Tag Archives: Pat Murphy

Pixel Scroll 4/25/23 Careful The Things You Scroll, Children Will Pixel

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(1) HUGO NOMINATIONS 101. For the benefit of people who haven’t had a lot of experience with the Hugos, Tarvalon has written “Demystifying the Hugo Award Nomination Process” at Reddit’s r/fantasy forum. And an interesting dialog between Tarvalon and Django Wexler continues in the comments.

… But because this is exactly the kind of nerd I am, I want to spend a little bit more time talking about the E Pluribus Hugo scoring system and its practical effects on crafting a nominating ballot. If you don’t care about the details, just nominate some things and let the math do what it does. If you’re curious, read on. And if you’re curious about the practical effects but not the voting mechanics, skip the next couple paragraphs and pick back up in the following section….

You’ll have to let us know how convincing you find Tarvalon’s ideas about how to do the most to help your favorites. (Another hat Tarvalon wears is being a judge in the Self-Published Science Fiction Book Competition.)

(2) VIEW THE ROSWELL AWARD CEREMONY. There will be a virtual celebration of the 2023 Roswell Award and New Suns Climate Fiction Award honorees on Sunday, May 21, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific. Free; Register here.

Free; Registration Required In an epic performance honoring planet Earth’s emerging sci-fi writers, celebrity guests deliver dramatic original short story readings! The Roswell Award and New Suns Climate Fiction Award: Virtual Readings & Honors recognizes outstanding new works of science fiction by emerging writers from across the United States and worldwide, including the winner of this year’s climate themed sci-fi story. This lively show will feature dramatic readings by celebrity guests (to be announced) from some of today’s hottest sci-fi and fantasy shows and movies. Following the readings, the authors will be honored for their writing.

(3) IT WILL HAVE TO DO. “John Scalzi says he has no other skills than writing” while answering the LA Times’ “Very Important Questions.”

Science fiction author John Scalzi stopped by the Los Angeles Times photo and video studio at the Festival of Books to tell us what his favorite kaiju is and answer other very important questions.

(4) NEWEST ADDITION TO TAFF EBOOKS. Jacq Monahan’s report of her 2012 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund trip, Same Planet Different World, is now a free download at the TAFF Ebooks page. (Though don’t let that discourage you from making a little donation to the fund while you’re clicking.) Here’s an excerpt from Jacq’s arrival at Heathrow where she discovered that customs officials’ idea of “humor” is universal.  

…Instead he motioned me toward a chair and said we’d have to have a little interview because it was a different matter if I was going to be paid in some capacity to be in the UK. He started writing something down, and I started thinking in desperate expletives.

I learned later from someone in the know that if I was to be employed in the UK I had to have a “silver thing” in the back of my passport that showed I had the proper permission. It’s always good to know the technical term.

Once I understood that my words misled the agent (because his questions had misled me (she maintains) I interjected hastily, “No, no! I’m not working. I won a fan fund!” I then braced for the worst. How could I explain TAFF to a mundane? And a mundane official? And a mundane official with the keys to my British kingdom? I’d had a hard enough time trying to explain the fan fund to anyone, family or non-fan friend, employer – anyone. And now, here was bureaucracy standing firmly between me and clotted cream.

To my surprise he stopped writing and crossed out what he had already written. He believed me! I couldn’t believe me, my good luck, that is. But then, a warning. “I want you to know that I’ll be attending that convention, and if I see you working in any capacity, I’ll have you arrested!” I trotted away as quickly as possible and found a restroom. Relief was palpable in a few ways, and I used the plastic toothbrush to restore a smile….

(5) RESEARCHING FAN HISTORY. Fanac.org has made the videos available of its two-part “Researching Science Fiction FanHistory” Zoom panel.

  • Researching Science Fiction FanHistory (Pt1 of 2) – Rob Hansen, Andy Hooper, Mark Olson & Joe Siclari

The first fan history was written by Jack Speer in 1939, and the most recent is the crowd-sourced Fancyclopedia.org, updated as of yesterday. The fan historians on our panel each focus in a very different way on fan history…Rob Hansen, author of “Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK”, brings a UK centered perspective to global fandom, and Andy Hooper has deeply researched the first World Science Fiction convention, both publishing in the traditional way. 

