The Libertarian Futurist Society has selected four finalists for the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.
This year’s finalists – first published between 1912 and 2003 – include novels by Poul Anderson and Charles Stross, a story by Rudyard Kipling, and a song by the Canadian rock group Rush.
Orion Shall Rise, a 1983 novel (Timescape) by frequent Prometheus winner Poul Anderson, was a Best Novel finalist. It explores the corruptions and temptations of power and how a free society might survive and thrive after an apocalypse. The story is set on a post-nuclear-war Earth with four renascent but very different civilizations in conflict over the proper role of technology. While sympathetic to all four civilizations and playing fair to all sides, Anderson focuses on forward-thinking visionaries who dream of reaching for the stars while trying to revive the forbidden nuclear technology that destroyed their now-feudal, empire-dominated world. Most intriguing: the depiction of a libertarian society with minimal government operating in formerly western Canada, Alaska and the United States.
“As Easy as A.B.C.,” by Rudyard Kipling (first published 1912 in London Magazine), the second of his “airship utopia” stories and one of the earliest examples of libertarian/liberal SF, envisions a 21st-century world founded on free travel, the rule of law, privacy, individual self-sufficiency, and an inherited abhorrence of crowds. Officials of the Aerial Board of Control, essentially a non-repressive world government reluctant to exceed its limited power, are summoned to remote Chicago. The city has been convulsed by a small group’s demands to revive the nearly forgotten institution of democracy, with its historical tendencies toward majoritarian tyranny unlimited by respect for the rights of individuals and minorities. The cautionary tale is most notable for its bitter condemnation of lynching, racism and mob violence.
“The Trees,” a 1978 song by Rush, was released on the Canadian rock group’s album “Hemispheres.” With lyrics by Neil Peart and music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, this was a rare Top-40 rock hit conceived in the fantasy genre. The song warns against coerced equality in a beast fable – or in this case, a “tree fable.” Peart poetically presents a nature-based fable of envy, “oppression” and misguided revolution motivated by a radical true-believer ideology of coercive egalitarianism. The survival and individuality of both agitating Maples and lofty Oaks are threatened when a seemingly “noble law” is adopted in the forest to keep the trees “equal by hatchet, axe and saw.”
Singularity Sky, a 2003 novel (Ace Books) by Charles Stross, dramatizes the ethics and greater efficacy of freedom in an interstellar 25th century as new technologies trigger radical transformation – strikingly beginning with advanced aliens dropping cell phones from the sky to grant any and all wishes. Blending space opera with ingenious SF concepts (such as artificial intelligence, bioengineering, self-replicating information networks and time travel via faster-than-light starships), the kaleidoscopic saga explores the disruptive impact on humanity as various political-economic systems come into contact. Stross weaves in pro-freedom and anti-war insights as a man and woman, representing Earth’s more libertarian culture and anarchocapitalist economy based on private contracts, interact with a repressive and reactionary colony, its secret police and its military fleet.
In addition to the above finalists, the Prometheus Hall of Fame Finalist Judging Committee considered six other nominees: “Death and the Senator,” a 1961 short story by Arthur C. Clarke; That Hideous Strength, a 1945 novel by C.S. Lewis; ”Ultima Thule,” a 1961 novella by Mack Reynolds; The Demon Breed, a 1968 novel by James H. Schmitz; Between the Rivers, a 1998 novel by Harry Turtledove;and “Conquest by Default,” a 1968 novelette by Vernor Vinge.
The final vote will take place in mid-2025. All Libertarian Futurist Society members are eligible to vote. The award will be presented at a major science fiction convention and/or online.
Hall of Fame nominees may be in any narrative or dramatic form, including prose fiction, stage plays, film, television, other video, graphic novels, song lyrics, or epic or narrative verse; they must explore themes relevant to libertarianism and must be science fiction, fantasy, or related speculative genres.
First presented in 1979 (for Best Novel) and presented annually since 1982, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between liberty and power, favor private social cooperation over legalized coercion, expose abuses and excesses of obtrusive government, critique or satirize authoritarian ideas, or champion individual rights and freedoms as the mutually respectful foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, civility, and civilization itself.
The awards include gold coins and plaques for the winners for Best Novel, Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame), and occasional Special Awards.
The Prometheus Award is one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently in sf.
Nominations for the 2026 Hall of Fame Award can be submitted to committee chair William H. Stoddard (halloffame@lfs.org) at any time up to Sept. 30, 2025. All LFS members are eligible to nominate.
The LFS welcomes new members who are interested in speculative fiction and the future of freedom. More information is available at our website, lfs.org and on the Prometheus blog (lfs.org/blog).
(1) NEW FUTURE UP. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Just posted SF² Concatenation’s fourth and final “Best of Nature Futures stories” of the year, just in time to hold you over the Christmas break. The originals are behind a pay-wall so these re-postings (with permission of Nature and the respective authors) are the only way for the broader public to see these rather neat little SF stories.
The latest is “Fear of the Dark” by Stephen Battersby. When the nature of dark matter is elucidated, it comes with a problem…
Five years after workers first took Disneyland to court for allegedly skirting an Anaheim minimum wage law, resort owner Walt Disney Co. has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit for $233 million.
The company approved the preliminary settlement Friday, which accounts for back pay with interest as the Anaheim law is set to increase wages in January to nearly $20.50 an hour.
“What we believe is the largest wage and hour class settlement in California history will change lives for Disney families and their communities,” said Randy Renick, an attorney representing the workers in the class-action suit.
Back pay owed to workers from Jan. 1, 2019, when the wage law first took effect, until the date Disney adjusted wages at the end of the court fight last year, accounts for roughly $105 million of the total settlement….
…The company reached an agreement last summer with four unions representing 14,000 workers that raised base pay to $24 an hour….
(3) SEATTLE 2025 COMMUNITY FUND. The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Community Fund is dedicated to helping fans from diverse backgrounds participate in Worldcon by providing financial support for travel, accommodations, and memberships.
They are now taking applications for Community Fund grants. Full guidelines are at the Community Fund – Seattle Worldcon 2025 webpage. They are focusing on assisting fans who are:
First time attendees from the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, British Columbia) LGBTQIA+ attendees BIPOC/AANHPI attendees Attendees from the Global South
If you belong to one of these groups and would like to apply for assistance, please submit your application here. We are approving applications in waves, with the first wave deadline set for January 17th. Though priority for the first wave will be given to people engaging in foreign travel, feel free to apply at any time if you fit into one of these focus groups.
(4) SEW THAT HAPPENED. Seattle Worldcon 2025 is also running a “Single Pattern Contest”. Contest Administrator Kevin Roche explains:
The Single Pattern Contest has been a tradition at Norwescon for nearly a decade, but the competition has a much longer history in costume/cosplay fandom. As the person who invented the contest (for Costume-Con 12 in 1994), I’m thrilled to have been asked to introduce it to the larger Worldcon audience.
This year there will be two options for patterns:
A vintage-style bowling shirt
A 60s-style slip or sheath dress
In some years, a pattern selected for a single pattern contest has gone out of print or been difficult to locate, so a garment style rather than specific pattern number will avoid that difficulty. If you prefer a pattern, however, here are some suggested patterns:
Joseph Reginella has been building and installing legitimate-looking monuments across the city that commemorate legendary local events that never actually happened.
His most recent creation memorializes Nathaniel Katz, who introduced rats to New York City and was “catapulted into the Hudson River” as punishment, according to the weathered plaque beneath his pompous-looking, rat-covered bust.
Never heard the legend of old Katz?
It’s because he never existed. Reginella, a freelance artist who specializes in mold-making, imagined the tall tale and built the bust in the image of his pigeon-loving neighbor.
But many people both on and offline believed it to be true, according to Reginella and several news reports…
… The way Reginella sees it, the monuments are not meant to be “gotcha” pranks but escapist delights and gateways into a sci-fi version of New York history he has lovingly built and displayed for public consumption. (In addition to the monuments, he creates extensive backstories and even documentaries for his tall tales.)…
(7) DAVID A. MCINTEE (1968-2024). David A. McIntee, author of many spin-off novels based on Doctor Who, reportedly has passed. McIntee has written about many other franchises, too, including Final Destination and Space: 1999. His first full-length Star Trek novel, Indistinguishable from Magic, was released in 2011.
He has written a non-fiction book on Star Trek: Voyager and one jointly on the Alien and Predator movie franchises.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born December 15, 1951 – David Bischoff. (Died 2018.)
Our community is blessed with many amazing writers of which David Bischoff was one. So let’s talk about him.
His first writings were in the Thrust fanzine where he did a mix of commentary and criticism. (Thrust got one Hugo nomination as a fanzine and four as semi-prozine.) Editor Doug Fratz would later convert it into a semiprozine where Bischoff along with John Shirley and Michael Bishop were regular contributors.
His first novel, The Seeker, which was co-written with Christopher Lampton was published by Laser Books forty-seven years ago. He was extremely prolific. No, I don’t mean sort of prolific, I mean extremely prolific. He wrote some seventy-five original novels which is to say not within of any of the many media franchises that he wrote within plus another thirty-five or so novels falling within those media franchises.
