24 This Evening Jonathan Hoag Renounces His Unpleasant Profession

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Mike Glyer

From the Tom Baker / Doctor Who “The Android Invasion”

(1) CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS AUTHOR Q&A. “Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: ‘Satire is a way to make myself less depressed’” in the Guardian.

…His first novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, now out in paperback and currently on the shortlist for this year’s Arthur C Clarke science fiction award (announced on 24 July), takes place in a future in which live-streamed combat between death-row convicts has become prime-time entertainment. [Nana Kwame] Adjei-Brenyah, born and raised in New York, was speaking from his home in the Bronx.

Where did Chain-Gang All-Stars begin?
I’d been working with this group to try to end solitary confinement in New York state, because it’s known pretty much universally to be torture. I actually got involved with them because they were trying to support my former school district – it was being mismanaged and children of colour were being treated poorly – but the group [Rockland Coalition to End the New Jim Crow] was also interested in the rights and outcomes of people who are incarcerated. I’m interested in systems that get us to buy into violence and trick us into stepping on each other’s heads – literally, metaphorically – and I view the prison system as a huge version of that. Ninety-nine per cent of people in prison are impoverished and suffering from mental health problems and diseases of addiction. The idea that you can put humans in cages only stifles our ability to respond to these systemic issues with compassion. Carceral solutions to serious human problems perpetuate those problems.

Why did you address the subject by writing a satirical dystopia?
The speculative nature of the story helped me feel more comfortable getting extremely specific about the brutal statistical realities of prison. I don’t deny I’m writing a dystopia, but dystopia is really just a point of view that depends on your proximity to violence.…

(2) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET WEARY. “Election result celebrated by David and Georgia Tennant with ‘amazing’ Doctor Who reference” – The Independent sets up the photo.

David and Georgia Tennant have celebrated the General Election results with an “amazing” Doctor Who callback.

After a night of humiliation for the Conservative Party, who were beaten in a historic landslide by Labour, Rishi Sunak, before falling victim to an embarrassing prank by a YouTuber, conceded to Keir Starmer, calling the result “sobering”….

(3) COMPANIONSHIP. “Doctor Who’s Russell T Davies explains how Varada Sethu’s cameo in ‘Boom’ led to her being cast as Ncuti Gatwa’s companion” at GamesRadar+.

“I think we might as well just be simple with this, because we’ve already said she’s not coming back as Mundy Flynn,” Davies tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which hits newsstands on July 10 and features Doctor Who on the cover. “It’s one of those very simple situations, like with Freema [Agyeman, who appeared in ‘Army of Ghosts’ before being cast as companion Martha Jones]: when you cast a great actor, you need a new companion.”Sethu played Mundy Flynn in ‘Boom‘, the third episode of season 1. Written by former showrunner Steven Moffat, it takes place on the wartorn planet of Kastarion 3, and Mundy is a marine who the Doctor and Ruby encounter after the Doctor steps on a landmine….

…”I was watching, like, the fifteenth edit of ‘Boom’, loving her,” Davies continues. “Every time I watch her, I think, ‘God, she’s brilliant’, I literally think she’s brilliant. I used to watch her thinking, ‘God, what a shame we can’t work with her again.’ I was thinking, ‘Should we go back to the 51st century, could we meet her again?’ and then I suddenly went, ‘Oh, let’s just cast her again. We’ve done that before. Lovely.’…

…Davies concluded by teasing what’s to come, claiming: “Good stuff ahead. Completely new character, again, a completely new story and that’s a great new story that will run across eight episodes.”

(4) FROM BRIDGERTON TO GALLIFREY. “’Doctor Who’ showrunner teases Nicola Coughlan cameo in Christmas episode” at Geo News.

Nicola Coughlan, who rose to fame after starring in Netflix’s regency era drama Bridgerton, has reportedly landed another role.

Steven Moffat, who is the director of Doctor Who, recently sat down for a confessional on Ireland AM, and weighed in on the Christmas special episode of the popular sci-fi series.

He also revealed the name for this episode, which is called, Joy to the World and continued to say, “Nicola is wonderful in it.”

“I’m not allowed to say anything about it. At least I think I’m not allowed to say anything about it so I’ll just shut up,” he also teased and added that Nicola “will break your heart.”

(5) OH-OH! Inverse takes us “Inside The Secret James Bond Reboot That’s Happening Right Now”.

…Written by Kim Sherwood, the novels Double or Nothing (March 2023) and A Spy Like Me (April 2024), tell a new kind of James Bond story, one that utterly reboots the canon of character and smarty, focuses on various new Double O agents. In doing so, Sherwood pulls off a radical pivot for the Bond franchise.

“What I’m doing I think is a structural shift where I’m turning it into an ensemble cast,” Sherwood tells Inverse. “Fleming was writing in this very traditional quest narrative structure where Bond was a kind of medieval knight. He’s given a mission and he sets out from the castle. He’s always on his own. But he’s part of a Double O section. He’s inherently part of a wider world.”

Tackling the wider world of 007 seems like something that should have already happened. And to some extent, it has. There were The Moneypenny Diaries in 2005, as well as a 2017 comic book miniseries about Bond’s CIA ally, Felix Leiter. But none of these spinoffs are quite as extensive or reboot-y as Sherwood’s Double O series.

“Growing up, I loved things like comic books or Star Trek, which lean into this idea of the extended universe and really big ensemble casts,” Sherwood says. “Those casts can be 25 characters deep, and every single one of them can carry the show. So that’s what I’ve grown up loving and being inspired by. That’s the direction that I’ve taken this expansion of Bond.”

Both of Sherwood’s “Double O” novels are masterclasses in world-building. The Double O section is now headed by Moneypenny, who, in this version of the timeline, rose through the ranks with Bond. A male version of M still oversees the Secret Service in general, but he’s a kindly grandfather figure who Sherwood says she modeled on Patrick Stewart. Meanwhile, the gadget expert “Q” (most recently played by Ben Whishaw in the films) is essentially an AI in this version, a quantum computer that assists MI6 with various intelligence gathering and tech problems….

(6) WHY THE WASP FACTORY WAS NEEDED. This is not the best week to lead with Neil Gaiman, but don’t hold that against Iain Banks. The Guardian has organized an anniversary tribute: “’An explosion of talent’: Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory at 40”.

[Neil Gaiman:] It was 1984, and the publisher Macmillan was holding a small event for booksellers, and had invited a tiny handful of journalists along as well. They would be announcing upcoming titles, trying to get the booksellers excited about them. I was one of the journalists, but I only remember one author and one book from that afternoon. The author’s editor, James Hale, was thrilled about a first novel, which Macmillan would soon be publishing, and which James had discovered on the “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts. The author had been asked to say a few words to the assembled booksellers about himself and his book.

The author had dark, curly auburn hair and a ginger beard that was barely more than ambitious stubble. He was tall, and his accent was Scottish. He told us that he had really wanted to be a science fiction writer, that he had written several science fiction books and sent them out to publishers without attracting any interest. Then he had decided to “write what he knew”. He had taken his own obsessions as a young man, his delight in blowing things up and his fascination with homemade implements of destruction, and he had given them to Frank, a young man who also liked blowing things up but went much further than the author ever had. The author was Iain Banks, of course, and the book was The Wasp Factory…

…Iain needed to write a book that would be published, and he did. A book that was unflinchingly readable, dragging the reader in and through….

(7) JON LANDAU (1960-2024). Film producer Jon Landau died July 5. Variety notes:

…Landau, a longtime producing partner to James Cameron, was behind three of the top four highest-grossing movies of all time. Landau helped make history with “Titanic,” the first film to cross $1 billion at the global box office. He topped that movie’s record-breaking grosses twice, with 2009’s “Avatar” and its sequel, 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

Before his death, Landau was deeply involved in the production of the “Avatar” sequels. Cameron is planning to fill his blockbuster sci-fi franchise with five movies in total, with the fifth tentatively coming out in 2031….

Landau’s genre producing credits include: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989); Solaris (2002); Avatar (2009); Toruk: The First Fight (2016; TV movie); Alita: Battle Angel (2019); and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 6, 1927 — Janet Leigh. (Died 2004). Janet Leigh. Alfred Hitchcock. A perfect pair it turned out. And Psycho is all that I’ll be talking about.

MAJOR SPOILER NOW. I MEAN IT.

Yes, she was in Psycho. Forty-seven minutes into film, she is showering when a shadowy figure brutally kills her character Marion by stabbing her over and over so the blood runs copiously.

Leigh receiving instructions from Alfred Hitchcock to film the shower scene in Psycho (1960). By Shamley Productions , Paramount Pictures.

It took a full week to complete from set-up to filming, seventy camera setups, using fast-cut editing of seventy eight pieces of film, and apparently a naked stand-in model for rehearsal (Marli Renfro who appeared in many men’s magazines of the days and appeared on the cover of the September 1960 edition of Playboy) in a mere forty-five second impressionistic montage sequence, and both inter-cutting slow-motion and regular speed footage. (I say apparently but read on as to why that is disputed.)

Hitchcock would later acknowledge that while Leigh’s face is seen that it is her, otherwise it is Renfro. And later contradicts himself in yet another interview. And then changes his mind yet again.

Yet another individual, Rita Riggs, who was in charge of the wardrobe, stated that it was Leigh in the shower the entire time, explaining that Leigh did not wish to be nude and so she devised many things including pasties, moleskin, and bodystockings, to be pasted on Leigh for the scene. I must say this sounds quite silly.

Now it has to be noted that in Psycho – Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller says all the actual shower footage in the film was of her and the only time Renfro was used was in an overhead shot that was eventually cut due to censors’ concerns.

At this point, we’ll never know, will we? Now keep in mind that Renfro is still alive and has continued to give interviews, insisting that it is she.

The question is where is the unedited film? That is the question that goes unanswered though the likely answer it seems is that it no longer exists.

END OF MAJOR SPOILER, REALY IT IS. SO IT WAS ALL SPOILERS THIS TIME.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal ends Franklin W. Dixon’s writing career before it starts.
Reality Check features a monstrous prank.

(10) ASTRONOMY PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR SHORTLIST. Smithsonian Magazine makes it possible for us to “See Ten Awe-Inspiring Images From the Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest” The photo gallery is at the link.

For generations, skywatchers and hobbyists around the world have admired the beauty of the cosmos.

The Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest channels that wonder into dazzling images, taken by amateur and professional astrophotographers as they vie for a £10,000 ($12,750) grand prize. The contest, arguably the biggest astrophotography competition in the world, is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in England and is in its 16th year.

…. The 2024 Astronomy Photographer of the Year shortlist, unveiled on Tuesday, includes an aurora shaped like a dragon, a total solar eclipse and a breathtaking shot of the Milky Way in a desert sky.

A panel of art and astronomy experts judges the contest. The overall winners will be announced on September 12….

(11) THE MOTION STOPPED – FOR ALMOST 30 YEARS. The New York Times knows “How Stop-Motion Yetis Emerged From Film Hibernation”.

Movies like “Dune: Part Two” and “Challengers” arrived in theaters later than expected because of last year’s actors’ strike, and Hollywood experienced significant production setbacks during the coronavirus pandemic.

But “The Primevals,” about a group of researchers who discover gigantic yetis and other prehistoric creatures, made those movie delays look minuscule when it was released in theaters in March.

It was filmed in 1994.

The live-action movie, which was delayed because of funding woes and then the death of its director, David Allen, incorporates a stop-motion animation technique in which puppets are painstakingly photographed and brought to life through a series of frames, as with a children’s flipbook. The retro look conjures up an earlier era of filmmaking, before computer-generated imagery took over visual effects.

“It’s like an archaeological find,” said Juliet Mills, who plays one of the movie’s researchers. “It’s like entering a time machine watching this film.”

Mills and the other actors had doubted that the movie would ever reach theaters. Even before Allen died, the film’s development had been plagued by outsize expectations and financial challenges….

… Allen had originally envisioned pushing the boundaries of what could be accomplished with stop-motion animation, Endicott said. In the decades since, however, computer-generated imagery had become an essential tool for animating films.

“By the time he was working on it in the ’90s, the movie became a comment that stop-motion still had a voice in a world of C.G.I.,” Endicott said.

Allen died in 1999. Despite his final wishes, the movie’s puppets collected dust in a storage unit for nearly two decades.

While rewatching an old version of “The Primevals” in 2018, Endicott recalled Allen’s directive and recommitted himself to releasing the film, even if it was an unfinished version. By this time, Band’s production company Full Moon Features had also become more profitable, so there were fewer funding hurdles. Endicott and a group of Allen’s friends and fans recreated some of the puppets and completed more of the animations, and Richard Band created an orchestral score….

(12) SPACE TRAVEL CONTMINATES MOON — WELL THEY SAID ALL THESE WORLDS WERE OURS EXCEPT EUROPA ALONE… [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Reported in this week’s Science journal comes the news that our visits to the Moon are contaminating its natural water ice trapped in permanently shadow areas…

Orbital spacecraft have observed thin surface deposits of water-ice in permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) of craters near the Moon’s poles. Any free water molecules hop across the lunar surface until they are either destroyed by sunlight or reach one of the PSRs, where they remain indefinitely. Rocket exhaust contains water, so Farrell et al. calculated how much water reaches PSRs from lunar landings. They found that the six Apollo landings contributed less than 1% of the surface water in PSRs, implying that most is natural. However, a single Artemis landing will increase PSR surface water mass by more than 20%, polluting the record of natural water on the Moon.

The primary research is here.

(13) DO ALIEN OPTIMISTS HAVE A FINE-TUNING PROBLEM? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Aliens are a key SF trope. But I am fascinated when there is serious discussion in the academic literature. Here’s the latest from Prof. David Kipping at the Cool Worlds Lab. “Crowded or Lonely? The Statistics of Alien Life”.

New research paper from the Cool Worlds Lab! Today we explore the implications of a classic result in statistics but applied to alien life for the first time. The result implies a startling conclusion, the cosmos is either teeming with intelligent civilisations, or we’re essentially alone. Join us today as explore how this works and what the implications might be.

(14) SOLARIS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult takes a look at Stanislaw Lem’s classic Solaris. And for once we get a behind the scenes look at how Moid pulls these vids together. The 12-minute video is below….

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “Gilbert & Sullivan” Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 6/15/24 Isn’t That The Motto Of The United States Pixel Academy?

Posted on June 15, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) NYT’S NCUTI GATWA PROFILE. “Ncuti Gatwa Brings Millennial Emotion to ‘Doctor Who’” – an unlocked copy of the New York Times article.

…“It sounds like a showbiz story, but the last person we saw was Ncuti — and bang!” [Russell T] Davies said. “I knew then and there that was the man.”

Gatwa said that he and Davies didn’t have many discussions about his portrayal of the Doctor. “This is a character that is constantly born again, with fresh eyes,” he said. “There is an element of innocence within the Doctor. For me, that’s where his curiosity comes from, the confidence to explore the unknown in the way kids do.”

Asked whether he consciously incorporated more L.G.B.T.Q. elements into Gatwa’s first season, Davies pointed out that he has been putting gay characters onscreen for around 30 years. “We never had a sexuality meeting,” he said with a laugh. “And the Doctor is an alien, of course — he’s not Ncuti Gatwa, and I think human labels barely apply to him. He loves Ruby with all his heart. He doesn’t care what gender people are.”

Gatwa had another take. “I feel like ‘Doctor Who’ has always been a bit camp,” he said. “I mean, it’s a time-traveling alien in a British police box!”

(2) WHAT IF? Brian Grubb shares a little list: “Some shows I would like to see Reacher appear on” – “the actual character, not the actor who plays him (who I also call Reacher)”. Here’s one example of what he wants like to see.

House of the Dragon

A dragon swoops in during a festival and begins spitting fire at the villagers, ruining their stands and burning a number of them alive.

Reacher headbutts the dragon.

The dragon leaves.

(3) NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER SURRENDER. Horror author Tim Waggoner advises writers how to “Stay the Course: How to Keep Writing (Especially When You Don’t Want To)”. It’s a very in-depth discussion of many varied career situations – quite interesting.

…I began wondering why some writers quit while others continue chugging along, regardless of setbacks and self-doubts. And as a creative writing teacher, I’ve seen people who stop before they really get started or who quit along the way. Why do some writing careers fizzle out, and what, if anything, can be done to help writers keep doing what they love?…

Why Do Some Writers Quit After a Long Career?

I think the following list is mostly self-explanatory, and most of the items are challenges of aging in general applied to a writing career. I turned sixty this year, and I’ve started to feel some of the issues below. I remind myself about envy again, try to focus on what I really wanted from my career (to write and to grow as a person and artist), and I remember the kid writer I used to be.

·       Disillusionment with the publishing industry.

·       Seeing younger writers having earlier and greater success than they did.

·       Their career didn’t reach the heights they’d hoped for.

·       Fearing their best days artistically are behind them.

·       Feeling forgotten.

·       They’re tired.

How NOT to Quit

If you’re truly determined to quit writing, no one can stop you. And as I said at the outset of this long entry, it’s okay if you do want to quit. But if you’d like to keep going, here’s some advice from someone who’s considered quitting more than once in his forty-year career….

(4) NEWS FLASH. At The Mary Sue, Rachel Leishman is incredulous: “How Are So Many People Just Now Realizing the Jedi Are Not Really That Great?”

It’s wild to me that people watched Star Wars and saw a group of overly religious wizards who took kids from their parents as the clean-cut good guys, but hey, what do I know? With The Acolyte, fans are getting a more complicated version of the Jedi, and people … aren’t happy.

