Tag Archives: Nero Awards

Pixel Scroll 1/14/25 Leave The Pixel. Take The Scroll.

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(1) FIRES VICTIMIZE JPL AND CALTECH COMMUNITIES. Over 150 people of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory community have lost their homes in the fires. “NASA’s Deep Space Mission Control Is Empty for the First Time in 6 Decades as L.A. Wildfires Rage” reports Gizmodo.

The JPL “is untouched by fire due to the brave dedication of our first responders. But our community has been very seriously impacted with over 150 JPLers who have lost their homes and many more displaced,” Laurie Leshin, director of the JPL, wrote in an X post on Friday. A JPL Facebook administrator confirmed this grim situation in a comment on Sunday. Most of the staff was asked to work from home this week, and administrators started a relief fund for Caltech and JPL communities.

Pasadena’s Caltech community has also suffered. Their alumni relations office announced a joint Caltech and JPL Disaster Relief Fund.

The Caltech and JPL communities—our dedicated staff, faculty, and students—have been greatly impacted by this week’s devastating fires in Southern California. Thousands in our community have been displaced under mandatory evacuation orders, and hundreds including their families have lost their homes in the fires.

In response to this crisis, we have established a special Caltech and JPL Disaster Relief Fund to support our affected staff, faculty, and students. Every gift to this fund will support individuals whose lives have been interrupted by this tragedy, whether they’ve lost their homes or are experiencing some other dire situation due to this crisis.

Please consider making a contribution to this special fund that will be used by Caltech and JPL to directly support affected individuals and their families. Your generosity will make a profound difference during this time of outsized need and will help many rebuild and start to recover from this crisis.

Your gift to the Caltech and JPL Disaster Relief Fund will be exempt from all indirect costs and fees.

While the magnitude of destruction from this firestorm is widespread, we can unite and lift our Caltech and JPL community together….

(2) GAIMAN DENIES ALLEGATIONS. Today, in “Breaking the Silence” at Neil Gaiman’s Journal, the author published a lengthy denial of the sexual assault allegations made against him. Gaiman’s statement begins:

Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation. I’ve always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I’ve now reached the point where I feel that I should say something.

As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever…

(3) SANDMAN B.C. Neil Gaiman is in the news today for a second reason as well. Matthew Boroson, today on Facebook in “This is about Neil Gaiman”, charged Gaiman with uncredited borrowing from the work of Tanith Lee.

…Neil Gaiman’s THE SANDMAN is a great comic book series.

Gaiman modeled his series on Tanith Lee’s TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH.

But you wouldn’t know this, because Gaiman has never given her any credit.

Despite the fact that the main character — a byronic, pale, otherworldly, deity-like character — is the prince of night and dreams.

Despite the fact that every time people see art depicting Tanith Lee’s main character Azhrarn, they think it’s Morpheus from the Sandman. (How bad is this? When people see depictions of her character, they say SHE must have ripped HIM off.)…

Bronson details similarities between the earlier Lee series and the later Gaiman stories at the link. He concludes:

…If you loved Neil Gaiman’s stories, if you are heartbroken to learn the storyteller you loved is apparently an abuser, here is my suggestion:

track down Tanith Lee’s TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH books. Her prose is more exquisite and imaginative, her ideas more original, her empathy real.

(4) NERO BOOK AWARDS FINALIST. [Item by Steven French.] Adam S Leslie wins the Nero fiction prize for his folk-horror novel, Lost in the Garden:“Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses among winners of Nero book awards” in the Guardian.

His folk horror novel, Lost in the Garden, follows three women as they travel to the mysterious Almanby. The novel was partly inspired by Leslie’s “almost ridiculously hauntological 1980s childhood, growing up in deepest rural Lincolnshire between an Anglo Saxon burial mound and a Cold war microwave radio transmitter, two miles from where Moondial was set!”

