Tag Archives: Merlin

Pixel Scroll 3/31/25 Are Pixels Beyond Count Or Not?

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(1) WILE E.’S DAY. We’ll get to see it after all: “Warner Bros Completes Sale Of ‘Coyote Vs. Acme’ To Ketchup” reports Deadline.

Ketchup Entertainment today confirmed their completed deal for worldwide rights to the live-action/animated hybrid film that brings Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote to the big screen. We had the deal pegged in the $50M range and the film is expected to get a theatrical release in 2026….

….The film is based on the Looney Tunes characters and the New Yorker humor article “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier.

Will Forte, John Cena, Lana Condor and Tone Bell star in the movie, which follows Wile E. Coyote, who, after Acme products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, decides to hire a billboard lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation. The case pits Wile E. and his lawyer (Forte) against the latter’s intimidating former boss (Cena), but a growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win….

(2) #30#. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has announced that the organization is shutting down. They offer a lengthy explanation in “The State of NaNoWriMo – A Community Update – March 2025” on YouTube.

We come to you today with a major operational update and important news about the future of the organization and we encourage you to listen to it in its entirety. This video shares real data and information that the organization has not discussed previously. It also contains some important acknowledgments and information about the logistics of our next steps.

This is the aftermath of a controversy that erupted last September when they issued an equivocal statement about using AI – when it did not go unnoticed that NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, a writing app that advertises AI-powered technology, including text rewrites – and Writers Board members Daniel Jose Older, Cass Morris, and Rebecca Kim Wells immediately resigned. 

(3) KICKSTARTER FOR LONG LIST ANTHOLOGY 9. [Item by Ziv Wities.] The Long List Anthology series collects stories that show up on the Hugo Award finalist tally, based on the official report of the top fifteen finishers in each Hugo category.  

Long List Anthology Volume 9 is drawn from the Long List of the 2024 Hugo Awards. This volume is co-edited by David Steffen, Chelle Parker, and Hal Y. Zhang, with original cover art by Evelyne Park. The new volume includes stories by genre favorites, new voices, and three translations of stories originally published in Chinese — including one translation which is original to the LLA.

Join the Kickstarter here: “The Long List Anthology Volume 9 by David Steffen”.

(4) SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS 2025 HOF INDUCTEES. The Society of Illustrators have announced the 2025 Hall of Fame recipients, contemporary artists Rudy Gutierrez, Kadir Nelson, and Tim O’Brien, and posthumous honorees Peter Arno, Frank R. Paul, and Marie Severin. The Society’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held on Thursday, October 9.

Here is what the press release says about artists of genre interest Paul and Severin.

Art credit: Frank R. Paul, Stories of the Stars: Andromeda, circa 1950s. Gouache and ink on board.

Frank R. Paul (1884 – 1963) was a pioneering American illustrator best known for shaping the visual language of science fiction during the early 20th century. His bold, visionary artwork graced the covers of seminal pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Fantastic Adventures, introducing readers to a vibrant, imaginative future filled with spaceships, robots, and alien worlds. Trained in mechanical drafting and architecture, Paul brought an unmatched level of technical precision and grandeur to his work, helping to define the aesthetic of speculative fiction long before the rise of popular sci-fi cinema. In an era before comic books or concept art departments, Paul created entire worlds from scratch, often illustrating full-color covers, interior black-and-white pieces, and even full spreads for each issue. Over the course of his career, he illustrated thousands of works and played a foundational role in inspiring generations of artists, writers, and filmmakers. He is widely regarded as the first major science fiction artist, and his influence is still seen in visual media today. Frank R. Paul was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 for his trailblazing contributions to the genre.

Art credit: Marie Severin (interior pencils), Marvel Spotlight No. 32, Marvel Comics, February 1977. Ink and color on paper.

