Tag Archives: Sigourney Weaver

Pixel Scroll 12/21/24 A Short Scroll For The Shortest Day

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(0) I’m visiting my brother to help celebrate his birthday. That’s my real excuse!

(1) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to settle in for a steak dinner with Marvel’s Tom Brevoort in Episode 243 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

First up — dinner with Tom Brevoort, who holds the record for being the longest-running editor ever at Marvel Comics, having been hired there in 1989 right out of college. Over the decades, he’s overseen titles such as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four. He became Executive Editor in 2007, and in January 2011, was promoted to also serve as Senior Vice President of Publishing. He’s an Eisner Award-winner for Best Editor, and is currently the Group Editor of The X-Men.

Tom Brevoort

We discussed how a guy whose first love was DC Comics ended up at Marvel, why he hated his early exposure to Marvel so much he’d tell his parents not to buy them because “they’re bad,” the pluses and minuses of comic book subscriptions (and the horror when issues arrived folded), how Cerebus the Aardvark inspired him to believe he could build a career in indie comics, the most unbelievable thing he ever read in a Flash comic, how he might never have worked at Marvel had I not gone to school with Bob Budiansky, the prevailing Marvel ethos he disagreed with from the moment he was hired, what it takes to last 35 years at the same company without either walking off in disgust or getting fired, the differing ways Marvel and DC reused their Golden Age characters, how to prevent yourself from being pedantic when you own an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of comics, and much more.

(2) ANYONE READING THIS A MILLENNEA IN THE FUTURE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Nature’s two-week Christmas edition is out, and some wag (possibly known to Filers) has a time-travel, prediction letter published…. “If anyone’s reading this Correspondence in 1,130 years’ time, please let us know”. Alas, it is behind a paywall, but due to a little Filer magic…

If anyone’s reading this Correspondence in 1,130 years’ time, please let us know

By Jonathan Cowie

In 1993, as part of Nature’s series of ‘Hypotheses’ articles, astronomer J. Richard Gott III proposed that, assuming the Copernican principle — no observer of the Universe is special — a random observer is likely to encounter an object during the mid-95% window of the object’s lifetime. The length of time for which something has been observable in the past is thus a rough measure of how long it is likely to be observable for in the future (R. J. Gott III Nature 363, 315–319; 1993).

Nearly a year later, a correspondent wrote in applying Gott’s analysis to Gott’s own paper, estimating that the appearance of the Correspondence implied there was a 95% probability that the paper would still be being read in 30.6 years’ time (G. Hewlett Nature 368, 697; 1994). I replied that if I had a Correspondence published in 30 years’ time, in 2024, then following Gott’s calculations, this would considerably extend the period of appreciation of Gott’s work (J. Cowie Nature 369, 194; 1994) — by more than a millennium, I now calculate.

This is that Correspondence. Alas, I shall not be around in 1,230 years’ time to write again.

(3) LOJO’S CHOCOFFEE DRINK. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Lojo Russo who was a member of Cats Laughing along with what seemed like most of the Minneapolis SFF writing community in the Eighties shares Lojo’s ChoCoffee drink which surely is suitable as a holiday drink.

Coffee: Jamaica Blue Mountain – rich & nutty, or dark roast Italian — if you like your coffee with an edge. 

Chocolate: 1 part heavy cream, 1/2 ;part dark chocolate syrup, 1/4 part sweetened condensed milk (depending on your sweet tooth), vanilla or almond flavoring (vanilla for Jamaica, almond for Italian) — Blend.

Pour chocolate mixture slowly, gently, lovingly into coffee until it suits your tongue. If you’re like my Italian grandfather, who taught me how to enjoy coffee when I was 8, there will be more chocolate cream than coffee.

(4) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien

Every Christmas between the years 1920 and 1943, the ever-so-blessed children of J.R.R. Tolkien received some of the most unique mail that a child could ever hope for: letters from Father Christmas himself! Beautifully illustrated and delivered in various ways, they told of all kinds of things that happened at the North Pole, and about the folk who lived there with Santa. There is the accident-prone and sleepy North Polar Bear and his two cousins who cause havoc, the evil goblins, and of course the elves and gnomes, not to mention snowfolk and cave bears. The letters came, or so it is claimed by those who don’t believe in Father Christmas, from the Tolkien children’s father, J.R.R. Tolkien himself.

In the published collection of these charming letters, we can read how the North Pole came to be snapped in half, why Santa had to move house, what a polar bear’s writing looks like (blocky is the best description) and how Santa had to defend his home from goblins. While this book does not directly connect to Tolkien’s Middle Earth mythos, it is easy for anyone versed in that mythos to recognize the origin of some of its characters in these letters. The goblin attack on Santa’s cellar will become the Goblin-Elf wars in The Lord of the Rings, and Santa’s elf-secretary Ilbereth is the obvious progenitor of the ancient elf-queen Elbereth. We even get a fully developed look at elvish writing and the goblin alphabet!

