Tag Archives: Quark

Pixel Scroll 4/7/25 That Sound? Either The Music Of The Spheres, Or Of An Infinity Of Pixels

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(1) HUGO VOTE TOTAL UPDATE. Today Hugo Administrator Nicholas Whyte issued a correction. The correct number of total Hugo Award nominating votes is 1,338.

(2) MURDERBOT PRODUCTION NEWS. Martha Wells is posting photos taken by Troyce on the Murderbot set at Bluesky. That’s in addition to the “First Look” photos in the following article which she warns is “spoilery”.

“’Murderbot’ Would Hate You—But That’s Why You’ll Love It” promises Vanity Fair.

… While the title might make the show sound like a hard-edged thriller, it’s more like a workplace comedy about hating what you’re good at. Skarsgård’s character is the unwitting straight man—or rather, straight…thing. (Though it looks like a man, Murderbot prefers the neutral pronoun because it is proud to be an object rather than a person.) It regards the small group of interplanetary scientists it must protect with the same enthusiasm as W.C. Fields babysitting a room full of toddlers. “It just doesn’t get humans at all,” Skarsgård says. “It’s not a deep hatred, it’s just zero amount of curiosity. It’s confused by humans and wants to get away from them.”…

… Murderbot’s devotion to a futuristic TV series called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon also evokes real people on the spectrum, who can develop a phenomenon called hyperfixation. Murderbot studies the fictional melodrama for cues about how to behave in emotional situations. The show-within-a-show stars John Cho, Jack McBrayer, Clark Gregg, and DeWanda Wise, sporting outrageous hairstyles and costumes that make the stylings of A Flock of Seagulls look like business casual…

(3) SF TITLES PULLED FROM NAVAL ACADEMY LIBRARY. [Item by F. Brett Cox.] The Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy has removed 381 books in response to the current administration’s policies. The list includes What Are We Fighting For?, nonfiction by Joanna Russ, as well as the following works of contemporary science fiction and fantasy literature: Ryka Aoki, Light from Uncommon Stars; Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built; Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man; Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland; Neon Yang, The Genesis of Misery. This has been reported in multiple outlets, including CNN, the NY Times, the AP, and CBS News.  Link to full list: “250404-List of Removed Books from Nimitz Library.xlsx” at Defense.gov.

(4) THE YEAR IN LIBRARY BOOK CHALLENGES. “ALA Releases Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024” reports Publishers Weekly.

The American Library Association kicked off National Library Week 2025 with its annual report on the state of the nation’s libraries, including the top 10 most challenged books of 2024. All Boys Aren’t Blue, George M. Johnson’s YA memoir about growing up Black and queer, surpassed Maia Kobabe’s Gender-Queer, which had topped the list two years in a row, as the most challenged title of last year….

…[The] ALA stressed the new stakes, in a statement: “This year, as library funding is under attack, ALA encourages every library advocate to Show Up for Our Libraries by telling Congress to protect federal support for libraries.”

In its report, the ALA documented 821 attempts to censor materials and services at libraries, schools, and universities in 2024—a notable drop from the 1,247 attempts recorded in 2023. Moreover, the ALA 2,452 unique titles that were challenged or banned last year, marking a decrease from the record-breaking 4,240 titles targeted in 2023.

However, Caldwell-Stone noted that while the trend is a positive one, 2024 still marked “the third-highest number of book challenges recorded by ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom since it began documenting library censorship in 1990.” She added that the data is just one part of the picture.

“Not reflected in these numbers are the relentless attacks on library workers, educators, and community members who stand up to the censors and defend the freedom to read,” Caldwell-Stone wrote. “These attacks are creating an environment of fear in which library workers are afraid to buy books or report censorship.”…

(5) R. E. BURKE PROFILE. British comics creator R. E. Burke is “working on a comic that will tell the story of what happened to her, and the women she shared 19 days with, based on the drawings, notes and official documents she managed to take out of the detention centre. Becky still doesn’t know why she was incarcerated for so long.” “’I was a British tourist trying to leave the US. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centre’” in the Guardian.

…Workaway warns users that they “will need the correct visa for any country that you visit”, and that it is the user’s responsibility to get one, but it doesn’t stipulate what the correct visa is for the kind of arrangements it facilitates in any given country. Becky had always travelled with a tourist visa in the past – including to the US in 2022 – without any problems. She checked that work visas were only required for paid work in Canada. She had had months to plan her trip, and would have applied for a work visa if it was necessary, she says.

