Tag Archives: Onion

Pixel Scroll 1/26/25 Pixels To The Left, Filers To The Right, I’m Stuck In The Middle With This Scroll

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(1) WHAT’S ‘BEST’ THIS YEAR. Siobhan Maria Carroll reviews the 2024 editon of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy in “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and the End of Earnestness” at Los Angeles Review of Books.

NOW IN ITS 10TH year, the annual Best American Science Fiction and Fantasyanthology provides an excellent overview of short genre fiction published in the United States. Each year, series editor John Joseph Adams selects 80 short stories from SF magazines and literary journals for blind review by a guest editor, who chooses their favorites from among them. This process maintains a high level of quality and consistency, while also allowing the guest editor to make a distinctive mark on each collection.

Hugh Howey, the 2024 guest editor, rose to fame after his self-published dystopian story“Wool” (2011) became an online sensation, leading to his stories’ distribution by Simon & Schuster and their adaptation into the Apple TV+ series Silo (2023– ). As might be expected for an author with a good eye for the market, Howey’s choices for the 2024 collection steer more toward the crowd-pleasing than those of my favorite series entry—the 2019 volume edited by Carmen Maria Machado. The result, however, is an impressive array of stories that will likely appeal both to casual readers and would-be writers….

… The high-water mark of the new millennium’s Age of Earnestness (the supposed successor to the 1990s Age of Irony) was directly tied to the rise of Twitter, as well as to a reading culture where attempts at nuanced expression could swiftly fall victim to dogpiles and hot takes. At least 12 of the 20 stories included in this volume (several of them from writers outspoken on social justice issues) were published in online magazines in 2023 in the wake of Twitter’s post-Musk exodus. Writing this review in the aftermath of the American election, I cannot help but perceive these stories as anticipatory responses to a changed technological and social culture. They are less overt in their depiction of “good” politics than previous entries in the Best American series, more interested in the psychology of “bad” and morally ambiguous characters, and more interested in depicting characters whose ability to change oppressive systems is limited or nonexistent….

(2) JOHN BARROWMAN NOW CLAIMS VICTIMHOOD STATUS. “’It was crap’: John Barrowman still refuses to take accountability for his actions” according to The Mary Sue.

Another day, another man fails to see how his sexually inappropriate behavior is wrong. This time around the man is John Barrowman, who up until a few years ago was one of Doctor Who’s most beloved stars. He played Captain Jack Harkness, one of the first pansexual characters on British TV, and was one-half of the show’s very first same-sex kiss. Fans adored him for his charm and charisma. That’s no longer the case.

Barrowman’s downfall was the result of another sexual misconduct allegation. In 2021, Noel Clarke, who played Mickey Smith on the show, was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Any chance of his ever returning to Doctor Who went up in smoke, as did his career. During this media storm, journalists uncovered some old footage of Clarke at a 2015 convention discussing Barrowman’s dubious behavior. He spoke about how Barrowman was allegedly constantly “taking his d*** out” on set and once even rested it on co-star Camille Coduri’s shoulder when they were in a makeup truck (she confirmed that she remembered this incident in the video but offered no further context). Seemingly, this had been tolerated for a while—but it wasn’t about to be tolerated any longer.

It turned out that Barrowman had been called out for his behavior in the past, but had seemingly learned nothing. In 2008, he admitted to exposing himself during a BBC Radio 1 show and apologized for it, saying he “went too far.” This apology was seemingly at the forefront of his mind when he made another apology in the wake of the 2021 allegations.

“With the benefit of hindsight, I understand that upset may have been caused by my exuberant behavior and I have apologized for this previously,” he said in a statement. “Since my apology in November 2008, my understanding and behavior have also changed.”

But apparently, this actually resulted in Barrowman learning nothing. Instead of changing and growing, he’s simply bitter that he lost his Doctor Who gig and a large portion of his entertainment career. He said as much to Wales Online recently. “I think I’ve been badly treated, definitely,” he complained. “I’m disgusted at the way my Doctor Who and Torchwood family turned their backs on me—99% of the things that were said about me were bulls***.”

Barrowman claimed that “no one was offended, no one was upset,” by his actions—but clearly, this isn’t true if he was delivering apologies. “It was crap,” he went on. “I ended up being good clickbait and it has lasted for three years. It’s been devastating—to the point I was blackballed. I can’t get into a room for an audition or a meeting anymore.”…

(3) DROPPING GENRE NAMES. Shelf Awareness brings us “Reading with… Carter Wilson”:

Book you’re an evangelist for:

William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. This might have been the only book I had to read in high school English that I fell in love with. The sheer creativity of Goldman is astonishing.

Book you’ve bought for the cover:

Well, it’s much more common I don’t buy a book because of the cover. But I will say I was persuaded by the gorgeousness of Anne Rice’s complete Vampire Chronicles. Gorgeous wrought-iron detailing all over the cover of that one

Book that changed your life:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Not sure any book has truly changed my life, but The Road is a book that forces you to read every single word. I can’t think of any other author whose use of language is as compelling as McCarthy’s.

Favorite line from a book:

“Don’t Panic.” –Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…

(4) WHERE CASTLE? If any Filefolk happen to be in the Paris area this summer: “Rare manuscript from middle ages that inspired Disney castle to go on display for first time in 40 years” in the Guardian. Despite the headline, the article never says what Disney castle they’re talking about. I guess you’re just supposed to know. However, the castle at the original Disneyland took its cues from Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein Castle.

… Pages from Les Très Riches Heures (The Very Rich Hours) – an elaborately decorated prayer book from the 15th century – will be exhibited at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris, after a costly restoration. It has not been seen, even by historians and academics, since the 1980s….

…He said the exhibition would also feature books from the duke of Berry’s collection on display for the first time since the 15th century. Berry, known as John the Magnificent, whose motto was “Le Temps venra” (the time will come), was one of medieval France’s greatest patrons of the arts and collected illuminated manuscripts.

Deldicque said the restoration of Les Très Riches Heures would be completed after the exhibition closes and the manuscript returns to the museum’s archive.

“It is too fragile and at risk of damage from light to be on permanent display,” he said. “That’s why this exhibition will be unique. Everyone knows about this book – but nobody has seen it.”…

(5) ON THE HORROR TRAIL. [Item by Steven French.] For the travelling horror fan, Atlas Obscura has compiled a list of fourteen must-see places to visit: “14 Haunting Places in Literature”.

There’s nothing quite like a horror story. The supernatural and macabre have haunted our imaginations for centuries—and inspired writers for centuries to create works that can terrify us.

We’ve compiled a list of our favorite places across the world that have appeared in horror literature, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to places that inspired Edgar Allan Poe before his death. Take a spine-tingling tour of these horror-inspiring locations—if you dare….

Here’s one of their bizarre destinations.

“The Raven that Inspired Dickens and Poe”

Perched on a log in the Rare Books department of the Free Library of Philadelphia stands a strange piece of history. Dead since 1841, but preserved with arsenic, and frozen inside a shadow box, this bird’s legacy is longer than most people’s. The raven’s name is Grip. Grip the Clever, Grip the Wicked, Grip the Knowing.

Once Charles Dickens’ pet raven, upon its death Dickens had it professionally taxidermied and mounted. Grip even makes an appearance in Barnaby Rudge, one of Dickens’ lesser-known stories.

The book was reviewed for Graham’s Magazine by its literary critic at the time, Edgar Allan Poe. Poe wrote that “[the raven’s] croaking might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama.” It wasn’t long after this that Poe published his breakout work “The Raven.” The coincidence didn’t escape notice, and Poe was taunted with the refrain “Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, / Three fifths of him genius, two fifths sheer fudge.”

Despite this, “The Raven” was a smashing success and Poe enjoyed performing readings at fancy salon parties. He would turn down all the lights and recite the poem with great drama. Everyone referred to him as “the Raven,” but it would only be four years after publishing “The Raven” and gaining worldwide fame that Poe would be found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, dying shortly thereafter….

