Tag Archives: Netflix

Pixel Scroll 3/24/25 I’m Still Big; It’s The Pixels That Got Small

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(1) OVERSEAS VISITORS TO U.S. WARNED. “Some European countries and Canada issue advisories for travelers to the U.S.” – Minnesota Public Radio has the story.

Some European countries, as well as Canada, are warning their citizens who travel to the United States to strictly follow the country’s entry rules or risk detention as the Trump administration cracks down on immigration enforcement.

Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Canada have revised their guidelines at a time when some travelers from these countries have been detained by immigration officials….

…The heightened advisories come after citizens from European countries have been detained and deported by immigration officials while traveling to the United States. Some of the warnings also note that the State Department has also suspended its policy allowing transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to update the sex field on their passports — eliminating the X marker as an option.

“We will enforce visa rules and other conditions of entry,” a State Department spokesperson told NPR on Saturday. “Prohibiting travel into the United States by those who might pose a threat or violate conditions of their visa is key to protecting the American people.”

On Friday, Germany’s Foreign Office adjusted its travel advisory after several of its citizens were reportedly arrested and detained by immigration authorities while entering the U.S., according to local media reports. The country is warning citizens that entering the U.S. through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) or a visa does not guarantee the right to enter the country.

The foreign office’s guidance says that, because U.S. border officials have the final authority to make decisions about whether someone can enter the country, there’s nothing that the German government can do to reverse a denial of entry. It recommends that travelers be able to provide proof of their return trip home, such as a plane ticket.

A German official on Saturday told NPR the country’s consulates general are aware of cases of citizens being detained and are in contact with their families as well as U.S. officials.

The United Kingdom is also warning its residents to comply with all entry rules or they “may be liable to arrest or detention.” The move comes after a tourist from the U.K. was reportedly arrested and detained by ICE at the U.S.-Canada border earlier this month.

Both Denmark and Finland have updated their travel guidance regarding people’s gender markers on their travel documents….

…On Friday, Canada also updated its travel guidelines for entering the U.S. Canadians and foreign nationals who visit the U.S. longer than 30 days “must be registered with the United States Government,” the government’s website warns — and that failure to comply could lead to “penalties, fines, and misdemeanor prosecution.”

(2) CANADIAN BOOKSELLERS CHALLENGE UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES. Publishers Weekly reports “Canadian Booksellers Unite in Tariff Fight”.

Canadian booksellers have joined forces to ask that Prime Minister Mark Carney exempt books from the 25% counter-tariffs scheduled to take effect on April 2 on $125 billion worth of goods imported from the U.S.

In an unusual collaboration, Laura Carter, executive director of the Canadian Independent Booksellers’ Association (CIBA), and Heather Reisman, CEO of chain bookseller Indigo Books & Music, sent a letter to the Prime Minister on March 20 urging the exclusion of books from the impending tariffs.

Carter and Reisman said in their letter that imposing tariffs on books would have “devastating consequences for Canadian readers, our businesses, and our cultural landscape,” reported the Quill & Quire.

The letter highlights a significant industry concern: that books by Canadian authors printed in and distributed through U.S. warehouses would be subject to the additional tariff, as the majority of books sold in Canada are published by Canadian divisions of multinational publishers.

“Unlike interchangeable consumer goods we know that readers will not likely substitute a book arriving via the U.S. for a Canadian printed and warehoused book,” Carter and Reisman said in the letter. “At this time there is nowhere near the capacity in Canada to handle all of our printing and warehousing. This tariff threatens the survival of bookstores and the livelihoods of thousands of Canadians.”…

(3) NNEDI OKORAFOR PROFILE. BBC Sounds makes available Outook’s feature on Nnedi Okorafor,“Making Marvel magic: The creative spark from my hospital bed”.

Nnedi Okorafor is an award-winning, Nigerian-American author of fantasy and science fiction. 

Becoming a writer was not the most straightforward journey for Nnedi. Before her literary success she was a talented tennis player and dreamt of turning pro. However following a diagnosis of scoliosis, routine surgery to her spine left her temporarily paralysed. 

Confined to her hospital bed, Nnedi found solace in her vivid imagination and began writing for the first time. It was the start of a highly successful career as an author and led to a request from Marvel to write some of their comics. Over the years she has written characters including Spiderman, the X-Men and the Avengers. Nnedi is also the first woman to write the character of T’Challa – the Black Panther, as well as his tech-loving sister, Shuri. Her latest book is called Death of the Author. 

(4) CHALLENGER HISTORY RECOGNIZED. The National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced March 20. The complete list of honorees is at the link. The only work of genre interest is the nonfiction winner.

Adam Higginbotham won the nonfiction award for Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. As committee chair Jo Livingstone stated, “Surprisingly propulsive in form and shocking in the facts it reveals, Challenger is a story of incompetence fostered when government agencies are invaded by corporate decision-makers.” 

(5) THEY WERE EXPENDABLE. “Review: Mickey 17” from Camestros Felapton.

…While Timo manages to secure a nice position on the crew of the colony ship, Mickey fails to read the paperwork and ends up being the designated “Expendable”: a person who has elected to be digitised so that new copies of him can be printed out each time he dies. For various reasons (explained in the film), the ship is only allowed the one expendable and only one copy of Mickey at a time. Thus he ends up being a living crash test dummy/human Guinea pig for scientists on the ship. Each death and reprinting leads to a new number….

(6) EL-MOHTAR’S NEW BOOK. Dina praises “A Fairy Tale With Teeth: Amal El-Mohtar – The River Has Roots” at SFF Book Reviews.

…I loved everything about this little book. The plot itself – that of two sisters who stumbled into Faerie as children, but have come out again – was fast-moving and surprisingly exciting for such a short novella. The language was pure poetry, not just on a line by line basis, but also because it includes snippet of songs and actual poems. The beautiful etching illustrations are just the cherry on top of the gorgeous SFF novella sundae.
Perhaps most impressively was the way El-Mohtar managed to make her characters come to life….

(7) MYSTERY UNLOCHED. [Item by Steven French.] Here’s a fun piece on the various media appearances of the Loch Ness monster, prompted by a musical about to premiere in Scotland: “From The Simpsons to Werner Herzog: the coolest, craziest, scariest Nessies ever” in the Guardian.

It is the UK’s largest body of fresh water, its volume totalling more than all the lakes of England and Wales combined. It is also the UK’s greatest source of daft stories. For the best part of a century, Loch Ness has used its monster-adjacent status not only to finance a healthy tourist economy, but also to generate a small industry in Nessie-related fiction, from the inspired to the crackpot. The Simpsons sent Mr Burns to do battle with the creature in an episode called Monty Can’t Buy Me Love. From the pen of poet Ted Hughes came Nessie the Mannerless Monster, who was tired of being told she does not exist. And indie folkster Matilda Mann has a song called The Loch Ness Monster, containing this advice: “Stay right down there.” Not wanting to be left out, the Royal Mail has just honoured Nessie with a fine, if rather unscary, stamp.

To these slithery ranks we will shortly be able to add Nessie, a family musical written and composed by Glasgow’s Shonagh Murray and about to premiere in Edinburgh and Pitlochry. Murray was reluctant to tackle such a familiar Scottish icon, until a challenge from her father drew her in. “I had just finished doing a couple of shows about the women behind Robert Burns,” she says. “I was joking with my dad that I needed to find something a wee bit less Scottish. He was like: ‘Oh, there’s loads of Scottish stories that have been told – but not to their full potential. You should do a Nessie musical.’ On a dare, I wrote an opening number. The more I was writing, the more I liked it. There was something charming and special about it.”

I never met the monster, said the writer of The Secret of the Loch after her research, but I did find a wonderful whisky

Despite claims to the contrary, the story goes back no further than May 1933. That was when hotel proprietor Donaldina Mackay and her husband John, driving along the north shore of the loch, claimed to have seen a large creature on the surface. They said it resembled a whale and described it rolling for a minute before disappearing. Their testimony, reported by the Inverness Courier, set off a summer of sighting claims. At the time, the dinosaur-battling King Kong was becoming a monster hit in cinemas, but here was a fearsome creature on Scotland’s very own soil (or loch)….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Mike Glyer.]

Born March 24, 1946 – Andrew Porter, 79. File 770’s indispensible Scroll contributor Andrew Porter got into sf fandom in the Sixties. He published a major genzine, Algol/Starship (1963–83), which received five Hugo nominations and won in 1974. And he has been a leading sf news writer for even longer — his first news-related column on upcoming paperbacks appeared in James V. Taurasi’s Science Fiction Times in 1960. Later in the decade he started his own newzine, S.F. Weekly (1966–68), and returned in the Eighties with Science Fiction Chronicle (1980–2002), a 21-time Hugo nominee and won in 1993 and 1994.

Andrew Porter in 1993 with his Hugo Award.

Porter was assistant editor on The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1966–74, and associate editor at Lancer Books in the late 1960s. Outside the sf field he also worked as a trade magazine editor and advertising production manager on such titles as Rudder, Quick Frozen Foods (under editor Sam Moskowitz), QFF International, Construction Equipment, and Electro-Procurement.

He has independently published nonfiction collections such as The Book of Ellison, Dreams Must Explain Themselves by Ursula K. Le Guin, Exploring Cordwainer Smith, and Experiment Perilous: The Art and Science of Anguish in Science Fiction and The Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. by Gardner Dozois. He was honored with a Special British Fantasy Award in 1992.

He was Fan Guest of Honour at ConFiction, the 1990 World Science Fiction Convention held in The Hague, Netherlands. The audio of his speech is available at Fanac.org.

He also was recognized by Chicon V (1991) with a Special Committee Award for Distinguished Semiprozine Work. And he was honored with the Big Heart Award in 2009.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven (1999)

Twenty-six years ago Rainbow Mars was published by Tor. It is my absolutely favorite work by Larry Niven, with Ringworld being my second. After that, it’s the Gil the ARM stories. Because of what the stories are, it hasn’t been touched by the Suck Fairy at all.

It contains six stories, five previously published and the longest, “Rainbow Mars”, written for this collection, plus some other material. It is about Svetz, the cross-reality traveler who keeps encountering beings who really should not exist including those Martians. He travel back in time  but it isn’t really time but alternative realties to retrieve animals as now in 3050 of them save dogs are extinct, but he never gets it right. 

SPOILER HERE. Horses are unicorns, Gila monsters are, monsters of sort in the form of fire breathing dragons, and, well, guess, that bird? No a phoenix is certainly not a great idea, is it? END OF SPOILER, REALLY IT IS. 

Now in the afterword, Niven notes, “Time travel is fantasy. But the only way to get fun out of it is to treat it as Analog–style science fiction. Keep it internally consistent. Lay out a set of rules and invite the reader to beat you to the consequences.” So these stories are to him SF, not fantasy. 

The first story, “Get A Horse!” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in October 1969. That was followed by “Bird in the Hand” in the same magazine, October of the next year. Surprisingly the third story, “Leviathan!” was published in Playboy in August of that year. 

Yes, I know Playboy did a lot of SF, it’s just that I wouldn’t have expected this story to show up there. It fits F&SF better in my opinion. Your opinion on that matter of course may differ.

Then “There’s a Wolf in My Time Machine” was published in October of that year in the fine zine that printed the first two. 

Finally the last story that got printed at that time, “Death in a Cage” was published in Niven’s The Flight of the Horse collection in September of 1973 which collected these stories as well. (The Flight of the Horse also had “Flash Crowd” which I like a lot and “What Good is a Glass Dagger?” which is fantastic.) 

Now we get Rainbow Mars, the novel, yes novel as Tor insists it is, that finishes out this delightfully silly volume. I think it’s a novella but y’all can give me your opinion on that. 

Some of Pratchett’s idea from a conversation he had with Niven remain in the final version of Rainbow Mars, mainly the use of Yggdrasil, the world tree. Though there’s Norsemen as well…

There’s two other two short pieces, “The Reference Director Speaks”, in which Niven speaks about his fictional sources for the Mars he creates, and “Svetz’s Time Line” which is self-explanatory. 

An afterword, “Svetz and the Beanstalk”, rounds out the work in which Niven talks about the fictional sources for Rainbow Mars as a whole.

The fantastic cover art, which was nominated for a Chelsey Award, is by Bob Eggleton who has won, if my counting skills are right tonight, an impressive nine Hugos, mostly for Best Professional Artist though there was one for Best Related Work for his most excellent Greetings from Earth: The Art of Bob Eggleton. 

I once, a long time ago, heard a pirated copy of the audiobook when the internet was a lot easier place to find such things. There were Zelazny novels there read by him. Sigh… 

Postscript: We also recommend John Hertz’ “Interview with Hanville Svetz (Larry Niven, co-author)” first published in Argentus, 2004, and available in Dancing and Joking on page 34.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) DON’T PANIC. “Netflix’s $275 Million ‘The Electric State’ Has Fallen Flat. No Matter?” The New York Times explains the reasons for the company’s sang froid. (Behind a paywall.)

Netflix spent over $275 million to make “The Electric State,” a sci-fi action adventure film starring Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt and a slew of sentient robots. Had it opened in theaters, instead of on its service as it did on March 14, the film would almost certainly be declared a giant disappointment.

Reviews have been dismal. And though the movie debuted at No. 1 on the streaming giant’s weekly chart of most-watched movies, it had far fewer views (25.2 million) than other expensive features, including “The Gray Man” (41.2 million), which was made by the same directors, the brothers Joe and Anthony Russo.

But there was little hand-wringing inside Netflix this week. No marketing chief was blamed. No production executive packed up her office.

Instead, the movie demonstrates how different Netflix is from the traditional studios — and how easily the company can spend so much for a middling result without Wall Street’s noticing. (Its stock is up slightly this week.)

Truth is, no one piece of content moves the needle at Netflix in either direction. “Squid Game 2” was the most-watched title in the company’s most recent engagement report, with 87 million views, but it accounted for only 0.7 percent of total viewing. Rather, the $18 billion that the company spends each year on movies and shows is meant to reach a worldwide audience with different tastes and interests. The budget for “The Electric State” represents 1.5 percent of what the company will spend on content this year….

(12) KEY OBSERVATIONS. Olivia Waite opens the door to “Science Fiction, Locked Room Mysteries, and the Joy of Literary Games” at CrimeReads.

Let me be very obvious at the start and say: a murder victim can’t tell you who the killer is. Locked-room mysteries are puzzling because the only person you’re sure was in the room is the one person you can’t ask for testimony. That’s also what makes locked-room plots such challenging things to read or write — a baffling impossibility turns out to be an illusion with a material explanation. An airgun from the empty house across the street, a serpent in the ventilator, a disguise or an accomplice or a clock hand nudged to display a fraudulent time.

Chandler famously objected to how this makes murder into something like a game — and he’s not wrong, ethically or aesthetically — but he does overlook the crucial fact that games are extremely fun. And my god do we need whatever fun we can scrape from these times….

… The great rebellious joy of sci-fi is that it rewrites the rules of our universe: faster than light travel, sentient mechanical beings, aliens and wormholes and alternative timelines and mirror universes and all. You must only touch the ball with your hands becomes you must never touch the ball with your hands. You transform a fact so you can explore the consequences — the propulsive and then what? that keeps the fictional pages turning. Humans colonize Mars — and then what? Robots can have feelings — and then what?

A corpse can tell you who killed them — and then what?…

(13) STOP THEM SCRAPERS! [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] All the “by clicking on this, you accept our terms”… ever want to set your terms (my son’s working out such a “by my use of your software, you you agree…”)? Well, here’s an IEEE proposed standard for it. “Doc Searls Proposes We Set Our Own Terms and Policies for Web Site Tracking” at Slashdot.

…Basically your web browser proffers whatever agreement you’ve chosen (from a canonical list hosted at Customer Commons) to the web sites and other online services that you’re visiting.

“Browser makers can build something into their product, or any developer can make a browser add-on or extension…” Searls writes. “On the site’s side — the second-party side — CMS makers can build something in, or any developer can make a plug-in (WordPress) or a module (Drupal). Mobile app toolmakers can also come up with something (or many things)…”MyTerms creates a new regime for privacy: one based on contract. With each MyTerm you are the first party. Not the website, the service, or the app maker. They are the second party. And terms can be friendly. For example, a prototype term called NoStalking says “Just show me ads not based on tracking me.” This is good for you, because you don’t get tracked, and good for the site because it leaves open the advertising option. NoStalking lives at Customer Commons, much as personal copyrights live at Creative Commons. (Yes, the former is modeled on the latter.)…

(14) SUNK COST. Adam Rowe discusses depictions of “Atlantis” at 70s Sci-Fi Art.

Much like the Bermuda triangle, Bigfoot, and the psychic powers of plants, serious discussions of Atlantis seem to have dwindled down to nothing since the ’70s and ’80s. But maybe it would be more fair to say that they’ve gotten less fun because, much like any other conspiracy theory, belief in Atlantis is now an on-ramp to harmful views like climate change denial or white supremacy….

… Now that I’ve gotten all the sensible opinions out at the front of this post, I have to admit that I really enjoy all this pseudo-historical nonsense. I devoted a whole chapter of my sci-fi art book to cryptozoology and the paranormal – while it was clearly distinct from science fiction, it was a thriving genre with plenty of crossover, including many big-name artists….

Here’s an example by David Hardy.

(15) ANDOR. Disney+ has dropped a trailer for the final season of Andor, which begins streaming on April 22.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John Hertz, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, 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).]

Pixel Scroll 3/19/25 Weres Click Scrolls, And “D’oh!” Say Trolls, And Little Fans Stalk Pixels. A Tribble’d Eat Melange, Too — Wouldn’t Groot?

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(1) CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE SHORTLIST. The inaugural Climate Fiction Prize shortlist was posted today. Read short descriptions of the books and author information here: “Explore the shortlist – The Climate Fiction Prize”. The winner will be revealed May 14.

The Climate Fiction Prize shortlist has been announced, with the judges selecting five titles representing the depth and range of climate fiction on offer to readers. The titles, selected from the all-female longlist announced in November, encompass a range of genres, with each tackling the climate crisis differently. More information about each title can be found here.

The shortlisted books:

  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre, Hodder)
  • And So I Roar by Abi Daré (Sceptre, Hodder)
  • Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen (Bloomsbury Circus)
  • Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, PRH)
  • The Morningside by Téa Obreht (W&N, Orion)

The Guardian has more information: “Samantha Harvey and Téa Obreht shortlisted for inaugural Climate fiction prize”.

(2) FILER HEADING TO WIKIMANIA. Congratulations to Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey who has been awarded a full scholarship to attend the Wikimania 2025 conference in Nairobi, Kenya this August.

Wikimania is the annual conference celebrating all the free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation – Wikimedia Commons, MediaWiki, Meta-Wiki, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary and Wikifunctions.

(3) INTERNATIONAL COSTUMERS’ GUILD PRESS LAUNCHED. Philip Gust has written a post “Introducing the International Costumers’ Guild Press”.

After several months of work, I’m pleased to announce that the International Costumers’ Guild Press is up and running, with the first two titles just published at the end of January 2025. Visit the International Costumers’ Guild Press page for more details. These two titles are based on existing ICG assets, which enabled me to focus on the publishing process.

The first title is the 2021 Edition of the ICG Masquerade Guidelines. The Guidelines were created by the ICG to assist costume Masquerade Directors in writing and implementing rules to ensure fair compe­tition in the Masquerades they run, and provide a resource for ensuring that all aspects of a successful Masquerade are covered. The Guidelines were created by the ICG Guidelines Committee in 1992. There have been four revisions, in 1994, 2006, 2010, and 2021.

