Tag Archives: SFWA

Pixel Scroll 9/6/24 24 Views of Mount Pixel, By Scroll-You-Say

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(1) PROS FOR SALE. Galactic Journey’s Gideon Marcus is at the Worldcon – the 1969 Worldcon: “[September 6, 1969] A hot time in the old town (Worldcon in St. Louis!)”.

… Jack Gaughan was the first artist since Frank Paul in ’56 to be the convention Guest of Honor.  Harlan Ellison was the toastmaster, a job he’s quite good at.  A little longwinded, but always funny.  On Friday, he auctioned off Bob Silverberg for $66 before Silverbob, in turn, auctioned Harlan off for $115 to a bunch of young ladies wearing Roddenberry sweatshirts….

(2) SFWA’S NEW QUARK. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has inaugurated a monthly public-facing roundup of the organization’s news: “Quark – A SFWA Public Digest”.

In an effort to maintain transparency and foster communications with all members of the SFF community and the public, SFWA would like to introduce Quark, a monthly digest which will give quick updates on what’s been happening within the organization…. 

(3) I WISH I WAS A SPACEMAN, THE FASTEST GUY ALIVE [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Word of Mouth over at BBC Radio 4 took a look at what it is like to be an astronaut. It began with a quick dive into the film Gravity musing on what was real – an encounter with an imaginary George Clooney who somehow imparted unknown but critical information – and what was not. But soon the programme got into the real meat of what it is like to be a spaceman with an interview with Chris Hadfield. I have to say it was one of the best interviews I have heard with an astronaut. Topics covered included: the why’s of space techno-speak, overcoming fear, sense of place and Chris’ getting into being a fiction author. All good stuff. 

Colonel Chris Hadfield is a veteran of three spaceflights. He crewed the US space shuttle twice, piloted the Russian Soyuz, helped build space station Mir and served as Commander of the International Space Station. 

Getting words and language right in as clear and a concise way is a matter of life and death for astronauts. Crews are traditionally made up of different nationalities and Russian is second to English on board. Chris Hadfield who flew several missions and captained the International Space Station talks about how astronauts communicate and the special language they use that he dubs NASA speak. He speaks several languages and lived in Russia for twenty years. As an author he has written several novels based on his experience in Space and as a fighter pilot the latest of which is The Defector. His books The Apollo Murders are being made into a series for TV. He tells Michael about the obligation he feels to share in words as best he can an experience that so few people have – of being in space and seeing Earth from afar. 

You can hear the 25-minute programme here.

(4) HOMEWARD BOUND. Starliner Updates reports:

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station on Friday, Sept. 6, with separation confirmed at 6:04 p.m. Eastern time.

The reusable crew module is expected to land at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time (10:01 p.m. Mountain time) Saturday at White Sands Space Harbor at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

AP News posted this overview: “Boeing Starliner returns to Earth without NASA astronauts”.

After months of turmoil over its safety, Boeing’s new astronaut capsule departed the International Space Station on Friday without its crew and headed back to Earth.

NASA’s two test pilots stayed behind at the space station — their home until next year — as the Starliner capsule undocked 260 miles (420 kilometers) over China, springs gently pushing it away from the orbiting laboratory. The return flight was expected to take six hours, with a nighttime touchdown in the New Mexico desert….

… A minute after separating from the space station, Starliner’s thrusters could be seen firing as the white, blue-trimmed capsule slowly backed away. NASA Mission Control called it a “perfect” departure.

Flight controllers planned more test firings of the capsule’s thrusters following undocking. Engineers suspect the more the thrusters are fired, the hotter they become, causing protective seals to swell and obstruct the flow of propellant. They won’t be able to examine any of the parts; the section holding the thrusters will be ditched just before reentry….

(5) NESFA SHORT STORY CONTEST. The New England Science Fiction Association is having a Short Story Contest (again) for non-professional writers.  Deadline is September 30.  Submissions must be less than 7500 words, and sent to storycontest@boskone.org. Full details here: “Short Story Contest”.

…The winner, runners-up, and honorable mentions will be announced during the awards ceremony at Boskone, in NESFA’s newsletter following Boskone, and in various electronic media, including e-zines, newszines, and the Boskone and NESFA websites, blogs, and Facebook pages.

The winner will receive a certificate of achievement, three NESFA Press books, and a free membership to their choice of the next Boskone or the Boskone after that.

Runners-up will receive a certificate and two NESFA Press books. Honorable mentions will receive a certificate and one NESFA Press book….

(6) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to munch on Mattar Paneer with horror writer William J. Donahue in Episode 235 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

William J. Donahue

Horror writer William J. Donahue is the author of such novels as Burn Beautiful Soul (2020), Crawl on Your Belly All the Days of Your Life (2022), and most recently, Only Monsters Remain (2023). His short story collections include Brain Cradle (2003), Filthy Beast (2004) and Too Much Poison (2014). When not writing fiction, Donahue works as a full-time magazine editor and features writer. Over the past 15 years, his writing and reporting have earned nearly a dozen awards for excellence in journalism from the American Society of Business Publication Editors.

We discussed the artistic endeavor which had him performing under the name Dirty Rotten Bill, why the first three novels he wrote will never see the light of day, what he was doing with one of those heads from the film 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, why he finds playing with the apocalypse so appealing, the reason he’s neither a plotter or a pantser, but a plantser, how a vegetarian is able to do damage to human flesh in his fiction, the way our journeys were different and yet we managed to wind up at the same destination, how wrestling changed his life, why we keep writing and submitting in the face of rejection, and much more.

(7) GAME ON! N. helps readers evaluate potential game Hugo nominees in “Hugo Award Gamer Grab Bag 2025: Indelible Indies” at the Hugo Book Club Blog.

Last year saw the formal introduction of the Best Game or Interactive Work category to the Hugo Awards, set for re-ratification in 2028. This year saw beloved RPG title Baldur’s Gate 3 win the prize (accepted by an attending dev team!), showing that this category does indeed have juice.

Still, questions remain on logistics, and how Worldcon attendees can best evaluate games in the face of the sprawling gaming industry. That’s what we hope to tackle in this (sporadic) series of guest posts, in which we plan to highlight various genre titles worthy of Hugo consideration (and plain worthy of playing). Easing into this inaugural post, here are three acclaimed indie SFF video games of note released so far in 2024 that we think voters would enjoy…

(8) CLOSING THE STARGATE. Slashfilm thinks they know “Why The Sci-Fi Channel Canceled Stargate SG-1 After Season 10”.

…So, what was “Stargate SG-1” about? The series picks up roughly a year after the events in [Roland] Emmerich’s movie, by which point the titular artifact has become common knowledge among the masses and the U.S. government has leveraged it to traverse distant worlds. An elite U.S. Air Force squad named SG-1 is deployed with the intention of warding off alien attacks, as the dark forest hypothesis comes into play with access to galactic civilizations both benign and malignant. The Goa’uld, the Replicators, and the Ori emerge as key threats to Earth, and the series draws heavily from history and mythology to weave intriguing cultural tapestries that intertwine, and often clash, with our own.

However, this well-oiled machine, which often ran on fumes due to budgetary constraints or a dearth of fresh creative directions, came to a halt in August 2006, when the Sci-Fi Channel (where the show had migrated to in 2002), announced that there would be no 11th season. Speculations about dwindling ratings, ever-expanding production costs, and poor marketing were cited to justify this cancellation. However, the real reason “Stargate SG-1” was axed can be traced to a network decision that had little to do with such logistical aspects. But what happened, exactly?

… In a now-archived interview with Variety, Mark Stern, former exec VP of original programming for the Sci-Fi Channel (now known as Syfy), clarified that “SG-1” cancellation was not ratings-based. “[The cancellation] was not a ratings-driven decision. We’re actually going out on a high note,” Stern said, while affirming that the cast and crew were given enough time to wrap up the narrative in a satisfactory manner, with all loose ends tied up in the series finale….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Dr. Valentin D. Ivanov.]

September 6, 1951 — Aleksandar Karapanchev.  (Died 2021.) Aleksandar Karapanchev was a Bulgarian speculative fiction writer, journalist and poet. He was also an active fan, publisher and editor. He graduated from the University of Sofia with degrees in Turkish and Russian languages. However, the most impactful part of his career was the work at the specialized speculative fiction publishers Rollis, Orphia and Argus in the 1990s. 

He joined fandom well before that and came to love and enjoy genre literature. He edited many dozens of books, served in the juries of a host of writing competitions and on the boards of non-profit organizations aimed to support and advance the speculative fiction. The last ten years of his life he was the secretary of Terra Fantastica – the society of Bulgarian speculative fiction writers.

Karapanchev authored tens of stories, published in the periodicals and in various anthologies. He was the recipient of tens of accolades and awards, including two Eurocons – for the Fantastica, Euristics and Prognotics (FEP) magazine he edited in 1989 and for his debut book in 2002. In 1996 as an editor he won, together with the team of the Argus publishing house, the most prestigious speculative genre accolade in Bulgaria – the Graviton award.

His most notable pieces of fiction are the short stories Stapen Croyd, describing the consequences of a noise catastrophe that has left the humanity in constant unrest and In the UNIMO Epoch, about the destructive effect of the consumerism. His stories have been translated in English, German and Russian. He also authored some poetry and a lot of genre-related non-fiction – reviews, articles on the history and modern tendencies of the genre.

Many young Bulgarian writers owe major improvements in their style to the diligent and careful editorial work of Aleksandar Karapanchev. His passing in 2021 was a major blow to the community.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) LATEST ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE NEWS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “LLMs produce racist output when prompted in African American English” – a news report in Nature. “Large language models (LLMs) are becoming less overtly racist, but respond negatively to text in African American English. Such ‘covert’ racism could harm speakers of this dialect when LLMs are used for decision-making.”

From the research paper’s abstract:

 Hundreds of millions of people now interact with language models, with uses ranging from help with writing1,2 to informing hiring decisions3. However, these language models are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgements biased in problematic ways about groups such as African Americans4,5,6,7. Although previous research has focused on overt racism in language models, social scientists have argued that racism with a more subtle character has developed over time, particularly in the United States after the civil rights movement8,9. It is unknown whether this covert racism manifests in language models. Here, we demonstrate that language models embody covert racism in the form of dialect prejudice, exhibiting raciolinguistic stereotypes about speakers of African American English (AAE) that are more negative than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded.

Primary research paper here, and it’s open access.

(12) NIGHT PATROL. Atlas Obscura explains how “In This Beautiful Library, Bats Guard the Books”.

THE 60,000 BOOKS IN THE Joanine Library are all hundreds of years old. Keeping texts readable for that long, safe from mold and moisture and nibbling bugs, requires dedication. The library’s original architects designed 6-foot (1.8 meters) stone walls to keep out the elements. Employees dust all day, every day.

And then there are the bats. For centuries, small colonies of these helpful creatures have lent their considerable pest control expertise to the library. In the daytime—as scholars lean over historic works and visitors admire the architecture—the bats roost quietly behind the two-story bookshelves. At night, they swoop around the darkened building, eating the beetles and moths that would otherwise do a number on all that old paper and binding glue….

(13) VOLCANISM ON THE MOON 120 MILLION YEARS AGO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Back when the dinosaurs were scaring Raquel Welch (I have never really forgiven them for that) 120 million years ago, there was volcanic activity on the Moon. Research reported in this week’s Science looks at samples from China’s the Chang’e-5 spacecraft.

Igneous rocks on the Moon demonstrate that it experienced extensive volcanism, with the most recent precisely dated volcanic lunar rocks being 2 billion years old. Some types of volcanic eruption produce microscopic glass beads, but so do impacts. Wang et al. examined thousands of glass beads taken from a lunar sample collected by the Chang’e-5 spacecraft (see the Perspective by Amelin and Yin). They used compositional and isotopic measurements to distinguish volcanic- and impact-related beads, identifying three beads of volcanic origin. Radiometric dating of those volcanic beads showed that they formed 120 million years ago and were subsequently transported to the Chang’e-5 landing site. The results indicate recent lunar volcanism that is not predicted by thermal models.

See the primary research here. 

(14) REV. B. HIBBARD’S VEGETABLE ANTIBILIOUS FAMILY PILLS. [Item by Andrew Porter.] From the site Daytonian in Manhattan. An advertisement in The Evening Post on August 25, 1837 promised in part:

They are highly appreciated for the relief they afford in affections of the Liver and Digestive Organs.  The worst cases of Chronic Dyspepsia, Inveterate Costiveness, Indigestion, Dyspeptic Consumption, Rheumatism, Nervous or Sick Headache and Scurvy, have been entirely cured by a proper use of them.  Also, Liver Complaints, Fever and Ague, Bilious Fever, Jaundice, Dysentery or Bloody Flex, the premonitory symptoms of Cholera, Dropsical Swelling, Piles, Worms in Children, Fits, Looseness and Irregularity of the Bowels, occasioned by Irritation, Teething, &c.

(15) WHERE WOLF? “’Wolf Man’ Trailer Sees Christopher Abbott’s Monster Unleashed”, and Deadline sets the scene.

Universal Pictures on Friday debuted the first teaser for Wolf Man, its new film in which Christopher Abbott (Poor Things) transforms into the classic movie monster.

Co-starring three-time Emmy winner Julia Garner (Ozark), Sam Jaeger (The Handmaid’s Tale) and young up-and-comer Matilda Firth (Subservience), the New Zealand-shot reboot helmed for Blumhouse and Universal by Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man) follows a family that is being terrorized by a lethal predator. Pic is slated for release in theaters on January 17, 2025….

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

SFWA Calls Special Election for President and Secretary, Reports Progress on Issues

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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) today announced they will hold a Special Election to fill the offices of President and Secretary. Those elected will serve for the remainder of the current terms, until June 30, 2025.

The office of President was vacated by the resignation of SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy on August 1. And when Interim President Chelsea Mueller resigned on August 15, Secretary Anthony W. Eichenlaub moved up to take her place.

Candidates for the two offices must post their platforms by September 24. Members will begin voting on October 9. The ballots will be counted after October 23.

The full SFWA Board consists of the President, Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Secretary, and five (5) Director-at-Large positions.

Progress Report. Also today, Interim President Anthony W. Eichenlaub sent members a “Report on SFWA Progress” with updates on these issues:

Non-Discloure Agreements:

The Board made significant progress on a new and limited confidentiality agreement to replace the current NDAs in last week’s meeting. This is the cornerstone of our push toward transparency, and we’re pleased with how it’s turning out. We spent the weekend wordsmithing and will be sending it to the lawyer at the beginning of this week. Our goal is to get it out as soon as possible.

SFWA Website:

A Website Content Audit Taskforce has been formed to locate and fix errors and omissions on the sfwa.org website. This is a limited duration taskforce and its goal is to fix inaccuracies and omissions on the current website as we put together plans for a full website overhaul. Please look in the next issue of the Singularity for volunteer opportunities to help with this taskforce.

International Writers:

The Board discussed our statement regarding writers in crisis around the world. This statement has been stalled too long, and now it’s on my desk. It needs some work, but I’m putting it as a top priority next week.