What franchises? Oh, how about these for a start and this is not a full listing by any means — Aliens, Alien Versus Predator, Farscape, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Jonny Quest, SeaQuest DSV, Space Precinct and War Games. And no, I never knew there were Jonny Quest novels.
David Bischoff. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Oh, and I must single out that he wrote two Bill, the Galactic Hero novels, Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure and Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Ten Thousand Bars which is either a great idea or maybe not. Not having read them I have no idea. A Planet of Ten Thousand Bars? Do they clone livers there?
And he wrote for the Trek universe, two most excellent episodes at that. He co-wrote the ”Tin Man” episode from Next Generation, a Nebula nominee, with Dennis Putman Bailey, and the “First Contact” episode from the same series written with Dennis Russell Bailey, Joe Menosky, Ronald D. Moore and Michael Piller.
Almost none of his extensive fiction has been collected save that which is in Tripping the Dark Fantastic from a quarter of a century ago which collects a few novelettes and some short stories.
Very little of his fiction is available from the usual suspects, and even Tripping the Dark Fantastic is not available.
For years, a fan-run account called Muppet History has been central to the Muppets fandom. It shared little-known facts, memes, and wholesome messages, amassing half a million followers on Instagram and more than 280,000 on X. Publicly, it was a wholesome and sweet platform, a passion project that took off. It became an unofficial ambassador of Jim Henson’s iconic cast of characters — inside and outside the world of diehard fans.
But on Monday night, a post on the account’s Instagram page had an ominous tone. “Good Evening,” the message started. “We wanted to take a moment to address some concerns that have arisen as of late.” The vague post — on which comments had been disabled — mentioned “overstepped” boundaries, the “harm” caused, and that people were made “uncomfortable.” It did not specify exactly what had happened.
Since that post, however, a rough sketch has come into focus. Fans claim that Muppet History’s co-runner Joshua Gillespie, who operates the account with his wife, Holly, was sending unwanted sexual messages to other people. Now, it’s gone from a bright spot on the internet to another soured piece of online culture, leaving a small community navigating the fallout….
…A few weeks after receiving the message, Maloney shared the screenshot of the conversation with a small group of close friends on Instagram. The screenshots were leaked and reposted publicly on X. After that, she says, “the floodgates opened” in her inbox.
“People found out that I was talking about this, and they just started coming to me and confiding in me,” Maloney says. They said they received messages “begging for nude pictures to depicting sexual acts and telling them they would like it … just really nasty comments from a Muppetaccount, and from [Joshua Gillespie’s] personal account.”…
The US Navy operates something called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, a training programme designed to equip military personnel with the necessary skills to survive in hostile environments. Part of this involves detaining them in a small cell while being repeatedly played the scariest thing that staff have to hand: a 1915 recording of actor Taylor Holmes reciting the Rudyard Kipling poem Boots.
The poem itself is terrifying enough, the percussive chant of an infantryman marching towards battle, trying to overcome his grinding sense of impending doom. But Holmes’s rendition almost defies definition. It begins haunted, but gradually rises to a possessed roar, as Holmes wails over and over again: “There’s no discharge in the war.” By its climax he’s screaming at the top of his voice, a prisoner of his own madness. It’s a scarring listen. It is also the soundtrack to the 28 Years Later trailer.
(12) TODAY’S THING TO NOT WORRY ABOUT. Although Gizmodo has learned “Tiny Black Holes Could Have Left Tunnels Inside Earth’s Rocks”, they say “A pair of imaginative cosmologists have great news for everyone: If a primordial black hole tunnels through your body, you probably won’t die.”
… “Familiar” black holes, if you can call them that, typically form in the wake of dying stars that collapse inwards. Primordial black holes, on the other hand, might have formed shortly after the Big Bang, when areas of dense space also collapsed inwards, before stars even existed—hence the primordial part.
Scientists have theorized the existence of PBHs for decades, but have never actually observed one. According to the study, some scholars even suggest that PBHs might be dark matter itself (the mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the universe’s mass). “Small primordial black holes (PBHs) are perhaps the most interesting and intriguing relics from the early universe,” the researchers wrote in the study…
…New research from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) suggests that that seawater will contaminate underground freshwater in roughly 75 percent of the world’s coastal areas by the end of the century. Their findings, published late last month in Geophysical Research Letters, highlight how rising sea levels and declining rainfall contribute to saltwater intrusion.
Underground fresh water and the ocean’s saltwater maintain a unique equilibrium beneath coastlines. The equilibrium is maintained by the ocean’s inland pressure as well as by rainfall, which replenishes fresh water aquifers (underground layers of earth that store water). While there’s some overlap between the freshwater and saltwater in what’s known as the transition zone, the balance normally keeps each body of water on its own side.
Climate change, however, is giving salt water an advantage in the form of two environmental changes: rising sea level, and diminishing rainfall resulting from global warming. Less rain means aquifers aren’t fully replenished, weakening their ability to counter the saltwater advance, called saltwater intrusion, that comes with rising sea levels….
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, 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.]
(1) THUMB OUT, THUMBS DOWN. The 1979 Best Dramatic Hugo race is analyzed by the Hugo Book Club Blog in “Death From Above (Hugo cinema 1979)”. In spite of everything going for it, this finalist did not win:
…Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy is rightly regarded as a classic of science fiction comedy. Those in our cinema club who love it, do so unreservedly … but it was not to everyone’s taste. Understated and ironic, some consider it a masterpiece of timing and laconic charm, despite the dialogue feeling loose and unstructured. Following an everyday Englishman who survives the destruction of planet Earth, the series meanders between various science fiction tropes before the protagonist uncovers the galactic conspiracy behind his planet’s demolition. There’s a reason this radio show spawned four sequels, was adapted into a television series, a movie, a video game, and a novelization that sold more than 14 million copies….
(2) URSULA VERNON’S GOOD NEWS.
For anyone still on this site—got a call from the surgeon, they got all the cancer! I am officially cancer-free!
(3) SMALL WONDERS. Issue 7 of Small Wonders, the magazine for science fiction and fantasy flash fiction and poetry, is now available on virtual newsstands here. Co-editors Cislyn Smith and Stephen Granade bring a mix of flash fiction and poetry from authors and poets who are familiar to SFF readers as well as those publishing their first-ever piece with us.
The Issue 7 Table of Contents and release dates on the Small Wonders website:
Cover Art: “Entrance” by Sarah Morrison
“Hikari” (fiction) by Morgan Welch (8 Jan)
“The Mummy Gets Adopted” (poem) by Amy Johnson (10 Jan)
“Quantum Eurydice” (fiction) by Avi Burton (12 Jan)
“Whispers of Ascension” (fiction) by Wendy Nikel (15 Jan)
“Lekythos” (poem) by Casey Lucas (17 Jan)
“The Sternum Ties it All Together” (fiction) by Janna Miller (19 Jan)
“Constellations of Flesh, Bone, and Memory” (fiction) by Timothy Hickson (22 Jan)
“Another Cemetery Wedding ” (poem) by Belicia Rhea (24 Jan)
“All the Dead Girls, Singing” (fiction) by Avra Margariti (26 Jan)
(4) MEDICAL UPDATE. Rusty Burke experienced a serious fall on December 16, resulting in severe head injuries and two subdural hematomas. Since then, he has been under intensive care, including intubation and sedation. There’s an extensive medical update at “The World of Robert E. Howard” on Facebook.
Rusty Burke is President of the Robert E. Howard Foundation, has edited several editions of Howard’s work, and has published countless articles on Howard for the academic and fan press. He founded The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies.
My guest this time around is Pat Murphy, who won the Nebula Award for her 1986 novel The Falling Woman, plus a second Nebula the same year for her novelette, “Rachel in Love.” She also won the Philip K. Dick Award for her 1990 short story collection Points of Departure, and the World Fantasy Award for her 1990 novella, Bones. For more than 20 years, she and Paul Doherty cowrote the recurring Science column in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She also co-founded the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 1991. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve known Pat for a loooong time, and I can tell you exactly how long — we met on September 4, 1980, more than 43 years prior to the conversation you’re about to hear. If you want to learn exactly how and why I can pinpoint that date, well, the episode will reveal all.
We discussed the part of Robert A. Heinlein’s famed rules of writing with which she disagrees, why she felt the need to attend the Clarion writing workshop even after having made several sales to major pro markets, the occasional difficulties in decoding what an editor is truly trying to tell you, the importance of never giving up your day jobs, why she can’t read Dylan Thomas when she’s working on a novel, the differences between the infighting we’ve seen in the science fiction vs. literary fields, what we perceive as our personal writing flaws, a Clarion critiquing mystery I’ve been attempting to solve since 1979, the science fiction connection which launched her career at the Exploratorium, and much more.
(6) ATWOOD. Margaret Atwood has been revealing aspects of her life and writing to BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life. Download program at the link.
Margaret Atwood talks to John Wilson about the formative influences and experiences that shaped her writing. One of the world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, Atwood has published over 60 books including novels, short stories, children’s fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She’s known for stories of human struggle against oppression and brutality, most famously her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian vision of America in which women are enslaved. She has twice won the Booker Prize For Fiction, in 2000 for The Blind Assassin and again in 2019 for her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments.
