Tag Archives: Sandra Miesel

Pixel Scroll 10/6/24 In Nomine Pixelis, Et Fileii, Et Scrollius Godstalkii

Posted on by
27

(1) LEARNING CURVE. “5 Dark Academia Novels from the World of Dark Fantasy” — CrimeRead’s Victory Witherkeigh on sub-genre of the school novel.

…What is it about school-setting stories that make us as readers sink into the world so much faster? Is it our nostalgia for a time when life seemed much more straightforward than our lives as working adults? We’ve seen it across the tales of boy wizards, lightning thieves, and even young women writing love letters. As a dark fantasy/horror author and fan, there’s something about school being a nightmare that just sings to my penchant for the spooky season of fall…

…Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – What is it about the secret societies of the Ivy League schools that are so interesting? Is it our own hunger for conspiracy theories when dealing with the institutions that have produced several of the United States’ most notorious leaders? Follow Galaxy “Alex” Stern as she navigates her first year at Yale University as the occult apprentice of a missing mentor trying to handle school and the varying power dynamics of the illegal occult use of the secret societies. This is the first book in a two-part Bardugo series that will make you snuggle in your college sweatshirt tighter….

(2) WHY HORROR? Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk tells the Guardian why she chose to write a horror novel:

“I adore horror. But I realised, too, that only the tools of that genre could portray the topic I wanted to portray – the hidden violence, the misogyny that is rife in the entirety of our culture, which we live with like some sort of constant illness, like a predator that is always present and emerges from time to time to attack us.”

(3) FOUNDATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY FANTASY. “Gods who make worlds” in The Christian Century.

Three decades ago, Tad Williams published the final volume in the best epic fantasy trilogy written in English since The Lord of the Rings. Called Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the series ran from 1988 to 1993 and totaled over a million words. Half of those words came in the final book—one of the longest books ever to make it onto the New York Times bestseller list….

…Why have these books sold well but never set the world on fire?

Three reasons come to mind. First, while Williams may mark a certain transition away from the never-ending half-lives of J. R. R. Tolkien imitations, his stories do not belong to the grimdark turn of contemporary fantasy (a turn recently pilloried by Sebastian Milbank as “grimdull”). They are not gritty. Whether the topic is sex or violence, there’s nothing pornographic on display. Williams is a romantic at heart. His stories are not sadistic. Subversion, when and where it happens, is subtle, thematic, and stylistic; the narratives are not oedipal, with Tolkien or C. S. Lewis or Christian morals as the fated father. For readers or viewers exhausted by the teetering nihilism of Game of Thrones and its many peers, Williams is a breath of fresh air.

Second, Williams puts the “slow” in “slow burn.” He is a master plotter, and you may be confident that every single narrative thread, no matter how small, will come together by the end. But there’s no hand-holding and no artificial fireworks to keep your attention. I know only two kinds of people who have picked up Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: those who put it down after about 200 pages, bored to tears and wondering what all the fuss was about, and those who kept going all the way to the end, falling in love in the meantime. There is no third group.

Finally, the world and history and happenings of Osten Ard are colored by a deep melancholy. (One character is startled to find a timeworn but intact statue: “She had never seen an ancient city of her people that was not in ruins.” A different character wonders to himself: “Is all we have—all we are—only a memorial of what we failed to save?”) Williams’s prose is among the best in fantasy, and its distinguishing character is a kind of plangent lyricism. In the dedication of the third volume, he calls the book “a little world of heartbreak and joy.”…

(4) COPYRIGHTUS INFRINGIO! “Warner Bros pulls plug on Harry Potter events at library” reports the Jackson Hole (Wyo.) News and Guide.

After eight years, Teton County Library has been forced to cancel its free Harry Potter-inspired programming for children and adults.

This year’s events — A Night at Hogwarts, Harry Potter Trivia for Adults and Harry Potter Family Day — had all been scheduled for later this month.

The library said in a press release Thursday that it acted in response to a cease-and-desist letter from legal representatives of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., the owner of copyright and other intellectual property rights related to the films featuring child wizard Harry Potter.

Before receiving the letter, the library’s staff “was unaware that this free educational event was a copyright infringement,” the release said. “In the past, libraries had been encouraged to hold Harry Potter-themed events to promote the books as they were released.”…

Boing Boing snarkily says:

…In the past the company has encouraged such activities, but it’s rebooting Harry Potter and wants to make sure the decks are cleared of deauthorized content and all the little brains wiped and ready for their new Vision for the Franchise….

(5) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Military.com reports “Troops at Colorado Space Force Base Will Have to Bring Their Own To-Go Boxes for Dining Hall”.

… “As of 15 October 2024, the Schriever SFB DFAC will no longer provide takeout containers for patrons,” the spokesman said. “This initiative is part of our ongoing efforts to reduce waste and minimize our environmental impact. Individuals who wish to take their food to go are welcome to bring their own reusable containers.”

Schriever Space Force Base near Colorado Springs is home to numerous around-the-clock missions ranging from GPS operations, missile detection and warning, satellite communications and high-level surveillance missions.