[SPOILER ALERT] The anger stems from the fact that the episode “Destiny” shows the Jedi going to Brendok and forcing the witches there (who are not apart of the Republic) to let them test children, Osha and Mae, to train as Jedi. When a fire breaks out because of Mae, the Jedi also do nothing to help save the witches, and the only “survivor” is seemingly Osha, all because the Jedi intervened. It isn’t the worst thing they’ve ever done, but it doesn’t exactly paint the Jedi in the best light.

The Jedi, as a group, are too overly strict in their rules—no emotional connections, continually doing as the Jedi Council says. It all leads to some people straying from the Order, and for a group that claims that only the Sith deal in absolutes, they sure have a lot of absolutes. While, yes, the Jedi are the “good guys” fighting against the fascist rule of the Empire, that doesn’t mean they’re perfect—far from it—and that’s what we’re seeing in The Acolyte….

(5) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books has released episode 76 of their bimonthly podcast Simultaneous Times. Hear it at the link. Stories featured in this episode:

“You Must Buy Your Purchase” by Andy Dibble — with music by Fall Precauxions
“Another Boiling Day” by s. c. virtes & Denise Dumars — with music by Phog Masheeen

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

June 15, 1989 — Ghostbusters II premiered in the States in Hollywood thirty-five years ago. It came out just five years after Ghostbusters was released and in the meantime The Real Ghostbusters, an animated series, began airing. That’s where Slimer comes from who appears who in is Ghostbusters II.

After the moneymaker that was Ghostbusters raked in three hundred million on a budget of no more than thirty million (or perhaps as low as twenty million, as the studio never admitted what was the actual budget), Columbia Pictures wanted desperately a sequel but ran into numerous objections from the cast and the production staff they needed until they waved fistfuls of cash at them according to sources. Much of that cash actually being a share of the profits in the box office. Now that wouldn’t be a great idea in the end.

Murray might have been the main problem here as he hated sequels. Co-creators, Reitman, Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis all had control over the franchise at the point, and their unanimous approval was required to produce this film. Murray thought sequels were just greed on the part of film companies but he was willing to do this on he had a lot of fun on the first one.

(Much later, after the death of Ramis, they sold control of the franchise to the studio for enough money to ensure trans-generational wealth. He and Aykroyd set up the production company Ghost Corps to continue the franchise, starting with the 2016 female-led reboot, Ghostbusters. It was really, really a financial nightmare making two hundred and thirty million while costing one hundred and forty-four million. Sweet mercy.)

As with the first film, Aykroyd and Ramis collaborated on the script which went through many variations. Way too many according to sources.

Neat note — Richard Edlund, their SFX producer, used part of the budget to found Boss Film Studios, which then employed used miniatures, practical effects and puppets to deliver the ghoulish visuals.

It was an extremely quick shoot as regards the street scenes, just two weeks. Filming in New York lasted approximately two weeks and consisted mostly of exterior shoots. Those street scenes happened because city authorities allowed the producers to film on Manhattan’s Second Avenue during a period in which access for forty city blocks was restricted because of the visit of Gorbachev. Cool.

The Fire House was an actual one, Firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company 8 fire station, in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan. The sign that they hung there was given to the station and hung there for years after until it fell off. So what happened to it? Here’s that story as reported in the New York Times on the 24th of March 2002:

“’Yeah, we’re the ‘Ghostbusters’ firehouse,’ said Firefighter Jim Curran of Ladder No. 8 at North Moore and Varick Streets. The filmmakers used the firehouse for exterior shots in both ‘Ghostbusters’ movies. The sign inside the station was hung outside the station for the second film, but it fell and broke. It was then given to the firehouse and was placed on a wall above a collage of pictures of ‘Ghostbusters’ fans who have made the pilgrimage.

“’We used to get a steady stream,’ Firefighter Curran said. ‘It was listed as a tourist destination by a Japanese airline. Plus we would get a lot of people coming out of the bars late at night.’”

So how did Ghostbusters II do financially? It earned just two hundred and fifteen million, much less than its predecessor which as I previously said pulled in three hundred million. It was, to say the least, considered a financial disaster from the perspective of Columbia Pictures. Before the film had been released, the Board had been talking of a Ghostbusters franchise. So Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the third film in the franchise , wouldn’t be released for thirty years. It would be a financial success making over two hundred million after costing seventy million.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is doing very well as with an opening weekend May 24 of forty-five million. So there’s life in the Ghostbusters after all, isn’t there?

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Free Range shows a superhero taking exception to part of a traditional wedding ceremony.
Non Sequitur depicts dinosaur denial.
Tom Gauld shows life on the campaign trail.

‘Politicians shamelessly chase votes from the Crime Fiction community’ my cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/kpQgwdhqZk
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) June 15, 2024

(9) THIS IS NOT GOOD. “This Tucson homeowner didn’t know his house was built on a cemetery — until he found bones” at KJZZ.

Almost like the famous 1982 film “Poltergeist,” some homeowners in the Dunbar Spring neighborhood of Tucson had no idea their homes were built on top of a cemetery when they purchased their properties near the intersection of Stone Avenue and Speedway Boulevard.

One of those is Moses Thompson, who bought his home in 2006.

“We’d only been in the house [for] maybe a month and a sinkhole opened up in front of the house,” Thompson said.

He thought he had a sewer line break, but he started digging and found that the soil was dry.

“And then I found some brass decorations, like some diamond-patterned brass pieces and then I found a cross and then I hit some boards,” Thompson said….

…So Thompson contacted a local archaeologist and described everything he found.

“He was like, ‘You 100% hit a human grave. Your house was built over the Court Street Cemetery,’” said Thompson.

That archaeologist, Homer Thiel, excavated the grave and found it was a small child.

“I scraped my trowel and discovered there was another person underneath,” Thiel said. “That was an adult male. He had identical coffin hardware, which indicates the two people were buried at the same time.”…

(10) BEING THERE. Mary SanGiovanni lets us step into her shoes for a moment.

(11) SCHRODINGER’S ACTION MOVIE. [Item by Chris Barkley.] A movie proposal seen on Bluesky.

(12) A 1698 AUTHOR’S IDEAS ABOUT INHABITANTS OF OTHER WORLDS. “Rare book predicting alien life discovered in Cotswolds” at BBC. (If the auction price is too rich for your blood, you can read a scan of The Celestial Worlds Discover’d at Google Books.)

A rare book predicting alien life could sell for thousands at auction.

The book, published in 1698, was found at a free antique valuation event in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, by books valuer Jim Spencer.

Inside, author Christiaan Huygens explores his fascination with the potential existence of extra-terrestrial beings.

Mr Spencer said its contents seemed “almost comical”.

The book, lengthily entitled The Celestial World Discover’d: Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets, Huygens questions why God would have created other planets “just to be looked” upon from Earth.

He concludes that aliens must have hands and feet like humans because of their “convenience”, writing: “What could we invent or imagine that could be so exactly accommodated to all the design’d uses as the Hands are? Shall we give them an Elephant’s Proboscis.”

He also suggests that “celestial beings” must have feet “[unless] they have found out the art of flying in some of those Worlds”.

The writer believed aliens enjoyed astronomy and observation, sailed boats and listened to music but also suffered misfortunes, wars, afflictions and poverty “because that’s what leads us to invention and progress”….

(13) YOUR GIBLETS AREN’T MADE FOR SPACE. “Human missions to Mars in doubt after astronaut kidney shrinkage revealed” reports The Independent.

Human missions to Mars could be at risk after new research revealed that long-duration space travel can impact the structure of astronauts’ kidneys.

Samples from more than 40 space missions involving humans and mice revealed that kidneys are remodelled by the conditions in space, with certain parts showing signs of shrinkage after less than a month in space.

… Scientists at University College London (UCL), who carried out the study, said that microgravity and galactic radiation from space flight caused serious health risks to emerge the longer a person is exposed to it.

Future missions to Mars were not ruled out, though the scientists said that measures to protect the kidneys would need to be developed to avoid serious harm to astronauts. Methods of recovery could also be introduced onboard spacecraft, such as dialysis machines….

(14) NO FAA REVIEW PRIOR TO NEXT SUPERHEAVY/STARSHIP FLIGHT. [Item by Bill.] The previous two Superheavy/Starship flights were both delayed because of waiting on the FAA to issue reports on their mishap investigations (and both reports were essentially reviews of SpaceX’s own investigations – there didn’t appear to be any significant value added by the FAA).

The FAA has said that there is no requirement for a review for the most recent flight. “The FAA assessed the operations of the SpaceX Starship Flight 4 mission. All flight events for both Starship and Super Heavy appear to have occurred within the scope of planned and authorized activities.” So SpaceX can launch again as soon as it is internally ready. “Review of 4th Superheavy/Starship flight; FAA clears SpaceX for next flight” at Behind the Black.

(15) WAVES HELLO. “’Gravity Waves’ Confirmed For First Time During Solar Eclipse, Say Scientists” – Forbes has the story.

Researchers at Montana State University have made a significant scientific breakthrough by confirming the existence of gravity waves in Earth’s stratosphere during a solar eclipse.

Gravity waves in Earth’s atmosphere are created by mountain ranges and by the difference in temperature between day and night.

The results show that the moon’s shadow during the eclipse lowered temperatures enough to generate atmospheric gravity waves. The cold, dark shadow cast by the moon during an eclipse creates a thermal shock that sends out ripples in the atmosphere. They can most often be observed as ripples in clouds.

During October 14’s annular solar eclipse and April 8’s total solar eclipse—both visible in the U.S.—53 teams of students from 75 institutions across the nation launched high-altitude balloons. This Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, a NASA- and National Science Foundation-sponsored program, was led by Montana State University….

… “By observing how the atmosphere reacts in the special eclipse cases, we can understand more about the atmosphere in general, which can help us better predict the weather and model climate change,” said Angela Des Jardins, director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium and an associate professor in the Department of Physics at MSU’s College of Letters and Science….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult in a 16-minute video wonders “Why Stephen King Banned His Own Book” …?

An essay about the life, fallout and death of Rage by Stephen King…

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Bruce D. Arthurs, Bill, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 6/14/24 No Pixels For Old Men

Posted on June 14, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) ON THE FRONT LINES, AND THOSE WHO WROTE THEM. Through the lens of a letter by J.R.R. Tolkien, Brenton Dickieson explores the tension between two critics in a Twentieth Century culture war. “Great and Little Men: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letter about C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot” at A Pilgrim in Narnia.

…Professionally speaking, Lewis was usually polite and firm when challenging Eliot in most of his literary criticism and theory. Sometimes the challenge is a bit more jovial, though there are a couple of moments of more pointed or heated criticism. Lewis was far more profuse in blame in his letters, where there seems to be a personal animosity toward Eliot–at least toward Eliot as a symbol. Twice, however, Lewis had a more personal opportunity to rethink his position and make a connection with another leading Anglican public intellectual.

The first of these was through Charles Williams, who was a close friend of both Eliot and Lewis. Indeed, Eliot and Lewis each described Williams in striking terms, admitting to Williams’ charismatic appeal and value as a poet and critic. Williams tried once, just a few months before he died, to bridge the divide between Eliot and Lewis. Just months before Charles Williams died, he arranged a meeting between Eliot, Lewis, and another Inkling, Fr Gervase Mathew, at the Mitre Hotel in Oxford. It was not a success….

(2) GLASGOW 2024 ADDS SPECIAL GUEST. Dr. Meganne Christian FRAeS (she/her) will be a Special Guest of the 2024 Worldcon. Dr Christian is Reserve Astronaut / Exploration Commercialisation Lead at the UK Space Agency, developing strategy on human and robotic spaceflight in the post-ISS landscape. Her full biography can be found on the Glasgow 2024 website.

In November 2022, she became a member of the ESA astronaut reserve, one of only 17 candidates selected from a pool of more than 22,500 applicants across Europe. Dr Christian holds a Bachelor of Engineering and a PhD in Industrial Chemistry from the University of New South Wales. From 2014 to 2023, she was a materials science researcher at the National Research Council of Italy and took two parabolic flight campaigns to test graphene coatings for thermal management in satellites.

Dr Christian has also undertaken two missions, including as a winter-over scientist, to the Concordia station in Antarctica, where she was a research scientist in charge of atmospheric physics and meteorology.

Looking forward to her appearance in Glasgow, Dr Christian said “I love science fiction, so I’m looking forward to soaking up the atmosphere with fellow fans and of course finding out the winners of this year’s Hugo Awards.”

(3) LAST-MINUTE SHOPPING IDEAS. A membership in Glasgow 2024 is one of the suggestions on the “STARBURST Father’s Day Gift Guide 2024” at Starburst Magazine. So is this:

Photo Creator Instant Pocket Printer

Another quirky gift choice is the Photo Creator Instant Pocket Printer. Again, aimed at younger folk, this is actually a very useful tool; it’s just that this set is very reasonably priced and comes with some good accessories. It’s a thermal printer that connects to your phone and can be used to print out silly pictures as well as actual photos. It comes into its own when you load it with sticky label thermal printer paper, turning this piece of childish fun into a useful and versatile label maker, as well as a way to create your own stickers. It doesn’t run out of ink (but needs special paper), fits in an everyday carry bag and is surprisingly practical.

(4) WRITING MASTER CLASS WITH GAIL CARRIGER ON JUNE 23. A one-day Locus Bay Area Writing Master Class with NYT bestselling author Gail Carriger is happening on Sunday, June 23, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., at Preservation Park in Oakland, CA. The cost is $210. For more info and to sign up: Locus Bay Area Writers Workshop: Writing Master Class with Gail Carriger, June 2024. Learn more about Gail at gailcarriger.com.

Her engaging instructional style will keep you entertained AND informed. Her workshop topic will be On Career & Comedy — a two-parter covering all the things Gail wishes she had known when starting out her career, plus practical tips on how to use comedy in your writing, with a break in between to order in sandwiches and chat. Gail combines the expertise of a dedicated data-miner with a fun and personable style, and can speak to both trad and self-publishing success and craft skills.

Part I: Things I Wish I Knew FIRST

Learn all the things Gail wishes someone had told her when she first started out in publishing! She’ll explain pesky concepts and terms that established authors and book industry professionals take for granted. She’ll review industry standards and expectations of authors, both in traditional and indie publishing. She’ll help you determine which path is best for your book and career: traditional publishing, self publishing, or a hybrid of the two. She’ll cover the things she believes EVERY author should have set up BEFORE their first book launch.

Part II: Peopling Fiction with Comedy

Gail addresses how authors can analyze and source humor, the many different ways to inject funny into fiction, and why you might want to do so. Learn to bring character depth, narrative pace, and social subversion to fiction using comedy. This is also your opportunity to pick her brain!

(5) WATCHMEN REWIND. World of Reel readies viewers for “’Watchmen’ Trailer: R-Rated Animated Adaptation Produced by Warner Bros”.

Some believe Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” was a botched adaptation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel, while others believe it to be an absolutely essential addition to the superhero genre. It’s a film that has spawned contentious debate over the years.

DC has decided to make an R rated animated version of “Watchmen” and maybe this’ll be a worthy effort. The adaptation is broken into two parts – one arriving in 2024 and the other arriving in 2025 (though no dates were provided by Warner Bros). …

(6) FIRST BITE, WRONG BITER. “The Early Vampire Novel The Vampyre was Falsely Attributed to Lord Byron” at CrimeReads.

One night in the rainy summer of 1816, at Lord Byron’s summer estate, Villa Diodati, in Cologny, near Geneva, Switzerland, Byron, and his friends Percy and Mary Shelley passed the time by telling ghost stories. The stories they created would lay the groundwork for future, publishable works…

However, there was at least another guest there, that night—one who is left out of Shelley’s recapitulation, likely because he was unknown as a writer. This is Byron’s physician-in-residence, John William Polidori, who contributed a concept that would later become his novel Ernest’s Berchtold; or the Modern Oedipus. But this novel not his most notable literary achievement, however—Polidori wound up expanding Byron’s vampire concept (several paragraphs of which Byron had actually written), churning out his own different short work on the same topic, entitled The Vampyre, that same summer….

…Polidori left Cologny in September of that year, and left his manuscript with his friend Countess Catherine Bruce, who lived nearby. Two years later, a London publisher named Henry Colburn received a manuscript in the mail, containing “outlines” of several stories—the gothic exercises developed and written by Byron’s houseguests in Cologny, and, apparently Polidori’s whole manuscript. Bibliographer Henry R. Viets, who comprehensively researched the publication history of Polidori’s text, claims that it is unknown how this material precisely arrived in Colburn’s possession. The outline for Frankenstein was in this bundle, but it had already been published, so Coulburn discarded it, and instead published, in his periodical called New Monthly Magazine, The Vampyre, attributing authorship to Lord Byron. He arranged for publication of the story as a book, shortly after. Polidori was shocked, upon seeing The Vampyre published, and under Byron’s name. Byron denied writing it, but it was almost too late—the story (in the magazine) was a triumphant success, and at least one literary edition was on its way….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Paul Weimer.]

Born June 14, 1949 – Harry Turtledove, 76.

By Paul Weimer. Doctor T. The Master of Alternate History. The Avtokrator.

And he earned and earns those sobriquets.

Once upon a time, there was a series of anthologies edited by Jerry Pournelle called There Will Be War. I loved these to pieces and bought each one as they came out. In the midst of that, I came across a different anthology, edited by S M Stirling called The Fantastic Civil War. In the midst of that volume there was, to my amazement, yet another piece by Turtledove called “The Long Drum Roll”, an excerpt from his forthcoming novel The Guns of the South. It was clear at this point that I needed to read it, and read more Turtledove.