This book is available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook versions. Visit the ICG Masquerade Guidelines page for information about this title, and to locate book sellers who offer the book. The ICG Press also sells the paperback and hardcover versions directly through our publication partner, IngramSpark.

The second title is Myrtle R Douglas: Mother of Convention Costuming. In 2016, the International Costumers’ Guild recog­nized Myrtle R Douglas as “The Mother of Convention Costuming” for creating the first costumes ever worn at a sci-fi/fantasy convention, in 1939. This full-color commemorative book, based on the video I made for my presentation at MidAmeriCon II, the 74th Worldcon, pays homage to the fan who forever influenced what we wear at sci-fi/fantasy conventions.

This book is available in paperback and hardcover versions. Because of the graphic layout and color illustrations, it is not easily adaptable as an ebook. Visit the Myrtle R Douglas: Mother of Convention Costuming page for more information and to locate vendors who sell the book. The ICG Press also sells the paperback and hardcover versions directly through our publication partner, IngramSpark.

The ICG Press will release its third title, a new edition of The Masquerade Handbook, on March 15, 2025. This work was originally compiled and privately distributed by Janet Wilson Anderson in 1991, and has been out of print since then. In 2022, ICG Vice President Leslie L. Johnston, working with ICG members Jill Eastlake and Judy Mitchell, began a project to bring this long-out-of-print title back to life and put it in the hands of today’s costumers. They turned over their work to the ICG Press in late fall of 2024….

And this week the Press announced “ICG Press Titles Now Available in Digital Formats”.

(4) EUROPEAN FAN FUND TAKING NOMINATIONS. European fans have until March 22 to make nominations for the European Fan Fund 2025. The complete guidelines are at the link. [Via Ansible.]

EFF is the European Fan Fund which transports European SF fans to Eurocons.

The purpose of the EFF is to create and strengthen bonds between European fans and fandoms. Currently in almost every country there is a fandom that quite often has little or even no connection to the broader European fandom. Most fans do concentrate on the “here and now” and are not looking for friends in other countries.

Nominations in the race to send a fan to Archipelacon (Eurocon 2025 in Mariehamn, Åland islands, 26-29 June 2025) are open to any European fan living outside Finland, Bulgaria and Poland who was active in fandom prior to January 2023. For more details on the rules, visit the FAQ section.

(5) CHESLEY SEASON. The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA) is taking 2025 Chesley Award suggestions until March 31. The announcement says they accept suggestions from “anyone”. The necessary form to use is at the link.

Chesley Suggestions for 2025 are now open. Please suggest works that were shown or created in 2024. For the publications suggestions the date is based on the publication date.

You have until the end of March to suggest!

 Anyone can suggest a piece. Your own art! Sure! A cover you liked? Yep! A fantastic piece you saw online or at a convention? Totally! Up to five suggestions per category.

(6) TRAILBLAZING GNOME PRESS. Steve Carper reminds Black Gate readers that “In the History of Vintage Science Fiction & Fantasy, Nothing Compares to Gnome Press”.

…Fantasy had long been a staple of what we would now call mainstream publishing but before the 1940s American science fiction was relegated to gaudy pulp magazines, critically reviled as among the lowest forms of fiction. The superweapons that emerged from World War II, especially the atomic bomb, suddenly made the field look prescient, a look into the onrushing future.

With mainstream publishers still reluctant to mine magazine back issues, fans of the genre saw a publishing niche. More than a dozen small presses sprang into mayfly-like existence before 1950.

Gnome was founded in 1948 by two members of New York fandom, Martin Greenberg and David A. Kyle….

… What’s 150,000 words and 1100 images to the internet? I already owned the URL GnomePress.com. The 113 pages there now comprise the first complete bibliography of Gnome Press (by author, title, and publication date), a separate page for each title with color scans of every variant board and cover I own along with contemporary reviews and previously unknown photos of the more obscure authors, information about a range of associational items, and histories both of Gnome and the f&sf field up to the time of its founding.

For all its literally exhausting coverage, the site remains a work in progress….

(7) IT WASN’T JUST AN EXAMPLE OF HOLLYWOOD ACCOUNTING. “Hollywood Filmmaker Charged With $11 Million Conspiracy to Defraud Netflix” – this New York Times link bypasses the paywall.

…The Justice Department on Tuesday charged Carl Erik Rinsch, whom Netflix hired to make a science-fiction series that was never completed, with an $11 million scheme to defraud the company.

According to the indictment, which was announced by prosecutors for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York Field Office, Mr. Rinsch secured funding from the streaming company from 2018 to early 2020. But he put the money in a personal brokerage account and ultimately used it to trade securities, instead of putting it toward the series, the indictment says.

Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Rinsch, who was arrested on Tuesday in West Hollywood, Calif., with engaging in wire fraud, money laundering and monetary transactions derived from unlawful activity.

The indictment does not cite Netflix by name. But the company has been involved in public disputes over the filmmaker’s planned series, which was initially called “White Horse” but was renamed “Conquest.” Last year, an arbitrator ruled that Mr. Rinsch owed the company nearly $12 million in damages and legal fees….

(8) ON THE ROADRUNNER AGAIN. Deadline reports “’Coyote vs. Acme’ Sale In Works After Warner Bros Shelved Toon Movie”.

Warner Bros‘ shelved movie Coyote vs. Acme finally might have found a new home with the studio deep in sale negotiations, we can reveal.

Gareth West’s distributor-financier Ketchup Entertainment is negotiating an all-rights acquisition in the $50 million range for the animated/live-action hybrid project. Ketchup last year rescued the same studio’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.

… Directed by David Green and written by May December scribe Samy Burch, as well as DC Studios co-boss James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, Coyote vs. Acme is based on the Looney Tunes characters and the New Yorker humor article “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier.

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

Despite test-screening well, the project became a high-profile casualty of WB cost-cutting two years ago and it has been sitting on the shelf for more than a year. The studio reportedly screened the movie to a string of buyers in early 2024 with a price tag of around $70M, which is how much the film is said to have cost. Studio sources claim to us that they didn’t get any offers at the time….

(9) THESE ARE THE OTHER VOYAGES. “’The Only Thing I Wish About It…’: Star Trek: TNG Stars Reveal Their Reactions to Galaxy Quest” at CBR.com.

…During a panel at the Indiana Comic Convention, Collider’s Steve Weintraub asked some Star Trek: The Next Generation alums what they thought of 1999’s Galaxy Quest.

“It’s perfect. It perfectly captures the essence (of Star Trek) with love and humor and intelligence…it’s so well-crafted,” said Denise Crosby, who played Lieutenant Tasha Yar in the first season of TNG and the Season 3 episode, “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

Jonathan Frakes, who portrayed Commander Will Riker in TNG and later Captain Riker in Star Trek: Picard, and has gone on to success directing Star Trek films and television, joked during the panel saying, “It’s almost like they read our mail. The only thing I wish about it is that we had made it.”

Crosby, who is also known for her role as Rachel Creed in 1989’s Pet Sematary, added that she had a small part in getting Galaxy Quest made. In 1997, Crosby hosted and was a co-executive producer of a Star Trek documentary film titled Trekkies that focused on die-hard fans of the franchise.

“Supposedly, and I’ve never asked him to verify this, but apparently on the first day of shooting, the story goes that Tim Allen gave the whole cast a copy of Trekkies,” Crosby said. “I had screened Trekkies for the writers of Galaxy Quest; they had never been to a con, and I was shopping Trekkies around at that time. I knew a production girl at the studio, and she said, ‘We’ve got these writers, they’re doing a rewrite on Galaxy Quest. Can they come to a screening?’” she said….

(10) MARGARET CLARK (1955-2025). Noted editor Margaret Clark died March 16. Books she acquired and edited have won seven of the last nine Scribe Awards for Best Original Novel – Speculative, given by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. 

David Mack has written a terrific tribute here: “RIP, Margaret Clark (1955-2025)”.

…Margaret was the first editor to ever hire me to write a book, roughly 25 years ago, when she commissioned me to pen The Starfleet Survival Guide. She took a chance on me before I had any print credits, and in so doing helped launch my professional prose-writing career, altering the trajectory of my life for the better.

During the past 25 years, I’ve written 32 novels for Star Trek, and roughly 40 books in total. Margaret was my editor on 24 of my Star Trek novels, and she also hired me to write a novel based on the TV series The 4400….

… I could be wrong, but I think Margaret might be the longest-serving editor of Star Trek novels in the history of the franchise. She oversaw part of the license for over a decade, and she was the sole acquiring editor for the line for most of the past decade….

(11) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

March 19, 1999 — Farscape debuted on this day

By Paul Weimer: Farscape is the punkier, overseas cousin to Stargate SG-1 (the fact that two members of Farscape wound up becoming series regulars in late SG-1 is not lost on me). A product of a vivid imagination, the genius of Jim Henson, and vagaries of trying to find one’s way in a science fiction universe that was brand new. Farscape dared to make its own way, with our Earthling Crichton being dropped in the far end of the galaxy and among a bunch of alien races, conflicts and concerns. And of course, given that he did use an impossible technology to get there, and still seeks to get back, this provided early and interesting hooks for Crichton right from the get go.

But, really, the season really gets its feet under it when it got its villains. The first season is fine, and we get to know the characters and their various sides. But it is Season 2, with the full use of Scorpius (although he did show up in Season 1), that the show really takes off. Bialar, the initial antagonist (and later less of one) really didn’t have the spark that the show needed in a recurring villain opposing the found family (because what else are the crew of Moya but that), and their plans and hopes. But Scorpius really provided the spark that the show needed, especially the “harvey” version in Crichton’s head. 

But where the series really shines, above and beyond the characters, the puppetry, the inventiveness and the uniqueness of its space opera verse, is that the series is self-aware. Crichton is genre savvy, he knows where and what is in for, and he is a protagonist and a hero for fans of the series who love and respect and enjoy science fiction. This makes the series a series for viewers who have watched Star Trek, read science fiction novels, and are and were ready to immerse themselves into a SF universe. Nowadays, some of the episodes and seasons feel padded by the strictures and requirements of network and syndication television, probably more than a few episodes could be excised and you would still get the long form character arcs, development, drama, and shared history that you get between the members of Moya’s crew. 

In some ways, while it is definitely more akin to Stargate SG-1, it, like Babylon 5, was an earnest and mostly successful attempt to create a universe that was neither Star Wars nor Star Trek, but something new, risky, and different. Farscape, even though it did delve into some serious themes, always has felt a bit lighter, more playful than B5. That’s no bad thing.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) CORPUS DELECTI. Get those bids in! “Original body model of ET expected to fetch up to $1m at Sotheby’s” reports the Guardian.

It was last seen standing at the entrance to a spaceship with a potted plant of chrysanthemums, its chest glowing bright red as it stared down at the tearful young boy on the ground below.

Now, the original body model of ET, the Extra-Terrestial, is expected to fetch up to $1m (£700,000) when it is sold at Sotheby’s auction house at in April.

The 3ft tall model was one of three used in the 1982 film, directed by Steven Spielberg, which won four Oscars. It comes directly from the collection of the film’s Oscar-winning special effects artist, the late Carlo Rambaldi, who also worked on King Kong and Alien….

E.T. is an item in Sotheby’s “’There Are Such Things:’ 20th Century Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy on Screen” auction which opens for bidding beginning on March 21 and continues through April 3.

The Hollywood Reporter story has more highlights.

…In addition to the model, other items from Rambaldi’s collection are included, like never-before-seen sketches for E.T., an animatronic study of one of E.T.’s eyes, two screen-used sand worm models from Dune (est. $15,000-20,000) and a dinosaur egg (est. $6,000-9,000) and baby dinosaur animatronic from the 1993 Japanese film Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story (est. $8,000-12,000). Items from Blade Runner, Total Recall, Dune, Labyrinth, The Wizard of Oz and Spielberg’s Jurassic Park franchise are also included in the collection….

(14) ARRIVAL. Entertainment Weekly encourages all to “Watch Stitch crash-land on Earth in first ‘Lilo & Stitch’ trailer”.

Ohana means family and — well, you know the rest.

But in case you’ve forgotten, Disney is reminding the masses by retelling the story of Lilo & Stitch via a live-action remake of the beloved 2002 film.

The first trailer for the upcoming film reintroduces Stitch, a chaotic blue alien experiment who quickly becomes the galaxy’s most-wanted extraterrestrial when he steals a spaceship and crash-lands on Earth. The kicker? His arrival just so happens to coincide with a desperate wish from a little Hawaiian girl, Lilo (Maia Kealoha).

“I wish for a friend,” Lilo says in the trailer, staring up at a shooting star. “Like, a best friend.”

And when Lilo’s attempt to adopt a dog leads her to befriend Stitch, that wish comes true. Just not in the way she expected…. 

(15) I’M SO GLAD WE HAD THIS TIME TOGETHER. The horror movie Together comes to theaters August 1.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/18/25 Soylent Green And Spam: I Would Not Like It In A Pixel, I Would Not Like It Fried With Schnitzel

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(1) BSFA AWARDS NEWS. The British Science Fiction Association released the “BSFA Awards 2024 Shortlist” today.

Congratulations to Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford for their article being among the finalists: “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” – which was simultaneously published by File 770 and Genre Grapevine, and so it would have been nicer if the BSFA announcement hadn’t failed to name File 770.

(2) ACE EDDIE AWARDS. The American Cinema Editors (ACE) announced the “ACE Eddie Winners” on March 15.  The awards recognize outstanding editing in 14 categories of film, television and documentaries. The complete list is at the link. The winners of genre interest are:

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (COMEDY, THEATRICAL)

Wicked
Myron Kerstein, ACE

BEST EDITED ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

The Wild Robot
Mary Blee

BEST EDITED SINGLE CAMERA COMEDY SERIES

What We Do in the Shadows (603 – Sleep Hypnosis)
Liza Cardinale, ACE
Dane McMaster, ACE

BEST EDITED ANIMATED SERIES:

X-Men ’97 (105 – Remember It)
Michelle McMillan

Also recognized were filmmaker Jon M. Chu who received the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award, recognizing a filmmaker who exemplifies distinguished achievement in the art and business of film. Film editors Maysie Hoy, ACE and Paul Hirsch, ACE received Career Achievement Awards for their outstanding contributions to film editing.

(3) THIS CHARACTER WAS DEMANDED BY THE TIMES. So argues R.P. O’Donnell: “Sherlock Holmes in the World” at CrimeReads.

…To Victorian Londoners, crime was terrifying and out of control. Penny Dreadfuls, cheap pamphlets blending the lurid and the sensationalist, contributed to the feeling that violent crime was lurking behind every street corner, waiting to spring out of every shadow with a knife drawn and ready to kill. 

Jack the Ripper, with the entire city at his heels, murdered and mutilated his way through the streets of London — preying on the same underworld he seemed to spring out of. And then, suddenly and without resolution, he disappeared, and slipped back into the shadows. Ready to spring out again, at any moment. A knife held against the entire city.

And then, out of these same shadows, stepped a hero. A man of science, who brought order to a dangerous world in the throes of calamitous change. A man who obeyed only a strict moral code, rather than the letter of an unjust law. A man who not only did not obey the class structure, but openly flaunted it — in his very first adventure, he reproached a King for saying a lower-class woman was not on his level. This was a man who would help anyone in need — as long as the case was interesting enough. He had no interest in money or class; he was as happy with a king’s simple portrait as he was with the proverbial king’s ransom. He was a man who didn’t just protect the city, but even adapted some of its worst bits, such as the young and ruthless pickpockets, to help him in his quest.

That man was, of course, Sherlock Holmes. And it’s no wonder he became a sensation when he first appeared in the Strand Magazine in 1891 — emerging into the city and wider society that he did.

(Author’s note: I’m setting aside the first novels for a few reasons. But in any case, it was the Adventures that exploded in popularity, and would’ve been most readers’ first introduction to Sherlock.)…

(4) WON’T BE IN SEATTLE. Count Australian sff author Jeremy Szal among those who are checking out of attending the Seattle Worldcon.

(5) BLACK MIRROR TRAILER. “’Black Mirror’ season 7 trailer previews epic ‘USS Callister’ sequel”. Entertainment Weekly sets the frame.

The AI apocalypse is primed for an explosive launch in the Black Mirror season 7 trailer, which previews a bloody, bombastic batch of six new episodes — including the return of Cristin Milioti (The Penguin) in a sequel to 2017’s epic “USS Callister” episode.

Netflix revealed Thursday the first preview of Charlie Brooker’s beloved sci-fi anthology, which welcomes a wealth of stars to its seventh season, including Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross, Awkwafina, Rashida Jones, Chris O’Dowd, Emma Corrin, Oscar-nominated actor Paul Giamatti, and Will Poulter (reprising the role of Colin Ritman from 2018’s interactive Bandersnatch movie).

In addition to teasing Milioti’s return alongside fellow “USS Callister” stars Jimmi Simpson, Paul G. Raymond, Milanka Brooks, Osy Ikhile, and Billy Magnussen, the Black Mirror season 7 trailer gives us a glimpse at a few of the new installment’s harrowing episodes….

(6) THE ELECTRIC STATE, THEIR LATEST DUD. [Item by Steven French.] A Guardian writer asks, “Why are the most expensive Netflix movies also the worst?”

Here’s the answer:

Blockbusters … have always been deceptively difficult to replicate; on some level, most of them seek some kind of overwhelming sensation, whether it’s thrills, big laughs, melodrama, spectacular visuals or some combination; these things can be faked or strung along (plenty of middling mega-movies have been big hits), but the presentation is part of that fakery, which in turn can be part of the fun. A well-crafted one can sweep you up in the moment even if what they’re doing isn’t all that clever or insightful and leaves you with empty calories; JJ Abrams owes his whole career to this phenomenon. The Netflix auteur movies, meanwhile, are made with the confidence that they will transcend their humble smaller screens (or maybe the serene knowledge that at least they’ll be shown at a lot of festivals before they make it to streaming). The most striking aspect of their mockbuster cousins is how they feel infused with the knowledge that this avenue is closed to them; it’s almost astonishing how inept they are at faking otherwise. Movies like The Electric State can throw around millions of dollars, big stars and cutting-edge effects, but they just can’t shake the bone-deep knowledge that they’re content first….

(7) CHILDREN AND FAMILY EMMY AWARDS. The Children’s & Family Emmys were presented on March 15. Animation Magazine tells who took home the honors: “’Orion and the Dark,’ ‘Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’ Are Among the Big Winners of Children’s & Family Emmys”.

…As previously announced, this year’s winners of the juried Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation honors are background designer Philip Vose (Merry Little Batman), viz-dev artist Miho Tomimasu (Orion and the Dark), animation supervisor Elena Najar (Merry Little Batman), character designer Lesego Vorster (Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire), digimatte artist Lauren Zurcher (Orion and the Dark), art director Guillaume Fesquet (Merry Little Batman) and storyboard artist David Lux (Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin)….

CAFÉ winners of genre interest included:

Children or Family Viewing Series

  • Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock (Apple TV Plus)  [The Jim Henson Company /Apple]

Fiction Special

  • The Velveteen Rabbit (Apple TV Plus) [Magic Lamp Pictures/Apple]

Preschool Animated Series

  • The Tiny Chef Show (Nickelodeon)

Children’s or Young Teen Animated Series

  • Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Disney+)

Animated Special

  • Orion and the Dark (Netflix)

Voice Performer in a Children’s or Young Teen Program

  • Eric Bauza as Daffy Duck & Bugs Bunny – Teen Titans Go! (Cartoon Network)

Younger Voice Performer in a Preschool, Children’s or Young Teen Program

  • Jacob Tremblay as Orion – Orion and the Dark (Netflix)

Writing for a Children’s or Young Teen Animated Series

  • “Dancing with Myself” – Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Disney+)

(8) YOU COULD GET LOST IN HERE. “Architectural Misdirection: Seeking Out Secret Staircases and Hidden Rooms” at CrimeReads.

