The Libertarian Futurist Society has selected four finalists for the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.
This year’s finalists – first published between 1912 and 2003 – include novels by Poul Anderson and Charles Stross, a story by Rudyard Kipling, and a song by the Canadian rock group Rush.
Orion Shall Rise, a 1983 novel (Timescape) by frequent Prometheus winner Poul Anderson, was a Best Novel finalist. It explores the corruptions and temptations of power and how a free society might survive and thrive after an apocalypse. The story is set on a post-nuclear-war Earth with four renascent but very different civilizations in conflict over the proper role of technology. While sympathetic to all four civilizations and playing fair to all sides, Anderson focuses on forward-thinking visionaries who dream of reaching for the stars while trying to revive the forbidden nuclear technology that destroyed their now-feudal, empire-dominated world. Most intriguing: the depiction of a libertarian society with minimal government operating in formerly western Canada, Alaska and the United States.
“As Easy as A.B.C.,” by Rudyard Kipling (first published 1912 in London Magazine), the second of his “airship utopia” stories and one of the earliest examples of libertarian/liberal SF, envisions a 21st-century world founded on free travel, the rule of law, privacy, individual self-sufficiency, and an inherited abhorrence of crowds. Officials of the Aerial Board of Control, essentially a non-repressive world government reluctant to exceed its limited power, are summoned to remote Chicago. The city has been convulsed by a small group’s demands to revive the nearly forgotten institution of democracy, with its historical tendencies toward majoritarian tyranny unlimited by respect for the rights of individuals and minorities. The cautionary tale is most notable for its bitter condemnation of lynching, racism and mob violence.
“The Trees,” a 1978 song by Rush, was released on the Canadian rock group’s album “Hemispheres.” With lyrics by Neil Peart and music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, this was a rare Top-40 rock hit conceived in the fantasy genre. The song warns against coerced equality in a beast fable – or in this case, a “tree fable.” Peart poetically presents a nature-based fable of envy, “oppression” and misguided revolution motivated by a radical true-believer ideology of coercive egalitarianism. The survival and individuality of both agitating Maples and lofty Oaks are threatened when a seemingly “noble law” is adopted in the forest to keep the trees “equal by hatchet, axe and saw.”
Singularity Sky, a 2003 novel (Ace Books) by Charles Stross, dramatizes the ethics and greater efficacy of freedom in an interstellar 25th century as new technologies trigger radical transformation – strikingly beginning with advanced aliens dropping cell phones from the sky to grant any and all wishes. Blending space opera with ingenious SF concepts (such as artificial intelligence, bioengineering, self-replicating information networks and time travel via faster-than-light starships), the kaleidoscopic saga explores the disruptive impact on humanity as various political-economic systems come into contact. Stross weaves in pro-freedom and anti-war insights as a man and woman, representing Earth’s more libertarian culture and anarchocapitalist economy based on private contracts, interact with a repressive and reactionary colony, its secret police and its military fleet.
In addition to the above finalists, the Prometheus Hall of Fame Finalist Judging Committee considered six other nominees: “Death and the Senator,” a 1961 short story by Arthur C. Clarke; That Hideous Strength, a 1945 novel by C.S. Lewis; ”Ultima Thule,” a 1961 novella by Mack Reynolds; The Demon Breed, a 1968 novel by James H. Schmitz; Between the Rivers, a 1998 novel by Harry Turtledove;and “Conquest by Default,” a 1968 novelette by Vernor Vinge.
The final vote will take place in mid-2025. All Libertarian Futurist Society members are eligible to vote. The award will be presented at a major science fiction convention and/or online.
Hall of Fame nominees may be in any narrative or dramatic form, including prose fiction, stage plays, film, television, other video, graphic novels, song lyrics, or epic or narrative verse; they must explore themes relevant to libertarianism and must be science fiction, fantasy, or related speculative genres.
First presented in 1979 (for Best Novel) and presented annually since 1982, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between liberty and power, favor private social cooperation over legalized coercion, expose abuses and excesses of obtrusive government, critique or satirize authoritarian ideas, or champion individual rights and freedoms as the mutually respectful foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, civility, and civilization itself.
The awards include gold coins and plaques for the winners for Best Novel, Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame), and occasional Special Awards.
The Prometheus Award is one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently in sf.
Nominations for the 2026 Hall of Fame Award can be submitted to committee chair William H. Stoddard (halloffame@lfs.org) at any time up to Sept. 30, 2025. All LFS members are eligible to nominate.
The LFS welcomes new members who are interested in speculative fiction and the future of freedom. More information is available at our website, lfs.org and on the Prometheus blog (lfs.org/blog).
Netflix is looking toward Discord for help in figuring out who, exactly, is leaking unreleased footage from some of its popular shows. The Northern District of California court issued a subpoena on Thursday to compel Discord to share information that can help identify a Discord user who’s reportedly involved in leaking episodes and images from Netflix shows like Arcane and Squid Game.
Documents filed alongside the subpoena specifically call out an unreleased and copyrighted image from the second season of Squid Game, posted by a Discord user @jacejohns4n. In an interview linked on the user’s now deleted X account, published on Telegram, the leaker claimed responsibility for the self-described “worst leak in streaming history,” where episodes of Arcane, Heartstopper, Dandadan, Terminator Zero, and other shows were published online. Netflix confirmed in August that a post production studio was hacked.
“One of our post production partners has been compromised and footage from several of our titles has unfortunately leaked online. Our team is aggressively taking action to have it taken down,” a Netflix representative told press at the time….
…The documents filed in November do not necessarily indicate a lawsuit; Digital Millennium Copyright Act laws allow copyright holders to file DMCA subpoenas without attached lawsuits. Copyright holders use this tactic to identify anonymous users on platforms like Discord, YouTube, X, and Reddit. Discord is currently fighting South Korean publisher Nexon over “improper and overly burdensome” DMCA subpoenas. “Discord is committed to fulfilling its obligations under the law, but acting as your copyright assertion partner is not one of them,” a Discord lawyer wrote to Nexon in a letter published as part of the case….
(2) BALLOONS, BEARS AND MORE, OH MY! [Item by Daniel Dern.] While driving over the weekend, listening to the radio, I happened to happen (on one of our local NPR stations) on part 1 (of 2) of Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics one-hour podcasts on the Macy’s Day Parade. Episode 1 started with “what does the parade cost,” and, while not answering that question, went into a fascinating look at the logistics, history (early on they had live bears!), getting/making a float, etc. (Part 2 is/will be “brick’n’mortar” which I may pass on)
(3) PILE HIGH YOUR MT. TSUNDOKU. NPR compiled a list of 351 “Books We Love” from 2024. Sixty-two of them are science fiction and fantasy.
NPR’s annual, interactive reading guide – is back with over 350 new recommendations from 2024. Discover picks by NPR staffers, including Ari Shapiro, Nina Totenberg, Eric Deggans, Steve Inskeep, Linda Holmes, and trusted critics such as Fresh Air’s Maureen Corrigan.
…Brian Collins writes fearlessly, expressing opinions that seem heartfelt even when they go against the public consensus. Some of their iconoclasm can likely be chalked up to the hotheadedness of youth — but at the same time, this willingness to disregard tin gods can lead to interesting insight. This is most evident when they tackle more complex matters in their Observatory editorials. Their piece on Starship Troopers is one of our favourite critiques of Heinlein published in recent memory. To quote from the editorial:
“Starship Troopers is one of the most famous and misremembered “canonical” SF novels; and unfortunately, no matter how you look at it, it also set a horrible precedent from which the genre still has not recovered. It’s totally possible the genre will never recover from such an impact so long as there are creative minds in the field (and by extension likeminded readers) who believe in Heinlein’s argument: that sometimes extermination is the only option.”
…When Paul Tazewell, costume designer for Wicked, was creating his own shoes for this year’s film, he went back to the original source material for inspiration. And it turns out, Baum never intended for those shoes to be red at all.
“They’re not ruby,” Tazewell tells PEOPLE of the original shoes. “In the book, they were these odd little silver boots.”
But because The Wizard of Oz was made in technicolor for 1939, the studio wanted to take advantage of the ability to showcase the many colors it had at its disposal, so Gilbert Adrian, costume designer for MGM, strayed outside the 1900 novel by L. Frank Baum.
Tazewell took the original book concept as his starting point and went from there….
…Earlier today, BBC revealed it’ll be re-releasing 1969’s “The War Games,” the final 10-part black-and-white serial that made up Doctor Who’s sixth season. That’d be notable on its own, but the network’s going the extra step by presenting it in color for the first time. In the serial, the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and Companions Jamie and Zoe learn an alien called the War Lord has plucked soldiers from Earth history and brainwashed them into fighting each other so he can use the survivors as an army to conquer the galaxy. In the decades since, it’s been dubbed one of the most important Who episodes, and we were pretty high on the cliffhanger for its penultimate episode back in 2010.
But this new version of “War Games” isn’t just getting a splash of color, it’s also coming with an updated score and visuals. Interestingly, those changes may also affect how the Doctor regenerates into Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor. Whereas the original version is a trippy, almost nightmarish sequence as he’s forced into his new look and pleads for the transformation to stop, the trailer for the technicolor airing hints at a process more in line with the show’s now default glowing flames around his body….
The Simpsons’ Ray Bradbury-inspired horror and sci-fi anthology episode strikes gold with clever parodies, concise writing, and hilarious gags.
The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror” specials were certainly the animated series’ first foray into anthology storytelling, but hardly the only time that they’ve dipped their toe into this water. 36 seasons in, The Simpsons has done “Simpsons Bible Stories,” “Simpsons Tall Tales,” “Simpson Christmas Stories,” and even “Thanksgiving of Horror.”…
… “Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes,” unsurprisingly, is an ode to Ray Bradbury, which the episode fully embraces. In many ways, it’s a successful counterpoint to “Treehouse of Horror IV’s” Night Gallery influence, except this time it’s riffing on Bradbury rather than Rod Serling. The episode’s triptych of supernatural societal stories is cleverly divided into different decades — the 1950s, an exaggerated sci-fi-skewing present, and a dystopian future — which makes for a strong enough structure that allows The Simpsons to flex its prophetic muscle, while it also wryly mocks the past and the present. It’s also a smart decision to use Lisa as the audience to the Illustrated Man’s (Andy Serkis) stories. Lisa is the one who listens to these subversive stories, but she’s not the protagonist in all three vignettes….
(8) A REASON FOR VIEWING. Abigail Nussbaum’s “Recent Movie Roundup 37” at Asking the Wrong Questions contains a highly qualified recommendation for Coppola’s Megalopolis.
..But for all of these problems—and without, to be clear, even suggesting that Megalopolis is not a bad movie—it must also be noted that it is not at all boring to watch. Partly this is simply because the cast—which also includes Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, and Robert De Niro—commit fully to the material no matter how absurd or nonsensical (Plaza, in particular, sinks her teeth into her rather iffy character with the zeal of a lion tearing meat off freshly-killed prey). Partly it’s that there are some beautiful images—Driver and Emmanuel balancing on steel beams among the city’s skyscrapers, building-sized statues of classical virtues collapsing in despair, human silhouettes flashing, stories tall, on the sides of buildings as a disaster strikes the city. But mostly, I think, it’s that Megalopolis is like no other movie you have seen or are likely to see, so obviously the product of a singular vision—and of that vision’s limitations, of time and age taking their toll on what was once a sharp talent—that you can’t help but appreciate it. It’s a terrible movie, but one that is terrible in its own, entirely unique way….
(9) TODAY’S DATE.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Born November 25, 1926 — Poul Anderson. (Died 2001.)
