Tag Archives: Piper J. Drake

Pixel Scroll 4/1/23 Shhh. Be Vewy Quiet, I’m A Pixel and I’m Hunting Filers

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(1) VOTING OPENS IN SFWA ELECTION AND REFERENDUMS. Full SFWA members have until April 11 to vote in this year’s SFWA Board of Directors election and respond to two referendums on whether English-language translations and speculative poetry should be allowed to count toward SFWA membership eligibility.

BOARD ELECTION

Candidates for President: Jeffe Kennedy*

Candidates for Secretary: Jasmine Gower*

Candidates for Director-At-Large (three [3] positions open): Phoebe Barton, Chelsea Mueller, Anthony Eichenlaub, Christine Taylor-Butler*

Oghenechovwe Ekpeki is also running for SFWA Director-at-Large, as a write-in.

* = currently serving on the Board

REFERENDUMS. Genre writers of poetry and translators of fiction cannot currently use those portions of their paid work as part of their catalog when applying to join SFWA or to upgrade their membership classification. Two resolutions dealing with those qualifications are up for a vote:

(I) Paid SFF and related genre poetry sales shall be considered for the purposes of determining eligibility for membership in SFWA.

(II) Payment for SFF and related genre translation work shall be considered for the purposes of determining eligibility for membership in SFWA by the translator.

(2) WELL, I’M BACK. The Chengdu Worldcon’s English language website is operational again after being down for several days. Naturally it never occurred to the committee to announce the outage before it began, or explain it while it was happening. They told Facebook readers today:

Our official website of 2023 Chengdu Worldcon has come back after upgrades. Please visit the previous address to checkyour membership status, purchase new memberships and to participate in the 2023 Hugo Awards nomination. For any inquiry, please contact us at：

[email protected]

en.chengduworldcon.com

Thanks for your patience and have a good weekend ahead!

(3) HOUR OF POWER. Well, maybe forty-two minutes anyway. BBC Radio 4 Front Row on Thursday included coverage of the Naomi Alderman novel The Power – a topical item as it has just been made into a TV series. “Front Row, Ria Zmitrowicz on The Power, The ENO’s The Dead City and God’s Creatures reviewed”.

The trailer for The Power is online.

The Power, is an emotionally-driven global thriller, based on Naomi Alderman’s international award-winning novel. The world of The Power is our world, but for one twist of nature. Suddenly, and without warning, teenage girls develop the power to electrocute people at will. The Power follows a cast of remarkable characters from London to Seattle, Nigeria to Eastern Europe, as the Power evolves from a tingle in teenagers’ collarbones to a complete reversal of the power balance of the world.

(4) WRONG ENOUGH TO WIN. [Item by ErsatzCulture.] The April 1 edition of the BBC quiz show Pointless Celebrities (which should be available online to UK iPlayer users here) opened with a question asking the contestants to complete the names of a set of science fiction novels.

For anyone unfamiliar with Pointless, it’s roughly an inverted Family Fortunes/Feud, where surveys have been done of 100 members of the public, but here contestants have to pick the least popular answers. If a completely incorrect answer is put forward, that’s scored as 100 points. The eight contestants are split into four teams of two, and in the opening round, one member of each team has to choose one of 7 questions to answer, and then the other members of each team have to choose from a second set of 7 questions. The aim is to come out of that round with the lowest total score, with the team having the highest score being eliminated.

All but one contestant went for a correct answer – the offender being Children of Dune.  Whilst it’s not surprising to me that the Vonnegut and Cixin Liu novels aren’t well-known to the general public, I was surprised to see how low the James, Haig and St. John Mandel works scored.

There is a series of screencaps from this part of the game in Ersatz Culture’s post at Mastodon, “An episode of Pointless Celebr…”

(5) FLAME ON! Carriesthewind’s Tumblr is the source of the rant “The IA’s ‘Open Library’ is Not a Library,…” quoted by Seanan McGuire at Seanan’s Tumblr.

…Yesterday’s district court ruling DID NOT CHANGE ANY SUBSTANTIVE COPYRIGHT LAW IN THE U.S. I cannot emphasize that enough. Regardless of whatever you think of the ruling, it was applying already existing law to the facts.

This is because the Internet Archive’s “Open Library” absolutely violates existing copyright law. It just does! They broke the law, they had plenty of notice they were breaking the law and harming authors (more on that below) and just think the law shouldn’t apply because they don’t like it.

The Internet Archive’s “Open Library” is not a library….

But what really got Carriesthewind steamed was a line in IA’s statement about the decision “The Fight Continues” which says — “It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online.” That provoked this response:

…How DARE you cloak your theft in the real struggles authors face with unfair licensing models. How DARE you pretend you are on the side of authors when you are stealing their works, and they have made it quite clear that they would like you to stop, please. And how DARE you frame it in this “for exposure” bullcrap that ignores the real struggles that authors have to eat, to get healthcare, to get any sort of fair pay and wages for their work, and instead pretend that all authors should care about is whether or not their books can be read online….

(6) COURT REJECTS A BOOK BAN. [Item by Jennifer Hawthorne.] CNN is reporting: “Judge orders books removed from Texas public libraries due to LGBTQ and racial content must be replaced within 24 hours”. Although no SFF titles are specifically mentioned in the article as having been targeted for the bans, there is a statement that the library cut off access to thousands of digital titles because they weren’t able to restrict access to two of the books they wanted to ban unless they banned access to the ALL the digital titles — so that’s what they did (!@#@!)  and I’m sure that impacted access to a lot of SFF digital titles. Also I figure that the Filers are interested in book banning/unbanning just as a general topic.

A federal judge in Texas ruled that at least 12 books removed from public libraries by Llano County officials, many because of their LGBTQ and racial content, must be placed back onto shelves within 24 hours, according to an order filed Thursday.

Seven residents sued county officials in April 2022, claiming their First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when books deemed inappropriate by some people in the community and Republican lawmakers were removed from public libraries or access was restricted.

The lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio claimed county officials removed books from the shelves of the three-branch public library system “because they disagree with the ideas within them” and terminated access to thousands of digital books because they could not ban two specific titles….

(7) STEAMY IN SEATTLE. Clarion West is promoting “Steamy in Seattle, a Paranormal Romance Tea Party”, an in-person event also being streamed online. Takes place May 5 from 3:00-4:30 p.m. Pacific. Buy admission for the in-person experience at the link above, or register for the free online version.

Meet authors Gail Carriger and Piper J. Drake as they discuss the paranormal romance genre and their own work in steampunk, shapeshifter romance, and romantic thrillers! Grab a steaming cup of tea and some delicious treats prepared by the Seattle Central College culinary students, or tune in via livestream.

Location: One World Restaurant on Seattle Central College campus (Capitol Hill neighborhood) and streaming worldwide!

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1958 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

The Muppet Show used to have a segment called “Pigs in Space.” Well this Social Justice Credential counterpart called “Cats in Space”, with a dollop of ever so cute kittens added in, appeared long before Heinlein’s Pixel came into being. 

Our Beginning this Scroll is of Ruthven Todd’s Space Cat and the Kittens. It was published sixty-five years ago by Scribner’s. It’s the fourth, and last, of a children’s books series involving Flyball, a cat who, yes, lives in space. 

The preceding books which, like this one are illustrated by Paul Galdone, are Space Cat, Space Cat Visits Venus and Space Cat Meets Mars. Without giving anything away, let me just say that there will be a lot of cats, not a few kittens and a considerable comical situations as the series goes on. 

They are available in both hardcover and from the usual suspects.

Yes there are spoilers here, so go away if you don’t want to read them as this Beginning tells us about how these cats… Oh that would be giving something away, wouldn’t it? 

And here it is…

They were in and out of everything. When you thought you had cornered one of the red and gray bundles flashing among the crates in the storeroom, you would suddenly become aware that you had been attacked from behind by another. With its sharp claws unsheathed it was scrambling up your back. 

Still, everyone on the Moon not only put up with them but liked them. This was only right, for their parents were the most famous cats in the whole of space. Flyball, their father, had not only been the first cat to leave Earth for the Moon, but he had also been the first cat on Venus and on Mars. 

On Mars he had found his wife. Moofa was the last of the Martian fishing cats. Red as any firetruck, with darker stripes that ran from her head to her tail, she had lived on the fish that she caught in the Martian canals.

Now Moofa and Flyball had these two kittens—Marty and Tailspin. Marty was the older brother by a few minutes and was as proud of it as if he had arranged it himself. 

At first glance the kittens, showing both their father’s gray and their mother’s red, looked exactly alike. Then a second look showed that Tailspin had a pure gray tip to his tail while Marty’s tail was red all the way. 

The kittens had been born on the Moon and both Moofa and Flyball agreed that it was an ideal place for kittens, even though there were neither mice nor birds for them to chase. 

On the Moon they were almost as light as feathers and could jump the most tremendous distances. Still, they found, it was just as hard to catch one’s tail on the Moon as it was on Earth. They knew about Earth, for they had visited it on the shuttle-rockets which went back and forth all the time. 

The Earth, the kittens thought, was rather a dull place. A jump that on the Moon would carry them across a room, on Earth was only an ordinary little pounce.

So please name other SF where cats are characters in the story.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 1, 1875 — Edgar Wallace. Creator of King Kong, he also wrote SF including Planetoid 127, one of the first parallel Earth stories, and The Green Rust, a bioterrorism novel which was made into a silent film called The Green Terror. Critics as diverse as Orwell, Sayers and Penzler have expressed their rather vehement distaste for him.  Kindle has an impressive number of works available. (Died 1932.)
  • Born April 1, 1883 — Lon Chaney. Actor, director, makeup artist and screenwriter. Best remembered I’d say for the Twenties silent horror films The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera in which he did his own makeup. He developed pneumonia in late 1929 and he was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer which he died from. (Died 1930.)
  • Born April 1, 1926 — Anne McCaffrey. I read both the original trilogy and what’s called the Harper Hall trilogy oh so many years ago when dragons were something I was intensely interested in. I enjoyed them immensely but haven’t revisited them so I don’t know what the Suck Fairy would make of them. I confess that I had no idea she’d written so much other genre fiction! And I recounted her Hugo awards history in the March 7 Pixel Scroll (item #9). (Died 2011.)
  • Born April 1, 1930 — Grace Lee Whitney. Yeoman Janice Rand on Star Trek. She would reach the rank of Lt. Commander in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Folks, I just noticed that IMDB says she was only on eight episodes of Trek, all in the first fifteen that aired. It seemed like a lot more at the time. She also appeared in in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. By the last film, she was promoted to being a Lt. Commander in rank. Her last appearance was in Star Trek: Voyager’s “Flashback” along with Hikaru Sulu. Oh, and she was in two video fanfics, Star Trek: New Voyages and Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. (Died 2015.)
  • Born April 1, 1942 — Samuel R. Delany, 81. There’s no short list of recommended works for him as everything he’s done is brilliant. That said I think I’d start off suggesting a reading first of Babel- 17 and Dhalgren followed by the Return to Nevèrÿon series. His two Hugo wins were at Heicon ’70 for the short story “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” as published in New Worlds, December 1968, and at Noreascon 3 (1989) in the Best Non-Fiction Work category for The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-1965.  I will do a full look at his awards and all of his Hugo nominations in an essay shortly. 
  • Born April 1, 1960 — Michael Praed, 63. Robin of Loxley on Robin of Sherwood which no doubt is one of the finest genre series ever done of a fantasy nature. He also played Phileas Fogg on The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, an amazing series that never got released on DVD. It has spawned a lively fanfic following since it was cancelled with names such as Spicy Airship Stories which I admit I’m going to go read.
  • Born April 1, 1963 — James Robinson, 60. Writer, both comics and film. Some of his best known comics are the series centered on the Justice Society of America, in particular the Starman character he co-created with Tony Harris. His Starman series is without doubt some of the finest work ever done in the comics field. His screenwriting is a mixed bag. Remember The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Well, that’s him. He’s much, much better on the animated Son of Batman film. And I’ll admit that James Robinson’s Complete WildC.A.T.s is a sort of guilty pleasure.
  • Born April 1, 1970 — Brad Meltzer, 53. I’m singling him for his work as a writer at DC including the still controversial Identity Crisis miniseries and his superb story in the Green Arrow series from issues 16 to 21 starting in 2002.  He and artist Gene Ha received an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue (or One-Shot) for their work on issue #11 of Justice League of America series. 

