Pixel Scroll 3/23/24 Please Be Aware That The Closest Pixel Might Be Behind You

(0) The Saturday Scroll will be a short one. I am on my way to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday — which will feel a bit incongruous because I’m still shocked and saddened by this first piece of news:

(1) DEB GEISLER, FN (1957-2024). Dr. Deborah M. Geisler (Deb), chair of Noreascon 4, the 2004 Worldcon, died today at the age of 66.

Her husband, Mike Benveniste, announced on Facebook that she passed at home while resting comfortably under hospice care after a long battle with lung and heart disease.  He added:

Deb was, at her core, a teacher.  As a professor of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University, she touched the lives of students for over 30 years.  Deb never stopped caring profoundly about her students and the material she taught.  She was also a science fiction fan, fellow of NESFA, and conrunner and made many friendships in that community. 

She was chair of Noreascon 4, a Boskone, the 2004 Worldcon, and volunteered her time, experience, and snark to many other conventions. She was also the love of my life — we would have been married 33 years this October.

Deb is survived by her sister Libby and brother Doug as well as her extended family.  I will post arrangements for a wake and a memorial in the future once I know them.

Deb Geisler in 2015. Photo by Michael Benveniste.

(2) FRANK R. PAUL AWARDS DEADLINE. The submission window for the Frank R. Paul Awards closes March 31. The relaunched award will be presented at the 2024 NASFiC in Buffalo. Award administrator Frank Wu reminds artists:

Frank R. Paul was the first great science fiction magazine artist; he did the covers for the first few years of Amazing Stories, and Ray Bradbury, Forry Ackerman and Arthur C. Clarke were enticed into this field by his art. The FRP awards for best book cover and magazine cover art offer a $500 honorarium for each. Any artist, author, editor or publisher can submit up to 5 of their own works from 2023; the awards are open to everyone, including pro, semi-pro, fan or indie. Reprinted works are fine, as long as the art is new for 2023. The award winners will be determined by a panel of judges, and Frank R. Paul’s grandson Bill Engle is a member of the award committee. 

For more information, please see the award website or contact the chief awards administrator, Frank Wu, at [email protected].

The Frank R. Paul Awards were last run in 1996 by Kubla-Khan and the Nashville SF Association. Frank Wu is funding the first year’s award. For subsequent years they will be setting up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and taking donations. 

(3) COIN OF THE REALM. “Coming to a Galaxy Near You – The Royal Mint Launches New Star Wars™ Range”.

The Millennium Falcon today (Monday 18th March) landed onto an official UK coin, as The Royal Mint unveils its latest collectable Star Wars™ coins and bullion bars.

Following the success of its first Star Wars coin series, Series 2 is dedicated to the franchise’s iconic vehicles. Designed by Ffion Gwillim, the first coin is the series depicts the infamous Millennium Falcon, one of the most recognised and celebrated vehicles in the Star Wars galaxy. Collectors and fans will enjoy the coin’s unique lenticular feature, depicting a silhouette of the Millennium Falcon and the Rebel Alliance ‘Starbird’ symbol.

Combining traditional minting techniques with modern technology, The Royal Mint’s craftspeople have faithfully reproduced the Star Wars vehicles for the first time on official UK coins. The lenticular feature, which tilts in the light to reveal symbols, is favourited by coin collectors, and demonstrates The Royal Mint’s specialised striking techniques. An advanced picosecond laser was used to imprint the intricate designs onto coin making tools to ensure exquisite accuracy.

Other coins launching in 2024 will showcase a TIE FighterX-Wing, and Death Star II.

(4) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 23, 1952 Kim Stanley Robinson, 72. If the Mars trilogy was the only work that Kim Stanley Robinson had written, he’d rank among the best genre writers ever. So let’s talk about it. The trilogy consists of Red MarsGreen Mars and Blue Mars plus The Martians collection of short stories which I’ve not read because I didn’t know it existed until now. 

(He wrote another Mars set novel prior to this, Icehenge, but it is not related to this continuity however it shares much of its themes.)

Kim Stanley Robinson reading at Boskone 57 in 2020. Photo by Daniel Dern.