Mark Olson and Joe Siclari are part of the FANAC Fan History project – Mark is chief editor of the crowd-sourced online Fancyclopedia.org, and Joe is the chairman behind the Fan History project, and in particular the driving force behind FANACs digital archive (FANAC.org)…

In this Part 1 video, the panelists talk about how they became interested in fandom and fan history in particular, and the different approaches they have taken to recording and interpreting fan history. You’ll hear about the creation of the first timeline of UK fan history, the nude figure with a dagger in each hand, and the tenuous but possible connection of fandom to the Zodiac killer. Perhaps most engrossing are the stories of contacts from non-fans, relatives of fans long gone. Some of these have no real understanding of what fandom was and is, but are seeking to learn about their relatives. There’s even an anecdote about Warren Fitzgerald, the African-American fan who was the founding president of the Scienceers, the first first regularly meeting sf fan club which was started in 1929.

Researching Science Fiction FanHistory (Pt2 of 2) – Rob Hansen, Andy Hooper, Mark Olson & Joe Siclari

In this Part 2 video, discussion ranges from academia to our panelists’ investigative techniques. When the primary resources are fanzines, researchers deal with first person accounts where “accuracy is not their primary virtue”, although how different that is from other histories is questionable. Unsurprisingly, panelists share stories and findings, more sometimes with each other than the audience.  Spoiler alert: John W. Campbell’s mother was not an identical twin!…Particularly interesting is a segment on the place of anecdote in fan history, and for those interested in learning more, there’s a “starter list” of readings. Audience Q&A forms the last portion of the recording, and with many of the audience experts in their own right, the questions (and answers) are first-rate.

I’m surprised to learn from a line in the announcement – “There’s even an anecdote about Warren Fitzgerald, the African-American fan who was the founding president of the Scienceers” – that the panel might be unaware of the extensive research some fans have done to put to the test Fitzgerald’s specific identification as an African-American. After I made the same assertion three years ago we had quite a donnybrook in the comments of the December 11, 2020 Scroll, and heard from people who have done a lot of research on Ancestry, through the census, etc.  

(6) WHAT’S UP WITH THE SOCIETY FOR CREATIVE ANACHRONISM? If you find the prospect of reading 42 pages of legal analysis about SCA kerfuffles irresistible, then “A Tale of 6 Sanctions” is for you. I did, of course, read it. Your mileage may vary. This is the introduction to the paper’s author:

In the SCA I am Aeron Harper, OL, OD, premier Society A&S Deputy for Historical Combat, and other awards and titles. My name is still on the society’s A&S rules for historical combat study, and on a number of kingdom’s C&T rules.

Mundanely, I am David Biggs, Attorney, U.S. Diplomat, and foreign policy advisor for the U.S. State Department. My day job includes interpreting, defining, and applying U.S. policies, which often involves ensuring they don’t contradict U.S. law. It also includes negotiating and implementing international agreements with foreign countries on behalf of the United States. I graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School, and was an editor on the Minnesota Law Review. All that to say, I know a little bit about researching, writing, interpreting, and applying laws and rules….

(7) HERE’S HOW IT PLAYS IN PEORIA. Public TV station WCBU is “Exploring the lost world of TV sci-fi in the 50s”.

“Twilight Zone” is often viewed as the first television series to showcase fantasy on the small screen. The Rod Serling program that ran from 1959 to 1964 is an oft-repeated TV classic with many memorable episodes but it wasn’t the first show to bring science fiction to television viewers.

“Captain Video and His Video Rangers” became the world’s first science fiction TV series when it went on the air in 1949 on the now defunct DuMont Television Network, said Alan Morton, author of “The Golden Age of Telefantasy,” a guide to sci-fi, fantasy and horror TV shows of the 1940s and 1950s.

Television was in its infancy in the 1950s with many of the earliest shows (like “Captain Video”) transmitted live. Most of these early sci-fi programs were aimed at kids, said Morton, citing entries such as “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” (1950-55), “Space Patrol” (1950-55), “Captain Z-Ro” (1951-56) and “Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers” (aired from 1953 to 1954 with a young Cliff Robertson as Ranger Rod Brown)….

(8) HARRY BELAFONTE (1927-2023). Singer Harry Belafonte died April 25 at the age of 96. His sff credis including guesting on The Muppets, and appearing in the Fifties doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil, and the Nineties alternate America movie White Man’s Burden.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1989 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Pat Murphy’s The City, Not Long After is a magical novel, one of those works that I reread regularly. 

Published thirty-four years ago by Doubleday, it’s set in San Francisco and much of the wonderfulness of the novel is indeed its setting (no spoiler there I’d say). Though the characters are interesting as well.

It was nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.

