Tag Archives: Peter S. Beagle

Pixel Scroll 5/17/18 The Furry With the Kzin On Top

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(1) #NEBULAS2018. Tonight SFWA held a reception for its latest Grandmaster Peter S. Beagle.

(2) THE SWAG IS OUT THERE. Cat Rambo reveals cool SFWA stuff.

(3) GENRE TV UPDATES. Deadline reports “‘Siren’ Renewed For Season 2 By Freeform”.

Ahead of the May 24 season 1 finale, Freeform has picked up a second season of its hit mermaid thriller Siren. The network ordered a 16-episode Season 2, up from 10 episodes this season. The renewal was announced just ahead of the network’s upfront presentation today in New York City.

Siren has been a ratings success for Freeform, debuting as the No. 1 new cable drama with young women 18-34 and 12-34.

Rev. Bob provides background:

If you’re not familiar with Siren, it’s an hour-long drama in which (a) mermaids and sirens are the same thing, (b) a fishing boat catches one in a net, and (c) the military swoops in and takes her before even the crew can get a good look, so (d) her sister comes ashore to find her and get her back. Naturally, this being a prime-time cable show, hot twenty-somethings, brooding guys, and romantic entanglements ensue. It’s actually rather well done, forgoing the usual “sanitized, waist-down” transformation for a more visceral full-body transformation more reminiscent of werewolf effects.

A commercial during tonight’s episode advertised SIREN Season 2 as “Coming 2019,” with next week’s episode as the Season 1 finale. This clears the decks for the June 7 two-hour premiere of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger. Both shows air on Freeform (formerly known as ABC Family).

Cloak & Dagger are well-established Marvel characters. For some reason, the TV show moves them from their usual NYC to New Orleans.

“Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger” is the story of Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph) – two teenagers from very different backgrounds, who find themselves burdened and awakened to newly acquired superpowers which are mysteriously linked to one another. Tandy can emit light daggers and Tyrone has the ability to engulf others in darkness. They quickly learn they are better together than apart, but their feelings for each other make their already complicated world even more challenging.

 

(4) WORLDCON 76 PROGRESS REPORT. The San Jose Worldcon has issued Progress Report #3 [PDF file].

Hugo voting has begun, and much more stuff is on the way. Check out our latest Progress Report for stories on past Worldcon, local places to visit when you’re here, and an interview with Artist Guest of Honor John Picacio about his #Mexicanx Initiative.

(5) WORLD FANTASTY CON PR. And the 2018 World Fantasy Convention has posted its own Progress Report Three [PDF file].

(6) VORKOSIFLORIST. Lois McMaster Bujold’s novella “The Flowers of Vashnoi” is now available for purchase. There are links to various sellers in her Goodreads Post.

Still new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique’s experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets.

This novella falls after Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance in the Vorkosigan series timeline, but may be read entirely independently. The Vorkosigan saga was the recipient of the first Hugo Award for best science fiction series in 2017.”

(7) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow posted photos from their latest reading — “Fantastic Fiction at KGB May 16”.

Tina Connolly and Caroline Yoachim read stories — Caroline’s was nominated for the Nebula Award. Tina’s is forthcoming in a couple of months. They were both excellent readers and left us all wanting desperately to know the ends of their stories.

Caroline Yoachim and Tina Connolly

(8) STAN’S FAVORITE AUTHOR IS SHAKESPEARE. Doctor Strangemind’s Kim Huett proves some ephemera is valuable: “So here’s an article about the surprising things one can find in a collection and the day I encountered the unexpected Stan Lee. If you thought Marvel films were the only place that Mr Lee made cameos well have I news for you” — “The Unexpected Stan Lee”.

One tip towards owning a collection.

Despite the title above this story doesn’t start with Stan Lee. Well get get to him in due course don’t worry, Stan Lee is inevitable after all, but first there needs to be some scene setting.

Like any profession the folk who deal in the buying and selling of second-hand books can recite a litany of peeves and dislikes in regards to their work. Not surprisingly most of these complaints revolve around the behaviour of the general public. Not you, I hasten to add, I’ve no doubt that if you’re reading this then you are the thoughtful and discerning type who wouldn’t dream of adding to a book dealer’s woes. Even so it’s possible for the average collector to miss a few tricks, some of which may surprise you. Consider for example the following complaint lifted from a private mailing list:

You need to add to that list the frustration of being offered a recently inherited collection only to discover that before calling the seller has thrown away everything they assumed was irrelevant rubbish. Why somebody not familiar with a collection and who usually has little or no interest in the subject the collection is built around assumes they are the best qualified person to decided what is valuable and what is not is beyond me. People don’t understand about ephemera!

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • May 17, 1957 — Monster From Green Hell premiered in theaters.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY COMPOSER

  • Born May 17, 1961—Enya. An Academy Award nominee and a Golden Globe Award winner for “May It Be”, a song she wrote for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

(11) END OF AN ERA. Romantic Times and the related convention are going away. “’This is the last RT’ – Kathryn Falk Announces End of Romantic Times” — Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has the story.

At a breakfast this morning at the 2018 RomanticTimes BookLovers Convention, Kathryn Falk and her husband Ken Rubin announced that they are retiring, and that this year is the last year for the RT Convention. While there had been rumors before the announcement, her words, delivered at the end of a farewell speech that focused on what she would be doing next, were met with gasps and audible shock.

Shortly afterward, the following email went out to RT Subscribers and newsletter members announcing that the convention as well as the RT Magazine online and the RT VIP Lounge would all be closing effective immediately…

… No mention was made regarding the new 2019 BookLovers Convention, which will be run by current RT Convention coordinator Jo Carol Jones. BookLovers Con will be held in New Orleans, May 15-19 2019.

JJ adds, “There are lots of fond comments, but take particular note of comments # 8, 11 and 20.”

(12) MARVELOUS SURPRISE, MAYBE. CNN declares “‘Captain Marvel’ won’t be what you might expect”. (Did any of you tell CNN what you expect?)

“That’s a lot of times what a typical origin movie is structured like, but as we introduce new characters moving forward, we want to find ways to subvert that structure, so at least the experience of the film feels new to audiences,” [Marvel producer Nate] Moore added. “We’re very conscious of making sure that audiences don’t get things that feel like they’ve seen them before.”

(13) KOMINSKY-CRUMB. The New York Times profiles “The Yoko Ono of Comics, on Her Own Terms”:

Among the few women making underground comics in 1970s San Francisco, the feminist infighting was fierce. Aline Kominsky (who would soon take the name of her famous and infamous boyfriend, Robert Crumb) was berated for drawing strips that female cartoonists in her collective thought were too crude and confessional, not uplifting enough, wallowing in the depths of self-loathing — about being too fat, too sexually voracious, too loud, too neurotic. This was not the work of an “evolved feminist consciousness,” she was told.

When she broke off and started her own comic book, Twisted Sisters, the first issue’s cover made it clear just how little she cared about anyone’s judgment: It was a drawing of her sitting on the toilet, underwear around her ankles, wondering, “How many calories in a cheese enchilada?”

“She specialized in outgrossing anyone who was going to call her gross,” said Diane Noomin, Ms. Kominsky-Crumb’s co-conspirator in Twisted Sister.

She didn’t care — and hasn’t for a long time now. For over four decades, Ms. Kominsky-Crumb has been shining an unabashedly unflattering light on her own life. It’s the theme that runs through “Love That Bunch,” a new book gathering her solo comics from her mid-20s until these past few years, as she turns 70 this summer.

