Tag Archives: Peter Cushing

Pixel Scroll 11/10/24 A Pixel A Day Keeps The Doctor Away. But Who Wants That?

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(1) WHALE OF A TALE. Sam Weller recalls Ray Bradbury’s work scripting Moby Dick (1956) in “I … Am Herman Melville!” at Los Angeles Review of Books.

…The next night, Bradbury met Huston in his suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The fateful encounter was one of Bradbury’s favorite stories to tell. 

“I walked into his room.” Bradbury recalled. “He put a drink in my hand. He sat me down and he leaned over and said, ‘Ray, what are you doing during the next year?’” When Bradbury imitated Huston, he assumed a rough, throaty baritone.

I said, “Not much, Mr. Huston. Not much.” And he said, “Well, Ray, how would you like to come live in Ireland and write the screenplay of Moby Dick?” And I said, “Gee, Mr. Huston, I’ve never been able to read the damn thing.”

He’d never heard that before and he thought for a moment and then he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what, Ray. Why don’t you go [home] tonight, read as much as you can, and come back tomorrow and then tell me if you’ll help me kill a white whale.”

Bradbury was stunned. He went home and told his wife, “Pray for me.” Maggie Bradbury, accustomed to her husband’s hyperbole, responded, “Why?” And he said: “Because I’ve got to read a book tonight and do a book report tomorrow.”…

…The next day, Bradbury agreed to write the screenplay. It had been quite a run. In just over a week, he had finished Fahrenheit 451 and agreed to work with his movie hero, adapting one of the most challenging works of American literature into a two-hour film. Bradbury signed a 17-week contract earning $650 a week plus living expenses, a king’s ransom for a man who, less than a decade earlier, had earned his stripes writing for pulp magazines that paid $40 or $50 per story…

(2) SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 FABRICS. Next year’s Worldcon is taking a page from Glasgow 2024’s playbook. Glasgow had a custom tartan that was designed, registered, and woven just for them. Now Seattle Worldcon 2025 has a Spoonflower shop with a selection of fabrics in their colors and using their logos, motifs, and characters. Below is an example of one of the patterns available.

(3) SEVENTIES TREK CON: KNOW ANYBODY? The BBC has posted a collection of Neil Slavin photographs: “Trekkies to twins: Eight photos of the quirkiest groups in 70s and 80s US”. Image can be viewed at the link.

The Star Trek Convention (1972-5)

The Star Trek convention, in Brooklyn, New York, was a trickier affair. “I don’t think it has heart,” says Slavin, typically forthright. With the wrestlers, “the pulse is very obvious,” he maintains, but this group, which met annually to exchange memorabilia and keep the memory of the original series of Star Trek alive, was much harder to penetrate. “It was [just] people dressing up,” he shrugs. “They don’t really know each other. They didn’t come together and have the kind of energy that would have changed the dynamic. Their concern is purely looking at the camera and being some character that they weren’t.” He nevertheless considers the photograph a success. “It shows the sociological cracks,” he says. “They need to be together, but they’re together apart.”

(4) TIM BURTON EXHIBIT. [Item by Steve French.] If folk happen to be in London: “What Makes the Dark, Whimsical World of Tim Burton So Compelling?” in Smithsonian Magazine.

An immersive ode to Hollywood’s goth king has arrived in London. In a new exhibition at the Design Museum, visitors can view Tim Burton’s early artworks, as well as sketches and costumes from Corpse Bride(2005), Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990) and more.

“It’s a strange thing, to put 50 years of art and your life on view for everyone to see, especially when that was never the original purpose,” says Burton in a statement.

(5) LEADING STREAMERS. JustWatch has shared their Top 10 sf streaming lists for October 2024. Not what I would have predicted!

(6) DEATH WILL NOT RELEASE YOU – IF YOU’RE PROFITABLE. “Peter Cushing Becomes Latest Icon To Be Given AI Resurrection In Sky Hammer Films Doc” reports Deadline.

Fans of Peter Cushing are in for a Halloween treat, with the iconic Frankenstein star the latest to be resurrected by AI.

In Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters, a Sky doc airing [on Halloween], viewers will be treated to a “powerful and poignant reveal of Hammer royalty,” Sky said, with what is being described as a “special homage” to Cushing.

Cushing, who died in 1994, played Doctor Van Helsing in five Dracula films and Baron Frankenstein in six movies from that franchise. He will be the latest celebrity given the AI resurrection treatment. Yesterday, the doc’s producer Deep Fusion Films unveiled a “world first” podcast hosted by a replica of the late chat show presenter Michael Parkinson….

…This isn’t the first time Cushing has been resurrected. His likeness was revived as Grand Moff Tarkin for 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and a high court legal battle over the use of the image was recently ruled by a judge to go to trial.

Ben Field, who runs Deep Fusion, said the Hammer doc resurrection has secured all necessary permissions. The decision to resurrect Cushing is “tied to his significance to the Hammer legacy,” he added. “As a figure central to Hammer’s success, Cushing’s presence is crucial to telling the story authentically,” he added….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary, November 10, 1966 — Star Trek’s “The Corbomite Maneuver”

Fifty-eight years ago this evening, “The Corbomite Maneuver” first aired.

It was the tenth episode of the first season, and it was written by Jerry Sohl who had previously written for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, The Invaders, and The Twilight Zone. (His other Trek scripts were “Whom Gods Destroy” and “This Side of Paradise”.)

It was the first episode filmed in which Kelley played Dr. Leonard McCoy, Nichols played Lt. Uhura and Whitney played Yeoman Rand, though we first saw them on the air in “The Man Trap”.  

Clint Howard, brother of Ron Howard, played the alien Balok but he didn’t voice him — Walker Edmiston provided that. Ted Cassidy, who was the Gorn in “Arena” and the android Ruk in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” voiced the Balok puppet. 

The Balok puppet itself was designed by Wah Chang, who, among other things, shared an academy award for the Time Machine prop in Pal’s movie of the same name. Cool fact: Chang is responsible for the Pillsbury dough boy. Any resemblance to Balok is probably accidental. 

So did critics like it at the time? No idea as I can’t find any contemporary reviews of it anywhere even on Rotten Tomatoes though media critics now love it as most put it in their top twenty of all of the Trek series episodes. 

It was nominated for a Hugo at NyCon 3, the year that “The Menagerie” won. “The Naked Time” was also nominated that year. 

It is, of course, streaming on Paramount+. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

November 10, 1982 — Aliette de Bodard, 42. Let’s start with Aliette de Bodard’s oh-so-excellent Xuya Universe series which is my go-to fiction by her. It started with “The Lost Xuyan Bride”, which you can read on her website. I can’t begin to even count the number of shorter stories here, I say shorter as isn’t everything a story, but she’s written a very large number of them.

Aliette de Bodard

My favorites? “The Shipmaker” which garnered a BSFA; Hugo-nominated “On a Red Station, Drifting” which I’ve reread at least three times because it’s so good; “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls” for its look at a ship mind; “The Tea Master and the Detective” which I adore; “Red Scholar’s Wake”, another one well worth rereading; and finally “The Mausoleum’s Children”, another much-deserved Hugo nominee.

