25 Oh, Scroll Us The Way To The Next Pixel Bar, Oh Don’t Ask Why

Posted on April 5, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS. The 2025 Hugo finalists won’t be publicly announced until tomorrow at Noon, but Escape Pod has already posted their 2025 Award Voter Packet.

(2) NON-SCIENCE AND WORLDCON IMPLICATIONS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Seattle Worldcon has expressed concern as to what the stricter US border controls will mean for fans and authors attending from overseas. As a result it is giving advice and also plans for an enhanced, virtual, on-line attendance experience. In science there are similar concerns. This week’s issue of Nature has a number of articles and news items on the new US presidency’s border policy impact on the nation’s science.

From the off an editorial spells out the problem of Trump’s funding cuts to science. Nature conducted a poll of over 1,600 US-based scientists and 1,200 said that they were considering leaving! Nature notes that this might not present an accurate picture of the feelings of all US-based scientists but it does, they say, provide a strong indication of the “despair” many feel. Those leaving gave Europe and Canada as their preferred destinations. Meanwhile, the EU is doubling the absolute maximum of two million Euros (US$2.2 million) relocation grant per applicant! (I understand that this is for senior scientists seeking permanent relocation, so don’t get your hopes up for some easy dosh.)

Then there is an article on the detention of visiting scientists at the US border which notes that researchers whose mobile smartphones have a record negative social media posts on them regarding US science policy have been barred from entry. Since 2019 visitor visa applicants to the US have had to provide details of their social media accounts and user names but these have rarely been used to bar anyone from entry. (I guess if I applied for a visa I’d be met with disbelief in not filling out those sections as I don’t have a home internet connection or smartphone – all my (by choice) limited online is done at local library and learned scientific society cybercafés.) LGBTQAI+ scientists are also actively reconsidering travelling to the US for symposia, conferences and field trips. Meanwhile, several US universities have warned foreign students against unnecessary travel outside the US in case they have difficulty getting back in. Advice for visitors is to arrive in the US with a clean burner phone and/or a lap-top pad that has already been wiped of unnecessary files and social media history.

Elsewhere in this week’s Nature there is an article on the cuts to CoVID and climate change research. The past month some 400 National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention research grants have been cut. Apparently, there was discussion in the NIH on potentially cancelling LGBTQAI+, gender diversity, equity and inclusion research. Meanwhile, the CDC is cutting US$11.4 billion in pandemic response science…! Yup, we have just had a global pandemic that has killed more than 7 million globally (a sure under-estimate as cause-of-death recording in less-developed nations is not that good) and 1.2 million in the US alone, so it might just be a bit of an idea to invest in ensuring lessons are learned and strategies are developed for use when the next pandemic comes… And it really is a case of ‘when’ not ‘if’…

Finally, there is piece on international food aid cuts. Here it is not just the US, which is dismantling its US Agency for International Development (USAID), but aid budgets in Britain (cut by 40%), France (37%), Netherlands (30%) and Belgium (25%) as money is diverted into military spend and support for Ukraine. Globally, severe malnutrition is responsible for up to 20% of deaths among the under five-year-olds.

Together, these articles from just one issue of the journal, paint a bleak, almost Orwellian, picture. Goodness knows what forthcoming editions will hold?

Turning back to SF, there has been some discussion in certain fannish quarters as to whether the US should host the Worldcon under such a socio-political regimen? While such a move may, for some, be controversial, it would not be impossible as in the coming years there are a number of serious bids from outside the US, plus few others. Montreal, Canada, is bidding for 2027. Brisbane, Australia is going for 2028. There is only one bid for 2029 and that’s Dublin, Ireland provided folk can all squeeze in (?). However, so far there are only US bids for 2030 and 2031. This may very well change.

If all this happens, it will see a massive – would ‘seismic’ be OTT? – change to the Worldcon. My first Worldcon was Brighton 1979. That was a great con with plenty of talks, a load of seasoned SF authors on the programme who’d been round the block several times and who had tales of their own encounters with other SF giants, and there was a solid film programme; a far cry from Glasgow and its mindless planorama computer package sifted, panel-led programme with few prepared talks and zero films (this last being a first for a British Worldcon). Back in 1979 I recall a bemused Christopher (Superman) Reeve astonishment at the cheer in the hall for Hugo-shortlisted Hitch-hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy: Superman won such was the N. America dominated Hugo-voting constituency as Hitch-hikers had yet to make it to the States. That Worldcon spawned a four-part BBC documentary on Science Fiction with interviews of authors at that Worldcon: true heritage value. Throughout the subsequent 1980s all but two (Melbourne 1985 and Brighton 1987) were held in the US! Since then the Worldcon has become more mobile but US-venued Worldcons still dominate. This could well end (for a while at least). The question is that in such times as these, what would a US venued Worldcon look and feel like? Almost certainly, there may well be fewer fans and pros from outside the US attending and if so might it be more like a NASFic than a Worldcon? I don’t know, but we will see.

You can see the 1979 Worldcon part of the four-part documentary series below…

(3) GROWING UP SFF. [Item by Steven French.] Author Oisin Fagan on his teenage reading material: “Novelist Oisín Fagan: ‘I was at the altar of literature and had its fire in me’” in the Guardian.

As a teenager I read fantasy. Growing up in rural Ireland, I’d see an oak tree on a hill and think: my God, this is Robin Hobb, JRR Tolkien, Ursula K Le Guin. It gives you back these parts of your life and allows you to recognise them as magical. Then at 14, I was like: time to read Ulysses! At that age you’re always reading above your capabilities. Dostoevsky might resonate deeply, but you fundamentally don’t know what’s happening. You read Notes from Underground thinking: “Yes, he’s totally right! Finally someone understands!” Then you reread it: “Oh, this is a comedy?”…

(4) JUSTICE IN FANTASY. “Power and Punishment: Using the Language of Fantasy to Subvert Real-Life Oppression” at CrimeReads.

Power lies at the heart of all fantasy, written or imagined. To craft a novel of the genre is to visualize an expression of power and assign it to factions that will then weave and warp over the course of the story. Yet, our ability to conjure is naturally shackled by the limits of what we have seen, what we believe, and what we hope is possible. It is little wonder then, that fantasy gives us worlds that are altered, yet familiar—inversions, allegories, and warnings. With these carefully constructed societies come equally detailed punishment, for there can be no law without consequences for breaking it. And it is in this interplay between power, its exercise, and its fettering that the fantasy genre’s subversive nature shines.

Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series is a more conservative example of this subversion. The books center in great part around a schism in magic along biological sex. All who channel magic draw it from the One Power, the driving force of all creation that’s split into male and female halves. The male half was corrupted by the Dark One in an ancient battle that has since resulted in male channelers being driven to madness over the course of using their power. It isn’t a taint of their causing, but one that makes them extremely dangerous. Naturally, it falls to female channelers of an authoritative magical organization, known as the Aes Sedai, to hunt and gentle men—essentially castrating them of magic to such severe degree that it often results in their suicide.

It seems a little on the nose when stripped down to bare bones and certainly is conservative in its rigid adherence to a biological binary. Yet, the matriarchal Aes Sedai isn’t a giant middle finger aimed at men, but a cautionary tale to all social groups seeking power that maintaining it can require great evil. And while readers, especially women and those who have been societally designated as other, are encouraged to empathize with the plight of male channelers in this world, they are also shown the danger these men pose, in part because they have the literal power to threaten a millennia-old hierarchy as much as because of their tendency to destructive violence due to it. The Wheel of Time’s subversive beauty doesn’t lie in its inversion of the modern patriarchy, but the means it employs to examine two pertinent questions of every age—is the potential for destruction enough cause for punishment before crime? What happens when a faction is downtrodden for too long?…

(5) DAVID THOMAS MOORE Q&A. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog hosts an “Interview with Rebellion Editor David Thomas Moore”.

UHBCB:
Do you have any thoughts on the state of modern SFF?

Moore:
It’s great, to be honest! There’s such a richness and plurality of identities and voices now; when I started fifteen years ago stories by marginalised authors were marketed on that, because they were exceptional, but now it’s scarcely worth mentioning. And that’s reflected in the stories themselves — when most writers looked like me, most of the stories were the types of stories I’d tell, but now I get to read and work with stories, characters, language and structures that are completely out of my safety zone and I love it.

We’re challenging genre conventions (and mashing them up). We’re pushing the boundary between “literary” and “genre.” We’re trying new things out, questioning assumptions and experimenting. And we’re having fun — the younger crop of writers approach their work with such joy and love, it’s wonderful.

(6) A BIT OF CONVENTION LORE. Why you would want to know the history of The Gross-Out Contest? But if you do, Brian Keene has summed it all up in “Jack Ketchum, Jay Wilburn, and The Gross-Out Contest”, an unlocked Patreon post.

…The Gross Out Contest is purposely profane, purposely over-the-top, and purposely counter culture. It is intended to be shocking. It is intended — for those who’s sense of humor leans toward such things — to be hilarious….

(7) WORLD SF STORYBUNDLE. There are five days left to buy the 2025 World SF StoryBundle curated by Lavie Tidhar.

Join me for a trip around the world, from China to Nigeria, Luxembourg to the outer reaches of space. Hello – and welcome to the eighth annual World SF bundle! Can you believe we’re still here?

Things are definitely looking bleak everywhere you turn, which is why literature matters more than ever. What better way is there to reach across languages and cultures then to experience the stories people tell? The language of science fiction and fantasy is universal, and here I tried to bring together a group of remarkable writers from all corners of the world.

Support awesome authors by paying however much you think their work is worth!

The three basic books are:

The Bright Mirror: Women of Global Solarpunk by Future Fiction
The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed
Sinophagia by Xueting C. Ni

Pay at least $20 to unlock another 7 bonus books, for a total of 10!