But the Canadian officials told Becky they’d determined she needed a work visa. She could apply for one from the US and come back, they said. Two officers escorted her to the American side of the border. They talked to the US officials. Becky doesn’t know what was said.

After six hours of waiting – and watching dozens of people being refused entry to the US and made to return to Canada – Becky began to feel frightened. Then she was called into an interrogation room, and questioned about what she had been doing during her seven weeks in the US. Had she been paid? Was there a contract? Would she have lost her accommodation if she could no longer provide services? Becky answered no to everything. She was a tourist, she said.

An hour later, Becky was handed a transcript of her interview to sign. She was alone, with no legal advice. “It was really long, loads of pages.” As she flicked through it, she saw the officer had summarised everything she told him about what she had been doing in the US as just “work in exchange for accommodation”. “I remember thinking, I should ask him to edit that.” But the official was impatient and irritable, she says, and she was exhausted and dizzy – she hadn’t eaten all day. “I just thought, if I sign this, I’ll be free. And I didn’t want to stay there any longer.” So she signed.

Then she was told she had violated her tourist visa by working in the US. They took her fingerprints, seized her phone and bags, cut the laces off her trainers, frisked her, and put her in a cell. “I heard the door lock, and I instantly threw up.”

At 11pm, Becky was allowed to call her family. Her father asked what was going to happen next. “I looked at the officer and he said, ‘We’re going to take you to a facility where you’ll wait for your flight. You’ll be there one or two days – just while we get you on the next flight home.’”…

But of course, she wasn’t.

… On her first day in the facility, Becky asked for a scrap of paper and a pen, and began to draw the inmates on the table next to her. She was immediately inundated with portrait requests. A Mexican woman called Lopez, who had a photo of her children stored on one of the iPads, told Becky she would buy her some paper and colouring pencils from the commissary if Becky drew her kids. She soon became the dorm’s unofficial artist-in-residence, with women huddling around the dirty mirrors to make themselves look presentable before they sat for her. They would decorate their cells with Becky’s drawings, or send them to their families. Lopez declared herself Becky’s manager. “She kept saying, ‘Becky, you need to ask for stuff in exchange. Ask for popcorn.’ And I’d be like, ‘Lopez, I don’t need anything.’ I thought, I’m here briefly, you’re stuck here a long time. I’m not going to take your food away from you.”…

… Becky had arrived in the detention centre on a Thursday. She soon realised she would not be out of it before the end of the weekend. No one ever replied to the message she sent to Ice on the iPad; she found out the Ice officer assigned to her case had gone on annual leave. The following Monday, Paul contacted the Foreign Office in London, and the British consulate in San Francisco. “They were doing the diplomatic bit,” he tells me. “But, after seven days, I could see it wasn’t really working. My perception is the British consulate couldn’t get Ice people to respond to them. There was no end in sight.”

After Becky had been incarcerated for more than 10 days, Paul decided to go to the media…

(6) OLIVIER AWARDS 2025. The Guardian names the winners of the awards that celebrate London theatre: “Olivier awards 2025: Giant, Benjamin Button and Fiddler on the Roof triumph”.

…The play Giant, which portrays children’s author Roald Dahl amid an outcry about his antisemitism, has triumphed at the Olivier awards on a star-studded night at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

US star John Lithgow took home the best actor prize for his performance as Dahl, Elliot Levey won best supporting actor (for playing publisher Tom Maschler) and Mark Rosenblatt received the award for best new play.

Giant is Rosenblatt’s debut as a playwright and brought him a double victory at the Critics’ Circle theatre awards in March, where he won for most promising playwright and best new play. Giant ran last year at the Royal Court in London and will transfer to the West End later this month, with Lithgow and Levey resuming their roles.

Lithgow thanked the audience for “welcoming me to England” and said “it’s not always easy when you welcome an American into your midst”, highlighting that this moment was “more complicated than usual” for relations between the US and the UK….

(7) REMEMBERING THE INKLINGS. Brenton Dickieson revisits “The First Meeting of the Inklings, with George Sayer” at A Pilgrim in Narnia.

