25 Pixels. Can There Be Too Many?

Posted on February 14, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE FULL HULK PALETTE. Gizmodo offers readers “A Field Guide to Marvel’s Multicolored Hulks”.

We all know the Incredible Hulk. He’s big, we won’t like it when he’s angry, and, of course, he’s very, very green. But that’s not the only hue Bruce Banner, or several other characters to take on the irradiated moniker of Hulk, has been over the years. As the MCU prepares for Captain America: Brave New World to add the latest splash to its Hulk palette in Thaddeus Ross’ crimson carnage causer, here’s a brief run down of the rainbow of Hulks from the comics and beyond.

Despite the color this version is not very Smurfy.

Blue

Many heroes over the years have harbored the cosmic, god-like force that transforms a host into Captain Universe, Hulk included—albeit only briefly. Although originally green when he first encountered it, the Enigma Force enhanced Bruce’s abilities to give him a strength boost across the board, but also transformed him into a shade of blue the first time he tried to use the power. Realizing is wildly increased strength, the Hulk declared his new form the strongest he’d ever been, only for the Enigma Force to vacate and search for a new host.

First Appearance: 2005

Reason for color: The Enigma Force transforms all of its hosts with an astral-themed makeover when they bond.

(2) THE RED HULK IS EXPENSIVE ENOUGH. The Cinemark Shop is taking pre-orders for the “Captain America: Brave New World Red Hulk Popcorn Bucket” for a mere $47.95. I’d hate to think what other Hulk designer colors would cost!

Experience movie snacking like never before with the Captain America: Brave New World Red Hulk Popcorn Bucket! Featuring a bold design inspired by Red Hulk, this limited edition bucket is perfect for fans looking to enjoy their favorite snacks with a heroic twist. Durable and eye-catching, it’s the ultimate way to celebrate Cap’s thrilling new chapter!

(3) CUTE IDEA CANCELLED. Polygon finds “D&D’s traditional 5th edition Easter eggs have been discontinued”, and does a roundup of their recent favorite faux legal disclaimers.

When 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons first rolled off the assembly line with the original Player’s Handbook (2014), it arrived with a very special Easter egg. It’s a goof that’s been repeated dozens of times, one that’s been included in every single hardcover rulebook, sourcebook, and campaign book published over the last decade. And with the release of the Monster Manual (2025), the franchise’s third revised core rulebook, publisher Wizards of the Coast tells Polygon that this little moment of jocularity is officially coming to an end. Pour one out, dear reader, for the fantasy legal disclaimer…

“Disclaimer: Wizards of the Coast is not responsible for the consequence of splitting up the party, sticking appendages in the mouth of a leering green devil face, accepting a dinner invitation from bugbears, storming the feast hall of a hill giant steading, angering a dragon of any variety, or saying yes when the DM asks, ‘Are you really sure?’”

… Reached for comment, Wizards sent word back from none other than D&D lead designer Jeremy Crawford. He let me know that I wasn’t imagining things, and that fantasy legal disclaimers are no more. Other, slightly more overt Easter eggs can be found throughout the latest D&D books, he said, including things like cameos from the characters in the original Saturday morning cartoon show from the 1980s. But these in-fiction snippets of fantasy legalese have gone the way of THAC0.

So, in honor of these comedic little morsels — and the anonymous folks at Wizards who helped them make their way into every game book for 10 solid years — here are the last five 5th edition D&D books and their fictional disclaimers….

(4) NOT ALONE – PLASTICS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In the SF novel Not Alone Sarah Jackson presents a near-future apocalyptic world in which plastic pollution kills people… Meanwhile, back in the real world there is concern as to how plastics ending up in human brain’s is impacting them as an item in this week’s this week’s Nature explores.

Plastics have infiltrated every recess of the planet, including your lungs, kidneys and other sensitive organs. Scientists are scrambling to understand their effects on health.

On average, microplastic levels were about 50% higher in brain samples from 2024 than in 2016 samples. And brain samples contained up to 30 times more microplastics than samples from a person’s liver and kidneys.

(5) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to “Chat and chew with Shannon Robinson” in Episode 247 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

My guest this episode is Shannon Robinson, whose short story collection, The Ill-Fitting Skin, was released last year. Robinson’s work has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Water-Stone Review, Nimrod, Joyland, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, and in 2011 she was the Writer-in-Residence at Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Other honors include the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts, a Hedgebrook Fellowship, a Sewanee Scholarship, and an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland Arts Council. Currently, she teaches creative writing and pedagogy at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with her husband and son.

We discussed how best to deal with rejection, the way our opinions about print vs. electronic publication have changed over the courses of our careers, when an untrustworthy narrator can be a feature, not a bug, the many ways readers can be misreaders of stories, how she realized she’d reached short story critical mass and it was time to assemble a collection, the way the genres in which we write are often defined by those who publish us rather than the words on the page, what she tells her students is the only rule in writing, our contrasting experiences with simultaneous submissions, the ways in which she’ll apply everything she’s learned in writing short stories to her upcoming novel, and much more.

(6) NOT EXACTLY SNUBBED. Entertainment Weekly listens in as “Lin-Manuel Miranda reveals why he wasn’t cast in ‘Wicked’”.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is breaking his silence on why he wasn’t cast in Wicked.

During Monday’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the Hamilton creator and star was asked why he didn’t make an appearance in the Jon M. Chu-directed movie musical — especially since the pair had previously worked together on the 2021 film adaptation of his musical, In the Heights.

“This has gotten blown away out of proportion,” Miranda declared, prompting host Stephen Colbert to reply, “And we’re going to continue to do that right now.”

The Grammy winner then explained that he was gunning for a very specific part in the musical.

“In the opening number of the show, this one munchkin runs out and goes, ‘Is it true you were her friend?’ Because, man, I don’t know if you’ve seen a live production of Wicked, but sometimes they really put some sauce on the ball when they deliver that line,” Miranda explained. “It’s where the story starts. So I was like, ‘I really wanted to do that line, Jon.’ And I was not cast.”

He completely understands why, though. “It would’ve been distracting!” Miranda acknowledged. His coveted role ultimately went to Kirsty Anne Shaw, who is credited as “Skeptical Munchkin” on the film’s IMDb page….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Fantasy Island (1977)

Forty-eight years ago, the original version of Fantasy Island aired its premiere episode on ABC. The series starred Ricardo Montalbán who was previously best known to television viewers for his Chrysler Cordoba commercials (which Dan Aykroyd parodied on Saturday Night Live) with their tagline of Fine Corinthian Leather, as Mr. Roarke, the Host, and Hervé Villechaize as his dwarf assistant, Tattoo.

It was created by Gene Levitt who had very little previous genre experience.

The critics were unanimous in their utter loathing of it. Newsday was typical of the comments about: “Given the premise, the [pilot] movie could have been fun, but it’s not. It drips with Meaning, but there is none. Actually, it’s quite dumb.” Tell me, did you consider it dumb?

Now it was however absolutely critic-proof as it had an amazing run lasting seven seasons of one hundred fifty-two episodes, plus two films called Fantasy Island and Return to Fantasy Island.

A two-season revival of the series with Malcolm McDowell and Mädchen Amick in the two roles aired fourteen years later while a re-imagined horror film version was released recently. I’ve seen the Malcolm McDowell and Mädchen Amick series and think it’s excellent. The horror film I’ve not seen. I do remember the original series and remember rather liking it. Am I imagining there’s an another, much more recent series as well?

Chrysler Cordoba commercial (proof almost nothing vanishes on the net) is here.

If you’re feeling adventurous, it’s streaming on ad-supported Tubi as is the Malcolm McDowell and Mädchen Amick version.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Brevity’s requirements sound familiar at first.
Dinosaur Comics remarks on clothes of the future.
Phoebe and Her Unicorn has a Peter Beagle reference.

(9) NO MAAS. “’A Court Of Thorns And Roses’ Fantasy Series Dead At Hulu & 20th TV” reports Deadline.

It’s a done deal — Hulu and 20th Television will not be proceeding with a TV adaptation of Sarah J. Maas’ bestselling fantasy book series A Court Of Thorns And Roses.

Word came out four years ago that Ron Moore had teamed with Maas for A Court Of Thorns And Roses TV series at 20th Television where Moore was under an overall deal. The project was set up at Hulu with a script commitment plus significant penalty.

Rumors that the adaptation may be getting scrapped at Hulu first started circulating in early 2024, with speculation intensifying after Moore left 20th TV to return to Sony Pictures Television a couple of months later. There was talk at the time that Disney siblings 20th TV and Hulu may try to pursue the IP with another writer. Ultimately, they won’t be going forward with the title….

(10) WARM-UP ACT. “The Origins of the ‘Dinosaur Renaissance’” at JSTOR Daily.

At the end of a summer day in 1964, John Ostrom and his team of paleontologists found a set of claws buried in the hills of Montana. They returned the next morning to find a fierce talon connected to the well-preserved foot bones of a new dinosaur. Ostrom called the site “The Shrine,” and his fieldwork there would help reshape the way the world thought about dinosaurs.

Ostrom named the creature Deinonychus antirrhopus, meaning “counterbalancing terrible claw.” He believed that the talon implied a hunting style incompatible with the common view of dinosaurs, explains Jon Axline. Most paleontologists believed that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, slow reptiles. But to Ostrom, Deinonychus seemed like an “agile carnivore” that was “built for speed,” writes Axline.

This would have meant a high metabolism, leading Ostrom to compare Deinonychus to modern animals with similar traits, such as emus and ostriches. Robert T. Bakker was an undergraduate on Ostrom’s team in Montana. Writing in 1975, he noted that mounting evidence was creating a paradigm shift that was dubbed the “Dinosaur Renaissance.” Bakker believed that rather than being cold-blooded reptiles, dinosaurs were the warm-blooded ancestors of modern birds.

Ostrom had noticed similarities between Deinonychus and Archaeopteryx (a feathered ancestor of birds) and thought they might be related. These speculations gained support from fossil evidence over time, Bakker explained….

(11) EVA EQUIPMENT NICKNAMES. “Meet ‘Tansuo’ and ‘Wangyu,’ China’s next moon rover and astronaut spacesuit” at Space.com.

China’s human spaceflight agency has unveiled official names for a spacesuit and rover to be used in the country’s moon landing mission before the end of the decade.

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced on Wednesday (Feb. 12) that the lunar extravehicular suit is named “Wangyu”, which means “gazing into the cosmos.” It echoes the name for the “Feitain” suit—meaning “flying into space”—currently used by Chinese astronauts to venture outside of the Tiangong space station in low Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, the unpressurized rover designed to carry two astronauts has been dubbed “Tansuo”, meaning “to explore.” The name reflects the lunar rover’s mission and practical value in aiding the Chinese people to uncover the mysteries of the moon, which is in line with China’s yearning to explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry and build itself into a space power, CMSA said in a statement….

(12) JUMANJI 4 TRAILER. “Jumanji 4 : The Final Game” is coming in 2026.

Get ready for an epic conclusion to the beloved Jumanji series with Jumanji 4: The Final Game. This thrilling adventure reunites the iconic cast from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level, including Dwayne Johnson as Dr. Smolder Bravestone, Kevin Hart as Franklin “Mouse” Finbar, Karen Gillan as Ruby Roundhouse, Jack Black as Professor Shelly Oberon, and Awkwafina as Ming Fleetfoot. Fans can also expect Nick Jonas as Seaplane McDonough, alongside Alex Wolff, Madison Iseman, Ser’Darius Blain, and Morgan Turner reprising their roles as the real-world teens drawn into the game. The plot picks up from The Next Level’s cliffhanger, with the boundaries between the game world and reality shattering—bringing chaos to both dimensions.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/28/25 One Moon Was A Ghostly Galleon, The Other A Spirited Schooner

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) CHINESE FANZINE ZERO GRAVITY NEWS PUBLISHES THREE ISSUES. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Three issues of the Hugo Award-winning fanzine Zero Gravity News have just been published, featuring articles about their personal experiences from a number of Chinese fans. Here is the text of RiverFlow’s two tweets about the issues (slightly edited):

Chinese fanzine Zero Gravity has published a themed special “l With Sci-Fi” across three issues. Issues 25 and 26 contain the views of middle school and college students on science fiction. The 27th issue mainly contains the articles of the memories of working-age Chinese sci-fi fans.

This comes to a total of 480,000 words across the three issues, which can be said to be another collective voice of Chinese science fiction fans.

The PDFs of the three issues can be downloaded from this Google Drive link – each is around 10MB in size.

(2) EBOOK ALTERNATIVE HELPS INDIE BOOKSTORES. Bookshop.org US now is also selling ebooks.

Every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores. Our platform gives independent bookstores tools to compete online and financial support to help them maintain their presence in local communities.

NPR has the story — “Bookshop.org launches new e-book platform that exclusively supports local bookstores”.

…MARTÍNEZ: OK, there are already a lot of online retailers for e-books. I mean, millions of them are sold every year. So why are we focusing on this one?

FADEL: Well, this one exclusively supports local bookstores, and that’s because e-books are a difficult format for smaller booksellers to keep up with, according to Bookshop’s CEO, Andy Hunter.

ANDY HUNTER: Because the publisher requirements are so strict, it requires a huge amount of technical effort to deliver an e-book securely so it can’t be hacked and it can’t be pirated around the web. And that is too much for any individual local bookstore to deal with.

MARTÍNEZ: All right, so that makes sense. So what do indie bookstores think?

FADEL: We checked in with a few owners like Pete Mulvihill of Green Apple Books in San Francisco, and he told us his stores will take all the help they can get.

PETE MULVIHILL: We survive by kind of (laughter) scraping and clawing where we can to find efficiencies or make a little extra income. And this is another significant, if small, stream of income for us. So it’s truly helpful….

(3) ROMANTASY RINGING THE REGISTER. “Bestsellers – Critical Maas: Is this real life? Is this just fantasy?” asks The Bookseller about the UK market. Since the start of the year sff sales are up nearly a third, with fantasy titles driving the train. “Bookshops across the country may soon need to rebalance their space as readers continue to seek to escape from reality.”

You would be forgiven for thinking that bookshops were caught in a landslide of fantasy fiction in 2024 with authors such as Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros dominating the top end of the fiction charts – as seen in our Author Review of the Year in last week’s issue (The Bookseller, 17th January 2025). It was not just the spicy side of the genre represented either, with JRR Tolkien’s sales rising 21.3% year-on-year through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market and Brandon Sanderson appearing inside the top 50 authors of the year for the first time. Is this a trend that’s going to continue into 2025 – and, if it is, which series should we be keeping our eye on?

It is timely to start with Rebecca Yarros, as the third book in her Empyrean series – Onyx Storm – is published this week, while Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are sitting atop the Fantasy charts so far for 2025.

First published in hardback in 2023, the first two books in the series were released in paperback in 2024, with Fourth Wing placing 11th in the full-year chart, selling just shy of 250,000 copies. The paperback of Iron Flame was only released in November and has shifted 78,586 copies in its first nine weeks – 7.4% down on the equivalent period for its predecessor….

…While Yarros tops the fantasy chart so far for 2025, it is Sarah J Maas who dominates it, taking five of the top 10 spots. With TCM volume sales of 1.3 million units in 2024, the author of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series rooted herself into second place in our authors of the year chart with sales of £13.2m.

So far this year, Yarros’ value has already reached £483,676 – up 88.9% against the first two weeks of 2024 – and with fans eagerly awaiting the paperback release of last January’s House of Flame and Shadow, as well as the fifth ACOTAR novel, a surprise 2025 release or two could see Maas’ sales increase further still.

The bestselling fantasy hardback title at the moment could be the start of the next big thing. First published at the beginning of December, Quicksilver – the first instalment of Callie Hart’s Fae & Alchemy series – has sold 34,417 copies, with 17.9% of that coming in the past two weeks. A sequel is due later in 2025 but, so far, no date for the paperback edition has emerged. Another author to keep an eye on is Sarah A Parker, whose When the Moon Hatched is one of just three hardbacks inside the fantasy top 20, despite being first published back in June. It has just topped £1m worth of sales and consistently appears in the e-book charts provided by BookStat. The paperback is due in May, while the second book in the Moonfall series will be published in October of this year.

While 19 of the 20 listed here are romantasy – only Gregory Maguire’s Wicked bucks the trend – they are not the only sub-genre of the market on which to keep an eye. The third bestselling fantasy author of the moment is Brandon Sanderson, whose Cosmere universe has delivered £135,763, while Tolkien’s romance-free books have notched up £109,753 – though it is worth noting even when Tolkien and Sanderson’s sales are combined with second-placed Yarros, they still cannot top Maas’ total…..

(4) CHINESE NEW YEAR GALA BROADCAST. [Item by Ersatz Culture and Prograft.] The annual Chinese New Year/Spring Festival Gala was broadcast by state broadcaster CCTV/CMG on Tuesday 28th. The full (nearly 5 hour) show can be seen on YouTube, but the links below jump directly a couple of performances that may be the ones of most relevance to File 770:

A folk dance performed by robots and human dancers. Per this news article, this is “a traditional Yangko dance, a vibrant folk art form from northeast China” where “the robots showcased their ability to manipulate handkerchiefs, a signature element of Yangko dance“.

A friend sent me a link to the Taobao sales page for what seems to be the robots used in this performance. The link wouldn’t show me the full product list as I don’t have a user account there, but he also sent me a screenshot, which is below, along with a Google Translation. The prices per unit convert to approximately $69k and $90k USD.

A girls choir performed a folk song with elements relating to the Chinese space program, such as the moon, an astronaut and a space station, which were overlaid onto the broadcast. This news article has more information about the performers, although it does not really mention the space aspects.

