Tag Archives: Percy Jackson

Pixel Scroll 8/18/23 Let’s Do The Time Lord Again

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(0) Short Scroll today – no reason, just not as many things I wanted to include.

(1) LE GUIN’S BEST BOOKS. The New York Times takes a look at why Ursula K. Le Guin matters: “Her powerful imagination turned hypothetical elsewheres into vivid worlds governed by forces of nature, technology, gender, race and class a far cry from our own.” “The Essential Ursula K. LeGuin”.

In her 2009 essay “On the Frontier,” Ursula K. Le Guin took stock of an abstraction endemic to both the American West, where she was raised, and her chosen genre of science fiction. Interplanetary wars, galaxy-spanning empires, brave men bounding toward their next conquest — all this action rests on a notion of the future as inchoate, waiting to be made. But that’s never been true, she argued, in America or her fiction. “The future is already full,” she wrote. “It is much older and larger than our present, and we are the aliens in it.”…

(2) THE TRIMBLES. Maggie Thompson posted this photo taken at Comic-Con showing her flanked by John and Bjo Trimble. Bjo recently turned 90.

(3) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA has released episode 66 of Simultaneous Times, a monthly science fiction podcast. Stories featured in this episode are:

  • “Cost of Living” by Mike Morgan; with music by Fall Precauxions
  • “We’re All Family Here” by Mark Soden Jr.; with music by Phog Masheeen

Available on all podcast players or at Podomatic.

(4) THE GODS THEMSELVES. “’Percy Jackson’ Series Gets Teaser, Premiere Date on Disney+” reports Variety.

After a decade of waiting, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” fans will finally get an author-backed screen adaptation of the beloved young adult novels on Dec. 20. The series will arrive on Disney+ with two episodes, followed by weekly drops….

The teaser opens with voiceover from Virginia Kull as Percy’s mother, Sally Jackson. “The stories that I have told you about Greek gods and half-bloods — they are real,” she says over images of Camp Half-Blood, Percy on the elevator to Olympus, Ares (Adam Copeland) and different confrontations with monsters….

Here’s the teaser trailer: “We’ve Been Expecting You”.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians tells the fantastical story of a 12-year-old modern demigod, Percy Jackson, who’s just coming to terms with his newfound supernatural powers when the sky god Zeus accuses him of stealing his master lightning bolt. Now Percy must trek across America to find it and restore order to Olympus.

(5) DON’T WALK A MILE IN HIS SHOES. “Minnesota man indicted over theft of Judy Garland’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’ slippers” – CNN has the story.

US authorities have charged a man in connection with the theft of a pair of ruby red slippers worn by actress Judy Garland as Dorothy in the 1939 classic movie “The Wizard of Oz” nearly 20 years after they were stolen from a museum in Minnesota.

On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted Terry Jon Martin on one count of theft of a major artwork for allegedly stealing “an object of cultural heritage from the care, custody, or control of a museum,” according to court documents filed in the US District Court of Minnesota. The slippers were valued at least $100,000, court documents stated….

BBC Sounds has recording of the Witness History interview with John Kelsch, one of the people who founded the Judy Garland Museum from which the slippers were taken in 2005: “The Wizard of Oz: The stolen ruby slippers”.

(6) CHRIS CALLAHAN (1944-2023). Chris Callahan, an active Washington Science Fiction Association member in the 1990s and earlier, died June 10. Rich Lynch notes, “She was one of the many people who worked on the 1998 Baltimore Worldcon and I am especially grateful to her for volunteering as a proofreader for the Souvenir Book.  She saved me from many embarrassing typos, and had some valuable insights on how it ended up being put together.”

