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(1) USPS TO ISSUE D&D STAMPS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “New DnD Stamps Celebrate Game’s 50th Anniversary | D&D News (dungeonsanddragonsfan.com) at Dungeons and Dragons Fanatics.

Over the years the Dungeons & Dragons brand has appeared in countless places, with everything from t-shirts and playing cards to video games and big screen Hollywood films. Now, the legendary RPG is coming to an envelope near you as a series of exclusive DnD stamps from the United States Postal Service (USPS) that are being released to commemorating the 50th anniversary of the legendary TTRPG.

So get ready to roll a saving throw versus shipping and handling, as we take a closer look at these unique collectibles.

The news also in also Item 1 of the USPS press release: “U.S. Postal Service Reveals Additional Stamps for 2024”.

Dern quips: “One of the USPS’s packaged sets will come with special dice that you can use when bringing D&D-stamped letters, packages, etc to a post office counter, for the opportunities including of free upgrade to a higher (faster) service delivery level; reduced total price (for packages, etc); even getting back 1 or 2x fresh stamps. (However, unlucky rolls can delay or fail delivery, damage your package, etc.)”

Additionally, when these stamps are used, the USPS is inserting phrases [1] to its (unofficial) [2] motto (which, I’m assuming, isn’t a guarantee):

…nor dragons, illithids, quicksand, vortexes, Balrogs, orcs, triffids, feral flat cats, time storms, falling space elevators, sandworms, Black Bolt sneezing, hamburglers, or dramatic readings by Harlan Ellison, [shall etc.]

[1] I’m not a D&Der, though continue to play NetHack, so I’m drawing from my more general sf/comics reading, etc.

[2] Which turns out to be older than I would have thought, per the USPS (“Postal Service Mission”, “About that motto”) and the Wikipedia.

(Editor’s note: File 770 reported about these stamps before, but Dern’s version is more fun.)

(2) NEXT ITEM ON THE AGENDA. “Dracula writer Bram Stoker revealed as a humble minute taker for actor charity” in the Guardian.

…The imagination of Bram Stoker gave life to one of literature’s most enduring terrors, Count Dracula. But the Irish-born writer’s mind was not only full of flapping cloaks, dripping fangs and creaking coffins. Stoker, it can now be confirmed, also had a strong vein, or shall we say streak, of bureaucratic efficiency running through his personality.

Researchers working for the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, the charity that supports actors and stage managers in need, have discovered that the minutes of its founding meeting, back in 1882, were taken by Stoker. It has now been confirmed that the handwriting matches documents held by the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, with images of the notes released this weekend….

(3) OLD SPARKY. Author Gareth L. Powell looks at the damage solar activity could wreak on terrestrial infrastructure in “Sci-Fi Eye: The wrong kind of sunshine” at The Engineer.

… When the charged particles from a coronal mass ejection hit the Earth’s atmosphere, they cause a geomagnetic storm that can disrupt radio transmissions and damage power lines. The most famous recorded example of this is the Carrington Event of 1859, which disabled the US telegraph network, causing fires and electric shocks. More recently, in 1989, a geomagnetic storm disrupted power distribution in Quebec and caused aurorae as far south as Texas.

If another large coronal mass ejection hit the Earth today, our satellites would most obviously be at risk, and the intense radio emissions and magnetic effects could disrupt our satellite-based communication, weather, and GPS networks. At the same time, the energetic ultraviolet radiation would heat the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to expand and increase the drag on those satellites, shortening their orbital lifetimes.

A severe event could also knock out power and disrupt electronic hardware, perhaps even causing errors and data loss as charged particles flip ones to zeroes and vice versa.

According to New Scientist, the most powerful solar storm ever to have hit us may have occurred 14,300 years ago, leaving a huge spike in radioactive carbon in tree rings from the time. So far, evidence has been discovered for nine more of these ‘Miyake’ events. Should one occur today, it could destroy all our satellites and potentially disable energy grids for months….

(4) QUITE A HANDFUL. Lisa Tuttle reviews these five books for the Guardian’s “The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup”: Three Eight One by Aliya Whiteley; The Glass Woman by Alice McIlroy; The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson; The Knowing by Emma Hinds; Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf.

(5) NOT JUST “A VAST WASTELAND”. The Guardian reminds everyone about the television programs with the greatest impact on the UK: “From the Post Office scandal to nuclear attack: 13 TV shows that shook Britain”. Terry Pratchett featured in one of them.

The War Game (BBC, 1966)

Unusually among the most influential TV shows, Peter Watkins’ simulation of a nuclear attack on the UK – made at the peak of the cold war – was not shown for 19 years. BBC bosses feared it would show viewers the futility of preparations for armageddon and its physical reality: evaporating eyeballs, rats outnumbering people in the streets. Counterintuitively, the show’s banning – supposed to reduce mass panic – led Britons to suspect that atomic war must be even worse than they had thought….

Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die (BBC Two, 2011)

A major debate of the next few years will surely be the right to elective death for the terminally ill. Celebrities recently joining this campaign – Esther Rantzen, Susan Hampshire – would acknowledge that they follow the brave trail of Terry Pratchett, the great fantasy novelist, who faced the harsh reality of death in an impeccable documentary in which he travelled to meet people intending to manage their exits and, with a terminal diagnosis of his own, examined the options. Because of Pratchett, this film will be seen as moving the dial on the question of self-determination….

(6) NASA NOT SCREWED AFTER ALL. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] After more than three months, NASA has finally managed to open the OSIRIS-Rex sample return cylinder from asteroid Bennu. They had to invent, and test, a new tool to safely remove a couple of screws as a workaround for the stuck top of the container. “NASA can finally touch the ‘rarest’ rocks on Earth” – and Mashable breathes a sigh of relief.  (Photos at the link.)

Two little screws almost ruined the ending of NASA‘s seven-year space journey to asteroid Bennu and back.

But after more than three months of trying to pry the lid off a can containing the bulk of rocks and dust from the asteroid, engineers have finally done it. To remove the stuck top, they made and tested new tools that could safely unscrew the fasteners without damaging the precious sample.

So far the science team has only seen grainy cell phone pictures of the sample, said Andrew Ryan, a co-investigator on the NASA mission, but better photos are expected next week….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 13, 1977 — Orlando Bloom, 47. Speaking of The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, let’s talk about Orlando Bloom who I think magnificently played  Legolas here and in the other five Jackson Tolkien films.  Mind you this is one of the reasons I didn’t watch The Hobbit films as he wasn’t in the novel, was he? 

So what else for genre work? Well there’s being Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. I’ve seen just the first but I immensely enjoyed it and thought he was quite good in it. 

Orlando Bloom in 2013.

Carnival Row which sounds like someone read Bill Willingham’s Fables and crossed it with a police procedural has him as Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate, an inspector of a Constabulary. It’s on Amazon, and I’d checking out.

He was the Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers. Yes, I consider it genre. 

He was Tommy Hambleton was in Needle in a Timestack, script  by John Ridley from the Robert Silverberg story which first was published  in the June 1983 issue of Playboy.

He has a single mystery to his name, a Midsomer Murders, “Judgement Day” in which he plays Peter Drinkwater, a petty thief who gets murdered. I mention this because acting on that series is a coveted affair indeed in Britain. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Pickles discusses what C.S. Lewis used to call “chronological snobbery.”
  • Rhymes with Orange has a timely warning. (Get it?)
  • Tom Gauld depicts a whole range of people who show up at the library assistance desk.

(9) DEMANDING OUR ATTENTION. AV Club scores the publicity of our two Star ___ franchises in “Star Trek races to announce it’s getting a new movie too, okay?”

Although there’s been a fair amount of ink spilled, over the last few years, about the ways Disney’s Star Wars movie franchise kind of fell off a cliff in the immediate aftermath of The Rise Of Skywalker, it’s worth remember that Star Trek has had it a hell of a lot worse. Although Trek’s television fortunes are doing pretty great at the moment—four series and counting, mostly well-received, right now—the series has been in retreat at the box office for fully eight years at this point, after the under-performance of 2016’s Star Trek: Beyond. (To the point that franchise star Chris Pine—a Major Movie Star!—has said more than once than he has absolutely no clue whether he still has that job, for all that the official line is that “Star Trek 4” is still in “active development.”)

But in the wake of Star Wars making noises this week indicating that it’s getting back into the movie-making tauntaun saddle with a film based on its beloved Mandalorian characters, we guess Star Trek needed to remind everybody that it’s still out there, potentially dominating the box office, too. Per Deadline, Paramount has let it be known that it’s started working with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot on a new Star Trek movie, even poaching some talent from the competition by hiring Andor’s Toby Haynes to direct. (Seth Grahme-Smith is writing, although details about the plot/concept/etc. are, unsurprisingly, zilcho at the moment.)…

(10) ALIEN GOES HOLLYWOOD. The Business podcast brings listeners “’Fargo’ creator Noah Hawley on season 5 and adapting ‘Alien’ for TV” at KCRW.com. Here are the topics covered in the 11-minute program.

Fargo creator Noah Hawley’s FX anthology series is just wrapping up its fifth critically acclaimed season. He still has more ideas for the show, and in spite of the ongoing upheaval in Hollywood, Hawley says he believes gifted creators will always be able to tell their stories. 

“Every generation has its masterpieces. You know, we had masterpieces before the golden age of television, and we’ll have masterpieces afterwards. It’s our responsibility to make them and to trick these corporations into paying for us to make them, right?” Hawley says. 