(5) YOUNG ADULTS WRITE NOW. The Horror Writers Association blog today announced the 2024 recipients of the YAWN Endowment — Young Adults Write Now (YAWN).

This endowment is provided by the Horror Writers Association and is aimed at supporting teen writing programs in libraries as part of its ongoing dedication to furthering young adult literacy. We received a large number of excellent applications last year and are heartened by the number of libraries currently prioritizing teen writing programs.

The YAWN application period runs from August 1st to October 1st, with five recipients selected in October. Each recipient is awarded $250, to be put toward developing or supporting a teen writing program in their library. More about the endowment can be found on the Horror Writers Association’s website, via the Horror Scholarships page.

Libraries receiving funding will be able to use the monies for anything relating to their proposed or currently active writing program, including but not limited to: books (specifically young adult horror and books on writing), supplies, special events, publishing costs, guest speakers and instructors, additions to the collection, and operating expenses.

The recipients of the 2024 Young Adults Write Now Endowment are:

South Fayette Township Library (Pennsylvania)
San Benito County Free Library (California)
Wharton County Library (Texas)
Cuyahoga County Public Library, Garfield Heights Branch (Ohio)
Public Library of New London (Connecticut)

(6) KASEY AND JOE LANSDALE Q&A. The Horror Writers Association blog’s “Nuts & Bolts” series has added an “Interview With Kasey and Joe R. Lansdale”.

KASEY LANSDALE

Q: What marketing advice do you have for authors, especially in light of the changing social media landscape?

A: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Mailing list. Social platforms are too erratic. It doesn’t matter if you have a million followers if, let’s say for example, they ban your audience …

Q: Can you share any insights about publishing that many authors don’t know, but would benefit from knowing?

A: The cream does not rise to the top. The publishers in most cases pick their lead title and put most of their juice behind it, and if something else gets out, it’s by pure magic. There’s no formula or we would all be doing it. There are two kinds of publicists. The ones who shoot out to their mailing list and hope someone answers, and the ones who beat down doors and hope for answers. Unfortunately, the results are usually pretty on par with one another. But that’s not a defeat, that’s a call to action. That means that the author must tell the world about their books, and take the opportunities given to share it and themselves with the world.

(7) LAUREL AMBERDINE (1970-2025). Writer and editor Laurel Amberdine died January 21 at the age of 54. The SFWA Blog has published a tribute: “In Memoriam: Laurel Amberdine”.

Laurel Amberdine (1970–21 January 2025) was a writer, interviewer, and genre editor. She worked for Locus Magazine for ten years, and was an assistant editor for Lightspeed magazine.

Amberdine was known for her kind and thoughtful interviews, yet she also loved to write, both prose and poetry. Her short fiction story, “Airship Hope” was published by Daily Science Fiction in 2013, and in her 2018 essay “Science Fiction Saved My Life” (Uncanny Magazine), she discussed how her chronic illness and disability had affected her, how finding writing gave her purpose, and how privilege inherent in the industry limits voices that readers may need to hear. Amberdine wrote a young adult novel, Luminator, which made it far along in the publication process, as well as an adult science-fiction novel.

Amberdine was known for her kindness and warmth, rooted in her Catholic faith, and extended to all who she encountered….

(8) AL SARRANTONIO (1952-2025). Sff/h writer, editor and publisher Al Sarrantonio has died reported Chet Williamson on Facebook. Wikipedia has a detailed article about his career.

Al Sarrantonio in the Seventies. Photo by and copyright © Andrew Porter.

He began an editing career at a major New York publishing house in 1976. His first short fiction, “Ahead of the Joneses,” appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1979, and the following year he published 14 short stories. In 1982 he left publishing to become a full-time writer.

He established himself in the horror field with such much-anthologized stories as “Pumpkin Head”, “The Man With Legs”, “Father Dear,” “Wish”, and “Richard’s Head,” (all of which appear in his first short story collection, Toybox). “Richard’s Head” brought him his first Bram Stoker Award nomination.

Sarrantonio won a Bram Stoker Award in 2000 for his anthology 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense, and a Shirley Jackson Award in 2011 for the anthology Stories: All-New Tales (co-edited with Neil Gaiman; it also won an Audie). Both books also were finalists for the World Fantasy Award.

(9) JEANNOT SZWARC (1940-2025). The Guardian’s writeup about movie/TV director Jeannot Szwarc is almost harshly frank: “Jeannot Szwarc obituary”. “Director whose big screen credits include Jaws 2, Supergirl and Santa Claus: The Movie alongside a 50-year career in television.” He also directed Somewhere in Time.

…His blockbusters, though, were among the most maligned films of their age. When asked about Jaws 2, Szwarc said: “I do believe I deserve some credit for just pulling it off.”

The odds were not in his favour. He had less than a month to prepare when the picture’s original director, John Hancock, quit three weeks into production. Only 90 seconds of what Hancock had shot proved usable. At that point, Szwarc said, “It was the biggest disaster in the history of Universal. They had spent $10m, and they had nothing.”

An unfinished script, bad weather and a malfunctioning mechanical shark only added to Szwarc’s woes as an immovable release date loomed. He was under no illusions about the task at hand. “I knew it wasn’t going to be a cinematic masterpiece. All I went in with was knowing I had to make it scary, and that I had to finish it.”

The film, which features a scene in which a shark chomps on a sea rescue helicopter as it attempts to take off from water, was met with dismay by critics. Riding the wave of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 predecessor, however, it was still a hit, grossing $187m….

…His TV credits in the early 70s included Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man and more than a fifth of the episodes of the long-running macabre suspense series Night Gallery.

Among his television films was The Small Miracle (1973), which starred one of his heroes, the Italian neo-realist director Vittorio De Sica. “I told him I felt like an art student who had to instruct Michelangelo,” he said.

Szwarc made his big-screen debut in the same year with the Michael Crichton-scripted thriller Extreme Close-Up. He followed this with Bug (1975), a horror film about pyromaniac cockroaches, which became the swansong of the ingenious horror producer William Castle….

…Between 2003 and 2011, he returned to the Supergirl/DC Comics milieu by directing 14 episodes of Smallville, the television series about Superman’s younger years…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 28, 1973 — Carrie Vaughn, 52.

By Paul Weimer: Carrie Vaughn’s urban fantasy series, the Kitty Norville series, is probably very well known to you. A radio DJ turned accidental radio talk show host who is (at first secretly) a werewolf gets involved with other aspects of the slowly revealed supernatural community, bringing them out into the open and having the United States and the world come to terms with them. It’s as if the Masquerade (from White Wolf) was being slowly and steadily lifted, and for everyone all at once.

Even then and even now, that goes against the grain of a lot of Urban fantasy, which either has the supernatural always out and open, or following the Masquerade model. But a series that considers the problems werewolves, vampires and others have adapting to modern society–and modern society adapting to others? That’s a lovely sociological and anthropological twist. Those first few novels, as Kitty herself comes to terms with her secret coming out, are really strong and I think they hold up to this day.

And Norville is and was willing to expand the playground and consider–if supernatural creatures have always been around, what does that, what did that actually mean in historical terms. There’s some really lovely worldbuilding in her nuanced explorations of the idea.

But a reason why the Norville books also hold a strong place in my heart is that they are, again, some of the earliest books I was given ARCs to read for review (the first three as a matter of fact). Although urban fantasy (except for, say, Seanan McGuire) is not my power chord of reading SFF, the idea that a publisher would give me books if I would review them was a pretty heady feeling.

Still is.

I’ve read a couple of novels and work by Vaughn outside of the Kitty Norville books (After the Golden Age, written in that heady period where authors were writing original superhero novels not tied to Marvel or DC). But for me, it may be unfair, Vaughn’s work begins and ends with a DJ turned accidental social heroine.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Jerry King knows why the monsters aren’t in their old hiding place.
Reality Check has a Dickens update.
Cornered misses a friend. [Warning for amazing bad taste.]
Thatababy has DIY special effects.
The Argyle Sweater should not practice medicine. Even in Hyperborea.
Wumo witnesses – different planet, same complaint.

(12) INSIDE DOCTOR WHO. Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat tell what it’s like writing a different Doctor. Watch video at X.com.

(13) STOP THAT GARBAGE TRUCK! “Scans for the memories: why old games magazines are a vital source of cultural history – and nostalgia” explains the Guardian.

Before the internet, if you were an avid gamer then you were very likely to be an avid reader of games magazines. From the early 1980s, the likes of Crash, Mega, PC Gamer and the Official PlayStation Magazine were your connection with the industry, providing news, reviews and interviews as well as lively letters pages that fostered a sense of community. Very rarely, however, did anyone keep hold of their magazine collections. Lacking the cultural gravitas of music or movie publications, they were mostly thrown away. While working at Future Publishing as a games journalist in the 1990s, I watched many times as hundreds of old issues of SuperPlay, Edge and GamesMaster were tipped into skips for pulping. I feel queasy just thinking about it.

Because now, of course, I and thousands of other video game veterans have realised these magazines are a vital historical resource as well as a source of nostalgic joy. Surviving copies of classic mags are selling at a vast premium on eBay, and while the Internet Archive does contain patchy collections of scanned magazines, it is vulnerable to legal challenges from copyright holders.

Thankfully, there are institutions taking the preservation of games magazines seriously. Last week, the Video Game History Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation of games and their history, announced that from 30 January, it would be opening up its digital archive of out-of-print magazines to read and study online. So far 1,500 issues of mostly American games mags are available, as well as art books and other printed ephemera, but the organisation is busy scanning its entire collection. The digitised content will be fully tagged and searchable by word or phrase, so you’ll be able to easily track down the first mentions of, say, Minecraft, John Romero, or the survival horror genre….

(14) OH, THAT’S DIFFERENT. NEVER MIND. “An asteroid got deleted because it was actually Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster” says Astronomy.com.

On Jan. 2, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid, designated 2018 CN41. First identified and submitted by a citizen scientist, the object’s orbit was notable: It came less than 150,000 miles (240,000 km) from Earth, closer than the orbit of the Moon. That qualified it as a near-Earth object (NEO) — one worth monitoring for its potential to someday slam into Earth.

But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) issued an editorial notice: It was deleting 2018 CN41 from its records because, it turned out, the object was not an asteroid.

It was a car.

To be precise, it was Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster mounted to a Falcon Heavy upper stage, which boosted into orbit around the Sun on Feb. 6, 2018. The car — which had been owned and driven by Musk — was a test payload for the Falcon Heavy’s first flight….

(15) PREPARE FOR THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] See the Orchard Machinery Corporation’s imposing Hedgehog tree trimming machine hacking along to Zombie as covered by Bad Wolves. Could this be a subtle hint that we should prepare for the zombie apocalypse? If so, such a machine might come in handy.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Orchard Machinery Corporation (@omcshakermaker)

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Ersatz Culture, Prograft, Daniel Dern, Jim Janney, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/3/24 Krypton Through The Tulips

Posted on August 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GLASGOW POSTS WORLDCON CONVENTION GUIDE. Glasgow 2024’s Convention Guide is available for the public to download from this link. The guide is also available through the members portal. portal.glasgow2024.org

(2) TL;DR WORLDCON PROGRAM. For comparison, Scott Edelman has scanned the Discon II (1974) program – all four pages of it. See it on Facebook.

(3) SARAH J. MAAS BANNED IN UTAH SCHOOLS. “It’s official: These 13 books are now banned from all public schools in Utah” at the Salt Lake City Tribune. Six of the 13 titles were written by the same fantasy romance author, Sarah J. Maas. Another, Oryx & Crake, is by Margaret Atwood.

…The law, which went into effect July 1, requires that a book be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material” — pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code….

(4) HOMETOWN HERO. Texas Highways devotes a short sidebar to Austin-based horror novelist: “Author Gabino Iglesias Tackles Monsters and Myths”.

Following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico was in ruins: 95% of the island was without power, half the population didn’t have tap water, and there was at least $90 billion in damage.

That catastrophic moment of grief and wreckage is the setting of Gabino Iglesias’ latest, House of Bone and Rain, the follow-up to 2022’s The Devil Takes You Home. The latter earned the Austin-based author a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel—the only Latino writer to achieve the horror genre’s highest honor—as well as a movie deal with Sony.

For House of Bone’s protagonist, Gabe, and his childhood friends, death is omnipresent in the wake of the storm. But after one of their mothers is gunned down at a club, they begin to look for answers in an even more dangerous world of drug kingpins, gang brutality, ghosts, and Lovecraftian monsters. Inspired by a tragedy that happened in the author’s own life prior to his move to Texas in 2008, the gothic coming-of-age tale induces emotional gravity as the characters navigate the loss of home and youth.

“The inciting incident with the mother getting shot, that actually happened to me and my friends,” Iglesias says. “I think I started formulating that story in my head in the summer of 1999—because when I actually sat down to write it, it was all there 20 years later.”…

(5) BBC SCRUBS ANOTHER WHO ITEM. “UK Stabbings Suspect Previously Appeared In Doctor Who Charity Advert” – Deadline has the story.

The BBC has removed a six-year-old Doctor Who charity advert from all its platforms, following the discovery that it starred the teenager who has been named as the suspect in this week’s Southport stabbings.

Axel Rudakubana, now aged 17, has been charged with three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder following the attack in northern England on Monday July 29, in which three young girls died, and several were left critically injured in a multiple stabbing that occurred in a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

The Times newspaper reports that the 2018 video sees Rudakubana, then aged 11, emerge from the famous Tardis in a brown trench coat and tie, similar to clothes worn by the show’s former star David Tennant.

(6) HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION ELECTIONS. Members will vote in the 2024 Horror Writers Association Elections for Officers and Trustees between August 19 and August 25. There is only one announced candidate for the offices of President and Secretary. Five candidates will vie for three Trustee positions.

The elected officers shall hold their respective offices for terms of two years, beginning on November 1 and ending on October 31.

FOR PRESIDENT

Angela Yuriko Smith

FOR SECRETARY

Becky Spratford

FOR BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Linda Addison
Patrick Barb
James Chambers
Ellen Datlow
Cynthia Pelayo

(7) INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER. In “The Word-Hoard: Clark Ashton Smith” at Muse from the Orb, Maya St. Clair shares a list of exotic words she learned by reading Smith’s fiction.

Clark Ashton Smith was a weird fiction writer and poet of the 30s, a multitalented storyteller-artist-sculptor-craftsman from northern California. Initially acclaimed as a local poet and wunderkind, his fantastic poetry and stories eventually found success in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. Mostly an autodidact, Smith lived with his family in an out-of-the-way cabin and did not pursue more than a middle school education. Instead, he drew from inspirations — Baudelaire, Poe — and resources at hand — the Oxford Dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica — to create his trademark maximalist style. His work attracted the attention of a fellow “obscure companion in the realms of the macabre,” H.P. Lovecraft, and the two maintained a spirited correspondence until Lovecraft’s death. (Smith sent Lovecraft a carved dinosaur bone.)¹ Robert E. Howard likewise thought that Smith was excellent, and wrote Smith that he would sacrifice a finger “for the ability to make words flame and burn as you do.”

(8) CHEATERS EVER PROSPER. Literary Hub asks, “Did You Know That Poetry Used to Be an Actual Olympic Sport?”. Truth! And did you know there was something shady about the first winners? Also truth!

At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe easily won the decathlon in the first modern version of the event. The grueling, ten-part feat was not the only addition to the burgeoning modern games. Other events that debuted at the 1912 Olympics included architecture, sculpture, painting, music… and literature.

… The artistic jury would “only consider subjects not previously published, exhibited or performed, and having some direct connection with sport.” The [1912] Stockholm literature competition had fewer than ten entrants, but included Marcel Boulenger, a French novelist who won a bronze medal in fencing (foil) at the 1900 Olympics, French Symbolist Paul Adam, and Swiss playwright René Morax. The gold was awarded to two Germans, Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach, for their work “Ode to Sport.” The jury was effusive in their commendations, calling the piece “far and away the winner,” because it “praises athletics in a form that is both literate and athletic.” The narrative ideas “are arranged, classified, and expressed in a series that is flawless in logic and harmony.”

Yet Hohrod and Eschbach never existed. They were pseudonyms for Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who had just won the very competition he organized….

(9) SOMETIMES THEY DO GET FURRY. The Guardian echoes the question “’Why are people always pointing the finger at furries?’: inside the wild world of the furry fandom”.

The first thing that hits you when you press through the revolving doors of the Hyatt Regency hotel and convention centre in Rosemont, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago, is the wall of sound. A cacophony of laughter and karaoke, pumping bass and gleeful, shouting voices. The second is the odour. The air is thick with the smell of sweat, coffee, alcohol, baby powder and deodorant. But the other senses fade out when your eyes start to process what they’re seeing. Because the thing that makes entering this lobby so sensationally surreal – the kind of experience you usually have to lick rare Amazonian frogs to achieve – is what people are wearing. In December 2023, I attended the Hyatt Regency for a convention called Midwest FurFest. It’s a gathering, one of the biggest in the world, for an often-misunderstood community known as “furries”, which is why about half the crowd – and there are nearly 15,000 people here this weekend – are dressed head to toe in massive, flamboyantly colourful, furry animal costumes….

(10) MAVERICK KONG. Maverick Theater, a small 75-seat venue in Fullerton, CA will present King Kong as a stage play through August 25.

Back for its 5th year! An original Maverick Theater stage adaptation of the 1933 film by Merian C. Cooper. The play is based on the Delos W. Lovelace novel, which is the same storyline and dialogue from the original film with only minor changes and additions. The overall show will have a lighthearted tongue-in-cheek feel but all the characters will be played honest and as true to the original; even the man in the monkey suit.