By Paul Weimer: One of my heart authors in the classical mode of SF is Poul Anderson, not far behind Zelazny and Vance in that ranking. My first known encounter with Poul Anderson’s work was, interestingly enough, Boat of a Million Years in 1989, years after my first encounters with Zelazny and Vance and the only one of the three I picked up as a grown up, first. I think there was a favorable couple of blurbs that got me interested. Unlike Vance and Zelazny, my older brother wasn’t into Anderson, so I missed him in my early SF education. But after reading Boat of a Million Years, about a set of immortals living through history (Highlander style!), I started seeking out his work, both his fantasy and his larger oeuvre of science fiction. I had loved the episodic historical vignettes of the characters as they live throughout human history, and I wanted more. I was hooked, friends.
I quickly found the theme of a lot of Anderson’s work: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” seems to be the keystone of what his characters try to do, time and again, across time and space. And his characters do that, be they time patrol veterans, heroes living through history, Imperial officers trying to stave off the end of their empire, or post-apocalyptic sea captains exploring and making contact with other societies trying to rebuild Earth. The odds may be stacked, the game may seemingly be doomed, but Anderson’s heroes plod on, doing the best that they can. (Kind of reminds you of Prince Corwin of Zelazny’s Amber, doesn’t it?)
And I found the historical motifs and how they add into his worldbuilding to be immersive, detailed and utterly enthralling. He does this in novels, both SFnal (such as his time patrol and other time travel novels) and historical fiction (such as The Golden Slave) where we are set in ancient and even prehistoric times. He does this also in imaginary societies as well. His Maurai novels and stories (such as Orion Shall Rise) are set on a future post-apocalyptic Earth, and Anderson has had a lot of fun in reimagining and mixing customs, societies and ideas from the past into his future world’s new civilizations. An overseas Empire very much like the British Empire–but run by the Polynesians. Raiders and brigands form the heartland of what was once America…but ones that use airships. He does this elsewhere, throughout his work, I could go all day with his historical motifs, but will just list one more for space: his Dominic Flandry portion of his future space history is very clearly an Empire in the Roman model…and Dominic Flandry is desperately trying to stave off its collapse, with plots, motifs and gambits taken from actual Roman history a plenty.
The more you read, the more you know, the deeper the work of Poul Anderson becomes. (The power of the story “Uncleftish Beholding”, for example, where he describes a nuclear test just using Anglo-Saxon words, shows his power with linguistics. And I haven’t even touched the sadness of The Broken Sword, the absolutely fun of A Midsummer’s Tempest, the genre-defining Three Hearts and Three Lions, and much more. His Science Fiction is his major chord, but his fantasy is definitely present as a noticeable minor chord in the fugue of his work.
My favorite Poul Anderson story is the one I keep coming back to, again and again and again. I consider it one of the definitive and best time travel stories ever written. No, it’s not “Delenda Est”, where Manse Everard must fix history after rogue time travels make Rome lose to Hannibal. That might get second place. No, my pride of place must go to “Flight to Forever”, where an inventor finds that going backwards is much harder (and after a certain amount of time, seemingly impossible) and so goes ever more forward into the future, looking for a way back to his home timeline. It’s got strange future societies, a tragic love story, immersive detail and worldbuilding, and a sympathetic and engaging and driven main character. It does everything that Anderson does, in one novella length piece.
Besides his SFF writing, Anderson wrote poetry, helped found the Society for Creative Anachronism, was trained as a physicist, and also wrote and sang filk, primarily with his wife. If the title Renaissance Man means anything, it is he who can claim it. Sadly, and tragically, I never met him in person. More happily given just how big his oeuvre is, both in short stories and in novels, there is still plenty of Poul Anderson I have not yet read. I plan to, next year for File 770, start tackling the NESFA Press collections of Anderson like I did with the Zelazny. Watch the skies!
Q: Is it morally correct to stay seated until the end of the credits in a cinema?
I’ve thought about this question my entire adult life! I think a lot of other people have, too. But to answer it, we have to think about what movie credits do, and why they’re there at all….
…It does seem like studios want you to watch all the credits, at least for their biggest movies. How can I tell? Because movies from Marvel and DC insert scenes after the credits roll that fill in key details about an upcoming sequel, or contain Easter eggs for fans of the franchise. Not everyone will stay, but people invested in the ongoing story will. And in a theater, you can’t just fast-forward through the credits to watch that post-credits scene….
In the realm of innovative furniture design, dragon-inspired sofas have emerged as one of the most exciting trends, blending fantasy with luxury. These extraordinary seating pieces are not just functional but also serve as bold statement pieces for any home or lounge area. Dragon sofas, with their plush textures, intricate details, and mythological symbolism, bring an enchanting and otherworldly element to any space. Whether you’re a fantasy lover or simply want a unique centrepiece for your living room, these dragon sofas offer the perfect combination of comfort and style….
Well, the verdict is in. The Moon is not made of green cheese after all.
A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. This, researchers hope, will help settle a long debate about whether the Moon’s inner heart is solid or molten, and lead to a more accurate understanding of the Moon’s history – and, by extension, that of the Solar System….
… They made several interesting findings. Firstly, the models that most closely resembled what we know about the Moon describe active overturn deep inside the lunar mantle.
This means that denser material inside the Moon falls towards the center, and less dense material rises upwards. This activity has long been proposed as a way of explaining the presence of certain elements in volcanic regions of the Moon. The team’s research adds another point in the “for” tally of evidence.
And they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth – with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That’s about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon.
The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That’s very close to the density of iron….
Firefly Aerospace’s moon lander is ready for its upcoming lunar voyage.
The company announced its Blue Ghost lunar lander completed environmental testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in mid-October and is now ready to be shipped to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA and SpaceX plan to launch the lander from Launch Complex 39A atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a six-day window that opens no earlier than mid-January 2025. The mission is known as “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”Blue Ghost will carry a variety of payloads to the moon, some of which are in support of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. CLPS pairs scientific payloads developed by NASA with commercial lunar landers headed for the moon on private missions….
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Jim Janney says, “I know Worldcon is over, and this doesn’t seem to have any fannish connection, but it’s too good not to pass on.” Quite so! Enjoy the Haggis Wildlife Foundation’s documentary: “The Elusive Scottish Haggis”. (Is there any other kind?)
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Paul Weimer, Daniel Dern, Jim Janney, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
(1) DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE. Paul Lynch’s book Prophet Song, set in a near future Ireland, is the 2024 Fiction Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Lynch’s novel also received the Booker in 2023.
(2) THE BOOKSHELF IS THEIR COSTAR. Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin have launched a weekly newsletter called Shelfies, in which they get people to talk about their favorite bookshelf, and their connection with the books on it. Shurin declares, “It is unashamedly us snooping at people’s shelves.”
Take a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves! We love books – and we’re the sort of people who love checking out other people’s collections! With Shelfies, we’ve asked a wide range of readers, authors and collectors from all walks of life to share not just their shelves with us – but the books that changed them.
From novelists to video game designers, scientists and film makers, and from London to Singapore, Ghana, Australia and New York and all points in between, Shelfies is a unique dose of book love directly into your inbox – sharing our love of books, with you.
(4) SFPA OFFICER ELECTION RESULTS. Starting January 1, 2025, Diane Severson Mori will be Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association.
Science fiction often begins with a question of “what if”? And in 1960, Poul Anderson asked just such a question: What if aliens attempting to invade the Earth encountered a troop of medieval knights? And what if the knights won the ensuing struggle? This is the premise of The High Crusade, one of the most offbeat and entertaining science fiction novels of the early 1960s….
“Tonight We’re Wearing Waste Bags” by Elena Sichrovsky; Music by Patrick Urn; Read by Jenna Hanchey
“Dreamer, Passenger, Partner by Colin Alexander; Music by Phog Masheeen; Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier
Theme music by Dain Luscombe
(7) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Anniversary: The Running Man (1987)
By Paul Weimer: Possibly the best of the Schwarzenegger SF movies of the late 1980’s. Yes, better than The Terminator, better than Predator, possibly on a par with Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The Running Man remains a biting satire of fascism, authoritarianism, consumerism, game shows, and a whole lot more.
The authoritarian hellhole that the United States, using violent game shows as an opiate to the masses is really on point, decades later, rather more plausible than ever. Some of the best (and by best, I mean scary) are some of the commercials and interstitial bits in between the actual Running Man show. The show where a man climbs a rope, trying to grab dollars with a vicious pack of dogs underneath him…or the neo-Puritanism revealed when an announcer shockingly reveals Amber may have had several lovers in a year.
Arnold strides through this film and carries it on his charisma, as a package deal with Richard Dawson, who plays Damon Killan as an evil version of his Family Feud persona. They have the best rapport and the movie sings when they finally meet each other. (I was surprised on a rewatch how long the movie actually takes to put the two of them in the same room as each other). I also think the movie hits the right level of action, adventure, social commentary, and humor.
And then there are the betting pool scenes. Long before betting truly has taken over sports, and a lot of other things, the betting on the TV show seemed to me at the time to be “over the top” (who would bet on a game show)? Naive me didn’t believe it…but in the years since, it makes absolute and corrosive sense that the general public would in fact bid on the game show and the deaths on the show. I mean, if The Running Man was made today, Draftkings would be advertising on The Running Man.
Sadly, given recent events…I think it might be too naive in thinking that the ending, where the crimes of the state being revealed lead to revolution and change, can actually be realistic in this day and age. But I can dream, right?
I don’t have any Egyptian looking trinkets in my collection, so this Olmec head my Dad brought back from Mexico years ago will have to do.
…“Remember, girls, we are looking for the Lost Tomb of Sibor. Scorpia, since your people hail from the Crimson Waste, you have knowledge of this wasteland that the Horde lacks…”
“Yes, but…”
“So I get why you need Scorpia. But why am I here, Shadow Weaver?”
“Because you are Force Captain, Catra. And because Scorpia didn’t want to go without you.”
“I’ll get you for this, Scorpia.”
“So lead the way, Scorpia. You do know where the tomb is, don’t you?”
“Yes, but… I don’t think this is a good idea, Shadow Weaver. The Tomb of Sidor is an accursed place. My people shun it and never go there.”
“Silly barbaric superstition. The Tomb of Sidor contains something of great value to the Horde and I mean to retrieve it for Lord Hordak. And now go, Scorpia. Take us to the Tomb.”
“Yes, but it’s your funeral.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Hush, Catra, she’ll hear you.”…
(10) WET WORK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It may be that there are sub-surface mini-seas on some of the moons of Uranus!
The Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986 revealed an unusually off-centred planetary magnetic field. Nine US and one Brit researchers have now re-examined the Voyager Solar wind data set. It reveals that Uranus was hit by a Solar windstorm at the time of the craft’s encounter with the planet. This Solar windstorm offset the planet’s magnetic field.
Similar observations in the Saturn system reveal that when its moons with sub-ice surface water orbit outside of the protection of Saturn’s magnetic field, probes cannot detect water-group ions; this is because they have been swept away by the Solar wind. The researchers therefore hypothesise that the absence of water-group ions when Voyager 2 passed by might not be due to an absence of moons sub-surface water but due to the Solar windstorm that was raging at the time that swept those ions away. It could be that some of Uranus’ moons do have sub-surface water. They hypothesise that Uranus’s two outer moons, Titania and Oberon, are more likely candidates for harbouring liquid water oceans.
Were Heathcliff to roam the blustery moors around Wuthering Heights today, he might be interrupted by a ping on his cellphone saying something like this: The wind is raging, so power is cheap. It’s a good time to plug in the car.
OK. So the 18th-century literary occupants of these windswept hills received no such pings.
But Martin and Laura Bradley do. They live in Halifax, an old mill town below the wuthering, or windy, heights of West Yorkshire. And when a squall kicks up, producing a surplus of electricity from wind turbines on the moor, their phones light up with a notification, like one that informed them of a 50 percent discount one Saturday in October….
…Octopus Energy, the country’s biggest electricity supplier, runs nine wind turbines on those hills. When it’s gusty, and power is abundant, it offers discounts. The Bradleys say they save upward of 400 pounds ($517) a year. Octopus says it not only attracts customers but also persuades communities that they benefit from new energy infrastructure.