(14) SEVENTIES SFF. James Davis Nicoll’s series continues with the letter L: “Fighting Erasure: Women SF Writers of the 1970s, Part VI”.

J.A. Lawrence may be best known as an illustrator, but she is also an author. She is perhaps best known for “Getting Along” (featured in 1972’s Again, Dangerous Visions) as well as for the collection Star Trek 12, which was part of a long-running series adapted from scripts of the original Star Trek. While many of her works were co-authored with her then-husband, the late James Blish, 1978’s Mudd’s Angels is a solo work by Lawrence.

(15) YOUR 451 SCORE. B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog writer Jeff Somers thinks he found “10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451”. Eh. I scored 8 out of 10, and one of them I “missed” is dubious (about a “prequel”). Good post all the same. Here is the one that was news to me:

There’s a video game adaptation, and it was written by Bradbury

If you’re jonesing for a sequel, you can find the nearest approximation if you can track down a copy of the 1984 video game Bradbury developed—and an old computer to play it on. It’s a direct continuation in which you play as Guy Montag, former Fireman, now seeking to make contact with the underground resistance working to save books. An interactive text adventure with some graphics, the game relies on quotes from famous written works that Montag must collect and pass on to resistance members to memorize them for posterity.

(16) SF WHERE IT’S LEAST EXPECTED. Narrative online magazine has a reputation for being very, very literary. Bruce D. Arthurs says, “So I was quite croggled to see that their latest ‘Poem of the Week’ was titled ’Alderaan’ by Maria Hummel.”

You can only read the first half of the poem at the link. To read the last half, you have to sign up and login.

Bruce read the whole thing and his verdict is, “Not particularly impressed by the poem, myself. But seeing it appear in a high-falutin’ literary mag like Narrative was quite the surprise. Maybe science fiction really is taking over the world.”

(17) GAS HISTORY. The earliest O2: “Scientists detect oxygen legacy of first stars”.

Astronomers have made the most distant ever detection of oxygen.

They observed it in a galaxy of stars that existed just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

But what is really fascinating is that this oxygen can only have been produced in an even older group of stars that would have dispersed it when they died and blew themselves apart.

That means we could be witnessing the traces of events that occurred a mere 250 million years after the Big Bang.

(18) IT’S ABOUT TIME. Southwestern solar calendar: “Arizona’s mysertious clock of ancient times” is traceable to past tribes, not space aliens.

In 2005, Zoll, then 57 and a volunteer at the forest’s V Bar V historical ranch site, detected a pattern to the shadows cast on the park’s huge rock art panels, which are covered with more than 1,000 petroglyphs.

Could this, he wondered, be an ancient calendar?

He shared his observation with a forest service archaeologist, who wasn’t particularly impressed. Archaeo- or cultural astronomy, the study of how ancient peoples tracked the seasons and studied the cosmos, has fought for respectability. It’s hard to prove that alignment with the sun, moon or stars isn’t mere coincidence. And in the past, some advocates haven’t helped their case, suggesting that prehistoric sites could have been fashioned by space aliens.

(19) WOULDA COULDA WAKANDA. HISHE gives us “How Black Panther Should Have Ended.”

(20) COLBERT. Live For Live Music explicates a Late Show comedy bit: “Kids Pitch A New TV Show: ‘Strangest Things: The Golden Mysteries'”.

On last night’s edition of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the late-night host recruited a slew of prominent actors and entertainers to help bring the ideas of a panel of “the most influential minds in the prized 6-8-year-old demographic” to life in a hilarious sketch dubbed “Kids Pitch.”

After an exhaustive session with the kids, Colbert’s focus group came to the conclusion that the new TV show they wanted to pitch would need to feature “very famous group band,” The Beatles (one kid, a young Beatles superfan, stuck to his Revolver when challenged on what their best album was). The focus group also came up with various thematic criteria including fighting and music (which, of course, means “rap battle”) as well as creepiness, aliens, Nick Cannon and Brooke Shields, among other things.

Playing three of The Beatles are John Oliver (Paul McCartney), David Tennant (George Harrison), and Michael Shannon (Ringo Starr).

[Thanks to ULTRAGOTHA, JJ, Bruce D. Arthurs, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Kim Huett, James Davis Nicoll, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Connor Cochran Bankruptcy Update

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U.S. Bankruptcy Court has granted the trustee’s motion to convert the Avicenna and Conlan Press bankruptcies from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, a liquidating bankruptcy. The orders were entered April 30.

Peter S. Beagle sued his former manager Connor Cochran in 2015 for $52 million in damages, disgorgement of illegal gains and restitution, and dissolution of two corporations he co-owns with Cochran, Avicenna Development Corporation, and Conlan Press, Inc. Cochran and his companies filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 4, one day before trial was scheduled to begin in Beagle’s lawsuit against them.

Whether liquidating the corporations’ assets will financially benefit anyone is a question. Several of Cochran’s creditors allege he has converted their assets to his personal use.

However, as reported here in March, the court lifted the automatic stay that took effect when Cochran filed bankruptcy, and allowing Beagle to proceed in California state court against Cochran, Avicenna Development Corporation, and Conlan Press, Inc. and obtain a final judgment.

Then, in April, the court also lifted the stay for Sandbox LLC and Justin Bunnell, investors in The Last Unicorn Tour, allowing them to proceed with state litigation against Avicenna Corporation.

And last month Patrick Lake filed with U.S. Bankruptcy court a “Complaint To Determine Dischargeability of Debt and Related Declaratory Relief” which allowed him to publicly rehearse the grounds for his defamation suit against Cochran. Over the course of several years, Cochran issued updates about his efforts to identify the anonymous source of some allegedly libelous blog posts and tweets, a person he ultimately claimed was Bay Area resident Patrick Lake.

Lake’s statement to the court (see the link below) argues:

…The true facts were that Plaintiff had not forged a contract with Plaintiff; that he does not engage in an “ongoing pattern of deception” in his attorney-client relationships or in his other business relationships; he is not a “stalker” nor “crazed” i.e., mentally unstable, mentally incompetent, or insane; and he was not fired from his employment as an art instructor when he left that employment over five years ago.

…As a proximate result of the defamatory statements of Defendant, Plaintiff has been harmed in that he has suffered past and future loss of income, as well as shame, mortification, emotional distress, public opprobrium, and humiliation, as well as attorneys’ fees incurred to attempt to correct the misleading and false statements of Defendant that have been repeated by others relying on Defendant’s widely published false and defamatory statements. Said damages are in an amount subject to proof at trial.

Lake’s attorney seeks a court ruling that Cochran’s debts to his client are nondischargeable in Cochran’s Chapter 11 proceeding.

Bankruptcy Court Allows Beagle To Resume Cochran Lawsuit

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Peter Beagle can resume litigation against former manager Connor Cochran and related corporations under a motion granted by U.S. Bankruptcy Court on March 23. The federal court order has lifted the automatic stay that took effect when Connor Cochran and his companies filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 4, one day before trial was scheduled to begin in Peter S. Beagle’s lawsuit against them.

The order allows Beagle to proceed in California state court against Cochran, Avicenna Development Corporation, and Conlan Press, Inc. and obtain a final judgment.

Beagle sued Cochran in 2015 for $52 million in damages, disgorgement of illegal gains and restitution, and dissolution of two corporations he co-owns with Cochran, Avicenna Development Corporation, and Conlan Press, Inc.