The Maverick Theater’s special effects team known as “Maverick Light & Magic” will take on the beauty and the beast adventure using a live compositing* process of multiple video sources. Similar to the process Willis O’Brien used to create the original King Kong. Actors will be interacting with live rear screen projections to create the illusion of Kong.

(11) MISSION: OLYMPOSSIBLE. “Tom Cruise to rappel off Stade de France in Olympics closing ceremony” reports the Guardian.

He’s scaled the world’s tallest building, dangled mid-air from a plane, set records for holding his breath underwater and, when he broke his foot shooting a rooftop parkour scene, just kept on running.

Now Tom Cruise, the 62-year-old movie star committed to a relentless dice with death, will take on his most high-profile hair-raiser to date: rappelling 42 metres (137ft) from the roof of the Stade de France as part of the Olympic Games closing ceremony this month.

The live broadcast will then reportedly cut to prerecorded footage of Cruise zipping through the streets of Paris on a motorbike, then on to a plane bound for California, clutching the Olympic flag all the while.

When he arrives stateside, he disembarks the plane by chucking himself out of the window, before skydiving down to the Hollywood sign. He then passes the flag to assorted athletes, including a cyclist, skateboarder and volleyball player, as they relay it round Los Angeles – the host city for the next games in 2028.

Cruise has been shooting the new Mission: Impossible movie in London and Paris since the new year, and sightings of him speeding around the French capital earlier this summer had been credited to that production.

Likewise, residents of Los Angeles are now so accustomed to his fondness for near-lethal stunts that the sight of Cruise falling from a huge height on to on the Hollywood sign in March raised few eyebrows.

It is believed the actor himself approached the International Olympic Committee and suggested the show-stopping sequence himself, having previously helped carry the torch through LA as part of its relay en route to Athens in 2004….

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 3, 1904 – Clifford D. Simak. (Died 1988.)

By Paul Weimer: The rural science fiction writer.

A lot of the science fiction writers of his time and age were big city enthusiasts and wrote their science fiction presents and futures extolling the city and its virtues, be it on Earth or another planet, or even planetwide cities.

Clifford Simak was different, very different. Much of his science fiction and fantasy could be considered rural, or pastoral, and my reading of him always seemed to come back to those liminal spaces between the civilized world and the wilderness. Themes of self-reliance, and yet community with others living in that same sort of space. An essential paradox that describes rural life…and Simak’s fiction.

And of course, always, Dogs. Aside from the rural life and setting of many of his stories, dogs, sometimes normal, often superintelligent or sentient, pop up everywhere. The themes of what dogs mean to humans: intelligence, companionship, loyalty and fidelity, are themes that one can find in Simak’s work whether or not there is an actual dog in it.

There are many fine Simak stories and novels I’ve read and enjoyed, from the “Big Front Yard”, one of the best first contact alien stories out there, to the strange and surreal “Shakespeare’s Planet”, “The Goblin Reservation”, and many more. Way Station, with its immortal caretaker of a rest stop for interstellar tourists, is particularly fun.

The one Simak story that stands above the novels, novellas and others for me is “Desertion”, part of the City cycle of future history stories that he wrote. “Desertion” is the one set on Jupiter, as the commander of a base around Jupiter is confronted with the fact that everyone he has sent out onto Jupiter, transformed for the purpose into Jovians…has disappeared and never come back. Our protagonist, X, and his dog, eventually come face to face with the stunning truth of what happened to their comrades. It is powerfully moving, as is much of Simak’s work.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit is unsafe in space.
Pardon my Planet surprises with what was in second place.
Rubes prefers the stoned version.
Tom Gauld might be saying the opposite of “Death will not release you”.

My cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/NFCwK08Je0
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) August 3, 2024

(14) SHELL GAME. “Un oeuf is enough: have we had our fill of movie Easter eggs?” asks the Guardian. No, of course not, they were just kidding.

…Easter eggs, that is, those fan-centric surprises with which the modern blockbuster is sprinkled, or in this case cluttered.

They take many forms: unpublicised cameos, in-jokes that only franchise devotees would clock, surprise scenes stowed away in the end credits, abundant references to other movies, even allusions to controversies on the sets of other movies. The Easter eggs in Deadpool & Wolverine belong to all these categories and more. There are so many, in fact, that it’s tempting to ask: which came first, the movie or the eggs?

Whatever the style of Easter egg, the point is the same: to encourage, flatter and reward the deepest possible level of fan engagement and to keep completists coming back for more….

…Given the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, Easter eggs are likely to remain a staple item on the menu. “I grew up watching Wayne’s World, which operated on much the same lines,” says [film critic] McCahill. “But I fear, after Deadpool & Wolverine, every big Hollywood movie is now just going to be a series of meme-able moments. Directors should be storytellers, not winkers. And as with their chocolate equivalents, Easter eggs should be consumed in moderation.”

(15) SOUNDS LIKE THE BOSS. “Hank Azaria, voice from the Simpsons, fronts a Bruce Springsteen cover band” is interviewed by NPR’s Weekend Edition.

SCOTT SIMON: But that’s really Hank Azaria, the voice behind many characters from the long-running “Simpsons” – also the pharaoh in “Night At The Museum” and Jim Brockmire, the plaid-clad sports announcer. And he’s now the presence behind Hank Azaria & The EZ Street Band, a Bruce Springsteen cover band that debuted this past week at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. The six-time Emmy award-winning actor joins us now from New York. Thanks so much for being with us….

(16) WITH FRICKIN’ LASERS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “A $500 Open Source Tool Lets Anyone Hack Computer Chips With Lasers” according to WIRED.

IN MODERN MICROCHIPS, where some transistors have been shrunk to less than a 10th of the size of a Covid-19 virus, it doesn’t take much to mess with the minuscule electrical charges that serve as the 0s and 1s underpinning all computing. A few photons from a stray beam of light can be enough to knock those electrons out of place and glitch a computer’s programming. Or that same optical glitching can be achieved more purposefully—say, with a very precisely targeted and well timed blast from a laser. Now that physics-bending feat of computer exploitation is about to become available to far more hardware hackers than ever before.

At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas next week, Sam Beaumont and Larry “Patch” Trowell, both hackers at the security firm NetSPI, plan to present a new laser hacking device they’re calling the RayV Lite. Their tool, whose design and component list they plan to release open source, aims to let anyone achieve arcane laser-based tricks to reverse engineer chips, trigger their vulnerabilities, and expose their secrets—methods that have historically only been available to researchers inside of well-funded companies, academic labs, and government agencies….

…Their goal in creating and releasing the designs for that ultra-cheap chip-hacking gadget, they say, is to make clear that laser-based exploitation techniques (known as laser fault injection or laser logic state imaging) are far more possible than many hardware designers—including clients for whom Beaumont and Trowell sometimes perform security testing at NetSPI—believe them to be. By demonstrating how inexpensively those methods can now be pulled off, they hope to both put a new tool in the hands of DIY hackers and researchers worldwide, and to push hardware manufacturers to secure their products against an obscure but surprisingly practical form of hacking….

(17) WILL SPACEX BAIL OUT BOEING? Futurism voices strong opinions about this: “It’s Sounding Like Boeing’s Starliner May Have Completely Failed”.

It looks like NASA officials might be seeing the writing on the wall for the very troubled Boeing Starliner, which has marooned two astronauts up in space for almost two months due to technical issues.

An unnamed “informed” source told Ars Technica that there’s a greater than 50 percent probability that the stranded astronauts will end up leaving the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon capsule, with another unnamed person telling the news outlet that the scenario is highly likely.

NASA officials are more cagey about what’s happening on the record, a marked contrast from previous weeks when they expressed confidence in the Starliner’s ability to safely bring back the astronauts.

“NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible,” NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars. “No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning.”…

… Many signs are now pointing towards SpaceX rescuing the stranded astronauts, according to Ars. These signs include the space agency giving more than a quarter million dollars to SpaceX for a “SPECIAL STUDY FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE,” and SpaceX actively training for the likely situation of the company sending a Dragon capsule to the space station to bring the astronauts home.

If SpaceX does get the green light, expect the Starliner project to be shoved into the proverbial dumpster, according to Ars‘ analysis.

It would be a bad look all around, because it would mean the American government had funneled a total of $5.8 billion into malfunctioning junk.

If this scenario happens, with Starliner not deemed safe enough for human travel, we hope politicians and others investigate what went wrong, given that SpaceX has managed to build the immensely more reliable Dragon capsule at 50 percent less cost than Boeing’s spacecraft….

(18) PITCH MEETING. Ryan George has to deal with a lot of questions in “Superman II Pitch Meeting”.

Released in 1980, “Superman II” is a sequel to the super popular Superman I, and it was also followed by Superman III. They really nailed the numbers on these. Superman 2 continues the Man of Steel’s adventures as he battles Kryptonian villains including General Zod amidst the growing popularity of superhero films during the late 70s and early 80s. Superman II definitely raises some questions though. Like where did Marlon Brando go? Why didn’t Lex Luthor just shut his lights? Why are snake bites so painful? Why did Superman have to give up his powers and then get them back so easily? What was with that cellophane S? To answer all these questions, check out the pitch meeting that led to Superman II.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon played “Password with Elmo and Cookie Monster”. Bird is the word…

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

Pixel Scroll 7/8/24 Listen, Billy Pixel’s Come UnScrolled In File

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) MAAS AND YARROS DOMINATE THE MARKET. “With Fantasy on Fire, Print Book Sales Are Catching Up to 2023” reports Publishers Weekly.

…Results for the first half of 2024 leave no question about what is driving sales: adult fantasy sales skyrocketed 85.2% over the first six months of 2023 thanks to a huge increase in interest in romantasy. Combined with increases of about 20% each in the science fiction and suspense/thriller areas, unit sales of adult fiction rose 6.3% in the first half of 2024. Sales of graphic novels continued to recede from record highs in 2022, falling 16.1% in this year’s first six months.

Books by Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros are leading the fantasy charge. Yarros’s Iron Flame and Fourth Wing combined to sell about 1.1 million copies, while Maas had seven books selling in big numbers, led by her latest, A Court of Thorns and Roses, which sold more than 740,000 copies. Her seven current bestsellers combined sold more than three million copies…

(2) THE EXTRA FILES. [Item by Steven French.] David Duchovny answers some readers’ questions in the Guardian: “David Duchovny: ‘I’m not just throwing on a kilt willy-nilly’”

Do you believe? TurangaLeela2

The proposition that Earth is the only planet in the universe that has managed to sustain intelligent life seems an impossibility. On the other hand, do I believe we’ve been contacted or are in contact with aliens? I don’t believe that, no. How often do I get asked if they are going to reboot The X-Files? I mean, that’s the default question people like to ask. If I was going to do it, I’d let y’all know. You wouldn’t have to ask me. I wouldn’t keep it a secret. Nowadays, I think people believe in conspiracies we never would have aired because they were just too stupid.

(3) WHAT COMES OVER THE DIGITAL TRANSOM. Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas belts out “The Ballad of the Slush Reader: What I’ve Learned (And What I Want to Know) about Reading Slush” at the SFWA Blog.

… I’m not the self-appointed slush reader representative of the short fiction genre publications, nor do I pretend to be one. I write these lines, first and foremost, from my own brief but fulfilling experience as a slush reader for Clarkesworld Magazine, as well as from what I’ve gathered in conversations with friends, who are also part of editorial teams. This essay is unapologetically, a personal generalization that hopes to start a discussion somewhere, sometime….

Communication is a two-way affair. Editors should be clear about the specific kind of commitment expected from slush readers: amount of stories read, level of detail in recommendations’ comments, etc. It is expected from them to be approachable and open to answering our questions on submission guidelines, as well as offering guidance on handling problematic stories, protecting author privacy, and giving advice on trusting our editorial instincts. First readers should write concise, unambiguous notes for the submissions we read and share any concerns we may have about them. We shouldn’t ghost our editors or make unilateral decisions based on our interpretation of the magazine’s guidelines if something is not clear in them. We’re members of a team, after all.

As the first ones to interact with a submission, we must treat the authors’ privacy with respect. A little decency goes a long way. Markets have the responsibility to delineate confidentiality specifications for the team and make sure authors know they exist. I believe that having better practices during recruitment, selection, and training can help identify and avoid the few people who might try to misuse the authors’ private information before they can even have access to it.

We’re supposed to read slush to support and advocate for other people’s work, but that doesn’t mean that we have power over them or that they owe us anything. We shouldn’t even think about rejecting a story on the basis of an author we don’t like, or recommend our friend’s work just because we know each other. We’re professionals. We do this for the stories, for the end readers. At Clarkesworld, for example, I don’t make final decisions but suggestions that have to be reviewed and approved by a senior member of staff.

(4) WILL MERGER AFFECT THE FEDERATION? “Paramount Global Officially Agrees To Skydance Merger, With Potential Big Impact On Star Trek’s Future” – and TrekMovie.com tries to foresee what that impact might be.

Today, Paramount Global announced that Shari Redstone’s National Amusements (which owns a controlling share of Paramount) will be sold to David Ellison’s Skydance Media and RedBird Capital for $2.4 billion, leading to a $4.5 billion merger of Paramount Global with Skydance. The deal will offer voting and non-voting shareholders a premium on their stock as well as inject billions into “New Paramount” coffers to help pay off debt. A new leadership team has been announced, with Skydance’s David Ellison to be Chairman and Chief Executive Officer with RedBird exec (and former NBCUniversal chief) Jeff Shell named as president….

…Since the 1960s when Desilu was purchased by Paramount, the Star Trek franchise has seen its way through multiple corporate changes. It is too early to know what this announcement means for the Star Trek franchise, but this deal was seen as one of the better potential outcomes. Unlike other potential bidders, Skydance is committed to keeping Paramount relatively intact, avoiding any potential division of the Star Trek rights that occurred during the Viacom/CBS corporate split years before they were remerged in 2019. The most positive indication for Star Trek is that Skydance previously partnered with Paramount on the production of the last two Trek feature films, and they were committed to backing the next movie currently in development. Skydance CEO David Ellison, who will run the new Paramount, was credited as an executive producer for both Into Darkness and Beyond. These movies were mentioned by Ellison in a call with investors this morning….

…During today’s call, incoming Paramount president Jeff Shell talked about seeing Paramount+ as part of an “ultimate bundle.” He also indicated they will be looking at more licensing deals and “windowing” strategies for Paramount-owned content, which could lead to Star Trek streaming originals showing up beyond Paramount+. Today’s investor presentation noted Star Trek as one of the key franchises for the new Paramount, including a plan to “reevaluate” franchises to fuel a “powerful and repeatable IP ecosystem.” Today Ellison also talked about unifying franchises across TV, film and interactive media, which could potentially lead to a more comprehensive Star Trek Universe….

(5) HE MADE IT SO. “Patrick Stewart Is Ready To Engage” at the Washington Free Beacon.

…Stewart represents a fascinating mix of working-class ethics, having grown up poor but hard-working, and upper-class aesthetics, which he refined first in amateur plays and then in acting schools. This occasionally led him to mildly awkward encounters. My favorite story in his memoir comes on the set of Dune, where Stewart (who was playing warrior-poet Gurney Halleck) was introduced to the musician Sting.

“Do you … play in a group?” Stewart asked.

“Yes, with The Police,” Sting replied.

“I broke into a broad grin,” Stewart writes. “‘You play in a police band?’ I said. ‘Wow! How marvelous!’ I have never fully recovered from the sheer embarrassment I suffered when word got out on the set about my exchange with one of the world’s biggest rock stars.”…

(6) LANTHIMOS TURNS TO SFF. According to The Mary Sue, “Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s Next Is a Sci-Fi Comedy”. Lanthimos’ 2023 picture Poor Things got a lot of awards attention this year.

… The movie, titled Bugonia, is set for a November 7, 2025, release date in the US. Jesse Plemons, who featured in Lanthimos’ recent release Kinds of Kindness, has been announced as the co-lead alongside Stone….

…A fifth collaboration between Stone and Lanthimos, the film is an adaptation of the 2003 South Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet!, directed by Jang Joon-hwan and starring Shin Ha-kyun and Yun-shik Baek. The plot follows two conspiracy-minded men who kidnap the powerful CEO of a major corporation, assured that she is an extraterrestrial being determined to end Earth’s existence. It remains to be seen whether Lanthimos’ rendition will be similar to the original or whether he tweaks the story to introduce some of his own elements….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 8, 1951 — Anjelica Huston, 73. The first role that I clearly remember Anjelica Huston from was as Mortica Addams in The Addams Family thirty-three years ago. She was every bit was ghoulishly fascinating as was Raul Julia as Gomez Addams. She inhabited that role as if she’d been born to play it. A perfect couple they were.

It’s worth noting that she always had a ghostly glow around the eyes, which became most noticeable when she was standing or lying in dim light. Bela Lugosi in 1931’s Dracula had the same effect. That meant all were her scenes were filmed with a light in her face.

So being Morticia required Huston to wear a truly tight dress on top of an already tight corset to give her the character’s distinctive, slim silhouette. (Director Barry Sonnenfeld aimed for a cartoon-like figure, so hence that metal corset which restricted her movements and caused quite severe headaches. She reported that she gleefully burned all of the dresses when shooting finished.)

In addition, she had to wear custom makeup to lighten her skin to create the look of Morticia, have her hair painfully scraped so that she could wear a wig and then on top of all this, had to wear regular makeup, fake nails and eyelash extensions to complete the look.

Despite all of this I think that, Huston’s portrayal of Morticia captured both warmth and macabre humor. She was a perfect mother to two rather unusual children, and a loving wife to Raul.

She’d reprise her role in Addams Family Values. The first film was nominated for a Hugo at MagiCon, the second at ConAdian.