I’ll return to the book that is Letters From Father Christmas, but let me turn now to a reading of the Letters that I recently attended. In my opinion, the Letters truly don’t come to life for modern-day readers unless they are treated to an oral performance of them by accomplished actors. Surely the Tolkien children had the Letters read aloud to them when they received them as ‘mail’ from Father Christmas. The reading I attended took place in the front area of Longfellow Books, a wonderful independent store in downtown Portland, Maine. Kirsten Cappy, publicity manager for Longfellow, gave this introduction before the reading:

On September 3rd, 1973, my father sat at the breakfast table with a bowed head and proclaimed, “Children (he never called us that), today, a god passed from this world.” Now this was a confusing statement from an ardent atheist who declared even our brief foray into the Unitarian church to have been ‘too constricting’. ‘God’ was placed in the same category as ‘Santa Claus’ in our family. Both were classified as something ‘other children believed in and that we could believe in if we felt so inclined.

The ‘god’ my father spoke of was J.R.R. Tolkien, who had passed away the previous day. My brother and I managed to breathe out the question of ‘who?’ before we were waved away and my father dug mournfully into his cornflakes. Our question was answered that night at bedtime when my father opened his battered copy of The Hobbit and began to read.

The three of us read through The Hobbit and each volume of The Lord of the Rings over a year’s worth of bedtimes. Tolkien’s stories are still synonymous with the bedroom I had at that age and the gaping closet that surely housed Orcs.

I have gone on to like fiction of all sorts, but nothing has matched the intensity and obsession that Tolkien brought to his creation of Middle Earth. His professional, scholarly fascination with the dead and evolved languages of England led him to read Norse myth. He then began to create myths of his own and to create languages to feed the mouths of his myth-makers.

Lying in my bed at night I often pictured Tolkien writing, but I never pictured my father’s god with children. He had, in fact, three children and took the time from his research and his conquest of Middle Earth to play the role of Father Christmas each year. Each year for 23 years there would be a letter on the mantle piece from Father Christmas addressed to the Tolkien children. The letters spoke of each year’s chaotic preparation for Christmas, about Father Christmas’ helpers and about the mishaps that would cause some of the promised gifts to never arrive. The Tolkien children would also address letters to the North Pole. The letters were full of Christmas wishes and curious questions about life at the North Pole and about Father Christmas’ companions, Polar Bear and Ilbereth The Elf. Answers would come from Father Christmas and his helpers with lavish descriptions and detailed drawings.

With us tonight are our favorite Portland actors, Moira Driscoll, Mark Honan and Daniel Noel who comprise The Usual Suspects. The Usual Suspects give dramatic readings of modern and classic fiction bi-monthly at Longfellow Books, where they are the resident performance group. (You will note the extravagant whiskers on Daniel and Mark — they are both appearing in The Christmas Carol at Portland Stage Co.) Tonight they will be reading aloud Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas in the voices of Father Christmas, Polar Bear and Ilbereth The Elf. I will pass around copies of the book, so you can look at Tolkien’s sweet, obsessive drawings of the North Pole.

By the end of this introduction, the crowd of some forty folks, half adults and half children, including the offspring of several of the performers, had settled in their seats with cookies and hot drinks in hand. Now it was time for the reading…

Two of the actors, Mark Honan and Daniel Noel, were members of the cast of the recent run of A Christmas Carol at the Portland Stage Company, which was staged at Portland Performing Arts Center. Mark Honan, (Cratchit in A Christmas Carol), who played Father Christmas, is a native of England; Daniel Noel (Marley’s Ghost and several other roles, including the Narrator) was the North Polar Bear — fitting given his charming bear-like nature; and Moira Driscoll played the supercilious elf Ilbereth. They sat side by side with their copies of Letters From Father Christmas in hand — I have the copy Daniel read from complete with his post-it notes! — looking absolutely tinkly. And each read the letters as if they were Father Christmas, the North Polar Bear, or Ilbereth. I truly believed that these were letters from Father Christmas to the Tolkien children (keep in mind that this Father Christmas is not by any means a Christian-based being, but rather a sort of friendly teller of tales about what happens during the course of the year at the North Pole).

And oh, what adventures they told on that cold night! They did not read all the Letters — for that pleasure, you’ll need to listen to Derek Jacobi and his friends do it. But they read for about forty-five minutes, the right amount of time on a cold winter’s night, and their selections gave the enthralled listeners a delightful time indeed. Tolkien’s language in these letters is clearer and more playful than in The Lord of The Rings. Just read these lines, which Daniel performed with a gruff voice and a glimmer in his eye: ‘Polar Bear was allowed to decorate a big tree in the garden, all by himself and a ladder. Suddenly are heard terrible growly squealy noises. We rushed out to find Polar Bear hanging on the tree himself! ‘You are not a decoration,’ said Father Christmas. ‘Anyway, I am alight,’ he shouted. He was. We threw a bucket of water on him. Which spoilt a lot of the decorations, but saved his fur.’