The Bankruptcy court order says any judgments obtained in state court may only be executed with its permission. The order also frees Justin Bunnell and Sandbox LLC, a California partnership, to intervene in the Beagle/Cochran state action and pursue its claims for $300,000 invested in The Last Unicorn screening tour launched in 2013.

[Thanks to ULTRAGOTHA for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 2/19/18 The White Zone Is For Scrolling And Filing Only. There Are No Ticky-Boxes In The White Zone

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(1) MORE MEXICANX. John Picacio announced more picks to receive Worldcon 76 memberships from the Mexicanx Initiative.

(2) MANY DOLLARS WERE MADE. From NPR: “‘Black Panther’ Breaks Records And Barriers In Debut Weekend”

Black Panther pounced on the weekend box office, breaking cultural barriers and earning the highest debut ever for a February film, with an estimated three-day domestic gross of $192 million, said Disney, Marvel’s parent company.

The opening was the fifth highest-earning of any film, according to Disney. The only other movies that have brought in more are Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Jurassic World and The Avengers, according to The Associated Press.

(3) WAKANDA. Abigail Nussbaum weighs in on “A Political History of the Future: Black Panther” at the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog:

From architecture to interior design to costuming, every aspect of Wakanda was designed from the ground up to incorporate traditional African imagery while projecting it into a bold, positive future. Costume designer Ruth Carter’s bywords for the film were “Beautiful. Positive. Forward. Colorful.” Camille Friend, head of the movie’s hair department, has spoken about her determination to feature only natural black hair, in varying styles reflecting the different characters’ personalities. (In one amusing scene, no-nonsense Dora Milaje leader Okoye (Danai Gurira) complains about having to wear a Western-style wig while undercover. Later, during a fight, she throws the wig in her opponent’s face as a distraction.) Star Chadwick Boseman has explained his decision to give T’Challa, the new king of Wakanda, an African accent as an attempt to forestall the preconception that as a cosmopolitan member of the elite, he would naturally have been educated in Europe. In every respect, Black Panther is hard at work crafting an image of African life that is sophisticated, knowledge-based, and futuristic, while at the same time producing a society that is just, prosperous, and benevolent.

(4) CATALANO’S HAT TRICK. Frank Catalano has had three sf-related stories on GeekWire this week:

“I interviewed Peter S. Beagle about his memories of Pittsburgh, where he is getting his SFWA Grand Master Award this year, and also about Seattle, where he used to live. It was done as a study in contrasts between GeekWire’s home city of Seattle and Pittsburgh, a city it is highlighting for the month of February. I happened to think Beagle and the SFWA Nebula Conference were a natural tie.”

Beagle said he came to the University of Pittsburgh as a writing student in 1955, when he was 16 years old. “It was the Steel City of legend then: legendary for its griminess, its foul air, its wretched baseball team, the blazing mills along the river going night and day,” he recalled. “Seeing it from an airplane at night (which was my first sight of the city) was truly like being welcomed to hell.”

Yet the city grew on him. “I came to cherish Pittsburgh, as I still do, even though there literally isn’t a brick on a brick remaining of the mid-fifties town I knew,” he said.

“I also interviewed Ramez Naam, author of the Nexus trilogy of science-fiction thrillers, about his take on why the world is trending more toward the positive than the negative (plus the status of turning Nexus into something more than a novel), and had him re-visit some predictions he made in 2015, for my podcast on science fiction, pop culture and the arts. It led to two stories, the first on the state of the world and tech (and the state of Nexus), and the second on his predictions”:

If you were to ask globally known clean energy expert Ramez Naam what makes him optimistic about technology and the future, it may boil down to one word: scale.

Naam has a long history of thinking about the effects of scale, even before his current role as co-chair for energy and the environment at Singularity University. In his award-winning Nexus science fiction trilogy, Naam tackled the implications of widespread brain-to-brain communication. And in his past role as a computer scientist at Microsoft leading teams working on early versions of Outlook, Internet Explorer, and Bing, Naam came to appreciate what sheer magnitude can do.

“I learned that we can create tools that really improve people’s lives, and that technology can scale to help billions of people,” Naam said. “And that, I think, inspired me with the power of using our minds and our imaginations to make the world better.”

Many of these what-ifs recall a frequent theme of Naam’s writing and speaking: building resilience, both organizationally and individually, to technological change. “Technology moves faster than society, and society even has multiple strata,” he explained. Each is subsequently more sluggish, starting with how fast the next generation learns, to how fast we learn, to how fast organizations learn, and finally to how fast government learns.

So to deal with rapid change, Naam said, “We have to be more experimental as a society.” Governments may have to try different policies just to see which ones work. “That would be anathema to the way that politicians voice certainty of, ‘X will do Y.’ But that’s how science works. It’s how innovation in business works,” he said.

“Finally — and this is a personal favorite — a story that Tacoma will soon have a park named for Dune, honoring Frank Herbert. Why a personal favorite?  Back in 1986, I was asked by Frank Herbert’s family to help field news media calls about his literary legacy when he died (at the time, I was very active in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and had been an officer of the organization).  And the park’s setting is especially appropriate, as my story notes.”

There likely won’t be any sandworms, but that’s not needed to spice up this news: Tacoma, Wash., native Frank Herbert, best known for the hugely popular Dune science-fiction novels, is getting a namesake park in his home town.

The Metro Parks Tacoma Board of Commissioners has approved naming an 11-acre waterfront site “Dune Peninsula at Point Defiance Park,” and a winding pedestrian loop being built on the same site the “Frank Herbert Trail.” The public space is currently under construction on land that once housed the former ASARCO copper smelting operation, next to the Tacoma Yacht Club boat basin.

(5) JOE HILL ON VINYL. HarperAudio, the audio imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, will publish Dark Carousel, a “vinyl-first” audiobook by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill on April 20, a release timed to coincide with Record Store Day on April 21. Entertainment Weekly revealed the cover of Dark Carousel along with an exclusive excerpt from the audiobook.

 Says author Joe Hill, “My hard rockin’ fantasies are pretty well documented at this point — the hero of my first novel was, after all, a world-famous heavy metal rocker. I’ve always wanted to have my own LP, and the idea that one of my stories is being released as an audiobook on vinyl blows my Beatles-quoting, Stones-fixated, Zeppelin-obsessed mind. Even better, I’m on the record with Matthew Ryan, a great American rocknrolla. His cover of “Wild Horses” is the best version of the song since the original. I’m so excited for readers and listeners to drop the needle on this story and Matt’s song.”

Written about a balmy summer night in 1994. Dark Carousel is the tale of four teenagers out for an evening of fun on the boardwalk who take a ride on the “Wild Wheel” – an antique carousel with a shadowy past – and learn too late that decisions made in an instant can have deadly consequences. What begins as a night of innocent end-of-summer revelry, young love, and (a few too many) beers among friends soon descends into chaos, as the ancient carousel’s parade of beasts comes chillingly to life to deliver the ultimate judgment for their misdeeds.

(6) HAVE YOU ORDERED YOURS YET? Hasbro wants 5,000 pre-orders to greenlight production: “Hasbro’s first HasLab toy is a replica of Jabba the Hutt’s barge”.

At this year’s Toy Fair in New York, Hasbro announced HasLab, a new program that aims to bring to life special creations like a massive, four-foot long recreation of Jabba the Hutt’s sail barge. The company is taking inspiration from platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, too: In order for the barge to become a real for-sale production item, Hasbro wants to gather 5,000 $499 pre-orders by midnight on April 3rd.

