(1) SANDERSON’S LATEST KICKSTARTER BONANZA. [Item by David Doering.] Brandon Sanderson has once again won the hearts of his fans. His current Kickstarter for “Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere® RPG by Brotherwise Games” had a campaign goal of $250,000. It’s currently raised $12.3 million, and has one day left to run. It is the largest RPG Kickstarter of all time.
The Cosmere® Roleplaying Game is a new system that encompasses the entire universe of Brandon Sanderson’s best-selling novels. This original RPG launches in 2025 with the Stormlight World Guide, Stormlight Handbook, and Stormlight Stonewalkers™ Adventure. It expands to include Mistborn® in 2026, with a steady rollout of new worlds and adventures for years to come!
(2) WILL LIBRARIAN FOLLOW BOOKS INTO THE CAN? “New College moves to fire top librarian over book disposals” reports the Tampa Bay Times.
Days after a public outcry over images of thousands of discarded books in a dumpster, New College has moved to fire the dean of the college’s library.
In a letter dated Aug. 16, the university’s general counsel sent Shannon Hausinger a letter saying a preliminary decision to fire her was made after they deemed her responsible for the improper disposal of 13,000 books.
The letter claimed Hausinger “deleted or failed to maintain notes relating to the reasons or justification that each book was selected for disposal.” The letter said that Hausinger sent a link to the library’s weeding policy to General Counsel for review on Aug. 14, but that the dumpster had arrived on campus on Aug. 13.
Hausinger was given 10 days to reply to the letter before a final decision would be made. New College did not immediately confirm if a decision had been made as of Tuesday.
In a statement Monday, university spokesperson Nathan March said the books in the library that were disposed of were separate from the hundreds of books in the Gender and Diversity Center — the removal of which received praise from the likes of trustee Chris Rufo and spokespeople for Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“There is no connection between the New College Library and the books that were removed from the Gender and Diversity Center,” he said. “As previously stated, the Gender and Diversity Center was in a separate building, and the books were never a part of the library’s collection. Those books could have been claimed at various times, and finally were claimed and donated; (they) were not discarded.”
Faculty and students have contested that characterization, saying they had no warning to claim the books and that it is unclear how many of those have been saved….
(3) THE RULES WE MUST FOLLOW. [Item by Steven French.] A new hit Chinese game has sparked controversy after gaming influencers who were given early access were told not to mention news and politics, Covid-19, or “feminist propaganda” while publicly discussing the game. “Hit game Black Myth: Wukong faces backlash after telling players not to discuss ‘feminist propaganda’” reports the Guardian.
Black Myth: Wukong, which was released last week, is China’s first “triple A” rated game, an industry term meaning a high budget blockbuster game, and is based on the famous 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.
Within three days it had sold more than 10m copies worldwide according to the game’s developers, Game Science.
But amid its success there has been debate over a list of topics to avoid that was sent to influencers and content creators along with access to a pre-release version of the game. The document, which was quickly shared on social media, listed issues to avoid while live-streaming the game.’
Do NOT insult other influencers or players.
Do NOT use any offensive language/humor.
Do NOT include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse.
Do NOT use trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘Covid-19’.
Do NOT discuss content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news, etc.It wasn’t clear what the instructions meant by “feminist propaganda”, but reporting on the directive noted Game Science employees had faced allegations of sexist and inappropriate behaviour, most notably in reports from game website IGN in November…
(4) CONSENT WILL NOW BE REQUIRED. “SAG-AFTRA Wins Passage of California Bill to Limit AI Replicas” – Variety explains.
A bill to protect performers from unauthorized AI replicas was approved by the California Senate on Tuesday and will soon head to the governor’s desk.
SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, has made the bill one of its top legislative priorities this year. AB 2602 would require explicit consent for the use of a “digital replica” of a performer.
The bill mirrors language in the SAG-AFTRA contract that ended last year’s four-month strike against the film and TV studios. It would also extend those protections to include other types of performances, such as videogames, audio books and commercials, and would also encompass non-union work….
(5) THE APPEAL OF D&D. NPR’s A Martínez and Glen Weldon think back: “As D&D turns 50, we remember the early days”.
…MARTÍNEZ: Now, you wrote an essay for NPR about your very first D&D character. Tell us about that.
WELDON: Well, yeah, I started playing a few years after it came out. And when I was 13, I started playing as a character who I stuck with for years. He was a kind of wizard called an illusionist. And I chose him because I found this one pencil sketch in a D&D rule book by illustrator Jeff D. It was an illusionist casting a gnarly-looking spell, and I dug that, but what I loved, what moved me, and what frankly sealed the deal for my young closeted, queer self was his outfit. And I went back and found this illustration. You can see it in the essay. A, He had thigh boots for one thing. I mean, I’m not made of stone.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
WELDON: Plus, he had very tight pants, and this form-fitting tunic, a sleeveless tunic – you and I would call it a tank top. But the important thing is that was a tank top with shoulder pads, and I’m not talking like little epaulets. I mean these were some dramatic, flared out, Ming the Merciless meets Julia Sugarbaker shoulder pads. So I’d love to sit here and tell you that it was something profound that hooked me on the game, like the magic of the imagination and the camaraderie with my fellow players, but real talk, it was that muscle shirt with the big swoopy shoulder pads….
