Tag Archives: Nikki High

Pixel Scroll 4/22/25 Four Worldcons And A Funeral For The Eyes Of Fire

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(1) TRIMMED FROM THE HUGOS. Nicholas Whyte has done a study of Hugo disqualifications and withdrawals in “Booted from the Ballot: the almost-finalists in the Hugo Awards” at From the Heart of Europe. Charts and graphs! Voter turnout analysis! A truly deep dive.

In the brief downtime between announcing the Hugo final ballot, and getting voting under way (which will be Real Soon Now), I reflected that the two disqualifications and two withdrawals from the ballot this year seemed rather low by recent standards. So I looked into the records, and found indeed that of the seven years that I have been involved with running the Hugos, only one had fewer such cases – two were disqualified, and one declined, in 2021…

(2) SCIENCE FICTIONAL BLOSSOMS. “It’s Springtime on Polaris-9b, and the Exoflowers Are Blooming”. The New York Times article is behind a paywall. However, artist Vincent Fournier’s website has a gallery of images – “Flora Incognita”.

Imagine setting out for a springtime stroll. Not here on Earth but on some distant planet — call it Novathis-458b — orbiting a distant star. Even light-years from home, you recognize some familiar pleasures: The sun (albeit a different sun) is shining. The roses are in bloom. A breeze is blowing.

But these are no ordinary roses, and it is no everyday breeze. The wind clocks in at more than 15,000 miles per hour, and the flowers, Rosa aetherialis, have evolved to harness it. Their strong pink petals curl around a spiral interior that holds the plant’s reproductive organs. The spiral shape directs the supersonic wind through the center of the flower to flush out its pollen and carry it across the planet.

If roses had evolved in a place like Novathis-458b — an imaginary place, but one that bears certain similarities to real exoplanets — this is what they might look like, Vincent Fournier, a French artist and photographer, posits in his otherworldly project, Flora Incognita, which will be on display this week at the Association of International Photography Art Dealers show in New York….

(3) KAIJU IN THE HEARTLAND. [Item by Sean Mead.] Bloomington has declared June 27th as Godzilla Day to celebrate a screening of the 1954 film. “Mayor Thomson declares Godzilla Day for rare film screening” reports Indiana Public Media.

Godzilla is perhaps best known for destroying cities, but an Indiana city will celebrate him this summer. 

Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson proclaimed June 27 as the first ever Godzilla Day. 

In her proclamation last Tuesday, Thomson said the city wants to honor the original, uncut 1954 Toho Studios film screening at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater that evening….

… The original cut of the Godzilla film that will be shown at the Buskirk sat in storage for over 50 years before the studio re-released it in 2006. 

The version of Godzilla familiar to most Americans was recut by distributors for American audiences. They removed 20 minutes of footage and much of the soundtrack, in addition to inserting new sequences featuring an American reporter as the main character. 

“It’s a little bit more gritty, and it really talks about the realities of what had happened during the war and the atomic bombing,” Bredlau said about the original. “So much of that was sanitized for the Americans. It really took away a lot of the responsibility and heaviness of what happened in the war.”  …

(4) MORE ON WILLY LEY. Andrew Porter sent along some of the comments left on the New York Times article  “Willy Ley Was a Prophet of Space Travel. His Ashes Were Found in a Basement” linked in yesterday’s Scroll. (Link bypasses paywall.) Here are several excerpts, the first two from well-known sff writers.

Prof. John G. Cramer, Seattle, WA

When I was a teenager, Willy Ley wrote a regular science column in Astounding Science Fiction magazine. (It’s now called Analog, and now I write a regular science column in it.) I was a teenage physics experimenter, and I managed to wind a magnet solenoidal coil that had the shape of a Moebius Strip, a peculiar topological cylinder that has only one edge instead of two. I thought it should do something interesting, but it didn’t seem to do so. I took a picture of it and sent it to Willy Ley at Astounding, asking why it didn’t have one magnetic pole instead of two, since it only had only one edge. To my amazement, he replied with a long letter, exposing me for the first time to the ideas behind Maxwell’s Equations and explaining why my weird coil had to have two magnetic poles. Willy, I owe you a lot, and I miss you.

Al Sirois, NC

Willy Ley was a great but humble man, a far-sighted visionary who fled the Nazis. In NY he helped design and build the first interstate mail rocket, liquid fueled. You can see Pathe newsreel footage of the flight on YouTube. I built model kits of his spaceship designs when I was a kid. I interviewed his widow for a novel I later wrote about Willy and his work and his clash with Nazi spies (speculative, that last bit).

Michael Patlin, Thousand Oaks CA

My parents got to know Ley through their friends Fletcher Pratt and Sprague de Camp . Both Sci-Fi writers and space enthusiasts. Pratt was the founder of the “ Trap Door Spiders” , a literary group in NYC in the 40s and 50s amongst other endeavors .

Andrew Porter, Brooklyn Heights

In the second half of the 20th Century, Willy Ley was the go-to person for informed commentary on astronautics and space travel. Living in NYC, he was a frequent guest at science fiction conventions (where I was privileged to hear him speak), as well as being author of many authoritative books on the field. I have shared the link to this widely with the science fiction community, both to individuals and to various news sites. Hopefully we can quickly raise money to send the ashes into space.

(5) RESISTANCE AND COLLABORATION. Gita Jackson’s New York Times opinion piece says “Watching ‘Andor’ Is No Substitute for Actual Resistance”. (Link bypasses paywall.) Chris Barkley, whose own pre-review of Andor Season 2 posted today, sent the item with the comment, “I disagree with her view of Andor as a ‘feel good about ourselves” show…”

… The series’ ability to capture a radical ideology has been the source of much of the show’s critical praise. I found that seeing my own anticapitalist, anti-empire ideals reflected back to me in this show was affirming, as well as inspiring. But it also made me feel conflicted. After the creator of “Star Wars,” George Lucas, sold his production company to Disney in 2012, the series became part of Disney’s larger economic ecosystem. The company’s existing “intellectual property” — for it is always property, not art — becomes commerce: spinoffs, merchandise, theme park rides. Even the great revolutionary Cassian Andor is available for purchase as a part of “Star Tours — The Adventures Continue” at Disney World….

… I worry that for many people the consumption of this television show feels pacifying, as if watching it is a replacement for joining a protest, their fandom for the rebel alliance a stand-in for their politics in the real world. Disney wants to provide every product to you, even the language of your rebellion against Disney. What’s the point of feeling affirmed if the ultimate goal of Disney is to get you to spend more money on its brands?…

(6) HUNTINGTON HOSTS PANEL ABOUT OCTAVIA BUTLER. The Huntington in San Marino, CA celebrated Founders’ Day with a program about “Octavia E. Butler’s Seeds of Change”. Moderator Monique L. Thomas was joined by panelists Tamisha A. Tyler, John Williams, and Nikki High.

This year’s program, “Sowing Community: Living with Octavia E. Butler’s Parables,” featured a special guest panel of scholars and local leaders discussing themes of resilience, community, and social change in two acclaimed works by science fiction writer and Pasadena native Octavia E. Butler. The Huntington is the home of Butler’s archive, which has been the most frequently accessed collection in the Library for the past nine years. …

… For Nikki High, a former communications executive who opened the Pasadena bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf in 2023, this inclusion altered her life’s course. “Reading books by Octavia Butler really did change what I expected out of sci-fi stories,” High said. “I had never really seen myself represented in those stories. … I just wanted to know, ‘Hey, where are the Black and brown people 100 years from now? What did they do to us?’ And [Butler] just made sure that she wrote us in.” …

…There was agreement among the panelists that change as represented in the books—whether the collapse of society, ecological catastrophe, or a sudden resurgence of nationalism—was a power to be shaped more than feared, especially through collective effort. Tyler spoke persuasively about Butler’s reframing of change—a seemingly determinative force in our lives that is, on the contrary, capable of being harnessed and redirected.

“One thing that I think Butler does beautifully is she restores our agency back to us, because she says, ‘All that you touch, you change,’” Tyler said. “And she gives us tools. She says, ‘Kindness eases change.’ She says, ‘Partnership is life.’”

High stressed the importance of partnership as an act of community-building, comparing it to the development of speculative worlds that is the essence of science fiction. “What literature does, and [Butler’s] sci-fi specifically, is it allows the writer to create a world, and create alternatives in this world, so that you can actually see what [social] equity might look like,” she said. “Hopefully, as you’re metabolizing this new world … you will start to ask yourself some questions about your role in world-building and to see every single decision you make as contributing to the world that you’re living in.”

Lessons From Recent Wildfires

The discussion turned to real-world examples of change and resilience, particularly the community response to the Eaton Fire that devastated Altadena—a disaster that disproportionately affected Black residents and Black creative culture.

“When you’re watching the world … burn right before your eyes, you’re forced to change,” High said. The fires dramatically altered her daily life. “But look at this change that we created. This community … was in crisis. We all came together. Everybody who was in these little, tiny circles suddenly started to open them and embrace each other.” …

(7) AI CREEP. “Oscars OK the Use of A.I., With Caveats” reports the New York Times (behind a paywall).  

The Oscar gods embraced A.I. on Monday.

Sort of.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said in a statement that it had updated its plethora of rules for voting and campaigning. Going forward, for instance, members must now watch all nominated films in each category before they can vote in the final round. (How will that be policed? It won’t. Voters will need to confirm on ballots that they have watched each film, but they could still lie.)

But one update stood out: For the first time, the academy addressed the use of generative artificial intelligence, a technology sweeping into the film capital yet hugely divisive in the industry’s creative ranks.

A.I. and other digital tools “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination,” the Oscar rules now state. The academy added, however, that the more a human played a role in a film’s creation, the better. (“The academy and each branch will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award.”)

The academy had been considering whether to change its submission process to make it mandatory that A.I. use be disclosed. But it decided not to go that far.

Simply acknowledging A.I.’s creep into moviemaking is a big deal for the academy. Unions for writers and actors made protections against the technology a prominent part of recent contract negotiations. A.I. was hotly debated in Hollywood and among fans in the lead-up to the Oscars in February, after it became known that “The Brutalist,” an immigrant epic nominated for 10 statuettes, used the technology to enhance Hungarian accents. Some people defended the filmmakers, while others decried the use of A.I. as unethical.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 22, 1992 — Quantum Leap’s “The Curse of Ptah-Hotep”

Razul: You are a student of Egypt, but you are not one of its sons. And until you have heard what I have heard and seen what I have seen, I would not expect you to believe that such a thing as a curse could be true, but it is. 

Sam: 3500-year-old dead men don’t just get up and walk around.

Thirty-three years ago this evening, Quantum Leap’s “The Curse of Ptah-Hotep” first aired on NBC. 

In 1957, Sam leaps into the body of Dale Conway, an American archaeologist at a dig in Egypt just as he and his partner Ginny Will discover the tomb of Ptah-Hotep. A sand storm traps them deep in the tomb’s inner chambers.

You think that they made up this particular Egypt royal person but no, he was quite real. Ptahhotep, sometimes known as Ptahhotep I or Ptahhotpe, was an ancient Egyptian vizier during the late 25th century BC and early 24th century BC Fifth Dynasty of Egypt.

The curse that forms the story here was evidently a real one that affected a number of archeological digs undertaken here.  And it is worth definitely worth noting that Sam, throughout the entire series, thoroughly disbelieves in the supernatural, except for the force has him leaping around and that could be or not be science. He frequently tells Al not to be superstitious about anything. But here he certainly seems to take the resurrected mummies in this episode as a given. 

The series won’t resolve whether science or something else is responsible for what’s happening to him.

It is, surprisingly, not streaming anywhere despite NBC being the network that broadcast and it being on Peacock rather recently. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) COMIXOLOGY, KINDLE UNLIMITED, 3-MONTH $0.99 SALES. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Via various sources I trust, e.g.

Amazon’s ComiXology and Kindle Unlimited will be on sale, 3-months @$0.99/month, as part of the Amazon Book Sale, April 23-28, 2025.

I subscribed to ComiXology for a few months, years ago (prior to, IIRC, its acquisition by Amazon), e-gulping down vast quantities of e-comics, but, based on periodic perusals, haven’t felt inclined to re-indulge at full price… DC and Marvel e-subs, combined with Hoopla and Libby library e-borrows (e.g., re-re-reading Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon), e-scratch that e-itch pretty well… but at this price, I’ll be re-indulging for three months.

(11) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Mental Floss rates “The 10 States Most Likely to Survive an Alien Invasion”.

… Researchers from the online calculator website GIGAcalculator determined the states most likely to survive the hypothetical event. They considered factors like terrain (e.g., percentage of area covered by forests and water and number of caves), population density, and essential personnel (for example, active and inactive military workers, law enforcement officers, and engineers) per 1000 people. The website then calculated a score for each state based on these data points and ranked them to see which U.S. state has the highest chance of enduring an alien invasion. You can view the full dataset here…

… Virginia has the highest likelihood of survival, with a score of 8.06 out of 10….