Growing up in remote Canadian woodland with her scientist parents, she traces her career as a story-teller back to sagas that she invented with her older brother as a child, and her first ‘novel’ written when she was seven. She recalls an opera about fabrics that she wrote and performed at high school for a home economics project, and how she staged puppet shows for children’s parties. Margaret Atwood also discusses the huge impact that reading George Orwell had on her, and how his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four especially influenced The Handmaid’s Tale. She reveals how that novel – written whilst she was living in Berlin in 1985 – was initially conceived after the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan and the resurgence of evangelical right-wing politics in America.
…At different times and from different perspectives, it can feel as though you’re watching a crime thriller, a fantasy, a celebration of alternate lifestyles or nature-centred folklore – or brilliantly conceived arthouse cinema. In the 2008 book Fifty Key British Films, Justin Smith considered The Wicker Man “a curious mixture of detective story and folk musical”.
The Wicker Man can also be watched as a challenge to orthodox religion – not least when Lord Summerisle defends his pagan ethos by wryly questioning Howie’s Christian worship of “the son of a virgin impregnated by a ghost”. Or perhaps it’s the first mockumentary in British cinema history, given an opening credit offering thanks to Summerisle residents “for this privileged insight into their religious practices and for their generous cooperation in the making of this film”….
(8) AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS AND GRAHAM GREENE. [Item by James Bacon.] Irish science fiction fan Pádraig Ó Méalóid investigates the circumstances under which one of the leading novelists of the twentieth century, Graham Greene, came to write a blurb for the back cover of the first edition of Flann O’Brien’s debut novel At Swim-Two-Birds, published by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1939. “The Mexican Pas de Trois of Flann O’Brien, Graham Greene, and Shirley Temple: The Background to At Swim-Two-Birds’s Back Cover Blurb” at The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies.
…Greene had worked as a publisher’s reader for Eyre & Spottiswoode in his younger days,13 but by the time At Swim-Two-Birds was published in 1939 he had already had eight novels published, including England Made Me (1935) and Brighton Rock (1938), so was probably both too busy and too successful to be working for anyone as a first reader for incoming manuscripts from first-time writers. At Swim-Two-Birds came to Longmans recommended by A.M. Heath, which might have meant that it would have started its journey on a higher rung than a book straight off the slush pile…
… During the early 1990s, Roger worked with [Jerry] Weist as comic art advisor to the Sotheby’s Comic Book and Comic Art auctions in New York City.
Beginning in 2004, he edited and published his own fanzine called the EC Fan-Addict Fanzine. The fifth issue was published by Fantagraphics in November 2023, and a sixth, posthumous issue is due out in June 2024 (also from Fantagraphics). He was the art editor for Bhob Stewart’s 2003 book Against the Grain: MAD Artist Wallace Wood, writing several chapters as well. In 2010, Roger contributed an essay called “The Early Years” for the Éditions Déesse edition of the WOODWORK: Wallace Wood 1927-1981 catalog done for the Wally Wood exhibition presented by the Casal Solleric in Palma City, Spain. After Jerry Weist’s passing, in 2012 Roger and Glynn Crain finished assembling his book Frank R. Paul: The Dean of Science Fiction Illustration for IDW Publishing.
Roger’s first book, Wally Wood: Galaxy Art and Beyond, was published by IDW in 2016. His other books include Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics (2017), Mac Raboy: Master of the Comics (2019), and The Chillingly Weird Art of Matt Fox (2023), all for TwoMorrows Publishing….
(10) TOM WILKINSON (1948-2023). [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Definitely one of ours — Shakespeare in Love as Hugh Fennyman, the fantasy film Black Knight in the role of Sir Knolte of Marlborough, in the sublime Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as as Dr. Howard Mierzwiak, next is Batman Begins as Mafia boss Carmine Falcone, The Exorcism of Emily Rose has him playing Father Moore, he’s a taxi driver in the romantic fantasy If Only and finally he’s James Reid in The Green Hornet.
Late in his career, he had two animated genre voicing credits. First as The Fox in The Gruffalo’s Child based off the picture book of the same name written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It looks adorable.
The second is yet another of the seemingly endless credits for Watership Down, this time for the character Threarah.
Died December 30.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born December 30, 1865 — Rudyard Kipling. (Died 1936.) Yes, Rudyard Kipling. I’ve not ever dealt with him at length so let’s do so now.
I think the works I like best by him are The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, the 1894 and 1895 collections of stories. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a main character is a boy Mowgli. As with most of his work, it reflects strongly his Anglo-Indian heritage and upbringing.
Rudyard Kipling
Up next for us is the Just So Stories for Little Children written eight years later. This collection of origin stories such as how the elephant got his trunk is considered a classic of children’s literature, and deservedly so.
Puck of Pook’s Hill borrows that character, and you know which character I mean, and drops him in 1906 Britain for a series of comical adventures with two children. Really, really fun stories.
He’s written at least two ghost stories, “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” and “My Own True Ghost Story” published in his 1888 The Phantom ‘Rickshaw & other Eerie Tales collection.
Lastly he did write some SF. To wit, “With the Night Mail” a 1905 story and As Easy As A.B.C., a 1912 publication. (Both were set in the 21st century in Kipling’s Aerial Board of Control universe.) The first was published in McClure’s Magazine in November 1905, and then in The Windsor Magazine in December 1905. In 1909 it was issued as a popular book, slightly revised and with additional poetry and faux advertisements and notices from the future. Both have anthologized repeatedly in the last one hundred and twenty-five years.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
Bizarro has that name for good reason, as this arrest for a peculiar game-related crime will show.
Nancy sounds like someone who went to the same school as Writer X.
…On top of it all, Gatwa also plays the more serious moments so well, mining them not just for the inherent drama (Ruby has mysteriously vanished from the timeline!) but also the emotion. Watch him watch the woman who left newborn Ruby at the church doorstep walk away, and you feel the conflict. The heartbreak. Perhaps a hint of recognition…? And then, Fifteen’s eventual resolve to stick to his plan.
Gatwa has stepped into this role with such elan and ease, while also infusing it with specific and fresh nuances, well, it’s almost as if he’s been playing it for 900 years.
According to a story run in the April 19, 1897, edition of the Dallas Morning News a “mystery airship,” as UFOs were known in those days, came sailing out of the sky, smashing through a windmill belonging to Judge J.S. Proctor, before finally crashing into the ground. The debris also destroyed the good judge’s flower garden. Unfortunately the pilot was also killed in the collision, but locals were able to drag what was described as a “petite” and “Martian” body from the wreckage. The body was supposedly buried under a tree branch in the Aurora cemetery, observing good Christian rites….
…Today, the alien’s headstone has been stolen but all traces of the Wild West alien spot are not lost. The Texas state historical marker that commemorates the cemetery still mentions the Martian burial among the other honored (and real) dead buried at the site….
…Is there any piece of television treasure [TV writer Tom Neenan is] still holding out for? “There is a Spitting Image puppet of Jarvis Cocker from the 90s that’s really spindly and awesome. If that came up I’d consider selling a kidney or something to buy it,” says Neenan. “Oh and I’m building a Dalek at the minute. It’s based on the plans for the new series and it’s all built by me but I’m very jealous of people who have a screen-used Dalek.”
Ah yes, Daleks. Holy mackerel, there is a wealth of Doctor Who collectors, hunters and enthusiasts out there, meeting up in conference centres, museums and online message boards to compare their wares. It is on one such website that I first came across Chris Balcombe, a man who owned and restored an original 1960s Dalek….
(16) FRIGHTENINGLY NUTRITIOUS. This 1945 Cream of Wheat ad was illustrated by Charles Addams. (Click for larger image.)
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Olav Rokne, Rich Horton, Scott Edelman, James Bacon, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Tom Becker.]
(1) 2022 #BLACKSPECFIC. FIYAH has posted the 2022 #BlackSpecFic Report, an examination of the state of representation of Black authors within the speculative short fiction market published in 2021. This report was composed by L. D. Lewis and Nelson Rolon with sponsor support from the Carl Brandon Society, Diabolical Plots, and CatStone Books.
In the report, “a market is considered “successful” with regard to its publication of Black authors if their percentages are within 2% of the U.S. census reported Black population (13.6%)” —
Highlights
Of the 23 pro and semipro markets examined in all 2015-2017 studies, 11 showed an increase in publishing works by Black authors relative to their respective outputs.
While Black editors of short speculative fiction continue to represent a small portion of the field, nearly all of the surveyed markets who host a Black owner, editor, or guest editor made the “Most Successful (without reprints)” list. And those four publications (Anathema, Fantasy Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Uncanny Magazine) are responsible for 25.4% of the entire field’s Black-authored works.
…We arrive at what we imagined would be the creative heart of an industry, but it turns out to be a room full of slot machines. Some of us are lucky enough to feed the right slot at the right time and hit jackpots of varying sizes. Others bring their own luck to the room – they can afford to feed the slots regardless of what they get in return. But what about everyone else? Who can honestly afford to stay?
The trouble with luck is that it is not a reliable foundation for a profession. Nor is it a reliable way to run an industry. Yet here we are.