I not read as deep in the Dominion of The Fallen series which leads off with the BSFA-winning House of the Shattered Wings novels, but the story of Paris in ruins because of a War between apparently Heaven and Hell is a tale worth its time. I’ve only listened to the next two, both are excellent, The House of Binding Thorns and The House of Sundering Flames, so I cannot advise on later novels. 

The last series doesn’t reflect her French Vietnamese culture unlike the first two. The third is Obsidian & Blood. She has the Mexica Empire teetering on the brink of destruction as the horrors the flesh-eating demons, or something they think are demons, from the stars, along with their might be goddess only held in check by the Protector God’s power. So has anyone read these? I haven’t.

I admit that the Xuya Universe series is the only series here that I follow. The characters, the setting and the story all make for a wonderful ongoing piece of fiction that I look forward to seeing her continue as long as she cares to.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) TRUE GRIT. [Item by Steven French.] And here’s another Dune: Prophecy actress answering questions: “Emily Watson: ‘You have to be a bit of an idiot to be an actor’” in the Guardian.

You are also about to star in Dune: Prophecy, the female-led TV prequel to the Denis Villeneuve movies. It’s set 10,000 years before the films and you play the leader of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, Valya Harkonnen. How would you describe her?

It becomes revealed through the series that she and her family have a really messed-up background. And that she is driven by a sense of vengeance about having been very deeply wronged. But she’s recognisably human, and, as a young woman, you’re rooting for her, because she’s strong-willed and free. And Dune is a very complex moral universe, where there are no goodies and baddies, which I like. It’s not standing around in spandex looking dumb.

(11) HERBERT ANALYZED. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian also has an interview with Olivia Williams, who was in The Postman and The Sixth Sense and stars in Dune: Prophecy, where talks about living with cancer and the use of AI in movies: “’Watch out, I’m even less inhibited’: Olivia Williams on movies, misogyny and living with cancer”.

…We are here to talk about her latest role, in Dune: Prophecy, a big-budget series that is a prequel to the recent films. Williams’s old friend Emily Watson stars with her, as leader of a nascent, nunlike sect of women, who have supernatural, sometimes violent abilities and world-conquering ambitions. It sounds as if Williams was not immediately wowed by the prospect of joining the Dune juggernaut.

“I had my suspicions about feminist TV based on a novel written by a bloke in the 60s,” she says. “And there are some elements that are very based in the patriarchy. There’s this fascination of, what do women get up to when men aren’t around, and what kind of wisdom is it that men are frightened of? They seem frightened we can read their minds, or know when they’re telling the truth or lying.”…

(12) OPEN TO SUGGESTION. “A Game Designer Who Wants to See Ideas He’ll Hate” in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

Ian Dallas, the founder and creative director of the video game studio Giant Sparrow, happened to be talking about food, but his gastronomical tastes are similar to his design philosophy. “I’m always interested,” he said, “in what’s the strangest, new intense experience that I can have.”

Giant Sparrow’s most recent release, What Remains of Edith Finch, is one of the more piquant fusions of narrative and game design of the past decade. What became a collection of short stories about a cursed family of storytellers living in the Pacific Northwest began as a scuba diving simulator.

From the rough prototype to the finished game, Dallas strove to evoke the rush of the sublime; while searching for ways to conjure that feeling, he made one prototype after another. By the alchemy of art, he and his small team ended up with a game that uses a different mechanic for each of the stories it tells about the last day of a character’s life. In one scenario, a little girl turns into a cat, an owl, a shark and a man-eating sea monster; in another, a man working at a cannery becomes lost in an internal fantasy while working over a fish-slicing machine.

Dallas’s approach to a project can be summed up as experimentation within a given set of parameters. He likes to tell new colleagues that he wants to see things he will hate.

“If I don’t see ideas that include some that are just like really out there, then we’re not trying hard enough,” he said. What might not seem promising early on can plant the seed for inspired creativity down the line….

…Dallas wants his new game to help people reflect on the vastly different ways that other species experience the world. He is also interested in “how many bizarre things are going on around us all the time that we aren’t really aware of or thinking about.”…

(13) SCARECROW REPRISE. “Ray Bolger sings ‘If I Only Had A Brain’ to Judy Garland”. Live on the Judy Garland Show, Episode 10, October 11, 1963. You’ve seen the movie in color. So for variety, watch them sing here in black & white!

(14) WORST INTRO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] What is the worst introduction to an SF/F book ever? Grammaticus Books thinks he has found it with the introduction to an edition collecting Robert Howard Conan stories.  The introduction slams Howard and those close to him.  Why?  Well Grammaticus Books thinks he has the answer… It was the collection’s publisher’s doing…. “The World’s WORST Book FOREWORD!!!”

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

Pixel Scroll 9/11/24 I’ve Clicked To Scroll It Stealthily In Narnia

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(0) File 770 was crashed most of the afternoon. Customer Service said high bot traffic is to blame. That may be fixed now. Let me quote Alan Arkin to whoever is sending these bots my way: “Argo fuck yourself!”

(1) LIFE IN PANDEMIC TIMES. “Station Eleven 10th anniversary: Emily St. John Mandel on what she’d change” at Slate. “Emily St. John Mandel on her eerily prescient sci-fi classic—and what she’d change about it now.”

You’re in a unique position in that you wrote a pandemic book in 2014, then had the TV adaptation come out in 2021. You experienced people’s responses to art about pandemics before COVID, during COVID, and now. I’m curious what the differences may have been.

I remember absorbing a lot of comments online to the effect of How did you predict this? Which I absolutely did not. There was always going to be another pandemic. What was interesting to see was the differences in the way between how I imagined a pandemic would be and how it actually is. In the Station Eleven pandemic, the mortality rate is insane. It’s like 99 percent or something. I didn’t have to go that far. It turns out society gets extremely disrupted extremely quickly, with vastly lower numbers than that.

Something I hadn’t anticipated was the in-between state of pandemics. For all my research into pandemics, I’d kind of thought of a pandemic as a binary state. You’re either in a pandemic or you’re not in a pandemic. But I remain fascinated by the month of February 2020 in New York City—we knew it was coming, but we didn’t believe it. It’s this uneasy territory wherein it’s very hard to make informed, reasonable decisions around risk management when you’re kind of in a pandemic and kind of not. We’re kind of there again now. Obviously, it’s much better than it was, but I do a lot of events where typically people will be unmasked at this point, but often there are a few people in the audience wearing a mask, and that is absolutely rational, and also being unmasked is rational at this point. That was something I just didn’t expect.

One thing that doesn’t ring true to me about the book anymore isn’t necessarily something I got wrong, but just the way our country has changed. When I wrote the book, I wrote a scene where all these flights are diverted to the nearest airport and everybody gets off the plane. They go to a television monitor tuned to CNN or something, and the announcer is talking about this new pandemic and everybody believes what the announcer is saying, which—I swear to God, that was plausible in 2011. At this point, absolutely not. I can’t even imagine that happening.