Marie Severin (1929 – 2018) was a legendary comic book artist and colorist whose work helped define the visual identity of both EC Comics and Marvel Comics throughout the mid-20th century. Beginning her career as a colorist at EC in the 1950s, she quickly earned recognition for her keen sense of composition, storytelling, and humor, eventually moving into penciling and inking as one of the few prominent female artists in the male-dominated industry of the Silver Age. At Marvel, she co-created iconic characters such as the Living Tribunal and worked on titles including Doctor Strange, The Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, and Not Brand Echh, a satirical series that showcased her sharp comedic sensibility. Known affectionately as “Mirthful Marie” among peers, Severin brought a distinctive style that blended expressive characters with dynamic layouts, all while mastering the art of visual pacing. She had a unique ability to inject personality and emotion into every panel, making even the most fantastical scenarios feel grounded and human. Her behind-the-scenes influence also extended to production and design, contributing to Marvel’s overall visual tone during a crucial period of expansion and experimentation.

Her versatility as both a humorist and dramatic artist made her an invaluable creative force in every genre she touched—whether superheroes, horror, fantasy, or comedy. Severin was admired not only for her technical skill but also for her warmth, wit, and generosity within the comics community. In 2001, she was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, and her legacy continues to inspire comic artists around the world. Marie Severin remains one of the most important and beloved figures in the history of American comics.

(5) BLACK MIRROR S7 EPISODE BRIEFING. “’Black Mirror’ Season 7 Trailer and Episode Details Revealed” by The Hollywood Reporter.

Such details include cast, synopsis, run time and credits for each standalone saga, which includes the first-ever Black Mirror sequel, for USS Callister, and a callback episode to Netflix’s first-ever interactive feature with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

(6) JAMESON QUINN DIES. Jameson Quinn was killed when he fell off a cliff in Guatemala on March 23. His death was announced by his mother on Bluesky. According to his son it happened when Quinn was trying to rescue a dog.

Jameson Quinn

Quinn is best known to science fiction fans for helping to reform the Hugo Award nominating system in the wake of the Sad/Rabid Puppies block voting episodes of 2013-2017. He designed the EPH (E Pluribus Hugo) voting method, and helped get it adopted by the World Science Fiction Society for use in nominations for the Hugo awards. He was an active participant on Making Light, and contributed articles to File 770 and also led comment discussions about the initiative here.

Quinn’s other noteworthy accomplishments in voting theory and/or voting reform included co-organizing and attending the British Colombia Symposium on Proportional Representation in 2018 (sponsored by the Center for Election Science), and popularizing the term “Voter Satisfaction Efficiency” (VSE).

A Harvard grad school blog profile about Jameson featured his contribution to EPH as an example of his work: “A Better Way to Vote”.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novel

It’s the seventy-fourth anniversary of the first publication of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation as a novel. So let’s tell the history of the novel. 

In the summer of 1941, Isaac Asimov proposed to John W. Campbell of Astounding Science Fiction that he write a short story set in a slowly declining Galactic Empire, based on the fall of the Roman Empire. Campbell thought the idea was great. 

Then Asimov proposed writing a series of stories depicting the fall of the first Galactic Empire and the rise of the second. Asimov would write eight stories for Campbell’s magazine over eight years (1942-1949), and they were later collected into three volumes known as The Foundation Trilogy which were published from 1951 to 1953.

Foundation was first published as a single book by Gnome Press. It has “The Psychohistorians”, “The Encyclopedists” “The Mayors”, “The Traders” and “The Merchant Princes”. “The Encyclopedists” and “The Mayors” were novelettes, the others are short stories.  As noted before, each was in Astounding Science Fiction. 

The cover art is by David Kyle. Please note that on the cover it is titled Foundation: An Interplanetary Novel. When Ace published it they renamed it The 1,000 Year Plan in their two editions of 1955 and 1962. 

At Tricon (1966), it would win the Hugo for Best All-Time Series. Other nominees were Burroughs’ Barsoom series, Heinlein’s  Future History series , E. E. Smith’s Lensmen series and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. 

As you know, it is now streaming as a series as Apple+. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) THE INSIDE STORY. “Rare Merlin and King Arthur text found hidden in binding of medieval book” – Popular Science tells how it was done.