And now our Beginning…

THE EARLY MORNING BREEZE BLEW through the vegetable garden in Union Square, shaking the leaves of the bean plants and the lacy carrot tops. The city of San Francisco was asleep. The city was dreaming.

In the Saint Francis Hotel, just off the Square, Danny-boy was dreaming of the color blue. With a paint roller on a long pole, he painted the sky. He had been at work for many hours. At least half of the expanse above him was smeared with paint of a thousand different shades: royal blue, navy, turquoise, baby blue, teal, the fragile hue of robins’ eggs, the treacherous blue-gray of the ocean at dusk. Toward the horizon, where Danny-boy’s roller had not yet reached, the blues faded to misty gray. But overhead, luminous colors swirled and flowed like the water in a river.

In the middle of the changing pattern, two patches of blue-gray coalesced. Bright eyes watched Danny-boy from the center of the sky. Dark blue shadows defined the angles of a face, the curves of a woman’s body. As Danny-boy stared upward, a young woman stepped out of the sky, looking more than a little confused.

The city slept, and its dreams drifted through the minds of its inhabitants, twisting and changing their thoughts.

“The man who called himself The Machine dozed on a narrow cot at the back of his workshop. In his dream, he was constructing an angel from objects he had gathered. The angel’s bones were pipes from the plumbing of an old Victorian mansion; its muscles were masses of copper wire, torn from the cables that ran beneath the city streets. On the angel’s massive wings, thousands of polished bottlecaps overlapped, making a pattern of scallops like the scales on a fish.

The Machine welded the last bottlecap to the wing and stepped back to admire his work. As he gazed up at the angel, he realized suddenly that his creation was not complete. Its chest was hollow: it had no heart.

“He heard footsteps and glanced behind him. A woman was walking toward him, carrying something in her cupped hands. He could not see what she carried, but he could hear the steady pounding of a heartbeat, keeping time with her footsteps.

“Dawn broke in the city: gray light shone on the gray stone buildings that surrounded the Civic Center Plaza. The statues on the facade of the public library showed signs of neglect. Over the years, pigeons had adorned the statues’ heads with streaks of white and deposited a clutter of feathers and broken nests at their feet.

In a tree that grew in the Plaza, a gray-muzzled monkey, one of the oldest of the troop that lived in the city, dreamed of the Himalayas. Icicles hanging from the eaves of a temple roof melted in the morning sun. Drops of falling water struck a bell, and the metal rang with a musical note. The water trickled away, whispering and crackling softly as it melted a path through the snow. The monkey stirred in its sleep. Changes were coming.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 25, 1897 — Fletcher Pratt. Pratt is best known for his collaborations with de Camp, the most well-known of which is the Harold Shea series which is collected as The Complete Enchanter. His solo fantasy novels The Well of the Unicorn and The Blue Star are also superb. Pratt established the literary dining club known as the Trap Door Spiders in 1944. The club would later fictionalized as the Black Widowers in a series of mystery stories by Asimov. Pratt would be fictionalized in one story, “To the Barest”, as the Widowers’ founder, Ralph Ottur. (Died 1956.)
  • Born April 25, 1907 — Michael Harrison. English writer of both detective and sff fiction. He wrote pastiches of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. His most remembered work is In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, The London of Sherlock Holmes and The World of Sherlock Holmes. He was also a noted Sherlock Holmes scholar, being a member of both the Baker Street Irregulars of New York, and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. He wrote three genre novels — The Bride of Frankenstein, Higher Things and The Brain. (Died 1991.)
  • Born April 25, 1915 — Mort Weisinger. Comic book editor best known for editing Superman during the Silver Age of comic books. He also served as story editor for the Adventures of Superman series. Before that he was one of the earliest active sf fans, working on fanzines like The Planet (1931) and The Time Traveller (1932) and attending the New York area fan club known as The Scienceers. (Died 1978.)
  • Born April 25, 1925 — Richard Deming. Ok, I think that all of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. novellas, or in this case the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. novellas, in the digest-sized Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, were listed under the house name of Robert Hart Davis. Deming was only one of a very long list of writers (I know of Richard Curtis, Richard Deming, I. G. Edmonds, John Jakes, Frank Belknap Long, Dennis Lynds, Talmage Powell, Bill Pronzini, Charles Ventura and Harry Whittington) that were the writers who penned novellas in the twin U.N.C.L.E. series. (Died 1983.)
  • Born April 25, 1929 — Robert A. Collins. Scholar of science fiction who founded the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. Editor of the Fantasy Newsletter & Fantasy Review from 1978 to 1987, and editor of the IAFA Newsletterfrom 1988 to 1993. Editor, The Scope of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the First International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film and Modes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Twelfth Annual International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. (Died 2009.)
  • Born April 25, 1939 — Rex Miller. Horror writer with a hand in many pies, bloody ones at that. (Sorry couldn’t resist.) The Chaingang series featured Daniel Bunkowski, a half-ton killing-machine. Definitely genre. He contributed to some thirty anthologies including Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror, Frankenstein: The Monster Wakes, Dick Tracy: The Secret Files and The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams. The last are amazingly outstanding. (Died 2004.)
  • Born April 25, 1981 — Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 42. She’s the publisher of Innmouths Free Press, an imprint devoted to weird fiction. Not surprisingly, for the Press she co-edited with Paula R. Stiles the Historical Lovecraft and Future Lovecraft anthologies. She won a World Fantasy Award for the She Walks in Shadows anthology, also on Innsmouth Free Press. She was a finalist for the Nebula Award in the Best Novel category for her Gods of Jade and Shadow novel, which won a Sunburst and Ignyte Award. And finally with Lavie Tidhar, she edits the Jewish Mexican Literary Review. Not genre, but sort of genre adjacent. Canadian of Mexican descent.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro shows what the medieval marketplace is calling for.  