If the project reaches its funding goal, Jabba’s Sail Barge (or The Khetanna if you’re a Star Wars geek) will come with a 64-page booklet with behind-the-scenes details, set photos, interviews and blueprints of the actual set piece in the film as well as production information on the toy. The barge also comes with a 3.75-inch scale Jabba the Hutt and soft cloth sails for the top of the sand boat.

(7) JOHN BROSNAN. Kim Huett’s next Doctor Strangemind post is “John Brosnan & the Abomnibus”. In 1969 John joined a group of other young Australians who were planning to travel by double-decker bus to England. The attempt was somewhat less than successful…

Something that John wrote extensively about in the early days was his attempt to travel by bus from Australia to England. Up until the eighties there was something of a tradition among young Australians to visit ‘Mother England’ before settling down to lives of quiet desperation in the sun-baked suburbs of Australia. Most such adventurers travelled to the mother country via cruise liner, a few lucky ones flew there, but John, being inexplicably drawn to doing everything the hard way, decided that he would spend several months of 1969 travelling to ‘Ye Merry England’ with a group of other young Australians in a double-decker bus. My impression from what he wrote is that he enjoyed it more in retrospect than he did at the time…

Huett is keeping Brosnan’s non-book material alive. There’s a PDF collection that can still be downloaded for free from eFanzines. More recently Dave Langford asked Huett to put together a new, even larger version, which can be downloaded for free here.

(8) CANDLE TIME. Steven H Silver celebrates another author with “Birthday Reviews: Jonathan Lethem’s ‘Lostronaut’” at Black Gate.

…Lethem won the World Fantasy Award for his collection The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye. He has been nominated for the Nebula Award four times, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award three times, and the Shirley Jackson Award, Sidewise Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award one time, each. His novel Gun, with Occasional Music received the William L. Crawford Award and won the Locus Poll for best first novel….

(9) NEW TWIST ON PARK MAPS. Mental Floss reports “A Cartographer Is Mapping All of the UK’s National Parks, J.R.R. Tolkien-Style”:

Cartographer Dan Bell makes national parks into fantasy lands. Bell, who lives near Lake District National Park in England, is currently on a mission to draw every national park in the UK in the style of the maps in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Kottke.org reports

Click here to see his impressive Yellowstone National Park map.

(10) HUGO RECS. Strange at Ecbatan’s Rich Horton wrapped up his Hugo recommendations with “Final 2018 Hugo Recommendation Post” – Semiprozine, Fancast,  Best Related Work, Professional Artist.

The others in the series are:

(11) FILLING IN SOME BLANKS. Mark Kaedrin also shares his picks for “Hugo Award Season 2018”, beginning with —

The nomination period for the 2018 Hugo Awards is open, so it’s time to get out the vote before the requisite whining and bitter recriminations start in earnest. I’ve read a bunch of eligible works, but of course not all will make the cut. Here’s where I’m at right now:

(12) CHOCOLATE CHAMPS. Congratulations to Filer Daniel P. Dern for scoring second in Boskone 55’s Chocolate for Trivia event.

CHOCOLATE TRIVIA SCORES

Bob Devney  52
Dan Dern  44
Tim Liebe  27
Peter Turi  23

(13) QUICKER SIPPER. Charles Payseur is back with “Quick Sips – Shimmer #41 [February stuff]”.

The stories from Shimmer Magazine’s February offerings excel in coming from interesting viewpoints. From ghosts of boys who never were and never should have been to bags full of dreams and magic, the character work here involves narrators whose primary function is to accompany someone else. In that these are two excellently paired stories that highlight the ways in which these companions, these burdens, these people relate to those who carry them. And the stories offer two widely different takes on that theme, one of the narrators kind and helpful and loving and the other…well, not so much. The stories show just how much these presences can help the people carrying them, and just how much they can hurt as well. To the reviews!

(14) GUITAR CITY. A popular movie has paid off in more than one way: “A Town In Mexico Sees Guitar Sales Soar Thanks To The Movie ‘Coco'”.

Real-life sales of guitars like Miguel’s guitar have soared thanks to the movie. And not just in U.S. stores. A small town in Mexico’s western highlands, famous for its generation of guitar makers, is also enjoying a Coco boon.

Paracho, in the state of Michoacán, is the former home of the very guitar maker who helped design the instrument seen in the film.

(15) NOT EXACTLY THE AGE OF AQUARIUS. A marker for the beginning of the Anthropocene: “‘Loneliest tree’ records human epoch”.

It’s been dubbed “the loneliest tree on the planet” because of its remote location, but the Sitka spruce might represent something quite profound about the age in which we live.

The tree, sited on Campbell Island in the Southern Ocean, records in its wood a clear radioactive trace from the A-bomb tests of the 1950s and 60s.

As such, it could be the “golden spike” scientists are seeking to define the start of the Anthropocene Epoch – a new time segment in our geological history of Earth.

The suggestion is that whatever is taken as the golden spike, it should reflect the so-called “Great Acceleration” when human impacts on the planet suddenly intensified and became global in extent.

This occurs after WWII and is seen for example in the explosion in plastics production.

(16) THE GANG’S ALL HERE. It’s 1963 and producer Roger Corman turns to Poe for his forty-seventh movie. Galactic Journey tells whether it’s worth seeing: “[February 18, 1963] An Odd Beast (Roger Corman’s The Raven)”.

The Raven hit theaters last month not so much to terrify audiences, but to reel them in with a star studded cast and a light, Edgar Allan Poe-flavored, fantasy comedy story. Starring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Hazel Court, the film is very loosely based around the narrative Edgar Allan Poe poem by the same name. By this I mean that Hazel Court is, of course, the sassy and longed-for Lenore, and Vincent Price quotes segments of the poem. There the similarities end.

(17) A BETTER USE FOR THAT MONEY. K. Tempest Bradford argues her fundraiser is a bargain at half the price.

https://twitter.com/tinytempest/status/965780409081581569

(18) SPEAKING UP. Sophie Aldred gives Uncanny Magazine readers a captivating account of “My Voice-Over Life”.

Sophie Aldred has been working as a professional actress, singer, and director for the last 35 years in theatre, TV, film and audio. She is perhaps best known as the 7th Doctor Who’s companion, Ace, who beat up a Dalek with a baseball bat….

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved to read stories to her brother. She liked to put on funny voices for all the different characters and found that she was rather good at mimicking accents and odd vocal characteristics. Sometimes her brother would beg her to stop reading as he had had enough; sometimes she listened.

The little girl also liked listening to the radio programmes that her Mummy had on in the kitchen while she was making supper for Daddy who came in hungry and tired from the office (it was the 1960’s after all). Although she didn’t understand any of the so-called jokes, she loved a man called Kenneth Williams, whose strangulated vocal gymnastics she tried to imitate, and another one called Derek Nimmo, who you could tell was rather vague and very posh just by the tone of his voice….

(19) I SEE FOUR JELLYBEANS! A psychiatrist in a mental hospital has a disturbing conversation with one of his patients, a brilliant mathematician, in the SF short film The Secret Number by Colin Levy.

[Thanks to JJ, Will R., John King Tarpinian, Mark Hepworth, John Picacio, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rev. Bob .]

Pixel Scroll 1/27/18 Vaster Than Pixels And More Scroll

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(1) GOOD NEWS FOR A CLARION WEST STUDENT. George R.R. Martin is funding another scholarship at a writing workshop, as he explains in “Worldbuilding in Seattle”.