I wrote last week about all the literary groups that formed some of the greatest writers of the 20th century, and how L.M. Montgomery was alone. One of those was the Inklings, which made C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien into the writers that they were. Without the daring possibilities in Tolkien’s work and the intelligent conversation of the Inklings, Lewis may never have turned to popular fiction and cultural criticism. Without Lewis’ persistent support and criticism and the company of other mythopoeic writers, Tolkien may never have completed that grand project of turning his mythology into popular story, lyric, and epic. I don’t think that the Inklings were more important to English literature than the Paris Expats or the Bloomsbury Set or the Detection Club, but in terms of the development of fantasy literature, the Inklings created new worlds.

Dickieson quotes from George Sayer’s Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times (1988; 1994; 2005). 

…I don’t know if Sayer ever attended an official Inklings event, but his description of how the Inklings emerged and what happened there is a great introduction both to this Oxford literary circle and to Sayer’s biography.

“For years no regular event delighted Jack more than the Thursday evening meetings of the little group of friends called the Inklings. His was the second group to use this name. Its predecessor was founded in about 1930 by a University College undergraduate named Tangye Lean. Members met in each other’s rooms to read aloud their poems and other work. There would be discussion, criticism, encouragement, and frivolity, all washed down with wine or beer. Lean’s group consisted mainly of students, but a few sympathetic dons were invited to join, including Tolkien and Jack, who may have been Lean’s tutor. Lean graduated in June 1933, and that autumn Jack first used the name the Inklings to describe the group that had already begun to meet in his rooms.

“It was always utterly informal. There were no rules, no officers, and certainly no agenda. To become a member, one had to be invited, usually by Jack. Nearly all members were his friends….

“…The ritual never varied. When most of the expected members had arrived (and maybe only three or four would come), Warren would brew a pot of strong tea, the smokers would light their pipes, and Jack would say, ‘Well, has nobody got anything to read us?’ …”

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Quark series (1978)

Forty-six years ago, a series called Quark aired as mid-season replacement on NBC. It surprised me that it only lasted eight episodes as I swear, I remember it lasting longer than that, then I often think that of series such as the Space Rangers which lasted six episodes and Nightmare Cafe which, oh guess, lasted six episodes as well. Surely, they lasted longer, didn’t they? 

It was created by Buck Henry, co-creator along with Mel Brooks of Get Smart. It was co-produced by David Gerber who had been responsible for the series version of The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (try not to hold that against him) and Mace Neufield who after being a talent agent for such acts as The Captain and Tennille and became responsible for The Omen as its producer. That film is effing scary.

(I tried rewatching Get Smart! a few years ago. Unlike The Man from U.N.C.L.E which held very splendidly when we watched it again, Get Smart! caused the Suck Fairy to visibly cringe when we watched it. I just thought it was bad, really bad.)

The cast was Richard Benjamin, Tim Thomerson Richard Kelton, Cyb and Tricia Barnstable, Conrad Janis, Alan Caillou and Bobby Porter. The Barnstable twins got a lot of press, mostly for the fact that they didn’t wear much by the standards of the day and really, really could not act. They previously appeared as the Doublemint Twins often with identical canines. I kid you not. 

Interesting note: they still live in their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky and are the hostesses of the annual Kentucky Derby Eve party which they founded in 1989. There were no Kentucky Derby parties before that as Tricia notes here, “It was astonishing that there really weren’t any celebrations at that time in Louisville,” Tricia says. “We started with about 500 people. We invited James Garner. Dixie Carter. Lots of stars. And they came!” The party which now draws thousands is a fundraiser for diabetes research as the maternal side has a history of that disease. 

Ok, so how is the reception? Oh, you have to ask? Seriously? One reviewer summed it up this way: “Only lasting eight episodes, it is eight episodes too many. The idea of spoofing science fiction is a given and there are only a handful that get it right, but this is a spectacularly awful show.” 

And another said succinctly that “A viewer seeking something a little different may find the series entertaining, but low expectations are a must.” 

Doesn’t most television SF comedy require low expectations? Most I said, not all.

It has no rating at Rotten Tomatoes. It might be streaming on Crackle and Philo, two services that I’ve never heard of. It might not be. Telling what is there is almost impossible as the major streaming tracking services don’t bother such services.

Yes, there are full episodes on YouTube. As it is very much still under copyright, those are definitely bootleg, so not provide links to them as they will be removed. As the Board Chair in Robocop 2 said, “Gentlemen, behave yourselves!”

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) JMS’ NEXT SPIDER-MAN. This July, writer J. Michael Straczynski closes out his series of “unlikely duo one-shots” with Spider-Man Vs. The Sinister Sixteen, featuring art by Phil Noto. For more information, visit Marvel.com.