(10) KELLY LINK INTERVIEW. Electric Literature declares, “Kelly Link Makes Fairy Tales Even Weirder Than You Remember”.

Chelsea Davis: Rules—often arbitrary, always ominous—shape many fairy tales, and most of the stories in White Cat. Don’t let anyone enter the front door; don’t visit your lover unless it’s snowing; and (my favorite) don’t hunker down for the night in a home that doesn’t have a corpse inside. How do explicit rules activate or shape a story?

Kelly Link: I love thinking about rules! I’m deeply interested in the relationship that we have with them as members of a family, or a social group, or a culture. They mark out the territory in which we (or our characters) live our lives. When thinking about imaginary people, a useful approach is to consider what rules they live by, which rules they break, and the consequences or freedoms that occur as a result.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated and horrified by all sorts of rules: Don’t wear white after Labor Day! Wear pantyhose with skirts. Never wear navy and black together. Don’t take candy from a stranger. 

I was a preacher’s kid, and aside from all the familiar stuff about virginity, and not taking the Lord’s name in vain, there were weirder, more interesting rules about not eating shellfish, or wearing certain fibers together, or not suffering a witch to live. (Though the two rules about loving your neighbor as yourself, and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you still seem like good practice.)…

(11) EKPEKI GOFUNDME CONTINUES. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki’s GoFundMe fundraiser for visa processing & legal fees has reached 20 percent of its $17,500 goal.

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki recently experienced visa complications that left him unable to attend the NAACP Image award ceremony, where he was a nominee for his work co-editing the anthology Africa Risen. These visa issues will also prevent him from attending the 44th Afrofuturism-themed International Conference For The Fantastic In the Arts as a guest of honour or be a visiting fellow at Arizona State University.

Because of these issues, Ekpeki is crowdfunding for a new visa that allows him the range of activities his burgeoning literary career demands.

Specifically, this crowdfunding is for a new visa and the associated legal and application fees. Ekpeki has already connected with a lawyer experienced in this legal area who will assist with the application.

(12) JEOPARDY! David Goldfarb notes that Thursday’s Jeopardy! episode had a category in the Double Jeopardy round called “Quoth the Title”. It hit one SFF trilogy in the middle, at the $1200 level:

Philip Pullman quoted Milton, “Unless the almighty Maker them ordain” these “to create more worlds”.

Returning champion Lisa Srikan tried, “What are men?” Jacob Lang was perhaps influenced by this to respond, “What are children of men?”. Sharon Stone (not that one) declined to guess. This isn’t quite at the level where I would just assume that every Filer would know it: the clue was looking for “His Dark Materials”.

Goldfarb also tuned into Friday’s Jeopardy! episode and enjoyed several more SFF-related clues. 

In the first Jeopardy round, 

“Hey, Big Spender” for $200:

If you’ve really got all that dough, why don’t you buy Action Comics #1 from 1938, which saw the debut of this otherworldly hero

Jen Petro-Roy responded correctly.

In the Double Jeopardy round,
“Oh, the Literary Places You Don’t Want to Go!”: $1200: 

The Sprawl is a rough city with an artificial gray sky in “Mona Lisa Overdrive”, a novel from this cyberpunk master

Jen knew William Gibson.

“Literary Places”: $2000: 

The idyllic school Hailsham harbors grotesque deeds in “Never Let Me Go” from this Japanese-born author

Jen messed up the name Kazuo Ishiguro: “Kashiguro” was not accepted. The other two didn’t answer.

“Last Lines of Movies”: $800: 

“Oh, no. It wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

Jen knew it.

“Literary Places”, $400: 

Isla Nublar off Costa Rica sets the scene of this 1990 Michael Crichton novel that bioengineers some terror

Brittany Shaw knew this one.

(13) APRIL FOOL’S DAY. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club blog tried its best to keep the holiday alive.

(14) FURTHER APRIL FOOLISHNESS. James Davis Nicoll reviews an essential volume of the science fiction canon in “By Klono’s Silk Unmentionables!”

Time erodes all, including our collective memory. Even what is preserved in print can be subject to caprice; once well-known works can be forgotten. Take, for example, that classic space opera: Thorne Smith’s Lensmen….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Meanwhile, this trailer for Trolls Band Together is not an April Fool – but maybe it ought to be!

After two films of true friendship and relentless flirting, Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake) are now officially, finally, a couple (#broppy)! As they grow closer, Poppy discovers that Branch has a secret past. He was once part of her favorite boyband phenomenon, BroZone, with his four brothers: Floyd (Golden Globe nominated electropop sensation Troye Sivan), John Dory (Eric André; Sing 2), Spruce (Grammy winner Daveed Diggs; Hamilton) and Clay (Grammy winner Kid Cudi; Don’t Look Up). BroZone disbanded when Branch was still a baby, as did the family, and Branch hasn’t seen his brothers since. But when Branch’s bro Floyd is kidnapped for his musical talents by a pair of nefarious pop-star villains—Velvet (Emmy winner Amy Schumer; Trainwreck) and Veneer (Grammy winner and Tony nominee Andrew Rannells; The Book of Mormon)—Branch and Poppy embark on a harrowing and emotional journey to reunite the other brothers and rescue Floyd from a fate even worse than pop-culture obscurity.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, David Goldfarb, Jennifer Hawthorne, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Danny Sichel, ErsatzCulture, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 12/18/22 As You Scroll, Bob

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(1) CLARION WEST CLASSES. Here are the Spring 2023 classes offered by Clarion West – click the link to read the full description and to register.