Callahan was part of the WSFA Players who performed Alexis Gilliland’s parody musical “2001 A Space Opera” at the 1974 Worldcon.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 18, 1925 — Brian Aldiss. Much honored, he’s was named a Grand Master by SFWA and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. I’ll single out his Helliconia series, Hothouse and The Malacia Tapestry as my favorites. He won a Hugo at Chicon III for “The Long Afternoon of The Earth”, another at Conspiracy ’87 for Trillion Year Spree which he co-authored with David Wingrove. He’s well known as an anthologist and SF writer with Space, Time and Nathaniel, a collection of short stories being his first genre publication. He’s edited far too many collections to know which one to single out, but I’m sure that the collective wisdom here can make recommendations. (Died 2017.)
  • Born August 18, 1931 — Grant Williams. He is best remembered for his portrayal of Scott Carey in The Incredible Shrinking Man though he will have the role of the psychopathic killer in Robert Bloch’s The Couch. Of course, he shows in Outer Limits, he plays Major Douglas McKinnon in “The Brain of Colonel Barham”.  And he’s Major Kurt Mason in The Doomsday Machine. (Died 1985.)
  • Born August 18, 1934 — Michael de Larrabeiti. He is best known for writing The Borrible Trilogy which is noted by several sources online as being an influence by writers in the New Weird movement. Ok folks, I’ve not read so please explain how The Borrible Trilogy influences that literary movement as it doesn’t seem like there’s any connection. (Died 2008.)
  • Born August 18, 1954 — Russell Blackford, 69. Writer resident in Australia for awhile but now in Wales. Author of Terminator 2: The New John Connor Chronicles, and editor of the Australian Science Fiction Review in the Eighties. With Van Ikin and Sean McMullen, he wrote Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction. And he wrote Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination: Visions, Minds, Ethics.
  • Born August 18, 1955 — Tom Flynn. Journalist who edited Free Inquiry magazine from 2010 until his death. He waged a decades-long crusade against Christmas. Seriously he wrote a book titled The Trouble with Christmas. His only work was his Galactic Rapture/Messiah Games space opera which ran to six volumes. Only one volume, The Destroyer’s Creed, is available from that company shall be named and it’s quite expensive. (Died 2021.)
  • Born August 18, 1958 — Madeleine Stowe, 65. She’s in the Twelve Monkeys film as Kathryn Railly, and she’s in the Twelve Monkeys series as Lillian in the “Memory of Tomorrow” episode. Her other genre work was a one-off in The Amazing Spider-Man which ran for thirteen episodes nearly forty years ago where she was Maria Calderon in “Escort to Danger” in that series, and she also played Mia Olham in Impostor which was scripted off Philip K. Dick’s “Impostor” story. 
  • Born August 18, 1966 — Alison Goodman, 47. Australian writer who’s won three Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Speculative Fiction for Singing the Dogstar Blues, The Two Pearls of Wisdom and Lady Helen and the Dark Days Pact. The Two Pearls of Wisdom was nominated for an Otherwise Award. 
  • Born August 18, 1967 — Brian Michael Bendis, 56. He’s both writer and artist, a still uncommon occurrence. Did you know he’s garnered five Eisner Awards for both his creator-owned work and Marvel Comics? Very impressive! He’s the primary force behind the creation of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, launching Ultimate Spider-Man which is an amazing series which I read on the Marvel Unlimited app. 

(8) QUEER LODGINGS. Robin Anne Reid’s latest Writing from Ithilien introduces readers/listeners to Queer Lodgings: a Tolkien Podcast

Queer Lodgings is a queer-led podcast covering all things Tolkien. Join Alicia, Grace, and Leah (and sometimes Tim), a group of fans and scholars, semi-monthly as we discuss Middle-earth from a lgbtq+-focused, intersectional, antiracist, and non-christian perspective.

They’re beginning to post transcripts of some episodes, and Reid provides in this issue of her Substack.

(9) FLY LIKE IT’S 1999. Plans are afoot for “The Eagle Has Landed” Documentary which will explore the legacy of the iconic Eagle Transporter from Space: 1999. The project’s director/creator Jeffrey Morris is launching a Kickstarter campaign on August 28 to bring it to life.

Meet the Visionaries: Icons of the Eagle Legacy

Click here to learn more about who will join Jeffrey Morris in the documentary, including:

Brian Johnson: Visual Effects Artist / Creator of the Eagle
Nick Tate: Captain Alan Carter in Space: 1999
Barbara Bain: Dr. Helena Russell in Space: 1999
Charles Duke: Astronaut / Apollo 16 Lunar Module Pilot
Kevin J. Anderson: Bestselling Sci-Fi Author / Space: 1999 Fan
Bill George: Visual Effects Supervisor
Robert Meyer Burnett: Filmmaker / Film Culture Podcaster

See a preview video here.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Jean-Paul L. Garnier, Olav Rokne, Rich Lynch, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 11/9/22 The Night They Scrolled Old Pixels Down

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(1) DRACULA DAILY. AudioFile’s Audiobook Break podcast has been sharing Dracula with audiobook listeners over the last weeks.

