Andy says: “So delighted to receive Sandra Newman’s Julia, been wanting to read this ever since I heard about it.”
Also, lying by the side of Andy’s copy is Pippin, a domestic ginger cat, paying homage to the book.
Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com
(1) WAYS IN WHICH PRATCHETT IS STILL WITH US. Sam Jordison discusses “Pratchett power: from lost stories to new adaptations, how the late Discworld author lives on” in the Guardian.
“Of all the dead authors in the world, Terry Pratchett is the most alive,” said John Lloyd at the author’s memorial in 2015. This sentiment remains as true now, 40 years after the publication of Pratchett’s first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic. The anniversary has been commemorated in a set of illustrated Royal Mail stamps. There’s been a show dedicated to Pratchett at the Edinburgh fringe. A Kickstarter for a graphic novel adaptation of Good Omens, the book he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman, became the number one comics campaign in Kickstarter history, bringing in more than £2.4m; a second series of the TV adaptation was also released.
All this would make 2023 an impressive year by any writer’s standards – but happened in the month of August alone. The big event comes this month, with the publication of A Stroke of the Pen, a collection of rediscovered early stories. This past year also brought an animated adaptation of Pratchett’s children’s novel The Amazing Maurice, and a new set of Discworld audiobooks….
Naturally, the best paragraphs are the ones that quote Pratchett:
…Not that Pratchett was universally disparaged: the critics who actually read his books tended to like them. When AS Byatt reviewed Thief of Time, she said it deserved to win the Booker prize. Of course, Pratchett never got a look in. “Thank goodness,” he said, “because I think my earnings would have gone down considerably if I suddenly got literary credibility.” He also joked that when he was given an OBE for services to literature, those services “consisted of refraining from trying to write any”…
(2) BEARS DISCOVER TYPING. Margaret Grebowicz traces “Terry Bisson’s History of the Future” in The New Yorker.
… In 1969, Bisson quit writing for a decade and left New York for “hippie commune” work in the South and Southwest. He met his wife, Judy Jensen, in a commune, and they became involved in the May 19th Communist Organization, a group created by former members of the Weather Underground. In 1975, the couple moved back to New York to organize for May 19th, and Bisson worked as an auto mechanic in taxi garages and a copywriter. He sold his first science-fiction novel, “Wylrdmaker,” to the publisher David Hartwell in 1981, for fifteen hundred dollars. The novel was pulp: it told the story of Kemen of Pastryn, a satirical futuristic version of Conan the Barbarian. It wasn’t the book Bisson wanted to write, he told me, but “it was the smartest thing I ever did. That’s when I discovered you didn’t have to be fucking Hemingway or Fitzgerald to write a novel.” His second novel, “The Talking Man,” was more of a passion project—it was a fantasy novel set in the rural South, with junkyards instead of castles. “There was a sense of science fiction as a very urban literature and the future as a very urban place,” the writer Karen Joy Fowler told me. “Terry’s perspective was more land-based, regional, and populist.”
If May 19th had asked him to do anything risky, Bisson would have. But he was always suspected of being a “petit-bourgeois intellectual” and thus was kept on the sidelines. In 1985, he was subpoenaed to testify in front of a grand jury, to identify friends who had gone into hiding, and who were suspected for bombings at the Capitol and three military bases nearby. He refused to comply, and spent three months in prison—a short stint, he notes, compared with those of his friends. There, Bisson started his third novel, “Fire on The Mountain,” an alternative history in which the abolitionist John Brown’s revolt at Harper’s Ferry succeeded. When it was published, in 1988, Bisson dedicated the book to Kuwasi Balagoon and the Black Liberation Army….
(3) THE 1440 MINUTE HATE. Sandra Newman, author of 1984 turnabout Julia, tells “What I learned about today’s rage culture from rewriting 1984” in the Guardian.
…Nowadays, the language of Nineteen Eighty-Four is used by rightwingers to indict “wokeism”. Any new coinage from the left is called “Newspeak”; any attempt to acknowledge moral ambiguity is dismissed as “doublethink”. With the single word “Orwellian”, a college’s overreaching speech policy, for example, is framed as an existential threat to the free world. But Nineteen Eighty-Four wasn’t a warning against a university’s inclusivity statement. It was a warning about men like Trump and Putin and the violent mass movements they inspire….