Variations on the classic Merlin and King Arthur legends span hundreds, if not thousands, of retellings. Many are documented within handwritten medieval manuscripts dating back over a millenia—but some editions are far rarer than others. For example, less than 40 copies are known to exist of a once-popular sequel series, the Suite Vulgate du Merlin. In 2019, researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered fragments of one more copy in their collections, tucked inside the recycled binding of a wealthy family’s property record from the 16th century. But at the time of discovery, the text was impossible to read.

Now after years of painstaking collaborative work with the university’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory (CHIL), archivists have finally been able to peer inside the obscured texts—without ever needing to physically handle the long-lost pages.

Experts combined multiple conservation tools and techniques to construct a 3D model of the fragments. These included multispectral imaging (MSI), which creates high-resolution images by scanning an artifact with wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet to infrared light. After borrowing X-ray and CT machines from Cambridge’s zoology department, the team then examined the parchment layers to map unseen binding structures without the need to deconstruct the delicate material. CT scanning allowed researchers to examine how the pages were stitched together using thin strips of similar parchment.

Some of the Merlin texts were unreadable due to being hidden under folds or stitching, so the team also needed to amass hundreds of images from every angle using an array of magnets, prisms, mirrors, and other tools. The combined result is a high-definition, digitized 3D model of the entire relic that unfolds, allowing experts to analyze it as though reviewing the physical manuscript itself.

The results revealed not just a part of Suite Vulgate du Merlin, but insights into the time period in which it existed. Experts now believe the sections originally belonged to a shortened edition of the tale. Given small typographical errors as well as the red and blue ink used in its handwritten decorated initials, historians traced its origins to sometime between 1275–1315 CE…

(10) TIME FOR A SNACK. Invasion ’53, written by Danielle Weinberg,is making the rounds of film festivals. View the trailer at the link.

Invasion ’53, a 10-minute short film about a man-eating alien who crashes a suburban cocktail party. The movie stars Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and was produced with Kurt Uebersax (Elf-Man, America’s Most Wanted).

(11) FROM AN OLD FAMILIAR SCORE. “What gave life on Earth its spark? Scientists recreating a decades-old experiment offer a new clue” says CNN.

In the 1931 movie “Frankenstein,” Dr. Henry Frankenstein howling his triumph was an electrifying moment in more ways than one. As massive bolts of lightning and energy crackled, Frankenstein’s monster stirred on a laboratory table, its corpse brought to life by the power of electricity.

Electrical energy may also have sparked the beginnings of life on Earth billions of years ago, though with a bit less scenery-chewing than that classic film scene.

Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and the oldest direct fossil evidence of ancient life — stromatolites, or microscopic organisms preserved in layers known as microbial mats — is about 3.5 billion years old. However, some scientists suspect life originated even earlier, emerging from accumulated organic molecules in primitive bodies of water, a mixture sometimes referred to as primordial soup.

But where did that organic material come from in the first place? Researchers decades ago proposed that lightning caused chemical reactions in ancient Earth’s oceans and spontaneously produced the organic molecules.

Now, new research published March 14 in the journal Science Advances suggests that fizzes of barely visible “microlightning,” generated between charged droplets of water mist, could have been potent enough to cook up amino acids from inorganic material. Amino acids — organic molecules that combine to form proteins — are life’s most basic building blocks and would have been the first step toward the evolution of life….

(12) VIDEO FROM ANCIENT DAYS. A zillion years ago, Vincent Price was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to promote Theatre of Blood, in which he murders all the critics who fail to praise his Shakespearean ham acting. (How long ago was this? Sitting next to him was the singer Mama Cass Elliot, who obviously wasn’t dead yet…!)

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

Pixel Scroll 2/5/19 Recycling Day: Leave Your Blue Bins On The Shoulders Of Orion Tomorrow

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(1) FANTASY LIST. ReedsyDiscovery offers its list of “The 100 Best Fantasy Series Ever”. It’s in alphabetical order by title – I was briefly worried, because if somebody wanted to put A Song of Ice and Fire in first place for some reason that could make sense, but it took me a moment to understand why Lord of the Rings was down around number 60.