…The awards, now in their second year, are run by Caffè Nero, and were launched after Costa Coffee abruptly ended its book awards in June 2022. The prizes are aimed at pointing readers “of all ages and interests in the direction of the most outstanding books and writers of the year”.

The four winners each receive £5,000, and are now in the running for the £30,000 Nero Gold prize for overall book of the year, selected by a judging panel chaired by Bill Bryson.

(5) SEVERANCE ENCORE PRAISED. If you want to know what the world thinks about the second season of Severance, see what these reviewers say.

More here:

And there’s a Q&A with the showrunner at The Ringer: “’Severance’ Is Finally Back. Its Creator Is Ready to Talk About It.”

(6) US LIBRARY AUDIOBOOKS. In “New Research on Audiobook Circulation in US Libraries” Publishing Perspectives looks at the stats.

Released today (January 14) to members of the news media, a 90-page 2024 survey of United States public libraries indicates that for a second year, digital audiobooks are dominating circulation in those libraries, both for adult and younger patrons….

Among highlighted points developed by the data produced:

  • Digital audiobooks accounted for 70 percent of adult audio circulation and 56 percent of youth audio circulation in libraries queried in the time frame of the survey
  • Circulation patterns showed significant variation according to community size: In smaller communities of fewer than 10,000 residents, physical and digital audio circulation were split evenly, 50 percent going to each. In larger communities of more than 500,000 residents, digital audiobooks made up 90 percent of circulation, with physical formats at just 10 percent
  • Respondents reported a 9.2-percent year-over-year increase in spending on digital audio materials for adult collections
  • Despite the dominance of digital formats, respondents indicated a 9.75-percent year-over-year increase in spending on physical audio materials for youth; this growth is thought by researchers to be driven by the increasing popularity of integrated print-and-audio products like Vox Books and Wonderbooks, as well as preloaded audiobook players such as Playaway
  • Professional reviews and patron requests remain the top drivers for audiobook selection in libraries
  • In addition, libraries studied tended to prioritize narrator (reader) quality when selecting audiobooks, with a strong preference for human readers over AI-generated voices

(7) A SURPRISING BAG OF POOH. “Rare collection of Winnie-the-Pooh letters to be auctioned” – the Guardian tells what’s up for grabs.

… The collection includes a series of written exchanges between AA Milne, the author behind the iconic children’s literature character, illustrator EH Shepard and their publisher, Frederick Muller.

The collection belonged to the late Leslie Smith, who founded the publishing company Cressrelles. His company had taken over another publishing company that had been run by the family of Winnie-the-Pooh publisher Frederick Muller, leaving Muller’s letters in Smith’s possession. The letters – some of which had not been seen by anyone since 1926 – were found by Smith’s children while clearing out their father’s loft after his death in November 2023….

…. There is also a stern reprimand written by Milne on behalf of the anthropomorphic bear, in response to an Observer crossword that referred to the character as a “fabulous monster”. Milne noted to Muller that “Pooh strongly objects”, adding that the bear was threatening to come to the publishing house and make his position clear….

…While the bulk of the material relates to the honey-loving bear and his assortment of friends, the letter collection also contains correspondences from other writers, including Enid Blyton and JRR Tolkien.

In one correspondence with Muller, Blyton discusses advertising space and expresses preference for her next book to be publicised on back covers.

Elsewhere, Tolkien addresses handwritten postcards to Smith about the minutiae of typefaces and making arrangements to collect an awards trophy. Smith’s son, Simon, who now runs Cressrelles, remembers his father describing the Lord of the Rings author as someone with “incredible wit and humour, but the most atrocious man at meeting deadlines.”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Fantasy Island premieres (1977)

Forty-eight years ago this evening the first version of Fantasy Island — a made-for-TV movie – aired on ABC. The series starred Ricardo Montalbán, an actor with a long film and TV career who was also known for his Chrysler Cordoba commercials with their tagline of “Rich Corinthian Leather”. Montalbán played Mr. Roarke, the Host, and Hervé Villechaize played his dwarf assistant, Tattoo (“Mister Roarke, the plane, the plane!”) It was created by Gene Levitt who had very little previous genre experience. 