And so I began to tuck in. After Guns of the South, I started to explore the Videssos novels, and was delighted with the “Byzantine empire with magic” setting and worldbuilding. Gerin the Fox, too, and his “edge of the Not-Roman Empire” was also a lot of fun. Agent of Byzantium, with a secret agent in an alternate Byzantine Empire? I began to devour his catalog and oeuvre with reckless abandon and then tried to keep up.

To say nothing of his giant series. Worldwar, with aliens versus the Allies and the Axis. The How Few Remain series, going from his alternate 1862 all the way to the 1940s? And several other series going to four and more volumes?

But, given his output, even to this day, he is an author hard to keep up with.

Dr T has also written a lot of single one shot novels, with a dizzying variety of alternate historical scenarios, with a wide range of divergence points. His Through Darkest Europe, reversing the fortunes of Dar Al-Islam and Western Europe in the Middle Ages, showing an inward looking, backward looking modern Italy, is chilling and all too plausible.

And if that wasn’t enough, Dr. T has also written a bunch under a variety of pseudonyms. His Turteltaub historical fiction novels, set in various periods are wonderful. His novel Justinian is NOT about the Justinian you are thinking of, but rather Justinian II, whose history and story is even wilder than the original. The novel reads like fantasy but it’s based strongly and accurately on real life events. It is almost literally unbelievable.

But my one favorite book of his might be a surprise. It would be a World of Difference. The divergence point is what if Mars was about twice the size of Earth, and so was able to hold an atmosphere, and some very strange life. Minerva (the renamed Mars in this verse) has intelligent life that is based on radial symmetry, and while the cold war politics might seem dated today, I wouldn’t mind if we had wound up with Minerva instead of Mars in our own solar system.

Long live the Avtokrator!

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Frank and Ernest visit a Homeric cloakroom.
Non Sequitur reveals the other ending.
Pearls Before Swine has concerns about letter writing.
Bizarro depicts an early punk band.

(9) THERE’S STILL ORE IN THIS ENEMY MINE. An update?The Hollywood Reporter says “’Star Trek: Picard’ Showrunner Terry Matalas Tackling ‘Enemy Mine’”.

Terry Matalas, the showrunner who steered the final season of Star Trek: Picard to new ratings and critical heights, has been tapped to write an update of the 1985 cult sci-fi movie Enemy Mine for 20^th Century Studios.

Set in a future where mankind is warring with a reptilian alien species, Mine starred Dennis Quaid has a human pilot and Louis Gossett Jr. as an alien who crash land on a desolate planet. Both have deep-seated hatred for one another, but are forced to overcome their prejudices to survive….

(10) THE PHYSICS GOES AWAY. “Wild New Study Suggests Gravity Can Exist Without Mass” at ScienceAlert.

What is gravity without mass? Both Newton’s revolutionary laws describing its universal effect and Einstein’s proposal of a dimpled spacetime, we’ve thought of gravity as exclusively within the domain of matter.

Now a wild new study suggesting that gravity can exist without mass, conveniently eliminating the need for one of the most elusive substances in our Universe: dark matter.

Dark matter is a hypothetical, invisible mass thought to make up 85 percent of the Universe’s total bulk. Originally devised to account for galaxies holding together under high speed rotation, it has yet to be directly observed, leading physicists to propose all sorts of out-there ideas to avoid invoking this elusive material as a way to plug the holes in current theories.

The latest offering in that vein comes from astrophysicist Richard Lieu at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who has suggested that rather than dark matter binding galaxies and other bodies together, the Universe may contain thin, shell-like layers of ‘topological defects’ that give rise to gravity without any underlying mass.

Lieu started out trying to find another solution to the Einstein field equations, which relate the curvature of space-time to the presence of matter within it….

(11) HERE’S A REASON TO BUY NEXT YEAR’S CALENDAR. Physics World says “It’s official: United Nations declares 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology”.

The United Nations (UN) has officially declared 2025 to be the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ). Agreed by its general assembly, the year-long worldwide celebration will highlight the impact and contribution of quantum science. It also aims to ensure that all nations have equal access to quantum education and opportunities. An opening ceremony is expected to take place on 14 January in Berlin.

(12) HOLD THE DOOR! “’Absolutely gutted’ — how a jammed door is locking astronomers out of the X-ray universe” – Space.com has the story.

…First, the good news: The telescope’s main instrument, a soft X-ray spectrometer known as Resolve, is working as expected. The slightly worse news: An aperture door covering Resolve has not opened. Multiple attempts to open the door — or “gate valve” — have failed. Despite reports suggesting JAXA and NASA have decided to “operate the spacecraft as is for at least 18 months,” Yamaguchi told me that “has not been officially decided.”

A NASA spokesperson confirmed “NASA and JAXA continue to hold ongoing discussions about the best path forward to operate XRISM; the current, leading option is to collect science for the next 18 months before making another attempt to open the gate valve, but the agencies will continue to assess alternatives.”

With the door closed, an intriguing “What If?” situation for mission specialists and X-ray astronomers presents itself. On one hand, the spacecraft is working superbly and showing it’s capable of delivering a heap of new, exciting data. Trying to open the door risks damaging the spacecraft. On the other hand, opening the door could fundamentally change our understanding of the universe….

(13) ANOTHER SPACE HARDWARE CHALLENGE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A bit worrying this as I was always a bit partial to the Hubble Space Telescope… “Hubble telescope down to last gyroscopes, limiting science” in Nature.

Despite failing hardware, NASA has no plans to pursue a servicing mission to the aging, iconic instrument…

Hubble’s gyroscopes, which spin at 19,200revolutions per minute, are precise but frag-ile. To make up for failures, service missions have shipped 16 replacement gyros to the telescope over its lifetime. It is now down to the last two of the six currently onboard. In standard three-gyro mode, the devices help the telescope quickly establish and maintain a view with its fine guidance sensors, which lock onto specific stars.

(14) THE MOST IMPORTANT MEN IN SF…? [Item by SFF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult takes a look at the first, principal gatekeepers of SF, the magazine commissioning editors of the early 20th century, in a short 11-minute, video. Time to grab a mug of builders…

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Ed Fortune, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, 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. (But if there aren’t any, how do I continue the roundup?)]

Pixel Scroll 6/9/24 Filefjonk, Scrollmaiden, And Other Moominpixels

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) INSTRUMENTS INSPIRED BY SFF. Guitar.com invites you to “Check out these sci-fi-inspired guitars, made with old model kits and even unused Covid tests”.

…Custom guitar brand Devil & Sons has launched a new series of sci-fi inspired guitars called Craftcasters, and their bodies are hand-constructed via the ‘kit bashing method’, where parts of old model kits, everyday items, hand cut plastic, sculpted epoxy, and yes (in this case), unused Covid tests, are pieced together to create unique artwork.

The uber-cool, spacecraft-like models were created across three years by artist and luthier Daniel Wallis, and according to him, they’ve been made using the same techniques model makers have been using for screen props since the original Star Wars and Alien films. Upon close inspection, you’ll be able to spot bits of train sets, remote controls, Warhammer models, and even old vacuum cleaner parts on their surfaces….

(2) DEFIANT PREQUEL. Abigail Nussbaum’s new blog post shares thoughts on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, “a film that is missing its final act, that has a great gaping hole at its center, and which is nevertheless an exhilarating and entirely satisfying action extravaganza, and worthy companion to Fury Road.” ”Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” at Asking the Wrong Questions.

…And now of course it must be acknowledged that Furiosa does work. I won’t get into the question of whether it’s as good as Fury Road; it obviously can’t deliver the same sharp blow to the head as that movie did, and once you allow for that, the two movies are too different for a side-by-side comparison to make much sense. But it does make you feel the same exhilaration, the same joyful disbelief at the fact that someone can do this with the cinematic medium, the same pulse-pounding desire for this ride to just keep going and going, and the same profound connection to and investment in its characters. Which obviously raises the question: how?…

(3) STOKERCON GOH SUBTRACTION. One of StokerCon 2025’s announced guests of honor, Graham Masterson, has backed out due to a scheduling conflict the committee told Facebook readers today. “Whether it can be worked out or not remains to be determined,” they said.

(4) THE END IS NEAR. Ted Gioia says sci-fi will soon follow the western in “The 6 Laws of Dying Hollywood Franchises” at The Honest Broker.

…The same reliance on aging cowboys was evident at movie theaters. John Wayne was still the top western movie star until his death at age 72.

You can laugh at that, but Hollywood has pushed to even more ridiculous extremes with Harrison Ford. The studios cast him in three action franchises (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Blade Runner) at an even older age than Wayne in his final film. (In a curious twist, this was Wayne’s little known role in Star Wars.)

This is not the sign of a healthy genre. Hollywood is now suffering at the box office, but you could have predicted it years ago, just based on its aging stars and franchises….

… How will this play out in the future? Well, let’s summarize what we learned from the rise and fall of the western genre.

Genres die slowly, especially popular genres with large mass audiences. In those instances, the decline can continue for decades after a genre’s commercial peak.
The final stages of decline are marked by total market saturation—reaching ridiculous levels. Far more product is churned out than even the core audience can absorb.
The proliferation of merchandise aims to expand the franchise, but actually accelerates the pace of decline.
During the period of decline, the average age of the core fan base gets older. Youngsters may continue to have some interest in the genre, but without the enthusiasm of the old days.
Even more ominous, the box office stars start showing their age—and are far too old to lead any movement. They are hired out of desperation, because holding on to old fans is now more important than attracting new ones.
As a result, everything about the genre starts to feel stale. The stories were fresher twenty years ago. The lead stars were definitely fresher twenty years ago. The only thing that isn’t stale is the movie popcorn out in the lobby—and even that’s not a sure thing.

This is obviously happening with almost every major Hollywood franchise today. We’re now almost fifty years beyond the release of Star Wars (1977)—that was long ago and in another galaxy. But even never-ending franchises eventually come to an end….

(5) VERY COOL BEANS. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Yes, it’s a few years old, but James D. McDonald posted an interesting little short story on his blog Madhouse Manor, and I felt it deserved more attention.

It’s called “The Coldest Equations Yet”, from 2017, and it’s a remix that might have made Tom Godwin smile and John W. Campbell grumble.

(6) THE REALLY BIG ONE. [Item by Jeffrey Smith.] I buy various volumes of The Best American series of short stories and essays every year, often starting them but rarely finishing them. I’ve decided to start cleaning some of them up, and am almost finished with The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016. In her introduction, the editor said she felt the most important piece in the book was “The Really Big One” by Kathryn Schulz. (See The New Yorker version from 2015, “The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest”.)

Over the last few years I’ve come to really appreciate Kathryn Schulz’s writing, reading her pieces in The New Yorker and often reprinted in these volumes. (The next of these I will finish, The Best American Travel Writing 2017, also has a piece by her.)

The article is about the potential for a massive earthquake to hit the Pacific Northwest, the fault there being more dangerous than the San Andreas. The editor lives at the southern tip of the fault, and says a) that she knows people who sold their houses and moved away after reading it, and b) the state governments are looking into developing early warning systems and strengthening infrastructure because of it.

“I simply cannot overstate the power of this piece,” the editor wrote. “When you read it, imagine you live where I live. Your life would change because of this story, just like mine did. That’s the power of great writing.”

It’s a long piece, and starts out with a lot of background information. The second half, though, is terrifying.

It was interesting to read this now in part because we recently watched a set of three Norwegian disaster movies: The Wave; The Quake; and The Burning Sea. (You have to hunt them down — they’re each on a different streaming service.) Judging by the article, the filmmakers did reasonably well with the science.

Here’s the beginning of Schulz article in The New Yorker:

When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.

Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. The 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta, California, which killed sixty-three people and caused six billion dollars’ worth of damage, lasted about fifteen seconds and had a magnitude of 6.9. A thirty-second earthquake generally has a magnitude in the mid-sevens. A minute-long quake is in the high sevens, a two-minute quake has entered the eights, and a three-minute quake is in the high eights. By four minutes, an earthquake has hit magnitude 9.0.

When Goldfinger looked at his watch, it was quarter to three. The conference was wrapping up for the day. He was thinking about sushi. The speaker at the lectern was wondering if he should carry on with his talk. The earthquake was not particularly strong. Then it ticked past the sixty-second mark, making it longer than the others that week. The shaking intensified. The seats in the conference room were small plastic desks with wheels. Goldfinger, who is tall and solidly built, thought, No way am I crouching under one of those for cover. At a minute and a half, everyone in the room got up and went outside.

It was March. There was a chill in the air, and snow flurries, but no snow on the ground. Nor, from the feel of it, was there ground on the ground. The earth snapped and popped and rippled. It was, Goldfinger thought, like driving through rocky terrain in a vehicle with no shocks, if both the vehicle and the terrain were also on a raft in high seas. The quake passed the two-minute mark. The trees, still hung with the previous autumn’s dead leaves, were making a strange rattling sound. The flagpole atop the building he and his colleagues had just vacated was whipping through an arc of forty degrees. The building itself was base-isolated, a seismic-safety technology in which the body of a structure rests on movable bearings rather than directly on its foundation. Goldfinger lurched over to take a look. The base was lurching, too, back and forth a foot at a time, digging a trench in the yard. He thought better of it, and lurched away. His watch swept past the three-minute mark and kept going.

Oh, shit, Goldfinger thought, although not in dread, at first: in amazement. For decades, seismologists had believed that Japan could not experience an earthquake stronger than magnitude 8.4. In 2005, however, at a conference in Hokudan, a Japanese geologist named Yasutaka Ikeda had argued that the nation should expect a magnitude 9.0 in the near future—with catastrophic consequences, because Japan’s famous earthquake-and-tsunami preparedness, including the height of its sea walls, was based on incorrect science. The presentation was met with polite applause and thereafter largely ignored. Now, Goldfinger realized as the shaking hit the four-minute mark, the planet was proving the Japanese Cassandra right.

For a moment, that was pretty cool: a real-time revolution in earthquake science. Almost immediately, though, it became extremely uncool, because Goldfinger and every other seismologist standing outside in Kashiwa knew what was coming. One of them pulled out a cell phone and started streaming videos from the Japanese broadcasting station NHK, shot by helicopters that had flown out to sea soon after the shaking started. Thirty minutes after Goldfinger first stepped outside, he watched the tsunami roll in, in real time, on a two-inch screen.

In the end, the magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than eighteen thousand people, devastated northeast Japan, triggered the meltdown at the Fukushima power plant, and cost an estimated two hundred and twenty billion dollars….

(7) DON’T DO THIS, DO THAT. Editor Demi Michelle Schwartz decided this was a good day to share the writing problems she runs into most often. Thread starts here. Excerpted below are the first two out of five. The second one became a subject of dispute.

? Editorial Thread ? After editing tons of manuscripts for Amethyst Ink clients, I’ve noticed five things I comment on the most. I hope you find this thread helpful, and let’s hope there are no typos. Ready? Let’s go! 1/?
— Demi Michelle ???? (@demimschwartz) June 8, 2024

Here’s an example. Instead of saying something like, “She heard the wind rustle the leaves on the tree,” say, “The wind rustled the leaves on the tree.” 3/?
— Demi Michelle ???? (@demimschwartz) June 8, 2024

2. Passive Voice. Passive voice comes in many forms. In general, this includes descriptions that tell and don’t show and also verbs that aren’t active. 5/?
— Demi Michelle ???? (@demimschwartz) June 8, 2024

Here’s another one. Don’t tell me “There were birds in the sky.” Show me. Something like… “Bluejays soared through the azure sky.” 7/?
— Demi Michelle ???? (@demimschwartz) June 8, 2024

So, in a nutshell, a quick way to spot passive voice is if you have is, are, was, or were in a description or paired with a verb ending in “ing.” Passive voice has its place sometimes, but for the most part, try to have vivid descriptions and active voice instead. Okay, next. 9/?
— Demi Michelle ???? (@demimschwartz) June 8, 2024

Stacie Turner on X:

One of my toxic traits is my urge to explain the passive voice to every editor on Twitter who explains it wrong.

Passive voice is not ‘when you use a form of the verb ‘to be’.’ It’s when the subject of the sentence is acted upon by the verb rather than performing the action.
— Stacie Turner (@StacieTurner) June 8, 2024

I should start making a list of editors who give incorrect grammatical tips on Twitter.
— Stacie Turner (@StacieTurner) June 8, 2024

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born, sort of, June 9, 1934 — Donald Duck, 90. Before I get to the history of Donald Duck, let me tell you why I chose this date.

The first ever reference to the character by name was in The Adventures of Mickey Mouse, published by David McKay Company, Philadelphia in 1931 — although the actual character wasn’t shown. On the first text page, it says, “Mickey has many friends in the old barn and the barnyard, besides Minnie Mouse. They are Henry Horse and Carolyn Cow and Patricia Pig and Donald Duck…” Not characteristic at all of what is to come, just animals in a barnyard.

The following year, a duck with the same name made another printed appearance in Mickey Mouse Annual #3, a 128-page British hardback. This book included the poem “Mickey’s ‘Hoozoo’: Witswitch, and Wotswot”, which listed some of Mickey’s barnyard animal friends: “Donald Duck and Clara Hen, Robert Rooster, Jenny Wren…” Again, nothing to do with the Disney character.

So when do we get that character? That was really when he was made the star of the Silly Symphony strips in 1937 and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, who debuted who debuted later that year. The team who did the strip made a city sophisticate instead of, as they called him, a country bumpkin. (Never saw him as the latter.)

“The Wise Little Hen”, officially released on June 9, 1934 was his first animated appearance. It was directed by Wilfred Jackson and of course produced by Walt Disney from a script by Otto Englander. It is based on the fairy tale The Little Red Hen. I have not looked for videos of it on YouTube or Vimeo as the film’s copyright was renewed in 1961, so it will not enter the public domain until January 1, 2030.