As a result of those daunting and time-consuming missions, many of the 8,000 Guardians, airmen and civilian employees on base are often in a hurry and take their meals or leftovers from the DFAC — fittingly called the Satellite Dish Dining Facility — to go.

The news was not well-received on the Space Force subreddit.

“So, if you’re on crew at Schriever, or are simply one of those people who doesn’t have time for a real lunch break and prefers (like me) to take a meal back to your desk and do working lunches, consider this your heads up to go buy a bunch of food containers,” one commenter wrote.

“I’m always impressed about how the negative-morale field around Schriever is able to warp reality into ever more depressing states, but this one takes the cake,” the commenter added.

The Space Base Delta 1 spokesperson said Guardians can bring their own from home or can also buy their own takeout containers from the on-base coffee shop — also fittingly named the “Bean Me Up Cafe.”

Additionally, Guardians can choose to sit and eat their meal entirely at the dining hall….

(6) MIESEL ART AUCTION RESULTS. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Here are screencaps showing the final sale prices of Sandra Miesel’s sff art put up for sale at Ripley Auctions. (Only the sff art, none of the other items.) Click for larger images.

(7) STILL IN SEARCH OF (DIGITAL) BOMINABLE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Following up on my item “(8) TERRY QUERY: WHERE’S ARNOLD?” in the September 24 Scroll (and some back-and-forth with a non-Filer PTerryphile), regarding the “recentlly ‘unlost’ story “Arnold, The Bominable Snowman,” which was, according to that scroll, “is/was supposed to be published online [in September 2024]:

The story is (now) available in an updated paperback version of Terry Pratchett’s (posthumous) collection, A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories… but not (based on my web search of my library’s e-holdings) Hoopla; Amazon/Kindle (and Amazon general search); nor a general web search), available online (yet).

If anybody knows more (ideally, when/e-where), my friend (via me) would like to know, as, no doubt, will many Filers.

(One guess is that it’s online in some UK site, outside of where my searches are searching.)

(Yes, I know, one could buy the new version or borrow/request it from one’s library. Or switch to Linux and LibreOffice–oh wait, wrong discussion…)

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 6, 1950 — David Brin, 74.

By Paul Weimer: It’s Kevin Costner’s fault that the work of David Brin came to my attention. When the adaptation of The Postman, warts and all, came to the screen, I discovered to my surprise I had not at that time read any of the work of David Brin. I set to rectify that, starting with The Postman…which, to my mystified surprise, I found I preferred the plot of the movie in many respects.  Undeterred, I hit my stride with reading his Uplift novels, revelling in the grand SF idea of species across the galaxy raising others to sentience–but who raised Humanity?  

But my favorite David Brin novel is probably Kiln People. Ostensibly a mystery novel, the big damn idea of Kiln People, being able to make copies of yourself to do various tasks and functions, is such a compelling one that I felt myself propelled on the strength of the premise and its implications for work, humanity, mortality and much more. Even more than the Uplift novels, it embodies the good of Brin’s fiction and thought. 

But Brin is an author whom I can disagree with, especially when it comes to Star Wars. I find Brin’s criticism and denigration of Star Wars to be, I think, way way too much. Sure, it’s a Campbellian monomyth hero chosen one narrative. But I think his criticism is way overpowered (and goes to far too much length) for the arguments he is making. I do get they come from a place of passion and sincere belief, but it is not one that I share. 

David Brin

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) TYPEWRITER COMEBACK. [Item by Andrew Porter.] PBS News Weekend tells “Why typewriters are having a renaissance in the digital age”

…Take a look inside this South Philadelphia shop called Philly Typewriter and you’ll see the renaissance of something many consider a relic of the past. And now it’s gotten a boost from a 21st century icon. Singer Taylor Swift using a vintage Royal 10 typewriter in the video Fortnight, the chart topping single off her latest album, the Tortured Poets Department….

Andrew Porter remembers:

I used to use a Royal portable that my father used when he was going to school in the 1930s. It came in a big case with a carrying handle. Used it for many years. 

Then my stepfather swiped an Underwood office machine from his office for me (he was the publisher, could get away with that) that I used for ALGOL and other stuff, until I bought my Selectric directly from IBM in 1968. They said I was the first person who’d ever bought one from them who didn’t work in an office. $105 down and $35 a month payment until it was paid off.

As I’ve posted before, when I got a computer, I had my Selectric serviced, then it went into the closet, and ultimately I gave it to Curt for his wife.

I think local doctors still use them, for filling out forms in triplicate.

My desk in 1974, exactly where I’m typing this now (and mailing labels: I remember them, too!):

(11) SECRETS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL BUGS. “The Oldest Termite Mound? 34,000 Years and Counting” — an unlocked article in the New York Times.

… Her appreciation for termites stems from a project that she recently oversaw in Namaqualand, a region of desert scrubland along the west coast of South Africa and into Namibia. There, some 27 percent of the landscape is covered with low, sandy mounds that were built by the southern harvester termite, Microhodotermes viator. Inside the mounds are vast labyrinths of chambers, tunnels and nests that extend up to 11 feet underground. The locals call them heuweltjies, which means “little hills” in Afrikaans.