(6) CHRISTOPHER BENJAMIN (1934-2025). Actor Christopher Benjamin died January 10 at the age of 90. The portion of his career of interest to sff fans is noted by the Guardian’s obituary:

With a portly but athletic physicality, a rich baritone voice, a bloodhound, drooping visage and a sarcastic sense of humour, Christopher Benjamin, who has died aged 90, was a backbone actor on television, but mostly stage, for many years.

He had a sort of internet afterlife when his role as Henry Gordon Jago in the BBC TV 1977 Doctor Who saga The Talons of Weng-Chiang was reprised in an audio supernatural mystery series from 2010 to 2021.

Benjamin was on TV and radio from 1965, appearing in Z Cars, The Avengers, The Saint, Jason King and, notably as the same character, Potter, in Danger Man and its more surreal, sci-fi spin-off, The Prisoner, both starring Patrick McGoohan. …

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 26, 1994 — Babylon 5 series premieres

Thirty-one years ago on PTEN, the Prime Time Entertainment Network, a syndicated network organized by Warner Brothers, the Babylon 5 series premiered.  It was created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski. It followed Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993), the pilot film which aired a year earlier. It would run for five twenty-two episode seasons as planned plus six related films. 

It generated a spin-off series, Crusade, but that only lasted thirteen episodes. Two other series were planned, The Legend of the Rangers and The Lost Tales, but neither got past the pilot. 

Its cast was marked by tragedy with a number of the principal actors dying young including Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, Jeff Conaway, Jerry Doyle, Andreas Katsulas and Michael O’Hare. 

It won two Hugo Awards for “The Coming of Shadows” at L.A. Con III and “Severed Dreams” at LoneStarCon II.

Babylon 5 in the revised print is streaming currently on Prime. I’m going to rewatch it this Winter as I’ve not seen it in at least a decade. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 26, 1918 — Philip José Farmer. (Died 2009.)

By Paul Weimer: Philip José Farmer first came to my attention as a name mentioned in the famous “Appendix N” of the original Advanced Dungeon Master’s Guide. Like the rest of the entries in that bibliography, it just listed his name, and a book title (“World of Tiers, et al”) and that was it. 

Not long thereafter, though, I came across issue 37 of Dragon Magazine, which was an in-house organ for TSR that mostly focused on D&D and (early on) other TSR games as well. Anyway, in issue 37, Ed Greenwood wrote an article called “From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass in one small step. The theory and use of Gates.” As someone who was already clued into my love of multiverse stuff, this was a formative article for me. 

In that article, Greenwood mentions The World of Tiers as “The magnum opus of gate systems”. He mentioned a number of other authors (particularly Moorcock and Cherryh) but I had remembered the mention of Farmer in the AD&D book and now really wanted to find The World of Tiers books, and now had the titles of each and every one. 

And so I read them and was immediately absorbed into the story of Robert Wolff, who is not the suburban homeowner he really thinks he is, but someone far older, more powerful and more dangerous. I also saw that Kickaha, the trickster who sets off Wolff on his adventure, was in fact, an even more interesting character with a complicated story (and very possibly an author insert character). 

From Tiers, I soon discovered the Riverworld novels, and got hooked on the idea of historical characters being pitted against each other after waking up on the titular planet, and much else besides. It’s one of the most interesting settings ever created in SFF. I remember back in the day, daydreaming what I would do if I woke up on the Riverworld. (The copy I had stressed and made it clear that everyone who ever lived “including you” was going to wake up on the planet.) I also weirdly associate the Billy Joel song “River of Dreams” with Riverworld as well. 

I recall a shared world of novels that he created the setting for, the “Dungeon”.  Farmer didn’t write any of the novels himself, but instead created the setting for a series of writers to play in. Like Tiers, it was a world involving Gates and strange planes, but as you might guess from the title, this was really a “prison plane” that the main character, Clive, is trying to penetrate to find his missing brother. What I particularly remember is that the novels with different authors took very big “Swings” back and forth, with authors in subsequent books retconning major events in previous books. I got the sense that the authors did not like the ideas of their counterparts all that much.  It does make the series not satisfactory overall, and I can’t imagine ever trying to reread it, but it was memorable for its imagery and imagination. 

Farmer is the second author, after Heinlein, that I read who tried to synthesize a lot of his characters and settings into as much of a single coherent whole as possible, particularly with his Wold Newton works. 

My favorite Farmer besides all of the goodness of Tiers and Riverworld might be The Gate of Time, eventually renamed Two Hawks from Earth. It featured a Native American pilot flying over Romanian airfields during WWII who gets blasted into an alternate history where the migrations of the Native Americans into North America didn’t happen, and they instead rolled westward into Europe, drastically changing the development of Europe instead. I loved how our protagonist tries and figure out what he is dealing with, a culture very different than anything he remembers, and gets caught up in intrigue and adventure. And really, that is what Farmer’s works have always done for me — entertaining action adventures that keep the pages turning.

Philip José Farmer

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) WET WORK. “Monster Devastated To See Film Depicting Things He Told Guillermo Del Toro In Confidence” – read all about it in The Onion.

Saying he felt humiliated by such a public betrayal of his trust, a monstrous abomination known as the Bog Freak told reporters Friday that he was devastated to have seen a movie depicting things he told filmmaker Guillermo del Toro in confidence….

(11) RESEARCHERS STICK WITH IT. Futurism reports “Scientist Testing Spider-Man-Style Web Shooters He Accidentally Made in Lab”.

Tufts University biotech researcher Marco Lo Presti made an astonishing discovery while investigating how silk and dopamine allow mussels to stick to rocky surfaces.

“While using acetone to clean the glassware of this silk and dopamine substance,” he told Wired, “I noticed it was undergoing a transition into a solid format, into a web-looking material, into something that looked like a fiber.”

Lo Presti and his colleagues immediately got to work, investigating whether the sticky fibers could be turned into a “remote adhesive.”

The result is an astonishingly “Spider Man”-like silk that can be shot not unlike the superhero’s wrist-mounted web shooters, as detailed in a paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials last year.

While it won’t allow an adult person to swing from skyscraper to skyscraper any time soon, the results speak for themselves. Footage of the team’s experiments shows strands of the material being dripped onto a number of objects from several inches above, forming a solid connection in a matter of seconds and allowing the object to be carried away.

The researcher’s collaborator, Tufts engineering professor Fiorenzo Omenetto, recalled being caught off guard by the accidental discovery….

(12) LONG NUMBERS TAKE DEEP POCKETS. In “New Prime Number, 41 Million Digits Long, Breaks Math Records”, Scientific American tells how the search operates. Oh, and that this particular search cost maybe $2 million to do.

…Last fall a new entry came from Luke Durant, a researcher in San Jose, Calif. Durant’s discovery unseated the former record holder for the largest prime, which had gone uncontested for nearly six years, an unprecedentedly long reign in the modern search for such numbers. The gap makes sense: the bigger primes are, the further apart they end up, making each new find harder than the last.

The new prime contains a mind-boggling 41,024,320 digits. To put that in perspective, the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe has around 80 digits. Each additional digit increases a number by 10 times, so the size of the new prime lives far beyond human intelligibility. Primes play a major role in pure math, where they’re main characters in a field called number theory, and in practice, where, for example, they underlie widely used encryption algorithms. A prime with 41 million digits won’t immediately join the ranks of useful numbers, but for now it adds a feather in the cap of a community that longs to apprehend the colossal….

… When asked how much money his project cost in an interview with Numberphile on YouTube, Durant said, “I believe it’s under $2 million.” That’s a hefty investment compared with the prime-search project’s prize of $3,000, which he plans to donate to the high school he attended, the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science….

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

Pixel Scroll 5/24/24 File “P” For Pixel

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(1) RECONCILING MIDDLE-EARTH. Max Gladstone enjoys sharing his insights about The Silmarillion in “Just Silmaril Things” at The Third Place.