When the ALCS first ran its survey of author incomes in 2006 it found that the median self-employed income of a full-time author was £12,330. In 2022 – a year in which multiple publishers have posted record profits while freelancers in all professions are still reeling from the impact of Covid-19, Brexit and rising living costs – the median full-time income has fallen to £7,000. That’s a drop of more than 60% when accounting for inflation.
There is also a more worrying, granular luck at play. The gender pay gap is getting worse – men earn 41% more than women (compared with 33% five years ago). Payment for Black and mixed-heritage authors is a full 51% lower than for white authors. Young authors earn less, as do older ones. Fewer authors than ever are receiving advances…
(3) LOCUS INDIEGOGO AT 82%. With 8 days to go, the Locus Magazine Indiegogo appeal has raised $61,790 of its $75,000 goal.
(4) AMAZING KICKSTARTER FALLS SHORT. Despite attracting contributions from 114 backers, the Amazing Stories Kickstarter failed reports publisher Kermit Woodall. Only $3,330 was pledged towards the $13,000 goal.
I’m afraid Amazing Stories failed to meet its Kickstarter goal. This means the SOL SYSTEM issue won’t be coming out as planned. Kickstarter won’t take pledge money from backers. No worries!
We do still plan to have an online convention, I can’t promise all the same writers will attend, but it will be different and possibly better! More news as that develops.
…The special SOL SYSTEM issue won’t happen.
(5) GENRE ON STRIKE. The call is out for authors and readers to join the HarperCollins picket line on December 16. (Via John Scalzi.)
Scientist Lanza conveys his theory that “the universe springs from life, not the other way around” in Observer (Story Plant, Jan.), a thriller coauthored with Kress.
How did you come to develop your theory of biocentrism?
Lanza: It goes back to when I was a young boy, when I used to explore the forests of eastern Massachusetts. I was observing nature and pondering the larger existential questions, and it occurred to me that the static objective view of reality that I was being taught just wasn’t right. The Nobel Prize was just awarded just a few months ago to three gentlemen whose experiments showed that entangled particles change behavior depending on whether you look at them or not. Why? The answer is that that reality is a process that involves our consciousness.
How did this partnership begin?
Kress: Our agent put us together, because Bob, who’s published several nonfiction books on biocentrism, wanted to embody his ideas in a novel. I was intrigued by the project from the very beginning because I have always thought that consciousness is woven into the universe. What we wanted to write together was about how these ideas might inform a possible future. And we worked until we got something we were both happy with….
(7) MEMORY LANE.
2019 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Rudyard Kipling statue
So today is we’re looking at a quite new statue, that of Rudyard Kipling which unveiled in Burwash just three years ago. Kipling as you know did The Jungle Booksand The Just Stories, plus two true pieces of SF in his Aerial Board of Control series, With the Night Mail and As Easy as A.B.C.: a Tale of 2159 A.D.
The fully life-size figure which is located on High Street shows Kipling, who lived in the village, sitting on a bench also cast in bronze. Burwash Parish Council commissioned the piece in 2018 and it was created by local sculptor Victoria Atkinson.
Atkinson researched Kipling using archives at Bateman’s, the Jacobean house which was the home of Rudyard Kipling, and the National Portrait Gallery with the Kipling Society providing details such as Kipling’s height and hat and shoe size. Of course she needed a live model to actually create the statue so she used one of her neighbors who wore a thick suit of the type favored by Kipling as a model to get the look and pose of Kipling right.
Oh the book underneath the bench? It’s The Just So Stories.
It was actually, to keep costs down, cast in Athens, Greece.
Now comes a really cool thing. The unveiling took place on February 25, 2019. So who did the unveiling? Why it was Mike Kipling, grandson of Rudyard Kipling!
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born December 7, 1915 — Eli Wallach. I‘ve a fondness for anyone who appeared on the Sixties Batman series. He played Mr. Freeze in a two part story, the third actor to do as both George Sanders and Otto Preminger had done so in previous two part stories. He also had one-offs in Worlds Beyond, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Veritas: The Quest and Tales of the Unexpected. (Died 2014.)
Born December 7, 1923 — Johnny Duncan. Was the Sixties Batman the first Batman series? You know better. Johnny here was Robin on Batman And Robin (1949) for Columbia Pictures Corporation. It ran for fifteen episodes of roughly fifteen or so minutes apiece. Robert Lowery was Wayne / Batman. He has only one other genre appearance, an uncredited one in Plan 9 from Outer Space as Second Stretcher Bearer. (Died 2016.)
Born December 7, 1915 — Leigh Brackett. Let’s us praise her first for her Retro Hugo for Shadow Over Mars, originally published in the Fall 1944 issue of Startling Stories. Now surely her scripts for The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye are genre adjacent? Ok, I’m stretching it, I know. Ok, then her very pulpy Sea-Kings of Mars is? Being rhetorical there. And I love her Eric John Stark stories! (Much of these were written with her husband Edmond Hamilton.) She completed The Empire Strikes Back script for George Lucas just before she died, and although it did not become the final script many of its elements made it into the movie and she received credit along with Lawrence Kasdan. (Died 1978.)
Born December 7, 1945 — W.D. Richter, 77. As a screenwriter, he was responsible for Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Dracula, and Big Trouble In Little China, the latter one of my favorite popcorn films. As a director, he brought Late for Dinner and Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension to us. He was also co-writer with Stephen King on the adaptation of King’s Needful Things novel to film.
Born December 7, 1949 — Tom Waits, 73. He’s got uncredited (but obviously known) roles in Wolfen and The Fisher King. He is in Bram Stoker’s Dracula as R.M. Renfield, and he shows up in Mystery Men as Doc Heller and in Mr.Nick in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. He’s simply Engineer in The Book of Eli.
Born December 7, 1953 — Madeleine E Robins, 69. I’m very fond of her Sarah Tolerance series which starts often Point of Honour, it features a female PI in an alternate version of Georgian London. The Stone War set in a post-apocalyptic NYC is quite interesting as well, and she has quite a bit short fiction, though only three have been collected so far in Lucstones: Three Tales of Meviel. Much of her fiction is available from the usual digital suspects.
Born December 7, 1973 — Kelly Barnhill, 49. Her The Girl Who Drank the Moon novel was awarded the Newbery Medal and she was a McKnight Writing Fellow in Children’s Literature. Four years ago, her “Unlicensed Magician” novella received the World Fantasy Award for Long Fiction. Iron Hearted Violet was nominated as Andre Norton Award.
Born December 8, 1979 — Jennifer Carpenter, 43. Ok, usually I pay absolutely no attention to TV awards, but she got a nomination for her work as Emily Rose in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. It was the MTV Movie Award for Best Scared-As-Shit Performance. It later got renamed to Best Frightened Performance. She’s apparently only got two other genre credits, both voice work. One is as Black Widow in Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher which is a horridly-done anime film that I do not recommend; the other is as Selina Kyle aka Catwoman in Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, the animated version of the Mike Mignola Elseworld series which I strongly recommend. Possibly the Limitless series she was in is genre, possibly it isn’t…
(9) BRACKETT BIRTHDAY SUGGESTION. Bill Higgins— Beam Jockey – thinks this would be most appropriate.
Everyone else gets parentheses, but I feel that, of all people, Leigh Brackett's lifetime should be written:
(10) ENTERPRISING LAWYERS. This legal advertisement is making the rounds in social media.
Evidently the “Shaw-Louvois” firm name is appropriate for Trek because in the 1967 Original Series episode Court Martial Lt. Areel Shaw prosecutes Captain Kirk, and in ST:TNG Phillipa Louvois is a member of Starfleet’s Judge Advocate General branch who has to rule on the rights of Lt. Cmdr. Data in “The Measure of a Man.”
In a hasty retreat, San Francisco lawmakers have reversed a vote allowing local police to use remote-controlled robots equipped with lethal explosives in extreme situations. The move comes after a wave of backlash from the community and activist organizations.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 Tuesday on a revised version of the policy, which now prohibits police from using robots to kill people. Tuesday’s vote was a surprise turn of events after the board approved the policy last week, including a clause allowing for the lethal bots. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the board rarely changes its mind on second round votes, which are typically seen as formalities. However, since the first vote on Nov. 29, the policy has received a wide range of criticism both locally and nationally. Lawmakers will debate the issue for another week before voting on yet another version of the policy next week….
Cat Eldridge is skeptical: “So the Terminators lost this first skirmish against humanity. But to paraphrase Arnold‘s character in the first Terminator film, ‘They’ll be back.’”
(12) GOOD LORD. “Figgy Pudding | SPAM® Brand”. Eh, so the main ingredient is still pork? Then shouldn’t this be Piggy Pudding?
…Rather than present the perfect ingredients for a swear, this study identifies something that all swear words seem to lack. Across languages, swear words tend to exclude sounds like l, r, and w, known as approximants.
If you’re like me, then the first thing you did was scour your brain for exceptions to the rule (and “asshole” was the first one that came to mind, followed by “wanker”). This isn’t to say that swear words wholesale lack these phonemes, but statistically speaking, curses across different languages are less likely to contain approximants….