I’ve read a dozen of these – you’re bound to do better!

(2) NEW BOOKS OUT. Vulture features “A Conversation With Marlon James and Victor LaValle”.

The other day, Victor LaValle, a Queens-born author who employs the form of the fairy tale as a barbed hook to lure readers into serious treatments of race, parenting, and the internet, ordered dim sum with Marlon James, a Jamaican author of sweeping social epics that delight in challenging all the conventions of narrative. Both have book projects out this week. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is James’s highly anticipated follow-up to the Man Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings. LaValle has co-edited a new speculative anthology, A People’s Future of the United States, prompting 25 of today’s biggest SFF writers to contemplate the future — and dark present — of the country….

MJ: I gotta say, that’s maybe the first time anybody’s ever mentioned that I write about sex. I actually kinda screamed.

VL: Did you feel all right with me talking about that aspect of it?

MJ: Absolutely! I don’t mind people writing about the violence, but it tends to be all they write about.

VL: For a black writer writing about gangsters, violence is almost the go-to. But sex is absolutely a part of your work in such a big and vital way, as another form of — not just violence but as communion, communication. I was talking about this with my wife, and she pointed out that none of the reviews of your last book mentioned sex at all. So as I was reading this one, I was like, It’s here, too. I just need to say, people should talk about sex.

MJ: Literary realism has this sort of indie-film attitude toward sex. Violence is violent, but sex isn’t sexy. It’s compulsive; nobody’s happy; they enjoy the cigarette way more than the sex. Sometimes I read these novels, none of which I’ll name, and I go, It’s not that hard to enjoy sex, people.

(3) KLAGES INTERVIEW. Juliette Wade and her team take another Dive Into Worldbuilding with “Ellen Klages and Passing Strange”. See the interview in video (below) or read the synopsis at the link.

I asked Ellen what had been the initial seed of this novella. As it turns out, the novella has a very long history! Ellen told us that she started writing a novel or a short story or something in 1977 when she was 22 or 23, and had just moved to San Francisco, and just figured out that she was queer. She ended up wandering around a lot, learning about Mona’s and many of the other locations that appear in the novella. She did a lot of research and did what she described as cosplaying Haskel and Netterfield with her love of the time. She told us she thought it would be a novel. She had four scenes typed, and would read the scenes every few years and say to herself, “Damn, I should do something with that.”

Then, years later, Jonathan Strand asked her for a novella for Tor.com. By that point, Ellen says, she had four or five folders full of notes and photographs put together from all her years of research. At that point she did 3 1/2 more months of research before writing. She read about a dozen books on Chinatown. She said she started there because it was “the thing I knew I had to get right.” She filled eighty pages with notes, most of which didn’t get used. One page, which she showed us on video, was filled with Haskel’s signature. She explored the gay and lesbian historical archives about Mona’s.

Three of the characters in the story, Babs, Polly, and Franny, have appeared in other works of Ellen’s fiction. In “Out of Left Field,” Babs and Franny appear as relatives of the main characters. Polly appears in “Hey, Presto!” and Franny in “Caligo Lane.”

(4) EARLY MERLIN. Text of a source probably used by Malory when writing his Arthurian legends has been found: “Centuries lost ‘Bristol Merlin’ uncovered at city’s Central Library”

A chance discovery, hidden away in a series of 16th-century books deep in the archive of Bristol Central Library, has revealed original manuscript fragments from the Middle Ages which tell part of the story of Merlin the magician, one of the most famous characters from Arthurian legend.  

Academics from the Universities of Bristol and Durham are now analysing the seven parchment fragments which are thought to come from the Old French sequence of texts known as the Vulgate Cycle or Lancelot-Grail Cycle, dating back to the 13th century.