…Of course it’s unreliable, it’s a transcribed oral tradition! But this is the one point in the fantasy of the Silmarillion on which we, the readers, proceed with authority. We can check the bard’s math. We were there, Gandalf: we were there at the close of the Third Age. Frodo did not cast the ring “into the Fire where it was wrought.” “Alone with his servant!” No Gollum at all—imagine a version of the Lord of the Rings that doesn’t understand Gollum! (And I thought that a version that didn’t understand Faramir was a crying shame…) The previous paragraph mentions the Witch-King falling at the battle of Pelennor Fields, but says nothing at all about Merry, or Eowyn.

Two thoughts, divergent. First: how amazing, at the end of a magisterial text, to invite the reader to rethink the whole damn thing. Not to undermine it, to lampoon or lambaste—but to encourage new questions, new depths of thought, insight: who else was there? At the ride of Fingolfin, at the kinslaying of the Teleri? What haven’t we seen, for the light of all this majesty? What isn’t told? What has been forgotten?…

(2) SCIENTIFIC FICTION. What Mark Twain did for Fenimore Cooper, and Damon Knight did for his sf-writing colleagues, Dashiell Hammett once did for practitioners of his genre. The Library of America’s “Story of the Week” is Hammett’s “Suggestions to Detective Story Writers”.

Soon after Dashiell Hammett published his third novel, The Maltese Falcon, to critical acclaim and strong sales, he accepted a position as crime fiction reviewer for the New York Evening Post….

…Perhaps inevitably, after several years of reading (and trashing) so many unremarkable novels, Hammett threw up his hands. His “Crime Wave” column in the June 7, 1930, issue of the Evening Post was supposed to be a review of three newly arrived mystery novels that were “from beginnings to endings, carelessly manufactured improbabilities having more than their share of those blunders which earn detective stories as a whole the sneers of the captious.” He declined to review the books he had been assigned and instead published a list of blunders he had encountered in these and other recent books, with the hope that writers might avoid them in the future….

Hammett begins:

…It would be silly to insist that nobody who has not been a detective should write detective stories, but it is certainly not unreasonable to ask any one who is going to write a book of any sort to make some effort at least to learn something about his subject. Most writers do. Only detective story writers seem to be free from a sense of obligation in this direction, and, curiously, the more established and prolific detective story writers seem to be the worst offenders….

Here are three things on his list that apparently would have come as news to certain authors:

…(4) When a bullet from a Colt’s .45, or any firearm of approximately the same size and power, hits you, even if not in a fatal spot, it usually knocks you over. It is quite upsetting at any reasonable range.

(5) A shot or stab wound is simply felt as a blow or push at first. It is some little time before any burning or other painful sensation begins.

(6) When you are knocked unconscious you do not feel the blow that does it…

(3) BOLD AS BRASS. On the other hand, if it’s a science fiction writer you want to be, take Ursula K. Le Guin’s advice: “Ursula K. Le Guin on How to Become a Writer” at Literary Hub.

How do you become a writer? Answer: you write.

It’s amazing how much resentment and disgust and evasion this answer can arouse. Even among writers, believe me. It is one of those Horrible Truths one would rather not face….

…Honestly, why do people ask that question? Does anybody ever come up to a musician and say, Tell me, tell me—how should I become a tuba player? No! It’s too obvious. If you want to be a tuba player you get a tuba, and some tuba music. And you ask the neighbors to move away or put cotton in their ears. And probably you get a tuba teacher, because there are quite a lot of objective rules and techniques both to written music and to tuba performance. And then you sit down and you play the tuba, every day, every week, every month, year after year, until you are good at playing the tuba; until you can—if you desire—play the truth on the tuba.

It is exactly the same with writing. You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned how to do it….

(4) DAVID BRIN HONORED BY CALTECH. David Brin is one of this year’s recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award (DAA), Caltech’s highest honor for alumni. The announcement was made at Caltech’s 87th Annual Seminar Day on May 18. “Caltech Celebrates Its 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients”.

[The award] went to four alumni who, because of both personal commitment and professional contributions, have made remarkable impacts in a field, on the community, or in society more broadly.

The 2024 class of DAAs are: David Brin (BS ’73), Louise Chow (PhD ’73), Bill Coughran (BS, MS ’75), and Timothy M. Swager (PhD ’88)….

David Brin is recognized for his enduring excellence in storytelling, examining how change, science, and technology affect the human condition in his New York Times-bestselling science fiction novels, and for his support of revolutionary ideas in space science and engineering through NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts Program.

Brin’s novels explore science’s potential impact on society with a mixture of hope and dread. His books have been honored with Hugo and Nebula awards, the most prestigious awards for science fiction and fantasy writing, and have been translated into more than 20 languages. One of his novels, The Postman, was the inspiration for the 1997 movie of the same name, which starred Kevin Costner. His 1998 nonfiction book, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? received the Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award from the American Library Association.

Brin serves on several advisory committees and sits on the external council for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, which explores high-risk, high-reward ideas that are capable of “changing the possible.”

(5) ALL DESIRES KNOWN. New Scientist interviews “Sci-fi author Martha Wells, author of the Murderbot series, on what a machine intelligence might want”.

When I wrote All Systems Red, one of my goals was to think about what a machine intelligence would actually want, as opposed to what a human thinks a machine intelligence would want. Of course, there’s no real way to know that. The predictive text bots labelled as AIs that we have now aren’t any more sentient than a coffee cup and a good deal less useful for anything other than generating spam. (They also use up an unconscionable amount of our limited energy and water resources, sending us further down the road to climate disaster, but that’s another essay.)

In the world of All Systems Red, humans control their sentient constructs with governor modules that punish any attempt to disobey orders with pain or death. When Murderbot hacks its governor module, it becomes essentially free of human control. Humans assume that SecUnits who are not under the complete control of a governor module are going to immediately go on a killing rampage.

This belief has more to do with guilt than any other factor. The human enslavers know on some level that treating the sentient constructs as disposable objects, useful tools that can be discarded, is wrong; they know if it were done to them, they would be filled with rage and want vengeance for the terrible things they had suffered….

(6) ANOTHER REASON TO REMEMBER 1984. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It strikes me that as it is 2024 this year is the 40th anniversary (1984) of the first (and I think only?) combination Eastercon-Eurocon.

Back in the day, I provided press operations for a number of conventions including Shoestringcons 1 & 2, BECCON 87 (Eastercon), Eastcon (Eastercon) etc. One of these was the 1984 Eurocon cum Eastercon, Seacon 84. Because I was doing press I got these posters (someone else produced) to include in my press kits. The attached is a photo of said poster.

The artwork shows the Brighton seaside with three piers (Brighton has had a troubled history with its piers – see the Wikipedia entries for West Pier and Brighton Palace Pier. And there is a spaceship crashing. The thing is that this space ship is also (look again) a beer mug. (Beer and SF go together in the UK.)

Sadly, I note that none of the GoHs are with us today (all those I looked up to, when I joined fandom in the 1970s, are now gone, (as also gone are a disturbing number of my fan friends which is the main reason I have cut back on con going to just one or two a year)).

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 24, 1963 — Michael Chabon, 61. The first work by Michael Chabon that I read was the greatest baseball story ever told, and yes, I know that statement will be disputed by many of you, or at least the greatest fantasy affair which is Summerlandin which a group of youngsters save the world from destruction by playing baseball.  It’s a truly stellar novel, perfect, that in every way deserved the Mythopoeic Award it received.

Michael Chabon

 Next on my list of novels that I really enjoyed by him is The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, the alternate history mystery novel, which would win a Hugo at Devention 3. Like Lavie Tidhar’s Unholy Land, this novel with its alternate version of Israel is fascinating. 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is story of  them becoming major figures in the comics industry from its start into its Golden Age. It’s a wonderful read and an absolutely fantastic look at the comics industry in that era.