(6) CHADWICK BOSEMAN COMMEMORATED. Entertainment Weekly took note as “Lupita Nyong’o marks 4th anniversary of Chadwick Boseman death”. (The Instagram post is at this link.)
The years go on, but the pain of loss hardly fades. Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of Chadwick Boseman’s death from colon cancer at age 42, and his Black Panther costar Lupita Nyong’o marked the occasion with a touching Instagram post….
“Grief never ends. But it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It’s the price of love,” Nyong’o wrote on Instagram, attributing the words to an unknown author.
She concluded the post more directly: “Remembering Chadwick Boseman. Forever.”
(7) CAROL ANN MACLEOD (1952-2024). Carol Ann MacLeod, wife of Glasgow 2024 guest of honor Ken MacLeod, died August 16. MacLeod made the sad announcement in a blog post today.
Carol, my beloved wife whom I met in 1979 and married in 1981, died on Friday 16 August.
She was the centre of my world, and she’s gone.
There will be a funeral service at Greenock Crematorium, on Monday 2 September, at 2 pm, to which all family and friends are invited. Family flowers only please. There will be a retiral collection in aid of Carol’s favourite charities.
(8) FRAN SKENE (1937-2024). Vancouver fan Fran Skene died June 17 at the age of 86. File 770 only learned that when we were notified of plans for her memorial. Garth Spencer has written a fine tribute to her in Obdurate Eye #41.
Fran chaired the 1977 Westercon, held in Vancouver, and three editions of the city’s annual V-CON (1978, 1981, and 1986). She was one of the leaders of the Vancouver in ’84 Worldcon bid (won by L.A.)
She published the fanzine Love Makes the World Go Awry from 1979 to 1983.
She was a guest of honor at MileHiCon 10 (1978), Westercon 35 (1982), Ad Astra 7 and Keycon 5 (1988), and the CUFF delegate in 2019.
(9) JOHN ADCOCK (1950-2024). Yesterday’s Papers website host John Adcock died June 1. The site’s new administrator, Rick Marschall, paid tribute in “RIP, John Adcock”.
…John Kenneth Adcock was born in 1950 in Nelson, BC, Canada; and grew up in Trail, BC. He was a cartoonist, illustrator, storyteller, and blogger. As a professional and amateur scholar he shared his love and fruits of research in the areas of comics and cartoons; dime novels and “penny dreadfuls” and various genres of folk music.
In recent decades John devoted himself to this web magazine In its electronic pages he published thousands of articles (many by himself but also by scholars from around the world) and illustrations. It commenced in 2008 with an article about Walt Kelly’s Ten Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo. At the time of John’s death there had been 5,562,010 page views of the Yesterday’s Papers site.
Yesterday’s Papers is widely respected as the internet’s premier site for scholarly essays; news and analysis; reviews and commentary on the history and heritage of the comic-strip art form….
(10) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
August 28, 1916 — Jack Vance. (Died 2013.)
By Paul Weimer: One of my heart authors.
I first heard of Vance’s work through the famous Appendix N in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Vance’s Dying Earth was hard to find at that point, however, and so my first exposure to Vance’s work was as the progenitor of the D&D magic system, instead of his science fiction and sword-and-planet works. My older brother had copies of the Tschai novels, featuring stranded astronaut Adam Reith. Since I was watching cartoons like Blackstar (which featured a stranded astronaut), the appeal was a connection for me to try Vance’s work.
On such a hook, a lifelong love of Vance’s work began. I stumbled on various short stories of his, here and there, and briefly contemplated buying a far too expensive used copy of the Dying Earth. But in the 1990’s the Dying Earth got re-released (as did the Tschai novels, the Demon Princes novels, and much more) and I deeply absorbed all the Vance that was republished. And then there are the Subterranean Press anthologies of his work, which I might decide to do columns on, in a re-read of his most excellent short fiction.
Vance’s use of language (and footnotes!) charm me incessantly. His baroque and descriptive locations, ideas, cultures, societies and worldbulding keep me going back to his work, from short stories to novels. Yes, some of his main characters can be sometimes faceless determinators, vessels for the reader to explore the worlds they live in more than having personality. But even that is a stereotype, an exaggeration, and perhaps his characters don’t come colorfully off of the page. As interesting as Ghyl Tarvoke is as a character in Emphyrio, it is the unusual social systems and the tenor of his writing that draw me in and keep me turning pages in one of his best and most definitive novels. It’s the one SF novel of his I’d commend to you if you want to try his SF side.