… When my Nineteen Eighty-Four book was announced, described as a “feminist retelling”, I was treated to a personal experience of how far things had gone. The news attracted a storm of misogynist and antisemitic abuse in rightwing tweets, blogs, YouTube videos, even newspaper articles. This was long before the novel was available to be read – before I’d barely written a few chapters. Still, all the attackers were sure what would be in it: a full-throated endorsement of Big Brother. …
(4) OHAYOCON MELTDOWN. Nerd & Tie is following the controvery between the owner and volunteers of a commercial sff con: “Ohayocon Senior Leadership and Volunteers on Strike After Removal of Con Chair Cody Marcum [Updated 10/6]”. A long post at the link.
…From what we’ve been able to gather, it appears that a group of Ohayocon staffers and volunteers had formed an informal union called Convention of Ohio Volunteer Network (COVEN) and presented a document of demands to Phelps and other members of the board of Cultural Exchange Society, Inc on March 4th, 2023. You can read a full version of that document here. …
Update 10/6/2023 (8:50pm CDT): Ohayocon has put out a statement regarding the current situation which is, frankly, confusing. In the statement, Ohayocon says “Contrary to misinformation swirling online, NO volunteers or members of the Senior Leadership Team have been fired from Ohayocon…” which is at odds with Phelp’s repeated, explicit statements that the con chair and marketing head had been fired….
(5) SMALL WONDERS 4. Co-editors Cislyn Smith and Stephen Granade are proud to bring a mix of flash fiction and poetry for the spooky month in Small Wonders Issue 4, now available on virtual newsstands here. Subscriptions are available at the magazine’s store and on Patreon.
The Issue 4 Table of Contents and release dates on the Small Wonders website:
(6) GOAL: DISRUPTION. “Spotify Gave Subscribers Music and Podcasts. Next: Audiobooks.” – in the New York Times.
Four years ago, Spotify’s business was stagnating. Apple had overtaken it as the top paid music service in the United States, losses were mounting and customer growth was slowing.
Daniel Ek, the company’s chief executive, decided that Spotify needed to transform from a music service into the everything store for audio. The first missing piece was podcasts, a business that has helped boost ad sales.
Now Mr. Ek has set his sights on another rapidly growing medium: audiobooks.
On Tuesday, Spotify said that it would begin offering 15 hours of audiobooks each month as part of its streaming service for premium subscribers in Britain and Australia. This winter, it will expand the offering to subscribers in the United States.
Spotify’s expansion into books has the potential to shake up the retail landscape for audiobooks, a fast-growing segment of publishing that has long been dominated by the Amazon-owned audio retailer Audible.
(7) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]
Single day tickets now available
Announcement on Weibo ; Chinese-language announcement on the official site ; Damai.cn sales page . There is no corresponding English-language item on the official site, and I don’t think there were FB or Twitter posts either.
Just over two weeks after attending tickets/memberships for the con were halted without notice, the promised single day tickets have finally gone on sale. Key points:
Translations of some of the reply comments on the Weibo post reflect the above:
Chengdu magazine cover feature on the Worldcon and SF generally – https://weibo.com/1615055180/NmLaY6rLI
File 770 contributor Feng Zhang posted photos of the October issue of Chengdu Culture/Tianfu Culture, in which the Worldcon is a cover feature, and in which he is interviewed.
A couple of Xiaohongshu posts about the interior decor
(8) CAN’T SLIP ONE BY HIM. A scholar suspects the language of Watership Down is spreading to English. “Lapine Lingo in American English: Silflay”.