What does he look like there? Pretty much like he does today as you can see for yourself. He really hasn’t changed that much since introduced physically, just his character become more of the smart ass that I think he is.

He would star in his own series that started in 1937 and ran for 24 years with “Donald’s Ostrich”, although two previous shorts, “Don Donald” and “Modern Inventions”, both from 1937, were later included in this series, with “The Litterbug” being the conclusion to this series.

Though he appeared in “The Wise Little Hen” short, the Walt Disney company officially lists the Don Donald short which was released in 1937 as his official release. No idea why. It off is still under copyright as are allthe myriad shorts he did until Disney stopped producing his shorts in 1961.

The one I now want to see is the second one which was released on May 29, 1937 titled “Museum of Modern Marvels” as it’s full of SF wonders including Robot Butler.

I think I’ve prattled on long enough tonight. I do like the character a lot. I’m not a Disney fan first, being a Warner Brothers fan deep in the bone but I appreciate them.

Editor’s Note: And courtesy of John Scalzi at Whatever we learned a new Donald Duck short dropped today: “D.I.Y. Duck”.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Alley Oop demonstrates how to improve the classics
Breaking Cat News reports an overabundance of genres in one book
Free Range warns about a tour.
Carpe Diem seems unlikely.

(10) THAT OTHER DUCK. “Darkwing Duck Returns: Dynamite Entertainment to Reprint Every Comic Book Story” reports IGN.

Dynamite Entertainment has become the source for Disney fans who yearn for the return of some of their ’90s favorites. Gargoyles has found new life at the publisher, and now Darkwing Duck is making his comeback.

Today Dynamite announced that they’ll be launching a new Darkwing Duck comic book series with the involvement of original animated series creator/writer Tad Stones. But before that book gets off the ground, Dynamite will be rereleasing every previous Darkwing Duck comic in a trio of graphic novel compendiums…

…Dynamite is turning to Kickstarter to crowdfund the Darkwing Duck reprints. The first volume will collect the entirety of writer Amanda Deibert and artist Carlo Cid Lauro’s 2023 series. The second volume will collect Lauro and writer Roger Langridge’s miniseries Justice Ducks and writer Jeff Parker and artist Ciro Cangialosi’s miniseries Negaduck. The third volume will collect all of the pre-Dynamite Darkwing Duck comics, including stories originally published in Disney Adventures magazine.

The Darkwing Duck Kickstarter campaign is live now….

(11) FAKE NEWS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Well this is firmly genre adjacent as fake news is fiction and it is spread by technology.

No, not Big Brother, but by the people themselves. Orwell could not have made it up. Anyway, this is the cover story of this week’s Nature.

Online misinformation is frequently highlighted as a blight that threatens to undermine the fabric of society, polarize opinions and even destabilize elections. In this week’s issue, a collection of articles probe the scourge of misinformation and try to assess the real risks. In one research paper, David Lazer and colleagues examine the effects of Twitter deplatforming 70,000 traffickers of misinformation in the wake of violent scenes at the US Capitol in January 2021. In a second paper, Wajeeha Ahmad and co-workers explore the relationship between advertising revenue and misinformation. A Comment article by Ullrich Ecker and colleagues discusses the risks posed by misinformation to democracy and elections, and an accompanying Comment article by Kiran Garimella and Simon Chauchard assesses the prevalence of AI-generated misinformation in India. Finally, David Rothschild and colleagues put the harms of misinformation into perspective, highlighting common misperceptions that exaggerate its threat and suggesting steps to improve evaluation of both the effects of misinformation and the efforts made to combat it.

(12) FUTURAMA PREVIEW. Comicbook.com is there when “Futurama Season 12 First Look Released”.

…Futurama Season 12 will be launching with Hulu on July 29th, and has finally given fans the first look at what to expect from the next wave of episodes. Confirmed to have many more seasons now in the works, the first look at Season 12 showcases a tease of where the next season will go to further differentiate itself from what went down during Season 11….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] How the generations have changed. Is it true that the new generation of fans have never heard of The Prisoner? Moid Moidelhoff at Media Death Cult has a feeling that many have not as he takes a 24-minute dive into this remarkable show (one of my personal favorites). This is shot on location in Portmeirion where the series was set…. “The Most Influential Show You’ve (Probably) Never Seen”.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Danny Sichel, Jeffrey Smith, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]

Pixel Scroll 5/28/24 If Pixelscrolls Were All I File, I’d Rather Be Starstruck

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) NEWITZ Q&A. In “’There’s No Way You Can Talk Back to a Gun’: On Psychological Warfare” at Happy Dancing Charlie Jane Anders interviews Annalee Newitz about Newitz’ book Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind

[ANDERS] So one really startling thing in your book is how much of psychological warfare comes out of real science, but kind of twisted sideways. Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays was an innovator of propaganda. Science fiction author Paul Linebarger, aka Cordwainer Smith, wrote a classic book about psychological war. How much of the roots of psyops come from pseudoscience?

[NEWITZ] One way that a psyop can be really effective is if it is crafted to give it the air of authority that comes from science. And of course, psychological warfare grows out of the field of psychology — it’s literally written on the tin. And a lot of these early psychological campaigns that you see in World War I and World War II really are pop psychology — they’re intended to play on people’s fears and neuroses, or their sexual anxities. Like one of the really popular psyops in World War II was telling the U.S. soldiers that bad guys were back home, stealing their women [while they were fighting overseas]. Very simplistic stuff. But remember, this is at the same time that advertising is also using these same techniques and saying, “Sex sells.”

But the other thing that is going on, is that a number of science fiction writers are contributing to propaganda efforts during both World War I and World War II, and up into the present. And what they bring to this project is an interest in how you create a story that’s really immersive and makes your audience feel like it’s real. Science fiction is really good at this because, like pop psychology, it often uses the language of science to bolster realism. Writers will describe faster-than-light ships in great detail, or depict an alien civilization in such concrete ways that you feel like an anthopologist standing there, looking at this alien world.

(2) FURIOSA FLOPPARONI? BBC says the cash register isn’t ringing: “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga sees worst Memorial Day box office figures in almost 30 years”.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is off to a disappointing start at the US box office, bringing in $32m (£25m) over the long Memorial Day weekend.

Its takings make it the lowest box office figures for the holiday weekend since Casper debuted to $22.5m (£17.6m) in 1995.

Furiosa only narrowly beat its closest competitor, The Garfield Movie, which made $31.1m (£24.3m).

The figures for the 2024 weekend were significantly down from 2023, when Disney’s The Little Mermaid brought in $118m (£92.4m)….

(3) HISTORY OF SF IN 20 MINUTES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult takes the brave step of recounting the key moments in the history of SF in a tad over 20 minutes. Some of this is shot on location at the Jodrell Bank radio telescope…(Don’t try this at home….) “The ‘Complete’ History Of Science Fiction”.

Much like the definition of Science Fiction I believe it will forever be impossible to pinpoint exactly when the genre was born it’s an art form that spontaneously emerged from ancient human history the tales of Gilgamesh the epics of Homer and the musings of Aristophanes consider the concept of immortality and the idea of traveling to other Realms and meeting other life forms as far back as the second millennium BC…

(4) CHAPTER ONE. James S.A. Corey — aka authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck – have a new book: “Expanse writers return with Mercy of Gods — read the first chapter now” – an invitation from Polygon. Here’s their intro:

The first in a new series, the Captive’s War trilogy, Corey’s The Mercy of Gods tells the story of an alien invasion, the enslavement of a human population, and a scientist’s assistant, Dafyd Alkhor, who stumbles into a deeper mystery. During a recent virtual event, Franck cheekily described the book as “the disappointing love child of Frank Herbert and Ursula Le Guin,” while Abraham said it was a total departure from the types of stories they were able to tell in the Expanse series. “It’s the story of living as a slave in a totalitarian regime,” he said via email. “How you stay true to — and even discover — yourself, how you compromise, how you serve the regime and how you can undermine it.”…

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 28, 1984 – Max Gladstone, 40.

By Paul Weimer. My greatest regret in reading Max Gladstone is that I didn’t start reading him sooner.

Max Gladstone in 2022. Photo by Scott Edelman.

When Three Parts Dead, the first in his Craft Sequence novels came out, I was reading other things and left the book alone. I also got some wrong idea about what the book was about and so while Gladstone’s reputation started to grow from that one book, I had not picked up his work at the time.

About a year-and-a-half later, when it was clear there were going to be more Craft books and that a number of people I trust considered him talented, I decided to pick it up. I was immediately struck by the strength of the prose, the complexity of the characters, and the logical and clever way Gladstone went about his worldbuilding. Even more than Tara Abernathy, the protagonist of the book, the other characters of the book, especially Elayne Kevarian, jumped off of the page at me. I began to read and acquire the rest of the Craft Sequence novels as they came out. His willingness to jump in time, focus on various events and characters speaks and sings to my worldbuilding heart, bringing a strong vision of what his world looks like from a variety of diverse perspectives, locales and characters.

The book of his that sings to me the most, however, is none of the Craft Sequence novels, and not the audacious Empress of Forever, but, rather, Last Exit. Readers of this space are well aware of my love of Amber and all things multiversal, long before the multiverse became a thing. Last Exit tells the story of a group of people who, when younger, discovered they could travel alternate worlds. Now, ten years after their last disastrous trip, they have to get the band back together. It is a book that like Amber, or like Zelazny’s Roadmarks, is an ultimate road trip book across realities and worlds. It’s a book with enormous heart, something that is very much at the bottom of Gladstone’s work.

Happy Birthday Max.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

Non Sequitur suggests an addition to book signings that nobody wants.
Thatababy salutes a producer.

(7) ONE AND DONE FOR. ScreenRant dares to rank the “10 Best Monsters From Standalone Sci-Fi Movies”. And they begin the list with three flavors of monster for the price of one.

10. Mimics (Edge of Tomorrow, 2014)

Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow follows Major William Cage (Tom Cruise), who finds himself drafted into humanity’s ongoing war against a seemingly unstoppable race of hostile aliens called Mimics. Cage is killed in combat, but wakes in a time loop, reliving the same battle day after day. Gradually, he realizes that if he teams up with the decorated war hero Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), he can exploit the time loop to defeat the Mimic army and save the human race.

Edge of Tomorrow was a fantastic Tom Cruise sci-fi movie that blended intense military action with the repeating time-loop narrative structure of Groundhog Day and featured one of the most compelling movie monster species in the Mimics. These were an extraterrestrial species that came to Earth and waged war against humanity and, in Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise’s character of Major William Cage was tasked with facing them time and time again. As an alien race that operated with a hive mind, Mimics were able to rewind time when they were killed and create temporal loops.

Science fiction movies have had countless monsters that have enthralled and terrified filmgoers for generations. While many of the most famous sci-fi monsters, like the Xenomorph or Predator, have continued to appear in sequels and ongoing franchises, other terrifying creatures left their mark in standalone movies. The one-and-done nature of these creatures made them all the more horrifying as the impact of their initial reveal was never lessened by subsequent appearances in later films….

As incredibly large brooding creatures that were hugely agile and possessed numerous tentacles, Mimics would often camaflouge themselves only to emerge and take out their unsuspecting prey. With three connected castes known as Drones, Alpghas, and Omegas, the Mimic species was truly a force to be reckoned with. While plans for an Edge of Tomorrow sequel have been festering for the past 10 years, for now, Mimics stand as one of the best monsters from standalone sci-fi movies.

(8) WICKED SPLIT. With “Movies: Wicked the Musical”, Shelf Awareness leads into the trailer:

A trailer has been released for Jon M. Chu’s two-part film adaptation of the Tony award-winning Broadway musical Wicked, which was based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Ariana Grande “is returning to her child-star roots” to play Glinda the Good Witch, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba (later known as the Wicked Witch of the West), Jonathan Bailey as Prince Fiyero, and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, IndieWire reported.

The cast also includes Michelle Yeoh, Bowen Yang, Peter Dinklage, Adam James, Keala Settle, Bronwyn James, Ethan Slater, and Colin Michael Carmichael. Wicked: Part One premieres November 27 in theaters, with a 2025 holiday season release anticipated for part two.

Chu (In the Heights, Crazy Rich Asians) directs the project, written by Tony nominee Winnie Holzman. “We decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one Wicked movie but two!” Chu noted. “With more space, we can tell the story of Wicked as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters.”

(9) THE WIZARD OF FLAWS. 13th Dimension is kind of harsh in its evaluation of “The Oddball World of 1949’s BATMAN AND ROBIN” serial. Is it deserved?

…The Wizard is uncredited until the final chapter, since part of the “cliffhanger” aspect to this story is the Dynamic Duo trying to figure out who he really is. The initial suspect seems to be the uber-crotchety Professor Hammil (William Fawcett), who has invented a device that allows the user to remote control any vehicle in Gotham City. Not too long after confronting Hammil for the first time, the wheelchair-bound inventor calls our heroes “A pack of careless idiots.” See? Crotchety!

The Wizard steals the device, and starts using it in ever-larger doses to show Batman and the GCPD that he means business. The machine runs on diamonds, so that means he has to steal a lot of them to keep it running. He spends a lot — a lot — of time in his secret cave base flipping switches and turning dials, while letting his fedora-d henchmen do the heavy lifting.

As you can see from the first chapter, where poor Bats has to tilt his head up so he can see through the eye-slits of his dime-store cowl, Batman and Robin is a cheap, cheap affair. Brought to you by the same team that would work on Atom Man vs. Superman, director Spencer Bennet and producer Sam “Eh, Good Enough” Katzman, this 15-chapter adventure has our heroes fighting almost exclusively during the day, which does Batman no favors. Most of the time, he and Robin just look completely ridiculous as they stand around regular citizens, and everyone pretends this is a totally normal set of affairs….

(10) FIDOUGHBOY. “China’s military shows off rifle-toting robot dogs” – CNN has the story.

It looks like something out of the dystopian show “Black Mirror,” but it’s just the latest adaptation of robotics for the modern battlefield.

During recent military drills with Cambodia, China’s military showed off a robot dog with an automatic rifle mounted on its back, essentially turning man’s best (electronic) friend into a killing machine.

“It can serve as a new member in our urban combat operations, replacing our (human) members to conduct reconnaissance and identify (the) enemy and strike the target,” a soldier identified as Chen Wei says in a video from state broadcaster CCTV.

The two-minute video made during the China-Cambodia “Golden Dragon 2024” exercise also shows the robot dog walking, hopping, lying down and moving backwards under the control of a remote operator….

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George experiences what it’s like “When Your Algorithm Starts Judging You”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Rob Jackson, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 5/19/24 Come For The Chocolate, Stay For The Pixels

Posted on May 19, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SMALL WONDERS IS KICKSTARTING YEAR 2. Cislyn Smith and Stephen Granade have launched a Kickstarter to fund the year two of Small Wonders, a monthly online SFF magazine for flash fiction and poetry.

For the past year, Small Wonders has published original and reprint flash fiction and narrative poetry, all tinged with the wonder of other worlds both science fictional and fantastic. Now the magazine is raising funds to cover Year Two, with an initial goal of $11,000. Stretch goals include publishing a Best of Year One collection, an issue guest edited by Premee Mohamed and Chimedum Ohaegbu, and more. Backers can get discounted yearly subscriptions; a Kickstarter-only mini issue with new works by Nino Cipri, Myna Chang, Jennifer Mace, Avra Margariti, and more; and pins and stickers themed to stories and poems from Year One. The Kickstarter runs through June 3.

Each issue of Small Wonders contains three original pieces of flash fiction, three new poems, and three re-printed flash fiction stories. Issues are published as ebooks (mobi, epub, and pdf) at the first of the month, and subscribers can receive every story and poem in their inboxes as they’re published on the website.

The first year of Small Wonders succeeded beyond Cislyn and Stephen’s expectations. It published new authors and poets as well as familiar names such as John Wiswell, Ali Trotta, Premee Mohamed, and Mary Soon Lee. and included multiple Rhysling-nominated poems. They’re excited to see what year two will bring, and hope you’ll be a part of it through the Kickstarter.

(2) VOTE FOR BEST FRENCH SFF SHORT STORY OF 2022. SFSF Boréal invited readers during the month of March to nominate the best French-speaking sff short stories that were published in 2022 in Canada. The four finalists for the Prix Aurora-Boréal have been announced. Members of SFSF Boréal are invited to vote for the best story at this link. Votes must be cast by June 1. The finalists are:

Blouin, Geneviève, “La Vie secrète des carapaces” (Solaris 223)
Côté, Philippe-Aubert, “À l’Ère des Jumeaux errants” (Les Six Brumes)
Kurtness, J.D., “Bienvenue, Alyson” (Hannenorak)
Vonarburg, Élisabeth, “Into White”, (Les Six Brumes)

The Congrès Boréal will be held in Montréal, Québec from September 20-22.

(3) THE N-WORD. Wrath James White gives his conclusive answer to using the n-word in dialog: “Make It Make Sense” at Words of Wrath.

I have been asked several times lately about non-Black authors using the n-word when writing character dialog. Because I am, frankly, weary of answering this question, I decided to answer it here, once and for all.

So, here’s my answer. It is appropriate for a White author to put the n-word in a character’s mouth if it isn’t done gratuitously (ala Quinton Tarantino) where the word is just shoehorned in unnecessarily to sound cool or edgy. If the dialog feels natural and non stereotypical. If the characters themselves aren’t one dimensional caricatures and are the type of people who would use the word as part of their everyday vernacular. If it’s the appropriate word to use in the moment and another word wouldn’t work just as well, then by all means do it. Wherever another word would be just as effective, don’t do it.