Ecolution: Solarpunk Narratives to Transform Reality by Francesco Verso
Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic by Tobi Ogundiran
Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw
The Golem of Deneb Seven by Alex Shvartsman
The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar
The Good Soldier by Nir Yaniv
The Pleasure of Drowning by Jean Bürlesk

(8) TOTAL ECLIPSE OF A STAR. “How Rutger Hauer Made Harrison Ford ‘Disappear’ in Blade Runner” — Inverse tells all about it.

In 2019, the legendary Dutch actor Rutger Hauer passed away. For cinephiles, his legacy was immense, ranging from films like Nighthawks to The Osterman Weekend, to Eureka, in which Hauer starred alongside the late Gene Hackman. And before his Hollywood breakthrough in Nighthawks, Hauer’s work in Dutch and German films was extensive. But, for science fiction and fantasy fans, his stardom is almost exclusively defined by his performance as the rogue replicant Roy Batty in the 1982 classic Blade Runner. Yes, fantasy fans and Ready Player One ‘80s completists will argue that Hauer’s turn in Ladyhawke is just as iconic, but history has proven that if there’s one role that truly became his legacy, it’s that of the baddie in Blade Runner.

Appropriately, a new documentary about the life of Rutger Hauer takes its title from a line from the movie, a line that Hauer himself helped craft. The documentary is called Like Tears in Rain, and it’s directed by Hauer’s goddaughter, Sanna Fabery de Jonge, who narrates the opening moments of the movie to give the documentary historical context. Naturally, this documentary isn’t only about Blade Runner or science fiction. And yet, the revelations and observations about how Hauer was eerily connected to Blade Runner are a huge part of the movie and, certainly, a must-see for any serious student of sci-fi cinema….

…But, just as the movie takes its title from Blade Runner, the discussions of that film and how Hauer changed it forever are central to what makes the documentary crucial for all future discussions about Blade Runner.

“He really turned that into a role for the ages,” Robert Rodriguez says in the movie. Meanwhile, Mickey Rourke asserts that, “He made Harrison Ford disappear. I’m sorry. No disrespect to Harrison Ford, but you couldn’t wait for the bad guy to come on the film.”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

April 5, 1917 — Robert Bloch. (Died 1994.)

By Paul Weimer: Psycho, and so so much more.

Psycho, the movie adaptation of his novel, is where I first got onto the Robert Bloch train, although I didn’t know I was doing so at the time (I thought I was on a Hitchcock train, I didn’t realize it was a shared train line). I was stunned by the movie, in a good way. It’s a bank robbery that turns into something far far darker. Sure you have seen the memes, but if you haven’t seen the original movie yet (don’t bother with the remakes). Do.

Bloch’s oeuvre and repertoire was usually crime and horror more than fantasy. He wrote Cosmic horror and cosmic horror adjacent work. I remember Nyarlathotep being in a number of his stories, he made good use of the Black Pharaoh. You might say that he punched his ticket in his early career.

Later on, Bloch’s screenplay writing was the major way he got from stop to stop on the trainline of life and wrote for a wide variety of shows. “Wolf in the Fold” (the Jack the Ripper one) is the one that I vividly remember as being unusually putting us into the head of Scotty and the other members of the crew. It turns out the Ripper was a recurring theme, and Bloch made stop after stop at that particular station in his writing.

I haven’t read all that much of his crime fiction, except for an occasional story here and there (especially for a podcast). But his vivid pulp-fueled writing made every word on the page memorable and sometimes visceral on the rails of his plots and characters. His mastery of the psychology of his victims and antagonists alike is what really set him apart from other similar writers. He got into the heads of his characters, and so his words got into the head of me, right along the old straight track of fears and doubts.

But why all these train metaphors. My favorite Bloch piece is “That Hell-Bound Train”, his Hugo award-winning short story. Our protagonist, Martin, is a drifter with a love of trains. He makes a deal with the devil, to stop time when he is happiest. The devil knows the essential indecision of a person means he will never do it, and thus he will claim Martin’s soul when he dies. But in a classic and amazing ending, Martin finally makes his choice to stop time…while on the train to hell itself. His eternity will be on a perpetual train ride, a fitting fate for a lover of trains.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro demonstrates when autocorrect goes too far.
Close to Home shows a Captain’s previous work.
Dark Side of the Horse fulfills the adage.
Dog Eat Doug returns to DnD.
Frank and Ernest reenact the first call.
Robbie and Bobby check a new game.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal finds the real solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Tom Gauld has his own ideas about horror.

(11) TRON IS ON. “’Tron: Ares’ Trailer: First Look at Disney’s Sci-Fi Sequel” – Variety introduces the clip. Movie arrives in theaters October 10.

“Tron” is back, more than 40 years after the original sci-fi movie hit theaters.

Disney has released the first trailer for “Tron: Ares,” the third film in the “Tron” franchise after the 1982 original and the 2010 sequel “Tron: Legacy.”

Jared Leto leads the film, which includes original star Jeff Bridges back as Kevin Flynn. Leto plays Ares, one of the programs from the digital universe who is tasked to enter the real world….

(12) JURASSIC HOMAGE – OR PERHAPS FROMAGE. “The film fans who remade Jurassic Park: how an Australian town got behind a $3,000 ‘mockbuster’” from the Guardian’s Australian edition.

This morning’s location: a field outside Castlemaine, Victoria. The air is thick with flies, attracted to the cow dung but ignoring the nearby dinosaur poo, sturdily constructed from papier-mache.

“Oh god,” Sam Neill groans – though these words aren’t actually uttered by Neill but local builder Ian Flavell, who has taken on Neill’s role as palaeontologist Alan Grant – and drops to his knees in front of an ailing triceratops.

This is Jurassic Park: Castlemaine Redux, a shot-for-shot remake (if you squint) of Jurassic Park, the 1993 blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg. This film’s director is John Roebuck, the man with the vision and the $3,000 budget. Right now, he’s hunched over a monitor: some sheep walked into the last shot and screwed up the continuity….

…To Roebuck’s surprise, support for his project quickly grew, which meant he only wound up spending $3,000 of his own money – mainly on venue hire and catering. Jurassic Park Motor Pool Australia – a club for owners and enthusiasts of replica Jurassic Park vehicles – supplied some wheels and props. Local cameraman Kristian Bruce brought his professional gear, retiring the DSLR Roebuck had been using. A man in Texas saw the trailer and offered his VFX services. Castlemaine itself – a town that embraces sublimely ridiculous ideas, such as Castlemaine Idyll (a raucous take on Australian Idol) and the community dance-off Hot Moves No Pressure – leapt on tickets to the “world premiere”. There are four screenings of Jurassic Park: Castlemaine Redux at the Theatre Royal between 11 and 13 April….

(13) ROBOVALET. The New York Times prepares readers for the “Invasion of the Home Humanoid Robots” – link bypasses the paywall.

On a recent morning, I knocked on the front door of a handsome two-story home in Redwood City, Calif. Within seconds, the door was opened by a faceless robot dressed in a beige bodysuit that clung tight to its trim waist and long legs.

This svelte humanoid greeted me with what seemed to be a Scandinavian accent, and I offered to shake hands. As our palms met, it said: “I have a firm grip.”

When the home’s owner, a Norwegian engineer named Bernt Børnich, asked for some bottled water, the robot turned, walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator with one hand.

Artificial intelligence is already driving cars, writing essays and even writing computer code. Now, humanoids, machines built to look like humans and powered by A.I., are poised to move into our homes so they can help with the daily chores. Mr. Børnich is chief executive and founder of a start-up called 1X. Before the end of the year, his company hopes to put his robot, Neo, into more than 100 homes in Silicon Valley and elsewhere….

(14) ANCIENT SPACE MARINER. “Vanguard 1 is the oldest satellite orbiting Earth. Scientists want to bring it home after 67 years” – Space tells how they want to do it.

Decades ago during the heady space race rivalry between the former Soviet Union and the United States, the entire world experienced the Sputnik moment when the first artificial satellite orbited the Earth.

Sputnik 1‘s liftoff on Oct. 4, 1957 sparked worries in the U.S., made all the more vexing by the embarrassing and humiliating failure later that year of America’s first satellite launch when the U.S. Navy’s Vanguard rocket went “kaputnik” as the booster toppled over and exploded.An emotional rescue for America came via the first U.S. artificial satellite. Explorer 1 was boosted into space by the Army on Jan. 31, 1958. Nevertheless, despite setbacks, Vanguard 1 did reach orbit on March 17, 1958 as the second U.S. satellite.

And guess what? While Explorer 1 reentered Earth’s atmosphere in 1970, the Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) Vanguard 1 microsatellite is still up there. It just celebrated 67 years of circuiting our planet….

…A team that includes aerospace engineers, historians and writers recently proposed “how-to” options for an up-close look and possible retrieval of Vanguard 1….

Vanguard 1 could be placed into a lower orbit for retrieval, for instance, or taken to the International Space Station to be repackaged for a ride to Earth. After study, this veteran of space and time would make for a nifty exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum….

…But there’s a major challenge of snuggling up close to the three pound (1.46-kilogram) Vanguard 1. It is a small-sized satellite, a 15-centimeter aluminum sphere with a 91-centimeter antenna span. It would be a delicate, ‘handle with care’ state of affairs.

As suggested by the study group, perhaps a private funder with historical or philanthropic interests could foot the retrieval bill….

(15) THE EARTH ONCE HAD RINGS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Everyone knows that Saturn has rings, but the Earth might have had them too.

Once – before the dinosaurs (whom I have never really forgiven for what they did to Raquel Welch) – the Earth may itself have had rings!

There is evidence of heavy meteorite showers half a billion years ago and, some scientists think, this may have been the remains of ancient rings orbiting our planet….

