Tag Archives: Salt Lake Comic Con

Judge Denies Key Motions for Summary Judgment In Comic-Con Infringement Suit

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In his latest rulings on San Diego Comic-Con Inc.’s suit against Salt Lake Comic Con, a federal judge refused to grant summary judgment on the trademark infringement issue because some factual issues can only be resolved by a trial.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Battaglia did grant several other motions, clearing away some lines of argument, and revealing his thinking about others.

The court observed that the defendant, Salt Lake Comic Con, has introduced evidence that “fluctuates” between two different defense theories, genericness ab initio (that “comic con” was a generic mark before SDCC began using it as a trademark) and genericide (that the term “comic con” has been appropriated by the public, as it has done with aspirin or escalator).

The judge ruled against the Salt Lake Comic Con’s genericness ab initio arguments:

Unfortunately for Defendants, the Ninth Circuit [the controlling circuit Court of Appeals to which this case might be appealed] has not recognized a genericness ab initio theory of defense.

While the judge accepted that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to genericide, he disagreed that Salt Lake Comic Con’s evidence entitled them to judgment as a matter of law.

This conclusion is reinforced by Plaintiff’s submission of its consumer survey that demonstrates that over 80% of consumers believed “Comic-Con” to be a brand name and not a generic name. Accordingly, the Court also DENIES Defendants’ motion for summary judgment based on a theory of genericide.

SLCC is allowed to keep making genericide arguments. However, the judge foreclosed a third line of defense by granting summary judgment that San Diego Comic-Con did not abandon its marks.

Thus, despite Defendants’ attempt to argue abandonment through third party use or failure to police, these arguments are unquestionably meritless as Defendants have not proven that Plaintiff’s mark is generic…. (“Abandonment of a trademark, being in the nature of forfeiture, must be strictly proved.”). Accordingly, Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment on this factor is GRANTED.

Additional rulings were made about expert witness testimony.

The judge also had sharp words for Salt Lake Comic Con (the Defendants) regarding their attempts to introduce fraud claims against SDCC.

On a final note, the Court articulates that it takes issue with the alleged “undisputed facts” section of Defendants’ motion for summary judgment based on abandonment.

Within this section, Defendants list Plaintiff’s trademarks and then delve into allegations surrounding and Plaintiff’s purportedly “fraudulent registration of the hyphenated form Comic-Con.” …It is unquestionably clear that these arguments are anything but “undisputed facts,” but are actually highly contested allegations.

… Furthermore, the fraud allegations are not only a baseless attack on Plaintiff unsupported by the record, but they are also in complete disregard of the Court’s previous [gag] order.

…Consequently, finding that Defendants have used their motion to improperly inject irrelevant and scandalous allegations into their motion, the Court finds a motion to strike warranted.

The court decision was handed down Tuesday, September 12.

The lawsuit began in 2014, when San Diego Comic-Con sued Salt Lake Comic Con’s organizers, accusing it of violating its copyrights on the term “comic con.”

The latest Salt Lake Comic Con begins September 21.

Judge Issues Gag Order in Comic Con Suit

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Salt Lake Comic Con’s Bryan Brandenburg has worked hard to gain public support for his side in the trademark infringement suit brought by San Diego Comic-Con. He’s been so successful at generating favorable publicity that SDCC’s lawyers asked Judge Anthony Battaglia to impose a gag order on the litigants, which he granted July 18.

San Diego Comic-Con’s request for a protective order played up Brandenburg’s own press coverage claims as a basis for requesting the order:

Since the inception of this dispute, Defendants have brazenly engaged in a strategic public campaign to disparage SDCC and “win this case in the court of public opinion.” Defendants’ public campaign has included statements made in numerous press releases, news articles, on websites and on social media including Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, Defendants boast they have secured more than 200,000 media articles reporting on the case that are “favorable” to Defendants.

Additionally, many of the statements made publicly by Defendants are misleading, prejudicial, inflammatory, or false. These include numerous claims that SDCC lied and/or committed fraud on the government in order to obtain its trademarks.

(Brandenburg’s fraud allegations are covered here.)

The complaint continues:

Defendant Bryan Brandenburg consistently disparages SDCC and/or its board members on social media by suggesting SDCC lies and engages in other unethical behavior.  Brandenburg’s comments are designed to harm SDCC and incite others on social media to engage in disparaging discussions about SDCC. Moreover, Brandenburg’s comments about SDCC almost always relate to this litigation and the suggestion that the dispute is frivolous.  Defendants repeatedly litigate their case by using media outlets to mischaracterize the parties’ positions and taint the public’s perception regarding the issues in dispute in this case.  Defendants’ media campaign is increasing in intensity as this case nears trial.  Defendants’ goal is to win this case by using media outlets to tarnish the reputation of SDCC and taint the jury pool.  As Defendant Bryan Brandenburg stated in one of Defendants’ many press releases, “I am asking for support from the community and all the powers of the Universe to bring victory to us in this case.”

Judge Anthony Battalgia, though motions for summary judgment in the case are still pending, seems to have been swayed by the argument that publicity is tainting the jury pool. The Hollywood Reporter, in “Comic-Con: This Year’s Convention Comes With a Judge’s Gag Order” explains the order, which denies part of the relief requested by SDCC while granting the most important items:

…Battaglia rejects a move to stop Farr and Brandenburg, and those associated with them, from making any false or misleading statement about San Diego Comic-Con or the merits of the dispute. That would be an unconstitutional prior restraint, the judge concludes.

However, accepting evidence that “the venire is being influenced through social media dialogue,” the judge is preventing both sides from making statements accusing, suggesting or implying that San Diego Comic-Con lied or committed fraud. Additionally, the parties aren’t allowed to discuss the alleged genericness of the term “comic con,” how the mark may or may not be descriptive, and whether San Diego Comic-Con abandoned its trademark rights.

The parties are being allowed to post court papers, but only in full and without further comment. The judge is also warning that violation of the order will warrant strong sanctions.

There’s a livelier article at Techdirt, “San Diego Comic Con Gets Gag Order On Salt Lake Comic Con”, where the writers are still pissed that SDCC subpoenaed them in 2015 about their coverage of the suit:

You can read the demand for a protective order here or below, and if I had to summarize it, it’s basically: “it’s no fair that Salt Lake Comic Con is getting good press coverage and we’re being mocked, so the court should silence them.” I read through the document and I kept expecting more… and… that’s really it. They literally complain that they’re losing in “the court of public opinion” and argue that it’s somehow unfair that one side is talking about this case publicly and they should be barred from any further conversation. And, it gives some more context to the paranoid view that was clear in the subpoena we received: SDCC and/or its lawyers are so focused on the negative press coverage that they seem to assume that something more nefarious is going on… beyond the basic likelihood that lots of people think this lawsuit is over-aggressive bullying by SDCC.

And about the gag order itself, Techdirt’s Mike Masnick says:

I have trouble seeing how the first two are unconstitutional prior restraint, but the rest are allowed to be gagged — especially something as mundane as discussing whether comic con is generic or descriptive. But, really, since the court apparently doesn’t want anyone discussing that kind of thing, perhaps go ahead and have a discussion in the comments about that very question. And, in case SDCC’s high priced lawyers are looking at this yet again, I’ll remind you once again that we have no relationship of any kind with the organizers of the Salt Lake City event. We just don’t like big bullies silencing people or filing questionable lawsuits.

Bryan Brandenburg’s only public statement since the order has been to make the announcement ordered by the court. He told Facebook followers:

United States District Judge Anthony J. Battaglia of the United Stated District Court for the Southern District of California has ordered that no editorial comments, opinions, or conclusions about San Diego Comic Convention v. Dan Farr Productions, LLC, et al., No. 14-cv-1865 AJB (JMA) (S.D. Cal.), be made on social media, and that no highlights or summaries of the status of the proceedings or the evidence presented be made on social media.

Naturally, fans like Chris Hamatake were quick to observe:

But there’s no restriction on fans commenting or expressing opinions, right? As I’m not part of the litigation process, I don’t see that anything posted by fans could affect the legal process either way…

Brandenburg laconically agreed, “No,” and his Facebook commenters immediately resumed their vocal support for SLCC.