The Supporting Tuition rate is shown for each class or workshop for folks who can pay it. Paying the Supporting Tuition rate enables us to continue to pay our staff and instructors equitably, as well as support access to classes for others who may be in a different situation. 

The Helping Hands rate is available to folks under more limited economic circumstances, no matter your background.

Cross-Examining Your Character With Henry Lien

01/21/2023 10:00 AM – 01/28/2023 01:00 PM PT; Online Workshop

  • $130.00  –  Supporting Tuition
  • $100.00  –  Helping Hands Tuition

Use courtroom interrogation techniques to get to the heart of your character.

Finding Creative Truth Through Desire And Fear With Sloane Leong

02/13/2023 05:00 PM – 06:30 PM PT; Online Class

  • $75.00  –  Supporting Tuition
  • $55.00  –  Helping Hands Discounted Tuition

This interactive lecture assists writers in understanding their desires, fears, and creative philosophy in service of clarifying what they truly want out of their writing practice and stories.

The Friend, The Lover, and The Enemy: Mastering Key Relationship Arcs with Piper J. Drake

03/04/2023 10:00 AM – 03/18/2023 11:30 AM PT; Online Class

  • $130.00  –  Supporting Tuition
  • $100.00  –  Helping Hands

Explore the relationships between principal characters and how those relationship arcs can be developed into dynamic and evolving connections to engage readers and drive the plot forward.

Weirdcraft: Writing Horror, Gothic, and the Literary Strange with Ian Muneshwar

03/28/2023 05:00 PM – 05/16/2023 07:00 PM PT; Online Workshop

  • $275.00  –  Supporting Tuition
  • $205.00  –  Helping Hands

This five-session workshop, aimed at beginning and intermediate writers who’ve already produced at least one draft of a horror story, will provide students with actionable feedback on their own fiction while broadening their understanding of craft-based approaches to writing horror.

Who Are You As A Writer? Identifying Your Narrative Building Blocks With Susan J. Morris

03/30/2023 04:30 PM – 05:30 PM PT; Free Class

  • Free

In this 1-hour webinar, learn to identify your core strengths, themes, narrative building blocks, and values, and how to use them to generate new ideas that play to your strengths.

Emergent Structures: How Structure Shapes Your Story On A Macro And Micro Level With Susan J. Morris

04/27/2023 04:30 PM – 06:00 PM PT; Online Class

  • $75.00  –  Supporting Tuition
  • $55.00  –  Helping Hands

Delve beyond Save the Cat to explore different structures—not just of plot, but of every aspect of your story, from scenes to character arcs.

(2) MOVING VOLUMES. [Item by Jeffrey Smith.] This article’s header is an illustration of Mount Tsundoku! “We’re drowning in old books. But getting rid of them is heartbreaking” says the Washington Post.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Bruce Albright arrives in the Wonder Book parking lot, pops the trunk of his Camry and unloads two boxes of well-worn books. “It’s sad. Some of these I’ve read numerous times,” he says.

Albright, 70, has been at this for six months, shedding 750 books at his local library and at this Frederick, Md., store. The rub: More than 1,700 volumes remain shelved in the retired government lawyer’s nearby home, his collection lovingly amassed over a half-century.

But Albright is on a mission. “I cleaned out my parents’ home,” he says. “I don’t want to do to my kids what my parents did to me.”

He’s far from alone. Books are precious to their owners. Their worth, emotional and monetary, is comparably less to anyone else.

Humorist and social critic Fran Lebowitz owns 12,000 books, mostly fiction, kept in 19th-century wooden cases with glass doors in her New York apartment. “Constitutionally, I am unable to throw a book away. To me, it’s like seeing a baby thrown in a trash can,” she says. “I am a glutton for print. I love books in every way. I love them more than most human beings.” If there’s a book she doesn’t want, Lebowitz, 72, will spend months deciding whom to give it to….

(3) HOW BLUE WAS THE BOX OFFICE? “’Avatar 2’ makes waves with $134 million domestic debut” and Yahoo! Entertainment thinks that was nothing to be sneezed at.

“Avatar: The Way of Water ” didn’t make quite as big of a splash as many assumed it would, but James Cameron’s big budget spectacle still helped breathe life into the box office this weekend. The sequel earned $134 million from North American theaters and $300.5 million internationally for a $434.5 million global debut, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

It tied with “The Batman” as the fourth highest domestic debut of the year, behind “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ( $187.4 million in May ), “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” ( $181 million in November ) and “Thor: Love and Thunder” ($144.2 million in July).

Expectations were enormous for “Avatar 2,” which carried a reported price tag of over $350 million, the pressure of following up the highest grossing film of all time (thanks in part to various re-releases) over a decade later and the daunting task of propping up an exhibition business that’s still far from normal.

(4) MAKES FOR COMPELLING READING. In Joe Stech’s latest Compelling Science Fiction newsletter he picks five of the “Top science fiction short stories published in October”. Leading the way:

The top story for the month of October (and therefore our t-shirt winner!) was The Conflagration at the Museum of You by Adam-Troy Castro. I’ve never read a story quite like it — implausibly bizarre and yet compellingly real. The writing is outstanding, and it really has to be to keep you reading. The story is written in the second person, discussing a museum dedicated to you, the reader. The ‘why’ of it is unimportant and hand-wavy, and the story could have easily been annoying to read, but it wasn’t, and you should read it.

(5) PETRONA AWARD. Maria Adolfsson won the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year for Fatal Isles, translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé. Adolfsson will receive a trophy, and both author and translator get a cash prize.

The judges said: “This captivating winning novel is the first in a proposed trilogy featuring the beautifully flawed protagonist Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby, whose take on life and work make for a strong down-to-earth and modern heroine in the relicts of a man’s world. Set in the fictional yet completely credible location of Doggerland, this three-islands archipelago in the North Sea, reflects Scandinavian, North European and British heritages. Doggerland is shaped and influenced by its geographical position; the atmospheric setting, akin to the wind- and history-swept Faroe and Shetland Islands, and Nordic climes, enhances the suspenseful and intriguing plot of a police procedural that combines detailed observations and thoughts on the human condition….

