Tag Archives: Ronald D. Moore

Pixel Scroll 4/3/24 Go, Strider! In The Sky

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(1) TOM DIGBY REMEMBERED. Long-time LASFSian Alan Frisbie shares some of his memories of Tom Digby, who died March 27.

Tom Digby

Alan Frisbie: I was saddened to hear from Paula Evans that Tom Digby had died. He was one of the first people I got to know in LASFS when I joined in 1969.  His monthly parties were always fun, especially because of the conversations on every topic under the sun.  He almost always had some new gadget he had built, often to demonstrate some interesting scientific fact.

At one party he had a Jello tasting competition.  On the table were about ten bowls of Jello, in all the typical colors.  Each person was given a 3×5 card and told to list each numbered bowl and its flavor.

At the end, he revealed that they were all the new pear flavor, but with different food colors added to fool us.

In his kitchen was one of those backwards-reading clocks.  However, the mechanism had been replaced with a small DC motor that, at random times, would rapidly run the hands in a random direction for a random amount of time.

As was popular at the time, he had a color organ attached to his stereo. This one, however, was unique.  He had taken an old color TV and connected the deflection yoke vertical & horizontal windings to the left & right amplifier outputs.  If the sound was a pure tone with a 90 degree phase difference, of course you would get a circle.  But music is never pure like that, so you got a constantly varying display.  I’m not sure how the colors were selected, but the display was absolutely mesmerizing.

He also built a drum & rhythm synthesizer back in those pre-microprocessor days.  It had a gigantic array of slide switches, with one column for each possible time, and a row for each possible sound.  There was a potentiometer for speed control.  You could configure any conceivable time signature and pattern with it.  We had lots of fun with it.

Tom was a truly unique individual.

(2) DOCTOR WHO EPISODE TITLES. The Doctor Who Season One episode titles have been revealed.

  • SPACE BABIES: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Julie Anne Robinson
  • THE DEVIL’S CHORD: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Ben Chessell
  • BOOM: Written by Steven Moffat, directed by Julie Anne Robinson
  • 73 YARDS: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Dylan Holmes Williams
  • DOT AND BUBBLE: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Dylan Holmes Williams
  • ROGUE: Written by Kate Herron and Briony Redman, directed by Ben Chessell
  • THE LEGEND OF RUBY SUNDAY: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Jamie Donoughue
  • EMPIRE OF DEATH: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Jamie Donoughue

A second Season 1 Trailer also has been released.

(3) NEW GAIMAN SERIES. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Dead Boy Detectives arrives April 25. They were created during Sandman (comic) #25, “Seasons of Mists”, and have been in lots of comics since (see list on “Dead Boy Detectives” Wikipedia entry.)

The characters (not sure it’s the same actors) were in several episodes of Doom Patrol Season 3. I lost track of whether they were in the Netflix Sandman series.

Here’s the trailer, which has me ready to start counting the days…

(4) RISING TIDE. Publishers Lunch says Reactor (formerly Tor.com) has announced these promotions:

Emmet Asher-Perrin has been promoted to senior editor, news & entertainment.

Christina Orlando has been promoted to senior editor, books coverage.

Leah Schnelbach has been promoted to senior editor, features.

Stefan Raets has been promoted to senior production editor.

(5) GOING SCOT FREE. “J.K. Rowling will not be arrested for comments about transgender women, police say” – click the link for NBC News’ description of and quotes from Rowling’s statements that were the source of the complaint.

…“We have received complaints in relation to the social media post,” a spokesperson for Police Scotland said in a statement. “The comments are not assessed to be criminal and no further action will be taken.”

Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act criminalizes “stirring up hatred” against people based on their race, religion, disability, sexuality or gender identity….

(6) IT’S HUDE! Cora Buhlert invites you to go “Exploring the Hude Solar System (with Bonus Gothic Abbey Ruins)”.

(OhmyGod! Look who’s included!)

Pluto

The way to Pluto leads through the forest on a public, but unpaved road. Eventually, the forest gives way to Hude Golf Course, where you can see golfers trying to hit their balls. Golfing is clearly a popular sport in the far reaches of the solar system. You travel past the parking lot of the golf course until at last, you reach Pluto, sitting by the side of the road directly in front of a private house.

Pluto is just a tiny speck on the marker, but then Pluto is tiny. And yes, when the Hude solar system was set up, Pluto was still an official planet. The number of moons is no longer correct either.

(Okay, be a spoilsport…)

(7) DON’T WALK UNDERNEATH WHEN THEY FLY BY. “Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida” says Ars Technica.

A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home, and NASA is on the case.

In all likelihood, this nearly 2-pound object came from the International Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida.

Otero wasn’t home at the time, but his son was there. A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2:34 pm local time (19:34 UTC) on March 8. That’s an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time—2:29 pm EST (19:29 UTC)—that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.

This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry….

… The entire pallet, including the nine disused batteries from the space station’s power system, had a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds), according to NASA. Size-wise, it was about twice as tall as a standard kitchen refrigerator. It’s important to note that objects of this mass, or larger, regularly fall to Earth on guided trajectories, but they’re usually failed satellites or spent rocket stages left in orbit after completing their missions.

In a post on X, Otero said he is waiting for communication from “the responsible agencies” to resolve the cost of damages to his home….

Of course he is.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY. April 3, 1978 — “’Annie Hall’ beats out ‘Star Wars’ for Best Picture”. Oh, noes!

The rise of the action-adventure blockbuster was on the horizon, but on April 3, 1978, the small-scale romantic comedy triumphs over the big-budget space extravaganza. At the 50th annual Academy Awards, held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture, beating out George Lucas’ Star Wars.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 3, 1968 — Jamie Hewlett, 56. Of course most of you know about Tank Girl, but I’m betting that that most of you don’t know the story of Jamie Hewlett, one of the co-creators, and his role in creating Tank Girl. So let’s tell it.

The comic was created by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett who met when they were studying at the West Sussex College of Design in Worthing, and first appeared in print thirty-six years ago in the British Deadline comics magazine.

Alan Martin in an Sci- Fi Online interview tells us how he and Hewlett created the character:

The three of us then worked together on the comic/fanzine Atomtan. While working on this Jamie had drawn a grotty looking heffer of a girl brandishing an unfeasible firearm. One of our friends was working on a project to design a pair of headphones and was basing his design on the type used by World War II tank driver. His studio was littered with loads of photocopies of combat vehicles. I pinched one of the images and gave it to Jamie who then stuck it behind his grotty girl illustrations and then added a logo which read ‘Tank Girl’.

Jamie Hewlett in 2014.

Posters, shirts of all sorts, and underpants, yes underpants, began showing up everywhere on the punk scene, including one shirt especially made for the Clause 28 protest march against Margaret Thatcher’s legislation effectively making homosexuality illegal. Tank Girl was particularly an icon among the lesbian community.

With its immense popularity, the major publishers showed interest in Tank Girl. Penguin UK was the one that Hewlett and Martin decided to go with. So they published all of the Deadline material as collections. What was interesting was that Penguin discovered that though that they owned global territorial rights, they didn’t own US rights. 

So Dark Horse won out over a number of other interested publishers forty years ago. A four-issue limited series Tank Girl: Visions of Booga, by Martin was released by IDW, as was Tank Girl: Armadillo and a Bushel of Other Stories, a Tank Girl novel also scripted by Martin. 

Fresh material is being produced by the current creative team is Alan Martin and Brett Parson. Tank Girl has appeared on a regular basis in various one-shots and limited series, now published by IDW, Image Comics, and mostly by Titan Comics.

No, I’ve not mentioned the film, have I? Well Martin and Hewlett are known for speaking quite poorly of their experience in the film, and what the film itself was. That’s has much as I’ll say about it. 

(10) SURFER’S UP. “’Fantastic Four’: Julia Garner To Play Silver Surfer In Marvel Movie” reports Deadline.

With the four actors set to play the iconic members of the super team, Marvel Studios‘ The Fantastic Four now has its sights set on who will play Silver Surfer, and it looks like they are going with one of the towns biggest rising stars.

Sources tell Deadline that Emmy winner Julia Garner is set to play the iconic comic book character in Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four. Pedro Pascal will play Reed Richards (aka Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby is Sue Storm (aka the Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn is Johnny Storm (aka the Human Torch) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach is Ben Grimm (aka the Thing)…

(11) AWARD TO RONALD D. MOORE. Variety reports“AFF to Honor Ronald D. Moore with Outstanding Television Writer Award”.

The Austin Film Festival (AFF) has announced Ronald D. Moore as the recipient of the 2024 Outstanding Television Writer Award for his prolific impact on the world of television and his work on celebrated science fiction and fantasy series such as “For All Mankind,” “Outlander” and “Battlestar Galactica.”

“I’m very honored,” Moore told Variety over the phone. “It’s great when your work is recognized and when a renowned organization like the Austin Film Festival chooses to do something like this. It’s amazing. I’m just very humbled by it all.” 

Moore will receive the award at the Festival Awards Luncheon during AFF’s Writers Conference, which takes place Oct. 24-27. Two panels, “A Conversation with Ronald D. Moore” and “Script To Screen: Battlestar Galactica,” are also scheduled for the event….

(12) WHAT ARE FANS STREAMING? JustWatch has compiled their top 10 charts for March 2024.

(13) THE FIVE PERCENT SOLUTION. El País profiles “Author who won Japan’s top literary award with help from ChatGPT: ‘AI helps you compensate for your weaknesses’”.

Rie Kudan, the Japanese writer who won this year’s Akutagawa Prize — the highest award in Japanese literature — with a book where around 5% of the content was generated by ChatGPT, encourages writers to use generative artificial intelligence in their creations.

“If you think carefully about how to use it and face your own weaknesses, AI helps you compensate for them,” says the 33-year-old author, speaking at the headquarters of her publishing house, Shinchosha, which advertises her work under the slogan “A book of prophecies in the era of generative artificial intelligence.” However, Kudan says that the input from AI was very small: “Only one page out of 144.”

The novel Tokyo To Dojo To (Tokyo’s Tower of Sympathy) was described by the jury as an “almost flawless” work and earned Kudan a literary prize created in 1935 and which has launched the careers of authors such as Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. The award winner was announced in January….

(14) REMEMBER TO BYO MENTOS. Walmart is one place you can get this “Disney Parks Coca Cola Coke Star Wars Galaxy Edge 13.5 Bottle Thermal Detonator”.

(15) ECLIPSE IN US CURSED EARTH AND BLACK ATLANTIC. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The eclipse will happen on April 8. Dr. Becky is an Oxford U based astrophysicist. “Total Solar Eclipse 2024 – WHEN, WHERE, WHAT, HOW, & WHY”.

(16) WHAT WILL EARTH BE LIKE 300 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]  The YouTube Channel PBS Eons usually takes a look back in time at past evolution but for once has gone all SFnal with a look forward at the future of life on Earth 300 million years hence. To put that in perspective 300 million years ago in the past was when the first reptiles arose and they became the dinosaurs (for whom I have never forgiven what they did to Raquel Welch…).  In this 11-minute video we look forward to a time when there will be a new supercontinent and the Hugo Award debacle is long forgotten….

We spend a lot of time here on Eons looking backwards into deep time, visiting ancient chapters of our planet’s history. But this time, we’re taking a look towards the deep future. After all, the story is far from over.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel! Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 6/9/22 I Scrolled This Pixel Five Times And All I Got Was This Lousy Scroll Title

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(1) MONSTROUS WORD STUDY. At CrimeReads, Ellen Datlow discusses the nature of monsters from the introduction to her anthology Screams From The Dark. “Monstrosity Is in the Eye of the Beholder”.

…In Old English, the monster Grendel was an “aglæca,” a word related to “aglæc”: “calamity, terror, distress, oppression.” A few centuries later, the Middle English word “monstre”—used as a noun and derived from Anglo-French, and the Latin “monstrum”—came into use, referring to an aberrant occurrence, usually biological, that was taken as a sign that something was wrong within the natural order. So abnormal animals or humans were regarded as signs or omens of impending evil. Then, in the 1550s, the definition began to include a “person of inhuman cruelty or wickedness, person regarded with horror because of moral deformity.” At the same time, the term began to be used as an adjective to describe something of vast size.

The usage has evolved over time and the concept has become less subtle and more extreme, so that today most people consider a monster something inhuman, ugly and repulsive and intent on the destruction of everything around it. Or a human who commits atrocities. The word also usually connotes something wrong or evil; a monster is generally morally objectionable, in addition to being physically or psychologically hideous, and/or a freak of nature, and sometimes the term is applied figuratively to a person with an overwhelming appetite (sexual in addition to culinary) or a person who does horrible things….

(2) PAYDAY. Rachel Swirsky’s novella January Fifteenth will be released by Tordotcom Publishing on June 14. January Fifteenth tracks four points of view, each in a different part of the United States of America, on the day when the government disburses Universal Basic Income. 