Her first genre role, and yes I’ve seen it but I’ve honestly long since forgotten everything about it, was in Ice Pirates as Maida, one of the pirates. I really need to show you what she was outfitted there as it is, errrr, well, I think kind of silly.

So what else did Angelica appear in? Good question. She would appear in The Witches based off of the Roald Dahl work as the Grand High Witch. Her makeup here is a work of art so here it is.

Yes, I know the film has fallen into let us say disrepute among certain groups, but I still like it.

I’m not seeing anything else this genre but she did one interesting animated work, one of which I wish to point out which is then let me spell this correctly in English A Cat in Paris. In French it sounds oh so much better as Une vie de chat. A cat’s life. Black cat with red stripes leads a double life. During the night, he accompanies a car burglar named Nico (who calls him Mr. Cat), who performs heists to steal jewels. She voices the English version of Claudine.

She’s in John Wick, Chapter 3, Parabellum as The Director about which the John Wick wiki helpfully says “The Director is a crime lord and leader of the New York branch of the Ruska Roma. She is also the adoptive mother of John Wick and a mentor at the Tarkovsky Theater.”

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Pearls Before Swine finds a problem next door.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal anticipates the next religion.
Rubes learns what monsters want.
Heart of the City has a crossover, or at least passing-through.

(9) RINGS OF POWER WILL BIND COMIC-CON. “‘Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Season 2 To Conquer San Diego Comic-Con” says Deadline.

This year at SDCC, ahead of the series’ Season 2 premiere on August 29, the streamer will host an exclusive press and influencer reception by invitation only on Thursday, July 25, in San Diego. It will be followed by The Rings of Power panel in Hall H on Friday from 11:05 a.m.-12:15 p.m. featuring the series’ showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay as well as cast giving fans a inside look at Season 2 in Middle-earth.

Afterward, at 1:45 p.m. at Venue 808 in San Diego, a fan meet-and-greet with cast will be held in conjunction with the official Lord of the Rings fan site TORn (TheOneRing.net). On display will be a curated collection of Season 2’s costumes and props….

(10) MAD, YOU KNOW. “Americana meets meshuggeneh at a museum exhibit about MAD magazine” – Jewish Telegraphic Agency takes you there.

There’s a delightful “what if” moment at the start of “What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine,” a new exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum here.

In 1964, MAD commissioned Rockwell himself to paint a portrait of Alfred E. Neuman, the humor magazine’s gap-toothed mascot, as he might have looked in real life. Correspondence featured in the exhibit suggests that Rockwell — grand master of gentle, folksy, even cornball Americana — was close to signing on with what MAD called its “usual gang of idiots”: goofball masters of sophomoric, anti-establishment satire.

In the end, Rockwell turned down the offer. “I think I better back out of this one,” he wrote. “After talking with you, and my wife who has a lot more sense than I have, I feel that making a more realistic definitive portrait just wouldn’t do. I hate to be a quitter, but I’m afraid we would all get in a mess.”

We didn’t lose just a marriage of comic sensibilities, but of ethnic ones: the “goyish” and the Jewish, mid-20th century style. Rockwell’s world is full of farmers and fishermen, country folk and small-town shopkeepers. MAD seemed to have been born on the Lower East Side, come of age in the Bronx, and found its voice somewhere between Brooklyn and Broadway….

(11) WORLDS WITHIN MURPHY’S LAW. Feeling mellow? Let’s fix that. The Mary Sue presents “The 10 Best Dystopian Novels, Ranked”.

…Authors have dreamed about all the countless ways the future can go wrong and will go wrong, so much so that a new genre was born from the collective unease: dystopian fiction. These novels are the worst—meaning they’re the best in their field…

This one’s new to me:

6. The Giver

The Giver [by Lois Lowry] may seem like a utopia on the surface, but it’s a dystopia like all the other cities on this list. Set in a peaceful society where people’s bad memories of the past are wiped away, only one person known as the Receiver of Memory is privy to the secrets of the human race. In order to maintain peace, the elders of this society eliminate the free will of everyone else. A good idea on paper? Not even in the pages of this book. You’ll soon find out why.

(12) SHIFTING GEARS. Ever heard that phrase, “Stop the Earth, I want to get off!”? Well, who knew — “Earth’s core has slowed so much it’s moving backward, scientists confirm. Here’s what it could mean” at WSVN.

Deep inside Earth is a solid metal ball that rotates independently of our spinning planet, like a top whirling around inside a bigger top, shrouded in mystery.

This inner core has intrigued researchers since its discovery by Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann in 1936, and how it moves — its rotation speed and direction — has been at the center of a decades-long debate. A growing body of evidence suggests the core’s spin has changed dramatically in recent years, but scientists have remained divided over what exactly is happening — and what it means.

… One promising model proposed in 2023 described an inner core that in the past had spun faster than Earth itself, but was now spinning slower. For a while, the scientists reported, the core’s rotation matched Earth’s spin. Then it slowed even more, until the core was moving backward relative to the fluid layers around it.

At the time, some experts cautioned that more data was needed to bolster this conclusion, and now another team of scientists has delivered compelling new evidence for this hypothesis about the inner core’s rotation rate. Research published June 12 in the journal Nature not only confirms the core slowdown, it supports the 2023 proposal that this core deceleration is part of a decades-long pattern of slowing down and speeding up…

(13) RASMUSSEN Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] An interview with astrophysicist Seven Rasmussen who has published in Clarkesworld under the pen name C.M. Fields: “’All things that wander in the heavens’: how I swapped my ivory tower for the world of science fiction” in Nature.

Through golden hive minds, dreaming androids and interstellar alien worlds, astrobiologist and speculative science-fiction author Seven Rasmussen explores humanity within the unfamiliar and strange. Rasmussen writes short stories that often feature space and the distant future — topics that her work as an astrobiologist at Tacoma Community College in Washington often touches on. Her debut non-fiction book, Life in Seven Numbers: The Drake Equation Revealed, is due to be published in June 2025. The book explores the seven variables of the Drake Equation, which estimates the number of intelligent, communicating civilizations in our galaxy.

Rasmussen spoke to Nature about writing science fiction as a scientist, her experience as a community-college professor and the importance of storytelling in science…

(14) WITCH WAY IS UP. “Agatha All Along Trailer: Kathryn Hahn Returns as WandaVision Witch” – The Hollywood Reporter sets the scene.

…A spinoff series from Disney+’s 2021 show WandaVision, Agatha All Along hails from creator Jac Schaeffer and premieres on the streaming service Sept. 18 with the first two episodes….

…Hahn reprises her WandaVision role as Agatha, who finds herself without her powers after a teen breaks her from a spell and urges her to attempt a dangerous gauntlet of trials known as Witches’ Road.

“I miss the glory days,” Hahn says in the trailer. “She took every bit of power I had, and I can be that witch again.”

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Alan Becker, creator of 2023’s “Animation vs Math”, which starts with simple arithmetical concepts and quickly devolves into an all-out battle with lasers and mecha, has done it again. “Animation vs Geometry” begins with the concept of the line segment and somehow becomes a thrilling chase scene with a giant monster from beyond reality.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Danny Sichel, Daniel Dern, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 2/27/24 It’s Scrolls And Pixels I Recall, I Really Don’t Know Files At All

Posted on February 27, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) BEN YALOW OFF LA IN 2026 BID. LA in 2026 Worldcon bid chair Joyce Lloyd told File 770 today, “I can confirm that Ben Yalow is no longer a member of the bid committee.”

Craig Miller, a director of the nonprofit, also said in a comment here that Yalow has resigned from SCIFI, Inc., the parent organization to the L.A. in 2026 Bid. And that Yalow is not going to be on the L.A. 2026 Worldcon Committee.

(2) SOUND OFF. Kristine Kathryn Rusch reacts to “Findaway And Corporate Rights Grabs” on Patreon.

…Does that mean that after next week, you will find my work on Findaway? Um, no. You will not. As a friend of mine said, they’ve shown their true colors. Musicians have had trouble with Spotify for years and these are Spotify-inspired changes.

Spotify bought Findaway in 2022, paying about $123 million dollars. At the time, Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, told investors that he was “confident that audiobooks will deliver the kind of earnings that investors are looking for, with profit margins north of 40 percent.”

Over the past 18 months or so, Spotify has tinkered with Findaway in a variety of ways, mostly to do with the way that they’re paying content providers. Then this new TOS rights grab, which is not unexpected. In fact, it’s right on time….

(3) VERSUS INJUSTICE. Reckoning publisher Michael J. DeLuca reacts to the 2023 Hugo disaster, then goes beyond, in his post “On Ongoing Prejudice in the SFF Community and What Is to Be Done”. (Or go straight to DeLuca’s “original, uncut and expletive-laden version” here: “Do the Right Thing: A Hugo Rant” at The Mossy Skull.)

….We perceive the dangerous potential, as daily worse things seem to come out about the behavior of a Hugo admin committee responsible for hurting so many great authors and the entire fandom of China—not to mention individual humans in their immediate vicinity—of writing them off as irrevocably evil outliers and therefore not representative of problems in our field. We don’t want this latest crisis to overshadow the previous, ongoing crisis or the one before that. That the Hugo committee has provided a scapegoat to whom consequences can be applied cannot be allowed to obscure the fact that, for one glaring example, the insidious shutting-out of Palestinian voices is still going on. There are so many compounded crises, anyone can be forgiven for not addressing every one all the time loud enough so nobody else forgets. Individually, we must choose one injustice at a time to address, with our voices, our donations, our votes, because otherwise we’ll all implode from the pressure. But we can’t let the latest injustice blot out the rest.

How do individual people get to act this terribly? They get encouraged. If they’re entitled white men, that encouragement need amount to nothing more than looking the other way. How do individual people get encouraged to be better? By positive peer pressure. By example.

The antidote to bureaucratic power-clutching and uninterrogated fascist creep, like the problem, is manifold. We need juried awards with juries of accountable, well-intentioned people empaneled by accountable, well-intentioned people. The Ignyte awards are one such. So are the Shirleys. Support them, care about them, pay attention to who wins. Our fellow Detroit-based indie press Atthis Arts bent over backwards this past year rescuing an anthology of Ukrainian SFF, Embroidered Worlds, from the slag heap. Pay attention to what they’re doing. Lift them up. We need magazines like Strange Horizons (who published a Palestinian special issue in 2020), Fiyah, Clarkesworld (who have long been in the vanguard of championing translated work and translators), Omenana, and khōréō (their year 4 fundraiser ends 2/29). We need magazines whose editors and staff are actively listening to, seeking out, boosting, celebrating, paying—and translating, paying, and celebrating translators of—Chinese, Taiwanese, Palestinian, Yemeni, Ukrainian, Russian, Israeli, Indigenous, Aboriginal, Congolese, Nigerian, disabled, neurodivergent, queer, and trans voices. Do we in that litany miss anybody currently getting oppressed and shut out? Undoubtedly. This work is unending. We choose to keep at it.

The Hugo admins aren’t the only ones failing at this. The PEN Awards have recently been actively lifting up pro-genocide voices and suppressing Palestinian voices. A story we published, “All We Have Left Is Ourselves” by Oyedotun Damilola Muees, won a PEN Award for emerging writers in 2021. How can the administrators of an award designed specifically to remedy the way the publishing establishment has systematically ignored marginalized voices side with imperialism? There’s an open letter calling the PEN organization to task for this. Reckoning is among those who have signed it….

(4) ROMANTASY. Vox explores “How Sarah J. Maas became romantasy’s reigning queen”.

… Within the stories themselves, Maas’s worldbuilding is full of hat tips to her predecessors. In A Court of Thorn and Roses, the faerie land is called Prythian, a nod to Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. In Prythian, faeries use a form of teleportation called “winnowing,” and their explanation of it will be familiar to anyone who loved Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. “Think of it as … two different points on a piece of cloth,” Maas writes (very much her ellipses). “Winnowing … it’s like folding that cloth so the two spots align.” If you’ve read the classics of YA fantasy before, you’ll recognize the sampling and remixing she is doing here.

Part of the pleasure of reading Maas is seeing these familiar YA fantasy references lie cheek by jowl with the tropes of romance novels. In A Court of Mist and Fury, the second volume of the series, two lovers who have not yet admitted their feelings for each other find themselves forced by cruel circumstance to fake date. Later, they end up at an inn with only one bed to spare, not once but twice. Across ACOTAR, Maas’s protagonist, Feyre, is torn between two boys. One is blond and sunny; one is dark-haired and brooding; both are impossibly beautiful, rich, and powerful; both begin as Feyre’s enemies….

(5) CHESTBURSTERS, MUPPETS, AND A BLACK HOLE, OH MY! Hugo Book Club Blog calls 1980 “The Ascendancy of Science Fiction Cinema (Hugo Cinema 1980)”.

In each year from 1970 to 1975, fewer than five of the top-30 movies (which could only be seen in cinemas at that time) could even remotely be considered genre works. By 1979, just two years after Star Wars, most of the top grossing movies were science fiction.

When the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation began in 1958, there had been concerns raised about whether or not there could be sufficient SFF movies worthy of consideration. Several times between 1958 and 1978, fans voted to present no award because they were dissatisfied with the cinematic fare on offer. That would never happen again.

After decades as a marginal cinematic genre, science fiction was in its ascendancy.

Most of the movies on the 1980 Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo have withstood the test of time: The Muppet Movie, Time After Time, Star Trek The Motion Picture, and Alien remain well-loved today. Only Disney’s The Black Hole stands out as being one we thought was unworthy of Hugo Awards consideration … and even it has some charm to it….

(6) GODZILLA MINUS ONE LIVE REVIEW. Artist Bob Eggleton and Erin Underwood will review Godzilla Minus One live on YouTube on February 29 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. (YouTube link.)

Join a special live movie review on YouTube of Godzilla Minus One with award winning science fiction artist Bob Eggleton, whose past work on Godzilla imagery has earned him love from fans around the world. Godzilla Minus One is the newest Japanese remake of the iconic monster who has captured our hearts ever since its original release in 1954. The newest film in the Godzilla genre features post war Japan when the country is still trying to recover, and “a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb.”

Bob Eggleton: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobeggleton; Bob Eggleton has won 9 Hugo Awards, and various other important awards for his art over the last 30 years of his career. He is a fan of Godzilla and worked as a creative consultant on the American remake. While in Japan he appeared as an extra in one of the more recent films. Bob has designed concepts for Star Trek, Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius (2001) and The Ant Bully (2006) as well as created art for various publishers, magazines, book covers and media projects. His passion is with classic masters of art such as JMW Turner, John Martin and the Romantic movement. Bob has always been fascinated with ‘scale’ as a philosophy in the painted image, whether it be the vastness of outer space, or the size of a kaiju, H P Lovecraft denizen, or a dragon viewed from a human perspective.

Erin Underwood: YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ErinUnderwood; Erin Underwood is a movie reviewer on YouTube. She’s also a science fiction and fantasy conrunner, fan, author, and editor who loves dissecting stories and talking about films, TV, and books. However, in the daylight hours, she designs and produces emerging technology conferences for MIT Technology Review, where she tells the story of how new technologies are being used and how they are likely to impact our world.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 27, 1940 — Howard Hesseman. (Died 2022.) So yes, I’m doing Howard Hesseman so I can mention how much I liked him as Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati. Hesseman prepared for the role by actually DJing at KMPX-FM in San Francisco for several months.

In interviews, the producers of the show said that persona was largely developed by him and the following opening words of him on the first show are all his doing.

All right, Cincinnati, it is time for this town to get down! You’ve got Johnny—Doctor Johnny Fever, and I am burnin’ up in here! Whoa! Whoo! We all in critical condition, babies, but you can tell me where it hurts, because I got the healing prescription here from the big ‘KRP musical medicine cabinet. Now I am talking about your 50,000 watt intensive care unit…

Now let’s talk about his genre roles.

He was Fred in Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, a television horror film that has no rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but one person there says the only interesting thing was the real tarantulas.

No, Clue, one of my all-time favorite films cannot be stretched to be considered genre, but I’m including it here because he, though uncredited, had the juicy role of The Chief.

He was in the wonderful Flight of the Navigator as Dr. Louis Farsday, and then there’s the amusing thing Amazon Women on the Moon where he’s Rupert King in the “Titan Man” segment.

He was Dr. Berg in the excellent Martian Child which based the David Gerrold’s Hugo Award winning novelette, not the novel based off it.

Yes, he was in both Halloween II as Uncle Meat and Bigfoot as Mayor Tommy Gillis, neither career highlights by any measure.

I see he showed up on one of my favorite series, The Ray Bradbury Theatre, playing a character named Bayes: in “Downwind from Gettysburg”.

Around the that time, he went elsewhere to the new Outer Limits to be Dr. Emory Taylor in “Music of the Spheres”.

I’m off to watch the pilot now…

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Wallace the Brave cites another victim of unappreciated wordplay.

(9) NO SFF IN DICK TRACY RETURN. In “Dick Tracy Writers Tease the Legendary Detective’s Return” at CBR.com, Alex Segura and Michael Moreci celebrate Dick Tracy’s return. No fancy wrist-radio, though.

When does your series take place? What made you choose this era as a setting?

Moreci: We’re very specific in the time we’re setting this — our story takes place in 1947, so it’s just after World War II. Again, there’s a definite, clear reason for that, rooted in Tracy’s character and the mood we’re trying to set.

Segura: This is Dick Tracy: Year One, basically.

(10) CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME. In a manner of speaking… The Library Foundation of Los Angeles invites you to “The Stay Home and Read a Book Ball”, 36th edition, on Sunday, March 3 at 12:00 a.m. – “Wherever you are!”

While you’re celebrating, take a moment to support the Library Foundation of Los Angeles by donating what you would have spent on a night out.