Embrace spine-tingling chills and vampiric horrors with AudioFile’s Audiobook Break podcast! In October, narrator Gildart Jackson and Dracula Daily’s Matt Kirkland joined AudioFile’s Michele Cobb to chat about the lasting impact of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA in pop culture, why they both loved serializing the timeless vampire story for their audiences, and more. Watch their discussion below—and start listening to DRACULA today.

Gildart Jackson narrates his Fireside Reading of Dracula with undisguised delight, letting listeners enjoy a masterpiece of horror on audio. Gildart has narrated more than 300 audiobooks and won multiple awards, and since Covid lockdowns began, he has been offering free daily Fireside Readings of classic books on Instagram and YouTube. Gildart’s entire family works on Fireside Readings—Gildart reads, Melora directs, Rory draws the illustrations, and Piper writes and performs the songs. It’s a true family affair.

Matt Kirkland’s Dracula Daily email newsletter has become “the internet’s biggest book club.” Matt shares how during the early days of Covid, he and his daughter realized how Bram Stoker’s epistolary tale is told through letters and diary entries throughout a summer and fall, and Dracula Daily was born. Now fans check their email messages with bated breath hoping for missives from all of Dracula’s characters, reordered as they occur chronologically in the novel. 

The audiobook will be ending on the podcast mid-month, but will stay up for people to listen to all the way through the end of the year. Listeners can follow along with DRACULA on our FREE Audiobook Break podcast now, with new chapters arriving every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Subscribe here.

(2) GUNN CENTER VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB. The Gunn Center for the Study of SF’s (CSSF) monthly virtual book club will meet on November 18.  For Native American Heritage Month, the Center has chosen Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun, the first of the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, a high fantasy epic inspired from histories and civilizations from pre-Columbian America. 

To join their virtual meeting on November 18th at noon (Central Time), register here. This programming is running all year, click here to see what’s in the Book Club’s future.

(3) RECREATIONAL POETRY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times, behind a paywall, Tom Faber reviews Poetry Games, an exhibition at the National Poetry Library (nationalpoetrylibraryorg.uk) through January 15.

Writers have long experimented with games as part of their practice, notably the Francophone Oulipo group, whose member Georges Perec wrote his 300-page 1969 novel La Disparition without using the letter ‘e’.  Now, however, everyone can participate in the playfulness of writing.  There’s a poetic spin on Jenga by Astra Papachristodoulou, where you pull out blocks bearing words to construct a poem. And Jn Stone and Abigail Parry’s Adversary, which asks players to build poems out of word cards.  Just try to avoid the Writer’s Block’ card which says, sympathetically, ‘It happens to all of us.’

There are also digital games such as Gemma Mahadeo and Ian McLarry’s If We Were Allowed To Visit, a navigable 3D space where every object is made of words, poetic fragments that shift as you move.  Philippe Grenon’s Émile Et Moi is a simple platformer in which you jump between words to build a poem.  After hopping around for a while, I had made, ‘another day swells air-bridged and downy/golden the night and glittering my works/dream rai sways alongside.’  Not bad, but perhaps not great poetry.

(4) MANCHESTER ENGLAND ENGLAND. Rob Hansen has added a section on “SUPERMANCON (1954)”, the British National SF Convention, to his fanhistory website THEN with a lot of old photos.

The 1954 British National SF Convention was held at the Grosvenor Hotel in Manchester, over the Whitsun weekend, Saturday 5th – Sunday 6th June (after this, the national convention would be held over Easter weekends).

(5) THE VERY “SPACIAL” FRIENDSHIP OF BUSTER CRABBE. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] When I was a little kid, prior to the Civil War, I had an imagination as fertile and as wide as my large brown eyes, dreamily filled with awe and wonder. My dad brought home our first television set in 1950.

Here is an affectionate remembrance of the Saturday Matinee and 1950’s Philadelphia television when classic cliffhanger serials thrilled and excited “children of all ages”… when careening spaceships and thundering hooves echoed through the revered imaginations and hallowed corridors of time and memory…and when Buster Crabbe lovingly brought “Flash Gordon,” “Buck Rogers,” “Red Barry,” and “Captain Gallant Of The Foreign Legion” to life in darkened movie palaces, and on television screens, all over the world.