SFWA tasked a committee to write such a statement in 2022. A draft reportedly was produced but the Board did not take action. This year there has been a renewed call from members who want a response to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. Some members doubt such a statement would be appropriate under the organization’s purpose statement. Some others believe it would relate to SFWA’s function of “supporting and empowering” writers. They note that earlier in the decade there was “A Statement from SFWA on Black Lives Matter and Protests” and “A Statement and Plan of Support for the Asian Diaspora Communities”, as well as an announcement that “SFWA Stands With Ukraine”.

Internal Communication:

The Board has decided to leverage the Airtable volunteer database to facilitate communication between committees.

Staff replacement:

The Board has been working on strategies for replacing staff. The first job listings are almost ready to go out.

Pixel Scroll 8/19/24 The Silver Pixels Of The File

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(1) DIAGNOSIS: SFWA. Two SFWA presidents resigning this month provoked widespread interest in learning about the organization’s problems. What File 770 shares what we have been able to find out in “SFWA: In My House There Are Many Issues”.

(2) BULWER-LYTTON CONTEST. The annual tourney to produce the worst opening line to a novel has been won this year by sf writer Lawrence Person of Austin, TX: “2024 Bulwer-Lytton Contest Winners”.

She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.

(3) BAD VIBRATIONS. Since 2023, Readers for Accountability has been trying to drive a boycott against St. Martin’s Press “regarding statements made by an employee in their marketing department [on their personal social media] and their failure to respond to concerns about systemic racism and influencer safety within the department. Among other demands, they have called on the publisher to “Address how, moving forward, they will support and protect their Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab readers, influencers, and authors in addition to their BIPOC readers, influencers, and authors.” “#SpeakUpSMP”.

Their protests were re-energized this month when the publisher sent influencers an unsolicited PR box for Casey McQuiston’s The Pairing with some remarkable contents:

In August 2024, Readers for Accountability discovered that influencers had received a PR box from St. Martin’s Press containing a vibrator, lube, and honey. Surprisingly, numerous influencers seemed completely unaware that they would receive these particular items, or even receive the box itself. This incident brought forth questions of influencer safety and consent that were addressed by R4A through this statement. St. Martin’s Press released their first public statement on 8/16/24 in response to #SpeakUpSMP, denying the accusations, stating they responded to influencer emails, and claiming to have conducted an internal investigation finding no wrongdoing.

Today, Publishers Weekly reported: “St. Martin’s Press Responds to Marketing Controversy”.

…The McQuiston controversy comes months after Readers for Accountability began a “marketing boycott” of SMP titles to protest what the group called racist, Islamaphobic, and anti-Palestinian sentiments sent by an SMP marketing department employee. The group said it first raised concerns to SMP in December 2023, but was not satisfied with the publisher’s response, and launched the #SpeakUpSMP marketing boycott, through which the group is refusing to support SMP titles until their concerns are addressed….

…On Friday, SMP posted a comment to its “publishing community,” though it did not specifically cite the comments it was responding to. The post reads in part: “The St. Martin’s Publishing Group is committed to publishing a wide variety of books from many viewpoints and perspectives. We condemn racism in all forms, including Islamophobia and antisemitism. This is a value of our company, and one that we hold ourselves accountable to every day.”…

(4) ESFS AWARDS. The European Science Fiction Society presented the “2024 ESFS Awards” today at Erasmuscon, the 2024 Eurocon in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

(5) ADEYEMI, BUTLER AND JEMISIN. The Week explores “How Black female science fiction and fantasy writers are upending the narrative”.

…Tomi Adeyemi: the fresh storyteller

The final installment of Adeyemi’s “Legacy of Orisha” trilogy, “Children of Anguish and Anarchy,” was released on June 25, 2024 and leapt to the top of the New York Times Children’s and Young Adult bestsellers list. The previous two titles in the series did the same when released. “There is something about reading when you’re young that is so different from reading when you’re an adult,” Adeyemi said when interviewed in SBJCT. “Books have the opportunity to bury themselves in your heart and shape the way you think about the world.” …

(6) ANALOG AWARD FOR EMERGING BLACK VOICES DEADLINE EXTENDED. The submission window for The Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices has reopened with a new deadline of August 31. Eligible to enter are “Any writer over 18 years of age who customarily identifies as Black, has not published nor is under contract for a book, and has three or less paid fiction publications is eligible.”

Here is what the award winner receives:

With editorial guidance, Analog editors commit to purchasing and publishing the winning story in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, with the intent of creating a lasting relationship, including one year of monthly mentorship sessions. These sessions will be opportunities to discuss new writing, story ideas, the industry, and to receive general support from the Analog editors and award judges.

Last year’s winner was Sakinah Hofler, whose acceptance speech is at the link.

(7) STARVING INTERFERES WITH WRITING. In “Neuromancer: the birth of an SF classic” at BookBrunch, “author William Gibson and his editor, Malcolm Edwards, recall how a seminal SF work came to publication.”

…In 1983, completing Neuromancer was proving a challenge. The paltry advance paid for the book was not enough to live on, and payments from Omni were essential.

10 March 1983
‘I still haven’t turned Neuromancer in and that makes Martha Millard [his agent] nervous. Just now I’m revising 18 pages of Skull Wars for Ellen Datlow [Omni fiction editor], at a hundred a page, I figure the delay on the novel is worth it. Boy’s gotta eat, right? I’m not all that sure of Neuro‘s alleged hotness, but then I’m never very keen on my own work.

‘Glad you liked “[Burning] Chrome”. It’s probably my best story to date for what that’s worth. Got a lot of Nebula taps, which surprised me. I don’t know about that kind of sentimentalism, though. Kind of like Leonard Cohen writing The Stainless Steel Rat.’*…

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Brewster Rockit missed a step in his literary career.
  • F Minus comments on designers.
  • Off the Mark has a useful tool for credential owners
  • Wumo cares for a famous pack
  • Tom Gauld diagrams a cocktail party.

(9) FAN FUND WINNERS ASSEMBLE. TAFF, DUFF and GUFF, present and past: TAFF co-administrator Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey sent along the group photo taken at the Glasgow Worldcon. “It was suggested at the shoot that this may have been the largest gathering of fan-fund delegates in the history of fan-fundery,” says Mike. (Photos courtesy of Mike Beneviste’s Worldcon Flickr feed). Click for larger image.

(10) BOX OFFICE REPORT. Fede Álvarez’s “’Alien: Romulus’ Tops Busy Box Office With $41.5M Opening” calculates The Hollywood Reporter.

Alien: Romulus scared up strong business in its box-office debut as it sets out to revive the classic franchise. The 20th Century and Disney movie topped the domestic weekend chart with $45.1 million, well ahead of a projected debut in the high-$20 million range and the second-best opening of the franchise, not adjusted for inflation.

Overseas, Romulus opened to a better-than-expected $66.7 million for worldwide start of $108.2 million….

…Disney’s Inside Out 2 remains the biggest hero of summer, with a global tally of $1.626 billion, the best showing ever for an animated pic. Over the weekend, it also became the top-grossing animated film at the international box office….

(11) CAMERON Q&A. In a wide-ranging interview, James Cameron tells the Guardian: “‘It’s harder to write sci-fi because we’re living in a sci-fi world’”. The Terminator, Alien, and his new OceanXplorers franchises are all discussed.

…October will mark the 40th anniversary of The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cybernetic assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, whose unborn son will one day save mankind from being destroyed by Skynet, a hostile artificial intelligence. (Cameron rejected a producer’s suggestion that he cast OJ Simpson in the Terminator role.)

“People pay the compliment, ‘Oh, it still holds up’,” he reflects. “I actually think that’s true of Terminator 2 qualitatively. I think Terminator 1 qualitatively is pretty obsolete, although story-wise it’s still pretty intriguing. There’s some interest around this idea that it was a bit prescient on certain things, like the emergence of AI, the potential existential threat of AI, which is transforming our world before our eyes.

“We’re at a point right now where it gets it gets harder and harder to write science fiction because we’re living in a science fiction world on a day to day basis. I’m working through some of the themes that I want to bring into a new Terminator film or possibly even a kind of a reboot of a larger story framework and it’s difficult right now because I want to let the smoke clear on the whole thing. That’s going to be a ride that we’re going to be watching for probably the rest of human history but certainly the next few years are going to be quite telling.”

If AI does come to pose an extinction-level threat, as some experts warn, Cameron’s Terminator films may be seen as a prophecy that humanity was heading as inexorably as the Titanic towards an iceberg of its own making. He adds: “As I jokingly said once in an interview, ‘I warned you guys in 1984 but you didn’t listen!’

(12) LUNAR CIRCUS. [Item by Tom Becker.] Performance artist Bastien Dausse created a simple device, called “the scale”, that counter-balances 5/6 of his weight, so he can perform acrobatics in the equivalent of lunar gravity. There are some limitations, so it is not a fully accurate simulation of lunar gravity, and he plays with the device’s limitations to artistic effect. It is beautiful. It is a tantalizing hint of the ways acrobats and dancers will find to move on the moon. “MOON – Compagnie Barks”.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended has a strange mashup: Inside Deadpool.

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

SFWA: In My House There Are Many Issues

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When Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association turned to their third President this month many asked what problems the organization is having to cause this result? Michael Damian Thomas supplied a plentiful list of SFWA’s issues, which follows below.

However, the two presidents’ resignations cite the needs of their families as their primary reason for leaving office.   

CHANGE AT THE TOP. Chelsea Mueller resigned August 15 as Interim President of SFWA, just two weeks after stepping up from Vice-President when SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy resigned on August 1. Both Kennedy and Mueller said the need to take care of family members overhwhelmed their resources.

Kennedy said:

…However, the last several months have been particularly demanding in my personal life, and I have come to the realization that I can no longer provide the focused attention SFWA needs from its President. Without going into too much detail, I continue to be the sole caregiver and financial support for my disabled husband, whose progressive condition is worsening. In addition, my stepfather of twenty years passed away suddenly, widowing my elderly mother for the third time, and I am in the process of taking over all of her finances and care….

Mueller said:

…Many of you may already know, but my husband was in a major motor vehicle accident a couple of months ago. The journey after that, as well as caring for our small child, has severely limited my bandwidth. I had intended to forge on and make as much time for this organization as I could.

However, I am out of spoons, and must use those I have to care for myself and my family….

Anthony W. Eichenlaub, SFWA Secretary, has taken Mueller’s place as the new Interim President. Mueller’s and Eichenlaub’s statements are excerpted in the File 770 post “Mueller Resigns as Interim SFWA President; Eichenlaub Takes Office”.

SFWA’S PROBLEMS. Michael Damian Thomas, urging SFWA members to seek out the details in the members-only Forum, gave X.com readers this list of issues troubling the organization:

It is fairly winding! One employees left & wasn’t replaced. One employee asked for accessibility accommodations, didn’t get them, gave 90 days notice, & then was immediately shut out of their SFWA email account. (That one gets more and more complicated.)

Multiple committees seem to have had members forced out or resigned, including Griefcom. There is a general pattern of these committee members saying there was little or no communication from the Board. Now we have multiple Board members resigning. Lots of claims about NDA stuff.

A check was issued to a charity antho and then the antho was told to not cash the check and destroy it, as the payment was in error. There is a lot going down!

Here is what File 770 has learned so far about those issues.

One Employee Left and Wasn’t Replaced

This is a reference to Deputy Executive Director Terra LeMay, a longtime SFWA employee whose status is a matter of controversy and is discussed in the next section. 

SFWA’s other employee is Executive Director Kate Baker.

One Employee Asked for Accessibility Accomodations; Gave 90 Days Notice; Was Shut Out of Email Account

Michael Capobianco, a former SFWA President, said in a comment on a public Facebook post on August 15:

I’m following along as best I can considering that everyone involved (and a lot of new Board members that aren’t) are on a rollercoaster ride of resignations and can’t tell anyone what’s going on explicitly because of the overbroad NDA’s they signed. It looks like it may be leveling off, but there are still a lot of members who are pissed off about the treatment of Deputy Executive Director Terra LeMay, and there’s no sign of a resolution to that problem, which could cascade into other problems of staff and Board behavior.

Jon Del Arroz’ Fandom Pulse newsletter has published – although misattributing the quote to the wrong author — the text of a SFWA Forum post on the subject in “SFWA Whistleblower Exposes Private Online Forum Post With Frustrated Members Demanding Jeffe Kennedy Be Ousted As President” [Internet Archive link]. The post was not written by Michael Capobianco, as asserted by JDA. The quoted post (dated August 2) says:

“The immediate event that kicked this off was Terra LeMay being terminated from her staff position after putting in a 90-day notice due to being denied reasonable disability accommodations, and then banned from Discord and blocked from accessing her SFWA email (presumably by Jeffe [Kennedy]) after she asked for an explanation on Discord in the ask-the-board channel.”

As of August 15, Terra LeMay’s status is that she still is employed by SFWA. She was not fired. And her terminal date would be 90 days from when notice was given – which was on June 30th — not that day. LeMay’s Discord access has been restored, but not her email account. She remains an employee, apparently without duties.

The following commentary is provided by a longtime SFWA member under condition that they remain anonymous. The source is reliable, and in a position to have direct knowledge of the information. (They are not anyone named in this post.)

Most recently, on June 30th, the SFWA employee Michael Damian Thomas mentions put in a notice of resignation. This notice expressed that the actual date of resignation would be negotiated between the two parties, but (per the terms of an existing employment contract) would be no later than 90 days. This employee is well-loved by the SFWA membership as someone who is always helpful, effective, and thoughtful, and has done a ton of great work for the organization, as well as holding a significant amount of institutional knowledge. The employee expressed their intent to continue working until the resignation date to ensure as smooth a transition as possible, but two weeks after that was abruptly locked out of SFWA email and other work accounts, which were all needed for job purposes. When the employee asked why this had happened on the SFWA Discord, someone (it’s not clear who) deleted the messages and banned the employee from the server. The first that most board members heard about this is when people started to demand it be addressed, so it definitely seems like someone in a position of power in the organization was acting on their own, without these being approved board actions.

A number of members have demanded that employee’s access be restored and they be given an apology, but that has not happened even a month later. Nobody has heard from the executive director in that time, and board members say they are unable to speak about it due to NDAs [Non-Disclosure Agreements] or because it’s an “employment situation.” My understanding is that the employee in question has since contacted the board a number of times with questions which have been ignored or only partially answered.

Committees Have Had Members Forced Out, or Resigned, Including Griefcom

The anonymous longtime SFWA member responded:

Regarding GriefCom, the chair and co-chair of that committee resigned after being told their work would have to expand to writers not in SFWA due to its nonprofit status. I think this happened a year ago or more, and don’t think it’s related to the current situation. In fact, a number of writers I know received very condescending and dismissive emails from the former GriefCom chair which essentially blamed them for problems they were facing with publishers. The new GriefCom chair is much better, and I have not heard any complaints recently about GriefCom, so in my opinion this particular case is actually the organization working as it should to serve writers.

There have been a few other committees with people resigning, and the fundraising committee was dissolved in order to set up a new structure of fundraising task forces (which I’m not sure has happened), but I am not aware of any committee volunteers actually being “forced out.”

File 770 has yet to determine who Michael Damian Thomas is referencing as “forced out”.

The list of SFWA Committees (and there are many) is at the link.

There is a general pattern of these committee members saying there was little or no communication from the Board.