(2) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. Two of the five National Book Award longlists were announced yesterday reports Publishers Weekly, for Translated Literature and Young People’s Literature. The shortlists come out October 1. The winners will be announced during an awards ceremony in New York City on November 20.

The works of genre interest in the 10-book longlists are named below.

Translated Literature

  • The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless)
  • Woodworm by Layla Martínez, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott (Two Lines)
  • Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary (Scribner)

Young People’s Literature

  • The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly (Greenwillow)

(4) WILL GAIMAN STEP BACK FROM GOOD OMENS? According to Deadline: “’Good Omens’: Neil Gaiman Offers To Step Back From Season 3”.

Neil Gaiman is understood to have offered to step back from the third and final season of Prime Video‘s fantasy drama Good Omens.

Deadline revealed on Monday that pre-production had paused on the BBC Studios-produced show in the wake of allegations made by four women against Gaiman, which he denies. This came after Disney’s planned feature adaptation of Gaiman’s 2008 YA title The Graveyard Book also was put on pause.

Now, we understand that Gaiman has made an offer to Amazon and producers to take a back seat on the latest season so that it can continue amid crisis talks over the Terry Pratchett adaptation’s future. Deadline understands Gaiman’s offer is not an admission of wrongdoing following a podcast from Tortoise Media that chronicled accounts of two women, with whom he was in consensual relationships, who accused him of sexual assault. Another two have since come forward. Gaiman’s position is that he denies the allegations and is said to be disturbed by them. His rep did not respond to a request for comment….

(5) WOT’S THAT? TV Guide says “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Has an Accent Problem”.

Tom Bombadil made his The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debut this week, played by character actor Rory Kinnear in a voluminous beard and wig. Known for his role in The Fellowship of the Ring (notably cut from the Peter Jackson movie), Bombadil is enigmatic yet silly; a mythic figure who hints at ancient wisdom while living out his days as a jovial, eccentric hermit. And like his harfoot neighbors, Rory Kinnear’s version speaks with a strong regional accent, playing into a recurring problem throughout the show.

Tolkien’s linguistic worldbuilding is famously sophisticated, and The Rings of Power puts a lot of work into its use of constructed languages like Quenya. Unfortunately its English-language choices are nowhere near as thoughtful, embracing clumsy stereotypes from around the British Isles. The most uncomfortable example is the nomadic harfoot community in Season 1; they’re the only characters who speak with Irish accents.

Writing in The Irish Times, critic Ed Powers described these “twee and guileless” harfoots as “a race of simpleton proto-hobbits, rosy of cheek, slathered in muck, wearing twigs in their hair and speaking in stage-Irish accents that make the cast of Wild Mountain Thyme sound like Daniel Day-Lewis.” He made the convincing argument that they reflect offensive images of Irish culture as “pre-industrial and childlike.” Unfortunately the show’s accent problems don’t stop there.

Overseen by American showrunners, the accent choices in The Rings of Power are deeply rooted in unexamined classism and regional stereotypes.….

(6) SUZANNE PALMER FUNDRAISER. “Fundraiser for Suzanne Palmer by Meguey Baker : Changing Suzanne’s Story: Emergency Funds for a Writer” at GoFundMe.

Let me tell you about Suzanne. She’s a writer, a world-builder, and a dear friend of mine over the past three decades. We need art to live. We need stories and storytellers. We need Suzanne. It’s easy to think that artists just make art, but they also have lives, and bills, and accidents that are terrible, or hilarious, or both, depending on the telling.

So when she told me the story about her kid stepping through the ceiling, plaster raining down on their sister’s bedroom below, it was with the smile of a writer who sees the humor in the misadventure. I knew it would become a family legend. But when she told me about being crushingly tight on funds due to payment for her work being months late, I knew that was no laughing matter.

I’m asking us all to step up….

(7) ANALYZING CONCORD’S FAILURE. [Item by Steven French.] Here’s the latest gaming news from the Guardian: “Sony’s big-budget hero shooter Concord failed spectacularly – here’s where it went wrong”.

As is now traditional, right after I’d filed last week’s Pushing Buttons, huge gaming news broke: Sony was pulling its hero shooter Concord from sale just two weeks after launch – because nobody was playing it. Everyone who bought it on PlayStation 5 and PC was refunded, and the future of the game is now unclear.

This is a brutal sequence of events. Sony bought the makers of Concord, Firewalk Studios, in 2023. Concord had been in development for eight years, and it was an expensive game, with bespoke cinematics and a long-term plan that would have cost $100m or more to develop. In its two weeks on the market, it sold fewer than 25,000 copies, according to estimates. This is a shocker, even compared with the year’s other bad news for developers and studios.

Much has been written about why Concord flopped so spectacularly. As Keith Stuart pointed out in his review of the game, it launched into a crowded genre, the hero shooter, in which many players already have their preferred game (Overwatch, Valorant or Apex Legends, to name three). Sony’s marketing of the game also seemed to fail, in that almost nobody knew about Concord before it arrived. (I barely knew about it, and it’s my job to know these things.) Criticisms, too, were levelled at its characters and design: it was generic and didn’t have any particularly interesting gameplay ideas.

The failure of Concord is also symbolic of the existential-level problems in modern game development: they are so expensive to create, and they take so long that a game can miss its moment years before it is released. All this makes publishers risk-averse, but if you’re simply trying to recreate what’s popular, it’ll be out of date by the time it’s finished….

(8) DID DISNEY MUFF THE MOFF? “Lucasfilm Sued for Recreating Grand Moff Tarkin Actor Peter Cushing’s Image in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” at IGN.

Peter Cushing

Disney subsidiary Lucasfilm is being sued over its recreation of Grand Moff Tarkin actor Peter Cushing’s image in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

As reported by The Times, a friend of Cushing has alleged Disney did not have permission to recreate the actor’s image with special effects for Rogue One. Disney tried and failed to have the case dismissed for a second time on September 9, 2024.

The plaintiff Kevin Francis is suing Lucasfilm through his film company Tyburn Film Productions and also brought claims against Rogue One producer Lunak Heavy Industries, the late executors of Cushing’s estate, and Cushing’s agency Associated International Management.

Francis claimed he must give authorization for any recreation of Cushing’s image following an agreement made between him and the actor in 1993, one year before his death at age 81.

Lucasfilm claimed it didn’t think it needed permission to recreate Cushing’s image due to his original contract for Star Wars (the 1977 film which became Star Wars: Episode 4 – A New Hope) and the nature of the special effects. It also paid around $37,000 to Cushing’s estate after being contacted by his agent about the recreation.

On September 9, deputy High court judge Tom Mitcheson dismissed the appeal, stating the case should go to trial. “I am also not persuaded that the case is unarguable to the standard required to give summary judgment or to strike it out,” he added. “In an area of developing law it is very difficult to decide where the boundaries might lie in the absence of a full factual enquiry.”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

Born September 11, 1952 – Sharon Lee.

By Lis Carey: She is best known as one half of the writing team of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, creators of the popular and very enjoyable Liaden Universe series of novels and stories. Her solo works include two Maine-based mysteries, a fantasy series set in the fictional Maine town of Archer’s Beach, and several dozen short stories, both sf and fantasy.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller in 2017.