 Over the last few months, prolific writer J. Michael Straczynski has been spotlighting unlikely character pairings in a series of action packed one-shots. These timeless and standalone stories have co-starred two Marvel icons of Straczynski’s choosing—either in unexpected team-ups or thrilling showdowns—from Doctor Doom & Rocket Raccoon to Nick Fury Vs. Fin Fang Foom. This July, Straczynski closes out the series with a collision course of heroes and villains from every corner of the Marvel Universe in SPIDER-MAN VS. THE SINISTER SIXTEEN #1.

…On what inspired the tale, Straczynski explained, “One of the most common tropes in the super hero world is that of the amount of destruction that comes when heroes and villains lock horns. We all accept that it just happens. This led to thinking: What if the owner of a popular restaurant has run it into the ground and needs the place to be destroyed for the insurance money, and invites a ton of heroes and villains to dine all at the same time in the hope that a fight breaks out? What if initially everyone tries to stay calm to enjoy the experience, but sooner or later, with that roster…the storm comes.”

(11) DIRE STRAITS. “’Game of Thrones’ Dire Wolves Return in De-Extinction Breakthrough” – The Hollywood Reporter mashes up science and show-biz insights.

Immortalized in Game of Thrones and on the crest of House Stark, the dire wolf is walking the Earth again and even howling after going extinct nearly 10,000 years ago.

As announced today by genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences, the long-extinct canine — or at least a very close approximation of it — has been successfully brought back to life. The process was accomplished via DNA extracted from two fossils as well as 20 edits of the genetic code of a gray wolf, the species’ closest living relative, according to research carried out by Colossal, sometimes known as the De-Extinction Company.

Colossal says it has whelped three dire wolves and — using CRISPR technology — decided to select fluffy white fur for their coats, based on its new analysis that the original species had snow-colored fur. (A previous study, published in Nature in 2021, found evidence that dire wolves were not closely related to gray wolves.)

The Colossal company has named its two new male dire wolves — a pair of six-month old adolescents — Romulus and Remus, after the mythological twin founders of Rome, who were said to have been raised by a wolf. And in an homage to Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen, it’s christened a female puppy Khaleesi.

The trio are now living in an enclosed preserve of more than 2,000 acres at an undisclosed location. They are expected to mature at 130 to 150 pounds — by contrast, a typical gray wolf clocks in at about 80 to 100 pounds.

 “Our team took DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies,” says Colossal CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm in a statement. “It was once said, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Today, our team gets to unveil some of the magic they are working on and its broader impact on conservation.”…

… Colossal reached out to [George R.R.] Martin after it started work on its dire wolf de-extinction project. Not only did he sign on as a Colossal Biosciences cultural adviser and investor, Martin also flew to meet Romulus and Remus at their private preserve (which Colossal says has been certified by the American Humane Society).

Says Martin, in a statement, “Many people view dire wolves as mythical creatures that only exist in a fantasy world, but in reality, they have a rich history of contributing to the American ecosystem.”

While many fans of Game of Thrones likely think that dire wolves as fantasy beasts, they are in fact an actual animal that lived in the Americas and likely went extinct due to the disappearance of the large herbivores on which they preyed. At L.A.’s famed La Brea Tar Pits, fossil remains from more than 3,600 dire wolves have been discovered and the adjacent museum devotes an entire wall to displaying around 400 dire wolf skulls….

(12) FUSION IN SPAAAAACE, [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Actually, this makes *perfect* sense. In my novels, before we discover complete conversion, this is how we get around the solar system.

There will, of course, be idiots against it, I mean, let’s ignore the humongous fusion reactor in the middle of the solar system… “Nuclear-powered rocket concept could cut journey time to Mars in half” at CNN.

… With funding from the UK Space Agency, British startup Pulsar Fusion has unveiled Sunbird, a space rocket concept designed to meet spacecraft in orbit, attach to them, and carry them to their destination at breakneck speed using nuclear fusion.

“It’s very unnatural to do fusion on Earth,” says Richard Dinan, founder and CEO of Pulsar. “Fusion doesn’t want to work in an atmosphere. Space is a far more logical, sensible place to do fusion, because that’s where it wants to happen anyway.”

For now, Sunbird is in the very early stages of construction and it has exceptional engineering challenges to overcome, but Pulsar says it hopes to achieve fusion in orbit for the first time in 2027. If the rocket ever becomes operational, it could one day cut the journey time of a potential mission to Mars in half….