The anonymous longtime SFWA member commented:

It’s been almost impossible to get answers about the current situation from the board, or even a very clear picture of what’s going on with other SFWA projects, because every board member and employee was made to sign what appears to be a very, very broad NDA. I have seen one of these, and it does not include any kind of end date, nor does it include detailed descriptions of what the people who signed it need to keep confidential. 

I want to note that the current board does really seem to be making a good faith effort to fix the issues around transparency and communication. I believe they are also setting up a special election for some time in the next couple of months, and both Chelsea [Mueller] and the new interim president [Anthony W. Eichenlaub] did make some good steps down that road when writing the membership. Chelsea provided a list of topics the board will discuss in the next four months, and Anthony has been above board as well in scheduling a special election and explicitly asking the membership to hold him accountable. Anthony was serving as secretary before this, and he’s also been working his way through the backlog of board meeting minutes at the same time as being interim president. 

While I definitely don’t think the organization is out of the woods yet, I’m hopeful that these are signs it’s moving in the right direction.

Multiple Board Members Resigning

Beyond the two presidents who have resigned, File 770 has not yet identified other board resignations.

However, SFWA has lost several other highly visible workers over the past year. Five employees and a contractor have left.

Beth Dawkins (volunteer coordinator) was a part time employee not a contractor. She gave two weeks notice on July 1. 

Kathleen Monin (event coordinator) was also a part time employee. She gave notice later on in the first part of July. 

Oz Drummond (bookkeeper and CPA) was a contractor. She resigned at the end of December, stayed a few months longer in a more limited capacity until March 2024. 

Rebecca Gomez Farrell (former communications director) was a part time employee and resigned in October of 2023.

Emily May (publications director) was a part time employee and resigned earlier in 2023, shortly before or after the Nebulas. 

No new employees or contractors have been hired in that time.

Another volunteer known to have stepped down this year is Mishell Baker, from her lead position on the Estates Project, but that was unrelated to the current situation. (Pixel Scroll — March 5, 2024, item 7)

Claims About NDAs

The anonymous longtime SFWA member said above, “It’s been almost impossible to get answers about the current situation from the board, or even a very clear picture of what’s going on with other SFWA projects, because every board member and employee was made to sign what appears to be a very, very broad NDA.”  

Author Jenny Rae Rappaport is urging SFWA members to sign a Petition for bylaws amendment to forbid NDAs. The supporting statement follows.

In the last several years, SFWA has begun requiring its Board members, employees, and key volunteers to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to ensure confidentiality. However, recent events have shown that these NDAs cause more problems than they solve. Because the NDAs are overly broad without clear limits or expiration dates, they leave employees, Board members, and volunteers uncertain about what they can and cannot say without potential legal repercussions. Even more concerning is that these NDAs have created distrust between SFWA membership and the Board, and an environment where the perception exists that bad actors can mistreat others and violate SFWA’s bylaws with impunity.

There is no legal requirement for SFWA as a 501(c)(3) to use NDAs, for either its legal or tax status. Many nonprofits, both inside and outside California, function perfectly well without using NDAs, either trusting that people will follow the laws about disclosure of personal, financial, and medical information, or using individual confidentiality agreements with the details of what information needs to be kept confidential spelled out.

Accordingly, in the interests of greater transparency for the organization, we, the undersigned members of SFWA, petition for the following change to the bylaws…

We move that Article V Directors be amended by the addition of a new section, to be numbered 10. [The complete wording of the amendment is at the link.]

  1. Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreements

a. Duty of confidentiality

Members of the Board of Directors, as part of their fiduciary duties, have a duty of confidentiality, which covers such items as private financial information about the corporation (accounts, for example, as opposed to the financial status, which must be disclosed), nor use any of the information for personal gain. This does not need to be further specified.

  1. Examples of such types of information include recipients of SFWA’s medical fund, information about unannounced Nebula award winners or nominees, information about contracts committee work, and all other information that would identify confidential information about specific individuals.

b. Duty to disclose

Additionally, the members of the Board have a duty to disclose, which means they must share any information they have which will affect SFWA or its beneficiaries (writers of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres), or that will affect their ability to perform their duties….

d. No NDAs

Given that these duties are already codified, no member of the Board of Directors will be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), nor shall any employee or volunteer be asked or expected to sign an NDA. When appropriate, Board members, employees, or volunteers may be required to sign a confidentiality agreement, which must be circumscribed in nature, listing the specific items that will be held confidential and the timeframe for which this will be required.

Any and all NDAs already existing when this bylaw becomes effective will be considered null and void, and no legal action will be considered against anyone who may be considered to have breached their NDA unless they have otherwise violated a law.

For a comparison of how NDA’s are handled by another organization of genre professionals, Horror Writers Association President John Edward Lawson explained on X.com why their organization requires elected officers and trustees, paid employees, and certain committee chairs or volunteers (but not all volunteers) to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. Lawson’s ten-part thread starts here.

Check Issued to Charity Antho; Then SFWA Told Antho to Destroy Check

This complaint is about the handling of a charity anthology originally intended to be underwritten by SFWA, Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora edited by Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Olha Brylova, and Iryna Pasko. It was ultimately funded through a Kickstarter appeal.

The following commentary about SFWA’s handling of the anthology is provided by a longtime SFWA member under condition that they remain anonymous. The source is reliable, and in a position to have direct knowledge of the information.

I’ve volunteered with SFWA for close to ten years, and the organization has frankly always been a little dysfunctional in terms of opaqueness and poor internal communications. The last two years in particular, though, have been Kafkaesque, with projects that committees had spent dozens of hours working on being abruptly cancelled by the board with no notice or real rationale, and volunteers being blamed for failing to communicate when they ask what happened.

Because the cancelled anthology project is emblematic of these problems, I’m going to talk about it at a little more length.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the international committee began work on setting up an anthology of Ukrainian science fiction in translation, supposedly with the agreement and approval of the board. (For context, SFWA had previously published a blog post stating that it “stands with Ukraine”). That work included contacting writers and editors living in parts of Ukraine that were being bombarded daily by Russian artillery, drones, and missiles to solicit work, and a couple of these folks put in significant amounts of effort on the project. This work proceeded for more than a year, with committee members in contact with their board liaison and other board members including the CFO, throughout. Committee members also contacted several different publishers before finding one who was interested in the project. As Michael Damian Thomas notes, that included sending the publisher a check to offset costs in printing the anthology and paying authors.

There was no indication at any time that the board disapproved of the project for over a year. Indeed, the project was announced in several different member newsletters. Early in 2023, Jeffe Kennedy [SFWA President] sent the committee chair and the publisher an email saying it was cancelled. I’m just going to quote from that email here:

“We’ve heard that there’s still confusion as to the Board’s recent decision to end SFWA’s involvement with the Ukrainian Anthology project. This email is intended to clearly communicate that to all involved parties.

“At our most recent meeting, the Board made the decision to end the project. There were two main reasons for this decision. The first is that we do not have either the staff time or expertise in Ukrainian cultural matters to take this on. That includes judging whether someone else may or may not be a good fit for editing it. This means it cannot be a SFWA project.

“It also cannot be a SFWA grant because of the extent of work that International Committee members have put into it and the potential credit they may receive as editors in any format. Of course, we recognize that the participating committee members did not know their efforts could jeopardize the grant, but that does not change the end result. Scenarios involving self-dealing and nonprofits are extremely delicate. As soon as we get into parsing shades of exemptions, we’ve crossed into the territory of an appearance of Conflict of Interest. That is our boundary; not whether a situation is legally a conflict of interest, but whether it generates the appearance of one.”

This is typical of the kind of dismissive, condescending communications I have seen from some former board members to volunteers. Note the passive “there’s still confusion” and the other ways this email makes it sound like volunteers were the ones to blame for the current situation.

The first reason Jeffe cites for the cancellation might sound reasonable on the face of things, but in light of the context above I find it ridiculous. That would have been a good reason not to start the project. It makes no sense at all at essentially the end of the project, given that one member of the international committee at the time was Ukrainian disapora and we had been working with two Ukrainian editors. The board was also not being asked to “take this on.” We already had experts in Ukrainian cultural matters working on it, and had already done all the work Jeffe said the board didn’t have time for.

The second reason is a complete misunderstanding of what “self-dealing” is. The Council of Foundations defines self-dealing as activities that result in disproportionate benefit by distribution of the organization’s earnings to insiders, such as founders, directors and officers. To claim that people who are not founders, directors, or officers of the organization receiving editor credit in a print anthology without any pay is self-dealing is clearly ludicrous. I don’t know if the board genuinely misunderstood what “self-dealing’ meant or if Jeffe was just looking for some excuse to cancel the project, or what. 

I emailed the board to tell them how bad this would be for SFWA if they really went through with it, and how disappointed I was that they would seek to blame volunteers for their own decisions (which I felt were without any merit) but I never got a response. I also still have not seen any of the meeting minutes where the project was discussed, despite requesting them repeatedly in the last year and a half, so I don’t really know what the discussion was at that board meeting or any of the ones prior.

This email also asked the publisher to shred the check they had been sent, but did not at any point apologize or say there had been any mistakes made in sending it. The publisher we had selected is a small press which runs on tight margins and which has a reputation for publishing inclusive, thoughtful fiction. Despite the situation this cancellation put them in, when the publisher said they had shredded the check, Jeffe did not thank them or apologize. Neither was there any recognition at any point that this meant people living in a literal warzone would not get paid by SFWA, after a SFWA committee had spent a year telling them they would, supposedly with the approval of the board.

The publisher was still interested in trying to do right by these authors, and several of us who had been on the international committee worked with them outside of SFWA to help bring it to publication. It’s a great anthology from a great press, and I’m proud of it. If you’d like to tell the folks at File 770 about it, they can find it here. 

All the same, I remain deeply frustrated at how SFWA handled the situation, and the whole thing was a giant mess.

SFWA’s Good Work Should Not Be Eclipsed.

The anonymous longtime SFWA member wants it known that despite these problems there is good work being done by the organization:

…Also, I want to be really explicit in saying that even though the organization has been having some issues, I sincerely do believe that the vast majority of current and former board members are working in good faith to meet SFWA’s mission of supporting and promoting all genre writers. 

The organization has done some great work in the last couple of years, creating more inclusive membership qualifications that better reflect professional writers as they exist today and which recognize historical and current inequities in publishing. I was also part of an effort which won the organization an NEA grant to put out a series of blog posts called “Publishing Taught Me”, a project that highlights the contributions of BIPOC editors and writers to publishing. SFWA does important work in the community as well, supporting other organizations with its Givers Grant Funds, helping authors with GriefCom, contract work, and the medical fund, and working to limit the harm of bad actors in the publishing industry through its support for Writer Beware.

I’m deeply sad that all these great things SFWA does are being overshadowed by what seems to have been one or two people abusing the organization’s lack of accountability and transparency, which could have been avoided without these overly broad NDAs. It makes me feel terrible to think that all those things may disappear if the organization doesn’t fix its issues. 

SFWA’s Interim President Anthony W. Eichenlaub feels the same, as he said in his introductory message to members:

SFWA is at a critical moment.

I hope you’ll take a pause to go through all of the emotions you are feeling because you’re right. Whatever you are feeling right now is appropriate because something you deeply care about is threatened. And many of us do love this organization. When it is functioning well, SFWA is truly a force for good, and it is unique in this industry.

SFWA BOARD MEMBERSHIP, BEFORE AND AFTER

As of August 6

  • Chelsea Mueller – Interim President
  • Jonathan Brazee – CFO
  • Anthony Eichenlaub – Secretary
  • Christine Taylor-Butler – Director-at-Large
  • Phoebe Barton – Director-at-Large
  • Noah Sturdevant – Director-at-Large
  • Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki – Director-at-Large
  • Alton Kremer – Director-at-Large

As of August 15

  • Anthony Eichenlaub – Interim President
  • Jonathan Brazee – CFO
  • Christine Taylor-Butler – Director-at-Large
  • Phoebe Barton – Director-at-Large
  • Noah Sturdevant – Director-at-Large
  • Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki – Director-at-Large
  • Alton Kremer – Director-at-Large

Update 08/18/2024: Made additions and corrections based on comments.

Pixel Scroll 8/15/24 Have Spice Suit, Will Travel

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(1) SFWA ON ITS THIRD PRESIDENT THIS SUMMER. Chelsea Mueller today resigned as Interim President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Mueller had been in office only since the beginning of August, as SFWA’s VP becoming the organization’s Interim President upon the resignation of SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy on August 1. Anthony W. Eichenlaub, SFWA Secretary, is stepping up as the new  Interim President. Mueller’s and Eichenlaub’s statements are excerpted in the File 770 post “Mueller Resigns as Interim SFWA President; Eichenlaub Takes Office”.

To learn why the organization is in a crisis SFWA members must read the Forum. Those outside can get only a very general idea from social media posts like M L Clark’s statement on Bluesky.

Author Jenny Rae Rappaport his urging SFWA members to sign a Petition for bylaws amendment to forbid NDAs. The supporting statement follows. The wording of the amendment is at the link.

In the last several years, SFWA has begun requiring its Board members, employees, and key volunteers to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to ensure confidentiality. However, recent events have shown that these NDAs cause more problems than they solve. Because the NDAs are overly broad without clear limits or expiration dates, they leave employees, Board members, and volunteers uncertain about what they can and cannot say without potential legal repercussions. Even more concerning is that these NDAs have created distrust between SFWA membership and the Board, and an environment where the perception exists that bad actors can mistreat others and violate SFWA’s bylaws with impunity.

There is no legal requirement for SFWA as a 501(c)(3) to use NDAs, for either its legal or tax status. Many nonprofits, both inside and outside California, function perfectly well without using NDAs, either trusting that people will follow the laws about disclosure of personal, financial, and medical information, or using individual confidentiality agreements with the details of what information needs to be kept confidential spelled out.

Accordingly, in the interests of greater transparency for the organization, we, the undersigned members of SFWA, petition for the following change to the bylaws:

(2) INDUSTRY REACTS TO GAME HUGO WINNER. PC Gamer marvels that “Somehow, Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t done winning yet: It’s just claimed the most prestigious award for science fiction and fantasy writing”.

….A special videogame category was added in 2021 to recognize the increased impact of videogames amidst the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it was a one-off: No game-related Hugo was awarded in 2022 or ’23.

In 2023, however, Worldcon voted to make the Best Game or Interactive Work a permanent category for 2024—wouldn’t you know it, just in time for the Baldur’s Gate 3 behemoth to smash through the walls like the Kool-Aid Man and run off with it. BG3 beat out Alan Wake 2 (yet again), Chants of Senaar, Dredge, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor for the big prize….

“The Hugo nominees and awards have determined my reading list since forever, so it’s a huge honor to be standing here,” Larian boss Swen Vincke said during his acceptance speech (via Polygon). 

“Videogame writing is often underestimated. It is very very very hard work. For Baldur’s Gate 3 we had to create over 174 hours of cinematics just to be able to respect the choices of the players and to make sure that each and every single one of them would have an emotional story that was reflecting their choices and their agency. It takes a very long time, it takes a very large team … It takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of talent. So I’m very happy for all of them and for all of the team back home that we can get this, and very grateful to the fandom.”