The trilogy with its colonizing and terraforming of Mars told through many narratives is quite fascinating. The use of multiple narratives isn’t by any means my favorite approach to telling a story but works perfectly here and I can’t imagine a more traditional approach working here. 

Red Mars won a BSFA and Nebula. Green Mars and Blue Mars won Hugos.

Then he went and wrote the outstanding Three Californias Trilogy. The novels that make up the trilogy are The Wild ShoreThe Gold Coast and Pacific Edge. I’ve only spent brief periods of time there, though I lived in both states north of there, but I found his creation of three possible future Californias rather interesting. 

May I note that the Science in the Capital series (Forty Signs of RainFifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting) is one perhaps that I can’t judge fairly as I didn’t like the first novel so I stopped there. 

His best one-off novels I think are without argument (ha!) The Years of Rice and Salt and New York 2140.  Now I’ll admit that’s based at, in part, on the fact that he’s written a lot of novel outside of the series I’ve read such as The Ministry for the Future with future generations being vested now which sounds interesting and  and Red Moonwell. 

He’s won way, way too many Awards to go into in detail, but I’ll will note that he won both the Robert A. Heinlein Award for everything that he done to that date, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in service to society. 

(5) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Season 1 trailer for the new Doctor Who has dropped.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Frank Wu, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]

Pixel Scroll 4/21/17 Pass The Pixel On The Left Hand Side

(1) MYSTERY SOLVED. Yesterday’s Scroll reported the episode of Fargo where someone picked up a rocket-shaped trophy as a weapon, which several people identified (incorrectly) as a Hugo. Today Movie Pilot ran a story about the episode’s Easter eggs and repeated the Hugo Award identification – illustrated with photos for comparison — in item #5.

When the sheriff drives back to her step-dad’s house to get the statue he’d made for her son, Nathan, she discovers the door ajar and the place a mess. Before heading up the stairs to investigate, she grabs something that looks very much like a Hugo Award, in case she needs to defend herself.

A Hugo trophy is awarded to the best sci-fi and fantasy writer of the year, meaning Ennis Stussy might have at one point won the award. Could he have been a witness to the alien encounter all the way back in 1979, inspiring him to write sci-fi?

The Fargo award is not a physical Hugo (whatever may be intended). Movie Pilot’s comparative Hugo photo is, and I was vain enough to hope it was one of mine (several have been photographed for archival purposes). After searching I found they used Michael Benveniste’s photo of a 1987 Hugo, and I definitely did not win in Brighton (although I won the year before and after), and the 1990 Worldcon bid I chaired was also annihilated in the voting…..

Whose Hugo is it? The plaque in the photo is hard to make out, but the phrase “edited by” is there, which narrows it the Hugo for Best Semiprozine or Best Fanzine, and there being an initial in the middle of the person’s name, it must be the 1987 Hugo given to Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown.

(2) NOTICING A TREND. JJ says at some point “Hugo award” entered the popular lexicon as “that’s some far-fetched confabulation you’ve got going on there.”

(3) ROAD WARRIOR. John Scalzi did a LA Times Q&A in which he shared “10 things you don’t know about authors on book tour”

  1. You have to be “on”

When people show up to your event, they expect to be entertained — yes, even at an author event, when technically all you’re doing is reading from your book and maybe answering some questions. As the author, you have to be up and appear happy and be glad people showed up, and you have to do that from the moment you enter the event space to the moment you get in a car to go back to the hotel, which can be several hours. It’s tiring even for extroverts and, well, most authors aren’t extroverts. Being “on” for several hours a day, several days in a row, is one of the hardest things you’ll ask an introverted author used to working alone to do. And speaking of work …

(4) IF I HAD A HAMMER. An advance ruling from @AskTSA.

(5) A VISIT FROM THE TARDIS. The Register claims “Doctor Who-inspired proxy transmogrifies politically sensitive web to avoid gov censorship” – a headline almost as badly in need of deciphering as HIX NIX STIX PIX.

Computer boffins in Canada are working on anti-censorship software called Slitheen that disguises disallowed web content as government-sanctioned pablum. They intend for it to be used in countries where network connections get scrutinized for forbidden thought.

Slitheen – named after Doctor Who aliens capable of mimicking humans to avoid detection – could thus make reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights look like a lengthy refresher course in North Korean juche ideology or a politically acceptable celebration of cats.