(6) MEMORY LANE.

1991 — [By Cat Eldridge.] FAO Schwartz bronze Teddy Bear, Boston

In Boston, there’s an eight foot teddy bear made of bronze that become homeless for awhile. Let us tell you that tale. 

The bear, eight feet tall and weighing three tons, was done by sculptor Robert Shure of Woburn. Two of his other works are the Joe DiMaggio Memorial at Yankee Stadium and the Massachusetts Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Boston. 

Boston’s bear was the first of many that FAO Schwartz would place around the country. It cost about sixty-five thousand dollars  when it was made in the early Nineties. Three of the teddy bears, the others being in New York and Seattle, were made of bronze while the rest were far less expensive fiberglass works.

Like The Ducklings we profiled in the Scroll last night, he was, as you can see in the image below, in the Back Bay, outside the FAO Schwartz store. Then one day he was gone. Well not quite that dramatically as FAO Schwartz went bankrupt in 2004 as so many of those department store did around that time, so the Boston store was closed, and he went into storage. Poor bear, sitting alone in a dark space, unloved.

The company donated Boston’s bear to the city, but what to do with him? He is a lot of bear and he needed a new place to live, one where children could love him again.

Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino decided that a contest was the best way to find him a home with the city’s children sending in their ideas as to where his home should be. That resulted in some seven thousand letters, with children from thirty-four states and even a few foreign countries submitting ideas for his home, many of them written in crayon. 

So where did he go? Well at least for now, he’s outside the Tufts Medical Center/Floating Hospital for Children, which is appropriate as the children there love him, but it was announced that Tufts Children’s Hospital inpatient pediatric beds will be closed and converted to add forty one adult ICU beds, citing increasing demand from critically ill adults. So he’ll need yet another new home presumably. 

Update: this week, the hospital announced that he’s staying there because they are keeping pediatric primary care services, including the Pediatric and Adolescent Asian Clinic, and the Children with Special Needs Clinic, so he will have lots of children to love him.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 18, 1923 — Alfred Bester. He is best remembered perhaps for The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award. I remember experiencing it as an audiobook— a very spooky affair!  The Stars My Destination is equally impressive with Foyle both likeable and unlikable at the same time. Psychoshop which Zelazny finished is in my library but has escaped reading so far. I’ve run across some scattered references to Golem100 but I’ve never seen a copy anywhere. Who here has read It? (Died 1987.)
  • Born December 18, 1941 — Jack C. Haldeman II. He’d get Birthday Honors if only for On the Planet of Zombie Vampires, book five of the adventures of Bill the Galactic Hero, co-written with Harry Harrison. He’d also get these honors for chairing Disclave 10 through Disclave 17, and a Worldcon as well, Discon II. He was a prolific short story writer, penning at least seventy-five such tales, but alas none of these, nor his novels other than There is No Darkness that he did with his brother are available in digital form. (Died 2002.)
  • Born December 18, 1939 — Michael Moorcock, 83. Summing up the career of Moorcock isn’t possible so I won’t. His Elric of Melniboné series is just plain awesome and I’m quite fond of the Dorian Hawkmoon series of novels as well. Particular books that I’d like to note as enjoyable for me include The Metatemporal Detective collection, Mother London and The English Assassin: A Romance of Entropy. While he was editor, New Worlds got nominated for Best Professional Magazine from 1967-1970. 
  • Born December 18, 1946 — Steven Spielberg, 76. Are we counting Jaws as genre? I believe we are per an earlier discussion here. If so, that’s his first such followed immediately by Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Between 1981 and 1984, he put out Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Twilight Zone: The Movie and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Ok so the quality of the last film wasn’t great… He’d repeated that feat between ‘89 and ‘93 when he put out Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Hook which I both love followed by Jurassic Park which I don’t. The Lost World: Jurassic Park followed along a string of so-so films, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, War of the Worlds and one decided stinker, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The BFG is simply wonderful. Haven’t seen Ready Player One so I’ll leave that up to y’all to opine on. 
  • Born December 18, 1953 — Jeff Kober, 69. Though he’s best remembered as Dodger in the stellar China Beach series, he’s been in numerous genre series and films including V, The Twilight Zone, Alien Nation, the Poltergeist series,The X-Files series, Tank Girl as one of the kangaroos naturally, Supernatural, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Kindred: The Embraced and The Walking Dead. 
  • Born December 18, 1954 — Ray Liotta. We could just stop at him being Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, don’t you think of it as being an exemplary genre cred? Well I do. On a much sillier note, he’s in two Muppet films, Muppets from Space and Muppets Most Wanted. On a very not silly note, he was Joey in Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. (Died 2022.)
  • Born December 18, 1968 — Casper Van Dien, 54. Yes, Johnny Rico in that Starship Troopers. Not learning his lesson, he’d go on to film Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and the animated Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars. Do not go read the descriptions of these films!  (Hint: the former has a nineteen percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.) He’d also star as Tarzan in Tarzan and the Lost City, show up as Brom Van Brunt In Sleepy Hollow, be Captain Abraham Van Helsing In Dracula 3000, James K. Polk in, oh really Casper, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter sequels, Rumpelstiltskin in Avengers Grimm and Saber Raine In Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Wheatcomics offers this astronomical view:

(9) FLAT NOTES. For crime novelist Ann Cleeves it was good news and bad news: “Writer recovers laptop containing half-finished novel after Shetland blizzard”, but it had been run over by a car.

… Tweeting an image of a badly misshapen computer, she said it had been found by a “sharp-eyed” young woman as she got off a school bus near to where Cleeves had been staying….

Describing how it was lost, she said she had been working in a library in Lerwick and walked “in a total blizzard” for a meeting at a nearby arts centre, adding that, while she was inside, the weather “just got worse and worse”.

“I needed to get home early and I think I must have either left my laptop there or it fell out of my bag while I was struggling through the wind and the snow to get from the library to the arts centre,” she said.