Vincke isn’t kidding when he says Larian wanted to ensure Baldur’s Gate 3 was as reactive as possible to player choices: The studio recently revealed that the game’s rarest ending has only been unlocked by 34 players—and remember, this is a game that’s sold well over 10 million copies. (For a little added context, 1.9 million Baldur’s Gate 3 players were turned into a cheese wheel. Which is fine, really: No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses.)…

(3) ELLISON FOUNDATION HAD IRS CHARITABLE STATUS REVOKED. The IRS has revoked the 501(c)(3) charitable status of The Harlan and Susan Ellison Foundation after it failed to file the required Form 990 for three straight years. Douglas J. Lane provides detailed coverage of the Foundation’s creation, activities, and status in his blog post “For Want of a Form”:

On Monday, August 12, 2024 the Internal Revenue Service updated its monthly list of 501(c)(3) organizations for whom it was revoking charitable status based on failure to file Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, for three consecutive years. 

Among the organizations freshly listed was EIN number 873507738, The Harlan and Susan Ellison Foundation.

The revocation of charitable status puts the Foundation and its president, J. Michael Straczynski, in a tricky spot, as it makes the organization fully taxable. They cannot receive tax-free donations or offer deductions to donors. Under California law, they will also not be able to distribute charitable funds. There are other ramifications, and while reinstatement is possible, it comes with a swath of requirements.

It’s critical to say at the outset of this account of the public-facing facets of the Foundation: I ascribe no malicious intent or nefarious purpose to anyone involved in any of the events that led to this revocation, and no impropriety is indicated by anything that has occurred. Indeed, Joe Straczynski speaks in a caring and sincere way about the place the Ellisons have in his heart, and how he wants to carry out their wishes. The Foundation has a laudable vision. But malicious intent and carelessness are two different things, and it’s clear a severe breakdown occurred somewhere along the way that resulted in opacity where transparency was required, creating a situation in which warnings were missed and the Foundation was positioned for a catastrophic setback that was wholly avoidable…

Lane also posted the information today at The Harlan Ellison Facebook Fan Club, leading to this series of comments from J. Michael Straczynski.

Thursday, August 15, 2024 at 10:21 a.m.

This is literally the first time I’m hearing this. We’ve had no contact from them directly or indirectly. If the forms were not submitted that’s strictly a paperwork issue and that’s on us. I need to find out what happened on the attorney side. This will be fixed and as per this the status will then be reinstated once we’ve sent in the forms.

Thursday, August 15, 2024 at 11:21 a.m.

Okay, last quick update for the moment. It looks like the notices were being sent to the wrong address/suite number. Also, as for the Packard, it was not sold, it was given freely to a member of this very forum in exchange for looking after it and maintaining it in Harlan’s memory. He can confirm this here if he so desires.

So bottom line for now: the paperwork fell through a crack between different offices over who was handling what, and the address (as noted in the link) was incorrect for the notices. I assumed all this was being properly attended to, while I was busy getting Harlan’s work back into print. That error was mine. The good news is that since this was apparently a comedy of errors on both sides, there should be no issue with getting this rectified swiftly by simply filing the paperwork.

Thursday, August 15, 2024 at 12:41 p.m.

Okay…I just heard from the business management firm we’ve been using and they confirmed that they hadn’t looked after this because they believed it was already being handled by others. They’re filing the paperwork as we speak and this will be rectified promptly.

Thursday, August 15, 2024 at 3:25 p.m.

This has now been officially resolved. We just confirmed with the tax dept that we never received any notices from the IRS. We sent in and they have now filed the returns with the correct address. After the IRS processes them, we will handle the paperwork to reinstate the Foundation which will apparently not be a problem. The IRS will update their records so no further notices are missed. The tax dept now has the Foundation on their schedule so they won’t miss it again anyway. Just to be on the safe side moving forward we are going to hire a nonprofit attorney on retainer to coordinate all of the moving parts so nothing falls through the cracks in future.

A colorful day but at least it’s ending better than it began.

(4) ANOTHER LOOK AT GAIMAN ALLEGATIONS. The Spinoff books editor Claire Mabey listened to the Tortoise Media podcast “Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman” and distilled the information into a timeline with explicit details of the encounters described by survivors in “The New Zealand allegations at the centre of a Neil Gaiman podcast investigation”.

(5) AMERICAN NON-IDOL. I don’t know that any of the many ways John Scalzi restates the basic point in his 3,600-word post really feels like it stuck the landing, but the oft-repeated message makes sense: “Please Don’t Idolize Me (or Anyone, Really)” at Whatever.

In the wake of the various recent allegations involving Neil Gaiman, people have been both very sad that someone who they looked up to as an inspiration has, allegedly, turned out to be something less than entirely admirable, and are now looking to see who is now left that they can rotate into the spot of “the good dude,” i.e., that one successful creative guy who they think or at least hope isn’t hiding a cellar full of awful actions. One name I see brought up is mine, in ways ranging from “Well, at least we still have Scalzi,” to “Oh, God, please don’t let Scalzi be a fucking creep too.” Which, uhhhh, yeah? Thanks?…

…Every person you’ve ever admired has fucked up, sometimes really badly. Everyone you’ve ever looked up to has secrets, and it’s possible some of those secrets would materially change how you think about them, not always for the better. Everyone you’ve ever known has things about them you don’t know, many of which aren’t even secrets, they’re just things you don’t engage with in your day-to-day experience of them. Nevertheless it’s possible if you were aware of them, it would change how you feel about them, for better or for worse. And now let’s flip that around! You have things about you that even your best friends don’t know, and might be surprised to learn! You have secrets you don’t wish to share with the class! You have fucked up, and lied, and have been a hypocrite too!…

…Oh, God, this is where Scalzi starts admitting to terrible, terrible things. No. I feel pretty confident I live a tolerably ethical life. Part of the reason for this is that I have what I think is a decent operating principle, which is: If I’m thinking of doing something, and Krissy called me right then and asked “what are you doing?” and I would be tempted to lie to her about it, then I don’t do that thing….

(6) GET READY FOR FANTASTIC FEST. “Fantastic Fest 2024 Lineup Featuring Terrifier 3, Never Let Go, More Unveiled” – Deadline has details.

Fantastic Fest, the country’s largest genre film festival, has unveiled the feature lineup for its 19th edition, taking place at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX, from September 19th- 26th.

Featuring 28 World Premieres, 23 International and North American Premieres, and 15 U.S. Premieres, the fest opens with the world premiere of James Ashcroft’s The Rule of Jenny Pen, a new thriller starring John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush. Lionsgate’s horror thriller Never Let Go will be presented during the opening night gala, with director Alexandre Aja, star Halle Berry and the team from 21 Laps in attendance. Meanwhile, opening night will also feature the world premiere of Terrifier 3, the latest film in Damien Leone’s horror franchise, centered on the horrifying Art the Clown.

(7) AURORA AWARDS VOTING STATISTICS. Clifford Samuels has posted the “Final results for the 2024 Aurora Awards” at the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association website. The direct link to the statistics is here.

(8) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA brings listeners Simultaneous Times episode 78. Stories featured in this episode:

“When You See A Dragon, You Run” by Jenna Hanchey, read by the author

“The Darling Murders” by Jonathan Nevair. Read by Jean-Paul Garnier

Music by Phog Masheeen. Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

Born August 15, 1933 – Bjo Trimble, 91.

By Lis Carey: Bjo was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, in 1933, discovered sf fandom in 1952. She was serving in the US Navy, at the Great Lakes Naval Station, and saw an announcement in Astounding Science Fiction about the science fiction convention that weekend in Chicago—the 10th Worldcon, the one we now call Chicon II, though at the time it had no official name. The largest Worldcon ever at the time, with 870 members, it was a great place for a smart and friendly young woman to meet people and make connections in fandom. Her new acquaintances included Robert Bloch, Willy Ley, August Derleth, and Harlan Ellison.

Bjo Trimble attends the 2024 Peabody Awards at Beverly Wilshire on June 9. Photo by Jon Kopaloff.

When it was discovered that she was an artist and cartoonist, she was recruited to provide illustrations for fanzines, sealing her fate. She claims to have met her husband, John Griffin Trimble, under Forrest J Ackerman’s piano, during a particularly crowded party. He was serving in the US Air Force, and they traded Stupid Officer Stories.

But as we all know, this was mere prelude. Bjo was active in LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fiction Society), and organized a fashion show for Solacon (the 16th Worldcon). In 1960, she started Project Art Show, which brought the first modern, organized art show at a science fiction convention to Pittcon, the 1960 Worldcon. Bjo continued the project, bringing art shows to Worldcons and other conventions. By 1969, Project Art Show had become The International Science-Fantasy Art Exhibition” (ISFAE), and was judging and awarding prizes, as well as organizing the art shows.

But in 1968, Bjo started turning her attention to a new fannish interest–Star Trek. Bjo and John Trimble were active in the letter-writing campaign credited with getting the show a third season, after it was initially canceled after its second season. They also helped convince NASA to name the first of the Space Shuttles Enterprise, although that was a test vehicle never intended for space flight.

Bjo was a major contributor to the Star Trek Concordance, containing cross-referenced details on every character, setting, event and device in every episode of the original Star Trek, and, in later editions of the book, its animated incarnation, and the Star Trek films. Originally self-published, it got a mass market publication by Ballantine Books in 1976, and an updated edition by Citadel Press in 1995. On the Good Ship Enterprise: My 15 Years with Star Trek, her memoir of her experiences in Star Trek fandom, was published in 1982.

Bjo was a Guest of Honor at Dragon Con, which was also the 6th North American Science Fiction Convention, in 1995. Bjo and John Trimble were Fan Guests of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th Worldcon. Bjo, or Bjo and John, were also honored at many Star Trek and other science fiction conventions.

 In addition, Bjo and John Trimble were Baron and Baroness of the Society for Creative Anachronism’s Barony of the Angels, from September 2008 to January 2012. That’s at least fandom adjacent, right?

 Sadly, John in April 2024, but Bjo is still with us. Her contributions to fandom will remain.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) MUTANTS DESERVE AWARDS. The Walt Disney Studios has a “For Your Consideration” website for the X-Men ’97 series.

(12) PAGING ALL READERS. “Book Bars Gain Momentum Around New York”: Eater tells you where to find the ones in New York City.

A flurry of book bars has recently opened that prioritize solo time as much as low-key conversation, offering a fun alt-combo to record bars and libraries. These spaces for reading, drinking, listening to music, and chatting with other book lovers (or not) are a post-shutdown pivot from social distancing. And while the throwback staple had started to revive just after the pandemic, their openings have gained momentum around the city.

Like wine bars and cocktail bars, the focus in book bars is less on needing labor to make complicated dishes as the case may be in a full-fledged restaurant. Instead, the business relies on easier-to-procure revenue streams: booze, books, and sometimes, ready-made snacks, like olives, nuts, and tinned fish. But book bars, owners say, are less about practicality than about creating a community, a third place that’s conducive to reading and chatting while enjoying a drink…

(13) PURINA HOBBIT CHOW. “What’s on the Menu in Your Fantasy World?” at Gastro Obscura.

FOOD AND FANTASY HAVE LONG gone hand in hand. Our oldest myths and fairy tales abound with ravenous monsters and enchanted apples, while modern fantasy literature has brought us the second breakfast-savoring hobbits of The Lord of the Rings and the sprawling medieval banquets of A Song of Ice and Fire. Fantasy fans rally around official cookbooks from the worlds they love, as well as unofficial recreations and fanfiction that explores the diets of their favorite characters.

(14) THE TREES THAT GREW THE POOH-STICKS. BBC Countryfile invites readers to “Discover the real-life Winnie-The-Pooh locations that inspired the famous children’s books by AA Milne”.

Ashdown Forest in East Sussex is perhaps best known as The Hundred Acre Wood, the beloved setting of arguably the most famous children’s books ever written, Winnie-the-Pooh, published in 1926, and The House at Pooh Corner (1928)….

…Today, the 6,500-acre heathland and woodland 36 miles south of London, is a rare and protected area, providing habitat for endangered flora and fauna. In this gentle, ancient landscape, we can enjoy its literary, cultural and environmental history; we can be twitchers, walkers or pub-goers….

(15) NOW LEAVING ON TRACK 9-3/4. “Back to Hogwarts pop-up coming to Grand Central Terminal with spellbinding interactive activities” reports AMNY.

For the first time ever, Warner Bros. Discovery will be hosting a Back to Hogwarts pop-up in New York City. From Aug. 30 through Sept. 1, “Harry Potter” fans can gather at Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal to celebrate the start of a new school year at Hogwarts.

In the “Harry Potter” universe, all students board the Hogwarts Express and return for a new year on Sept. 1. Warner Bros. Discovery hosts global celebrations in cities like London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo, uniting fans worldwide with digital activities, in-person gatherings, and watch-alongs, plus huge celebrations at “Harry Potter” destinations such as the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios.

At the New York pop-up, guests can expect to find magical performances, LEGO building activities, an interactive “Harry Potter: Quidditch Champion” experience, and a Butterbeer toast, courtesy of the flagship Harry Potter New York store. On Sept. 1, there will be a ticketed event with a live 11 a.m. countdown, marking when the Hogwarts Express would leave Kings Cross station in the series.

Though all of the events are free to attend, “Harry Potter” fans must sign up for a timed-entry ticket, which will be available starting Aug. 19. To make sure you don’t miss it, sign up and opt into email communications from the Harry Potter Fan Club by Aug. 17. On Aug. 19, an email will be sent including a link to the ticket site ahead of release at 12 p.m. EST. 

(16) NOT A ROLLING STONE. SAILING, MAYBE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Today’s Nature has Stonehenge on the cover. There’s a Nature News item here.

The history of Stonehenge poses many challenges, not least of which is where all of the stones came from and how they were transported to the site. The Neolithic structure is made up of two main types of stone — sarsens sourced some 25 kilometres away near Marlborough, and bluestones that originated in Wales. The largest of the bluestones at the site is the six-tonne Altar Stone, but it is an anomaly: it did not come from Wales. In this week’s issue, Anthony Clarke and colleagues reveal that the Altar Stone probably made a remarkable journey of some 750 kilometres from Scotland. The researchers analysed two fragments from the stone and discovered a striking similarity to the Old Red Sandstone of the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland. The team suggests that the stone could have been transported by sea, indicating that there might have been a significant level of societal organization within Neolithic Britain.

The original research by Anthony Clarke and colleagues link above is to “A Scottish provenance for the Altar Stone of Stonehenge”.

(17) UPLIFTING HUMANS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In a series of stories and novels, David Brin explored the idea of species uplift where by a technological civilization genetically manipulates a non-sentient species into full-blown sentience: a process called ‘uplifting’. Brin’s series has a climax in the Hugo-winning The Uplift War (1986).

Last weekend, while folk in Glasgow were preparing for the Hugo Awards ceremony, Isaac Arthur posted one of his monthly ‘Sci-Fi Sunday’ videos. While in David Brin’s stories the humans appeared to be the exception in the Galaxy who evolved sentience naturally whereas every other civilization seems to have been uplifted with the original uplift being made by some ancient and now extinct civilization. Conversely, in Isaac’s video, he explores the notion that humans were uplifted by an alien race.