It may interest some to know that her “day jobs” over the years have included (in addition to a lot of secretarial work) advertising copy writer, call-in talk host, nightside news copy editor, freelance reporter, photographer, book reviewer, and deliverer of tractor trailers.

 Born and raised in Baltimore, MD, she met fellow beginning new writer Steve Miller. They married in 1980, around the time Sharon made her first professional sale, “A Matter of Ceremony,” to Amazing Stories.

 In 1988, Sharon and Steve moved to Winslow, Maine, and lived there until 2018, when they moved “into town,” to Waterville, on the other side of the Kennebec River. Throughout their writing lives, they’d been carefully supervised by a succession of cats, and this remains true for Sharon. She currently has three Maine Coon cats, including veteran editorial cats Trooper and Firefly, and the new apprentice, Rook.

Sharon is working on the next Liaden book, Diviner’s Bow. She makes no guarantees on how long she will continue writing the series, but will continue to credit Steve as co-author on any new Liaden works she writes. She’s adamant that Liaden would not exist without both her and Steve, and that he is still an integral part of continuing to tell stories in that setting. Because of that, new Liaden stories will continue to bear both names.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) KISSES FROM SPACE. [Item by lance oszko.] Orbital Author Reading gives new meaning to Book Launch. “Kisses from Space”. “Kisses from Space – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital”.

Polaris Dawn Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon invites you to embark on a celestial journey as she reads Kisses from Space, a children’s book published by Random House. Inspired by the resilient spirit of the young patients at St. Jude, Anna’s heartwarming tale comes to life by bridging the gap between the cosmos and our earthly hearts. These courageous children, in turn, have lent their creativity to the book by crafting artwork inspired by its whimsical illustrations. As you immerse yourself in the magic of Kisses From Space, know that every page turned contributes to a noble cause: supporting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

(12) WESTEROS: EVERYTHING MUST GO. Heritage Auctions is running “HBO® Original Game of Thrones The Auction”, an huge event offering over 2,000 costumes, weapons, props, and set decorations, from October 10-12. For example:

…Among the essential pieces in this auction, my favorite is Oathkeeper, a Valyrian steel sword. Although initially forged for Jaime Lannister (through Tywin Lannister) from Eddard Stark’s legendary sword “Ice,” it was later gifted to Brienne by Jaime with the poignant directive, “It was reforged from Ned Stark’s sword. You’ll use it to defend Ned Stark’s daughter.” Oathkeeper thus became a symbol of Brienne’s journey from an underestimated sole female heir, whose worth was once seen as limited to marriage, to her rise as the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard….

(13) DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO BABYLON-I-AY? Live Science celebrates a “Babylonian Map of the World: The oldest known map of the ancient world”.

…This tablet, which depicts how Babylonians perceived the world thousands of years ago, is peppered with details that offer insight into an earlier time. For example, the ancient world is shown as a singular disc, which is encircled by a ring of water called the Bitter River. At the world’s center sits the Euphrates River and the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon. Labels written in cuneiform, an ancient text, note each location on the map, according to The British Museum. …

(14) CHINA’S MARS PLANS. “China aims for historic Mars mission ‘around 2028’ as it vies for space power” reports CNN.

China’s historic attempt to bring samples from Mars to Earth could launch as soon as 2028, two years earlier than previously stated, according to a senior mission official.

The country’s Tianwen-3 mission would carry out two launches “around 2028” to retrieve the Martian samples, chief mission designer Liu Jizhong said at a deep-space exploration event in eastern China’s Anhui province last week.

The projected mission launch is more ambitious than a 2030 target announced by space officials earlier this year, though the timeline has fluctuated in recent years. A 2028 target appears to return to a launch plan described in 2022 by a senior scientist involved with the Tianwen program – a mission profile that would see samples returned to Earth by 2031.

The latest remarks follow China’s landmark success retrieving the first samples from the far side of the moon in June.

It also comes as an effort by NASA and the European Space Agency to retrieve Mars samples remains under assessment amid concerns over budget, complexity and risk. The US space agency, which first landed on Mars decades ago, said it is evaluating faster and more affordable plans to allow for a speedier result than one that would have returned samples in 2040….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Once upon a time on Letterman: “James Earl Jones presents things that only sound cool when he says them.”

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

Dracula in the 1970s: Prints of Darkness

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Preface (7/19/2018)

By Steve Vertlieb: It was in 1997 that I first received a rather flattering telephone call from an editor in New York, asking if I’d be willing to participate in a new published anthology that he was compiling for Midnight Marquee Press. The book would assemble many genre writers of the period in a collaborative effort celebrating the “life,” and death of Bram Stoker’s literary creation in film.

Christopher Lee as Dracula

The “editor,” whose name shall go unspoken here, said that he had grown up with my work in such publications as The Monster Times, and that he would be honored to include a chapter by me in the pages of his forthcoming book, which was to be called Dracula, The First Hundred Years.

I was asked to write a somewhat light-hearted examination of the “Dracula,” and related vampire films, and television productions of the 1970’s.

Prompted, perhaps, by his professed “love” for my work, I agreed, and began fabricating a new article for his publication. I set about writing a lengthy new piece and, once finished, sent it off by mail to New York. I received a congratulatory telephone call from the “gentleman” in question shortly following its receipt, advising me that he was delighted with my work. He said that it was everything that he could have hoped for, and more, and that while many of his writers would need to be heavily edited, my work would be published essentially as I had written it.

Now, it’s normal for an editor to send each of his stable of writers the “proofs” of their edited work once completed, prior to publication, so that they might be gone over and approved for content. Months went by, however, without any further communication from the book’s editor.

I’d begun hearing ominous rumblings from a number of writers, grumbling that their efforts had been heavily tampered with and changed, and that there was brewing trouble in “paradise.” I continued to rest easily, however, in the spoken assurance that my work would be published essentially as written.

When the book was at last published, however, I discovered to my horror that my work had been badly distorted, compromised, and truncated.

Wherever I had spoken of actor Christopher Lee with affection and reverence, my text had been re-written to ridicule and attack him. Wherever I had spoken of actor Frank Langella with respect and admiration, my text had been re-written as would reflect the secret yearnings of a smitten school girl in drooling affection for her hero.

Large chunks of my writing had been unceremoniously removed and altered, without either my knowledge or permission by an unscrupulous “editor” who had unkindly inserted his own cryptic observations and prejudice under my name and byline, shabbily using my personal reputation either to malign or revere the films and performances that he had either loved or loathed.

When I asked why he had done this to me, he replied that he thought that “it was funny.”

Reviewers of the volume, who had taken offense to many of the cruel observations expressed supposedly by me, were harsh in their very personal criticism of my work. I set about composing a letter-writing campaign to address these issues, stating rather forcefully that the offensive opinions determined objectionable were either edited, or added, after my work had been submitted, and neither with my knowledge or consent.

Consequently, sales of the volume plummeted, and the “editor” complained that I had “murdered” his book.