[Via Petréa Mitchell.]

SDCC and SLCC Ask Judge To Decide Comic Con Mark Litigation

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San Diego Comic-Con International has been trying control the term “Comic-Con” term for decades. In August 2014 they filed suit in U.S. District Court against the owners of the Salt Lake City Comic Con claiming the name of Salt Lake City’s event is too similar. The San Diego con claimed SLCC had piggybacked on its “creativity, ingenuity, and hard work,” and by using the Comic Con name “intended to suggest, mislead and confuse consumers into believing that the Salt Lake Comic Con convention is associated with, authorized by, endorsed by or sponsored by SDCC.”

The judge, as is commonly done, prodded SDCC and SLCC to have settlement discussions and resolve the case without trial. This month the Salt Lake City defendants (which includes Dan Farr Productions [DFP], and Dan Farr and Bryan Brandenburg as individuals) traveled to San Diego to give depositions leading up to a final settlement conference. SLCC’s Bryan Brandenburg subsequently told the Associated Press there was no compromise forthcoming from court-mandated conference. SDCC says they’ll only accept SLCC licensing the name “comic con” for a fee. Read “substantial fee.”

The AP reports that San Diego Comic-Con declined specific comment on the case, though they said Utah organizers’ position is “without merit.”

Salt Lake City Comic Con has now moved for summary judgment, calling on the court to render a decision on the existing record. SLCC’s primary argument is that SDCC has no rights to the generic term “comic con.” And if that’s not enough, mark history shows SDCC abandoned efforts to register “Comic Con” in favor of the hyphenated name “Comic-Con” and since SLCC does not use the hyphenated term in its name there is no infringement.

If summary judgment is not granted, or does not resolve all issues (as happened when a court issued a decision in the Dr. Seuss/ComicMix suit) the case could go to trial in the fall.

Brandenburg has continually appealed to the public, colorfully asking for “support from the community and all the powers of the Universe to bring victory to us in this case.” Three weeks ago he posted on Facebook the arguments in his defense; he asserts that the facts therein “are undisputed.”

1) Comic-Con International does not have a trademark for “Comic Con”. They tried to get it in 1996 but Chicago Comicon and Motor City Comic Con opposed the trademark and San Diego abandoned it. https://goo.gl/QXXSul Here is the DEAD trademark https://goo.gl/nWcByy

2) San Diego did not originate the name “comic con”. By the 1960’s, American (and British) comic book collectors were gathering for events that they called comicons, comic cons, comic conventions. In 1966, three comic cons were held in New York City alone, where comics originated. It wasn’t until 1970 that the Golden State Comic Book Convention was organized…and it wasn’t until later that it was called Comic-Con International.

3) In the 1990’s, SDCC had decided it should OWN the generic cultural terminology and began to process a series of applications for register marks but claimed they used the phrase and mark “exclusively” according to trademark applications. This was a false claim that was made on their trademark applications as there were many comic cons by this time and they did not originate the term.

4) Comic-Con, “Comic Con” and “Comic-Con” are generic and the trademark office should revoke SDCC’s trademarks not only because they are used generically in popular culture, but because their trademarks were obtained by falsely claiming exclusive use of the marks. They are generic because these terms identify a type of event, not any particular event or producer.

5) Furthermore, SDCC abandoned any rights it might have had by granting a naked license to at least one major comic con event. This means the license did not have sufficient oversight or controls. They also did not police said trademarks between 1995 and 2014 with comic cons all over the country that were non-affiliated and non-licensed.

6) “Comic Con” is not only generic in fact and by abandoned trademark application, but when Salt Lake Comic Con applied for the trademark for “Salt Lake Comic Con”, the attorneys at the TRADEMARK OFFICE RULED that a trademark could not be obtained because both “Salt Lake” and “Comic Con” were descriptive.

7) Salt Lake Comic Con has never used “Comic-Con” to describe it’s convention, but that doesn’t matter because many events around the country and the world use “comic-con” as part of their name and until SDCC filed their lawsuit in 2014 against SLCC they did NOT make most if not all of the comic-cons change their name, sign a license agreement or adhere to any type of standards or oversight. When they were forced to abandon the trademark for “comic con”, they then secured “comic-con” and have used it from that point forward.

8) “Comic Con” is generic and unprotectable. “Comic Con” simply denotes a comic con. Comic con is a noun indicating what an event is, not whose event it is. Even Wikipedia states “Comic con is any comic book convention.”

9) Salt Lake Comic Con relied on the fact that the “comic con” trademark was abandoned combined with the fact that every comic con outside of SDCC we talked with had no agreement with SDCC and asserted that “comic con” was generic.

10) SDCC’s trademarks should be canceled because they did not originate the term “comic con” AND they obtained them by falsely claiming exclusive use.

He has also made available redacted copies of SLCC’s latest court filings.

While litigation is always emotional, some say what really got SDCC’S goat was having the Salt Lake Comic Con’s garish “Tony Stark”-like Audi driving around downtown San Diego during their Comic-Con in 2014. The suit was filed a month later.

[Thanks to Dave Doering and Kate Hatcher for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 3/1/17 Old Man Pixel, He Just Keeps Scrollin’ Along

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(1) HELSINKI NEWS. Worldcon 75 is holding an Academic Poster competition and would very much like participation from as many university students and researchers as possible.

We are hosting a science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) poster competition for undergraduate students, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. The competition is also open to posters that explore the connections between STEMM subjects and SF/fantasy/horror. There will be a €100 prize for the poster that best communicates research to the general public.

Presenters will be able to share their research with an audience that is very interested in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, but where many audience members will not have been formally educated in STEMM subjects. In addition, presenters will be invited to give five minute mini-talks on Saturday 12th August 2017 explaining their research. Taken together, the posters and mini-talks represent an exciting opportunity for the presenters to practice research communication, and for audience to learn about cutting-edge research.

If you are interested in displaying a poster then fill in our web form below or follow this direct link to the form.

The deadline for applications is 1st May 2017 and we will inform you of our decision by mid-June.

(2) DREAM FULFILLED. Phil Kaveny, who I know from the Mythopoeic Society, announced the script for his play “The Munitions Factory” is available from Amazon Kindle.  He calls it “My project of a lifetime.”

The Munitions Factory is a play about love, money, revolution, and the military industrial complex. Set in Imperial Germany in 1917 during the worst winter in German history, The Munitions Factory is really about our world in the 21st century. It is a hard driving play that will jar you out of your complacency, and it is also a compelling love story about characters who walk the razor’s edge between desperate love and repulsion that is common in wartime.

(3) DOWN TO THE WIRE. In comments Jonathan Edelstein pointed out that “a team headed by the heroic Jake Kerr is putting together a 2017 Campbell-eligible anthology.”

The submission form is here for any Campbell-eligible authors (first pro publication in 2015 or 2016) who want to submit a sample of last year’s work.

(4) ODDS FAVOR THE HOUSE. The Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance opened voting today for the CLFA Book of the Year Awards.

CLFA an online group of readers, authors and other creative individuals who want to see more freedom-friendly storytelling in the marketplace. We provide our members with networking opportunities as well as a safe, friendly and open environment for both political and creative discussions. We are currently at over 1300 members strong, with new participants joining us on a daily basis….

CLFA Book of the Year Awards, now in their third year, seek to recognize the best in freedom-friendly fiction. To qualify for entry in the CLFA 2017 Book of the Year contest, the work has to be over 50k words and first published in any form in 2016. Our members voted to arrive at the Top 10 list, which is now open to the public for the final vote.

Voting is open until midnight on March 31, 2017. Winners to be announced in April 2017. Voting happens here.