Three years ago, Dr. Francis and her field research team set out to find why the groundwater along the Buffels River in Namaqualand was saline. “The groundwater salinity seemed to be specifically related to the location of these heuweltjies,” she said. The investigators reasoned that radiocarbon dating could pinpoint when the minerals stored in the termite mounds had seeped into the groundwater.

The investigators were surprised to find that the heuweltjies were far older than any active termite structures known to exist. As detailed in a paper that the researchers published this spring in the journal Science of the Total Environment, one of the three mounds selected for dating has been continually occupied by termite colonies for 34,000 years. It is more than 30,000 years older than the previous record-holder, a mound in Brazil built by a different termite species….

(12) GOING DEEP. “NASA’s laser comms demo makes deep space record, completes first phase” at Phys.org.

…NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration broke yet another record for laser communications this summer by sending a laser signal from Earth to NASA’s Psyche spacecraft about 290 million miles (460 million kilometers) away. That’s the same distance between our planet and Mars when the two planets are farthest apart.

Soon after reaching that milestone on July 29, the technology demonstration concluded the first phase of its operations since launching aboard Psyche on Oct. 13, 2023….

(13) LET’S TREAD BOLDLY 2 — SPACE TRAVEL RADIATION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Going into space is fraught with dangers: you can get stuck in orbit (Marooned); have a critical computer glitch (2001); have your crew quarters destroyed (Dark Star); encounter a meteor shower (Pitch Black); have mental issues (Forbidden Planet); get left behind (The Martian), get a blocked toilet due to the Russian, potato-heavy diet (The Big Bang Theory); encounter rogue space junk (Gravity)… among much else.  Among the ‘much else’ are the radiation belts surrounding the Earth.  These are caused by the Earth’s magnetic field trapping solar wind positive and negative particles, accelerating them to the poles where they enter the Earth’s upper atmosphere to the visual delight of spectators. Associated risks include cancer, cataracts, degenerative diseases and tissue reactions which makes space travel far more hazardous than being at a convention after the bar has run dry. (Honest!) So, what to do?

Well, for the International Space Station there is little problem as its orbit is below the inner Van Allen belt.  But if you want to go anywhere more interesting, you have to go through the Van Allen belts.  Here the recent Artemis mission with the unmanned Orion capsule that went around the Moon (how I remember the run-up to Christmas with Apollo 8) took detailed measurements from various place inside the craft.

This research has just been published.  The Orion craft traversed both the lower (more proton rich) and higher (more electron rich) belts. They report on radiation measurements at differing shielding locations inside the vehicle, a fourfold difference in dose rates from differently located detectors was observed during proton-belt passes that are similar to large, reference solar-particle events encountered in interplanetary travel. Interplanetary cosmic-ray dose equivalent rates in Orion were as much as 60% lower than previous observations from the Apollo missions. Furthermore, a change in orientation of the spacecraft during the proton-belt transit resulted in a reduction of radiation dose rates of around 50%. These measurements validate the Orion for future crewed exploration and inform future human spaceflight mission design. What happens in the future will depend heavily on shielding, trajectory, the Solar cycle and severity of Solar particle events. The problem is that manned interplanetary missions have good reasons to prefer long missions in light vehicles. (Lighter vehicles and short missions use less fuel and short missions shorten exposure.) So radiation risks will remain a key challenge for human space exploration.

The primary research is George, S. P., et al (2024) “Space radiation measurements during the Artemis I lunar mission”. Nature, vol. 634, p48-52.

(14) GOING WITH THE FLOW. [Item by N.] This info comes a little late, but on closer inspection, this film has fantastical elements! Good, because it looks and sounds stunning. Set for a limited release in NY and LA on November 22 and a wide release in the rest of the US on December 6. (Those in France get it earlier on October 30). “’Flow,’ An Edge-Of-Your-Seat Survival Film, Gets U.S. Trailer, Release Date” at Cartoon Brew.

A wondrous journey, through realms natural and mystical, Flow follows a courageous cat after his home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land, they must rely on trust, courage, and wits to survive the perils of a newly aquatic planet. From the boundless imagination of the award-winning Gints Zilbalodis (Away) comes a thrilling animated spectacle as well as a profound meditation on the fragility of the environment and the spirit of friendship and community. Steeped in the soaring possibilities of visual storytelling, Flow is a feast for the senses and a treasure for the heart.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Hmm. Seems genre adjacent. Or perhaps adjacent to genre adjacent: Ryan George’s “How Psychics Argue”.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/20/24 It’s Not A Cookbook, It’s A Pixel Scroll!

Posted on by
22

(1) BIG DEAL. Marie Vibbert counsels writers about “Playtesting Card Games” at the SFWA Blog. One bit of advice will sound very familiar.

Immolate Your Darlings

You’ve perhaps heard writers talk about “Murdering their darlings,” which refers to the agony of having to cut a beautiful sentence, scene, or even a sub-plot that you love but doesn’t serve the overall arc of the story. I once twisted five drafts of a novel around a scene I absolutely adored before I realized that it had to go. Ow, it hurt.

The same thing happens in games. There might be a mechanic, a special card, an illustration, a subtle joke…and you love it, but it has to go. It’s worse when you have this nice physical card you made for the mock-up.