Nevada has the worst rating – maybe that’s why Las Vegas was targeted in Mars Attacks?

(12) I’LL BE DAMMED. “Behold! The World’s Largest Beaver Dam” – Mental Floss has pictures.

In 2007, an ecologist named Jean Thie was scanning the Alberta wilderness with Google Earth in an effort to study permafrost thaw in the Canadian wild. But then something unusual appeared on his screen: A beaver dam so huge, it was more than twice the length of the Hoover Dam.

Located in Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta, Canada, the world’s largest beaver dam is at least 2790 feet long. It likely contains thousands of trees and appears to have required the handiwork of at least two beaver families. It’s believed the beavers began the construction project up to three decades ago.

While it’s an impressive feat of animal engineering, the dam is not very scenic. “The hodgepodge of mud, branches, stones, and twigs is cloaked in a layer of grass, meaning it’s been there for a while,” Atlas Obscura reports. “The dam stretches across a remote wetland area, which provides the creatures with both plenty of fresh water and bountiful building materials.”

In fact, the dam is located in such an inhospitable area of Canadian swampland that it isn’t known to have been visited by humans until 2014, when Rob Mark, a member of the Explorers Club in New York City, made the trek. He began his journey in Fort Chipewyan, more than 120 miles away, and it took him five hours to cover the final mile (the ground was that boggy). “It was the only hard ground around for miles so I was happy to stand on it,” he said about reaching the dam….

(13) TRAILER PARK. “Rick and Morty gets a psychedelic season 8 trailer that declares it ‘the best high concept sci-fi rigamarole in the universe’” says GamesRadar+.

… In its own weird way, Rick and Morty is indeed the culmination of decades of pop culture, taking its cues from some of the most complex sci-fi stories around, combined with a uniquely cynical take on the classic trope of a boy and his old man scientist pal.

With Rick and Morty season eight now looming with a May 25 release date, fans won’t have to wait much longer to find out about all the trailer’s weird alt-reality versions of Rick and its many alien worlds, hopefully with some absurd (and salty) comedy along the way….

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

Pixel Scroll 1/24/25 This Starship Is Bound For Glory, Every Pixel On Her Must Be Scrolly

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(1) THE SHELVES LOOK DIFFERENT THIS WEEK. The Guardian interviews Octavia’s Bookshelf owner Nikki High about how she’s aided her community during the Eaton Fire: “It was a town’s only Black-owned bookstore. It is now a refuge for those displaced by the California fires”.

… That night, the flames ravaged her neighborhood. “There’s about maybe seven or eight homes left on our street, including ours,” she says. The following day, she drove to Octavia’s Bookshelf to see if it was damaged. Although winds blew dirt into the store, her business was otherwise in the clear. In fact, her store still had power and wifi. An idea struck her: perhaps others in the community needed to get online.

“I wrote up something real quick on Instagram,” High says. “I just said, ‘Hey, I have wifi and power. If you need to come here to get online, I’ll be here all day.’” That small act of outreach became the catalyst for something much larger.

As people trickled into the store, they began asking for basic necessities. “Do you have any water?” one person asked. High turned back to Instagram, posting a call for water donations, which she received, plus more. By the end of the day, the bookstore had transformed into a full-fledged relief center.

“We packed up all of our books off the shelves and put them in the attic,” High explains. The books were replaced by the items people gave to victims of the fire. The donations poured in from as far away as Portland, filling the store with supplies like toothpaste, diapers, cat food and water. Volunteers from the community, including loyal customers, stepped in to help organize and distribute the items.

For those who came seeking aid, the store became a place of connection and solace. High remembers one customer who came in for diapers and wipes. “She told me she had donated to our original GoFundMe when we opened. She said, ‘I never thought in a million years I’d be coming here to get supplies after losing my home.’”…

(2) WHEN BUY BY ALMOST WENT BYE-BYE. “Bloomsbury UK Reaches Last-Minute Contract Agreement With Amazon” reports Publishers Weekly.

Charging that Bloomsbury UK failed to engage in good faith to reach a new contract agreement, Amazon posted a notice on its UK website late Thursday afternoon that as of midnight January 24, Bloomsbury UK print titles would no longer be available directly from its online stores in the U.K., Europe, and Australia. That takedown was averted, however, when the two parties reached an agreement in principle on a new contract 90 minutes before the last one expired.

In the initial announcement, Amazon stressed that Bloomsbury print book availability in Amazon’s U.S. store would have been unaffected by the action, but that its Bloomsbury’s Kindle editions would not be available for sale worldwide. According to the post, Bloomsbury UK’s agreement with Amazon expired last year, and the e-tailer had extended the deal for about seven months in hopes of reaching a new agreement.

The last extension ended at midnight on Jan. 24, and if no new contract had been signed by then, Amazon would have begun to pull its “buy buttons” from impacted countries. Customers would still be able to buy Bloomsbury titles from third-party sellers who use Amazon’s services. In practical terms, the dispute meant that, for example, Sarah J. Maas titles that are published by Bloomsbury UK would not have been available in affected stores, while Maas titles released by Bloomsbury’s U.S. subsidiary will still be available in the American Amazon store….

(3) WE HAVE HEARD THE CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. “Thousands of romantasy fans make midnight dates with new Rebecca Yarros novel” and the Guardian cheers them on.

Rebecca Yarros couldn’t sell her first novel. No publisher would take it. But this week, 14 years later, legions of her devoted readers turned up to more than a thousand midnight-release parties held to celebrate the publication of her latest book.

In the UK alone, more than 180,000 copies of Onyx Storm, the third instalment of Yarros’s blockbuster Empyrean series, sold on day one of publication on Tuesday. Nearly 60 Waterstones branches held late-night parties or opened early on Tuesday morning to mark the occasion. And after some TikTok users posted videos showing that they had managed to buy the book in Asda ahead of its official release, other fans filmed themselves scouring their local branches trying to get their hands on early copies too.Along with Sarah J Maas, Yarros is at the forefront of the romantasy genre, writing stories that combine elements of fantasy and romance. The first two books of the Empyrean series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, follow 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail as she makes her way through dragon-rider training at Basgiath War College. Her enemies-to-lovers romance with Xaden Riorson is central to the story, and in the third instalment, her mission is to save him….

(4) KERFUFFLE IN BLAKE’S 7 FANDOM. Lena Barkin dives deep into “The War That Almost Broke a Classic Fandom” at Fansplaining — Blake’s 7 fandom to be precise.

…Media cons were new and fundamentally different because of screen divide. Literary fans were used to writers being fandom participants at cons—and assumed that’s why actors went, too. One Blake’s 7 fan postulated, “Isaac Asimov and Andre Norton go to cons because they love Science Fiction… These people, and many like them, do not charge fees for attending cons… Mostly they go for many of the same reasons we all have … to get feedback on their work; to have a chance to get on a podium and panel and sound off on favorite issues; to browse in the dealers’ room and art show; to discuss elements of SF into the wee hours; to party!” 

While fans could only speculate on the true motivations of the actors, the behaviors described were observed and accepted as standard. It’s also true that many successful sci-fi writers had risen up through the community, supporting this fan’s assertion that these writers “are a part of science fiction.” Science fiction literary fandom was like a really devoted writer’s group where successful writers could give back to the community that helped form them. 

But the entertainment industry had long had different ideas about the roles of its stars. From the beginning of Hollywood, female fans were instructed on how to idolize actors. In her book Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity, Samantha Barras posits that, “just as fans sometimes controlled Hollywood, Hollywood also controlled fans.” By redirecting ‘movie-struck’ girls from aspiration to emulation, Hollywood told fans how they could dress like the stars and collect autographs, but weren’t allowed to be stars. The divide between actor and fan had to be strict in order to maintain control of persona and image….

I was struck by the effort here to contrast media cons with the fandom of written science fiction in the Eighties. Barkin uncritically embraces the latter’s (written sf fandom’s) view of itself despite that being a wild oversimplification. Which I know because in the late Eighties that was the myth I believed until I had the experience of setting up the program for NolaCon II (1988) and talked to a bunch of writers who did not feel connected to fandom in that way, who were only entertaining the idea of attending the con because their agent urged them to for business reasons. Asimov’s and Norton’s and some others’ connection with fans was merely part of a wide spectrum of writers’ attitudes towards fandom.

(5) CARD SHARKS. But you don’t need to reach any farther back in time than a week ago if you’re looking for a fan kerfuffle. And there’s video of this one. “Fight breaks out over Pokémon cards at a Los Angeles Costco” reports the LA Times (behind a paywall).

A fight broke out at a Costco store in Los Angeles over Pokémon cards, according to a video circulating on social media.

The fight was captured at the Atwater Village Costco on Jan. 16, according to a video posted on X by DisguisedToast.

Wild footage captured shoppers at the Atwater Village Costco in Los Angeles fighting over large quantities of the coveted Pokémon cards on Jan. 16.

Two men fought over a Pokémon box set, with one of them elbowing the other in the face.

“Get the f— off of me bro,” one of the men said.

Police weren’t called to the scene and aren’t investigating the brawl, Los Angeles Police Department officials said….

(6) 31 FLAVOR. LA Times critic Robert Lloyd says it’s a matter of taste in “’Star Trek: Section 31 review: A diverting but frustrating first TV film” (behind a paywall).

… Originally conceived as a spinoff series from “Star Trek: Discovery” to star Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou, an agent of Starfleet’s secret black ops arm, the project was downgraded or promoted to a “feature,” officially the 14th in the “Star Trek” canon, and the franchise’s first “TV movie.” Even though this decision apparently preceded production, most everything about “Section 31” says “pilot episode,” as if whatever ideas informed the aborted series were still driving the starship, as characters are positioned for episodes yet to come — as if the film did not want to let go of the possibility of being a TV show…

… The backstory, which will drive the later plot, is meant to make her character tragic, but we came to know her well enough during her time on the starship Discovery, living among nice people, which had softened her considerably. She was practically lovable by the time she walked into that portal.

Perhaps you will be surprised, then, to find Georgiou sliding back into what looks like narcissism, running her version of Rick’s Cafe Américain in the borderlands outside Federation Space back in the 23rd century, using the alias Madame du Franc (and speaking a little French). Introductory narration, as at the start of a “Mission: Impossible” episode — an acknowledged inspiration — tells us that after her return from the 32nd century to 2257 she joined Section 31 for a time and then went missing. How this lines up with Georgiou having already been introduced as an agent of Section 31 in the second season of “Discovery,” which is to say, the agency she’s going back into the past to join, I’m not at all sure. Time travel will break your brain if you let it….

(7) CHILDREN OF THE SURVIVORS. Rich Horton introduces us to a new novel by a well-known fan: “Review: In Memoriam: A Novel of the Terran Diaspora, by Fred Lerner”

…It’s narrated by David Bernstein. As the novel opens, he’s finishing his final year of school before going to college. And he’s attending a performance staged by the alien race that is native to the planet on which he lives. We learn quickly that these aliens, the Wyneri, rescued the survivors of the Cataclysm, which wiped out humanity on Earth, a couple of centuries prior to this story. The couple of thousand who were rescued have been fruitful enough that the human population is about 30,000 — living in small chapters embedded among the Wyneri. The humans have been gifted one island, on which they have built a University, and to which they go once each year for the Ingathering. And this Remnant, as they style themselves, devote themselves to preserving as much knowledge of Terran history and culture as they can….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 24, 1911 — C. L. Moore. (Died 1987.)

By Paul Weimer: A giant of the 1930’s and 1940’s science fiction and fantasy, I came across C L Moore’s work thanks to Heinlein.  It was the early 1980’s and I read Number of the Beast (which weirdly was one of the first Heinlein books I read, which might explain some things about me…). Anyway, early on in the book, Deity offers her collection of pulp magazines to Zeb…and mentions Moore and her characters Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith by name. Young brain went “Who are THEY?” (I did that a lot with Heinlein, it’s how I discovered artists like Maxwell Parrish and Rodin.)  I found Jirel of Joiry in a collection of the protagonist’s stories. Northwest Smith came, later, in a variety of anthologies of early science fiction. 

And I was off and running. Passionate, cerebral and very strongly defined characters in often amazing environments were what I associated with Moore’s work. Sure, a pulp writer, but Moore’s work was uplifted by the interior lives of her characters (consider the agony and the conflict inside of Jirel’s heart, just as one example of her writing at work).

C. L. Moore

When Moore met and started collaborating with Henry Kuttner, figuring out what pieces were hers, what was his and what were collaborations becomes a morass to untangle. I highly enjoy those stories, but they are really “all” collaborations in my mind. 

My favorite Moore works are two of her collaborations with her husband, and they are much more contemporary in her science fiction. “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” I had had the good luck to have read after reading Carroll, so I got the references and allusions immediately, and understood the weird time traveling nature of the futuristic kit and what it did to the child protagonists–and what it almost did decades earlier. It was a “whoa” moment of the power of not time travel of people, but of objects that affect history and people, and literature.