Lapine Lingo in American English: Silflay; Author(s): Thomas E. Murray; Source: American Speech , Winter, 1985, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 372-375; Published by: Duke University Press
“The general conclusion concerning silflay and its infiltration into American speech, then, is clear: whereas the Russians may or may not be coming, the rabbits have definitely already come and gone, and in their short stay have left a significant linguistic imprint on a sizable portion of the American population. As for the future of silflay, I think it may warrant further attention. Will its popularity die a slow and inconsequential death, as is the case with so many nonce creations, or will it spread, either geo-graphically or socioeconomically, to other English-speaking peoples? Moreover, what of the other terms that Adams created (over forty are listed in the Glossary at the end of the novel)? Will one or more of them charm some innocent lover of bunnies into increasing his or her vocabulary and thus propagating other aspects of the lapine lingo? Perhaps not, but given the current, unexpected popularity of silflay, the entire rabbit language phenomenon certainly bears watching.”
(9) NM-AZ BOOK AWARD WINNERS. The New Mexico Book Co-op has announced the 2023 winners of the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.
The winner in the Sci-Fi category is Avery Christy for Mountain Knight.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
(11) COMICS SECTION.
(12) FOR ALL MANKIND MISSION ART. Collectspace.com covers an interesting item: “New collectible pin buttons depict ‘For All Mankind’ space mission patches”. (The direct link to the Icon Heroes product page is here.)
As recently announced by Apple TV+, the fourth season of “For All Mankind” is set to debut on Nov. 10. Created by Ronald D. Moore, along with current showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, “For All Mankind” explores how humanity’s space exploration efforts may have proceeded differently if the Soviet Union had beaten the United States to landing a man on the moon.
One of the ways the show has distinguished its timeline from our own has been the inclusion of altered or entirely new mission patches worn by the astronauts in the series. For the past three seasons, Icon Heroes, a pop culture collectibles company, has sold limited edition replicas of the “For All Mankind” embroidered emblems.
Now, the Irvine, California-based company is offering those same alternate Apollo artworks, space shuttle symbols and Martian marks as collectible pinback buttons….
(13) 2023 LAUREATE AWARD. The National Fantasy Fan Federation has announced the 2023 Laureate Award winners. The Laureate Award was first given in 1941.
Best Fan Writer — Martin Lock
Best Fan Artist — Jose Sanchez
Best Fan Website — Fanac.org from Joe Siclari, Edie Stern, and Mark Olsen
Best Non-N3F Fanzine — Simultaneous Times Newsletter from Jean-Paul L. Garnier
Best N3F Fanzine — Tightbeam
Best Podcast — Simultaneous Times
Best Novel — Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Best Shorter Work or Anthology — Return to Glory by Jack McDevitt
Best Pro Artist — Austin Arthur Hart
Best Editor — Toni Weisskopf
Best SF Poet — Michael Butterworth
Best Comic Book — New Think 1.0
Best Anime — Chainsaw Man
Best Manga — Mindset
Best Television Show, Film, or Video — Heath Row’s Productions
Best None of the Above — Manuscript Press (Rick Norwood) and aruffo.com for reprinting the daily comic strip Alley Oop
(14) RALPH CRAM’S OEURVE. “The University Architect Who Also Wrote About Haunted Buildings” in the Princeton Alumni Weekly.
The architect who created the look of Princeton’s campus wrote ghost stories. Fittingly, Ralph Adams Cram’s stories are about haunted buildings, and what haunts those buildings is the past. In a story collection that he published in 1895, empty houses prove, over and over, to be anything but. In a crumbling castle near Innsbruck, Austria, where a devilish nobleman once set the ballroom on fire while his guests danced inside, two “ghost hunters” get caught up in a danse macabre. In a secluded convent near Palermo, Italy, a visitor follows a beckoning specter to the site where, a century earlier, the nuns bricked up one of their sisters in the convent’s walls, a heartless punishment for a sin of the heart. In an abandoned old manse in the Latin Quarter of Paris, rumored to have once been a favorite haunt of the city’s witches, a gang of young “rake-hell” students spends the night on a dare, with predictably ghastly results.
The thesis is straightforward: We inhabit buildings, and they inhabit us, in a larger sense than we might think. In 1907, a group of archaeologists who planned to do excavations in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey performed séances to get advice from the former inhabitants on where to dig. Cram wrote a defense of their methods, arguing not that they dialed up literal ghosts but that buildings are a deep well of memory that outlasts their inhabitants. (The archaeologists found what they were looking for, but England is so crowded with historical odds and sods that they find kings under parking lots, so their chances were already good.)…
(15) TAKE TWO. The solar system has no suspenders but it may have two belts. “Puzzling objects found far beyond Neptune hint at second Kuiper belt” in Science.