Even your game’s theme, which might seem the most essential part of it, must be disposable. On the off chance your game is picked up by a publisher, one of the most common things they want to do is re-theme it, probably for some big franchise. (In case you thought someone set out to create the Go Bots 50th Anniversary Card Game.)

You cannot grow attached before completion. The game is in flux. Consider every part expendable in service to the greater whole….

(2) SFF ART UP FOR AUCTION. [Item by Sandra Miesel.] I’ve put some of my sf collection up for sale at RipleyAuctions.com The live auction is October 5 and registration is free. My pieces include: the Kelly Freas’  DAW cover painting for Soldier, Ask Not by Gordon R. Dickson and its preliminary sketch, Kelly’s Analog interior illustration for “The Second Kind of Loneliness” by George R.R. Martin; Kelly’s Laser Books sketch for The Extraterritorial by John Morrissey; Richard Powers’ cover painting for Far Out by Damon Knight; John Schoenherr’s Analog interior illustrations for “And He Fell into a Dark Hole” by Jerry Pournelle, “The Demon Breed” by James Schmitz, “Spaceman” by Murray Leinster, and the ultimate prize: Schoenherr’s scratchboard Analog illustration for the very first installment of “Dune World”. Sandra Miesel at Ripleyauctions.com.

Frank Kelly Freas, American (1922 – 2005), Soldier, Ask Not book cover

(3) REMEMBERING THE FAHRENHEIT FIFTIES. Heritage Auctions has an interesting item on the block – a volume of Fahrenheit 451 inscribed by Bradbury to Hugh Hefner.

40th Anniversary Edition. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR TO HUGH HEFNER: “For Hef! Who published this when almost everyone else was afraid! With gratitude! Ray Bradbury. Nov. 3, ’93. 40 years later!”

Fahrenheit 451 was first published by Ballentine Books, Inc., in 1953, as a revision and expansion of his fifty-six-page novella, “The Fireman.” The novel was sold to Hugh Hefner’s new magazine, Playboy, which published the story in three installments in its fourth, fifth, and sixth issues (March 1954 to May 1954). 

(4) SPOTLIGHT ON MAD MAGAZINE. [Item by Steven French.] If you happen to be in Massachusetts over the next month, check out “What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine,” an exhibition running until October 27 at the Norman Rockwell Museum. 

It covers the full 72-year history of Mad, highlighted by the stretch from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, when the magazine pilloried mass culture—television, movies, politics and more—in a way that introduced satire to kids raised on tamer entertainment like “Leave It to Beaver.”

The Smithsonian article on it is an interesting read in its own right!  “The Madcap History of Mad Magazine Will Unleash Your Inner Class Clown”.

… Mad magazine had its beginnings in 1947, when publisher Maxwell Gaines’ death in an upstate New York boating accident left his Educational Comics company to his 25-year-old son, William Gaines. Under Maxwell, the comics featured stories of science, animals, history and Picture Stories From the Bible. When William took over, he quickly shifted gears to “Entertaining Comics” (EC for short) and started publishing romance, westerns, science fiction, war and horror stories, most notably Tales From the Crypt. Gaines the younger had more than laughs and frights on his mind, however; woven into EC Comics were progressive ideals around racial equality, pacifism, environmentalism and the existential nuclear-age dread rarely spoken of in the placid, conformist 1950s.

In 1952, a comic book poking fun at other comic books debuted, but it would take four issues for Tales Calculated to Drive You MAD to take off. That fourth one featured the parody “Superduperman,” a blueprint for making hay of pop culture and politics. Amid a panic over youth corruption, inspired in part by EC’s other publications, editor Harvey Kurtzman convinced Gaines to retool Mad from a comic book into a magazine, and in July 1955 (Issue No. 24), a future mockery machine emerged….

(5) LITIGATION IS IN THE CARDS. “Cards Against Humanity sues SpaceX, alleges ‘invasion’ of land on US/Mexico border” – Ars Technica has the story.

Cards Against Humanity sued SpaceX yesterday, alleging that Elon Musk’s firm illegally took over a plot of land on the US/Mexico border that the party-game company bought in 2017 in an attempt to stymie then-President Trump’s attempt to build a wall.

“As part of CAH’s 2017 holiday campaign, while Donald Trump was President, CAH created a supporter-funded campaign to take a stand against the building of a Border Wall,” said the lawsuit filed in Cameron County District Court in Texas. Cards Against Humanity says it received $15 donations from 150,000 people and used part of that money to buy “a plot of vacant land in Cameron County based upon CAH’s promise to ‘make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for Trump to build his wall.'”

Cards Against Humanity says it mowed the land “and maintained it in its natural state, marking the edge of the lot with a fence and a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.” But instead of Trump taking over the land, Cards Against Humanity says the parcel was “interfered with and invaded” by Musk’s space company. The lawsuit includes pictures that, according to Cards Against Humanity, show the land when it was first purchased and after SpaceX construction equipment and materials were placed on the land….