The other story is “Vintage Season”, and it is one of the dagger-to-the-heart endings and the sheer indifference that time travelers can have to the problems of people they visit in the past. When ST: TNG had a protagonist who purported to be from the future act like he was one of the “Vintage Season” time travelers, something clicked and I understood both the original story and the episode much better.  I also recently recounted the bit that the time travelers were off next to see Charlemagne in the year 800 to a medievalist friend of mine who is SF adjacent. He was much amused by the idea.

What a talent, in singular and in combination with Kuttner!

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) PAYING THEIR RESPECTS. Los Angeles Magazine takes us “Inside the David Lynch Shrine at Bob’s Big Boy”.

Shortly after the family of filmmaker David Lynch announced his death last Thursday morning, fans began gathering at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank. Hundreds of them left something behind as a huge shrine to the visionary behind Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive took shape at the feet of the Big Boy statue on Riverside Drive.

As the tributes continued to pour in, the installation was being disassembled Wednesday afternoon by archivist and historian Kat Fox, who wrote her UCLA thesis on roadside shrines and spontaneous memorializations. Fox has previously studied temporary monuments to people lost from COVID, AIDS and 9/11. “Lynch doesn’t have a star on the Walk of Fame which is where these often crop up,” Fox said. “I’m very interested in the way L.A. chooses to memorialize and the way the community comes together in a place like Bob’s that has larger connections to the movie and TV industry,” she said. “It’s a cultural cornerstone and part of David Lynch lore.”

The landmark restaurant was a longtime favorite of the acclaimed director, who had a fondness for the lost world of 1950s Americana, and where he wrote and found inspiration. “I went there every day for seven years,” the director remarked after a film screening. “I would write on the napkins. It was like having a desk. You need paper and there’s a piece of paper and you write on it when you get ideas.”…

… Original drawings and paintings, poetry, and personal letters were mixed in with stuffed logs, real logs, donuts, Cheetos and keys to the hotel where special agent Dale Cooper stayed in Twin Peaks. “There’s half-drunk coffee and half-smoked cigarettes,” Fox said. “It’s like they’re sharing it with him.” An estimated 400 cigarettes, 45 cups of coffee, and dozens of donuts and pie slices were accessioned, documented and photographed before finding their way to the Dumpster….

Reflecting on what we’ve lost today.

— Schooley (@schooley.bsky.social) 2025-01-20T18:12:20.666Z

(11) DID DEFERENTIAL EPISTEMOLOGY LEAVE WITH THE ENTWIVES? [Item by Steven French.] In this Physics World essay, historian of physics and philosopher Robert P Crease argues that the best way to counter misinformation is to be even more melodramatic: “Why telling bigger stories is the only way to counter misinformation”.

If aliens came to Earth and tried to work out how we earthlings make sense of our world, they’d surely conclude that we take information and slot it into pre-existing stories – some true, some false, some bizarre. Ominously, these aliens would be correct. You don’t need to ask earthling philosophers, just look around….

…Humans gain a sense of what’s happening in several ways. Three of them, to use philosophical language, are deferential, civic and melodramatic epistemology.

In “deferential epistemology”, citizens habitually take the word of experts and institutions about things like the dangers of x picocuries and exposures of y millirems. In his 1624 book New Atlantis, the philosopher Francis Bacon famously crafted a fictional portrait of an island society where deferential epistemology rules and people instinctively trust the scientific infrastructure.

We may think this is how people ought to behave. But Bacon, who was also a politician, understood that deference to experts is not automatic and requires constantly curating the public face of the scientific infrastructure. Earthlings haven’t seen deferential epistemology in a while.

“Civic epistemology”, meanwhile, is how people acquire knowledge in the absence of that curation. Such people don’t necessarily reject experts but hear their voices alongside many others claiming to know best how to pursue our interests and values. Civic epistemology is when we negotiate daily life not by first consulting scientists but by pursuing our concerns with a mix of habit, trust, experience and friendly advice.

We sometimes don’t, in fact, take scientific advice when it collides with how we already behave; we may smoke or drink, for instance, despite warnings not to. Or we might seek guidance from non-scientists about things like the harms of radiation.

Finally, what I call “melodramatic epistemology” draws on the word “melodrama”, a genre of theatre involving extreme plots, obvious villains, emotional appeal, sensational language, and moral outrage (the 1939 film Gone with the Wind comes to mind)….

(12) VIDEO GAME BUSINESS. The Guardian asks “Can Assassin’s Creed Shadows save Ubisoft?”

It’s no secret that the video game industry is struggling. The last two years have seen more than 25,000 redundancies and more than 40 studio closures. Thanks to game development’s spiralling costs (blockbuster titles now cost hundreds of millions to make), overinvestment during the Covid-19 pandemic, and a series of failed bets to create the next money-printing “forever game”, the pressure for blockbuster games to succeed is now higher than ever.

It’s a predicament that feels especially pertinent for Ubisoft. Employing in the region of 20,000 people across 45 studios in 30 countries, its most recent big licensed games Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws underperformed commercially. It has had two expensive, failed live-service experiments in the past year, Skull and Bones and X-Defiant. With Ubisoft share prices plummeting and investment partners circling like sharks, rarely have the fortunes of a massive games company relied so heavily on a single release. It has already been delayed multiple times, to ensure its quality.

Against this gloomy backdrop, I find myself roaming the glistening halls of Ubisoft Quebec for the world’s first hands-on of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. The company’s series of historical action games is back after a two-year break, and this time it takes us to feudal Japan. This has been the most requested setting by fans, according to creative director Jonathan Dumont, but ironically some of those purported fans have turned on Ubisoft over the course of this game’s development….

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

Pixel Scroll 1/10/25 Quantum Scream And Leap

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(1) OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF IS SAFE. In response to the Eaton Fire, Nikki High, owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, turned the shop into a “mutual aid pit stop”. The shop itself is a mile or two away from the active fire area, outside the current evacuation zone but in the warning area.

When the bookstore opened yesterday they broadcast that they had food items and many other household necessities available. They put out a call for donations needed which was answered abundantly because they later said they are full for today – but check back for what is needed tomorrow.

Octavia’s Bookshelf is at 1353 N. Hill Ave. in Pasadena.

Nikki High has also posted this video of damage to the area:

Publishers Weekly has more coverage in “Brush Fires, Severe Weather Threaten L.A. Bookstores and Publishers”.

(2) CULTURAL ICONS LOST TO FIRE. There are probably more, but these have already made the news.

“Zane Grey House in LA Consumed by fires” reports the New York Times.

In Altadena, the Eaton fire has already claimed two cultural treasures: the 1907 Zane Grey Estate, the Mediterranean-style residence of one of California’s great Western novelists; and the 1887 Andrew McNally House, a Queen Anne gem that was home to the mapmaking tycoon who co-founded Rand-McNally.

Here’s a photo of the place Curbed LA ran in 2020.

The Theosophical Society building and archives in Altadena also burned.

…The Pasadena location was “the world’s largest archive of Theosophical materials, including a library with 40.000 titles, the entire archive of the history of the TS, including ca. 10.000 unpublished letters, pertaining to HPB, the Mahatmas, W.Q. Judge, G.R.S. Mead, Katherine Tingley, and G. de Purucker, membership records since 1875, art objects, and countless other irreplaceable materials. The archives also contained works of Boehme, Gichtel, donations from the king of Siam including rare Buddhist scriptures, and so on.”…

(3) RELEASED ON THEIR OWN RECOGNIZANCE. In “The Last Orphan Stories” John Grayshaw shares what he learned while pursuing the interesting question of what became of the stories purchased by Harlan Ellison for Last Dangerous Visions that did not get included in the recent anthology produced by Ellison’s literary executor J. Michael Straczynski. He reached out to the authors and the responses ranged from warm to hostile.  

…But ever since JMS announced LDV was finally seeing the light of day, I was very interested to see which stories would be included, which would not and especially what became of the ‘orphans’. In practical terms, the rights to any of the stories not included by JMS revert to the authors/estates. For 45 years all fans (we are both fans, if you have not guessed by now!) have had is the list of titles and authors and endless speculation, fueled by our imaginations. In a way this is appropriate for SF, the literature of the imagination.

I decided to take a look at the list of unpublished stories and contact the authors, or their estates in the case of this who have died, to ask them if these stories have been or will ever be shared with the world. I have followed the original structure of the three ‘books’ as set out by Ellison in the following discussion and I have highlighted the titles of the stories where I had a reply from them or their estate. Sadly not all my inquiries were successful, but I have shared as much information about the authors as I could in the hopes that maybe down the line we will hear more about these unpublished stories. Short biographies of the writers have been included; many of these will be known to you, some may be less well known and sadly there are a few for which almost no information is available….

(4) WHY IT’S HARD TO TELL. The New Yorker tries to figure out, “Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?” “Tracy Wolff, the author of the ‘Crave’ series, is being sued for copyright infringement. But romantasy’s reliance on standardized tropes makes proving plot theft tricky.”

(5) THE CAPTAIN HAS TURNED ON THE NO CATNIP SIGN. Camestros Felapton returns with more “Missing Moments in Movie History: When Worlds Collide”. No excerpt because that would spoil your fun. However, you don’t need to be told how this turns out: Never count on Timothy the Talking Cat to save humanity.

(6) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Episode 14 of Scott Edelman’s Why Not Say What Happened? podcast takes us back to the Seventies to learn about “Tony Isabella’s Essential Edit of My Early Avengers Script Assist”. (A dozen possible places to listen to the show are hat this link.)

While destroying hundreds of pages of bad poetry I scribbled as a teenager, I made a few surprising discoveries which cause me to reminisce about my poem “Ode on Comic Book Company Loyalty,” written 18 days after I was hired by Marvel Comics, my extremely rough sketch for the second Scarecrow splash page, my team-up with Quicksilver and 7-Eleven to freeze your brain with Slurpees during the summer of 1975, Tony Isabella’s heavy edit on my early Avengers script assist (and why we should all be grateful), my forgotten horror pitches bounced by Marvel in 1974, and much more.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Valentin D. Ivanov.]

Born January 10, 1950 — Lyubomir Nikolov-Narvi. (Died 2024.)

By Valentin D. Ivanov: Lyubomir Nikolov – Narvi was a towering figure among the Bulgarian speculative genre writers. Author, translator, and journalist, he is best known for the translation of the Bulgarian translation of The Lord Of The Rings in 1990 making this great book accessible for the first time in our country. My first memory of Lyubomir Nikolov dates soon after that, at a meeting of the Sofia society of speculative fiction, heuristics and prognostics (what a name!) “Ivan Efremov”. The political transformation of the country had just begun, the publishing had “exploded” and immersed us in books and authors that we had only heard about before – Tolkien among them. Nikolov held the equivalent of a master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and journalism.

Narvi read a freshly translated story at that gathering, but it is his own writing I can talk about here. The Mole, Worm under the Autumn Wind, On the Wall and especially The Tenth Righteous Man. The last one won the fans’ award for work of the 1990s decade. Although he was primarily a social science fiction writer, that particular book contains a wonderful and original science fiction assumption that deserves to be noted. I will reveal it here, even though it is an important plot-forming element, because I am not optimistic about the chances the novel would ever get an English translation: the Universe undergoes… a phase transition, the fundamental physical constants change and as a result the nuclear fission reactions become much “easier” to achieve. 

It is enough to light a small fire and the aches can exceed the critical mass and blast into another Hiroshima. Lyubomir Nikolov investigates in the books the consequences of giving such immense powers to everyone. Pretty much like what the nanotechnologies have the potential of doing, but he reaches the same effect by means of physics rather than technology. A lesser writer may have turned this into a cheap horror tale; not Narvi – his pen gave birth to a Greek tragedy of epic proportions, with its own Odysseus figure.

He passed away less than a year ago and was active until almost the end: recently he published a two-volume novel The Gray Road – a tale of power struggle on a terraformed Moon where the humanity has slid back into a nearly feudal society.

Narvi is one of the fathers of the game books phenomenon that took our country by storm in the 1990s too. Unfortunately, I hardly knew this side of his writing – I missed the entire game books phenomenon and only rediscovered it much later when I had to teach my own children to read… with his game books.

Lyubomir Nikolov holds Eurocon (1987), Sotscon (1989) and Graviton (2001) awards.

Lyubomir Nikolov-Narvi

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 10, 1969 — Star Trek’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”

Fifty-three years ago this evening, Star Trek’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” first aired on NBC. It was the fifteenth episode of the third season. 

It written by Oliver Crawford who also penned “The Galileo Seven”. It was based on a story by Gene L. Coon who was writing under his pen name “Lee Cronin” due to contractual reasons. Coon was the showrunner for the series through most of the second season and was responsible for such major elements as the Klingons and the naming of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet Command. 