January Fifteenth—the day all Americans receive their annual Universal Basic Income payment.

For Hannah, a middle-aged mother, today is the anniversary of the day she took her two children and fled her abusive ex-wife.

For Janelle, a young, broke journalist, today is another mind-numbing day interviewing passersby about the very policy she once opposed.

For Olivia, a wealthy college freshman, today is “Waste Day”, when rich kids across the country compete to see who can most obscenely squander the government’s money.

For Sarah, a pregnant teen, today is the day she’ll journey alongside her sister-wives to pick up the payment­­s that undergird their community—and perhaps embark on a new journey altogether.

In this near-future science fiction novella by Nebula Award-winning author Rachel Swirsky, the fifteenth of January is another day of the status quo, and another chance at making lasting change. 

The Tordotcom Publishing 2022 Debut Sampler includes a preview of Swirsky’s upcoming novella. (The writers represented in the Sampler are Scotto Moore, Marion Deeds, Malcolm Devlin, Rachel Swirsky, Joma West, Hiron Ennes, Aimee Pokwatka.)

(3) DO HUGO WINNERS LOSE THEIR FLAVOR ON THE BEDPOST OVERNIGHT? James Davis Nicoll asked the Young People Read Old SFF panel what they think of “Eyes of Amber” by Joan D. Vinge.

This month’s Young People Read Old Hugo Finalists focuses on Joan D. Vinge’s 1977 Hugo-winning Eyes of Amber. Initially giving the impression of high fantasy1, the story is in fact primarily set on a pre-Voyager Titan, imaged as a life bearing world whose intelligent inhabitants while inhuman in form struggle with issues familiar to humans. Interaction is limited to messages relayed via robot probe, but this is sufficient to raise intriguing moral issues for the humans monitoring the probe. 

Readers of a certain vintage may have first encountered the story in 1979’s Eyes of Amber and Other Stories. Readers of a slightly older vintage — readers like me, for example — might have encountered it in Analog’s remarkable Women’s Issue. Younger readers might never have encountered the story at all because in the grand tradition of Hugo finalists by women Eyes of Amber appears to have been out of print in English since 1987. The Young Readers therefore are likely to be engaging Vinge’s Novelette with fresh eyes: will they like it as much as readers did 45 years ago?… 

(4) GAME MAKING EMPLOYEES GROUND DOWN. Kotaku reports “Fallout 76 Developers Crunched Under ZeniMax’s Mismanagement”.

“No one wanted to be on that project because it ate people. It destroyed people,” one former developer on Fallout 76 told Kotaku. “The amount of people who would go to that project, and then they would quit [Bethesda] was quite high.”

Kotaku spoke to 10 former employees of Bethesda and its parent company ZeniMax Media who were familiar with Fallout 76’s development, all of whom shared their accounts only under the condition of anonymity. Some sources said that they signed non-disparagement agreements upon leaving the company, and feared that ZeniMax’s influence in the industry would prevent them from being hired elsewhere.

Testers who worked during the months leading up to the original launch said that they crunched 10-hour days for six days a week as the game trudged toward the beta’s optimistic launch date of November 14, 2018.

Some testers would only find reprieve when they finally left the Fallout 76 team. Two former testers recounted that one of their colleagues said in a QA group chat after leaving the project: “I didn’t cry last night when I was taking a shower.” Another said in the same chat: “I pulled into work today, and I sat in my car for a second, and my chest didn’t feel heavy like it normally does.”…

(5) TITLE SEARCH. At Black Gate, Gregory Feeley finds that “The Fantastic Novels of Harlan Ellison” were more honored in the breach than the observance.

…In 1972, at the Los Angeles World Science Fiction Convention, Ellison told a large audience that his 1970 novella “The Region Between” would form the middle third of a novel, The Prince of Sleep. Ellison made the story sound exciting (the published novella ends with the destruction of the universe), which somewhat made up for his other announcement: that he had broken with Doubleday and The Last Dangerous Visions would soon be with another publisher. Not long after this, Locus announced the sale of the novel to Ballantine. The novel, which was never completed, would in time be sold to at least two subsequent publishers….

(6) AT THE OFFICE IN SPACE. According to WIRED, “’For All Mankind’ Is the Best Sci-Fi of Its Era”.

…Now in its third season, For All Mankind started with a simple question: What if the Americans weren’t first to put a man on the moon? From that premise, though, it has built something far more complex: a show that combines political intrigue, military brinkmanship (aka a lunar standoff between American and Russian forces), and a space race that eventually lands on the surface of Mars.

But as much as the show, unsurprisingly cocreated by Battlestar Galactica and Trek producer Ronald D. Moore, can get wonky and gleefully trope-y, its success doesn’t lie in the verisimilitude of the faux NASA hardware or brilliance of its space scenes. Instead, it’s the fact that Moore and his cohort opted to treat the entire show like a grand workplace drama; Mad Men, but for NASA….

(7) ARE THEY FRIENDLY? JUST LISTEN. SYFY Wire lists “E.T. and 9 other great friendly aliens who really do come in peace”.

In science-fiction, aliens don’t typically “come in peace.” Instead, they tend to be invaders or monsters — think War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Alien, or countless other examples of threats from Mars or beyond. However, there are some pop culture aliens who mean well, the most famous of which is undoubtedly E.T….

5. “THEODORE ARROWAY,” CONTACT (1997)

No, Jodi Foster’s dad is not an alien — that’s just the form the actual alien takes to make Dr. “Ellie” Ann Arroway comfortable when she (and by extension, humanity) encounters a being from another world for the first time. The aliens in Contact are extremely friendly, wanting nothing more than to welcome a new space-faring race… in due time, of course. They are patient, thoughtful, and kind — and they believe in humanity enough to trust that we’ll be able to figure out how to contact them and join them in the stars. They will be happy to have us there when we’re ready. Extremely friendly of them, especially seeing as their first encounter with our species was a video of, uh, Adolf Hitler….

(8) OF COURSE. A skeptical Jessie Gaynor asks “Did Dr. Seuss know what horses looked like? (An investigation.)” at Literary Hub.

One of my toddler’s favorite books is Dr. Seuss’s ABC. I like the narcotic effect of the sing-song rhymes, she likes getting praised whenever she correctly screams a letter, and we both like the goofy little drawings. Every time I get to H, though—”Hungry Horse. Hen in hat. H…h…H”—I ask myself the same question. Not “What begins with H?” but: did Dr. Seuss go his entire life without seeing a horse? Or a photograph of a horse? Or an oil painting of a horse, standing next to Napoleon or Tony Soprano? Because, according to his rendering in Dr. Seuss’s ABC, this is what Dr. Seuss thought a horse looked like…

(9) THE KINDLING EDITION. “A fireproof copy of ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ auctioned for $130,000 to help fight book bans” – NPR has the figures.

Bidding on a special, fireproof copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale ended on Tuesday afternoon, when the book was auctioned by Sotheby’s for $130,000. Proceeds from the auction will go to PEN America’s efforts to fight book banning.

In a promotional video for the auction, the 82-year-old Atwood tries, unsuccessfully, to burn the book with a flamethrower.

The Handmaid’s Tale seems to be a favorite among those who fear the written word. The dystopian novel about misogyny and other dangers of oppression became a bestselling novel, an Emmy-winning TV show and a regular on banned book lists.

“I never thought I’d be trying to burn one of my own books… and failing,” says Margaret Atwood in a statement. “The Handmaid’s Tale has been banned many times—sometimes by whole countries, such as Portugal and Spain in the days of Salazar and the Francoists, sometimes by school boards, sometimes by libraries.”…

(10) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 59 of Octothorpe is up: “Chickens”. Art by Alison Scott.

John Coxon is roast beef, Alison Scott is pickled onion, and Liz Batty is flamin’ hot. We get excited about the Fanzine Lounge at Chicon 8 before talking Hugo Voter Packets and discussing Kevin Standlee’s wisdom on NASFiC voting. Listen here!

(11) A FAN’S APPRECIATION: CLIFFORD D. SIMAK’S WAY STATION

1963 – [By Cat Eldridge.]

Not an anniversary, though June was cover date on the magazine that published Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station, this is intended as my appreciation of that stellar novel.  It was originally published as Here Gather the Stars in the June and August 1963 issues of Galaxy Magazine, with the book publication coming in November of that year from Doubleday. 

I don’t think that there’s a lot of outstanding fiction by this writer. This is along with City, A Choice Of Gods and All Flesh is Grass are great but a lot of his writing is just OK. This and City are stellar. 

I like the novel because Enoch isn’t perfect nor are the aliens who pass through it perfect but both are fully realized so that they feel quite real. The setting is interesting too — an interstellar way station that hadn’t changed in a century manned by a Civil War veteran, and I don’t think it says which side of the War he fought on, not allowed to live in his own house. 

Having read it more times than I remember, I’m not surprised that it won the Hugo Award at Pacificon II. I should listen to it to see how it works that way. Simak is blessed as having a lot of his works done as audio narratives including City.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 9, 1925 — Keith Laumer. I remember his Bolo series fondly and read quite a bit of it. Can’t say which novels at this point though Bolo definitely and Last Command almost certainly. The Imperium and Retief series were also very enjoyable though the latter is the only one I’d re-read at this point. He has two Hugo nominations, first at Noreascon for his “In the Queue” short story and then at IguanaCon II for his “The Wonderful Secret”. The usual suspects have decent though not complete ebooks listings for him, heavy on the Imperium and Retief series and they’ve just added a decent though not complete Bolo collection too. (Died 1993.)
  • Born June 9, 1930 — Lin Carter. He is best known for his work in the 1970s as editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. As a writer, His first professional publication was the short story “Masters of the Metropolis”, co-written with Randall Garrett, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1957. He would be a prolific writer, average as much as six novels a year. In addition, he was influential as a critic of the fantasy genre and an early historian of the genre. He wrote far too much to me to say I’ve sampled everything he did but I’m fond of his Castillo, Great Imperium and Zarkon series. All great popcorn literature! (Died 1988.)
  • Born June 9, 1943 — Joe Haldeman, 79. Whether or not, it was written as a response to Starship Troopers as some critics thought at time, The Forever War is a damn great novel which I’ve read at least a half dozen times. No surprise that it won the Hugo at MidAmeriCon and the Nebula Award.
  • Born June 9, 1954 — Gregory Maguire, 68. He is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West based off of course the Oz Mythos, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister retelling the tale of Cinderella and Mirror, Mirror, a revisionist retelling of the Snow White tale which is really excellent. Well you get the idea. He’s damn good at this revisionist storytelling.
  • Born June 9, 1956 — Patricia Cornwell, 66. You’ll know her better as the author of the medical examiner Kay Scarpetta mystery series, now some twenty-six novels deep and soon to be a series with Jamie Lee Curtis as the producer. She is here, well in part as I do like that series a lot, because she wrote two SF novels in the Captain Chase series, Quantum and Spin.
  • Born June 9, 1961 — Michael J. Fox, 61. The Back to The Future trilogy stands as one of the best SF series ever done and his acting was brilliant. Since 1999 due to his Parkinson’s Disease, he’s has mainly worked as a voice-over actor in films such as Stuart Little and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Prior to his diagnosis, he performed on Tales from the Crypt and directed “The Trap” episode. He would return to live action performing in 2014, bless him, with The Michael J. Fox Show series. 
  • Born June 9, 1981 — Natalie Portman, 41. Surprisingly her first genre role was as Taffy Dale in Mars Attacks!, not as Padme in The Phantom Menace for which the fanboys gave her far too much hatred which is what they do when they do not have a real life. She’d repeat that role in Attack of The Clones and Revenge of The Sith and of course get fresh grief from them. She’d next play Evey in V for Vendetta. And she played Jane Foster, a role she played oh magnificently — and got more grief for — first in Thor, then in Thor: The Dark World and then in Avengers: Endgame. She’ll reprise the role in Thor: Love and Thunder in which she’ll play both Jane Foster and Thor. That I’ve got to see. 

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro shows superhero roommates have their own way of sharing housework.
  • The Far Side shows who wishes the Creator had rested even earlier.
  • Calvin and Hobbes illustrates why you can’t fool all of the people all the time.  

(14) JURASSIC Q&A. The New York Times interviews “Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill on Their ‘Jurassic’ Reunion”.

…On their late-April Zoom call, Neil, Dern and Goldblum were eager to catch up, engage in some light teasing and ponder how their lasting chemistry as a trio has proved as potent a selling point as all those special effects. “These ‘Jurassic’ films, they’re often known as dinosaur films, but if you’re not interested in the people, the films don’t work,” Neill said. “Dinosaurs are the bit players, albeit awesome ones.”

Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.

How long has it been since you’ve seen the original “Jurassic Park”?