Parts of the Vulgate Cycle were probably used by Sir Thomas Malory (1415-1471) as a source for his Le Morte D’Arthur (published in 1485 by William Caxton) which is itself the main source text for many modern retellings of the Arthurian legend in English, but no one version known so far has proven to be exactly alike with what he appears to have used.

(5) ONE FOR THE FILES. Colette H. Fozard, Co-Chair of the DC in 2021 Worldcon bid, writes:

I wanted to let you know that we made our bid filing with Dublin 2019 Site Selection and it has been accepted as complete by the Site Selection Administrator.

(6) ANNIE BELLET 10 YEARS IN SFF. Celebratory thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/anniebellet/status/1092839390169260032

(7) EMSHWILLER OBIT. Author Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019), winner of World Fantasy Con’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2005) has died. The SFWA Blog has an obituary:

Author Carol Emshwiller (b.Carol Fries, April 12, 1921) died on February 2nd, 2019.   Ms. Emshwiller began publishing science fiction in 1954, with the story “Built for Pleasure.”  Emshwiller built a reputation as a short fiction author and Ursula Le Guin said that she had “one of the strongest, most complex, most consistently feminist voices in fiction.”

…SFWA President Cat Rambo remembers,

Carol Emshwiller was one of the greats of short story writing, right up there with Grace Paley, James Tiptree Jr., Ursula K. Le Guin, and R.A. Lafferty, and she pushed its edges in order to do amazing, delightful, and illuminating things–just as she did with her longer work. As a short story lover, I am gutted by this loss to the writing community and plan to spend part of today re-reading Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories, with its beautifully incisive and unflinching stories.

This photo from Melissa C. Beckman shows the author in front of a portrait of her painted by her late husband Ed Emshwiller.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 5, 1904 – William S. Burroughs. I’m going to confess that I’ve read nothing by him so everything I know about I’ve absorbed by reading about him and seeing his fiction turned into films. So though ISFDB lists a number of his works as SF, I’ve not a clue what they’re like. So educate me please. (Died 1997.)
  • Born February 5, 1922 – Peter Leslie. Writer in a number of media franchises including The Avengers, The New Avengers (and yes they are different franchises), The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and The Invaders. ISFDB also lists has writing in the Father Hayes series but I don’t recognize that series. (Died 2007.)
  • Born February 5, 1934 – Malcolm Willits, 95. Author of The Wonderful Edison Time Machine: A Celebration of Life and Shakespeare’s Cat: A Play in Three Acts which he filmed as Shakespeare’s Cat. He also co-edited Destiny, an early Fifties fanzine with Jim Bradley.
  • Born February 5, 1940 – H.R. Giger. Conceptual designer in whole or part for Aliens, Alien³, Species and Alien: Resurrection to name a few films he’s been involved in. Did you know there are two Giger Bars designed by him, both in Switzerland? And yes they’re really weird. (Died 2014.)
  • Born February 5, 1964 – Laura Linney, 55. She first shows up in our corner of the Universe as Meryl Burbank/Hannah Gill on The Truman Show before playing Officer Connie Mills in The Mothman Prophecies (BARF!) and then Erin Bruner in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. She plays Mrs. Munro In Mr. Holmes, a film best described as stink, stank and stunk when it comes to all things Holmesian. Her last SF was as Rebecca Vincent in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

(9) LEAPING V. LOOKING BEFORE. Jason Heller tells other dreamers not to wait. His thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/jason_m_heller/status/1092832459719200769
https://twitter.com/jason_m_heller/status/1092840756589383682

A bunch of sff authors begged to differ.

https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1092884323777372161

(10) ON THE RADIO. Genre was shut out at the BBC Audio Drama Awards 2019 but there’s the link in case you want to see the results. However, the winner in the Best Actress category is known to fans from her work on Torchwood.