An interesting story by him is “The Final Solution: A Story of Detection” novella. The story, set in 1944, is about an unnamed nearly ninety-year-old retired detective who may or may not be Holmes as this individual is a beekeeper. 

He is, I’d say, a rather great writer. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) HER. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] And here’s The Onion‘s take on the ScarJo AI voice fiasco. “Jerky, 7-Fingered Scarlett Johansson Appears In Video To Express Full-Fledged Approval Of OpenAI”. Read the short satire at the link.

(10) OCTOTHORPE. In Episode 110 of the Octothorpe podcast “Tom Hanks Bloody Loves the Moon”, John Coxon is a professor, Alison Scott doesn’t have a bucket list, and Liz Batty is the country’s foremost fan historian.

We’re a day late because John got distracted! We go through our mailbag and have our thoughts provoked by lots of intriguing commentary, before talking a little about the Arthur C Clarke Award and then onto picks.

Three photographs of the night sky, labelled Newcastle, Bangkok, and “Quite near London” (the labels were written by a Londoner, which is why it doesn’t just say “London”). Text above reads “Octothorpe 110” and below reads “Local Aurora Snapshots”. The Newcastle and London images show photographs of aurora with some minor bits of vegetation intruding; the Bangkok picture shows a skyline of buildings underneath a thunderstorm.

(11) SPACE PIONEER. “Ellison Shoji Onizuka: The First Asian American in Space” – the National Air and Space Museum website has a profile of this astronaut’s work in space before being lost in the Challenger disaster.

…Months after the tragedy, as debris from Challenger was found and processed, personal possessions were returned to the crew’s families. The Onizukas received a memento with special meaning. He had taken on the flight a soccer ball inscribed with good wishes and signatures from his daughter’s Clear Lake High School soccer team, which he helped coach. Stowed in a bag inside a locker in the crew cabin, the ball had been found in the wreckage. The Onizuka family presented the ball to the school. Thirty years later in 2016 astronaut Shane Kimbrough, whose son attended the same school, took the ball on his expedition to the International Space Station and later returned it to the school, where it remains on display. Symbolically, this flight seemed to complete Onizuka’s too-short final mission….

(12) THE BIG ONE. Smithsonian Magazine lists “The Seven Most Amazing Discoveries We’ve Made by Exploring Jupiter”.

…With its gorgeous swirling overcoat and nature of extremes, Jupiter has long captured the public imagination and continues to inspire scientific study. Recent discoveries have only heightened Jupiter’s mystique, enticing researchers to probe this far-flung realm. Here are some of the most enthralling findings scientists have made about Jupiter and its moons in the last five decades….

You may not have gotten the memo:

Yes, Jupiter has a ring

“A lot of people don’t even realize it has one,” Becker says. Too puny to be observed with a backyard telescope, Jupiter’s dusty wreath remained undetected for a long time. Discovered only in 1979 during the Voyager 1 flyby, the ring has since been viewed with more powerful ground telescopes and other visiting spacecraft.

Like any ring encircling other planets in the solar system, Jupiter’s is a glorified debris field. Detritus from crash-landed meteorites congregate around Jupiter. This loose mélange of ice, dust and rock spans 32,000 to 130,000 miles in width from the planetary surface.

When other celestial objects pass through the ring, they can leave behind tracks in the dust stream. One of the most famous of wakes came from the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter in 1994. Years later, the Galileo and New Horizons spacecraft found ripples in Jupiter’s ring that were kicked up by shards from the comet, the celestial equivalent of footsteps in freshly fallen snow….

(13) WE’LL GO AT NIGHT. The BBC reports on ESA’s proposed new Sun probe: “Airbus UK to build Vigil satellite to monitor Sun storms”.

British engineers will lead the development of a new satellite to monitor the Sun for the energetic outbursts it sends towards Earth.

The announcement of Vigil, as the spacecraft will be known, is timely following the major solar storm that hit our planet earlier this month.

The event, the biggest in 20 years, produced bright auroral lights in skies across the world.

Airbus UK will assemble Vigil and make it ready for launch in 2031.

It’s a European Space Agency (Esa) mission. The €340m (£290m) industrial contract to initiate the build was signed at an Esa and European Union space council being held in Brussels….

(14) VIDEO OF ANOTHER DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Roger Corman’s 1994 (but never released) Fantastic Four movie is now on YouTube. I bought a VHS of this at some WorldCon, probably late in the previous millennium. Watched it once. If this is (per the CBR article) an improved viewing, I might give it a try.

An interesting article about it from 2017: “Where Are They Now: Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four”.

The Roger Corman’s ill-fated film The Fantastic Four was supposed to officially release in 1994, but that never happened. In 2005, Stan Lee said that the only reason the film was ever made was because executive producer Bernd Eichinger wanted to retain the rights to the film series, so he made a low budget film knowing it would never see the light of day, and one day make a big-budget version for the public to see. Eichinger and Corman deny these claims, stating that their intentions were always to release the film.

Avid Arad, who was a Marvel executive at the time and would later found Marvel Studios, bought the film and ordered that it be buried without even seeing the movie because he didn’t want Marvel to be associated with low-budget B movies as it might tarnish the franchise. So what happened to the movie? It is still available for free to stream on Youtube and Dailymotion. The quality as admittedly quite poor, but it is still watchable for anyone interested in a superhero movie with the incredibly low budget. And what about the cast and crew of this Marvel anomaly? Let’s take a look at what they’ve all been up to since their work on this film.

The movie: The Fantastic Four (1994) unreleased film produced by Roger Corman and Bernd Eichinger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA7LcG4ch3A

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

Pixel Scroll 10/4/22 TANSTAFE! (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Elevenses)

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(1) MEASURED BY ANOTHER YARDSTICK. “Too Dystopian for Whom? A Continental Nigerian Writer’s Perspective” by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki at Uncanny Magazine.

It is a common conception that people come to fiction, especially the speculative, to escape reality. And that is indeed one of the purposes it can serve. Another is that conversely to escaping, people come to fiction to encounter or experience reality. A paradox? After all, we already live in reality, one that is ubiquitous. We have it all around us, painfully so sometimes. Hence the need for an escape. But you see, reality has different facets, different windows, like eyes, that reveal different vistas.

This is why the consumption of fiction and SF/F based on other cultures and by people of other demographics is a necessity. Doing so helps us diversify our understanding and encounter all these different realities that lie beyond our immediate purview. What we are often steeped in is our own immediate reality, which is, while occasionally painful, also painfully limited.

It has often been surmised, most especially around discussions of war, climate change, natural disasters, and more recently the outbreak of COVID-19, in articles like this in Wired and on The Apeiron Blog we are living in a dystopia. This realization has weaned many of the need for apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian fiction, and has them preferring instead to immerse themselves in lighter, more upbeat and positive work. This is of course valid, as we all must do what we feel right. But beyond personal preferences of individuals for lighter, “happier” works in this period of gloom, there is a wider and more general assertion that dystopias, apocalypses, grimdark, dark fantasy, and the like are now unnecessary because we live in and have it all around us. A Publishers Weekly piece talks about dystopian fiction losing its lustre due to the pandemic and spells doom for the subgenre of doom. But is this really so? In a viral tweet, the account tweets its disagreement, which I quite agree with, saying that “Dystopian fiction is when you take things that happen in real life to marginalized populations and apply them to people with privilege.” The dystopian reality is not new and has been with us for a while. Its fictionalizing continues till date despite those debates regarding its relevance or necessity….

(2) FINALIST NUMBER ONE. Mark Lawrence has started posting finalists for the 8th Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. The first (and as of today only) finalist is Tethered Spirits by T.A. Hernandez.

(3) NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today announced the winners of “The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022: Entangled states – from theory to technology”.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 to
Alain Aspect, Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France,
John F. Clauser, J.F. Clauser & Assoc., Walnut Creek, CA, USA and
Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, Austria

Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information.

The ineffable effects of quantum mechanics are starting to find applications. There is now a large field of research that includes quantum computers, quantum networks and secure quantum encrypted communication.