The finalists are:

  • Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright
  • Discovery by Karina Fabian
  • Set to Kill by Declan Finn
  • By the Hands of Men, Book Three: The Wrath of a Righteous Man by Roy M. Griffis
  • Murphy’s Law of Vampires by Declan Finn
  • Chasing Freedom by Marina Fontaine
  • Domino by Kia Heavey
  • Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge by John Ringo
  • Souldancer by Brian Niemeier
  • Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant

At the moment Peter Grant’s novel from Castalia House is leaving the field behind. He’s got 50 votes to 25 votes for John C. Wright’s novel (also from Castalia House). Last year’s Dragon Award-winning Souldancer by Brian Niemeier has one vote so far.

(5) INJUSTICE. Australia writer Tom Taylor, of Injustice Gods Among Us and Injustice 2 comics, told his Facebook readers he won’t be at Emerald City Comic Con this week and or other U.S. events.

Sadly, I won’t be attending Emerald City Comicon in Seattle this week.

I have also turned down all other US signing and convention invitations so far this year.

I know I’m far from the only person concerned about traveling to the States at this time, but I wanted to explain my decision.

I want to start by saying this decision was incredibly difficult. I was really looking forward to this trip. I have traveled to the US regularly since 2009. This year, I have four different books with three different publishers, and a TV series to promote. Beyond this, I have fans and colleagues I was looking forward to meeting. I also have many good friends in the States, and I was looking forward to catching up with all of them. Truth be told, I’m missing them.

But America, through no fault of most of its citizens, doesn’t feel like a safe or welcoming travel destination at this moment.

There have been reports of interrogation, phone data downloads, requests for social media accounts, returns and five-year travel bans and everyone from children to the elderly being detained. All of this has many people I’ve spoken to reconsidering or cancelling their US travel plans.

I’ve had friends and people I work with suggest I leave my phone at home, or delete my twitter account for a month before I come.

I refuse those terms.

My twitter account isn’t complimentary towards the current administration, but it’s far from inflammatory and shouldn’t need to be scrutinized to gain entry to a country where free-speech is so highly valued.

Traveling fifteen hours on a plane is bad enough. Travelling towards uncertainty, half-worried about being caught in limbo by overzealous border security, with my wife and children wondering why I haven’t called, is nightmare fuel…..

(Via Comicsbeat.)

(6) PENRIC SEQUEL. Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest novella Mira’s Last Dance (Penric & Desdemona Book 4) is out.

(7) VOTE FOR PAUL WEIMER. Ten days ‘til Down Under Fan Fund voting closes. The deadline is midnight, March 10 (PST). Our Paul Weimer is the only candidate for the trip to the Australian National Convention, but the contribution of $5 or more accompanying your vote will help keep the fund going during and after Paul’s trip. Click here to get started.

CANDIDATE PLATFORM

Paul Weimer

I’m a podcaster for the Skiffy and Fanty podcast, the SFF audio podcast, a noted SF/F book reviewer and a regular panelist at local cons. I am also an amateur photographer. I have only been to one international con, the Worldcon in London in 2014, and would love to broaden my international fandom connections. If I have the honor of being selected, I aim to build the links I already have with Australian fandom (in things like being a prior participant in The Australian SF Snapshot) into face to face interviews, meetings, and more with fans and genre folk at Continuum and elsewhere in Australia. Have camera and recorder and ready to travel!

Nominators: North America: Mike Glyer, Arref Mak, and Jen Zink. Australasia: Gillian Polack and Alexandra Pierce.

(8) GLOWING REVIEWS. Jason continues to burn the midnight oil and has melted down another month of online science fiction and fantasy offerings into a shiny list of favorite stories in “Summation of Online Fiction: February 2017” at Featured Futures.

Thirteen February pro-rate webzines (the same as last month’s list except that a new bimonthly issue of Compelling replaced the defunct Fantastic) produced forty-three stories of 196,912 words. I most appreciated six (amounting to 14% of the whole)…

(9) SMALL WORLD, BIG NEWS. ChiZine Publications has cut an illustrated book deal with George A. Romero, creator of The Night of the Living Dead. They have acquired The Little World of Humongo Bongo, an illustrated book, originally published in French.

The Little World of Humongo Bongo is the tale of fire-breathing giant Humongo Bongo, who lives on the tiny planet of Tongo. Gentle and curious, his world is thrown upside down when he encounters a race of tiny people named the Minus, who initially worship him as a God but then turn on him when they succumb to fear, greed and the lust for power….

The Little World of Humongo Bongo will be published in Fall/Winter 2017, in association with Dave Alexander’s Untold Horror, a multi-media brand dedicated to exploring the greatest horror stories never told.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • March 1, 1692 — The Salem Witch Trials began in Massachusetts with the conviction of West Indian slave, Tituba, for witchcraft.

(11) CALLING ALL SMOFS. Kevin Standlee shared the news that as of yesterday there was still no bid for the 2019 Westercon, to be selected this July in Tempe.

Any site in Western North America (or Hawaii) is eligible. (Nobody filed by the end of December 2016, so the exclusion zone is suspended.) The filing deadline for the ballot is April 15, 2017. If no bid files by then, site selection won’t have any bids on the ballot, and I probably will have to ask Tempe for a larger room and longer time slot for the Westercon Business Meeting.

So here’s your chance to host a Westercon!

The bidding requirements are in the Westercon Bylaws, Article 3. The bylaws are on the Westercon web site at http://www.westercon.org/organization/business/

It’s approximately the same as Worldcon, with minor differences. The outline is the same: file bidding papers, and if the voters at the administering Westercon select you, you get the bid. If nobody wins, the Business Meeting decides.

(12) SLCC UPDATE. Here’s Bryan Brandenburg of the Salt Lake Comic Con appearing before the Utah Legislature (to the right of the flag). In his address, Bryan emphasized that their intent is to fill the void and not replace the other commercial events.

(13) ROBOMALLCOP. Francis Hamit is sufficiently impressed with the company that he bought some stock. “I thought this might be of interest. Securitas is the largest provider of contract human security officers in the world. Knightscope is a new company with a unique robotic system that does not replace human officers but does greatly extend their range.” And they have some good news.

Knightscope, developer of advanced physical security technologies focused on significantly enhancing US security operations, and Securitas AB (SECU-B.ST), the world’s second largest private security company, announced today that the parties are extending their channel partner agreement through February 2020. The agreement gives Securitas Security Services USA, Inc., a subsidiary of Securitas, rights to offer Knightscope’s technologies to its significant existing customer base, while Knightscope continues to develop new technologies and provide operational support.

Hamit adds:

Any resemblance to the Daleks is strictly coincidental. I am sure.

(14) UNDERSTANDING FUTURISM. New from McFarland, Science Fiction and Futurism: Their Terms and Ideas by Ace G. Pilkington.

Science and science fiction have become inseparable—with common stories, interconnected thought experiments, and shared language. This reference book lays out that relationship and its all-but-magical terms and ideas. Those who think seriously about the future are changing the world, reshaping how we speak and how we think.

This book fully covers the terms that collected, clarified and crystallized the futurists’ ideas, sometimes showing them off, sometimes slowing them down, and sometimes propelling them to fame and making them the common currency of our culture.

The many entries in this encyclopedic work offer a guided tour of the vast territories occupied by science fiction and futurism.

Beware, it will help multiply the number of books on your TBR pile. In his Foreword, David Brin says, “Provocative and enticing? Filled with ‘huh!’ moments and leads to great stories? That describes this volume.”

(15) RING THAT BELLE. John Ostrander talks about The Other in “The Face in the Mirror” at ComicMix.

The most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly featured an article about and interview with Emma Watson, playing Belle in the upcoming live-action Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. She may be best known for playing Hermione in the Harry Potter films. In addition to being very talented, Ms. Watson is also very smart and very articulate. As the article notes, she has also been a leader in feminist causes.

In the article, she’s asked why it is hard for some male fans to enjoy a female hero. (Witness the fanboy furor at the all-female remake of Ghostbusters and the female leads in the last two Star Wars films.) She replied: “It’s something they [some male fans] are not used to and they don’t like that. I think if you’ve been used to watching characters that look like, sound like, think like you and then you see someone [unexpected] up on the screen, you go ‘Well, that’s a girl; she doesn’t look like me. I want it to look like me so that I can project myself onto the character.’. . .for some reason there’s some kind of barrier there where [men] are like: ‘I don’t want to relate to a girl.’”