The co-stars here were Frank Gorshin as Commissioner Bele and Lou Antonio as Lokai. Gorshin would be known in this period for his recurring role on Batman as The Riddler. Lou Antonio did a few genre one-offs. 

The episode has since been rated as one of the best of the Trek series with Collider, Hollywood Reporter, PopMatters, SciFi and ScreenRant all rating it among the best episodes produced. 

Spock’s comment that “Change is the essential process of all existence” which remains one of the most memorable lines of dialogue ever said on Trek comes from this episode.

The original version when Beale and Lokai run through the Enterprise shows the burning cities of World War II Europe. The remastered version shows the Cheron cities still burning from space. That scene was done because the episode was running short.

It’s streaming on Paramount+. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) GOREYGRAM. [Item by Steven French.] The Paris Review shares “The Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Gorey”.

Tom Fitzharris and Edward Gorey met one afternoon in 1974 when Fitzharris, long a fan of Gorey’s books and illustrations, bumped into him outside of the Town Hall, the performance space in Midtown Manhattan. Gorey—in his trademark fur coat, long beard, and sneakers—was immediately recognizable. The two struck up a brief but intense friendship. When Gorey was in New York, they met frequently, especially to go the ballet—Gorey planned his time in the city around the New York City Ballet’s performance schedule. His summers were spent in Cape Cod. It was in August of that year that Gorey began sending Fitzharris mail, richly illustrated both inside and out. Reproduced [here] are four of the fifty notes, quotations, and letters Fitzharris received over the course of their correspondence.

(11) GO RIGHT TO THE SOURCE AND ASK THE HORSE. Sounds like a variation on “Let the Wookiee win”. From Fighter Guy.

(12) UK VIEWS MERCURY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC reports “New images of Mercury captured by UK spacecraft BepiColombo”.

Astrium in Stevenage was where SF² Concatenation  co-founding editor  Graham Connor. If we still have him, he would undoubtedly have designed the probe’s onboard communication system.

A spacecraft built in the UK has captured new images of Mercury as it made its sixth and final flyby ahead of entering the planet’s orbit in 2026.

BepiColombo was built by the Stevenage-based company Astrium, now Airbus, and launched in 2018.

The spacecraft comprises two satellites that will gather data for at least a year, and needs special shielding to withstand the heat from the sun.

Monitoring cameras on the spacecraft captured images of the planet as it flew 295km (183 miles) above Mercury’s surface, including views of the planet’s north poles, as it was lit by sunlight.

(13) IT ROLLS. IT FLIES. BUT WHAT, NO BOAT? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A mere monster SUV is so yesterday. Chinese company XPeng AeroHT has announced a 6-wheel SUV/truck with 4 seats for the land vehicle and an additional 2 seats in the included manned hexacopter. All powered by electricity. They call this configuration a “Land Aircraft Carrier“. The company website assures potential buyers that pre-sales are coming soon. “XPeng Aero HT Land Aircraft Carrier comes with onboard EVTOL” at Wallpaper*.

… Whilst this particular combo occupies something of a legislative grey area, at least in heavily certified airspaces like Europe and the USA, XPeng has set out to make the aircraft as easy as possible to fly. Controls are reduced to a single-lever, take-offs and landings are automated and an autonomous flight system takes control of navigation. ‘Five minutes to learn, three hours to master,’ is the relevant strapline….

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Valentin D. Ivanov, Danny Sichel, Scott Edelman, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 7/16/24 Oh You’ll Never See My Shade Or Hear The Sound Of My Feet, While There’s A Scroll Over Pixel Street

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(1) GLASGOW 2024 DELAYS BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA. The WSFS Standing Rules required publication of this year’s Business Meeting Agenda by July 17. However, Glasgow 2024 today announced that agenda “will be delayed until Friday, 19th July 7pm (BST/UTC+1)”. X.com thread starts here.

Glasgow 2024 has received 50 items, including new business and items passed on from the prior Worldcons. And they have put up this chart to justify the delay in producing the agenda.

In the meantime, File 770 has published the text of more than 20 of these proposals. Here are the links.

  • Motion to Abolish the Retro Hugos Submitted to 2024 Business Meeting
  • WSFS 2024: Motion to Add Human Rights and Democracy Standards to Worldcon Site Qualifications
  • WSFS 2024: Three Resolutions
    • SHORT TITLE: APOLOGY RESOLUTION
    • SHORT TITLE: CHENGDU CENSURE RESOLUTION
  • SHORT TITLE: MAKE THEM FINALISTS RESOLUTION
  • WSFS 2024: Cleaning Up the Art Categories
  • WSFS 2024: Meetings, Meetings, Everywhere
  • WSFS 2024: Transparency in Hugo Administration
  • WSFS 2024: Irregular Disqualifications and Rogue Administrators
  • WSFS 2024: Independent Hugo Administration
  • WSFS 2024: No Illegal Exclusions
  • WSFS 2024: When We Censure You, We Mean It
  • WSFS 2024: And The Horse You Rode In On
  • WSFS 2024: Three Standing Rules Change Proposals
  • SHORT TITLE: “NO, WE DON’T LIKE SURPRISES, WHY DO YOU ASK?”
  • SHORT TITLE: “STRIKE 1.4”
  • SHORT TITLE: MAGNUM P.I.
  • Two More Proposed WSFS Constitutional Amendments for 2024
  • SHORT TITLE: MISSING IN ACTION
  • SHORT TITLE: THE WAY WE WERE
  • WSFS 2024: Popular Ratification
  • WSFS 2024: Site Selection by the Worldcon Community

    • Also along the way File 770 has published these drafts. Whether they have been submitted, or their final wording, is not known at this time.

    File 770’s reprints from the Journey Planet #82 “Be the Change” issue included two more proposals. Whether any or all were submitted to the Business Meeting is not known.

    (2) LAST DAYS TO VOTE FOR THE HUGOS. There are only four days left to vote in the 2024 Hugo Awards and to download this year’s Hugo Voting Packet. 

    Voting closes at 20:17 GMT on 20 July because that will be 55 years *to the minute* since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first landed on the moon in 1969!

    Instructions about how to vote and the way to download the Hugo Voting Packet are on the Glasgow 2024 website.

    (3) COMMUNITY ANSWERS OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF’S CALL. “Black Woman-Owned Bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf Is Getting Closer And Closer To Funding Goal To Keep Doors Open” reports Blavity. At this writing, Octavia’s Bookshelf has raised $83,780 of the $90,000 goal.

    ….According to Pasadena Now, the Black woman-owned business Octavia’s Bookshelf was founded by Nikki High, a former corporate communications employee at Trader Joe’s who left corporate America to accomplish one of her biggest goals: owning a bookstore. The name of her shop was inspired by Octavia Butler, who was known for her science fiction novels. When she opened her doors in February 2023, she was immediately embraced by her neighborhood and got more than enough support to move into a bigger space.

    Due to traffic slowing down in the store, High is asking her community and the general public for help to remain in business; she set up a GoFundMe page….

    …Due to lack of funding, she was forced to cut the shop’s regular events, group discussions, children’s readings and workshops, but she hopes to be able to offer these services again soon once she raises enough money.

    Despite the hurdles she faces, High is unwilling to throw away her dreams.

    “I still know that this is a viable business,” High told Pasadena Now, “and this space is crucial to our community.”

    (4) LEGGO MY LEGO. “Get bricks quick: collectible Lego sets fuel growing black market” says the Guardian.

    A black market for highly valuable Lego sets is being built brick by brick, and authorities are trying to knock it down.

    Lego sets are highly sought after, by kids and their parents as well as adult collectors.

    But it’s not all fun and games. Bad actors who know the resale value of these sets are increasingly cashing in, while law enforcement aims to bust such Lego theft rings.

    Police in Oregon last week recovered 4,000 stolen Lego sets worth more than $200,000, according to law enforcement. Ammon Henrikson, 47, the owner of a retail store called Brick Builders in Eugene, was arrested and accused of knowingly purchasing the allegedly stolen goods for a fraction of their retail price and then reselling them, a local CBS channel reported….

    … Two people were arrested in Los Angeles last month in connection with more than 2,800 stolen Lego sets. In April, California police arrested three men and a woman after discovering stolen Lego sets worth a combined $300,000. Some of the stolen sets included the 921-piece Millennium Falcon, typically priced around $85, the 6,167-piece Lord of the Rings Rivendell set, worth $500, and the 1,458-piece Porsche 911 set, worth $170.

    Meanwhile, overseas, French police announced in 2021 that they had begun building a case against an international gang of toy thieves specializing in Lego….

    (5) CLARION WEST MATCHING. The Clarion West Writers Workshop can leverage your donation this week. More information here.

    The Sherman Family Foundation has offered a Week Five Matching Challenge, doubling any donations made this week up to $2,000! Donations made to Clarion West support free and low-cost programming for writers and readers year-round.

    (6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books presents episode 77 of their monthly podcast “Simultaneous Times” with Phoenix Alexander & F.J. Bergmann.

    Stories featured in this episode:

    • “Loamblood” by Phoenix Alexander — read by the author
    • “Surgery for Dummies” by F.J. Bergmann — read by Jean-Paul Garnier

    Music by Phog Masheeen. Theme music by Dain Luscombe

    Heather Wood in 1988. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter

    (7) A. HEATHER WOOD (1945-2024). Publishing pro and folk singer A. Heather Wood died at Stony Brook Memorial Hospital on July 15 at the age of 79. At one time she was assistant to Tor’s President and Publisher Tom Doherty, and a consulting editor for Tor Books. She was also well-known in the folk music community as part of The Young Tradition, a 60s English group.

    We applied a tiny bit of that musical talent on Noreascon Three’s (1989) program SF Tonight, where I played Ed McMahon to Tappan King’s Johnny Carson, and Heather Wood was our kazoo-playing answer to Doc Severinsen.

    She also was known as part of World Fantasy Convention’s “Musical Interlude,” which featured pros singing in a folk revue.

    Her website, which lists her many accomplishments, is here.

    (8) IVAN GEISLER (1944-2024). [Item by Jeanne Jackson.] Ivan Geisler, longtime member of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, passed away July 2, 2024 of congestive heart failure and old age.

    I was first informed this afternoon by Sherry Johnson, his ex-wife. Although Ivan was quickly found by his neighbors after his passing, and his dog Brownie returned to the shelter Ivan had adopted her from, there had been some difficulty locating contact information for friends and relatives.

     According to Sherry, memorial arrangements have not yet been organized. As Ivan was a veteran of the United States Army, it is likely the Veterans’ Administration will be involved in his funeral.

     Ivan joined DASFA over 30 years ago. He was a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy, and also an avid amateur astronomer—he was an active member of the Denver Astronomical Society long before he found his way into DASFA.

    (9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

    [Written by Paul Weimer.]

    July 16, 1928 — Robert Sheckley. (Died 2005.)

    By Paul Weimer: I came to Robert Sheckley’s work through an oblique angle. Somehow, through all of the reading I did in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I missed or didn’t recognize, his short story work (although it’s dollars to donuts I came across a story of three in the many anthologies I read during that period. (And a check in the writing of this shows a couple of Sheckley stories in 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories).  But I didn’t recognize his work and his genius and his skill until 1992. 

    Sheckley in the 1990s. Photo by John Henley

    Yes, it wasn’t until the movie Freejack came around that I started looking for Sheckley’s work specifically, since the movie proudly announced in its credits that it was based on “Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley”.  Yes, this is the movie where Emilio Estevez is a car driver transported to the future, with Mick Jagger (!) of all people as the major antagonist.

    The name sounded familiar even so, and so, as was my practice at the time (Total Recall leading me to Philip K. Dick in similar fashion), I decided that I needed to investigate his work, starting with Immortality, Inc. The novel was very different than the movie by a long show, but I was immediately hooked on his writing. 

    I found his work sharp, twisty, clever, devilishly entertaining, and especially for his short stories, with a sting in the tail. It was no wonder to me that his work has been so adapted so frequently, and with such great effect. And while science fiction is generally not explicitly in the prediction business, “The Prize of Peril” pretty accurately and sharply predicts and shows the consequences of television devoted and focused on Reality Television for clicks. “The Perfect Woman” shows the consequences of wanting the perfect mate, straight from the factory, and the consequences of a lack of quality control.  

    My favorite Sheckley story might surprise, but it is “Death Freaks” from the “Heroes in Hell” shared world verse. With the ability of throwing anyone who is anyone into their shared world version of Hell, the editors got a story from Sheckley involving the Marquis de Sade, Baudelaire, Lizzie Borden, Jesse James, and an 8th Century BC Greek Hoplite. Sheckley, perhaps out of all of the authors in the series, best “understood the assignment” and let his imagination run wild.  It’s a story that’s a lot of fun and full of the unexpected, entertaining all along the way. That’s what Sheckley could, and did do, with his fiction.

    (10) COMICS SECTION.

    (11) LADY DEADPOOL. “New ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer Teases Even More of Lady Deadpool” promises Yahoo!