Beyond Neptune’s orbit lie thousands of small icy objects in the Kuiper belt, with Pluto its most famous resident. But after 50 astronomical units (AU)—50 times the distance between Earth and the Sun—the belt ends suddenly and the number of objects drops to zero. Meanwhile, in other solar systems, similar belts stretch outward across hundreds of AU….
A new discovery is challenging that picture. While using ground-based telescopes to hunt for fresh targets for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, now past Pluto on a course out of the Solar System, Fraser and his colleagues have made a tantalizing, though preliminary, discovery: about a dozen objects that lie beyond 60 AU—nearly as far from Pluto as Pluto is from the Sun. The finding, if real, could suggest that the Kuiper belt either extends much farther than once thought or—given the seeming 10-AU gap between these bodies and the known Kuiper belt—that a “second” belt exists…
(16) ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH. “NASA rover makes adventurous trip, then snaps stunning Mars picture” at Mashable.
It was a long slog. But NASA‘s Curiosity rover did it.
The space agency’s car-sized robot, which has ventured up Mars’ Mount Sharp for nearly a decade, successfully traversed rocky terrain to arrive at a scientifically-intriguing site made by ancient avalanches of boulders, debris, and water. Today, this place, Gediz Vallis Ridge, exists as a prominent hill blanketed with large rocks.
After making the arduous trek (scientists worked to find a passable route to this area for three years), the Curiosity rover turned around and snapped an expansive image of the Martian landscape beyond, which NASA released on Oct. 5.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Juli Marr, Andrew (not Werdna), Mark Roth-Whitroth, Steven French, John-Paul L. Garnier, JeffWarner, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
(1) STAR POWER. Over the weekend Scott Edelman recorded a reading by Charlie Jane Anders and Sandra Newman at a Washington D.C. bookstore —
On the afternoon of Saturday, February 16, 2019, Charlie Jane Anders (The City in the Middle of the Night) and Sandra Newman (The Heavens) read at the Union Market branch of the Politics & Prose Bookstore, and then took part in a follow-up Q&A session. Unfortunately, due to the configuration of the seating, I was only able to include Michelle, the ALS interpreter (who consented to being recorded), when attached to the individual readings, and not for the follow-up Q&A. I also did not turn the camera on anyone asking a question, as I did not have their consent.
(2) KNIGHT OF THE RPG. Eurogamer has “The story behind the Oblivion mod Terry Pratchett worked on”, and it’s quite touching.
…Most people know Pratchett as the author of Discworld, the famous fantasy series about a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants. However, what many people don’t know is that the knighted author was also a massive fan of video games – so much so that he actually worked on mods for Oblivion, most of which were spearheaded by a Morrowind modder named Emma….
“Honestly, although I knew about Terry’s illness I never thought of him as someone who was ill,” Emma told us. “The things I added to Vilja that were originally for him, I did because I enjoyed and because it felt so natural. It would be totally unfair to say that I was helping him – he was helping and inspiring me all the time, and I think we both had a lot of fun with figuring out new things for Vilja to say and do.”
(3) ARE THESE ON YOUR SHELVES? How many of these have you read?Pulp Archivist Nathan Housley discovered a list of what was required in “A Basic Science-Fiction Library” in 1949. You’d think there being only 17 items, selected by old-time fans and pros, I’d score pretty well. No so — I’ve only read six. And I feel no temptation to remedy the shortfall! Housley begins by telling who contributed to the list —
The editors included Sam Merwin, Jr. of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories, Paul L. Payne of Planet Stories, and Everett Bleiler of The Checklist of Fantastic Literature and The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949. John Campbell of Astounding and Raymond Palmer of Amazing were invited but chose not to participate.
The writers included Dr. David H. Keller, P. Schuyler Miller, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. Van Vogt, Donald Wandrei, and Lewis Padgett–better known as the husband and wife team of Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore.