That sounds right to me. We’ve seen that attitude prevalent not only in movie fans but comic fans as well. There’s a wish fulfillment, a fantasy fulfillment, in comics and comics-related TV and movies, in fantasy as well and we want to be able to easily project ourselves into that. For some male fans, a woman doesn’t cut it. The bias also can extend to seeing someone of a different race as the hero. I think it’s certainly true about sexual identity as well. To appeal to a certain demographic, the hero, the lead, cannot be female, or black, or gay. And heaven forbid they should be all three; tiny minds might explode….

Are you Arab? Do you wear a turban? Are you black? Are you gay? Are you female? Then you are not like me, you are “Other.” And that is inherently dangerous. We cannot be equal. It comes down to “zero-sum thinking” which says that there is only so many rights, so much love, so much power to be had. If I have more of any of these than you, I must lose some for you to gain.

Some of the people feel they don’t have much. I remember a line from Giradoux’s one-act play The Apollo of Bellac: “I need so much and I have so little and I must protect myself.” Sharing is not gaining; sharing is losing what little you may have.

Except it’s not. If for you to keep your power intact, you must deny someone else the power to which they have a right, it’s not really your power. It’s theirs and it’s been stolen.

Pop culture has its part to play. Putting women, blacks, gays, Latinos, and others in the central role helps normalize the notion of equality. Mary Tyler Moore did it; Bill Cosby (gawd help me) did it, Rogue One does it. However, pop culture can – and has – also re-enforced negative stereotypes. So – how do we engage it for more positive results?

Denny O’Neil, many years ago, when he was editing a special project I was working on told me, “You can say anything you want but first you have to tell a story.” That’s your ticket in. “Tell me a story” appeals to the very roots of who we are as human beings. It’s how we explain and codify our world. If you want to open a closed mind, go through the heart. Don’t lecture; engage. Show, don’t tell. Showing women, blacks, LGBTQ, Latinos, Asians, and so on as heroes, as something positive, normalizes the notion. If I can be made to identify with them then The Other is no longer strange; they are me and, thus, not other.

(16) BRADBURY ASSOCIATIONAL ITEM. I’d tell you to start shaking the change out of your piggy bank except that will only work if you filled it with gold sovereigns. Still available on eBay, Ray Bradbury-owned oil painting by Raymond Bayless. Price: $15,000.

Ray Bradbury personally owned Raymond Bayless painting, titled, “War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells”. Art depicts the famous naval battle from the story between a martian “Tripod” weapon and English ironclad, the HMS Thunder Child. Cityscape along the horizon is on fire, and the ship also goes up in flames with a cloud of black smoke, the martian chemical weapon, rising from it. Painting features a color palette of predominantly light blues and greys, accented in orange, black and white. Signed, “Raymond Bayless 91,” at lower left. A sticker on verso is also signed by the artist. Oil on Masonite painting is framed to an overall size of 18.75″ x 24.75″. Near fine. With a COA from the Bradbury Estate.

[Thanks to David Doering, Cat Eldridge, Francis Hamit, JJ, Jonathan Edelstein, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day John From GR.]

Pixel Scroll 2/24/17 770 Error: File Not Scrolled

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(1) TED’S HOUSE SAVED. A copy of Ted White’s thank-you to supporters of his GoFundMe comes via Andrew Porter.

My thanks and my gratitude to all of you who helped me meet my goal within one day. I’m flabbergasted. I’m still getting my head around it.

But I must point out to everyone who has proffered Joel [Zakem]’s advice that I am not the legal owner of my house. My daughter is (I have the lifetime right of occupancy — for as long as I keep the taxes paid). For this reason I have been unable to qualify for tax abatement.

The moment I move out of the house, it will revert to my daughter, who will sell it to developers who will tear it down and build two separate houses on the adjoining lots and sell each for over a million bucks. I expect I’ll be dead by then.

In the meantime, my heartfelt thanks.

(2) AMBITIOUS COMIC CON. The Outdoor Retailers Show was formerly the largest event in Utah, generating $45M each July between hotel, dining and touring. They left over a public lands debate.

Conrunners Dan Farr and Bryan Brandenburg wrote on Linkedin that “Salt Lake Comic Con Can Fill the Void of Outdoor Retailers Exit”. They are scheduled to make a presentation before the Utah Legislature to promote their ideas, which might become one of the largest fannish public/private initiatives in the country.

…It’s a shame that Outdoor Retailer has left the state. Let’s fill that void with a world class comic con event. We can do this.

…We believe this creates an opportunity for us to step up and take advantage of an industry that is already thriving in Utah and make it even more beneficial to the state and its residents. We believe we can build something that will have much more impact if we are able to line up the type of support that Outdoor Retailers had here. Salt Lake Comic Con is only three years old and we’ve already helped generated tens of millions of dollars in economic impact to the area.”

Right now we are the largest comic con per capita in the world. The people of Salt Lake City and Utah are used to doing more with less. We are one of the top economies in the country, #1 for volunteerism, a top outdoor destination, best skiing on earth, have the internationally renowned Sundance film festival and one of the top locations for movies. But most importantly, Utah is the nerdiest state in the country. Let’s take all the successes and resources to become one of the top comic con destinations in the world.

(3) VON DIMPLEHEIMER’S LIST OF LISTS. Eric von Dimpleheimer has assembled another masterpiece which you can download free. He explains:

I began putting together an ebook of the various 2016 recommendation lists and sorting them by magazine (with some links to free stories), but as I kept coming across more recommendations, I abandoned the Sisyphean project. It is still useful (to me at least) and I thought others might be interested in it. I included two of Rocket Stack Rank’s annotated lists and Greg from Rocket Stack Rank is OK with me including them as long as the ebooks are free, which they are.

I want to stress that the ebooks are NOT finished or free from errors, but they are as complete as I am likely to make them. Anyone is free to add to or alter the ebooks as they see fit, as long as links to the sites of the original listmakers  remain (or in a few cases, better links are found.)

(4) MIND MELD. Shana DuBois has organized a new installment of this classic feature – “Mind Meld: Fresh Perspectives on Common Tropes” at B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

Tell us about a book, or books, that flipped SF/F/H on its head, approaching a common trope from such a fresh perspective you couldn’t stop thinking about it: What fresh methods did the book(s) use to look at the world anew?

Answering the question are Sofia Samatar, Max Gladstone, Joyce Chng, Jaime Lee Moyer, and Rachel Swirsky.

(5) BLOWN UP, SIR! Think of Wonder Woman’s Invisible Jet made with transparent balloons. Then go to io9 and see the pictures – “Just Let This Little Girl’s Wonder Woman Invisible Jet Costume Win Every Contest”.

(6) THE SHADOW JURY KNOWS. The Shadow Clarke shortlists are starting to come thick and fast:

…But first, my six in alphabetical order by author surname:

The Power — Naomi Alderman (Penguin Viking)

I hummed and hawed the most about including this book on the list. It seems to be another example of one type of book that has done well in the Clarke during recent years; the kind of novel that features one or more young female protagonists and reflects on aspects of a patriarchal society in a manner that can be compared with the work of the Award’s first winner, Margaret Atwood. Indeed, Alderman was actually mentored by Atwood during the writing of the novel. Moreover, it might be argued that The Power is simply a provocative what-if story that turns on a gimmick. However, any such reading would miss the book’s capacity to mix raw excitement with complexity and subtlety. The combination of the framing narrative and the unforgettable illustrations is worth the price of admission alone.

I sat at my computer last Tuesday morning, flicking between my work and the Clarke Award twitter feed, waiting for the submissions list to drop. When it finally did and I clicked through, with trepidation and a flicker of excitement, my first thought was: there are fewer eye-catching features in the Award’s 2016 landscape than I was hoping for. By which I mean, the list felt very flat.