…Cards Against Humanity also set up a website to publicize its lawsuit. “We have terrible news,” the website says. “Seven years ago, 150,000 people paid us $15 to protect a pristine parcel of land on the US-Mexico border from racist billionaire Donald Trump’s very stupid wall. Unfortunately, an even richer, more racist billionaire—Elon Musk—snuck up on us from behind and completely fucked that land with gravel, tractors, and space garbage.”

The website claims that SpaceX made a “lowball offer” to buy the land after Cards Against Humanity complained….

(6) WRITER BEWARE. “Wolves in Authors’ Clothing: Beware Social Media Marketing Scams” says Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware.

For authors, one of the (these days, increasingly few) positives of social media is connecting with other authors. Especially if no one else in your family/social circle is involved in the arts (raises hand), it’s great to be able to find a community where you can discuss craft, business, the ups and downs of querying, the challenges of self-publishing–both sharing your own experiences and learning from others’.

But…what if that friendly author who just DM’d you on one of your social media accounts isn’t actually a writer, but someone who wants to sell you worthless “marketing” services?

… Oooh, conversion enhancement campaign! That’s some sexy jargon right there.

The name on the marketer’s Instagram account (which no longer exists) was Ashley Wallace of Ashley Digitals. You can see the author’s conversation with her–including an unconvincing excuse for why her website URL doesn’t work, an elaborate sales pitch, and false claims about clients….

(7) FOUR-PAGE GOTHAM GAZETTE INSERT IN THURSDAY NYT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Our household gets the New York Times in the classic physical flattened-dead-tree version; I was bemused to discover the Thursday, September 19 edition included a four-page insert, the Gotham Gazette.

As part of HBO/MAX’s promotion of its new Penguin live-action show, which has just started. I/we haven’t yet tried it (but we just finished, and enjoyed, the first two episodes of Agatha All Along, over on Disney+, which, perhaps-arguably, is bat-adjacent via Walt’s round-eared mascot.)

Here’s some article links — note, the first link has readable images of the four-page insert. Wak, wak, wak.

“The Penguin: Gotham Gazette Offers Interesting Post-The Batman Details” at Bleeding Cool.  This article has readable images of full four online pages. The others below have some partial shots.

“How the New York Times became the Gotham Gazette for a day” at Fast Company. Including “But if you pass through Grand Central Station today, or Little Italy, or Times Square, you’ll see old-school newspaper hawkers schlepping copies of the Gotham Gazette”  [also, according to the ComicBook.com article listed below, at Times Square, Penn Station]

“The Penguin Takeover Heads to New York City to Celebrate Premiere” at Comicbook.com. This article includes deets on the “Penguin take-over” events in NYC and elsewhere:

HBO and Max are gearing up for the premiere of The Penguin with a takeover of the Big Apple. The spinoff of The Batman brings Colin Farrell back as Oz Cobb, aka the titular Penguin and foe of the Dark Knight. The Penguin has started a global campaign leading to the premiere on Thursday, September 19th, with one of its first stops at San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. The Penguin Takeover will involve exclusive merchandise trucks all across New York City, along with the lighting of iconic landmarks and collaboration with local businesses using Penguin’s signature plum purple hue….

Max is continuing The Penguin’s presence internationally following the Iceberg Lounge’s success in San Diego. The Penguin will bring the iconic Iceberg Lounge to select locations in France, Spain, The Netherlands, and Thailand, along with other local promotions in the APAC, EMEA, and LATAM regions. Fans might also spot The Penguin’s purple Maserati in the streets of São Paulo, Paris, and other major cities.

The Penguin Takeover will feature the Feast of San Gennaro, the New York Latino Film Festival Block Party, early fan screenings at Alamo Drafthouse, and specialty menu items at participating businesses as Gotham comes to life. The takeover will extend beyond New York, with The Penguin’s iconic Iceberg Lounge and other experiences in select cities worldwide.

Also coverage at MSN.com: “The Penguin makes The Gotham Gazette real for one day only as the Max series takes over The New York Times to explain everything that’s happened since The Batman”.

And Looper: “HBO’s Penguin Confirms Where Batman Is (Or Isn’t)”.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)

Forty-five years ago on this evening, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century first aired on NBC.

It is of course based on characters created by Philip Francis Nowlan. It started out as a comic strip that first appeared in daily U.S. newspapers on January 7, 1929, subsequently appearing in Sunday and international newspapers, then there were books, a radio adaption, comic books, a serial film. You get the idea. 

So after all of that came this series. It was developed by Glen Larson who created Battlestar Galactica and Leslie Stevens who created Outer Limits.  

It lasted but two seasons in total comprising thirty-seven episodes. A feature-length pilot episode for the series was released as a theatrical film, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It did spectacularly well at the box office as it cost just three and a half million and made eighteen point seven more than that!  

The film was narrated as was the first season by William Conrad who had found stardom as a detective in the two series, Cannon and Nero Wolfe. Yes, he played Wolfe though briefly as it lasted but fourteen episodes. Who here saw him as Wolfe? 

The only cast that counts was Gil Gerard as Captain William “Buck” Rogers and Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering.  Oh, and Mel Blanc in the first season voicing Twiki. Felix Silva would voice him in the second season. Other cast members I’ll note are Tim O’Connor as Dr. Elias Huer, Pamela Hensley as Princess Ardala and Henry Silva as Kane. Andrew Thom Christopher as Hawk, a bird man with the most comical feather for hair I’ve ever seen! 