BEST ACTRESS

WINNER: Eve Myles, 19 Weeks, director Helen Perry, BBC Cymru Wales, BBC Radio 4

(11) KLINGON CUTLERY. Police in Northwest England raided the home of a teenager and seized a cache of weapons including one that was … more esoteric. The BBC reports “A replica of a weapon wielded by a race of alien warriors in the sci-fi TV show Star Trek has been seized by police from a 17-year-old boy’s bedroom.” They did not, however find a ChonnaQ or D’k tahg. “Star Trek Klingon blade seized from Widnes teen’s bedroom”

The Widnes Police also posted about the raid on their Facebook page — some of the comments are quite amusing:

Nina : This is what happens when you remove Kahless from schools and everything else! Thoughts and prayers.

Michael Z. Williamson: Remember when young British males were REQUIRED to have a longbow? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

(12) OH, THE HUMANITIES. “Ursula K. Le Guin Was a Creator of Worlds” by Julie Philips is the cover story on the new issue of Humanities, published by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

When she found her way into science fiction and fantasy, those genres turned out to be well suited to her imagination, her curiosity, and her subversive suspicion that man was not the measure of all things. From the very beginning, in interviews and essays, Le Guin championed science fiction’s literary value. She did it most memorably in a 2014 speech when she accepted the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (or what writer China Miéville in the documentary calls “the welcome-to-the-canon award”). In that speech, she described herself and her colleagues as “realists of a larger reality.”

(13) I FEEL PRETTY. Call it a more modern take on the Island of Misfit Toys (SYFY Wire: “Second trailer for musical UglyDolls movie feels like a mix of Trolls, Toy Story, and Inside Out”).

STX Entertainment has unveiled the second trailer for its animated UglyDolls movie via The Ellen Show, and the message of what looks to be a Trolls redo is actually very resonant for us all: Don’t shy away from what makes you different; embrace it.

The new trailer also explains where the singing UglyDolls come from — they’re factory rejects compared to the “normal” dolls of our world, and are left discarded in a town all their own. They’re all pretty much happy until a renegade by the name of Moxy (voiced by Kelly Clarkson) wants to explore the wider world and find the kid who will love her. Along with her friends, Moxy will travel to the Institute of Perfection, which pairs dolls with humans.

[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Juliette Wade, Cat Eldridge, Olav Rokne, John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, rcade, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day microtherion.]

Pixel Scroll 11/21 The Incredible Linking Fan

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(1) For lovers and others of giant movie monsters, “Doc Kaiju” — well known at the Classic Horror Film Board — has put together a rather remarkable compendium of such creatures: Kaijumatic: House of 1,000 Giant Monsters

Or, as he likes to put it:

Now with 1003 pages stuffed with 1670 big stars from 749 movies!

And, he updates it, constantly.

(2) Barney Evans has uploaded 50 photos taken at the 1988 Loscon, including many from the masquerade.

(3) “David Tennant Answers Our Burning Questions… Sort Of” in a Yahoo! video and profile.

As any David Tennant fan knows after years of watching him promote Doctor Who and Broadchurch, no one evades questions more delightfully. Hoping some of the mind control capabilities of his latest character, the villainous Kilgrave in Marvel’s Jessica Jones (now streaming on Netflix), had rubbed off on us, we invited him in to Yahoo Studios, handed him a card filled with questions, and asked him to answer them.

One example:

Name a book, TV show, or movie you’ve pretended to have read or seen, but you totally haven’t.

That’s a very good question. Probably in audition I’ve done that several times with some worthy director, who asked me what I thought of their latest opus.

(4) Entertainment Weekly looks on as “Stephen Colbert mocks scientists for making wrong Lord of the Rings reference”:

This week, a new species of spider was identified and given the name Iandumoema smeagol, a reference to Smeagol, the hobbit who would become Gollum after getting ahold of the One Ring. The cave-dwelling spider was given the name Smeagol because it shared a similar lifestyle with the character, who lived in a cave and stayed out of the sun until he morphed into the monstrous Gollum.

Colbert, however, wasn’t having any of it on Friday’s show. “Smeagol wasn’t a scary creature who lived in a cave,” Colbert said before recounting Smeagol’s biography, and how he killed his cousin after finding the One Ring.