Every great story requires interesting characters, an engrossing plot, evocative prose, an important theme… but epic fantasy also requires a memorable setting. A “secondary universe,” as J.R.R. Tolkien termed it, a world both like and unlike our own, with its own rich history and geography and customs, its own beauties and terrors….

These days, the world is more need of wonder than ever before. To that end, I am pleased to announce that I am sponsoring a new annual scholarship at the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle. https://www.clarionwest.org/ An intensive six-week course for aspiring authors of science fiction and fantasy, Clarion West is one of the longest-running and most successful workshops in the world. Its instructors and graduates make up an honor roll of the best and the brightest in science fiction and fantasy. This summer the instructors will be Daniel Abraham, Ken MacLeod, Karen Lord, Yoon Ha Lee, Karen Joy Fowler, and Ellen Datlow. The deadline for applying is March 1.

Our new WORLDBUILDER SCHOLARSHIP will cover tuition, fees, and lodging for one student each year. The award will not be limited by age, race, sex, religion, skin color, place of origin, or field of study. The winner will be selected each year in a blind judging to an applicant who demonstrates both financial need and a talent for worldbuilding and the creation of secondary universes. For further details, query Clarion West at [email protected]

(2) DWINDLING. Larque Press has compiled the “2017 Total Paid Distribution” statistics from the publisher’s statement of ownership for Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF, among others. Print circulation diminished slightly over the past year, except for F&SF. See the numbers at the link.

Dell and F&SF sell far more issues via subscriptions than newsstands. For the most part, combining the two gives you the total paid circulation. However, it’s important to note these numbers don’t include digital sales, which are likely on the rise. Below is the “total paid distribution” from Jan/Feb 2017 and 2018 of the print editions…

…Except for F&SF, the year-over-year numbers show declines of ~500–1000. Is this due to thicker, less frequent issues, general magazine publishing trends, distribution challenges, or something else?

(3) EVERMORE. If you want to see a fantastic sculpture being created for Evermore Park in Utah, click this Facebook link:

Here’s Cory Clawson sculpting while our shop dog, Woody, supervises. Have a little sneak peek at some of the talent behind Evermore’s Creative Studio.

(4) ADD TWO. John Picacio says Christopher Brown has contributed two Worldcon memberships for Mexicanx creators/fans.

UPDATE!!! VERY GOOD NEWS: Our sponsorship team is GROWING. John and I are now officially joined by ace photographer Ctein (hooray for you, man!!) who is sponsoring two more Worldcon memberships for Mexicanx. We are also now joined by Ty Franck — one-half of the James S.A. Corey writing juggernaut. He’s sponsoring one Worldcon membership for a deserving Mexicanx. Right on, Ty!! And this just in — Christopher Brown, author of TROPIC OF KANSAS, is sponsoring two more Mexicanx for attending Worldcon memberships. Too good. And this crazy train is going to keep rolling because I’m confirming more sponsorships right now, to be announced soon. This has become A THING. ‘Keep you posted.

(5) EUROCON UPDATE. The committee for Eurocon Nemo 2018, to be held in Amiens, France, has had to arrange another meeting place in the city after finding its planned facilities aren’t ready. The committee has updated its website to show the new location, and posted an explanation on Facebook. The con takes place July 19-22.

Hello everyone
It was a real commotion for the Nemo 2018 team for the past ten days. So, we had to play radio silence. We must apologise.
Indeed, last week, the news suddenly fell that, finally, because of various delays on the building site, we could not have the visa of the committee of security to organize as planned the convention on the site of the Citadel.
It was therefore urgent to find a plan B. It is now done, thanks to the University of Amiens, and in particular to its cultural service and library. Thanks to Anne-Sophie, Justin and Jennifer.
The Convention will take place as planned, with an unchanged program, but it will be at the Pôle Universitaire Cathedral, in the center of Amiens, at the foot of the cathedral, in the middle of a lively district, filled with restaurants, cafes , with exhibition halls, meeting rooms, amphitheatres, a cafeteria, theaters and cinemas all around!
And as a bonus, we will still have the right to visit the site Citadel, to admire the architectural creation of the cabinet Renzo Piano.
Finally, here is a setback that results in even more facilities and animations …

(6) FROM MOLTEN GLASS. “One Meredith goblet coming up,” says Hampus.

https://twitter.com/PhysicsVideo/status/954351449676292096

(7) PETER S. BEAGLE ON LE GUIN. SFWA’s newest Grandmaster says farewell to another: “In memoriam, Ursula K. LeGuin” at Support Peter S. Beagle.

…I didn’t know her well. She lived in Portland, and I’ve been all over northern California in the last half-century, with six years out for the Seattle area. We hadn’t yet met when I followed her by a week into the Clarion West workshop (1972, was it?), to be greeted by a note saying, “Welcome, Unicorn! Make the little kobolds work their tails off!) Mostly we ran into each other at various conventions, grabbing coffee where we could. I do like to recall a serious conversation, initiated by me in increasing alarm at having become known more and more, in the intervening years, as the Unicorn Guy. Meanwhile, Ursula’s recently-published Earthsea novels had, as far as I was concerned, put paid to dragons as literary figures: I felt – and still feel – that dragons should be off-limits to all other writers, no matter how gifted or inventive they might be. But I was younger then, and had the chutzpah to offer to trade my unicorns even-up for her dragons. “Unicorns are really easy to housebreak. They always ask to go outside.” I remember that I was even willing to throw in a utility infielder, if she insisted.

Ursula’s response: “Do you know how impossible it is to keep dragons off the curtains? And they’re absolute hell on carpets!” We never did make the deal, but not for my lack of trying. As I say, I was younger then….

(8) MORE ON LE GUIN.

A few years later, I entered an MFA program populated by folks whose idea of engaging with speculative fiction was trying to comprehend Harry Potter. I was also newly married, and my husband had six or seven of Le Guin’s books. Discouraged, again, about writing science fiction and fantasy, I started reading The Left Hand of Darkness, which shattered what I thought a science fiction novel could be, how gender could be portrayed, how an invented world could shape my worldview. More importantly, it changed how I encountered gender on a daily basis—one of the most empathy-producing moments in my life to date. As I closed the covers and promptly fell into a book hangover, I couldn’t understand why none of my professors had taught Le Guin or pushed one of her books into my hands. Yes, folks had suggested her, but one book deep into her work, and I’d found a complex thinker, writer, reader, teacher all rolled into one.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction is usually reckoned to have been the Campbell Era at ASTOUNDING, and its Big Three were Heinlein, Asimov, and Van Vogt. Yet as important as that era was, for me the true Golden Age will always be the late 60s and early 70s, when the Big Three were Roger Zelazny, Samuel R. Delany, and Ursula K. Le Guin. We shall never see their like again.

(9) PLAUDITS. Book View Café proudly reports Le Guin’s  “No Time to Spare Is Finalist for Essay Prize”.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s 2017 collection of essays, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, is one of the five finalists for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.

This prize, one of the PEN America Literary Awards, is “[f]or a book of essays published in 2017 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.”

Many of the essays in this collection began as blog posts, some of which were published here on the Book View Cafe blog.

Winners will be announced at a February 20 ceremony in New York.

(10) HONOR ROLL. Steven H Silver’s “2017 In Memoriam” list is posted at Amazing Stories.

(Editor’s Note: Every year, Steven H Silver compiles the obituaries of those we have lost.  This information is published in various locales and is incorporated into the honor roll displayed during the Hugo Awards presentations.

It’s an unenviable task, though a necessary one.  Our community and our genres are built upon a foundation of people and it is fitting that we remember them.)