“We’ve got these famously bleak, windy hills,” said Greg Jackson, the company’s chief executive. “We wanted to demonstrate to people that wind electricity is cheaper, but only when you use it when it’s windy.”…
(12) THE DEATHS FROM TROPICAL STORMS AND HURRICANES IN THE USA HAVE BEEN GREATLY UNDERESTIMATED. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In climate-change science fiction, people die in major climate events: cf. the film The Day After Tomorrow or the climate fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson.
In the real world, people die all the time and this enables demographers to calculate the number of expected deaths. Usually only a score or more deaths are associated with US tropical storms. These are due to obvious things like drownings or being hit by wind-blown debris.
Two US demographers have now looked the number of excess deaths (those above the expected death rate) between 1930 and 2015. They have found that there are an average of 7,000 – 11,000 excess deaths in the months following a tropical storm or hurricane. These deaths are mainly from infants (less than 1 year of age), people 1 – 44 years of age, and the black population. (Presumably the elderly were safe in a refuge while young adults were protecting property and so in harm’s way? But the very elderly also took a big hit.) The researchers did not look at the death certificates of all (around 100,000) those excess deaths over this eight-and-a-half decade period and so do not know exactly what it was they died of. This, they say, needs to be the subject of future research.
A Disney Holiday Short: The Boy & The Octopus follows the journey of a child who discovers a curious octopus has attached to his head during a seaside vacation. After returning home, the boy forms a true friendship with the octopus by introducing his new companion to his life on land — harnessing the power of the Force with his Jedi lightsaber, playing with his Buzz Lightyear action figure, and imagining Santa Claus’ route around the world with the map on his wall — before taking the lovable octopus out into the world to experience the joy of the holidays, hidden under his Mickey Mouse beanie….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cora Buhlert, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]
A regrettable reminder to wish a dead comic book friend happy birthday sent me down a Marvel memories rabbit hole, reminding me of what it was like to know Stan Lee before he had hair, the cherry pie that almost got me fired, the day Archie Goodwin did parkour across Bullpen furniture, Len Wein turning us into a Mickey Mouse operation, Marie Severin’s most inventive prank, my faux fight with Don McGregor, performing Time Square guerrilla theater with Steve Gerber, the time I was on Candid Camera (or was I?), and more.
A mid-’70s Marvel Bullpen pic of Scott Edelman in Mickey Mouse ears with Irene Vartanoff, Chris Claremont, Bonnie Smith, and Roger Slifer.
(2) REMEMBERING JOHN NIELSEN-HALL. Motorway Dreams, a publication of the late John Nielsen-Hall’s collected fan writing, has been released as an Ansible Editions ebook on the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund site. It’s a free download, however, they hope you will be moved to use the donation button and contribute to the informal fan fund associated with his favorite convention, The Corflu Fifty.
John Nielsen-Hall was first active in UK fandom from the late 1960s to the late 1970s as a central member of London’s iconoclastic “Ratfandom”; in the early days he signed himself John Hall or John N. Hall. He returned to fandom in the 1990s, participating in email lists, and in 2005 began to publish again with Motorway Dreamer, a title he’d chosen early in his fan career but never before used. Motorway Dreams echoes this title and (in the cover lettering) his fondness for Comic Sans. It’s an eclectic mixture ranging from knockabout Ratfan reminiscences and convention reports to travelogues and thoughts on rock music, living with John Brunner and his wife Marjorie (an uninhibited and much admired memoir), Buddhism (which he adopted during his long absence from fandom), big cars, collecting ancient artefacts, the horrors of dialysis, and even some literary criticism. He died in September 2024 and is much missed. This collection was assembled as a memorial.
Over 66,000 words. Cover artwork by Harry Bell from Motorway Dreamer #3 (2006) ed. John Nielsen-Hall.
…When a fictional starship is designed badly, it’s usually because the ship in question is part of a sci-fi project that’s as bad as it is. And yet the worst sci-fi starship ever created is, somehow, not part of the worst piece of science fiction ever made. It’s on a kind of good, new science fiction series called The Ark….
…The Ark is set in a future where the Earth is rapidly becoming uninhabitable. The whys and hows of this aren’t all that important and aren’t fully explored by the show. What matters is that humans need a new home and so The Ark program was conceived to build ships that would take us somewhere else.
The series begins aboard Ark One, flying through space mid-mission. The crew is in stasis for the long voyage, there’s a disaster, and most of the command crew is killed. The survivors wake up, and the only people left are junior officers and civilians….
The aesthetic failures of this design could be dismissed as being due to an attempt at realism. That excuse won’t work, because that’s not what’s going on.
For instance, those spinning rings may look like they are there to create gravity with centrifugal force. They aren’t. This is where the stasis pods were kept. Once everyone wakes up, they never go in that section of the ship again. Instead the crew spends all its time in the parts of the ship without any gravity creating spin, and yet there seems to be plenty of gravity in them.
So why the spinning rings then? No idea, they’re just there and no one on the ship ever mentions them.
That’s the case with most of Ark One. Nothing about it serves any purpose. The Ark’s hero ship is a bunch of non-specific pieces jammed together for no reason. The people inside the ship don’t seem to know most of it, outside of the command area at the front and the very strange biodome on top exists.
The biodome, by the way, also makes no sense. When running out of food, the crew decides to grow crops in there, because it’s a big open space. Why was a big, empty, exposed, dome-shaped area on top of the ship? It’s never addressed….
…It’s also unclear why the ship has stasis pods or why the entire crew was sleeping in them. Once the accident wakes them up, they seem to be able to activate the ship’s hyperspace drive and get almost anywhere in a few days or hours. In fact, along their journey, they encounter other identically ugly and stupid Arks, all of which have fully active and awake crews….
After graduating from UCLA in 1983, David Silverman worked as a freelance illustrator and animator until, in 1987, he landed a job animating on The Tracey Ullman Show — where The Simpsons began. Animating on all 48 shorts led to David directing the first shows of The Simpsons. Starting with the Christmas Special in December 1989, and then the premiere episode the following month, David soon became Supervising Animation Director and a producer on The Simpsons. All told, he has directed 24 episodes and has won 4 Emmys along the way.
When no one was looking, David snuck away from The Simpsons to work at DreamWorks (The Road to El Dorado – co-director), Pixar (Monsters, Inc. – co-director), and Blue Sky (Ice Age, Robots – writing and boarding). But, he came back to the show full-time at the end of 2003 and directed The Simpsons Movie. In 2012, David directed and co-wrote the short film The Longest Daycare about Maggie Simpson, which earned him an Academy Award nomination.
(5) A MONSTER’S DOZEN. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s roundup of recent young adult books includes some genre related works: “Young adult books roundup – reviews”.
Liz Hyder won the older readers’ category in the Waterstones children’s book prize for her memorable debut Bearmouth. Now, in The Twelve (Pushkin), Kit and her friend Story must travel back in time to find Kit’s sister, who goes missing close to an ancient stone circle on the eve of the winter solstice. Channelling the dark menace of classic British fantasy writers such as Susan Cooper and Alan Garner, this is a beguiling tale of ancient magic, good and evil, deeply rooted in the Welsh landscape. Haunting illustrations by Tom de Freston add to the eerie atmosphere….
…The trailer culminates with its tensest moment: President Ross collapsing to the ground at what looks like a White House press conference, holding out his hand as he begins to transform. He then emerges from flames as the Red Hulk.
“You want me? Come and get me!” Sam [Wilson] taunts as he faces off against the newly morphed president before a backdrop of D.C.’s famous blossoming cherry trees.
(7) BRUCE BOSTON (1943-2024). Poet Bruce Boston died November 11. His wife, Marge Simon, announced his passing saying, “He is at peace, it was his wish. If you would like to donate a couple of dollars or more to your local Humane Society, that would be wonderful.”
While best known for his poetry, Boston also publishedmore than a hundred short stories and the novels Stained Glass Rain and The Guardener’s Tale, the latter a Bram Stoker Award Finalist.
Boston has won the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award for speculative poetry a record seven times, and the Asimov’s Readers’ Award for poetry a record seven times. He has also received a record four Bram Stoker Awards for solo poetry collections, and was named SFPA’s first Grand Master in 1999.
He was the poet guest of honor at the World Horror Convention in 2013.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Anniversary: Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest (1974)
This is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication by Doubleday (cover art by Tom Lewis) ofPoul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest.
Let’s raise a tankard of our favorite beverage on honor of the author who wrote it and the work itself.
It would win the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and be nominated for the Locus, Nebula and World Fantasy awards as well.
THESE MAY BE SPOILERS. THINK OF THEM AS PIXELS SLEEPING UNDERFOOT.
It was in a world where Shakespeare was the Great Historian, all the events depicted within his plays were historical fact. Some of the plays depicted technology more advanced than existed then, Anderson just said that this world was more technologically advanced than our world. And the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are also part of this world.
The novel takes place in the era of Cromwell and Charles I, but the characters deal with the English Civil War which is coeval with an Industrial Revolution.
This is under spoilers for an obvious reason — One of the guards sent to escort Jennifer when she is being used as bait in a trap for the catching of Prince Rupert is named “Nehemiah Scudder”. That was the name of the First Prophet in Heinlein’s “If This Goes On—” first serialized in 1940 in Astounding Science-Fiction.
The Old Phoenix tavern here appears in several of Poul Anderson’s short stories as a nexus between worlds.
I ASSUME YOU AVOIDED WAKING ANY OF THE PIXELS? GOOD? YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.
Lester Del Rey said in his August 1974 If review that it is “a fantasy I can recommend with pleasure.”
It is available in print and digital editions.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
F Minus warns this is what book reading might soon be like.
One of Stephen King‘s earliest short stories, “Here There Be Tygers,” has now been turned into an animated short film. King remains one of the most iconic and prolific horror authors of all time, writing novels like It, Carrie, The Shining, and Misery, among others, as well as many short stories. “Here There Be Tygers” was first published in Ubris magazine in 1968 before appearing in his Skeleton Crew collection in 1985. King’s short story follows a third-grader who discovers a tiger hiding out in the school bathroom and the scary encounters that follow.
Dark Corners Films now releases an animated short film called Lily, which adapts the events of King’s “Here There Be Tygers.” The short film, which clocks in at just under 10 minutes, is told mostly in black-and-white, with splashes of bold red and green to help convey some of the story’s key themes and moments….
Marvel’s animated series What If…? returns in Season 3 for its culminating adventure through the multiverse. Watch as classic characters make unexpected choices that will mutate their worlds into spectacular alternate versions of the MCU. The Watcher (voice of Jeffrey Wright) will guide viewers as the series traverses new genres, bigger spectacles and incredible new characters….
…Season 3 features fan-favorite characters like Captain America/Sam Wilson, The Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes, Hulk/Bruce Banner, The Red Guardian, Captain Peggy Carter, Agatha Harkness, Shang-Chi, Storm the Goddess of Thunder, and numerous others….
(12) IT IS A QUESTION OF SCALE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In 1964, in a paper that looked at the hypothetical detectability of alien civilisations, Soviet physicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed a three-point scale – the Kardashev scale – for technological civilisations. It is an energy-based scale with type-1 Kardashev civilisations harnessing all the energy falling on their home planet, type-2 harnesses the entire energy output of their home star, and type-3, their galaxy.
Currently our planet is between 0 and 0.5 on the scale. (And thank goodness our galaxy does not host a type-3 civilisation…)
Physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time asks whether we will ever become a Type 1 civilisation. This means harnessing around 10,000 times more than we currently do to become a fully-fledged Type 1.
Warning: in the 20-minute vid Matt does refer to our ‘A.I. overlords’ and ‘A.I. successors’: I keep on telling people that the machines are taking over, but no-one ever listens… “How Can Humanity Become a Kardashev Type 1 Civilization?”