(13) CUDDLY KEN PASSED 30 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Kenny Everett, one of Britain’s all-time top two disc jockey’s, died 30 years ago this month.  In addition to radio, he was known for The Kenny Everett TV Show: it was all in the best possible taste.. His humour was decidedly wacky and occasionally SF-adjacent if not, as with Captain Kremmen full-blown Sci-Fi.  And so…

Front shields on. Krill tray in position. Booster one. Booster two. Booster three. My mission, to camply go where no hand has set foot, to explore new vistas, quash new monsters and make space a safe place for the human race…  Yes, he’s so hunky… Muscles of steel, legs like a gazelle, thighs like tug boats, x-ray eyes, bionic blood, bulging biceps, a lock of tousled hair falling over a bronzed forehead, saviour of the Universe… Cue the music…

[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, F. Brett Cox, Lis Carey, Teddy Harvia, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 3/24/21 I Scrolled Pixel Rae’s Lawn

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(1) JEOPARDY! Tonight’s installment of Jeopardy! featured an entire category about the Nebula Awards. The first clue even mentioned the L.A. Science Fiction League of 1937. Andrew Porter provides screencaps. (Click for larger image.)

(2) TURN BACK THE CLOCK. Internet Archive Blog proudly points to a“Major SciFi Discovery Hiding in Plain Sight at the Internet Archive”.

Fans of science fiction learned last week that the word “robot” was first used in 1920—a full three years earlier than originally thought.The “massively important yet obvious” change in date was confirmed with a search of the Internet Archive, which has a digitized first edition of the Czech play, R.U.R. Rossum’s Universal Robots, published in 1920. There on the title page, hiding in plain sight in an English-language subtitle to the work, is the earliest known use of the word “robot.”

This important piece of information is one of many little-known facts captured in the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. The project was completed this year by historian Jesse Sheidlower,…

(3) PROGRESS REPORT. Alastair Reynolds, in “We’ve been landing on Mars for a long time”, compares the length of time probes have been going to Mars with a benchmark in the history of eartbound aviation.

(4) THE WRIGHT STUFF. There was a lot more mileage left in the old bird after all: “Part of Wright brothers’ 1st airplane on NASA’s Mars chopper” reports AP News.

A piece of the Wright brothers’ first airplane is on Mars.

NASA’s experimental Martian helicopter holds a small swatch of fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, the space agency revealed Tuesday. The helicopter, named Ingenuity, hitched a ride to the red planet with the Perseverance rover, arriving last month.

Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet no sooner than April 8. It will mark a “Wright brothers’ moment,” noted Bobby Braun, director for planetary science at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, Ohio, the Wrights’ hometown, donated the postage-size piece of muslin from the plane’s bottom left wing, at NASA’s request….

(5) BLUE PLAQUE SPECIAL. “Campaign to buy JRR Tolkien’s Oxford home fails” reports The Guardian.

An appeal to the public to raise £4.5m to buy JRR Tolkien’s former home in Oxford has failed.

Project Northmoor launched a crowdfunding campaign in December to raise money to acquire Tolkien’s former house at 20 Northmoor Road in Oxford, before it was put on to the market. Backed by names including Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen, who played Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf in adaptations of Tolkien’s novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the campaign said it wanted to turn the Grade II-listed property into “the first literary centre in the world dedicated to Tolkien”, and that it needed £4.5m to do so.

The Tolkien Society distanced itself from the project, after being approached for support by organisers, saying that the house “would not be a museum and would not be open to the public”, and that given the property is a listed building and already has a blue plaque celebrating the author, it is “well protected under the law and not in need of rescue”. The Tolkien Society was also concerned that plans it had seen for the property included “spiritual retreats”, that the charity’s “business model includes running a bed and breakfast, with a full-time resident warden”, and that its “primary intention appears to be to run creative workshops, rather than educational programmes about Tolkien”. It was also critical of the fact that “no prominent members of the Tolkien community – be they writers, academics, artists etc – are directors of the company”…

(6) “BLERDS” EXPLORE INTERSECTION OF BLACKNESS AND NERDINESS. Adam Bradley of the New York Times offers an insightful article titled “The Black Nerds Redefining the Culture”. In it, he traces how race and nerd subcultures overlap and affect each other.