In the twenty years since its publication, the title has come to be reviled by readers, and wholly disavowed by its unwitting publisher. In the decades that followed, I’d longed to have my work published in its entirety, and as originally conceived as written.

Here, then, for the first time ever, and with enthusiastic permission of Midnight Marquee Press, is the published premiere of my original work.

The full article follows the jump.

Continue reading →

Dr. Van Helsing And Victor Frankenstein: A Peter Cushing Remembrance

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By Steve Vertlieb: I had the honor and distinct pleasure of both knowing and sharing correspondence with British actor Peter Cushing for several years during the late Sixties and early Seventies.  He was a wonderfully gifted, intelligent, sensitive, and witty artist who somehow found solace from my words of comfort during a very difficult period in his life following the death of his beloved wife and partner, Helen.  Here are some deeply moving, truly heart-breaking letters from Peter from that troubling period. His honesty, humanity, and compassion are most expressively captured in these searingly candid personal letters of correspondence.

We met at last at Forry Ackerman’s “Famous Monsters of Filmland” convention in New York City during the Summer of 1975. Our meeting was, for me, a precious dream come true. When I reminded him of our long correspondence, he said “Ah, Yes…You used to write me with your brother…just like Laurel and Hardy.” The “in joke” there was, of course, that Peter had appeared with the famed comedy duo in A Chump at Oxford in 1939.

Peter Cushing and Steve Vertlieb in 1975.

He was a gentle, adorable soul. His presence in my life for a time continues to fill my heart with both joy and tenderness, as he remains never far from my memories and thoughts.

Remembering Peter Cushing: 05/26/1913 – 08/11/1994

Sir Peter Cushing Remembered

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Steve Vertlieb, left, Peter Cushing, right, in 1975.

By Steven J. Vertlieb: We lovingly remember and celebrate the 104th Birthday (born May 26, 1913) of the magnificent Peter Cushing, the cultured gentleman of horror who, along with partner and friend Christopher Lee, led Hammer Film Productions in England to near mythical success and legend during the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies.

Peter became a friend through correspondence during the Sixties and Seventies. His letters were often searingly open, and heartbreakingly honest. We met finally at New York ‘s “Famous Monsters of Filmland” film convention during the torrid Summer of 1975.

Here I am with Peter upon our meeting at this memorable gathering. When I reminded him of our long correspondence, he said “Ah, Yes…You used to write me with your brother…just like Laurel and Hardy.” Just adorable.

With our beloved Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing was, perhaps, England’s most cherished export during his shared tenure as Hammer Films’ most prominent actor and star. Wishing Abraham Van Helsing and Baron Frankenstein a joyous, Gothic, Happy Birthday in horror Heaven.

Pixel Scroll 1/5/17 But You Scroll One Lousy Pixel….

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what-would-carrie-do

(1) WWCD? Cody Christensen of Cedar City, Utah has a petition on Change.org  called “Make Leia an Official Disney Princess” which requests that Disney induct Princess Leia into the pantheon of princesses and that some sort of ceremony for Carrie Fisher be held at a Disney theme park.  He has over 40,000 signatures.

After the tragic lose of Carrie Fisher, we feel that it is only fitting for Disney to do away with the rule that an official Disney princess must be animated and make Leia a full-fledged princess. This would be a wonderful way to remember Carrie and a welcoming to one of Disney’s new properties that is beloved by millions.

What we are asking is that the Walt Disney Corporation hold a full ceremony inducting Leia as the newest Disney princess as well as a special service in memory of Carrie Fisher.

Christensen told Geek how he got the idea for the petition.

“I started the petition because it was something that bugged me since Disney bought the property. Disney had princesses and Leia was a Princess. Then I found out that Disney had set rules for who could and couldn’t be a princess. (Supercarlin brothers video) With Carrie’s death, I think that it’s time to change the rules.”…

“I actually have 5 daughters and there are constantly princess movies playing in the background.” he said “We are big fans of the current Princess line-up, but I think that Leia is a really strong, positive, awesome role model for my girls, and she would make a great addition.”

(2) SPEAKING OF DISNEY PRINCESSES. Abigail Nussbaum reviews Moana, The Lobster, Star Trek Beyond and Lalaland at Asking the Wrong Questions.

Moana – Disney’s latest attempt to reinvent the princess movie takes two novel approaches: drawing on Polynesian folklore and mythology for its story, and recruiting Hamilton wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the film’s songs.  Heroine Moana (Auli’l Cravalho) is torn between her duties as the daughter of the village chief and her desire to roam the seas, but finds herself able to gratify both desires when she’s tasked with restoring the heart of creation goddess Te Fiti, aided by Maui (Dwayne Johnson), the demigod who originally stole it.  The plot is thus a picaresque, in which Moana and Maui encounter various dangers and challenges on their journey to Te Fiti, during which they also bond and help each other overcome their hang-ups.  It’s a similar structure to Tangled–still, to my mind, the best of the modern princess movies–but Moana lacks that film’s multiple intersecting plot strands and broad cast of characters, and ends up feeling simpler and more straightforward.  What it does have is genuinely stunning animation, especially where it draws on the scenery of the Pacific islands and the iconography of Polynesian cultures, and some excellent songs by Miranda, which pay homage to both the Disney and musical theater traditions while still retaining entirely their own flavor–I’m particularly fond of a scene in which Moana and Maui encounter a giant, jewel-encrusted lobster (Jemaine Clement), who sings a David Bowie-inspired glam-rock ballad, and then complains that no one likes him as much as The Little Mermaid‘s Sebastian.  But pretty much every song here is excellent and memorable in its own right.

(3) TAIL-GUNNER LOU. “Is there a blacklist?” asks Lou Antonelli, because the rejection slips he gets now are not quite as warm as they once were.

A colleague asked me the other day if I felt there is a blacklist in literary s-f against non-PC writers.

I replied I don’t know, there’s no way to tell for sure; that’s the nature of a blacklist – it’s a conspiracy.

I will say that before 2015, when I was a double Sad Puppy Hugo nominee, my rejections almost always included invitations to submit to that market again.

Now, that is very uncommon, and in fact almost all my rejections now end with “best of luck” or “good luck with your writing” – and no encouragement to submit again.

Someone wrote anonymously to encourage Lou’s suspicions, inspiring a follow-up post decorated with a photo of Senator Joe McCarthy:

I don’t often approve anonymous comments, but I did in this one case, since it sounded true, and given the subject matter, it’s completely understandable why someone would prefer to remain anonymous:

“Day after the election, when I posted a picture of myself with a Trump hat, a famous editor of whom almost anyone would know her name, had her assistant message me to tell me how awful I am, that I’m not going to be invited to write in anthologies again, coupled with the threat that the publishing industry is small and word travels fast.

“Blackballing is real. But you are not alone.”

(4) BUMPER CROP. Mark-kitteh noticed that after SFCrowsnest’s brutal review of Uncanny Magazine #14 yesterday, Uncanny’s editors made some lemonade:

(5) UTES READ GEEZERS. At Young People Read Old SFF, James Davis Nicoll has set the table with Miriam Allen DeFord’s “The Smiling Future”.