… You may not feel exactly the same as Bond does about both My Dinner with Andre and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (a rare dual enthusiasm in any case), but seeing where he places them in relation to other movies can help to give you a sense of whether and how they could fit into your own personal canon — as well as the kind of context a film needs to earn its place…
A restless young woman ships off to fight an interstellar war, only to struggle with the effects of being cut off from her home by both time and space.
(16) DEFINITELY NOT TODAY’S SCROLL TITLE. By Daniel Dern:
Scrollomon Grundry Filed On Sunday Posted On Monday Notified On Tuesday Clicked On Wednesday Commented On Thursday Fifth’ed On Friday Stalked On Saturday This is the lifecycle of Scrollomon Grundy
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, Soon Lee, Dann, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]
Actor and presenter Rachel Griffiths, Nick Stathopoulos and Deng Adut in Finding The Archibald. ABC
… The series about “the Archie” arrives in the popular prize’s centenary year. Producer, writer and director Griffiths endeavours to establish her cred as host by telling us that she is the daughter of an art teacher and the wife of a painter, as well as “an actor who’s spent her whole life trying to understand the human condition”.
Apparently, a survey of the Archibald’s history and consideration of what it might reflect about our country isn’t sufficient: the production requires some tricking up. So Griffiths embarks on a mission to select a single portrait that she believes “captures the changing face of Australia and will stand the test of time”.
She interviews a range of artists who have submitted portraits to the prize, as well as people who have posed for them, and ponders the question of what makes a great portrait. She also poses for one herself.
Meanwhile, the series also follows Natalie Wilson as she curates an exhibition of 100 portraits to accompany the NSW Art Gallery’s display of this year’s entrants. Her search involves thousands of emails sent in an effort to locate past Archibald entries. Fortunately, Sherlock Griffiths is on hand to help her find the one of Molly Meldrum, which is hanging in the first place that anyone might look for it: his house….
In today’s sci-fi/ fantasy community, it’s fashionable to dig up H.P. Lovecraft and put him on trial as the avatar of everything wrong with speculative fiction. While we won’t defend Lovecraft’s abhorrent social values, we have to ask: what is the point of this? What do we gain by canceling a man who is now a dusty skeleton mouldering in the dirt? Are we really reckoning with genre fiction’s bigoted past, or are we just looking for a way to distract from our contemporary problems?
In this episode, Karlo Yeager Rodríguez joins us to talk about horror, colonialism, and Captain Picard’s dangerous space dumps.
English Heritage has acknowledged the “racism, xenophobia and lack of literary merit” in Enid Blyton’s writing, and the “racist and imperialist sentiments” of Rudyard Kipling, as part of its ongoing efforts to better reflect today’s values in its blue plaques.
While English Heritage’s blue plaques commemorating both authors remain unchanged, the charity’s online information about both now goes into detail about the problematic aspects of their writing and views.
English Heritage notes online how in 1960, Macmillan refused to publish Blyton’s children’s novel The Mystery That Never Was, noting her “faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia”. It would go on to be published by William Collins….
English Heritage has also noted the views of Kipling, who is still commemorated with a blue plaque at 43 Villiers St in London where he lived between 1889 and 1891.
English Heritage’s online information for Kipling now highlights how his political views “have been widely criticised for their racist and imperialist sentiments”. It points in particular to works such as The White Man’s Burden “with its offensive description of ‘new-caught, sullen peoples, half devil and half child’” which “sought to portray imperialism as a mission of civilisation”.
It also highlights that “George Orwell found Kipling’s attitude to instances of colonial brutality ‘morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting’, but admitted the importance of his work to him in his younger life.”
The Underground Railroad is a stone cold masterpiece, one that not only shoulders the challenging task of adapting the novel it was based on with seeming ease, but that breaks new ground in terms of what television can be and how it can achieve its effect. It deserves sustained, continued discussion and exploration. So this post isn’t a review—I’m not sure I feel equal to that—so much as a series of observations, ones that will hopefully get more people to watch the show, and talk about it….
…So getting to wear the costume, hold the shield, and call himself Captain America — as Wilson does in the Marvel comics — was somewhat overwhelming for Mackie.
“Having if not one of my bucket lists, the bucket list moment happen, is not so much about becoming Captain America — it’s about having my dreams realized,” he says. “It’s very humbling when, you know, you get the opportunity that you’ve always dreamed of.”
The other half of Sam’s journey on the show is the transformation of his relationship with Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) from simmering resentment to a lasting and profound friendship. That translated into several scenes of emotional and physical familiarity between Sam and Bucky that some fans interpreted as a budding romance — similar to how some Marvel fans desired Bucky and the first Captain America, Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, to be a couple.
Mackie points out that he’s played in these kinds of waters before, in an episode of “Black Mirror” in which he and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II star as best friends who play an immersive, virtual reality video game that allows them to simulate being a man and woman in a sexual relationship. But he resists an interpretation that Sam and Bucky are sexually or romantically attracted to each other.
“So many things are twisted and convoluted. There’s so many things that people latch on to with their own devices to make themselves relevant and rational,” he says. “The idea of two guys being friends and loving each other in 2021 is a problem because of the exploitation of homosexuality. It used to be guys can be friends, we can hang out, and it was cool. You would always meet your friends at the bar, you know. You can’t do that anymore, because something as pure and beautiful as homosexuality has been exploited by people who are trying to rationalize themselves. So something that’s always been very important to me is showing a sensitive masculine figure. There’s nothing more masculine than being a superhero and flying around and beating people up. But there’s nothing more sensitive than having emotional conversations and a kindred spirit friendship with someone that you care about and love.”
“Sam and Steve had a relationship where they admired, appreciated and loved each other,” Mackie continues. “Bucky and Sam have a relationship where they learn how to accept, appreciate and love each other. You’d call it a bromance, but it’s literally just two guys who have each other’s backs.”…
(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
June 17, 1960 – The Twilight Zone’s “The Mighty Casey.”
What you’re looking at is a ghost, once alive but now deceased. Once upon a time, it was a baseball stadium that housed a major league ball club known as the Hoboken Zephyrs. Now it houses nothing but memories and a wind that stirs in the high grass of what was once an outfield, a wind that sometimes bears a faint, ghostly resemblance to the roar of a crowd that once sat here. We’re back in time now, when the Hoboken Zephyrs were still a part of the National League, and this mausoleum of memories was an honest-to-Pete stadium. But since this is strictly a story of make believe, it has to start this way: once upon a time, in Hoboken, New Jersey, it was tryout day. And though he’s not yet on the field, you’re about to meet a most unusual fella, a left-handed pitcher named Casey. — Opening narration
It’s almost summer, so let’s have a baseball story. On this day in 1960, The Twilight Zone first aired “The Mighty Casey” in which a down-and-out baseball team’s fortunes are lifted by a mysterious but seemingly unbeatable young player. It was directed by Robert Parrish and Alvin Ganzer, and of course written by Rod Serling. Cast was Jack Warden as McGarry, Robert Sorrells as Casey and Abraham Sofaer as Dr. Stillman.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born June 17, 1898 — M. C. Escher. Dutch artist whose work was widely used to illustrate genre works such as the 1967 Harper & Row hardcover of Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, or Berkley Books 1996 cover of Clive Barker’s Athens Damnation Game. (Died 1972.)
Born June 17, 1903 — William Bogart. Pulp fiction writer. He is best remembered for writing several Doc Savage novels using the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson. Actually he’s responsible for thirteen of the novels, a goodly share of the number done. It’s suggested that most of his short stories were Doc Savage pastiches. (Died 1977.)
Born June 17, 1927 — Wally Wood. Comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work on EC Comics’ Mad magazine, Marvel’s Daredevil, and Topps’s landmark Mars Attacks set. He was the inaugural inductee into the comic book industry’s Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, and was later inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. (Died 1981.)
Born June 17, 1931 — Dean Ing. I reasonably sure the first thing I read by him was Soft Targets and I know I read all of his Man-Kzin Wars stories as I went through a phase of reading all that popcorn literature set in Niven’s universe. His “Devil You Don’t Know” novelette was nominated at Seacon ‘79. I also liked his L-5 Community series. (Died 2020.)
Born June 17, 1941 — William Lucking, 80. Here because he played Renny in Doc Savage: Man of Bronze. (I know I’ve seen it, but I’ll be damn if I remember much about it.) He’s also had one-offs in Mission: Impossible, The Incredible Hulk, The American Hero, The Quest, Voyagers, X-Files, The Lazarus Man, Millenium, Deep Space Nine and Night Stalker.
Born June 17, 1953 — Phyllis Weinberg, 68. She’s a fan who was married to fellow fan Robert E. Weinberg. She co-edited the first issue of The Weird Tales Collector. She co-chaired World Fantasy Convention 1996.
Born June 17, 1982 — Arthur Darvill, 39. Actor who has had two great roles. The first was playing Rory Williams, one of the Eleventh Doctor’s companions. The second, and to my mind the more interesting of the two, was playing the time-traveler Rip Hunter in the Legends of Tomorrow. He also played Seymour Krelborn in The Little Shop of Horrors at the Midlands Arts Centre, and Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus at Shakespeare’s Globe.