In a presentation last October, Cecylia Bocovich, a University of Waterloo PhD student developing the technology in conjunction with computer science professor Ian Goldberg, said that governments in countries such as China, Iran, and Pakistan have used a variety of techniques to censor internet access, including filtering by IP address, filtering by hostname, protocol-specific throttling, URL keyword filtering, active probing, and application layer deep packet inspection.

(6) NAFF WINNER. Fe Waters has been voted the 2017 National Australian Fan Fund (NAFF) delegate and will attend Natcon at Continuum in Melbourne in June.

Waters got into fandom in 1990, started attending Swancon in 1995, and after being inspired by the kids’ programming at AussieCon IV took on organizing the Family Programme for Swancon 2011–2013. For her Family Programme work she was awarded the Mumfan (Marge Hughes) Award in 2013. In 2016 she was the Fan Guest of Honour at Swancon.

The National Australian Fan Fund (NAFF) was founded in 2001 to assist fans to travel across Australia to attend the Australian National Convention (Natcon).

(7) NEIL GAIMAN, BOX CHECKER. Superversive SF’s Anthony M, who liked Neil Gaiman’s 17th-century vision of the Marvel universe — Marvel: 1602 (published in 2012) – nevertheless was displeased by its revelation of a gay character: “Marvel: 1602” and the Wet Fish Slap.

….Or even, if you are really, really incapable of not virtue signaling, if it’s truly so very important to you that people know you’re Totally Not Homophobic, why on earth would you have this character tell Cyclops he’s gay?

It was stupid, it was pointless, and it was insulting that Gaiman decided to make his story worse in order to tell the world that he was Totally Cool With Being Gay. It was a way of telling the reader that he cared less about them than about making himself look good to the right people….

(7-1/2) SEVEN DEADLY WORDS. Paul Weimer watched Mazes and Monsters for his Skiffy and Fanty podcast. You can listen to what he thought about it here, but wear your asbestos earbuds because Paul warned, “That episode is most definitely not safe for work, because I ranted rather hard, and with language not suitable for children….”

(8) AROUND THE SUBWAY IN 25 HOURS. “50 Years Ago, a Computer Pioneer Got a New York Subway Race Rolling” is a fascinating article about a Vernian proposition, and may even involve a couple of fans from M.I.T. in supporting roles, if those named (Mitchell, Anderson) are the same people.

A six-man party (Mr. Samson, George Mitchell, Andy Jennings, Jeff Dwork, Dave Anderson and Dick Gruen) began at 6:30 a.m. from the Pacific Street station in Brooklyn. But when they finally pulled into the platform at Pelham Bay Park after a little more than 25 hours and 57 minutes, reporters confronted them with an unexpected question: How come they hadn’t done as well as Geoffrey Arnold had?

They had never heard of Mr. Arnold, but apparently in 1963 he completed his version of the circuit faster (variously reported as 24 or 25 hours and 56 minutes). Worse, he was from Harvard.

“I decided to take it on a little more seriously,” Mr. Samson recalled.

With his competitive juices fired up, he got serious. He collaborated with Mr. Arnold on official rules and prepared for a full-fledged computer-driven record-breaking attempt with 15 volunteers on April 19, 1967.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 21, 1989 — Mary Lambert’s Stephen King adaptation Pet Cemetery opens

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY CITY

  • April 21, 753 BC – Rome is founded.

(11) SAD ANNIVERSARY. An interview by his local paper — “Pine Mountain author Michael Bishop to release book of short stories” – notes it’s been 10 years since his son was killed is a mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

Q: What led you to write “Other Arms Reach Out to Me: Georgia Stories” as a collection?

A: First, this book gathers almost (but not quite) all my mainstream stories set in Georgia or featuring characters from Georgia in foreign settings (see “Andalusia Triptych, 1962” and “Baby Love”) in a single volume. So, in that regard, it represents the culmination of a career-long project that I did not fully realize that I had embarked upon, but that I did always have in the back of my mind as an important project.

You will notice that “Other Arms” opens with a hommage to and an affectionate parody of the short fiction of Georgia’s own Flannery O’Connor (called “The Road Leads Back”) and that it concludes with a controversially satirical take on gun politics in Georgia set in an alternate time line (“Rattlesnakes and Men”).