The critics were unanimous in their absolute utter loathing of it. Newsday was typical of the comments about: “Given the premise, the [pilot] movie could have been fun, but it’s not. It drips with Meaning, but there is none. Actually, it’s quite dumb.” What is now called the Popcornmeter at Rotten Tomatoes, aka the audience ratings, gives it an eighty percent approval rating. 

It was obviously critic-proof as it had an amazing run lasting seven seasons of one hundred fifty-two episodes, plus two films called Fantasy Island and Return to Fantasy Island. It was fun, good popcorn viewing. 

A one-season revival of the series with Malcolm McDowell and Mädchen Amick in the two roles aired fourteen years later, and a Fox sequel ran for two seasons beginning in 2021. A re-imagined horror film version was released in 2020. I remember the original series and remember rather liking it a lot at the time. 

Chrysler Cordoba commercial (proof almost nothing vanishes on the net) here.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 14, 1949 — Lawrence Kasdan, 76.

Lawrence Kasdan did the screenplay for my favorite all-time genre film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which would win a Hugo at Chicon V. And no, the Suck Fairy had not had any impact upon my appreciation of it which if anything has strengthened down the decades. She drops by to watch it with me as she has a very soft for Harrison Ford. 

Speaking of being involved in my favorite films, he was the writer along with Leigh Brackett of the oh so perfect The Empire Strike Back which yes also won a Hugo, this time at Denvention Two. It and Star Wars are my go-to Star Wars films for watching over and over. (I refuse to use the revisionist names for these films.) 

He also wrote Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Solo: A Star Wars Story but I’ll confess that I stopped watching the Star Wars films after the original trilogy.  There’s later material I like, say the animated series and I am planning on getting Disney+ as the new series intrigue me a lot, but the later films just don’t interest me.

Finally, Dreamcatcher is a horror SF film based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name. It’s directed by Lawrence Kasdan and co-written by him and screenwriter William Goldman of The Princess Bride fame. 

Lawrence Kasdan

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bliss wanders into the wrong woods.
  • Dinosaur Comics parses the case of duplicate Sherlocks.
  • Rubes thinks you can guess the movie. Of course you can.

(11) DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH. “Diamond Comic Distributors Files for Bankruptcy” reports Publishers Weekly. The company filed Chapter 11, which potentially allows for a reorganization of the business.  

Diamond Comic Distributors, a linchpin in the distribution of comics to comics shops since it was founded in 1982, has made a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the U. S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland.

According to the filing, Diamond has received $41 million in debtor-in-possession financing from JP Morgan Chase that will be used to fund operating expenses and to meet its working capital needs. The filing also states that Diamond has received a $39 million stalking horse bid from an affiliate of Universal Distribution to acquire Diamond’s Alliance Game Distributors division for $39 million.

In addition to an offer to buy its Alliance business, Diamond said it has received “strong interest” from Universal to acquire Diamond UK. The future of other Diamond properties, including Diamond Book Distributors, is more uncertain, with the bankruptcy announcement saying only that Diamond has received interest from potential buyers.

“We remain committed to finding additional buyers for our businesses,” said Diamond president Chuck Parker, in a statement.

As the one-time the undisputed king of comics distribution to comics shop, Diamond leveraged the increased popularity in comics to expand into new areas, including the distribution of graphic novels to bookstores and other outlets through Diamond Book Distributors. The booming interest in all things related to comics, however, brought in more competitors, leading to a number of major comic book publishers leaving the distributor for such upstart rivals as Lunar Distribution….