Imagine a world where humanity masters every planetary resource available to it – our first step on the famous Kardashev scale of technological advancement. How distant is that step? Will we even become a true Type-1 civilisation, and how can we get there?
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
(1) HAS DARK REGIONS PRESS REACHED THE END? Dark Regions Press is a small press founded by Joe Morey in 1985, specializing in horror and dark fiction. His son, Chris, is the current owner.
… With them also taking on the Dark Renaissance books when that venture folded, Dark Regions Press ended up as home to a lot of my material – more than fifteen books in total, and I was always happy to see it there, given the tremendous production values that the company put into their products, particularly the hardcovers…
So, from a purely selfish viewpoint, I’ve been mostly happy there.
But over the years there have been many rumblings of discontent, from both authors and customers, and it’s been getting increasingly hard for me to ignore them. I’ve pulled some of my work for them in recent years, and just last month was asking them to release rights back to me on some others… maybe my spidey-senses were tingling just enough to try to tell me something.
And now there’s the current shitshow.
The website is down, the company is up for sale (although my books are still being sold on the online sites), and Chris Morey, the owner, is incommunicado. I’ve seen reports of customers being over $1000 in the hole on preorders, and of people waiting for many years for books that now look like they’ll never arrive. I can’t begin to imagine how much money is owed, given the number of people I see complaining over the past few days. It’s turned into one of the all time great small press publishing clusterfucks.
Right now I’m trying to get in contact with them to find out exactly what’s going on, but I think this is the end of the line for me there whatever happens to them now.
Brian Keene remembers reporting issues with that publisher before:
During The Horror Show with Brian Keene’s final year, we factually detailed what an absolute tire fire Dark Regions Press was. As usual, many people yelled at us. Dave always took it personally when folks did that. You’re welcome to come to Vortex and apologize to his ashes.
It has come to our attention that Dark Regions Press has gone dark and their site has come down with no word to customers. We are aware that DRP owes a lot of books to a lot of customers. While Weird House is a separate entity from Dark Regions, many of you know that Chris at DRP is Joe’s son and that Joe used to own Dark Regions over a decade ago. As such, we feel compelled to make a statement and share what we know.
Some of you may be aware that Joe at Weird House was helping Dark Regions to fulfill some of the books they were behind on, including Transmissions from Punktown and Wolf Hunt 3. Weird House lent some of its resources to Chris to finish these books and fulfill orders. Small press is a tough business however, and we could only afford to help out so much. We had hoped that with the aid we lent to Chris and DRP the company could recover and make good on their commitments to customers. Unfortunately, Dark Regions seems to have needed more help than Weird House could afford to give.
As for what is happening with DRP, we honestly don’t know at the moment. We at Weird House were unaware of Dark Regions taking down their site. We only became aware of this when it was brought to our attention by a reader. Chris at DRP didn’t inform Joe or anyone else at Weird House of his intention to take down the site. At this point, we still don’t know the status of the company.
We wish that there was more we could do, but the truth is, Joe left Dark Regions many years ago. While we sympathize with those impacted by the actions of DRP, Chris and Dark Regions are responsible for their unfulfilled orders. We simply can’t afford to pay for the failings of another business because of a shared last name.
We will continue to share any information as it comes to us. Feel free to reach out to us via email or facebook messenger if you have any questions or concerns.
Book trilogies often suffer from second-book syndrome, with the middle installment feeling like a slow and unnecessary bridge between the opening and conclusion — though there are a few lucky trilogies where the second book is the best. Trilogies tend to struggle when it comes to balancing their stories, and when this happens, the middle typically suffers. This is why so many book trilogies peak with the first installment, though some manage to make a comeback during the finale, even after a lackluster second novel.
Then there are the rare trilogies that successfully navigate their second books, using them to raise the stakes and move the story forward ahead of the final chapter. In some cases, the middle novel is even the best of the series, as endings don’t always stick the landing….
At the top of their list:
1. The Farseer Trilogy By Robin Hobb (1995-1997)
Second Book: Royal Assassin
Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy is considered a fantasy classic, and while all three books deserve their reputations, Royal Assassin stands out as the best. The Farseer Trilogy tells the tale of Fitz, and it continues well beyond this series. But this trilogy sets the stage for the rest of the Elderlings books, and it does a compelling job of it. Assassin’s Apprentice is a great start, but the later books surpass it. Again, the first book in any trilogy bears the burden of introducing characters and world-building elements that make it slower and more difficult to get into.
(3) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Crypt Keeper taken from The Mystic Museum this weekend in Burbank, CA.
Walking through the doors of this boutique video game festival, you are immediately greeted by a bullet hell shoot-em-up with a painterly twist. In ZOE Begone!, you dodge and unleash attacks at blistering speed before the game erupts into a euphoric shower of pointillist colour, dazzling the eyes and punishing the thumbs. Next to it sits Left Upon Read; at first glance, a dark-fantasy Quake clone, but one that gives you the bizarre task of checking text messages on a smartphone as you slice your way through a dungeon. These are subversive games, taking well-worn design tropes and breaking them in witty, playful ways.
Rule-breaking is a major theme of Glasgow independent game festival, the latest iteration of an event previously known as Southside games festival. It took place last weekend at Civic House, nestled in the shadow of the M8, the concrete eyesore that carves through Glasgow and connects the city with the wider central belt. On display are more eccentric and smaller-budget games than those you see on shelves, all made by developers who either live within Glasgow or a short train ride away….
The Big Bang Theory wasn’t just a ratings juggernaut—it was a casting magnet for big names. But even the biggest magnets have their limits, as the show discovered with a few near misses that would have sent fan theories into overdrive….
…Forget the whispers of Harrison Ford as Professor Proton or Sandra Bullock as a mystery love interest. Big Bang almost landed a true legend: Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey). In an interview with TV Line, creator Chuck Lorre revealed his dream casting for the absentee Howard Wolowitz Sr.—Howard’s mysterious father….
(6) DEBORAH P KOLODJI (1959-2024). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association today announced the passing of its former president, Deborah P Kolodji, on July 21.
Deborah P. Kolodji
She was an integral part to the growth and continuance of the speculative poetry community and the SFPA. A lifelong champion and educator of short form poetry, Debbie was well-respected through many writing communities. Her influence, talent and passion will be missed. She was the creator of the Dwarf Stars Award, and we believe she remains a giant in the cosmos.
She was the inaugural recipient of SFPA President’s Lifetime Service Award in 2023. The citation told about her many career highlights:
[She was] the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group, the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America, and a member of the board of directors for Haiku North America. She has given hundreds of haiku workshops over the past 15 years and recorded two Poetry Pea videos, one on “Exaggerated Perspective” in haiku (which referenced scifaiku) and one on speculative haiku.
She has long been an advocate for speculative haiku and scifaiku, writing several articles for mainstream haiku journals, including one in Terry Ann Carter’s book, Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Literary Forms. She presented a talk on scifaiku at the 2007 Haiku North America in Ottawa as well as being on a haiku panel at the 2007 WorldCon in Montreal. She has given several scifaiku workshops at ConDor as well as participating in a scifaiku slam in San Diego.
The Dwarf Stars Award came out of Kolodji’s advocacy for short form poetry, and she edited several volumes of the Dwarf Stars anthology, including the first one. As SFPA president, she created Eye to the Telescope with Samantha Henderson, and co-edited the first issue. The Vice President position was added to the SFPA board under her administration, and the SFPA also held its first poetry contests.
A native Californian, she has a degree in mathematics from the University of Southern California. With over 1,000 published haiku to her name, her first full-length book of haiku and senryu, highway of sleeping towns, from Shabda Press, was awarded a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award from The Haiku Foundation. Her e-chapbook tug of a black hole won 2nd Place in the Elgin Awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. Her new book, Distance, was co-authored with Mariko Kitakubo of Tokyo. This book was written in a collaborative form called “Tan-ku,” a conversation in tanka and haiku, where the tanka were written by Mariko and the haiku by Deborah….
(7) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
1974 – A Midsummer’s Tempest by Poul Anderson.
By Paul Weimer: Shakespeare, no surprise, is extremely popular and common to reference, allude and outright steal from by science fiction and fantasy authors. And why not? The Bard’s work is immortal, after all, and while most of his work is not genre as we understand it, plenty of it touches upon or outright waltzes into fantasy. But what if everything that Shakespeare wrote was true, especially the fantastic bits. What if Shakespeare’s work were history, not fantasy and quasi-history? Faeries, wizards, ghosts and more were all established facts in the world?
That’s the conceit of Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer’s Tempest, fifty years old this year.
The setting is the early 17th century in this alternate world, and we are in the midst of the English Civil War. The Roundheads and the Cavaliers are in deadly contention. Charles the First is on the edge of defeat. Prince Rupert, in our timeline, is one of the most interesting characters of the period with a varied career ranging from Cavalry officer to colonial governor, and cousin to several English Monarchs. In this world and timeline, in the course of the book, he teams up with the ward of his captor (love, true love, friends) and together they go through a whirlwind set of plots involving Titania and Oberon, the books of Prospero, and a lot more in their efforts to try and preserve Charles I as king of England. Chases, escapes, magic, romance and much more.
And if you like cinematic universes and multiverses, this novel is also for you. This novel features The Old Phoenix, an inn that connects to multiple worlds in Anderson’s verse, and Rupert meets characters from other Anderson universes in the process. A decade before Heinlein tried it in Number of the Beast, the appearance of the Old Phoenix in A Midsummer’s Tempest helps knit together a lot of the fantastic verses and worlds of Anderson’s worlds.
Oh, and did I mention the characters speak in blank verse, and sometimes outright poetry, in the bargain, with plenty of allusions to a slew of Shakespeare’s plays in the bargain?
This is one of the lighter, funnier and confectionary of Anderson’s oeuvre. Some of his work can be fraught with doom, dark destiny and a vision of fighting against fate bravely but in vain. A Midsummer’s Tempest is the exception that proves the rule. The protagonists win, true love prevails, and the book ends in a proper marriage, Shakespeare style.
About the only other novel that even tries to come close to Anderson’s approach here is John M Ford’s The Dragon Waiting, which is pretty good company for A Midsummer’s Tempest to share.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
The Flying McCoys witness a communications breakthrough. Or is it breakdown.
The Far Side – “I have always wanted to pull over and read one of these tickets,” says John King Tarpinian.
(9) SCIENCE FICTION HOMEWORLDS ONE-DAY SPECIAL ON LEARNEDLEAGUE. [Item by David Goldfarb.] An SFF-related One-Day Special quiz appeared on LearnedLeague over the past weekend: Science Fiction Homeworlds. I got 8/12, which was good for 95th percentile since some of the ones I knew were relatively obscure to the LL community. (I didn’t do better because it branched out into media and video game franchises that I haven’t followed.)
Ryan Reynolds recently spoke to The New York Times ahead of the release of “Deadpool and Wolverine” and remembered the humble beginnings of his R-rated superhero franchise. The actor said the first “Deadpool” movie finally got off the ground at 20th Century Fox after he’d already spent a decade trying to get it made. Reynolds even paid out of pocket for his screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to be on set because the scrappier production was not that of a normal comic book tentpole.
“No part of me was thinking when ‘Deadpool’ was finally greenlit that this would be a success,” Reynolds said. “I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen: They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”…
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, David Goldfarb, Anne Marble, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]
“To my great embarrassment, I’ve just discovered that I have been holding onto your novel, HACKER, since February 1990”, read a letter to Noughts & Crosses author Malorie Blackman from the senior commissioning editor of Simon & Schuster, dated nearly two years later. “I’m afraid we are not publishing any teenage novels in the near future”. The printed letter, addressed to “Marlorie”, with the extra “r” struck through in pen, was one of 82 rejection letters the writer received before her first book was published.