One key factor in this development is how quantum mechanics allows two or more particles to exist in what is called an entangled state. What happens to one of the particles in an entangled pair determines what happens to the other particle, even if they are far apart….

(4) THE ONION ISN’T KIDDING. “Area Man Is Arrested for Parody. The Onion Files a Supreme Court Brief.”  — the New York Times covers the litigation.

A man who was arrested over a Facebook parody aimed at his local police department is trying to take his case to the Supreme Court. He has sought help from an unlikely source, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Monday.

“Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government?” the brief asked. “This was a surprise to America’s Finest News Source and an uncomfortable learning experience for its editorial team.”

The source is, of course, The Onion.

Or, as the satirical website described itself in the brief, “the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.”

The Parma, Ohio, area man in question, Anthony Novak, spent four days in jail over a Facebook page he created in 2016 that mocked his local police department. He was charged with using a computer to disrupt police functions, but a jury found him not guilty.

Mr. Novak says his civil rights were violated, and he is trying to sue the city for damages. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit earlier this year, saying that the police had qualified immunity, and an appeals court upheld that decision. Now the high court is reviewing his request to take up the matter….

(5) STAR TREK SANDWICH. According to Boing Boing, “Harlan Ellison auction includes the world’s most (in)famous “Star Trek” photo”.

Heritage Auction’s upcoming auction of Harlan Ellison’s estate contains a wealth of memorabilia, including a photo of young Harlan flanked by Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner in full character costume. Nimoy inscribed the photo with, “Harlan, Love you & your great credits,” and Shatner wrote, “Who’s the kid in the middle.”

Heritage says the photo is “sure to be one of the most fought-over, sought-after items in Heritage’s history.”

…Proceeds from the sale will benefit the Harlan and Susan Ellison Foundation, a nonprofit created by Straczynski. The foundation is working to turn the late couple’s Los Angeles home into what Straczynski calls “a place dedicated to writing, creativity, art and music.”

It will be a “memorial library,” he says, “full of books (50,000 by actual count), art (the pieces in the Heritage auction represent only a small portion of what’s there), comics, amazing architecture (complete with a tower, hidden rooms, gargoyles and the Lost Aztec Temple of Mars).” Straczynski says it will serve “fans of Harlan’s work, sure, but also lovers of art and books and architecture, as well as academics who will be able to study his manuscripts and decades of correspondences with some of the most famous writers in and out of the science fiction genre.”

(6) DEBUT NOVEL OF FAMED COMICS CREATOR. Grant Morrison discusses their first novel at CrimeReads. “Grant Morrison on Gender, Genre, and Drag”.

Molly Odintz: Luda is all about the instability of identity, exemplified by drag. What did you want to say about the identities we are assigned, and assume?

Grant Morrison: At the simplest level, I suppose I want to say that ‘identity’, at least from my point of view, appears to be conditional and refuses to be contained by any label; how does the ‘identity’ of a person as a two year old child square with that same person’s alleged ‘identity’ as a 40-year old or as a dying 90-year old in a failing physical frame – our bodies and minds and how we feel about ourselves, and who we are within a larger constantly shifting and rearranging system, are subject to such radical transformations over decades that were we to speed a human life up to last ten minutes rather than 80 years the result would resemble a radical metamorphic shifting of shape and size, intellectual capacity and ‘personality’. The idea of a single label adequate to that process seems absurd.

(7) SOCIAL MEDIA CRITICISM AGAINST GRRM COAUTHORS. George R.R. Martin’s tweet publicizing a forthcoming Westeros reference book opened floodgates of criticism against his coauthors Linda Antonsson and Elio M. García Jr.

Variety reported today “‘Game of Thrones’ Fans Boycott George R.R. Martin’s Next Book, Accusing Coauthors of Racism”.

Bestselling fantasy author and “House of the Dragon” executive producer George R.R. Martin is caught in the crossfire of the heated battle over inclusive casting — and some of his fans are calling for a boycott of his upcoming book due to comments by its coauthors.

Out Oct. 25, “The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of the Targaryen Dynasty, Volume One” is being touted as a “deluxe reference book” for those itching to learn more about Westeros’ most powerful family. When Martin publicized it on social media last week, thousands of fans responded in outrage, many calling out the problematic behavior and “history of racism” of his coauthors, married couple Linda Antonsson and Elio M. García Jr. “I will not be buying anything with Linda and Elio attached to it,” one wrote, while others urged Martin to sever ties with the pair….

…Antonsson contends that upset fans are criticizing “cherry-picked statements stripped of context.” She tells Variety that it bothers her to be “labeled a racist, when my focus has been solely on the world building.” According to the author, she has no issue with inclusive casting, but she strongly believes that “diversity should not trump story.”

“If George had indeed made the Valyrians Black instead of white, as he mused on his ‘Not a Blog’ in 2013, and this new show proposed to make the Velaryons anything other than Black, we would have had the same issue with it and would have shared the same opinion,” Antonsson says.

Vulture carries more documentation: “’Game of Thrones’ Book Co-Authors Accused of Racism by Fans”.

…Married couple Linda Antonsson and Elio M. García Jr., who founded the fansite Westeros.org and have worked as fact-checkers on Martin’s novels, have decried the casting of people of color in Game of Thrones for over a decade. In 2011 and 2012, Antonsson made numerous Tumblr posts saying that most of Westeros, including Dorne, and many of the overseas lands, should be considered “very white indeed,” and getting angry and defensive at any suggestions from “whiny social justice crusaders” to the contrary. Antonsson insists that the only correct interpretation of the books is that “Unremarked skin colour=>white.”

“If you start talking about there being a need — a need outside of what is in the text — to cast actors of certain ethnicites [sic] even if their appearance doesn’t match at all what’s in the text … well, fuck that, plain and simple,” she wrote in May 2012. “I don’t respect that approach, never have and never will, and that is a perfectly valid decision. It has nothing to do with racism, so kindly go fuck yourself with something sharp and pointy.” She disapproved of the casting of a Black actor as Xaro Xhoan Daxos because that character was described as “pale” in the books, and celebrated the casting of a white actor to play Daario Naharis because of his race. In 2021, after the casting of Steve Touissant as Corlys Velaryon, Antonsson wrote on Twitter, “Take your woke fucking stupidity and shove it up you ass. Corlys is miscast, there are no black Valyrians and there should not be any in the show.”…

(8) BIG DEALS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Tom Faber discusses the appeal of card games.

The influence of cards is more notable in the popular genre of ‘deck-building’ games.  These titles such as Slay The Spire and the enormously popular Hearthstone, from World Of Warcraft creator Blizzard, prove particularly compelling because they augment cards with all the capabilities of digital technology, offering seamless online multi-player modes, visual pyrotechnics and an eternally expanding set of possible cards from which to choose…

…The enduring presence of cards is credit to their adaptability.  Cards are not a game in themselves but a highly flexible medium which can be used as metaphors for combat, vehicles for strategy or links to a long lineage of play that stretches far back into human history.  Today you can build memories out of houses of cards in Where Cards Fall or use cards as units of dialogue in Signs Of The Sojourner.  Rather than killing off the humble playing card, video games have given them thousands of fresh possibilities.

(9) MEMORY LANE.  

1965 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Fifty-seven years ago on the BBC, Out of this World series first aired. It. produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series. 

It was created and produced by Irene Shubik while she was working on Armchair Theatre as a story editor. In the highly patriarchal workplace of the Sixties BBC, it was unusual that was allowed to do this. 

(Very much to her credit, she was involved in The Jewel in the Crown undertaking, a most impressive series indeed.)

She was aided by the fact that Armchair Theatre had done an adaptation of John Wyndham’s “Dumb Martian” story as a deliberate showcase for the Out of this World series. 