SAM NEILL The last time I watched it in its totality was sitting beside Princess Di at Leicester Square at the London opening. On the other side of me was my son Tim — he was 11 and completely swept away by it, but about the time the T-Rex turns up, Tim started to fart. And the draft was drifting across me to royalty! I spent the whole film in a muck sweat, thinking, “Princess Di is being exposed to the horrors of a little boy’s fart, but she’s going to think it’s me. I am going to be subliminally blamed for my son’s crimes, and I don’t think she’ll talk to me afterwards.” But she was well brought up and never mentioned it.

JEFF GOLDBLUM I love that story, Sam. I’ve heard him tell that a couple of times, and it’s just amazing the lengths that he will go to still blame the boy.

LAURA DERN And Tim’s a grown man now!

(15) NO LOOMPA LOOMPAS WERE HARMED. MSN.com reports “Two people rescued from chocolate tank at Mars factory in Pennsylvania”. What is this, a Smothers Brothers tribute?

Two people were rescued from a tank full of chocolate at a Mars plant in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, according to emergency dispatchers.

Crews were called around 2 p.m. to Mars Wrigley Confectionery in Elizabethtown after two workers became trapped in the tank and couldn’t get out on their own.

“Fire crews have eliminated pulling them straight out of a tank,” Brad Wolfe, communications supervisor for Lancaster County 911 dispatch, told CNN. “They have to cut a hole in the side of the tank to get them out,” he said.

Wolfe said that it’s unclear how the people fell into the chocolate tank.

(16) ON PARADE. SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie sent an even better photo of a Dalek in Queen’s Jubilee regalia.

(17) YOU’LL BE AN OLD ONE BY THE TIME THEY ARRIVE. Steve Jackson Games would love to sell you a Cthulhu D6 Dice Set. Pre-order for shipping in September. I hope your luck holds out til then!

(18) DARKNESS FALLS. Hell’s army just got stronger. We’re gonna need some backup. Marvel’s Midnight Suns, a tactical RPG from Firaxis Games and 2K, launches worldwide October 7, 2022.

(19) SPOILERIFFIC. “Jordan Peele’s Final ‘Nope’ Trailer Reveals Its Mysterious Plot, Which Is All About [Spoilers]” warns Variety.

…Universal Pictures released the final trailer for “Nope,” Jordan Peele’s third feature film. It teases much of the movie’s previously-unknown plot, in which Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya star as the duo behind a horse training ranch for Hollywood productions, who, thanks to the aliens hovering over their property, hatch a scheme to capture and sell the first authentic footage of UFOs…

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, N., SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John Coxon, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]

Pixel Scroll 10/29/20 The Wheel of Time Bears Bitter Fruit

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(1) FOR THE WINNERS. Joy Alyssa Day posted a photo of this year’s Chesley Award.

Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 13. On April 13, 1970, the Apollo 13’s lunar landing was aborted in what would become a historic mission. The crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft splashed down on April 17, 1970.

It’s a beautiful piece, 4″ wide, 12″ deep and about 4″ tall. Water is sculpted fused glass with a blown glass Apollo Capsule attached. Capsule is engraved and painted for the doors and windows.

(2) BREAK THE CYCLE. Samantha Haney Press in a Facebook post urges “A Radical Approach To Fan-Run Cons”.

…Conrunning is a hard, sometimes thankless task. Most of the time people don’t know who does what unless they’re looking to complain. Most people don’t know that a lot of fan-run cons are run by volunteers, not paid workers.

THAT BEING SAID, conrunners are still stewards of and drawn from the community made up of the convention’s attendees. If your convention isn’t welcoming to congoers of marginalized identities, the demographics trickle up. Fewer people of color among attendees means fewer people of color to recruit from for leadership positions.

And the reverse becomes true, too – no people of marginalized identities in leadership roles? Those demographics will feel unwelcome as attendees, either through passive perception or active failures by leadership. It’s a cycle.

You have to make a DELIBERATE EFFORT to break the cycle. At *every* link in the chain, or it perpetuates itself.

You need not just one person overseeing programming, for instance, but an ecosystem of people across many departments, from front-facing/high-profile jobs to the invisible ones backstage. You need redundancy in case of burnout – conrunner burnout is REAL, and it’s **compounded** by social justice burnout for those trying to enact systemic change….

(3) SPECULATING ABOUT REALITY. Mary Anne Mohanraj interviews “Minal Hajratwala”, author of Leaving India, at Speculative Literature Foundation. (Transcript here.)

“South Asian work in particular, it’s interesting because I feel like…a modern South Asian science fiction sensibility, if there is one, is still forming. And of course, I mean, we’ve talked about this, how diverse South Asia is, so many different strands. So whether you can even say there is ‘a South Asian sensibility’ is disputable. But at the same time, I do think that South Asian countries have this deep wellspring of myth…and religion, which is nothing if not speculative. Like, that’s, to me, that’s the definition. It’s like we don’t know things; therefore, we will speculate about how reality is constructed. And so drawing from that is this really fertile ground that I think people are still just beginning to tap into.”

(4) SOUND FAMILIAR? Den of Geek presents “The Scariest Sentences Ever Written, Selected by Top Horror Authors”. You’ll know a bunch of these.

For Halloween we’ve attempted to round up some of the scariest sentences ever written – and who better to ask for their recommendations than some of the finest horror writers and editors around? We asked some of our favourite experts to tell us the line that scared them most and why. Any suggestions of your own? Let us know in the comments.

To Serve Man by Damon Knight

Scariest sentence: “It’s a cookbook,” he said.

Is there a better whammy of an end line than this? Ten to one you’ll know the story that precedes it: Seemingly benevolent aliens, the Kanamit, arrive on earth, promising peace and prosperity. The aliens are as good as their word, and start whisking “lucky” humans off to their planet for a “ten year exchange programme”. A U.N translator, who (rightly) thinks this is all too good to be true, sets about translating the aliens’ favourite book, which, from its title, “To Serve Man,” is assumed to be an innocent handbook. It ain’t (see the last line).

(5) CLUB FANS. PC Magazine asks Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society President Matthew B. Tepper “In 2020, Is Science Fiction Still an Escape?”

…That was a long time before you joined, but do you have any memories of meeting [Ray Bradbury]?
MBT: If you bounced around to all the libraries and bookstores on LA’s Westside, as I did as a kid, it was hard not to meet Ray! He was always around somewhere, always genial, always ready to bask in adulation. The last time I saw him was just before his 90th birthday, at a bookstore.

There must be lots of writers who’ve emerged from LASFS over the years.
MBT: Yes, we’ve had many authors come up from our membership. The best known is Larry Niven, author of Ringworld, and he still attends our Zoom meetings. 

(6) MORE ABOUT LUPOFF. Comics expert Maggie Thompson focuses on the good times in “Richard Allen Lupoff: Among the Memories” at The Comics Journal.

…But facts, dates, awards: They don’t convey just how much fun it was to hang out with Dick and Pat — and how eternally kind they were as hosts. I’m speaking here as one among many who experienced their kindness. For example, they: provided home base, as Don and I explored Manhattan’s comics publishers; played host, as Don and I visited Poughkeepsie to tour the Western printing operation; and brainstormed collecting a bunch of nostalgia articles into book collections that others could share. Heck, I haven’t even mentioned their kindness, as the plans for us all to see the Broadway show It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman fell through — and they arranged to substitute the off-Broadway The Mad Show. They were there for us so that we could attend John Benson’s multi-day New York City comics convention that same year (with Pat and me as two of the four attending females). And it was grand to see them more than once at Comic-Con International: San Diego.

(7) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.

  • 1996 — Terri Windling’s The Wood Wife was published by Tor Books with the cover illustration by Susan Boulet. It would win the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature the following year. It was nominated for both the BFA and Nebula Awards too. She later published a somewhat loosely connected story, “The Color of Angels”, a year later. Jo Walton in What Makes This Book So Great says that The Wood Wife “hits a sweet spot for me where I just love everything it’s doing.”

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born October 29, 1906 – Fredric Brown.  Had he written only “Arena”, The Lights in the Sky Are Stars, Martians, Go Home, and What Mad Universe, it would have been enough for us; these even if alone would make him a star in our sky.  Two more novels, a hundred thirty shorter stories – some very short, one of his gifts.  Also detective fiction (Edgar Award for The Fabulous Clipjoint).  NESFA Press has two collections.  I never met him in person; photos show an ordinary-looking man; all his strangeness, of which he had no lack, must have gone into his work.  (Died 1972) [JH]
  • Born October 29, 1925 – Beryl Mercer.  Active in the British SF Ass’n.  Essays, reviews in Vector and Zenith, some with husband Archie Mercer.  Fanzines Oz (for OMPA, the Off-trails Magazine Publishers Ass’n), Mercatorial Annual (with AM), The Middle Earthworm (with AM; Tolkien), The Once and Future Worm (with AM; Arthur); did much of the zine reproduction for PADS (Printing And Distributing Service) and contributed Link (with Mary Reed).  Eastercon committees.  Doc Weir award (U.K., for service).  (Died 2003) [JH]  
  • Born October 29, 1935 — Sheila Finch, 85. She’s best-known for her stories about the Guild of Xenolinguists which are quite excellent. The Golden Gryphon collection The Guild of Xenolinguists is well worth seeking out. She also wrote Myths, Metaphors, and Science Fiction: Ancient Roots of the Literature of the Future which is exactly what the title says. Neither are available at the usual digital suspects though some of her other work is. (CE) 
  • Born October 29, 1938 — Ralph Bakshi, 82. Started as low-level worker at Terrytoons, studio of characters such as Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse. His first major break would be on CBS  as creative director of Mighty Mouse and the Mighty Heroes. Fast forwarding to Fritz the Cat which may or may not be genre but it’s got a foul mouthed talking cat. Genre wise, I’d say War Wizards which features voice work by Mark Hamill and whose final name was Wizards so it wouldn’t be confused with you know what film. Next up was The Lord of the Rings, a very odd affair. That was followed by Fire and Ice, a collaboration with Frank Frazetta. Then came what I considered his finest work, the Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures series!  Then there’s Cool World… (CE) 
  • Born October 29, 1967 — Rufus Sewall, 53. Appeared as Reichsmarschall John Smith in The Man in The High Castle loosely based on the novel by Philip K. Dick. And he was the lead in Dark City, a film often compared to the Matrix films. He’s also appeared, and this not a complete listing,in The Legend of Zorro, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, A Knight’s Tale, Mermaid Chronicles Part 1: She Creature, The Illusionist and on the American version of the Eleventh Hour series.(CE)
  • Born October 29, 1971 — Winona Ryder, 49. Beatlejuice, of course, but also Edward Scissorhands and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Not to mention Alien Resurrection and Star Trek as Spock’s human mother Amanda Grayson. Which brings me to Being John Malkovich which might me the coolest genre film of all time. (CE) 
  • Born October 29, 1971 — Anna Dale, 49. Scottish  writer whom many reviewers have dubbed “the next JK Rowling” whose best  known for her Whispering to Witches children’s novel. It was based on her masters dissertation in children’s writing. She has written two more novels of a similar ilk, Spellbound and Magical Mischief. (CE)
  • Born October 29, 1979 — Andrew Lee Potts, 41. He is best known as Connor Temple on Primeval and the all-too-short live spinoff Primeval: New World. He was also Tim Larson in Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, a British crime drama series. Yes, it’s that Stan Lee. He also had recurring role of Toby in Strange, a BBC supernatural series. (CE) 
  • Born October 29, 1938 – Ralph Bakshi, 82.  Producer, director, writer, animator.  Fritz the Cat (1972), first animated film to be rated X, may be the most financially successful independent animated film of all time.  Two years of Mighty Mouse 1987-1989.  Started as a cel polisher at Terrytoons.  Golden Gryphon for his Lord of the Rings.  Inkpot.  Annie.  [JH]
  • Born October 29, 1968 – Stanley Donwood, 52.  One novel, a shorter story, four covers for us; half a dozen other books; artwork for the band Radiohead, its singer Thom Yorke’s solo albums, TY’s band Atoms for Peace – I’ll let you decide whether those are ours, Our Gracious Host has been after me for saying maybe. Website Slowly Downward, also the title of a 2001 collection.  Here is Blue Light.  Here is Concrete Island.  Here is Let’s All Go to the Science Fiction Disco.  [JH]
  • Born October 29, 1975 – Dahlia Rose, 45.  Seven dozen books; mostly romance, historical, military, modern, paranormal, combinations thereof; to quote her Website, “Bad boys, soldiers and shifters, spice between the sheets”.  Ten so far in the Paladin Dragons series.  [JH]
  • Born October 29, 1986 – Lyndsay Gilbert, 34.  Likes SF, playing the fiddle, cats, dogs, “and the ancient art of belly dance”.  Has read Tennyson and Yeats.   One novel, three shorter stories so far.  A few months ago she wrote, “My life has changed so much in the last two years.  Unfortunately my writing hasn’t changed enough, so prepare for a deluge of emotional poems, folks.”  [JH]

(9) GONE ALREADY. ComingSoon reports “Sci-Fi Drama Brave New World Cancelled at Peacock After One Season”.  