Hole-punched and stored in a ring binder, the letter is now on display at a British Library exhibition about Blackman, who has gone on to write more than 70 books for children and young adults, including the million-selling Noughts & Crosses series. The rejections folder is one of the artefacts that the author is most excited for the public to see, she says. “I hope that does encourage people.”…
…The exhibition traces Blackman’s young adulthood: the Lewisham homeless shelter she lived in aged 13 is pictured; the comics she turned to as a “shield against the real world” are displayed. In the local library, which she says “saved my life”, she would read novels, including classic fiction – the likes of Jane Eyre. Later, at 22, she came across Walker’s The Color Purple – the first novel she had read that was written by a Black author and featured Black protagonists. “It had a profound effect on me,” says Blackman. “She was a Black woman author. They existed!”…
(2) MEDICAL UPDATE. Jane Yolen suffered a fall the other day and required surgery. Her daughter Heidi has been posting updates on Facebook and says the surgery went great.
Squid Game: The Challenge contestants are threatening legal action against Netflix and producers after claiming they were injured during the filming of the game show.
A British personal injuries law firm is representing two unnamed players who say they suffered hypothermia and nerve damage while shooting in cold conditions in the UK.
Express Solicitors said in a press statement that it had sent letters of claim to Studio Lambert, the co-producer of Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge.
The contestants’ allegations concern their experience shooting the show’s opening game ‘Red Light, Green Light,’ in which players must evade the attention of a menacing robotic doll.
Express Solicitors, which specializes in no win no fee claims, said its clients risked their health by having to stay motionless for long periods during the shoot as they attempted to stay in the competition….
(4) AUTHORS’ RIGHTS IN THE AGE OF AI. [Item by Francis Hamit.] The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society is the UK outfit that manages the Public Lending Right. I’ve been a member for several years and get regular payments for my photocopying royalties, something that does not exist in the U.S.
The ALCS’ two-page white paper “Authors and AI principles” is the most sensible thing I’ve seen yet about AI and Authors’ rights.
First on the list of principles:
1. Human authors should be compensated for their work and have transparent information of uses of their work – new technologies and types of uses should respect the established precedent that there must be fair payment for use and transparency regarding how works have been used.
There should be no use without payment. While many systems of remuneration reflect the ways in which we consume media at the time, the principles of copyright remain: that authors should share in the enjoyment of their work, especially financially. Licensing continues to be an effective way to adapt to, support and remunerate a wide range of uses of original works. As authors works are often used in ways to develop AI technology, authors must also have transparent information regarding when and how their work has been used….
…Fans are the lifeblood of any creative endeavour, but this is particularly powerful point for science fiction: were it not for the continued enthusiasm from fans then Doctor Who might have died never to be regenerated after initially leaving the air in 1989, or after the underperforming TV-movie in 1996 (starring the criminally underrated Paul McGann)….
…Along with the Doctor’s equally iconic TARDIS, the Dalek is a firm favourite construction project for fans and has been since they first appeared, inspiring people’s creativity and technical innovation at home. Indeed, building your own Dalek became such a recognised rite of passage for fans that the BBC issued official instructions on how to build your own as part of a Radio Times special issue celebrating the tenth anniversary of Doctor Who in 1973. The article suggested that the project would be particularly good ‘as an exercise for a well-equipped school, using the resources and facilities of several departments- woodwork, metalwork, art and so on.’ The practicality of the design was tested by students of London’s Highbury Grove School (now City of London Academy Highbury Grove): ‘With help from their staff, they produced [a] magnificent black-and-orange specimen in two weeks, at a cost of £12’, which is a considerable saving on the approximately £250 the 1963 originals cost: although the Radio Times models were designed to be static, not operational TV props. Either way, I suspect it would cost a little more now….
For a show that is about the capability to be everywhere and anywhere, any period in time, Doctor Who is a show that is arguably burdened with context. Now 60 years old today, the thought of navigating any of its stories without an awareness of its place in that history is almost unthinkable. But every once in a while, in a very long while, Doctor Who wields that context to set itself free.
That’s the paradox—as well as the philosophy of John Rawls—that sits at the heart of “The Day of the Doctor,” Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special that climaxed a blockbuster period of celebrations for the series 10 years ago tonight. It is, of course, almost impossible to think of “Day” outside of this context—metatextually, we now know so much of what almost happened during its production and ideation that it’s almost a miracle to revisit the final product and not deem it miraculous for simply existing.
…And it is about the weight of context. The tragic heart of “Day of the Doctor” is John Hurt’s aforementioned “War” Doctor: the regeneration that took part in the Time War, an incarnation left to banished memories out of the shame of what he had to do to end the conflict between the Time Lords and the Daleks once and for all, one petrified to even call himself a Doctor for the hurt he wielded to do so. Following him on the eve of the final days of the conflict as he steals a weapon of mass destruction from his own people—the Moment, a weapon so powerful, so horrifying, it developed its own conscience to almost stop itself from being—the War Doctor’s arc is one about wrestling with the weight of his own personal history, a push and pull that haunts him, and is compacted when he comes face to face with his future: two further incarnations of himself that yes, still feel the pain of the Time War, a pain muted in some ways, but still, a future for himself that exists beyond the horrifying task he has burdened himself with…
Wendy’s has started rolling out its new AI chatbot system that is supposed to be handling customer orders at the drive thru. However, according to one TikTok video, what was intended to be a seamless transition turned into a comical and frustrating experience.
The video, which was posted by Macey (@maceitrain) this week, kicks off with Macey already mid-order, requesting a Coke. The Wendy’s robot promptly responds with a simple, “Anything else?”
The TikToker then proceeds to modify her order. “Can I make the junior bacon cheeseburger Biggie bag a medium, please?” she says.
After each update to the order, the robot mechanically repeats, “Anything else?”
…The video has since accumulated over 944,200 views with over 550 comments. Some commenters were not overly impressed by the speed of the new ordering system.
“I feel like that took longer than having a human take the order,” one commenter said….
(8) MARTY KROFFT (1937-2023). Marty Krofft, who partnered with his older brother Sid to build a kids’ TV empire around shows like The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, died November 25. The Hollywood Reporter profile is here.
The Kroffts followed Pufnstuf with The Bugaloos (1970-72), the Claymation series Lidsville (1971-73), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-75) and Land of the Lost (1974-76)…
Indeed, the Kroffts’ style was so popular that McDonald’s copied it to create Mayor McCheese and McDonaldland for an early ’70s advertising campaign. The Kroffts sued, winning a reported seven-figure settlement in 1977….
…Marty joined his brother full-time in 1958 after Sid’s assistant left, and they opened Les Poupees de Paris, an adults-only burlesque puppet show that played to sold-out crowds at a dinner theater in the San Fernando Valley….
Les Poupees went on the road and played world’s fairs in Seattle in 1962, New York in 1964 and San Antonio in 1968. It featured 240 puppets, mostly topless women, and Time magazine called it a “dirty puppet show.”
After that, it was so popular, “we couldn’t even get our own best friends in the theater,” Sid said. It drew an estimated 9.5 million viewers in its first decade of performances….
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 25, 1926 — Poul Anderson. (Died 2001.) Need I say that he’s one of my favourite writers? I’m reasonable sure that along with Heinlein, Bradbury and Le Guin that he was the first of the writers that I read extensively. And as Algis Budrys said in his Galaxy review column of February 1965, “we will all soon realize he has for some time been science fiction’s best storyteller.”
Poul Anderson
Poul was really, really prolific which will mean that I’m not going to detail everything he did here. Indeed, ISFDB list twenty-three novels and an amazing thirty-three collections of his short stories! So where to start?
Well in my case, that is quite easy as my go to works by him when I want to be entertained at length by great storytelling is the Technic History stories with those of Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry being the ones I like the best. Not that other stories aren’t excellent in their own as they are.
Now there’s the ever so fun Hoka novels (Earthman’s Burden and Star Prince Charlie) and the Hoka! short stories, a sequel to the first novel, that were co-written with Gordon R. Dickson.
I’ve always enjoyed his Time Patrol stories as they’re some of the best such tales that were ever written. These of course, as are all of his short stories, to found in The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson that NESFA published. All seven volumes are now available as epubs!
What’s next? Orion Shall Rise remains one of my most read novels by him. It’s part of his Maurai & Kith series, a most interesting future history. The short stories, also excellent, were collected in, not surprisingly, his Maurai & Kith collection.
I was surprised to find that Operation Chaos and Operation Luna actually had a handful of short stories as well, six to be exact, one written by Eric Flint. I shall need to seek them out. Another set of novels that I’ve read several times.
Let’s not forget The Unicorn Trade that he and Karen collaborated on. Such a wonderful collection it is.
Yes, there’s lots more, but I’m going to finish off with A Midsummer Tempest which is always a delight to experience.
No, I didn’t forget he won seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. All well deserved.
And if you go here, you get to hear the delightful story of Karen and her role role in filk songs. I’m told that Poul had a fine singing voice. I wonder if there’s any recording of him and her singing.
(10) MONITORING WHO MEDIA. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] More from Beeb. Alas you have to have a BBC Sounds account to download in this case… “Doctor Who: 60 years of Friends and Foes”.
As Doctor Who celebrates its 60th anniversary, Sue Perkins explores how the programme has reflected our social history across the decades both on and off screen. From advances in technology to politics, violence, gender and sexuality.
Featuring archive footage, interviews and new conversations with showrunner Steven Moffat, script editor Andrew Cartmel, former companions including Anneke Wills, Katy Manning and Janet Fielding, and the voice of the Daleks Nicholas Briggs along with Dalek Operator Barnaby Edwards. Also, there’s analysis from several academics who have published books on the subject.
Sue examines how progressive the show has been, questioning if our favourite time traveller has kept with the times.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]
Call Me Joe (The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson) NESFA Press, 2009
Review by Warner Holme: Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson strongly starts off a NESFA Press series of volumes covering the work of one of the key 20th century writers of Science Fiction, Poul Anderson.
In the introduction, the editor, Rick Katze, states “This is the first in a multi-volume collection of Poul Anderson stories. The stories are not in any discernible pattern…” The pieces of fiction are an eclectic mix of early works in his oeuvre, mixed with poetry and verse that range across his entire career.
The contents include: Call Me Joe, Prayer in War, Tomorrow’s Children, Kinnison’s Band, The Helping Hand, Wildcat, Clausius’ Chaos, Journey’s End, Heinlein’s Stories, Logic, Time Patrol, The First Love, The Double-Dyed Villains, To a Tavern Wench, The Immortal Game, Upon the Occasion of Being Asked to Argue That Love and Marriage are Incompatible, Backwardness, Haiku, Genius, There Will Be Other Times, The Live Coward, Ballade of an Artificial Satellite, Time Lag, The Man Who Came Early, Autumn, Turning Point, Honesty, The Alien Enemy, Eventide, Enough Rope, The Sharing of Flesh, Barbarous Allen, Welcome,Flight to Forever, Sea Burial, Barnacle Bull, To Jack Williamson, Time Heals, MacCannon, The Martian Crown Jewels, Then Death Will Come, Prophecy, Einstein’s Distress, Kings Who Die, Ochlan and Starfog.
The introduction is not quite correct, in that the reader can find resonances between stories, sometimes in stories back to back. There are plenty of threads, and a fan of Anderson and his Nordic viewpoint might call it a skein, a tangled skein of fictional ideas, themes, ideas and characters. The same introduction notes that a lot of the furniture of science fiction can be found in early forms here, as Anderson being one of those authors who have made them what they were for successive writers. In many cases, then, it is not the freshness of the ideas that one reads these stories for, but the deep writing, themes, characters and language that put Anderson in a class of his own.