It lasted but thirteen episodes of which one survives today as the BBC bulk erased them, the ass****s. Too bad as Boris Karloff presented it and the stories were based off tales written by Clifford D. Simak (“Immigrant”), Isaac Asimov (“Little Lost Robot”) which is the only one that survives which the British Film Institute has released on DVD and Philip K. Dick (“Impostor”). 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 4, 1860 — Sidney Edward Paget. British illustrator of the Victorian era, he’s definitely known for his illustrations that accompanied Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand. He also illustrated Arthur Morrison’s Martin Hewitt, Investigator, a series of short stories featuring the protagonist, Martin Hewitt, and written down by his good friend, the journalist Brett. These came out after Holmes was killed off, like many similar series. (Died 1908.)
  • Born October 4, 1904 — Earl Binder. Under the pen name of Eando Binder, he and his brother Otto published SF stories. One series was about a robot named Adam Link. The first such story, published in 1939, is titled “I, Robot”. (A collection by Asimov called I, Robot would be published in 1950. The name was selected by the publisher, despite Asimov’s wishes.) As Eando Binder, they wrote three SF novels — Enslaved Brains, Dawn to Dusk and Lords of Creation. There’s lots of Eando Binder available on iBooks and Kindle. (Died 1966.)
  • Born October 4, 1923 — Charlton Heston. Without doubt, his best known genre role was astronaut George Taylor in the Planet of the Apes. He returned to the role Beneath the Planet of the Apes. He’s also Neville in The Omega Man, and Detective Thorne in Soylent Green. By the way, once at the LA Music Center he played Sherlock Holmes in The Crucifer of Blood, opposite Richard Johnson as Dr. Watson. His IMDB credits show him as being on SeaQuest DSV in the “Abalon” episode. (Died 2008.)
  • Born October 4, 1932 – Ann Thwaite, 90. Author of AA Milne: His Life which won the Whitbread Biography of the Year, as well as The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the Pooh, a scrapbook offshoot of the Milne biography. (And yes, Pooh is genre.) In 2017 she updated her 1990 biography of A.A Milne to coincide with Goodbye Christopher Robin for which she was a consultant. 
  • Born October 4, 1956 — Christoph Waltz, 66. He portrayed James Bond’s nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Spectre and in No Time to Die. Genre wise, he also portrayed Qohen Leth in The Zero Theorem, Benjamin Chudnofsky in The Green Hornet (I lasted ten minutes before giving up), Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, himself in Muppets Most Wanted, Léon Rom in The Legend of Tarzan and Dr. Dyson Ido in Alita: Battle Angel. 
  • Born October 4, 1956 — Bill Johnson. His writing was strongly influenced by South Dakota origins. This is particularly true of his “We Will Drink a Fish Together” story which won a Hugo for Best Novelette in 1998. (It got a Nebula nomination as well.) His 1999 collection, Dakota Dreamin, is quite superb. (Died 2022.)
  • Born October 4, 1960 — Annabelle Lanyon, 62. She was Oona in Legend. And she showed as Isabel in the Quatermass franchise, Quatermass series and the Quatermass Conclusion. She’s been in more genre related films and series than I can possibly list here, i.e. The Werewolves of The Third Reich which has a twenty-one rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes, 
  • Born October 4, 1975 — Saladin Ahmed, 47. His Throne of the Crescent Moon was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel and did win the Locus Award for Best First Novel. He has also written for comics characters Kamala Khan (The Magnificent Ms. Marvel), Black Bolt, Exiles and the Miles Morales (Spider-Man) series, all on Marvel Comics. Oddly only his Marvel is available at the usual suspects.

(11) COMPLETELY MAD. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna profiles Sergio Aragones, who is still active at 85 drawing for MAD, about his comic book Groo The Wanderer. “Sergio Aragones, MAD magazine artist, is still spoofing our humanity”.

… “When Mad accepted me, that was a change of life, a change of mind, a change of everything. Somebody liked what I did,” Aragonés says. Yet despite this “radical mind change,” he appreciated: “I didn’t have to change at all. It was what I had been doing since I was a kid, drawing, drawing, drawing.”

Aragonés also cherished the famous annual Mad trips, sometimes to far-flung places. He roomed with his heroes in Switzerland, went on safari with them in Africa, and while onboard near Bermuda, helped surprise Gaines by re-creating the publisher’s favorite Marx Brothers moment: the crowded cabin scene from “A Night at the Opera.”…

(12) IT’S OFFICIAL. “Velma Is a Lesbian: New ‘Scooby Doo’ Film Makes Her Gay Officially” reports Variety.

Velma is officially a lesbian.

Clips from the brand new movie “Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!,” which show the Mystery Inc. member googly-eyed and speechless when encountering costume designer Coco Diablo, have gone viral on Twitter, confirming suspicions held by the “Scooby” fan base for decades.

“OMG LESBIAN VELMA FINALLY,” reads one tweet, which has over 100,000 likes.

It’s long been an open secret among fans and “Scooby-Doo” creatives that Velma is gay. Even James Gunn, who wrote the early live-action films, and Tony Cervone, who served as supervising producer on the “Mystery Incorporated” series, have confirmed the character’s sexuality, but they were never able to make it official onscreen.

In 2020, Gunn tweeted that he “tried” to make Velma a lesbian in the live-action movies. “In 2001 Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script,” he wrote. “But the studio just kept watering it down & watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) & finally having a boyfriend (the sequel).”

(13) LOCAL ROVING. [Item by Steven French.] Wanted: job for redundant Mars rover! “Planetary rover once intended for Mars tested in Milton Keynes quarry” – the Guardianihas the story.

A planetary rover potentially destined for missions on the moon or Mars has been put through its paces at a quarry in Milton Keynes.

The Sample Fetch Rover (SFR), known as Anon, was intended to collect sample tubes left on the surface of Mars by Perseverance.

But this year Nasa and the European Space Agency announced the rover would no longer be needed for this work, as Perseverance, which landed on the red planet in February 2021, was already collecting samples from the planet.’

… Quarry testing is essential to the development process, providing a unique and dynamic landscape that cannot be replicated within the Mars Yard test facility at Stevenage, and the event marks the first time all the rover’s systems are being tested simultaneously….

(14) PLAYING IN OVERTIME. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “The Visual Effects Crisis,” the Royal Ocean Film Society notes that visual effects artists are suffering, with weeks of 100-hour days to make insane deadlines.  The Phantom Menace used one visual effects company; The Rise Of Skywalker used 12, and some Marvel films use 35.  But profit margins are thin, and companies frantically shift locations to take advantage of tax credits.  CATS is exhibit A of what happens when visual effects companies screw up.  The narrator notes that Rhythm and Hues’s work helped Life Of Pi win four technical Oscars but the company went bankrupt because of the many changes they had to do to make director Ang Lee happy.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Avatar (2022 Remastered) the Screen Junkies say that even though they did Avatar in 2012 if there’s a remastered version of Avatar in theatres they can take on the film again.  They say the plot combines Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, and Ferngully, with generic characters they call “Colonel Soldier” and “Doctor Samples” (because Sigourney Weaver’s character is always looking for samples).  The aliens look like a cross between Ugly Sonic and those creatures in CATS.  And if you think “unobtainium” is a silly name, your inner 12-year old can look up the real mineral “cummingtonite” on Wikipedia.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Steven French, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/20/22 When I Scroll Alone, I Prefer To Be By Myself

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(1) CON CELEBRITY GUEST CHARGED. Yahoo! reports “Gary Busey Charged for Two Counts of Criminal Sexual Contact in New Jersey”. Last weekend the actor was a celebrity guest at the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill.  

Gary Busey is facing four charges, including two counts of criminal sexual contact in the fourth degree, by the police department of Cherry Hill, N.J. The actor was visiting the town during the weekend of Aug. 12 to Aug. 14 to attend the Monster-Mania Convention at the Doubletree Hotel.