Matt O’Dowd, over at PBS Space Time looks at a paper that came out at the end of last year that runs with this idea….

Planet Earth is the jewel of the solar system—the shimmery blue oceans, the verdant green forests, the wispy whimsical cloud formations. Saturn is the only competitor for most gorgeous planet with that giant ring system. Hmm… what if we could put the jewel of the Earth in its own ring? Then no contest. Well, there’s an extremely good chance that Earth once DID have a ring system. At least, that’s the proposal by a recent study that has evidence that a mysterious burst in meteor activity nearly half a billion years ago was actually caused by that ancient ring system collapsing onto the Earth. And, you know, if we had a ring once maybe we can have one again.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, 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 Shrinking Violet.]

Pixel Scroll 10/20/24 Pixel Rain

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 ROOM BLOCK WILL OPEN 10/24. The 2025 Worldcon has announced their room block will open for reservations at 12:00 p.m. Pacific on Thursday, October 24.

Our room block will open at 12pm PDT on Thursday, Oct. 24!

For more information about the hotels we're using, check the hotels and accommodations page on our website: https://t.co/o1am2Yfgfb
— Seattle2025 (@seattle2025) October 19, 2024

(2) WORLD FANTASY AWARDS. The 2024 World Fantasy Awards were presented today in Niagara Falls, NY.

(3) ENDEAVOUR AWARD. The winner was announced this weekend at OryCon: “Margaret Owen Wins 2023 Endeavour Award” — for Painted Devils (Henry Holt).

(4) BACK IN PRINT. “Books So Bad They’re Good: The Return of John M. Ford (fall rewind)” at Daily Kos.

…John M. Ford was part of a gifted group of SF/fantasy writers that came along in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s and included luminaries like Diane Duane, Charles de Lint, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Guy Gavriel Kay. An immensely talented poet and even better novelist/short story writer, Ford began writing for Asimov’s before he was out of college, and by 1980 he’d published several beautifully crafted short stories, a slew of game reviews, and proto-cyberpunk novel Web of Angels. Soon came his best-known work, The Dragon Waiting, and the next two decades saw a steady stream of finely written poems, novels, gaming supplements, and contributions to the Liavek shared-world series.

Not all was writing — like so many authors, Ford had to take day jobs as an editor, computer consultant, and even hospital orderly to pay the bills — but by the time Ford died unexpectedly in the mid-000’s he’d won several major awards, become a fannish celebrity thanks to his long-running “Ask Dr. Mike” routine, and acquired a reputation as “writer’s writer” who had never achieved great success despite immense talent. His place in science fiction and fantasy seemed assured, and most fans thought it was only a matter of time until a small press began reissuing his works.

Except that this didn’t happen.

Just why is still in dispute. The late Tor editor David Hartwell claimed that Ford, who died intestate, had been estranged from his SF-hating family who thought science fiction and fantasy were immoral and refused to let the books be reprinted on religious grounds. Ford’s life partner claimed that he’d planned to revise his will to cut his family out and appoint her as his executrix, but since the version he left was never witnessed it wasn’t legally binding, plus they had never actually married beyond a self-penned Klingon ceremony. No one knew how to contact his heirs, and if Hartwell was to be believed, Ford’s family hadn’t approved of his work, his personal relationships, or pretty much anything he’d done as an adult, so why even bother?

It wasn’t until 2018, when Slate’s Isaac Butler began digging into the story, that the truth came out. Ford’s family, far from disapproving of his work, had repeatedly written to his agent inquiring about republication. They had not known that his life partner was more than a friend, nor that the agent, overwhelmed by personal problems and grief-stricken by Ford’s death, had basically withdrawn from the industry completely. They were not happy with the rumors that had circulated about them deliberately withholding Ford’s works from publication, and it took nearly a year of negotiations by Tor Books’ editor Beth Meacham for them to change their mind….

(5) BREVITY. Bill Ryan considers Ramsey Campbell and the power of the short story in horror writing in “Horror in Brief” at The Bulwark.

ONCE, YEARS AGO, I POSTED something on the internet about my disappointment in a novel by the revered, almost superhumanly prolific, Liverpudlian horror writer Ramsey Campbell. The details of what I said then are not relevant here; what is relevant is that someone responded to what I wrote by recommending that I read a particular short story by Campbell called “The Companion.” As it happened, I owned a collection of Campbell’s short fiction that contained the story, so, with some skepticism, I read it. “The Companion” instantly became one of the best horror stories I had ever read, and it remains so to this day.

I shouldn’t have been all that surprised at the sharp contrast between what I felt about the novel by Campbell and my intense admiration for that short story. I’ve long maintained that horror fiction thrives in the short form, and that horror novels can often stretch an idea beyond its breaking point.

(6) JEFF VANDERMEER Q&A. “Jeff VanderMeer Talks About His New ‘Southern Reach’ Novel” — link bypasses New York Times paywall:

A lot of readers wanted to learn what happens after the end of the trilogy, when the situation is pretty dire: Area X is spreading uncontrollably and looks like it will colonize the planet. Why did you decide to go back into the past instead?

To describe what happens after “Acceptance,” when Area X takes over, would be almost impossible. It would be so alien or removed that it felt like a perspective I couldn’t really write. But this book is kind of like a prequel, contiguous with the prior few books, and it’s also sneakily a sequel. So it kind of allowed me to do what I didn’t feel like I could do directly, and that was exciting.

Why do you think you and so many of your readers are still thinking about Area X?

I think because it did come so deeply out of my subconscious. The fact that I was sick when I wrote it, recovering from dental surgery, and the fact that I was still unpacking its meaning in my mind after it was written, and then it took on so many different meanings from other people. There have been so many different interpretations, because of the ambiguity in the books. So people can see a lot of different things in the books, and then when they reflect it back at me, it makes me think about the books differently as well…

(7) IN THE DAYS OF THE DEROS. No science fiction fan’s education is complete without having learned about The Shaver Mystery. Bobby Derie brings readers up to speed with “H. P. Lovecraft & The Shaver Mystery” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.

What follows is an extended deep-dive into the history of one of the most contentious affairs in pulp science fiction in the 1940s, the Shaver Mystery, and its interactions with H. P. Lovecraft’s Mythos, which was also beginning to coalesce in the same period. The ramifications of their interactions would spill over into science fiction fandom, conspiracy circles, and occult literature, with long-lasting effects on popular culture….

(8) BLOCH ON THE AIR. The Robert Bloch Official Website has added new radio episodes scripted by the author. Listen in at “Radio”.

Bloch spent little time working within the medium of radio. Aside from penning radio scripts resulting from participation in Milwaukee political candidate Carl Zeidler’s 1940 bid for mayor and for a few local shows in the Milwaukee area, Bloch’s only commercial foray into radio broadcasting came in 1945, with the debut of Stay Tuned for Terror. A program devoted to horror and the supernatural in the same vein as Lights Out, Terror’s initial, and only season, featured 39, 15-minute radio plays. The scripts, all written by Bloch, consisted of eight originals, with the remainder adapted from his own stories, primarily from Weird Tales, who promoted the radio show within their pages. Sadly, this radio program is for the most part “lost,” apart from, to date, four episodes that have only recently been discovered…

(9) I’M JUST A POE BOY. “The Ghost Of Edgar Allen Poe And Other Strange True Facts About The Master Of The Macabre” – the Idolator begins its collection of oddities with this —

His Obituary Was Full Of Lies

Just two days after Edgar Allan Poe’s death, the New York Daily Tribune posted an obituary about him written by a man who called himself “Ludwig.” This wasn’t the kind of loving obituary most people might see in the newspaper. Ludwig made comments such as, “He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses,” among other claims.

As it turns out, Ludwig was a fake name used by Poe’s rival Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an enemy Poe had made during his time as a critic. Griswold would later write a biographical article on Poe titled “Memoir of the Author” which made further false statements or spread half-truths to taint Poe’s image.

(10) NYCC COSPLAY. “SEE IT! New York Comic Con brings out amazing cosplayers and pop culture icons” in amNewYork. Twenty-three photos at the link.

The 2024 Comic Con wrapped up Sunday after four days that saw thousands of pop culture lovers travel to the Big Apple from all across the country.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born October 20, 1882 — Bela Lugosi. (Died 1956.)

By Paul Weimer: I’ve mentioned in this space before watching movies on WPIX in New York as a formative experience. I got to see lots of old movies that way and be exposed to a wide range of films. It is no wonder that the work of Bela Lugosi came to mind. I (except for his first appearance ifor me) seemed to always be seeing him in movies with Boris Karloff, just like I saw endless movies with Christopher Lee paired with Peter Cushing. Lugosi was Dracula, of course, his most iconic role, but I didn’t see him there first.

The first time I saw him (and heck, the first time I saw Dracula period) was, don’t laugh, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.

Yes, by the vicissitudes of chance, I got to see Lugosi play Dracula in a comedic variation and derivation of his original role, as well as seeing a number of the Universal monsters at the same time. WPIX would later give me the aforementioned Lugosi/Karloff movies and I began to understand what the comedy was making fun of. Lugosi’s Dracula is chilling, sui generis and the template that every other Dracula performer has to measure up against, since.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

B.C. has an unexpected crash.
Frazz discusses the length of a day.
Jumpstart introduces a new superhero.
The Argyle Sweater lists things that are seldom seen.
Carpe Diem cleans up.
Tom Gauld shows why there’s little time left for doing science:

My latest cartoon for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/lcMSiMY7Pg
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) October 20, 2024

(13) WHO TELLS YOUR STORY. “Mass shooting survivors turn to an unlikely place for justice – copyright law” — the Guardian’s tagline: “The approach aims to ‘avoid rewarding’ assailants and prevent trauma reliving. Could it be a viable solution?”