(12) CLASSIC CARTOONS. StudyFinds ranks the “Best Cartoon Series Of All Time: Top 5 Cartoons Of All Time, According To Editors and Fans”. Looney Tunes is number one.

Cartoons and animated features have been delighting fans since the very beginnings of motion film. As a medium they allow creators to pull an audience into a realm of pure storytelling without limitations. Among all the beloved titles, it can be hard to choose a favorite. So, in the space of the small screen, we endeavor to ask the question, what are best cartoon series of all time?

A lot of nostalgia is associated with popping on your favorite kids’ movie. One recent article describes, “There’s something about watching your favorite animated film and seeing that Magic Kingdom logo that brings back some of the best childhood feelings and memories.” Although some people may automatically associate cartoons with children and humor, the best cartoons move past this stereotype to become a vehicle for storytelling. Slapstick, violence, and impossible situations are all the hallmarks of iconic animated shows….

(13) DUNE 2 TRAILER TEASE. “’Dune: Part Two’ Trailer Shows Timothee Chalamet Riding Giant Sandworm” – Variety saw the trailer at CinemaCon. When it hits YouTube we’ll link to it.

Timothée Chalamet has assumed his rightful place as Muad’Dib, prophet of the Fremen in the first trailer for “Dune: Part Two.”

“In the first movie Paul Atredis is a student…we really see Paul Atreides become a leader here,” Chalamet said at CinemaCon on Tuesday, teasing a first look at the sci-fi epic….

“Dune: Part Two,” which is produced by Legendary and Warner Bros., is set to be released on November 3, 2023. Warner Bros. showed the footage during its presentation to theater owners. It also shared footage and trailers from “Barbie,” “The Flash” and sequels to “Aquaman” and “The Nun.”

(14) READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP. From Nature, “First up-close images of Mars’s little-known moon Deimos”.

Images from the UAE’s Hope mission suggest that the moonlet’s composition is similar to that of the red planet’s surface.

The United Arab Emirates’ space probe Hope has taken the first high-resolution images of the farside of Mars’s moonlet Deimos. The observations add weight to the theory that Deimos formed together with Mars, rather than as an asteroid that was captured in the planet’s orbit, mission scientists say.

(15) MOON MISSION FAILS. Controllers could not regain contact after scheduled touchdown: “Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after historic moon landing attempt” at CNN.

A Japanese lunar lander, carrying a rover developed in the United Arab Emirates, attempted to find its footing on the moon’s surface Tuesday — and potentially mark the world’s first lunar landing for a commercially developed spacecraft. But flight controllers on the ground were not immediately able to regain contact, prompting the company to presume the spacecraft was lost.

The lander, built by Japanese firm Ispace, launched atop a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on December 11. The spacecraft then made a three-month trek to enter orbit around the moon, which lies about 239,000 miles (383,000 kilometers) from Earth, using a low-energy trajectory. Overall, the journey took the lander about 870,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) through space.

Touchdown was expected to occur Tuesday at 12:40 p.m. ET, which is Wednesday at 1:40 a.m. Japan Standard Time….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, David Langford, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 4/1/19 Scroll Over Beethoven

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(1) A WISE SAYING TO SUIT THE DAY.