During the time of the convention, Cherry Hill police responded to a report of a sex offense at the Doubletree Hotel. After investigating the incident, detectives charged the 78-year-old actor on four offenses: two counts of criminal sexual contact in the fourth degree, one count of attempting criminal sexual contact in the fourth degree and one disorderly conduct count of harassment. The Cherry Hill Police Department has declined to provide further details regarding the incident at this time.

The Monster Mania committee wrote on Facebook today:

Monster-Mania is assisting authorities in their investigation into an alleged incident involving attendees and a celebrity guest at its convention in Cherry Hill, New Jersey last weekend. Immediately upon receiving a complaint from the attendees, the celebrity guest was removed from the convention and instructed not to return. Monster-Mania also encouraged the attendees to contact the police to file a report.

The safety and well-being of all our attendees is of the utmost importance to Monster-Mania, and the company will not tolerate any behavior that could compromise those values. Monster-Mania will continue to assist the authorities in any and every way possible.

(2) MILFORD, CLARION, AND OTHERS. S. L. Huang dives into sff history to find “The Ghost of Workshops Past: How Communism, Conservatism, and the Cold War Still Mold Our Paths Into SFF Writing” at Tor.com. Huang is especially interested in questions such as why “Milford would fail more often for writers of color or other minority students in the workshop.”

…Part 4. From Iowa to Bread Loaf to Milford to Clarion   

I traced this method of workshopping from Iowa to the early years of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and from Bread Loaf to Milford, which was the first writing conference dedicated to SFF. The Milford Writers’ Conference was founded by Damon Knight, Judith Merril, and James Blish in 1956, smack in the middle of Engle’s red-hot zeitgeist. There’s no indication the founders knew any of the politics attached to the expansion of those workshop methods—it’s likely they sourced the format from a colleague and figured this was the way workshopping was done.

Thanks to Engle, it was how workshopping was done. By the 1950s, almost nothing else would have existed to provide another model.

Milford was founded as a conference between peers, not as a program to teach newer writers. A decade later, in 1967, Robin Scott Wilson (who, in what appears to be an unrelated coincidence, used to work for the CIA), came and asked for assistance in starting a more beginner SFF workshop for the college campus on which he taught. He recruited much-needed help from Damon Knight and from Knight’s fellow author and by-then wife Kate Wilhelm.

None of the three had any prior knowledge about how to teach writing, other than by trying to adapt what they had been using at Milford. In Wilhelm’s Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, in which she details the very beginnings of Clarion, she confesses, “Neither Damon nor I had had teaching experience, and we were learning by trial and error what was effective and what was not.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Wilson, the only one of them who was an active professor at the time: “[A] condition of my employment was that I organize a writers’ workshop. I did not know how to do this. I did not know anybody who knew how to do this…”

… Oh, but Clarion’s methods work, an objector might point out, citing the rave reviews or the substantial number of people who credit a workshop on their ramp toward publication.

I don’t think that’s wrong. Clarion’s methods work…for the people they work for. I don’t want us not to have those methods. I want there to be more. More choice, more diversity, to nurture all types of voices and minds and pens.

My intent is not to criticize Wilson and Knight and Wilhelm for experimenting, but to emphasize the opposite—we should experiment more, in our own generation! Fifty years after Clarion’s founders built something new, it’s on us keep moving forward….

(3) WHAT WAS REVEALED DURING THE DOJ / PRH TRIAL. “A Trial Put Publishing’s Inner Workings on Display. What Did We Learn?” in the New York Times.

Lawyers for the Department of Justice and for Penguin Random House delivered their closing argument on Friday in a case that will determine whether the publisher, the country’s largest, can buy one of its rivals, Simon & Schuster.

The case, which will be decided in the fall by Judge Florence Y. Pan, focused on the effects of consolidation on publishing, an industry that has already been dramatically reshaped by mergers in recent years.

The government sued to stop the deal on antitrust grounds, saying it would diminish competition among the biggest houses and push down advances for some authors. Bertelsmann, the parent company of Penguin Random House, argued the deal would bring its supply chain and distribution muscle to a longer list of authors, to their benefit, and that the industry is large and varied, made up of many important players beyond the biggest firms. Judge Pan expressed skepticism over several of Penguin Random House’s main arguments.

Beyond the legal debate, the three-week trial offered an unusual glimpse into the world of publishing, offering observers a parade of high-profile publishing executives, agents and authors speaking frankly and on the record about how books are made.

Here is some of what we learned….

What books drive the industry’s profits?

By most measures, publishing is thriving. In any given year, hundreds of publishers in the United States release around 60,000 books. From 2012 to 2019, print book sales grew by more than 20 percent, from nine billion to 11 billion, Mr. Dohle testified. And book sales were strong during the pandemic, rising by another 20 percent from 2019 to 2021, he said.

But the trial highlighted a surprising fact: A minuscule percentage of books generate the vast majority of profits.

During their testimony, Penguin Random House executives said that just 35 percent of books the company publishes are profitable. Among the titles that make money, a very small sliver — just 4 percent — account for 60 percent of those profits.

“That’s how risky our business is,” Mr. Dohle said. “It’s the books that you don’t pay a lot for and become runaway best sellers.”

The trial offered examples of books that publishers paid a relatively small amount for, and that turned out to be a great hit. Sally Kim, the publisher of the Penguin Random House imprint Putnam, said they acquired “Where the Crawdads Sing” for “mid-six figures.” That book has gone on to sell around 15 million copies worldwide.

The issue is industrywide, and has been exacerbated by the rise of online retail, which tends to reinforce the visibility of best sellers. In 2021, fewer than one percent of the 3.2 million titles that BookScan tracked sold more than 5,000 copies.

(4) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.  

1883 – [By Cat Eldridge.] So today is the birthday of Austin Tappan Wright who was born in 1883. He died at the young age of forty-eight as a result of an automobile accident near Santa Fe, New Mexico, on September 18, 1931. During his lifetime, he published just one work of fiction, the “1915?” short story in the Atlantic Monthly for April 1915. In 1981 in the Elsewhere anthology, Mark Arnold and Terri Windling published An Islandian Tale: The Story of Alwina.

Islandian kinds of love are noted by Ursula K. Le Guin in her Always Coming Home novel, though she only mentions three of the four kinds which are ania (desire for marriage and commitment), apia (sexual attraction) and alia (love of place and family land and lineage). The fourth is amia which is love of friends. 

Did you know that Islandia wasn’t published when he was alive? His widow edited his forty years long working obsession, err hobby, project that resulted in her twenty-eight hundred page long, well, what we would know as the Islandia novel if it had been published but it wasn’t, and following her own death in 1937, their daughter Sylvia further edited and cut that text drastically. The resulting draft, only a thousand pages long, shorn of Wright’s extensive appendices, was published in 1942, along with a pamphlet by Basil Davenport, An introduction to Islandia; its history, customs, laws, language, and geography, based on the original supplementary material. 

Is there a full, unedited version? Yes, there is. The complete and never-published version of Islandia can be found in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. A scan of the original typed manuscript and a detailed map of Islandia are available on the Harvard Library website.

It details an extensive Utopian fantasy about an imaginary country he called Islandia located near Antarctica (if I remember correctly) with a complex history, culture and geography, said to be in scope to Tolkien’s writings of Middle-earth. I personally do not think that is valid comparison, but it is certainly a most interesting read though nowhere near as interesting as what Tolkien created. 

Now that might have been the end of the fiction based on Wright’s extensive notes and such but along came three authorized sequels by Mark Saxton who most people know for being responsible editing the papers of Austin Wright Tappan into Islandia. With the permission of the daughter, he set his last three novels in that fictional Utopian realm. It is for these that he is now remembered. 

The first, The Islar was published in 1969 as a modern-day sequel to the original novel. The two others, The Two Kingdoms and Havoc in Islandia, one published a decade later and one three years after, both take place much earlier in the kingdom’s history. All three were written off of Wright’s extensive background notes. 

He planned on more, but the daughter died and the Estate revoked him writing more. He’s since died and no one else has showed interest in writing novels based off these writings. 