As I scrolled down the 86 submitted books the wildcard submissions seemed fewer and further between than in recent years.  The avalanche of self-published works that some anticipated didn’t materialise – submissions were actually down this year overall – but it looked as though a lot of other submissions hadn’t materialised either. A brief and unscientific comparison between 2016 and 2017 lists for example, seems to suggest a decrease in submissions from ‘mainstream’ or non-genre imprints – 36 in 2016, 28 in 2017 (with 20 imprints and 17 imprints submitting respectively). There were some books in this category notably absent.  The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan (William Heinemann) for one, Hystopia by David Means (Faber & Faber) for another. I’d also hoped that Salt might take a punt on Wyl Menmuir’s uncanny dystopian fable The Many; and Galley Beggar Press on Forbidden Line by Paul Stanbridge. The fact that the ratio of books by women has fallen this year (from 33% of the total to 28%) may be attributable to the drop in submissions from non-specialist imprints who, as a fellow shadow juror pointed out to me, are far more likely to publish female writers of SF.

My shortlist is primarily based on optimism– being impressed by the multiple things these novels are attempting to do– and, to quote Nina Allan’s recent introduction, “to pay sufficient attention to the ‘novel’ part of the equation.” It includes books I might not love, but I would like to see discussed in relation to more popular books that have a better chance of landing on the official shortlist. I have followed only one firm rule: I will not include any previous Clarke award winners. This omits Chris Beckett, Paul McAuley, China Miéville, Claire North, Christopher Priest, and Tricia Sullivan. In a couple of cases, this rule made my shortlist picks more difficult, but I’m a big proponent of the one-and-done rule (or won-and-done, rather) because it’s only too obvious SF awards culture likes to chase its tail.

(7) THE ENTERTAINER. Larry Correia’s Toastmaster speech at the Gala Banquet at Life, The Universe and Everything (LTUE 2017) is available on YouTube.

(8) STARGAZING. The Google Doodlers had fun with the discovery of seven exoplanets at Trappist-1.

(9) SUSAN CASPER OBIT. Philadelphia author Susan Casper (1947-2017), wife of Gardner Dozois for 47 years, passed away February 24.

Announcing her death on Facebook, Dozois said: “She was an extremely tough woman, and fought through an unbelievable amount of stuff in the last couple of years, but this last illness was just too much for her fading strength to overcome.”

She was the author of two dozen published stories. Her 1994 novella “Up the Rainbow” took sixth place in  Asimov’s annual Readers Poll.

Her fiction in collaboration with Gardner Dozois is part of Slow Dancing through Time (1990), which includes one collaboration with both Dozois and Jack M Dann.

She served as a Tiptree Award judge in 1994.

There will be no viewing or funeral service, but there will be a memorial gathering in the future.

Susan Casper. Photo by and copyright © Andrew Porter.

(10) MARTIN DEUTSCH OBIT. Courtesy of Dale Arnold:

Martin Deutsch, President of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, died February 24. He had been receiving chemotherapy for a bone marrow condition for several weekly cycles of treatment and his doctor was optimistic, but fate intervened.

The night before he had reported being very tired, but intending to meet with the BSFS Treasurer that morning as previously scheduled. He had also said he would be attending the BSFS book discussion on Saturday, but might need to borrow one of the wheelchairs BSFS keeps around for people who need them at Balticon to get into the building. However, the morning of the 24th before the BSFS Treasurer arrived Martin passed out in his favorite chair and died before medical assistance arrived. It is reported that there was little pain.

Martin was first elected as President of BSFS in 1980 and served continuously since then leading the meetings with his own twist on formal meeting rules. He never tired of building things for BSFS and Balticon and many of the fixtures and displays at the convention, particularly in the art show which he ran for many years with his wife Shirley Avery, were his inspiration made manifest. During the most recent election of BSFS officers Martin said he was not ready to give up yet and indeed his spirit never gave up.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • February 24, 1786 — Wilhelm Grimm was born, one of The Brothers Grimm.

(12) TODAY IN ALTERNATE HISTORY

  • February 24, 1989 — The body of Laura Palmer is discovered in Twin Peaks, WA.

(13) NOW WITH SUBTRACTED GOODNESS. MovieWeb passes along the scuttlebutt – “Unaltered Original Star Wars Trilogy to Be Re-Released Before Last Jedi?”

This year not only brings Star Wars fans a new theatrical adventure in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but also a number of new books and, of course, another Force Friday event happening this fall, but that’s not all. This year also marks the 40th Anniversary of the original Star Wars, with the anniversary celebration kicking off at Star Wars Celebration, which runs from April 13 through April 16 in Orlando, Florida. If a new rumor is believed to be true, LucasFilm may be making a big announcement about the 40th anniversary soon, with plans apparently under way to release a new Blu-ray set with the theatrical versions of the original trilogy films.

(14) HERE’S THE PITCH. From MLB.com — “Five baseball movies you probably haven’t seen that (mostly) deserve watching”. Martin Morse Wooster sent the link and a couple of comments:

  1. The fine film Battlefield Baseball HAS to be seen (or at least the trailer does).

The MLB.com description reads —

It’s kind of like “Friday Night Lights” in that it’s about high school sports rivalries. But it differs in one crucial way: The game doesn’t end until the opposing team is dead. Oh yeah, the synopsis also sounds like a Stefon sketch. “Battlefield Baseball” features zombies, deadly baseball equipment and that thing where a pitcher throws a lethal pitch known as the “Super Tornado.”

 

  1. The clip from Rhubarb does have Leonard Nimoy — in 1951!

There’s a good (very short) view of him about 2:10

(15) INCLUDES SEMIPRO AND FAN RECS. Shaun Duke has assembled a crowdsourced “2017 Hugo Awards Reading / Viewing List”.

As I did last year, I have begun to compile a big massive (and, indeed, very sexy) list of all the books, stories, comics, movies, fans, etc. suggested to me via my recent 2017 Hugo Awards Recommendations form. The following is by no means a comprehensive list, as it is based on suggestions by readers. If something is missing, let me know in the comments.

(16) PROBLEM DAUGHTERS ANTHOLOGY CANCELED. Nicolette Barischoff and Rivqa Rafael made the announcement in their “Statement on the Dissolution of the Problem Daughters Anthology”.

Unfortunately, the Problem Daughters project has been canceled, and Nicolette Barischoff and Rivqa Rafael have parted ways with Djibril al-Ayad and FutureFire.net Publishing. This decision was extremely painful, and not taken lightly in consideration of the many wonderful, generous people who helped us get to this point. Unfortunately, the ideological differences between the involved parties have proved insurmountable, leaving us no choice but to end this collaboration.

We apologize to all of you who feel let down by this decision — our backers, our potential contributors and just anyone who wanted to read this book. We did, too.

Everyone who backed the project will be contacted as soon as possible so we can arrange a refund. We ask for your patience as we undergo this process.

Once again, we thank you for your support, and apologize for this inconvenience and disappointment.

Publisher The Future Fire also posted that the anthology is permanently closed to submissions.

The editors of the Problem Daughters, Djibril al-Ayad, Rivqa Rafael, and Nicolette Barischoff were behind the “Intersectional SFF Roundtable” for Apex Magazine that was taken down after Likhain’s open letter to the editor protesting the involvement of Benjanun Sriduangkaew. Apex Magazine editor Jason Sizemore issued an apology, and briefly there also was an apology signed the three editors on The Future Fire site, now only readable in the Google cache file. The gist of their apology was that they were sorry for not including a black woman in a panel about intersectionality. The controversy about Sriduangkaew’s participation was not addressed.

(17) BE YOUR OWN BBC STATION. Michael O’Donnell recommends these BBC radio programs currently available on the BBC iPlayer.

In “I Was Philip K Dick’s Reluctant Host”, Michael Walsh – a journalist and respected film reviewer for The Province, a leading Vancouver newspaper – talks about the time he came to the aid of the author of Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall and Man in the High Castle, who he met at a convention in 1972.

Discovering that Dick’s wife had walked out on him, that he had nowhere to go and was also suffering deep addiction problems, Michael invited Philip to stay with him and his wife Susan at their home in Vancouver.