For example, if your story takes place in the 90s or early oughts, then “dog”, “playa”, “gangsta”, “playboy”, “sistah” and “bruh” would all work just as well in most situations where one Black person is talking to another. Using the n-word in place of these words is a choice and the author should definitely question their motives for making that choice. That is unless you are writing a racist character.

Obviously, it would be absurd to have a racist character avoid using the n-word unless he’s a closeted racist. Still, even a racist doesn’t use the word in every sentence, and might even use other more creative pejoratives. And, most racists are not blatant in their racism….

…The bottom line, I can’t grant you a pass to use the n-word. Nothing I have said above will guarantee that you won’t get the taste slapped out of your mouth for including it in yourwriting. But, if you do find it necessary to use it, just like I said in a previous article about grossout and gore, make it make sense. Make it feel natural and not like a teenager or adolescent trying to shock their parents. If you don’t think you can pull that off, use another word.

(4) LEFT BEHIND? “Some fight change, while others adapt. It’s a Toy Story sort of deal,” says Ronald Kelly in “Woody, Buzz, & the Changing of the Guard” at Fear County Chronicle.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my place in an ever-growing, ever-changing horror genre. How it once was, how it is now, and if Ol’ Ron has the willpower and stamina to hang in there and keep up the pace with all the new and wildly talented authors who are flooding a market that was once relatively small and limited, both in ranks and growth. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the Pixar movie Toy Story….

You see, I’m Woody. Most of us veteran horror authors are. Woody is old-fashioned, leery of change, and a little hesitant to hand over the reins to anyone else because he likes the position he’s held for so long (Andy’s favorite and the leader of the toys). Deep down inside, he believes that he deserves to retain that position, perhaps indefinitely. Could be that he was pretty special and popular in the past, along with some of his peers (Woody’s Roundup stars Jessie, Bullseye, and even Stinky Pete in Toy Story 2). Woody likes how it is in Andy’s Room because it’s familiar, comfortable, and safe. He feels like he’s the head honcho there… not necessarily giving the orders but holding some measure of respect and authority among those around him. Even the mouthy and cantankerous Mister Potato Head looks to him for stability and guidance….

…Truthfully, very few veteran writers feel contempt and suspicion toward the swell of new storytellers bursting on the scene, but unfortunately some do. They feel challenged by progress and diversity and aren’t receptive to those who want a piece of the action. They also don’t approve of how the rules have changed, and how the dynamic of the writing world is evolving at a rapid pace. The mere thought of the Changing of the Guard horrifies them. We’ve seen it happen in social media in the past few years; an old-dog author bristles at the sudden influx of new talent in the genre and cries foul, sometimes in very volatile and unflattering ways. Some have even gone as far as losing all respect in the genre they helped trailblaze and end up being cast from the ranks for their nearsightedness, prejudice, and insolence….

(5) IN THE BEGINNING. “A Closer Look At Great Animated Title Sequences” at CartoonBrew.

In honor of Saul Bass’s birthday this month, we’re taking a look at some of the greatest animated title sequences from live-action movies (the topic of great credits sequences in animated movies is a subject for another time)….

… As Walt Disney suggested above, opening credits in the early days of movies tended to be straightforwardly informational, often created quickly by in-house art departments superimposing text over static background paintings. Even so, there are a handful of movies from the 1930s and ’40s that contain brief bits of animation during the credits. One great example is the cartoon opening of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). This scene is frequently attributed to Walter Lantz, but was actually directed by Dave Fleischer….

pic.twitter.com/lVVeWaC5B6
— Cartoon Study (@CartoonStudy) May 16, 2024

… Maybe the all-time classic title sequence comes from The Pink Panther (1963), by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, which not only introduced a cartoon star but also introduced one of the best movie themes ever composed (by Henry Mancini). Looney Tunes director Friz Freleng supervised the sequence, while Freleng’s longtime layout artist Hawley Pratt designed the panther and Ken Harris primarily animated him. Producer David DePatie remembered the movie’s premiere: “The memories of that night will remain with me forever. The projector started to roll and as the Panther first appeared there was a ripple of laughter from the audience which quickly became whistles and roars of approval as the Panther toyed with the various titles. At the conclusion of the main title, the crowd went bananas.”…

pic.twitter.com/EEJa7V6p4p
— Cartoon Study (@CartoonStudy) May 16, 2024

(6) REESE WITHERSPOON, LITERARY TASTEMAKER. “When her career hit a wall, the Oscar-winning actor built a ladder made of books — for herself, and for others.” Link bypasses Paywall, courtesy Brad Verter: “Inside Reese Witherspoon’s Literary Empire”

…First and foremost, she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves. “Because that’s what women do,” she said. “No one’s coming to save us.”

Witherspoon, 48, has now been a presence in the book world for a decade. Her productions of novels like “Big Little Lies,” “Little Fires Everywhere” and “The Last Thing He Told Me” are foundations of the binge-watching canon. Her book club picks reliably land on the best-seller list for weeks, months or, in the case of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” years. In 2023, print sales for the club’s selections outpaced those of Oprah’s Book Club and Read With Jenna, according to Circana Bookscan, adding up to 2.3 million copies sold.

So how did an actor who dropped out of college (fine, Stanford) become one of the most influential people in an industry known for being intractable and slightly tweedy?

It started with Witherspoon’s frustration over the film industry’s skimpy representation of women onscreen — especially seasoned, strong, smart, brave, mysterious, complicated and, yes, dangerous women…

(7) PUBLIC FROCKING. Attention 18th-century re-enactors! “You Can’t Live in the Past, Even in a Period-Accurate Frock” contends the New York Times, although they know where you can get one.

In 2012, not long after he decided to dedicate his professional life to 18th-century wares, Casey Samson spent a weekend at a colonial-era fair in Bardstown, Ky., selling leather mugs out of a tent.

On his first night there, Mr. Samson sat alone by a crackling campfire, smelled the wood smoke and felt as if he had been transported to a different time. He knew then, he said, that he had made the right choice.

Today, Mr. Samson and his wife, Abbie, own and operate Samson Historical, a three-story business that doubles as a pseudo-museum on the downtown square in Lebanon, Ind., about 30 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

On a recent morning, Mr. Samson, 32, walked into a small warehouse tucked behind the retail space and waxed poetic about the shop’s “great wall of waistcoats.” But there was more: “These are original sugar dippers.” And: “One of Abbie’s passions is clay pipes.” And: “All right, so: gun flints.”

There were breeches and bonnets, frocks and cloaks, candles and lanterns, hip kidneys (for extra support) and bum rolls (for that perfect silhouette). And while Samson Historical has 10 full-time employees and manufactures its own merchandise, it also works with about 40 artisans from trades that are teetering on the edge of extinction: blacksmiths, woodworkers, glass blowers, horners. A fifth-generation pipe maker from Germany handcrafts the store’s pipes.

“A lot of what we do,” Mr. Samson said, “is trying to help keep these things alive.”…

(8) MAYBE YOU WONDERED. “How the ‘B Movie’ Got Its Name” at MSN.com.

When the legendary filmmaker Roger Corman died on May 9 at the age of 98, obituaries dubbed him “the King of the B Movies”—or, even more snappily, “King of the B’s.” He earned that sobriquet by churning out hundreds of low-budget productions, often sensationalistic “exploitation films” or genre fare like horror or science fiction….

In the silent era, motion picture studios began using a tiered approach to categorize productions. When Adolph Zukor founded his Famous Players film company in 1912, he used a three-way classification. As Gerald Mast recounted in his 1971 book “A Short History Of The Movies,” Zukor initially divided his pictures into “Class A (with stage stars and stage properties, the artsy films); Class B (with established screen players); and Class C (cheap, quick features).” Mary Pickford started as a “B” actress in 1914, but her movies quickly proved more popular than Zukor’s “Class A” productions.

A two-tiered system with “Class A” and “Class B” films became the industry standard, catching on during the Great Depression when the “double feature” offered two-for-one pricing to attract customers. The main feature would have the prestigious stars and high production values, while the “B” feature would be an inexpensive, quickly produced genre film like a Western. Studios set up “B units” to produce second features, and the slapdash “B movies” were aptly nicknamed “quickies” or “cheapies.”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born May 19, 1946 — André the Giant. (Died 1993.) This Birthday for André René Roussimoffwho performed as André the Giant came about because (a) I really, really like The Princess Bride film and have seen it way too many times, and (b) I thought that he was charming in it as Fezzik. That said, I knew nothing about him and all his other performances, or his life story, at all.

He was a French professional wrestler of impressive height, seven feet and four inches to be precise. He would wrestle his entire life right up until he died at age forty-six of congestive heart failure after an apparent heart attack in his sleep in the Paris hotel he was staying at in order to attend his father’s funeral. It was likely associated with his untreated acromegaly which had been diagnosed some twenty-five years earlier.

His first genre role was being Bigfoot on The Six Million Dollar Man on “The Secret of Bigfoot, Part 1” and “The Secret of Bigfoot Part 2”. Naturally I’m giving you a photo of him in that role.

Next up is being the Monster in “Heaven Is in Your Genes” on Greatest American Hero. Monster, just Monster? So, what did he look like there? Ahhh…. They apparently didn’t a budget for creating a monster which explains the generic name. I’m giving you a photo anyway so you can see what he looked like sans makeup.

Andre the Giant on Greatest American Hero

He got to be in a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan the Destroyer. He played Dagoth the Dreaming God, the main antagonist of Conan. For some reason, he was uncredited. Considering what he looks like in the film, it was easy for him to go uncredited.

And that brings us to his best and last genre role, that of Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride. He’s played as Goldman describes him in his novel, “Fezzik. The timid, large-hearted and obedient giant who accompanies Vizzini. Fezzik loves rhymes and his friend Inigo, and he is excellent at lifting heavy things.”

Not a long career, but an interesting one I’d say.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal discusses computers and hands.
Thatababy – can you name all the robots?
Wallace the Brave’s Spud ponders an unwanted superhero.
Carpe Diem changes a company name – apparently it’s been frighteningly successful.
Macanudo has a problem with an incantation.

Tom Gauld shared his latest:

My latest cartoon for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/Fkd6HO2GE2
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) May 17, 2024

My latest cartoon for @GuardianBooks. #books #ghost pic.twitter.com/yS5RZwjm5E
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) May 19, 2024

(11) SAURON TURNS HIS EYE TO YOUR WALLET. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Palantír viewing room included. Hopefully without a working Palantír just in case Melkor find a way to open the Door of Night. I mean, if you thought Sauron was bad news, you sure don’t want to deal with the OG baddy. “$460, 5,471-piece Lego Barad-dûr set comes for LOTR fans’ wallets in June” at Ars Technica. (See the set in detail at the LEGO® Icons website.)

…Sauron, Base Master of Treachery, will keep his Eye on you from atop the tower, which will actually glow thanks to a built-in light brick. The tower includes a minifig of Sauron himself, plus the Mouth of Sauron, Gollum, and a handful of Orcs.

The Lego Barad-dûr set will launch on June 1 for Lego Insiders and June 4 for everybody else. If you buy it between June 1 and June 7, you’ll also get the “Fell Beast” bonus set, with pose-able wings and a Nazgûl minifig. It doesn’t seem as though this bonus set will be sold separately, making it much harder to buy the nine Nazgûl you would need to make your collection story-accurate….

(12) SPACE AT LAST. “90-year-old Ed Dwight, 5 others blast into space aboard Blue Origin rocket” – NPR has the story. (This was Blue Origin’s 25th mission to space. The New Shepard Mission NS-25 Webcast replay is on YouTube.)

Ed Dwight, the man who six decades ago nearly became America’s first Black astronaut, made his first trip into space at age 90 on Sunday along with five crewmates aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

The flawless liftoff from a West Texas launch site marked the first passenger flight in nearly two years for the commercial space venture run by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The approximately 10-minute suborbital flight put Dwight in the history books as the oldest person ever to reach space. He beat out Star Trek actor William Shatner for that honor by just a few months. Shatner was a few months younger when he went up on a New Shepard rocket in 2021.

(13) INDIA’S NEXT MARS MISSION. Space.com says “India’s ambitious 2nd Mars mission to include a rover, helicopter, sky crane and a supersonic parachute”.

India is preparing to launch a family of seemingly sci-fi robots to Mars, perhaps as soon as late 2024.

The Mars Orbiter Mission-2 (MOM-2), or Mangalyaan-2 (Hindi for “Mars Craft”), is set to include a rover and a helicopter, like a robotic NASA duo already on Mars — the Perseverance rover and now-grounded Ingenuity. A supersonic parachute and a sky crane that will lower the rover onto the Martian surface will also be part of Mangalyaan-2, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials said last week during a presentation at the Space Applications Centre in Gujarat, India Today reported….

…Media reports from late last year suggest that Mangalyaan-2 will have at least four science instruments designed to study the early history of Mars, analyze its leaking atmosphere, and look for a hypothesized dust ring around the planet generated by its two moons, Phobos and Deimos….

(14) SPEEDING UP TRAVEL TO MARS. “NASA-funded pulsed plasma rocket concept aims to send astronauts to Mars in 2 months” reports Space.com.

An innovative rocket system could revolutionize future deep space missions to Mars, reducing travel time to the Red Planet to just a few months.

The goal of landing humans on Mars has presented a myriad of challenges, including the need to quickly transport large payloads to and from the distant planet, which, depending on the positions of Earth and Mars, would take almost two years for a round trip using current propulsion technology.The Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR), under development by Howe Industries, is a propulsion system designed to be far more efficient than current methods of deep space propulsion, enabling the trip between Earth and the Red Planet to be made in just two months. Specifically, the rocket will have a high specific impulse or Isp, a measure of how efficiently an engine generates thrust. This technology could therefore enable astronauts and cargo to travel to and from Mars more efficiently and rapidly than existing spacecraft, according to a statement from NASA…

(15) THE FINEST SUPERNATURAL TALE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff over at the Media Death Cult YouTube Channel invites us to consider Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 novelette, ‘The Willows’, as a contender for the grand chief fountainhead of the insidious order. It did though inspire the likes of H. P. Lovecraft. You don’t have to buy in to the pronunciation of Danube as ‘dan-noob’ but it is the Moidelhoff way…

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Daniel Dern, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 5/13/24 Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Pixel Was In

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) RAPHAEL HYTHLODAEUS’ UTOPIA. Go back to where Utopia began in “Utopian Realism, a speech by Bruce Sterling”.

…So, Thomas More and Peter Gillis are in this private home, avoiding actual work. They enjoy many free-wheeling, private, intellectual discussions, which are all about law, and justice, and business, and economics, and politics, and the general state of the world.

These two intellectuals agree that the state of the world is pretty terrible. Clearly the real world is quite bad, it’s not a Utopia at all. In fact the first part of the book “Utopia” is pretty much all dystopia. It’s about how bad things are in Europe, and it’s rather realistic too — these are grim assessments.

So, Thomas More and Peter Gillis, while discussing the world together, decide to invent this wandering scholar named Raphael Hythlodaeus. The wise and learned Raphael can speak Latin and Greek, just like they do — but Raphael has been to a country where everything works.

Peter Gillis even invents a Utopian alphabet, and he writes some poetry in the language of Utopia — just to demonstrate that he can play this fun Utopian game with his guest Thomas More.

Peter Gillis is willing to cooperate. He even pretends to personally introduce Thomas More to Raphael Hythlodaeus.

In the book, Raphael appears, and he starts talking. He recites the entire story of Utopia. Raphael speaks the book “Utopia,” aloud. It’s 30,000 words of text, so Raphael recites this book in one long afternoon. It’s a three and a half hour lecture, and Thomas More writes it all down.

However, it’s somehow not boring. It’s a brilliant, world-class lecture, because Raphael Hythlodaeus is quite an amazing guy. Raphael doesn’t look rich or famous. Basically, he looks like a sailor. He’s got a long beard, and he’s kind of weatherbeaten. He’s a long-haired wanderer in beat-up old clothes…

(2) WHO FELL? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 has aired a dramatisation of a mid-twentieth century classic The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963) by Walter Tevis. This was made famous beyond the SF book-reading community with the 1976 UK film starring starman David Bowie as the man himself from a dying world who comes to Earth for help and who uses his knowledge to create a techno-industry to fund his own space mission home, but whom the authorities rumble and capture…

This 1-hour radio play co-stars Doctor Who’s northern incarnation, Christopher Eccleston (also known for the apocalyptic 28 Days Later and a bit-part in the US series Heroes among much else) as Bryce. Harry Treadaway stars as Thomas Newton.

Prior to the radio play there was a separate introductory programme that most interestingly includes an audio clip of an interview with Tevis himself. This reveals that the story is as much about alcoholism: a man struggling to cope in a strange, hostile world, separated from his family.

“The Man Who Fell to Earth by American writer Walter Tevis was published in 1963. Unlike most sci-fi of its time, it’s not about space, far-off galaxies or a distant future, but set only a decade or so from the time of writing.”

I was unaware that a few years later Tevis modified the novel to include a reference to ‘Watergate’ but that (apparently (I’ve not read it)) this was unnecessary for the core of the story. Here’s the BBC descriptor for the play…

“The classic novel that spawned the acclaimed film starring David Bowie, from the writer of The Queen’s Gambit and The Hustler.

An alien arrives in Kentucky with five years to save the handful of survivors of his dying planet, and to save humanity from itself. Calling himself Thomas Newton, his plan is to use his race’s advanced technology to make millions, and then build a spaceship to bring the last of his people to live on Earth.