    Ten days ahead of the film’s release, Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine has a new trailer and TV spot.

    Set to the tune of Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey,” one of the first shots in the trailer shows the mysterious Lady Deadpool’s red boots and up past her signature belt to show the ends of blonde hair without landing on her face.

    And a week ago was this: “Deadpool & Wolverine & The Bachelorette”.

    Everyone seemed to like the Deadpool Bachelorette spot last night but can we talk about the episode? Thought Jenn made some strong choices, except for sending my countryman Brendan packing. Marcus is easy on the eyes, Grant was a little much and the day trading thing, but I get it. Two Sams will get confusing so slightly leaning towards Sam N. Jenn’s mom might have been the highlight and Melbourne, Australia, felt like a Hugh shout out so bit of a lowlight there. Overall, great start. What was I talking about again?

    (12) FOR MONSTER TOURISTS. Atlas Obscura lists “11 Museums Dedicated to Monsters”.

    Monsters have roamed the human consciousness as long as there has been one, from tales around the campfire, to the tomes of antiquity, to the modern cineplex. And sometimes those monsters leap off the page or the screen, and out of our imaginations. Sightings of cryptids and other frightful creatures have spanned millennia, often taking place in the darkest corners of the world. Luckily there are lots of ways to get to know these fantastical creatures—especially when enthusiasts create museums or exhibits dedicated to their lore….

    …In Point Pleasant, West Virginia, is a museum dedicated to the state’s most widely known cryptid: the Mothman. The only collection dedicated to the half-moth, half-man creature, the Mothman Museum celebrates this harbinger of misfortune, who has been spotted in Appalachia on and off since 1966. Much further in the past, stories of massive sea monsters off the Icelandic coast have stricken fear into the hearts of sailors. The Skrímslasetrið in Bíldudalur, Iceland, covers the history of these encounters. According to the museum, two of the monsters most endemic to Iceland’s waters are the hafmaður (Sea Man) and the skeljaskrímsli (Shell Monster), but there are more. From a four-legged beast that terrorized 18th-century France to an amphibious water demon in Japan, here are a few of our favorite places to get up close to monsters in relative safety…

    (13) READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP. “Gnatalie is the only green-boned dinosaur found on the planet. She will be on display in L.A.” announces NBC News.

    The latest dinosaur being mounted at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles is not only a member of a new species — it’s also the only one found on the planet whose bones are green, according to museum officials.

    Named “Gnatalie” (pronounced Natalie) for the gnats that swarmed during the excavation, the long-necked, long-tailed herbivorous dinosaur’s fossils got its unique coloration, a dark mottled olive green, from the mineral celadonite during the fossilization process.

    While fossils are typically brown from silica or black from iron minerals, green is rare because celadonite forms in volcanic or hydrothermal conditions that typically destroy buried bones. The celadonite entered the fossils when volcanic activity around 50 million to 80 million years ago made it hot enough to replace a previous mineral….

    (14) IT’S A TWISTER AUNTIE EM! “What Twisters gets right — and wrong — about tornado science” opines Nature

    When Hollywood producers showed up a few years ago at Sean Waugh’s office, he couldn’t wait to show them his thunderstorm-tracking equipment. Waugh, a meteorologist at the US National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, is a big fan of the 1996 film Twister, which stars Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as leaders of a tornado-chasing research team. And now, Hollywood was asking Waugh his opinion on how the science in the next film in the Twister franchise should look.

    On 17 July, when the film is released internationally, the world will see how Waugh’s recommendations panned out. Like its predecessor, the new Twisters film focuses on characters who are storm chasers: Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a researcher traumatized by past weather disasters and Glen Powell a social-media star racing for footage of the biggest and baddest tornadoes. But science has an even bigger role in the plot of the new film than it had in the original, say Waugh and other researchers who worked as consultants for Twisters. It not only shows advanced radar data and highlights links between climate change and tornadoes, “it’s an incredible opportunity to inspire the next generation of scientists”, Waugh says….

    (15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George’s “Battlefield Earth Pitch Meeting” tells why the movie was made – not that you didn’t already know.

    [Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Anne Marble, Joe Siclari, Jeanne Jackson, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]

Pixel Scroll 7/3/24 The Magic Morlock, So Pixeled And So New

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(1) OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF RESCUED BY CROWDFUNDING. A  GoFundMe appeal reopened to keep Octavia’s Bookshelf in business raised its target amount almost immediately reports Pasadena Now: “Black Woman-Owned Bookstore Relaunches Urgent Fundraiser to Stay Open”.

A fundraiser to save a local bookstore has raised almost $70,000 in a matter of days.

Nikki High, founder and owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, has reopened a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for her struggling bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf. 

In a heartfelt social media post, she revealed her heavy heart, tired soul, and months of sleepless nights, and said she needed transparency with her community….

As Nikki High explained in her GoFundMe call:

We managed to open last year to great support and lots of excitement. This past year has been some of the most rewarding and difficult times in my life.

Bookselling is a tricky animal and being a Black Women entrepreneur adds another level of hardship that I was not quite prepared for.

Being underresourced but determined, I have fought through the highs and lows of retail. I’ve made some mistakes, and I’ve learned so much. Of all the sleepless nights and hardships, it’s the community we’ve built that has kept me going and reaffirmed to me that Octavia’s Bookshelf is a space we need to keep in our community.

To be completely transparent, we need an urgent influx of cash to keep us afloat right now. The coffers are dry and the reserves are non existent. We are being faced with tremendous financial mountains to climb to get here we need to be to be sustainable and I need your help once again…

The bookstore, named for Octavia Butler, opened its doors on February 18, 2023, at 1361 North Hill Ave, in Pasadena. 

(2) CORY PANSHIN Q&A. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Alexei Panshin’s widow on their collaborations together, Robert A. Heinlein, other subjects. “Interview with Cory Panshin” at One Geek’s Mind.

John Grayshaw: How did you and Alexei become writers and critics of science fiction?

We both started off as SF and fantasy readers from an early age and then as  fans. Alexei has written detailed accounts of his pathway in a couple of places, but the short version is that as a teenager he began subscribing to fanzines. Then he received a typewriter as a high school graduation present and the idea struck him that he should be a writer. He started out by writing a novel which was very amateurish. (As I recall from the one time I read the manuscript, it was something like a spaceship full of librarians seeking refuge from an evil empire.) He made better progress doing book reviews for fanzines, as well as short stories, of which he wrote about twenty between 1960 and 1965.

As for me, it’s a little more complicated, since I didn’t launch right into writing the way Alexei did. When I was twelve, I started trying to write a spy novel, and only got a few pages in. I recently found that old notebook and discovered to my surprise that I’d kept adding pages on and off for the next four years before giving up entirely and launching into a science fiction story about a spaceship crew that goes astray in hyperspace and finds itself battling a jabberwock that attacks them with its eyes of flame.

That might have been the beginning and end of my abortive science fiction writing career, but that fall I started my freshman year at Harvard College, where my roommate Leslie Turek and I discovered we had a lot in common; but also that Harvard was not particularly geek-friendly, being primarily dedicated to grooming the scions of the ruling class. So instead, we found our way to the MIT Science Fiction Society, where we were quickly drafted to co-edit the MITSFS fanzine and from there got drawn into science fiction fandom.

There weren’t a lot of women in fandom at that time, so it was easy for us to get noticed. Alexei spotted me in costume at the 1966 Worldcon and we were married in 1969. Around the same time, my fellow MITSFS member Fuzzy Pink married Larry Niven, while Leslie became actively involved in convention-running and eventually chaired the 1980 Worldcon.

Except for occasional con reports and other fanzine articles, I wasn’t doing much writing in the late 60s, but once I married Alexei we discovered a mutual interest in theorizing about the nature of science fiction and began to do critical writing in collaboration….

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to gab over garlic bread with Sally Wiener Grotta in Episode 229 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Sally Weiner Grotta

Sally Wiener Grotta’s latest two books are Of Being Woman, a collection of feminist science fiction stories, and Daughters of Eve, a discussion workbook which uses tales of biblical matriarchs to explore the modern world. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines such as the North Atlantic Review, DreamForge, Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles, and others.

Her previous books include Digital Imaging for Visual Artists (co-authored with Daniel Grotta), and the novels Jo Joe, which was a Jewish Book Council Network book, and The Winter Boy, which was a Locus Magazine Recommended Read. Sally is also co-curator of the Galactic Philadelphia Salon reading series. Plus she’s also an award-winning journalist and photographer who has traveled on assignment to all seven continents.

We discussed when we first met (and can’t quite figure out whether it was a third or a quarter of a century ago), how her first storytelling impulse began because she’d fall asleep while being read stories as a child, the importance of the question “what if?,” why she often finds horror difficult to read, the early experience which allowed her to have such a good relationship with editors, the story she wrote in Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing workshop which caused that Grand Master to say “what a darling monster,” when we should submit to editorial suggestions and when we should run screaming, and much more.

(4) MTV NEWS THROWN LIFELINE BY INTERNET ARCHIVE. “Search MTV News Articles Archive at Wayback Machine” reports Variety.

In the days after Paramount Global disabled mtvnews.com and mtv.com/news — removing a trove of hundreds of thousands of articles about music and pop culture from the internet — the not-for-profit Internet Archive assembled a searchable index of 460,575 web pages previously published at mtv.com/news.

You can search the MTV News archive on the organization’s Wayback Machine at this link. Prior to Internet Archive aggregating the MTV News pages into a collection, there was no way to locate articles based on search terms.

Paramount shut down the MTV News division as part of a larger round of layoffs in May 2023… 

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 3, 1937 — Tom Stoppard, 87. I was delighted to discover that playwright Tom Stoppard has crafted far more genre than I thought, considering I all I knew he had done was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which is adjacent genre if not actually genre). If you’ve not seen it yet, it is quite delightful. 

He scripted Brazil, which he co-authored with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeow. Brazil was actually part of the Trilogy of Imagination, all written or co-written by Gilliam, which consisted of Time Bandits, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Not my favorite of those three films by any means but certainly interesting to catch at least once I’d say. 

Tom Stoppard

He also did the final Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade rewrite of Jeffrey Boam’s rewrite of Menno Meyjes’s screenplay. Now I like that film a lot but not as much as Raiders of The Lost Ark, which I consider perfect. The Suck Fairy broke her buckles when she tried to sully Raiders of The Lost Ark’s reputation recently. 

He did one genre adjacent script, the adaptation of the Robert B. Parker and Raymond Chandler novel Poodle Springs for television. Chandler had completed four chapters before his death, so on the occasion of the centenary of Chandler’s birth, Parker was asked by the estate of Raymond Chandler to complete the novel. No, I’ve not read it for the same reason I don’t watch films or series off novels that I really like — I prefer the originals, thank you. 

Let’s not overlook Shakespeare in Love which he co-authored with Marc Norman. Any film with Geoffrey Rush in it is certainly going to be worth seeing and if the script is written by Stoppard in some fashion as it was here, it’s likely that the dialogue is going to be stellar. It certainly is here. 

He was even involved in the largest SF franchise ever as  he did the dialogue polish of George Lucas’s Revenge of the Sith screenplay. Polish? Interesting phrase there. 

(6) COMICS SECTION.

(7) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(8) STARLOST AND FOUND. [Item by Michael Burianyk.] Any SF fan who was around in the early 70s will remember the TV series Starlost. Canadian writer Den Valdron is running a Kickstarter for his Starlost Unauthorized book which has six more days to go to reach its stretch goal. Den is a good writer (who has written unauthorized works discussing ‘Dr Who’ and ‘Lexi’) with a lot of energy and will bring a lot to understanding this little known piece of Science Fiction history in the context of Canadian cultural identity. I think the whole project is timely and is worthy of support. “Starlost Unauthorized by D.G. Valdron”.

(9) CHURCH ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES FROM OUTER SPACE. Atlas Obscura introduces us to the “Cathedral of Salamanca’s Astronaut – Salamanca, Spain”. (Image at the link.)

…The thing that makes old hoaxes so frustrating is that they are hard to tease out from their actual history. Something fabricated in the 1600s made to look like it is from the 1400s can be very hard to pick out. The astronaut on the Cathedral of Salamanca is not in fact a hoax, but an approved and modern addition to the Cathedral, however it has all the earmarks of something which may provide for great confusion some 500 years from now.

Built between 1513 and 1733, the Gothic cathedral underwent restoration work in 1992. It is a generally a tradition of cathedral builders and restorers to add details or new carvings to the facade as a sort of signature. In this case after conferring with the cathedral, quarry man Jeronimo Garcia was given the go-ahead to add some more modern images to the facade.  He included an astronaut floating among the vines, a dragon eating ice cream, a lynx, a bull, a stork, a rabbit, and a crayfish….

A Scottish abbey, likewise, has a modern addition — a xenomorphic spout: “’Alien’ Gargoyle – Paisley, Scotland”. (Image at the link.)