Mystery fans love ingenious misdirection in their plots, and novels can be even more mysterious when the setting itself adds layers of intrigue. Creepy old buildings have a long history in mystery fiction, and the novels I’m diving into today use architecture as a key part of the puzzle…. 

In the middle of this list:

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

This classic novel is dominated by a medieval abbey’s labyrinthine library that’s filled with secret passageways and hidden rooms. Friar William of Baskerville and his apprentice are investigating the mysterious deaths of several monks at the abbey, and the architecture both provides clues and mirrors the deeper symbolic meaning behind the crimes. 

(9) CHRIS MOORE’S NYT OBITUARY. [Item by Daniel P. Dern.] Sff artist Chris Moore, whose passing was noted in the February 11 Scroll, has now received a detailed tribute in the New York Times. This gift link bypasses the paywall: “Chris Moore Dead: Illustrator for Classic Sci-Fi Books Was 77”.

DPD notes, Alex Williams’ obituary for Moore has a refreshing, remarkable depth (and presumed accuracy) with respect to sf stuff, e.g.:

Chris Moore, a British artist who conjured fantastical worlds with high-sheen covers for books by science-fiction masters like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and Alfred Bester, and who lent his artistry to albums by Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac, died on Feb. 7 at his home in Charmouth, on the southwestern coast of England. He was 77.

… Moore provided memorable interstellar images for various editions of notable books by Mr. Dick — including his novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” the basis of the 1982 film “Blade Runner” — as well as works by Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, H.G. Wells, Alastair Reynolds, J.G. Ballard, Stephen King and many others.

…While best known for his visual journeys through the cosmos, Mr. Moore produced a wide range of illustrations. He created the art for several album covers, including Fleetwood Mac’s “Penguin” (1973) and Mr. Stewart’s “The Vintage Years 1969-70” (1976), as well as contributing images to magazines like Omni and Asimov’s Science Fiction. And he designed wallpaper tied to the Star Wars film “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980).

…He exhibited his work for the first time in 1995, at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, where he realized that there was a market for his originals, which he began selling….

DPD adds: So I’m sure I saw those there, and for all I know, crossed paths with Moore.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 19, 1928 — Patrick McGoohan. (Died 2009.)

 I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. — Number 6

I don’t how times I’ve seen the opening of The Prisoner series as it’s been separately shown from the episodes online pretty much since video came to the Internet. Not sure in what context I was watching it but it was, without doubt, one of the best openings I’ve seen.

Then there was the series. Weird, thrilling, mysterious. Eminently watchable over and over and over again. Was it SF? Or was it a spy series set in the very near future? Who knew? And then there was Number Six, the never named intelligence agent played by Patrick McGoohan. He seemed destined to play this role.

He was an American-born Irish actor, director, screenwriter, and producer. Now it turns out that The Prisoner was his creation. He was also one of the writers – there were five in fact — and he was one of four directors. In other words, he had his hand in every facet of the series and its sixteen episodes. 

Before he was that unnamed intelligence agent he was, and I’m not at all convinced that McGoohan meant this to be a coincidence, secret agent John Drake in the Danger Man espionage series. I’ve seen a few episodes, it’s well crafted.  

Danger Man (retitled Secret Agent in the United States for the revived series) was a British television series broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. (A neat bit of history here: Ian Fleming was brought in to work on series development, but left before that was complete. Apparently, he didn’t like the way the secret service was to be portrayed.) 

After The Prisoner, McGoohan’s next genre endeavor was as the narrator of Journey into Darkness is a British television horror film stitching together two episodes derived from late Sixties anthology television series Journey to the Unknown.

We are now leaving genre and headed for, well the Columbo series. Why so? Because he was good friends with Peter Falk and directed five episodes of the series, four of which he appeared in, winning two Emmys in the process. McGoohan was involved with the series in some way from 1974 to 2000. 

He was said that his first appearance on Columbo was probably his favorite American role. He had top billing as Col. Lyle C. Rum, fired from a military academy, in “By Dawn’s Early Light”, one of the Columbo films that preceded the series.

His daughter Catherine McGoohan appeared with him in the episode “Ashes To Ashes” The other two Columbo episodes in which he appeared are “Identity Crisis” and “Agenda For Murder”.  

Yes, he reprised his role as Number Six for The Simpsons in “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”.  Homer Simpson fakes a news story to make his website more popular, and he wakes up in a prison that is a holiday resort. As Number Five, he meets Number Six. 

McGoohan’s last movie role was as the voice of Billy Bones in the animated Treasure Planet.

He received the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for The Prisoner.

The Prisoner is streaming on Prime. No, not awful remake (shudder) but the original one. 

Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Brewster Rockit seems to be accounting to DOGE.
  • Dog Eat Doug doesn’t want to go to Mars.
  • Rose Is Rose shows why reading only the good parts doesn’t work.
  • Wizard of Id takes us back to the early history of social media “blocking”.
  • Tom Gauld tells what changed the bird’s mind.

A cartoon for @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T13:03:11.704Z

(12) THE SHADOW KNOWS. ThePulp.Net takes us from Victor Jory to Alec Baldwin and beyond in “The Shadow on film”.

As in radio, The Shadow’s film career began with him as an announcer of detective stories, not as a lead character. In 1931 — the same year that the namesake pulp began — The Shadow began introducing a series of two-reel mysteries for Universal Studios.

Frank Readick, one of the voices of The Shadow on radio’s Detective Story Hour, is credited with narrating A Burglar to the Rescue, the first of the six 15- to 23-minute films. The other film shorts included: Trapped, Sealed Lips, House of Mystery, The Red Shadow and The Circus Show-Up.

It was five years before The Shadow returned to the screen. This time silent-screen actor Rod La Rocque appeared in The Shadow Strikes for Grand National Pictures. The 1937 film featured detective Lamont “Granston,” who like Cranston in the radio program was The Shadow. In 1938, La Rocque returned, this time as Lamont Cranston, in International Crime. The Shadow isn’t the main character, but rather radio sleuth Cranston is.

The Shadow is back in the lead role in a 15-chapter Columbia serial. The Shadow starred hawk-nosed actor Victor Jory….

… Alec Baldwin is the latest to assume the role in The Shadow. The 1994 film enjoyed the trappings of a robust budget. The art direction and production were splendid, but the script was lacking. Disappointingly for pulp purists, its story, like the previous motion pictures, was an amalgam of influences from The Shadow’s past in print, radio and film. On top of that, screenwriter David Koepp or director Russell Mulcahy added several curious twists to the story, such as Margo Lane being psychic, and Lamont Cranston being police commissioner Wainwright Barth’s nephew….

(13) A SOLAR ECLIPSE… FROM THE MOON. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, which successfully touched down in Mare Crisium on March 2, 2025 got a pic of the *Earth* eclipsing the Sun… “Private Lunar Lander Captures Stunning ‘Diamond Ring’ Eclipse from the Moon’s Surface” at Daily Galaxy. You can see the image at the link.

For the first time in history, a privately operated lunar lander has captured images of a total eclipse from the Moon’s surface. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, which successfully touched down in Mare Crisium on March 2, 2025, recently transmitted breathtaking images of a “diamond ring” eclipse—a rare celestial phenomenon that occurs when the Sun emerges from behind Earth, forming a brilliant ring of light in the lunar sky….

(14) A LIGHTER FORM OF DARK MATTER. Hey, I’m not making this up! “Mysterious phenomenon at center of galaxy could reveal new kind of dark matter” at Phys.org.

A mysterious phenomenon at the centre of our galaxy could be the result of a different type of dark matter.

Dark matter, the mysterious form of unobserved matter which could make up 85% of the mass of the known universe, is one of science’s biggest manhunts.

In this first of its kind study, scientists have taken a step closer to understanding the elusive mystery matter. They believe a reimagined candidate for dark matter could be behind unexplained chemical reactions taking place in the Milky Way…

Dr. Shyam Balaji, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at King’s College London and one of the lead authors of the study explains, “At the centre of our galaxy sit huge clouds of positively charged hydrogen, a mystery to scientists for decades because normally the gas is neutral. So, what is supplying enough energy to knock the negatively charged electrons out of them?

“The energy signatures radiating from this part of our galaxy suggest that there is a constant, roiling source of energy doing just that, and our data says it might come from a much lighter form of dark matter than current models consider.”

Primary research: Pedro De la Torre Luque et al, (2025) Anomalous Ionization in the Central Molecular Zone by Sub-GeV Dark Matter, Physical Review Letters, vol. 134, 101001 

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Around tea time, about 65 million years ago, a large pebble hit the Earth, wiping out many birds with a single stone.  (I really have never forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch.) Recently there has been news of asteroid 2024 YR4 possibly hitting Earth in 2032.  It now looks like it will be a near miss, but what other dangers are there out there?  Keep watching the skies….  Over at PBS Space Time Matt O’Dowd looks at the chaotic Solar system that otherwise might puzzle Bruce Willis…

Giant space rocks are definitely going to hit the Earth again. We actually do know how to deflect them, but only if we find them and correctly assess their risk. But the solar system is a chaotic place. How is it even possible to tell if a space rock will one day collide with the Earth?

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

Pixel Scroll 2/26/25 Do Pixels Dream Of Scrolls That Will Be?

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(1) THREE MAJOR PROZINES CHANGE OWNERSHIP. Jason Sanford today reported “Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF purchased by new owner” on Patreon.

…The new owner of the magazines is Steven Salpeter and a group of investors. Salpeter is the president of literary and IP development at Assemble Media and previously worked as a literary agent for Curtis Brown.….

(2) ASTOUNDING AWARD’S FUTURE? Following the report that Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF have been purchased by a new owner, John Scalzi speculated about the fate of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Although voting is administered by the Worldcon, the Astounding Award belongs to Dell Magazines, publisher of Analog prior to this sale. Will Analog’s new owners continue the sponsorship? John Scalzi volunteered a landing place if one is needed in a post at Whatever:

 If the new owners of Asimov’s and Analog don’t want to take sponsorship of the Astounding Award (or the award is not otherwise folded into the responsibilities of WSFS/the individual Worldcons), we’ll take it on. The ideal plan would be for the Scalzi Family Foundation to act as a bridge sponsor while we set up an endowment that would allow the Astounding Award to be run indefinitely.

(3) EISNER HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES. Comic-Con International has announced 21 creators and industry figures who will be inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame this year.

In addition to these choices, voters in the comics industry will elect 6 persons from a group of 18 nominees proposed by the judges. Those nominees will be announced within the next week, and a ballot will be made available for online voting. 

(4) BEST ECOFICTION OF THE YEAR. Violet Lichen imprint editor-in-chief, Marissa van Uden has extended the call for submissions deadline for ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction. She’s seeking reprint submissions from editors, publishers, and authors.

We’ve received more than 150 stories nominated by publishers, editors, and authors so far, and the range of stories, ideas, and perspectives has been so wonderful to read. As this is our first year of the anthology and our launch happened so quickly, we’ve decided to extend the submissions window out to Monday, March 17, to ensure that everyone publishing ecofiction gets a chance to submit….

…Ecofiction engages with some of the most urgent issues facing us today and also looks ahead to the possibilities of the future. Even when dealing with dark or tragic themes, ecofiction stories are expressions of our human connection to the most beautiful planet we know, and to all of earthlife….

(5) BOOK WITHIN A BOOK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 working weekday Women’s Hour had a second half (35 minutes in) largely devoted to two SF works.  The first was a play, a re-imagining of the Greek tragedy Oedipus but set in a dystopic, near-future, climate drought-ridden future…

And then the Nigerian-American SF author Nnedi Okorafor who was discussing her latest book Death of the Author (out from Gollancz). This is a sweeping story about a writer of a science fiction novel that becomes a global phenomenon… at a price. The future of storytelling is here. A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written. This is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it… This interview begins 50 minutes in.

Nigerian American science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor’s new book is Death of the Author. It follows the story of Zelu, a novelist who is disabled, unemployed and from a very judgmental family. Nnedi and Nuala talk about the book within her book, success, and the influence on her writing of being an athlete in her earlier years.

You can access the programme here.

(6) SANS AI. “James Cameron will reportedly open Avatar 3 with a title card saying no generative AI was used to make the movie” reports GamesRadar+.

James Cameron has reportedly revealed an anti-AI title card will open up Avatar 3, officially titled Avatar: Fire and Ash. The Oscar-winning director shared the news in a Q&A session in New Zealand attended by Twitter user Josh Harding.

Sharing a picture of Cameron at the event, they wrote: “Such an *incredible* talk. Also, James Cameron revealed that Avatar: Fire and Ash will begin with a title card after the 20th Century and Lightstorm logos that ‘no generative A.I. was used in the making of this movie’.”Cameron has been vocal in the past about his feelings on artificial intelligence, speaking to CTV news in 2023 about AI-written scripts. “I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said – about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality – and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it,” he told the publication. “I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don’t know anyone that’s even thinking about having AI write a screenplay.”…

(7) IMAGINARY PAPERS. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination has published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, its quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination.

In this issue, Sarah M. Ruiz writes about climate action, allegory, and solidarity in the 2024 film Flow; Libia Brenda writes about Crononauta, the quasi-mythical, short-lived 1964 magazine founded by Alejandro Jodorowsky and René Rebetez; and Rachael Kuintzle reports on a workshop on energy futures hosted by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2024.

(8) DARK DELICACIES TO CLOSE. SFGate is there when “After 30 years, California’s prince of horror hangs up his jacket”.

On April 5, a beacon for California horror fans will be snuffed out when legacy Los Angeles shop Dark Delicacies closes its doors. “We’ve been open for 30 years, and I could have happily died right here,” laughs co-owner Del Howison, “but my wife Sue wanted to have a life — whatever that is.”

Dark Delicacies is more than just a Southern California storefront selling ghoulish souvenirs. It’s been a destination for film buffs, horror genre diehards and celebrities from across the macabre spectrum for decades, and Howison himself has become a cult attraction for those with a love of Southern California’s darker corners.

The longtime horror curator plans to stay busy until the end. On a recent weekday, Howison is moving about his Burbank shop, taking pictures of vintage Spanish and Italian movie posters to sell online. He occasionally breaks to gesture at the Tiki mugs, shot glasses, board games, playing cards and action figures on the shelves. “We stopped calling them dolls, as guys didn’t like saying they were collecting dolls,” Howison says of his early days in business. “Of course, back then, there was no such thing as a horror convention.”…

(9) UK PAPERS PROTEST AI LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A first this side of the Pond. Irrespective of their political leanings, all the papers came together on Tuesday in a campaign to stop British government proposals (yes, we have daft politicians over here just as you do in the US) to allow artificial intelligence (AI) free access to intellectual property so that it can be trained.  This is something that authors have been worried about. “UK newspapers launch campaign against AI copyright plans” in the Wandsworth Times.

Special wraps appeared on Tuesday’s editions of the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Mirror, the Daily Star, The Sun, and The Times – as well as a number of regional titles – criticising a Government consultation around possible exemptions being added to copyright law for training AI models.

The proposals would allow tech firms to use copyrighted material from creatives and publishers without having to pay or gain a licence, or reimbursing creatives for using their work.

In response, publishers have launched the Make It Fair campaign, which saw newspapers put covers on the outside of their front page – criticising the Government’s consultation – organised by the News Media Association (NMA), and backed by the Society of Editors (SOE).

The message said: “The Government wants to change the UK’s laws to favour big tech platforms so they can use British creative content to power their AI models without our permission or payment. Let’s protect the creative industries – it’s only fair.”…

(10) SF AUTHOR ISHIGURO IS ALSO AGAINST IT. The Bookseller reports “Kazuo Ishiguro urges government to ‘reconsider’ AI ‘opt-out’ plan: ‘No-one believes it will work’”. (Behind a paywall.)

…In a statement shared with the Times, the Klara and the Sun (Faber) author said the country had reached a “fork-in-the-road” moment. “If someone wants to take a book I’ve written and turn it into a TV series, or to print a chapter of it in an anthology, the law clearly states they must first get my permission and pay me,” he said.

“To do otherwise is theft. So why is our government now pushing forward legislation to make the richest, most dominant tech companies in the world exceptions? At the dawn of the AI age, why is it just and fair – why is it sensible — to alter our time-honoured copyright laws to advantage mammoth corporations at the expense of individual writers, musicians, film-makers and artists?”

Ishiguro continued that “no one believes the proposed ‘opt-out’ system will work”, saying this is why “those lobbying on behalf of the tech giants favour it”….

(11) MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG (1985-2025). Actress Michelle Trachtenberg, known especially to fans for playing Dawn Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died at the age of 39. According to the Guardian:

…Police sources confirmed her death to both ABC News and the New York Post. There is no cause of death yet known, with police saying on Thursday that the New York Medical Examiner is investigating but no foul play was suspected. She had recently undergone a liver transplant, according to sources….

A successful child actress, her first lead film role was in the comedy adventure Harriet the Spy (1996). Trachtenberg followed the film with a role in Inspector Gadget next to Matthew Broderick. Her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer came in 2000 and continued til the show ended three years later. 

Trachtenberg continued to have an active career after that in non-genre productions.

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Award-Winning Barbara Hambly

Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite writers of horror and mysteries, has won two Lord Ruthven Awards given by the Lord Ruthven Assembly, a group of scholars specializing in vampire literature who are affiliated with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. 

(This piece is about her fantasies and mysteries that I’m familiar with. I know she wrote some SF, do comment upon it if so inclined.)

Those Who Hunt in The Night, the first in her excellent John Asher series, won the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel. I think the series, eight long, might be concluded, as the last came out six years ago.

I’m also very impressed of her two novelizations done for one of my favorite TV series, Beauty and the Beast and and Beauty and the Beast: Song of Orpheus as it’s hard to write material off those series that’s worth reading.  I’ve read others which very quickly got really mawkish as they overly focus on the relationship, in my opinion of course, of the relationship of Catherine and Vincent to the exclusion of what could a fleshing out of that world. Not her. Wonderful novels! 

I’ve not tracked down her three Sherlock Holmes short story pastiches yet.

I listened to Bride of the Rat God, which is the only supernatural fantasy in theSilver Screen historical mystery series, and the next book which was not a fantasy, Scandal in Babylon. There are two more in the series so far. They likewise are not fantasy according to her.

And yes, there’s lots about her writing career I’ve not included here so feel free to tell me what you think I should have mentioned. If anybody has read her Abigail Adams or Benjamin January mystery series, I’d be interested in knowing what you think.

Barbara Hambly

(13) COMICS SECTION.

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T15:48:26.139Z

(14) GOING DARK. Publishers Weekly reports that “Dark Horse Digital Has Shut Down”.

Dark Horse Media has officially shut down Dark Horse Digital as of February 24, 2025, with comics no longer available for purchase on the platform. Online access to the DHD website, however, will still be available at least through this summer, and users can continue to log in and read the comics in their bookshelves.

Effective March 31, 2025, the Dark Horse Comics and Plants vs. Zombies Comics apps for iOS will also no longer be supported.

The move follows downsizing at Dark Horse Media earlier this month, and bookends DHD’s 14-year run.

(15) LOST MARVELS FACTS FOUND. “Fantagraphics Drops Out Of Free Comic Book Day, Pulls ‘Lost Marvels’” – Bleeding Cool has corrected details. With Diamond Comic Distributors having filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, things are up in the air.

Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphics gets in touch to correct me. He says “Contrary to what you wrote, the comics were actually not printed yet. If they had been, we would have proceeded as planned. But since they weren’t, and given the uncertainty of whether Diamond will even exist come May (or be able to pay us for them), we made the difficult decision to pull the plug while we could. We may still produce the comic this year, bypassing FCBD. Things are, as you can probably understand, a bit fluid these days… The decision was made entirely based on the uncertainty of FCBD and had nothing to do with the Lost Marvels book series itself, which is otherwise proceeding as planned!”

(16) GANG AGLEY. The Guardian’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter wonders: “Netflix’s games were once its best-kept secret – where did it all go wrong?”.

When Netflix first started adding video games to its huge catalogue of streaming TV shows and films, it did so quietly. In 2021, after releasing an impressive experiment with the idea of interactive film in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in 2018 and a free Stranger Things game in 2019, Netflix began expanding more fully into interactive entertainment.

The streamer’s gaming offering, for a long time, was its best-kept secret. Whoever was running it really had an eye for quality: award-winningly brilliant and relatively little-known indie games comprised the majority of its catalogue, alongside decent licensed games based on everything from The Queen’s Gambit to the reality dating show Too Hot to Handle. Subscribers could play games such as Before Your Eyes, a brief and touching story about a life cut short; Spiritfarer, about guiding lost souls to rest and Into the Breach, a superb sci-fi strategy game with robots v aliens. The company bought or invested in several game studios known for making critically acclaimed work, including London-based Ustwo games (which was behind Monument Valley). It also established a studio in California to work on blockbuster games, staffed by veteran developers.

But it seems things are changing. That blockbuster studio has been closed, as first reported by Game File, before it could ever release a game. Its latest tie-in game, Squid Game Unleashed, absolutely sucks – it’s constructed around the celebration of slapstick violence, making it a terrible fit for a satirically violent show about capitalist exploitation. Funding a bunch of indie darlings and hiring big-name talent from the likes of Blizzard and Bungie for its game studio gave the impression that Netflix really was keen on becoming a part of the gaming industry, and doing it properly. Now that is very much in question.

The company has made layoffs across its gaming divisions, including at Night Studio – makers of weird-fiction supernatural teen horror series Oxenfree. It has cancelled plans for several forthcoming games that were due to join the service, including indie hits Thirsty Suitors and Don’t Starve Together, and promising-looking hobbit game Tales of the Shire. What’s going on?

(17) GWENDDYDD. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Did you know Merlin had a sister? I didn’t… and I know more about the Matter of Britain than all but about 30 people in the US. “Early poems about Merlin portray him as environmentalist, say scholars” in the Guardian.

He is probably most often thought of today as a wizard, a shape-shifter or a mentor to the young King Arthur.

But a detailed re-examination of Myrddin – Merlin – by Welsh scholars suggests he can also be considered an early British environmentalist deeply worried about human interaction with the natural world…

… The researchers have been combing through manuscripts in the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth, and also in the 15th-century Red Book of Hergest at Jesus College, Oxford.

They also discovered more about the importance of Merlin’s sister, Gwenddydd. Callander said: “Gwenddydd is a really important figure in Welsh Merlin poetry. She supports Merlin and also appears to be a prophet in her own right.

“We found hundreds of lines of poetry in her voice in dialogue with her brother. Merlin describes her as ‘fair Gwenddydd, summit of dignity’ and ‘refuge of songs’. One of the important aspects of the project is to throw light on this lost female voice from medieval Wales.”

Callander said it was surprising that early Merlin poems had been largely neglected. “These Welsh-language texts had not been edited or translated in full, meaning much material has been missed out.”…

(18) TIME TO VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE GIANTS. “Akiva Goldsman To Reimagine 3 Classic Irwin Allen Sci-Fi Titles For TV” – Deadline has the story.

 Akiva Goldsman is developing a new Universe at Legendary Television featuring three reimagined Irwin Allen sci-fi TV series. The Oscar-winning writer, producer and director will draw inspiration for the new TV shows from Allen’s catalog and focus on revitalizing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants and The Time Tunnel.

… Legendary Television is focused on the three titles above and not Allen’s second TV series Lost in Space, which aired from 1965-68 on CBS and was reimagined by Legendary TV for a 2018-21 series on Netflix. 20th Century Fox produced all four of the original shows….

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Jason Sizemore, Joey Eschrich, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 12/6/24 Can We Borrow A Cup Of Pixels

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(1) DIAGRAM PRIZE. The Bookseller today announced the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year went to The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire in the closest race of the past quarter century.

The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire earned 27% of the public vote, just ahead of How to Dungeon Master Parenting, which itself was a hair in front of Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement. With just five percentage points separating the top three, it is the closest Diagram race since the selection of the winner for the 46-year-old prize went to an online public vote 25 years ago….

(2) PIRACY? DON’T BE RUDE. 404 Media spoke to someone behind “The Unauthorized Effort to Archive Netflix’s Disappeared Interactive Shows”.

Last month, Matt Lyzell, the creator of the Netflix interactive series Battle Kitty announced on his personal Instagram account that Netflix was going to remove his show from the streaming service just two years after its debut. By the end of the day, Netflix confirmed that not only Battle Kitty was being removed, but that all 24 Netflix interactive series were to be removed on December 1, with the exception of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, Ranveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, and You vs. Wild.

“The technology served its purpose, but is now limiting as we focus on technological efforts in other areas,” a Netflix spokesperson told 404 Media at the time. 

It is normal for Netflix and other streaming services to rotate titles in and out of their catalogue depending on what they cost to license and host and how many subscriptions they drive to the platform, but Netflix removing its interactive series means that, as original Netflix creations, once they are removed from Netflix they will not be available anywhere else, and they are a new and unique format that dozens of producers, animators, voice actors, and other creatives have finished work on very recently. 

Unwilling to accept Netflix’s decision to make all these interactive shows totally inaccessible, a group of fans—and, in a few cases, people who worked on the interactive shows—are finding ways to archive and make them available for free. 

“I couldn’t let this work go to waste. We’re talking about over 100 hours of video and ~ one thousand hours of dubbing,” Pixel, one of the archivists in a Discord channel archiving Netflix interactive shows, told me.

On Discord, dozens of users have collaborated on capturing all the videos from Netflix before they were removed, as well as reverse engineering how the platform handled their interactive elements. Some shows are already fully emulated and can be streamed in bespoke, alternative players, others are uploaded to YouTube in a series of daisy-chained, interlinked videos that recreate a very similar interactive experience, while some others have been uploaded as non-interactive videos. 

404 Media agreed not to name the Discord channel and some of the places where the Netflix interactive archives are being hosted so Pixel could talk about the archiving effort. While Netflix has made it so there is no way to view Netflix interactive shows without basically pirating them, the archivists worry that the company will still try to take down any alternative method for viewing them.    

“While I can’t disclose fully how we are archiving these, I can say that they pull directly from Netflix’s servers, so no re-encoding or loss of quality,” Pixel said. “I would love to talk more about how it works, but it risks Netflix patching out the tool entirely.”

Netflix interactives, in case you are unfamiliar, are choose-your-own-adventure videos where the viewer can make choices at the end of a scene that determine how the story unfolds….

(3) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 124 of the Octothorpe podcast, “The Third D Isn’t What You Think”, John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty –

…Discuss your comments and also go into detail on upcoming conventions in the UK and worldwide, before talking about some Hugo-eligible things. (They’re games. Sorry, Mark.)

And there’s an uncorrected transcript at the link.

The Glasgow 2024 logo drawn in pencils and crayon, but across the middle there is a segmented creature with eight eyes and mandibles. At the top, the words “Octothorpe 124” appear in blue.

(4) TALKING ABOUT GALAXY QUEST. [Item by N.] For RedLetterMedia, noted Star Trek superfan Mike Stoklasa and noted Star Trek actor Jack Quaid look back on and dissect the 1999 Hugo-winning cult classic: “Galaxy Quest Review”.

Mike and Jack sit down to talk about the cult classic film “Galaxy Quest” starring Tim Allen and many others. A film that has gained popularity over the years and days since it was released. Mike and Jack come at this film with different perspectives, while both appreciating it as the wonderful magical fun adventure film it is with fantastic visual FX and monsters, Jack sees the film as the memorable movie he grew up with and helped to mold his love for cinema and acting. Mike (being 37 years older than Jack) sees the film as a magical what-could-have-been kind of thing. He smells the studio meddling like a wet fart from afar. The potential for a PG-13 or R rated dry, vulgar comedy was there, but watered down by a spineless studio that wanted to G-rated Tim Allen comedy. Would it have flopped as a more adult film? Would it have been better if they went full kids tale? Don’t ya know no one will ever know! It’s a slippery pig that’s been oiled up with K-Y jelly. Mike tries to grab a hold of that piggy to see what it done be. Jack is happy with what the movie is. Mike can’t see the forest through the trees. He loves all the moments in the film. So many good moments and character choices and fun gags. But at what cost? Who done they make this movie for?

(5) OLD PEOPLE WATCH OLD SF. (Hey, this title was Mark’s own suggestion!) at Mark Roth-Whitworth’s blog, he asks people to “Just for fun, compare and contrast”.

Back in the mid-eighties, two films came out about three years apart. One was a box office wonder, and the other was a bomb.

Unfortunately, the Hollywood smash, War Games, was written by Hollywood writers without a clue. Manhattan Project, on the other hand, was dead on… but wasn’t set in California, and the plot didn’t have an utterly unrealistic storyline….

(6) PLONK YOUR COSMIC TWANGER. [Item by Steven French.] If anyone fancies some acoustic gothic blues inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, well, here’s your jam: “’The Lighthouse’ by Half Deaf Clatch” at Bandcamp.

‘The Lighthouse’ is a musical work of fiction, inspired by the writing of H.P Lovecraft. A Gothic, Acoustic type thing, played on a nylon strung folk guitar with some percussion, vocals and other bits and pieces thrown in for good measure.

(7) TONY MEADOWS (1948-2024). [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I have only just found out. Tony was part of the NW England fandom and interacted with MaD SF (Manchester & District – not to be confused with BaD SF – Bolton down devil’s highway A666). He lived in northwest England all his life, though did once make it to the US and visit his friend, one Forrest J Ackerman.

Picture of him as he should be remembered, in the dark screening fantastic films.

Tony was a stalwart of the Festival of Fantastic Films which he helped found (with the legendary Harry Nadler also now sadly gone) and up to late 2000s ran a programme stream screening celluloid films (the only way to see a film with the whirrr of a projector going…). He had a huge film collection.  Also, back in the day when Eastercons weren’t wall-to-wall fan panels and actually had pros giving talks and a film programme (remember them?), Tony would contribute.

Part of the hippy generation of Brit fandom. Another sad loss.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: December 6, 1979 — Star Trek: The Motion Picture

By Paul Weimer: Star Trek: The Motion Picture was, as it so happened, the fourth Star Trek movie I saw. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (and when the time comes, I will tell that story) came first, followed by Star Trek IV, Wrath of Khan and finally Star Trek: The Motion Picture. 

I had the disadvantage of having read and learned about the movie before I ever saw it, and it colored my perception of it, and to a real sense, colors it today. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was described to me as a movie with a painfully glacial pace, a movie that takes forever to get to its point, a movie that really is just a two-hour version of a one-hour television show. It was with all of this baggage that I saw the movie, on VHS. 

I found all of this true, and yet not true. Yes, the movie has pacing issues. Yes, there really is just a one-hour plot in a two-hour movie. Yes, there are some extremely weird choices (why are Klingon warships firing Federation photon torpedoes?  Star Fleet Battles had to have a whole supplement to explain that). I still don’t get Ilia as a character but I do kind of like having Decker tell Kirk that he has to be the one who merges with V’Ger, not him. Kirk was once again be ready to be a ballhog…but gets shut down. It does nicely set us up for the Admiral Kirk in Star Trek II, I think. 

And the movie is gorgeous. It gave us an idea of what Star Trek could look like if it had a real budget. It gave us sense of wonder and allowed the imagination of taking cardboard sets from the 1960’s and making them substantial, and realer for it. And without Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there would be no Wrath of Khan, or probably any further TV series. So for all of its issues and problems, Star Trek: The Motion Picture made modern Star Trek possible… and kept Star Trek from just being something you watched on New Year’s Eve like Twilight Zone reruns and see at small conventions.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Baldo reports on a new scam.
  • Birdbrains doesn’t realize how easy it is to be overlooked.
  • Bizarro gets stuck with this joke.
  • Dinosaur Comics gives arts career counseling.
  • Ink Pen has a crossover.
  • Zits follows a Science article (check the days before and after as well)

(10) STRACZYNSKI DOING CAPTAIN AMERICA & COLLEAGUES. “Patton Oswalt on J. Michael Straczynski’s Return to Spider-Man” at Bleeding Cool. Oswalt doesn’t have that much to say, the post is mostly sample interiors from the comic – which are pretty entertaining.

J. Michael Straczynski is coming to the end of his run on Captain America, and he has used that fact to bring in a couple of other characters he is best known for writing at Marvel; Thor and Spider-Man. He is taking advantage of that fact to remind readers of what he used to be best known for at Marvel Comics back in the day, drawn by stellar Marvel artist Jesus Saiz….

(11) BIG HAMMER! [Item by Steven French.] You not only have to be worthy to lift this, but pretty tall as well! (Spotted outside the exhibition ‘Movie Icons: Hollywood Props’  in Turin, Italy).

(12) I RECOGNIZE THIS ONE. “How do you save a dying mobile game? Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has the answer” says the Guardian. My daughter used to play this game!

At some point, most mobile games die. Apple’s iOS software updates have killed thousands of App Store games over the years: older games simply disappear, unless their developers make them compatible with every new device or software. (Most don’t, or can’t, devote such resources to that.) And for live mobile games, which encourage users to log in every day, the game’s popularity inevitably wanes and its developer stops updating it, leaving it inert and unplayable. Sometimes there is no warning. A game is there one day and gone the next. A bleak fate indeed.

The mortality rate for mobile games is high: 83% of them fail within their first three years, according to one survey. But perhaps there’s another way. In 2017, Nintendo released a mobile version of its bestselling chill life-simulation game Animal Crossing. Named Pocket Camp, it ran for seven years before Nintendo ended support for it last month. But instead of letting the game die, the company has released a complete version for £8.99, packaging up years of content and letting players either transfer their data and keep their memories, or start fresh. The game lives on.’

(13) SURF’S UP! A tsunami warning followed a 7.0 earthquake in Northern California the other day. Not everyone got excited for the same reason.

(14) CHINESE SPACEPLANE?  “Mysterious Object Appears At Remote Chinese Airfield Linked To Spaceplane Program” is TWZ’s analysis.

Recent satellite imagery shows a curious white-colored object at the end of the runway at a remote airstrip in northwestern China. The airfield, which is situated near the Lop Nur nuclear test site, has been tied to Chinese reusable space plane developments in the past.

A satellite image taken on Nov. 29 that The War Zone obtained from Planet Labs shows the white-colored object, along with several smaller ones, that look to be vehicles and support equipment, at the southwestern end of the desert airstrip’s runway. The runway itself is more than 16,400 feet in total length, or more than 3 miles long, which makes it one of the longest anywhere in the world. A row of vehicles is also visible at the facility’s main apron, which has been significantly expanded in recent years, including with the addition of a new large hangar.

What the larger object on the runway might be, or even its exact shape, is unclear. Though it looks broadly cylindrical from above, its body is also seen casting a distinctly wedge-shaped shadow. Some obscuration of markings on the runway may point to the presence of short stubby wings at one end. It has an overall length of around 32 feet.

As already noted, the remote Chinese airfield and its extremely long runway have previously been linked to work on reusable spaceplanes with potential military applications, including ones believed to be roughly akin in form and function to the X-37B. The War Zone‘s first report on this facility came after it appeared that one of these crafts touched down there following the end of a mission in space in September 2020. The recently observed object is comparable length-wise to the U.S. Space Force’s two secretive X-37B mini-shuttles (just over 29 feet long), though that alone does not mean there is a relationship between the two….

(15) NOT MUCH TO ‘EM. “James Webb Space Telescope discovers 4th exoplanet in sweet triple ‘super puff’ star system” – Space.com has the story.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered a fourth world in a strange system of ultralight “super puff” planets.

The new extrasolar planet or “exoplanet” was discovered around the sun-like star Kepler-51, located around 2,615 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan).Remarkably, the new world, designated Kepler-51e, isn’t just the fourth exoplanet found orbiting this star; all these other worlds are cotton-candy-like planets. That means this could be a whole system of some of the lightest planets ever discovered.

“Super puff planets are very unusual in that they have very low mass and low density,” team member Jessica Libby-Roberts of Penn State’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds said in a statement. “The three previously known planets that orbit the star, Kepler-51, are about the size of Saturn but only a few times the mass of Earth, resulting in a density like cotton candy.”

Libby-Roberts added that the team theorizes that these cotton-candy planets have tiny cores and huge, puffy atmospheres of hydrogen or helium….

(16) SECOND ARTEMIS MISSION DELAYED. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Am amazed at what you Yanks do without Cavorite: “Artemis: Nasa delays mission to send astronauts around Moon” reports BBC.

US space agency Nasa has announced a further delay to its plans to send astronauts back to the Moon.

The agency’s chief, Bill Nelson, said the second mission in the Artemis programme was now due for launch in April 2026.

The plan had been to send astronauts around the Moon but not land in September 2025. The date had already slipped once before, from November of this year.

That will mean that a Moon landing will not take place until at least 2027, a year later than originally planned.

The delay is needed to fix an issue with the capsule’s heat shield, which returned from the previous test flight excessively charred and eroded, with cracks and some fragments broken off.

Mr Nelson told a news conference that “the safety of our astronauts is our North Star”.

“We do not fly until we are ready. We need to do the next test flight, and we need to do it right. And that’s how the Artemis programme proceeds.”

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Disney+ has posted the Doctor Who Christmas 2024 trailer.

The Doctor brings Joy to the world(s)! The eagerly awaited Doctor Who Christmas Special, “Joy to the World,” premieres December 25. When Joy checks into a London hotel in 2024, she opens a secret doorway to the Time Hotel — discovering danger, dinosaurs, and the Doctor. But a deadly plan is unfolding across the Earth, just in time for Christmas. The Doctor Who Christmas special beings streaming December 25 on Disney+.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, N., 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 6/2/24 Take Me Down To The Scroll Tonight, I Want To See The Pixels

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(1) MAKING IT UP. Sarah Gailey interviews the authors and editors of The Worst Ronin in “Middle Finger To the Sky: The Worst Ronin by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Faith Schaffer” at Stone Soup.

Gailey: What did you get to do here that you might not have gotten to do if this book landed elsewhere?

Tokuda-Hall: [The Worst Ronin] was largely written with a middle finger to the sky–when POC are invited to the table to tell our stories, there are usually so many caveats. Yes, we want your story but we want it to be about your marginalization. Or, yes, tell your story, but we want it to be edifying about your culture. There’s this demand that we serve the white gaze, and not a respect for our boundless imaginations. We want to make up shit, too. And so I very stridently let the reader know, in many ways, that this book is not there to educate them about anything. This is not historically accurate. This is a work of invention.

Gailey: How did you first dive into the story, knowing you could do whatever you want?

Tokuda-Hall: I took such joy in writing this book. I had a misguided notion at first that I would keep it super wholesome and middle grade, but my brain just doesn’t work that way, and as soon as I accepted that the plot and characters took off and I just felt like I was sprinting to catch up with them. The hardest thing with this book was balancing the humor that is so inherent to the central characters (The Worst Ronin is a buddy comedy, in its heart) with the darkness of the stories they each would face. …

(2) WHITHER STOKERCON 2025? During last night’s Bram Stoker Awards ceremony it was announced that StokerCon 2025 will be held June 12-15 at the Hilton Stamford Hotel in Stamford, Connecticut.