Miriam Allen de Ford was a prolific author of both mysteries and Fortean-flavoured science fiction stories. She was also an active feminist, disseminating information about family planning in a time when that was illegal in many regions. Although widely anthologized while alive , since her death she seems to have lapsed into obscurity, at least on the SF side of thing. A pity.

“The Smiling Future” is perhaps not de Ford’s best known science fiction work but it does have the advantage of being on the internet archive, not true of much of her work (because her work was mainly for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, none of which is on the archive). Also, it has dolphins and who doesn’t like dolphins? Selecting it out of all the de Fords I could have selected is therefore something of a calculated risk. Will the risk pay off?

There was enough of a positive reaction to get a good discussion going.

(5) WARNING. It takes a long time to stop laughing at Camestros Felapton’s “A Poster for Timothy”.

(6) SECOND WARNING. Not that Camestros Felapton won’t be a nominee for his work published in 2016, but the first thing he should put in his Hugo eligibility post from 2017 is “A Cat Reviews LaLaLand“. Quite funny, though beware, spoilers abound! …I read it anyway.

(7) PUPPY THOUGHTS. Brian Niemeier  L.Jagi Lamplighter is delighted to be part of SuperversiveSF’s new collection Forbidden Thoughts, which boasts a foreword by Milo Yiannopoulos.

But what can you do with a super controversial story in this age of safe spaces and trigger warnings?

Then, in the midst of the Sad Puppy fervor, I caught a glimmer of an answer. Jason Rennie, editor of Sci Phi Journal and the brilliant mind behind SuperverisveSF, suggested in the midst of a flurry of Sad Puppy emails, that the authors involved get together and do an anthology of anti-PC stories, kind of a modern Dangerous Visions–putting into story form all those thoughts that the SJWs don’t want people to think. Basically, doing what SF is supposed to do, posing difficult questions.

Those of us on the email chain decided on the title: Forbidden Thoughts.

I LOVED this idea. Here was my answer to what to do with my controversial story.

So, I kept on Jason about this, and I kept on the other authors. When a few were too busy to be able to fit writing a new short story into their schedule, I convinced them to submit incendiary blog posts.

So we now had a volume with stories by, among others, John, Nick Cole, Brian Niemeier, Josh Young, Brad Torgersen, Sarah Hoyt, and, a particularly delightful surprise for me, our young Marine fan friend, Pierce Oka. Plus, non fiction by Tom Kratman and Larry Correia submitted some of his original Sad Puppy posts–the thing that started it all!

(8) THE FORBIDDEN ZONE. There probably are a few things The Book Smuggler would like to forbid: “The Airing of Grievances – Smugglivus 2016”

In publishing and on Twitter, advocates for equality, feminists, poc readers and authors were attacked left and right every time they called out racism and sexism in publishing. And folks, there was a lot of that this year. Like that one time when a publisher had a book of “parody” covers that was so racist it almost made our eyes bleed. White authors continued to be awful and show their asses, like that one who said that those who call out cultural appropriation are getting “too precious.” And just a few days ago, we all found out that racist nazi piece of shit Milo Yiannopoulos got a huge book deal with a major publishing house…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

Born January 5, 1914 — George Reeves, TV’s first Superman.

(10) SOMETHING TERPSICHOREAN. Sparknotes explains Bradbury’s dedication of Something Wicked This Way Comes.

In “A Brief Afterword,” Bradbury explains why Something Wicked This Way Comes is dedicated to Gene Kelly and describes how the book was written. Bradbury met Gene Kelly in 1950 and they became friends shortly thereafter. In 1955 Kelly invited Bradbury and his wife, Maggie, to a private screening of his “collection of musical dance numbers with no connecting plotline,” Invitation to the Dance, at MGM studios. Bradbury and his wife walked home and along the way he told his wife that he desperately wanted to work with Kelly. She suggested that he go through his stories until he found something that would work, turn it into a screenplay, and send it to Gene Kelly. So Bradbury looked through many of his short stories and found The Black Ferris, a ten page story about two young boys and a carnival. For a little over a month he worked on the story and then gave Gene Kelly the eighty page outline of a script that he had created. Mr. Kelly called Bradbury the next day to tell him that he wanted to direct the movie and asked for permission to find financing in Paris and London. Although Bradbury gave his assent, Gene Kelly returned without a financer because no one wanted to make the movie. Bradbury took the partial screenplay, at the time titled Dark Carnival, and over the next five years turned it into the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes that was published in 1962. As Bradbury writes at the end of his afterword, the book is dedicated to Gene Kelly because if he had not invited Bradbury to that screening of his movie, then Something Wicked This May Comes may never have been written. When the book was published, Bradbury gave the first copy to Gene Kelly.

(11) CALLING ALL CARLS. An emergency session of internet scholars has convened at Camestros Felapton’s blog to help him identify “That difficult first novel”.

I was stumped by a trivia question which asked: “What was the first novel in English?”

The problem with the question is one of setting boundaries, specifically:

  • What counts as a novel? Do legends count? What about Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur? Is it a novel, a retelling or a purported (if fanciful) attempt at history?
  • What counts as ‘in English’? Does Chaucer’s middle English count? What about Malory’s middle English (which is more like modern English than Chaucer?)
  • Do translations count? Don Quixote is very like a novel, so might the first translation of that into English count?

(12) LOUDSPEAKER FOR THE DEAD. ScienceFiction.com has the story behind this particular effect — “Raising Cushing: New Video Shows Off CGI Work Done To Create ‘Rogue One’ Grand Moff Tarkin”.

Now, for those interested in how exactly they managed to bring Tarkin to life in the film, ABC News has released a new video on Twitter courtesy of ILM (check it out below) showcasing some of the work that went into building Tarkin, that shows in a handful of seconds what clearly took MONTHS of effects work to accomplish, giving us in brief all of the steps necessary to get the character right. They cast a man that already bore a striking resemblance to Peter Cushing, then digitally enhanced his features until he was Peter Cushing, animating all of his moments from that point onward to carry on the illusion.

 

(13) WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN? A reboot of Charmed is in the works.

The story hails from Jessica O’Toole, Amy Rardin and Snyder Urman with O’Toole and Rardin penning the script.

The original Charmed starred Alyssa Milano, Holly Marie Combs, Shannen Doherty and Rose McGowan. Combs has already tweeted her reaction, saying “We wish them well.” Milano also took to Twitter. “#Charmed fans! There are no fans like you. You’re the best of the best,” she said.

(14) THEY CAME FROM SPACE. Here’s another job that pays more than yours — “These guys hunt for space rocks, and sell them for enormous profit to collectors”.

These ancient meteorites can be older than the Earth itself. The price tag is high: Just 100 grams of Mars rock, enough to fit in the palm of a hand, can demand $100,000.

For help tracking down such rare rocks, private collectors turn to professional meteorite hunters. These adventurers earn their living by crisscrossing the globe, searching for astronomic treasures. The risks are real, including prison and death, but so are the potential rewards — rocks that can be flipped quickly for fortunes.