According to Deadline, Peacock has officially decided not to give David Wiener’s sci-fi drama series Brave New World a second season renewal, with UCP planning to shop it to other streamers or networks. This cancellation comes four months after the Alden Ehrenreich-led series debuted its 9-episode first season as part of the original slate for the streamer’s launch in July.

(10) FOR ALL MANKIND. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “What if America had lost the race to the moon? My long-read Q&A with Ronald D. Moore” at the American Enterprise Institute, AEI scholar James Pethokoukis interviews For All Mankind creator Ronald D. Moore about his show, including why NASA did not cooperate with the series because they don’t want to hear from cranks who think the Moon landing was faked, why there should be more optimistic sf, and whether Moore, as a former Star Trek writer, agrees with Peter Thiel’s statement that Star Wars is capitalist and Star Trek communist because there’s no money in Star Trek.

In the show, one of the lead characters, astronaut Ed Baldwin, portrayed by Joel Kinnaman, criticizes NASA for being too risk-averse. Is that just a purely in-show criticism? Or is that a real-world criticism when we think about the things that have either gone wrong or not really been as spectacular as maybe many of us had hoped decades ago?

I think it’s a little bit of both. In the show’s context, I felt like that’s where the characters would go. They would be looking for reasons why they got beat, and it was like, “Well, this is why we got beat: We got too risk-averse after the Apollo 1 fire. It made us too cautious, and we lost that spirit. That’s the reason.”

In real-world terms, I think there is some validity to that. I think that the Apollo 1 fire, the Challenger accident, and the Columbia accident were magnified to the point in the public imagination that then everything at NASA became about safety. I’m not saying that we should risk astronaut lives willy-nilly. That’s not the point at all. But these are inherently dangerous things that we’re attempting. We’ve gotten to the point with space travel where we’re so concerned about that aspect that it feels like they’re really unwilling to take much risk at all.

And it’s an inherently dangerous undertaking. So then you’re sort of saying, “Well, we’re going to do very, very little of it because we have to be so, so, safe in every single possible way because we’re so deathly afraid of losing somebody.” The truth is it was predicted that we were going to lose more than one orbiter when the Space Shuttle program was first posited. So it wasn’t a shock on a certain level that it happened. It’s an inherently dangerous business. But, as a result of what happened, the way it was portrayed, and the way we dealt with it, the American public just became like, “God, we just cannot risk their lives anymore.” That works against the idea of, “You have to boldly go. You got to be bold. You got to take the risk.”

(11) REWINDING SHEETS. The Guardian brings you “Scariest ghosts in cinema – ranked!”. My favorite horror movie is almost at the bottom of this list.

18. Emeric Belasco in The Legend of Hell House (1973)

Size does matter. If ever a ghost failed to live up to its reputation it’s the malevolent entity at the centre of John Hough’s screening of Richard Matheson’s haunted house tale (played by an uncredited Michael Gough) who has to delegate his havoc-wreaking to a black cat and unsecured chapel furniture. He still manages to rack up a body count.

(12) HOUSELESS HAUNTS. CrimeReads’ Matthew Lyons counts off “The 9 Scariest Fictional Haunted Houses (That Aren’t Actually Houses)”. First on the list —

The Photo Album – Paper Tigers, Damien Angelica Walters

Some of the scariest hauntings are borne out of trauma, and in no other book is this fact examined with such dread and empathy as Damien Angelica Walters’ Paper Tigers. The story follows Alison, a horribly scarred young woman navigating the trauma from the loss of the life she used to know, who soon discovers a photo album in a curio shop that is far more terrifying and alive than it seems at the outset….

(13) BOWIE. Pitchfork invites everyone to “Watch the New Trailer for David Bowie Movie Stardust“  — “…The movie focuses on a U.S. publicity tour in 1971, which led to Bowie inventing the Ziggy Stardust character. The film is coming to theaters and VOD on November 25.”

David Bowie is one of the most seminal legends in music history; but who was the man behind the many faces? In 1971, a 24-year-old fledgling David Bowie (Johnny Flynn) is sent to America to promote his newest record, The Man Who Sold the World. Leaving behind his pregnant wife Angie (Jena Malone), Bowie and his band embark on a makeshift coast-to-coast promotional tour with struggling Mercury Records publicist Rob Oberman (Marc Maron).

(14) MUPPET SCARES. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Yahoo! Entertainment story, “MVP of Horror: Alice Cooper recalls making a devilish deal with the Muppets”, Lyndsey Parker interviews Cooper, who said he was concerned that appearing on The Muppet Show would affect his brand as a super-scary guy, but Cooper says he had a really great time.

Back in the ‘70s, almost every major musical artist was starring in some bonkers movie musical or TV variety show — even KISS got in on the act. But KISS’s fellow shock-rocker Alice Cooper turned most of those opportunities down, out of concern that such projects would dilute the menacing image he’d so carefully cultivated with his own 1975 television special, Alice Cooper: The Nightmare, and its companion concept album, Welcome to My Nightmare. “I never wanted to be in a show where I had to totally lose the Alice character and become something else,” he explains to Yahoo Entertainment.

But when Jim Henson came calling, asking him to star in The Muppet Show’s 1978 Halloween special, that was an offer Alice could not refuse. “I never had so much fun in my life as doing The Muppet Show,” he gushes.

“I balked at first,” Cooper admits. “I went, ‘Oh man, I’ve been spending all this time building this villain image. Is this just going to water it down?’ I said, ‘Who’s going to be on it?’ And they said Christopher Lee, Vincent Price [who’d done previous Muppet Show Halloween guest spots]. And I went, ‘I’m in!’ I didn’t even have to think about it. I went, ‘I’m in. If those guys can do it, I am privileged to do it.’”

I saw the version of “School’s Out” Cooper did with the Muppets and I thought it was pretty entertaining.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, John Hertz, John King Tarpinian, Michael Toman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “Poppin’ Wheelies” Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 10/3/20 Travels With
My Ancillary

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(1) PENRIC IS BACK. Lois McMaster Bujold told readers on Facebook “Penric 9 impending”.

I am pleased to report that I’ve finished the first draft of a new Penric & Desdemona novella. The title will be “Masquerade in Lodi”. The final editing pass/es are still to go, and will take the usual unknown amount of time, but artist Ron Miller is beforehand with the cover art.

It’s a sort of pocket prequel, a small-scale tale taking place over one day, set during the period Penric spent working for the archdivine of Adria about a year before his big Cedonian adventure. So in terms of internal chronology, it falls between “Penric’s Fox” and “Penric’s Mission”. It is at the moment a mid-sized novella, about 33k words.

She also said the release of Baen’s mass market paperback edition of the first collection Penric’s Progress is set for February 2021 (with “Penric’s Demon”, “Penric and the Shaman” and “Penric’s Fox”.)

(2) ISFIC WRITERS CONTEST. [Item by Steven H Silver.] Although Windycon will not take place as an in-person convention this year (and a further announcement about that is coming this week), we will be running the ISFiC Writers Contest.  Updated rules and timeline at located here.

The contest is open to anyone who was a member of Windycon 46, Windycon 47 in 2020, or Windycon 47 in 2021, as well as anyone resident in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, or Wisconsin.

First Prize

  •  $300.00
  •  Windycon 47 in 2021 Membership
  •  Double Room for Windycon 47 in 2021
  •  The winning story will be included in the Windycon 47 in 2021 program book and archived on the ISFiC Website.

Honorable Mentions (Up to 2)

  •  American 1 oz. Silver Coin

(3) HEAR IGUANACON II. Audio recordings of 19 panels/events at Iguanacon II, the 1978 World Science Fiction Convention have been posted by Hal C. F. Astell on the AZ Fandom website. Some of the panels available are —

  • Unexplored Archetypes and Mythologies (Octavia Butler, William Wu, Diana Paxson, Paul Edwin Zimmer) (1:14:39, 179 MB)
  • Life on a Neutron Star (Dr. Robert L. Forward) (1:28:18, 212 MB)
  • Art as an Outlet for Changemakers (Jeanne Gomoll, D. C. Fontana, Virginia Aalko, CJ Cherryh) (1:07:09, 161 MB)
  • Critic’s Circle (Bill Patterson, Avedon Carol, Mike Glyer, Gary Farber, Tom Perry, Ted White) (1:04:03, 154 MB)
  • Dialogue (Samuel R. Delany, Robert Silverberg) (44:39, 107 MB)

(4) A TRIO OF MENTORS. From the Odyssey Writing Workshops come three Odyssey Podcasts — #129 (Holly Black), #130 (E.C. Ambrose) & #131 (Scott H. Andrews)

Holly Black was a guest lecturer at the 2019 Odyssey Writing Workshop. In this excerpt from her question-and-answer session, Holly answers questions about writing young adult and middle grade fiction. One student points out that some people think fantastic creatures must be a certain way. How do you deal with those expectations? Holly says that when writing in a tradition, you’re adding to a conversation. Bring your own perspective into the conversation based on who you are….

E. C. Ambrose was a guest lecturer at Odyssey 2020. In this excerpt from her lecture on generating plot from the heart of your story, Elaine talks about “How to Middle,” how to use plot turns to avoid getting mired in the muddy middle. Many writers get stuck after the opening section of their novel or story. Once the characters and situation have been introduced, we need to start playing with those elements, using plot turns and plotting tools. Plot turns change the trajectory of a plot or change the meaning of the story in the mind of the reader. Elaine explains different types of plot turns: the time bomb, the time trap, the crucible, the dilemma, the reversal, the revelation, the confrontation, and natural elements. A lot of flash fiction has a single plot turn, usually a reversal or a revelation. Plot turns can be presented in different ways: through dialogue, action, thought, or narration. The rate of plot turns is a significant factor in the pace of a story.

In Winter 2019, Scott H. Andrews, editor and publisher of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, taught the Odyssey Online course Emotional Truth: Making Character Emotions Real, Powerful, and Immediate to Readers, and he’ll be teaching an expanded version of the class this winter. In this excerpt from the first class, Scott shares an example from Angela Hunt, in which she describes how reading the sequel to Gone with the Wind had her in tears after a few pages. A character died, one that she had a strong attachment to from the first book. The sequel tapped into the well of emotion she already had. That’s what stories need to do; they need to make the reader feel something by leveraging readers’ past experiences. For writers, this task breaks into two parts. First, the writer needs to get the emotion into the story so the reader understands it. That means making the emotion clear and obvious enough that the reader picks it up. Many writers tend to be overly subtle or oblique about emotion, so it doesn’t come through. Second, the writer needs to make the reader feel the emotion. This involves using concrete images, using the physical rather than the cerebral, and conveying emotion through the prose. Common weaknesses include lack of specificity, ambiguity, and lack of honesty. Writers may flinch from what something really feels like.

(5) THERE’S NO FIGHTING IN THE WAR ROOM. Nor in the utopian Federation of th 24th century.The Hollywood Reporter interviews Ronald D. Moore about “The Classic ‘Star Trek’ Episode Gene Roddenberry ‘Hated’”.

…“Family,” which debuted Oct. 1, 1990, is an outlier among Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes; it’s the only episode with no scenes set on the Enterprise-D bridge or to not feature Data (Brent Spinter). It’s also special in that there is no sci-fi B-plot. It’s an off-premise character drama exploring the lives of Picard, Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn) and Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) as the Enterprise undergoes repairs post-Borg attack while orbiting Earth. What may seem dull on paper is a compelling and, at times, heartstrings-tugging affair that adds much necessary depth and emotion to three of sci-fi’s most memorable characters.

It’s ironic that an episode loved by so many fans was met with disdain by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

“Gene really hated it,” recalls Moore of his initial story meeting with Roddenberry…. 

(6) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.