Trying to choose a favorite Jack Vance work is much harder than it looks. I have already named some of his best and some of my favorites. But I am going to go with one of his non-series minor stories. “Green Magic”. It’s short, sharp, and in the end has a poignant melancholy to it that infuses a lot of Vance’s work. The price of knowledge can be hard and steep, and in the story, Howard Fair indeed learns that cost.
And if you think his fiction is wild, his real life (as seen in his autobiography, This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This Is “I”) was pretty wild, too. Such a talent.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
- FurBabies continues the encounter with AI food service.
- Off the Mark witness a paleontological proverb.
- Carpe Diem says this is the anticlimax of the species.
- Scary Gary tries writing in a coffee shop.
(12) NOT A FAN. Maya St. Clair’s trio of reviews in “The Agony, the Ecstasy, the Renaissance Fantasy” includes a wonderful KTF of My Lady Jane, both the book and the recent adaptation.
…This is a confession. When I read the widely-beloved book My Lady Jane however many years ago, I felt it was some kind of cultural gaslight designed to torture me personally. No matter how I tried to understand its appeal, I could never figure out just why, or for whom, My Lady Jane existed. Its humor felt forced and precious; its cutesy insistence on giving Protestant child-martyr Jane Grey the fairytale AU she somehow “deserved” (or would have even wanted) came across as a fake-friend kind of projection. In terms of style, My Lady Jane felt engineered to appeal to the twee librarian blogs that dominated YA in the 2010s. None of it clicked for me, and I never had one of those poptimist conversion experiences by which one learns, like a chill and well-adjusted person, to stop worrying and love the Silly Thing For What It Is….
As for the quickly cancelled TV series:
… We know that the real Jane Grey would have resisted such portrayals, but as a figure of the stuffy, backwards past, she couldn’t have known any better, and will receive our punishment/liberation anyway. Our female gaze is constant and sharp, and we do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, we want our female gaze to be inflicted on others….
(13) THIS JOB IS NOT THAT F’N EASY! [Item by Steven French.] “’It was bloody hard work’: what it’s like to be a 16ft TV troll” says the Guardian.
With the second season of Amazon’s The Rings of Power featuring a hill troll called Damrod lumbering around, now is the perfect time to consider these massive creatures afresh. More specifically: if you’re asked to portray one as an actor, what do you do?
“We had a little bit of difficulty right at the start because: how do you actually play a troll? How do you move?” This is William Kircher, who played Tom, one of the three cave trolls in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Kircher was lucky enough to portray not just Tom; like the other two actors in the troll sequence, he also doubled up as a dwarf in the Hobbit trilogy (and got paid two separate fees for his trouble). But, while his dwarf Bifur was for all intents and purposes just a small man who had never been to the barber, his troll role took a little more thought. “It was bloody hard work,” he says. “There’s no easy way to play a troll.”’
(14) FOR AULD LANG NYE. The last Disney World ride featuring Bill Nye is going to be replaced. “It’s The End Of An Era As Disney World Cuts Ties With Bill Nye The Science Guy After Nearly 30 Years” – Cinemablend tells what happened.
Following D23 we have a very a lot to look forward to at Disney Parks. A great deal of new attractions at Disney World are planned for the next several years. The recent announcement that work is set to begin soon on the Tropical Americas area of Disney’s Animal Kingdom has a lot of Walt Disney World fans quite excited.
Dinoland U.S.A. has been underused for years, and the news the new land will be receiving attractions dedicated to Encanto and Indiana Jones is a lot to look forward to. However, there is one beloved attraction that will have to go to make room for what’s new, and when Dinosaur finally closes it will also end a nearly three-decade run for Bill Nye The Science Guy at Walt Disney World.It’s sad when moments like this happen, and Bill Nye is a pretty iconic figure for many who grew up with him. It will certainly be sad to see him go.
Bill Nye’s relationship with Disney goes back to the early 1990s when his self-titled TV series was produced by the company. Perhaps that was why, in the late ‘90s the famed educator could be found in three different places at Walt Disney World. However, two of those three attractions are already gone, and as one fan pointed out on Twitter, the third is now on the chopping block….
… When the new Tropical Americas area at Disney’s Animal Kingdom was officially announced to be replacing Dinoland U.S.A., it was all but confirmed that Dinosaur was dead….
The exact date that Dinosaur, and by extension Bill Nye, will disappear from Disney World is unclear. D’Amaro said the Tropical Americas construction would be done in phases, so even if work begins soon, that doesn’t mean Dinosaur will close on the day that work starts. D’Amaro specifically mentioned fans having a bit more time to say goodbye to Dinosaur, indicating it will be open for at least a while during construction….
[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Paul Weimer, David Doering, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