She added that people had been “amazingly kind” since she first tweeted about the laptop and that she been “getting responses from all over Lerwick”….

(10) THERE’S A SUCKER BORN… According to Yahoo!, “Donald Trump NFT Collection Sells Out, Price Surges”.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s non-fungible token (NFT) digital trading card collection sold out early Friday, the day after its initial release.

According to data from OpenSea, at time of writing, the collection’s trading volume is 900 ETH, or about $1.08 million. Its floor price is about 0.19 ETH, or about $230 – more than double the original price of $99.

Some tokens are selling for much higher prices. The one-of-ones, the rarest of the NFTs, which comprise 2.4% of the 45,000 unit collection (roughly 1,000), are selling for as much as 6 ETH at the time of writing. One of these rare trading cards, of the 45th president standing in front of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch, is currently listed at 20 ETH, or about $24,000.

According to data from Dune Analytics, nearly 13,000 users minted 3.5 tokens upon the release of the collection. Additionally, 115 customers purchased 45 NFTs, which is the minimum number of tokens that guarantees a ticket to a dinner with Trump; 17 people purchased 100 NFTs, which, according to the Trump Trading Card site, was the maximum quantity allowed to mint….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Jennifer Hawthorne, Jeffrey Smith, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 11/24/20 Do I Dare Disscroll The Pixelverse?

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(1) GRATING EXPECTATIONS. Piper J. Drake analyzes readers’ reactions based on default views of history in “Marginalized people living varied and fulfilled lives in genre fiction is historically accurate” at the SFWA Blog.

Earlier this year, an author of color announced the acquisition of her new historical romance series. In direct reply to her tweet, someone publicly questioned the historical accuracy of the series. The author of color was prepared because she knew she would be challenged about “historical accuracy” and she provided an organized response. The challenger deleted her tweet but doubled down on her right to question the author and circled back to her own feed to gain sympathizer support for the attitude she was getting from the author of color because she “just asked a question.” For those sympathizers, I broke down the original challenge to demonstrate why it wasn’t just a question but, in reality, an insidious attack.

Let’s unpack this, because one might wonder why we’re even discussing historical accuracy in science fiction and fantasy. After all, these genres are fiction. Accuracy doesn’t need to come into play.

But here’s the thing: when the question of historical accuracy is raised regarding fiction, it’s rarely — if ever — actually about facts or history. 

It’s about the default, the norm.

It’s about what some people consider to be true simply because they’ve never questioned those assumptions, and the reality they default to is often wrong…. 

(2) SERPELL ON AFROFUTURISM. The Huntington has posted “Black Matter”, in which Namwali Serpell, professor of literature at Harvard, author of The Old Drift, and recent recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke award for the best science fiction novel published in the UK, discusses the origins of afrofuturism. This is the Ridge Lecture for Literature

(3) PICKING UP AFTER PICARD. Abigail Nussbaum copes with Trek-induced anxieties in “One More Adventure: Thoughts on Star Trek: Picard”, which she says ends up wasting its beloved titled character.

I watched the first few episodes of Star Trek: Picard this spring, and then stopped. I could blame a lack of time, too many shows on my schedule and not enough hours to keep up with all of them (this was the reason that I similarly ended up dropping the most recent season of Legends of Tomorrow, which I wrote up on my tumblr last week). But really, the reason was that Picard made me anxious. All new Star Trek does. I find it impossible to watch these shows without the constant awareness that the people who are the franchise’s current stewards have, at best, a teaspoon’s-depth understanding of what it is and why it works, and I end up feeling constantly on guard against the next travesty they’re sure to commit. Which also makes me kind of sick of myself, for watching like that, being unable to let go, unable to trust the story to take me where it wants to go—even if that distrust is well earned. It’s for this reason, I think, that I found this summer’s new animated foray into the franchise, Lower Decks, so relaxing. The show is wall-to-wall fanservice, with absolutely no pretension of doing anything new with its material. So while the result is, inevitably, uninvolving, it’s also easier to trust.

Picard, in contrast, seems designed to agitate my NuTrek anxieties….

(4) CRITICS’ CHOICE. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar line up their picks of the year: “2020 books: Best science fiction, fantasy and horror” in the Washington Post. The list of five opens with —

“The Only Good Indians”

By Stephen Graham Jones

Jones, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, conjures a revenge story involving friends who are haunted by a supernatural entity. The tale calls to mind classics such as “It” and “Ghost Story.” Jones’s take is a fresh and enticing tale — and features a memorable foe.

(5) ‘TIS THE SEASON. Journey Press hopes you’ll do some gift shopping off their booklist — “Received from Galactic Journey, reposted with permission”, signal boosted by James Davis Nicoll.

As you may know, the book business has been hit inordinately hard by COVID. Printing and shipping have been disrupted, but more importantly, bookstores have been locked down. Those that are open have lower foot traffic for obvious and good reasons.

For presses like mine , which have prioritized brick and mortar shops over Amazon, it’s been a rough time.

With the holiday season coming up, I wonder if you might consider one or more of our books as gift possibilities — for others…and yourself. Not only would you be getting some great reading material, you’d be helping me and Journey Press out at a time when we could really use some good news. I guarantee you will enjoy all of these, as will anyone you give them to:

(6) BE EARLY BIRDS. The annual “H.G. Wells Short Story Competition” offers a £500 Senior and £1,000 Junior prize and free publication of all shortlisted entries in a quality, professionally published paperback anthology.

The theme for the 2021 HG Wells Short Story Competition will be “Mask”. The competition will open in early 2021, and close in July 2021.

Get started now while we wait for them to start taking submissions.

(7) RIPPLES ON THE POND. Engadget delivered the news — “The Hugo Awards will have a video game category in 2021” with a link in the last sentence to the post here – presumably the strong case was made in the comments, or the linked article by Ira Alexandre.

…As things stand, video games won’t be an ongoing fixture at the Hugo Awards. That’s not unusual. The awards have consistently experimented with categories. In 2002 and 2005, for instance, it gave out awards to the best websites, but hasn’t done so since. The good news is that the Hugo Study Committee will consider adding a permanent Best Game or Interactive Experience category, and there’s a strong case to be made for their inclusion.  