In a Nashville courtroom in early July, survivors of the 2023 Covenant school shooting celebrated an unusual legal victory. Citing copyright law, Judge l’Ashea Myles ruled that the assailant’s writings and other creative property could not be released to the public.

After months of hearings, the decision came down against conservative lawmakers, journalists and advocates who had sued for access to the writings, claiming officials had no right to keep them from the public. But since parents of the assailant – who killed six people at the private Christian elementary school, including three nine-year-old children – signed legal ownership of the shooter’s journals over to the families of surviving students last year, Myles said releasing the materials would violate the federal Copyright Act….

… But the approach is also a response to the frustration that survivors and victims’ families feel. The ways shooters have historically been portrayed in the media, they say, has been damaging; oversight over the distribution of harmful materials online – including video footage of deadly shootings – has been virtually nonexistent; and free rein over shooters’ names and intellectual property has enabled outside actors to profit from their reproduction.

Together, these elements speak to the need for greater care over how the stories of mass shootings are retold, survivors and advocates say, so that victims – rather than their killers – are remembered….

(14) PROBLEM OR SOLUTION? “’It’s quite galling’: children’s authors frustrated by rise in celebrity-penned titles” reports the Guardian.

A modern classic by Keira Knightley” reads the provisional cover of the actor’s debut children’s book, I Love You Just the Same. Set to be published next October, the 80-page volume, written and illustrated by Knightley, is about a girl navigating the changing dynamics that come with the arrival of a sibling.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star is the latest in a long list of celebrities to have turned to writing children’s books. McFly’s Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter have been hovering at the top of the bestseller chart since the publication last month of their latest book The Dinosaur that Pooped Halloween!. Earlier in the year, David Walliams dominated with his newest book Astrochimp. The entertainer has sold 25m copies of his children’s titles in the UK alone, according to Nielsen BookData.

… “These celebrities do not need any more money or exposure, but plenty of genuine writers do,” says the author, poet and performer Joshua Seigal.

When news broke of Knightley’s book deal, authors expressed frustrations online; in one viral tweet, the writer Charlotte Levin joked about deciding to become a film star….

… Some argue that celebrity-backed titles help keep the industry healthy. “Attention paid to any children’s book creates a rising tide that lifts the entire publishing industry,” says the author Howard Pearlstein.

Books written by celebrities can also help increase representation in children’s fiction. “Celebrity fiction has been one of the key ways to get Black and brown characters on shelves in recent years,” says Jasmine Richards, a former ghostwriter of celebrity fiction and founder of StoryMix, which develops fiction with inclusive casts of characters to sell to publishers….

(15) A SERIOUS CASE OF LUPINE. “Wolf Man Official Trailer: Watch Now” advises SYFY Wire.

Watch out, Brundlefly! You might just meet your match in writer-director Leigh Whannell’s take on lupine monsters in the upcoming Wolf Man.

The film’s official trailer, which dropped during the Blumhouse panel at New York Comic Con Friday, gives off some serious Cronenberg vibes, teasing a werewolf infection akin to a deteriorative disease that eats away at the body and turns the mind into primal mush….

(16) ATTRACTIVE NUISANCE? [Item by Steven French.] Don’t go near this if you’ve got any metal in your body! “China builds record-breaking magnet — but it comes with a cost” according to Nature.

China is now home to the world’s most powerful resistive magnet, which produced a magnetic field that was more than 800,000 times stronger than Earth’s.

On 22 September, the magnet, at the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) at the Chinese Academy of Science’s Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, sustained a steady magnetic field of 42.02 tesla. This milestone narrowly surpasses the 41.4-tesla record set in 2017 by a resistive magnet at the US National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) in Tallahassee, Florida. Resistive magnets are made of coiled metal wires and are widely used in magnet facilities across the world.

China’s record-breaker lays the groundwork for building reliable magnets that can sustain ever-stronger magnetic fields, which would help researchers to discover surprising new physics, says Joachim Wosnitza, a physicist at the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Germany.

The resistive magnet — which is open to international users — is the country’s second major contribution to the global quest to produce ever-higher magnetic fields. In 2022, the SHMFF’s hybrid magnet, which combines a resistive magnet with a superconducting one, produced a field of 45.22 tesla, making it the most powerful working steady-state magnet in the world….

(17) THE ORIGINAL SPACE JUNK. [Item by Steven French.] “Most meteorites traced to three space crackups” says Science.

The bombardment never stops. Each day, up to 50 meteors survive the fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere and reach the surface as meteorites. Researchers and collectors have recovered more than 50,000 of these rocks, which are prized in part for the mystery of where they came from.

Now, researchers have eliminated some of the mystery. They have traced most meteorites to just three Solar System bodies that shattered to form families of asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, plus countless smaller fragments that sometimes reach Earth.

Until now, a source was known for only 6% of meteorites; now, more than 70% have a known origin, says Miroslav Brož, an astrophysicist at Charles University who led one of three related studies published recently in Nature and Astronomy & Astrophysics. “It feels like a lifetime discovery.”…

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Ryan George chops it up with a “Guy Who Is Definitely Not Cursed”. ((HINT: Yes he is.))

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, 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 Tom Becker.]

Pixel Scroll 10/15/24 Like Scrolls Thru The Hourglass, So Are The Pixels Of Our Lives

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SEATTLE 2025 CONSIDERING ARTISTS TO DESIGN HUGO BASE. The 2024 Worldcon committee announced on Facebook:

Seattle Worldcon 2025 is currently accepting information from artists interested in designing the 2025 Hugo Base. Have an idea that builds yesterday’s future for everyone?

If, after reading the information listed at the link below, you are interested, please fill out the form. Our Hugo Base Subcommittee will be reviewing submissions until November 15, 2024. After that point, we will contact you to either move forward with further discussions or with a heartfelt thanks for sharing your interest.

There’s a Google Doc link in the post that takes readers to the complete guidelines. They say in part:

Our Hugo Base sub-committee will be reviewing submissions based on the following criteria:

Ability to produce an initial order of 45 bases;
Ability to possibly produce more bases upon request in the 3 months after our convention;
Concept that fits with the theme of our Worldcon (https://seattlein2025.org/about/our-theme/); and,
Ability to have the initial order delivered to us by July 24, 2025;

(2) ALSO KNOWN AS. Dave Hook discusses “My Favorite Speculative Fiction Pen Names” at A Deep Look by Dave Hook.

….Historically, it was not that hard for an author in pulp or genre fiction to publish under a name different than their legal name. Many works of fiction were submitted to editors in the mail, perhaps with a cover letter and address or post office box. Correspondence and payment could go back to that address, with someone ultimately cashing the check. Especially before the internet, it was not hard to do this. I assume the editors often knew there was a pen name, or even requested one be used.

With today’s copyright laws and the internet, it is my suspicion that using a pseudonym without anyone other than your agent, editor or publisher knowing it is you is a good deal harder than it might have been in the past….

… Cordwainer Bird was used by Harlan Ellison for “material he was partially disclaiming”, to quote SFE. This was substantially scripts for TV, including “The Price of Doom” (1964) episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, “You Can’t Get There from Here” (1968) episode of The Flying Nun; and “Voyage of Discovery” (1973) episode of The Starlost. Harlan Ellison’s first published story was “Glow Worm“, a short story, Infinity Science Fiction, February 1956. He wrote under many pseudonyms especially early in his career. For those not familiar with his broad work in speculative fiction including SF, fantasy, and horror and combinations thereof, you would not go wrong with the recent collection Greatest Hits, J. Michael Straczynski editor, 2024 Union Square & Co. (see my review).

Cordwainer Bird was also used as a pseudonym by Philip José Farmer with permission of Harlan Ellison for the “The Impotency of Bad Karma“, a short story, Popular Culture June 1977. His first published work was “The Lovers“, a novella, Startling Stories August 1952. 1952, rather revolutionary and still important. Farmer went through what he called his “fictional author phase” from 1974 to 1978, when he used pseudonyms that were often the names of fictional writers in works by others or by him. My own favorite in terms of pseudonym used by Farmer is “Venus on the Half-Shell“, a novella, F&SF December 1974, as by Kilgore Trout, who first appeared in Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965 Holt, Rinehart and Winston….

My fave did not make his list – “Tak Hallus”, a Steven Robinett pseud that supposedly is Persian for “pen name”.

(3) SFWA UPDATE. SFWA’s Interim President Anthony W. Eichenlaub today sent a message to members that said in part:

…Recent resignations prove to us how much we’ve come to depend on our staff while also highlighting flaws in the structure of our organization. SFWA must change as it rebuilds. To help guide us in this, we are bringing in Russell Davis in a transitional leadership position. He knows SFWA well, understands corporate structure, and is already getting up to speed.

At last week’s Board meeting we discussed new formats for the Nebula Conference that will allow us to serve both members and non-members without burning out volunteers or staff. Our yearly event has taken many forms throughout the years, and we want to focus this year on a celebration of everything SFWA has accomplished over these past sixty years. None of the details are nailed down yet, but it will likely be a significant change from the Nebulas of recent years. We’re focusing on the Midwest and we’ll have more to share as soon as possible.

We also now have a finalized confidentiality policy. It’s back from the lawyer, and the next step is to vote both this and the corresponding OPPM changes in so that we can start rolling it out. My hope is that we can make this the start of a cultural shift toward transparency for the organization. Change is easier when it happens in the light of day….

(4) SIFTING AND SIEVING. Uncanny Magazine coeditor Michael Damian Thomas today expanded on his previous comments about an AI-inspired surge in submissions.

2- We haven't banned any submitters yet for AI use. We would probably need something like "I totally used AI for this story, you suckers!!" for that to happen.
— Uncanny Magazine (@UncannyMagazine) October 14, 2024

4- AI submissions aren't anywhere near Uncanny's biggest problems. Those remain the financial impact of Am*zon changes and the disintegration of social media.
— Uncanny Magazine (@UncannyMagazine) October 14, 2024

(5) LIVE FROM BROOKLYN. The Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival is now live through October 20.