Now, it has to be said that Isaac himself does not subscribe to the idea of humans being uplifted (he makes that clear both at the video’s beginning and end), but explores the concept hypothetically.  Included in the mix is a slightly more sober idea that the Earth might have been subject to panspermia and specifically directed panspermia… As well as a brief dive into Eric von Daniken which, mercifully, he looks at purely through an SFnal lens… “Were Primitive Humans Uplifted By Aliens?”

Many believe humanity’s climb upward may have been assisted by outsiders. Is this possible, and if so, what does that tell us about our own past… and future?

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

Mueller Resigns as Interim SFWA President; Eichenlaub Takes Office

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Chelsea Mueller today resigned as Interim President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Mueller had been in office only since the beginning of August, having as SFWA’s VP become the organization’s Interim President following the resignation of SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy on August 1.

Anthony W. Eichenlaub, SFWA Secretary, has stepped up as Interim President. He says there will still be a Town Hall for members on September 10. And SFWA’s Board will be sticking to the agenda topics that were previously scheduled.

Chelsea Mueller sent a statement to SFWA members today that said in part:

…With the immense change happening in our organization right now and the need to respond swiftly, thoughtfully, and with full attention, I’d be doing a disservice to SFWA by remaining in a key role that could cause lag in acting quickly and appropriately.

Burnout is a constant refrain within our volunteers, and I can see why. Since taking an officer role on the board on July 1, I’ve worked nearly the hours of a full-time job. So many tasks for our officers could be off-loaded to appropriate staff members if we reviewed our structure. I have shared input with the Executive Director and the Board around what roles I think the organization may need moving forward to better balance the load and allow the Board of Directors to act as a steering governance body instead of an operational one.

One of my main initiatives for this term was to see our official website overhauled to improve navigation and discoverability. I have already prepared a document for a Request for Proposal (RFP) to begin that process (though it needs input and validation from the InfoSys and Accessibility committees). If the continuing board wants to move forward with the RFP, I am willing to advise on the process to select a vendor and negotiate pricing.

Also, because it feels inappropriate to leave during this time and ignore the current situation, I will depart by saying that I believe our staff—current and past—care deeply about SFWA and deserve respect, kindness, and fairness. I will debrief with whomever I need on the board in order to pass on the limited knowledge I’ve gained in these last few weeks on the priority matters at hand.

I thank you all for your trust in me, the stories you write, and the expertise you share. I’ve learned so much from our members, and it’s been an honor to serve you on the board the last year.

New Interim President Anthony W. Eichenlaub followed with a statement of his own:

Dear SFWA Membership,

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote “A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” The towel is there to protect from panic and ease anxiety during an adventure. I realize that this is a challenging time. We have our towels and are preparing.

Our president and vice president have both stepped down. Most of our employees have resigned.

SFWA is at a critical moment.

I hope you’ll take a pause to go through all of the emotions you are feeling because you’re right. Whatever you are feeling right now is appropriate because something you deeply care about is threatened. And many of us do love this organization. When it is functioning well, SFWA is truly a force for good, and it is unique in this industry.

Now let’s take a deep breath, in fact several breaths.

I ask that you think of one thing that you can do to help SFWA move forward. Not one hundred things that someone else can do, but one thing that you can do. Maybe you can think of a way to improve communication on a committee that you are on. Maybe you can lend your unique expertise when the next volunteer call comes out for a targeted task force. Maybe the only thing you can do is vote in the upcoming special election. On that note, we will be sending more information on this election in the coming weeks, and we ask that you please vote.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I still want that list of a hundred things that we can do. I’ve seen dozens of great suggestions in the past few weeks, and I do not want that to stop.

Because I have stepped into the interim President role and was not elected on a platform, I feel like it might be good if I share a little bit about my philosophy for the Board. I believe that the Board’s duty is to provide direction, both ethical and strategic. I believe that the Board should rely heavily on the expertise and efforts of employees and volunteers to accomplish the organization’s mission. In its current state, Board members take on too much. This leads to Board member burnout and it leads to reduced involvement in member volunteers. It also takes autonomy away from the volunteers still involved, which I believe is one of several causes for volunteer burnout. This is a vicious cycle that we need to break.

That said, I am treating this short-term position as my primary job. I currently have the privilege of financial security and a lack of hard deadlines. I do not expect your next elected President to follow suit, but I do believe that at this critical point the extra attention will benefit SFWA.

I believe in transparency. There are limits, of course, but I believe that when we hit a limit to what can be ethically, legally, or safely disclosed, I at least owe you a reason. Please hold me to that.

The Board will be sticking to the agenda topics that were previously scheduled, and I am looking forward to the upcoming Town Hall on September 10th. I’m also planning to write more letters to the membership with updates on what SFWA is currently doing.

Still processing all of this? Me too.

The only way that I know of to move forward in a constructive and productive way is to find that one thing that might make things better. My one thing is accepting this position as interim President. It’s a big one, but yours doesn’t have to be. I’m going to need all the help I can get.

Pixel Scroll 8/7/24 With A Purposeful Pixel And A Terrible Scroll  He Pulls The Spitting Godstalk Down

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(1) CRANKY DRAGON AWARD FINALIST. It’s not the Dragon Awards that Tom Kratman is upset with — in contrast to those who are miffed because they dropped Cedar Sanderson. Kratman welcomes his book’s appearance on the ballot because it lets him count coup on Publishers Weekly which gave it a bad review.

That Publisher Weekly’s review concluded:

….A deeply conservative ideology runs throughout, often given voice through Sean’s observations about the differences between past and present: “The Democratic Party of my time,” he tells a 1960s Democrat, “is a wholly owned subsidiary of a new class of amazingly rich, denationalized and globalist plutocrats.” He follows this up with digs at LGBTQ rights and the sexual revolution (arguing it actually “reduced women’s choices”), and Kratman does nothing to differentiate the views of his character from the philosophy of the book itself. While the author’s flair for fight scenes is undeniable, there’s little else to recommend this. 

(2) BOOKMARK THIS. The Photography Team at the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow is posting “Worldcon Photos” to Flickr. Obviously, there will be more when the convention really starts on August 8.

(3) BRISBANE IN 28 UPDATE. Today Random Jones, chair of the Brisbane in 28 Worldcon bid, sent a progress report subscribers:

The bid for Worldcon in Brisbane began in 2020, with the intention to bid for the 2025 Worldcon. However the pressures of dealing with a world with Covid and the massive changes that resulted from those years caused the committee to realise that 2025 was not feasible, and the bid was retargeted towards 2028.

Earlier this year the committee determined it was time to pass the baton on to a new and reinvigorated committee, and from this we are now a few days out from the start of Worldcon Glasgow 2024 full of energy and the desire to get the job done.

My name is Random Jones and I am the chair of the Brisbane in 28 Worldcon bid committee. I am the head of a small but dedicated bunch of fans who are intending to make our Worldcon the best that not only Brisbane has to offer, but the whole of Australia and the South Pacific region.

Over the next 2 years until the site selection vote, we want to make sure people truly believe that we are a fantastic option to hold Worldcon, and that we have the both the dreams and the ability to make it happen.

Glasgow Worldcon: Brisbane in 28 will be present at Glasgow Worldcon, 8 to 12 August, 2024. We will be running a table in the fan-tables section plus holding a party on the Thursday night. Come along and get a badge ribbon, learn what a Tim Tam Slam is, and possibly discover the truth about drop bears. There may also be fairy bread, but we can’t make any guarantees at this stage.

We will also be present at the Future Worldcons Q&A session which will be held on Friday August 9 at 13:00 BST in the Carron room. Vix will be there as our representative, and will be doing a small presentation and answering any questions people have.

(4) CHENGDU DELEGATION AT GLASGOW WORLDCON. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] On Tuesday 6th July, Hugo winner RiverFlow posted on Weibo a list of Chinese people who were known to be attending the Glasgow Worldcon in person.

Amongst the list of Hugo finalists and fans – some of whom wrote reports from last year’s Worldcon that were mentioned in Pixel Scrolls in late 2023 and early 2024 – there is a line item about a mysterious “Chengdu delegation”, with the parenthesized caveat that River doesn’t know who might be part of this delegation.

Whilst this could be a delegation representing the Chengdu Worldcon, this is perhaps unlikely for a variety of reasons.  A perhaps more plausible answer is that it relates the retooled Tianwen Program which in its recent press announcement, explicitly mentioned the involvement of people from Chengdu local government.  Other possibilities might be promotion for the Chengdu SF Museum, or parties interested in the ASFiC/EASFiC proposal (item E.12 on the Business Meeting agenda).

This delegation item doesn’t seem to refer to representation of Chengdu-based science fiction publishers such as Science Fiction World or Eight Light Minutes Culture, as staff from those organizations are listed in separate items in River’s post.

As an aside, it is unclear if the Panda Study trip covered in posts earlier this year is still going ahead.  There was a Chinese-language update in late March (which didn’t get written up for File 770), which has a schedule indicating that the group would have arrived in London on Tuesday 6th, before heading to Glasgow on the 9th.  That piece also states that the trip would involve a previous Hugo winner and/or one of the “Four Kings” of Chinese SF, saying that more details would be released 3 months in advance.  The apparent lack of any such details becoming public may well indicate that the trip has been cancelled.  No-one I’ve spoken to about it is aware of any updates since that one in late March.

(5) EVERMORE OVERHAUL COMING. [Item by Dave Doering.] Great news on Utah’s answer to Disneyland. Evermore revived! “Evermore’s new owners to reveal hints about opening with interactive clues, cash prizes” at KSL.com.

Evermore Park is soon to be nevermore. Utah real estate executive Brandon Fugal announced the private sale of the now-defunct fantasy adventure theme park Monday.

“I am thrilled to see the venue transition into its next chapter, now in progress,” Fugal said. “The new owners have an extraordinary vision.”

Evermore had struggled for years with its operating model, pandemic setbacks and financial woes until ultimately defaulting and being evicted from the property owned by Fugal.

New owners Travis Fox and Michelle Fox want Utahns to get excited about plans for the park through their community “Hatch The Egg” tournament. Anyone 18 or older can sign up, whether as individuals or families, to receive clues and compete for a chance to win cash prizes.

Details about the park’s new direction and opening will be revealed over the course of several months via tournament clues. The tournament’s grand prize of $20,000 and the grand reopening date will be announced Nov. 21…

(6) GALAXY MAGAZINE RETURNS WITH ISSUE 263. Galaxy Science Fiction magazine is back. Originally running from 1950 to 1980, Starship Sloane Publishing has revived the classic magazine for a contemporary audience, featuring both authors from its original run and beyond into today’s global SF landscape, with works spanning seven countries.

With fiction, essays, poetry and art by: Eugen Bacon, F. J. Bergmann, Eliane Boey, Ronan Cahill, A J Dalton, Bob Eggleton, Zdravka Evtimova, David Gerrold, Richard Grieco, Rodney Matthews, Bruce Pennington, Daniel Pomarède, Gareth L. Powell, Christopher Ruocchio, Paulo Sayeg, Robert Silverberg, Nigel Suckling, & Dave Vescio

Cover art by Bruce Pennington.

Galaxy #263 will be available in digest paperback and as a free PDF download at Galaxy SF.

(7) FAN IS NOW VEEP CANDIDATE. Nicholas Whyte notes that Politico lists Tim Walz’s status as an sf fan as one of his defining characteristics. The link goes to a January 2019 Twin Cities.com / Pioneer Press headline: “Minnesota, meet your new governor: teacher, coach, soldier, sci-fi fan — and eternal optimist”.

(8) OUT OF THE STARTING GATE. Michael Capobianco finishes his overview of the first year of SFWA in “A Brief History of SFWA: The Beginning (Part 2)” at the SFWA Blog.

… Damon Knight was now president of SFWA, Editor/Writer/Publisher of the Bulletin, and chair of a one-person Contracts Committee/Griefcom.  It was at about this point that SFWA was becoming unmanageable for one person. Enter Lloyd Biggle, Jr., the newly elected Secretary-Treasurer. Biggle struck Knight as someone who was “sucker enough to take that job (Secretary-Treasurer) and do it conscientiously,” which was apparently an extremely accurate assessment.

Knight recalled in Bulletin #54, “Lloyd not only served two terms as Secretary-Treasurer and did dozens of other jobs for the organization, he set up the trustee system and served on it for years, while I got out after two terms and lay in a hammock. Furthermore, it was Biggle who proposed the annual SFWA anthology as a means of making money for the organization. And from that came the idea of the annual awards and the trophies and the banquets and this whole apparatus. Of course, it had crossed my mind that we might do something like that eventually, but in the beginning, we were too poor. It was our share of the royalties that made it possible.”…

(9) WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM. Steve Stred wants people to know how he was treated by DarkLit Press: “Speaking Up: My DarkLit Experience”.

I’m just seeing that it looks as though DarkLit Press is pulling all the books & closing up shop. It doesn’t surprise me with the number of authors who pulled their books – myself included – and I very well might’ve been the first one whose book had been published (a few pulled them when the new crew took over before publication) and out in the wider world, when the rights were requested to be returned.

But, behind the scenes I’ve already seen screenshots labelling me as the ‘trouble maker,’ and the reason this is happening. Which, if you know me and have even a passing idea of what’s gone on behind the scenes, you’ll know that is furthest from the truth. I try really hard to support everyone, cheer everyone on, and have helped with the Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant (how I miss that!) and trying to get the Canadian Horror Writers Association up and running….

These are just two of many incidents Stred lists:

– DarkLit had been known to post sales/preorder numbers. So and so has hit 1000 preorders! So and so has sold 2000 copies etc etc. From when my book went up for preorder, I asked monthly either through DM or emails for updates on the preorder numbers. As of writing this – on August 6th, 2024 – I’ve never been shown a single report, nor given any numbers.

– During the weekend before launch, I had a number of DarkLit authors reach out asking how my experience had been, and I was forthcoming. They shared lack of royalty payments, having to chase down being paid for royalties or even receiving a report, and this was both prior to and after the leadership/ownership take over….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

August 7, 1960 — Melissa Scott, 64.

By Lis Carey: Melissa Scott was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1960, and grew up there. She discovered science fiction when she broke her arm in gym class, and was sent to the school library until it healed. The librarian offered her a science fiction book and suggested she try it. She was hooked, and proceeded to exhaust the resources of every library she had access to.

Melissa Scott at Bucconeer in 1998. Photo by Dbrukman

Following in her father’s footsteps, Melissa attended Harvard College, in Cambridge, MA, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in history, and helped produce a college-sanctioned science fiction magazine, which led to the formation of the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. From there, she enrolled in the graduate history program at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. (Both Cambridge and Waltham are within the metropolitan area generally referred to as “Boston,” by those from more distant parts who might find Boston’s actual boundaries a surprise.) While at Brandeis, she earned her PhD in comparative history, and sold her first novel, The Game Beyond.

The other thing Melissa did in Greater Boston was meet her partner, Lisa A. Barnett. They settled in Portsmouth, NH, and were together for 27 years, until Lisa’s death from breast and brain cancer, in May 2006. 

Melissa has written two dozen science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as short stories. Three of those novels, the fantasy novels Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams, and the alternate history fantasy novel, The Armor of Light, were co-written with Lisa. Can I just express here how much I enjoyed the Points novels, and truly treasure The Armor of Light?