(11) IHINGER OBIT. Minneapolis fan Rob Ihinger (1955-2018) died of leukemia on January 27 his wife, Peg Kerr, announced at CaringBridge (more medical details at the link).

We waited for his mother and other family members who flew in from around the country, and family and friends gathered in his ICU room, sharing laughter, telling stories, and giving Rob his last tastes of Coca Cola Classic and ice cream. Rob was able to recognize and greet with pleasure the visitors who came to say goodbye. Then around midnight, we withdrew the tubes and monitors and simply stopped the medication which was keeping his blood pressure stable. Shortly thereafter, Rob slipped into sleep.

My beloved husband Rob Ihinger passed away peacefully this morning at 9:15 a.m. in the presence of his family.

(12) WALKER OBIT. Cartoonist Mort Walker (1923-2018), creator of Beetle Bailey and other strips, died January 27.

The character that was to become Beetle Bailey made his debut as Spider in Walker’s cartoons published by the Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. Walker changed Spider’s name and launched “Beetle Bailey” as a college humor strip in 1950.

At first the strip failed to attract readers and King Features Syndicate considered dropping it after just six months, Walker said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. The syndicate suggested Beetle join the Army after the start of the Korean War, Walker said.

“I was kind of against it because after World War II, Bill Mauldin and Sad Sack were fading away,” he said. But his misgivings were overcome and Beetle “enlisted” in 1951.

Walker attributed the success of the strip to Beetle’s indolence and reluctance to follow authority.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • John King Tarpinian found the Star Wars translation for a contemporary faux pas in Off the Mark.
  • Will R. enjoyed the Laugh out Loud Cats sending up the title of a popular movie.

(14) A PORG TWEETS. David Gerrold knows how he feels….

(15) STOKERCON 2018 NEWS. At the StokerCon 2018 Website you can find the complete program for The Second Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference —

The Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is part of the Horror Writers Association’s Outreach Program. Membership to the Horror Writers Association is not required to submit or present, however registration to StokerCon 2018 is required to present.

And the full program for Librarians’ Day —

Join Stoker Con for a special day-long program of panels and presentations for librarians! Becky Spratford, author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, 2nd edition (ALA, Editions) and horror reviewer for Booklist and IndiePicks Magazine and Kristi Chadwick, Consultant, Massachusetts Library System and Library Journal’s Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror columnist are coordinating the event.

(16) GRAMMAR POSSE. The latest Horror Writers Association newsletter includes Anthony Ambrogio’s feature, “The Grumpy Grammarian: Ms. Speaking Speaks about Misspeaking (and Gives Me a Chance to Wax Pedantic)”.

Poet and HWA Proofer Supreme Marge Simon offered a couple of additions to those frequently misspoken phrases I talked about in my January column. I hope I do justice to her comments here.

“Hope your cold is better now.”

Marge writes, “Everyone says it that way, but, in truth, if your cold is better, then it is doing well—flourishing—and you are not! … So, to be correct, one should say, ‘I hope your cold has gone away/is over/has let up, etc., and you are feeling better now.’” However, she concedes, “That one is beyond reasonable criticism.” Doesn’t hurt to point it out, though.

(17) MONTH OF JOY. Where have I been? I just found out about the Skiify and Fanty “Month of Joy.” The latest installment is “Cooking and a Recipe by Cora Buhlert”. Learn how to make “Grandma Buhlert’s Herring Salad.”

During the trashfire of a year that was 2017, I’ve found that no matter how upset I am, sitting down in the kitchen to prepare a meal inevitably makes me feel better. To me, there is something incredibly soothing about assembling ingredients and spices, chopping vegetables, meat or fish and finally stirring the pot or pan, waiting for it all to come together.

So what sort of food do I make? For starters – and I know that may surprise some – very little traditional German food. German cuisine is too greasy and too meat and salt heavy for my tastes. And here in North Germany, traditional food quite often means “throw everything into a big pot and boil it, until it turns to mush”. There are some German dishes I like and make on occasion – herring salad, North Sea shrimp salad, pea soup, venison stew with red cabbage, sailor’s curry (which is a North German take on South/South East Asian food), apple puree, several cakes and cookies. And I suspect I could make most of the traditional dishes of my region, if necessary.

(18) THE LID IS OFF. Civilization-wide mind control is here!  Bloomberg video: “Tristan Harris Says Tech Companies Have Opened Pandora’s Box”. Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist, discusses changing Silicon Valley’s culture and the fight against online extremism with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on “Bloomberg Technology.” Says Harris:

[These social media companies] have unleashed this civilization-scale mind-control machine, and they don’t even know what thoughts it’s pushing into 2 billion people’s minds…. Two billion people use Facebook; that’s more than the number of followers of Christianity. One-point-five billion people use YouTube; that’s more than the number of followers of Islam. These products have that much daily influence over people’s thoughts.

(19) DOWN THE TUBES. The Mother Nature Network asks “Is this housing solution just a pipe dream?”

As Hong Kong continues to grapple with an affordable housing crisis of epic proportions, no potential solution, no matter how unconventional or quixotic, is overlooked. And this includes single-occupancy dwellings fashioned out of concrete water pipes.

 

(20) SHARP GUESSES. Author of the bestselling Outlander time-travel novels Diana Gabaldon says: “Note that this is NOT a confirmation–but it’s a pretty good bit of speculation.” — “Outlander Seasons 5 and 6 Are Almost Definitely Happening”.

”There are ten books, and we are having very productive conversations about the future of the show.

“We have joined the legions of fans of Outlander around the world. Our biggest concern is making sure that we don’t kill Caitriona [Balfe] and Sam [Heughan] along the way,” [Starz CEO Chris] Albrecht [said], noting how incredibly hard both stars work on the show.'”

(21) POTTERDIVERSE. Emeraldbirdcollector authored a delightful short fanfic on what would have happened “If Harry had gotten a less conventional, but more loving adoptive family” —

Dear Minerva,

Thank you so much for your kind letter of the 17th. It is always a pleasure to hear from you. I do appreciate your waiving the rules about familiars to allow Wednesday to bring little Homer – she dotes on that spider, and I don’t think she could consider Hogwarts home without his company.

We were delighted but completely unsurprised by the children’s Sorting. Of course Wednesday is a Ravenclaw – she has always had a brilliant mind, and it is rather traditional for the women in our family….

(22) TIME PASSAGES. In 1963, Galactic Journey has received the very latest issue of New Worlds: “[February. 03, 1963] The Freeze Continues (New Worlds, February 1963)”

I Like It Here, by Mr. James White

This month’s guest editorial is from a New Worlds regular, who I know you will recognise in the US for his Sector General stories. With characteristic humour he adeptly summarises the contradiction in the current argument in s-f, between writers who don’t care what they write (as long as it sells) and writers who do not produce the sort of s-f that readers want. In typically droll manner, the many trials and tribulations of the modern writer is recognised in this editorial, determined to amuse. For a slightly less amusing consequence of this we also have Mr. John Carnell’s ‘View from the Hill’ at the end of this issue, of which more later….

(23) ARISTOTLE. Always three movements ahead!

https://twitter.com/ScribesShade/status/957213750704054272

Novice jughead?