But Newton begins to doubt his purpose, and finds himself unable to cope with the emotional weight of being human. He finds solace with two fellow outsiders – cheery functioning alcoholic Betty-Jo, who falls quietly in love with him, and widowed scientist Nathan Bryce, who tracks him down after recognising his tech as impossible.

Little do they realise that the Government are watching…”

You can download the introduction as an MP3 here.

You can download the play as an MP3 here.

(3) BAFTA TV AWARDS 2024. There was only one winner of genre interest in last night’s BAFTA TV Awards 2024.

REALITY

Squid Game: The Challenge Production Team – Studio Lambert, The Garden / Netflix

In contrast, there were many genre winners when the 2024 BAFTA Television Craft Awards were previously announced on April 28.

(4) QUIRINO AWARDS. Animation Magazine reports the winners of the “Quirino Awards: ‘Robot Dreams,’ ‘Jasmine & Jambo,’ ‘Lulina and the Moon’”.

The Ibero-American Animation Quirino Awards closed its seventh edition with the awards ceremony on Saturday. Streamed worldwide, the Tenerife event was swept by animation from Spain, which won five of the 10 awards….

7th Quirino Awards Winners

Best Feature Film – Robot Dreams by Pablo Berger. Arcadia Motion Pictures, Lokiz Films, Noodles Prod., Les films du Worso (Spain, France).
Best Series – Jasmine & Jambo – Season 2 by Sílvia Cortés. Teidees Audiovisuals, Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals, with the participation of IB3 (Televisió de les illes Balears), Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals (Spain).
Best Short Film – Lulina and the Moo by Marcus Vinicius Vasconcelos and Alois Di Leo. Estudio Teremim (Brazil).
Best Animation School Short Film – The Leak by Paola Cubillos. KASK & Conservatorium Hogeschool Gent, Vrije Universiteit Brussels (Belgium, Colombia).
Best Commissioned Animation – In the Stars by Gabriel Osorio. Punkrobot Studio, Lucasfilm (Chile, US).
Best Music Video – SIAMÉS “All the Best” by Pablo Roldán. Rudo Company (Argentina).
Best Video Game Animation – The Many Pieces of Mr Coo directed by Nacho Rodríguez. Developed by Gammera Nest (Spain).
Best Visual Development – Sultana’s Dream by Isabel Herguera. Abano Producións, El Gatoverde Producciones, UniKo Estudio Creativo, Sultana Films, Fabian&Fred (Spain, Germany).
Best Animation Design – Cold Soup by Marta Monteiro. Animais AVPL, La Clairière Ouest (Portugal, France).
Best Sound Design and Original Music – Robot Dreams by Pablo Berger. Arcadia Motion Pictures, Lokiz Films, Noodles Production, Les films du Worso (Spain, France).

(5) FURRY STEM. “Furries, Neurodivergence, and STEM: Finding Your Path from Zero to One to One Billion” is Furries at Berkeley’s inaugural Furry Masterclass event, the first in a series of talks featuring prominent academic voices from within the furry community.

This talk is hosted by the fantastic Dr. David “Spottacus” Benaron! Spottacus is an inventor, entrepreneur, biochemist, a founding editorial board member of the Journal of Biomedical Optics, and a former professor at Stanford University. Among his achievements are the invention of the green light heart sensor, the first in vivo imaging of light-emitting genes, and the multispectral wearable optical sensor for tracking hemoglobin and hydration levels. Last year, Spottacus won a lifetime achievement award in biomedical optical physics from the International Society for Optics and Photonics. Spottacus is also a furry; a member of a community based upon the appreciation of anthropomorphic animals, featuring all kinds of creative self-expression. While furry has long been the target of misinterpretation and vitriol, folks like Spottacus show that fandom engagement and living outside the box can be boons rather than limitations. Spottacus’ talk explores his personal experiences with; as well as the intersections between; his career in STEM, the furry fandom, and neurodivergence.

(6) SFF FILMS THAT PASS MUSTER. BGR conducts a roll call of “The best sci-fi movies ever, according to Neil deGrasse Tyson”.

Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has never been shy about expressing his opinion about movies on X/Twitter — and, specifically, weighing in as to whether they got the scientific elements right or not. On a recent episode of his show StarTalk, meanwhile, he decided to actually share a detailed list of the sci-fi movies that he thinks are the best of the best, detailing what they got right, what they missed the mark on, and why some of them are so good that they deserve a “hall pass” for any errors….

These are two of the films on his list:

The Martian (2015): Tyson describes this one, starring Matt Damon as an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars, as “the most scientifically accurate movie I’ve ever witnessed.”

The Blob (1958): Reaching deep into the past for this one, Tyson gives this old-school creature feature high marks because of the way it imagines aliens looking amoeba-like — totally different, in other words, from almost every other movie in which you see an alien depicted as something like a little green man.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born May 13, 1937 – Roger Zelazny. (Died 1995.)

By Paul Weimer: The author that got me into Science Fiction and Fantasy? Maybe. My first science fiction and fantasy was Asimov (I,Robot), Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles) and Tolkien (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings). But it was Roger Zelazny who really made it stick. Sure, I read more of Asimov, and I tried to read The Silmarillion and failed, but it was reading Nine Princes in Amber and its sequels that really convinced me to get on the endless road through shadow to seek out other science fiction and fantasy.

It is ironic that for a writer best known for his short stories that I started with, and for a while stuck with, Zelazny’s novels. After Amber came Jack of Shadows, Deus Irae, Dilvish the Damned, Lord of Light and others.

If I had to point a single novel at a reader for Zelazny, I would go with Jack of Shadows. Jack of Shadows does a lot of things that the second Amber series tries to do (and not always successfully) . And I have mentioned before and elsewhere science fantasy IS my jam. How can I resist a novel where the dayside of the Earth is run on science, and the darkside is run on magic?

It took me a while to actually find and delve into the short fiction that everyone had raved about. The Last Defender of Camelot was the first collection of his I read, and then I started hunting his stories in “Best of” collections and other anthologies, and started filling in hjs oeuvre and trying to read all of his work.

This is a process that continues to this day.

Reading the NESFA collections of Roger Zelazny, which I have been reviewing here at File 770, I have realized how much of the Zelazny stories I have missed, and how much, for even the author that got me into SF and Fantasy, I still have a lot to learn about. My love for Roger Zelazny and his work is a lifelong journey. I suppose in theory there will come a day where I can say I have read all of Zelazny’s work. Someday.

There are always surprises. I remember reading and liking a story in an old anthology of “best stories” that, much to my surprise, I only recently learned was a Zelazny story. (“The Game of Blood and Dust”). Zelazny continues to delight me.

But why do I like Zelazny’s work in the first place? Even long before I picked up a camera, I’ve always been interested in imagery, in capturing moments. Zelazny captures these moments, that imagery, those scenes that resonate in my mind. Those moments captured, that lovely writing demands my attention. From Corwin walking down the stairs to Rebma, to Jack coming back from the death at the eastern pole of the world, to the Tristan and Isolde imagery of The Dream Master, to Hellwell in Lord of Light. And on, and on, and on.

And such well drawn characters in often very limited space. They are often driven, and yes, the women very often have green eyes and red hair. (Zelazny had a type, you see) but I see that as feature, not bug. And yes, too many of them smoked, and that helped take him from us way way too soon. I never got to meet him, much to my sorrow. (He, Pratchett and Banks are three of my regrets in that regard). Dilvish the Damned, particularly comes across as a character we learn in bursts, in small bits of backstory and worldbuilding. (Also a lot of Zelazny’s characters are driven, almost to obsession. They are passionate and seize things by the horns, and sometimes get the horns as a result.

But, finally, what other SFF author has written properties that I’ve mined and run roleplaying games out of for three decades, after all? Long live the work of Roger Zelazny.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Nancy shows Sluggo’s dedication to reading widely.
Wallace the Brave wonders if there’s a missing link.
Carpe Diem uses a superhero to prove a cliché.
Arctic Circle finds someone annoyed by rewilding.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal introduces a new word and the tricks you can do with it.

Tom Gauld has been busy again.

Book Mouse.
for @GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/Nkl9cGSNFB
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) May 11, 2024

My latest cartoon for @newscientist #mathematics #recycling pic.twitter.com/Lx04nm4NnW
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) May 12, 2024

(9) IT’S A WRAP. “’The Mummy’ at 25: Director on Brendan Fraser, Dwayne Johnson, Reboot” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Brendan has talked about doing some of his own stunts, during which he endured some bumps and scrapes.

We had a great stunt team, but Brendan [Fraser] is a big, tough guy, and he was younger back then. We kind of beat the crap out of him. Everybody talks about the scene when he gets hung. Usually when somebody gets hung, it’s a dummy, and that’s why they put bags over people’s heads. Brendan was always gung-ho, and he was like, “Make the noose really tight on me.” Then he decided to let his knees sag a little bit. But what he forgot is that the minute you put that much pressure on your carotid arteries, it knocks you out. We all looked, and he’s completely unconscious. It was fine, and he recovered in 10 seconds. But he woke up like, “What happened?”

(10) AGATHA UPDATE, MAYBE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “What the Heck Is Happening With Marvel Studios’ Agatha Show?” asks Gizmodo. The studio must be telling them it’s “Narnia business!”

The fact that a show about a devious witch has us so confused feels completely on brand. It started back in late 2021 when Marvel revealed it was working on a WandaVision spinoff series focused on Kathryn Hahn’s breakout character, Agatha Harkness. Since then, the show has had at least four publicly announced titles, with a possible fifth revealed in the most Agatha of ways. All of which (witch?) is to say, what the heck is happening?

The first title revealed back in 2021 was Agatha: House of Harkness. A few months later, at Comic-Con 2022, that was changed to Agatha: Coven of Chaos. A year or so after that, it became Agatha: Darkhold Diaries. Finally, earlier this year, it became just plain Agatha. You’d imagine it couldn’t change again (unless, of course, Marvel finally goes with the always-best choice Agatha All Along) but that may not be the case. Monday morning, the official Marvel Studios account tweeted a new Agatha title which was deleted only minutes later. The title was Agatha: The Lying Witch With Great Wardrobe….

(11) SPACE MINING. Ars Technica tells how “In the race for space metals, companies hope to cash in”. If they can get their tech to work.

…Potential applications of space-mined material abound: Asteroids contain metals like platinum and cobalt, which are used in electronics and electric vehicle batteries, respectively. Although there are plenty of these materials on Earth, they can be more concentrated on asteroids than mountainsides, making them easier to scrape out. And scraping in space, advocates say, could cut down on the damaging impacts that mining has on this planet. Space-resource advocates also want to explore the potential of other substances. What if space ice could be used for spacecraft and rocket propellant? Space dirt for housing structures for astronauts and radiation shielding?…

… To further the company’s goals, AstroForge’s initial mission was loaded with simulated asteroid material and a refinery system designed to extract platinum from the simulant, to show that metal-processing could happen in space.

Things didn’t go exactly as planned. After the small craft got to orbit, it was hard to identify and communicate with among the dozens of other newly launched satellites. The solar panels, which provide the spacecraft with power, wouldn’t deploy at first. And the satellite was initially beset with a wobble that prevented communication. They have not been able to do the simulated extraction.

The company will soon embark on a second mission, with a different goal: to slingshot to an asteroid and take a picture — a surveying project which may help the company understand which valuable materials exist on a particular asteroid….

(12) TO AIR IS HUMAN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This Earth-like exoplanet is the first confirmed to have an atmosphere. “‘Milestone’ discovery as JWST confirms atmosphere on an Earth-like exoplanet” in Nature. This is an important milestone in exo-planet astronomy. 55 Cancri e is too hot to support life as we know it, but could provide clues about Earth’s formation.

Astronomers say that they have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to detect for the first time an atmosphere surrounding a rocky planet outside the Solar System¹. Although this planet cannot support life as we know it, in part because it is probably covered by a magma ocean, scientists might learn something from it about the early history of Earth — which is also a rocky planet and was once molten.

Finding a gaseous envelope around an Earth-like planet is a big milestone in exoplanet research, says Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not involved with the research. Earth’s thin atmosphere is crucial for sustaining life, and being able to spot atmospheres on similar terrestrial planets is an important step in the search for life beyond the Solar System.

Primary research here (abstract only as rest is behind a pay wall).

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff over at the Media Death Cult YouTube channel has had a look at a book by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who was married to the Duke William Cavendish. One of her books inspired Alan Moore…

Pixel Scroll 5/6/24 You Saved The Ringworld Old Wu, Louis

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) TOMLINSON CRITICIZES PENGUINCON FOR CAVING TO HIS CYBERSTALKERS. In “PenguiCon 2024 Postmortem or How Not to Handle Cyberstalking”, Patrick S. Tomlinson explains how he was disinvited from a convention – one he didn’t originally apply to present at, until he was contacted by the committee about a proposal submitted by a cyberstalker.

…Now we can fast forward to this year, specifically February. I didn’t apply to attend PenguiCon in 2023 because my wife and I were traveling internationally too close to the convention to make it work logistically. So, I was surprised and happy to receive an email from the person who’d invited me in 2022 asking about scheduling for 2024. The surprise quickly turned to confusion when they asked if I’d submitted a panel suggestion “Alien Crabs and Dragonpox: How STDs are depicted in SFF and why we need more sex-positive representation.”

Reader, I had not. I’m all for sex positivity, but no I didn’t want to run a panel on space herpes.

What had actually happened was a member of the stalking cult had impersonated me to abuse the convention’s unsecured panel suggestion form. I politely declined to run their panel but offered to do another presentation of my own choosing. My counteroffer was quickly accepted and a presentation “Why not Venus?” about terraforming our closest planetary neighbor was put on the official schedule. I booked my room and set to work researching, preparing, and practicing the presentation, an intermittent process which took a total of about two weeks.

Again, I need to reiterate the organizers of this convention were not only aware of the cult stalking us, but had previous experience identifying, confronting, and mitigating their criminal harassment to the benefit of all involved. I therefore approached the coming convention confident any stalker attacks would be properly wrangled, which is why what happened next caught me so completely off guard.

Two Mondays ago, just hours after putting the finishing touches on my presentation, the same person who had booked me was tasked by the PenguiCon board to inform me I’d been disinvited from the convention because the cult stalking my family had sufficiently harassed and threatened other attendees through social media and other vectors to the point I learned later a Guest of Honor was forced to withdraw out of concern for their safety….

I wanted to handle this privately, I really did. Both to try and salvage the relationships and to help everyone involved avoid embarrassment. But between the PenguiCon board ceasing all communication with me, and these libelous statements being made public by our stalkers as a result of poor OpSec on the part of at least one board member, I’ve been forced to present the facts and refute the false narrative being presented by both our stalkers AND the PenguiCon board itself, even if accidentally….

…I want to reiterate that all of this was a known issue that PenguiCon had prior experience with and had handled professionally and competently the last time around. Which is why I find the results and fallout from this year, which again I didn’t even sign up to appear at initially, so incomprehensible. I realize this means my chance of appearing at future PenguiCons now hover near absolute zero, and I’m genuinely upset about that. They have a great con with a unique blend of creators and builders from diverse disciplines that encourages conversation and cross pollination. And as someone who’s hand sold thousands of books, their co-op style bookstore for attending authors should be a model for conventions everywhere.

But for everything they do well, the way they handled cyberstalking, especially for a convention focused on sci-fi and tech, needs to be held out as an example of what not to do for other con runners and boards. Our situation is an extreme example, but when you’re working with guests who are quasi-public figures or even celebrities like authors, artists, and actors can be, you need awareness of the potential for cyberstalkers and have policies and procedures in place.

Policies which do not include victim-blaming their targets and rewarding their criminal behavior.

(2) TOMLINSON ON AGENT LESLIE VARNEY. Tomlinson today also wrote a thread on X.com — that starts here – criticizing literary agent Leslie Varney. It begins: “And now I have to deal with Leslie Varney. Again. Leslie is a literary agent representing other authors like me. Over the last 11 months, she has also made the conscious choice to closely align herself with the criminal cult stalking and SWATTing my family.”

(3) PULITZER PRIZES. The 2024 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today. The complete list is at the link.

The lone winner of genre interest is film critic Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times, for his writings about sff movies. The Pulitzer Prize website cites the reviews listed below. Unfortunately, you will probably find them paywalled.

August 11, 2023: ‘Oppenheimer’ doesn’t show us Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That’s an act of rigor, not erasure
November 2, 2023: Review: ‘All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,’ one of the year’s great debuts, is a major work of art
March 12, 2023: The Oscars’ best picture might seem radical. But it’s as traditional as they come [Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, which he panned]
June 1, 2023: Review: Spanning continents and decades, ‘Past Lives’ is a love story for all time
December 20, 2023: Review: ‘All of Us Strangers’ is a ghost story, a gay romance and the year’s best movie
June 29, 2023: Review: With the messy but poignant ‘Dial of Destiny,’ a franchise strains to keep up with the Joneses
October 26, 2023: Review: Bah, humbug! ‘The Holdovers’ is a clunky, phony white-elephant gift of a movie

(4) ON THE TRACK OF MIDWEST FURFEST GAS ATTACK. Fur and Loathing has dropped the first of six episodes in a “Furry True Crime podcast of six episodes, releasing weekly”. Connect at the link.

Dogpatch Press reminds fans what is being investigated in its post “Midwest Furfest 2014 chemical attack – new findings by Fur And Loathing podcast”.

Think you’ve heard everything about the 2014 chemical attack on Midwest Furfest? Wait until you hear this.

The intentional release of chlorine gas sent 19 people to the hospital. It was one of the largest chemical weapons terrorist attacks in American history.

Who did it? And… why?