Later interviews with Gerard and Gray as well as the directors say that neither got along with the other as they thought each was getting more lines and better stories. Oh well. 

Buster Crabbe who played Buck Rogers in the original thirties Buck Roger’s film serial would play Brigadier Gordon in an episode here. Yes, a nod to his other film series. 

The casting director had a fondness for one of our favorite series. Many of the actors who had played villains in the Batman series guest-starred here such as Frank Gorshin, Roddy McDowall, Julie Newmar and Cesar Romero. 

It’s worth noting that the series re-used most of the props, star fighters, stages, some of the effects film and even costumes from Battlestar Galactica. The network obviously being keen on keeping costs down at all costs.

Ratings were fine for the first season, but dropped drastically in the second season and cancellation was decided by mid-season. 

It has streamed on Amazon and on Peacock, not surprisingly on the latter as that’s owned by NBC, and Prime, but not is not currently streaming anywhere. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) SQUID GAME RETURNS. “’Squid Game’ Season 2 Trailer: New Players, New Game” – Variety introduces the trailer.

“Squid Game” is back and Netflix has released the first teaser for its hotly anticipated second season. The footage comes as the final reveal of the streamer’s annual Geeked Week fan event.  

The teaser picks things off right after Season 1’s finale, when Seong Gi-hun abandoned his plans to go to the U.S. and instead started a daring chase with a newfound motive. In the short teaser, he appears back in his 456 uniform amid a crowd of new contestants. Another massive cash prize awaits them, with a quick look at the games to come.

The globally successful Korean series follows financially struggling individuals competing in deadly games for a chance to win a life-changing prize, revealing the dark depths of human desperation and resilience…

(11) THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME. “Scientists discover weird new kind of shape found in nature” reports Boing Boing.

Mathematicians have identified a new class of shapes that “tile space without using sharp corners.”

From bathroom floors to siding on buildings, it’s common to cover areas without gaps by arranging shapes with straight edges and flat surfaces. In the natural world though, those kinds of shapes are rare. Patterns like those in muscle tissue are created with flowing curves, rounded surfaces, and almost no sharp angles. But the mathematics of these “soft shapes” have been a mystery until now.

“Nature not only abhors a vacuum, she also seems to abhor sharp corners,” says University of Oxford mathematician Alain Goriely who, with colleagues from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, discovered the new shape class called “soft cells.”

From Oxford University:

In 2D, these soft cells have curved boundaries with only two corners. Such tiling patterns are found, among others, in muscle cells, zebra stripes, the shapes of river islands, in the layers of onion bulbs, and even in architectural design.

In 3D, these soft cells become more complex and interesting. The team first established that, in 3D, soft cells have no corners at all. Then, starting with conventional 3D tiling systems such as the cubic grid, the team showed that they can be softened by allowing the edges to bend whilst minimising the number of sharp corners in this process. Through doing this, they found entire new classes of soft cells with different tiling properties.

Professor Gábor Domokos said: ‘We found that architects – including Zaha Hadid – have constructed these kinds of shapes intuitively whenever they wanted to avoid corners.

(12) TRANSCENDENCE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The concept of transcendence or subliming (the term used in Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels) is a minor, but recurring SF trope by which a civilization evolves to a point when they leave our space-time continuum for a ‘higher’ plane of existence.  I think I first came across this half a century ago reading Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  Anyway, Isaac Arthur over at Isaac Arthur Science Futurism this week takes a bit of a dive into this concept…

Many seek a path to enlightenment through study and meditation, but what does science tell us about transcendence? And could entire civilizations seek to leave this reality behind?

(13) FROM THE CRYPT, ER, ARCHIVE. The Paul Lynde Halloween Special of 1976 has a highly eclectic cast – like Margaret Hamilton and Betty White vamping together!

Bringing Witchypoo from HR Pufnstuf and Wizard of Oz’s wicked Witch of the West together but only Paul Lynde could give you the band KISS and Donny and Marie Osmond in the same show.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/21/20 It Was Pixellation, I Know, Scrolling You All Alone

Posted on by

(1) YOU ARE NUMBER SIX — ACROSS. Robert Sawyer discovered his book is the first clue in today’s Sunday Mirror (UK) “Quizword and Crossword” puzzle.

(2) GENE WOLFE. Thomas Mirus’The Catholic Culture Podcast devoted a recent episode to “Gene Wolfe, Catholic Sci-Fi Legend”. Sandra Miesel (a three-time Hugo nominated fanwriter in the Seventies) and Fr, Brendon Laroche weigh in.

After much popular demand, Thomas pays tribute to legendary Catholic sci-fi writer Gene Wolfe, who passed away last year. Though not known to the general public, Wolfe is a sci-fi author’s sci-fi author—a number of his contemporaries considered him not only the best in the genre, but in American fiction at the time (Ursula Le Guin said “Wolfe is our Melville”). Among today’s writers, one of his biggest fans is Neil Gaiman.

One critic described Wolfe’s magnum opus, The Book of the New Sun, as “a Star Wars–style space opera penned by G. K. Chesterton in the throes of a religious conversion.”