(24) A POSITED FUTURE. Via the Welcome to you’re “DOOM!”  site.

https://welcometoyouredoom.tumblr.com/post/160735741191

(25) STAND BY TO FIRE HEADCANON. Scott Lynch fills in some missing pieces of Star Wars. Jump on the thread here —

[Thanks to Dave Doering, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, Laura Resnick, Martin Morse Wooster, Will R., Lenore Jones, James Davis Nicoll, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Peter S. Beagle Named SFWA Damon Knight Grand Master

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Peter S. Beagle

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has selected Peter S. Beagle as the 34th Damon Knight Grand Master for his contributions to the literature of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is given by SFWA for “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.” Beagle joins the Grand Master ranks alongside such legends as C. J. Cherryh, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K. LeGuin, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Joe Haldeman. The award will be presented at the 52nd Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in Pittsburgh, PA, May 17-20, 2018.

Beagle, best-known for his novel The Last Unicorn, and has also explored our fascination with the mythical in The Innkeeper’s Song, A Fine and Private Place, and a wide variety of short fiction. Beagle won the Hugo and the Nebula Award for his 2005 novelette “Two Hearts.” He has won the Mythopoeic Award for his novels The Folk of the Air and Tamsin. He was nominated for a Hugo for his adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings for Ralph Bakshi’s animated version and wrote the screenplay for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Sarek.”

SFWA President Cat Rambo said:

Peter Beagle’s work has been the gateway for multitudes of fantasy readers, but also writers as well, including myself. His work shines a light on the human heart and its beauties even when that heart is flawed and wanting, showing how that beauty arises from such imperfect conditions. Beagle unquestionably belongs among the greats, and I count it a privilege to invite him to be the next SFWA Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master.

The Nebula Awards will be presented during the annual SFWA Nebula Conference, which will run from May 17-20.

On May 20, a mass autograph session will take place at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center and is open to the public. For more information on the conference, including a link to register, visit nebulas.sfwa.org.

In addition to the Nebula Awards, SFWA will present the Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, the Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book, the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, the Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award, and the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

[Based on the press release.]

Cochran Files Bankruptcy on Eve of Trial

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Connor Cochran and his companies filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 4, one day before trial was scheduled to begin in Peter S. Beagle’s lawsuit against his former manager.

Beagle sued Cochran in 2015 for $52 million in damages, disgorgement of illegal gains and restitution, and dissolution of two corporations he co-owns with Cochran, Avicenna Development Corporation, and Conlan Press, Inc.

Cochran filed with United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. The details are public record. Cochran listed these as the largest unsecured claims against him:

$626,558  Rimon, PC – Legal fees
$500,000  Peter S. Beagle – Pending litigation (est.)
$400,000  Justin Bunnell – Judgment (*)
$ 83,592  Gloria Cheng – Property settlement
$ 24,915  Kathleen Hunt – Court-assessed fee
$ 20,000  Law Office of James R. Thompson – Legal fees
$  7,800  Son-Rise Property Management – Residential lease

Plus ten personal loans of $5,000 or less, and miscellaneous other small debts and claims.

(*) The Bunnell judgment relates to an investment by Sandbox LLC, a California partnership, and Justin Bunnell in The Last Unicorn screening tour launched in 2013. Projected for more than 150 different cities, Cochran and Beagle drove to tour destinations in a car loaded with stuff for sale. To quote the Bunnell complaint —

Specifically, on or around February 15, 2012, Defendant Avicenna and Plaintiff Sandbox entered into a written joint venture agreement whereby, in exchange for Sandbox’s remittance of Three Hundred Thousand Dollars ($300,000.00) to Defendants, Defendant Avicenna agreed to, among other things, oversee the distribution and marketing of the Picture through a “special limited release film tour” and remunerate Plaintiff, at a minimum, Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars ($450,000.00) and, thereafter, twenty-five percent (25%) of all profits derived from the the film tour and/or the exploitation of the Picture (the “Joint Venture Agreement”).

Commenting on the bankruptcy filing, Beagle’s attorney Kathleen Hunt said —

My favorite document so far is the one claiming that Connor has had literally $0 income for the past six months. (Presumably this is justified in his mind because the $ went to the companies, and he didn’t transfer it to his personal bank account – he just used the company bank accounts as if they were his personal accounts.)

She says the bankruptcy has put the lawsuit “trial on hold for awhile.”

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge for the story.]

2017 Novellapalooza

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[Editor’s note: be sure to read the comments on this post for more novellas and more Filer reviews.]

By JJ: I’m a huge reader of novels, but not that big on short fiction. But the last couple of years, I’ve done a personal project to read and review as many Novellas as I could (presuming that the story synopsis had some appeal for me). I ended up reading 31 of the novellas published in 2015 and 35 of the novellas published in 2016 (though a few of those were after Hugo nominations closed).

Last year, the result of this was the 2016 Novellapalooza. I really felt as though I was able to do Hugo nominations for the novella category in an informed way, and a lot of Filers got involved with their own comments. So I decided to do it again this year.

The success of Tor’s novella line seems to have sparked a Golden Age for SFF novellas, with Subterranean Press, NewCon Press, PS Publishing, and Book Smugglers jumping on the bandwagon, as well as the Big 3 magazines and the online fiction venues – so there are a lot more novellas to cover this year. Toward the end, I’ve gotten to the point of being more selective about which ones I read, based on the synopsis.

It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book despite not feeling that the jacket copy makes the book sound as though it is something I would like – and to discover that I really like or love the work anyway. On the other hand, It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book in such a case, and to discover that, indeed, the book doesn’t really do much for me.

Thus, my opinions on the following novellas vary wildly: stories I thought I would love but didn’t, stories I didn’t expect to love but did, and stories which aligned with my expectations – whether high or low. Bear in mind that while I enjoy both, I tend to prefer Science Fiction over Fantasy – and that while I enjoy suspense and thrillers, I have very little appreciation for Horror (and to be honest, I think Lovecraft is way overrated). My personal assessments are therefore not intended to be the final word on these stories, but merely a jumping-off point for Filer discussion.

I thought it would be helpful to have a thread where all the Filers’ thoughts on novellas are collected in one place, as a resource when Hugo nomination time rolls around. Which of these novellas have you read? And what did you think of them?

Please feel free to post comments about any other 2017 novellas which you’ve read, as well.

(Be sure to rot-13 any spoilers.)

Read more…

Beagle and Cochran Issue Statements About Authorship

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Peter S. Beagle, now 78, sued his former manager Connor Cochran in 2015 for $52 million in damages, disgorgement of illegal gains and restitution, dissolution of two corporations he co-owns with Cochran, and other injunctive relief. Cochran’s cross-complaint was dismissed by the Superior Court of Alameda County on November 7. Beagle’s suit is scheduled for trial in January. Within the past month both litigants have made statements about the authorship of some of Beagle’s published work in recent years.

From the Support Peter S. Beagle blog on October 26: “AN Important Message from Peter S. Beagle”.

As many people are aware, Peter Beagle, beloved author of “The Last Unicorn”, “A Fine And Private Place”, and  “Summerlong”, is suing his former manager and business partner, Connor Cochran. Now Cochran is publicly claiming co-authorship of most, if not all, of Peter’s titles, from the point at which Peter and Cochran first worked together.

Here is Peter’s statement, in his own words, slapping down Cochran’s claims. As usual, Peter says it better than anyone else could. Please read and share.

I am 78 years old.  I have been publishing professionally for almost sixty years.  Telling stories, in one way or another, one medium or another, is what I do, and all I ever wanted to do.  From the beginning, starting with my first book, A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE, I have worked with various publishers and editors, most of them helpful, and a few truly excellent.  Connor Cochran, at his best, was for many years one of this latter group.  I have said this many times in public, particularly commending his sense of structure; he even suggested titles for several of my stories. I have been grateful over our long acquaintance for such things.