On the other hand, PC Gamer is condescending in its coverage: “The Hugo Awards are getting a videogame category—but only for 2021”.

…Hold on, I hear you say, haven’t games been meaningful prior to early 2020? Isn’t the continued growth of the gaming industry a pretty strong signifier of how many people spend a large amount of time gaming, pandemic or no? 

Well, even though videogames do have a rather large audience overlap with science fiction novels, the people who actually nominate and vote for the awards may not be a prime gaming audience. These are the same people who just last year showed that when it comes to diversity, the Hugos still have some way to go, and who reference Pong in reply to their own gaming category announcement. Back in 2006, a newly-introduced videogames category to the Hugo Awards was dropped due to lack of interest.

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • November 24, 1985 — Ewoks: The Battle for Endor premiered on ABC. It was produced and written by George Lucas. Starring Wilford Brimley, Warwick Davis, Aubree Miller, Paul Gleason and Carel Struycken, the sequel to Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure was considered mostly harmless by critics. It is treated as canon by Lucas. It holds a 51% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born November 24, 1849 – Frances Hodgson Burnett.  Four novels for us including The Secret Garden, nine shorter stories; much other work outside our field including Little Lord Fauntleroy, first loved, then hated (“an awful prig”), perhaps due for re-examining.  John Clute, whom I love to agree with because it’s so seldom, says “The supernatural content of [SG] is slight … but the book as a whole, like the best fantasies, generates a sense of earned transformation….  ‘Behind the White Brick’ stands out…. has a swing and a drive … makes one regret that FHB did not write full-length fantasies.”  (Died 1924) [JH]
  • Born November 24, 1907 — Evangeline Walton. Her best known work, the Mabinogion tetralogy, was written during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and her Theseus trilogy was produced during the late 1940s. It’s worth stressing Walton is best known for her four novels retelling the Welsh Mabinogi. She published her first volume in 1936 under the publisher’s title of The Virgin and the Swine which is inarguably a terrible title. Although receiving glowing praise from John Cowper Powys, the book sold quite awfully and none of the other novels in the series were published at that time. Granted a second chance by Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series in 1970, it was reissued with a much better title of The Island of the Mighty. The other three volumes followed quickly. Witch House is an occult horror story set in New England and She Walks in Darkness which came out on Tachyon Press is genre as well. I think that is the extent of her genre work but I’d be delighted to be corrected.  She has won a number of awards including the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, Best Novel along with The Fritz Leiber Fantasy Award,  World Fantasy Award, Convention Award and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. (Died 1996.) (CE) 
  • Born November 24, 1912 – Charles Schneeman.  Ten covers, three hundred interiors.  Here is the May 38 Astounding.  Here is the Jan 40.  Here is the Nov 52.  Here is the Aug 68 Riverside Quarterly.  This is for Gray Lensman.  This is for “The Scrambler”.  (Died 1972) [JH]
  • Born November 24, 1916 – Forrest J Ackerman.  (No punctuation after the J).  Pioneer and indeed a founder of fandom; collector (he was the Grand Acquisitor); editor, literary agent.  Famous for wordplay, he was known as 4e, 4sj, and much else.  At Nycon I the first Worldcon he and Morojo – an Esperanto nickname, they were both Esperantists – wore what he called futuristicostumes, pioneering that too.  Winning a Hugo for #1 Fan Personality, never given before or since, he walked off stage leaving it, saying it really should have gone to Ken Slater.  For years administered the Big Heart, our highest service award.  In one of his more inspired puns, called us the Imagi-Nation.  (Died 2008)
  • Born November 24, 1942 – Alicia Austin, 78.  Fan and pro artist.  Three dozen covers, four hundred eighty interiors.  Inkpot; one Hugo; World Fantasy Award; Guest of Honor at ConFrancisco the 51st Worldcon; more.  This Program Book page shows her logograph for L.A.Con (in retrospect L.A.con I).  Artbook Alicia Austin’s Age of Dreams.  Here is The Last Castle.  Here is Solomon Leviathan’s Nine Hundred Thirty-First Trip Around the World.  Here is Bridging the Galaxies.  [JH]
  • Born November 24, 1948 — Spider Robinson, 72. His first story “The Guy with the Eyes” was published in Analog February 1973. It was set in a bar called Callahan’s Place, a setting for much of his later fiction.  His first published novel, Telempath in 1976 was an expansion of his Hugo award-winning novella “By Any Other Name”. The Stardance trilogywas co-written with his wife, Jeanne Robinson.  In 2004, he began working on a seven-page 1955 novel outline by the late Heinlein to expand it into a novel. The resulting novel would be called Variable Star. Who’s read it? Oh, he’s certainly won Awards. More than be comfortably listed here. (CE) 
  • Born November 24, 1949 – Jim Warren, 71.  A hundred covers, two hundred twenty interiors.  Artbooks The Art of Jim Warren; Painted Worlds.  Here is All Flesh is Grass.  Here is Jimi Hendrix.  Here is a Disney-related image (JW is an official Disney artist).  He is self-taught.  [JH]
  • Born November 24, 1951 – Ruth Sanderson, 69.   Eight short stories, a score of covers, two dozen interiors for us; much other work outside our field.  Two Chesleys. World Fantasy Con 2011 Program Book.  Here is The Princess Bride.  Here is The Snow Princess.  Here is The Golden Key.  Here is The Twelve Dancing Princesses, in a grayscale coloring book for adults.  Here is her Little Engine That Could.  [JH]
  • Born November 24, 1957 — John Zakour, 63. For sheer pulp pleasure, I wholeheartedly recommend his Zachary Nixon Johnson PI series which he co-wrote with Larry Ganem. Popcorn reading at its very best. It’s the only series of his I’ve read, anyone else read his other books? (CE) 
  • Born November 24, 1957 — Denise Crosby, 63. Tasha Yar on Next Gen who got a meaningful death in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. I other genre work, She was on The X-Files as a doctor who examined Agent Scully’s baby. And I really like it that she was in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, as Denise, Bruno’s Moll. And she’s yet another Trek performer who’s popped doing what I call Trek video fanfic. She’s Dr. Jenna Yar in “ Blood and Fire: Part 2”, an episode of the only season of Star Trek: New Voyages. (CE)
  • Born November 24, 1957 — Jeff Noon, 63. Novelist and playwright. Prior to his relocation in 2000 to Brighton, his stories reflected in some way his native though not birth city of Manchester. The Vurt sequence whose first novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award is a very odd riff off Alice in Wonderland that Noon describes as a sequel to those works. Noon was the winner of the Astounding Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer. (CE) 
  • Born November 24, 1965 — Shirley Henderson, 55. She was Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She was Ursula Blake in “Love & Monsters!”, a Tenth Doctor story, and played Susannah in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, a film that’s sf because of the metanarrative aspect. (CE)