Wolfe also held the patent on the machine that makes Pringles. That’s his face on the can.

In this episode, Fr. Brendon Laroche comments on Wolfe’s works, while Wolfe’s friend, Catholic historian and sci-fi expert Sandra Miesel, shares personal reminiscences.

(3) THE HALL NINE YARDS. Paul Fraser deconstructs the story choices of “The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volume 1, 1970, edited by Robert Silverberg, part one” It’s a long post filled with fascinatingly salty opinions.

… Already we can see the wheels beginning to come off. Are these stories by Sturgeon, Heinlein, Leiber, and Clarke really the best these writers wrote in the pre-1965 period? Do A Martian Odyssey and Twilight really belong in the same list as Flowers for Algernon or Nightfall?

The selection procedure becomes even more muddled as editor Silverberg bodges his way through the rest of the list: Arthur Clarke’s The Star is in the top fifteen but is bumped by The Nine Billion Names of God; one writer (Bradbury, I assume) has four stories on the original ballot but none in the top twenty, so Silverberg includes Mars is Heaven, “the story that the writer himself wished to see included in the book” (this, rather than the more obvious There Will Come Soft Rains or The Sound of Thunder)3; another writer’s stories “made the second fifteen, one vote apart; but the story with the higher number of votes was not the story that the writer himself wished to see included in the book” (presumably that is why the middling Huddling Place is here rather than the slam-dunk Desertion).

Definitive? I think not, and this will become even more apparent when we look at the stories themselves….

This footnote is a masterpiece of subversion:   

2. The SFWA has, at various times in its history, been as dodgy an electorate as any other—as one can see from the high correlation of peculiar winners to individuals holding office in the organisation (who conveniently had access to the mailing list of members)—and that’s before you factor in the tendency for a group of professionals to engage in “Buggins’ Turn” (see the Wikipedia article).

Let us also not forget that roughly the same set of voters made sure that the 1971 Nebula Award short story result was “No Award” so that none of the “New Wave” nominees would win, a partisan act that led to the mortifying scene where Isaac Asimov announced Gene Wolfe’s The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories as the winner at the Nebula Awards before having to correct himself.

(4) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • June 21, 1985  — Cocoon premiered. Directed by Ron Howard, it was produced by David Brown, Richard D. Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck. The screenplay was written by Tom Benedek off a story by David Saperstein. It starred Don Ameche, Wilford Brimle, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Brian Dennehy, Jack Gilford, Steve Guttenberg, Maureen Stapleton, Gwen Verdon, Herta Ware and Tahnee Welch. Music was by James Horner who did the same for The Wrath of Khan and Avatar. The film was overwhelmingly positively received, did very well at the box office and currently holds a rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes of 67%. 