The titular story, for example, Call Me Joe, leads off the volume. It is a story of virtual reality in one of its earliest forms, about Man trying to reach and be part of a world he cannot otherwise interact with. Watchers of the movie Avatar will be immediately struck by the story and how much that movie relies on this story’s core assumptions and ideas. But the story is much more than the ideas. It’s about the poetry of Anderson’s writing. His main character, Anglesey, is physically challenged (sound familiar). But as a pseudoJovian, he doesn’t have to be and he can experience a world unlike any on Earth:
Anglesey’s tone grew remote, as if he spoke to himself. “Imagine walking under a glowing violet sky, where great flashing clouds sweep the earth with shadow and rain strides beneath them. Imagine walking on the slopes of a mountain like polished metal, with a clean red flame exploding above you and thunder laughing in the ground. Imagine a cool wild stream, and low trees with dark coppery flowers, and a waterfall—methanefall, whatever you like—leaping off a cliff, and the strong live wind shakes its mane full of rainbows! Imagine a whole forest, dark and breathing, and here and there you glimpse a pale-red wavering will-o’-the-wisp, which is the life radiation of some fleet, shy animal, and…and…”
Anglesey croaked into silence. He stared down at his clenched fists then he closed his eyes tight and tears ran out between the lids, “Imagine being strong!”
Reader, I was moved.
That’s only part of the genius of Anderson’s work shown here. Anderson has many strings in his harp and this volume plays many of those chords.
There is the strong, dark tragedy of “The Man who Came Early” which is in genre conversation with L Sprague De Camp’s “Lest Darkness Fall” and shows an American soldier, circa 1943, thrown back to 11th century Iceland and, pace Martin Padway, doing rather badly in the Dark Ages. Poul Anderson is much better well known for his future history that runs from the Polesotechnic League on through the Galactic Empire of Dominic Flandry, but this volume has three stories of his other future galactic civilization, where Wing Alak manages a much looser and less restrictive galactic polity, dealing with bellicose problems by rather clever and indirect means.
And then there is his time travel tales. Time Patrol introduces us to the entire Time Patrol cycle and Manse Everard’s first mission. I’ve read plenty of his stories over the years, but this first outing had escaped me, so it was a real delight to see “where it all began”. A wildcat has oil drillers in the Cretaceous and a slowly unfolding mystery leads to a sting in the tail about the fragility of their society. And then there is one of my favorite Poul Anderson stories, period, the poetic and tragic and moving “Flight to Forever”, with a one way trip to the future, with highs, lows, tragedies, loss and a sweeping look at man’s future. It still moves me.
And space. Of course we go to space. From the relativistic invasion of “Time-Lag” to the far future of “Starfog” and “The Sharing of Flesh”, Anderson was laying down his ideas on space opera and space adventure here in these early stories that still hold up today. “Time-Lag’s” slow burn of a captive who works to save her planet through cycles of invasion and attack, through the ultimate tragedy of “Starfog” as lost explorers from a far flung colony seek their home, to the “Sharing of Flesh”, which makes a strong point about assumptions in local cultures, and provides an anthropological mystery in the bargain. “Kings Who Die” is an interesting bit of cat and mouse with a lot of double dealing espionage with a prisoner aboard a spacecraft.
Finally, I had known that Anderson was strongly into verse and poetry for years, but really had never encountered it in situ. This volume corrects that gap in my reading, with a variety of verse that is at turns, moving, poetic, and sometimes extremely funny. The placing of these bits of verse between the prose stories makes for excellent palette cleansers to not only show the range of Anderson’s work, but also clear the decks for the next story.
The last thing I should make clear for readers who might be wondering if this volume truly is for them to is to go back to the beginning of this piece. This volume, and its subsequent volumes, are not a single or even multivolume “best of Poul Anderson”. This is a book, first in a series, that is meant to be a comprehensive collection of Poul Anderson. This is not the book or even a series to pick up if you just want the best of the best of a seminal writer of 20th century science fiction. This volume (and I strongly suspect the subsequent ones) is the volume you want if you want to start a deep dive into his works in all their myriad and many forms. There is a fair amount from the end of the Pulp Era here, and for me it was not all of the same quality. I think all of the stories are worthy but some show they are early in his career, and his craft does and will improve from this point. While for me stories like the titular Call Me Joe, “Flight to Forever”, “The Man Who Came Early”, and the devastating “Prophecy” are among my favorite Poul Anderson stories, the very best of Poul Anderson is yet to come.
(NESFA, 2009)
Often shy and retiring Warner Holme has worn many hats over the years. He has worked in fields ranging from the medical to advertising, but always finds himself most at home among stories and words. He can usually be found in the mid-south, caring for some person or animal, and is almost never more than a meter away from a few books.
(1) CHANGES IN PUBLISHING. Pete Kahle of Bloodshot Books is stepping down from publishing and Joe Mynhardt of Crystal Like Publishing is stepping in to help Bloodshot Books’s authors by offering them all a new home at Crystal Lake — or offering them the option to simply take their rights back if they prefer. See “Big Publishing News” on the Crystal Lake Publishing website.
Anyone who knows me [Joe Mynhardt] knows that I’m a big supporter of great books and great authors. I believe in the power of stories, and want to give my all to the genre fiction community.
So whenever I see authors or even a publisher in need, I reach out. Sometimes it’s to help publishers end things on the best of terms, and other times to help authors find a new home for their books.
That’s why I made the decision to step in and offer all the authors at Bloodshot Books a new home at Crystal Lake Publishing. I’m familiar with most of the authors there (yip, I always keep an eye on talented authors), and some of the actual books. Plus, I know Pete Kahle at Bloodshot Books has a great eye for talent. Unfortunately Pete has to step down from publishing, so this is our way of helping him and the 40+ authors involved.
We have given all the authors the option to take their rights back, in case they want to sub elsewhere or self-publish, but I’m confident that Crystal Lake is a great publishing house. We’re trustworthy, pay on time, and hell, we’ve been around for over 10 years. Which is almost impossible in this industry.
If any Bloodshot Books authors are reading this and you haven’t received our emails (there are a few authors we’re struggling to get a hold of), please message me. Even if you’re not interested, you’ll need a rights reversion letter from us.
(2) GET READY BEAGLE FANS! The Essential Peter S. Beagle, which celebrates the storied career of the bestselling author of The Overneath, Summerlong, and The Last Unicorn, will be released May 16 by Tachyon Publications. They will begin taking preorders on April 11 starting at noon Pacific time.
Beagle, one of America’s most influential fantasists, continues to evoke glowing comparisons to such iconic authors as Twain, Tolkien, Carroll, L’Engle, and Vonnegut. From heartbreaking to humorous, these tales show the depth and power of Beagle’s incomparable prose and storytelling.
Featuring original introductions from Jane Yolen (The Devil’s Arithmetic) and Meg Elison (Find Layla), and gorgeous original illustrations from Stephanie Law (Shadowscapes), The Essential Peter S. Beagle is a must-have for any fan of classic fantasy.
Few headlines thrill like “‘Counterportation’: Quantum breakthrough paves way for world-first experimental wormhole.” The article itself delivers, raising the possibility that “disembodied transport (…) without any detectable information carriers” may prove to be physically realizable.
Teleportation by another name is still teleportation….
First on his list is —
All the Colors of Darkness by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (1963)
The Universal Transmitting Company has a simple dream: provide the Earth of the mid-1980s with facilities that would allow travellers to step from city to city or continent to continent in a single stride. The business would be instantly profitable and the founders able to sit back and rake in the dough.
This elegant plan is straightforward in concept. In practice, the project has met impediment after impediment. Why, it’s almost as if the Universal Transmitting Company had a very determined enemy…
(4) PUTTING CHATGPT TO WORK. Joe Pitkin says “I Used ChatGPT to Write My Novel!” at The Subway Test. But he doesn’t mean what was probably the first thought that came to your mind.
But the novel I’m working on now, Pacifica, begins each of its 74 chapters with an epigraph. Much like the computer game Civilization, each chapter is named after one of the technologies that have made modern humanity possible. And, much like Civilization, each technology is accompanied by an apposite quote. Leonard Nimoy was the gold standard narrator for those quotes in Civilization IV (though Sean Bean has his moments in Civilization VI).
One of the most fun parts of drafting Pacifica has been finding the right quotes for each chapter. I picked from books and poems that I love (as well as a few books that I hated) to put together what I imagined as a kind of collage or mosaic of human knowledge. I imagined the task as something like a literary version of the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, where The Beatles assembled a photo-collage crowd of their favorite thinkers and artists and goofball influences.
… So I asked ChatGPT to find me some quotes about superconducting….
(5) AN INDEX OF FOOLISHNESS. “The Post ruins April Fools’ Day, 2023 edition” is a compilation of shenanigans published yesterday by the Washington Post. Here are a couple of literary-themed examples.
(6) SLF GULLIVER GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation announced in February that Em North is the winner of the 2022 Gulliver Travel Grant. North’s winning piece is The School of Forgetting.
Since 2004, the Gulliver Travel Grant has sought to assist writers of speculative literature (in fiction, poetry, drama, or creative nonfiction) in their research. The grant awards one writer $1000 annually, to be used to cover airfare, lodging, and/or other travel expenses.
Em North is a writer who has lived in eighteen different states and still can’t figure out where to settle down. Their debut novel, IN UNIVERSES, is forthcoming from Harper Books (US) and Heinemann Hutchinson (UK) in March 2024. They received their MFA from Johns Hopkins University, where they were awarded the Benjamin T. Sankey Fellowship for a graduating student. They have also received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, the Tin House Summer Workshop, Aspen Words, and the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Their fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Sun, Conjunctions, Lightspeed Magazine, Threepenny Review, and Best American Experimental Writing 2020.
Before becoming a writer, they studied physics and philosophy, writing their undergraduate thesis on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. In previous lives, they’ve worked as an observational cosmologist, snowboard instructor, horse trainer, wine taster, pure math researcher, (very brief) investment banker, ranch caretaker, and creative writing instructor.
(7) SLF VIRTUAL CLASSES. The Speculative Literature Foundation has three courses and workshops on its April schedule – see full details and registration cost at the link.
Nancy Hightower, essayist and author, is teaching a workshop on writing about mental health on April 22. The day after, our course on screenwriting begins with Ted Schneider, director and writer of films like “Early Light” and “Iqaluit.” On May 13 our Writing the Taboo workshop returns, instructed by our very own director, Mary Anne Mohanraj.
(8) LEO D. SULLIVAN (1940-2023). Animator Leo D. Sullivan, whose most famous work was the chugging engine that opened Soul Train, died March 25 at the age of 82 reports Deadline.
…In addition to creating the memorable Soul Train opener, Sullivan contributed to cartoons featuring Fat Albert, Transformers and My Little Pony. He worked as an animator for five decades.
His resume included television work for The Incredible Hulk, Flash Gordon, BraveStarr and Scooby-Doo, his family said.
Born in Lockhart, Texas, Sullivan moved to Los Angeles in 1952, and started working for Looney Tunes animator Bob Clampett. In the 1960s, he joined forced with Floyd Norman, the first Black animator at Disney, and cofounded Vignette Film, which created educational films about historic Black figures.
He also published a video game that honored the Tuskegee Airmen and taught at the Art Institute of California-Orange County.
Sullivan was honored by the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1979 and 1991….
(9) MEMORY LANE.
1984 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.] Poul Anderson & Karen Anderson’s “Cosmic Concepts”
This is less about “Cosmic Concepts” which this is the Beginning of, but rather all of the splendid poetry of The Unicorn Trade.
Now most of you know that this collection which is mostly by Poul Anderson & Karen Anderson was published first by Tor thirty-nine years ago. It’s an amazing collection of stories, poems, and, errr, science fiction haikus, something I never knew even existed.
I am not by any means a big poetry fan but I was quite delighted by everything that was here for poetry, most of which is by her. The poetry is a sheer joy to read. Of the collection starts off with “The Unicorn Trade”, a stellar affair, by her but I will also single out “Haiku for Mars” and “Professor James” by both of them. A deep drink of their favorite ale is in order!