It would go on to be one of the most challenging experiences of Michael’s life, as drug dependency, unwanted advances on Michael’s wife and unpredictable mood swings made the period something of an emotional rollercoaster for the wary hosts – but also fascinating insight into one of Sci-Fi’s greatest ever visionaries.

Clarke Peters (The Wire, Treme) reads The Underground Railroad, the new novel by Colson Whitehead. This brilliant and at times brutal novel about the history of slavery and racism in America won the US National Book Award for Fiction in 2016.

“What if the underground railroad was a literal railroad? And what if each state, as a runaway slave was going north, was a different state of American possibility, an alternative America?”

Whitehead’s inventive novel follows Cora and Caesar as they escape from a Georgia slave plantation and run north in pursuit of freedom, aided by the stationmasters and conductors of the Underground Railroad.

Vintage sci-fi serial from 1961.

“A glimpse across a weird threshold, on the rim of space where there should be nothing but eternal, frozen darkness. Yet where there was something more…..”

Newspaper reporter, Tom Lambert has decided to reinvestigate the strange events of ten years before, concerning the “cosmic noise”. Believing the inside story was never told, he’s tracked down the only man who knows, Dr Hayward Petrie.

Told in flashbacks, the story unfolds from Dr Petrie’s own recordings of the time when the detection of a strange pattern of signals sparks a mysterious discovery…

[Thanks to Michael O’Donnell, JJ, Daniel Dern, David Doering, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Moshe Feder, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

Settlement Predicted in Comic Con Name Litigation

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San Diego Comic-Con International figured in two mainstream news stories today.

(1) SETTLEMENT EXPECTED. The Salt Lake Comic Con and San Diego Comic-Con are inching closer to settling a court battle over naming rights reports the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Lawyers for the two pop-culture conventions said they have been able to resolve many of their disagreements over whether the names are too similar, and are working on the remaining sticking points.

They asked a federal judge to give them more time, until March 1, to work on a possible agreement, according to court documents filed Friday in Southern California.

SDCC alleges that the name of Salt Lake City’s event is too similar. In court papers filed in August 2014, SDCC claimed that SLCC had piggybacked on its “creativity, ingenuity, and hard work,” and by using the Comic Con name “intended to suggest, mislead and confuse consumers into believing that the Salt Lake Comic Con convention is associated with, authorized by, endorsed by or sponsored by SDCC.”

The U.S. Patent and Trademark office is withholding judgment. It suspended its own ruling in November until the federal case could be resolved. In July, the office awarded Salt Lake Comic Con a trademark for its name. Officials said “comic con” was too generic to trademark but “Salt Lake Comic Con” was specific enough to qualify. While the Utah organizers called that a decisive step, San Diego disagreed.

(2) STADIUM POLITICS. The San Diego Chargers professional football team seemed to be using Comic-Con as a catspaw in its latest statement seeking support for a new stadium, by making a suggestion that the project include a permanent site for Comic-Con International and a Comic-Con museum.

At the same time, we have considered the potential benefits to both the greater San Diego region and the Chargers of a multi-use stadium/convention center facility downtown. The multi-use facility, when combined with Petco Park, the existing Convention Center, the Gaslamp Quarter, and a revitalized East Village, would create an unparalleled entertainment and sports district that will host Super Bowls and will ideally be a permanent home for Comic-Con and a Comic-Con museum. All of our research demonstrates that voters are more likely to approve a multi-use facility that would generate economic activity on hundreds of days per year, including by attracting major sporting and convention events that San Diego cannot now host. The downtown multi-use facility would also free up the existing Mission Valley site for potential use by educational institutions such as San Diego State and UCSD, as well as for a large riverfront park.

Comic-Con’s response made it clear they do not support the stadium-convention center plan.

“We have had no discussions with the Chargers and were surprised to be mentioned in their recent statement. We hope the public is aware, and we would like to reiterate our ongoing belief that a contiguous convention center expansion is the preferable solution to the limits on current convention center space. Comic-Con has doubts that a multi-use facility would serve the best interests of potential conventions hoping to exhibit in San Diego,” their own statement reads.

Pixel Scroll 1/24/2016 I Saw The Best Scrolls Of My Generation Destroyed By Pixels, Filing Hysterical Numbered

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(1) THE FINNISH. Finland hosts the World Science Fiction Convention in 2017 — but if you can’t make it to Helsinki, hit the library: more and more Finnish speculative fiction authors are getting English translations, as NPR reports in “Finnish Authors Heat Up The Speculative Fiction World”.

In the middle of Johanna Sinisalo’s novel The Core of the Sun, the reader is interrupted by an ad. It’s for Fresh Scent, a personal fragrance available from the State Cosmetics Corporation of Finland. It’s marketed to woman, although “marketed” is an understatement. In Sinisalo’s nightmarish, alternate-reality vision of her homeland, a tyrannical patriarchy splits women into two classes — docile “eloi” and undesirable “morlocks,” terms cheekily drawn from H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine — as part of an oppressive national health scheme that crosses insidiously over into eugenics.

The ad for Fresh Scent is just one of the novel’s many fragmentary asides. In additional to its more conventional narrative, which centers on Vanna, a woman with an addiction to chili peppers (it makes sense a skewed sort of sense, really), The Core of the Sun is made up of epistolary passages, dictionary entries, article excerpts, transcripts of hearings, scripts for instructional films, homework assignments, folk songs, and even fairytales that exist only in Sinisalo’s twisted version of the world. Chillingly, one passage concerning the social benefits of human sterilization is taken from a real-world source, a Finnish magazine article from 1935.

There’s a streak of scathing satire to the book’s fragmentary science fiction, and in that sense it sits somewhere between Margaret Atwood and Kurt Vonnegut — but Sinisalo crafts a funny, unsettling, emotionally charged apparition of the present that’s all her own.

(2) SPEAKING OF COLD PLACES. The New York Times captioned this tweet “A Wookie Chills in Washington (Not Hoth)”

(3) AN ALARMING INSIGHT.

(4) DEATH OF A GOLDEN AGE. Saladin Ahmed’s Buzzfeed article argues “Censors Killed The Weird, Experimental, Progressive Golden Age Of Comics”.

In the 1940s, comic books were often feminist, diverse, and bold. Then the reactionary Comics Code Authority changed the trajectory of comic book culture for good.

The comics themselves exhibited wild stylistic variety. A single issue of Keen Detective Funnies could contain one story with gorgeous Art Nouveau-ish illustration, and another with glorified stick figures. The comic books of the Golden Age were also significantly more diverse in terms of genre than today’s comics. On newsstands across America — in an era when the newsstand was an urban hub and an economic juggernaut — comic books told tales of True Crime, Weird Fantasy and Cowboy Love, Negro Romance, and Mystery Men. And Americans bought them.

Even as Amazing-Man and Blue Beetle were rescuing helpless, infantilized women, badass superheroines like the Lady in Red, the Spider Queen, and Lady Satan were stabbing Nazis and punching out meddlesome, sexist cops.

(5) NOW THAT SHE HAS OUR ATTENTION. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s post “Business Musings: Poor Poor Pitiful Me Is Not A Business Model” actually is not a rant telling writers to buck up, it’s a discussion of the true levers of culture change. But it begins with a rant….

Granted, in the recent past, the major publishing companies were the only game in town. But they are no longer the only game in town. A major bestselling writer can—and should—walk from any deal that does not meet her contractual and business needs.

Hell, every writer should do that.

But of course most writers won’t. Instead, an entire group of them beg for scraps from the Big All-Powerful Evil Publishers, proving to the publishers that writers are idiots and publishers hold all the cards.

I already bludgeoned the Authors Guild letter last week, so why am I going back to the same trough? Because this poor-poor-pitiful-me attitude has become the norm in the publishing industry right now, and I’m really tired of it.