We kick off the 5th annual Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival by making over 200 films available to stream online and upvote for recognition.

(6) A NICE PAYCHECK, TOO. Variety hears the actor say — “Harrison Ford: Rejecting Marvel Roles Is ‘Silly’ When Audiences Love It” – and you can quote him.

Harrison Ford is no stranger to blockbuster Hollywood franchises, having played Han Solo and Indiana Jones across decades. And now, the 82-year-old actor is joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross / Red Hulk in next year’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” Speaking to GQ magazine, Ford said it would be “silly” to avoid Marvel when it’s something moviegoers have clearly responded to for years now.

“I mean, this is the Marvel universe and I’m just there on a weekend pass. I’m a sailor new to this town,” Ford said about his MCU debut. “I understand the appeal of other kinds of films besides the kind we made in the ’80s and ’90s. I don’t have anything general to say about it. It’s the condition our condition is in, and things change and morph and go on. We’re silly if we sit around regretting the change and don’t participate. I’m participating in a new part of the business that, for me at least, I think is really producing some good experiences for an audience. I enjoy that.”…

(7) WARD CHRISTENSEN (1945-2024). Ars Technica pays tribute to “Ward Christensen, BBS inventor and architect of our online age” who died October 11:

Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system (BBS), has died at age 78 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. He was found deceased at his home on Friday after friends requested a wellness check. Christensen, along with Randy Suess, created the first BBS in Chicago in 1978, leading to an important cultural era of digital community-building that presaged much of our online world today.

In the 1980s and 1990s, BBSes introduced many home computer users to multiplayer online gaming, message boards, and online community building in an era before the Internet became widely available to people outside of science and academia. It also gave rise to the shareware gaming scene that led to companies like Epic Games today….

…Christensen and Suess came up with the idea for the first computer bulletin board system during the Great Blizzard of 1978 when they wanted to keep up with their computer club, the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists’ Exchange (CACHE), when physical travel was difficult. Beginning in January of that year, Suess assembled the hardware, and Christensen wrote the software, called CBBS.

“They finished the bulletin board in two weeks but they called it four because they didn’t want people to feel that it was rushed and that it was made up,” Scott told Ars. They canonically “finished” the project on February 16, 1978, and later wrote about their achievement in a November 1978 issue of Byte magazine.

Their new system allowed personal computer owners with modems to dial up a dedicated machine and leave messages that others would see later….

Tom Becker also notes, “There is some indication that he was active in Chicago fandom. He has a mention on Fancyclopedia as one of the founders of the Build-A-Blinkie organization.” — “Ward Christensen”.

… Dale Sulak, Dwayne Forsyth and Ward Christensen created the Build-a-Blinkie organization. Build-a-Blinkie is a 501(c)3 dedicated to the teaching of STEM. They run learn-to-solder events in the Great Lakes area. Build-a-Blinkie has the world’s largest mobile soldering stations and participates at numerous Maker Faires, libraries, universities, Maker Spaces, and Chicago-area sf conventions….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY?

Born October 15 [allegedly], 1953 – Walter Jon Williams, 71. [The Science Fiction Encyclopedia says he was born October 2, 1953. The Internet Science Fiction Database says his birthday is October 15, and so does IMDb. His blog (“Geezer Test”) celebrates October 28 as does the Wikipedia. We’re celebrating the ISFDB’s choice this year.]

By Paul Weimer: I mentioned Walter Jon Williams before in my remembrance of the work of John Ford. And I stand by what I said there: he is one of the most widely writing people in SFF today. The sheer breath of the type of work he writes, from the post singularity(?) Metropolitan, to the sword and singularity of Implied Spaces, the Drake Majestal future space opera crime capers, and so much more. The impossibility to pin him and his work down, I think is part of the reason why his work isn’t better known–he doesn’t stick to a line long enough to get complete traction in it so that he attracts a critical mass of readers.

And that is a shame.

His work is clever, erudite, witty, and bears up to multiple readings. The intensity and subtlety of the Dread Empire’s Fall series, one of the best space opera series out there, is criminally underappreciated. Or his Quillifer series, which feels like early Renaissance with magic and Gods sort of world, as Quillifer is the “Most Interesting Man” made flesh–but that doesn’t help him get out of his latest schemes and problems. He has to work hard with cleverness, boldness and ingenuity to continue his rise. (Quillifer is a favorite of mine, and it feels resonant with the work of K J Parker).

And he’s also written a solid Star Wars novel, The New Jedi Order: Destiny’s Way.

He’s also written outside of genre, from historicals to near future thrillers to a straight up disaster novel (The Rift— really good!) He always seems ready to invent and try something new. .

Williams also runs the Taos Toolbox workshop in New Mexico every year.

I got to meet him in Helsinki, where he was GOH for the 2017 Worldcon, but he doesn’t remember me. Alas!

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss thinks some will remain lost who want to be found.
Off the Mark prefers large treats.
The Flying McCoys illustrates a super toss.
The Argyle Sweater starts a rival series.
Speckticles receives an unsubtle gift.

(10) ATWOOD ON THE RADIO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s BBC Radio 4’s The Verb programme had as one of its two guests the SF grandmaster Margaret Atwood, firmly in poetry mode of course.

Ian McMillan talks to Margaret Atwood and Alice Oswald about how we write poetry, and their own process, the natural world, time, and the possibilities of myth…

You can download the 42-minute programme here.

(11) ROCKY HORROR. Buzzfeed shares a collection of “Rocky Horror Picture Show Behind The Scenes Facts”. Lucky thirteen is —

13. Rocky is wearing a prosthetic plug to cover his belly button. Because Frank-N-Furter created him, he wouldn’t have had an umbilical cord.

(12) KEVIN SMITH NEWS. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Kevin Smith has finally regained the rights to his 1999 religious fantasy DOGMA, which were being controlled by Harvey Weinstein. Yes, that Harvey Weinstein.

Smith is planning to rerelease the movie on home video format as well as streaming; he’s also mentioned the possibility of sequels and associated TV material, now that Weinstein will no longer be getting any of the profit. “Kevin Smith Regains Control of Dogma, Coming to Streaming” at Consequence Film.

Kevin Smith’s celebrated 1999 comedy, Dogma, will soon be re-released in theaters and made available on streaming for the first time, now that the director has finally secured the rights to the film after its one-time owner, Harvey Weinstein, held it “hostage” for years.

Smith confirmed the acquisition during a recent interview on The Hashtag Show, explaining that the rights had been bought off Weinstein recently, which allowed him to finally regain them. “The movie had been bought away from the guy that had it for years,” he said. “The company that bought it, we met with them a couple months ago. They were like, ‘Would you be interested in re-releasing it and touring it like you do with your movies?’ I said, ‘100 percent, are you kidding me? Touring a movie that I know people like, and it’s sentimental and nostalgic? We’ll clean up.’”

(13) RED PLANET AGRICULTURE. In Nature, “Rebeca Gonçalves explains how plant food could be grown on the red planet”: “Planning for life on Mars”.

The day this photo was taken, in November 2021, I got the best of presents. One hundred kilograms of material designed to simulate Mars regolith, the dense, soil-like deposits present on the planet’s surface, arrived from Austin, Texas, at the Wageningen University laboratory in the Netherlands, where I was then working. Mars has no nutrients or organic matter, so there’s no real soil in its regolith. The simulant I received had been developed by NASA researchers on the basis of data retrieved and analysed by rovers that have visited the red planet.

Over the next few months, my colleagues and I started to explore what we could grow in the material. We found that tomatoes, peas and carrots all took to the soil and grew well. But could these plants realistically survive on Mars?

The planet does have water, but most of it is frozen at its poles or buried deep underground. So for plants to live, water would need to be pumped up to the surface. Mars has almost no atmosphere and no magnetic field, so plants would have to be housed in colonies, with greenhouse-like structures to protect them. In these, an internal ecosystem with a controlled atmosphere could help the plants to retrieve oxygen through hydrolysis.

In modern agriculture, those techniques are already used to protect crops. And research to understand how to help food grow in harsh conditions won’t be wasted if it doesn’t get to Mars. That’s because restoring infertile, degraded soil that’s been damaged by climate change, or events such as flash flooding and droughts, will become more and more important in the future.

I’d love to visit Mars, but preferably when some kind of life-support system is in place. Our research might represent a step in that direction….

(14) CASH OFFENDS NO ONE. The Hollywood Reporter says the litigation is over: “Microsoft Settles Antitrust Suit Seeking Divestiture From Activision”.

Microsoft has settled an antitrust lawsuit brought by gamers challenging the tech giant’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The two sides on Monday notified the court of a deal to dismiss the lawsuit “with prejudice,” meaning it can’t be refiled. Terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed. “Each party shall bear their own costs and fees,” agreed the lawyers in a court filing.

The lawsuit, filed in California federal court in 2022 by gamers across multiple states, stressed that the merger will create among the largest video game companies in the world, with the ability to raise prices, limit output and reduce consumer choice. One example cited in the complaint was the possibility that Microsoft makes certain titles exclusive to Xbox. It was filed less than two weeks after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal….

(15) IN TIMES TO COME. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Should someone check to make sure these are not plutonium-producing breeder reactors? “Google inks nuclear deal for next-generation reactors” reports The Verge.

Google plans to buy electricity from next-generation nuclear reactors. It announced the deal yesterday, which it says is the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase electricity from advanced small modular reactors (SMRs) that are still under development.

Google inked the deal with engineering company Kairos Power, which plans to get its first SMR up and running by 2030. Google agreed to purchase electricity from “multiple” reactors that would be built through 2035.