The targets deserve to know, because they were lucky to survive. The weapon’s deadly potential was only avoided by fast response. The level of crime fell just behind the 2001 anthrax attacks, but strangely, nobody was ever charged for it. The story faded into underreporting, disrespect towards the community, murky rumors, and hopes that it won’t happen again. There’s pride in resilience — but 10 years later, justice wasn’t served. It’s the biggest cold case in furry fandom.

The case revived when investigation by Dogpatch Press drew journalist Nicky Woolf and Project Brazen to seek FBI records, identify suspects, and fly across America to interview sources. Nicky is a journalist who reports on internet culture, with stories in The Guardian, and his original podcast series Finding Q and The Sound: Mystery of the Havana Syndrome. Nicky and Brazen’s series Fur And Loathing delivers never-before reported findings to empower the community….

(5) AMAZON’S UNION-BUSTING. Cory Doctorow tells how “Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election” at Pluralistic.

…When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – “relentless” (Bezos’s original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented “one click checkout” – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon’s relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like “fairness” or “grievance…

(6) CHRIS HEMSWORTH TAKES A LIE DETECTOR TEST. Vanity Fair wired up actor Chris Hemsworth and asked him some uncomfortable questions.

Vanity Fair’s May cover star Chris Hemsworth takes our infamous lie detector test. Between him and Matt Damon, who usually pays the bill? Does he think he’s fashionable enough to be a co-chair for the 2024 Met Gala? Is it true that his little brother Liam also auditioned for “Thor”?

(7) THEY’RE THE TOPS. MoovitApp ended up with a list of 30 titles as they went about “Ranking The Most Popular and Beloved Books Of All Time”. Works by Hemingway, Tolkien, Harper Lee, and Nabokov are here – would you like to guess in what order?

It’s hard to say exactly what makes a book great; they are after all, pieces of art that are just as subjective as anything else. However, there are some books that seem to endure for longer and resonate with more readers. Whether or not you’re a fan of literature, these are the stories that some might consider required reading. So, did you read all the best ones, and did your favorite make the list? Read on and see!…

(8) ROGER BOZZETTO (1937-2024). French academic and literary critic Roger Bozzetto died March 20. His passing was reported on Facebook.

The specialist in science fiction and fantastic literature was one of the most important and relevant European SF&F critics and theoreticians.

He was Professor Emeritus of general and comparative literature at the University of Provence, France.

He was also a member of CERLI (Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur les Littératures de l’Imaginaire/Center for Studies and Research on the Literatures of the Imagination, founded in 1979, the pool of great SF&F specialists of the last three decades in the French university landscape).

(9) JEANNIE EPPER (1941-2024). Stuntwoman Jeannie Epper, who worked on myriad films, many genre or genre-adjacent, died May 5 at the age of 83. The Hollywood Reporter paid tribute:

Jeannie Epper, the peerless, fearless stunt performer who doubled for Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman and swung on a vine across a 350-foot gorge and propelled down an epic mudslide as Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone, has died. She was 83.

Epper died Sunday night of natural causes at her home in Simi Valley, her family told The Hollywood Reporter.

Just one member of a dynasty of stunt performers that Steven Spielberg dubbed the “Flying Wallendas of Film” — starting with her father, John Epper, there have been four generations of Eppers in show business since the 1930s — she worked on 150-plus films and TV shows during an astounding 70-year career.

In 2007, Epper received the first lifetime achievement honor given to a woman at the World Taurus Awards and ranks among the greatest stuntwomen of all time.

Known for her agility, horse-riding skills and competitiveness, the 5-foot-9 Epper also stepped in for Linda Evans on the ABC shows The Big Valley in the 1960s and Dynasty in the 1980s. When Evans’ Krystle was engaged in one of those knock-down, drag-out catfights with Joan Collins’ Alexis, chances are it was Epper you saw mixing it up.

Epper also put herself in harm’s way for Kate Jackson on Charlie’s Angels, for Lindsay Wagner on The Bionic Woman, for Angie Dickinson on Police Woman, for Jessica Walter in Play Misty for Me (1971), for Jill Clayburgh in Silver Streak (1976) and for Nancy Allen in RoboCop (1987).

… Epper worked for Spielberg (as director or producer) on eight films, among them Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), 1941 (1979), Poltergeist (1982), Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Minority Report (2002)….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born May 6, 1969 – Annalee Newitz, 55. By Paul Weimer: Newitz’s work for me has been far less about their science fiction and much more about their non fiction writing. Sure, Autonomous is a solid novel with a lot of things to say about autonomy, slavery, and a heck of a lot about economics and the free market, and gender dynamics. But it is Newitz’s journalism at i09, Gawker, Gizmodo and elsewhere, writing about society and technology that really drew my attention to their work. That would also include the podcast Our Opinions are Correct, which Newitz co-hosts with Charlie Jane Anders. While I don’t always agree with them and their opinions, I have always found Newitz’ point of view (as well as Charlie Jane’s) to be interesting, strongly reasoned and worthy of engaging in and thinking about.

Annalee Newitz in 2023. Photo by Scott Edelman.

Newitz’s book Four Lost Cities, to date, is my favorite of their works. Strongly grounded in their journalism chops, the book looks at four cities that have fallen into decay and ruin: Çatal höyük, one of the very first and earliest of cities, Pompeii, perhaps the most famous and well known of the four cities, Cahokia, the Mound city whose mounds still remain on the other side of the Mississippi from St. Louis, and finally, Angkor Wat. The last, particularly, was a revelation for me, as I didn’t quite realize the hydraulic engineering that went into and kept Angkor Wat running. Given Newitz’s interest in science and engineering, Newitz is particularly interested in how and when circumstances caused that engineering to slip. And consequently, just how the city’s inhabitants had to face a slow motion collapse and apocalypse. The fall of cities due to internal and external factors definitely loom over the other three cities in the volume as well, but Angkor Wat, as their capstone, definitely is where the themes of the book, and perhaps of a lot of Newitz’s concerns in general, really come to the fore and in full flower and their full powers.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Eek! shows the beginnings of an eternal problem.
Tom Gauld teases about AI:

My latest @newscientist cartoon #AI pic.twitter.com/s9woTiqHkv
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) May 5, 2024

And here’s Teddy Harvia’s contribution!

(12) UNICORN. Michaele Jordan has allowed File 770 to share her latest micro story published by 50 Give or Take.

(13) VINTAGE X. The final trailer for Marvel Animation’s X-Men ’97 dropped a week ago. The series is on Disney+.

(14) STAR WARS THAT NEVER WAS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff at Media Death Cult goes all alternate future with a Star Wars film that could have been… “The Star Wars Sequel That Was Never Made”.

We dive into the Star Wars sequel that could have been, Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye.The novel written by Alan Dean Foster.

(15) LEGO STAR WARS. And here’s some more Star Wars that should never be – but which Gizmodo tells us is going to get its own four-part Disney+ animation: “Darth Jar Jar Strikes in Lego’s Crazy New Star Wars Series”. (Can anything including Jar Jar really be called “intellectual property”?)

The Star Wars Universe gets turned upside down in Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy, a fun what-if style series. When ordinary nerf-herder Sig Greebling (Gaten Matarazzo) unearths a powerful artifact from a hidden Jedi temple, the galaxy as we know completely changes.

In the four-part special debuting on Disney+ September 13, the good guys are bad, bad guys are good, and it all falls on Sig’s shoulders to become the hero the galaxy needs to put everything back together….

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Michaele Jordan, 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 day Daniel Dern. (Daniel was inspired by this Allan Sherman parody.]

Pixel Scroll 1/29/24 I’m All Lost In The Pixel-Market, I Can No Longer Scroll Happily

Posted on January 29, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SIC SEMPER HEAVENLY TYRANT. [Item by Anne Marble.] Xiran Jay Zhao’s social media offers a window onto their problems with the publisher of their next book, Heavenly Tyrant. They began on January 24 with these messages:

To be fair to my publisher, HT was never going to be pubbed in April. For the past few months I was in no mood to work much on it instead of doing advocacy for P@lestine and going to rallies, but at the start of the year I was told it was still possible to make a Dec 2 release –
— ????iran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) January 25, 2024

– except my editor's poor handling of my concerns about a Z!on!st author of his made me request another one, though I said I'm willing to finish the line edits with him to stay on schedule for 2024. I knew he had done at least 90k of the line edits, yet –
— ????iran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) January 25, 2024

No one wants to get into a spat with their own publisher in public but I'm beyond frustrated KNOWING the line edits exist but I'm being prevented from working on them at such a critical juncture. It's not even like I'm refusing to work with my editor for this bc I said I will
— ????iran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) January 25, 2024

Then today, Xiran Jay Zhao implied that their publisher threatened legal action over those X.com. posts

Serving me legal papers to try and intimidate me into silence instead of just giving me the edits is….wild
— ????iran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) January 29, 2024

Anyway please preorder Heavenly Tyrant so I cannot be sued for damages ????????https://t.co/SzqMrUVnPx
— ????iran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) January 29, 2024

And later:

This could be about anything btw please don't make assumptions. I could have beef with a merch store. How would you know
— ????iran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) January 29, 2024

In response to some of these posts, horror & SFF writer Zachary Rosenberg suggested at this point, Xiran Jay Zhao should get a lawyer and stop posting to protect their interests.

The hardcover was published by Penguin Teen. (Wikipedia says that they signed with Penguin Teen Canada. I’m not sure if they had a separate U.S. edition.) The paperback is published by Tundra Books, an imprint of Tundra Book Group, which is part of Penguin Random House of Canada Limited. The author lives in Canada.

(2) LUKYANENKO ENDORSES PUTIN. Well, what else did you think the Chengdu Worldcon’s absent guest of honor was going to do? “Писатель Сергей Лукьяненко поддержал решение Владимира Путина участвовать в выборах” at Звездный Бульвар (Star Boulevard) — “Writer Sergei Lukyanenko supported Vladimir Putin’s decision to participate in the elections”.

The collection of signatures in support of Vladimir Putin’s participation in the presidential elections continues in Moscow. The famous Russian science fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko spoke about his support for the candidacy of the current president in Moscow today in a conversation with journalists from the Moscow News Agency.

“I support Vladimir Putin’s decision (to nominate his candidacy for the presidency). I think that the changes in the country are visible to everyone who has lived at least more than 20 years,” he said….

(3) DON’T SAY WORLDCON. This odd phenomenon in Chinese social media was reported earlier today. Later it was learned the ban only affected one group.

Update: apparently this filter on the word “Worldcon” is limited to specific WeChat groups, and only stops the Chinese characters for the term.
— H Book Club blog (@Hugo_Book_Club) January 29, 2024

(4) FURRY CON STAFF UPRISING. [Item by Patch P.] There’s turbulent convention organizing, and then there’s having staff resign in protest to force a leadership change: “Grassroots action: Leadership changes and weeding out hate at Garden State Fur The Weekend”. Dogpatch Press has the full story, which begins —

Garden State Fur The Weekend is an upcoming furry convention set for May 3-5, 2024 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. With their launch only months away, something unusual happened. GSFTW posted an official statement about opposing hate and Nazi-fur groups….

It was followed by an announcement of the con chair stepping down and a new one stepping up. It blames medical issues of the ex-chair, Dashing Fox. Dogpatch Press wishes good health to him. The story could end there, but unofficially, the change was forced by staff resignations. You’re seeing the aftermath of revolt behind the scenes, then getting back on track for launch. Yes, they stood up with the power of collective will to change the leadership for the better….

…Let’s not beat around the bush about why staff resigned to uproot the ex-chair: He actively associated with the Furry Raiders. They are a nazifur group who wither everything they touch. Their ties to alt-right hate groups and criminal schemes could fill a book….

(5) RABBIT TESTERS. Michael Grossberg opens a discussion of “Rabbit Test: Samantha Mill’s story, which swept this past year’s sf awards, has been hailed as libertarian (But that depends on your view of its central issue.)” on the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Blog. One learns from his post there are people who classify themselves as Libertarians and do not agree with a woman’s freedom to choose to have an abortion. However, the post doesn’t explain whether that is on religious grounds, or why.

…That story is “Rabbit Test,” by Samantha Mills.

According to at least one veteran libertarian sf fan, Mill’s story fits the distinctive focus of the Prometheus Award.

“The well-written story has a strong individual-liberty theme,” said Fred Moulton, a now-retired former LFS leader and Prometheus judge.

But does it?…

…That’s been a hot-button issue even within the libertarian movement. Since libertarianism began to be popular in the 1960s and 1970s, most libertarians have supported a woman’s right to abortion (perhaps influenced partly by Ayn Rand, whose novels and essays helped spark the modern movement).

Yet, some libertarians have always disagreed, even while being consistently “pro-choice” on everything else that doesn’t violate the basic libertarian principles of non-aggression….

(6) GASTRONOMICAL AND OTHER BALONEY. In “Around the World in Eighty Lies”, The Walrus reveals an Atlas Obscura contributor’s mystifying pattern of fabricated facts.

THE STORY WAS CHARMING: a short article about soups, continually replenished for decades, secreted in jars across oceans. The soups, according to one source, were “older than Taylor Swift.” I devoured the article, published in December 2022 on Atlas Obscura, an online publication billed as “best-in-class journalism about hidden places, incredible history, scientific marvels, and gastronomical wonders,” and texted it to a few soup-obsessed friends. Then I forgot about it for months until the weather turned chilly and I pulled up the link again, only to notice the article had changed. An italicized editor’s note had been added to the top, which began: “This article has been retracted as it does not meet Atlas Obscura’s editorial standards.” The note went on to state that multiple details and interviews had been fabricated.

Intrigued, I did a Google search for the author, Blair Mastbaum. His social media profiles and Wikipedia page suggested an American writer in his mid-forties, very active on Instagram, where he posted captionless photos of his travels in Europe. Mastbaum had written ten other articles for Atlas Obscura, eight of which, it turned out, had similar retractions. Topics ranged widely: acoustic archeology, Hawaiian cultural appropriation, an obscure dialect of sign language. Mastbaum’s first retracted story had been published in January 2022; the last one more than a year later….

(7) ONE THUMB UP. [Item by Steven French.] For folks in Chicago, a “Science on Screen” series that includes Godzilla, Don’t Look Up, Contagio and War Games at Siskel Film Center from February 9-12.

It’s the end of the world as we know it…and, if we’re being honest, we could use some help in feeling fine. From pandemics to nuclear war, from planet-pulverizing meteors to a city-smashing monster, these films explore all the ways we’re risking destruction. Watch the films with experts from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keepers of the Doomsday Clock, to discuss the end times—and how we can avoid them. Presented in partnership with the University of Chicago Existential Risk Laboratory, the Japanese Cultural Center (JCC), and the DePaul Humanities Center. Additional speakers to be added.

(8) WHAT WHO’S FIGURES WERE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This month’s SFX magazine has the final low-down on Britain’s Doctor Who viewing figures which now includes 7-day catch-up views. (Remember, for comparison the US has five times the population of the UK.)

First up, The Goblin Song by Murray Gold reach number one on the iTunes chart on the day of its release and no12 in the official single sales chart that week and number six on the official singles download chart and number four on the official top 40.

Doctor Who ‘The Star Beast’ consolidated at 9.5 million viewers including catch-up. Overnights for ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ were 4.83 million with 7.14 million adding in 7-day catch-ups. ‘The Giggle’ obtained 4.62 million overnight and 6.85 million with 7-day catch-ups added in. ‘The Church on Ruby Road’ was the most watched scripted show (which excludes things like the King’s address to the nation) on Christmas day with 4.73 million viewers which increases to 7.49 million with 7-day catch-ups added in.

(9) BRIAN LUMLEY (1937-2024). Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award winner Brian Lumley died January 2 his website has reported. He came to prominence in the 1970s writing in the Cthulhu Mythos featuring the new character Titus Crow, and in the 1980s began the best-selling Necroscope series, initially centered on character Harry Keogh, who can communicate with the spirits of the dead. His other series included The Primal Lands, Hero of Dreams, and Psychomech. He wrote around 60 books and many works of short fiction.

Lumley also had a 22-year career as a Royal Military Policeman. He is survived by his wife, Barbara Ann (Silky) Lumley, his daughter Julie and many grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Brian Lumley at 1992 World Horror Con. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 29, 1958 — Jeph Loeb, 66. It’s not likely that you’ve heard of Jeph Loeb but you’ll definitely have heard of the work he first did as a comics writer and later film writer/producer. So let’s get started.

Loeb, a four-time Eisner Award winner, started out as comic writer, with his first work being on Challengers of the Unknown with Tim Sale. Loved that series!

They notably would somewhat later do Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight and Batman: The Long Halloween. The latter you’ll no doubt recognize. The former is a collection of really interesting stories. It is available from the usual suspects.

(As always I’m not listing everything, just what I’m interested in.)

They did a really great Catwoman series, Catwoman: When in Rome. I’ll do no spoilers as it’s a six-issue story extraordinary told. If you’ve got lots of money to spare, the absolute edition is, well, absolutely amazing.

At the end of the Nineties, he started a nearly three-year run on Superman with Ed McGuinness largely being the artist. It ended with the rather amazing Emperor Joker storyline.

Of course this being the two major comic producers, Loeb and McGuinness soon got another a series going, Superman/Batman, and that in turn led to a new ongoing Supergirl series.

Now Marvel.

He destroyed his hometown of Stamford, Connecticut in the first issue of the Civil War series. Oh poor Stamford.

His Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America series got coverage by the Associated Press and The Washington Post. Impressive.

Film scripts he has, oh yes.

With Matthew Weisman, he wrote the script for Teen Wolf, you might recognize for having a major role for Michael J. Fox. Completely different in tone was his next script with Weisman, Commando, the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle. And he did Teen Wolf Two as well, this time with Weisman and Tim Kring.