(12) THE SIGN OF THE DRAGON. Mary Soon Lee has announced the publication of the first print edition of The Sign of the Dragon, containing forty superb illustrations by Gary McCluskey.  Mary says:

Of all the things I have written, “The Sign of the Dragon” remains the one that matters most to me. Its roots lie in my childhood, growing up with a mixed Chinese/Irish heritage and losing myself in Tolkien, Le Guin, et al. I wrote the first poem in 2013, and the first ebook edition of the book came out in 2020, so this print edition is long-awaited. It’s a hefty book, about 600 pages and a little over two pounds in weight. I note that there is now also an illustrated Kindle edition.

“The Sign of the Dragon” is an epic fantasy with Chinese, Mongolian, and Irish elements that tells the story of King Xau, chosen (spoiler warning!) by a dragon to be king. The story is approximately one hundred thousand words, and told in poetry.

(13) NUMBER NINE, NUMBER NINE. Scientific American asks “Will We Find Planet Nine with the Vera Rubin Observatory’s New Telescope?”

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Unless you’re really on the low end of our listener age bell curve, chances are you grew up learning about our solar system’s nine planets. Of course, unless you’ve been living under a rock since 2006, you also know that now we only have eight planets. Sorry, Pluto fans.

But maybe you’ve also heard rumblings about the mysterious Planet Nine. This hypothetical extra planet has been popping in and out of the news for more than a decade. Thanks to a new observatory set to come online in 2025, the truth about Planet Nine could finally be within reach.

Here to tell us more is Clara Moskowitz, senior editor for space and physics at Scientific American….

…Moskowitz: Exactly. And then this is where the story starts leading toward the idea of Planet Nine because then they found this object called Sedna.

Moskowitz: Sedna is another sort of, you know, similarly sized, really-far-out-there object. The closest it ever gets to the sun is 76 times the Earth-sun distance. And then they found other objects like this.

But the weird thing about these is that they’re on these crazy orbits. The orbits are so stretched out and so distant, and they later found out they also seem to be tilted at this weird angle compared to all of the other planets in the solar system. So they’re just odd, but there’s a bunch of them like this. And scientists can’t really explain how you get all these objects on these extreme, weird, long orbits unless there was something hidden out there guiding them—kind of shaping their paths with its own gravity. And that hidden something would have to be pretty large….

…Moskowitz: The very exciting thing about this story is that it’s a big mystery that we’re pretty much guaranteed to solve one way or the other soon because we have this giant new telescope coming online this year called the Vera Rubin Observatory.

Moskowitz: It’s got the largest camera in the world, and it’s in Chile, at the top of a mountain, and it’s turning on this year. It’s supposed to have its first light in July.

And this thing is going to change everything. The way the Rubin Observatory is going to work is that it’s going to scan the sky every couple of days and just completely map the entire southern sky over and over and over. And that’s a perfect way to find more objects out there—potentially to find Planet Nine itself, if it is there—but either way, to find a lot more of Sedna-, Eris-like objects. With current telescopes, they’re really hard to see. They’re super far away, and they’re super dim. But Rubin is much bigger than anything we’ve used before, and it’s going to create these maps that if you see something moving in them from night to night, you know, you’re going to be able to identify the orbits of these objects.

(14) READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP. “P.E.I. homeowner captures sound and video of meteorite strike on camera, and scientists believe it’s a first” reports CBC News.

Joe Velaidum can’t help but wonder what could have happened if he’d lingered outside his front door for just a couple of minutes longer before taking his dogs for a walk. 

The timing of their departure that day last July proved lucky. Just seconds later, a meteorite would plummet onto the front walkway of Velaidum’s home in Marshfield, Prince Edward Island, shattering on impact with a reverberating smack. 

“The shocking thing for me is that I was standing right there a couple of minutes right before this impact,” Velaidum told CBC News. 

“If I’d have seen it, I probably would’ve been standing right there, so it probably would’ve ripped me in half.” 

Luckier still, his home security camera caught both video and audio of the meteorite’s crash landing. 

Scientists believe it could be the first time that both sound and visuals of a meteorite’s strike have ever been recorded. 