  • Twenty-five years ago, the Mythopiec Award for Adult Fantasy went to Patricia A. McKillip for her Something Rich and Strange novel. It was written for Brian Froud’s Faerielands series under the creative impulse of Froud’s art. It was published by Bantam Spectra in 1994. It would be her second major award, her first being the World Fantasy Award for The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born October 3, 1862 – Alice Woodward.  Prolific illustrator.  For us, children’s books e.g. Adventures in Toyland, The Peter Pan Picture Book, Alice in Wonderland; also Bon Mots of the Eighteenth Century; Gilbert & Sullivan; science.  Here are Peter Pan and Wendy flying.  Here are Alice and the Caterpillar.  Here is Robert Browning’s Pied Piper.  Here is a fairy opening a book.  (Died 1951) [JH]
  • Born October 3, 1874 — Charles Middleton. He is no doubt best remembered for his role as the Emperor Ming the Merciless in the three Flash Gordon serials made between 1936 and 1940 which is only genre production he appeared in save three chapters of a Forties Batman serial in which he played Ken Colton. (Died 1949) (CE) 
  • Born October 3, 1924 – Harvey Kurtzman.  Founding editor of Mad.  Earned more money by getting Playboy to include Little Annie Fanny which, let’s face it, was exquisitely designed for its market – and satirized its readers.  Taught (“Satirical Cartooning”) at the NY School of Visual Arts.  European Acad. Comic Book Art Lifetime Achievement Award.  Harvey Award named for him.  (Died 1993) [JH]
  • Born October 3, 1931 – Ray Nelson, 89.  Eight novels, a score of shorter stories (notably “Eight O’Clock in the Morning”); famed and distinctive as a fanartist, not least for inventing the propeller beanie: the direct connection from Ray to Time for Beany and Beany & Cecil on one tentacle, and numberless drawings in fanzines on another, is known.  Rotsler Award.  First Fandom Hall of Fame.  [JH]
  • Born October 3, 1935 — Madlyn Rhue. She was in “Space Seed” as Lt. Marla McGivers, Khan Noonien Singh’s (Ricardo Montalbán) love interest. Other genre appearances included being on the original Fantasy Island as Lillie Langtry in “Legends”,  nd Maria in the “Firefall” episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. (Died 2003.) (CE)
  • Born October 3, 1948 – Marilyn Singer, 72.  Over a hundred children’s and young adults’ books; fantasies, realistic novels, nonfiction, poetry.  Cybil Award for Mirror, Mirror (reversible verse).  Here is Turtle in July.  Here is Sky Words.  Here is The Dog Who Insisted He Wasn’t (her first).  Here is The Circus Lunicus.  See her in Wikipedia.  [JH]
  • Born October 3, 1964 — Clive Owen, 56. First role I saw him in was the title role of Stephen Crane in the Chancer series. Not genre, but fascinating none the less. He’s been King Arthur in the film of the same name where Keira Knightley was Guinevere. He also was in Sin City as Dwight McCarthy, and in The Pink Panther (though weirdly uncredited) as Nigel Boswell/Agent 006. I’ll also single him out for being Commander Arun Filitt in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. (CE) 
  • Born October 3, 1969 – Colleen Houck, 51.  After 17 years a sign-language interpreter she self-published Tiger’s Curse which became a NY Times Best Seller; five sequels.  Reawakened and three sequels another best-seller.  Recently The Lantern’s Ember.  “Indian mythology is very complex … the same god or goddess can have … incarnations with different names, appearances, and personality traits.  My Indian mythology is ‘westernized’…. don’t try to pass a test … based on my version … I hoped to make it … real enough that if you happened to visit Hampi you’d look for the statue and the entrance to Kishkindha.”  Don’t miss her husband’s caption glasses.  [JH]
  • Born October 3, 1973 — Lena Headey, 47. Many of you will know her as Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones but I liked her sociopathic Madeline “Ma-Ma” Madrigal on the most awesome Dredd much better. She was also Angelika in The Brothers Grimm, a film I’m sure I’ve seen but remember nothing about even though Heath Ledger was in it. (CE) 
  • Born October 3, 1984 — Jessica Parker Kennedy, 36. She played Melissa Glaser on The Secret Circle, and was Nora West-Allen / XS on The Flash; on Smallville, she had the recurring role of Bette Sans Souci / Plastique. Next she was in the principal cast of Black Sails as Max but I’ll leave it to you to judge if that show was genre. (CE) 
  • Born October 3, 1987 – Katsuie Shibata, 33.  (Pen name of Shôta Watatani; the original 1522-1583 was a trusted general of Nobunaga Oda 1534-1582 famous in song and story; in Japanese style these are all reversed, with personal name e.g. Nobunaga last)  Won the second Hayakawa SF Contest with Niruya Island.  Since then, World Insurance (3 vols.), “Southern Cross”, “Princess Diary”, “Quarantine Officer”.  Here he is imagining education in 2036 for Ricoh.  [JH]
  • Born October 3, 1988 — Alicia Vikander, 32.She was Ava, an artificial intelligence, in Ex Machina, spooky film it was. Several years later, she starred as Lara Croft in the rebooted Tomb Raider. In The Man from U.N.C.L.E., she plays Gaby Teller. Finally she’s The Lady / Esel in The Green Knight, a retelling of the story of Sir Gawain. It’s listed as forthcoming this year.  (CE) 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Heathcliff has a new physical fatness program.
  • The Flying McCoys is amusing if you get the reference. And how could you not?
  • Lio discovers just what his jack-o‘-lantern needs.

(9) SUPER FOR SOME. LAist celebrates a milestone anniversary: “Somewhere In Time: How A Time Travel Romance Starring Superman Found Its Fans”.

Saturday, Oct. 3 marks the 40th anniversary of Somewhere in Time, a film that took one of the longest, weirdest journeys to popularity. It was savaged at the box office for being stodgy, overly romantic, and out of touch. But today, it’s a cult favorite, beloved for the very qualities it was panned for. Its fan base includes retired 4-star General Colin Powell, a couple of FilmWeek critics, and me.

… Christopher Reeve, fresh from Superman, is the playwright. Jane Seymour, then of Battlestar Galactica, is the actress. And Christopher Plummer, who had just killed as Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree, is her controlling manager. The bestselling score was by John Barry, and it was directed by Jeannot Szwarc — who had just saved Universal’s butt by taking over Jaws 2….

(10) SLF SCORES ILLINOIS GRANT. Speculative Literature Foundation director Mary Anne Mohanraj announced the Illinois Arts Council has awarded the SLF a grant for $1700, “which will be a big help as we continue to build out the Portolan Project.” She extended thanks to their Development Director Cee Gee, and to UIC spring interns Darius Vinesar and Emmanuel Henderson “who helped us research and build out a database of grants we should be applying for.”

[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Gary Farber, Andrew Porter, Steven H Silver, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, and John Hertz for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 6/22/20 Come Pixel Round Filers, Wherever You Scroll, And Admit That The Word Counts Around You Have Grown

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(1) FOR ALL MANKIND. There’s a lot of information available about Season 2 of Apple TV+’s alternate history of the space race For All Mankind – only I didn’t locate a release date.

Take a guided tour of For All Mankind’s first lunar base. Former Astronaut and technical advisor Garrett Reisman helps show us around Jamestown.

Collider interviewed series creator Ronald D. Moore.

One of my favorite shows on any streaming service is the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind. Created by Ronald D. Moore (who previously developed the Battlestar Galactica reboot), the series takes place in an alternate history where the global space race of the 1960’s never ended. In this alt timeline, the Soviet Union landed on the Moon first and we follow NASA as they try and catch up while also dealing with the changing times. Loaded with fantastic performances, incredible production design, and an honest depiction of the space race, I strongly recommend watching the first season when you get the chance.

(2) BETTING ON RESNICK. Alex Shvartsman did a cover reveal for Mike Resnick’s The Hex Is In: The Fast Life and Fantastic Times of Harry the Book. Cover art by Túlio Brito. See it at the link.

From boxing matches to dragon races to elections, there’s no wager Harry won’t cover—so long as the odds are right.

Harry the Book operates out of a Manhattan bar booth, with his personal wizard and his zombie bodyguard close at hand. He’ll dope out the odds on any sort of contest, even if that gets him into a heap of trouble.

The book will be out in August, but you can order eARCs immediately at the link.

(3) ROTHFUSS TEAMS WITH ONE SHOT PODCAST. Patrick Rothfuss will partner with One Shot Podcast, releasing new episodes every Monday through July 27, for an actual play miniseries set in The Kingkiller Chronicles’ world of Temerant.

One Shot is a weekly actual play podcast that explores different role playing systems with self contained One Shot stories. A rotating cast of improvisers, game designers, and other notable nerds show off the variety and diversity in RPGs run a new game every month.

The multi-performer audio production will feature original music by Arne Parrott and sound design by Casey Toney (NeoScum, Campaign Skyjacks, Hey Riddle Riddle.) Performers include Patrick Rothfuss himself alongside Satine Phoenix (Gilding Light, GMTips) Liz Anderson (Campaign: Skyjacks, Jackbox Games, Contributor at The Onion), Bee Zelda (The Broadswords), and Gamemaster James D’Amato (One Shot, Campaign: Skyjacks). 

While new to his readers, this is not the first time Rothfuss has roleplayed Temerant. In the years before the publication of The Name of the Wind, he fleshed out the world and tested ideas in private games he would run for friends and family.

“Long before I ever tried to write a novel, I made characters and built worlds for roleplaying games,” says Rothfuss. “Telling stories like this will give me a chance to show off corners of my world that don’t appear in my novels, and it’s playful and collaborative in a way that I really miss. Most importantly, these are stories that will let people spend time in my world sooner rather than later, while they’re waiting for the next book to come out.” 

Rothfuss and D’Amato set their first Temerant story at The University, following students who find themselves at loose ends at the end of the term: juggling financial responsibilities, personal relationships, and their hopes for the future. 

“It’s a college road trip movie,” said D’Amato. “For our first adventure, I wanted to look to the left of Kvothe’s rougeish heroics to see what else we can learn about Temerant.”

“I had such fun,” said Rothfuss. “It’s the first time I’ve ever PLAYED a game in my world instead of running it. I got to share details about the culture and magic I’ve never talked about before. I loved making characters and seeing where our shared story took us. I’ll admit, it wasn’t at all what I anticipated….” 

(4) THE SCALZI FENESTRATION. John Scalzi’s “The Hugo Window” takes off from an observation in Camestros Felapton’s recent post “Back to Flint”.

… Camestros Felapton blog, as part of a more general examination about who wins and/or is a finalist for Hugo Awards, and when they win them (and when they stop winning them, if they do indeed ever start winning them). The proprietor of the blog essentially argues that for every writer there is a Hugo window, during which they and their work are both popular enough and new enough to draw attention. But sooner or later that window closes.

I come up because I’m used as an example:

“I am not saying John Scalzi will never win another Hugo Award but I don’t expect him to even though I think he’ll be writing good, entertaining sci-fi for many years. This is not because he’s not sufficiently left-wing for current Hugo voters but because we’ve read lots of John Scalzi now and sort of know what to expect.”

It’s not about me, it’s about my Hugo window.

And do I think this is correct? Sort of, yes! And also sort of not….

And Scalzi goes on to develop the thinking behind his answer.

(5) DO YOU KNOW THE WAY. James Davis Nicoll finds “Five SFF Stories That Prove You Can Never Go Home Again” at Tor.com.

To quote Princess Leia, sometimes you cannot go home again. Why this might be varies from story to story… Perhaps home is unrecognizable, or has vanished entirely. Perhaps you yourself have been changed and can no longer fit in as you did in the past. Whatever the reason behind this particular experience of alienation, it is fodder for engaging stories. You might enjoy these five examples.

(6) DEATHSTAR WARMED OVER. You have until June 25 to bid on “”Star Wars” 20” x 16” Photo Signed by 23 of the Cast — Many With Personal Notes Such as Carrie Fisher Writing ”I know…Did you?” — With Becket COA for All Signatures” at Nate D. Sanders Auctions.

Visually powerful 20” x 16” photo of the second Death Star from ”Star Wars”, signed by 23 of the cast, many of whom write their character name or a playful note such as Carrie Fisher’s, ”I know…Did you?” All autographs are penned in silver felt-tip, showing excellent contrast against the black and silver photo. With Beckett COA for all signatures, including: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Jeremy Bulloch, Dave Prowse, Gary Kurtz, Kenny Baker, Anthony Daniels, Paul Blake and Billy Dee Williams. Photo is framed with a ”Star Wars” plaque to a size of 27.625” x 26.75”. Near fine condition.

(7) SCHUMACHER OBIT. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher died June 22.Variety paid tribute: “Joel Schumacher, Director of Batman Films and ‘Lost Boys,’ Dies at 80”.

Joel Schumacher, costume designer-turned-director of films including “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “The Lost Boys” and “Falling Down,” as well as two “Batman” films, died in New York City on Monday morning after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 80.

… Schumacher’s second and last film in the franchise was 1997’s “Batman and Robin,” with George Clooney as Batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger as villain Mr. Freeze. For “Batman Forever,” the openly gay Schumacher introduced nipples to the costumes worn by Batman and Robin, leaning into the longstanding latent homoeroticism between the two characters. (In 2006, Clooney told Barbara Walters that he had played Batman as gay.)