Some of my other favorite books of Melissa’s are the Silence Leigh trilogy (Five-Twelfths of Heaven, Silence in Solitude, and The Empress of Earth), Dreamships, and Trouble and Her Friends.

Melissa’s books typically feature gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters, but their sexuality is rarely the point of the story. The characters’ sexuality is just a feature of the characters, and the cultures they live in. When she started publishing, this was new and exciting—at least for me. The one exception to the characters’ sexuality being just part of the characters and not the point of the story is Shadow Man, where a drug used to survive interstellar travel causes an increase in intersex births. This leads the culture recognize and accept five body types—except on the relatively isolated planet of Hara, where they recognize only two, male and female.

Trouble and Her Friends, Point of Dreams, and Death by Silver won Lambda Literary Awards for gay/lesbian science Fiction. Melissa also won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1986.

After Lisa’s death, Melissa moved to North Carolina, near where her mother grew up. She has continued to write fantasy and science fiction, including more Points novels, more original science fiction, and both Star Trek and Stargate: Atlantis tie-in novels, as well as collaborations with other authors.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) MEDICAL UPDATE. “Daisy Ridley Reveals She’s Been Diagnosed with Graves’ Disease: ‘I Didn’t Realize How Bad I Felt’” at Yahoo!

Daisy Ridley is opening up about her health, revealing in a new interview that she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease in September 2023.

The actress, 32, discussed her experience with the autoimmune disorder in the cover story for the September/October issue of Women’s Health, which dropped on Tuesday, Aug. 6.

“It’s the first time I’ve shared that [Graves’],” said Ridley, who had previously shared her struggle with endometriosis and polycystic ovaries.

Graves’ disease is an immune system condition that affects the thyroid gland, according to Mayo Clinic. It causes the body to make too much thyroid hormone….

(13) TERF BATTLE. The New York Times finds “A Play About J.K. Rowling Stirred Outrage. Until It Opened.”

There are more than 3,600 shows in this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and most will struggle to get even a single newspaper review. Yet for months before the festival opened on Friday, one play was the subject of intense global media attention: “TERF,” an 80-minute drama about J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, and her views on transgender women.

Before anybody had even read the script, a Scottish newspaper called the play, which imagines Rowling debating her views with the stars of the “Harry Potter” movies, a “foul-mouthed” attack on the author. An article in The Daily Telegraph said that “scores of actresses” had turned down the opportunity to play Rowling. And The Daily Mail, a tabloid, reported that the production had encountered trouble securing a venue.

On social media and women’s web forums, too, “TERF” stirred outraged discussion.

The uproar raised the specter of pro-Rowling protesters outside the show and prompted debate in Edinburgh, the city that Rowling has called home for more than 30 years. But when “TERF” opened last week, it barely provoked a whimper. The only disturbance to a performance on Monday in the ballroom of Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms came from a group of latecomers using a cellphone flashlight to find their seats. About 55 theatergoers watched the play in silence from the front few rows of the 350-seat capacity venue….

… But the muted response to the show itself suggests that fewer British people are riled by the debate than the media coverage implies — or at least that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, outrage can quickly vanish.

The play’s title, “TERF” — an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist — is a pejorative label that Rowling’s critics have applied to her for years. Rowling has gotten into heated debates about gender issues on social media, and she published an essay in 2020 accusing transgender activists of “seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators.” Critics have accused her of being transphobic or anti-trans, which she has denied. Through a spokesman, she declined to comment for this article….

(14) CRUSHING LAWSUIT. “Crew of Titan sub knew they were going to die before implosion, according to more than $50M lawsuit” – AP News has the story.

The family of a French explorer who died in a submersible implosion has filed a more than $50 million lawsuit, saying the crew experienced “terror and mental anguish” before the disaster and accusing the sub’s operator of gross negligence.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet was among five people who died when the Titan submersible imploded during a voyage to the famed Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic in June 2023. No one survived the trip aboard the experimental submersible owned by OceanGate, a company in Washington state that has since suspended operations.

Known as “Mr. Titanic,” Nargeolet participated in 37 dives to the Titanic site, the most of any diver in the world, according to the lawsuit. He was regarded as one of the world’s most knowledgeable people about the famous wreck. Attorneys for his estate said in an emailed statement that the “doomed submersible” had a “troubled history,” and that OceanGate failed to disclose key facts about the vessel and its durability….

…The lawsuit goes on to say: “The crew may well have heard the carbon fiber’s crackling noise grow more intense as the weight of the water pressed on Titan’s hull. The crew lost communications and perhaps power as well. By experts’ reckoning, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the vessel’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish prior to the Titan ultimately imploding.”…

(15) THIS HOAX IS UNUSUAL FOR BEING FONDLY REMEMBERED. “A giant sea monster shows up on Nantucket 87 years after an elaborate hoax” – NPR attends the celebration.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Eighty-seven years ago, a local artist perpetrated a spectacular prank on the residents of Nantucket, the Massachusetts island. The artist, Tony Sarg, was big in his day. Edgar B. Herwick III of member station GBH was on Nantucket yesterday for a re-creation of the monstrous hoax.

EDGAR B HERWICK III, BYLINE: In the summer of 1937, artist, entrepreneur and notorious prankster Tony Sarg took his penchant for high jinks to grand new heights with a long con of sorts that began weeks before the main event.

DARIN JOHNSON: He met up with two of his fisherman friends who he coaxed into going to the newspaper and telling the newspaper that there was a sea monster spotted out in the water.

HERWICK: That’s Darin Johnson, CEO of the American Theater for Puppetry Arts and Sarg scholar. Later, these so-called firsthand accounts were augmented in the press with photos of enormous reptilian footprints on a South Shore beach, whipping the townsfolk into a frenzy.

JOHNSON: And then, on August 19, they blew up this giant balloon and floated it out in the water, and it became this huge national media sensation.

HERWICK: And it was a monster balloon – a 125-foot green monster named Morton. Parade balloons may be Sarg’s greatest legacy. After all, he designed the very first ones for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 1927. But he’s also considered by some the father of modern American puppetry….

HERWICK: It’s that all-too-forgotten legacy that inspired the historical association to dub this the Summer of Sarg on the island. And yesterday was its centerpiece, Sarg Community Day….

(16) RECOMMENDED. [Item by Ed Fortune] Here is the trailer for Emily Carding’s award-winning show: Quintessence, coming to Hall 2, Sunday, August 11, 2024, at the Glasgow Worldcon. “Quintessence by Emily Carding”.

A combination of cataclysmic events results in the extinction of the human race, leaving behind an AI being programmed to recreate humanity when the time is right, with the complete works of Shakespeare as a guide to the human spirit. Humanity must thrive… but at what cost? This original sci-fi storytelling show was inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and will leave you wondering who the real monster is. Originally created in collaboration with the London Science Museum, written and performed by award-winning actor Emily Carding (Richard III (A One-Woman show)).

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Ersatz Culture, Lis Carey, Daniel Dern, Dave Doering, Ed Fortune, Random Jones, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dann.]

Pixel Scroll 8/2/24 We’re Off To Scroll The Pixels, The Wonderful Pixels Of Scroll

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(1) SFWA BOARD ADDRESSES STAFF CHANGES. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association today sent members a message with very general comments about recent changes in their professional and volunteer staff. At the top is yesterday’s resignation by President Jeffe Kennedy, whose office will be filled by Vice President, Chelsea Mueller until a special election is held. The message also says other issues are roiling the organization without identifying any of them specifically.

…Due to the nature of the employee/employer relationship, we do not feel it is ethical or appropriate to make these matters public. Our duties as Board members require us to work in the best interest of SFWA. Our responsibilities as compassionate human beings compel us to seek solutions reflecting our respect for our employees and volunteers. Sometimes, we may fall short, especially when things happen quickly and information is limited. Moving forward, we ask for your patience and trust as we do our best to fulfill our obligations….

…All members received the email from Jeffe Kennedy explaining her resignation as SFWA’s President on Aug 1, 2024. The Board is working with all relevant stakeholders to determine the timeline and process for a special election for president as outlined in the Bylaws. We will share those details as they are finalized. In the interim, SFWA’s elected Vice President, Chelsea Mueller, will fill the office of president.

The Board acknowledges there are several other issues, both ongoing and recent, that have been brought to our attention. Please know that we are listening and we will address your concerns and your suggestions as we move forward. At the center of many of these issues is the need for greater transparency. We cannot comment on legal matters or confidential matters such as Griefcom and the Emergency Medical Fund (EMF). Still, there are many aspects of this organization where we need to improve communications with our membership. There are many good suggestions on how to do this, but most will take time to implement.

Many topics brought to the forefront need to be considered by the Board of Directors with member input. The Board has scheduled upcoming board meetings focusing on and prioritizing these topics…

(2) BBC PULLS TENNANT ERA WHO EPISODE TO REDUB CAMEO BY PROSECUTED NEWS ANCHOR. “’Doctor Who’ Episode Featuring Huw Edwards Removed From BBC iPlayer” reports Deadline.

The BBC is starting to scrub Huw Edwards from its vast library of content.

The UK broadcaster has temporarily removed from iPlayer an episode of Doctor Who featuring the disgraced news anchor, who this week pleaded guilty to indecent child image charges.

No longer available to stream is Fear Her, an installment from Season 2 of the sci-fi drama starring David Tennant and Billie Piper. The episode is now being redubbed to remove Edwards, whose voiceover features during a news clip.

He features when Chloe Webber, a girl who is terrorized by a demonic version of her abusive dead father, makes everyone disappear in a sports stadium….

The BBC added: “As you would expect we are actively considering the availability of our archive. While we don’t routinely delete content from the BBC archive as it is a matter of historical record, we do consider the continued use and re-use of material on a case-by-case basis.”

It is perhaps unsurprising that executives looked at the Edwards episode, given the nature of his crimes and that Doctor Who has a young fan base. The Daily Mirror reported that the footage of Edwards would be edited out.…

… The BBC also appears to have removed an episode of The Great British Menu featuring Edwards as a guest judge. Season 17, Episode 28 is not currently available on iPlayer.

The BBC will face decisions over whether it can replay countless hours of archive footage of Edwards. He has been a mainstay for major national moments, including the Queen’s death.

There have also been questions over whether Edwards should be scrubbed from James Bond movie Skyfall, during which he appears as a newsreader.

(3) EKPEKI BOUND FOR SCOTLAND. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki has got a visa and will attend the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon. He’s still looking for help with some of the expenses. The GoFundMe to “Help Oghenechovwe Ekpeki Attend the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon” raised over $1000 of the $3000 goal on the first day.

(4) COVER REVEAL. And today Ekpeki shared the cover of Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction volume 3 by Cyrielle Prückner. The book can be preordered at Amazon.com.

(5) ROLL YOUR OWN INSULT. Ekpeki also has been playing with the Don Rickles of ChatGPTs:

(6) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 115 of the Octothorpe podcast is “I Like the Way Glasgow Did It”.

John is a busy bee, something’s bugging Alison, and Liz meets a wasp. We spend our episode this week digging into the WSFS Business Meeting in unprecedented detail, but hopefully we make it more transparent and at least somewhat funny. Let us know if you have any questions before the convention, and listen here!

An uncorrected transcript is available here.

A giant stripy purple bucket of popcorn on a cinema screen says “Octothorpe 115 WSFS Special”, and John, Alison and Liz sit in the audience, silhouetted in the style of *Mystery Science Theatre 3000*. John is saying “We’re gonna need a bigger box of popcorn.”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 2, 1954 – Ken MacLeod, 70.

By Paul Weimer: When I first started reading MacLeod in the mid 1990s, it felt like a trangressive, even forbidden act.  As you know, Bob, I grew up in a relatively conservative (in many senses of the world) household. And while science fiction and fantasy (and really all of my reading) were escapes from that world, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I started to branch out and read things that felt…trangressive.

Like, for example, the Fall Revolution novels of Ken MacLeod.  Confronted with societies and ways of organizing nations and societies far removed from my normal reading or experience, was more than a bit of a wakeup call.  I had never actually read a socialist SF writer and a world both communist and libertarian and very different than what I was used to until I picked up The Star Fraction. His technological ideas, AI and Singularities and much more. I was struck, too how MacLeod seamlessly wove in concepts of alternate history and divergent choices right into his narrative. I was amazed that the fourth of the Fall books was in fact an alternate history to the first three. 

Ken MacLeod

Although contemporary events overshadowed and made his world impossible, I am also a fan of a one shot technothriller/spy thriller/mindbender, The Restoration Game. It’s set in a Soviet Republic that no longer exists, and has a MMO player as a main character, who finds out that the real world is even stranger than the game and its epic story she is trying to use to brew revolution. It shows MacLeod loving to burst his work at the seams with ideas, with a truly wham moment in the denouement of the novel that I would not dream of spoiling. Fun stuff, and one of my early book reviews, back in the day. You can still find that review review online although I think I was in the end a bit too harsh on it. I continue to confront and engage with MacLeod’s work.

Lately. I’ve been highly enjoying his newest works, the Lightspeed Trilogy books. The use of plausible politics and the polities of Earth keeping FTL travel a secret at all costs, combined with time jumps, strange aliens and their plans (especially the Fermi), and a tangle of ideas and concepts.  MacLeod’s books, from the Fall Revolution to the Lightspeed books are bursting at the seams with ideas. Critics and fans who bemoan that modern SF books are lacking inventiveness in ideas and concepts simply have not been reading MacLeod’s work. I get that, because his politics can be a bit much and his works wear them on their sleeve, and proudly. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Last Kiss recommends comic book lovers. In a manner of speaking.
  • Eek! shows faster isn’t going to be better.
  • Non Sequitur presents a writing challenge that’s hard to overcome.

(9) I BELIEVE. The Paris Review’s Jason Katz tells what it was like “At the Great Florida Bigfoot Conference”.

The evening before the fourth annual Great Florida Bigfoot Conference in the north-central horse town of Ocala, I was in a buffet line at the VIP dinner, listening to a man describe his first encounter. “I was on an airboat near Turner River Road in the Glades and I saw it there,” he said. “At first, I confused it with a gator because it was hunched over, but then it stood up. It was probably eight feet tall. I could smell it too. I froze. It was like something had taken control over my body.” His story contained a common trope of Bigfoot encounters: awe and fear in the face of a higher power.

I sat down at a conference room round table and gnawed on an undercooked chicken quarter, looking around at my fellow VIPs, or as the conference’s master of ceremonies, Ryan “RPG” Golembeske, called us, the Bigfoot Mafia. Most of the other attendees were of retirement age. Their hats, tattoos, and car bumpers in the parking lot indicated that many were former military, police, and/or proud gun owners. Many were Trump supporters—beseeching fellow motorists to, as one bumper sticker read, MAKE THE FOREST GREAT AGAIN, a catchphrase which had been written out over an image of a Bigfoot on a turquoise background in the pines, rocking a pompadour. The sticker was a small oval on the larger spare wheel cover of a mid-aughts Chinook Concourse RV. Above it and below it, in Inspirational Quote Font, was the phrase “Once upon a time … is Now!” The couple who owned the RV cemented their identities with a big homemade TRUCKERS FOR TRUMP window decal next to a large handicap sticker. As a thirty-six-year-old progressive, I was an outlier in this crowd. But, like many, I was a believer.