Google needs a lot more clean energy to meet its climate goals while pursuing its AI ambitions. New nuclear technologies are still unproven at scale, but the hope is that they can provide carbon pollution-free electricity while solving some of the problems that come with traditional nuclear power plants…

(16) PRIMARY APPEAL. “Rainbow Brite: New TV Show and Theatrical Movie in the Works” – Variety covers the spectrum.

Rainbow Brite is getting a remix from Crayola Studios and Hallmark, which are teaming to develop a new TV series and feature film inspired by the 1980s children’s franchise.

The theatrical movie is in the works from “Fast & Furious” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” producers Neal H. Moritz and Toby Ascher, while Cake Entertainment is developing a series with “contemporary appeal” based on the themes of “friendship, teamwork and the power of color and optimism to overcome darkness and negativity.”

Per the series logline, “Rainbow Brite, a friend, hero, role model and creative inspiration who brings all the colors of the rainbow to the universe, is transported to a dark and gloomy place with a mission to bring color, light and happiness to the world.”…

(17) IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF BEING RIPPED OFF. [Item by N.] “Elon Musk, Tesla Mocked for Copying ‘I, Robot’ Designs” – The Hollywood Reporter tells why.

At Tesla‘s big Cybercab Robotaxi presentation last week at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, the company also showed off the latest iteration of the Tesla Bot, dubbed Optimus, as well as a Robovan. The initial reveal of the trio of robot products caused great excitement on social media, but, very quickly, praise turned to mockery as the designs were scrutinized with a host of people accusing Elon Musk‘s company of ripping off the designs found in the 2004 sci-fi film I, Robot starring Will Smith.

Tesla had dubbed the event “We, Robot,” which plays into the title of Isaac Asimov’s 1950 short-story collection on which the film is based, so there was some recognition of the cross-pollination of ideas. However, many on social media called out the uncanny resemblance that all three of Tesla’s planned robot offerings have to similar products in Alex Proyas‘ film, which is set in 2035 Chicago….

I Robot vs We Robot #Tesla pic.twitter.com/vpcwoc4FnH
— TheTeslaLife (@TheTeslaLife) October 12, 2024

Optimus, a general-purpose robotic humanoid Tesla is currently developing that takes its name from the Transformers character, does bear similarities to the NS5 robots found in I, Robot. But it was the fact that the Robovan (a self-driving people mover that looks like the robot delivery vehicle in the film) and Robotaxi (a self-driving taxi that looks like the Audi RSQ in the film) also aped similar vehicles found in I, Robot that really inspired the relentless mockery on social media and even a response from Proyas.

Hey Elon, Can I have my designs back please? #ElonMusk #Elon_Musk pic.twitter.com/WPgxHevr6E
— Alex Proyas (@alex_proyas) October 13, 2024

Alex Proyas also directed the 1998 film Dark City.

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

Pixel Scroll 10/14/24 Pixelling Pigeons In The Scroll

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 SHORT STORY CONTEST. The Seattle Worldcon 2025 today announced a short story writing contest with adult and young adult entry categories. The winners in each category will be recognized at the convention, receive free memberships to the convention, and have their stories published in an upcoming anthology by Grim Oak Press. Full details at the link: “Writing Contest – Seattle Worldcon 2025”.

Stories must draw inspiration from the Worldcon theme: Building Yesterday’s Future–For Everyone. This theme was selected to invoke nostalgia for the hopeful science-fictional era of the early 1960s, when Seattle held its first (and until now, only) Worldcon, followed up by the Century 21 Exposition (a.k.a. 1962 World’s Fair), showing the world a vision of its technological future, complete with freshly built Monorail and Space Needle.

(2) WHEN BAD NEWS IS BIG NEWS. Charlie Jane Anders answers the question “Why Are Toxic ‘Superfans’ Such a Nightmare for Hollywood?”

…But even if @Fanboy3997 is not a king-maker, he can do a certain amount of damage to a franchise. This is at least partly a reflection of the fact that the internet, like so many other media before it, does a better job of boosting negativity and hate than spreading anything positive. (“If it bleeds, it leads.”)

Disgruntled fans can help to shape the narrative about a project in various ways.

1) They can drown out the people who actually like it.

2) They can even harass anybody who expresses enthusiasm for a project they don’t like.

3) They can do the aforementioned review bombing, and harass actors and creators.

4) They can create the appearance of a major backlash, even if it’s really just five people and an swarm of bots.

5) And, though journalists will never admit it, a angry fans have a major ally in the journalistic profession, which will assist in blowing their complaints way out of proportion and creating a fake controversy in order to manufacture drama that in turn will lead to eyeballs on news sites.

To some extent, this is what happened with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a movie that was a massive financial success and one of the most successful movies of all time, with an “A” on Cinemascore (signifying that audiences in theaters overwhelmingly loved it.) What I’m convinced were a relatively small number of fans had a meltdown, which probably would’ve had a limited impact if journalists hadn’t chosen to run with it and create a news cycle around the backlash. That, in turn, led to the notion that

(3) IDENTIFYING DANGER. “INTERVIEW: J. Michael Straczynski” at Grimdark Magazine asks JMS in the context of his work on Last Dangerous Visions.

[GdM] Can you explain your perspective, and, by extension, Ellison’s, on what makes a story “dangerous” in speculative fiction?

[JMS] The distinction you draw is correct, in terms of how this relates to speculative or science fiction. There has been a lot of hard-edged, socially challenging writing in other forms and genres. Alan Ginsberg’s Howl, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the raw emotionalism of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind, JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye…all of them pushed the frontiers of writing, and many of them got banned or ended up in court on obscenity charges. But they kept on writing, because it was necessary to take a stand for literary freedom.

The SF genre was (and to a degree still is) fairly conservative and, seeing what happened to the writers noted above, tended to steer clear of controversy. This persisted up until the time of Harlan’s first Dangerous Visions anthology and the slow birth of New Wave Science Fiction (with writers like Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Leguin, Samuel R. Delany and others poking at the walls of conservatism) which DV codified from individual efforts into a movement.

What makes a story dangerous in speculative fiction? Anyone who is willing to risk controversy, to speak to the flaws of society, to sexual and political issues even though they might get in trouble as a result. Harlan once wrote that “the chief commodity a writer has to sell is their courage,” and for me, that’s what a dangerous vision is all about: a story that requires a modicum of courage to tell it.

(4) FIRST FANDOM ANNUAL 2024. Editors John L. Coker III and Jon D. Swartz invite fans to order the First Fandom Annual 2024, devoted to a “History of the Sam Moskowitz Award”.

Sam Moskowitz, I-Con XIV (1995), Long Island, NY. Photo by John L. Coker III

Remembering Sam Moskowitz
The Sam Moskowitz Archive Award
The Sam Moskowitz Collection

Articles by Sam, photographs With Hal W. Hall, David A. Kyle, Robert A. Madle, Julius Schwartz, Jon D. Swartz, Ph.D., Joseph Wrzos

Fifty-six pages, 28# paper, heavy gloss color covers, printed endpapers, face-trimmed, saddle-stitched, B&W interiors, with color illustrations throughout.

Limited to (26) copies, available for $35. each (includes packaging, Priority Mail, insurance). Please send check or money order for $35 (payable to John L. Coker III) at 4813 Lighthouse Road, Orlando, FL – 32808.

(5) ALTERNATE BATMAN. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Paul Dini found some notes in his car on which he had long ago written alternate ideas for the resolution to Batman Beyond.

Huh. The things one finds jotted down on old legal pads deep in the trunk of one's car. pic.twitter.com/OtqYy1xdr5
— Paul_Dini (@Paul_Dini) October 13, 2024

(6) ART HENDERSON (1942-2024). Virginia fan Art Henderson died October 12 at the age of 82. He is survived by his wife, Becky.

Art and Becky Henderson at the 1974 Worldcon. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Mike Glyer.]

Born October 14, 1952 – Charlie Williams. (Died 2021.) Fan artist Charlie Williams first came to prominence as a regular contributor to Chat, the Chattanooga clubzine published by Rich and Nicki Lynch. He also later appeared in all 30 issues of their Hugo-winning genzine Mimosa.

Williams was a member of the Knoxville Science-Fantasy Federation and in the 1970s, he owned a comics store in Knoxville and taught cartoon illustration at the University of Tennessee. At one time he was a member of the Spectator Amateur Press Association. He was guest of honor at Imagincon ’81 (1981), Con*Stellation II (1983), and Roc*Kon 8 (1983).

Williams loved to draw complex, inventive scenes several of which are displayed below, including a cover for an issue of File 770 from the Eighties.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit discovers the reason for a recent space event.
Eek! obviously thinks it’s “threat or treat”.
Lio has a classic reference.
The Argyle Sweater missed an update.
Macanudo underrates genre reading.
Tom Gauld knows about speed reading.

My cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/gxkh0nilCA
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) October 12, 2024

And he’s had better days.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/Ds5vn6jdr9
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) October 14, 2024

(9) POLITICAL COMICS. The makers of the “Stop Project 2025 Comic” website say:

We’re a group of comic book writers & artists who are furious about Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s plan to consolidate power under authoritarian rule. So we made a bunch of comics to explain their agenda and move you to vote against it.

(10) VIDEO GAME WITH NUANCE. “Metaphor: ReFantazio is the rare fantasy game that goes beyond racism 101” declares The Verge’s reviewer.

…But Metaphor is more than just a stylish, dynamic RPG — it’s also the rare fantasy story that tackles discrimination with nuance.

In a lot of fantasy, I’m annoyed by the storytelling conceit of using discrimination against fantasy races as an allegory for real-world racism. Stories featuring this trope usually stop at the “racism is bad” surface level, demonstrating that with ugly over-the-top displays of violence (hey there, Dragon Age) while ignoring the subtleties that make racism so heinous and pervasive. Metaphor manages to incorporate and tackle both aspects of this reality.