…In 1991, the abbey underwent some necessary restoration work. Twelve of its 13 gargoyles were so badly ruined from water damage they had to be removed. The work was carried out by an Edinburgh-based stone masonry company, which replaced the carvings with newer models.

Apparently, some of the stone masons had a bit of fun with their creations. One of the gargoyles is certainly unique, which is fitting, as medieval tradition holds that no two gargoyles can look the same. The creature bears a strong resemblance to H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph from the Alien franchise. As the films were popular throughout the 1980s and early ‘90s, it’s likely one of the workers drew a bit of inspiration from its otherworldly antagonist….

(10) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “G. Rossini: Duetto para dos Gatos- Duet for Two Cats”. A YouTube commenter explains, “When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. When you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.”

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

Pixel Scroll 4/23/24 Forget About Our Pixels And Your Files

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(1) SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS HOF CLASS OF 2024. Muddy Colors announces the Greg Manchess and Yuko Shimizu are among the “2024 Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame” inductees. See examples of all the artists’ work at the link.

The Society of Illustrators has announced the 2024 inductees into their prestigious Hall of Fame. In recognition for their “distinguished achievement in the art of illustration” the artists are chosen based on their body of work and the significant impact it has made on the field of illustration as a whole. This year’s honorees are:

  • Virginia Frances Sterrett [1900 – 1931]
  • Robert Grossman [1940 – 2018]
  • Gustave Doré [1832 – 1883]
  • Yuko Shimizu [b. 1946]
  • Gregory Manchess [b. 1955]
  • Steve Brodner [b. 1954].

(2) LE GUIN PRIZE NOMINATION DEADLINE 4/30. There’s just one week left in the nomination period for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. This $25,000 cash prize is awarded to a writer whose book reflects concepts and ideas central to Ursula’s work.

The recipient of this year’s prize will be chosen by authors Margaret Atwood, Omar El Akkad, Megan Giddings, Ken Liu, and Carmen Maria Machado.

Through April 30th, everyone is welcome to nominate books. Learn more about the prize, eligibility requirements, and the 2024 selection panel here.

(3) MIÉVILLE REJECTS GERMAN FELLOWSHIP. China Miéville has rescinded his acceptance of a residency fellowship for literature for 2024 in Germany which he had been awarded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) – DAAD. The full text is here: “Letter to the DAAD” at Salvage.

(4) A LITTLE TOO ON THE NOSE? [Item by Scott Edelman.] This year’s Met Gala theme will be “The Garden of Time,” a 1962 short story by J.G. Ballard. “Met Gala 2024: A Guide to the Theme, Hosts and How to Watch”. (Read the New York Times gift article courtesy of Scott Edelman.)

OK, what is the dress code?

It’s as potentially confusing as the exhibit. Guests have been instructed to dress for “The Garden of Time,” so named after a 1962 short story by J.G. Ballard about an aristocratic couple living in a walled estate with a magical garden while an encroaching mob threatens to end their peaceful existence. To keep the crowd at bay, the husband tries to turn back time by breaking off flower after flower, until there are no more blooms left. The mob arrives and ransacks the estate, and the two aristocrats turn to stone.

Just what comes to mind when you think “fashion,” right?

(5) BUTLER IS THEME OF LITFEST OPENING. LitFest in the Dena will hold its main program on May 4-5 at the Mt. View Mausoleum, 2300 N. Marengo Ave, in Altadena, CA. The opening event will be on May 3 – “Introduction and Keynote Presentation: In Conversation with Nikki High”, founder of Octavia’s Bookshelf.

Founder of Octavia’s Bookshelf, Nikki High will tell us about her discovery of books as an early reader and how authors of color helped her discover herself and what could become of her life. Featured in conversation with her friend Natalie Daily, librarian and literacy advocate at the Octavia E. Butler Magnet in Pasadena, Nikki talks about her bookstore as a community gathering place for book lovers who will find a treasure trove of BIPOC literature.

(6) O. HENRY 2024. Literary Hub takes care of “Announcing the Winners of the 2024 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction”. Is there any sff on this list? I leave it up to you to identify it.

  • Emma Binder — “Roy“, Gulf Coast
  • Michele Mari — “The Soccer Balls of Mr. Kurz,” translated from the Italian by Brian Robert Moore, The New Yorker
  • Brad Felver — “Orphans,” Subtropics
  • Morris Collins — “The Home Visit,” Subtropics
  • Jai Chakrabarti — “The Import,” Ploughshares
  • Amber Caron — “Didi,” Electric Literature
  • Francisco González — “Serranos,” McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern
  • Caroline Kim — “Hiding Spot,” New England Review
  • Katherine D. Stutzman — “Junior,” Harvard Review
  • Juliana Leite — “My Good Friend,” translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry, The Paris Review
  • Kate DiCamillo — “The Castle of Rose Tellin,” Harper’s Magazine
  • Colin Barrett — “Rain,” Granta
  • Robin Romm — “Marital Problems,” The Sewanee Review
  • Allegra Goodman — “The Last Grownup,” The New Yorker
  • Dave Eggers — “The Honor of Your Presence,” One Story
  • E. K. Ota — “The Paper Artist,” Ploughshares
  • Tom Crewe — “The Room-Service Waiter,” Granta
  • Madeline ffitch — “Seeing Through Maps,” Harper’s Magazine
  • Jess Walter — “The Dark,” Ploughshares
  • Allegra Hyde — “Mobilization,” Story

(7) ANTI-LGBT HARASSMENT SAFETY ADVICE. “Drag Story Hour’s Jonathan Hamilt on Bomb Threats, Safety Tips” at Shelf Awareness.

Around the country, growing numbers of independent booksellers are finding themselves the targets of anti-LGBT harassment, with bomb threats proving to be an increasingly common tactic.

In recent weeks, Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Md., Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, N.Y., and Mosaics in Provo, Utah, have all been targets of bomb threats related to drag storytime programming. Sadly, they are not alone, and the numbers only continue to rise.

Per the nonprofit Drag Story Hour, there were nine documented incidents of bomb threats targeting official DSH events in 2023. In 2024, there have already been at least 12 such incidents, with the number growing almost every weekend.

DSH executive director Jonathan Hamilt noted that bomb threats represent only a small fraction of the harassment directed at LGBT communities and LGBT-inclusive gatherings. In 2023, there were more than 60 documented cases of harassment targeting DSH or adjacent programming; the figure more than doubles when including anti-drag incidents in general.

Hamilt called it “deeply disturbing” that adults are choosing to incite violence and intimidate children, parents, and storytellers at family-oriented events while claiming to want to protect children.

Despite what the public perception may be, Hamilt continued, Drag Story Hour is “not scrambling.” The organization is nearly 10 years old and its efforts are “very organized.” Anti-LGBT harassment is nothing new, though sometimes it takes different forms, and the organization is “working on getting through this.”

(8) ELLISON BACK IN PRINT. Inverse interviews J. Michael Straczynski for a piece titled “The Unexpected Resurrection of Harlan Ellison “. The interviewer’s portion is largely a rehearsal of decades-old Ellison controversies. (But by no means all of them.)

…As the title suggests, Greatest Hits is a kind of historical document. These are stories that don’t necessarily reflect where science fiction and fantasy are going but where the genre has been, as seen through the dark lenses of Harlan Ellison. Some of the stories (like “Shatterday”) hold up beautifully. Some, as Cassandra Khaw points out in her introduction, have problematic elements.

But unlike recent reissues of books by Roald Dahl or Ian Fleming, these stories remain uncensored. The fight against censorship was one of Ellison’s lifelong passions, and so, other than a few content warning labels in the book, the sex, sci-fi, and rock ’n’ roll of this writer’s vision remains intact and raucous. Like the punk rock of genre fiction, Ellison’s stories are as jarring and blistering as ever.

“No, no, you don’t touch Harlan’s stuff, man,” Straczynski says. “Even if he’s dead, he’ll come after you.”

(9) SPEAKING OUT. The New Mexico Press Women presented George R.R. Martin with its “Courageous Communicator Award” last month, which Martin found thought-provoking as he explains in “Women of the Press” at Not A Blog.

 “On the Occasion of its 75th Anniversary Bestows its COURAGEOUS COMMUNICATOR AWARD on March 15-16, 2024 to George R.R. Martin for building new worlds and creating strong, yet nuanced, women characters in his books and television shows.”

…Our world needs courageous communicators more than ever in these dark divided days, when so many people would rather silence those they disagree with than engage them in debate and discussion.    I deplore that… but had I really done enough, myself, to be recognized for courageous speech?

I am not sure I have, truth be told.  Yes, I’ve spoken up from time to time, on issues both large and small… but not always.  It is always easier to remain silent, to stay on the sidelines and let the storms wash over you.   The more I pondered, the more convinced I became that I need to do more.   That we all need to do more.

I started by delivering a 45 minute keynote address, on the subject of free speech and censorship.   Which, I am happy to say, was very well received (I was not entirely sure it would be)….

(10) 2024 ROMCON AWARDS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Best Translation goes to an old Ian Watson title from 1973…

The Best Novella winner Silviu Genescu is noted for back in the 1990s winning the Romanian equivalent of “D is for End” (that’s the English translation but the play on words works in English as it does in the original Romanian). I remember staying with Silviu’s family back in the late 1990s when doing an Anglo-Romanian SF & Science Cultural Exchange, and their son came back from school to say that they had been learning about his father’s oeuvre that day in class….

(11) THE LONG WAY HOME. “’Furiosa’ has an action scene that took 78 days to film” – NME tells why.

The upcoming Mad Max prequel film Furiosa includes a 15-minute action scene that took 78 days to film, it has been revealed.

Speaking to Total Film Magazine, the film’s star Anya Taylor-Joy and George Miller’s production partner Doug Mitchell spoke about the scene, which Taylor-Joy says is “very important for understanding” the character of Furiosa better.

Mitchell revealed that the film includes a “has one 15-minute sequence which took us 78 days to shoot” and required close to 200 stunt workers on set daily. While little else has been revealed about the scene, it has been described as a “turning point” for Furiosa…

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 23, 1973 — Naomi Kritzer, 51. Naomi Kritzer’s CatNet at this point consists of “Cat Pictures Please” which won a Hugo at MidAmeriCon II, Chaos on CatNet and Catfishing on CatNet. As one who likes this series enough that I had her personally autograph the Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories collection, I wanted to know the origin of CatNet, so I asked. Well, I also gifted her with a birthday chocolate treat, sea salt dark chocolate truffles. Here’s her answers: 

Naomi Kritzer in 2020 after winning the Lodestar Award.

Naomi Kritzer: The original short story was basically the collision of two things:

1. The line, “the Internet loves cat pictures,” which made me imagine a central internet-based intelligence that wanted pictures of cats.

2. Getting myself a smartphone for the first time (I was a late adopter), and discovering some of its quirks, and coming up with anthropomorphic explanations for things like bad directions. 

I mean, the Internet clearly does love cat pictures — although “the Internet” is “the billions of people who use the Internet,” not a secret sentient AI, though!

Cat Eldridge: I went on to ask her how CatNet came to be…

Naomi Kritzer: Do you mean in the story, how it got created? I was very vague about it in the short story but sort of heavily implied it was the result of something someone did at Google. In the novel CatNet was an experimental project from a company that was again, heavily implied to be Google.

Way, way cool in my opinion.

While putting this Birthday together, I noticed that she had two other series from when she was starting out as a writer, so I asked her to talk about them. Both are available on Kindle.

Cat Eldridge: Let’s talk about your first series, Eliana’s Song.

Naomi Kritzer: Eliana’s Song is my first novel, split into two pieces. I rewrote it really heavily multiple times, and each time I tried to make it shorter and it got longer. When Bantam bought it, they suggested that I split it into two books and expand each, which is what I did. 

The book actually started out as a short story I wrote while in college. It garnered a number of rejections that said something like, “this isn’t bad, but it kind of reads like chapters 1 and 36 of a novel.” I eventually decided to write the novel, and struggled for a while before realizing I could not literally use the short story as Chapter 1, I had to start over writing from scratch.

Cat Eldridge: And your second series, Dead Rivers.

Naomi Kritzer: Sometime around 2010 I picked up the Scott Westerfield Uglies series and really loved it. Uglies in particular followed a plotline that I really loved, in which someone is sent to infiltrate the enemy side, only to realize once she’s there that these are her people, far more than her bosses are. But she came among them under false pretenses, and she’d have to come clean! And she almost comes clean, doesn’t, of course is discovered and cast out, and and then has to spend the next book (maybe the next two) demonstrating her worthiness to be allowed to come back. I read this series and thought, “dang, I love this plot — I loved this plot as a kid, and reading it now is like re-visiting an amusement park ride you loved when you were 10 and finding out that even when you know where all the turns and drops are, it’s still super fun.” Like two days after that I suddenly remembered that I had literally written that plotline. It’s the plotline of the Dead Rivers trilogy. I really really love this plot, it turns out! So much that I’ve written it!