(3) UBIQ. The Society of Illustrators will host “JACK DAVIS: A Centennial Celebration”, an exhibit of work by the famed MAD Magazine cartoonist and commercial illustrator, at its New York location from June 12-September 21. Full details at the link.

The Society of Illustrators marks the centenary celebration of Jack Davis’ birth by hosting a retrospective featuring the original art from among his most admired works, many for the first time ever. The art on view represents every genre and every phase of Davis’ six-decade career: from EC Comics and Mad Magazine to TV Guide and Time Magazine, from Raid and McDonald’s ads to NASCAR and Super Bowl promotions, from history book illustrations to movie posters….

…“Jack Davis was quite possibly the most ubiquitous American humor illustrator of all time. Davis was a master cartoonist, caricaturist, and illustrator, and his funny, fast-paced, manic, beautifully rendered work has graced the covers of countless comic books, magazines, and record albums and has also appeared on movie posters, bubble gum cards, and advertisements. A virtual mind-boggling one-man industry, Davis has been called “the fastest cartoonist alive” and ‘the master of the crowd scene.’ It’s astonishing to realize that this quiet Southern gentleman was usually finished with assignments for the day and out on the golf course by 2:30 p.m.”

– Drew Friedman from his Fantagraphics book, Heroes of the Comics.

(4) LOSCON 50. Can it be Loscon 50 already? Why, it wasn’t that long ago I missed the first one while I was at grad school….

However, I trust the committee’s count. And here’s the graphic that accompanies their Progress Report #3 on Facebook. Get a full update there.

(5) BEFORE YOU CAN READ THE OMENS. Colleen Doran’s Funny Business brings us a “Good Omens Update”, a highly detailed tour of Doran’s techniques for producing art for the book. So much more is involved than I ever guessed.

…I use the construction method of drawing, as you see. This is an old-school technique. Some people seem to assume that artists always use computers and tracing for their drawings, but most cartoonists of my generation work extemporaneously. There’s quite a bit of noodling around and searching in the sketches. Using too much reference often results in stiff, dead work.

In comics, it’s very important to make sure you’ve considered word balloon placement when designing a page. The script for Good Omens is more copy-heavy than most modern comic book scripts because I want to preserve as much of the clever original language as I can….

(6) DIVING INTO NETFLIX. If you’re interested in the latest business statistics on Netflix and its content, JustWatch recently released a page where they provide data and analysis: JustWatch: Netflix Statistics.

Some of the page’s features are content expansion, popularity, subscription prices, its market share, and much more.

(7) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport’s stories for June are by authors Kelly Robson, Laura Anne Gilman, Meg Elison, and Yi Sheng Ng. The first story of the month is free to read, but they seek “paying subscribers who allow us to keep publishing great stories week after week.”

In this, June’s first, free, story, Kelly Robson shows us how, at Versailles, getting old is no picnic. But sometimes there are options… “The High Cost of Heat” by Kelly Robson.

(8) USE THE FORCE…OF MEMORY. After all this time can there still be “Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About the Original ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy”? Maariv Periodical challenges you to find out. Their first fact is:

Big Mistake

When it came to signing a contract with James Earl Jones to fill in Darth Vader’s voice, George Lucas offered him a choice: He could take a salary of $7,000 for his work or royalties off the back end of ticket sales. Back then, $7,000 was a decent amount of money, so Jones took the cash, which turned out to be a costly mistake.

Had he chosen the alternative, he would have earned far more; Jones admitted years later that the decision cost him “tens of millions of dollars.” In comparison, Sir Alec Guinness took the royalties – and his heirs have earned an estimated $95 million for his work in the first “Star Wars” film.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY DOUBLE FEATURE.

[Compiled by Paul Weimer.]

June 2, 1929 — Norton Juster. (Died 2021.)

By Paul Weimer. Once upon a time when the world was young, a 2nd grade teacher had a reading session with my class. We read a book about a character who had found himself in a land of mathematics and weirdness, of two princesses bound, of paths to infinity and clock-like dogs. It was a wild and magical place and I adored the book to pieces. 

Norton Juster

The problem is, I had misunderstood the title. I thought the title was “Milo and the Mathemagicians” and did not see or find the book for three decades after that second grade classroom. Some days, I wondered if I had just imagined or hallucinated the existence of this book. 

Enter the pre-LLM internet. It was the mid 2000’s and I got the urge to try and find some books of my youth among dome other things. And in that time, the Internet was at its peak for finding information that you wanted. SEOs were not yet a thing. Amazon was not full of crap. Websites still proliferated. And I had great success. I managed to find a copy of an old liberal arts college math textbook that, decades ago, had introduced me to Escher and other wondrous things. (Oddly, it was just called The Math Book)  I found some old SF anthologies I had not seen for years. I hit upon authors and musicians and others I had dimly remembered from my youth. It was a great time for me for rediscovery. 

And then there was Milo.  I was throwing search terms in one day trying to find “Milo and the Mathemagicians”, and somehow managed to hit The Phantom Tollbooth.  I read the description and thought “Is this it?” I bought a copy and with anxious anticipation, I started reading it. Did you ever have that feeling, wondering if the book you are reading is something that is going to be that good, or live up to the suck fairy? I had that feeling re-reading The Phantom Tollbooth.

Imagine my utter happiness  when I delved into the book and found, to my delight, that it WAS the book I had remembered from that second grade class. And all of the joys in the book, the wordplay, the characters, the concepts (how many children’s books try and explain *infinity*) and the absolute heart of the book.  And the artwork and drawings. I had not remembered specific drawings from the second grade class, but I had remembered the book WAS illustrated. And the illustrations are wonderful! 

I don’t regret seeking out the TV movie that was made, subsequently, it doesn’t quite work for me, but I can see why it was made. 

But speaking of movies, the other Juster property I adored that I did not realize at the time WAS Norton Juster was the Academy Award winning short film The Dot and the Line.  I had seen it way back when I had read Flatland, and loved it, but had no idea that it had anything to do with The Phantom Tollbooth.  Imagine my delightful surprise when I found out it was based on a Juster book. I think, given its dynamism, that the short movie is better than the actual book and I do recommend that fans of The Phantom Tollbooth go seek it out.

I’ve now, including the second grade class, read The Phantom Tollbooth four times. And I look forward to it again. And I really need to rewatch The Dot and the Line myself. Don’t jump to the island of conclusions that The Phantom Tollbooth is for children alone. It works for readers of all ages. If you have any interest in wordplay, mathematics or whimsy, pick it up and give it a spin.

Born June 2, 1915 — Lester Del Rey. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer. For me, first and foremost, Lester Del Rey was a publisher and an editor. Many of the books I first encountered reading science fiction, back 4 decades ago, were published by Del Rey, which he founded with his wife Judy Lynn Del Rey.  And for a good while, that’s all I thought that he was (although his legacy and influence as a publisher is huge). 

Lester Del Rey at a Philcon around 1964. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology was a gateway to a number of authors for me. Theodore Sturgeon. Murray Leinster. Fritz Leiber (for “Coming Attraction”, although I would soon discover Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser).  And Lester Del Rey, for “Helen O’Loy”.  I had read enough Greek Mythology by that point to get the idea that this was a Helen of Troy story, and it was perhaps the first story I read where a robot was an object of romantic interest. Helen’s story, and the tragedy of it moved me deeply.

I soon came across other Del Rey stories, here and there, randomly, sprinkled in best of collections and favorite science fiction stories and the myriad other SF anthologies that I read in the first decade of my science fiction reading.  

But it was Harlan Ellison® who turned me onto perhaps the best and my favorite of the Lester Del Rey stories. In one of his own collections about the relationship between men and Gods, he mentioned a Lester Del Rey story “For I am a Jealous People”.  I could see the biblical allusion in the title, and I decided to seek it out.

I recently re-read it, and it still slaps, hard.  “For I am a Jealous People” is a kicker of a story, where the Abrahamic God is real, has always been real. But, now, God is angry with humanity and fed up with us, and basically has sided with aliens invading Earth and its possessions. That is a smash to the face to begin with, but it’s humanity response to this revelation in the story that really brings it home to me, the power of a Del Rey story at it’s best.  Humanity’s response could have been any number of plausible results. Regret. Sadness. Despair. Resignation. Anger.  Del Rey goes for “Good. Bring it!” It’s a muscular answer to the question of what to do when even God is against you, and it remains powerful to this day.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) UPDATES TO THE BLOCH WEBSITE. Jim Nemeth, curator of the Robert Bloch Official Website announced three new additions.

1) Bill Gillard, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, recounts his recent travel to Laramie, Wyoming, to research the Bloch papers/archives collection, housed at the University of Wyoming. With photos! Read: Robert Bloch Papers
2) Matthew R. Bradley’s interview of Bloch; from Filmfax magazine (Aug/Sep 1993) Read:  Heart of a Small Boy. 
3) See Bob’s military draft card. See Gallery page.

(12) SPACE, THE FINAL EPISODE. Camestros Felapton has closing remarks on the conclusion of a Star Trek series: “Farewell Star Trek Discovery”.

….Notably, this season had the best attempt yet at marrying the idea of single season long story with Star Trek’s more traditional episode-long stories. The basic plot idea (a quest for a series of clues leading to a hidden secret treasure) was not terribly original but it was enough of a hook to ensure each episode could have its own sub-story while overtly moving the plot along. The broader plot was also well served by the two antagonists who became more interesting as the season progressed….

(13) LEARNING ALL OVER AGAIN. “How NASA astronauts are training to walk on the Moon in 2026” in Nature.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins was having a hard time seeing in the eerie twilight of the Moon’s south pole this month.

Rubins made her way carefully through the deep shadows on the lunar surface, her path dimly lit by lights on her spacesuit’s helmet. She was hunting through the volcanic landscape for geological treasure — Moon rocks that she could pick up and bring back to Earth, which would reveal secrets of this frozen world. As the first person to set foot on the Moon in more than half a century, Rubins was making good progress on her historic foray — despite the piles of cow manure along the way.

The rock-strewn plain wasn’t really the Moon but was, in fact, the high desert of northern Arizona. Rubins and astronaut Andre Douglas were participating in the biggest dress rehearsal yet for the next time NASA plans to send people to the Moon’s surface, a mission known as Artemis III. If all goes to plan, Rubins or one of her colleagues will be stepping onto the actual Moon a little over two years from now. So NASA is training its astronauts to make the most of their precious time there — given that no human has set foot on the lunar surface since the last Apollo crew blasted off in 1972….

(14) PIGS NOT IN SPACE. Slashfilm discusses Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon and a little-known predecessor in “This 14-Minute Short Isn’t The First Sci-Film, But It Came Close”.

…But “A Trip to the Moon” wasn’t the first sci-fi film. Indeed, it wasn’t even Méliès’ first sci-fi film. 

If one is to trust the Aurum Film Encyclopedia, the first sci-fi film ever was “The Mechanical Butcher,” a short made by the Lumière Brothers in 1895. The Lumières, as all first-year film students know, invented the Cinématographe motion picture system, one of the earliest motion picture cameras, making them among the very first filmmakers. “The Mechanical Butcher” is only 53 seconds long, and depicts butcher characters lifting a pig into a futuristic machine and extracting it as prepared pork products. Mechanized slaughterhouses were relatively new in 1895, and the Lumières made a short depicting the absurdity of sped-up, high-tech meat manufacture. Why, only a moment ago, these pork chops were alive! If sci-fi is a genre that analyzes technology’s effects on human development — techno-anthropology — then “The Mechanical Butcher” certainly counts….

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Paul Weimer, Rich Lynch, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 6/1/24 If You Like My File And You Think I’m Pixely, Come On Baby Let Me Scroll

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(1) $UPPORT THE BID. The Worldcon Heritage Organization, which maintains several fixed exhibits to be shown at Worldcons, including a collection of past Hugo Awards, is putting together a bid in hopes of acquiring the first Hugo Award ever given when it goes to auction on June 7. They will also try to get the honorary one given to Hugo Gernsback in 1960, another lot in the same auction.

Ackerman’s 1953 Hugo
Gernsback 1960 Hugo

WHO President Kent Bloom said in a comment on File 770, “Our funds are limited, so if anyone bids against us we may not succeed. I don’t know how to set up a fund to collect donations, but anyone who wants to donate can send money to Worldcon Heritage Organization, c/o Kent Bloom, 1245 Allegheny Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80919. If you want this considered as a contingent donation, please let us know and if we don’t succeed in acquiring the trophies we can return your contributions.” Bloom can be contacted at President@worldconheritage.org or at kent.bloom (at) rialto.org

John Pomeranz followed with this advice: “And, as a reminder, let’s not publicize how much we’re giving. No need to tip off the other bidders how high WHA might be able to go.”

(2) POLAND’S FAN OF THE YEAR. Congratulations to Polish fan Marcin “Alqua” Klak who received the Śląkfa Award from Śląski Klub Fantastyki as the fan of the year.

Marcin “Alqua” Klak

(3) UNEXPECTED KAIJU. “Godzilla Minus One Makes a Surprise Stomp to Netflix and Digital” reports Gizmodo.

Godzilla Minus One was one of 2023’s best movies, if not the best, depending on who you ask. If you’re one of the folks who didn’t get the chance to see it in theaters, great news: it’s now on Netflix and available to own or rent digitally…

…If you weren’t aware, there was some confusion around the circumstances of Minus One’s arriving on streaming and physical formats. Due to a contract between Toho and Legendary, the movie had to be taken out of theaters once Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire came out. Presumably, that’s also why a physical 4K/Blu-rRay version hasn’t dropped in outside of Japan either. New Empire only just hit streaming in mid-May and is coming to physical formats on June 11, so it might be a while before folks get to snatch up Minus One to add onto their physical collections….

(4) WHO KNEW? At Physics World, Robert P. Crease says our Steven French knew! “Ursula Le Guin: the pioneering author we should thank for popularizing Schrödinger’s cat” at Physics World.

… But despite its current ubiquity, the fictitious animal only really entered wider public consciousness after the US science-fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K Le Guin published a short story called “Schrödinger’s cat” exactly 50 years ago. Le Guin, who died in 2018 at the age of 88, was a widely admired writer, who produced more than 20 novels and over 100 short stories.

Schrödinger originally invented the cat image as a gag. If true believers in quantum mechanics are right that the microworld’s uncertainties are dispelled only when we observe it, Schrödinger felt, this must also sometimes happen in the macroworld – and that’s ridiculous. Writing in a paper published in 1935 in the German-language journal Naturwissenschaften (23 807), he presented his famous cat-in-a-box image to show why such a notion is foolish.

For a while, few paid attention. According to an “Ngram” search of Google Books carried out by Steven French, a philosopher of science at the University of Leeds in the UK, there were no citations of the phrase “Schrödinger’s cat” in the literature for almost 20 years. As French describes in his 2023 book A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics, the first reference appeared in a footnote to an essay by the philosopher Paul Feyerabend in the 1957 book Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Physics edited by Stephan Körner….

(5) SUMMER IS COMING. “George R.R. Martin reveals first look at his sci-fi short film The Summer Machine” at Winter Is Coming.

…The Summer Machine is a science fiction story and may be the first entry in an anthology. Martin is producing the movie, but not writing or directing it; both roles are filled by Michael Cassutt, with whom Martin worked on the 1985 Twilight Zone reboot. The short will star Lina Esco, Charles Martin Smith and Matt Frewer.

We don’t know many details about the plot, although in the image above you can clearly see that Martin is sitting in front of some kind of sci-fi doohicky….

(6) GEORGE R.R. MARTIN COMING TO GLASGOW 2024. Blink and you’ll miss it, but in a Not a Blog post about yet another TV series based on his work (“Here’s Egg!”) George R.R. Martin said he’s going to this year’s Worldcon.

THE HEDGE KNIGHT will be a lot shorter than GAME OF THRONES or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, with a much different tone… but it’s still Westeros, so no one is truly safe  Ira Parker and his team are doing a great job.  I hope to visit the shoot come July, when I swing by Belfast on my way to the worldcon in Glasgow.  

(7) CENSORING SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT APPARENTLY FEARS TO TOUCH BOOK. “The Handmaid’s Tale Was Removed from An Idaho School Library. This Teen Handed A Copy to the Superintendent At Graduation” – People tells what happened then.

Annabelle Jenkins protested the removal of the graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel earlier in the school year

An Idaho high school graduate took book censorship into her own hands at her graduation ceremony earlier this month.

During the May 23 graduation ceremony for the Idaho Fine Arts Academy, Annabelle Jenkins handed West Ada School District superintendent Derek Bub a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The book had been removed from the school district’s libraries in Dec. 2023.

According to the Idaho Statesman, the novel was one of 10 books, including Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen and Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas, to be removed from the school district. It’s administration concluded that the “graphic imagery contained within [the graphic novel adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale] was not suitable for the West Ada School District student population,” per a statement from district representative Niki Scheppers.

“I just realized that I did not want to walk across that stage and get my diploma and shake the superintendent’s hand,” Jenkins told KTVB. “I just did not want to do that.”

In a TikTok Jenkins posted, which currently has over 24 million views, the graduate is seen shaking the hands of other faculty on stage during the ceremony. When she gets to Bub, Jenkins hands him a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale graphic novel instead.

“I got up there and I got the book out. I kind of showed it to the audience really quick,” she said. “He crossed his arms like this and he wouldn’t take it.” Jenkins placed the book at his feet before she walked off the stage….

(8) DOG’S BEST FRIEND. The New York Times’ Amy Nicholson tells why this is a “critic’s pick”: “‘Robot Dreams’ Review: A Friendship That Is Far From Mechanical”. (Link bypasses NYT paywall.)

Decades after Philip K. Dick asked if androids dreamed of electric sheep, we have an answer. This android — one of two nameless leads in the Oscar-nominated charmer “Robot Dreams” — envisions a small, lonely dog in his third-floor walk-up, microwaving a depressing dinner for one. Set in 1980s Manhattan, Pablo Berger’s all-ages, wordless wonder of a cartoon kicks into gear when the mutt assembles a self-aware, spaghetti-limbed robot companion ordered from an infomercial. You might be thinking that sentient artificial intelligence didn’t exist 40 years ago, and you’d be right. But dogs don’t rent apartments, either.

This fanciful vision of New York is populated by animals: sporty ducks, punk rock monkeys, buffalo mail carriers, penguins shouldering boomboxes, and a disproportionate number of llamas. Mechanical beings are sparse and some creatures consider them lower in status, a brutal development when our robot’s relationship with his dog begins to break down. But Berger isn’t interested in science fiction. He’s made a buddy film that’s as relatable as two friends bonding over slices of pizza (but the robot eats the plate, too)….

(9) ZACK NORMAN (1940-2024). Producer Zack Norman, who gained a kind of fame as the maker of a film referenced on Mystery Science Theater 3000, died April 28 at the age of 83. The New York Times obituary tells how he became a pop culture icon.

…A far more obscure film that Mr. Norman helped produce, “Chief Zabu” (1986), entered into pop-culture lore in an unusual way: by disappearing for three decades.

“Chief Zabu,” which Mr. Norman wrote, produced and directed with Neil Cohen, was another bargain, made on a shoestring budget of $200,000. Mr. Norman was also a star of the film: He played Sammy Brooks, a real estate mogul who, with his friend Ben Sydney (Allen Garfield), pursues both financial and political ambitions in a grandiose scheme to take over a fictitious Polynesian island.