The Emmy-winning writer also talks to Eric Deggans about his upcoming television adaptation of Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise, and explains why he thinks people are getting tired of densely plotted shows on TV — including season 4 of Fargo, which had 23 main characters. 

(11) WHAT HAPPENS TO A RABBIT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN. Animation World Network anticipates “Nostalgic Horror Flick ‘Oswald Down the Rabbit Hole’ to Begin Filming this Spring”.

Lilton Stewart III, award-winning American filmmaker and creator of November 11th Pictures, has teamed with producer Lucinda Bruce on Oswald Down the Rabbit Hole, a film that will capture the magic of iconic cartoon characters through the lens of horror. The feature, described as Who Framed Roger Rabbit meets Nightmare on Elm Street, is set to begin filming in Spring 2024, with an announcement teaser trailer releasing this month.

Oswald follows main character Art and some of his closest friends as they track down his long-lost family lineage. When they find his Great-Grandpa Oswald’s abandoned home, they are transported to a place lost in time, shrouded by dark Hollywood Magic. The group finds that they are not alone when the cartoon Rabbit, a dark entity, comes to life. Art and his friends must work together to escape their magical prison before the Rabbit gets to them first….

“Much like Pooh, Tigger, and Mickey Mouse, the Oswald character entered the public domain on January 1, 2023. Originally owned by Disney, control of the cartoon rabbit shifted to Universal in 1928, leading to the creation of Mickey Mouse to compensate for the loss. Nothing says ‘copyright expiration’ like a horror reimagining!”

(12) LOST CITIES ARE A SORT OF MINOR FANTASY AND SF TROPE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]  The front cover of this week’s Science journal has “Two thousand years of garden urbanism in the Upper Amazon”.

The urban core of the Sangay archaeological site shows artificial earthen platforms and dug streets distributed along the edge of the cliffs flanking the Upano River. Recent investigation revealed a dense system of pre-Hispanic urban centers in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, in the eastern foothills of the Andes. This discovery changes the perception of the Amazon’s ancient human past.

The primary research is here:

When intact, the Amazonian forest is dense and difficult to penetrate, both on foot and with scanning technologies. Over the past several years, however, improved light detection and ranging scans have begun to penetrate the forest canopy, revealing previously unknown evidence of past Amazonian cultures. Rostain et al.describe evidence of such an agrarian Amazonian culture that began more than 2000 years ago. They describe more than 6,000 earthen platforms distributed in a geometic pattern connected by roads and intertwined with agricultural landscapes and river drainages in the Upano Valley. Previous efforts have described mounds and large monuments in Amazonia, but the complexity and extent of this development far surpasses these previous sites.

(13) A ROCKET WITH THE MUNCHIES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “Watch this rocket ‘eat’ its own body for fuel” at Popular Science. (“Ouroboros-3 Hybrid Autophage Rocket Engine Test (Composite)”.)

…Collaborators from the University of Glasgow say they have debuted the first successful, unsupported autophage (Latin for “self-eating”) rocket engine prototype. Revealed earlier this week during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Forum, the Ouroboros-3—named after the ancient Egyptian symbol of a snake eating its own tail—utilizes its own body as an additional fuel source. In a video of the tests, the Ouroboros-3 can be seen shrinking in length as its body is burned away during a simulated launch….

(14) FIND OUT WHAT YOU MISSED IN 2023. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Northern hemisphere’s academic year’s, spring edition of SF2 Concatenation is now up.

New , SF2 Concatenation has its spring* season edition. It includes the season’s full news page, with its Film News;  Television News;  Publishing News;  General Science News  and  Forthcoming SF Books from major British Isles SF imprints for the season, among much else.  Separately SF2 Concatenation has a couple of stand-alone articles and convention reports. Plus there is the usual tranche of stand-alone book reviews.  Something for every SF enthusiast and/or science bod.
* ‘Spring’ season here being the northern hemisphere, academic year spring.

In the news page mix SF2 Concatenation has its annual bit of fun with our selection of ‘Best SF’ books and films of the previous year, 2023.  This is also on SF2 Concatenation’s Best SF Books and Films archive, so you can see whether any of their previous years’ choices went on to win major SF awards. (Of course it is too early to see how our latest – 2023 – selection fares.)

Time to sit down at the PC, open the lap top or pad and explore the news page and its links to trailers and videos as well as science papers.

For details of / links to the new content, scroll down to beneath ‘Most recently added‘ below.

FORTHCOMING

Mid-March will see the first of the zine’s four ‘Best of Nature ‘Futures’ short, short SF stories of the year.  If you want to check out past stories in this series the Best of Nature ‘Futures’ archive is here.

Most recently added

v34(1) 2024.1.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Autumn 2024

v34(1) 2024.1.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v34(1) 2023.1.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. A forgotten classic: “ Snoopy’s Christmas vs. The Red Baron”.

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