Rounding out the list were the fans. A. Langley Searles is “best known for the scholarly science fiction fanzine Fantasy Commentator.” Forest Ackerman was the literary agent for many of the authors listed above as well as the father of convention cosplay. And Sam Moskowitz was a noted historian of science fiction fandom and a fervent opponent of the Futurians.
(4) CAPTAIN MARVEL DENIERS BEWARE. At The Mary Sue, Rachel Leishman diagnoses the symptoms: “Men Clearly Fear Women Leading Nerd Films, and … Good”.
And now, we have Captain Marvel. For the first time in ten years, we’re getting a superhero film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe led by a woman, and that means that Twitter is a minefield of men calling Brie Larson “Loudmouth Larson” and claiming that her devotion to equality in the press for the film and the future of her character is what is going to tank the movie (even though it is currently on track to be a box office success).
(5) FROM OUR SPY BEHIND THE PAYWALL. In the February 12 Financial Times, Leo Lewis says that Japanese public broadcaster NHK is broadcasting Tokyo Reborn, a series about the rebuilding of Tokyo that in many ways continues Katushiro Otomo’s great 1988 noir anime Akira, which is set in 2019, NHK is using Akira as a touchstone (and has hired Otomo as a consultant on the series), because the “Neo Tokyo” Otomo portrays in his film is preparing for the Tokyo Olympics of 2020, an accurate prediction on Otomo’s part.
Akira’s many fans adore the idea that its creator correctly predicted” that Tokyo would host the Olympics in 2020. And the film was central in creating the ‘cool Japan’ brand that continues to promote Japanese pop culture and put its animation on a global stage. It has even been a catalyst for foreigners (including me) to develop long relationships with Japan.
It is a delicious vindication of Mr Otomo’s work that the film’s influence remains so powerful in a year that once represented the distant future.
(6) ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. “‘Every Day Is A Good Day When You’re Floating’: Anne McClain Talks Life In Space” – NPR has the story.
What do you eat in space? How do you sleep in space?
And just what does one do all day long in space?
Children from the Georgetown Day School in Washington D.C., recently had a chance to ask their most burning questions to NASA astronaut Anne McClain.
They are roughly the same age that McClain was when on her first day of preschool she announced that she wanted to become an astronaut.
By the time McClain was about 5 years old, she said she wrote a book about flying to space on the Soyuz vehicle. Now she’s floating around on the International Space Station, showing that sometimes childhood dreams do come true.
“When you are finally in space and you’re finally looking back at Earth and you realize for the first time in your life there’s nothing standing between you and your dream, it’s just so hard to describe the profound impact of that,” McClain, now 39, told NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
(9) COMICS SECTION.
(10) KEEP ON TREKKIN’. There’s always room for, um, another Star Trek series? (Deadline: “‘Star Trek’: Nickelodeon Near Deal For Kids Animated Series From Alex Kurtzman, Hageman Brothers & CBS TV Studios”).
Alex Kurtzman and CBS TV Studios have set the latest extension of the Star Trek TV franchise. Nickelodeon is in negotiations for a Star Trek animated series from Emmy-winning writers Kevin and Dan Hageman (Trollhunters, Ninjago), CBS TV Studios and Kurtzman’s studio-based Secret Hideout banner.
Penned by the Hageman brothers, the animated series is targeted at younger audiences. Because of that, it would be the first new Star Trek project outside of CBS All Access, which has an adult focus.
(11) THE NIGHT STUFF. How did I live without this?Archie McPhee offers a Glow-in-the-Dark Rubber Chicken.
Svengoolie can use it inside his coffin
We all agree that Rubber Chickens are hilarious. If you looked at a normal Rubber Chicken, you’d assume that funny things only happen when a source of light is available. What about hilarious night shenanigans or power outage tomfoolery? This 20” soft vinyl Glow-in-the-Dark Rubber Chicken will make you giggle no matter how little light there is. Whether you’re sitting in the dark in your living room pretending to not be home while someone knocks on the door, building a blanket fort or UPSing yourself cross-country in a crate, you’ll be laughing the entire time.
(12) NEXT: WHO WAS THE CHEKHOV OF SCIENCE FICTION? Andrew Porter says everybody missed this one on Jeopardy:
Final Jeopardy: British Authors.