The film fizzled in a preview and was never released. For 30 years it was buried, but not forgotten — at least not to fans of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” the Generation X staple of the 1990s that featured a weary space traveler and his robot friends poking fun at bad B-movies on a journey through the cosmos.

On the show, any time a character in one of those achingly bad movies cracked a newspaper, Joel Hodgson, the original host, would wearily intone, “Hey, Zack Norman is Sammy in ‘Chief Zabu.’”

It was a knowing reference to an advertisement for the movie, featuring a stern photo of Mr. Norman, that he continued to run — stubbornly yet playfully — in Weekly Variety every Wednesday for nine years. Why? “Because it gave me great joy,” he said in a 2016 interview with The Sun Sentinel of South Florida….

Mr. Norman’s faith in “Chief Zabu” eventually paid off. He and Mr. Cohen released a new cut of the film in 2016 and then took it on tour, presenting it at comedy clubs. Even so, it took them decades to realize that the Variety ad had become a cultural artifact.

In a 2020 interview with the film website Skewed & Reviewed, Mr. Cohen said that neither of them had heard of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” until one afternoon in the mid-2010s when they were walking down a Los Angeles street and saw a man wearing a “Zack Norman as Sammy in Chief Zabu” T- shirt.

“We stopped the guy and said, ‘Dude, what is up with that?’” he recalled. “And you can imagine his reaction when he saw he was talking to Zack Norman, whose face was on his T-shirt.”

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

June 1, 1947 — Jonathan Pryce, 77. I’m reasonably sure that the first role I saw Jonathan Pryce in was the lead antagonist of Some Wicked Comes This Way. (Bradbury did a stellar job writing the screenplay, didn’t he?)  He pulls off the carnival leader of Mr. Dark in suitably sinister manner. 

Then there’s the matter of Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where we meet him executing a heroic officer played by Sting for his act of bravery because it’s demoralizing to soldiers and citizens just trying to lead as he says unexceptional lives. 

(That is the Gilliam film I’ve watched the most followed by Time Bandits. Surely you’re not surprised?) 

As media baron Eliot Carter is in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, he’s trying to cause war between the United Kingdom and China. Arrogant little prick he is here. 

He’s in Pirates of the Caribbean seriesas Governor Weatherby Swann. I’ve only seen the first film, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and I thought it was an interesting but not terribly great film. 

He’s The Master in the Doctor Who special,  Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, made specifically for the Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was the only BBC commissioned live-action Doctor Who production between the Who television movie and the launch of the present Who era starting with the “Rose” episode.

In Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, he got to play that character with Bill Paterson as Watson. The Baker Street Irregulars, a group of street urchins as the BBC press kits described them, is trying to find their missing members, while also trying to prevent Sherlock Holmes being convicted of murder. I’ll end this review with a photo of him in that role.

Jonathan Pryce as Sherlock Holmes.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) STARLINER LAUNCH SCRUBBED. “Boeing forced to call off its first launch with NASA astronauts once again” – NBC News has the story.

NASA and Boeing were forced once again to call off the first crewed launch of the company’s Starliner spacecraft.

NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were scheduled to lift off aboard the Starliner from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday at 12:25 p.m. ET. The flight to the International Space Station would have been the vehicle’s first with a crew.

The launch attempt was scrubbed with only 3 minutes and 50 seconds to go in the countdown — yet another setback for Boeing, which has already dealt with years of delays and budget overruns with its Starliner program.

Officials were attempting to try again the next day but announced Saturday evening that the flight was postponed “to give the team additional time to assess a ground support equipment issue,” according to NASA….

(13) SECOND LIFE. “Scavengers Reign, a sci-fi show like no other, now gets a second shot at life on Netflix” – Polygon has the good news.

The streaming era operates via a cold and opaque calculus. Many shows unceremoniously premiere with limited promotion, only to face swift cancellation with an equal lack of fanfare. With no real numbers and a few dodgy reports available to the public and creators (now a little less dodgy, thanks to the Writers Guild of America strike), a show’s fate can feel like a cosmic joke, with no rhyme or reason to why some soldier on and some never get the chance to find an audience. Scavengers Reign, the stunning animated series that debuted on Max last year, found its number was up when the streamer canceled it earlier this May. However, in a rare moment of clarity, there is a way forward for the show: It just has to be a hit starting Friday, when it premieres on Netflix.

Its new summer home (Scavengers Reign is still available to stream on Max) is reportedly considering a season 2 renewal pending the show’s Netflix debut, though what a favorable run looks like isn’t terribly clear. Mostly, this is just an excuse to exercise a rare bit of streaming-era agency: Go check out Scavengers Reign, one of the very best shows of last year, and the rare series that earns the superlative of “like nothing else on television” simply by virtue of its stunning visual design.

Taking visual cues from European sci-fi artists like Moebius and Simon Roy, Scavengers Reign chronicles the aftermath of a disaster aboard the spacecraft Demeter, following a handful of survivors that escaped to the alien world of Vesta Minor, a hauntingly beautiful and hostile planet…. 

(14) THREE SHALL BE THE NUMBER. “’3 Body Problem’ To Run For 3 Seasons On Netflix” reports Deadline.

3 Body Problem creators David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo on Friday cleared up the confusion over the Netflix sci-fi drama’s recent renewal, confirming that it will produce two more seasons.

At the streamer’s upfront presentation last month, the streamer announced that 3 Body Problem has been picked up for “all-new episodes”, with Benioff, Weiss and Woo assuring fans that they will “get to tell this story through to its epic conclusion.”

No number of episodes or seasons were revealed, creating a confusion and triggering wild speculation. Benioff, Weiss and Woo subsequently indicated to THR that the pickup was for “seasons” but have not provided specifics until today when they confirmed that there will be Seasons 2 and 3 during a 3 Body Problem Television Academy panel at the Netflix FYSEE space….

(15) SMOKE BUT NO MIRRORS? [Item by Steven French.] So, maybe not built by aliens ….? “Are dusty quasars masquerading as Dyson sphere candidates?” asks Physics World.

Seven candidate Dyson spheres found from their excess infrared radiation could be a case of mistaken identity, with evidence for dusty background galaxies spotted close to three of them.

The seven candidates were discovered by Project Hephaistos, which is coordinated by astronomers at Uppsala University in Sweden and Penn State University in the US.

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical construct: a swarm of energy collectors capturing all of a star’s radiant energy to provide huge amounts of power for its builders. As these energy collectors – basically huge arrays of solar panels – absorb sunlight, they must emit waste heat as infrared radiation to avoid overheating. While a complete Dyson swarm would hide a star from view, this waste heat would still be detectable.

The caveat is that to build a complete Dyson swarm, a lot of raw material is required. In his 1960 paper describing the concept, Freeman Dyson calculated that dismantling a gas giant planet like Jupiter should do the trick.

Given that this is easier said than done, Project Hephaistos has been looking for incomplete Dyson swarms “that do not block all starlight, but a fraction of it,” says Matías Suazo of Uppsala University, who is leading the project….

(16) CHANG’E-6 LANDS ON MOON. “China’s Chang’e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon” – CNN puts the news in perspective.

China’s Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday morning Beijing time, in a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country’s aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon.

The Chang’e-6 probe landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, where it will begin to collect samples from the lunar surface, the China National Space Administration announced.

China’s most complex robotic lunar endeavor to date, the uncrewed mission aims to return samples to Earth from the moon’s far side for the first time.

The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the far side of the moon. China first completed that historic feat in 2019 with its Chang’e-4 probe.

If all goes as planned, the mission — which began on May 3 and is expected to last 53 days — could be a key milestone in China’s push to become a dominant space power.

The country’s plans include landing astronauts on the moon by 2030 and building a research base at its south pole – a region believed to contain water ice.

Sunday’s landing comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, eye the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. You’re just in time (!) for the “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark Pitch Meeting” with Ryan George. Does the proposed story have any holes? Shut up, he explained.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/21/24 Cotton Candy Pixels, What Flavor Is Your Favorite?

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(1) COUNTERFEIT CHARACTERS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] We all now know that A.I. threatens creativity… something we seemed to have missed in SF where A/I. was oft portrayed more as a physical threat. BBC Radio 4 (the BBC’s national news and magazine station that replaced the Home Service) is airing a half-hour programme on A.I. replacing actors…. “Counterfeit Characters”.

What do Artificial Intelligence and digital technology mean for actors and their relationship with audiences?

Leading acting coach Geoffrey Colman, who has spent his working life on the sets of Hollywood movies, in theatrical rehearsal spaces, and teaching in the UK’s most prestigious classrooms, wants to find out.

AI, he says, may represent the most profound change to the acting business since the move from silent films to talkies. But does it, and if so how are actors dealing with it? What does that mean for the connection between actors and audiences?

Geoffrey’s concern is rooted in acting process: the idea that the construction of a complex inner thinking architecture resonates with audiences in an authentic almost magical way. But if performance capture and AI just creates the outer facial or physical expression, what happens to the inner joy or pain of a character’s thinking? The implications for the actor’s technique are profound.

To get to the bottom of these questions Geoffrey visits some of those at the cutting edge of developing this new technology. On the storied Pinewood lot he visits Imaginarium Studios, and is shown around their ‘volume’, where actors’ every movement is captured. In East London he talks to the head of another studio about his new AI actor – made up from different actors’ body parts. And at a leading acting school he speaks to students and teachers about what this new digital era means for them. He discusses concerns about ethical questions, hears from an actor fresh from the set of a major new movie, quizzes a tech expert already using AI to create avatars of herself, and speaks to Star Wars fans about how this technology has allowed beloved characters to be rejuvenated, and even resuscitated.

You can access the programme at this link.

(2) VOICEJACKING. Meanwhile, back in the litigious real world… “Scarlett Johansson Said No, but OpenAI’s Virtual Assistant Sounds Just Like Her” says the New York Times.

Days before OpenAI demonstrated its new, flirty voice assistant last week, the actress Scarlett Johansson said, Sam Altman, the company’s chief executive, called her agent and asked that she consider licensing her voice for a virtual assistant.

It was his second request to the actress in the past year, Ms. Johannson said in a statement on Monday, adding that the reply both times was no.

Despite those refusals, Ms. Johansson said, OpenAI used a voice that sounded “eerily similar to mine.” She has hired a lawyer and asked OpenAI to stop using a voice it called “Sky.”

OpenAI suspended its release of “Sky” over the weekend. The company said in a blog post on Sunday that “AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice — Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.”

For Ms. Johansson, the episode has been a surreal case of life-imitating art. In 2013, she provided the voice for an A.I. system in the Spike Jonze movie “Her.” The film told the story of a lonely introvert seduced by a virtual assistant named Samantha, a tragic commentary on the potential pitfalls of technology as it becomes more realistic.

Last week, Mr. Altman appeared to nod to the similarity between OpenAI’s virtual assistant and the film in a post on X with the single word “her.”…

(3) WHISKY TASTING EVENT CONCURRENT WITH WORLDCON. [Item by Sandra Childress.] This is an invitation to those attending Worldcon this summer to venture outside of the convention space for a couple of hours and taste some local history and whisky at the Clydeside Distillery Tour & Tasting. This event is a venue takeover being hosted by Joel Phillips’ Friday Night Weekly Whisky Zoom that has been running nearly non-stop since April 2020. This group has hosted parties at Discon 3 and Chicon 8 — all in the name of friendship and whisky. 

The Clydeside Distillery

This time around, the group is doing something different. The Clydeside Distillery is across the parking lot from the convention center. Joel and the Zoom members knew this was not to be passed up. So, on August 9 (Friday) starting at 7:00 p.m. there will be a tour and tastings for up to 150 pre-paid attendees. The cost of $103USD includes the following:

  • 2 tickets for welcome drinks (1 of which can be used at the blind Scotch tasting station if you choose)
  • Welcome drinks are Prosecco, Beer or mixed whisky drink
  • 6 canapes per person
  • 4 wee drams of single malts (your choice) from Clydeside Distillery including a bourbon cask finish and sherry cask finish only available at the distillery and a third single malt yet to be determined.

Additionally, a cash bar will also be available and a station where you may buy a bottle for £68 and create your own personalized label.

Deadline to register and pay is Thursday July 25th or when the count hits 150. There will be no onsite registrations available. Please register via the Google Form (https://forms.gle/QnGmmhTN58Xe76un6) and follow the instructions there for payment. As of May 20, there are 62 registered…so there is still room for you and your friends to join the tour and tasting.

(4) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024. The non-genre novel Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann, has been named the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024. The winner was announced by Eleanor Wachtel, Chair of the 2024 judges, at a ceremony sponsored by Maison Valentino and held at London’s Tate Modern today. 

The £50,000 prize is split equally between author Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann, giving each equal recognition. 

Erpenbeck’s novel, which was originally written in German, follows a destructive affair between a young woman and an older man in 1980s East Berlin, with the two lovers seemingly embodying East Germany’s crushed idealism. A meditation on hope and disappointment, Kairos poses complex questions about freedom, loyalty, love and power. 

(5) SHE’S THE CAPTAIN. “’Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Series Casts Holly Hunter in Main Role” – Variety has details about the actor and the series. If you wondered, this Hunter is no relation to the Hunter who played Star Trek’s first Captain.

The “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” series at Paramount+ has cast Holly Hunter in a lead role, Variety has learned.

Hunter’s character will serve as the captain and chancellor of the Academy, presiding over both the faculty and a new class of Starfleet cadets as they learn to navigate the galaxy in the 32nd century….

(6) DON’T PANIC. Not that you were anyway… “’3 Body Problem’ Creators Clarify Netflix’s Mysterious Renewal Plan” for The Hollywood Reporter.

One of the biggest 3 Body Problem mysteries since the show ended has been: What did Netflix‘s renewal announcement mean, exactly?

During the streamer’s upfront presentation last week, Netflix promised “additional episodes” of the acclaimed sci-fi drama to “finish the story.”

Of course, “additional episodes” could mean anything from two episodes to five seasons and, naturally, many fans worried that the ultimate answer would be too close to the former for comfort.

But showrunners David Benioff, Dan Weiss and Alexander Woo assure things are going to be just fine (for the show, at least, if not for their ensemble drama’s characters facing an alien invasion). While the trio didn’t reveal the exact number of episodes in their new deal, they emphasized it was for “seasons” — plural — and that the number of hours aligns with their original plan to adapt author Liu Cixin’s two remaining novels in his Hugo-winning trilogy.

“We knew going into this how many hours we need to tell the rest of the story because we’ve got a roadmap through to the end,” Weiss told The Hollywood Reporter. “And we have what we need to get to the end as intended from when we started.”

“By the time we finish with the show, it will be seven years we’ve devoted to it,” Benioff added. “We’re now at a place where we get to tell the rest of the story, and, yes, we have enough time to tell the rest of the story the way we want to and that’s immensely gratifying.”…

(7) LECKIE Q&A. The Mountain View (CA) Public Library hosted an online event with author Ann Leckie as part of Sci-Fi September last year.

Critically acclaimed science fiction author Ann Leckie joined us for an exclusive conversation about her new novel Translation State and answered questions from the audience.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 21, 1917 — Raymond Burr. (Died 1993.) Surely you know Raymond Burr, the man whose Birthday it is today. So let’s get started.

I must of course start with his long running role as Perry Mason which is decidedly not genre. CBS paid Gardener for the rights to two hundred and seventy-two of his stories, a good idea given that Perry Mason would run nine seasons. Many early episodes were based off his stories and novels.  

The role of Perry Mason proved the hardest to cast. Richard Carlson, Mike Connors, Richard Egan, and William Holden were considered. None at all suited the casting team. Burr initially read for the role of district attorney Hamilton Burger, but he told them that he was more interested in the Perry Mason role. They had seen him being a lawyer, and said he could play the role provided he lose at least sixty pounds. He did and got the role.

Raymond Burr, right, Frank Iwanaga, left, in Godzilla, King of the Monsters

What a magnificent Perry Mason he made. Burr’s coolness, control and reserved sense of humor were such that he became so identified with the character that, for the television audience, that meant there was no other Mason but Burr. He was not the Mason that had existed, there were four before him, all on film, and the producers tried reviving the series after CBS cancelled it, but it utterly failed. And HBO has a new series that looks at early years of his life. 

In the late Eighties he reprised his Mason role in twenty-six tv movies. The first has the title of Perry Mason Returns.

Now for his genre work.  Mike joked with me when I said when I was doing him that he was the lawyer for Godzilla. Well, he was Steven Martin in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! It is a re-edited for American audiences of the 1954 Japanese film Godzilla which in its original wasn’t available outside Japan for fifty years. He would reprise this role in Godzilla 1985.

He was the Grand Vizier Boreg al Buzzar in The Magic Carpet. Evil viziers! Dungeons! Magic carpets! Princesses! 

He’s Cy Mill, hulking villain in Gorilla at Large. Remember what was said about his weight in his Burr casting. Well, this film was done just previous to this series and he was quoted as saying there, “I was just a fat heavy.” Burr told journalist James Bawden, “I split the heavy parts with Bill Conrad. We were both in our twenties playing much older men. I never got the girl but I once got the gorilla in a 3-D picture called Gorilla at Large.”

He was Vargo in Tarzan and the She-Devil , the seventeenth film of the Tarzan film series that began with 1932’s Tarzan the Ape Man, twenty years earlier.

Television wise, he appeared on Tales on Tomorrow in “The Masks of Medusa” and in the horror film Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, he’s Jonash Sebastian. I thought there’d be more but there aren’t. 

(9) ARMED SURVIVOR. In “Rocket Man No More”, Heritage Auctions introduces one of the headline lots from the May 31 Star Wars Signature Auction: “Star Wars Prototype Rocket-Firing Boba Fett L-Slot / Hand-Painted”.

Star Wars Prototype Rocket-Firing Boba Fett L-Slot / Hand-Painted AFA 60 (Kenner, 1979). The Rocket Firing Boba Fett has been called the “Crown Jewel of Unproduced Toys” It’s become legendary as an iconic Star Wars “Mandela Effect,” (far better termed “Rocket Fett Syndrome.”) The figure everyone thought they had, but didn’t. Offered as a mail-away premium, the Rocket Firing Boba Fett was highly promoted by Kenner, lodging it in everyone’s imaginations. For four proof-of-purchase seals cut from any Star Wars 3 ¾” action figure card back it could be yours. It seemed a cruel trick, when the Boba Fett figures that shipped, arrived with their plastic missiles sonically welded in place. It was a clear letdown. Helping along this disappointment was a small polite letter explaining Kenner’s safety concerns over the toy necessitating the change. It offered in substitution any Star Wars 3 ¾” action figure of choice if the consumer wasn’t satisfied with the redesign. Looking back, the removal of the rocket launching mechanism should have been no surprise. Almost immediately anything to do with it was being mysteriously obscured by stickers ignoring the feature. Kenner’s legal department already had concerns over the toy’s safety, but the company’s outgoing President Bernie Loomis was highly in favor of the project. As Kenner engineer’s struggled to make the toy safe, another ominous event was happening in the toy world. Rival toy company Mattel was experiencing their own problems with their popular Battlestar Galactica toy spaceships, which fired a similar sized projectile. If accidentally shot into the mouth, the choking potential for children was becoming clear. Already, there were several aspiration induced injuries, and one child’s death. The culmination of these two events ultimately doomed the Rocket Firing Boba Fett. Painfully most would agree Kenner made the right decision, erroring on the side of safety. It’s uncertain exactly how many Rocket Firing Boba Fetts were created before Kenner abandoned the concept for a safer non-firing figure. What survives today in the hobby generally comes from ex-Kenner employees who took examples home. All others are believed destroyed with none (despite urban legends) ever getting distributed to the public. Surviving populations featuring the original reverse “L-slot” latch configuration number about seventy. Mostly injection molded in blue-gray, these “first-shot” figures are generally unpainted and were created to test the mold cavity functions before general production. As such these unpainted “first-shots” lack all copyright and point of origin stamps to the back of the legs. Of the seventy examples believed in collector’s hands today, only five have been found hand painted – two in production paint scheme as this example, and three in unique alternate paint schemes. One of only two examples known to exist…

(10) DOCTOR MEWLITTLE. An SJW credential with credentials! “Meet Max, the cat receiving an (honorary) doctorate from Vermont State University this weekend” – Vermont Public has the story.