(2) APRIL FOOLISHNESS. Here’s a prank that was hard to miss – because the perpetrators e-mailed me the link to the Haines in 2021 Westercon bid.

Haines in 2021 is the byproduct of several days of post-travel exhaustion and mild annoyance at all of the kvetching about the Tonopah bid. You want a bid somewhere that isn’t dry and hot, has no risk of you wandering out into the desert, and that you don’t have to drive several hours to get to? Fine, then! Haines, Alaska solves ALL of those problems!

What we lack in experience, we make up for in location! What we lack in location, we make up for in…well, you didn’t want the experienced team putting together your Westercon, so that’s on you.

Getting there is twice the fun of being there:

By Road: The Alaska Marine Highway System accepts cars for transport. However, if you want to avoid a long ferry ride you can drive from Seattle to Haines in only 34 hours (entering and exiting Canada) via Skagway, involving a short ferry ride.

(3) A MORE OBVIOUS JOKE: Nerdbot gets into the spirit of the day with a news flash — “BREAKING: George Lucas to Film New Star Wars Trilogy”. Clever artwork accompanies the rumor “of a new Jar Jar Binks story line, including the confirmation of him being the one, true Sith lord and the current Emperor of the New Galactic Empire.”

(4) DIVE INTO THE PACIFIC. Juliette Wade’s latest Dive Into Worldbuilding interview is with Vida Cruz about Philippine mythology.

…We started by discussing Vida’s story “Odd and Ugly,” which she describes as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in Spanish colonial Philippines. In this tale, the Beast is a Kapre, a kind of hairy giant who lives in a tree and smokes cigars, while Beauty is a farm girl. The story is told in second person from the Beast’s point of view. Vida told us that she had written about these two characters in different iterations, and the Beauty and the Beast portion of the story came last.

Since the Spanish were in the Philippines for over 300 years, education has been heavily influenced by them. There is a dearth of good literature about the early colonial period. When Vida attended Clarion workshop in 2014, she did more research for that story….

Read the summary and/or watch the interview video:

(5) BACK TO THE HAGUE. Here’s a new flyer for Reunicon 2020, the celebration planned for the 30th anniversary of the Worldcon in the Netherlands.

In short, we have now organized a World Science Fiction Congress in The Hague 28 years ago (and 30 years in August in 2020), in which we had rented the congress building and also many hotel rooms in The Hague, including the then Bel Air hotel was our headquarters. The SF congress lasted five days and had around 3500 visitors from around the world, in addition to thousands of so-called “supporting” members, who could not come but did support our congress. More information via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/48th_World_Science_Fiction_Convention

It was a huge success at the time. And they have been asked for a follow-up for years. As remaining committee members, we have decided to respond to this at the 30th anniversary in 2020 in the form of a kind of reunion meeting, a so-called REUNICON 2020.

(6) TIPTREE CORRECTION. Ben Roimola, Editor-in-chief and publisher of the only Swedish language sf-fanzine in Finland, Enhörningen (www.enhorningen.net) spotted something in the Tiptree Award press release that needed correcting. He contacted Pat Murphy, who shared it with me, and you may find the explanation equally interesting. He writes: 

I am thrilled and extremely happy to see Maria Turtschaninoff’s novel ”Maresi” on the Tiptree Honor List! It’s such a great novel (as are all her novels) for readers of all ages from YA upwards. Thank you for choosing it among the honor list!

BUT, there is a small error in the text about the novel. On the web page (https://tiptree.org/2019/03/gabriela-damian-miravete-wins-2018-tiptree-award-honor-and-long-list-announced) your write ”This young adult novel was translated from Finnish.”, but the novel was actually translated from Swedish. You see, Finland is a bilingual country with Finnish and Swedish as the official languages (and Sami as a third one in the northern parts). Maria Turtschaninoff is part of the minority of Finns who have Swedish as their main language. Yes, she is a Finn and the novel is published in Finland and it is a Finnish novel, BUT it is written and published in Swedish. ”Maresi” has been translated in Finnish, but the English translation is, of course, made from the original Swedish language novel.

We Swedish speaking Finns are such a small minority (anly about 5% of the population), that it is understandable to make an error such as the one you made, but we do exist and want to point out the fact that we do. 🙂

(7) EYES WIDE SHUT. At The Believer, B. Alexandra Szerlip revives one of Hugo Gernsback’s enthusiasms in “Vintage Tech: Learn While You Sleep (Hypnopaedia)”, about programs that allegedly educate you while you are sleeping.