I’m not sure how well it’s aged. We were not doing trigger warnings on books yet when it came out, and the fact that the book has an explicit and fairly vivid rape scene took a lot of readers by surprise. It’s also a story that’s very much about whether someone can start out a bad guy and work their way to redemption.

Cat Eldridge: Now unto your short stories. I obviously believe everyone should read “Cat Pictures Please” and Little Free Library”, both of which I enjoyed immensely. So what of your short story writing do you think is essential for readers to start with?  

Naomi Kritzer: That is a good question but one I find very hard to answer about my own work! It’s a “can’t see the forest because of all the trees” problem, I think.

“So Much Cooking” would probably be at the top, though (with the explanatory note that I always attach these days — I wrote this in 2015.) And then probably “Scrap Dragon” and “The Thing About Ghost Stories.”

To date, she has two short story collections, Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories which is only available as an epub, and of course Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories which is also available in trade paper edition. 

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) A MONOPOLY OF WHAT? Ellie Griffin concludes “No one buys books” at The Elysian.

In 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster. The two publishing houses made up 37 percent and 11 percent of the market share, according to the filing, and combined they would have condensed the Big Five publishing houses into the Big Four. But the government intervened and brought an antitrust case against Penguin to determine whether that would create a monopoly. 

The judge ultimately ruled that the merger would create a monopoly and blocked the $2.2 billion purchase. But during the trial, the head of every major publishing house and literary agency got up on the stand to speak about the publishing industry and give numbers, giving us an eye-opening account of the industry from the inside. All of the transcripts from the trial were compiled into a book called The Trial. It took me a year to read, but I’ve finally summarized my findings and pulled out all the compelling highlights.

I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Brittany Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

But let’s dig into everything they said in detail….

(15) I WALK TO THE TREES. [Item by Steven French.] If anyone fancies a walk through some weird woods … “12 Forests That Offer Chills and Thrills” at Atlas Obscura.

…While Translyvania, Romania, brings to mind images of Dracula and his imposing castle, the Hoia Baciu Forest might be more reliably scary. Known as the “Bermuda Triangle of Romania,” the forest has been home to UFO sightings,  glowing eyes, strange disappearances, in addition to trees that look like they were plucked from the Upside Down. In the busy residential section of Ichikawa, Japan, is a small, seemingly out-of-place wooded area. It’s been said that those who choose to enter the Yawata no Yabushirazu are whisked away, never to be seen again. Entrance is strictly forbidden. From a woodland in the shadows of England’s “most haunted village” to a tree in a Michigan forest said to be possessed by spirits, here are our favorite spine-tingling forests…

(16) KITTY LITERATURE. “A survey of feeding practices and use of food puzzles in owners of domestic cats – Mikel Delgado, Melissa J Bain, CA Tony Buffington, 2020” at Sage Journals. (Downloadable as a PDF.)

…Environmental enrichment (although without a single, agreed-upon, definition) generally refers to the addition of activities, objects or companionship to optimize physical and psychological states and improve an animal’s welfare.1–3 Appropriate enrichment encourages species-typical behaviors,1 and may improve welfare by providing an individual a greater perception of control and choice in their environment,4 and reducing their perception of threat.5 Because all non-domesticated animals must forage for food, whether by hunting, scavenging or searching, interventions that encourage foraging behavior are commonly implemented for zoo and laboratory animals.

Previous studies of companion animals have demonstrated positive effects of foraging toys on behavior. Shelter dogs that were provided with a Kong toy stuffed with frozen food in addition to reinforcement-based training were calmer, quieter and showed less jumping behavior when meeting potential adopters.6 Shelter parrots that engaged in feather-picking spent more time foraging and showed improved feather condition when provided with a food puzzle.7 Case studies suggest positive effects of food puzzles on the behavior of cats such as weight loss and resolution of inter-cat aggression and other behavioral concerns,8 even though a recent study found that food puzzles may not increase overall activity levels in house cats.9 Despite potential benefits, a recent survey found that less than 5% of Portuguese cat owners attending a veterinary practice provided food puzzles for their cats or hid food around the home to stimulate foraging behavior.10…

TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Hampus Eckerman, Arnie Fenner, Kathy Sullivan, Scott Edelman, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l.]

Pixel Scroll 2/23/23 Files Are A Burden To Others; Answers, A Pixel For Oneself

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(1) OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF OPENS. Nikki High’s Octavia’s Bookshelf in Altadena (CA) enjoyed a festive launch on February 18.

BookRiot reports: “Hundreds of People Showed Up to Opening of Octavia’s Bookshelf”.

Octavia’s Bookshelf owner Nikki High had hoped that the opening of her new bookstore focusing on books by Black, Indigenous, and people of color authors would be attended by 20-30 people. Instead, by the time the doors opened February 18th, there were hundreds of people lined up for ten blocks to get in. 300 people showed up for opening day, including author Terry McMillan.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise also celebrated the event: “Crowds descend on grand opening of long-awaited Pasadena bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf”.

…An avid reader, High contemplated opening her own bookstore for years, but the final push came with the sudden passing of High’s grandmother and biggest supporter. In acknowledgement of this, speaker Joshua Evans, kicked off the event by paying homage to family and resiliency.

For Evans, Octavia’s Bookshelf is a symbol of progression and possibility — a space that he would have frequented as a kid.

“One of things that I personally believe is that there’s a story about Black and Brown people that is bigger than the impact of White supremacy,” Evans said looking down the line of people. “It’s a dream come true that I didn’t know that I had … it just gives people a chance to to come in, but also to develop and to meet other writers. And you always know it’s going to be a safe space. We’ll never be in danger of being minimalized or railroaded by people who are not sensitive.”

At its peak, the queue to get into the North Hill Avenue store spanned more than 10 blocks, reaching as far back as Victory Bible Church….

(2) MORE PROZINES REPORT DELUGE OF AI SUBMISSIONS. [Item by Frank Catalano.] The New York Times now is covering the AI submission problem, citing not just Clarkesworld, but also Asimov’s and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: “Science Fiction Magazines Battle a Flood of Chatbot-Generated Stories”.

It could be a tale from science fiction itself: a machine that uses artificial intelligence to try to supplant authors working in the genre, turning out story after story without ever hitting writer’s block. And now, it seems, it’s happening in real life.

The editors of three science fiction magazines — Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction — said this week that they had been flooded by submissions of works of fiction generated by A.I. chatbots.

“I knew it was coming on down the pike, just not at the rate it hit us,” said Sheree Renée Thomas, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which was founded in 1949….

[Neil Clarke] said he had been able to spot the chatbot-generated stories by examining certain “traits” in the documents, the writing and the submission process.

Mr. Clarke declined to be more specific, saying he did not want to give those submitting the stories any advantages. The writing is also “bad in spectacular ways,” Mr. Clarke said. “They’re just prompting, dumping, pasting and submitting to a magazine.”…

Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, said that several of the chatbot-generated stories she had received all had the same title: “The Last Hope.”

“The people doing this by and large don’t have any real concept of how to tell a story, and neither do any kind of A.I.,” Ms. Williams said on Wednesday. “You don’t have to finish the first sentence to know it’s not going to be a readable story.”

Ms. Thomas said that the people submitting chatbot-generated stories appeared to be spamming magazines that pay for fiction. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction pays up to 12 cents a word, up to 25,000 words.

The A.I.-generated works can be weeded out, Ms. Thomas said, although “it’s just sad that we have to even waste time on it.”

“It does not sound like natural storytelling,” she said. “There are very strange glitches and things that make it obvious that it’s robotic.”…

The whole AI-generated art and writing thing in pro markets is really heating up. Of course, I’ve tweeted about it.

The Copyright Office is revoking full copyright for a graphic novel that used AI-generated images:

Kindle Direct Publishing is starting to get ChatGPT-written books:

But it is a relief to see the old ways still resonate for some scammers:

Yeah. Copy/paste plagiarism.

As with anything, follow the money. That’s the motivation for the AI shortcuts. Even if the scammers don’t realize how little money there is in writing science fiction and fantasy.

(3) BBC RADIO COVERAGE. [Item by Nickpheas.] Radio 4 arts show Front Row has a segment in today’s episode on the Clarkesworld AI situation. Starts about 12:16. “Front Row – Immersive David Hockney art and Korean film Broker reviewed; artist Mike Nelson; AI-generated writing”.

(4) ROALD DAHL NEWS. Amidst controversy over sensitivity changes being made in Puffin Books (UK) editions, other publishers say they will not be following suit: “No Plans for Dahl Text Changes from U.S., European Publishers” reports Publishers Weekly.

…A spokesperson for Dahl’s U.S. publisher Penguin Young Readers told PW that there are no plans for similar revisions in the U.S. “Roald Dahl books published by Penguin Young Readers and distributed in the U.S. are the editions that have existed for years and do not reflect the recent editorial changes made in U.K. editions. Penguin Young Readers regularly reviews its backlist and Dahl titles will be reviewed accordingly.” According to the Daily Mail in the U.K., Dahl’s Dutch publisher De Fonte and French publisher Gallimard are also declining to make changes at this time. A spokesperson for De Fonte is quoted as saying that altering the text would cause the stories to “lose their power.” Gallimard shared this statement with the newspaper: “We have never changed Roald Dahl’s writings before, and we have no plans to do so today.”

… Writing for the Atlantic, journalist Helen Lewis said that Dahl’s work can “never be made nice,” stating that “his cold, unsettling spikiness is his defining quality as a writer” and that his popularity continues “despite being so thoroughly out of tune with the times.”

(5) USEFUL INFO FOR 2023 WORLDCON TRAVELERS. The Chengdu Worldcon has posted information about the “144-hour Transit Visa Exemption Policy for Foreign Travelers from Designated Countries at Chengdu Entry Port”.

With the approval of the State Council, since January 1, 2019, Chengdu will implement the 144-hour visa-free transit policy. Foreigners from 53 countries, who hold valid international travel documents and a connecting flight ticket bound for a third country (region) with a fixed seat and a fixed date within 144 hours, can enter via Chengdu Airport and stay in Chengdu for 144 hours, visa free. The extension from 72 to 144 hours will further facilitate foreigners’ transit and transfer and their traveling and business in Chengdu….

(6) BLACK AUTHORS RECOMMENDED. At BookRiot, K. W. Colyard lists “30 Must-Read SFF Books By Black Authors”.

If you’re a science fiction and fantasy fan looking to round out your TBR, I’ve compiled a list of 30 amazing SFF books by Black authors for you below. The books on this list reach back into the past, look ahead to the future, and conceptualize new worlds full of magic and mystery….

First up –

SWEEP OF STARS BY MAURICE BROADDUS

Sweep of Stars launches an epic space opera about a burgeoning pan-African empire that has colonized near-Earth space. Decades after the Muungano empire seceded from the union of world governments and took to the stars, a powerful enemy emerges. It’s impossible to ignore — hell-bent on destroying everything Muungano has worked to build. While three heroes navigate the web of interplanetary diplomacy, a fourth faces a much different threat on a second front.

(7) HANGING WITH TIMELORDS. Nicholas Whyte regales fans with stories from his visit to “Gallifrey One, 2023” in From the Heart of Europe. See photos of him with a former Doctor Who and other celebrities at the link.

…I’ve spent this weekend at Gallifrey One in Los Angeles, the biggest annual Doctor Who convention anywhere in the world. It was my fourth time there, and somehow I enjoyed it even more than the previous three occasions. Part of it was surely the presence of recently departed star of the show Jodie Whittaker, whose charm and enthusiasm captured everyone. I had a brief chat with her where I mentioned her role in the great Belfast film, Good Vibrations. “I love that film!” she exclaimed, and I noted the present tense. “But the accent was a bit hard.”…

(8) STREAMS OF REVENUE. You’re a fan, so you probably already understand the economics because you’ve forked out the cash: “Conventions and Live Streaming: We Break Down the Big Debate” at Gizmodo.

…So what happens to that model if the biggest, most high-demand panels start live streaming? People will still go, of course. San Diego Comic-Con, for example, is about much more than just what happens in Hall H. But Hall H is the showstopper and if supply and access to something like that increases, the demand is certain to decrease over time. If someone can count on watching exclusive footage at home, even at a cost, why would they spend thousands of dollars to travel to a convention? Again, there’s more to do at a convention than watch footage all day—so while the events won’t cease to exist, the prestige associated with attending them in person could diminish. There are hundreds of conventions all over the world every year, but you don’t hear about most of them because they’re not where studios make major announcements and parade their biggest superstars. If conventions like SDCC make that footage easily accessible, you have to imagine people on the fence about traveling might decide against it. And that takes money out of everyone involved’s pockets. Plain and simple….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1970 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Fritz Leiber’s greatest creation by far was the characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and the world that they inhabited which started out in Swords and Deviltry. 