As Vermont State University Castleton graduates receive their degrees this weekend, so too will a tabby cat. The cat, named Max, is getting an honorary degree as a “Doctor in Litter-ature.”

Once a feral kitten in the town of Fair Haven, Max has lived with his human mom, Ashley Dow, on Seminary Street in Castleton for the past five years. And for most of those years, he’s been venturing up to the university campus….

(11) ANOTHER SPACE CAT. Captain Kirk also picked up an honorary sheepskin on May 20. Forbes reports, “William Shatner Among Geniuses Honored At Liberty Science Center Gala, Underscoring Intrinsic Bond Of Art And Science”.

William Shatner beamed up into the Liberty Science Center (LSC) last night to accept the 2024 Icon Award at the sold-out 12th Annual Liberty Science Center Genius Gala.

“On October 13, 2021, William Shatner, age 90, boldly went where no one else had gone before: into space,” said LSC President and CEO Paul Hoffman. “At 93, Will remains incredibly active.”

Shatner was filming in Los Angeles, so Hoffman interviewed him in his Studio City office.

“I saw a great deal that made me cry, and I didn’t know why I was crying, literally crying. I was weeping uncontrollably when I landed,” said Shatner. “I realized, oh my God, I’m in grief! For what I’ve seen of the world, you look at your telescopes, it’s fantastic, it’s magical. Space is magical. I’m looking at space from the spaceship and all it is is palpable blackness, it’s black death. I look back and I see blue, beige, and white. The planet is calling to us. You can’t believe how small this rock we’re living on is. You can’t believe how thin the fertile earth is. … That’s how precious our topsoil is. And then there’s the air. I’m a pilot. I know you can’t go above 3,500 feet for oxygen. Two miles of oxygen, a handful of dirt that we’re going to live on, and live on with increasing numbers. We now know everything is connected, interconnected. Everything is part of each other. All of nature is alive and vibrant with intelligence and life.”…

(12) SPACEPLANE MISSION TO ISS. “World’s first commercial spaceplane in final stages before debut ISS flight” reports New Atlas.

The world’s first winged commercial spaceplane has arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, its final destination before its first mission to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year.

Following rigorous testing at Ohio’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility, the Dream Chaser DC-100 spaceplane named Tenacity got the green light to commence final pre-launch preparations, such as finishing its thermal protection system and payload integration, before it hitches a ride on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket to deliver 7,800 pounds (3,540 kg) of food, water and science experiments to the ISS….

(13) MILKY WAY. [Item by Steven French.] A collection of absolutely stunning photographs: “Milky Way photographer of the year 2024 – in pictures” in the Guardian. Photo at the link —

The vanity of life | Wadi Rum desert, Jordan

Photographer Mihail Minkov: ‘The concept behind this shot is to highlight the stark contrast between the vastness of the cosmos and the minuscule nature of humanity. The composition intentionally draws the viewer’s focus to a small figure, underscoring our insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe, while the majestic Milky Way core dominates the background’

Photograph: Mihail Minkov/2024 Milky Way photographer of the year

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Heritage Auctions has an interview with Former Kenner Engineer Jacob Miles about the Boba Fett – Star Wars action figure pulled from production.

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

Pixel Scroll 2/9/24 The FTL And The Furriest

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(1) TOR ACCUSED OF USING AI ART COVER, AGAIN. [Item by Anne Marble.] People strongly suspect that Tor used yet another AI cover for a release by its Bramble imprint. In this case, the book is their hardcover reprint of Gothikana, a dark academia romance by an anonymous author known as RuNyx– an indie book that is both loved and hated. (Both the writing and the “hero” have been criticized.) Tor published this new edition in hardback with sprayed edges and what looked like a gorgeous new cover. Even people who already had the book bought it for the cool presentation. This is an adult hardcover priced around $30. But now, many people are saying that this new cover is probably AI.

Gabino Iglesias has one of the best posts on this:

This is not a first for Tor. In December 2022, File 770 published the news when Tor was caught using AI elements on the cover of an SF novel by Christopher Paolini – “Pixel Scroll 12/20/22 The Filezentian Gate” item #3.

You can see the Tor cover, the Solaris cover, and the indie covers of Gothikana on Goodreads.

Emma Skies devoted a TikTok video to analyzing the artwork: “I’m So Sick Of This”.

@emmaskies

I’M SO SICK OF THIS I really don’t understand why we keep having to have this conversation in *creative* spaces. Stop ???????? using ???????? AI ???????? art ???????? It doesn’t even look good! Frankly this is beyond embarrassing and I’m incredibly disappointed in Tor. This is lazy and it’s insulting to authors, consumers, and artists who should and historically would be getting hired for these jobs, and this is only going to keep getting worse as the publishing industry is obsessed with pumping out more and more work for less money utilizing fewer employees. We are not heading in a good direction. ???? #torbooks #torpublishinggroup #brambleromance #gothikana #runyx #bookcover #aiart #noaiart #romancebooks #darkromance #fantasyromance #booktok #emmaskiesreads #greenscreen

? original sound – emmaskies

BTW I can’t tell whether a cover is AI or not. But when you look at the mysterious gate closely… Ugh. And I persuaded myself to buy this book because of the cool cover and sprayed edges…

More recent posts on Gothikana include Ed Crocker’s thread on X, started to celebrate covers by humans — which is a great response!

By the way, you can see the Solaris cover, which is complete different, in this post:

(2) MEDICAL UPDATE. Kaja Foglio had emergency gall bladder surgery last weekend, and had to be readmitted to the hospital on Monday. Phil Foglio posted the news at Bluesky.

(3) UGANDA WORLDCON BID REPLIES TO SENSITIVE QUESTION. Steve Davidson reported on Facebook that Amazing Stories recently asked the Ugandan Worldcon Bid —

“Given the laws of Uganda regarding LGBTQ+ how are you planning on handling this for attendees?”

The “the official committee stand” responded and I wanted to share their response, the first line of which states:

“This law is in courts of law and we can’t comment about it for fear of prejudice.”

The balance of their statement says:

“However, as a country so far, we have hosted and planning to host major global conventions like the Commonwealth Speakers of Parliament and Presiding Officers, NAM summit, the G77 + China in 2024 all have been completed without incidents consequential from this law and later AFCON in 2027 will be hosted here. We also have seen a successful football World cup in Qatar, the Worldcon has been successfully hosted in China in 2023 some of these parts of the world have more harsh laws against homosexuality. These precedents will help inform Kampcon in planning mitigation measures. The experiences of previous hosts with similar legal challenges will be instructive on how Kampcon approaches this issue in terms of its code of conduct to guide all the operations. In the meantime, we are also involving every stakeholder in the planning of this event right from bidding and we are receiving support of a number of forms from the national convention bureau (MICE Bureau) so we are doing all within means not to have any conflict legal or otherwise with the authorities of the land and the host community. The number one commitment for any host is safety first! This is not different for Kampcon. “

Davidson’s post includes quotes from media coverage about the enforcement of laws against homosexuality.

(4) FIVE BOOKS TO ENJOY. Lisa Tuttle’s new Guardian column reviews The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown; Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi; Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde; Past Crimes by Jason Pinter; and The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers. “The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup”.

(5) BRISTOW Q&A. A lot of sff mentioned in the Shelf Awareness interview with Su Bristow:

Favorite book when you were a child:

There were so many! But I guess the one I returned to over and over again would have to be The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. It’s the origin story of Narnia, and how evil was unintentionally brought in right at the start. It felt important to me, in a way that I couldn’t have articulated at the time.

Your top five authors:

Ursula K. Le Guin. Her Earthsea trilogy had a profound effect on me in my teens. The Taoist philosophy that underpins it, and the idea of equilibrium in nature–and of course in magic–struck me with the force of truth. It still does.

Barbara Kingsolver. Her versatility is extraordinary, and I’ve loved all her books, particularly The Lacuna and Demon Copperhead. I hope there are many more to come.

J.R.R. Tolkien. An obvious choice, maybe, but it’s not the writing so much as the depth and breadth of the world he created. He was aiming to set up a mythology for Britain, and he succeeded; his influence is everywhere.

Alan Garner. A master weaver of language, landscape, and legend. He creates songlines for his corner of the British Isles.

Terry Pratchett. The humanity, humour, and passion in his books is breathtaking, not to mention the immense wealth of detail and unforgettable characters….

(6) LIFE ON THE DEATH STAR? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Mimas is the moon of Saturn that famously looks like the Star Wars Death Star. But his week in Nature research reveals that it yet may be another place in our Solar System that might, just might, harbor life… (though personally I think we will just find some interesting pre-biotic chemistry…). “Mimas’s surprise ocean prompts an update of the rule book for moons”.

The shifting orbit of one of Saturn’s moons indicates that the satellite has a subsurface ocean, contradicting theories that its interior is entirely solid. The finding calls for a fresh take on what constitutes an ocean moon.

The detection of liquid water oceans under the icy surfaces of outer Solar System moons suggests that these moons could provide abodes for life under conditions that differ markedly from those on Earth. However, it can be a challenge to detect subsurface oceans directly, so inferences about candidate ocean moons are typically drawn from comparison to moons known to harbour oceans, such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus. These moons have many similarities in terms of both the conditions that sustain their oceans and the way that their surfaces indicate the existence of an internal ocean. If the criteria were set by these moons, the small Saturnian moon Mimas would easily be ruled out as an ocean moon. It therefore comes as a surprise to learn that Mimas must have an internal ocean, according to results reported in this week’s Nature. Primary research paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06975-9.pdf 

(7) BODYING THE COMPETITION. “’Three Body Problem’ Coming to Peacock Before Rival Netflix Version” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Now Netflix has a two Body problem.

An adaptation of Liu Cixin’s epic sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem is going to land on a major U.S. streaming service just weeks ahead of Netflix launching its own version.

Peacock announced Friday it has acquired Tencent’s Three-Body, the Chinese adaptation that was released internationally last year. The streamer will launch all 30 episodes Feb. 10.

While Tencent pegged the release date choice to the Lunar New Year, the launch is also clearly timed to get ahead of Netflix’s big-budget version, titled 3 Body Problem, coming March 21…

…The two adaptations are very different, however. The Tencent version is considered an ultra-faithful adaptation (to the point that some have criticized it as being a bit tedious) that, like the novels, remains squarely focused on characters from China who grapple with an alien invasion. Netflix’s version expands the story to an international cast and takes liberties to adapt the dense and physics-heavy novel for a mainstream audience. Also, while the Tencent version avoids the book’s brutal portrayal of the Chinese Cultural Revolution — a key sequence in the story — the Netflix version was able to be more faithful in that regard….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 9, 1931 — Algis Budrys. (Died 2008.) I usually can’t remember the cover art for a novel I read nearly fifty years ago but I remember that for Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys. It was the Equinox / Avon edition of 1974 with the cover illustration by William Maughan. I picked up on some newsstand in those days when newsstands still existed and they had SF novels to purchase along with comics and zines as Amazing and If.  I’ll get nostalgic later…

It was the first work I read by him and I remember that it was quite good. I see it was nominated for a Hugo at Seacon, the year A Canticle for Leibowitz won.  It was by no means his first publication as that goes to “The High Purpose” which been printed in Astounding in 1952, the year he started as an editor and manager for such publishers as Gnome Press and Galaxy Science Fiction. 

Algis Budrys. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

Between 1965 and 1961, he had two short stories, a novelette and two novels nominated for Hugos. None would win.

I’ve read three of his novels in total, the others being Some Will Not Die and Who?, none of the other novels are ones I recognize at all.  Both of these were well worth my reading time as well. I caution that I’ve not re-read any of these in thirty years so I don’t how well the Suck Fairy would react to them now. 

He was extremely prolific with his writing of short stories, penning well over a hundred. I’ve read enough of them to say he had a deft hand at this story length. So after the early sixties, he wrote far less fiction and worked in publishing, editing, and advertising to make a much better living. 

One was the Tomorrow Speculative Fiction magazine from 1993 to 2000. It was nominated for a Hugo at ConAdian and the next year at Intersection. Alas he did not win.

He’s best known I think for his F&SF book columns that ran for almost forty years starting in 1975. I know that I looked forward to them immensely. They’re collected in Benchmarks Continued, Benchmarks Revisited and Benchmarks Concluded. There’s also Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf which collects his columns there. 

And let’s not overlook A Budrys Miscellany: Occasional Writing 1954-2000 which collects some of his fanzine writings. It’s available at the usual suspects.

(9) COMIC SECTION.

(10) REVIEW OF ‘MACHINE VENDETTA’ BY ALASTAIR REYNOLDS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds, his latest novel came out a couple of weeks ago and SF² Concatenation has an advance post review ahead of its summer season edition. It sees a return to ‘Revelation Space’ and a Prefect Tom Drefus Emergency. The full review is here.

A terrorist incident, resulting in a conflagration in a large orbiting habitat, was caused by racism species-ism between uplifted pigs (to human sentience levels) and humans. The habitat was one of thousands that formed the Glitter Band orbiting the planet Yellowstone. Humans had arrived at Yellowstone centuries earlier but the planet has an unbreathable atmosphere, so that while some humans established a colony on its surface, others remained in orbit, hence the hundreds of habitats. Each of the habitats was largely self-policed (usually by local constables) but overall, inter-habitat, peace-keeping and the maintenance of democracy (via strictly controlled computer voting) was undertaken by just a thousand prefects operating from Panapoly – an asteroid hollowed out to provide habitation, space docks etc.

Then a prefect – Ingvar Tench – visits Stadler-Kremeniev orbital habitat. Ingvar Tench thinks she has been ordered there for a routine inspection of its voting mechanisms, but back at the Panapoly, the senior prefects are puzzled as no orders had been given Ingvar: what could she be doing visiting a habitat on the prefects’ watch list? Further, they are perturbed that communications with her have been cut… 

Enter senior prefect Tom Drefus who is sent to Stadler-Kremeniev to find out what Ingvar Tench is doing. Alas, he arrives too late and, long story short, she is dead…. 

(11) READY, WILLING, AND ABLE. RadioTimes quotes“Louise Jameson on Doctor Who return: ‘I’d be back in a nanosecond’”.

Doctor Who legend Louise Jameson has insisted she’s game for a return appearance as classic character Leela.

Jameson recently reprised the role in live-action for Leela vs the Time War, a short film made to promote the Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 15 Blu-ray set.

Speaking at a BFI Southbank screening of 1977 story Horror of Fang Rock held to mark the release, Jameson suggested she wouldn’t hesitate if asked to return to the BBC sci-fi series.

“Let’s see… I’d absolutely love to do one,” she said. “I’d be back in a nanosecond.

“Can you just tell Russell [T Davies, Doctor Who showrunner]? Can somebody ask him to watch it [Leela vs the Time War]?”…

(12) THE DOORS OF HIS MOUTH, THE LAMPS OF HIS WHYS. [Item by Steven French.] Not really genre related but so bizarre I couldn’t resist! An Atlas Obscura post from 2017: “Encryption Lava Lamps – San Francisco, California”.

Why use lava lamps for encryption instead of computer-generated code? Since computer codes are created by machines with relatively predictable patterns, it is entirely possible for hackers to guess their algorithms, posing a security risk. Lava lamps, on the other hand, add to the equation the sheer randomness of the physical world, making it nearly impossible for hackers to break through.


While you might think that such an important place would be kept in secret and locked off from the public, it’s actually possible for visitors to witness these lava lamps in person. Simply enter the lobby of Cloudflare’s San Francisco headquarters and ask to see the lava lamp display. 

It may seem bizarre that Cloudflare would allow average people to affect the video footage, but that’s actually intentional. External disturbances like human movement, static, and changes in lighting from the adjacent windows all work together to make the random code even harder to predict. So, by standing in front of the lava lamp display, you add an additional variable to the code, making it even harder to hack. In a way, by visiting Cloudflare’s wall of lava lamps, you can play a role in making the internet more secure…

(13) IRON MAN COSTS PLENTY OF GOLD. Speculative Fiction Collectors will happily sell you the “Iron Man Mark 2 Life-Size Statue” for a mere $12,399 – stand by to torch your credit card!

Paying homage to Tony Stark’s iconic armor from Iron Man (2008), Queen Studios crafted this piece with the utmost precision. Capturing Iron Man’s signature silver suit, he embodies a powerful stance. At a remarkable height of 214cm tall, the statue boasts a detachable breastplate for a customizable display. Dotted with internal lighting located in various components, it includes: the eyes, arc reactor, and palm repulsors. With fitting illumination around the base, this statue is a stunning addition to any collection.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Anne Marble, Kathy Sullivan, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, David Goldfarb, Steve Davidson, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 12/14/23 Because My Pixels Are Delicious To Scroll

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(1) ALL SYSTEMS GREEN. Martha Wells’ series is coming to TV: “Alexander Skarsgård Stars In ‘Murderbot’ Sci-Fi Series Ordered By Apple” – Deadline carried the announcement.

Apple TV+ has officially picked up Murderbot, a 10-episode sci-fi drama series starring and executive produced by Emmy winner Alexander Skarsgård (Succession). Based on Martha Wells’ bestselling Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning book series The Murderbot Diaries, the project hails from Chris and Paul Weitz (About a Boy) and Paramount Television Studios.

The action-packed Murderbot received a blinking green light a year ago, with the casting of the title character interrupted by the strikes. The series centers on a self-hacking security android (Skarsgård) who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable “clients.” Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe….

(2) THE END IS NEAR. Good Omens is getting another curtain call: “Good Omens Renewed for Season 3 at Amazon” says The Hollywood Reporter.

The streamer has renewed Good Omens, the fantasy-comedy that started as a limited series, for a third and final season. Production on the show from BBC Studios, and based on the novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, is expected to begin soon in Scotland.

“I’m so happy finally to be able to finish the story Terry and I plotted in 1989 and in 2006,” Gaiman said in a release announcing the news Thursday. “Terry was determined that if we made Good Omens for television, we could take the story all the way to the end. Season one was all about averting Armageddon, dangerous prophecies and the End of the World. Season two was sweet and gentle, although it may have ended less joyfully than a certain Angel and Demon might have hoped. Now in season three, we will deal once more with the end of the world. The plans for Armageddon are going wrong. Only Crowley [David Tennant] and Aziraphale [Martin Sheen] working together can hope to put it right. And they aren’t talking.”…

(3) WHO COUP. Sir Derek Jacobi will be a headline guest at Gallifrey One, the annual LA Doctor Who convention, happening February 16-18.

Star of stage and screen, and one of Britain’s national treasures, Sir Derek Jacobi portrayed the Master (and his alter ego, Professor Yana) opposite David Tennant in 2007’s “Utopia,” fulfilling a life-long ambition of the actor to star in Doctor Who. He also voices the character in audio adventures for Big Finish Productions, credited as the War Master; also voiced the Master in the 2003 Doctor Who audio play “Scream of the Shalka”; and starred as Martin Bannister in the Doctor Who Unbound audio release “Deadline.”