Born June 17, 1982 — Jodie Whittaker, 39. The Thirteenth Doctor now in her third series and hopefully not final one. She played Ffion Foxwell in the Black Mirror‘s “The Entire History of You”, and was Samantha Adams in Attack the Block, a horror SF film.
(7A) NUTS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This is from a review by Robert Armstrong of Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts by Blake Scott Ball in the June 12 Financial Times. Armstrong notes that Charles Schultz was a World War II veteran.
Snoopy’s alternative identity as a first world war flying ace–with his dog-house propeller plane–was a childhood favourite. It never occurred to me to read the strips as commentaries on the Vietnam War. Yet they were. It is telling that Snoopy never defeated the Red Baron, and equally notable that the strips became more bleak as the war went on.’I’m exhausted,’ Snoopy complains in 1971. ‘this stupid war is too much.’ Readers got the message: Schultz supported the fighting man, but not the war. The soldiers in Asia got it too.
(8) STRACZYNSKI BOOK LAUNCH. J. Michael Straczynski will do a Zoom book launch for his new non-sf novel Together We Will Go on Tuesday, July 6 at 5:30 p.m. Central. Free to attend, registration required. Register here.
Known for his groundbreaking work across television, comics, films, and more, award-winning and bestselling author J. Michael Straczynski joins us to celebrate the publication day of Together We Will Go (Gallery/Scout Press), his stirring first foray into literary fiction. A powerful tale of a struggling young writer who assembles a busload of fellow disheartened people on a journey toward death, Together We Will Go grapples with the biggest questions of existence while finding small moments of the beauty in this world that often goes unnoticed. As Straczynski’s travelers cross state lines and complications to the initial plan arise, it becomes clear that this novel is as much about the will to live as the choice to end it—and that it’s a book readers will remember for a lifetime.
Three Chinese astronauts arrived Thursday at China’s new space station at the start of a three-month mission, marking another milestone in the country’s ambitious space program.
Their Shenzhou-12 craft connected with the space station module about six hours after taking off from the Jiuquan launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert.
About three hours later, commander Nie Haisheng, 56, followed by Liu Boming, 54, and space rookie Tang Hongbo, 45, opened the hatches and floated into the Tianhe-1 core living module. Pictures showed them busy at work unpacking equipment.
“This represents the first time Chinese have entered their own space station,” state broadcaster CCTV said on its nightly news broadcast.
The crew will carry out experiments, test equipment, conduct maintenance and prepare the station for receiving two laboratory modules next year. The mission brings to 14 the number of astronauts China has launched into space since 2003, becoming only the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to do so on its own.
(10) MORE POWER. Netflix dropped a trailer for How I Became a Superhero. Airs July 9.
Who are the real superheroes? In a world where humans and superheroes coexist, a lone wolf cop teams up with a brilliant detective to dismantle a dark organization trafficking superpowers.
(11) REH IN THE COMICS. The Cromcast: A Weird Fiction Podcast lets you listen in to a panel from the recent get-together in Cross Plains: “Howard Days 2021 – REH in the Comics!”
This conversation from Friday, June 11th, at the First United Methodist Church in Cross Plains, Texas. The panel focuses on the history of Robert E. Howard’s characters and stories presented in a comic book format. Mark Finn moderates Roy Thomas, Fred Blosser, Patrice Louinet, and Jay Zetterberg.
(12) REBORN SERIES CONTINUES. Jenna Greene is a teacher and author whose novel, Reborn, won the 2019 Moonbeam Children’s Book award. She is the co-host of Quill & Ink: A Podcast for Book Lovers.
In Reborn, a character tries to escape her fate:
The marks on Lexil’s skin state she is a Reborn – someone who has lived before. As such, she must toil in service to those who have only one chance at life. Sold at auction, she is fearful but accepting of her new life. Everything changes when she must save a young child from a fate worse than death.
With the help of a new ally named Finn, she flees to the Wastelands. There she struggles to survive, while discovering more about herself, the world, and what it truly means to be Reborn.
Now, in the series’ second book, Renew, Lexil and Finn are forced to venture back into the Wastelands:
The Unclaimed Cities are not the idyllic setting Lexil, Finn, and Ceera thought it would be. This new land has challenges of its own – which they soon discover.
When Lexil and Finn return to the Wastelands, they are accompanied by Kaylen, someone they can’t decide is a friend or foe.
(13) MEMORY JOGGER. B-Side Books from Columbia University Press has some writers you’ve heard of advocating for books they hope you’ll love, too. Got to love this cover, anyway!
…What do you do when a book that you love has been neglected or dismissed by everyone else? In B-Side Books, leading writers, critics, and scholars show why their favorite forgotten books deserve a new audience. From dusty westerns and far-out science fiction to obscure Czech novelists and romance-novel precursors, the contributors advocate for the unsung virtues of overlooked books. They write about unheralded novels, poetry collections, memoirs, and more with understanding, respect, passion, and love.
In these thoughtful, often personal essays, contributors—including Stephanie Burt, Caleb Crain, Merve Emre, Ursula K. Le Guin, Carlo Rotella, and Namwali Serpell—read books by writers such as Helen DeWitt, Shirley Jackson, Stanislaw Lem, Dambudzo Marechera, Paule Marshall, and Charles Portis.
… Fast forward to now and there are thousands of ambrosia beetle species, including more than 70 of the Coptoborus genus—and counting. In christening the new beetles, Smith and Cognato got some inspiration by finding similarities between the beetle and its namesake.
For instance, the C. uhura was given its name because its reddish color, reminiscent of the uniform worn by Nichelle Nichols’s Uhura character in the original “Star Trek” TV series.
And Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley character in the “Alien” film franchise had a shaved head in the movie “Alien 3.” One of the beetles, now named C. ripley, was also glabrous, or without hair.
Other names were selected because the duo just liked the characters and found them inspiring. For example, the C. scully beetle was named after Dana Scully, Gillian Anderson’s character on “The X-Files.”
The character is also behind what’s known as the “Scully Effect.” By showing a successful female scientist on TV, the show helped raise awareness of science, technology, engineering and mathematics—or STEM—professions among young women.
In their paper, Smith and Cognato wrote, “We believe in the ‘Scully Effect’ and hope future female scientists, real and fictional, continue to inspire children and young adults to pursue STEM careers.”…
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Cora Buhlert, Moshe Feder, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]
The Libertarian Futurist Society has selected five finalists for the 2021 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.
The Winter of the World, a 1975 novel by Poul Anderson
“As Easy as A.B.C.,” a 1912 novelette by Rudyard Kipling
“The Trees,” a 1978 song by Rush (recorded as part of the rock group’s 1978 album “Hemispheres”)
Emphyrio, a 1969 novel by Jack Vance
“Lipidleggin’,” a 1979 short story by F. Paul Wilson
The Prometheus Awards ballot will be emailed to LFS members at the usual time next May, The Prometheus Award, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), was established and first presented in 1979, making it one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently in sf. Presented annually since 1982 at the World Science Fiction Convention, the Prometheus Awards include gold coins and plaques for the winners for Best Novel, Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame), and occasional Special Awards.
(1) ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALS. No genre works were on the shortlist, so needless to say today’s Andrew Carnegie Medal winners were all non-genre books. The omnivorous readers among you might like to know what they are anyway:
The Tea Master & the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
The trouble with reading SFF is that you end up with amazing life goals that probably will not be attained during your own lifetime. It’s bad enough when a favourite book leaves you wanting a dragon librarian to be your best friend, or a magic school to invite you in when you turn eleven… and now I need a spaceship who brews tea in my life.
A really good cozy mystery balances rich characters with charmingly creepy murders, and de Bodard hits all the right notes in this wonderful, warm homage to Sherlock Holmes in which our detective is Long Chau, an angry and traumatised scholar, and her Watson is a calm, tea-brewing shipmind.
As with the original Watson, Long Chau’s story is told from the point of view of the detective’s friend, which allows a contrast between the detective’s technical brilliance, and our narrator’s emotional intelligence. Yes, the emotional work in the story is largely done by the spaceship. That’s how great it is. –Tansy
(4) HEMMING DEADLINE. If you’re going to nominate for the Norma K. Hemming Award, you need to get it done by January 31. Details at the website.
Designed to recognise excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class or disability in a published speculative fiction work, the Norma K Hemming award is open to short fiction, novellas, novels, anthologies, collections, graphic novels and stage plays, and makes allowances for serialised work.
Entry is free for all works, and entries may be provided to the judges in print or digital format.
Nominations are open to all relevant and eligible Australian work produced in 2018.
(5) FOOD REVELATIONS. Fran
Wilde did a class about “Fantastic Worldbuilding.” Cat Rambo tweeted the highlights.
Fran Wilde’s online writing class talks about how to build a vivid, compelling world in the context of writing about an event set in that world. For other Rambo Academy live classes, see http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/upcoming-online-classes/
The way you get readers involved in a world right away is to use the objects of that world. Cooking lets you invoke all sorts of aspects of the world. #buildingthebanquetpic.twitter.com/q5IdBzzGFE
A new trailer for The Wandering Earth — described as China’s biggest science fiction movie ever — landed earlier this week, showing off an ambitious adventure that follows the efforts to save Earth after scientists discover that the sun is about to go out.