And now the Beginning of “Cosmic Concepts”…
This is the science fiction story. This is the young man full of pride, whose gadgets work the first time tried in a science fiction story.
This is the elder scientist, every year on the honors list, who trained the young man full of pride, whose gadgets work the first time tried in a science fiction story.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 6, 1924 — Sonya Dorman. Her best-known work of SF is “When I Was Miss Dow” which received an Otherwise retrospective award nomination. Her “Corruption of Metals” received won the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She also appeared in Dangerous Visions with the “Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird” story. (Died 2005.)
Born April 6, 1926 — Gil Kane. Artist who created the modern look and feel of Green Lantern and the Atom for DC, and co-created Iron Fist with Roy Thomas for Marvel. I’m going to single him out for his work on the House of Mystery and the House of Secrets in the Sixties and Seventies which you can find on the DC Universe Infinite app. (Died 2000.)
Born April 6, 1935 — Douglas Hill. Canadian author, editor and reviewer. For a year, he was assistant editor of Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine. I’m going to admit that I know more of him as a decidedly and to be admired Leftist reviewer than I do as writer, indeed he held the same post of Literary Editor at the socialist weekly Tribune as Orwell earlier did. Who here is familiar with fiction? He was quite prolific indeed. (Died 2007.)
Born April 6, 1948 — Sherry Gottlieb, 75. Best remembered and loved as owner of the Change of Hobbit bookstore whose origin story you can read in her memoir. It closed in 1991. She’s written two horror novels Love Bites and Worse Than Death.
Born April 6, 1948 — Larry Todd, 75. Writer and cartoonist, best known for the decidedly adult Dr. Atomic strips that originally appeared in the underground newspaper The Sunday Paper and his other work in underground comics, often with a SF bent. In our circles, Galaxy Science Fiction, Amazing Science Fiction and Imagination were three of his venues. He also did some writing for If. He also did, and it’s really weird art, the cover art and interior illustrations for Harlan Ellison’s Chocolate Alphabet.
Born April 6, 1956 — Mark Askwith, 67. Did you know there was an authorized Prisoner sequel? Well there was. The Prisoner: Shattered Visage is a four-issue comic book series written by him and Dean Motter who was also the artist. Askwith also wrote for DC Comics, specifically Batman: Gotham Knights.
Born April 6, 1977 — Karin Tidbeck, 46. Her first work in English, Jagannath, a short story collection, made the shortlist for the Otherwise Award and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. The short story “Augusta Prima”, originally written by her in Swedish, was translated into English by her which won her a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award in the Short Form category.
Last month one of our journalists received an interesting email. A researcher had come across mention of a Guardian article, written by the journalist on a specific subject from a few years before. But the piece was proving elusive on our website and in search. Had the headline perhaps been changed since it was launched? Had it been removed intentionally from the website because of a problem we’d identified? Or had we been forced to take it down by the subject of the piece through legal means?
The reporter couldn’t remember writing the specific piece, but the headline certainly sounded like something they would have written. It was a subject they were identified with and had a record of covering. Worried that there may have been some mistake at our end, they asked colleagues to go back through our systems to track it down. Despite the detailed records we keep of all our content, and especially around deletions or legal issues, they could find no trace of its existence.
Why? Because it had never been written.
Luckily the researcher had told us that they had carried out their research using ChatGPT. In response to being asked about articles on this subject, the AI had simply made some up. Its fluency, and the vast training data it is built on, meant that the existence of the invented piece even seemed believable to the person who absolutely hadn’t written it.
Huge amounts have been written about generative AI’s tendency to manufacture facts and events. But this specific wrinkle – the invention of sources – is particularly troubling for trusted news organisations and journalists whose inclusion adds legitimacy and weight to a persuasively written fantasy. And for readers and the wider information ecosystem, it opens up whole new questions about whether citations can be trusted in any way, and could well feed conspiracy theories about the mysterious removal of articles on sensitive issues that never existed in the first place.
If this seems like an edge case, it’s important to note that ChatGPT, from a cold start in November, registered 100 million monthly users in January. TikTok, unquestionably a digital phenomenon, took nine months to hit the same level. Since that point we’ve seen Microsoft implement the same technology in Bing, putting pressure on Google to follow suit with Bard….
This reminds me of the punchline from an old Peanuts strip.
(12) JEOPARDY! David Goldfarb brings us more highlights from Wednesday’s Jeopardy! episode, which had (in the Double Jeopardy round) a category called “Literary Bad Day for the Planet”.
$1600: Early in this novel Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz informs humanity Earth will be destroyed for a hyperspatial express route
Returning champion Brian Henegar responded: “What is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?”
$400: Set in Melbourne, Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel “On the Beach” finds much of the world destroyed by this man-made disaster
Brian: “What is a nuclear war?”
$800: In Neal Stephenson’s “Seveneves”, this mysteriously blows up into 7 pieces that rain bolides onto Earth
Brian: “What is the moon?”
$1200: Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” is a sun that went supernova, killing a planet, & is this celestial object from the New Testament
Teresa Browning: “What is the Star of David?” Silence from the other two.
$2000: John Wyndham’s novel about “The Day of” these meat-eating plants sees most of humanity blinded before being featured on the menu
Brian: “What are the triffids?”
(13) FUTURISM RESOURCE. John Shirley and Brock Hinzmann have launched Instant Future, a new site for essays and articles.
Instant Future offers both quick jumps and deep dives into futurist prediction. We look with open minds, informed by critical thinking, to refine the lens of prediction, sorting through new research and media reports so you don’t have to. We look for the most insightful voices in the field of prediction, to cite and to interview. We combine the insights of professional futurists and forward-thinkers of all kinds, to give you an advanced look at what’s coming.
We’re offering a brisk trip to the edge the future itself…an edge that’s always edging away.
(14) DO CHICKENS HAVE LIPS? Maybe they would have if they were descended from T. Rex. “Facelift for T. rex: analysis suggests teeth were covered by thin lips” is a report in today’s Nature. “Crocodiles and Komodo dragons provide evidence to support the idea of a scaly cover over the teeth of dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex.”
…In crocodiles, the enamel is thick and stays hydrated because they live in the water. Even so, crocodile teeth bear the signs of cracks and damage on their outer surface. That’s not the case in theropods, she says. Theropod teeth are covered by just a thin layer of enamel, indicating that these dinosaurs probably had lips to keep the teeth protected and coated in saliva when their mouths were closed….
(15) FREE SHOWING OF SF CLASSIC. The UCLA Library Film & Television Archive will be showing a restored print of Invaders from Mars at the campus’ Billy Wilder Theater on April 9 at 7:00 p.m.
Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.
Invaders From Mars. U.S., 1953
Young David (Jimmy Hunt) wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a flying saucer land in his backyard. So begins the visually stunning and whimsical film that has been captivating audiences for 70 years, directed by production designer William Cameron Menzies (Gone with the Wind) and photographed by studio legend John F. Seitz (Double Indemnity). Politically and socially charged, this superbly crafted sci-fi thriller captures the paranoia of the time, complemented by a curiosity for the universe. Physically compromised shortly after its release—butchered, recut, elements scattered—Invaders from Mars has been retrieved from the brink of extinction thanks to this dazzling new restoration. Screening on the same date the movie premiered in 1953, the film will be preceded with a presentation about the restoration by former Head of Preservation at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Scott MacQueen.
DCP, color, 78 min. Director: William Cameron Menzies. Screenwriter: Richard Blake. With: Leif Erickson, Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz.
Restored by Ignite Films in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, George Eastman Museum and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Anne Marble, David Goldfarb, Moshe Feder, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
(1) CANADA READS SFF. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic is a finalist in the 2023 CBC Canada Reads competition. She told her newsletter readers today:
Canada Reads is a literary battle, with panelists championing five books. Each day, they vote to eliminate one book, until a single title is chosen as the book the whole country should read this year.
The champion for my novel is TikTok creator and nursing student Tasnim Geedi, known as groovytas. The debates will take place March 27-30, 2023. They will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBC Books.
(2) SF RELATED CONTENT ON JEOPARDY! 2023-01-24. [Item by David Goldfarb.] The current Jeopardy! champion is four-time LearnedLeague champion Troy Meyer. On Tuesday’s episode he faced some SF-related clues.
In the first round, one of the categories was “Finding Nimoy”. At the $1000 level:
This remake about a pod people takeover moved the action from a small town to San Francisco, with Leonard as a famous psychologist.
Troy Meyer correctly responded, “What is Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
At the $400 level:
Nimoy’s plentiful voice-over work included the evil robot Galvatron in the cartoon movie version of this TV show.
Joe Incollingo responded, “What is Transformers?”
At the $200 level:
Nimoy appeared in other TV series with this “Star Trek” co-star, including “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and “T.J. Hooker”.
Troy Meyer responded, “Who is William Shatner?”
In the Double Jeopardy round, one of the categories was “Pop Culture Goes to Mars”. This category was actually majority mundane, cluing things like “Veronica Mars” and the rock band “30 Seconds to Mars”, but there were two actual SF clues:
$1200: Jack Nicholson was the President & Glenn Close, the First Lady in this 1996 Tim Burton film.
Troy Meyer responded, “What is Mars Attacks?”
$400: “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, in fact it’s cold as hell”, sang Elton John in this hit.
… Where Aven differs from the Rome of antiquity is that, in this version of the world, magic has shaped the course of history as much as war, politics, law, and religion. Adding that additional lever of power complicates both interpersonal and geopolitical relationships in ways that I adore playing with.
It’s a teasing way of referring to those of us with a tendency to go way overboard in our worldbuilding. The “iceberg principle” of worldbuilding says that there’s far more below the surface than makes it onto the page of the finished product. My cohosts and I are people who have really, really big icebergs, and the way we create them can sometimes seem like self-torture….
Cool. Awkward. Black. is a multi-genre anthology that centers Black teens who celebrate their nerdy passions of cosplay, manga, STEM, gaming and the arts….
Favorite line from a book:
“In her spare time, she looked to books or the stars for company.” —Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I read so many books and have many favorite lines but this particular one has stayed with me. I truly believe books and stars can be great company.
In news that has arrived suspiciously close to Super Bowl Sunday, M&M’s announced today that the brand’s “beloved spokescandies” would be placed on “indefinite pause” for being ostensibly divisive. The spokescandies will be replaced by comedian Maya Rudolph, who will be tasked with “champion[ing] the power of fun.”…
In the past year, M&M’s changes to the personalities and likenesses of its candy characters have stoked the ire of conservatives, who facilitated a minor uproar against the brand for being too “woke” as it made such minor adjustments as redesigning some M&M’s shoes and removing titles like “Mr.” and “Mrs.” from certain candies.
(6) IN PASSING: MICHAEL DOUGAN. Cartoonist Michael Dougan died recently. Specifics about exactly when are scarce, however, there are two solid tributes.
… Michael was so well-rounded; he was at times a cartoonist, a newspaperman, a barista, a restauranteur, a tv writer, and a great conversationalist, to name a few. His work is not as well-remembered as it should be, although his best book, I Can’t Tell You Anything, was released by Penguin in 1993 and still holds up as some of the best autobiographical work of its era. Part of Michael’s obscurity is because in 2006 a fire destroyed his house in Seattle, taking all of his art and archives—and in some ways his comics career—with it. He seemed to process what was a cartoonist’s Worst Case Scenario better than most could have, but it also seemed to fuel a desire to move forward rather than look backward. He spent a couple of years in LA writing for television. Whenever I brought up doing a collection of his work, he was interested but ultimately dismissed it as being too much of an “epic undertaking” to find the time for….