The man who sold Jurvetson his Mars rock is 44-year-old Michael Farmer. Since the late 1990s, Farmer has traveled to some 80 countries looking for these precious rocks. Perhaps his best-known find is a nearly 120-pound meteorite discovered in Canada, which he and his partners sold to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto for $600,000.

“Any time you dig up a treasure worth more than half a million bucks, it’s a good day,” said Farmer, who works closely colleagues around the world tracking meteorite showers.

This work is not for the faint of heart. In 2011, Farmer was kidnapped, beaten and nearly killed by Kenyan thieves. That same year, he was charged with illegal mining in Oman and imprisoned for two months. Farmer says his motivation is not purely monetary, but rather the thrill of the chase.

(15) GETTING THE POINT ACROSS. After seeing this cover some of you will find it hard to believe I am not the Washington Post’s copyeditor:

https://twitter.com/samthielman/status/817022669564551168

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Rose Embolism, JJ, Mark-kitteh, John King Tarpinian, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]

Pixel Scroll 5/26/16 You Got Your Scroll In My Pixel Butter

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(1) CAPTAIN SPOILED. At The Mary Sue “Comics Fans Respond to Captain America’s ‘Big Secret’”.

Um … whut? **SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS #1**

If you read the new Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 that came out today, you already know: Steve Rogers and his mother had been recruited by HYDRA when he was a boy, and he’s apparently been a secret operative for HYDRA this whole time. Again, I say: Uh … whut?

Apparently, issue #2 will give us a better idea of what actually happened with Cap, and how he’s managed to be a HYDRA operative for this long. Naturally, fans were unnerved, and Breevoort’s already started getting emails:

“The idea of Captain America means something very primal and very strong to the people of this nation, and they have a very visceral reaction when you get to something like that,” Brevoort explains. “You want people to feel and react to your story. So far, so good.”

Sure, you want them to feel and react to your story … but what exactly do you want them to feel? A good writer knows exactly what they want to say and evoke, and it isn’t just strong feels for the sake of strong feels.

Whatever writer Nick Spencer and the folks over at Marvel are trying to evoke, Captain America fans are not having it….

Actor Chris Evans doesn’t like it either.

https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/735696011172012033

(2) I SCREAM YOU SCREAM. Scott Edelman enjoys a serendipitous dinner with Maria Alexander in Episode 9 of his podcast Eating the Fantastic.

During the recent StokerCon in Las Vegas, I did what I always do during conventions—slip away as often as possible to chow down and catch up with friends. One of those meals took place in old-timey ice cream parlor Serendipity 3, and was recorded (as so many convention meals will be from now on) as an episode of Eating the Fantastic.

My dinner companion this time around was Maria Alexander, whose debut novel, Mr. Wicker, won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. But in addition to being a novelist, Maria’s also a poet, screenwriter, games writer, swordswoman, and so much more—and I attempted to explore all those facets in this episode.

 

Maria Alexander

Maria Alexander

(3) HERE’S MY NUMBER AND A DIME. According to The Verge, “Samsung made a Batman-inspired Galaxy S7 Edge”, though it’s only for sale in a limited number of countries.

Samsung has made a Batman-inspired smartphone … really. In true ludicrous Samsung fashion, it’s called the Galaxy S7 Edge Injustice Edition, and it features the superhero’s logo in gold on the back. The device is commemorating the third anniversary of Injustice: Gods Among Us, and it’s being produced in partnership with Warner Bros. The package appears to include a Samsung Gear VR headset, as well as a real gold-plated Batarang and a rubber phone case modeled after Batman’s armor.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW_0aYguJ_E

(4) UNDERSTANDING THE TINGLE. “Satirical erotica author Chuck Tingle’s massive troll of conservative sci-fi fans, explained” at Vox (the megasite, no relation to VD.)

Tingle announced that if he won his category, Quinn would accept the award on his author persona’s behalf. This was undoubtedly anathema to many members of the SFF community who overlap with Gamergate; Quinn is essentially Gamergate enemy number one, and one of the women who has experienced the most harassment at the hands of angry men on the internet.

And now TheRabidPuppies.com is the latest volley in Tingle’s game. Realizing the domain was up for grabs, Tingle snapped it right up.

Tingle didn’t just seize the opportunity and the sudden spike in attention to taunt the Puppies, though; he’s using the new website to drive traffic to three of the Puppies’ most reviled enemies and their projects:

  1. Quinn’s support network for online harassment victims, Crash Override
  2. Jemisin’s acclaimed novel The Fifth Season, which is currently nominated for the Hugo for Best Novel
  3. Fantasy writer Rachel Swirsky’s crowdfunding campaign to raise money for LGBTQ health resourcesTingle’s inclusion of Swirsky is significant. Her short story, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” is a surreal, jarring allegory for dealing with identity-motivated hate crime and violence. Its inclusion as a 2014 Hugo nominee was widely touted by the Sad/Rabid Puppies as being the ultimate example of how “SJWs” — the shorthand for “social justice warriors,” a derogatory term many in the “alt-right” use to refer to progressives and intersectional feminists — had invaded SFF culture.

(5) GRANDFEMMES FATALE. “Five Fantasy Grannies You Don’t Want To Fool With” at Suvudu.

Augusta Longbottom, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter

You’ve got to be a bad-ass to stand up to the Death Eaters, and Augusta Longbottom isn’t anyone’s chump. She is stern and demanding, but she isn’t heartless, as her grandson Neville eventually learns.

(6) SHORT ORDERS. At the upcoming Bonhams/Turner Classic Movies Drawn to Film auction, says a Hollywood Reporter story, “’Snow White’: Rare Concept Art of Rejected Dwarfs to Be Auctioned”.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was Disney’s first feature-length animated film and the animators worked to give each of the seven dwarfs a distinct personality. The concept sketches (see above) include such familiar ones as Doc, Grumpy, and Dopey, and the not so surprisingly dropped dwarfs, Deafy and Baldy. Other unused dwarf names included Jumpy, Wheezy, Tubby, and Sniffy. The estimate for the sketches is $3,500-$4,500.

(7) REAL ESTATE CLICKBAIT. Every so often there’s a speculative article like this – “Macmillan Publishers weighs leaving Flatiron Building for a new HQ”. (In 2009 there was a story that an Italian investor was going to turn the building into a hotel….) By implication, if Macmillan ever gives up the space, Tor Books will be moving to a new home —

Macmillan Publishers, the sole office tenant in the Flatiron Building, is considering relocating its headquarters when its lease expires in a few years.

Should that happen, it would give the property’s owners a blank slate to work with for the first time since the building was completed more than 100 years ago.

Macmillan, parent company to publishers like St. Martin’s Press and Henry Holt & Co., has been in the iconic tower in some shape or form for about half a century. Now, it occupies all of the office space — nearly 176,000 square feet — in the roughly 180,000-square-foot building at 175 Fifth Avenue.

The publisher’s longtime broker, Leon Manoff of Colliers International, said the company is considering all options for when its lease expires in a few years, including staying put or relocating elsewhere in Manhattan to a new, 150,000-square-foot headquarters.