“Blerds still love the same types of content [as other nerds],” Terril “Rell” Fields, the 33-year-old founder of the Raleigh, N.C.-based blerd.com says. “A Blerd just sees nerd culture through their Black cultural lens.” They may notice things that other nerds don’t: a Black or brown supporting character in a comic book that might otherwise be forgotten; a political allegory of race and democracy played out in a sci-fi television series.

(7) THEY CAME IN FROM THE COLD – TO WRITE. In “The Best Spy Novels Written by Spies, According to a Spy” on CrimeReads, sf writer Alma Katsu, a former spy, recommends her favorite spy novels by people who served in intelligence.

…As a retired intelligence professional and a published novelist, and now the author of a spy novel, I’m here to set the record straight: Even when you’ve been in the espionage business, it’s hard to write a good spy novel.

The heart of a good spy novel is not the caper but the personal or moral issue facing the protagonist. In a nutshell, that is the spy business, particularly on the clandestine side. You’re constantly asking yourself, am I doing the right thing? Do the ends justify the means? If I do this questionable thing, what does it mean about me as a person? The best spies—like the best people in general—question themselves. Test their motives. And try to hold themselves accountable. Because—like Spiderman—spies have great power, and with great power comes great responsibility….

Joe Weisberg, An Ordinary Spy

That’s right, the mind behind the brilliant TV series The Americans put a few years in with one of the three-letter agencies. Before his transition to television, he wrote this absolutely true-to-life novel. There was a tussle with CIA’s pre-publication review board that resulted in redactions, which the publisher cheekily decided to leave in. Without fail, when asked what it’s like to work at the Agency, this is the book I recommend. An Ordinary Spy perfectly captures what happens in the beginning, when your James Bond dreams crash into reality.

(8) THERE ARE OLD EQUATIONS, AND BOLD EQUATIONS, BUT THERE ARE NO OLD, BOLD COLD EQUATIONS. Netflix dropped a trailer for Stowaway, about a stowaway aboard a Mars mission,