I first became aware of Michael Dougan in the mid-80s from his work in Weirdo. The first story of his that I can remember was “Dennis the Sullen Menace”, written by Dennis P. Eicchorn. This issue (no. 19) was edited by Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who took over the editorship of the magazine after Peter Bagge moved on. Bagge had been the editor until issue 17, and his tastes still informed the contents of Weirdo. In addition to Michael Dougan and Dennis P. Eicchorn, Weirdo No, 19 had Mark Zingarelli and Bagge himself. Bagge knew all of the aforementioned cartoonists because they were all Seattle homers. Bagge got a bunch of his fellow Seattlites to contribute. Therefore, when I moved to Seattle in 1989, I got to know those guys, as well as other cartoonists from the region in Bagge’s artistic and social circle….
(7) MEMORY LANE.
1958 — [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Poul Anderson loved beer. In fact, he was the first writer to imagine a spaceship powered by beer in the Bicycle Built for Brew novel published in Astounding Science Fiction sixty-five years ago. It’s available from the usual suspects in The Makeshift Rocket.
It wasn’t unusual for his characters to hoist a brew or two as I experienced when listening to some of the Nicholas Van Rijn stories recently.
So I leave you with a quote from “The Innocent Arrival” which is collected in Karin and Poul Anderson’s The Unicorn Trade (highly recommend and available from the usual suspects as a Meredith Moment):
“I see. Well, what are you having to drink?”
“Beer,” said Matheny without hesitation.
“Huh? Look, pal, this is on me.”
“The only beer on Mars comes forty million miles, with interplanetary freight charges tacked on,” said Matheny. “Tuborg!”
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 25, 1905 — Margery Sharp. Her best remembered work is The Rescuers series which concerns a mouse by the name of Miss Bianca. They were later adapted in two Disney animated films, The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen the first one a very long time ago. Her genre novel, The Stone of Chastity, is according to her website, based on English folklore. Other than the first volume of The Rescuer series, she’s not really available digitally though she is mostly in print in the dead tree format. (Died 1991.)
Born January 25, 1918 — King Donovan. His first SF films has him as Dr. Dan Forbes in the 1953 The Magnetic Monster and as Dr. Ingersoll In The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The very next year, he plays James O’Herli in Riders to the Stars. And now we get to the film that you know him from — Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which he plays Jack Belicec. After that, I show him only in Nothing Lasts Forever which has never been released here in the States. (Died 1987.)
Born January 25, 1920 — Bruce Cassiday.Under two different pen names, Con Steffanson and Carson Bingham , he wrote three Flash Gordon novels (The Trap of Ming XII, The Witch Queen of Mongo and The War of the Cybernauts) and he also wrote several pieces of non-fiction worth noting, The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, co-written with Dieter Wuckel, and Modern Mystery, Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers. The latter done in ‘93 is rather out of date and out of print as well. Checking the usual suspects shows nothing’s available by him for this genre though some of his pulp novels are available with appropriately lurid covers such as The Corpse in the Picture Window. (Died 2005.)
Born January 25, 1943 — Tobe Hooper. Director of such genre films as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (the original of course), Poltergeist (damn scary film) Invaders from Mars and Djinn, his final film. He directed a smattering of television episodes including the “Miss Stardust” of Amazing Stories, “No More Mr. Nice Guy” of Freddy’s Nightmares, “Dead Wait” of Tales from the Crypt and the entire Salem’s Lot miniseries. He also wrote a horror novel with Alan Goldsher, Midnight Movie: A Novel, that has himself in it at a speaking engagement. (Died 2017.)
Born January 25, 1958 — Peter Watts, 65. Author of the most excellent Firefall series which I read and enjoyed immensely. I’ve not read the Rifters trilogy so would welcome opinions on it. And his Sunflower-linked short stories sound intriguing. He won a Hugo for Best Novelette at Aussiecon 4 for “The Island”.
Born January 25, 1973 — Geoff Johns, 50. Where to begin? Though he’s done some work outside of DC, he is intrinsically linked to that company having working for them for twenty years. My favorite work by him is on Batman: Gotham Knights, Justice League of America #1–7 (2013) and 52 which I grant which was way overly ambitious but really fun. Oh, and I’d be remiss not to note his decade long run on the Green Lantern books. He’s the writer and producer on the most excellent Stargirl that streamed on HBO Max. Johns is producing the Green Lantern series that will stream on HBO Max.
Born January 25, 1975 — Mia Kirshner, 48. She was Amanda Grayson in Star Trek: Discovery. Her first genre was in the really not great The Crow: City of Angels as Sarah Mohr. (I editorialize, it is what I do. It’s like cats playing with string.) She had another run as Isobel Flemming in The Vampire Diaries and one-offs in The War of The Worlds, Dracula: The Series, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Wolf Lake. She had a plum role in Defiance as Kenya Rosewater.
Mars and the Imagination was conceived and assembled by the experienced collector David Wenner – whose comprehensive collection on the history of physics now resides at the Niels Bohr Library of the American Institute of Physics – and represents much more than a “collection” of works. Through his years of research and study, Wenner was able to unearth important and previously unrecognized literary and historical texts, making new connections among them. Contextualized in such a way, the items in Mars and the Imagination collectively tell an illuminating story through primary sources that to our knowledge has not been previously attempted. It is the story of our fascination with the Red Planet, a story of our wonder about something that is just out of reach, a story that has revealed as much about us as it has about Mars.
Fiction and Non-Fiction
For hundreds of years, Mars has been observed by scientists, but lurked tantalizingly on the edge of our ability to truly understand the nature of the planet. It thus became a perfect template for speculation: What are the conditions on Mars? Is it hospitable to life? Are there, or have there ever been, living beings on Mars and if so, are they like us? Superior to us? Threatening to us? Will we ever be able to visit Mars?
The approaches to answering these questions have been varied, with both scientific inquiry and imaginative fiction in a continual dialogue of influence on each other. Mars and the Imagination, therefore includes texts by such scientific giants such as Kepler, Huygens, Hooke, and Cassini, but also fiction by literary masters such as Swift, Wells, Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke.
Tools Of Honor: No Klingon ever breaks his word. Shaped like the traditional Klingon Bat’leth weapon, this 6-in-1 multitool will help you tackle a variety of daily tasks. Perfect for when you’re exploring the universe, hiking, or camping.
The new super space telescope James Webb has ventured into the freezer.
It’s been probing some of the darkest, coldest regions in space for clues about the chemistry that goes into making planets, and perhaps even life.
This newly released image shows a segment of the Chameleon I molecular cloud, some 630 light years from Earth.
It’s here, at temperatures down to about -260C, that Webb is detecting types of ice grains not previously observed….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, David Goldfarb, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
In the aftermath of World War III, with restoration of peace and order, and the efforts to cope with the nuclear fallout, a new science of the human mind is secretly invented. Its inventors and those who study and work with it aim to create a stable, new, human civilization that will ultimately prevent war. They also want a civilization that protects the maximum freedom of individuals while preventing the nationalism and fanaticism and power hunger that ultimately crushes that freedom. Achieving this requires a certain amount of ruthlessness, and absolute secrecy, and the dangers in that are fairly obvious. Poul Anderson largely abandoned the series after the 1950s, both because the nuclear third world war hadn’t happened, and because he was losing his naivety. These are good stories despite that, and the characters are complex and realistic, as Anderson characters remained throughout his career.
The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 (The Complete Psychotechnic League #1), by Poul Anderson Baen Books, October 2017
By Lis Carey: Poul Anderson began writing his own “future history” in the 1950s, with its starting point being that there would be a limited nuclear war at some point in the 1950s. From that point would develop a secret effort to build a new social structure that could permanently prevent war. This project was founded on a new discipline of social psychology, and a secret organization within the UN, secretly manipulating people and events, including the occasional assassination.
You might think these people are the bad guys, but Anderson intended them to be the good guys, building a human civilization of freedom, prosperity, individual freedom, and no more war. Nuclear weapons meant war could never be allowed to happen again. If you’ve looked at photographs and films from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including interviews with the survivors, it should be clear why. So Anderson has his initially tiny cadre of people studying the mathematics of the new science of the human mind, who work first to ensure militaristic dictatorship doesn’t become an acceptable form of government for UN members, and then to have enough influence to ensure all the countries stay on track and the UN develops toward being a true world government.
One of the interesting features of this story sequence is the Un-Men, the UN’s top, and top secret, agents, who undertake all the most dangerous missions to thwart the efforts of nationalists and authoritarians in various countries, including the US, to weaken the UN, strengthen national governments, and bring back the ability of national governments to pursue their view of national interests, even if it means invading and conquering their neighbors. Two things go into making these Un-Men the super-agents that they are. One is superior mental and physical training grounded in the ever-advancing science of the human mind, related to the science that also enables the Psychotechnic Institute to project and manage the future development of human civilization in the direction they want. (It’s worth noting that the Psychotechnic Institute is officially independent of the UN, lessening its direct power, but providing a level deniability on both ends.)
The other thing is that one very exceptional man, extremely intelligent, strong, and adventurous, never chose to enlist in the program, but was eventually cloned. The clones emerge identical to the original, not just physically and in some important aspects of temperament and personality, but in every way, except for particular scars that one individual got and another didn’t. And this is true to the point that, when necessary, one Un-Man can impersonate another well enough to fool even his wife, in even the most intimate circumstances. This is of course impossible because nurture and life experience does play a role in how we turn out. But in the 1950s, who knew? We were still decades away from cloning Dolly the sheep. The superior science of the mind resulting in more effective education for those to whom it is extended, I’m totally willing to believe as a potential reality. The completely identical Un-Men? That’s something I go with for the sake of the story.
Another interesting feature is the story set on Venus. You might argue with the politics of it, and Anderson in his later years certainly did. But this Venus is not the verdant jungle of other sf of this period. It’s oppressively hot still, but dry, barren, and uninhabitable in its current state. It’s not the real Venus we know now, but it’s a lot more realistic than most sf and popular imagination portrayed at the time. The now-independent and unified colonies on Venus are working on terraforming it. But to do so, the colony has become extremely collectivist and top-down, with little to now personal freedom and an ever-present secret police. This is something the 1950s Anderson didn’t approve of, the 1990s disapproved of even more, and no one who remembers the USSR, or Mao’s China, or other such regimes, would volunteer to live in. Anderson and his protagonist in this story do both concede, and I agree, that some degree of collectivization is necessary to the project they’re undertaking. This much, though, stems from the greed and power-hunger of those in charge.
It’s also noted that the Venusian political bosses are making use of the as much of the same science the Psychotechnic Institute is using to remake Earth to their vision, and using it quite effectively. And that right there is one of the things I’ve always loved about Anderson — that ability and willingness to see that there’s more than one side, even when he’s coming down firmly on one particular side.
Another thing I love is that the characters are interesting, complex, and realistic. People are individuals, not stereotypes or stick figures. There aren’t many women in these stories, but the ones that are here, and play significant roles, are also intelligent, resilient, and interesting, as well as varied in their interests and goals. The ones that are more in the background? They look and sound more like what we find conventional 1950s fiction. The basic social roles seem similar. But the ones who are significant characters are real people, without being portrayed as freakish in their own setting.
The stories weren’t written in any particular order, but in 2017, Baen gathered them into three volumes, presenting them in internal chronological order, and providing an introduction and interstitial material reframing these stories as the alternate history they became when we didn’t have a nuclear war by the end of the 1950s. The stories in this volume range from shortly after the nuclear war, starting with one of the early experts in the new science of human behavior confronting a valued old friend, to try to dissuade him from unfortunately short-term goals, which would result in more war and death in the longer run.
I haven’t talked much about the individual stories. They’re good stories, and I enjoyed them, but what struck me most deeply in rereading these, is the overall impact, and experience of reading these 1950s stories in the 2020s. Still very good stories, but as different as my politics are from Anderson’s in his later years, I agree with him about the weaknesses here. The Venus story isn’t the only one where the potential danger of the Psychotechnic Institute’s psychometric science is acknowledged, and yes, I think it’s a greater danger than the younger Anderson recognized at the time.
And yet these are still very good stories, and I enjoyed them.
Recommended.
I received this book as a gift, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