The big battles of 2014 and 2015, from all of the fighting over the meaning of Amazon in the past few years to the in-genre squabbling over the Hugo awards that science fiction indulged in last year to the hue and cry indie writers have treated us to over the various changes in Kindle Unlimited since its inauguration have all had the same basic complaint.

Someone—be it a publisher (that Amazon is Evil argument) or a writer (the rest of it)—believes they’re entitled to something, and when they don’t get that something, they complain loudly, on social media or in traditional media or via group letter or through (in sf’s case) hateful spiteful posts about the opposing parties.

Only a handful of people take responsibility for the situation they’re in—if, indeed, they are responsible. Only a few actually analyze why the situation exists.

(6) HIGH PRAISE. The first line in David Barnett’s review of Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds is —

Imagine that Diana Wynne Jones, Douglas Coupland and Neil Gaiman walk into a bar and through some weird fusion of magic and science have a baby. That offspring is Charlie Jane Anders’ lyrical debut novel All The Birds In The Sky.

Do you think that’s a lot to live up to?

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 24, 1888 — Typewriter “copy” ribbon patented by Jacob L. Wortman. Harlan Ellison still uses one.
  • January 25, 1984 – Apple’s Macintosh computer went on sale. Price tag: $2,495.

(8) TRI ROBOT. Mickey Zucker Reichert, the author of To Preserve, is a working physician and the author of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot Trilogy (To Protect, To Obey, To Preserve). The third book will be published in hardcover by Roc in February.

Nate, has been Manhattan Hasbro Hospital’s resident robot for more than twenty years. Nate’s very existence terrified most people, leaving the robot utilized for menial tasks and generally ignored. Until one of the hospital’s physicians is found murdered with Nate standing over the corpse.

As programmer of Nate’s brain, Lawrence Robertson is responsible for his creation and arrested for the crime. Susan Calvin knows the Three Laws of Robotics make it impossible for Nate to harm a human. But maybe someone manipulated the laws to commit murder.

(9) DOUGH-REY. Kip W. pays tribute to characters from that billion-dollar movie The Force Awakens.

Poe, a flier; a fast male flier
Rey, who scavenges a bit,
Maz, a host who knows the most,
Finn, a white shirt drone who quit,
Snoke, a hologram quite tall,
Ren, a very angry joe,
Beeb, a droid head on a ball,
Which will bring us back to Poe. Poe, Rey, Maz, Finn, Snoke, Ren, Beeb, Poe!

(10) FLEXIBILITY. Nick Osment analyzes the benefits of reading science fiction in “What We Can Learn From a Time Lord: Doctor Who and a New Enlightened Perspective” at Black Gate.

If tomorrow you stepped inside a time machine and found yourself standing in the yard of this man who is separated from being your neighbor only by the passage of a century, then suddenly his opinions would become somewhat more relevant because now you would actually have to interact with him. But they would not become any more credible to you just because you were now hearing them face-to-face. You would still hear them from the vantage of having come from the future.

Now imagine your life today not as if you were living in your own time but as if you were visiting from a hundred years in the future. The weight given by proximity, i.e., these people are my neighbors, is leveled off, much the way that visiting that long-dead neighbor would be. Detach yourself from all the noise of the television and the Internet and your workplace, your college, your local pub. See it from a more objective position — of not being of this time, with the knowledge that this time, too, will pass, and all these people who are speaking right now; they all, too, will be dead and most of them forgotten.

(11) BIGGER ON THE OUTSIDE. 11.22.63, the eight-part event series based on Stephen King’s 2011 novel, premieres Presidents Day, February 15 on Hulu.

11.22.63 is a thriller in which high school English teacher Jake Epping (James Franco) travels back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy — but his mission is threatened by Lee Harvey Oswald, falling in love and the past itself, which doesn’t want to be changed

 

(12) LONG TAIL OF SALES. Fynbospress summarizes the impact of streaming on the music business, and explains the parallels in book publishing to Mad Genius Club readers in “The Importance of Being Backlist”.

In summary, if publishing continues to mirror music, then streaming will continue to increase, but frontlist sales may continue to fall, and it become harder and harder to get discovered in the initial release period. However, backlist volume is growing, and people are discovering their way through the things that have been out there a while. So, while you can and should do some promotion of your latest release – if it fails to take off, don’t despair. Instead, write the next book, the greatest book you’ve written yet. Sometimes you make your money on the initial release surge, and sometimes, it’ll come in having a lot of things out there all bringing in an unsteady trickle.

(13) TWO COMIC CONS MAY SETTLE. A settlement may be at hand in the San Diego Comic-Con’s suit against the Salt Lake Comic Con for for trademark-infringement. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that on Thursday, attorneys for both conventions asked the judge to extend a procedural deadline so that they could work “diligently” on a settlement. The conventions have scheduled a meeting with Adler on Wednesday in San Diego.

Drafts of the agreement have been exchanged,” according to the Thursday court filing requesting the extension, “and the parties hope to soon reach agreement as to all terms.”

San Diego Comic-Con is a trademarked name, and lawyers have argued that the similarity of “Comic Con” in the name of the Salt Lake City event has confused people into thinking the event is somehow associated with San Diego’s convention.

As Salt Lake’s organizers have seen it, the legal battle isn’t just between them and the flagship convention; it’s a threat to the dozens of other comic book conventions around the world that also use “comic con” in their names. Salt Lake Comic Con co-founder and chief marketing officer Bryan Brandenburg previously asserted that if San Diego wins the case, the precedent will allow it to do this to other organizations.

(14) RING OF POWER. Jim C. Hines snapped this photo at Confusion:

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Henley.]

Pixel Scroll 10/8 The Legend of Slatestroke

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(1) Just finished Ancillary Mercy tonight. What a cast of characters!

“Ohg, lbh xabj, lbh’er nyy bhg bs svfu fnhpr. Naq V qba’g guvax V’ir rire frra n jne orsber!”

“V’z tbvat gbb,” fnvq Fcurar.

“Rkpryyrag!” ercyvrq Genafyngbe Mrvng. “V’yy tb cnpx.”

(2) The ultra-premium all-access pass to the Salt Lake Comic Con is pricey, but not as much as the cost of getting indicted for trying to scam your way into its VIP area.

A federal grand jury has indicted a Layton man, accusing him of impersonating a federal agent to get VIP access to Salt Lake Comic Con.

The indictment, handed down late Wednesday, accuses Jonathan M. Wall, 29, of pretending to be a Special Agent of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. In a statement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah said Wall then demanded Salt Lake Comic Con allow him in “under the ruse that he was entering the VIP area to apprehend a wanted fugitive.”

Wall attracted the attention of a retired Salt Lake City police officer who was providing security for the event, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The officer questioned Wall and notified the Air Force, who also came to question him.

Wall is charged in the indictment with impersonation of a federal officer and making a false statement to a federal agent. If convicted, he faces a combined seven years in prison and a potential $250,000 fine for each count. Wall has not been arrested, but a summons will be issued for him to appear in federal court, prosecutors said.

Incidentally, the indictment reveals that the “false statement” he made was lying about asking for ONE pass when he actually asked for TWO!

(3) And to think no one will be indicted for telling the even bigger whopper that there are people who think The Martian is a true story.

(4) It’s a Big Idea, but it’s also a great news story – how did Ctein and bestselling detective novelist John Sandford wind up collaborating on an sf book, Saturn Run?

That Big Idea led to a Big Problem. How the hell do you get a ship to Saturn in under six months, not to mention building it in under two years? No “wantum mechanics” (Greg Benford’s wonderful term for totally-made-up science shit); it’s not much of a hard bolts-and-rivets thriller if people know you’re faking it. It wasn’t an unsolvable problem. John could research it. In his former life he was a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and has written forty or so thrillers, so he knows research. It’d just take several years of his life to get himself fully up to speed, that’s all.

The hitch was, John’s steady gig is turning out two novels (plus change) each year like clockwork. His readers expect it. He can’t take off a couple of years to explore himself as an author. This led to John’s second Big Idea, the crazy one.

Why not write it jointly with his friend, me?

Ctein includes an entertaining version of his phone call when Sandford talked him into collaborating.