Explained Colbert: “Smeagol hid from his guilt and the yellow face of the sun, by retreating into a cave, where his shame and his fear turned him into an unrecognizable creature. That creature wasn’t Smeagol anymore; that creature was Gollum. You should have named the spider Gollum. You don’t discover a venomous snake and name it Anakin. You name it Darth Vader.”

 

(5) Brandon Kempner strikes gold in “SFWA 2015 Nebula Recommended Reading List: Analysis and Prediction” at Chaos Horizon.

Table 1: Correlation Between Top 6 (and Ties) of the 2014 Nebula Suggested Reading List and the Eventual 2014 Nebula Nominees

Novel: 4 out of 6, 67.7%
Novella: 6 out of 6, 100%
Novelette: 5 out of 6, 83.3%
Short Story: 6 out of 7, 85.7%

(6) Netflix will remake Lost in Space.

The original comedy, which ran from 1965 to 1968, centered on the Robinson family as they attempted to colonize another planet in deep space — a mission that was sabotaged by a foreign secret agent and caused their ship to get knocked off course.

According to our sister site Deadline, the updated version is an epic (but grounded!) sci-fi saga about “a young explorer family from Earth, lost in an alien universe, and the challenges they face in staying together against seemingly insurmountable odds.”

(7) Laughing Squid presents the entire history of Doctor Who illustrated as a medieval tapestry.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, Bill Mudron has created a “slightly ridiculous” tribute to the Bayeux Tapestry that shows the entire history of the show. It begins when the Doctor runs away from his home planet of Gallifrey and ends with “The Day of the Doctor,” the 75-minute 50 anniversary special set to air on BBC One on November 23rd, 2013. A larger version of the illustration can be found on Mudron’s Flickr, and prints are available to pre-order online.

 

Doctor Who tapestry COMP

(8) The sparks fly when Galactic Journey’s time traveler to the sf genre of 55 years ago rubs together the contemporary and historical notions of political correctness in “I aim at the Stars (but sometimes I hit London)” .

If the United States is doing well in the Space Race, it is in no small thanks to a group of German expatriates who made their living causing terror and mayhem in the early half of the 1940s.  I, of course, refer to Wehrner von Braun and his team of rocket scientists, half of whom were rounded up by the Allies after the War, the other half of whom apparently gave similar service to the Soviets.

The traveler comments on a hagiographic von Braun biopic released at the time, and provides a scan of the souvenir Dell comic book based on the film.

(9) Michael J. Martinez prepping to see the new Star Wars movie by watching the two original trilogies in their canonical order. He begins — Star Wars wayback machine: The Phantom Menace.

This is basically a movie that’s supposed to remind us of the first trilogy, but does very little to actually create an origin story for those older movies. Instead, we have attempts at nostalgia. Look, Jedi! Lightsabers! The Force! Spaceships and space battles! But even there, we have problems. Such as:

There’s no smart-ass. All the prequels were missing the Han Solo archetype — the scrappy outsider and audience surrogate who can stand toe-to-toe with these gods and monsters.

There’s George Lucas’ efforts at being cute, with the Gungans. I think George felt that he needed to appeal to the cute younger audiences, starting with Return of the Jedi, and thus we had Ewoks. Now we have Gungans, complete with silly mannerisms and catchphrases. Adults always underestimate kids’ ability to grasp nuanced entertainment, and this is no exception. We didn’t need Gungans.

The stereotypical accents and mannerisms of the Gungans and the Trade Federation folk have been covered elsewhere. But still…WTF were you thinking, man? Just no.

Wooden dialogue and stiff acting. I think I know what George was going for here — a shout-out to the sci-fi serials and movies of the 1940s and 1950s. Fine, I get it. But it didn’t work. At all.

(10) “Don’t nominate me for any awards” posts Lela E. Buis.

I don’t want to be left out of the trending commentary….

(11) “4 Beautiful Ray Bradbury Quotes That Celebrate Autumn”  selected by Jake Offenhartz at History Buff.