“It’s not anything we’ve ever heard before. From a science perspective, it’s new,” Chris Herd, the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection curator, told CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin.

“The meteorite itself we’ve been able to investigate since then, thanks to the owners.”…

(15) BEYOND BAKER STREET. “A Speedrunner Destroyed ‘Elden Ring’ with Just a Saxophone” – Inverse explains this awesome feat.

Video games are a spectator sport, at least for a few weeks every year. The 2025 edition of Awesome Games Done Quick wrapped up on January 12, bringing seven straight days of speedrunning to a close and raising more than $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation through ticket sales and donations. AGDQ and its sister event, Summer Games Done Quick, are always a highly entertaining introduction to speedrunning, but January’s event also turned into a surprising spectacle, with multiple speedrunners incorporating live performances into their runs.

A whole week of 24-hour speedrunning streams might seem daunting to get into, but these events do a lot to make them accessible even for newcomers. The proceedings this year were at times elevated into a form of performance art, often involving live music in the process….

… Along with racing for the fastest times, speedrunners are also known for imposing ridiculous challenge for their runs (like playing the piano while beating a Mario game, for instance). A run of Elden Ring at this year’s show combined that idea with the musical theme. This year saw a speedrunner who goes by Dr. Doot playing Elden Ring using an electronic saxophone modified to act as a game controller. The runner attempted to beat Elden Ring’s bosses in succession without being hit, and while he didn’t managed to finish unscathed, the fact that he controlled the game using mostly his own breath is nothing short of astonishing. Add to that the fact that each input on the saxophone controller was accompanied by a note from the instrument, and the grueling Elden Ring run became one of the funniest events of the week….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Mary Soon Lee, N., Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

Pixel Scroll 12/4/24 To Scroll Beyond The Pixel

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(1) AUDIOBOOKS OF THE YEAR. AudioFile Magazine today released its picks for the Best Of 2024 in nine categories.

File 770 partnered with them to share “AudioFile’s 2024 Best Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Audiobooks”.

Moira Quirk and Jefferson Mays. Photos courtesy of the narrators.

(2) INTERNET ARCHIVE LOSS FINALIZED. Time has run out for the defendant to appeal Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive to the Supreme Court. IA will also be reimbursing some of the plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs reports Publishing Perspectives in “Copyright: Publishers Cheer Conclusion of Internet Archive Suit”.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP)  today (December 4) has announced a final resolution to the case Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive—this because the Internet Archive declined to file a “cert petition” with the Supreme Court of the United States by a December 3 deadline.

The moment signifies a hard-won victory for publishing, and it comes at a propitious moment for the AAP team, key members of the staff of which are in Mexico. There, the AAP is a partner to CANIEM, the Mexican publishers’ organization, in producing for this week’s International Publishers’ Association (IPA) and thus providing more than 200 publishing-delegates with whom to share the news….

…As the AAP puts it today, “with this case concluded, publishers have achieved a decisive and broadly applicable victory for authors’ rights and digital markets, an outcome that was our foremost, principled objective.

“In addition, the Internet Archive is bound by a sweeping permanent injunction and must make a payment to AAP, which funded the action, the amount of which is confidential under the terms of a court-approved, negotiated consent judgment between plaintiffs and Internet Archive.

“We are, however, permitted to disclose that ‘AAP’s significant attorney’s fees and costs incurred in the action since 2020’ will be ‘substantially compensated.’”…

(3) HOW DARE THEY? The Heinlein Society got a little tetchy about challenges to its Heinlein-related content and set Facebook readers straight that their scope is practically unlimited.

It seems someone is always asking how one of our posts is Heinlein related. Actually, complaining because they don’t think it’s Heinlein related. Now seems a good time to clarify.

1. Anything relating to SF/F, books, libraries or reading is Heinlein related. I could even argue that Heinlein is the father of modern SF. He certainly legitimized it after WWII. When Heinlein started writing, SF was limited to the pulp magazines and was generally looked down upon. It certainly wasn’t considered literature. Heinlein changed that when he started selling stories to the slick magazines and had his juvenile novels published in hardcover. He was also the first SF writer to have a NY Times best seller with Stranger in a Strange Land.