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • March 24, 1978 — Quark was slotted in on NBC as a mid-season replacement series. Yes, the pilot aired on May 7, 1977, so technically that its birthday but let’s skip past that technically please. Quark was created by Buck Henry, co-creator of Get Smart. It starred Richard Benjamin, Tim Thomerson, Richard Kelton, Tricia Barnstable and  Cyb Barnstable. It specialised in satirizing popular SF series and films and the Wiki article says three episodes were based upon actual Trek episodes. It lasted but eight episodes, beating Space Rangers by two episodes in longevity. You can see the first episode here.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born March 24, 1852 – Edward Page Mitchell.  Editor-in-chief of the New York Sun; pioneering SF author.  “The Crystal Man” predated Wells’ Invisible Man; “The Clock That Went Backward” predated The Time Machine – though Wells must be credited for that superb name, and story; faster-than-light travel (“The Tachypomp”) in 1874; other firsts.  See Sam Moskowitz ed., The Crystal Man (1973).  More here.  (Died 1927) [JH]
  • Born March 24, 1874 — Harry Houdini. His literary career intersects the genre world in interesting ways. Though it’s not known which, many of his works were apparently written by his close friend Walter B. Gibson who as you know is the creator of The Shadow. And one famous story of his, “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”, was actually ghost written by Lovecraft! ISFDB lists another piece of genre fiction for him, “The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstad”. (Died 1926.) (CE)
  • Born March 24, 1897 — Theodora Kroeber. Mother of Ursula K. Le Guin. Anthropologist, Ishi in Two Worlds is the work she’s most remembered for. ISFDB lists her as having but one genre work, a children book titled Carrousel with illustrations by Douglas Tait. Ishi is available on the usual suspects. (Died 1979.) (CE) 
  • Born March 24, 1911 – Gabriel Mayorga.  I know of five covers, half a dozen interiors for us, but he may have done more.  Tuned a notable artistic vision to the demands of our publishers.  Here is the May 40 Super Science (Fred Pohl, editor).  This Jun 40 Astonishing was re-used by Justine Larbalestier for The Battle of the Sexes in SF.  Here is the May 41 Super Science Novels (also Pohl).  Painted, sculpted, and taught in New York City, working in oil, pastel, watercolor, epoxy, plastic and polyester plastic.  Here is Strength (1928) carved from a bar of soap for a contest.  He illustrated this Theory and Practice of Fencing.  More here.  (Died 1988) [JH] 
  • Born March 24, 1930 — Steve McQueen. He got his big break by being the lead, Steve Andrews, in The Blob. Setting aside the two different roles on Alfred Hitchcock Presents he had which are at least genre adjacent, The Blob is his only genre appearance in his brief life. He died of a heart attack. (Died 1980.) (CE) 
  • Born March 24, 1946 — Andrew I. Porter, 75. Editor, publisher, fan. Major member of NYC regional fandom starting in the early Sixties. Editor of Algol: The Magazine About Science Fiction which became Starship. Algol / Starship started in the Sixties and was a five-time Hugo nominee in the Seventies, and exceedingly superb reading it was. He won a Hugo for Best Fanzine in 1974, in a tie with Richard E. Geis, who was doing SFR. He founded the newzine Science Fiction Chronicle in May 1980 and published it monthly, eventually selling it to DNA Publications in May 2000.  He has won myriad awards including the Big Heart Award. He has attended hundreds of science fiction conventions and nearly forty Worldcons since his first in ‘63. He was Fan Guest of Honor at several conventions, including the 1990 Worldcon. And with John Bangsund, he was responsible for Australia hosting its first Worldcon. (CE)
  • Born March 24, 1946 — Gary K. Wolfe, 75. Monthly reviewer for Locus for twenty-seven years now and yes, I enjoy his column a lot. His brief marriage to Ellen R. Weil which ended with her tragic early death  resulted in them co-writing Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever.  Old Earth Books has reprinted many of his reviews done between 1992 and 2006 in Soundings: Reviews 1992-1996. He’s also written several critical looks at the genre, Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction. (CE)
  • Born March 24, 1949 — Tabitha King, 72. Wife of Stephen, mother of that writing brood. I met her but once on the lot of the original Pet Sematary a very long time ago. ISFDB to my surprise lists only two novels she’s written solely by herself, Small World and Wolves at the Door, and one with Michael McDowell, Candles Burning. None of her books are with her husband which surprised me. (CE)
  • Born March 24, 1949 – Bob Walters, age 72.  A score of covers, a hundred eighty interiors.  Here is Sunspacer.  Here is the Dec 84 Asimov’s.  Here is the May 85 Analog.  Here is A Thunder on Neptune.  [JH]
  • Born March 24, 1960 – Lene Kaaberbøl, age 60.  A score of novels for us; also crime fiction.  Nordic Children’s Book Prize.  Morgensen Prize.  First published at age 15.  “I was born in Copenhagen, by mistake, really, since my parents are both Jutlanders…. the distinction may appear trivial to non-Danes, but to insiders it is a crucial one!…  The Morning Land was one of the first … Danish fantasy novels for adults.”  Silver medal in pétanque at the World Championships.  [JH]
  • Born March 24, 1975 – Carl Hancock Rux, age 46.  Author of novels, essays, poems, plays, songs; actor and director; instrumentalist, singer (five solo albums, a dozen singles). Village Voice Literary Prize, NY Fdn. for the Arts Prize.  Alpert, Bessie, Doris Duke, Obie Awards.  Asphalt (novel, play) is ours.  More here.  [JH]
  • Born March 24, 1988 – Viktoria Gavrilenko, age 33.  Three covers for us.  Here is Villains, Inc.  Here is Young Sentinels.  Freelance concept artist and illustrator (also as “Viccolatte – call me Vik”); other occupations, tea drinking, writing, staring at ducks.  [JH]

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • xkcd’s “IMDb Vaccines” illustrates an eccentric thought experiment about a scene in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
  • Frank and Ernest discuss the legal issues of a monster stomping on a city.

(12) INTERNET RANDALL. Lorelei Marcus replays a famous (at the time) production of Arsenic and Old Lace with Boris Karloff for Galactic Journey readers: “[March 24, 1966] Dark Comedy and Birthday Wishes (a Tony Randall double feature)”.

… For those who are unfamiliar with the show, Arsenic and Old Lace is a dark comedy about two sweet old ladies who murder for fun, and their poor nephew, Mortimer Brewster, who discovers their nasty habit and tries to clean up the whole mess. Further conflict arises when Boris Karloff- I mean Jonathan Brewster, Mortimer’s brother and a notably malicious murderer, returns home to hide out for a while. As you might imagine, insanity ensues….

Though the rest of the cast is marvelous, I’d have to say Tony Randall gives the best performance as Mortimer Brewster, the straightman nephew. You may believe I have a slight bias in favor of Randall at this point, and that’s probably true, but I think it’s also fair to say that his execution of Mortimer ties the whole show together.