I also found by Richard N. Farmer, Islandia Revisited: A Sequel By Other Hands which he claims to be a sequel to Islandia. No, it’s not authorized, and I cannot figure why it’s still in existence.

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 20, 1932 — Anthony Ainley. He was the fourth actor to play the role of the Master, and the first actor to portray the Master as a recurring role since the death of Roger Delgado in 1973. He appeared in eleven stories with the Fourth through Seventh Doctors.  It is noted that he enjoyed the role so much that sources note he even stayed in character when not portraying The Master by using both the voice and laugh in social situations. (Died 2004.)
  • Born August 20, 1943 — Sylvester McCoy, 79. The Seventh Doctor (my second favorite of the classic Who Doctors after Baker) and the last canon Doctor until the modern era of the official BBC Doctors when they revised canon. He also played Radagast in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films, he’s The Old Man of Hoy in Sense8 and he voices Aezethril the Wizard in the “Endgame” episode of Thunderbirds Are Go. 
  • Born August 20, 1951 — Greg Bear, 71. Blood Music which won a Nebula Award, and a Hugo Award at L.A. Con II (1984) in its original novelette form is a amazing read. His novels Moving Mars and Darwin’s Radio are also Nebula winners, and he has other short fiction award winners. I’m also very fond of the Songs of Earth and Power duology, The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage, and found his Queen of Angels a fascinating mystery. He’s deeply stocked at the usual suspects. 
  • Born August 20, 1961 — Greg Egan, 61. Australian writer who does exist though he does his damnedest to avoid a digital footprint. His excellent Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and “Oceanic” garnered a Best Novella Hugo at Aussiecon Three. I assume he wasn’t there given his stance again attending Worldcons? And He’s won a lot of Ditmar Awards.
  • Born August 20, 1962 — Sophie Aldred, 60. She’s Ace, the Seventh Doctor’s Companion. (By the way Doctor Who Magazine: Costume Design: Dressing the Doctor from William Hartnell to Jodie Whittaker is a brilliant read and has a nice look at her costuming.) She’s reprised the role in the Big Finish audio adventures, and she’s recently written Doctor Who: At Childhood’s End where Ace meets the Thirteenth Doctor. born 1962, aged sixty years.
  • Born August 20, 1963 — Justina Vail Evans, 59. Olga Vukavitch in Seven Days, a series I thought was extremely well-crafted. She shows up in other genre undertakings such as Super Force, Conan, Journey to The Center of The Earth, The Adventures of Superboy, The X-Files, Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, Conan and Highlander: The Series. 

(6) COMICS SECTION.

  • Dinosaur Comics finds the connection between Anne of Green Gables and Back to the Future.

(7) YOU BE THE JUDGE. The Onion’s satirical review of “the seven-volume Chronicles Of Buckeye” says “Underwhelming Fantasy Novel Starts With Map Of Ohio” – a map which includes John Scalzi’s hometown. The review seems to have nothing else to do with him. But do you believe in coincidences?

(8) HOLEY SHEET. CrimeReads’ Keth Roysdon talks about “ghost shows,” a now-forgotten horror-tinged vaudeville entertainment of the 1940s. “The Lost History of America’s Traveling ‘Ghost Shows’”.

…True ghost shows were an evening’s worth of entertainment. Usually starting not long before midnight, these shows were staged in a movie theater and combined a magic act (with an emphasis on horror-tinged magic like swords through comely assistants) and a live-action horror skit (Frankenstein’s monster lurching around the stage) and a blackout period (in which phosphorescent-painted “ghosts” were flown on wires over the heads of the audience) and, usually starting at midnight, a screening of a classic or not-so-classic old black-and-white horror film….

(9) BALLET NEWS. [By Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Laura Chapelle reviews a new production of Léo Delibes’s Coppélia (which, remember, is about a doll that comes to life) by the Scottish Ballet (scottishballet.org.uk) in a version by Morgann Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright “also known as Jess and Morgs.”

Dr Coppelius, once a lonely doll maker, is recast here as a babyfaced tech guru in a turtleneck, founder and chief executive of a company called NuLife.  He gets a visit from journalist Swanhlda, who questions him about his ethical negligence.  Their conversations happen in voiceover while the dancers attempt, and don’t quite manage, to act them out credibly.  Soon enough, Swanhilda finds herself wandering the halls of NuLife, encountering the company’s many lab creatures and, at one point, turning into one.  (How?  Don’t ask.)…

….It’s lo-fi dramaturgy that trips up this Coppélia.  In the 19th-century libretto, Swannhilda had a fiance, Franz, who became obsessed with a doll.  Jess and Morgs have contrived an improbable storyline to keep him around:  the 21st-century Franz shows up with his journalist girlfriend to her work event, holding her hand throughout.  The two open and close the ballet, but their relationship has no context or substance.

(10) CROWLEY’S ADVICE ABOUT READING THIS BOOK. In the Boston Review, John Crowley reviews an sf novel from Denmark — The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century, by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken – “Science Fiction as Poetry”.

…Its premises are familiar Science Fiction ones: it centers a great spaceship, called The Six Thousand Ship, built to reach far planets around other suns, discover new beings, and return to Earth with treasure. The wondrous new planet of this book is called New Discovery. The planet’s Earth-like geography—of forests, warm valleys, regular nights and days—belies the fact that it is home to some very unearthly beings—the so-called “objects” that the crew collect to bring home to Earth. But The Employees contains nothing like a conventional narrative, and the reader must piece together most of this on their own. Instead, the focus of the book—and its unusual form—are made clear by Ravn’s subtitle: “A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century.”…

(11) MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER. “TWO Asteroids May Have Killed Off the Dinosaurs, Scientists Say”. Mike Kennedy notes this story is behind a Popular Mechanics firewall except via the Apple News app.

A newly-discovered crater 250 miles off the coast of West Africa could have been formed by a large asteroid strike. 

The probable timing of this potential asteroid strike could make it a “sibling” of the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid hit. 

Researchers hope to investigate the crater to gain more precise clues into the timing of the likely impact. 

Scientists have long believed the Chicxulub asteroid smacked Earth near the Gulf of Mexico, causing about a 100-million-megaton blast devastating enough to erase the dinosaurs from Earth. That burst created a short-lived thermal pulse in excess of 10,000 degrees, which is certainly lethal enough to have destroyed nearby life. But the massive asteroid may have had some help from a second “sibling” asteroid, scientists say. 

More than five miles in diameter beneath the North Atlantic Ocean, the newly-discovered Nadir Crater lies about 250 miles off the coast of West Africa—and researchers believe that the asteroid that may have caused it about 66 million years ago could have been that dino-killing helper. There are two prevailing theories about this second asteroid, according to a new study, published August 17 in Science Advances: that the asteroid may have been a broken-off piece of the Chicxulub asteroid, or that it was a wholly separate asteroid from an impact cluster…. 

(12) DATLOW Q&A. Terrifying Tomes of Terror presents “Episode XIIII: Publishing Anthologies with Ellen Datlow (Special Guest Co-Host Laurel Hightower)”.

I am joined by former Guest, Laurel Hightower, as my Guest Co-Host talking to the indomitable Ellen Datlow, Award-Winning Editor of over 100 Anthologies! Ellen takes us through her career in one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI2a61WPyGI

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Lise Andreasen, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

G.R.R. Martin in The Onion

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George R.R. Martin felt the satirical sting of The Onion in a  faux interview where he seemingly predicts a radical course change for his popular fantasy series:

In the wake of last year’s highly successful publication of the fifth installment in his A Song Of Ice And Fire series, author George R.R. Martin assured fans Tuesday the final two books in the fantasy saga would be “complete turds.” “For starters, there’ll be no mention of the dragons at all, because I’m pretty much sick of writing about dragons at this point,” said Martin, who added he would also be introducing an entirely new storyline set on a completely different continent and featuring a cast of at least 50 new characters all vying for the same throne.

[Thanks to Dave Locke for the story.]