It bears repeating: I believe in the existence of the Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, Wild Man, or, as it is called in South Florida, the Skunk Ape….

(10) MOTTO. I like this one.

(11) BETTER NOT TELL BLOFELD. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] If Ernst Stravo Blofeld can make a giant space laser with stolen diamonds, you better not tell him about this supposition… “Mercury could have an 11-mile underground layer of diamonds, researchers say” at CNN.

A layer of diamonds up to 18 kilometers (11 miles) thick could be tucked below the surface of Mercury, the solar system’s smallest planet and the closest to the sun, according to new research.

The diamonds might have formed soon after Mercury itself coalesced into a planet about 4.5 billion years ago from a swirling cloud of dust and gas, in the crucible of a high-pressure, high-temperature environment. At this time, the fledgling planet is believed to have had a crust of graphite, floating over a deep magma ocean.

A team of researchers recreated that searing environment in an experiment, with a machine called an anvil press that’s normally used to study how materials behave under extreme pressure but also for the production of synthetic diamonds….

(12) CERN AT WORK ON ITS PUBLIC IMAGE. “Angels & Demons, Tom Hanks and Peter Higgs: how CERN sold its story to the world” – PhysicsWorld looks back

“Read this,” said my boss as he dropped a book on my desk sometime in the middle of the year 2000. As a dutiful staff writer at CERN, I ploughed my way through the chunky novel, which was about someone stealing a quarter of a gram of antimatter from CERN to blow up the Vatican. It seemed a preposterous story but my gut told me it might put the lab in a bad light. So when the book’s sales failed to take off, all of us in CERN’s communications group breathed a sigh of relief.

Little did I know that Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons would set the tone for much of my subsequent career. Soon after I finished the book, my boss left CERN and I became head of communications. I was now in charge of managing public relations for the Geneva-based lab and ensuring that CERN’s activities and functions were understood across the world.

I was to remain in the role for 13 eventful years that saw Angels & Demons return with a vengeance; killer black holes maraud the tabloids; apparently superluminal neutrinos have the brakes applied; and the start-up, breakdown and restart of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Oh, and the small business of a major discovery and the award of the Nobel Prize for Physics to François Englert and Peter Higgs in 2013….

(13) JUSTWATCH TOP 10S. The JustWatch service has shared their list of the Top 10 streaming sff movie and TV shows in July 2024.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Daniel Dern, 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 Thomas the Red.]

Pixel Scroll 8/1/24 Yes, Those Pixels Are Looking At You Reading This Scroll, So Be Good

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(1) JEFFE KENNEDY RESIGNS AS SFWA PRESIDENT. Science Fiction and Fantasy Association President Jeffe Kennedy announced to members today that she has resigned the office. Her statement says in part:

…I’ve served in this role for over three years and on the Board of Directors for more than seven years. It has been a privilege and an honor to serve this organization.

However, the last several months have been particularly demanding in my personal life, and I have come to the realization that I can no longer provide the focused attention SFWA needs from its President. Without going into too much detail, I continue to be the sole caregiver and financial support for my disabled husband, whose progressive condition is worsening. In addition, my stepfather of twenty years passed away suddenly, widowing my elderly mother for the third time, and I am in the process of taking over all of her finances and care. These family obligations will require far more attention than I could have anticipated when I accepted the nomination to serve a second term as SFWA President.

My legal and fiscal responsibility to SFWA—and my own personal integrity—prevent me from commenting on any issues related to SFWA’s administration and operations. Throughout my tenure I did my best to serve the organization and all of its constituents with sincerity and respect, and to fulfill all of the duties I was elected to perform. Now it is time for me to step back….

(2) OGHENECHOVWE DONALD EKPEKI TRAVEL FUNDRAISER. Chris Barkley has opened a GoFundMe to “Help Oghenechovwe Ekpeki Attend the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon”.

…The African Speculative Fiction Society has provided sponsorship to attend but Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is still in need of funding for other travel and visa expenses, hence this GoFundMe effort. He would like to raise $7500.00.

He has won the Nebula, Locus, Otherwise, Nommo, British & World Fantasy awards and was a finalist in the Hugo, Sturgeon, British Science Fiction and NAACP Image awards.

He is a finalist in the Nommo Award in two categories, best short story and best novella, which will be presented at the Worldcon in Glasgow this year….

(3) GREATNESS REMEMBERED. Rich Horton reviews “An Infinite Summer, by Christopher Priest” for Strange at Ecbatan.

To repeat myself: The late Christopher Priest (1943-2024) was one of the greatest SF writers of his generation. He made an early splash with novels like Inverted World and A Dream of Wessex (aka The Perfect Lover), followed by The Prestige, which was made into a successful movie by Christopher Nolan, and then by any number of stories and novels in his Dream Archipelago sequence. I wrote an obituary of him for Black Gate here…. 

(4) HE SHOT FIRST. [Item by Steven French.] From the Guardian’s readers interview with Malcolm McDowell: “‘Kubrick had stewed pears and sour chicken for lunch because Napoleon did’”.

If they ask you to appear in Star Trek again, would you say yes? Nicens_boi

I mean, you can’t top killing Captain James T Kirk. I suppose I could go back and kill old Patrick Stewart … I got a lot of flak from unhappy Trekkies, but there were also a lot of happy Trekkies who’d had it with old Bill. I think he overstayed his welcome. It was good for him to move on. I’m a great admirer of Shatner. He’s 90-odd. He’s still working. He’s been an astronaut. Good god, he wipes the floor with us young guys. I once made a surprise visit when he was being interviewed on stage. They introduced me: “And the one that killed Captain Kirk.” He went: “You shot me in the back.” I never thought the producers got it right, because they didn’t send him off in a glorious manner. Shot in the back on a bridge that collapses was not a noble end to a great character.

(5) BBC COVERS VIDEO GAME ACTORS STRIKE. “SAG-Aftra strike: ‘They’re crushing human beings beneath their feet’”.

When actor Jennifer Hale talks, you listen. Her delivery is measured and surgically precise, yet her tone has a warmth that most ASMR creators would envy. She could read the phone book and you’d pay attention.

It’s unsurprising, then, that her voice is her livelihood, and that she takes the threat to her industry posed by AI so seriously.

“They see that the work of our souls is nothing more than a commodity to generate profits for them,” she says of several of the major gaming companies. “They don’t see that they’re crushing human beings beneath their feet in blind pursuit of money and profit, it’s disgusting.”

From Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series to Samus Aran in the Metroid titles, Hale’s list of gaming credits is as long as your arm and her voice is familiar to millions.

Hale is one of the most high-profile voice actors in the world. She’s joined 2,500 members of the US actors union SAG-AFTRA who perform in games, by striking until games divisions of prominent companies like Activision, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney and EA agree to protections around the use of artificial intelligence (AI)….

(6) WHERE AI ACTUALLY WORKS? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Last night’s BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row had a rather disturbing item on AI and film script selecting. “Dramatizing MPs, Jon Savage on LGBTQ and music, Stirling Prize shortlist, Screenwriters v AI”

Apparently, it typically takes a week to read and assess and write a report on a submitted film script and proposal but now an AI can do it in five minutes!!!! They did a trial run and it seems to work even if it is not quite there yet… but you can bet it will be soon.

This was the last item on the programme so skip to the final 10 minutes

With voice actors and motion capture performers in the US currently on strike over AI protections, the place of AI in the culture industries remains highly contested. The Writers Guild of America may have settled their strike but film critic Antonia Quirke explores whether screenwriters still have something to fear from the algorithm…

(7) WHO WINKED. If the TARDIS can travel anywhere in time and space, surely it can do this: “Doctor Who boss says breaking the fourth wall is ‘part of the show going forward’” in Radio Times.

While Doctor Who has not been afraid to break the fourth wall in the past, and have characters speak directly to the viewers watching at home, Russell T Davies’s new era has been notable for its particularly prominent usage of the device.

Not only has Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor done it, winking to camera near the end of The Devil’s Chord, but Anita Dobson’s mysterious Mrs Flood has done it on multiple occasions, including at the very end of the most recent season.

Now, speaking at San Diego Comic-Con, Davies has addressed these fourth wall breaks, saying: “It’s part of the show going forward, breaking the fourth wall.”…

(8) CHRISTMAS SPECIAL CLIP. “Doctor Who debuts first-look at 2024 Christmas special with Nicola Coughlan” – a video shown last week at Comic-Con is shared by Radio Times.

…The clip was introduced by guest star Nicola Coughlan, who confirmed that the episode’s punning title refers to her character Joy, “a determined woman whose life is changed forever when she meets the Doctor”.

The sequence – which you can watch below – sees the Doctor zip from Manchester in 1940 to Italy in 1962, then to Mount Everest in 1953 and finally to London in 2024, where he meets Joy.

Coughlan’s character is, of course, attempting to fend off a Silurian with a hair dryer when the Time Lord appears to deliver a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte… only in Doctor Who….

(9) TARAL WAYNE (1951-2024). Eleven-time Best Fan Artist Hugo finalist Taral Wayne, Fan Guest of Honor at the 2009 Worldcon, died July 31. Steven Baldassarra, who had heard from him earlier in the day and was bringing over a few things, says when he arrived there was no answer to his knock at the door or to phone calls. The building superintendant was asked to open the door and check. They found Taral lying down in his living room, unresponsive. Paramedics were summoned but were unable to revive him.  

Baldassarra’s announcement ends with this fine tribute:

I knew Taral for just over 30 years. And while some people may have known Taral for being curmudgeonly, stubborn, fractious, and condescending, I also got to know the man who was also genuinely warm, gentle, impish, thoughtful and even vulnerable.

Taral had a ferocious intellect and was an exceptionally talented graphic artist; I could see how hurt he was for not getting his chance in the sun in becoming a financial success with his graphic work and illustration. But despite all that, Taral did what he had loved, and was contented living by the beat of his own drum.

Taral was truly a wonderful friend, and I am truly blessed to have had known him and having had him as part of my life.

I knew Taral for 45 years and will miss him a lot. File 770’s obituary will appear later this evening.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 1, 1986 – Howard the Duck film (1986). Thirty-eight years ago a certain cigar-smoking fowl was let loose upon unsuspecting film goers. Many of whom promptly left the cinemas they were in. That was Howard the Duck based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name.

He was hatched from the minds of writer Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik. The former says that he based him off his college friend Howard Tockman. One assumes very, very loosely off that individual. His first comic appearance was fifty-one years ago so he’s a very old duck at this point.

Before we get to the film, we should know that he has appeared elsewhere. Starting in 2014, the character, voiced by Seth Green, appeared in cameos in several Marvel films, to wit the first Guardians of the Galaxy film and the last of those (at least so far) as well the fantastic animated Guardians of the Galaxy series also voiced by Green) and Ultimate Spider-Man (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson there), and finally the What If…? Series where he was also voiced by Green.

I’m thinking there’s a live action appearance by him after the Howard the Duck film rather recently but I’ll be buggered if I can remember what it is. Anyone remember what it was? It was brief that I know and I can almost picture it. I remember there was a female next to him so I must’ve seen the film if I remember that. But that is all I remember.

Now for how Howard the Duck, the film. It came out the year that Aliens, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Little Shop of Horrors, and Labyrinth came out. Tough competition indeed. And wasn’t that a fantastic year for genre films? Every film I’ve mentioned here got nominated Conspiracy ’87 with Aliens winning the Hugo. Only Big Trouble in Little China and The Fly aren’t here, and they, too, came out that year. 

So the film, yes I am getting it now, was written by rather unusually by the producer  Gloria Katz and the director George Huyck. I’ve seen that particular combination do a script before. They certainly had the credits as writers, she having written the scripts for American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; his scripts were the same as they were a couple that scripted together.

So you now know who directed and produced this film. Lucas co-produced it. It was Lucas who suggested adapting the comic book following the production of American Graffiti which they were of course involved in. (He wrote it with them. Talented man that he is.) Lucasfilm was the production company. 

Ok I can’t defend it, I really can’t. There’s nothing about the film that’s not considered a rotten, smelly sulphurous mess. Its humor was considered juvenile at best, the performances, well, just awful and the story cringingly bad. In the years since, I’ve deepened my belief that it’s among the worst films ever made. It currently holds a thirteen percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. Ouch. Really ouch.

However, one criticism I am puzzled by to the day. The vast majority of comments online plus professional and amateur critics take umbrage at what Howard the Duck looks like. This makes no sense. Given the limitations of translating a two-dimensional comic duck into an actual physical creature, I thought that they did a fine job.

Remember almost thirty years on, they’d avoid this need with the Rocket Raccoon creature by simply being an entirely digital being. Today Howard would be the same. So yes, a much better one for that. 

What they did was create a rather large custom puppet, which had an individual inside. That being Jordan Prentice in his first, errr, acting gig. He however didn’t provide the voice as that was the work of Chip Zien who was The Baker in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods musical. The film version is well-worth seeing.

If I remember correctly it’s the worst film Lucas ever produced both from a critical viewpoint and certainly from a financial as well. It cost at least thirty-seven million dollars to produce (not counting distribution costs including the millions to print up films) and had box office receipts of that amount. Now keep in mind that Roger Ebert did an essay on it whereas his research said it was an even split, so Lucasfilm would’ve made back eighteen million thereby losing eighteen million on this. Ouch. Really ouch.

I keep hearing rumors of a sequel but I can’t imagine Disney who owns the rights now having any interest in doing so as they’ve been losing money on a lot of their MCU series right now. 

I saw it once in the theatre. Did I want to ever see it again? What do you think? It’s worse than the Super Mario Bros was and that’s saying quite a bit.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) AVENGERS DISSEMBLE! “Jeremy Renner Says Robert Downey Jr. Kept His Marvel Return a Secret From the Original ‘Avengers’ Cast: ‘The Son of a B—- Didn’t Say Anything!’” – so he tells Variety.

… “No! I had no idea. The son of a bitch didn’t say anything to me,” Renner said. “We’re good friends. There’s the Avengers family chat. The original six. He said not a peep. I got online and started blowing up his phone like, ‘What’s going on? You’ve been hiding this from us the whole time?’ It’s exciting news. I’m really, really excited about it.”…

(13) HOLLYWOOD RELICS. Atlas Obscura pinpoints “11 Horror Film Sets Where You Can Revisit Your Greatest Fears”.

There’s no better way to get into the Halloween spirit than turning off the lights and scaring yourself out of your skin with a good horror flick. But if watching them (and rewatching them) on the small screen just isn’t enough any more, why not try to see some of the real-life locations where these cult classics were filmed?

In Washington, D.C., 75 steps offer a shortcut between Prospect Street NW and Canal Road NW, and if you visit at night you’ll recognize the site where Father Karras plummeted to his death in the 1973 film The Exorcist. The steps were padded with rubber during filming, and they have since been designated a historic landmark. In Morocco, just outside Ouarzazate, in a place known as Hollywood’s “door to the desert” sits a desolate, American-style gas station, home to rusted-out vehicles and dust covered props. It was plopped there for the 2006 remake of the Wes Craven classic, The Hills Have Eyes, and now just confuses anyone who sees it without knowing the backstory….