Though mid-afternoon sunsets and leafless trees may give the impression that winter is fast approaching, we’re still technically just halfway through fall. Which strikes us as good enough reason to look back at the work of Ray Bradbury—master of science fiction, adversary of censorship, and chronicler of all things fall. The author wrote extensively about the season, penning autumnal wisdom in various projects throughout his career, most notably in a short story collection called The October Season and a novel titled The Halloween Tree. We’ve collected some of our favorite fall-related quotes below, so cozy up and have a read:

1. The October Country (1955)

“That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”

(12) Merlin is in Disney’s future says CinemaBlend.

If you were going to create a checklist for how to make a current Hollywood blockbuster there are a few things you want to be sure were on it. First, you want to base it on an already existing piece of fiction, preferably a book. It would be even better if it were a series of books, about a character people were already familiar with. It would need to be able to have big fantasy action set pieces too. Then you want to bring in a production team that was involved in one of the previous fantasy action franchises based on a series of books, because that stuff looks great on a trailer. It looks like Disney just checked off all their boxes as they just brought in an Academy Award winning screenwriter from The Lord of the Rings to pen the screenplay based on a 12 book series about Merlin the magician.

Philippa Boyens is known, almost exclusively, as one of the writers behind the incredibly successful films based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

(13) Guy Gavriel Kay, Member of the Order of Canada.

(14) Caitlin Kiernan, two-time WFA winner, regrets the Lovecraft bust is being retired, in her post “I have seen what the darkness does.”

You may or may not have heard that the World Fantasy Committee has voted to change the design of the World Fantasy Award from Gahan Wilson’s bust of Lovecraft, which has served as the award since it was first given out in 1975. No, I don’t approve. I don’t believe this was the appropriate course of action. I’m saddened by this lamentable turn of events, and I’m glad that I received my two World Fantasy awards in advance of this change. How long, now, before the Mystery Writers of America are pressured to abandon the Edgar Award? When we set this sort of thing in motion, where does it end?

(15) A limited TV series based on a Vonnegut book – it could happen, reports A.V. Club.

Back in April, we reported that Kurt Vonnegut’s fourth novel, Cat’s Cradle, had been optioned for TV by IM Global Television. At that point almost nothing was known about the project other than the fact that it would indeed use Cat’s Cradle as its source material, which is implicit in a TV show labeled as Cat’s Cradle adaptation. Now though, according to Deadline, a precious few details have emerged: the show will live on FX as a limited series, and be written and executive produced by Fargo creator Noah Hawley.

Vonnegut’s original work was published in 1963 and takes on science, technology, and religion with equal satirical fire. After the novel’s narrator, John, becomes involved in the lives of the adult children of Felix Hoenikker, a fictional co-creator of the atomic bomb, he travels to the fake Caribbean island of San Lorenzo and encounters a strange outlawed religion called Bokononism that many of the area’s inhabitants practice anyway. Through Hoenikker’s children he also learns about ice-nine, a way to freeze water at room temperature that could be devastating if used improperly. Needless to say, destruction and dark humor ensue.

(16) On its February cover, Mad Magazine slipped Alfred E. Newman into a crowd of storm troopers.

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(17) IGN will be ranking the top 100 movie trailers of all time in a feature that will be unveiled November 23-25.

(18) Comic Book Resources retells a bit of lore about the making of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in “Movie Legends Revealed: The Accidental ‘Star Trek’ Actress?”

It is a funny scene, but it was also ad-libbed. Notice how everyone else ignores them? The woman who answered them was also supposed to ignore them. The comedy was supposed to derive from the fact that they couldn’t get an answer (and, yes, from the way Chekov says “vessels”).

The woman in question was San Francisco resident Layla Sarakalo, who woke up one day to discover her car had been towed. She had missed the notices that “Star Trek” was filming on her street, and her car was in the way. She decided that one way to get the money to pay for the towing was to get a job as an extra on the set.

 

[Thanks to Shambles, James H. Burns, Will R., John King Tarpinian, and Lynn Maudlin for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]