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born June 21, 1839 – Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.  Called the greatest writer of Latin America; the greatest black literary figure.  Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas – i.e. written after the grave – has been translated into Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English, Esperanto, French.  Two dozen shorter stories; recent English collections in 2018, 2019.  (Died 1908) [JH]
  • Born June 21, 1882 – Rockwell Kent. “I don’t want petty self-expression,” he said; “I want to paint the rhythm of eternity.”  Illustrated Moby-Dick.  Here is Peace Oath.  Here is a bookplate.  His jazz-age-humorist side was signed “Hogarth, Jr.” in the original Vanity Fair and Life magazines.  Memoirs, This Is My Own and It’s Me, O Lord.  (Died 1971) [JH]
  • Born June 21, 1938 — Mary Wickizer Burgess, 81. I noticed sometime back when searching iBooks for genre fiction that there was something called Megapacks showing up more and more such as The 25th Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack, The Randall Garrett Megapack and The Occult Detective Megapack. They were big, generally around five hundred pages in length, and cheap, mostly around five dollars, but occasionally as little as ninety cents, in digital form! Starting in 1976, Mary and her husband, the now late Robert Reginald founded Borgo Press which has published hundreds in the past forty years. By the turn of the century, they’d already published three hundred Megapacks. I bought them for the purpose of getting as little as one story I wanted to read. (CE)
  • Born June 21, 1938 — Ron Ely, 82. Doc Savage in Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, a film I saw a long time ago and remember little about. He was also, fittingly enough, Tarzan in that NBC late Sixties series. Somewhere Philip Jose Farmer is linking the two characters…  other notable genre roles included being a retired Superman from an alternate reality in a two-part episode “The Road to Hell” of the Superboy series, and playing five different characters on the original Fantasy Island which may or may not be a record. (CE)
  • Born June 21, 1944 – Hori Akira.  His Solar Wind Node won the 1980 Nihon SF Taisho Award; Babylonian Wave won the 1989 Seiun.  A dozen shorter stories, translated into English, German, Hungarian; “Open Up” is in Speculative Japan 2 (i.e. in English).  Non-fiction, Two People’s Trip on the SF Road (with Musashi Kanbe).  [JH]
  • Born June 21, 1947 — Michael Gross, 73. Ok, I’ll admit that I’ve a fondness for the Tremors franchise in which he plays the extremely well-armed graboid hunter Burt Gummer. Other than the Tremors franchise, he hasn’t done a lot of genre work as I see just an episode of The Outer Limits where he was Professor Stan Hurst in “Inconstant Moon” (wasn’t that a Niven story?) and voicing a few Batman Beyond and Batman: The Animated Series characters. (CE)
  • Born June 21, 1948 – Sally Syrjala.  Active particularly in the Nat’l Fantasy Fan Fed’n; edited Tightbeam, Kaymar Award, President 2008-2009.  Elsewhere in fanzines e.g. Lan’s Lantern, LASFAPA (L.A. Scientifiction Fans’ Amateur Press Ass’n), indeed a regular correspondent of Vanamonde.  High school valedictorian.  Chaired the Friends of Cape Cod Museum of Art, trustee of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society.  Her File 770 appreciation is here.  (Died 2010) [JH]
  • Born June 21, 1955 – Sue Burke.  Translator (four books so far of Amadís de Gaula), fan, pro.  Recent novels Semiosis, Interference; two dozen shorter stories, poems, in Abyss & Apex, Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Broad Spectrum, Clarkesworld, Interzone, Slate.  Alicia Gordon Award.  Milwaukee, Austin, Madrid, Chicago.  Her Website is here.
  • Born June 21, 1957 — Berkeley Breathed, 63. ISFDB on the basis of a chapbook called Mars Needs Moms is willing to include him as genre but I’d argue that Bloom County which includes a talking penguin is genre as they are fantastic creatures. And he contributed three cartoons to the ConFederation Program Book. (CE)
  • Born June 21, 1964 — David Morrissey, 56. His most well known role is playing The Governor on The Walking Dead (which is a series that I’ve not seen and have no interest of seeing as I don’t do zombies) but I saw his brilliant performance as Jackson Lake, the man who who believed he was The Doctor in “The Next Doctor”, a Tenth Doctor adventure which was an amazing story. He was also Theseus in The Storyteller: Greek Myths, and played Tyador Borlú in the BBC adaption of China Mieville’s The City & The City. I’ll admit that I’m very ambivalent about seeing it as I’ve listened the novel at least a half dozen times and have my own mental image of what it should be. He has also shows up in Good Omens as Captain Vincent. (CE)
  • Born June 21, 1965 — Steve Niles, 55. Writer best-known for works such as 30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, Simon Dark and Batman: Gotham County Line. I’ve read his Criminal Macabre: The Complete Cal McDonald Stories and the the graphic novel — great bit of horror! Sam Raimi adapted 30 Days of Night into a film. (CE)
  • Born June 21, 1984 – Theresa Hannig.  Steffan Lübbe Prize.  Seraph Prize for The Optimizers; next novel The Imperfect.  Just now a panelist at First Virtual Book Fair of the Saar (19-21 June).  Has been a project manager for solar-power plants.  [JH]

(6) DOUBLE HEADER. Galactic Journey reviews a pair of (1965) Ace Doubles. “[June 20, 1965] Ace Quadruple (June Galactoscope #1)”

[Kris Vyas-Myall and Cora Buhlert team up to cover two of the better Ace Doubles to have come out in a while. Enjoy!]

The Ballad of Beta-2, by Samuel R. Delany, and Alpha, Yes! Terra, no!, by Emil Petaja (Ace Double M-121)

I have generally been disappointed by the Ace Doubles so far this year. Those I have read have seemed to me to be quite old fashioned and I had been wondering if they were going to be heading into a more conservative route with them this year. Thankfully, this new Double I have found has been one of their best…

(7) THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY. The Library of America’s “Story of the Week” is Ambrose Bierce’s “Working for an Empress”. The explanation of how this story came to be is rather involved. Part of it is —

…Captured during the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III was deposed in September 1870 and lived in exile with the Empress and their entourage at Camden Place, a palatial country house in Kent, until his death in January 1873. James Mortimer, an American who served in France as an imperial private secretary, followed Louis-Napoleon and Eugénie to England and, with their financial support, established the London Figaro, the weekly that hired Bierce to write a column. In the spring of 1874, when Bierce had been in England for two years, Mortimer wrote him with a strange proposal: to edit and write a new publication called The Lantern, which was to be modeled after the seditious French journal published years earlier by Rochefort. Because Mortimer’s patron and friend, the Empress Eugénie, regarded the just-escaped Rochefort as “a menace and a terror,” Bierce was puzzled and discomfited by the offer. But his qualms were mostly overcome when was also told that the new magazine, like its predecessor, should be “irritatingly disrespectful of existing institutions and exalted personages”—a prospect that “delighted” Bierce. Still, the purpose of the new enterprise mystified him.

(8) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. In The Guardian: “Yeast of our worries: Marmite supplies hit by Covid-19 beer brewing slowdown”.

…When asked by a customer why larger 400g squeezy jars were hard to get hold of at the moment, the firm replied: “Due to brewers yeast being in short supply (one of the main ingredients in Marmite) Supplies of Marmite have been affected. As a temporary measure we have stopped production of all sizes apart from our 250g size jar which is available in most major retailers.” 

Brewers slowed and stalled production when pubs were forced to shut in an attempt to slow the Covid-19 pandemic.

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