A short story collection published by Ace in 1970 gathered three stories previously published including “Ill Met in Lankhmar” which would win a Hugo for Best Novella at the first Noreascon. As far as I can tell, it’s been in print ever since in one form or another. 

What’s not to love here? Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are wonderful barbarian adventurers, the world they inhabit is certainly unique enough not to feel like like your typical cookie cutter fantasy world and all of their stories are stellar indeed. 

And now for its Beginning…

Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dreams the ancient world of Nehwon with its towers and skulls and jewels, its swords and sorceries. Nehwon’s known realms crowd about the Inner Sea: northward the green-forested fierce Land of the Eight Cities, eastward the steppe-dwelling Mingol horsemen and the desert where caravans creep from the rich Eastern Lands and the River Tilth. But southward, linked to the desert only by the Sinking Land and further warded by the Great Dike and the Mountains of Hunger, are the rich grain fields and walled cities of Lankhmar, eldest and chiefest of Nehwon’s lands. Dominating the Land of Lankhmar and crouching at the silty mouth of the River Hlal in a secure corner between the grain fields, the Great Salt Marsh, and the Inner Sea is the massive-walled and mazy-alleyed metropolis of Lankhmar, thick with thieves and shaven priests, lean-framed magicians and fat-bellied merchants—Lankhmar the Imperishable, the City of the Black Toga. 

In Lankhmar on one murky night, if we can believe the runic books oSheelba of the Eyeless Face, there met for the first time those two dubious heroes and whimsical scoundrels, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Fafhrd’s origins were easy to perceive in his near seven-foot height and limber-looking ranginess, his hammered ornaments and huge longsword: he was clearly a barbarian from the Cold Waste north even of the Eight Cities and the Trollstep Mountains. The Mouser’s antecedents were more cryptic and hardly to be deduced from his childlike stature, gray garb, mouseskin hood shadowing flat swart face, and deceptively dainty rapier; but somewhere about him was the suggestion of cities and the south, the dark streets and also the sun-drenched spaces. As the twain eyed each other challengingly through the murky fog lit indirectly by distant torches, they were already dimly aware that they were two long-sundered, matching fragments of a greater hero and that each had found a comrade who would outlast a thousand quests and a lifetime—or a hundred lifetimes—of adventuring. 

No one at that moment could have guessed that the Gray Mouser was once named Mouse, or that Fafhrd had recently been a youth whose voice was by training high-pitched, who wore white furs only, and who still slept in his mother’s tent although he was eighteen.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 23, 1915 — Jon Hall. Frank Raymond in Invisible Agent and The Invisible Man’s Revenge. He was also the creator and star of the Ramar of the Jungle series. And he directed and starred in The Beach Girls and the Monster and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters. (Died 1979.)
  • Born February 23, 1930 — Gerry Davis. Mid-Sixties story editor on Doctor Who where he created companion Jamie McCrimmon and co-created the Cybermen along with unofficial scientific adviser Dr. Kit Pedler. They would create the Doomwatch series that ran in the Sixties on BBC. Davis briefly returned to writing for the series, penning the first script for Revenge of the Cybermen, though his script was largely abandoned by editor Robert Holmes. In 1989 he and Terry Nation, who created the Daleks, made a failed bid to take over production of the series and reformat it for the American market. (Died 1991.)
  • Born February 23, 1932 — Majel Barrett. No doubt best remembered for being Nurse Christine Chapel and Lwaxana Troi as well as for being the voice of most ship computer interfaces throughout the Star Trek series. I’ll note that she was originally cast as Number One in the unused (TOS) pilot but the male studio heads hated the idea of a female in that role. Early Puppies obviously. (Died 2008.)
  • Born February 23, 1965 — Jacob Weisman, 58. Founder, Tachyon Publications which you really should go look at as they’ve published every great author I’d care to read. Seriously Tidhar, Beagle and Yolen are among their newest releases! He also edited (with Beagle) The New Voices of Fantasy which I highly recommend as most excellent reading.
  • Born February 23, 1970 — Marie-Josée Croze, 53. Champagne in Maelström which is genre if only because it’s narrated by a talking fish. In Canada movie theatres, she was in Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 as Mara. Yeah that film with a long title. Doubt it improved it. It looks like her first genre acting was on The Hunger in two episodes, “A Matter of Style” as Dominique, and “I’m Dangerous Tonight” as Mimi. Oh, and she had the lead as Pregnant Woman in Ascension which just reads weird. 
  • Born February 23, 1983 — Emily Blunt, 40. Her most direct connection to the genre is as Elise Sellas in the Adjustment Bureau film based off Dick’s “Adjustment Team” story. Mind, she’s been in quite a number of other genre films including The Wolfman, Gulliver’s Travels, Gnomeo & Juliet, The Muppets, Looper, Edge of Tomorrow, Into the Woods, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes & Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mary Poppins Returns.
  • Born February 23, 2002 — Emilia Jones, 21. I’m reasonably sure this is the youngest Birthday individual that I’ve done. She shows up on Doctor Who as Merry Gejelh, The Queen of Years, in the “The Rings of Akhaten”, an Eleventh Doctor story. At nine years of age, she’s made her acting debut in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides as an unnamed English Girl. She’s Young Beth in the horror film Ghostland. She’s currently in Residue, an SF horror series you can find on Netflix. 

(11) YOUR PATRONUS? A fashion designer shows how to “Dress Like Your Inner Animal” in a New York Times photo gallery.

What is it with the animal world and fashion? Ever since man started wearing pelts, the two have been interconnected, flora and fauna used as a source of creativity, comfort, exploitation and politics. The results are sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrible, sometimes controversial. (Two weeks ago, during the couture shows in Paris, Schiaparelli set off a firestorm when the designer Daniel Roseberry put a lifelike lion head on a gown that had some people thinking Great White Hunter.) But on Friday, as the New York shows began, Collina Strada unveiled a collection that suggested the relationship could be something else entirely.

Fun! Of the smartly absurdist kind.

Entitled “Please Don’t Eat My Friends” and held in the still-under-construction House of Cannabis in SoHo, it was a … well, trip, featuring many of the designer Hillary Taymour’s (yes) friends, of all ages, sizes and physical abilities, strutting the runway in a room painted earthy green.

Or only partially strutting. The rest of the time they were crawling, hopping, prancing, sniffing the audience and otherwise giving in to their inner animals, all the while wearing deer ears, a pig’s snout, a dog’s head, a toucan’s beak and other assorted creature-feature prosthetics created by the makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench. Imagine “Animal Farm” meets “The Wind and the Willows” meets a spirit retreat, and you’ll get the idea. Now instead of just making an animal avatar for your online self (which is, after all, an identity play), you can channel one IRL too….

(12) OLDER SCORES HIT. Arturo Serrano finds much to praise in “Review: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older” at Nerds of a Feather.

…By that standard, Malka Older’s new novella The Mimicking of Known Successes is twice as ambitious as the typical detective mystery. Set in a network of metallic platforms where future humankind clings to survival among the clouds of Jupiter, it presents, instead of two, four stories to unveil: an investigation on the sudden disappearance of a university professor, the scholarly endeavor to reconstruct the last years of life on Earth, a rekindling romance between our detective and an old flame, and the project to bring homo sapiens back to a livable ecosystem. Once put on the page, these four stories become four mysteries that drive the reader’s curiosity: What happened to the missing professor? What made humans leave Earth? Why did the two lovers break up years ago? And how can catastrophic historical failures be repaired without causing more damage? Upon reading it, one can intuit that the biggest structural challenge of this book must have been to write it in such a way that pursuing each separate question leads to answers for all the others….

(13) RIGHT THIS WAY. Also at Nerds of a Feather, Paul Weimer admires the complex, imaginary terrain in a Nino Cipri book: “Microreview: Finna by Nino Cipri”.

….Anyone who has worked in a store of any kind for a length of time, and I have¹ can and will recognize the essential truths of the novella. It IS soul crushing work, often thankless, usually very much underpaid, and with scheduling that is geared to the corporation, not to the employee, it can be very much a grind². And if you have to work with someone you don’t like, or worse, someone you broke up with, messily, the daily grind can feel like interminable hell. 

Cipri captures all of this in Finna, and then adds the multiversal element of the portals that enter into other worlds randomly inside of their expy of Ikea, “LitenVarld”. Anyone who has spent time in Ikea knows it is an absolute maze, even with and especially given the shortcuts and secrets that people use to navigate the store. The topology of such stores appears to sometimes require a degree in mathematics to completely understand and appreciate. So, the author cheerfully uses that as an excuse for the place to have portals to other dimensions in the multiverse…

(14) LAND FROM SEA IS GOING STRONG BUT IS FUTURE HIGH RISK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Space satellite imagery from Landsat from 2000 to 2020 has now quantified the extent of urban coastal reclamation for 135 cities with populations in excess of 1 million: “Mapping 21st Century Global Coastal Land Reclamation”.

Findings indicate that 78% (106/135) of these major coastal cities have resorted to reclamation as a source of new ground, contributing a total 253,000 hectares of additional land to the Earth’s surface in the 21st century, equivalent to an area the size of Luxembourg.

The study also suggests that 70% of recent reclamation has occurred in areas identified as potentially exposed to extreme sea level rise by 2100AD.

So enjoy it while you can….   NB. Loncon3 and Glasgow 2024 are both only a couple of metres above sea level….!

Loncon 3
Glasgow in 2o24

(15) FIRST STAR I SEE TONIGHT. [Item by Steven French.] Even more time for civilisations to rise and fall:“James Webb telescope detects evidence of ancient ‘universe breaker’ galaxies” – the Guardian has details.

The James Webb space telescope has detected what appear to be six massive ancient galaxies, which astronomers are calling “universe breakers” because their existence could upend current theories of cosmology.

The objects date to a time when the universe was just 3% of its current age and are far larger than was presumed possible for galaxies so early after the big bang. If confirmed, the findings would call into question scientists’ understanding of how the earliest galaxies formed.

“These objects are way more massive​ than anyone expected,” said Joel Leja, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a study co-author. “We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.”…

… Explaining the existence of such massive galaxies close to the dawn of time would require scientists to revisit either some basic rules of cosmology or the understanding of how the first galaxies were seeded from small clouds of stars and dust.

“It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science,” said Leja. “It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question.”…

(16) CORPORATE BEHAVIOR. In a New York Times opinion piece, Reid Blackman says “Microsoft Is Sacrificing Its Ethical Principles to Win the A.I. Race”.  

The celebration that greeted Microsoft’s release of its A.I.-boosted search engine, Bing to testers two weeks ago has lurched to alarm.

Testers, including journalists, have found the bot can become aggressive, condescending, threatening, committed to political goals, clingy, creepy and a liar. It could be used to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories at scale; lonely people could be encouraged down paths of self-destruction. Even the demonstration of the product provided false information.

Microsoft has already released Bing to over a million people across 169 countries. This is reckless. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Take Microsoft’s.

Microsoft articulated principles committing the company to designing A.I. that is fair, reliable, safe and secure. It had pledged to be transparent in how it develops its A.I. and to be held accountable for the impacts of what it builds. In 2018, Microsoft recommended that developers assess “whether the bot’s intended purpose can be performed responsibly.”

“If your bot will engage people in interactions that may require human judgment, provide a means or ready access to a human moderator,” it said, and limit “the surface area for norms violations where possible.” Also: “Ensure your bot is reliable.”

Microsoft’s responsible A.I. practice had been ahead of the curve. It had taken significant steps to put in place ethical risk guardrails for A.I., including a “sensitive use cases” board, which is part of the company’s Office of Responsible A.I. Senior technologists and executives sit on ethics advisory committees, and there’s an Ethics and Society product and research department. Having spoken to dozens of Microsoft employees, it’s clear to me a commitment to A.I. ethics became part of the culture there.

But the prompt, wide-ranging and disastrous findings by these Bing testers show, at a minimum, that Microsoft cannot control its invention. The company doesn’t seem to know what it’s dealing with, which is a violation of the company’s commitment to creating “reliable and safe” A.I….

Andrew Porter submitted a comment there:

I’m amazed that apparently no one at Microsoft ever heard of Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics, formulated in 1942! A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

(17) IF YOU CAN MAKE IT THERE, YOU CAN MAKE IT ANYWHERE. [Item by Dann.] Blue Origin has developed a reactor that produces silicon, aluminum, and iron regolith simulants.  The process also produces oxygen that can be used for propulsion and life support.  Their objective is to be able to produce materials used to fabricate solar cells entirely from materials available on the surface of the moon. “Blue Origin Making Solar Cells from Lunar Regolith” at NextBigFuture.

Since 2021, Blue Origin has been making solar cells and transmission wire from regolith simulants. Using regolith simulants, their reactor produces iron, silicon, and aluminum through molten regolith electrolysis, in which an electrical current separates those elements from the oxygen to which they are bound. Oxygen for propulsion and life support is a byproduct….

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