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • June 22, 1979 — Alien premiered. It would win the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation at Noreascon Two (which had Robert Silverberg as Toast Master). Released by  20th Century Fox, it was directed by Ridley Scott.  Screenplay was by Dan O’Bannon based on the story by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett.  It starred Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The Alien and its accompanying objects were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, while concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the more mundane settings. Jerry Goldsmith was the composer. Critics loved the film, it did a great box office and the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a stellar 94% rating. (CE)

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born June 22, 1856 – Sir Henry Rider Haggard.  Most famous for King Solomon’s Mines introducing Allan Quatermain, and She introducing Ayesha (yes, that’s She Who Must Be Obeyed); fifty more novels, some about him, her, or both; twenty shorter stories; translated into Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish.  Had 100 letters in The Times.  (Died 1925) [JH]
  • Born June 22, 1900 – Leo Margulies. Sometimes called the Giant of the Pulps, partly because he was physically short, partly because (it is said) he at one time edited 46 of them, including Captain Future, Startling, Strange, Thrilling Wonder; later Fantastic Universe and Satellite.  With Oscar Friend, co-edited My Best SF Story, From Off This World, The Giant Anthology of SF.  First reviver of Weird Tales, 1973.  By his nephew, Leo Margulies (P. Sherman, 2017).  (Died 1975) [JH]
  • Born June 22, 1927 – Lima de Freitas.  Ceramicist, illustrator, painter, writer.  Officer of the Order of Merit (France); Order of St. James of the Sword (Portugal).  A hundred eighty covers for us; here is Fahrenheit 451; here is The War Against the Rull; here is Foundation and Empire.  (Died 1998) [JH]
  • Born June 22, 1936 — Kris Kristofferson, 84. He first shows up in a genre film, The Last Horror Film, as himself. As an actor, his first role is as Bill Smith in Millennium, which is followed by Gabriel in Knights, a sequel to Cyborg. (A lack of name creativity there.) Now comes his role as Abraham Whistler in Blade and Blade II, a meaty undertaking indeed! Lastly, he voiced Karubi in Planet of the Apes. (CE)
  • Born June 22, 1947 – Octavia Butler.  Fourteen novels, nine shorter stories, two Hugos.  Translated into Bulgarian, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish.  Guest of Honor at WisCon 4, OryCon V, LTUE 7 (Life, the Universe, and Everything), Eastercon 48, Lunacon 41, Balticon 34, Rustycon 21; Parable of the Sower was Book of Honor at Potlatch 17.  U.S. Air Force Academy Special Achievement Award.  MacArthur Fellowship (first SF author to receive this).  Solstice Award.  (Died 2006) [JH]
  • Born June 22, 1949 – John-Henri Holmberg.  Critic, editor, fan, translator.  Co-edited Science Fiction Forum.  Started first SF bookstore in Sweden.  Co-chaired Stockon 5 & 6.  Reporter for Science Fiction Chronicle.  Published Fandom Harvest.  European SF Award for Nova magazine.  Fan Activity Achievement (FAAn) Award for “Worldcon Kaleidoscope” (Trap Door 34).  Big Heart Award.  Guest of Honor at Swecon 14 (33rd Eurocon), at 75th Worldcon (Helsinki, 2017).  [JH]
  • Born June 22, 1949 — Meryl Streep, 71. She’d make the Birthday list just for being Madeline Ashton in Death Becomes Her and her epic battle there with Goldie Hawn. She’s the voice of Blue Ameche in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and a very real Aunt Josephine in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. She’s the voice of Felicity Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox, based off the on Dahl’s 1970 children’s novel. She voices Jennie in a short that bring Maurice Sendak’s dog to life, Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life. She’s The Witch in Into The Woods. I think that’s it. (CE) 
  • Born June 22, 1953 — Cyndi Lauper, 67. Ok, I’m officially old as I’m thinking of her as always young. Genre wise, she played a psychic, Avalon Harmonia, on the Bones series. She also has one-offs in series as diverse as The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, Shelley Duvall’s Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme and Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. Oddly enough she has one serious acting credit, Jenny (Ginny Jenny/Low-Dive Jenny) in Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. (CE)
  • Born June 22, 1958 — Bruce Campbell, 62. Where to start? Well, let’s note that Kage loved the old rascal as she described him, so I’ve linked to her review of Jack of All Trades. I personally liked just as much The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and think it’s well worth checking out. I think his work as Ash Williams in the Evil Dead franchise can be both brilliant and godawful, often in the same film. Or the same scene. The series spawned off of it is rather good. Oh, and for popcorn reading, check out If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, his autobiography. (CE) 
  • Born June 22, 1971 — Laila Rouass, 49. She was Sarah Page, an Egyptologist on Primeval, a series I highly recommend if you’ve not seen it. She played Colonel Tia Karim, a traitorous UNIT officer in the two part “Death of The Doctor” on The Sarah Jane Adventures. This story was the last to feature Sarah Jane Smith and the Doctor, The Eleventh here, together onscreen. Jo Grant would also show up. (CE)
  • Born June 22, 1973 — Ian Tregillis, 47. He is the author of the Milkweed Triptych trilogy which is frelling brilliant. He’s contributed three stories to Max Gladstone’s The Witch Who Came in From the Cold, a rather good serial fiction anthology (if that’s the proper term) and he’s got another series, The Alchemy Wars, I need to check out.  (CE)
  • Born June 22, 1958 – Johanna Sinisalo.  Eight novels; forty shorter stories, two dozen for us; three anthologies, notably The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy (i.e. in English); also comics, television; translated into English, French, German. Tiptree Award (as it then was).  Seven Atorox Awards.  Finlandia Prize. Guest of Honor at Worldcon 75.  [JH]
  • Born June 22, 1984 – Robert Bennett.  Nine novels, four shorter stories; translated into Bulgarian, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Latvian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish.  Interview in Clarkesworld 64.  Two Shirley Jackson awards.  His Website is here.  [JH]

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) DIFFICULT QUIZ OF THE DAY. A Buzzfeed contributor throws down a challenge: “I Will Be Seriously Impressed If You Can Figure Out Whether These Are “Star Trek” Compounds Or Skincare Ingredients”. I scored 9 out of 20. Which earned me the Picard facepalm. Do better.

(12) MODDING UP. “My Kid Could Do That” by Elvia Wilk on the N Plus One magazine blog is a sf short story about augmented reality.

Today 60 percent of the American population, according to recent reports, possesses a database implant that allows a range of augments to be downloaded directly into the brain. The artificial intelligence can allow a person, for example, with no chiseling experience the ability to create a lifelike wooden sculpture. While there are no reliable statistics within the art world, a recent anonymous survey of working artists in New York City under 40 reported an above-average augmentation rate compared with the general population.

(13) JEMISIN ONLINE. N. K. Jemisin discussed her latest novel, The City We Became, with sociopolitical comedian W. Kamau Bell during a live virtual event held by the New York Public Library earlier this month. The video is now available.

(14) IF YOU CAN MAKE IT THERE. “Review: The City We Became by N K Jemisin” at Camestros Felapton.

…If you are immediately thinking of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, then that’s not unreasonable but whereas Gaiman’s London is narrow, weird, convoluted and Victorian, Jemisin’s New York is loud, colourful and in your face. Whereas Neverwhere is a rabbit warren of a mystery, The City We Became owes more to superheroes, a genre that is as New York as they come. I can’t claim Jemisin has grasped that same sense of place as Gaiman did with London because I don’t know New York except through it’s own fictional depictions but it feels like it does.

The superhero comparison is not a shallow one. This is very much a story about a group of New Yorkers who each gain unique powers and who must find a way to fight a supernatural evil…

(15) FOR THE RECORD. [Item by Rob Thornton.] As the wheel turns and progressive rock begins to make a comeback once more, evidently the extravagant extra-long science fiction concept album must also return, as seen in this Bandcamp Daily review: “Neptunian Maximalism, ‘Éons’”

At 123 minutes and—in its physical form—three CDs long, Éons, the new album from Belgium’s Neptunian Maximalism, is unquestionably a massive work. Even so, the size and scale of the project—formed in 2018 by multi-instrumentalist Guillaume Cazalet and saxophonist Jean-Jacques Duerinckx—never feels unnecessary or extravagant as this aptly named collective uses the healthy runtime to explore heavy psych, tribal rhythms, free-jazz freakouts, meditative drone and the vast, shadowy spaces in between. Arriving in the wake of a four-song EP and a largely improvised live album that hinted at Neptunian Maximalism’s ambition, Éons fully delivers on those early promises. The sonic epic not only gives the band plenty of room to roam, but also follows a conceptual framework that imagines the end of Earth’s human-dominated anthropocene era and the onset of a ‘probocene’ era, in which the planet is ruled by superior, intelligent elephants.

(16) THE MIDDLE. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Well it’s not The Monolith from that film… Atlas Obscura visits “The Center of Santa Clara Valley”.

ALONG COYOTE CREEK ON A far-flung San Jose, California trail, a mysterious plaque sits next to a bike path. At first glance, it appears to be entirely covered in ones and zeroes. But from a different angle, the words “Santa Clara Valley” are faintly visible, etched beneath the numbers.

The reason for the plaque’s strange location is that it marks the geographical center of the Santa Clara Valley, which may be more familiar by its other moniker: Silicon Valley. The numbers, as it happens, spell out three words in binary. 

(17) IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND. “Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site” reports BBC.

A ring of large shafts discovered near Stonehenge form the largest prehistoric monument ever discovered in Britain, archaeologists believe.

Tests carried out on the pits suggest they were excavated by Neolithic people more than 4,500 years ago.

Experts believe the 20 or more shafts may have served as a boundary to a sacred area connected to the henge.

“The size of the shafts and circuit is without precedent in the UK,” said Prof Vince Gaffney, a lead researcher.

The 1.2 mile-wide (2km) circle of large shafts measuring more than 10m (30ft) in diameter and 5m (15ft) in depth are significantly larger than any comparable prehistoric monument in Britain.

(18) INCLUSIVE. “Is this the most accessible game ever?”

The first time Steve Saylor fired up the hotly-anticipated new game The Last of Us Part II, he burst into tears.

“Y’all don’t even know how much…” he says between sobs in his video of the moment, which has now had nearly half a million views.

“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”

Steve is legally blind, and was looking at the overwhelming accessibility options menu.

Courtney Craven, editor of accessibility-focused gaming site Can I Play That, is hard of hearing and has some motor-control issues, and had a similar reaction.

“The first thing I did upon launching [the game] for the first time was FaceTime a friend and cry,” she says.

The game has already been dubbed “the most accessible game ever”.

It has more than 60 different accessibility settings, allowing an unprecedented level of customisation and fine-tuning.

Every button can be changed, and one-handed control schemes are available by default.

Players like Courtney can turn on direction arrows on subtitles to indicate where the sound is coming from; players like Steve can outline characters and enemies in vivid colours.

(19) ROLL ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM. NPR declares “The Latest Pandemic Shortage: Coins Are The New Toilet Paper”.

Just as supplies of toilet paper are finally getting back to normal, the coronavirus has triggered another shortage of something we typically take for granted: pocket change.

Banks around the U.S. are running low on nickels, dimes, quarters and even pennies. And the Federal Reserve, which supplies banks, has been forced to ration scarce supplies.

“It was just a surprise,” said Gay Dempsey, who runs the Bank of Lincoln County in Tennessee, when she learned of the rationing order. “Nobody was expecting it.”

Dempsey’s bank typically dispenses 400 to 500 rolls of pennies each week. Under the rationing order, her allotment was cut down to just 100 rolls, with similar cutbacks in nickels, dimes and quarters.

That spells trouble for Dempsey’s business customers, who need the coins to stock cash registers all around Lincoln County, Tenn.

“You think about all your grocery stores and convenience stores and a lot of people that still operate with cash,” Dempsey said. “They have to have that just to make change.”

…The U.S. Mint produced fewer coins than usual this spring in an effort to protect employees from infection. But the larger problem — as with many other pandemic shortages — is distribution.

During the lockdown, many automatic coin-sorting machines that people typically use to cash in loose change were off-limits. And with many businesses closed, unused coins piled up in darkened cash drawers, in pants pockets and on nightstands, even as banks went begging.

“The flow of coins through the economy … kind of stopped,” Powell said.

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Neil Gaiman on ‘Game of Thrones,’ Favorite Words, and Tattoos” on YouTube is a 2015 interview with WNYC where Gaiman explains that, given a choice between living in Game of Thrones or Lord of The RIngs, he’d choose a world with better plumbing.

[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, Andrew Porter, Olav Rokne, John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Darrah Chavey, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

Pixel Scroll 9/26/19 Pixel, Pixel On The Wall, Who’s The Filest In The Scroll?

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(1) LITIGATION. Brianna Wu announced in a public Facebook post:

Alex Jones is suing me for defamation. Not a joke. He’s suing Young Turks too.

I obviously can’t comment on the legal aspects of the case until I get representation, but this is my statement for media.

If the Sandy Hook parents can stand up to Alex Jones, I can too.

According to a Boston News story, “Alex Jones Says Brianna Wu Defamed Him in a Tweet”, this is the provocation:

https://twitter.com/BriannaWu/status/1140703258702491649

The lawsuit filed in Texas on Wednesday names Wu, as well as Cenk Uygur, of the news outlet the Young Turks, and Mark Follman, of the magazine Mother Jones. It seeks damages and a “jury trail [sic].”