Somewhere in the vaults of Warner Bros is his Flash film script. Now that would really interesting to read, wouldn’t it?

He wrote a script for an episode of Smallville, after which he became a supervising producer and has written many episodes since then. He had a three year contract extension to stay on the series but left when his son developed cancer. (The son sadly passed away.)

He was writer/producer on Lost during its second season. After leaving Lost, he was co-executive producer and writer on Heroes. Tim Sale’s art was prominently featured.

Thirteen years ago, Marvel Entertainment appointed him to the position of Executive Vice President, Head of Television of its new Marvel Television. If you’ve watched a Marvel series since then be it Agent Carter or Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., he’s listed as executive producer.

He left Marvel five years ago.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Loose Parts has its own peculiar idea about saving the Earth.
Candorville has a debate about whether to waste words on a genre topic.

(12) REINVENTING THE WHEEL, ER, GRID? “14 Years Later, a Classic Sci-Fi Franchise Is About to Take its Biggest Risk Yet” claims Inverse.

It’s time to get back on the grid. As of now, the third film in the Tron franchise — titled Tron: Ares, but styled as Tr3N — is officially filming. Fourteen years after the second film, Tron: Legacy, and 42 years after the 1982 classic, Tron will finally become the weirdest sci-fi trilogy of all time.

How should Tron-heads feel about all this? Will Tr3N fix everything or destroy all programs, now and forever? At this point, it feels like Tr3N will either be great or terrible, with no room for a middle ground. Here’s why….

… Whether the movie is great or horrible, the third Tron movie will have to tackle the paradox of Tron’s essential weirdness. As a concept, Tron was both ahead of its time and terribly shortsighted. In the first film, we got an entire virtual world populated by living, sentient Programs, who manifest as people; imagine The Matrix, but most characters are Agent Smith.

Because it came out in 1982, Tron used arcade game logic to imagine this alternate digital realm, which gave the film its beautifully minimalistic aesthetic. However, this vibe also made “The Grid” seem small and empty compared to the kinds of virtual worlds that have existed in science fiction ever since.

The limitations of Tron’s world-building were so obvious that Tron: Legacy explicitly states Kevin Flynn created a bigger and better second version of the Grid. Still, this Grid feels limited in the same way the first one did, simply because the world-building feels contingent on the real world mattering more than the Grid. The paradox at the heart of Tron is the struggle to make a virtual world matter more than the real world….

(13) BOMBS AWAY. “Dr Strangelove at 60: is this still the greatest big-screen satire?” asks the Guardian.

…The message of Fail Safe: human beings are fallible. The message of Dr Strangelove: human beings are idiots.

On balance, Kubrick’s message is more persuasive. Dr Strangelove remains the greatest of movie satires for a host of reasons, not least that it hews so closely to the real-life absurdities of the cold war, with two saber-rattling superpowers escalating an arms race that could only end in mutual annihilation. There’s absolutely no question, for example, that the top military and political brass have gamed out the catastrophic loss of life in a nuclear conflict, just as they do in the war room here. Perhaps they would even nod sagely at the distinction between 20 million people dead v 150 million people dead. All Kubrick and his co-writers, Terry Southern and Peter George, have to add is a wry punchline: “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.”…

(14) SLIM NOT-SO-SHADY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] When it first landed on the Moon a week or so ago, JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) first ever Moon lander was unable to generate solar power and quickly lost energy from the battery. Now, however, it appears that the solar panel was misoriented and SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) is back online. “Japan’s SLIM probe regains power more than a week after moon landing” reports Reuters.

… SLIM lost the thrust of one of its two main engines shortly before the touchdown for unknown reasons and ended up drifting a few dozen metres away from the target. The lander safely stopped on a gentle slope but appeared toppled with an engine facing upward in a picture taken by a baseball-sized wheeled rover it deployed.

The probe’s solar panels faced westward due to the displacement and could not immediately generate power. JAXA manually unplugged SLIM’s dying battery 2 hours and 37 minutes after the touchdown as it completed the transmission of the lander’s data to the earth.

JAXA does not have a clear date when SLIM will end its operation on the moon, but the agency has previously said the lander was not designed to survive a lunar night. The next lunar night begins on Thursday.

(15) DON’TCHA JUST LOVE DYSTOPIAS….? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Dystopias are great (provided you just read about them and not begin to live in them as we now seem we are about to….) Moid over at Media Death Cult has a dive into dystopic fiction.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Barbie with a Cat” is a parody of the movie with Owlkitty.

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Anne Marble, Daniel Dern, 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 Xtifr.]

Pixel Scroll 11/28/23 Scrollmas Won’t Be Scrollmas Without Any Pixels

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION 2025 ACCESSIBILITY. Karen Fishwick, Chair of World Fantasy Convention 2025, responded to Mari Ness’ comments about accessibility issues at the 2025 WFC hotel quoted in yesterday’s Scroll.

There have been some very valid concerns raised on social media about the accessibility of World Fantasy Convention 2025.

Some of these concerns are based on experiences at a previous WFC held at the same Hotel, so I wanted to make sure that these were put into context.

The hotel has recently undertaken some renovations in the front/lobby area, which has improved access.
The bedrooms have been renovated since 2013.
We are not using function rooms in the hotel that are not accessible to people in wheelchairs (including the mezzanine room on the staircase). The function rooms we are using are on the lower ground floor and the upper ground floor. We do also have options to use rooms on Floor M as well.
Details of the entrances to the hotel are on our Accessibility Audit https://worldfantasy2025.co.uk/accessibility-audit/

There are still some things we are working on:

Parking for high sided vehicles – this particularly affects dealers, event organisers and people with larger mobility vehicles – There is space to drop people/unload at the venue, but the car park is height limited. We are looking for parking options. If these are further away from the venue, we will look at the logistics of getting drivers to and from that site. Details of the current provision and height limits are on our Accessibility Audit. https://worldfantasy2025.co.uk/accessibility-audit/
We will be talking to adjacent hotels to identify options for people with different budgets and access needs to make sure that people have a range of options to choose from.

We would very much like people to read our Accessibility Policy https://worldfantasy2025.co.uk/accessibility-policy/ that sets out the measures we are taking to improve the accessibility of our event. We will add any additional measures/accommodations to this page as they are confirmed.

If anyone has specific concerns or have a question about the venue, they can contact me directly on [email protected]

On a personal note, I myself am physically disabled, so we do take these concerns very seriously and want to work with our potential attendees to ensure they enjoy the event.

(2) OF COURSE THERE WERE VFX. “No Visual Effects in ‘Barbie’? Glen Pratt Reveals the Truth” – Animation World Network sets the record straight.

Much has been made of Barbie and Oppenheimer sharing the same theatrical release date to the point that clever fan posters were created to promote a possible double bill coined Barbenheimer. Both productions also notably shared the declaration that they contained no visual effects when in fact, the famed physicist’s biopic, directed by Christopher Nolan, utilized digital compositing; and there are full CG shots as well as CG augmentation used to bring the adventures of a Mattel doll to life by Greta Gerwig.

Caught the middle of the controversy are Glen Pratt and Andrew Jackson, the visual effects supervisors responsible for the two projects. Their presence on the credit list highlights the ludicrous nature of the public statements….

… “Even if you look at the sets that were physically built like the Barbie Dream House,” Pratt continues. “We shot clean plates of that for certain shots and in those clean plates, when you looked at them without any actors or crew in them, it looked like a toy. We were taking that and extrapolating further upon that language.”

There are over 20 fully CG shots in the film. “In the Dawn of Women sequence, which is Greta’s version of 2001: A Space Odyssey there is an entirely CG shot of the original Barbie doll which doubles as the monolith,” Pratt reveals. Framestore did concept art, visual development, previs, postvis, and virtual production, totalling 1,300 shots, while Chicken Bone FX, FuseFX, UPP, and Lola VFX contributed 300 shots. 600 of the 1,600 shots required extensive visual effects work. “When Barbie is first driving out onto the open road environment and you have the big Barbie Land rainbow, all of that was essentially bluescreen,” Pratt shares. “There was a tiny bit of set and pink road but the car had to be moving. The sky, distant vista of Barbie Land and the mountains were created digitally from reference photography of the sets that were built. We created an entirely CG environment.”…

(3) LIST OF PRIORS. [Item by Jim Janney.] Ars Technica has a long dive into movie time travel, from George Pal to Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, with separate scores for entertainment and science. Includes some I haven’t seen and some I hadn’t even heard of. “The Ars guide to time travel in the movies”.

…Even without scientific accuracy, we can still ask for logical consistency. Alas, that is also pretty thin on the ground, although in this case, there are true exceptions. The most straightforward way for travel to the past to make sense is if you can visit but you can’t actually change anything—“Whatever happened happened,” in the memorable formulation of fictional physicist Daniel Faraday in the TV show Lost. Physicists have dubbed this the “Novikov self-consistency principle,” but it can really just be summed up as “making sense.” Somewhat more ambitiously, we can imagine one or more alternative parallel timelines that are created by a sojourn into history. For the most part, however, our cinematic heroes make a cheerful hash of logic and narrative sense as they traipse through their pasts….

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

…You will not be surprised to learn that Hot Tub Time Machine doesn’t work too hard to maintain scientific plausibility in its portrayal of time travel….

(4) EGGSCLUSIVE. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Did you there was an Alien series? I didn’t.

But Deadline does: “’Alien’: Timothy Olyphant Cast In Noah Hawley’s FX Series”.

Timothy Olyphant is reuniting with Noah Hawley and FX, signing on for a major role in the upcoming Alien series. Olyphant, who recurred on Season 4 of Hawley’s FX anthology series Fargo, is set to star opposite Sydney Chandler in Hawley‘s prequel to the Alien franchise, sources tell Deadline.

Details about Olyphant’s character are not being disclosed. I hear he plays Kirsh, a synth who acts as a mentor and trainer for Chandler’s Wendy who is a hybrid, a meta-human who has the brain and consciousness of a child but the body of an adult….

(5) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. “From Local, to Global, to Gone: On the Rise and Fall of Borders Books” — an excerpt from Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral History of American Book Publishing & Bookselling in the 20th Century, edited by Buz Teacher and Janet Bukovinsky Teacher — at Literary Hub.

… Rookie Mistake #2: they ordered some new books and mixed them with used books on the same shelves. Customers were confused, not knowing if a slightly worn new book was “used,” or if a gently used book was “new.”

Rookie Mistake #3: They finally understood that Ann Arbor was a readers’ town and that antiquarian books were of marginal interest to the local avid readers. All the used books were culled from the shelves. After surviving three moves in two years, Borders Book Shop was in a good location with enough space to make a splash, and selling the kind of books people wanted. Their ambitions were rekindled.

That year, Joe Gable, fresh from Madison, Wisconsin, swaggered into Borders Book Shop. During a stand-up job interview in front of the fiction section Tom asked him “What do you know about books?” Sounding a bit like Marlon Brando, looking straight into Tom’s eyes, Joe said humbly: “I know more about books than anyone in this store.” Tom was momentarily stunned by the hubris of the comment. But he took the insult like a man, and after a few pointed questions, he hired Joe on the spot. In fact, Joe did know more about books than anyone in the store. And he proved it over the next quarter century….

(6) RECOMMENDED CLASSICS. The Martian Chronicles and Lord of the Rings are on Her Campus’ list of “ Classics That Are Worth The Read”.

Often it feels like to consider yourself a true reader, you have to know the classics. But the most classic of classics can feel impossible to read. I’ve read my fair share of incredibly boring classics, but have also managed to find some entertaining and important stories among them. Here is my list of five classics that are absolutely worth the read….

(7) DAVID ELLIOTT (1931-2023). Director David Elliott, who worked on several Gerry and Sylvia Anderson series, died November 10. Stephen La Riviere paid tribute in the Guardian.

Like many film back-room boys, my friend David Elliott, who has died aged 92, was not a household name, although he had seven decades worth of credits. Many thousands, however, will remember the happy childhood images he created as a director on the classic 1960s puppet TV series Thunderbirds, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.

David first met Gerry Anderson while they were both working on feature films in the 50s. When Anderson went on to become a producer of puppet series for the fledgling medium of television, he brought David over to picture edit. A back-breaking schedule saw him cut one episode of The Adventures of Twizzle (1957-58) a day. The work paid off and soon a marionette empire was born.

David then started directing, shooting puppet stars as if they were film stars. Each production brought greater worldwide success. Four Feather Falls (1960), Supercar (1961-62), Fireball XL5 (1962-63), Stingray (1964-65) and Thunderbirds (1965-66) entertained and pushed the boundaries of TV. At one point, Anderson’s production company AP Films was the largest consumer of colour film, when TV was still black and white. It was a far-sighted decision that ensured new audiences for their work for decades….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 28, 1946 — Joe Dante, 77. He started off as one as us as he wrote columns and articles for fanzines and APAs.

Now let’s look at what he’s done that I find interesting.

The first would be his collaboration with John Sayles when they completely rewrote the first draft of Gary Brandner’s The Howling novel for that film. Brandner was said to extremely angry with the film that was produced.

Because of The Howling, Speliberg offered up Gremlins, one of my all time favorite films, to him. I’ve watched it more times than I can count and I enjoyed it each time. Gremlins II, not so much.

Spielberg also brought him on as one of the directors on John Landis’ Twilight Zone: The Movie. Dante’s segment, a remake of the original Twilight Zone “It’s a Good Life” episode as written by Serling. That story was based off a Jerome Bixby story published in 1953 in the Star Science Fiction Stories anthology series, edited by Frederik Pohl.

Ahhh, Innerspace with Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan. The Studio hated it, Dante made the film he wanted to despite the Studio and audiences stayed home. I thought it was sweet.

I hadn’t realised to now that Dante was responsible for Small Soldiers, an interesting film. Not a great film but it have a possibility of being something. Not sure what that something would have been. Dante says that there were twelve writers involved in writing the script. Ouch.

So Dante directed Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Moving on.

Finally Dante came back to Gremlins by serving as a consultant on the Max Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai prequel series. Don’t get too excited as this is an animated series and I’ll give you the promo poster of this kid friendly series as I take leave of you.

(9) PROTEST DAMAGE TO LIBRARY. “New York Public Library facing steep graffiti cleanup costs after protests” – Gothamist forecasts the bill.

…Protesters have caused at least $75,000 in graffiti damage to the famous New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman building, where some carved reliefs may need to be replaced.

The damage was caused by at least three separate pro-Palestinian protests over the last few weeks, officials said. The worst damage, however, occurred on Thanksgiving Day when protesters sprayed “Free Palestine” in dark green paint and smeared red handprints on the steps, fountain and facade.

The graffiti damage from Thursday covered parts of marble where donors’ names are engraved with delicate crevices that can be easily eroded by cleanup efforts, said Garrett Bergen, director of facilities for the library.

Cleaning dark paint from the building requires applying a number of applications of solvent for days at a time, he said.

“We could have to replace certain elements if a rosette is too damaged for the paint to be removed. So it’s a little unclear,” Bergen said….

(10) SNAKES, IT HAD TO BE SNAKES. “Box Office: ‘Hunger Games’ Beating ‘Wish’ With $43M, ‘Napoleon’ $30M+ Over Thanksgiving” reports Deadline.

Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes won Black Friday and Saturday at the box office, respectively with $11.4M and $11.2M, soaring above a Disney animated movie (Wish) which are typically the champs of Thanksgiving weekend, and big streamer Apple’s $200M war epic, Napoleon, for a No. 1 win over the holiday stretch with a 3-day $28.8M and 5-day of $42M….

… Disney Animation’s Wish came in third on Friday and Saturday (eeks) with respectively $8M and $7M, behind Apple Original Production’s Sony-distributed Napoleon, which earned an estimated $8.4M on Friday and $7.5M [Saturday]…

(11) PAYING IT FORWARD. “Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s advice to writers from advice given to him by Robert Heinlein” – a Writers & Illustrators of the Future video from a number of years ago.

(12) LAUGHING WITH BARBIE. “’Barbie’ Gotham Awards Tribute: Watch Greta Gerwig & Margot Robbie Get Silly” – an invitation from Deadline.

Barbie writer-director Greta Gerwig and star-producer Margot Robbie showcased their comedy chops in a one-two bit tonight, thanking the Gotham Awards for a Global Icon & Creator tribute. Watch their speech above.

“We love a restaurant in a bank!” said Gerwig of the Cipriani Wall Street locale, which is just that.

The duo was lovingly introduced by Laura Dern. …… “Four years ago, I asked Greta to come and write Barbie with me,” said Robbie. Gerwig and her husband and co-writer Noah Baumbach “took an object — a doll with no character or story — and cooked up the most ridiculous, outrageous, bananas script in an attempt to conjure back what they loved about the movies.”

Said Gerwig about making the film during the Covid lockdown: “We figured that if no one was making movies anyway, they might as well not make this one. And we showed it to everyone. And Warner Bros., miraculously, said yes, and Mattel, miraculously, said yes.”

Robbie: “Essentially. Mostly. With some notes, which Greta and Noah ignored.”

Gerwig: ”We carefully considered the notes. And then we presented our case.”

Robbie: “You ignored them.” …

(13) THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This is a charming, and surprisingly informative 15 minute documentary from the one and only Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult. Actually, this came out a couple of weeks ago, but I have only just watched my downloaded copy. Trust me, I think you’ll find two or three things you did not know. (Have you ever heard of the paperback original revolution of the 1950s?…) In the middle of domestic chaos, Moid took the trouble to make this the week before he moved house. So make a mug of builders and join Moid…

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Lise Andreasen, Jim Janney, Steven French, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian, for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

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