…We are honored to be able to welcome Sir Derek to Gallifrey One this year, his first-ever Doctor Who appearance in North America, courtesy our friends at Showmasters Events.  Sir Derek will participate in two main stage interviews during his visit, one on Friday afternoon, and one Saturday, included with general admission.  He will also be autographing and doing photo ops on Saturday and Sunday, will do a VIP script reading on Sunday morning, will participate in our guest receptions on Friday & Saturday evenings, and has a separate Diamond Pass; all of these require purchase (see below.)  Additionally, he is included in the TARDIS Tag package….

The con will also have Billie Piper, Alex Kingston, and a flock of other Doctor Who actors, writers, and production people.

(4) WHO HOLIDAY SPECIAL. Inverse tells how “2023’s Wildest Sci-Fi Show is Bringing Back Its Most Underrated Secret Weapon”.

… With this episode being the first one to contain Gatwa as the sole Doctor, this could mean a shift in the Doctor Who we know and love. Original reboot showrunner Russell T. Davies may be back, but there’s a new Doctor and a new companion at the start of a new season, why not try a new (old) genre as well?

Even if this is just a temporary jaunt into the world of fantasy, it’s proof of exactly what the third special “The Giggle” established: The Doctor took a break to rest and deal with the literal centuries of trauma that he has undergone, and now he can find himself in silly high jinks that are more suited to a classic children’s novel instead of a hardboiled sci-fi paperback….

(5) ECCLESTON’S PRICE. CBR.com listens in as “Christopher Eccleston Reveals His Conditions for Doctor Who Return”.

Eccleston, who played the ninth Doctor in the first season of the show’s revival in 2005, had a relatively brief spell at the helm before being replaced by David Tennant. Eccleston has since been vocal about his mixed feelings about his time on the show. While speaking at the For The Love of Sci-Fi fan convention over the weekend, Eccleston was asked about if he would come back to Doctor Who, and what the BBC would need to do in order to make that happen. Eccleston was brutally honest with his answer, telling audiences, “Sack Russell T Davies. Sack Jane Tranter. Sack Phil Collinson. Sack Julie Gardner. And I’ll come back. So can you arrange that?”…

(6) MOVE TOWARDS STREAMER TRANSPARENCY. Netflix today debuted its first semi-annual report of hours of content viewed on the streaming site. Or as The Verge puts it: “Netflix reveals how many hours we spent watching The Night Agent and Queen Charlotte”.

Netflix is going to start publishing a new report twice a year that details the most popular shows and movies on the platform. The first report, released today, details the most-watched content from January to June 2023, and it’s perhaps the best look yet at how much people are actually watching Netflix’s gargantuan library of titles.

“What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report” will track three metrics: hours watched, whether a show is available globally, and a show’s release date. In this first report, the first season of The Night Agent tops the list with more than 812 million hours viewed, followed by Ginny & Georgia’s second season (665.1 million hours viewed), The Glory’s first season (622.8 million hours viewed), Wednesday’s first season (507.7 million hours viewed), and Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (503 million hours viewed). Those are only the top five; the full list contains more than 18,000 titles. (Content is included if it has been watched for more than 50,000 hours.)

(7) SUBSTACK’S NAZI PROBLEM. Max Gladstone, in “Substackers Against Nazis”, told readers:

I’m taking part in a collective action on Substack today. I did not help draft the letter below, but I agree with it. I’ve been planning to shift this newsletter off Substack for a while now, and this is one of the reasons why.

Gladstone signal-boosted a mass letter which begins:

Dear Chris, Hamish & Jairaj:

We’re asking a very simple question that has somehow been made complicated: Why are you platforming and monetizing Nazis? 

According to a piece written by Substack publisher Jonathan M. Katz and published by The Atlantic on November 28, this platform has a Nazi problem: 

“Some Substack newsletters by Nazis and white nationalists have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, making the platform a new and valuable tool for creating mailing lists for the far right. And many accept paid subscriptions through Substack, seemingly flouting terms of service that ban attempts to ‘publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes’…Substack, which takes a 10 percent cut of subscription revenue, makes money when readers pay for Nazi newsletters.”

As Patrick Casey, a leader of a now-defunct neo-Nazi group who is banned on nearly every other social platform except Substack, wrote on here in 2021: “I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling. The cause isn’t going anywhere.” Several Nazis and white supremacists including Richard Spencer not only have paid subscriptions turned on but have received Substack “Bestseller” badges, indicating that they are making at a minimum thousands of dollars a year….

Filer Robin Anne Reid also circulated the letter to her Substack readers.

(8) CHENGDU CATCHUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Two new articles published by Southern Weekly

On Wednesday 13th, Southern Weekly published two long articles following up from the Worldcon.

The first is titled ‘“They gave me comfort, and I risked my life to do something for them”: The birth of a Hugo-award winning science fiction fanzine’, and is an interview with Best Fanzine winner and Best Fan Writer finalist RiverFlow.  Extracts via Google Translate, with manual edits:

“In those two years, I was in so much pain that I couldn’t communicate with people normally, and I couldn’t take care of myself to a certain extent.  My daily spiritual support was to communicate with a group of science fiction fans on the Internet,” he said.  “They could give me some comfort. Even if I risk my life, I can do something for them.”  For a young man who is used to being self-isolated, these kindnesses and comforts from strangers are almost unbelievable…

He decided that he was not a “science fiction fan” in the strict sense, but a “fan of science fiction fans.”

So, he found another way to do something for his friends.  The idea of starting a fan magazine was mentioned by someone in the group, and it stirred something in his heart. He searched for public information about Chinese science fiction fans and found that there was almost no specialized research in the country.  “Why do the groups of science fiction fans who cared about me seem to have no part in the narrative of the entire history of Chinese science fiction and seem to have disappeared?”

In July 2020, the first issue of “Zero Gravity News” was released.  RiverFlow only took one day to typeset it in Word.  The issue was not detailed, just excerpting some science fiction news, group discussions, etc.  But the sci-fi fanzine had taken one small step.

RiverFlow also posted some comments on Weibo about the piece.

The second article is ‘A conversation with science fiction scholar San Feng: Why is science fiction fan culture important?’  Much of the article covers the history of the Worldcon, western SF fandom etc and seems to be aimed at a general audience, and so will be already familiar ground to File 770 readers.  Later on it moves onto SF in China, which will probably be of more interest.  (Again, this is via Google Translate with manual edits.)

Southern Weekly: Does the Chinese science fiction circle also have a similar structure [to SF in the West]?

San Feng: Our science fiction fan culture is relatively recent. According to our research, it was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that science fiction fans in the strict sense began to appear.

Liu Cixin said that he is the first generation of science fiction fans, including Han Song, Yao Haijun, etc. It can be understood that people born in the 1960s fell in love with science fiction in the early 1980s. At that time, Chinese science fiction did not have a distinct cultural identity of science fiction. Science fiction clubs or science fiction research societies were established in many places, but most of them were in a top-down manner. Many places wanted to organize people to write science fiction, so they set up science fiction research associations.

To truly build a science fiction fan community from the bottom up, I think the landmark event was Yao Haijun’s founding of the science fiction fan magazine “Nebula” in 1988 (note: some say it was 1986).  At that time, he was still working as a lumberjack in Yichun [in northeast China].  Because he liked science fiction, he used a mimeograph in his spare time to publish a science fiction fan magazine “Nebula”, which was shared with science fiction fans all over the country.  If you got in touch with him and sent a little money to him, maybe a few cents, he would send you a mimeographed magazine.

(Note: both of the above links are to mobile versions of the articles, and have subheadings stating that they will only be freely available for some unstated time period, before going behind a paywall.  There are desktop versions of those pages, but those have truncated content, requiring a login to see the full article.)

Three Worldcon reports

The following Chinese-language con reports all strike quite different tones from each other.  (All extracts via Google Translate, with manual cleanup edits.)

The first one is by Shen Yusi, and was posted on the Zero Gravity Weixin/WeChat account on November 15th.  This one is very positive about the event.

If Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award and let the world hear the strongest voice in Chinese science fiction, then in 2023 the World Science Fiction Convention held in Chengdu allows the world to truly see what the Chinese science fiction community looks like…

I had seen the aerial view of the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum on the official website, which is quite shocking. It looks like a huge piece of silver metal foil flying down by the lake. I once joked that I would never be able to witness this form of the venue with my naked eyes – after all, I can’t fly. From the ground, the venue looks like a huge alien aircraft, with a silver-white outer shell and mostly icy blue light inside. From an aesthetic point of view, this sci-fi feel is relatively avant-garde, rather than being something from the present day…

There were many young people and children at the event, which I had never thought about before.  Groups of primary school students visited this event under the guidance of their teachers.  There was also an award ceremony for the essay competition in an exhibition hall on the second floor.  I can’t do anything other than praise Chengdu’s education sector!  Maybe the next Liu Cixin will emerge from these children?

There were many college students on site, including booth staff and student media interviewing guests.  As a person who was very capable of making waves when they were in college, I can’t help but sigh and think that it’s great to be young! Many of these college students have not yet shed their youthfulness, and they are full of bookishness and strong idealism. After all, science is “fantastical”. If you don’t have a little bit of the second spirit, how can you have the ambition to conquer the stars and the sea?

The second report was posted to Zhihu – which I think usually gets compared to Western Q&A websites like Stack Overflow or Quora – by Chen Mengyu on November 6th.  This one is slightly more mixed; it seems like they enjoyed the more literary, fannish or creative activities, but were bored stiff by some of the more “corporate” events that they stumbled into.

At lunch, the sun was just right and the lake was like a mirror. I lay on a soft chair and had a bite of fried chicken and a Coke, feeling comfortable.

[A woman I’d met previously] invited her friends over, and there were more people.  Everyone had finished eating and wandered around chatting. While chatting, I felt that most of the people who like science fiction are middle-class people. There was also a man who flew over from Guangzhou to attend the conference.

I went to the Trisolaris [Three-Body Problem] fan meeting and found that there was a queue of two to three hundred meters. Haha, the last time I saw such a queue was at the National Museum. We gave up on queuing.

Soon we found an area where people were playing a creative game. We were divided into several groups, and given a common starting prompt, each group would start writing one sentence at a time, and at the end there was a vote for the group with the best writing…. My group won first place, and as a reward each person chose a book. I chose

[2021 novel] Tales from a Small Town, and I was very happy….

Then I went to the Shenzhen Science and Fantasy Growth Fund panel. My friends became bored, so instead they queued up for the The Three-Body Problem panel. I was the only one who stayed, and I have to admit that it was really boring… The top ten sci-fi cities in the country, as calculated by complex formulas, were announced in the panel: Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Xi’an, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan and Nanjing.  This looked familiar to me – the top ten cities ranked by GDP.  The list was exactly the same except that Xi’an is not in the top ten by GDP… Then I wrote down a piece of data and was shocked! Beijing and Chengdu have the highest density of science fiction writers, reaching a level of 27 science fiction writers per million people…

Because I drew a lottery ticket for the closing ceremony, I attended it on the next day, but there was nothing interesting in the closing ceremony… there were only two things worth  mentioning; one was the simultaneous interpretation, either English to Chinese or Chinese to English.  After choosing, if someone speaks English, the interpreter would translate it on the spot and read it out into the earphones, which I found very interesting.

[The other was that] next year’s science fiction convention was represented by Vincent in a kilt.  It is foreseeable that there will be many Scottish hunks in kilts at next year’s Worldcon.

(Attached images: chenmengyu[123].jpg)

The final report is a Weibo post from October 23rd, which to be honest is a bit of a snarky rant.  This isn’t completely unjustified, as the poster was unable to attend due to the rescheduling, despite living relatively close to Chengdu in a neighbouring province, nor did they have much success with the online component of the con, with both the livestreams and the Hugo voting failing for them.

Your science fiction conference this year is really terrible. I really can’t help but want to curse, but after thinking about it, I might as well forget it…

Since I couldn’t attend in person, I bought an online ticket.  However the website locked up, and I couldn’t get in to watch the live broadcast. They didn’t give me a refund. When I asked, they said it wasn’t allowed.

It’s 2023, and a “science fiction conference” that can’t even be broadcast online is awesome.

The Hugo Awards have always been voted for by members who spend money, and I have been a member for a long time.  I have been voting for the Hugo Awards in the past few years, but this year I was inexplicably unable to vote.  I really admire this organizer.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 14, 1916 — Shirley Jackson. (Died 1965.) I was surprised to learn how prolific she was — she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than two hundred short stories! 

Shirley Jackson in 1940.

Her first novel, The Bird’s Nest, she considered a mainstream work of fiction but the publisher didn’t and marketed it as the publishing house marketed it as a psychological horror story. She was right as it’s a woman with multiple personalities, not horror at all.

Her following novel, The Sundial, concerned a family of wealthy eccentrics who believe they have been chosen to survive the end of the world, and was definitely genre as there’s a ghostly presence. 

Jackson’s fifth novel, The Haunting of Hill House, Is one that we all know about it. It has been made into two feature films and a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series. It was done as The Haunting in 1963, and then as, errr, The Haunting thirty-six years later. The latter is not faithful to the novel as it is (SPOILER ALERT) an explicit fantasy horror film in which all the main characters are terrorized and two are killed as explicitly supernatural deaths (END SPOILER). 

Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill is the first authorized novel set in the world of Hill House. The novel takes place decades after the events of The Haunting of Hill House, as a group of theater professionals rent Hill House to workshop a new play. Lis is reviewing it for us. 

The same year she wrote The Bad Children, a one-act children’s musical based on the “Hansel and Gretel” tale. She wrote the book and lyrics with the music being by Allan Jay Friedman.

I’d talk about “The Lottery” short story but I’ve honestly never figured out the appeal of that frankly abhorrent story, so I won’t. If you won’t to, go ahead. Now “The Missing Girl” short story first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in their December 1957 issue is a chilling work of horror well worth you reading.

It’s available in a collection comprising fifty four stories of the hundred and four that she did called Just an Ordinary Day. Remarkably it’s a Meredith Moment I’d say at just $7.99! 

Though in extremely poor health, she produced two final works of note. The first being We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a Gothic mystery novel. Time magazine noted it as one of the Ten Best Novels of 1962.

The following year, she published Nine Magic Wishes, an illustrated children’s novel about a child who encounters a magician who grants him numerous enchanting wishes.

At just one forty-eight years of age, her heart failed, according to both of her biographers, due to a combination of heavy smoking, alcoholism and extreme dependence on pain killers prescribed by physicians who didn’t know better at the time. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Frazz is for those of us who like big words.
  • Shoe goes well with Frazz.

(11) I SEE NONEXISTENT PEOPLE. “Imaginary Friends ARE Real in ‘IF’ Teaser Trailer” – Animation News Network explains how it works.

…Ask yourself the question, “What if all your imaginary friends were real?” And what if your superpower was you could see them all? Then your life would look a lot like the story of IF, John Krasinski’s upcoming comedy adventure about a girl who discovers that she can see everyone’s imaginary friends and the magical adventure she embarks upon to reconnect forgotten ‘IFs’ with their kids….

(12) MR. ROBOT NOW HAS A UNIVERSE. GQ tells readers, “Confirmed: ‘Leave the World Behind’ Takes Place in the ‘Mr. Robot’ Extended Universe”.

Leave the World Behind, Sam Esmail’s first feature film since the success of his tech-thriller series Mr. Robot, deals with themes similar to those of his acclaimed USA Network show. But the connections may not stop there. As one keen-eyed Reddit user noted, the film references a hacking in the tri-state area that nearly led to a catastrophic meltdown at a nuclear power plant. This seems to clearly be a nod to the 11th episode of Season 4, “eXit,” in which Rami Malek’s Elliot nearly hacks a nuclear plant, with catastrophic potential damage….

(13) FIRST, LET’S IGNORE ALL THE LAWYERS. As usual, people aren’t interested in legal advice that would keep them from doing what they’ve already decided to do: “Meta used copyrighted books for AI training despite its own lawyers’ warnings, authors allege” – Reuters has the story.

…Meta Platforms’ (META.O) lawyers had warned it about the legal perils of using thousands of pirated books to train its AI models, but the company did it anyway, according to a new filing in a copyright infringement lawsuit initially brought this summer.

The new filing late on Monday night consolidates two lawsuits brought against the Facebook and Instagram owner by comedian Sarah Silverman, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon and other prominent authors, who allege that Meta has used their works without permission to train its artificial-intelligence language model, Llama.

… In the chat logs quoted in the complaint, researcher Tim Dettmers describes his back-and-forth with Meta’s legal department over whether use of the book files as training data would be “legally ok.”

“At Facebook, there are a lot of people interested in working with (T)he (P)ile, including myself, but in its current form, we are unable to use it for legal reasons,” Dettmers wrote in 2021, referring to a dataset Meta has acknowledged using to train its first version of Llama, according to the complaint.

The month prior, Dettmers wrote that Meta’s lawyers had told him “the data cannot be used or models cannot be published if they are trained on that data,” the complaint said….

(14) SOUNDS LIKE THE NEEDLE IS STUCK. “NASA working to solve Voyager 1 computer glitch from billions of miles away” reports CNN.

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a computer glitch that’s causing a bit of a communication breakdown between the 46-year-old probe and its mission team on Earth.

Engineers are currently trying to solve the issue as the aging spacecraft explores uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system.

Voyager 1 is currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, while its twin Voyager 2 has traveled more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from our planet. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Voyager 1 has three onboard computers, including a flight data system that collects information from the spacecraft’s science instruments and bundles it with engineering data that reflects the current health status of Voyager 1. Mission control on Earth receives that data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeroes.

But Voyager 1’s flight data system now appears to be stuck on auto-repeat, in a scenario reminiscent of the film “Groundhog Day.”

A long-distance glitch

The mission team first noticed the issue November 14, when the flight data system’s telecommunications unit began sending back a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes, like it was trapped in a loop.

While the spacecraft can still receive and carry out commands transmitted from the mission team, a problem with that telecommunications unit means no science or engineering data from Voyager 1 is being returned to Earth.

The Voyager team sent commands over the weekend for the spacecraft to restart the flight data system, but no usable data has come back yet, according to NASA….

(15) IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE LIVED…OUR ANCESTORS. IndieWire sets the frame for “’Out of Darkness’ Trailer: A Stone Age Survival Horror Story”.

Set during the Stone Age, the horror film “Out of Darkness” brings a modern twist to the survival story.

The film, which marks both director Andrew Cumming and screenwriter Ruth Greenberg’s respective feature debuts, centers on a teenager (Safia Oakley-Green) who must survive immigrating across the sea and into a foreign land that may or may not house monsters.

The official synopsis for the indie horror film reads: “A group of six have struggled across the narrow sea to find a new home. They are starving, desperate, and living 45,000 years ago. First they must find shelter, and they strike out across the tundra wastes towards the distant mountains that promise the abundant caves they need to survive. But when night falls, anticipation turns to fear and doubt as they realize they are not alone. Terrifying sounds suggest something monstrous at large in this landscape, something that could kill or steal them away. As relationships in the group fracture, the determination of one young woman reveals the terrible actions taken to survive.”…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Joel Zakem.] Loontown is a nearly 18-minute animated noir set in a city reminiscent of Los Angeles, whose denizens are talking balloons, gasbags and others of their ilk. It was written by World Fantasy Award winning author Lavie Tidhar and directed, animated and scored by Nir Yaniv, who had previously collaborated with Tidhar on the 2009 novel The Tel Aviv Dossier. Loontown can currently be viewed on YouTube.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Ersatz Culture, Joel Zakem, Kathy Sullivan, Soon Lee, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day JJ.]