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Lio shows why you never got that flying saucer as a kid. 
  • Lio also prompts this note to self: Avoid horror movie pop-up books.
  • Pearls Before Swine discusses the challenges of writing during the lockdown.
  • Off the Mark has an X-ray vision of a Thanksgiving Day truth.

(11) DOCTOROW. Register at the link to watch Cory Doctorow’s talk on “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism” — 2020 Beaverbrook Annual Lecture Part 2 on November 30 at 12:00 Eastern. A live Q&A session will follow.

His lecture, “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism” will build from his recently published book of the same name, and will respond to the current state of surveillance capitalism through a critical analysis of technological and economic monopolies.

(12) CONTESTS OF NOTE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, Haben Kelati has a piece about contests for kids.  She lists three of them and I thought two were pertinent.

The Geek Partnership Society has a contest for kids to write poetry, comic books, or short stories with sf or fantasy elements, with prizes being $50-75 gift cards: Writing Contest – Geek Partnership Society.

NASA has a contest where kids imagine who they’d bring on an expedition to the Moon’s south pole and one piece of technology they’d leave on the Moon to help future astronauts.  Three first prizes get trips to see an Artemis-1 launch and nine second prizes get tours of the Johnson Space Center. Future Engineers :: Moon Pod Essay Contest.

(13) HE WAS FIRST. “2020 National Book Festival Highlights: Gene Luen Yang” includes video of Yang’s presentation.

When Gene Luen Yang was named the 2016-2018 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, the honor represented more than just recognition for his extraordinary work. It was also a profound acknowledgment of the importance of a genre that was once relegated to being mere comics.

Yang was the fifth National Ambassador, but the first graphic novelist to receive the honor.

The Library of Congress and the Children’s Book Council bestow the ambassadorship on a writer for his or her contributions to young people’s literature, the ability to relate to kids and teens, and a dedication to fostering children’s literacy.

In “Dragon Hoops” (First Second), Yang’s first nonfiction work, he turns the spotlight on his life, his family, basketball and the high school where he once taught. In “Superman Smashes the Klan” (DC Comics), a Chinese-American teenager awakens to find his house surrounded by the Klan of the Fiery Kross.

In the video Yang recorded exclusively for the Library, he speaks eloquently about the importance of libraries in disseminating stories: “Libraries are the keepers of stories. Stories define culture, right? Whether or not we have hopeful culture or a culture that’s mired in despair is completely up to the stories that we tell. It’s completely up to the stories that are taken care of by our libraries, that are collected and disseminated by our libraries.”

(14) WELCOME TO AARP. My fellow geezers, here’s a chance to play the video games of your youth without that Atari console you wouldn’t have anyway because if you did you’d have sold it by now. “Atari Video Games – Classics Available To Play Online”. Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong.

(15) CALCULUS OR BUST. In the Washington Post, education columnist Jay Mathews says he is re-reading Have Space Suit, Will Travel and notes that Heinlein foresaw a dominance of “progressive education,” where students pick the courses of interest to them. “Progressive education hard to pin down because it’s everywhere”

…It is called progressive education. It took a beating in the 1950s, particularly from conservatives like Heinlein. In his novel, he describes a future time when humans are living on the moon and exploring the solar system, but the progressive commitment to student-centered learning in the United States has led to this class schedule described by the book’s hero, an ambitious high school sophomore:

“Social study, commercial arithmetic, applied English (the class had picked ‘slogan writing’ which was fun), handicrafts .?.?. and gym.” The school has no math classes beyond algebra and geometry, so the hero’s father persuades him to learn trigonometry and calculus on his own to pursue his dream of going to space.

…Heinlein died in 1988 at age 80.  He might be pleasantly surprised that in the real 21st century, even at a small-twon school like the one in his book, calculus is likely to be available, as well as college-level courses in chemistry and biology and reading of real literature.  My visits to schools often reveal that despite Heinlein’s doubts, progressive education has deepened learning with projects and topics relevant to students’ lives.

(16) IN DOUBTFUL TASTE. The New York Times wants to know “Why Were Canadians Warned Not to Let Moose Lick Their Cars?”

Visitors at a Canadian national park were greeted with a rather unusual digital road sign this weekend: “Do not let moose lick your car.”

The sign caught the imagination of the internet and led to questions like:

“What happens if a moose licks your car?”

“Is it really that big of a problem?”

And, perhaps most salient: “Exactly how would you stop them?”

As it turns out, the signs were put up by officials of Jasper National Park, in … Alberta, to try to stop moose from licking road salt off idling cars — a serious problem that can present dangers to the vehicles, the drivers and the moose.

Steve Young, a spokesman for the park, said … moose usually got their salt, a vital part of their diets, from salt licks… But the animals discovered that they could get the mineral from cars splashed with road salt. (It has begun snowing in Jasper, and salt can help melt ice on roads.) continues….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY.  In “Watch Dogs: Legion” on YouTube, Fandom Games says the future London portrayed in this series “is like now, only 20 percent more Elon Musk-ified.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, John Hertz, Michael Toman, Darah Chavey, James Davis Nicoll, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day John A Arkansawyer.]