Share photos of your literary festivities on our Facebook event page, Instagram, or Twitter and tell us what you’ll be reading. Tag us at @LibraryFoundLA and use hashtag #StayHomeandRead to let others know how you are celebrating!

(11) THE ROBOT YOU NEED? The “Lost In Space Electronic Lights & Sounds B9 Robot Golden Boy Edition” is offered by Diamond Select Toys on Amazon.

Eyes light up and sensors blink, Chest blinks when B-9 talks
Head bubble manually raises and lowers, Arms extend and collapse
Claws open and close
Wheels allow B-9 to roll
B-9 Says the following phrases, including dialogue from “Cave of the Wizards”: “Watch it, I do not like grubby finger stains on my new suit of gold.” “From now on I’d appreciate it if you’d call be Golden Boy” “In my opinion, it is not Professor Robinson who needs psychiatric treatment, it is his doctor.” “I forgot, you are brave, handsome Dr. Smith.” and more!

(12) SIDEWAYS ON LUNA. [Item by Steven French.] I wonder if one of the engineers went home before the launch thinking “I’m sure I’ve forgotten something”! “Odysseus craft’s moon mission to be cut short after sideways landing” in the Guardian.

….On Friday, Intuitive Machines had disclosed that the laser range finders – designed to feed altitude and forward-velocity readings to Odysseus’ autonomous navigation system – were inoperable because company engineers neglected to unlock the lasers’ safety switch before launch on 15 February. The safety lock, akin to a firearm’s safety switch, can only be disabled by hand….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Introduction from Deadline: “’The Watchers’ Trailer Sees Dakota Fanning Stalked Through Irish Forest”. Comes to theaters June 7.

Warner Bros on Tuesday unveiled the first trailer for The Watchers, the anticipated supernatural thriller marking the feature debut of writer-director Ishana Night Shyamalan, with Dakota Fanning (The Equalizer 3) in the lead.

Set up at New Line following a multi-studio bidding war, this film from the daughter of M. Night Shyamlan is based on the 2021 gothic horror novel by A.M. Shine. Pic tells the story of Mina (Fanning), a 28-year-old artist who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers that are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night….

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, N., Kathy Sullivan, Andrew (not Werdna), Olav Rokne, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]

Pixel Scroll 2/18/24 Aren’t All Pixels Made Of Exotic Materials?

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) CANCELLING HERSELF. Samantha Mills mournfully headlined her latest blog post “’Rabbit Test’ unwins the Hugo”. After reading the Barkley/Sanford report and some others’ analysis of the voting reports, Mills says:

…Looking at the information we currently have, it’s hard for me to conclude anything other than: I shouldn’t have been on that ballot. On the one hand, it seems as though the final vote hasn’t been tampered with, and the voters engaged in good faith with the works they were told were the finalists, for which I still say thank you! But it’s really, really hard for me to see past the initial fact, which is that I shouldn’t have been on that ballot.

This entire experience has been very stressful and fraught. Initially I assumed I wasn’t going to be a finalist, because even though the story had taken off like mad in the U.S., the bulk of the membership was not going to be American. I assumed we would see a lot of Chinese nominees — which would have been cool! We’d get a slice of international scifi that I rarely ever see! And then I was really pleasantly surprised to be informed I was a finalist after all. When the full ballot was posted, I was also surprised at how few Chinese nominees were in the fiction categories. There were four in the short story category, though, so I thought it was legit, and that wow, John Wiswell and I somehow made the cutoff anyway, isn’t that amazing!

I accepted the nomination because, you know, it is supposed to be an honor. But then due to concerns about the Worldcon event itself, I elected not to participate in programming or accept a free trip to Chengdu. This was also fraught. I’ve never been to a Worldcon, and I’d never been nominated before. And as I said in my previous long-winded post on the subject, I have nothing against the fandoms at play. But I wasn’t comfortable being one of the faces of local PR under political circumstances that felt entirely above my pay grade, so I bowed out…

(2) HUGO DIAGNOSIS AND POSSIBLE CURE. Nerds of a Feather editorsThe G, Vance K, Arturo Serrano, Adri Joy, Chris Garcia, Paul Weimer, and Alex Wallace have each written part of “The Hugo Awards Crisis Deepens – Where We Stand and How to Save the Awards”.

The G’s segment concludes:

There are two sets of problems here: (a) the proximate issue of what was done in 2023 and (b) what this reveals or illuminates about the the cartel of self-proclaimed “SMOFs” (secret masters of fandom) who treat the Hugos – and Worldcon more broadly – as their birthright, playground and personal fiefdom. The Hugo Awards are supposed to be democratic in nature and process; the behavior of the self-proclaimed “SMOFs” is fundamentally anti-democratic – and this is by no means confined to Chengdu Worldcon.

Now here are my suggestions for how to rebuild trust in the Hugo Awards:

No one involved in the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards, or who assisted in the collection of political evidence, can ever be allowed to have any role in administering the awards ever again.
Vote tabulation must be performed in a transparent manner using software that multiple people have access to for purposes of validation.
All tabulations must be independently audited for purposes of verification.
Individual Cons should no longer administer the Hugo Awards – this should be done by an independent, rotating committee.
All decisions by said committee must be audited; all disqualified nominees must be notified and given time to appeal.

(3) STARSHIP FONZIE SCOOP. Eric Hildeman got ahead of the “Glasgow 2024 Passalong Funds Announcement” with the information he reported in Episode 36 of his “Starship Fonzie” podcast. He’s now also posted a transcript on his blog.

Here’s more information about Chengdu’s passalong offer of $40,000 to Glasgow:

“… My colleague, and I think it’s fair to say, con-running coach, Alexia Hebel, is not only the treasurer for Capricon, she was the treasurer for the Western component of the Worldcon in Chengdu. And as such, one of her duties was to administer the pass-along funds from Chengdu over to Glasgow. What are pass-along funds? Well, if there’s any money left over after running a Worldcon, they have the option and traditionally always do of passing that surplus along to the next Worldcon as a donation towards its effort. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the basic idea. While in between duties at Capricon and after speaking with Ben Yalow about it, she offered $40,000 in pass-along funds to the Glasgow Worldcon. And again, that’s de rigueur. You know, every Worldcon does this if they can. Glasgow turned the money down. They’re so anxious to avoid any associations with the Chengdu Worldcon that they’re unwilling to even touch the money, to the tune of 40 grand.

(4) SEEN AROUND FANDOM. These convention badge ribbons will be in great demand once somebody starts handing them out.

(5) DRAMA CRITIC. Lauren Oyler asks what effect Goodreads one-star reviews – or any other reviews – have in “’God forbid that a dog should die’: when Goodreads reviews go bad” at the Guardian.

Something dramatic happens on a social media platform every day. On Goodreads, the anachronistically designed website for logging, rating (out of five) and reviewing books, the dramas are more amusing, and they occasionally even draw attention from areas beyond the site’s supposedly book-loving users. The most recent featured Cait Corrain, the fantasy author who set up an elaborate network of fake accounts to post positive reviews of her own forthcoming book as well as negative reviews of authors she felt were her competitors. When citizen journalists uncovered her plot in December 2023, her book was cancelled, and she lost her agent and a future book deal.

A juicy, postmodern story of self-sabotage, or a sad one about the intersection of the internet and mental health. Regardless, its stakes are relatively low: publicly harassing one’s colleagues is a sackable offence anyway, and it’s hard to find someone who really cares about the vicissitudes of the young adult literature world who isn’t part of the subculture. I’m not; I’m a professional critic, and an author of a literary novel. I’m a snob. I care about my book, and the authors I feel are my competitors. And while Goodreads has been around since 2007, its significance to the broader literary world remains steadfastly confusing. Does it sell books? Does it make and break careers? The flashy, funny stories that have emerged about the site over the last several years have done exactly what its proprietors surely want: make it seem like Goodreads is important. But is it?…

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA presents episode 72 of the Simultaneous Times podcast with Eugen Bacon & Todd Sullivan. Stories featured in this episode:

“A Good Ball” by Eugen Bacon, with music by Fall Precauxions, read by Jean-Paul Garnier
“Shards of Glass” by Todd Sullivan, with music by Phog Masheeen, read by Jean-Paul Garnier

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

Available on all podcast players or at Podomatic.

(7) THE SOURCE: SARAH MAAS FANTASY. Ann Smoot points out “The Jewishness of Sarah Maas’ Fantasy World” at Hey Alma. Beware spoilers.

Whether you’ve been thinking about starting to read “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” or you’re a long-time fan of “Throne of Glass,” it’s likely that you’ve heard of Sarah J. Maas. The author is making headlines the world over thanks to her fantasy series. Whether you’re invested in them for the well-written smut or the beautiful way she weaves her stories, fans can’t put down her novels. But what some readers might not know about the rather private author is that she was raised by a Catholic mother and a Jewish father and attended Hebrew school in her youth. She went on to attend Hamilton College for religious studies and met her future husband at her college’s Hillel, where he served as president. Her connection to her Jewish faith isn’t just apparent when looking at her personal history, though. It just takes a keen eye and a flip through any of her series’ to recognize that she has woven her culture through every story….

… The way that Maas deftly and lovingly weaves her Jewish culture and faith into her writing opens up the world of our stories and tradition to a wider audience. Jewish faith hasn’t had a very loud voice in fantasy — but thanks to Maas, that might be about to change.

(8) ROLE MODEL. [Item by Danny Sichel.] “Peter Talks To a Spider”, a ten-page comic, by Donny Cates and Chip Zdarsky, published on Marvel’s official Threads account: “What happens when Spider-Man chats with an actual Spider”. Images at the link.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 18, 1919 — Jack Palance. (Died 2006.) Tonight I’ve come to talk of Jack Palance who was born of Ukrainian immigrant parents with name of Volodymyr Palahniuk. His last name was actually a derivative of his original name. While guesting on What’s My Line?, he noted that no one could pronounce his last name, and how it was suggested that he be called Palanski but instead that he decided just to use Palance instead. He didn’t say where his first name came from.

(OK nitpickers, I do not want to hear from you. Seriously, I don’t. His career makes a gaggle of overly catnapped kittens playing with skeins of yarn with lots of lanolin still on it look simple by comparison so I may or may not have knitted it properly here, so bear with my version of it.)

Surprisingly it looks like that he got his start in our end of things in television performances and relatively late as they started in the Sixties with the first one being Jabberwock on a musical version of Alice Through the Looking Glass. I’m sure I want to see that as it had Jimmy Durante as Humpty Dumpty, and the Smothers Brothers as Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Next up was a Canadian production with him in the title role of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and that in turn saw him being the lead in Dracula, also known as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dan Curtis’ Dracula, the last when the ego of the Director got way, way too big.

I’m going to digress here because it’s so fascinating. In 1963, The Greatest Show on Earth first aired. This Circus drama had Johnny Slate as the big boss who keeps the circus running as it moves from town to town. It was produced by Desilu, the production company founded by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Sr. It lasted but one season as it was up against shows by Jack Benny and Richard Boone.

A bit of hard SF was next, Cyborg 2, released in other countries as Glass Shadow, creative but terribly uninformative, where he’s Mercy, an old renegade cyborg.

Remember my Birthday recently on the wonderful Carol Serling? Well he was in The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics film that she made possible as Dr. Jeremy Wheaton in “Where the Dead Are”.

If Treasure Island counts as genre and yes I do count it in my personal canon, then his role as Long John Silver is definitely canon.

He got to play Ebenezer Scrooge in Ebenezer. Now the fun part is that it’s set in the Old West, where he is the most greedy, corrupt and mean-spirited crook in the old West obviously, he sees no value in “Holiday Humbug” by several reviewers. This film I went to look up on Rotten Tomatoes, but no rating there.

Not at all shockingly to me, he shows up on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. where he plays a character of Louis Strago in a two-parter “The Concrete Overcoat Affair” which got reedited as “The Spy in the Green Hat”.

A bit of horror was next in Tales of the Haunted as Stokes in “Evil Stalks This House” was up late in career.

Finally for roles that I’m reasonably sure were of genre interest, he was on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as Kaleel in the “Planet of the Slave Girls” episode.

One more gig for him related to genre or at least genre adjacent, though not as a performer, but as the host of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for four years. He had three different co-hosts from season to season, including his daughter, Holly Palance, actress Catherine Shirriff, and finally singer Marie Osmond.

I’ll take your leave now.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit has a writing tall tale.
Broom Hilda has writing hopes.
Crabgrass plans writing time travel.
Non Sequitur brings us to an odd facts sideshow.
Reality Check has a lot of mixing.
Wallace the Brave has a detailed worry.
The Argyle Sweater shows a genie with a hearing problem – or maybe a listening problem.

(11) HEAVENLY OSCULATION. [Item by Steven French.] David Tennant answers Guardian readers’ questions about the length of his sideburns, what kind of cheese he would be and being a Doctor Who fan: “David Tennant: ‘Kissing Michael Sheen was fine. He’d brushed his teeth’”.

“Am I as geeky as the Doctor who fans? Yes. As a Doctor Who fan myself of old, I can very much can plug into that. I don’t think I ever got in trouble at school. That is one of those stories that’s ended up on Wikipedia. I wrote an essay on Doctor Who, which some unpleasant newspaper found and printed. But I didn’t get in trouble for it. I think I got quite a good mark for it.”

(12) LGBTQ VIDEO GAMERS. The New York Times article about a GLAAD study says “Report Says 17 Percent of Gamers Identify as L.G.B.T.Q.” There were 1500 participants in the survey.

Less than 2 percent of console video games include L.G.B.T.Q. characters or story lines even though 17 percent of gamers are queer, according to GLAAD’s first survey on the industry.

The survey, whose results were released on Tuesday, said a majority of respondents had experienced some form of harassment when playing online. But it also found that many queer gamers saw virtual worlds as an escape in states where recent legislation has targeted L.G.B.T.Q. people. Seventy-five percent of queer respondents from those states said they could express themselves in games in a way they did not feel comfortable doing in reality.

“That is a statistic that should pull on everyone’s heartstrings,” said Blair Durkee, who led the advocacy group’s survey alongside partners from Nielsen, the data and marketing firm. “The statistic is driven largely by young gamers. Gaming is a lifeline for them.”

GLAAD has produced a similar breakdown of queer representation in television since 1996. Its latest report found that 10.6 percent of series regulars in prime-time scripted shows identified as L.G.B.T.Q., which researchers said helped put their video game study in perspective….

(13) CREATING VIDEO FROM TEXT. That’s the latest step forward in artificial intelligence says OpenAI in “Sora”.

We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction.

Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model. Sora can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt.

Today, Sora is becoming available to red teamers to assess critical areas for harms or risks. We are also granting access to a number of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers to gain feedback on how to advance the model to be most helpful for creative professionals.

We’re sharing our research progress early to start working with and getting feedback from people outside of OpenAI and to give the public a sense of what AI capabilities are on the horizon….

… The current model has weaknesses. It may struggle with accurately simulating the physics of a complex scene, and may not understand specific instances of cause and effect. For example, a person might take a bite out of a cookie, but afterward, the cookie may not have a bite mark….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The second trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has dropped. Only in theaters March 29.

The guardians of nature. The protectors of humanity. The rise of a new empire.

The epic battle continues! Legendary Pictures’ cinematic Monsterverse follows up the explosive showdown of “Godzilla vs. Kong” with an all-new adventure that pits the almighty Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal undiscovered threat hidden within our world, challenging their very existence—and our own. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” delves further into the histories of these Titans and their origins, as well as the mysteries of Skull Island and beyond, while uncovering the mythic battle that helped forge these extraordinary beings and tied them to humankind forever.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Paul Weimer, Eric Hildeman, Joshua K., Cliff Ramshaw, Kathy Sullivan, Jean-Paul Garnier, Dan Bloch, Rich Lynch, Danny Sichel, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 2/7/24 We’ll Pixel Them All With Laughter And Merriment, Except For The Ones We Scroll For Experiments

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) PRH PLANS EDITION OF A FAMOUS POTTER FANFIC. [Item by Anne Marble.] Penguin Random House (through Del Rey) is going to publish a revised version of “Manacled,” a very famous Harry Potter fanfic. This is a Hermione plus Draco (Dramione) fan fiction with a lot of trigger warnings. The author, SenLinYu, announcd this on Tumblr:

I’m excited to announce that I have signed a book deal with Del Rey at Penguin Random House in the US and Michael Joseph in the UK for my debut novel, Alchemised, a standalone dark fantasy set in a war-torn world of necromancy and alchemy, in which a healer with amnesia is taken as a prisoner of war and must fight to protect her lost memories and the secrets hidden among them. It will grapple with themes of trauma and survival, legacy, and the way that love can drive one to extreme darkness, and it is, as you may be able to tell, a reimagined version of Manacled.

I know I’ve been rather quiet about my publishing journey, and a lot of that has been because I didn’t want to spark any concerns or worry that I might be abruptly taking away a story that is such a deep part of myself and that I know has meant so much to so many people. This process has unfolded very slowly and quietly because I have tried to be mindful as I could be in every step of the way.

As most of you know, I have been a reader in fandom long before I ever began to write. Fanfiction is incredibly special to me, and I have tried to do my best not to undermine its legal protection or allow my works to do so either. During the last several years, there has been a growing issue with illegal sales of Manacled, putting both me and the incredible community that shares fanfiction freely in legal jeopardy.

After consulting with the OTW as well as other lawyers, it has grown clear that as a transformative writer I have limited options in protecting my stories from this kind of exploitation, but I wasn’t sure what to do; I didn’t want to just take the story down, in part because I worried that might only exacerbate the issue, but I didn’t know what other options I had. Then I suddenly had this idea of alchemy, which was peculiarly appropriate; an academic world filled with unique transmutational abilities, and a necromantic war against people who had discovered the secrets of immortality, and I could see a path to reimagining the story while still holding on to as much of the original spirit of Manacled as possible.