The movie is based on a story by Chinese author Cixin Liu — who’s best known for his Three-Body Problem trilogy and last year’s Ball Lightning. While those books are huge, epic stories, The Wandering Earth is no less ambitious: when scientists realize that the sun will go out in a couple of decades, they hatch a desperate plan: to move the planet to Proxima Centauri. The construct thousands of giant engines to move the planet out of orbit, where it can then slingshot post Jupiter and out of the Solar System.
Robert Pattinson despises his iconic “Twilight” character, Edward Cullen, with a fury unlike any other. Pattinson has complained throughout so many interviews about Edward, the century-old telepathic vampire who falls for Kristen Stewart’s Bella (a witch or something), that there’s an entire Tumblr feed dedicated to his most (self-) scathing comments.
Among his harshest words: He has said “Twilight” “seemed like a book that shouldn’t be published.” That “if Edward was not a fictional character, and you just met him in reality — you know, he’s one of those guys who would be an ax murderer.” He called his performance “a mixture of looking slightly constipated and stoned.”
(8) OBSCURE AWARD. The Society of Camera Operators’ awards were presented January
26, and if you scan The Hollywood Reporter article closely enough you’ll be able
to discover the single winner of genre note: “‘A Star Is Born’ Camera Operator Tops SOC Awards”.
Movie category had no genre nominees
Movie
category winner
* P. Scott Sakamoto for A Star Is Born
TV
category winner
* Chris Haarhoff and Steven Matzinger for Westworld
Other
awards presented
* Jane Fonda — Governor’s Award
* Harrison Ford— President’s Award
* “Lifetime Achievement award recipients were Dave Emmerichs, camera operator; Hector Ramirez, camera operator (live and non-scripted); Jimmy Jensen, camera technician; John Man, mobile camera platform operator, and Peter Iovino, still photographer.”
* Technical achievement award — makers of the Cinemoves Matrix 4 axis stabilized gimbal
Rami Harpaz lead a group of IAF pilots in Egyptian captivity to translate the iconic fantasy work into Hebrew while in prison, the book introduced Tolkien to Israeli readers and remains iconic.
…He was captured by the Egyptians during the War of Attrition, while in captivity he was given a copy of the Hobbit, the famous fantasy book by J.R.R. Tolkien, by his brother who was able to deliver the book to him via the Red Cross.
Prison conditions were harsh and the Egyptians tortured the Israeli prisoners, yet despite of this, Harpaz and his fellow prisoners began to translate the book into Hebrew. The initial motivation was to allow Israelis who could not read English well to enjoy the book in Hebrew.
The translation was done in pairs with one person reading in English and speaking it out in Hebrew and the translation partner writing it down in Hebrew and editing it. Harpaz and three other captured pilots were the translators of what became known as ‘the pilots translation’ of the Hobbit. The final product was seven notebooks written by hand, the book was published in 1977 with funding provided by the IAF.
(10) TODAY’S
BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled
by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 27, 1832 – Lewis Carroll. Writer of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. In 1876, he also produced his work, “The Hunting of the Snark”, a fantastical nonsense poem exploring the adventures of a very, very bizarre crew of nine tradesmen and a beaver who set off to find the snark. (Died 1898.)
Born January 27, 1940 – James Cromwell, 79. I think we best know him as Doctor Zefram Cochrane In Star Trek: First Contact which was re-used in the Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly (Part I)”. He’s been in other genre films including Species II, Deep Impact, The Green Mile, Space Cowboys, I, Robot, Spider-Man 3 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. He played characters on three Trek series, Prime Minister Nayrok on “The Hunted” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Jaglom Shrek in the two part “Birthright” story, Hanok on the “Starship Down” episode of Deep Space Nine and Zefram Cochrane once as noted before on Enterprise.
Born January 27, 1957 – Frank Miller, 62. If you’re not a comic reader, you first encountered him in the form of Robocop 2 which I think is a quite decent film. His other films include Robocop 3, Sin City, 300, Spirit (fun) and various Batman animated films that you’ll either like or loathe depending on your ability to tolerate extreme violence. Oh, but his comics. Setting aside his Batman work all of which is a must read, I’d recommend his Daredevil, especially the Frank Miller & Klaus Janson Omnibus which gives you everything by him you need, Elektra by Frank Miller & Bill Sienkiewicz, all of his Sin City work and RoboCop vs. The Terminator #1–4 with Walt Simonson.
Born January 27, 1963 – Alan Cumming, 56. His film roles include his performances as Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, Fegan Floop In the Spy Kids trilogy, Loki, god of Mischief in Son of the Mask (a really horrid film), Nightcrawler In X2 and Judas Caretaker in Riverworld (anyone know this got made?).
Born January 27, 1970 – Irene Gallo, 49. Associate Publisher of Tor.com and Creative Director of Tor Books. Editor of Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction. Interestingly she won all but one of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director that were given out between 2004 and 2012.
…Like Verne and Wells, Kipling wrote stories whose subject-matter is explicitly science-fictional. “With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D.” portrays futuristic aviation in a journalistic present-tense that recalls Kipling’s years as a teenaged subeditor on Anglo-Indian newspapers. “The Eye of Allah” deals with the introduction of advanced technology into a mediaeval society that may not be ready for it.
But it is not this explicit use of science and technology in some of his stories that makes Kipling so important to modern science fiction. Many of Kipling’s contemporaries and predecessors wrote scientific fiction. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Conan Doyle are among them. Yet echoes of their work are seldom seen in today’s science fiction. Kipling’s appeal to modern readers lies instead in his approach and his technique.
The real subject-matter of Rudyard Kipling’s writing is the world’s work and the men and women and machines who do it. Whether that work be manual or intellectual, creative or administrative, the performance of his work is the most important thing in a person’s life. As Disko Troop says in Captains Courageous, “the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the next man gets his vittles”….
(12) PACIFIC INKLINGS FESTIVAL. Sørina Higgins, Editor of The Inklings and King Arthur, will be the featured speaker when The Southern California C.S. Lewis Society presents The Pacific Inklings Festival and General Meeting on March 9.
His latest was supposed to address a controversial blog post from shortly after Stan Lee’s death. Address it, yeah. Back down from it? Not at all.
Bill Maher is not backing down when it comes to criticizing fans of Marvel giant Stan Lee, and fans of comic books in general.
On Friday’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” the host insisted that he had nothing against the late Lee, but that adult fans of comics simply need to “grow up.”
“I’m not glad Stan Lee is dead, I’m sad you’re alive,” Maher said.
This came after Maher found himself in hot water once again after doubling down on his controversial comments about how comic books cannot be considered “literature” and how superhero movies are not “great cinema.” Moreover, he said that people who think otherwise “are stuck in an everlasting childhood.”
And @billmaher if you want you can come as my plus one, I promise you I won’t ask you to read a comic but I will ask you to donate a bit to Hero and sign my copy of Iron Man 3.
Kihrin is a thief, an apprentice musician, and a resident of the Capital. He’s also possesses a rather powerful artifact whose provenance he does not quite understand, one that is difficult to take from him except by his free will. Even more than this, Kihrin and his artifact are pawns in a long simmering plot that would see him as key to the destruction of an empire. Instead of being a prophesied hero come to save the world, Kihrin’s role is seemingly destined for a much darker fate, unless his patron goddess, the goddess of luck, Taja, really IS on his side.
1. Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me and I Think It’s My Husband by Joanna Russ [Top] Someone’s Trying to Kill Me and I Think It’s My Husband is Joanna Russ talking about the narrative tropes of gothic fiction from the late sixties and early seventies. The essay itself was originally published in 1973; I first read it in the collection To Write Like A Woman, which is great if you have a chance to read it. I found Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me at work though, and ah, it’s good to have it back.
The premise of this essay is that Joanna Russ, faced with the new wave of gothic fiction, had a publisher friend send her some of the most representative examples of the genre and broke down all of the common elements and analysed them as expressions of the “traditional feminine situation.” I would argue that regardless of how representative those books were, that’s a very small sample size (she mentions about half a dozen titles, and I’m just trying to picture the reaction today if someone tried this with, say, romantic suspense books). But her analysis is interesting? She’s analysing it, justifiably, as an incredibly popular genre with female readers, and picking out the elements that might be contributing to that (“‘Occupation: housewife’ is simultaneously avoided, glamorised, and vindicated” is one of the stand-out points for me, especially when coupled with the observation that the everyday skills of reading people’s feelings and faces are often the only thing keeping the heroine alive), but it’s a little strange to read. It’s interesting, and I can definitely relate some of her points to female-led genres today (I’m mainly thinking of things like cozy mysteries), but it is definitely an outsider to a genre picking apart its building blocks. So, interesting as a dissection of those specific titles and tropes, but maybe not representative of the wider genre.
…In addition to balancing the magical aspects of the show, multiple episodes explore issues of feminism, smashing the patriarchy, race, sexual orientation, disability, and bullying. Through Sabrina, these becomes issues of her world rather than political statements. While TV shows at times have issue-driven episodes that seem to be responding to the political climate of the previous six months, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina focuses on the lives of the characters, and since this is part of their lives, of course Sabrina is going to help them. That being said, especially early in the season, it at times felt a little white-savior as Sabrina works behind the scenes with magic to help her friends….