“Hypnopaedia aka Sleep Learning had been thrust upon the world in 1921, courtesy of a Science and Invention cover story. Echoing Poe, Hugo Gernsback informed his readers that sleep ‘is only another form of death,’ but our subconsciousness “is always on the alert.’  If we could ‘superimpose’ learning on our sleeping senses, would it not be ‘an insatiable boon to humanity?/’ Would it not ‘lift the entire human race to a truly unimaginable extent?’

Gernsback proposed that talking machines, operating on the Poulsen  Telgraphone Principle (magnetic recordings on steel wires) be installed in people’s bedrooms.  The recordings library would be housed in a large central exchange; subscribers could place their orders by radiophone.  Then, between midnight and 6 AM,requests would be ‘flashed out’ over those same radiophones, onto reels, each with enough wire to last for one hour of continuous service.  Eight reels would give the sleeper enough material for a whole nights’ work!”

(8) AH! SWEET IDIOCY! “Laney himself would not allow it to be reprinted during his lifetime, evidently fearing lawsuits,” says Fancyclopedia 3. What fan can resist that bait? Today David Langford added Francis T. Laney’s Ah! Sweet Idiocy! to his free ebook page – download it here. And chip in a bit for fan funds if you please.

This infamous memoir and polemic about the 1940s Los Angeles fan scene was published in 1948. This first ebook edition was added to the TAFF site on 1 April 2019. Cover painting of Laney by Dan Steffan. 85,000 words of Laney plus 18,000 of additional material for a total of 103,000 words.

Please be warned that a few passages display a level of homophobia perhaps excessive even by 1948 standards.

Francis Towner Laney’s many brief and often affectionate character sketches of contemporaries may be of more interest now than all the fiery rhetoric about political machinations and (gasp) homosexuality in and around the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, a gigantic arena of controversy in which world-shaking elections could be deadlocked with 8 votes to 8. Still-remembered subjects of Laney “vignettes” include Forrest J Ackerman (alternately a close friend and deadly rival), Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith and A.E. van Vogt, while among his offstage correspondents were Anthony Boucher and August Derleth. Ah! Sweet Idiocy! has always been controversial: Fancyclopedia 3 notes that “Canadian faned Beak Taylor reportedly quit fandom after reading it. Laney himself would not allow it to be reprinted during his lifetime, evidently fearing lawsuits.”

David Langford has added brief notes on abbreviations never or only belatedly explained in the text; with help from Robert Lichtman, a summary of its reissues since Laney died; and from Rob Hansen’s photo archive, contemporary snapshots of Laney and many other featured fans. Also included are Harry Warner Jr’s 1961 appraisal and Alva Rogers’s 1963 rebuttal of Ah! Sweet Idiocy!, “FTL & ASI”.

Rob Hansen has posted a page of photos from the 1930s and 1940s that are in addition to those he supplied for the ebook: “LASFS & Others, 1930s/40s”.

(9) TAILS OF THE TEXAS RANGERS. In “A Dinosaur Tried To Throw The First Pitch at a Rangers Game And It Did Not Go Well” on mlb.com, Andrew Mearns says the Texas Rangers had Roxy the dinosaur throw out the first pitch at Globe Life Park to promote Dino Day at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.  But Roxy didn’t do well because dinosaurs have very weak arms!

(10) WHERE THE SCARES COME FROM. NPR’s Linda Holmes discusses how “Fears Are Forever In Jordan Peele’s ‘Twilight Zone'”. SEMI-SPOILER WARNING — lots of context/spoilers for older work; spoiler-free for first four new episodes.

What is the scariest thing you can imagine?

The Twilight Zone ran from 1959 to 1964. It was adapted into a film in 1983, then revived on television for brief runs in 1985 and 2002. Now, it returns on CBS’s streaming service CBS All Access, hosted and executive produced by the man who may be America’s most exciting filmmaker, Jordan Peele. He developed the new version alongside a team of executive producers including Simon Kinberg and Glen Morgan (Morgan was one of the primary writers behind The X-Files). Peele, in his films Get Out and Us, has spent a lot of time thinking about one of The Twilight Zone’s central questions, going back to original creator and host Rod Serling: What is the scariest thing you can imagine?