I began redrafting the concept privately around Christmas 2022, and then as if the universe had aligned, just as I was finishing, Caitlin Mahony and Rivka Bergman of WME reached out to me and were delightfully enthusiastic about concepts and ideas for my new alchemical world and the ways I had reimagined the story.

I’m thrilled to be working with Emily Archbold, my visionary editor at Del Rey, along with Rebecca Hilsdon at Michael Joseph in the UK, to polish this novel for publication in Fall 2025. I feel uniquely privileged that both my publishing teams are familiar with Manacled and understand how special it is to so many people, and how important it is that this reimagining captures the same spirit while also having its own wings.

Manacled is not going anywhere at present. It will remain online throughout 2024, at which point it will, if you’ll pardon the pun, alchemise for 2025 and be removed from AO3….

The revised version is described as “Alchemised, a standalone dark fantasy set in a war-torn world of necromancy and alchemy, in which a healer with amnesia is taken as a prisoner of war and must fight to protect her lost memories and the secrets hidden among them.” As far as I know, it will be published under the name SenLinYu — just like the original fan fic. A lot of people are happy for the author. They are happy she is finally going to get paid for her work. They also see it as Penguin Random House banking on the popularity of her fanfic.

senlinyu getting a publishing deal to make manacled a real book I’m so emotional rn she deserves this so much (and so do I for being victimized by her writing) pic.twitter.com/uKVAXIXGbk
— natalie (@aniskyy) February 5, 2024

One aspect that drove the author’s decision is that “Manacled” is so popular that some people have resold it online without the permission of the author. However, those sales are illegal, and they jeopardize both the original author and the fanfic community. The author mentioned that she consulted with the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) as well as lawyers about how to protect herself. So she decided to revise the fanfic and turn it into a new work. It will be sold in 2025. Until then, the original fanfic will still be available on A03. This news is not without its critics. First, a number of posts have accused the author of ripping off The Handmaid’s Tale alongside the Harry Potter elements. I haven’t read the fanfic, so I’m not sure how close it gets. From what I understand, there is a “concubine” element. (It seems a lot of dystopias have borrowed heavily from A Handmaid’s Tale in recent years.)

Manacled being published as official work feels so tacky to me considering it copied world building of two popular fictional works like harry potter and handmaid’s tale. If I was an author I would sue that shit so fast
— harry’s fool (@depresseddrarry) February 6, 2024

One poster got truly angry about this upcoming publication, calling the author a “freak” and a “horrible person” for romanticizing abuse. I’m sure this won’t be the only complaint along these lines. I’m torn with that sort of take. Yes, maybe some readers might get the wrong idea from reading a very dark story. But maybe we’re not giving readers (even young ones) enough credit.

(2) DON’T LET KIDS GET SMARTER. “LeVar Burton’s Banned Book Rainbow” is a show-within-the-show on Jimmy Kimmel Live, beginning at the 11:05 mark:

(3) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Isabel Yap and Randee Dawn in person at the KGB Bar on Wednesday, February 14 starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

ISABEL YAP

Isabel Yap is the author of Never Have I Ever: Stories, which was published by Small Beer Press in 2021, and was named one of the 2021 Best Books for Adults by the New York Public Library. Her work has appeared in venues including Tor.com, Lithub, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. Her collection won the British Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Ignyte, Locus, Crawford, and World Fantasy Awards. By day she works in the tech industry as a Product Manager. She likes visiting museums, playing the ukulele, and commiserating with others about how hard it is to write books.

RANDEE DAWN

Randee Dawn is the author of the bestselling novel Tune in Tomorrow, which was a finalist in the 2023 Next Generation Indie Awards. Her latest story, “The Fifth Horseman,” appears in the new anthology The Four ???? of the Apocalypse. Her stories have also appeared in Soul Scream, Horror for the Throne, and Even in the Grave, and she is the co-editor of Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles. An entertainment journalist who writes for the Los Angeles Times, Variety, and other publications, Randee lives in Brooklyn with her spouse and a fluffy, sleepy Westie.

Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)

(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Observations from Hugo winner Ling Shizhen regarding the trophies

As yet, I’ve not noticed any Chinese coverage of the core part of Chris M. Barkley’s interview with Dave McCarty on Weibo, perhaps because of the initial lack of transcripts making that less accessible to non-native speakers, plus I’m uncertain how accessible SoundCloud, Google Drive, etc are to Chinese users. (Google Drive I’m fairly sure is inaccessible in China without workarounds)

However, the notes at the end of Chris’ piece, regarding damage to the trophies that were shipped to the US, have garnered some discussion.

One of my Chinese SF friends made me aware that Best Fanzine co-winner Ling Shizhen had spoken on WeChat about the subject. I don’t personally have access to that app, nor did I have alternative contact details for Ling, so I reached out to RiverFlow to see if I could get more information which I might be able to share more widely.

Here is the the subsequent response from Ling via RiverFlow, firstly in the original Chinese, and then a machine translation via DeepL, with minor manual edits for phrasing.

2023年10月22日，我自成都抵重庆。一路行程中，我的箱包被塞满，为防这奖杯受损，便基本手持，虽感沉重，这奖杯无事。

后由重庆回上海时，先快递回去一大批于2023成都世界科幻大会收到的物件，便想这奖杯放书包里会好些。这奖杯被安置妥当后，一路小心，最多受行走及列车难免的些许微小颠簸。

至家后，发现有问题：这奖杯底座上的“星门”和这奖杯底座间的衔接处，有此前未有的松动，那“星门”有点晃。才发现：那“星门”本不是整块完全焊死在这奖杯底座上。于是想还不如一路手持由重庆回上海。至少我的相关亲历可以说明这奖杯很经不得碰……

On 22nd October 2023, I arrived in Chongqing from Chengdu [a journey of approximately 300km per Google]. During the journey, my bag was stuffed to the brim, so I basically held the trophy in my hand to prevent it getting damaged, and although it felt heavy, the trophy was fine.

When I returned to Shanghai from Chongqing [a distance of just under 1,700km per Google], I couriered back a large number of items I received at the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention, so I thought it would be better to put the trophy in my backpack. After the trophy was properly placed, I was careful all the way, and it endured nothing worse than the inevitable bumps of walking and trains.

After arriving home, I found that there was a problem: the connection between the “stargate” and the base of the trophy had loosened up in a way that I had not been seen before, and the “stargate” was a bit shaky. It was only then that I realised that the “stargate” was not completely welded to the base of the trophy. So I think it would have been better to go all the way back to Shanghai from Chongqing carrying it by hand. At least my personal experience shows that this trophy is not very contact-friendly.

Many thanks to Ling Shizhen and RiverFlow for getting back to me so promptly, and for providing the information I requested.

Ling Shizhen and RiverFlow receiving the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine. Image from the 2023 Hugo Ceremony video stream

Close up of the 2023 Hugo base, taken from the 2023 Worldcon Opening Ceremony video stream, previously published in the 2023-10-18 Pixel Scroll.

(5) FLAME ON. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian is agog as “House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J Maas races to the top of bestseller chart”.

The story of a half fairy, half human woman has gripped UK book buyers this week, as a novel about the hybrid heroine shot to the top of the bestseller chart.

House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J Maas, the third book in the Crescent City series featuring Bryce Quinlan, has become the third fastest-selling science fiction and fantasy title since records began since its publication on 30 January.

Maas sold 44,761 copies of the new title in the week of its launch, coming in behind Terry Pratchett’s 2011 book Snuff with 54,687 launch week sales and Rebecca Yarros’s Iron Flame which saw a record-setting 57,055 sales last November, according to the Bookseller.

Maas and Yarros are driving a surge in popularity of the “romantasy” genre, which blends elements of romance and fantasy and has attracted huge numbers of readers through social media recommendations, particularly via TikTok. Videos with hashtags related to Maas have been viewed more than 14bn times, her publisher Bloomsbury said.”

(6) USED OR OVERUSED? At the Fantast Author’s Handbook, Philip Athans challenges the use of particular word: “Active Search: Because”.

…I want to talk about the word “because.” I think “because,” which like all words is perfectly fine and in no way “banned,” sometimes—actually, fairly often—sounds clunky….

(7) COLLINS FUNDRAISER. Horror author, comics creator, and File 770 news contributor Nancy Collins was hospitalized earlier this week with blood clots in one lung, and as she says in the title of her GoFundMe, “What Doesn’t Kill Me Leaves Me With Medical Bills”.

This past Saturday (February 3rd, 2024) I woke up to discomfort in my left chest every time I inhaled. As the day went on I experienced increasing pain that radiated into my armpit and through my left shoulder, accompanied by extreme exhaustion. That evening I drove myself to the E.R. at a hospital near my house here in Macon, GA. By that point I thought I was having some kind of cardiac episode, as my mother’s side of the family had a long history of heart issues.

Within 30 minutes of being taken into the exam area, I was screaming in agony and could no longer sit up. Being kept prone helped alleviate the intensity of the pain, but breathing was still an issue.

An EKG, a set of Xrays, and a MRI scan later, I was told I wasn’t having a heart attack. However, I did have a blood clot in my lower left lung–actually, several small ones, according to the doctor. He said that if I hadn’t come in when I did Saturday night, odds are I would not have woken up Sunday morning.

They admitted me into the hospital, where I was ordered bed rest, pumped full of blood thinners, and then underwent several ultrasounds. They kept me over the weekend, finally releasing me Monday evening with several prescriptions and an outpatient appointment with a hematologist. I suspect I will be on blood thinners for the rest of my life. (I know, ironic for someone best known for writing vampire stories. Even more ironic–the clots appear to be the result of me sitting too long in front of my laptop while writing. )

I’m setting up this campaign to help with the medical bills from this unexpected reminder that I am no longer a spring chicken. While I have medical insurance, it ain’t all that and a bag of chips. I’m still on the hook for 25% of my treatment–possibly more, if it turns out any of the physicians, technicians, or laboratories who handled my case happen to be out-of-network.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 7, 1960 — James Spader, 64. How can I not do the Birthday of James Spader, the performer who played Dr. Daniel Jackson, Egyptologist in Stargate? Yes, I’m really fond of that film. And yes, I am equally fond of the Stargate SG-1 franchise.

His first SF film actually came as a starring role as Joey Callaghan in Starcrossed where an alien woman is running from a deadly enemy and tries to hide here. She meets a young mechanic (Joey), who helps her to go home and to be a freedom fighter there.

James Spader in 2014. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

A decade later, his next role is in Stargate one. I thought it was a great performance by him. And yes, the character as performed by Michael Shanks in Stargate SG-1 continuity is just as interesting, just completely different. His role I thought was more true to that of being an Egyptologist but the Stargate SG-1 continuity isn’t really concerned with the original premise, is it?

If you saw Avengers: Age of Ultron, and I will readily admit that I have not, he not only voiced Ultron but did the motion capture for it.

But his greatest role, and I readily admit that is not genre was in The Blacklist as Raymond “Red” Reddington, a former US Naval Intelligence officer turned fugitive who’s forced to become an FBI crime consultant. And I was surprised to learn that he was an executive producer for that series.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro has a Batmobile punchline.
Rhymes with Orange features Stone Age editing.

(10) TRACING THE ROOTS OF COMICS. At Colleen Doran’s Funny Business the artist takes her work on a Neil Gaiman book as the jumping-off point for a discussion of comic art history: “CHIVALRY: From Illuminated Manuscripts to Comics”.

One of the many reasons I wanted to adapt Neil Gaiman’s Chivalry into graphic novel form was to create a comic as a bridge and commentary re: comics and illuminated manuscripts.

We’re often told that the first comic was Action Comics #1 featuring Superman, a collection of Superman comic strips that morphed into comic books as an art form.

Sequential art predates Action Comics #1.

Action Comics popularized sequential art book storytelling that had already appeared in other forms in fits and starts throughout history. Comic books didn’t take off as a popular medium for several reasons, not least of which was the necessary printing process hadn’t been invented yet and it’s hard to popularize – and commercialize – something most people can never see.

You find sequential art in cave paintings and in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I’ve read that comics (manga) were invented by the Japanese in 12th century scrolls.

And sequential art appears over and over again in Western art going back well over 1000 years, and in book form at least 1100 years ago.

The most obvious example of early sequential art in Western art – as a complete narrative in sequence – is the Bayeux Tapestry. …

(11) GRIMDARK ARCHITECTURE. The completed Brooklyn Tower is being compared to Barad-dûr. “Brooklyn Tower and 100 Flatbush Lead a Borough’s Art Deco Revival” at Bloomberg.

On an overcast day, the delicate pointed crown of the Brooklyn Tower is invisible in the clouds, as if a vengeful enemy has shrouded its superlative vantage in smoke. Nonetheless, over the low-rise flatlands that comprise most of the borough, the jagged edges rising along the dark shaft are present and unmistakable.

The Batman building, the Tower of Sauron — the nicknames write themselves. And why not? Better this than another squared-off tower that simply fiddles with the ratio of white solid to blue glass. Maybe I should hate it for its bigness, its blackness, its thrust — but I don’t. Skylines need punctuation. The designers of the Brooklyn Tower, SHoP Architects, threw everything at this to make it an exclamation point…

….“The idea was Gotham, it was Deco,” says Gregg Pasquarelli, founding partner of SHoP Architects. “Batman should live here.”…

Brooklyn Tower is the borough’s first supertall skyscraper. Photo: Max Touhey, courtesy of SHoP Architects

(12) OMG! The H Book Club blog on X.com made this gobsmacking observation:

If you'd asked me who would play Gene Wolfe on screen, I would never in a million years have guessed Chris Pratt.

But there you go. @ReReadingWolfe https://t.co/hB632OzVtS
— H Book Club blog (@Hugo_Book_Club) February 6, 2024

Footnote: In case you don’t already know the background:

(13) MARVEL TV CREW MEMBER LOSES LIFE. “’Wonder Man’ Crew Member Dies During Production Of Marvel TV Series” reports Deadline, and people are donating to the support of his widow.

A Go Fund Me drive has already raised more than $115,000 for Juan Carlos Osorio, the crewmember on Marvel’s WonderMan series who died Tuesday after falling from a catwalk at Radford Studios.

“On February 6th, 2024, our friend Spike lost his life on the set of Marvels WonderMan shoot at CBS Radford studios due to a potential structural failure,” reads the fundraise, started by Bill Martel. “We are hoping the Production Company, The Facility, MBS, Marvel Studios handles things properly, but expect a long road fraught with attorney fees and expenses. In the mean time, bills will be mounting and the widow, Boom Operator Joanne W. will be left to deal with everything. Help if you’re able, it’s greatly appreciated.”…

(14) INVESTMENT MEANS ADDING DISNEY CONTENT TO FORTNITE. “Disney Invests $1.5 Billion in ‘Fortnite’ Developer Epic Games” reports Variety.

Disney is investing $1.5 billion in “Fortnite” developer Epic Games in what will be the Mouse House’s “biggest foray into the game space ever,” Disney CEO Bob Iger announced Wednesday.

…Per further information provided by Disney, “in addition to being a world-class games experience and interoperating with ‘Fortnite,’ the new persistent universe will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Avatar’ and more. Players, gamers and fans will be able to create their own stories and experiences, express their fandom in a distinctly Disney way, and share content with each other in ways that they love.”…

(15) RARE UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM TRAILER FOOTAGE FROM “THE MAN WHO ‘SAVED’ THE MOVIES”. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] Here’s the original theatrical trailer for the never completed feature length motion picture documentary, The Man Who “Saved” The Movies, concerning over half a century of published writings…associations with actors, composers, writers, and directors…and some seventy-six years devoted to a passion for both films and film makers, while lovingly chronicling the life and career of film, and film music historian Steve Vertlieb.

Featuring appearances by Veronica Carlson, Philippe Mora, Paul Clemens, Juliet Rozsa, Lee Holdridge, Mark McKenzie, Patrick Russ, and Gregg Nestor, the film remains a work in progress. While financial difficulties have sadly plagued its production, it is my hope that it may one day reach completion.

… and, yes, that is me with Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Kirk Douglas, William Shatner, Jack Klugman, old friend and iconic American film director, Frank Capra, Oscar winning film composer, John Williams, Oscar winning film composer, Miklos Rozsa, famed science fiction author, Ray Bradbury, iconic special effects titan, Ray Harryhausen, “Psycho” author Robert Bloch, together with “The Time Machine” producer/director, George Pal, Hammer Films’ star, Peter Cushing, and screen hero/gold medal Olympian, Buster Crabbe.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob6-t0MKXRY

(16) COLD WAR SURPLUS? “Remnants of a Nuclear Missile Are Found in a Garage” – in Bellevue, WA – reports the New York Times. “The police responded to a call from a U.S. Air Force museum that said a man had offered to donate a Cold War-era missile stored in his late neighbor’s garage.”

Members of the bomb squad in Bellevue, Wash., on Thursday were called to inspect parts of a military-grade missile in the garage of a resident.

Elements of the larger, intact missile, such as the warhead, were missing and the authorities deemed the piece to be inert and safe, the police said in a news release on Friday.

An Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio, contacted the police in Bellevue on Jan. 31 to report that a resident had offered to donate the missile, which belonged to his late neighbor….

…The next day, the man was “surprised” to hear from the police because he had not called them but invited the bomb squad to inspect the missile remnant, Officer Tyler said.

Squad members identified the rocket as a Douglas AIR-2 Genie missile, designed to carry a 1.5-kiloton nuclear warhead….

…It was clear that the missile remnant did not pose a threat given that it was missing its warhead and did not contain rocket fuel, Officer Tyler said.