Return with us now to “those thrilling days of yesteryear” when “Zorro’s Fighting Legion,” Buzz Corry of the “Space Patrol,” Ming, The Merciless, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, and Larry “Buster” Crabbe lit the early days of television, and Saturday afternoon motion picture screens, with magical imagery, and unforgettable excitement. Just click on the blue links above and below to escape into the past, via the world of tomorrow. “Careening Spaceships And Thundering Hooves: The Magic, Majesty And Visionary Splendor Of A Wondrous Childhood Era … And The Very “Spacial” Friendship Of Buster Crabbe” at Benner Days, Benner Nights.

Steve Vertlieb, Buster Crabbe, Erwin Veritlieb
Steve Vertlieb, Buster Crabbe

(6) KEVIN O’NEILL (1954-2022.) “Kevin O’Neill, comic artist and ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ co-creator, dies at 69” reports the Los Angeles Times.

Kevin O’Neill, co-creator of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “Marshal Law” comic books, died last week after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, according to longtime collaborator Gosh Comics. He was 69.

… He started working in the comics industry at age 16, first as an office assistant for children’s humor comic Buster. He eventually made his way to publisher 2000 AD, where he was both a writer and illustrator. Its stable of titles includes Judge Dredd and Nemesis the Warlock, which O’Neill created with Mills.

The British artist worked as a Disney Comics colorist among other jobs before joining DC Comics. It was at DC that he began getting recognition with a stint on “The Omega Men.” He also worked on Alan Moore’s stories for the “Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual” in 1986….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

2008 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Doctor Who’s “The Unicorn and The Wasp”

Ok, this is simply my look at a favorite episode of Doctor Who which aired in May of 2008. 

If you haven’t seen this episode, go away now. Really. Truly. Everything that follows is spoilers in the extreme.

SPOILERS ALL THE WAY DOWN

One of my favorites of the newer episodes of this series is a country house mystery, “The Unicorn and The Wasp”, featuring a number of murders and, to add an aspect of meta-narrative to the story, writer Agatha Christie at the beginning of her career. It would riff off her disappearance for ten days which occurred just after she found her husband in bed with another woman. Her disappearance is a mystery that has never been satisfactorily answered to this day. Or it has depending on your viewpoint. 

Needless to say, the Doctor and Donna Noble arrived in the TARDIS at the grounds of the country house just before afternoon cocktails. The Doctor (David Tennant, my favorite of the new Doctors) uses his psychic power to convince The Lady of The Manor that she has met them previously and invited them for the weekend.

A murder will soon happen when Professor Plum is killed in The Library with a lead pipe. Yes, a Clue board game reference which his plucky companion (Catherine Tate) gleefully notes. And so it goes for the entire episode in a rather delightful manner. It’s silly, it’s fast-paced, and it’s one of the most British episodes that the new Who does. And it’s one that shows how clearly this series is fantasy, not SF.

The Unicorn of the title is simply the code name of an infamous jewel thief, but The Wasp of the title is a wasp, a bloody big one on that. A wasp that’s the love child of a shape shifting alien who made Her Ladyship pregnant in India forty years ago. A wasp that’s so big that it couldn’t survive in Earth’s gravity, but this is fantasy after all. (I firmly believe that almost all science fiction is fantasy — some are just more blatant about it.) And do keep an ear out for the many, many references to the novels Christie wrote.

A delightful romp which fits very nicely into the genre of Manor House mysteries which of course the future Dame Agatha would write a few herself. Oh and Agatha Christie was played by Fanella Woolgar, who was cast at the urging of Tennant who may or may not have known that the actress had appeared in the Poirot series several years previously.

Unfortunately it is now streaming only on Disney +, isn’t it?