It’s true that Serling’s show was always connected, both in text and in subtext, to events of the moment. The fear of nuclear annihilation was ever-present in characters who built shelters and feared missiles. Allegories connected to the civil rights movement and other efforts to escape systemic injustices were common. Space travel was everywhere, both as opportunity and threat. The human legacy of endless war hung over the world always. Not-fully-trusted technology, like robots and large airplanes, held dangers, while technology that felt like it might arrive soon, like time travel, perhaps held even more.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 1, 1885 — Wallace  Beery. He starred in the first adaptation of Doyle’s The Lost World, filmed in 1925. He’d be Long John Silver in a 1930s adaptation of Treasure Island, and he was in Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks. (Died 1949.)
  • Born April 1, 1926 — Anne McCaffrey. I read both the original trilogy and what’s called the Harper Hall trilogy oh so many years ago. Enjoyed them immensely. No interest in the later works she set here. And I confess that I had no idea she’d written so much other genre fiction! (Died 2011.)
  • Born April 1, 1930 — Grace Lee Whitney. Yeoman Janice Rand on Star Trek. She would reach the rank of Lt. Commander in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Folks, I just noticed that IMDB says she was only on eight episodes of Trek. It seemed like a lot more at the time. Oh, and she was in two video fanfics, Star Trek: New Voyages and Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. (Died 2015.)
  • Born April 1, 1942 — Samuel R. Delany, 77. His best works include Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection and the Return to Nevèrÿon series. He is one of the most honored writers in the history of the genre, a well-deserved accolade. My short must read list for him includes The Jewels of Aptor, Dhalgren, Babel-17 and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. 
  • Born April 1, 1953 — Barry Sonnenfeld, 66. Director of The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values (both of which I like), the Men in Black trilogy (well one out of three ain’t bad), and Wild Wild West (what a piece of shit that is). He also executive produced Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events which I’ve not seen, and is the same for Men in Black: International, the forthcoming possible reboot of that series. 
  • Born April 1, 1960 — Michael Praed, 59. Robin of Loxley on Robin of Sherwood which no doubt is one of the finest genre series ever done of a fantasy nature. He also played Phileas Fogg on The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, an amazing series that think ever got released on DVD. 
  • Born April 1, 1963 — James Robinson, 56. Writer, both comics and film. Some of his best known comics are the series centered on the Justice Society of America, in particular the Starman character he co-created with Tony Harris. His Starman series is without doubt some of the finest work ever done. His screenwriting not so much. Remember The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Well that’s him. 
  • Born April 1, 1964 — Marcus Hutton, 55. He’s making the Birthday list because he played Sgt. Leigh In “The Curse of Fenric” story on Doctor Who during the Seventh Doctor. It’s one of the best stories done in the Sylvester McCoy years. 
  • Born April 1, 1997 — Asa Butterfield, 22. He played the young Mordred in the Merlin series and Norman in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, also was in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children as Jacob “Jake” Portman. He was Gardner Elliot, a Martian boy who travelled to earth in The Space Between Us. 

(12) SIGNAL BOOSTED. Wow – we made the big time!

(13) THE HORROR. I Like Scary Movies is making its first stop in Los Angeles. Ticket info at the link.

I Like Scary Movies is a groundbreaking interactive art installation celebrating some of your favorite films, including the first chapter of IT, The Shining, The Lost Boys, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Beetlejuice!

• We have timed entry every 15 minutes so that you aren’t waiting in line just to get in! Visitors can expect to spend an average of 90 minutes on their quest to capture their own iconic moments as they explore the rich worlds that have come to life.

• This first-of-its-kind exhibit spans 25,000 square feet (nearly half a football field!) and features amazing large-scale photo opportunities!

• Come play with us! “Sink” into the infamous carpet from the The Shining’s Overlook hotel and explore “redrum” hedges. Swallow your fear as you pass through the jaws of IT’s Pennywise and explore the clown’s sewer lair. Have a seat in the throne of Freddy Krueger and step into his boiler room to become snatched by his giant glove from A Nightmare on Elm St. Then have a turn as recently deceased guests in the Netherworld waiting room before visiting Beetlejuice’s graveyard. Test your strength as you hang from the Santa Clara train tracks before becoming part of a “noodle” dinner from The Lost Boys. These are just a few things that fans will interact with on their way to the Gift Shop at the end of the journey, where we’ll have exclusive merchandise for you to take a part of your experience home with you!

• The exhibit does not feature “scare actors” or strobe lights.

(13) HERLAND AUTHOR. Kate Bolick, in “The Equivocal Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman” at the New York Review of Books website, praises Gilman’s pioneering horror short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” and her dystopia Herland, but also notes her support of racism and eugenics.