“It was essentially just a rusted piece of metal at that point,” he said. “An artifact, in other words.”…

The NYT news report reminds me that when I first got into fandom I heard tell about Russell Seitz, a fan who was famous for having acquired the components of an ICBM. The following is one version of that story:

In the late 70’s, when most of our nuclear arsenal was converted from liquid to solid fuel, the U.S. Government auctioned off a number of obsolete missile silos and their contents. Mostly the silos got bought by local farmers who converted them for grain storage. I only know what happened to one of the missiles. It was offered at sealed bid auction and a friend of mine, Russell Seitz, bought it. When you bid on something like this, you have to send in a check for 10% of your bid as a deposit. He looked at his bank account, and figured he could spare about $300 that month, so that’s what he sent. When he discovered that he’d won the bid, he had to scrounge up the rest. Now the buyer must pick up the goods himself, but he can request that his purchase be delivered, at government expense, to the nearest military base. Being an undergraduate at M.I.T. at the time, he had the missile shipped to Hanscom Airforce Base, about 12 miles away. He then arranged for a truck, and donated the missile to a local modern art museum (I forget which one). Tax laws were a little different in those days, and if you donated something to an art museum, you could deduct not the just the purchase price, but the original value of the object, which was considerable. Income averaging allowed him to spread the “loss” out over a number of years so that he didn’t have to pay taxes for a long time! He was legendary at M.I.T. for quite a while, and acquired the nickname “Missile” Seitz.

(17) EARLY RELEASE SUPER BOWL AD. Does having the Aquaman actor in it make this an item of genre interest? You decide! Zach Braff, Jason Momoa and Donald Faison appear in a Flashdance-themed Super Bowl commercial for T-Mobile.

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The official trailer for Despicable Me 4 is out. The movie comes to theaters on July 3.

In the first Despicable Me movie in seven years, Gru, the world’s favorite supervillain-turned-Anti-Villain League-agent, returns for an exciting, bold new era of Minions mayhem in Illumination’s Despicable Me 4.

Following the 2022 summer blockbuster phenomenon of Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru, which earned almost $1 billion worldwide, the biggest global animated franchise in history now begins a new chapter as Gru (Oscar® nominee Steve Carrell) and Lucy (Oscar® nominee Kristen Wiig) and their girls —Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and Agnes (Madison Polan)—welcome a new member to the Gru family, Gru Jr., who is intent on tormenting his dad.

Gru faces a new nemesis in Maxime Le Mal (Emmy winner Will Ferrell) and his femme fatale girlfriend Valentina (Emmy nominee Sofia Vergara), and the family is forced to go on the run. The film features fresh new characters voiced by Joey King (Bullet Train), Emmy winner Stephen Colbert (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert) and Chloe Fineman (Saturday Night Live). Pierre Coffin returns as the iconic voice of the Minions and Oscar® nominee Steve Coogan returns as Silas Ramsbottom.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Anne Marble, Steve Vertlieb, Heath Row, Kathy Sullivan, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]

Pixel Scroll 2/3/24 It’s Hot As Hell In Pixeldelphia

Posted on February 3, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) DRAGON CON BANS AI ART FROM SALES AREAS. The Dragon Con 2024 Art Show Application Form includes this ban:

No AI artwork of any kind will be allowed to be sold or distributed in the Dragon Con Art Show, Comic and Pop Artist Alley, or Vendor Halls. Failure to comply with our AI Policy can lead to immediate removal from show floor.

(2) VOICE FOR HUGO CHANGE. Mary Robinette Kowal shared her knowledge of how Hugos are administered in a Bluesky thread that starts here. She contrasts how the disqualification of her audiobook novella “Lady Astronaut of Mars” was handled by the 2013 administrator versus the way those ruled “ineligible” have been treated by the 2023 administrator.

After providing more background history, Kowal makes a call for change in Hugo oversight.

(3) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

A couple of Chinese language videos about the Hugos

Whilst looking for coverage of the Hugos on the Chinese internet, I came across this Bilibili video, posted Wednesday 31st. It’s a compilation of 5 news items from a channel that I think I maybe submitted an item for last year. The final item – from around 10:20 in – is entitled

雨锅奖余波 (yuguo jiang yubo – Hugo Award Aftermath).

I don’t think there’s anything new there to anyone who’s been following File 770 coverage, but this is one of the few mainland China items I’ve seen on the subject, outside of user comments on various social media platforms, that – as previously covered – have had a tendency to disappear.

As I type this 3 or 4 days after the video was uploaded, it has received just over a quarter-of-a-million views. I’ve got a local backup copy just in case it does belatedly vanish.

The below screenshots and Google Translated renditions thereof are included primarily for the bullet comments from users. Filers might like to note that the video also includes a (machine translated?) screenshot of a Paul Weimer blog post.

A day earlier, I came across this video from a YouTuber in Taiwan, which was posted 4 days ago, and has just over 200 thousand views as I type this. It’s another explainer for mainstream audiences, so again there won’t be much new to people who’ve been reading this site.

The video is edited in a snappy way, and very memey.

(The place where I came across a link to this video is also worthy of a write-up, but that will have to wait for another day.)

(4) SAWYER’S STATEMENT ABOUT TIANWEN PROJECT. Robert J. Sawyer, a Chengdu Worldcon guest of honor, responded to discussion about the Tianwen Project and his participation in a launch ceremony at the Worldcon in a Facebook comment this week.

Elsewhere he answered some other questions about his guest of honor appearance.

And because people have been known to carelessly treat things others say in comments here as if they are my personal opinion (like Robert J. Sawyer, who recently blocked me in social media), I am going to quote what I wrote to a friend in October 2022 after passage at Chicon 8 of a resolution calling for Sergey Lukyanenko to be disinvited from the Chengdu Worldcon:

…Continuing a line of discussion I raised on FB — I want to be clear that I’m not demanding any action from Robert J Sawyer. If he volunteersto make a public statement, obviously I would run it. Otherwise, it’s not his fault that the other two GoHs are problematic. So while I expect at some point the Twitterati will try and railroad him because he’s the only English-speaker and the only GoH who answers his social media, I personally don’t think Sawyer has to take responsibility for the malfeasance of the committee or their refusal to clean up their GoH slate….

Which it seems to me is quite different from what some of his interrogators have had to say here and on FB. (And the malfeasance I had in mind in October 2022 was that the site selection voters who by then had been members for 10 months had yet to hear from the committee, people who wanted to buy new memberships complained that they couldn’t, and that the new Chengdu website had launched without any statement about who their Guests of Honor were, even though the names had been announced immediately after they won the bid.)

(5) NOT IF IT PUTS HIM OUT OF WORK. “Star Trek’s William Shatner Was Asked About His Stance On A.I. Replacing Him, And He Had An Interesting Response” reports Comicbook.com.

…Shatner recently spoke with Comicbook.com ahead of his upcoming appearance at Orlando’s MegaCon, and was asked about the possibility of his James T. Kirk one day being brought back to life, as it were, via A.I. Never one to shy away from hard questions, the actor gave his honest take on the situation, and how he’d respond to it depending on the situation:

“It’s an interesting question. The strike was all about getting permission to do that. And so if I’m alive, I don’t want A.I. to do that, but if I’m dead and they ask my family and they’re going to pay my family very well to sound like me, I would advise them to say yes.”

William Shatner isn’t so okay with allowing A.I. to take over his character or his own persona if he’s still alive, which is understandable. But if he’s no longer around to pass judgment, he’ll leave it to his family to decide. If a fair price is determined, apparently, he’s giving the green light to allow his likeness to be used for Captain Kirk.

(6) JENNELL JAQUAYS (1956-2024). Artist and game designer Jennell Jaquays, who created scenarios with myriad paths for Dungeons & Dragons, levels for video games like Quake II, and art that invited novices to try role-playing games, died January 10. The New York Times obituary is here.

… Over nearly five decades, Ms. Jaquays illustrated the covers and interiors of settings, modules, books and magazines for D&D and other role-playing games. In one of them, a red dragon roars while perched in front of a snow-capped mountain; in another, a nautiluslike spaceship floats above an alien world; in a third, two Ghostbusters prepare to tangle with a field of animated jack-o’-lanterns.

Ms. Jaquays also crafted scenarios of her own. Two of her earliest D&D modules, “Dark Tower” and “The Caverns of Thracia,” are renowned for their pathbreaking designs.

In the early days of D&D, many scenarios were fairly linear — enter dungeon, defeat monsters and plunder, assuming your characters survive.

Ms. Jaquays’s adventures were not so straightforward. They often contained several possible entrances and multiple avenues, some of them secret, by which players could accomplish their goals.

“The result is a fantastically complex and dynamic environment: You can literally run dozens of groups through this module and every one of them will have a fresh and unique experience,” the game designer Justin Alexander wrote about dungeons like Ms. Jaquays’s on his website in 2010…

(7) CHRISTOPHER PRIEST (1943-2024.) British sf writer Christopher Priest died February 2 at the age of 80. (Not to be confused with the comics author with the same name.) His novel The Prestige was a World Fantasy Award winner in 1996. His book The Islanders won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and a British SF Association Award in 2012. Four other works also received BSFA Awards, Inverted World (1975), “Palely Loitering” (1980), The Extremes (1999), and The Separation (2003), the latter winning the Arthur C. Clarke Award as well. He was a Worldcon guest of honor in 1995, and received the Prix Utopia life achievement award in 2001.

In the late Eighties Priest also took time to pen The Last Deadloss Visions “an enquiry into the non-appearance of Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions”, which he called “a polemical pamphlet, written to express a point of view and to persuade others of that view.”

The British Council website’s “Christopher Priest – Literature” follows a long biography with a critical appreciation of his work. It says in part:

Christopher Priest was born in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, in 1943…. His first novel, Indoctrinaire, was published by Faber and Faber in 1970, beginning a stretch of two decades during which Priest’s novels appeared almost biennially. 1972’s Fugue for a Darkening Island saw Priest nominated for the John W. Campbell Award. His third novel, The Inverted World (1974), won Priest the first of his four BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Awards. In the mid-1970s he was an associate editor of the UK semi-academic journal Foundations, which provided a distinctive platform for the criticism and popularization of science fiction at a time when the genre was not well established in the academy.

…Priest 1995’s epistolary novel The Prestige was a popular breakthrough. Winner of the World Fantasy Award and James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and nominated for the BSFA and Arthur C. Clarke awards, it was adapted into a film directed by Christopher Nolan, released to acclaim in 2006….

As time went by Priest generally was less interested in playing the role of elder statesman his accumulated honors had earned for him than he was in continuing to dish out the kind of fiery opinions he’d shared throughout his career. Consider that in 2012, before going on to win two major awards later in the year, he blasted the Arthur C. Clarke shortlist, saying he was dismayed that several quality books didn’t make the list, with sketches of the defects of the actual choices. (Although not all of the authors took it hard, judging from Charles Stross’ reaction, which was to issue a commemorative t-shirt.)

He is survived by his wife, Nina Allan, who followed her announcement of his passing with a chosen poem.

Christopher Priest at the 1980 Worldcon, NoreasCon Two. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 3, 1970 — Warwick Davis, 54. This is not by any means a complete listing of everything he’s done. Just remember that before lodging the complaint that I forgot to include something. I didn’t forget. I just didn’t include it.

Warwick Davis is much loved for being the title character in Willow and really not loved for being Lubdan the Leprechaun in, errr, the Leprechaun film series. Look you really don’t need to see the latter even if you’re seriously drunk on cheap fake Irish beer on St. Patrick’s Day. They made him a lot on money but they’re really awful. Willow on the other hand is sublime. It brings a tear to my eye when I see it.

He was the physical aspect of Wicket W. Warrick in Return of the Jedi, Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker though the character was voiced by Darryl Henriques.

He also played a lot of other Star Wars characters. The Phantom Menace saw him play Wald, Weazel, and Yoda in the walking shots, and a street trader on Tatooine; The Force Awakens a Wollivan (and no, I don’t recognize all of these characters); A Star Wars Story saw him being Weeteef Cyubee; then Star Wars: The Last Jedi got the sneeze-worthy character names of Wodibin / Kedpin Shoklop, the latter in a deleted scene. Think I’m done? No. Next is Solo: A Star Wars Story where he’s Weazel / DD-BD / W1-EG5 / WG-22 and finally there’s The Rise of Skywalker where he’s Wicket W. Warrick for the final time plus Wizzich Mozzer again. Whew!

He’s in all five of the Harry Potter films in one or more of three roles — Professor Filius Flitwick, Goblin Bank Teller and Griphook, the latter just as the voice of that character. I’ve only seen the first three films and yes, I’ve loved them deeply even though all I’ve read of the novels was the first hundred pages of the first which I found exquisitely, deeply boring. God, I found her a bad writer.

Now here’s one that I really didn’t expect. He was in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as Marvin the Paranoid Android. (Love the voicing of that character in the BBC radio production!) Again he didn’t voiced the character as that was provided by Alan Rickman.

He shows up twice in Narnia productions, once as Nikabrik in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian film, and on the television film Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as Reepicheep. Loved those novels.

Finally he voiced Sniff (Snufkin) in the English language track for the Finnish crown funded animated Moominvalley series. Really great books. The Estate just allowed the likeness of the characters to be commercially used less than a decade ago. Have you seen a Moomin plushie? Oh really cute! I want!

(9) AND GOOD-BYE TO YOU TOO, OLD RIGHTS-OF-MAN. Bill Coberly asks “Are We All Too Cynical for Star Trek?” in a piece for The Bulwark, a political Substack, about the changing portrayal of Starfleet across the decades.

…This is not to say that the ’90s shows never delved into the complexity and nuance of this ethos—indeed, playing at the edges of their internal morality was how they derived much of their interest. A number of Starfleet admirals throughout TNG are shown to be venal or corrupt. One of the greatest episodes of Deep Space Nine (1992–99), “In the Pale Moonlight,” is entirely about how, in times of crisis, moral compromise may be necessary, even for Starfleet. But such cases are treated as exceptional, unusual circumstances far beyond the norm; as a rule, Starfleet is good, and the best way to be a good servant of the true and just in the world of Star Trek is by being a good Starfleet officer. How does one be a good Starfleet officer? By doing one’s job, by being a professional, by following one’s duty.

THINGS ARE DIFFERENT IN modern Trek. By “modern Trek” I mean the five major TV shows that have aired since the franchise returned to the small screen in 2017: Discovery (2017–present), Picard (2020–23), Lower Decks (2020–present), Prodigy (2021–present), and Strange New Worlds (2022–present). Starfleet as an institution often plays a partially antagonistic role in each of these shows. By the time of Picard, the titular paragon has quit Starfleet in a huff because it no longer lives up to his principles, and in both seasons one and three it is revealed that Starfleet has been compromised by hostile alien agents and cannot be trusted. The first season of Discovery ends with Starfleet condoning genocide, only to be stopped by our heroic crew; Season 2’s villain was an out-of-control Starfleet AI that threatened all life in the galaxy; and Seasons 3 and 4 keep the crew in near-constant conflict with Starfleet and/or Federation brass. Lower Decks is centered on the adventures of a low-level officer who routinely defies Starfleet regulations to help nearby planets in ways that Starfleet would not condone. Even Strange New Worlds, the most archetypal of the modern shows, emphasizes how unjust some of Starfleet’s rules are: In the first episode of the second season, the crew is forced to steal the Starship Enterprise itself to rescue a comrade in defiance of Starfleet’s orders….

(10) SFF BOOKS ON SALE. [Item by BGrandrath.] Back with another Whatnot commercial. The other day someone posted asking about a good place to buy books this might be the answer… “Over 40 Science Fiction Books | Vintage Book Haul”.

BOB’S Books will be on my nomination list for Best Fancast this year.

(11) ROMANTASY. The Guardian discusses “A genre of swords and soulmates: the rise and rise of ‘romantasy’ novels”.

…It is unclear where the “romantasy” label originated: though Bloomsbury said it coined the term to “identify the genre [Sarah J. Maas] was spearheading”, the term was posted on Urban Dictionary as early as 2008. In any case, its usage has exploded in the last year on social media and in marketing copy for fantasy romance titles.

Romantasy authors are selling well in part because of their huge popularity on social media; Maas’ publisher, Bloomsbury, says that videos with hashtags connected to her books have more than 14bn views on TikTok alone. On “BookTok”, the corner of the platform dedicated to book-related content, fans share their rankings of book series, theories about what might happen in future novels, compilations of favourite quotes and outfits inspired by books.

Such novels are typically set in fantastical worlds, with fairies, dragons, magic, but also feature classic romance plotlines – enemies-to-lovers, soulmates, love triangles. “Romance readers have discovered that romantasy has all the tropes they adore, but set in a world they can escape to and get lost in,” explains Ajebowale Roberts, an editor at HarperCollins.

“The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games” is how Canadian author Nisha J Tuli describes one of her romantasy novels, Trial of the Sun Queen….

(12) BURNSIDE Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] John Burnside is an award-winning poet and author: “John Burnside: ‘My stoner friends were into The Hobbit, but Gormenghast was darker’” in the Guardian.

The book that changed me as a teenager

Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series. My stoner friends were into Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but that didn’t interest me. What Peake created was darker, more intricate, at once more sinister and more beautiful than anything else I had read up to that point. At the end, I was left with a powerful impression of the richness of language, of its magical power. As my father would say, “people like us” didn’t become writers, (or musicians, or artists) but Peake made me wonder if writing was maybe worth the risk of honourable failure.

(13) TOP 10 STREAMING SFF FOR JANUARY. JustWatch has shared its rankings of the Top 10 Sci-Fi streaming films and TV series for January 2024.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Ersatz Culture, BGrandrath, Ken Josenhans, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Maytree.]