2. Anything relating to Star Trek is Heinlein related. Heinlein enjoyed Star Trek. He gave his permission to air The Trouble With Tribbles when they realized how closely Tribbles resembled the Martian Flat Cats from The Rolling Stones. He had an original painting by Kelly Fries of LT Uhura / Nichelle Nichols hanging on the wall of his study. He went to Star Trek conventions to promote blood drives. (Also, see item 1)

3. Anything relating to space or space travel is Heinlein related. Heinlein wrote about space travel his entire career and deeply cared about the future of space travel. He wrote the screenplay for Destination Moon and acted as the technical advisor, the first realistic movie about a trip to the moon. Heinlein was a guest commentor with Arthur C. Clarke and Walter Cronkite during the first moon landing in 1969. After her husband’s death, Virginia Heinlein started the Heinlein Prize Trust to promote the commercialization of space.

4. Anything relating to science is Heinlein related. Heinlein graduated from the US Naval Academy as an engineer, but he always wanted to be an astronomer. He loved and promoted science in his books. He inspired a generation of youth to pursue science with his juvenile book series.

5. Anything relating to cats is Heinlein related. This one should be obvious, but Heinlein was a huge cat lover and included cats in many of his stories.

6. Anything relating to humor is Heinlein related. Heinlein was a great fan of humor in general as evidenced from the humor in his books. He was greatly influenced by Mark Twain.

I know that people will continue to complain. I suppose it’s just human nature…

(4) CALL FOR PEER REVIEWERS. The Journal of Tolkien Research, a peer-reviewed, open access, online-only journal devoted to Tolkien research is looking for peer reviewers to assist with reviewing and assessing peer-review submissions to the journal. The editor is looking for the following minimum qualifications:

  • Published at least 2 peer-reviewed articles related to Tolkien research
  • Adequate knowledge of past and current research related to Tolkien and his works
  • A master’s degree in any area (ABD or Ph.D. preferred)
  • Ability to review 9-12 articles per year
  • Ability to provide appropriate criticism, review, and suggestions for revision on a timely basis on all articles that you agree to peer review

Please send an email detailing your qualifications along with a CV (attachment or URL). Please send any questions to the founding and current editor of JTR: Dr. Brad Eden brad.l.eden@gmail.com

(5) SFF WRITER IS NERO BOOK AWARDS FINALIST. [Item by Steven French.] Novelists shortlisted for this year’s Nero awards in the U.K. include YA author Patrick Ness: “2024 Nero book awards shortlist announced to celebrate ‘extraordinary writing talent’” in the Guardian. “The awards are run by Caffè Nero, and launched after Costa Coffee abruptly ended its book prizes in June 2022. The prizes are aimed at pointing readers ‘of all ages and interests in the direction of the most outstanding books and writers of the year’”.

…Ness made the children’s fiction list for Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody, illustrated by Tim Miller. “Ness’s brio turns the school travails of a group of monitor lizards into a bonkers, yet convincing story about difference – and giant killer robots,” wrote reviewer Kitty Empire in the Observer….

…A total of 16 books were shortlisted across the four categories of fiction, debut fiction, nonfiction and children’s fiction. Winners of each category will be announced on 14 January 2025 and receive £5,000, and an overall winner of the Nero Gold prize will be revealed on 5 March and win an additional £30,000….

(6) LOSCON 51 GOHS. Next year’s Loscon guests of honor were announced at the end of last weekend’s convention.

(7) A TAKE ON RAY BRADBURY. For all those of us who are C.S. Lewis fans – by which I mean, me – here’s an interesting letter on offer from Heritage Auctions: “C. S. Lewis. Autograph letter signed”.