All three contestants guessed wrong:
Correct question: Who is H.G. Wells?
(13) A CAT EXPLAINS A CLASSIC. At Camestros Felapton, “Timothy the Talking Cat reads ‘Ender’s Game’”. Timothy really gets it, you know?
…So once upon a time there were three human children who lived in a cruel and cynical world. Everybody was fighting each other or fighting the space alien bugs from Starship Troopers. The bugs were really scary and are all like “we were in a really famous science-fiction story”….
(14) 3-DELIGHTFUL. NASA is trying out a 3D printer on the International Space Station as a prelude to using them for long-term missions to the Moon and Mars. Perhaps it makes sense, then, that moviemakers are using them to make movies about space travel (Variety: “BigRep’s 3D Printer Takes ‘First Man’ to the Moon”).
Production designer Nathan Crowley was strolling through the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the shoot for “The Greatest Showman” in fall 2016 when he passed a building with a 3D printer printing a chair.
“The lady inside told me it was a machine from BigRep,” recalls Crowley. “I said, ‘When’s the last time you had a filament jam?’ She said, ‘About a month ago.’ And I was like, ‘OK, I need that machine.’”
Crowley didn’t get to use it for “The Greatest Showman,” but he rented two BigRep One models for his next film, director Damien Chazelle’s “First Man,” rounding out an arsenal of 18 3D printers used make everything from knobs and joysticks for the lunar module that puts Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) on the moon to a 14-foot-tall scale model of a Saturn V rocket.
[…] Crowley has been using 3D printers since 2014’s “Interstellar,” directed by frequent collaborator Christopher Nolan. But back then he used them strictly for concept models.
On Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “we did models by hand for the Batmobile, and it would take weeks,” says Crowley. With 3D printers, “it was a game-changer to be able design and output something, have a look at it, change something and do it again and again without having to handmake each design.”
(15) CAT AND MOUSE CLASSIC. “Tom and Jerry at MGM–Music Performed By The John Wilson Orchestra” on YouTube is a suite, arranged by Scott Bradley, of selections from Tom and Jerry cartoons performed by the John Wilson Orchestra at the BBC Proms in 2013.
(16) SMURFS, MR. RICO?!? They even have a few blue laws — “German Town Sees A Smurf Invasion, As Thousands Gather To Break World Record”.
They came covered in blue paint, donning red and white hats, nearly 3,000 in all. Their goal was simple: To break the world record for the largest group of people dressed as Smurfs.
The group Dä Traditionsverein organized the event in Lauchringen, Germany on Saturday near the border with Switzerland. They had strict rules: in order to be counted, participants couldn’t show any non-blue skin. They could dress as Papa Smurf — with his trademark red cap and a white beard — or Smurfette, with blonde hair and a white skirt or dress. Normal smurfs were OK, too — but some characters, like the evil wizard Gargamel, were strictly off limits.The group posted on Facebook that 2,762 Smurfs showed up.
(17) HOW LOFTY ARE THOSE AMBITIONS? Christian Davenport in the Washington Post has a long piece on efforts to take control of the Moon’s resources. “The moon, often referred to as the eighth continent, is again the center of a reinvigorated space race that, like any good Hollywood reboot, features a new cast of characters and new story lines.” The goal this time is to make mining on the moon commercially viable, with emphasis on controlling the moon’s poles, because that’s where the water is and water can be used for fuel. “NASA wants to get to the moon ‘as fast as possible.’ But countries like China and India are racing there, too.”
Yet, unlike the Apollo era, this Space Age is being driven by a third factor: greed. A growing number of corporations are benefiting from new technologies and wealthy backers chasing an unproven dream that a lucrative business can be built on the moon and deep space by extracting the metals and resources on the surface on the moon.
Though the prospect of a self-sustaining lunar-mining economy may be little more than a chimera, the moon is drawing investors and explorers the way the promise of the American West once did. As a result, several lunar-prospecting companies have emerged with plans to fly spacecraft to the moon in the coming years.
(18) SOMETHING’S MISSING. WhatCuture would like to remind you about “10 MCU Plot Points Marvel Has Completely Abandoned.”
[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Hampus Eckerman, Cat Eldridge, john King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