Pixel Scroll 4/24/23 A Pixel Lives Forever, But Not So Files And Scrolls

Posted on April 24, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) MOST CENSORED. “ALA Releases Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022” – see the complete list at Publishers Weekly. This genre work is on it:

10. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas, for claims it is sexually explicit.

(2) 2025 WORLDCON BID STATUS. According to the Chengdu Worldcon PR#1, the deadline for submission of materials for biding for the 2025 Worldcon was April 21, 2023.

Kathy Bond, Co-Chair of the Seattle 2025 Bid, says “We filed our documents in March and received confirmation that they were received by the Chengdu team.”

However, all are waiting on the Chengdu committee to confirm whether that was the sole filed bid.

(3) THE STATE OF TRADPUB SALARIES. A Publishers Weekly survey sees “Starting Salaries at Big Publishers Grow”.

As of April 1, the average entry-level salary for publishing employees located in New York City at the Big Five trade publishers and Scholastic was $47,583, up from $38,583 before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a recent survey conducted by PW. That marks an increase of 23.3%, during a period when prices rose 12.4%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Publishers raced to increase starting salaries beginning in 2020, after the onset of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police prompted book business workers to call attention to social justice causes, including the need for publishing employees to make a living wage. Another round of salary increases occurred earlier this year across the Big Five—including at HarperCollins, where union members ended a three-month strike in February.

According to the publishers polled in this survey, staffers work between 35 and 40 hours a week, depending on the company, and all are eligible for overtime. Respondents to the industrywide 2022 PW salary survey said they were working an average of 42 hours per week—including time outside the office—the same number of hours they reported working in 2021. The survey also found that median compensation for staff with less than five years of experience was $46,000 for editorial, $48,000 for sales and marketing, and $61,500 for operations and production….

(4) SEE ENDEAVOUR AWARD WINNER INTERVIEW. The Endeavour Award for science fiction and fantasy published by Pacific Northwest authors is announcing a new series of interviews and readings featuring winners, finalists, judges, and other PNW luminaries. The first interview will be with 2021 Endeavour Award winner Erica L. Satifka, who won the prize for her short story collection How to Get to Apocalypse and Other Disasters. The event will be held Friday, April 28 at 4:00 p.m. Pacific (7:00 p.m. Eastern), and will include an interview and a reading from her book. To join, visit the Endeavour Award’s Facebook page.

The award administrator is currently seeking entries for books published in 2022. Entries are free. Please contact Jim Kling at jkling@gmail.com for more information.

Since 1999, The Endeavour Award has recognized science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction. The author(s) must have had legal or physical residence in the Pacific Northwest (Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia) when the publisher accepted the book, and must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest. The books must have been published in the United States or in Canada.

(5) THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. Craig Miller tells a fascinating story on Facebook about working on publicity for Oliver Stone’s first feature as a director, a little-known film called The Hand.

…A couple final comments about the film. When I was a publicist, I would not lie. I would not tell people something was great if I didn’t think it was. When I was repping “The Hand”, I used to describe it as “one of the best disembodied hand movies ever”. And on that metric, I think I’m correct….

(6) BULGACON 2022 RECORDINGS ON LINE. [Item by Valentin D. Ivanov.] Bulgacon is the annual national Bulgarian SFF convention. The 2022 hybrid edition took place in Kardzhali on Sept 2-6, 2002. The event gathered some international participation (including Peter Watts, Paul MacAuley, Julie Novakova and Lavie Tidhar, among others.

A bilingual Bulgarian/English booklet with the program and the list of panelists can be seen in pdf format here.

Recently, the recordings of 16 panels (most in English with Bulgarian translation) were made available on a dedicated YouTube channel.

(7) DENNY LIEN MEMORIAL PLANNED. The family obituary — “Obituary of Dennis Kieth Lien” – includes details of the planned memorial. There is also a link to a page full of tributes and reminiscences about him.

A memorial celebration of life is planned for Friday June 2, 5–8 pm, at the Como Park Streetcar Station. See Denny’s online memorial board for further information as well as tributes, personal anecdotes, and photos: www.kudoboard.com/boards/xRExNJQo/dennylien

(8) HOW TO TRAIN YOUR BOT. The Washington Post’s analysis of a dataset that may be used to train AI bots like ChatGPT, linked in the April 21 Scroll, inspired Jonathan Cowie to check on some other SF sites “including my personal Science-com one I’ve not updated since CoVID…” (To refresh your memories, File 770 ranked 3,445^th with 2.5 million “tokens”.) Here are screencaps of the results for Locus.com, Ansible, SF2 Concatenation, and Science.com.

(9) ON THE ROAD. Feline intelligence far surpasses AI when it comes to understanding great literature. “Timothy reads The Road by Cormac McCarthy” at Camestros Felapton.

…Mr McCarthy wrote a novel in which nearly everything is dead. He doesn’t say that a cat did it but I think we can infer that. When you read literature, the author doesn’t always explain everything….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1997 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Before her short life was drawn to a close by cancer, Angela Carter was fond in her writings of using folklore themes. Her best remembered story I think is A Company of Wolves which got turned into a film but there were others as well but not limited to including a woman with wings, werewolves, the erl-king, and reworkings of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

What we have for our Beginning tonight is her “Puss-in Boots” story which she wrote specifically for The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories collection which was published by 1997.

The Bloody Chamber was often described as a series of retellings’ of classic children’s fairy tales. Not true. Carter said she was actually writing new tales which revealed the intrinsic violence which included sexual violence towards women of those old folk tales.

This tale, and I don’t consider this a spoiler, is based off the Italian commedia dell’arte tradition.

This story, as is The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories collection, simply stellar.

And now for our rather delightful Beginning…

“Figaro here; Figaro, there, I tell you! Figaro upstairs, Figaro downstairs and–oh, my goodness me, this little Figaro can slip into my lady’s chamber smart as you like at any time whatsoever that he takes the fancy for, don’t you know, he’s a cat of the world, cosmopolitan, sophisticated; he can tell when a furry friend is the Missus’ best company. For what lady in all the world could say ‘no’ to the passionate yet toujours discret advances of a fine marmalade cat? (Unless it be her eyes incontinently overflow at the slightest whiff of fur, which happened once, as you shall hear.)

A tom, sirs, a ginger tom and proud of it. Proud of his fine, white shirtfront that dazzles harmoniously against his orange and tangerine tessellations (oh! what a fiery suit of lights have I); proud of his bird-entrancing eye and more than military whiskers; proud, to a fault, some say, of his fine, musical voice. All the windows in the square fly open when I break into impromptu song at the spectacle of the moon above Bergamo. If the poor players in the square, the sullen rout of ragged trash that haunts provinces, are rewarded with a hail of pennies when they set up their makeshift stage and start their raucous choruses, then how much more liberally do the citizens deluge me with pails of the freshest water, vegetables hardly spoiled and, occasionally, slippers, shoes and boots.

“Do you see these fine, high, shining leather boots of mine? A young cavalry officer made me the tribute of, first, one; then, after I celebrate his generosity with a fresh obbligato, the moon no fuller than my heart–whoops! I nimbly spring aside–down comes the other. Their high heels will click like castanets when Puss takes his promenade upon the tiles, for my song recalls flamenco, all cats have a Spanish tinge although Puss himself elegantly lubricates his virile, muscular, native Bergamasque with French, since that is the only language in which you can purr.

“Merrrrrrrrrrrci!’

Instanter I draw my new boots on over the natty white stockings that terminate my hinder legs. That young man, observing with curiosity by moonlight the use to which I put his footwear, calls out: ‘Hey, Puss! Puss, there!’

‘At your service, sir!’

‘Up to my balcony, young Puss!”

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 24, 1910 — Albert Zugsmith. American film producer, film director and screenwriter who specialized in really low-budget exploitation films such as Sex Kittens Go to College and Female on the Beach through the Fifties and Sixties. So why am I giving him a Birthday, you ask? Why it’s because he produced The Incredible Shrinking Man which won a Hugo at Solacon. (Died 1993.)
Born April 24, 1946 — Don D’Ammassa, 77. Considered to be one of the best and fairest long-form reviewers ever. His Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2005) covers some five hundred writers and as can two newer volumes, Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction (2006) and Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction (2009) are equally exhaustive. I can’t comment on his fiction as I’ve only ever encountered him as a reviewer.
Born April 24, 1947 — Michael Butterworth, 76. Author with Michael Moorcock of, naturally, two Time of the Hawklords novels, Time of the Hawklordsand Queens of Deliria. He also wrote a number of Space 1999 Year 2 novels, too numerous to list here. He also edited Corridor magazine from 1971 to 1974. He also wrote a number of short fiction pieces including one whose title amuses me for reasons I’m not sure, “Circularisation of Condensed Conventional Straight-Line Word-Image Structures”.
Born April 24, 1950 — Michael Patrick Hearn, 73. Academic who has some of the best annotated works I’ve had the pleasure to encounter. I wholeheartedly recommend both The Annotated Wizard of Oz and The Annotated Christmas Carol, not to overlook Victorian Fairy Tales which is simply the best collection of those tales.
Born April 24, 1953 — Gregory Luce, 70. Editor and publisher of both the Science Fiction Gems and the Horror Gems anthology series, plus such other anthologies as Citadel of the Star Lords / Voyage to Eternity and Old Spacemen Never Die! / Return to Earth.
Born April 24, 1955 — Wendy S. Delmater, 68. She was nominated at Sasquan for a Best Semiprozine Hugo for editing the exemplary Abyss & Apex webzine. It’s particularly strong in the areas of speculative poetry and small press genre reviews. She herself has written a lot of genre centered essays, plus a handful of genre stories and poems.
Born April 24, 1983 — Madeline Ashby, 40. California-born Canadian resident writer whose Company Town novel created an entire city in an oil rig. Interestingly In 2013, she was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer but recused herself on the grounds that her pro career started with her ‘09 publication of a short story in Nature, so her eligibility period had expired in ‘11. And her Machine Dynasties series is simply brilliant, and resonates with the later Murderbot series.

(12) FINAL SPACE RECEIVING A CONCLUSION AS A GRAPHIC NOVEL. [Item by N.] Final Space, the beloved cult sci-fi animated series, after it was given an unceremonious cancellation and tax write-off, is able to conclude its story next year via graphic novel as Olan Rogers has received a license.

I can finish Final Space.
This isn't a joke.
After two years of trying Warner Brothers Discovery gave me a license for a graphic novel. THE FINAL CHAPTER begins today!
PRE-ORDER NOW: https://t.co/4tBUZrvfKW pic.twitter.com/0uvDLtrVQn
— Final Space (@FinalSpace) April 24, 2023

Book is on sale here.

That’s the good news. The bad news, in a bit of a monkey’s paw for fans of the show outside of the US, is no digital release and what appears to be extremely high shipping costs (though Rogers, as of writing, is working with Shopify to reduce these). See these tweets for examples of the shipping costs: (1), (2), (3).

(13) THE ORIGINAL WAR ON COMICS. Unlike some Filers, there are readers even now approaching retirement age who know nothing about Seduction of the Innocent and the related efforts to censor comics. So CrimeReads’ Keith Roysdon is stepping in to provide “A Brief History of America Freaking Out About Horror Comics”.

Fourteen-year-old David Drew was the poster boy for horror comics in the 1950s, in the worst possible way….

…A wire service story widely published in newspapers beginning May 19 reported that Drew had told Douglas Kelley, a University of California psychiatrist, that he read horror comics and especially liked comics that “depict torture and throwing people off cliffs.”

As the young killer moved through the California legal system – he pleaded guilty in November 1955 – newspapers and wire services quickly found a memorable label for his crime: “the comic book hatchet slaying.”

Authorities and newspapers were already primed to cite comic books as a bad influence on young people. A year before, in the spring of 1954, the Congressional Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency had held public hearings. Among those testifying was Frederic Wertham, a psychiatrist whose book, “Seduction of the Innocent,” posed the theory that comic book heroes like Batman and Robin were gay and a bad influence on children.

Months before young Stanley Frank was killed, in October 1954, the Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America had been adopted by comics industry publishers. The comics industry had waved a white flag in the war on comics.

(14) QUEST CATALOG. SYFY Wire does a roundup of “Our favorite Holy Grail quest movies in honor of ‘Mrs. Davis’” Beware spoilers. Monty Python and the Holy Grail wins high praise here.

How far would you go to defeat an evil A.I.? That’s the question at the heart of Mrs. Davis, the new Peacock original series that premiered this week after a wave of positive reviews and early buzz that’s set it up as one of the most intriguing new genre shows of the year.

Now, there are a lot of twists and turns built into this show, but the basic setup is this: There’s a massively popular, potentially dangerous A.I. out there that calls itself “Mrs. Davis,” and a nun named Simone (Betty Gilpin) who wants to shut it down for the good of mankind. Simone is convinced that getting Mrs. Davis to deactivate is the right thing to do, but Mrs. Davis isn’t exactly just sitting by a plug that’s waiting for the nun to pull it. So … how is she supposed to get it done?

SPOILERS AHEAD

In the series premiere, it’s revealed that Mrs. Davis has made a promise to Simone: The A.I. will shut down if Simone can track down, and eventually destroy, the Holy Grail.

(15) ADA HOFFMANN COLLECTION ANNOUNCED. Apex Book Company has acquired first North America English rights to the collection Resurrections by Ada Hoffmann. The deal was brokered by agent Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates.

Ada Hoffmann’s work has been a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award (2020, The Outside), the Compton Crook Award (2020, The Outside), and the WSFA Small Press Award (2020, “Fairest of All”). She is the winner of the Friends of the Merrill Collection Short Story Contest (2013, “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library”) and a two-time Rhysling award nominee (2014 for “The Siren of Mayberry Crescent” and 2017 for “The Giantess’s Dream”).

Apex Book Company is a small press owned and operated by Jason Sizemore.

(16) MOCKUMENTARY. We may have looked at this before – but let’s look again! “The Great Martian War 1913-1917”.

This film was made in 2013 as a joke, for WW1’s 100th anniversary.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George tells us what it would be like “If Cats Had Podcasts” – and it’s barely an inconvenience!

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, N., Jim Kling, Valentin D. Ivanov, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

AudioFile’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Audiobooks for 2022

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Mike Glyer

This year File 770 is partnering with AudioFile to announce the winners of the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Audiobooks of 2022. They are listed below with links to AudioFile’s review.

AudioFile also will be featuring exclusive interviews with narrators from Best Audiobooks 2022 across all the categories on their podcast, Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine.

*Left:* January LaVoy. Photo by Todd Cerveri. *Right:* Bahni Turpin. Photo Linda Posnick.

AudioFile’s 2022 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobooks are full of out-of-this world listening. Read on to discover a new take on a beloved classic, rich worldbuilding with outstanding full-cast narrations, or a captivating noir fantasy full of otherworldly beings.

BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY AUDIOBOOKS FOR 2022

THE ATLAS SIX: Atlas, Book 1 by Olivie Blake | Read by Steve West, David Monteith, Damian Lynch, Caitlin Kelly, Andy Ingalls, Munirih Grace, Siho Ellsmore, James Patrick Cronin | AudioFile Earphones Award. Macmillan Audio | 16 hrs.

Six exceptional individuals are recruited to join the mysterious Alexandrian Society. Listeners hear from prospective initiates from alternating points of view as the competition unfolds, all performed by a talented ensemble of narrators.

Review of The Atlas Six

A COURT OF MIST AND FURY: A Court of Thorns and Roses, Book 2 by Sarah J. Maas | Read by Melody Muze, Anthony Palmini, Henry W. Kramer, Jon Vertullo, Amanda Forstrom, and a Full Cast |AudioFile Earphones Award. GraphicAudio | 8 hrs.

Melody Muze inhabits the role of this story’s narrator, along with Feyre, a mortal in an immortal body who lives in the land of Faerie. Sound effects, background music, and an imaginative cast enhance this magical battle between good and evil.

Review of A Court of Mist and Fury

EVEN THOUGH I KNEW THE END by C.L. Polk | Read by January LaVoy | AudioFile Earphones Award. Recorded Books | 3.75 hrs.

January LaVoy’s captivating talents are on full display as she narrates a romantic, fantastical noir mystery. Helen Brandt has sold her soul to a demon, but now faces a chance to earn it back, save her city, and have a future with her girl.

Review of Even Though I Knew the End

MAXINE JUSTICE: Galactic Attorney by Daniel Schwabauer | Read by Aimee Lilly | AudioFile Earphones Award. Oasis Audio | 9 hrs.

There can be no doubt that narrator Aimee Lilly is having fun portraying Maxine Justice, who is feisty, resilient, and a bit down on her luck. Lilly captures all of Max’s dry wit, which makes this whimsical sci-fi story full of humans, robots, and aliens even more effective.

Review of Maxine Justice: Galactic Attorney

MOON WITCH, SPIDER KING: Dark Star Trilogy, Book 2 by Marlon James | Read by Bahni Turpin | AudioFile Earphones Award. Penguin Audio | 30.75 hrs.

Bahni Turpin shows extraordinary range in her expert narration of this sprawling fantasy, the second installment of the Dark Star Trilogy. Listeners are treated to the fascinating and tumultuous 177-year life story of the witch Sogolon—from her painful childhood to her rise to power.

Review of Moon Witch, Spider King

WITCHES ABROAD: Discworld, Book 12 by Terry Pratchett | Read by Indira Varma, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy | AudioFile Earphones Award. Penguin Audio UK | 9.75 hrs.

This highly amusing new recording of a classic in Pratchett’s beloved Discworld series, primarily narrated by Indira Varma with distinct British voices, introduces listeners to a godmother-witch, Magrat. She must stop the servant Emberella from marrying the prince, which (surprisingly) would destroy the kingdom.

Review of Witches Abroad

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