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 9, 1921 — Alfred Coppel. Have I ever mentioned how much I love pulp? Of course I have. Everything from the writers to the artwork to the magazines themselves are so, so cool. And this writer was one of the most prolific such authors of the Fifties and Sixties. That he was also a SF writer is an added bonus. Indeed, his first science fiction story was “Age of Unreason” in a 1947 Amazing Stories. Under the pseudonym of Robert Cham Gilman, he wrote the Rhada sequence of galactic space opera novels aimed at a young adult market. Wiki claims he wrote under the A.C. Marin name as well but I cannot find any record of this. (Died 2004.)
  • Born November 9, 1924 — Larry Shaw. A Hugo Award-winning fan, author, editor and literary agent. In the Forties and Fifties, Larry Shaw edited Nebula, Infinity Science Fiction and Science Fiction Adventures. He received a Special Committee Award during the 1984 Worldcon for lifetime achievement as an editor. (Died 1985.)
  • Born November 9, 1938 — Carol Carr. Fan and writer of note. Her participation in the so-called secret APA Lilapa, and articles in the Innuendo, Lighthouse and Trap Door fanzines is notable. She wrote a handful of genre fiction, collected in Carol Carr: The Collected Writings. Mike has an obit here. (Died 2021.)
  • Born November 9, 1947 — Robert David Hall, 75. Best known as coroner Dr. Albert Robbins M.D. on CSI, but he has quite as few genre credits. He voiced Dinky Little in the animated Here Come the Littles, both the film and the series, the cyborg Recruiting Sargent in Starship Troopers,  voice of Colonel Sharp in the G.I. Joe series, Abraham in The Gene Generation, a biopunk film, and numerous voice roles in myriad DCU animated series. He was the voice of Colonel Sharp in the G.I. Joe series, Abraham in The Gene Generation, a biopunk film, and numerous voice roles in myriad DCU animated series. Interesting note: in Starship Troopers he has no right arm, but in real life he lost both of his legs at age thirty-one when they had to be amputated as a result of an accident in which an 18-wheeler truck crushed his car.  
  • Born November 9, 1954 — Rob Hansen, 68. British fan, active since the Seventies who has edited and co-edited numerous fanzines including his debut production Epsilon. And he was the 1984 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate. His nonfiction works such as Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK: 1930-1980, last updated just a few years ago, are invaluable, as is his fanhistory website.
  • Born November 9, 1971 — Jamie Bishop. The son of Michael Bishop, he was among those killed in the Virginia Tech shooting. He did the cover illustrations for a number of genre undertakings including Subterranean Online, Winter 2008 and Aberrant Dreams, #9 Autumn 2006. The annual “Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for an Essay Not in English” was established as a memorial by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. (Died 2007.)
  • Born November 9, 1988 — Tahereh Mafi, 34. Iranian-American whose Furthermore is a YA novel about a pale girl living in a world of both color and magic of which she has neither; I highly recommend it. Whichwood is a companion novel to this work. She also has a young adult dystopian thriller series. 
  • Born November 9, 1989 — Alix E Harrow, 33. May I note that her short story with one of the coolest titles ever, “Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies”, won a Hugo at Dublin 2019. Well I will. And of course her latest novel, The Once and Future Witches, has an equally cool title. It won the BFA Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel. 

(9) OH NOES! Oh no for the “oh no” comic. Twitter thread about the litigation starts here.

(10) IN THE OLYMPIAN ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS. Shelf Awareness reports on an interesting casting decision: “TV: Percy Jackson and the Olympians”.

Lin-Manuel Miranda will have a key guest-starring role on Disney+’s upcoming series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, based on Rick Riordan’s bestselling book series. Deadline reported that Miranda, who, along with his son, is a fan of the Percy Jackson books, “will play Hermes, the messenger god who looks out for travelers and thieves, and is a bit of a trickster himself.” 

(11) IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE LIVED A MARTIAN. “House-Hunting for Caves on Mars Has Already Started” says the New York Times.

The neighborhood is a wild card, and moving there is bound to be expensive. But one of the best options for shelter when humans finally make it to the red planet will be subterranean caves. These rocky hollows, which exist in droves on both Earth and the moon, are natural buffers against the harsh conditions of Mars.

In a presentation this month at the Geological Society of America Connects 2022 meeting in Denver, researchers pinpointed nine leading cave candidates worthy of future exploration. All of these grottos appear to extend at least some distance underground, and they’re close to landing sites accessible to a lightweight rover.

These structures would offer a respite from the challenging Martian environment, said Nicole Bardabelias, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona. “Everything at the surface is subject to harsh radiation, possible meteorite or micrometeorite bombardment and really large day-to-night temperature swings,” she said.

To home in on Mars’ most sought-after real estate, Ms. Bardabelias and her colleagues consulted the Mars Global Cave Candidate Catalog. This compendium, based on imagery collected by instruments aboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, inventories over 1,000 candidate caves and other peculiar-looking features on Mars. (Think of it as the first Martian multiple listing service.)…

(12) YOU MAY THINK YOU KNOW THIS STORY. So the cricket says. Netflix dropped this trailer for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio today.

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