Responding to a request for a photograph, Lewis offers his opinions on Ray Bradbury:

“Dear M. Rutyearts / I enclose a photo; whether good or not I do not know, but it is the only one I can find. Bradbury is a writer of great distinction in my opinion. Is his style almost too delicate, too elusive, too nuancé for S[cience]. F[iction]. matter? In that respect I take him and me to be at opposite poles; he is a humbled disciple of Corot and Debussy, I an even humbler disciple of Titian and Beethoven. / With all good wishes, / Yours sincerely, C. S. Lewis.”

The same December 11 auction includes a first edition Edgar Allan Poe. Tales (1845), current bid is $2,800.

FIRST EDITION, third printing, with copyright notice in three lines and no imprints on copyright page. “Here… begins the detective story, with ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ ‘Mystery of Marie Roget,’ and primus inter pares, the character of the amateur detective who triumphs over the blundering police, in ‘The Purloined Letter.’ The earlier Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque… contains a larger number of the Poe tales of horror, which are still the artistic standard for that school, but this volume adds ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ‘The Descent into the Maelstrom,’ and ‘The Gold Bug'” (Grolier).

(8) GUMBY. The Los Angeles Breakfast Club presents “Restoring Gumby with Mauricio Alvarado” on December 11. (From 7:00 a.m.– 9:00 a.m. at 3201 Riverside Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90027).

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION: In preparation for Gumby’s 70th next year, official Gumby licensee, Mauricio Alvarado is working on preserving and screening the work of Art Clokey. Mauricio is currently scanning and restoring the original film prints in 4K, so a new generation can meet Gumby. Join the LA Breakfast Club on December 11th to learn about the history of Gumby and see some of Mauricio’s newly restored clips — exhibited publicly for the first time!

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Mauricio Alvarado is owner of Rockin Pins and manager of the official Gumby social media channels. Thanks to the support of the new owners of ‘Gumby’, Mauricio has been actively screening and sharing the work of Art Clokey to new and old audiences across the country. Mauricio is also the co-founder of Fleischertoons, a project dedicated to locating, scanning, and distributing lost or unknown cartoons by legendary animator and filmmaker Max Fleischer.

(9) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport’s first story each month is free. They hope that you will subscribe to receive all the stories, and support the work of their authors. Start off December with “And You and I” by Jenna Hanchey.

(10) DEGREE OF SEPARATION? [Item by N.] “When Your Hero Is A Monster” by The Leftist Cooks is an hour-long video essay using Neil Gaiman as a framework to examine the dissonance in separating the artist from the art, tied with larger discussions of fandom and parasocial relationships. 

(11) HEAR ‘ORBITAL’. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Orbital, Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize winning novel, has been serialized on BBC Radio 4 as book of the week.  No, according to her, it is not ‘science fiction’ but ‘space realism’. Nonetheless, it is cracking hard SF…

Across 24 hours on the International Space Station, six astronauts from different nations contemplate the Earth, as continents and oceans pass beneath them. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of one astronaut’s mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from Earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it. They begin to ask, what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity?

You can down load mp3 of the 15-minute episodes here… Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 5.

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: Back To The Future (1985)

I already discussed how important Back to the Future II was to my SFF education a couple of weeks back. But before Back to the Future II, was the original Back to the Future.  I was younger, then, by four years, and not yet immersing myself as much into fandom. So I do recall a Starlog article about the movie, but it would take the sequel and the discussions of same to really get me excited for the franchise outside of the movie itself.

But this was 1985 and I was able to go to movies on my own at last, and so a time travel movie was tailor-made for my tastes. Sure, I didn’t quite get the music or the joke about Marvin Barry, but I knew what I liked. And I liked this. I could see Marty as a slightly older brother, cool, trying his best in a dysfunctional family (boy did that hit) and then trying desperately to save his own future even as problematic as it is.