I might add that this last story grows out of our lifelong desire to see the United States adopt sensible nationwide gun legislation that mandates background checks in every setting. We also are advocates for the banning of sales to private citizens of military-style weapons, high-capacity magazines, and certain excessive kinds of body-maiming ammunition without extremely good reasons for them to own such armament, which is totally unnecessary for protecting one’s home and hunting.

(12) MERGE WITH TV. The Into The Unknown exhibit at The Barbican in London runs June 3 to September 1. Visitors will be able to “Step Into A Black Mirror Episode”.

Walking into a Black Mirror.

Is that something you can see yourself doing?

Because if so, we have some good news for you: as part of their new show exploring the history of sci-fi, Into The Unknown, The Barbican are going to turn their huge Silk Screen entrance hall into an immersive take on the oh-so-gloriously bleak episode 15 Million Merits.

Quite how they’re doing this is still under wraps, but we do know that moments from the episode will be re-edited, mashed-up, and displayed on huge six-foot video installations surrounding you. We’re assuming that there will also be exercise bikes….

(13) ALWAYS NEWS TO SOMEONE. How did I miss this Klingon parody of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” at the height of the craze in 2012?

(14) WOZ SPEAKS. Steve Wozniak’s convention starts today. CNET made it the occasion for an interview — “Woz on Comic Con, iPhones and the Galaxy S8”.

Wozniak, commonly known as “Woz,” sat down with CNET a week before the second annual Silicon Valley Comic Con to talk about the geek conference he helped start in San Jose, California; what superhero he’d like to be; what features he’d like to see in the next iPhone; and why he’s excited to get his Galaxy S8.

Even though California already has a Comic Con — the massive event in San Diego — Wozniak said there’s plenty of room for more. “We’re going to have a big announcement at the end of this one,” he said. “We’re different and better, and we don’t want to be linked in with just being another.”

Last year marked the first time Silicon Valley hosted its own Comic Con, and this year it expands into areas like virtual reality and a science fair. The show kicks off Friday and ends Sunday.

“We’ll have the popular culture side of Comic Con, but we’ll mix in a lot of the science and technology that’s local here in Silicon Valley,” he said. “It seems like [tech and geek culture are] made for each other in a lot of ways.”

(15) THE TRUTH WILL BE OUT THERE AGAIN. Another season of X-Files is on the way says ScienceFiction.com.

You can’t keep a good TV series down – well, unless you’re Fox with ‘Firefly,’ I guess.  But hey, maybe Fox feels some remorse over this too-soon axing, so they are making up for it by giving 1990s hit sci-fi/conspiracy show ‘The X-Files‘ another go!

Originally, ‘The X-Files’ ran from 1993-2002 on TV, with two theatrical films in the mix as well.  Off the air but never truly forgotten, the show reached a sort of “cult status,” enough so that Fox made the call to bring the show back for a limited 6-episode revival in early 2016.  Based on the success of that experiment, Fox has rewarded series creator Chris Carter with a 10-episode order for this new season to debut either this Fall or early 2018 on the network.

(16) CELL DIVISION. A news item on Vox, “The new Oprah movie about Henrietta Lacks reopens a big scientific debate”, reminds Cat Eldridge of an sf novel: “There’s a scene in Mona Lisa Overdrive where Gibson hints strongly that one of the characters is a runaway cancer that’s contained within a number of shipping containers…”

This practice went on for decades without much controversy — until the bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot came along in 2010. The story sparked a debate among the public, researchers, and bioethicists about whether this practice is ethical — and whether the benefits to science truly outweigh the potential harms to individuals whose donations may come back to haunt them.

On Saturday, a new HBO movie starring Oprah based on the book will surely reignite that debate. The movie strongly suggests the practice of using anonymous tissues in research can be nefarious and deeply disturbing for families — while at the same time great for science. And so the research community is bracing for a backlash once again….

(17) WORKING. “Analogue Loaders” by Rafael Vangelis explains what would happen if real-life objects had to “load” the way computers do when we boot them up.

[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Hampus Eckerman, Mark-kitteh, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Clack.]