(2) SPACE DRAMA. For All Mankind premieres November 1 on the Apple TV app for those with an Apple TV+ subscription. The series will dramatize an alternate history depicting “what would have happened if the global space race had never ended” after the USSR succeeds in the first manned Moon landing. It’s created by Emmy Award winner Ronald D. Moore (Outlander, Battlestar Galactica), Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi.

Told through the lives of NASA astronauts, engineers and their families, For All Mankind presents an aspirational world where NASA and the space program remained a priority and a focal point of our hopes and dreams.

(3) RESTORE THE LEGEND! Chris Garcia has given himself a task – to make Jack C. Haldeman II (or as everyone else called him, Jay) famous again! The legendary writer and SMoF, Jay was also the master of the SpecFi Sports story! This plan all starts with a simple plan – an issue of The Drink Tank!

We’re looking for stories about Jay, personal reminiscences, appreciation of his writings, anything! We’d love stories particularly about folks who knew him from the 1970s and 80s, and especially anything about the Discon II!  If you’ve got any photos of Jay, that’d be great, too!

We’ve set November 20th, 2019 as the deadline!

Any questions? Drop a line at [email protected]

(4) GAHAN WILSON APPEAL. Paul Winters, organizer of the “Help Gahan Wilson find his way” GoFundMe, is calling for more donations after Wilson had a medical emergency.

We have a crisis.

Gahan had surgery over the weekend and he was discharged from the hospital yesterday. It turns out that the hospital and the memory care facility didn’t have the best communication going, because today we were told that the memory care unit could not care for Gahan because of the severity of the surgery. The hospital won’t take him back and he can’t go to a rehabilitation facility.

We were informed that for him to stay in the memory care facility, we would need to get him a 24 hour care person to stay with him for the next thirty days until the doctors can assess his condition.

All through this gofundme I have been careful not to take in too much money. A few months ago, I suspended donations because it looked like we would have enough. Today, that all changed. Please, if you can spare any more, we could use it to pay this unexpected expense.

The circumstances of this whole hospital event have been surreal. I will spare everyone the details of the surgery, but we did it because the doctor said he would die without it. None of the medical experts warned or prepared us for the change that would make in his care level after the surgery.

I know that even with Alzheimer’s Gahan wants to live. Whenever we are with him, he speaks of how lucky we all are to be alive and the last cartoon he drew was of a guy holding a sign that read “Glad to remain alive!” I know he was drawing himself. We will keep trying to give him the best quality of life until the end.

(5) ATTENTION, BUCKAROOS! Chuck Tingle’s game was released at the beginning of the month: “The Tingleverse: The Official Chuck Tingle Role-Playing Game”.

This rulebook contains everything a group of buckaroos will need, including four playable types (bigfoot, dinosaur, human, and unicorn), five trots (bad boy, charmer, sneak, true buckaroo, and wizard), several unique ways, as well as hundreds of cool moves that are specially crafted for each unique play style.

Within these 270+ pages you will also find various magical items and a menagerie of monsters, ranging from pesky Void crabs to this villainous Ted Cobbler himself.

The only question left is: what are you waiting for?

(6) WISDOM SEEKER. Likewise, UrsulaV knew who could help her navigate the recent fannish storm.

Tingle even promised to get into the topic on his “My Friend Chuck” podcast — but I must be in the wrong timeline, it hasn’t dropped yet.

(7) THE CAT’S MEOW. Orbit’s cover reveal for Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes explains why we’re interested. SJW Credentials in SFF… Irresistible.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • September 26, 1937 — The Shadow radio serial premiered with the first episode being titled “The Death House Rescue”. The introduction to the program, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” was spoken by actor Frank Readick. 
  • September 26, 1987 — Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Encounter at Farpoint” opening episode premiered in television syndication. The series would run for seven years, the longest Trek series to date. 
  • September 26, 2001 — Star Trek: Enterprise debuted. It was called simply Enterprise for the first two seasons. “Broken Bow” was the name of the first episode. Captain Archer was played by Scott Bakula, star of Quantum Leap. It ran for four seasons before being cancelled. 
  • September 26, 2007 — The Bionic Woman first aired. This is NBC’s retooling of the 1970’s SciFi channel series Bionic Woman which starred Lindsay Wagner, and now starring Michelle Ryan. It lasted exactly eight episodes. 
  • September 26, 2014 — Star Wars: Rebels first aired. It was produced by Lucasfilm Animation and set in the Star Wars universe five years before A New Hope. It lasted four seasons. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 26, 1866 — Winsor McCay. Cartoonist and animator who’s best remembered for the Little Nemo strip which ran between The Wars and the animated Gertie the Dinosaur film which is the key frame animation cartoon which you can see here. He used  the pen name Silas on his Dream of the Rarebit Fiend strip. That strip had no recurring characters or theme, just that a character has a nightmare or other bizarre dream after eating Welsh rarebit. What an odd concept. (Died 1934.)
  • Born September 26, 1877 — Edmund Gwenn. Dr. Harold Medford in the classic Big Insect film Them.  He showed in the Fifties show Science Fiction Theatre twice, once as Dr. Pliny in “A Visit from Dr. Pliny” and another time as Dr. Lorenz in “The Strange Doctor Lorenz”. (We’re not mentioning his famous role as Santa Claus: since we all still believe, that must be classified as merely a courtroom drama.) (Died 1959.)
  • Born September 26, 1927 — Charles Macaulay. He appear twice in Trek, once in “The Return of the Archons” as Landru, and in the “Wolf in the Fold” as Prefect Jaris. He was Captain Townsend in “God Save The Queen” in The Tales of The Golden Monkey, and in the Wonder Woman series, he was Ambassador McCauley in “Formula 407”. (Died 1999.)
  • Born September 26, 1941 — Martine Beswick, 78. Though she auditioned for Dr. No, she was instead cast in From Russia with Love as Zora. She also appeared  as Paula Caplan in Thunderball. She would appear in One Million Years B.C. opposite Raquel Welch.  She made several Hammer Studio films including Prehistoric Women and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.
  • Born September 26, 1948 — Olivia Newton-John, 71. She was Kira in Xanadu which is considered responsible for the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards. In 2017, she appeared in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming. A coincidence? I think not. It got a 30% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
  • Born September 26, 1956 — Linda Hamilton, 63. Best known for being Sarah Connor in The Terminator film franchise and Catherine Chandler in the Beauty and the Beast series. She also played Vicky Baxter in Children of the Corn, and Doctor Amy Franklin in King Kong Lives. She would be Acacia, a Valkyrie in “Delinquents” of the Lost Girl series, a role she would reprise in two more episodes, “End of a Line” and “Sweet Valkyrie High”.
  • Born September 26, 1957 — Tanya Huff, 62. Her Confederation of Valor Universe series is highly recommended by me.  And I also give a strong recommendation to her Gale Family series. I’ve not read her other series, so I’ll ask y’all what you’d recommend.
  • Born September 26, 1968 — Jim Caviezel, 51. John Reese on Person of Interest which CBS describes as a “crime drama”. Huh. He was also Detective John Sullivan in Frequency, and Kainan in Outlander. And yes he played Number Six in the unfortunate reboot of The Prisoner. 
  • Born September 26, 1985 — Talulah Riley, 34. Miss Evangelista in “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead”, two Tenth Doctor stories. She also portrays Angela in Westworld, and she shows up in Thor: The Dark World as an Asgardian nurse. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Crankshaft obviously has seen authors hawking their books in the dealer’s room.
  • Free Range gets a laugh from an unexpected link between the Olympics and UFOs.

(11) KIDS IN THE HALL. The Chicago Tribune says even Stan Lee paid a visit: “He dared to build the Hall of Justice in his backyard — now there’s a superhero museum in Elkhart, Ind.”

As with any decent superhero origin, the Hall of Heroes Superhero Museum here began in ambition and humility, overreach and wonder: Allen Stewart loved superheroes and comic books and spent every dime from his paper routes on superhero comics and toys and refused to throw anything away. His fever never abated, not as a teenager, not after he entered the military, not after he started a family, and so, when he became an adult and made some money in local real estate, he decided to splurge: He decided he would build the Justice League’s Hall of Justice in his backyard.

This was a dozen years ago.

…Still, the Hall of Heroes and its unlikely Hall of Justice were becoming a draw in Elkhart County. Within a few years of opening, he had 10,000 annual paying visitors, and the collection — which he now calls the largest superhero memorabilia collection in the world, and believes is worth about $5 million — exploded to include: a nine-foot tall Hulk statue, a Captain America shield used in the 2011 movie, rare Superman toys, original artwork and the debut comics of nearly every major superhero. His Hall went from something like a child’s bedroom shrine to superheroes to something like a museum.

(12) DEADLY WALL. At Galactic Journey, Cora Buhlert precedes her reviews of the latest (in 1964) German sff with a local news bulletin: “[September 26, 1964] A Mystery Mastermind Double-Feature: The Ringer and The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse”.

…Another visitor who received a warm welcome in Germany was American Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when he visited Berlin earlier this month. The official reason for the visit was a memorial service for John F. Kennedy, but Dr. King also used the opportunity to visit the Berlin Wall, where only hours before a young man had been shot during an attempt to flee East Berlin and only survived due to the heroic actions of an US Army sergeant who pulled him to safety, a sad reminder that about fifty people have already been killed trying to surmount the Berlin Wall….

(13) THE HUBBLE GAZE. Abigail Nussbaum drills into new sff film Ad Astra at Asking the Wrong Question.

…This is absolutely a film that revels in the stark visual of a single space-suited protagonist made small against a backdrop of endless stars, or in stunning vistas of planetary bodies and orbital installations.  It absolutely features long wordless stretches in which the cosmic soundtrack strives to create a 2001-esque sense of grandeur.  And it absolutely filters all those sensory feasts through Pitt’s character, a soulful Competent Man whose emotional turmoil is both soothed and magnified by the scale of the setting he’s been placed in, and the challenges of surviving it.  But Ad Astra also feels like a film aware of its antecedents, of the movies that have come before it over the last decade and the tropes they’ve established.  If it isn’t quite a dismantling of those tropes, it is at least a more measured, more humane response to them….

(14) NOT SURPRISED BY DAN SIMMONS. RedWombat was ahead of the curve, like usual.

(15) ALT-RIGHT HATES SEEING THOSE CLICKS GO TO WASTE. Jon Del Arroz hopes he can rev up the last couple days of his latest Kickstarter campaign by tweeting his own crap about Greta Thunberg. Was getting banned for a week part of the plan? No idea. “BANNED On Twitter And Can’t Promote!” [Internet Archive link.]

(16) SOUND AND FURY. FastCompany explains “What it means that Samuel L. Jackson is the new voice of Alexa”.

…To get started, just say, “Alexa, introduce me to Samuel L. Jackson.” You can then choose whether you want him to use explicit language or not, so it’s safe to assume that those who want him to curse will get a dose of his iconic “Motherf—er!” The beauty of it is, you can always change your mind and toggle between clean and explicit content as much as your heart desires.

(17) NO DISASSEMBLE. BBC reveals how “Bacterial ‘striptease’ evades antibiotics”.

Bacteria have been caught “stripping off” in order to evade antibiotics and survive, scientists show.

Researchers at Newcastle University filmed bacteria “undressing” and taking off their outer layer – or cell wall.

Antibiotics can attack cell walls so scientists think this is a new form of drug resistance and could explain why some infections keep coming back.

But experts said it was still unclear if this was having an impact on patients.

What are they taking off?

Some species of bacteria have a cell wall built out of sugars and amino acids (the building blocks of protein).

It gives the bacterium shape and protection but it is also a weak spot that can be exploited by antibiotics.

The first antibiotic to be discovered, penicillin, disrupts the cell wall and causes bacteria to burst.

The study, published in Nature Communications, looked at bacteria from elderly patients with urinary tract infections that kept coming back.

Researchers spotted that some bacteria were responding to antibiotics by slipping out of their cell wall in order to escape the drug’s effects.

(18) STARKILLER! [Item by Olav Rokne.] Stars and galaxies are being torn asunder, and nobody really knows why.  Could it be The Doomsday Machine from Star Trek’s original series? Has some alien civilization found a Tox Uthat? Is it just a bunch of busy Vogons? Well, probably not. But hopefully, Canadian scientists working with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) will be able to figure out the exact mechanism that explains why galaxies are being destroyed. The New York Post has the story: “Something in the universe is killing off entire galaxies”.  

The cause of death is thought to be a shutdown of star formation, and a new project aims to use one of the world’s leading telescopes to observe the process in detail.

The Canadian-led project is called the Virgo Environment Traced in Carbon Monoxide survey (VERTICO).

It will investigate how galaxies can be killed off by their own environment.