(17) THAT LEAKY WARDROBE. In this Saturday Night Live sketch, Mr. Tumnus (James McAvoy, reprising a character he played in a movie) meets several women who have recently arrived in Narnia.
(18) REVIEW OF “I AM MOTHER”.
Variety: “Sundance Film Review: ‘I Am Mother’”. “After
a mass extinction, a robot raises a little girl in a handsome, if derivative
sci-fi thriller that salutes its own parentage.” The review gives much of
this female-cast-led gerne film generally good marks, though significant issues
are also pointed out. Bottom line:
What really presses [Director Grant] Sputore’s buttons is proving that he can make an expensive-looking flick for relative peanuts. If this were his job application for a blockbuster gig, he’d get the job. Though hopefully he and [Screenwriter Michael Lloyd] Green realize that the best sci-fi thrillers don’t just focus on solving the mystery of what happened — they explore what it all means. Sputore is clearly an intelligent life form. But as even his robot creator knows, “Mothers need to learn.”
Cast: Clara Rugaard, Rose Byrne (voice), Hilary Swank, Luke Hawker (motion capture), Tahlia Sturzaker.
Britain’s most famous literary award is looking for a new sponsor after hedge fund Man Group said it would end its support after 18 years.
The UK-based financial giant said its annual £1.6m backing of this year’s Man Booker Prize would be its last.
The link between the hedge fund and the literary world has not always been a smooth, with novelist Sebastian Faulks last year calling the firm “the enemy”.
Man Group said in a statement it had been a privilege to sponsor the prize.
But the BBC’s arts editor, Will Gompertz, said relations between Man Group and Booker organisers had been strained for some time, with a company source suggesting they felt underappreciated.
A tree made famous by the TV fantasy drama Game of Thrones has fallen in strong winds.
Gale force winds of up to 60 mph hit Northern Ireland overnight on Saturday.
The Dark Hedges are a tunnel of beech trees on the Bregagh Road near Armoy that have become an an international tourist attraction since featuring in the hit series.
(21) OVER THE TOP. Let
Quinn Curio tell you “The Dumbest Things About
Gotham.”
What are the dumbest things that have ever happened on Fox’s Gotham show? Welcome to the party. The pain party.
[Thanks to John Hertz, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Mark Blackman, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]
By Colleen McMahon: Fans of the public domain have been looking forward to 2019 for a very long time — 20 years to be exact! This is because on January 1, 2019, new works will enter the public domain in the United States for the first time since 1998. In this edition of “Wandering Through the Public Domain,” I want to take a brief look at how the “public domain freeze” happened.
In 1998, the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) was passed by Congress. For copyrights owned by an individual, the term was extended to life of the creator plus 70 years. For copyrights owned by corporations, the term was extended to 95 years from publication or first use.
The previous update to copyright law in 1976 had done away with the need to renew copyrights for 28-year terms. The 1976 law set the term for individual copyright at life plus 50 years, or 75 years for corporate copyrights, and the implications of this latter term is what set the stage for the 1998 changes.
Under the 1976 law, Disney faced the possibility of Mickey Mouse moving into the public domain in 2003, 75 years after the release of the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie.” Beginning in the early 1990s, Disney heavily lobbied Congress to lengthen the copyright term, joined by other large corporations like Time Warner.
Republican Congressman Sonny Bono was a vocal supporter and sponsor of copyright extension legislation in the 1990s, and his unfortunate death in a ski accident in early 1998 created additional momentum for passage of the new law. Mary Bono, the late Congressman’s widow, was appointed to finish Sonny’s term and took up the copyright cause. The CTEA was renamed “TheSonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act” and passage of the law was promoted as a way to memorialize a popular Congressman and celebrity. The law was passed by both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Clinton in October 1998.
Up until the law was passed, works had been passing into the public domain each January as the 75-year mark was reached. Under the 75-year term, works copyrighted in 1923 would have moved into the public domain on January 1, 1999, but the 20-year extension meant that the new expiration date for 1923 works moved to 2019. The public domain limit that has been frozen at 1922 for two decades will at last begin moving again in just a few weeks.
I’ve been looking at 1923 publications and have not found much in the F/SF realm as yet. The one exception so far is H.G. Wells’ Men Like Gods, a “scientific fantasy” about a utopian society in a parallel universe. There is more to come just over the horizon, as the earliest science fiction magazines began publishing in the late1920s.
In the meantime, we can still enjoy the many pre-1923 works as well as later ones where the copyright was not renewed while we look forward to a new burst of public domain access each January — at least until Congress decides to change the laws again. Mickey Mouse is back on the expiration schedule for 2023, so Disney is probably revving up their lobbying efforts even as I write this….
On to this week’s finds:
Lester Del Rey (1915-1993) is best remembered these days as an editor, particularly of the publishing imprint that still bears his name, but he was also a prolific author of science fiction in earlier years. Project Gutenberg has three Lester Del Rey novels, all of which have also been recorded through Librivox:
I’m not sure this is really science fiction, but Atom Mystery by Charles Coombs (1914-1994) is a fun kid/YA book with a trope you don’t see anymore — finding a uranium mine as a ticket to riches!
A collection of unpublished writings of Samuel Butler, edited after his death by Henry Festing Jones. Musings on writing, art, and philosophy, including thoughts about Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited, which are often categorized as early F/SF.
[Full disclosure: I worked on this project, recording two of the chapters!]
In the Jungle Books, Kipling tells 9 wonderful and exciting tales about Mowgli, the human baby raised by a pack of wolves in the jungles of India. His exploits and adventures are many and varied especially his dealing with the other animals such as his wolf mother and father and brother wolves, Baloo the wise bear who teaches him the Law of the Jungle, and in his life long battle with Shere-Kahn, the lame human-killing tiger. This edition collects all the Mowgli stories from both Jungle Book volumes and places them in chronological order.
The Castle stood above the quiet little town for as long as folks remembered: barren, deserted, lonely and frightening to the townsfolk. Until one day, smoke began to ascend from the dunjon. They were warned not to go near, and when intrepid souls dared to venture to uncover the mystery of the ruined castle, they learned firsthand what supernatural terrors await inside The Castle of the Carpathians.
20 short science fiction stories by various authors. This volume includes stories by Lester Del Rey, H.Beam Piper, Robert Silverberg, Miriam Allen DeFord, Philip K.Dick, and others.
The Libertarian Futurist Society has selected five finalists for the 2016 Hall of Fame Award, given in recognition of a classic work of science fiction or fantasy with libertarian themes.
The descriptions of the works and their themes come from the Society’s press release.
Manna, by Lee Correy (published 1984)
A novel about the economic development of space in the twenty-first century, and about competing economic philosophies that shape it. One of its most interesting aspects is the setting: the United Mitanni Commonwealth, an imaginary small East African country founded on a distinctive vision of personal freedom of choice. Correy’s hero, a former American aerospace officer, is drawn into the Mitanni struggle both for a vision of the future and for simple survival, while discovering the customs of his new homeland.
Courtship Rite, by Donald M. Kingsbury (published 1982)
A novel set on a planet in a remote solar system, where human colonists struggle with a harsh environment. The author, a mathematician, explores the mathematical concept of optimization in biological evolution, in political institutions, in culture, and in personal ethics—through linked dramatic struggles over political ambition and the creation of a family.
“As Easy as A.B.C.,” by Rudyard Kipling (published 1912)
One of Kipling’s two “airship utopia” stories, set in the year 2065—but the utopia is an ambiguous one. Striking for its vision of a future that looks back in horror at the lynchings and racism of Kipling’s own time. Compact and evocatively written.
The Island Worlds, by Eric Kotani and John Maddox Roberts (published 1987)
A novel of asteroidal rebellion against a corrupt and oligopolistic Earth. Unusual in its portrayal of an internally divided liberation movement with conflicting ethical and strategic beliefs.
A Mirror for Observers, by Edgar Pangborn (published 1954)
A novel of conflicting factions of Martian refugees working in secret to influence humanity toward enlightenment and self-destruction. Notable for its vision of a future United States with two entirely new leading political parties—a constitutionalist party and a fascistic Organic Unity Party—and of its reaction to an engineered plague. Pangborn offers no radical solutions; he focuses on personal ethics, and he shows reasons for despair and then turns back to hope.
Fourteen nominees were considered for the award. Those not making the shortlist were: Firesign Theater’s “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus,” James P. Hogan’s The Mirror Maze, Murray Leinster’s “Exploration Team,” C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, O.T. Nelson’s The Girl Who Owned a City, Rush’s 2112, Robert Silverberg’s A Time of Changes, T.H. White’s The Book of Merlyn, and F. Paul Wilson’s Hosts.
Hall of Fame candidates are nominated by the members of the Libertarian Futurist Society. Any work first published more than five years ago is eligible. The finalists have been selected by a committee of judges. The winners will be determined by a vote of all members.
Last Year’s Hall of Fame Winner: Harlan Ellison recorded a short video accepting the 2015 LFS Hall of Fame award for “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.”