(13) BEEN THEN, DONE THAT. The Science Fiction 101 podcast returns in episode 2, “It’s About Time”.

Phil [Nichols] and Colin [Kuskie] consider the persistence of the concept of time travel. And we have a little guess-the-mystery-sound competition, albeit with no prizes to speak of other than (a) some small kudos and (b) a shout-out on our next episode. (Post a comment if you can identify the sound.)

(14) THE LARCH. “This Wooden Sculpture Is Twice as Old as Stonehenge and the Pyramids” says Smithsonian Magazine. Image at the link – it looks like Groot imitating “The Scream.”

Gold prospectors first discovered the so-called Shigir Idol at the bottom of a peat bog in Russia’s Ural mountain range in 1894. The unique object—a nine-foot-tall totem pole composed of ten wooden fragments carved with expressive faces, eyes and limbs and decorated with geometric patterns—represents the oldest known surviving work of wooden ritual art in the world….

Based on extensive analysis, Terberger’s team now estimates that the wood used to make the Shigir statue is about 12,250 years old. Carved from a single larch tree with 159 growth rings, the object itself was likely crafted around 12,100 years ago, at the end of the Last Ice Age, reports Michelle Starr for Science Alert.

(15) BEFORE 42. CBC previews a new book that reveals “Even Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy author Douglas Adams struggled with writer’s block”.

Writing didn’t always come easily for Douglas Adams.

That may be a surprise to fans of the late British comedy and sci-fi writer, whose prolific resume includes the iconic novels The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, as well as classic episodes of Doctor Who and Monty Python. 

But it’s no surprise to his sister Jane Thrift, who was there when he was writing some of his most famous works, and often got a sneak peek at his earliest drafts. 

“If it was going well, oh, it was exciting. He’d call you in and print it off the printer or show you what he’d written and he’d stand there. And it was a bit tricky sometimes because he was just waiting for the expression or the laugh,” Thrift told As It Happens host Carol Off. 

“But the times when it was difficult — those were difficult. Those were hard. It was hard to watch him go through that process. And I think it was probably as he became more successful, he knew the value of each word and it had to be perfect.”

Adams’s insecurity about his own writing is one of revelations about the author’s inner-life that will be explored in the forthcoming book 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams. …

(16) THEY CAN’T SEE YOU COMING. Smithsonian Magazine answers “How Does Your Vision Compare to Other Critters in the Animal Kingdom?”

Ever wondered what the world looks like through a cockatoo’s eyes? How about a giraffe—or even a butterfly?

For a new study published last month in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, a team of researchers set out in search of answers. As lead author Eleanor Caves explains in a press release, humans have higher visual acuity than most members of the animal kingdom, who “see the world with much less detail than we do.” And in recent decades, researchers have been slowly teasing apart how clear (or blurry) each critter’s view of the world is.

… As the measure decreases, an animal’s (or individual’s) vision worsens: At less than 10 cycles per degree, a human is deemed legally blind. The majority of insects, however, are lucky to see even one cycle per degree.

(17) STILL MORE SHAT! Birthday week continues with “William Shatner for the Commodore VIC-20” on YouTube. Shat learns that in 1982 you can play computer games on a computer!

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “The Cloudy Dog Talk About” on Vimeo is a cartoon by Asami Ike for Filers who know dogs are their friends!

[Thanks to JJ, Mike Kennedy, Rich Lynch, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, Olav Rokne, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, Jennifer Hawthorne, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Tip of the Day: 86 Space Station 76

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The trailer for Space Station 76 sold me…on the idea that I never need to see this movie.

Its slogan might have been “Yes, this is your grandfather’s space station!” because the film’s a send-up of 1970s sf. That could be a funny premise for original humor. However, you can see from the trailer that Space Station 76 covers much the same ground as Quark, an sf parody acually made in the 1970s. Quark bombed and went off the air two months after it premiered, something the producers of Space Station 76 ought to have taken as a warning.

Someone who worked on the new movie accidentally revealed the bottom line to the Los Angeles Times:

“It’s like ‘Peyton Place’ in outer space,” offers production designer Seth Reed, who only had four weeks to prep the low-budget film and found inspiration in everything from midcentury architects like Pierre Koenig to the 1971 “The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement” (a few sets are still available on Amazon).

Well, that would explain a great deal of what you see in the trailer.