I didn’t quite realize then what the movie was doing, by giving us a slice of the 1950’s, it was recapitulating things like Happy Days. Hill Valley circa 1955 is a paean to a time and place that has fixated itself strongly in the American Imagination. As Grease was an image of that time for an earlier generation, as was Happy Days, Hill Valley’s Back to the Future is a vision of a very much idealized time. Now, I can see the weaknesses and the problems of that idealized time but it is winningly described and shown here.  And given that Marty’s original timeline present isn’t all that great…in a sense Marty going back to the 1950’s is him going to a happier and simpler time for him (if not that he has to save his own existence). 

Is it any wonder that McFly not only manages to save his future…but to *improve* upon it? 

But for all of the time travel shenanigans and the culture of the 1950’s as compared to the 1980’s, where this movie sings is in its cast. From Michael J. Fox in the Marty McFly role, to Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and especially Thomas Wilson as Biff make this movie what it is, and is a great deal of why it was such an out of nowhere success. (that, and of course, DeLoreans are cool).  It actually grew in box office success, and held off strong competitors for weeks. The movie was, and remains, a phenomenon.

(13) STEPPING INTO HISTORY. [Item by Steven French.] Jade Cuttle talks about her love of re-enacting: “’I’m a mixed Black female historical re-enactor in a sea of men with beards’” in the Guardian.

…I can shake the shackles of gender, race and class and slip into skins different to my own. It’s a reclamation of power, though not everyone agrees. There’s always debate about the authenticity of historical TV dramas and films. Look at the uproar that greeted Ridley Scott daring to “lob a few sharks” into the Colosseum in Gladiator II, and the mixed Black female actor Caroline Henderson playing a leader in Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla. As a mixed Black female re-enactor in a sea of men with beards, I’m not always fully authentic myself either. It’s a struggle to squeeze my afro hair beneath a coif, wimple or helmet, unless I tame the fuzzy strands into tiny plaits first. The costumes are not always made for people like me. But the groups I’m part of encourage me to explore a range of roles. We are 21st-century organisations based on modern values….

(14) COMPANIONS, VILLAINS, AND OTHERS. Valerie Estelle Frankel has put together Women in Doctor Who (McFarland):

Over the past half-century Doctor Who has defined science fiction television. The women in the series—from orphans and heroic mothers to seductresses and clever teachers—flourish in their roles yet rarely surmount them. Some companions rescue the Doctor and charm viewers with their technical brilliance, while others only scream for rescue. The villainesses dazzle with their cruelty, from the Rani to Cassandra and Missy. Covering all of the series—classic and new—along with Class, K9, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, novels, comics and Big Finish Audio adventures, this book examines the women archetypes in Doctor Who.

(15) SCREENTIME. JustWatch has shared its Top 10 streamers for November 2024.

(16) HIGH AND DRY. [Item by Steven French.] “Did Venus ever have oceans? Scientists have an answer” reports Reuters. And the answer is … nope!

Earth is an ocean world, with water covering about 71% of its surface. Venus, our closest planetary neighbor, is sometimes called Earth’s twin based on their similar size and rocky composition. While its surface is baked and barren today, might Venus once also have been covered by oceans?

The answer is no, according to new research that inferred the water content of the planet’s interior – a key indicator for whether or not Venus once had oceans – based on the chemical composition of its atmosphere. The researchers concluded that the planet currently has a substantially dry interior that is consistent with the idea that Venus was left desiccated after the epoch early in its history when its surface was comprised of molten rock – magma – and thereafter has had a parched surface…

(17) NO, SF GOT IT RIGHT! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Did you watch that video File 770 posted a couple of days ago? “Minicon 15 (1979)-History of the Future-Ted Sturgeon Clifford Simak Lester del Rey Gordon Dickson”?

Interestingly, in it they said that SF got space travel wrong and that private companies would never go to space because it was too expensive hence the provenance of Governments only…

Now, Star Trek was familiar then (1979) and the authors would know of William Shatner… but never guess he would get to space courtesy
of a private company.

Just had to share that musing….

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