There’s a moment when you’re reading a fantasy book with a companion, and they mention that realizing their goal of a world where everyone is treated equally won’t be enough. “Equal competition doesn’t mean equal footing,” Heismay says. It’s the first time I’ve seen a video game acknowledge that simply stopping the big bad evil racist won’t magically make up for the countless generations of oppression. The game does the same with class and wealth. There’s a character vying for the throne who wishes to essentially “eat the rich” and redistribute their wealth at the point of a guillotine. But by virtue of her extremely low status, she sees everybody with more than a few coins to rub together as her ideological enemy. It’s just like when people in poverty lash out at other people a little bit less in poverty when their real enemies are the wealthy powerholders who exploit that animosity. It’s awesome that the game calls that out….

(11) SPACE DETECTIVE WORK. NASA’s JPL announces “First Greenhouse Gas Plumes Detected With NASA-Designed Instrument”.

The imaging spectrometer aboard the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s Tanager-1 satellite identified methane and carbon dioxide plumes in the United States and internationally.

Using data from an instrument designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the nonprofit Carbon Mapper has released the first methane and carbon dioxide detections from the Tanager-1 satellite. The detections highlight methane plumes in Pakistan and Texas, as well as a carbon dioxide plume in South Africa.

The data contributes to Carbon Mapper’s goal to identify and measure greenhouse gas point-source emissions on a global scale and make that information accessible and actionable.

(12) ANNUAL APPARITION. “It’s Spirit Halloween season. How does the retailer stay afloat year-round?” NPR tried to find the answer.

SELYUKH: It is unusual. To be clear, it is a private company – Spirit Halloween – so we don’t know for sure, all of the under-the-hood stuff. They do skip the most expensive parts of being a retailer. That’s kind of how they save a lot of money on rent, utilities, workers. If you think about it, their stores – most of them are not permanent. Most of the store workers are temporary. Much of the year, Spirit Halloween mainly pays a big team to scout real estate locations, looking for empty store fronts. Then in late summer, the hustle starts for new stores to materialize. They’ve built over 1,000 of them.

RASCOE: That has to be a really big operation, like, turning all of these empty spaces into stores.

SELYUKH: It is, and it is very fast, too. You know, last year, I talked to a woman who worked at a mall where Spirit Halloween took over shuttered Sears, and she was describing an insane speed, like a matter of days. And I should say, I have tried a few times to get a tour of how Spirit Halloween works in an empty store or at least an interview with some official, and they don’t do interviews.

RASCOE: So you got ghosted. You see what I did there….

(13) EUROPA CLIPPER LAUNCHES. “NASA spacecraft rockets toward Jupiter’s moon Europa” and AP News wishes it bon voyage.

A NASA spacecraft rocketed away Monday on a quest to explore Jupiter’s tantalizing moon Europa and reveal whether its vast hidden ocean might hold the keys to life.

It will take Europa Clipper 5 1/2 years to reach Jupiter, where it will slip into orbit around the giant gas planet and sneak close to Europa during dozens of radiation-drenched flybys.

Scientists are almost certain a deep, global ocean exists beneath Europa’s icy crust. And where there is water, there could be life, making the moon one of the most promising places out there to hunt for it.

Europa Clipper won’t look for life; it has no life detectors. Instead, the spacecraft will zero in on the ingredients necessary to sustain life, searching for organic compounds and other clues as it peers beneath the ice for suitable conditions…

(14) COMET A3 FROM THE DC SUBURBS OF MARYLAND. [Item by Rich Lynch.] An iPhone photo…I just held the phone as steady as I could and hoped for the best. I’m actually amazed that it worked!

For those wanting to see the comet, this evening it’s located halfway between Venus and Arcturus, and remains visible for probably a couple of hours after the sun has set.

(15) TAKE INSPIRATION FOR YOUR HALLOWEEN BAKING. “Swedish chef making a pumpkin pie” – a Muppets excerpt.

(16) IN NO TIME AT ALL. Boing Boing says “’Skip Danger vs the Space-Time Continuum’ is a hilarious anti-time travel movie”.

…A wonderfully self-aware homage to Back to the Future and Hot Tub Time Machine — minus, perhaps, the actual time machine.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/22/24 The Only Living Scroll In New Crobuzon

Posted on September 22, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SOMETHING HE LEARNED FROM BILBO. Peterson Pipe Notes reminds pipe smokers “Today is Hobbit Day!—Tolkien & Peterson”.

Today (September 22nd) is Hobbit Day, marking the beginning of Tolkien Week 2024. Many observe the day with a birthday cake—in honor of Bilbo and Frodo, whose birthdays are today. I’m thinking just as many celebrate with a tankard of beer from the Prancing Pony (yes, it comes in pints) and as many more with a pipe of good tobacco.

It’s fairly common knowledge that one of the dharma doors to pipe smoking of the past 50 years or so is The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It was in fact mine, when in my first nine weeks of high school I was marooned at home with mononucleosis. After finishing my day’s academic work—which took about 90 minutes—I’d spend the remainder reading at whim. That reading was drawn mostly from Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which included books by such greats as Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, E. R. Eddison, David Lindsay, George MacDonald, and of course Tolkien. I was so taken with Middle Earth that I knew I needed to learn to smoke a pipe. My dad, a very irregular pipeman at the time, had two Kaywoodies in a drawer in the living room. Armed with one of them and some Cherry Royale (from Ted’s Pipe Shoppe in Tulsa), I took my first steps on the road….

(2) THE BRADBURYS. “On Maggie Bradbury, the woman who ‘changed literature forever.’” at Literary Hub.

Ray Bradbury met his first girlfriend—and his future wife—in a bookstore. But they didn’t lock eyes over the same just-selected novel, or bump into each other in a narrow aisle, sending books and feelings flying. It was a warm afternoon in April 1946, and 25-year-old Ray Bradbury—an up-and-coming pulp fiction writer—was wearing a trench coat and carrying a briefcase while he scanned the shelves at Fowler Brothers Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles. Naturally, Marguerite McClure—Maggie—who worked at the bookstore, “was immediately suspicious.” Someone had been stealing books, but hadn’t yet been caught. So she struck up a conversation. “I expected him to slam his briefcase down on a pile of books and make off with a few,” she said. “Instead, he told me he was a writer and invited me to have a cup of coffee with him.”

Coffee became lunch became dinner became romance; Maggie was the first woman Ray had ever dated, but he managed all right, and they were married on September 27, 1947.

“When I got married, all my wife’s friends said, ‘Don’t marry him. He’s going nowhere,’” Bradbury said in his 2000 commencement address at Caltech. “But I said to her, ‘I’m going to the moon, and I’m going to Mars. Do you want to come along?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ She said yes. She took a vow of poverty, and married me. On the day of our wedding, we had $8 in the bank. And I put $5 in an envelope, and handed it to the minister. And he said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘That’s your pay for the ceremony today.’ He said, ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘You’re going to need this.’ And he gave it to me. And I took it back.”…

(3) STAND UP TO AI. SF Standard takes notes as “Comedian John Mulaney roasts SF techies at Dreamforce”.

“Let me get this straight,” John Mulaney said. “You’re hosting a ‘future of AI’ event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?”

Everyone inside the auditorium at the Moscone Center groaned. Any notion that the award-winning comedian would play the corporate gig safe (and clean) were thrown out the window Thursday, when Mulaney, closing the Dreamforce festivities, started roasting his host, Salesforce, and the audience sitting right in front of him…

… The comedian rounded out his Dreamforce appearance by thanking attendees “for the world you’re creating for my son … where he will never talk to an actual human again. Instead, a little cartoon Einstein will pop up and give him a sort of good answer and probably refer him to another chatbot.”…

(4) AMAZING AND FANTASTIC SIXTIES REVIVAL. In “Fantastic Fiction: The Amazing and Fantastic Cele Goldsmith” at Seattle Worldcon 2025, Cora Buhlert introduces us to a historic prozine editor.

By the 1950s, the once venerable Amazing Stories, the oldest science fiction magazine, and its sister magazine Fantastic were deep in the doldrums. Both magazines were bottom-tier markets, publishing formulaic stories by the same handful of authors under various pen names.

All this changed in 1955, when a young Vassar graduate named Cele Goldsmith arrived at Ziff-Davis Publishing to work as an assistant to Howard Browne, the editor of Amazing and Fantastic, and his successor Paul Fairman. When Fairman left in 1958, Cele Goldsmith found herself editor of two ailing SFF magazines at the age of only 25….

(5) THEME PARK TURNAROUND. [Item by David Doering.] Here’s the latest on the resurrection of Evermore. “Name revealed for new fantasy-themed venue at former Evermore Park property” reports ABC4.com.

As new owners have taken over the former home of Evermore Park, they’ve been hatching excitement through an interactive experience that slowly unveils information about the future of the venue. In the latest reveal, the owners announced what the new venue’s name will be — “The Realm Town.”

Michelle and Travis Fox, bought the 13-acre property from Brandon Fugal earlier this year after the owners of Evermore Park shut its gates in April. Since then, the Foxes launched the “Hatch the Egg” initiative, where participants complete quests through an app, much like Pokémon Go. As players solve clues, details for the future plans of the park are revealed as its undergoing renovations. Players also join in on the opportunity to win prizes and join in on special in-person events….

(6) TOUCHPOINT WILL CLOSE. A press has made an agreement with the Authors Guild to address complaints that drew the attention of Writer Beware: “Authors Blast TouchPoint Press for Unethical Business Practices” at Publishers Weekly.

After hearing from dozens of authors about the poor business practices of TouchPoint Press, the Authors Guild said Friday that it has reached a deal with TouchPoint founder Sheri Williams, under which Williams agreed to pay authors overdue royalties and revert rights back to any author who has not yet received them. In addition, according to Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger, Williams has agreed to close the press, which bills itself as a “traditional royalty-paying publisher” of adult and children’s books.