Andrew Porter adds, “Admittedly the office space is constrained by the unique shape of the building. Doherty’s office is in the ‘prow’ of the building, with windows on the east, west, and north. Here’s my admittedly not well-lit photo of Doherty in his office:”

Tom Doherty in Flatiron office. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

Tom Doherty in Flatiron office. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(8) RAMBO INTERVIEWED. Rachel Swirsky conducts a “Silly Interview with Cat Rambo Who Plays in the MUD”.

  1. Although you write stories in other venues, you have at least two persistent worlds. One is Tabat where your novel takes place. Can you talk about the world and how it came to be?

Tabat started with a game concept. A friend was working on a MUD (a text-based multi-player game) where each administrator would create their own city, and I decided to do a seaport. One of the cool things about the game engine was that you could add tags onto room, so there were bits of description that only appeared under certain conditions, including things like time of day, season, moon phase, tide, and so forth, including things like if the player was carrying a specific object or had particular spells on them.

I went nuts with it. I built a city where you smelled fish when the tide was high and the wind was coming from the south, and where the tiles of the great Moonway shifted in color depending on whether the moon was full or lean….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born May 26, 1913 – Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • May 26 is World Dracula Day in honor of the publication date of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897.

(11) STAR TREK TOURIST TRAP. Dave’s Geeky Ideas recommends that the vacant Houston Astrodome be repurposed as a life-sized Deep Space Nine.

Right now the folks in Houston are trying to figure out what to do with the Astrodome, which has been sitting vacant for several years. Many plans for the dome have fallen by the wayside, including this multi-use approach which I really like. I’m going to throw my esteemed hat into the ring and declare that the Astrodome be converted into Deep Space Nine.

That’s right: a mega Star Trek tourist destination in the very city where the Space Program resides. This resort would look and feel like the space station seen in the show.

This is made possible by building the central hub and encircling promenade in the middle of the field, with three bridges that connect to the existing concourse in the Astrodome. The dome’s circular shape is quite handy here!

(12) MIXED MOTIVES. Andrew Liptak recalls the nomination of Hubbard’s Black Genesis in “Gaming the System: The 1987 Hugo Awards” at Kirkus Reviews.

Following the publication of Battlefield Earth, Bridge Publications had begun to heavily promote its author. Hubbard and his publisher were pointed in the direction of a flaw in the Hugo Award voting system, particularly by Charles Platt, a science fiction author and editor. In a 1983 issue of his publication, The Patchin Review, he plastered a banner on the front page: “Vote for L. Ron Hubbard!” In his introductory editorial, he lamented that the Best Novel Hugo was “merely a measure of how personally popular a writer is among a small clique of science-fiction fans.”

He also noted that there were things that fans could do to change this: “Hubbard is no hero to the people who usually vote for Hugos. If he won, would it bring about a reformation of the Hugo system, or even its abolition? There’s only one way to find out.”

He wrote to Hubbard and the Bridge, noting that “anyone may nominate and vote. All you have to do is become a supporting member of this year’s world Science Fiction Convention. You do not have to attend the convention itself.”

Hubbard and the Bridge seem to have followed this advice, either coming to this conclusion on their own, or through Platt’s suggestion. Hubbard had established a major story contest, Writers of the Future, and had begun heavily sponsoring science fiction conventions in the mid-1980s. Writing in a fanzine, David Langford authored an essay that described the efforts of the publisher, noting that “it seemed that a large number of fans had become similarly, cumulatively bothered by the grotesque scale of the L. RON HUBBARD promotions,” during the 1987 Conspiracy Convention. The organization had begun promoting the books and sponsoring covers to get Hubbard’s name out before readers.

(13) A HAPPILY DISSATISFIED CUSTOMER. Dr. Mauser claims credit for the Three-Stage Voting (3SV) idea but feels others who have embraced it lack his human touch.

The problem, and it’s a problem common to most folks of a particular political vein, is that they’re trying to counter human behavior with Mathematics. This never works. But the other problem is that they’re ignoring the SOURCE of the data they’re feeding into their formulae — the Fans. The Fans are an incredible resource, and a solution to their problem that they are afraid to make use of, because fans are a Wild Magic, and unpredictable, and hard to control. Math is Safe, math is predictable, but math can’t tell you what is good SF (The Cold Equations notwithstanding).

Even with the Three Stage Voting idea, they’re coming at it all wrong. Some proposals involve “Negative Voting” which they want as a way of getting a gang together to knock out entries they don’t like (They do love them some of that No Award veto power!). They propose empowering the administrators to add or remove entries, or even remove individual voters they don’t like. It’s like they still don’t trust the fans to vote the “right” way. And let’s not even think about the canned Medusa’s head of their mathematical Slate Detection dream, which they swear would NEVER generate a false positive….

(14) INFLATION STOPPED. The ISS expansion isn’t going smoothly. The BBC reports, “Flexi-space room expansion suspended”.

The deployment of a new, expandable “room” on the International Space Station was suspended on Thursday when it failed to open up as expected.

Astronaut Jeff Williams began inflating the module, but controllers eventually told him to stand down after 3.5 hours of extremely slow progress.

Installed in a compact form, the vessel is supposed to stretch to 4m in length with a volume of 16 cu m.

But as Williams squirted air into the module, it stretched only a few cm.

Engineers on the ground will now review the data with a view to resuming the expansion on Friday.

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module is a demonstrator for the type of habitats that may be used to build future orbiting labs.

(15) ABIGAIL ON APOCALYPSE. If you’re looking for a nuanced review of X-Men: Apocalypse, Abigail Nussbaum delivers.

I promise, at some point I’ll go back to writing about things that aren’t superheroes.  Though that would require Hollywood to stop blasting superhero stories at us in such close succession (I haven’t even written anything about the second season of Daredevil, though you can get a sense of the existential despair it plunged me into from the thread starting at this tweet).  Coming at the end of that barrage, it’s perhaps understandable that the third (or sixth, or eighth) X-Men movie should be met with a muted, not to say exhausted, response.  And some of the reviews have gone further and been downright brutal.  I’m here to say that both of these reactions are unearned.  X-Men: Apocalypse is by no means a great movie, and it has some serious problems.  But I still found myself enjoying it a great deal more than any other work in this genre since Deadpool.  Perhaps this is simply the relief of a superhero story that is not about grim-faced men taking themselves very seriously, and which instead tells an unabashedly silly story in a totally committed way.  Or it might be because alongside the flaws, there are also things to praise in X-Men: Apocalypse, things that hardly any other superhero works are doing right now.

(16) 1975 HUGOS. Fanac.org has posted video of the AussieCon (1975) Hugo Awards Banquet on its new YouTube channel.

AussieCon, the 33rd Worldcon, was held in Melbourne, Australia in 1975. This video includes the Hugos Awards (presented by John Bangsund), the First Fandom Award, The Gandalf Award and the Big Heart Award. Bob Silverberg, Ben Bova, Fan Guests of Honor Susan Wood and Mike Glicksohn, Rusty Hevelin and others appear. Thanks to Kathi Overton for 2016 video editing.

 

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Will R., Andrew Porter, David K.M. Klaus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]