Principal investigator Toby Brown explained in The Conversation that he is leading a team of 30 experts who will be using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope to map stars being made in our nearest galaxy cluster, the Virgo Cluster.

(19) UP, UP AND AWAY. BBC learns: “Balloon ‘taxi service’ to take satellites to space”.

A satellite delivery “taxi service” using a giant helium balloon is being developed by a start-up company.

B2space is looking primarily to launch commercial satellites, but it has even fielded an inquiry about “space funerals”, sending ashes into space.

…Described as a satellite “taxi service” by the company, balloons have already been sent to the edge of the atmosphere to test their components and systems – their first launch was from Snowdonia Aerospace Centre, and they have since taken off from Shetland Space Centre.

B2space’s technology will use a giant helium balloon to lift an unmanned rocket up over the sea to a height of around 22-25 miles (35-40km). The rocket, carrying a satellite, will then blast into space to deliver its cargo, while the balloon deflates and falls to earth to be retrieved from the sea.

This will be cheaper because the rocket does not have to power itself up through dense air up to 22 miles, using 85% less fuel, and the rocket will be smaller, the company claimed.

(20) MODERN BUSINESS. Not like Macy’s telling Gimbel’s, any more… “Star Wars: Marvel boss Kevin Feige to develop film for Disney”.

The man behind Marvel Studios’ string of comic book movie blockbusters is to develop a new Star Wars film, a senior executive at Disney has revealed.

Alan Horn, co-chairman of Walt Disney Studios, said it “made sense” for Kevin Feige to work with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy on the project.

The film would be part of “a new era in Star Wars storytelling,” Horn told the Hollywood Reporter.

Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios are both subsidiaries of Walt Disney Studios.

Horn described Feige – who has been president of Marvel Studios since 2007 – as “a die-hard fan” of the Star Wars universe.

Under Feige’s leadership, the films that make up the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) have made more than $22 billion (£18 billion) worldwide.

(21) JEDI GAMES. EA has dropped a Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order game trailer — “Cal’s Mission.”

In the Galactic Empire, the Inquisitorius has only one mission: seek out and destroy all remnants of the Jedi Order. Learn more about what Cal Kestis is searching the galaxy for and why the Empire will stop at nothing to bring him down. Become a Jedi in Respawn Entertainment’s third-person action-adventure game, STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order™. Available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC this holiday season, November 15, 2019.

[Thanks to Chris Garcia, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Steven H Silver, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]

Pixel Scroll 12/15/17 You’ve Got The Wrong Android, I Scroll My Name Danger

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(1) HE DOOD IT. How could he not? “Wil Wheaton Wears ‘Star Trek’ Uniform To ‘Star Wars’ FOR REAL”.

Life gloriously imitated art Thursday when actor Wil Wheaton wore a “Star Trek” costume to a screening of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

Wheaton portrayed Wesley Crusher on TV’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987-1994), and has been playing himself on “The Big Bang Theory.” In a 2015 episode of the hit sitcom, he watched a “Star Wars” movie in “Star Trek” garb, attracting boos from the audience and an insult from one moviegoer. “Live long and suck it!” he yelled back in a memorable line.

https://twitter.com/wilw/status/941564325738594305

(2) A DISTURBANCE IN THE THEATER. Fans weren’t prepared to accept the first silent Star Wars movie: “Uprising at Burbank AMC after ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ starts without sound”.

According to Twitter user, Isaias Rodriguez, theater management attempted to appease the angry fans by either moving them to another screening at the same theater — albeit not in the IMAX format — or to attend a screening of the much-anticipated film at another AMC theatre Friday.

Police reportedly were called to the Southern California venue.

(3) ICE CREAM AND COOKIES. Scott Edelman invites you to lunch at the Society of Illustrators with Irene Gallo in Episode 55 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Irene Gallo

Gallo has worked as an art director at Tor Books for more than two decades, where she currently holds the title of Creative Director. She’s also the Associate Publisher of Tor.com, and is ultimately the one responsible for the look of the publishing company’s book covers, as well as its online output. She’s been nominated for a Chesley Award for her art direction an astounding 19 times, the first back in 1999, and has won 13, as early as 2001, and as recently as 2017.

We discussed what it was like the first time she realized she wasn’t the only one in the world who cared so strongly about art, how she felt the day she discovered Harlan Ellison as well as the title of his that made her go “whoa,” why seeing book covers as thumbnails started long before the trend of Internet bookselling, how a manuscript moves from cover concept through to final cover, whether the cliche that an author is the worst possible designer of their own book cover is true, how self-published authors who create their own books can get the best possible covers, and much more.

(4) WHO PREVIEW. If you want to read some “minor spoilers” for the Doctor Who Christmas Special, “Twice Upon A Time,” ScienceFiction.com is ready to oblige: “15 Things To Watch For In ‘Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time’”. If not – DON’T CLICK!

With just 11 days to go until to Peter Capaldi’s Doctor and the Steven Moffat say their final farewells, some fans are finding it hard to wait! Some sites have been granted early access to ‘Twice Upon a Time,’ so to hold us over until December 25, we have a list of hints and teasers from the episode!

(5) SJW CREDENTIALS ARE GO. Corey J. White has identified “5 of the Coolest Cats in Space” for readers of Tor.com.

The cat is on the floor, looking up at me and yelling as I type this. My original plan was for a piece on ‘Pets In Space’, but she’s threatened to vomit on my bed, under the covers, if I don’t focus solely on cats. Why? Because cats are better than dogs. I am typing this of my own free will. Please send salmon.

In all seriousness though, even dog lovers have to admit that cats would make better pets aboard a space craft: they don’t require as much food as any but the smallest dogs, unlike many dog breeds they don’t need a lot of space to run around, and they’re great at catching the rodents chewing on the cables of the life-support system.

(6) SECOND FIFTH. John Scalzi shares his “Spoiler-Free Observations on The Last Jedi”.

  1. The Last Jedi is the longest Star Wars film, and director Rian Johnson packs it full of story, so you’re unlikely to be bored, and even the laggy parts move along. With that said, there’s so much going on in the story and we’re keeping track of so many characters (Luke and Leia and Rey and Kylo and Poe and Finn and Chewie and BB-8 and R2D2 and C-3PO and Hux and Snoke and Phasma and oh look there are new characters too and what the hell are these porg things anyway?) that it can feel thin, and some bits are clearly contrived simply to give beloved characters things to do and/or give us new merchandising yes Porgs I am looking at you (I bought a porg stuffed animal at the show last night so, uh, I fell for it). I think I would have been happier with a sharper focus on fewer characters, and also I’m worried that Episode IX will be three and a half hours long and have five different endings, a la The Return of the King.

(7) PLAY BALL. Cut4.com, a Major League Baseball site, tried to attract a few clicks by assembling a baseball team out of Star Wars characters in celebration of The Last Jedi — “This is the team you’re looking for”. This one you need to follow baseball to fully appreciate:

Starting Pitchers: Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jamie Moyer

The wise old wizard, utilizing a psychological advantage to best his enemies and thrive, despite all odds. And, as a solid No. 2, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

(8) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA VET BACK ON TV. Deadline reports — “Apple Orders Ronald D. Moore Space Drama Series”.

Ronald D. Moore is heading back to space. Apple has given a straight-to-series order to a space drama from the Battlestar Galactica developer. The untitled project hails from Sony Pictures Television and Moore’s studio-based Tall Ship Productions.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 15, 1958 — Frankenstein’s Daughter came out.
  • December 15, 1961 — The Twilight Zone aired “Once Upon A Time,” starring Buster Keaton.
  • December 15, 1974 – Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein premieres.
  • December 15, 1978 – Superman – The Movie premiered in U.S. theaters.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born December 15, 1949 — Don Johnson, who starred with his canine companion in A Boy and His Dog.

(11) MATH PROJECT. Do we know anyone attending Emmanuel College in Boston?

(12) DUBIOUS FAN. Camestros Felapton is restraining his enthusiasm about new mix-and-match possibilities after the Disney/Fox merger for several reasons. Here’s one of them: “Disney, Fox and MCU”.

A comic book universe relies on somehow making superheroes whose basic premise is quite different work together. Marvel has juggled this by having elements that work together and elements that work as given character’s own domain. Thor can be a god-like alien being on Earth and exist side-by-side with Iron Man a human with fancy gadgets but their separate adventures put the characters in quite different characters. Some suspension of disbelief is required to accept that these characters can have their own stories without every film requiring all the Avengers to turn up to help but the settings help and each character can have separate stories.

Now add the X-men. The X-Men aren’t the X-Men without the key premise that they live in a world in which:

  • Some people get random mutant superpowers.
  • That the wider population knows this.
  • That the mutant population is feared and persecuted and suppressed.

Captain America has to be cool with this. I mean, obviously, he isn’t but for the X-Men to have their stories, basically The Avengers have to not do anything when the US government starts hunting people with giant killer robots. Also, the wider public has to be relatively OK with one bunch of super powered people and raging bigots about a different bunch. It has to be OK to get superpowers from a spider bite but not from a genetic mutation AND people have to believe that story (i.e. people don’t think Spiderman is a dangerous mutant).

(13) CHRISTMAS GOAT. Hampus Eckerman says, “Sometimes you have to go to the foreign press to understand why the Gävle goat is burned down every year. The Guardian has its own theory, totally new for me.” — “Killing Gävle – a Swedish city divided by a giant straw Christmas goat”.

Welcome to the small northern Swedish city of Gävle where there’s an annual battle over a 12-metre-high straw effigy of a goat. Local custodians try to protect a giant straw goat from mischievous pagans in a fight for the spirit of Christmas.

Every year since 1966, in the dark days of winter, the business owners pay for a goat to be built in the central square on the first day of advent. For 37 of those 51 years, the goat has been burnt down or damaged by shadowy outsiders, sometimes within a few hours of going up.

In the latest Guardian documentary, Killing Gävle, residents and those who might want to burn the goat explain their hopes and motivations as Christmas approaches and the battle over the goat is fired up once more.

The goat, which pulls Santa’s sleigh, has come to symbolise Christmas in Sweden, drawing people in from the surrounding country. Families bring their children to look in wonder and, the businesses hope, do a bit of shopping while they are there.

But there are other people in the dark forests that surround the city who hold an entirely different view of the goat. They believe in a time before Christianity appeared in Sweden, when people worshipped Norse gods including the goat goddess Heidrun (goddess of enlightenment) and the god of thunder, Thor, who rode around on two goats. Each night he would burn and then eat them, only to wake up the following morning to them having been reborn and able to pull his chariot again….

 

(14) DOPPELGANGER. When they get it right and find one that has nine planets, then we can talk: “NASA’s Kepler finds solar system like ours with eight planets” in USA Today.

Researchers used data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope to discover an eighth planet orbiting a star known as Kepler-90.

The planet, dubbed Kepler-90i, is a hot, rocky planet that orbits its star every 14.4 days, and was found with the help of artificial intelligence, NASA said Thursday. The discovery marks the first solar system to tie with our solar system in the number of planets orbiting one star.

(15) STAY FROSTY. Timothy Cama, in a December 12 article in The Hill called “Emails: Disney annoyed by Obama push to use ‘Frozen’ brand” said that recently unearthed emails showed a 2015 negotiation between the Obama administration and Disney about using Frozen characters to promote warnings about climate change broke down because, according to one Disney executive, “it’s in our culture to tell stories that project optimism and have happy endings.”

Papp’s outreach generated extensive media coverage at the time and attracted mockery and criticism from conservatives who already thought then-President Obama’s climate agenda had gone too far.

The effort to use “Frozen” for climate messaging was part of an extensive plan by the Obama administration to convince Americans and the world that climate change is a major issue with enormous consequences.

(16) OCEANS, NOT CANALS. The BBC considers “Pacific ‘baby island’ is natural lab to study Mars”.

It is one of Earth’s newest landforms and it could just tell us where to look for evidence of life on Mars.

The tongue-twisting volcanic island of Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai exploded out of the Pacific Ocean in 2015, and its shape has been evolving ever since as it has been lashed and bashed by waves.

Scientists are watching this slow erosion very closely.

They think they see the remnants of many such water-birthed islands on the Red Planet.

(17) FORERUNNER. The 60th anniversary of this project recently passed — “Skylark: The unsung hero of British space”.

It wasn’t a big vehicle, and it didn’t go to orbit. But the anniversary of that first flight from Woomera, Australia, should be celebrated because much of what we do in space today has its roots in this particular piece of technology.

“Skylark is an unsung British hero really,” says Doug Millard, space curator at London’s Science Museum.

“The first one was launched during the International Geophysical Year of 1957, and almost 450 were launched over the better part of half a century. It was the Skylark space rocket that really laid the foundations for everything the UK does in space.”

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Slaughterbots” on YouTube is a near-future film warning about the problems of miniature drones trained to kill.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Hampus Eckerman, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]