But he did not write my stories, as he is now claiming publicly.  They are my work, and no one else’s – as are all my other books, all the way back to that first one, published in 1960, when I was twenty-one.  They are my legacy.

To quote a remembered line from the classic movie All About Eve, “It is about time that the piano realized that it has not written the symphony.”

And to quote partially from the words of my lawyer, Kathleen Hunt, addressed to Connor Cochran’s  former lawyer, Richard Mooney:

“Your claims are plainly false and inconsistent with the letter and application of U.S. copyright law. The statements may also constitute libel or other injurious action towards Beagle…. You surely knew that there is no evidence of a joint authorship relationship between Cochran and Beagle, that  there  was  no  objective  manifestation  to  create  a  work  of  joint  authorship, that the parties’ conduct at the time the works were created suggests a clear intent not to create a work of joint  authorship, and  that  the  statute  of  limitations  had  long  expired.  Under  these  circumstances, there can be little doubt that the sole purpose of your Correspondence was to fraudulently obtain authorship credit in the 27 Works in order to acquire leverage over my client in pending litigation.”

For fifteen years, over the counsel of true and knowledgeable friends, I trusted Connor Cochran implicitly  with all that I believed to be of any real value: my work, and the future of my legacy.  I was certain beyond any question that he was a man of honor and creativity.  I will forever regret that I was wrong.

Peter S. Beagle

Connor Cochran made this public Facebook statement on November 17:

Earlier this year I wrote a letter to certain editors, and shared with my Facebook friends, the fact that some of the “Peter S. Beagle” works published in the last 15 years were actually written by me and Peter in collaboration. The decision to finally share the truth was driven in part because I wanted to set a proper example for my daughter Brigid’s future, and in part because after two years I have gotten pretty sick of being lied about by Peter and the people who are controlling his life.

When word of what I had done got to Peter and his enablers, they did not take it well. On October 25th Peter released a public statement completely denying that we had ever collaborated, and further impugning my integrity and motives.

I was going to ignore it, but two days ago the LOCUS newszine got in touch to tell me they were going to run Peter’s statement. The editor wanted to know if I had any comment about it, or about the current status of the lawsuit.

And you know…once again I found that I was really tired of Peter making public statements that just aren’t true.

So after discussions with my attorney I wrote up a response and sent it to LOCUS. I am posting it here as well. In fairness to Peter I have put his own statement first in the attached image, so everyone can understand the context.

The surrogate who originally posted Peter’s statement asked folks to share it around as they saw fit. I invite anyone reading this to do the same.

———————————————–

11/17/17 — CONNOR COCHRAN’S RESPONSE (AT THE REQUEST OF LOCUS MAGAZINE) TO PETER S. BEAGLE’S 10/25/17 PUBLIC STATEMENT

Just like the allegations in his lawsuit, Peter’s most recent public statement is not true. The only question is whether it is knowingly false, or another example of the memory problems Peter displayed that forced suspension of THE LAST UNICORN Screening Tour in 2015.

First, I have never claimed that I “wrote his stories,” as he asserts. What I *have* recently shared — with the editors who bought the pieces in question, with my friends on Facebook, and now with LOCUS readers — is the fact that between 2002 and 2015 I CO-wrote nine published “Peter S. Beagle” stories, plus one novel manuscript and several screen treatments; as well as making substantial creative contributions to another seventeen works of fiction published under Peter’s byline and several of the poems and song lyrics in our yearlong 52-50 PROJECT. On everything else we did together (which is at least another 70-100 items, if not more) I was indeed just his editor, albeit a highly demanding one.

I was never public about co-writing at the time because Peter and I both thought that keeping my contribution to certain stories under wraps was the best thing for the Beagle literary “brand.” But that does not mean my co-authorship was a strict secret – it was well-known to some of our mutual friends. And, of course, anyone who reviews our working drafts and emails will see the cited stories are collaborations. (For just one example, comparing all the drafts of the 1,888-word story “The Fable of the Octopus,” from Peter’s 2006 collection THE LINE BETWEEN, shows that he wrote only 62% of the final text. I wrote the other 38% of it, including the ending, the denouement, and the moral. More importantly, Peter did not alter a single word of my contribution, responding to my writing only with a short email that began “I think it works fine this way, Connor — thank you again!”)

As for the status of the lawsuit: the court recently dismissed my counter-suit when it proved physically impossible to process hundreds of thousands of pages of documents to determine which related to the broad discovery requests, let alone which might be private or privileged, in the allotted timeframe. That certainly doesn’t make me happy, but so it goes. I have nonetheless handed over to Peter and his attorney more than 50,000 pages of documents refuting the allegations in his lawsuit, with another 100,000 pages of documents currently being prepped to turn over. In contrast, Peter has never provided ANY documentation that supports the wild allegations in his complaint, or refutes my counter-suit. Further, Peter has twice filed for “injunctions” in this same matter, only to have them flatly rejected with stern lectures from the judge because his filings contained no evidence.

The last two years have been a nightmare for me and my family. But come trial in January I am confident the jury will see who is telling the truth. And so, eventually, will everyone else.

Court Dismisses Cochran’s Countersuit Against Beagle

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Peter Beagle and Connor Cochran in 2013.

Peter S. Beagle won a round in his lawsuit against his former business manager, Connor Cochran, on November 7 when the Superior Court of Alameda County dismissed Cochran’s countersuit against Beagle. It was dismissed with prejudice, which means Cochran can’t try it again. Meanwhile, Beagle’s suit against Cochran is proceeding, with trial scheduled to begin on January 5, 2018.

Beagle, one of the top fantasists of his generation, and Connor Freff Cochran, the lifelong sf/f fan who became Beagle’s manager shortly after they met in 2001, spent 14 years rallying fans around the author’s campaign to get what he was due from sales of The Last Unicorn movie, and get back other rights controlled by exploitative corporations. Although they succeeded on both counts, the story of their teamwork came to an ugly end in 2015 when Beagle and Cochran sued each other in California courts.

Beagle’s lawsuit against Cochran [PDF], filed in November 2015 with the Superior Court of California in Alameda County, alleges Cochran committed fraud, elder abuse, and defamation.

Beagle, now 78, asked for $52 million in damages (or more as determined by the court), disgorgement of illegal gains and restitution, dissolution of two corporations he co-owns with Cochran, and other injunctive relief.

Cochran’s answer and cross-complaint, filed in January 2016, asked the court to dismiss Beagle’s suit as “frivolous, issued without capacity or under undue influence,” and to award damages in an amount to be determined.

Beagle hasn’t been free to go on his way and resell his earlier published works because he had turned over his intellectual property and all of his rights to Avicenna Development Corporation, which he and Cochran formed in 2008 to manage and protect Beagle’s intellectual property rights, each man owning 50%.

The intellectual property held by Avicenna not only includes Beagle’s own works, but also rights in works he inherited from Edgar and Mary Pangborn, from his mother, and the rights in Cochran’s own previously created works.

The judge’s November 7 decision dismissed Cochran’s cross-complaint, and mirror complaints by the corporations, Avicenna Development Corporation, and Conlan Press, Inc., with prejudice, because of prolonged failure to comply with court orders to produce documents and answer interrogatories. The court also renewed its order for Cochran and the defendant corporations to pay $24,915 in sanctions that have remained unpaid since September 2016, and levied an additional $3,060 sanction against Cochran.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge for the story.]