… There is a snake in this garden, however—not in the plot, but in Gilman’s conception of this utopia-in-her-time: a desire for racial purity. For all her progressiveness when it came to equality for the sexes, Gilman was a xenophobe, a regrettably common response at the turn of the last century to the waves of immigrants resettling in urban areas. This prejudice dovetailed with her simultaneous embrace of eugenics, then a respectable academic field and a widespread enthusiasm even among, or especially among, social reformers. Between her passion for science and sociology and her constitutional faith in the forward march of progress, Gilman was quick to adopt the idea that some human populations are genetically superior to others, and that by playing to the strengths inherent to each race, poverty could be eradicated and society vastly improved. 

Moreover, at a time when sex education and effective birth control weren’t widely available, Gilman saw in eugenics an answer to the scourges of sexually transmitted diseases (a major public-health issue until penicillin was found to treat syphilis in 1943) and involuntary motherhood. Feminists and activists in general were divided over eugenics: Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, and Olive Schreiner all shared Gilman’s views, while Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, and Florence Kelley fought against them.

(14) BE HISTORY. Marquette University, which has a huge J.R.R. Tolkien collection, wants to hear from fanboys and girls for an oral history project about the author. 

Check out this story on USATODAY.com: “Here’s your chance to become part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s oral history”.

Marquette is kind of a pilgrimage site for Tolkien fans. I thought we should collect their voices,” says William Fliss, curator of Marquette’s Tolkien collection.

Fans are given just three minutes to briefly expound on why they love Tolkien. To help people distill their thoughts, Fliss asks them to answer three questions:

When did you first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien?

Why are you a Tolkien fan?

What has he meant to you?

(15) AFRO FANTASY ALBUM. NPR’s Michel Martin reports that “Fantasy Collides With African Culture In Blitz The Ambassador’s ‘Burial Of Kojo'”.

On his 2014 album, Afropolitan Dreams, hip-hop artist Samuel Bazawule, also known as “Blitz the Ambassador,” vividly describes his journey from wide-eyed immigrant to multinational success story. In one song he declares: “I think I’m relocating back to Ghana for good.”

And, he did.

Taking leave from his home in Brooklyn and returning to the country of his birth was a fateful decision that Bazawule credits as the inspiration for his first feature film, The Burial of Kojo. The modern fable of a young girl navigating the spirit realm to find her father after his mysterious disappearance, the film takes place entirely in Ghana, using a cast and crew made up almost entirely of locals.

The Burial of Kojo caught the eye of producer and director Ava DuVernay , who acquired it earlier this year for distribution by her production company, ARRAY. On Sunday, the film makes its premieres on Netflix — the first original film from Ghana to be released on the streaming platform.

(16) THRONE FOR A LOOP. “A Game of Thrones Fan Traveled To The Arctic As Part Of A Worldwide Scavenger Hunt”. Chip Hitchcock comments, “As someone who works convention logistics, I want to know how the throne got there without everyone noticing the activity.”

Some fans watch Game of Thrones. Others live it.

The final season of the HBO hit television series premieres in two weeks. But some fans got an early treat this month when the TV network challenged people to a worldwide scavenger hunt.

For those who don’t watch the show, the ultimate symbol of power in the fictional Game of Thrones kingdom of Westeros is the Iron Throne. So, HBO placed six of them in different locations around the world and tweeted the hashtag #ForTheThrone, along with a cryptic 12 second video. Fans could also view hour-long 360-degree videos of the thrones in various terrains.

Soon after, fans around the world began their quests.

One of those individuals was Josefine Wallenå, a 25-year-old gamer and project manager from Sweden.

After looking at one of HBO’s tweeted clues closely and its caption, she realized one of the thrones might be nearby.

(17) LIVE! FROM THEIR MOTHER’S BASEMENT. “Dead Pixels: A comedy ‘about gamers for gamers'” — looks like this is UK-only for now, but most UK content seems to get spread around eventually.

Dead Pixels is a new comedy about gamers that promises to be “on their side”.

One of the stars of the show, Alexa Davies, tells Newsbeat: “It’s about fully understanding where people who play come from.”

Part live action and part computer animation, the show is based on a fictional game called Kingdom Scrolls.

“A lot of the funny bits are about characters’ frustrations with the balance between real life and the game,” says Alexa.

(18) WELL, DID IT? The question in Rowan J. Coleman’s headline is a tad blunt – “Crusade – Did It Suck?”

Following the landmark Babylon 5 is no easy task, but J.Michael Straczynski took a stab at it with Crusade. Was it any good?

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Pat Murphy, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Gray Anderson, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]