Rasenberger said that, over the last two years, 35 to 40 authors have contacted the Guild with concerns about TouchPoint’s failure to fulfill its contractual obligations and that, as of last week, there were 26 open cases. Problems about TouchPoint had also been raised by Writer Beware, whose Victoria Strauss who says she started receiving “a handful of complaints” as far back as 2015….

(7) TRANSCENDENCE: BAH, HUMBUG. Mark Roth-Whitworth found a lot to challenge in Isaac Arthur’s video about “Transcendence”. He shared his criticisms at his blog in “Transcendence, and a response”, including this one:

…Then let’s consider very advanced aliens. Remember, I mentioned how close technologically to us they needed to be? Suppose they were so advanced that they glanced at us, thought “seen that before thousands of times, ignore them till they reach the point where they have something to say beyond our equivalent of “run, Spot, run”. Maybe they have whatever they’re perceiving in their transcendence that’s far more interesting or important than primitives like us? Why should we matter, if they’re that advanced? If they have nothing we need, like the remote tribes in the Amazon who are being attacked by illegal loggers, miners, and farmer, why would they pay attention to us?

Then there’s the idea of transcending the universe. What evidence do we have that there is a beyond this one? Perhaps some immensely advanced beings might want to skip the Big Crunch as the universe is recreated in a new Big Bang….

(8) CROSS-GENRE NOIR. “Spooky Sleuthing: 5 Noir and Detective Films That Feature the Supernatural” at CrimeReads.

… As the days grow shorter and we head into spooky season—the Halloween decorations are on sale at Costco, in any case—it’s a good time for fans of detective and noir fiction to consider supplementing their viewing list with a few movies that combine the best parts of their favorite genre with the weird and occult. Here are some recommendations:…

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996): How did Quentin Tarantino end up scripting a vampire movie that’s like nothing else in his extensive filmography? Legend has it that special makeup effects Robert Kurtzman needed a horror script for his up-and-coming effects studio, KNB EFX Group, and paid a young Tarantino $1,500 plus the makeup effects (re: buckets of blood) for the latter’s “Reservoir Dogs.” But Kurtzman couldn’t find a studio willing to fund the film with him as the director, and eventually Tarantino, his fame on the rise, guided the script into the hands of his buddy Robert Rodriguez….

(9) A PEEK INTO NEW WORLDS AT 60. “Michael Moorcock is Back: New Worlds 60th Anniversary Issue Global Exclusive Video”. Information about ordering a copy is at the link.

Steve Andrews previews the 60th Anniversary issue of New Worlds magazine, celebrating MM taking on its editorship in 1964 and with a cast of groundbreaking contributors, changing SF and Literary Fiction for the better, forever. At the time of posting this video, not even Moorcock himself has seen a finished copy, but you see one here!

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born September 22, 1971 — Elizabeth Bear, 53.

By Paul Weimer: I knew Elizabeth Bear before she broke big in genre. That’s not a boast, per se, that’s an observation that she was part of the small and intense community of people who were involved in the fandom of the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game, based on the work of Roger Zelazny. Bear attended many of the same small cons as I did revolving around the game. (Other authors in the “Secret Amber Cabal” (as named by Scott Lynch) include people like Genevieve Cogman, Jane Lindskold, and I guess, myself.)

But back to Bear. Her ambitions and efforts to be a writer were something I was both aware and interested in, from the very beginnings of her career. I loved her novel trilogy debut that started with Hammered. I was delighted and not surprised when her Whiskey and Water series eventually brought a Marlowe as a character on the screen. Her ability to write fantasy and science fiction in equal measure has always enchanted me. The Eternal Sky fantasy novel series. Carnival, which was once the “if you must read one Bear novel, read this one) book (nowadays, that might be Machine or Ancestral Night).

Bear’s novels are accompanied by a strong short fiction oeuvre as well, although I think she works better for me as a writer at the longer lengths. Although I admit her Hugo awards (one for short story and one for novelette) might make me less than completely accurate in that regard. But I think the longer lengths, especially in hitting the marks in completing series (such as recently, the Origin of Storms, which completed the Lotus Kingdoms books VERY fantastically) proves that she works the long form best.

Bear is also one of the leaders of one of my local cons, 4th Street Fantasy, and so helps foster the genre conversation for her fellow readers, writers and fans.

And she is a very good friend. Happy birthday Bear!

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Eek! has a credential-caused delay.
Frank and Ernest have lined up the top talent.
The Argyle Sweater features obscure equipment from Sesame Street.
Tom Gauld wonders who will break the bad news to them.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/85h5MsMbGO
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) September 15, 2024

(12) MAD ABOUT YOU. CBS News’ Sunday Morning show visited the exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum: “How Mad Magazine’s humor created a revolution”.

Nestled the rolling hills of rural Massachusetts. swathed by manicured grounds, sits the Norman Rockwell Museum. And there, side-by-side with the wholesome works of America’s most beloved illustrator, is the world’s dumbest cover boy: Alfred E. Neuman.

“It’s sacrilegious! It’s an outrage!” laughed political cartoonist Steve Brodner. “But I do think if Norman Rockwell were here, he’d laugh his head off. He’d think this was fantastic.”

(13) LOST COMPLETELY. “10 best episodes of ‘Lost’ ranked for 20th anniversary” by Entertainment Weekly. If you watched the series, maybe you have an opinion, too.

It’s been 20 years since Oceanic flight 815 crash landed on a mysterious island, and TV has never been the same. Cue the blurry title card, because it’s time to celebrate two decades of Lost.

When the ABC drama premiered Sept. 22, 2004, it introduced a large ensemble of compelling characters and intriguing mysteries portrayed cinematically in ways that had never been attempted before on TV. And as the series continued for six seasons, it raised more questions than it answered as the mythology got more and more complex — flashbacks became flash forwards and then flash sideways, and don’t even get us started on the frozen donkey wheel. Debates still rage amongst fans about whether the castaways were dead the whole time, what was up with those cursed numbers, and what the island really was….

4. “Pilot” (season 1, episode 1-2)

From the very first moment Jack opened an eye in the middle of a mysterious jungle up to the final seconds with Charlie’s iconic and chilling delivery of, “Guys, where are we?,” Lost debuted a pitch-perfect TV pilot. Introducing an ensemble this large and a mystery this complex in only two episodes of broadcast TV should have been impossible. But J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof hooked viewers immediately — and ultimately changed the TV landscape forever. The Emmy-winning episode featured juicy, head-scratching twists (An unseen, but definitely heard, violent monster! A polar bear in the tropical jungle! A French distress call looped for 16 years!) and continued to raise the intense stakes as the survivors learned help may not be coming at all … because they crashed over 1,000 miles off-course, so any rescue attempt would be looking in the wrong place. The flashbacks also subverted expectations as viewers learned the castaways aren’t who they first appeared to be with the reveal that it was actually leading lady Kate who was the handcuffed prisoner onboard the flight. Like the survivors, we truly had no idea what was in store from the rest of the series after these two episodes, but the premiere instantly made it clear that this was no ordinary sci-fi/fantasy thriller.

(14) THE LITTLE DUCK. Beware! This Disneyland Paris commercial from 2018 may wring your heartstrings! (Or put a crimp in your gizzard – I know about some of you….)

(15) GET READY FOR WEDNESDAY. “’Wednesday’ Season 2 Trailer, Release Date on Netflix, Jenna Ortega” – TVLine has the rundown.

… Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plays Wednesday’s mother Morticia Addams, promises that “Season 2 is going to be bigger and more twisted than you can ever imagine.” And don’t feel bad that you only get to see bits and pieces: “If we showed you any more, your eyes would bleed,” Ortega warns in a perfect Wednesday deadpan. “And I’m not that generous.”…

(16) PORTRAIT OF JENNIE. [Item by Andrew Porter.] I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen this romantic fantasy, beginning when I was a kid, and watched it on Channel 11 in NY—and called the station, begging them to show all the film, including the final segments which were tinted, and a scene in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Technicolor.

That final scene included, uncredited, Nancy Davis, Anne Francis, and Nancy Olson, as teenagers! “Portrait of Jennie (1948) Filming Locations”.

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

Seattle Wins 2025 Worldcon Site Selection Vote

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Mike Glyer

The 83rd Worldcon will be held in Seattle, WA from August 13-17, 2025 in the Seattle Convention Center Summit Building. The site selection voting results were announced October 21 by Chengdu Worldcon Business Meeting chair Donald Eastlake III.

SITE SELECTION RESULTS. There were 168 valid ballots received.

163 votes for Seattle
2 votes for No Preference
2 votes for Xerpsin 2010
1 vote for Peggy Rae’s

Seattle was the only filed bid.

The convention’s website is here: Seattle Worldcon 2025 – Building Yesterday’s Future–For Everyone

Seattle Worldcon 2025 Progress Report 0 can be downloaded at the link. The convention’s Guests of Honor and Hosts will be:

GUESTS OF HONOR

HOSTS

Martha Wells

Donato Giancola

Bridget Landry

Alexander James Adams

K. Tempest Bradford

Nisi Shawl

File 770

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Tag Archives: Seattle Worldcon 2025

Pixel Scroll 4/5/25 Oh, Scroll Us The Way To The Next Pixel Bar, Oh Don’t Ask Why

Pixel Scroll 10/20/24 Pixel Rain

Pixel Scroll 10/15/24 Like Scrolls Thru The Hourglass, So Are The Pixels Of Our Lives

Pixel Scroll 10/14/24 Pixelling Pigeons In The Scroll

Pixel Scroll 9/22/24 The Only Living Scroll In New Crobuzon

Seattle Wins 2025 Worldcon Site Selection Vote