Saturn Run cover

(5) Joe Tonelli on Digg advises about “The Best (And Worst) Movies To Watch On Paramount’s New YouTube Channel”.

Trigger Warning: Splash page has a big movie poster image that looks like Dolph Lundgren auditioning for the role of Aatr’s tits….

Mark no-last-name says, “For some reason the reviewer needs no less than 3 choices for worst SF movie. I can’t argue with him about Masters of the Universe though, even at a young age I could tell how badly that movie stank.”

One of the free sf films in the Paramount Vault is Conquest of Space , which is somewhat hideous despite being based on Willy Ley’s classic book with illustrations by Chesley Bonestell.

(6) SF Site News reports artifacts from the collection of Ray Harryhausen will go up for auction on October 17.

Harryhausen was known for his work in stop-motion animation and worked on films such as Clash of the Titans, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts. Auction items include models, paintings, and cameras, many of the objects autographed by Harryhausen.

There are loads of photos of the items at Dangerous Minds.

(7) Congratulations to Taral Wayne for placing his William Hope Hodgson tribute “The Canaries in the Dark” in the second volume of The Yellow Book from Oldstyle Press. There’s no pay, he says. However, I was one of the people that recommended he try it on a fiction market instead of settling for a fanzine appearance, so I say well done.

(8) In “Stephen Hawking answers July questions on Reddit AMA” we are reminded about a truth we already know – these memories are indelible for the fan, not the celebrity.

He responded to just nine questions, taking time to answer one from a Canadian poster who said he’d seen Hawking in 1995 as a boy at a video rental store in Cambridge, England, where Hawking lives. The poster asked if Hawking remembered watching “Wayne’s World 2” on a store monitor while parked for about 5 minutes next to two kids. He answered simply, “No.”

(9) The “Stunning New Mockingjay Part 2 Poster Comes Loaded With Hidden Secrets”.

Non-book readers might want to look away now while we break down the hidden context of the new one sheet.

According to Wired who debuted the poster yesterday, the image serves a dual purpose as a propaganda poster for the District 13 rebellion in the movie, as well as promoting the IMAX release of the film which is actually coming to the UK a day early on 19 November.

(10) A one-minute video about “Guillermo del Toro’s House of Horrors” accompanies the New York Times article.

The director of fantasy and horror films keeps his collection of books, gory props and mannequins where he can see, and be inspired by, them.

The door swings open and there, surrounded by blood-red walls, is a hellhound with four hooded eyes and gaping fangs. The head of Frankenstein’s monster floats, disembodied and huge, a story above it. Peering at you from the living room, his fingers paging through a book, is the early-20th-century horror novelist H.­P. Lovecraft. On a Victorian sofa, a demented doll stares down a bronze gargantua, Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie.

Welcome to Guillermo del Toro’s imagination.

Bleak House is what Mr. del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker known for the terrifying fantasy of “Pan’s Labyrinth” and American action-horror series like “Hellboy,” christened this pad, which serves as repository and inspiration. He writes there, and when he is in production, a handful of designers work in the repurposed garage. “We draw, draw, draw,” he said, every frame as detailed as animation.

(11) Here’s a candidate for the most expensive toy of the coming Christmas season — Disney’s $120 attempt to make your kid feel like Iron Man.

iron man gauntlet COMPThe starter pack for Disney’s first line of Playmation toys, based on the Avengers, costs $119.99, and requires 12 AA batteries. The main toy is the Iron Man arm gauntlet, but you’ll also get two action figures and electronic bases for them to stand on while they interact with you.

Skeptic John King Tarpinian thinks, “With twelve batteries the kid could not lift his arm.”

(12) And toys for the grown-ups include HP’s Star Wars- inspired laptop and Stream notebooks.

HP has today in Barcelona announced a number of new devices, including the George Lucas-honouring Star Wars inspired Special Edition Notebook.

While we aren’t exactly short of Star Wars products popping up prior to the big movie release, HP does win our “coolest new laptop of the year award” hands down. And only Star Trek fans will probably disagree.

Featuring a “battle worn” finish which is supposed to remind you of how crummy the Death Star is, the Special Edition is also embellished with Aurebesh typeface. Even the touch pad “mirrors the X-Wing Star Fighter Guidance System” while the keyboard features red backlit keys.

(13) There were quite a few Equicons over the years. The first four, 1971-1974, were run by Bjo Trimble in Los Angeles.

Here is some celebrity footage from Equicon in 1974. George Takei, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Majel Barrett, Gene Roddenberry, Arlene Martel, Mike Farrell, Robert Foxworth, Larry Vincent, D. C. Fontana, Kirk Alyn, David Gerrold, George Clayton Johnson, and Bjo Trimble.

Mike Farrell and Robert Foxworth are in the Equicon assemblage, because they had just starred in the Roddenberry pilot, The Questor Tapes.

The members of S.T.A.R. San Diego ran Equicon 75 at the El Cortez Hotel, with most of the Star Trek cast attending as guests. The “Captain” in the TV ad is now-famous science fiction author Greg Bear.

[Thanks to Dave Doering, Will R., James H. Burns, John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

Salt Lake Comic Con Tries To Make Its Mark

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Salt Lake Comic Con logo

Salt Lake Comic Con opens September 24. Held for the first time in 2013, the rapidly growing event drew 120,000 in 2014 and this year will fill the entire Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake Comic Con is not only distinguished by its explosive success. Among all the Comic Cons in America, the event run by Dan Farr Productions is the only one being sued by the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) for trademark infringement.

SDCC alleges that the name of Salt Lake City’s event is too similar. In court papers filed in August 2014, SDCC claimed that SLCC had piggybacked on its “creativity, ingenuity, and hard work,” and by using the Comic Con name “intended to suggest, mislead and confuse consumers into believing that the Salt Lake Comic Con convention is associated with, authorized by, endorsed by or sponsored by SDCC.”

Comic-Con International, the organizers of San Diego Comic-Con and WonderCon, own the trademarks on San Diego Comic-Con, Anaheim Comic-Con, San Francisco Comic-Con and Los Angeles Comic-Con.

Although the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) registered the Salt Lake Comic Con trademark in July, the ultimate fate of the trademark depends on a settlement of the suit or a court decision.

In August, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jan Alder gave both conventions until August 18, 2016 to settle, and set a timeline for discovery and other actions that could lead to a trial in late 2016 or early 2017.

One head-scratching oddity about the suit is that SDCC did not originate the “comic con” nomenclature. It was first used by the New York ComiCon in 1965.

Andrew Porter recalls, “In 1965, I ran off the program for a New York ComiCon — note abbreviation, not what’s used now — on my spirit duplicator, all 125 copies. And I worked on several ComiCons, including one with Ted White, John Benson, Mike McInerney and others, in the mid-1960s. And now someone wants to [trademark] the name?”

Salt Lake Comic Con management is well aware of the history, and displays online a huge array of documents supporting their position. They emphasize that more than 90 other events have been called “Comic Cons.” Several are megacons. Denver’s drew a reported 101,500 attendees in May. A Seattle convention had 80,000 in March. The New York Comic Con says it attracted 151,000 last year.

And it actually was not until 2007 that the nonprofit behind SDCC trademarked the Comic-Con name which it has been using since 1970.

Peter Hahn, a lawyer who represents the nonprofit on trademark issues, pointed out that registration is not required to protect a mark. Mr. Hahn said the nonprofit’s tools in dealing with more than a dozen conventions that have used some form of the Comic-Con name have included warning letters and licensing arrangements. Litigation has been used for “the most egregious” cases, he said.

Last August, the San Diego group filed an infringement suit against the operators of Salt Lake Comic Con, who, according to the complaint, had gone so far as to wrap an Audi with advertisements for their convention and drive it around San Diego. The Salt Lake operators countersued, asking the United States District Court for the Southern District of California to declare the San Diego nonprofit’s trademark claims invalid.

Encouraged by the USPTO’s initial decision granting registration to the Salt Lake group, a large number of other local comic cons have now launched trademark bids .