(14) SKELETON CREW. “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Release Date Finally Revealed” at ScreenRant.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew‘s release date has finally been confirmed by Lucasfilm…. As one of many upcoming Star Wars TV shows, Skeleton Crew naturally has a lot of hype surrounding it. This excitement is only bolstered by Skeleton Crew‘s place in the Star Wars timeline, with the show expected to tie into the likes of The Mandalorian and Ahsoka.

… Lucasfilm has finally confirmed the release date for the show via People. As evident, anyone interested in the continuation of Star Wars’ New Republic era will not need to wait much longer with Skeleton Crew‘s confirmed release date of December 3, 2024. With confirmation of when the show will be released on Disney+ finally being provided, the wait for more updates and the show’s eventual premiere will only grow in both difficulty and anticipation….

(15) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA NO LONGER A PEACOCK TALE. Variety reports “’Battlestar Galactica’ Reboot No Longer in the Works at Peacock”.

The project was first announced back in 2019 ahead of Peacock’s official launch as part of the streamer’s initial slate of original programming. It was never formally ordered to series, though, and has been in development ever since. Exact story details never emerged, but the show was said to be set in the same continuity as the 2003 “Battlestar Galactica” series.

The reboot was a passion project for Sam Esmail, who was executive producing via Esmail Corp. under the company’s overall deal with studio UCP. Chad Hamilton of Esmail Corp. was also an executive producer. Michael Lesslie had originally come onboard as the writer of the reboot in 2020, but it was reported that he left the project in 2021…

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

Pixel Scroll 7/31/24 There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Ugly Chickens

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(1) GLASGOW 2024 PROGRAMME. The Glasgow 2024 Programme is live. Explore the full programme from the Worldcon website via ConClár at “Glasgow 2024 Programme Guide”. Users can search participant names, and individual program items.

They remind members, “Live streams and recorded streams of much of the programme will also be available on our online platform, so if you aren’t able to attend something you can always go back and rewatch at your leisure.”

(2) SILVERMAN, TREMBLAY AND COATES LOSE MOMENTUM IN SUIT AGAINST OPENAI. The judge has tossed another claim in a suit about AI copyright violation brought by celebrities in a state court due to a Federal law preempting it. “Sarah Silverman Lawsuit Against OpenAI Suffers Setback As Judge Trims Case” at The Hollywood Reporter.

Top authors suing OpenAI over the use of their novels to train its artificial intelligence chatbot have hit a stumbling block, with a federal judge narrowing the scope of their case.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín on Tuesday evening dismissed a claim accusing the Sam Altman-led firm of unfair business practices by utilizing the works of authors — including Sarah Silverman, Paul Tremblay and Ta-Nehisi Coates — without consent or compensation to power its AI system.

The writers’ primary claim for direct copyright infringement was left untouched.

In February, the court dismissed other claims for negligence, unjust enrichment and vicarious copyright infringement. It denied dismissal of the unfair competition law claim, but lawyers for the authors tweaked it after lawsuits from Silverman, Tremblay and Michael Chabon — all of whom originally brought their own class actions — were grouped together. OpenAI seized upon the changes for a second try at dismissal, which was challenged by the plaintiffs.

In the order, Martínez-Olguín not only found that the company is allowed to move to dismiss the claim but that the Copyright Act bars it. She said that the law “expressly preempts state law claims” relating to works “within the subject matter of copyright.”

The authors argued that the unfair business practice at issue was using their works to train ChatGPT without permission. But since the allegedly infringed materials are copyrighted books and plays, they cannot bring a state law claim, which the court concluded should be under the purview of copyright law….

(3) UKRAINE’S READERS. The Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board says “Book reading, from the war trenches to the bedrooms of children, has helped Ukrainians assert their cultural independence and mental toughness.” “Ukraine’s freedom, book by book”.

…Fighting a war for their survival has turned many Ukrainians into avid book readers, eager to find solace, freedom, wisdom, or, perhaps, empathy. They are aware of Russian forces trying to wipe out Ukrainian culture by, for example, destroying more than a hundred libraries.

In May, the country’s largest printing house, Factor Druk, was badly damaged by Russian missiles. Donors quickly pledged to restore the book publisher. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy likened the attack to events in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” the temperature at which book paper ignites. Since the invasion, more than one hundred books have been printed for children to help them cope with the war’s trauma. The number of bookstores has expanded significantly. From May 30 to June 2, the country’s annual book festival in Kyiv drew 35,000 visitors, up from 28,000 last year…

(4) SUCCESSFUL HUMAN TRAFFICKING STING AT COMIC-CON. “Comic-Con Human Trafficking Operation: 14 People Arrested” – The Hollywood Reporter has the story.

Fourteen people were arrested and 10 victims were recovered in a human trafficking sting during Comic-Con over the weekend, authorities said.

The operation to recover victims of sex trafficking and target sex buyers using the San Diego convention was initiated from July 25-27, according to the California Department of Justice’s San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force.

“Unfortunately, sex traffickers capitalize on large-scale events such as Comic-Con to exploit their victims for profit,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta shared in a statement. “These arrests send a clear message to potential offenders that their criminal behavior will not be tolerated. We are grateful to all our dedicated partners involved in the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force, whose collaboration has been invaluable. We take great pride in our office’s commitment to uplifting vulnerable Californians by offering them assistance and guidance when they need it most.”

… Officials said after the nine adult potential victims and a 16-year-old juvenile were recovered, adult and juvenile support service advocates were there to provide support as needed….

(5) OF WHAT NATURE? Orion Magazine bids us “Return to Area X” with Helen Macdonald’s introduction to Acceptance: A Novel by Jeff Vandermeer.

…I came to Acceptance in a kind of hermeneutic fever, burning with questions and desperately wanting answers on the true nature of Area X, even though I knew the categories question and answer were ones Area X would laugh at. The novel opens with a scene from Annihilation: the death of the psychologist on the twelfth expedition (we learn she is the Southern Reach’s director). This time we are given the scene from her point of view, and Acceptance takes us forward in this way, switching between multiple timelines and revisiting characters we already met but only partially knew—Gloria, the psychologist/director, whose girlhood on that coastline has abiding relevance for her actions in the story; John Rodriguez, aka “Control,” a word whose multiple meanings—the exercise of power, an experimental necessity, and an institutional role—are bound up in his fate; Saul, the lighthouse keeper and former preacher, whose story is a tender and terrible tragedy; Ghost Bird, the biologist’s double, a person made by Area X and whose relationship to it is thus both complicated and transformative—and a whole panoply of other characters, some new, all made anew, rebuilt and recast. As I read, my questions about Area X became less insistent; what I wanted was to follow this cast of characters to better understand their various compasses and motivations: what pulled at them, what pushed them, what brought them to each other, and which beacons drew them, willingly or unwillingly, on their journeys, for Acceptance is, of course, a book of journeys both metaphysical and physical…

(6) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Christopher Rowe and James Chambers on Wednesday, August 14 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

CHRISTOPHER ROWE

Christopher Rowe was born in Kentucky and lives there still. Neither of these facts are likely to change. He has been a professional writer of speculative fiction since before the turn of the millennium. His stories and books have been reprinted and translated around the world, and have been finalists for every major award in the field, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Theodore Sturgeon awards. He is the author of one of the most well-regarded collections of recent years, Telling the Map (Small Beer Press), and of two critically acclaimed novellas, These Prisoning Hills and The Navigating Fox (Tordotcom Publishing). He likes golden retrievers, good food, and giant robots. He probably watches more professional bicycle races than you do, but who knows?

JAMES CHAMBERS

James Chambers is a Bram Stoker Award and Scribe Award-winning author. He is the author of A Bright and Beautiful Eternal World, On the Night Border and On the Hierophant Road; the novella collection, The Engines of Sacrifice, the novellas, Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God and Three Chords of Chaos, and the original graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe. He edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthologies, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and A New York State of Fright as well as Where the Silent Ones Watch, forthcoming from Hippocampus Press.

(7) PRESENT AT THE CREATION: SFWA. Michael Capobianco is putting together an organizational history. Here’s the first installment: “A Brief History of SFWA: The Beginning (Part 1)”.

On January 15, 1965, Damon Knight, a well-known author, critic, and co-founder of the Milford Conference writer’s workshop, sent an announcement by US Mail to every professional science fiction writer he could locate, asking for $3 from anyone who wanted more of the same. Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) was born.

It was not the first attempt to create an organization of American professional science fiction authors, and there were genre writer precursors. In the 1930s, The American Fiction Guild was formed to help pulp writers with their business concerns; it’s mainly remembered now because L. Ron Hubbard was president of its NY chapter. Mystery Writers of America, arguably a model for some aspects of SFWA, had been established in 1945. MWA’s membership policy was not one of those aspects, however.

Writing in the 10th-anniversary issue of the SFWA Bulletin, SFWA’s primary publication through most of its existence, Knight talks about attending a meeting of the MWA and realizing that most of the attendees were not writers: “I knew that about 70 percent of that audience was composed of hangers-on, relatives, friends, and friends of friends. And I made up my mind that if I ever did start SFWA, it would not be like that.”…

(8) SENDS GREETINGS. [Item by Krystal Rains.] Dr. Gregory Benford had a couple appointments yesterday and thought to send a photo to share, so folks knew he was doing well.

(9) YSANNE CHURCHMAN (1925-2024). English actress Ysanne Churchman died July 4 at the age of 99. The Guardian obituary recalls:  

Alongside many small character roles on television, Churchman voiced Sara Brown in the puppet series Sara and Hoppity (1962) and Soo the computer in The Flipside of Dominick Hide (1980), a time-travelling Play for Today, and its sequel, Another Flip for Dominick (1982).

In Doctor Who, she mustered a squeaky falsetto voice as Alpha Centauri, a diplomat from the hermaphrodite hexapod species featured in the stories The Curse of Peladon (1972) and The Monster of Peladon (1974), with Stuart Fell wearing the costume. She returned to voice the part again in the 2017 adventure Empress of Mars.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

July 31, 1950 – Steve Miller. (Died 2024.)

By Lis Carey: Steve Miller was one half of the writing team of Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, who created the thoroughly satisfying and fun Liaden Universe® series.

Steve was an active member of fandom, along with being a writer. Some of his notable fan activities included being Director of Information of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, and serving as Vice Chair of the bid committee to hold the 38th World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore. (They lost to Boston.)

Meanwhile, Steve was working on his writing skills. He attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1973, wrote for fanzines and sold stories to semi-professional markets. He made his first professional sale, a short story called “Charioteer,” to Amazing Stories, for the May 1978 issue.

Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. Photo at Legacy.com

Steve and another science fiction writer just at the beginning of her career, Sharon Lee, married in 1980. Sharon has mentioned that they started collaborating very early, and the big thing that came out of that was the Liaden Universe®. Loosely speaking, it’s space opera, but individual novels and recurring themes include political intrigue, adventure, coming of age, first contact, and romance. The current count of Liaden novels stands at 26, and there are also dozens of short works in the series, many of which have been gathered together, for your convenience, in the Liaden Constellation collections, of which there are now five.

Steve himself was a lively, fun, friendly guy, and the Liaden stories are lively and fun, too. He and Sharon were regulars at Boskone for quite a few years, and very welcome. Sadly, Steve died at home on February 20, 2024, at home in Waterville, Maine.

Sharon Lee is working on the next Liaden book. She makes no guarantees on how long she will continue writing the series but will continue to credit Steve as co-author on any new Liaden works she writes. She’s adamant that Liaden would not exist without both her and Steve, and that he is still an integral part of continuing to tell stories in that setting. Because of that, new Liaden stories will continue to bear both names.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) GET READY FOR DC CASH. The U.S. Treasury tells comics fans about “A New Coin & Medal Series Coming In 2025”. The webpage includes a survey asking the public to score which superheroes they want to show them the money.

We’ve joined forces with DC—celebrating comic book art as a uniquely American artform. This new series promises to surprise and delight comic aficionados and coin collectors alike!

Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman launch the series in 2025, but who will join them?

This is where we need YOU! Help us choose six more DC Super Heroes—three each for 2026 and 2027.

Take the super quick survey below and vote for the DC Super Hero you want included in this epic collection!

Your Hero, Your Choice!

The press release tells how many coins will be in the series: “Mint Collaboration with Warner Bros, DC Super Heroes”.

…The new series will feature nine iconic superheroes depicted on 24-karat gold coins, .999 fine silver medals, and non-precious metal (clad) medals. Debuting in summer 2025 with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, the three-year series will include six additional DC characters—three each in 2026 and 2027.

Beginning on July 10 and continuing through August 11, 2024, the Mint invites the public to vote for the DC Super Heroes they would like to see included in this series. Public participation ensures that this multi-year series represents the most beloved of DC’s Super Heroes. The public may vote in this survey by visiting: www.usmint.gov/dc.

(13) GOING BOLDLY LOWER. Animation Magazine returns from Comic-Con to tell how “’Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Boldly Goes on with IDW Comics”.

While the show will be embarking on its fifth and final animated series mission this fall, the misadventures of the U.S.S. Cerritos B-crew will continue in a new Star Trek: Lower Decks comic book! Announced at San Diego Comic-Con, IDW Publishing has unveiled a first look at the ongoing series inspired by the hit Paramount+ adult animated comedy.

Writer Ryan North and artist Derek Charm, the Eisner-nominated duo behind Star Trek: Day of Blood – Shaxs’ Best Day, reunite to kick-off this next chapter of Starfleet history, featuring the lovably flawed characters from the show.

… “Just when you thought we couldn’t go lower… we’re back with the first ever ongoing Lower Decks series,” said IDW Group Editor Heather Antos….

(14) ALIEN STAR WILL PERFORM SHAKESPEARE. “Sigourney Weaver Sets West End Debut As Prospero In Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’” reports Deadline.

Sigourney Weaver will make her West End stage debut as storm-creating sorcerer Prospero in The Tempest and Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell will play sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing when director Jamie Lloyd returns Shakespeare early this winter to the historic Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a landmark venue in Covent Garden owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Weaver, star of Ridley Scott’s Alien movies and James Cameron’s Avatar epics, last starred in one of Will’s plays when she played Portia in a 1986 off-Broadway revival of The Merchant of Venice. 

(15) SQUID GAME DROPS ON BOXING DAY. “’Squid Game’ Season 2 Sets Premiere Date, Series to End With Season 3” – Variety has details.

“Squid Game” Season 2 finally has a premiere date at Netflix, with the streamer also announcing that the hit Korean drama has been renewed for a third and final season.

Season 2 will drop on Dec. 26, while the third season will premiere in 2025. The premiere date and final season announcement were made via a video, which can be viewed below.

In addition, series creator, director, and executive producer Hwang Dong-hyuk posted a letter to fans in which he wrote in part, “I am thrilled to see the seed that was planted in creating a new Squid Game grow and bear fruit through the end of this story.”

… The official description for Season 2 states:

“Three years after winning Squid Game, Player 456 remains determined to find the people behind the game and put an end to their vicious sport. Using this fortune to fund his search, Gi-hun starts with the most obvious of places: look for the man in a sharp suit playing ddakji in the subway. But when his efforts finally yield results, the path toward taking down the organization proves to be deadlier than he imagined: to end the game, he needs to re-enter it.”…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George tees up “The Acolyte Pitch Meeting”.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Lis Carey, Steven Paul Leiva, Krystal Rains, 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 Daniel Dern.]