If Tolkien intended The Lord of The Rings to be a ‘mythology for England,’ it’s clear to me that these Letters were a personal mythology for him and his children. No matter that there are reflections of his darker work here — this reading shows beyond any doubt that the Letters were a refuge from the stark realities of being a relatively poorly compensated academic. Even if the children didn’t always get Christmas presents, they did get a letter from Father Christmas.

I turn my attention back to the new edition of Letters From Father Christmas, which was the basis of this performance. This is the first time that all of the letters have been published. What you get are facsimiles of the letters in all their glorious messiness along with a printed version on the facing page in what appears to be a Palatino font so that you can actually read them. This is important, as the handwriting of Father Christmas (roundish like ink dripping from a fountain pen on its last legs), North Polar Bear (chunky — he has big paws), and Ilbereth (best described as spidery) is less than readable. 

And the Letters are most definitely worth reading, as they do form an ongoing story that Tolkien very obviously relished telling in the same manner that he first told The Hobbit to his children: as an unfolding narrative over a period of time. It’s worth your time to see how much effort he put into the Letters — handwritings, drawings, quirky borders — all are here. What his children made of them is not known, nor I suppose does it matter now that they belong to all who read them, but I would have preferred Baillie Tolkien, daughter-in-law of J.R.R., to have given us just a bit more context. I even checked The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien to see if there was anything there about these letters, but not according to the index.

My recommendation is that you read these aloud to anyone who will listen, as hearing them does enhance their charm. Barring that, turn the lights down low, sink deep into that overstuffed chair by the fireplace, drink your cocoa, and listen to the cold winter’s wind howl outside as you read. Listen… Is that the North Polar Bear making his way across the roof? Or is it the Goblins attacking again?

(5) TUNE IN. At Spotify you can access “The Gift – a playlist by The Ray Bradbury Center”.

(6) RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s review of the West End production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest ends with ‘come for Sigourney Weaver, stay for the weird magic’: “The Tempest review – Sigourney weaves weird magic in West End debut”.

SIGOURNEY Weaver, the latest in the line of high status screen stars to be wooed to the stage by director Jamie Lloyd, may for ever be known as Ellen Ripley to fans of her defining science fiction role on film. She is certainly in alien territory here, and plays Prospero with the steely-voiced conviction of a commander giving urgent instruction to an interstellar space crew at imminent risk of attack. She is making her West End debut in this late Shakespearean drama as its gender-reversed central sorcerer and usurped Duchess of Milan, and the remote isle of sounds and sweet airs which she sequesters appears to be floating in deep space…

(7) THE ORIGINAL RIPLEY. Meanwhile, BBC Sounds is offering the episode of Witness History that explains the origins of “Robert Ripley and the ‘Believe It or Not’ empire”.

In December 1918, sports writer and cartoonist Robert Ripley was struggling to find some content for his column in the New York Globe. So he compiled and illustrated some of the quirkiest sports facts from the year and created what would go onto become the ‘Believe It or Not’ cartoon.

Its popularity grew and, by the time of America’s Great Depression, Ripley was a multi-millionaire who would travel the world on his hunt for more weird and wonderful facts.

His empire expanded into radio and, in 1940, he persuaded the Duke of Windsor – who had abdicated from the throne in 1936 – to give his first commercial radio appearance.

John Corcoran, exhibits director at Ripley’s, tells Vicky Farncombe about that historic moment.

This programme also includes archive courtesy of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Archives. 

(8) MASTODONTIA. “They Thought It Was an Old Baseball. It Was a Mastodon Tooth.” – the New York Times tells the story (behind a paywall).

…The box was opened. What he saw inside — two yellowed teeth from a long-dead mastodon — stirred in Dr. Harris a thrill he hadn’t felt in years.

“I was crazy excited,” said Dr. Harris, 50, who has worked in archaeology for nearly 30 years. “It was the same old-school excitement I felt when I got into this field in the first place.”

The discovery of the remarkably well preserved mastodon jaw was announced Tuesday by the New York State Department of Education, which runs the New York State Museum, where scientists are studying the artifact. Fearful that their home near Scotchtown, N.Y., would be overrun by news crews or treasure hunters, the couple declined to be named or interviewed for this article.

According to Dr. Harris, the mastodon jaw was discovered when the couple noticed something poking out of the grass in their backyard.

At first they thought it was an old baseball. It was not a baseball. A little digging revealed two enormous teeth buried in the soil, just inches below the surface. Realizing that this might be something of scientific importance, the homeowners reached out to Dr. Harris. The authenticity of the teeth was apparent immediately, he said, so he contacted Robert Feranec, director of research and collections at the state museum. In October the two scientists organized a small team to excavate a trench 14 inches deep.

There they found the jaw of an adult mastodon — a cousin to the woolly mammoth, which roamed North America until it went extinct about 10,000 years ago. There were also fragments of a toe and a rib. If the homeowners agree, Dr. Harris and Dr. Feranec hope to return to the yard next summer, after the ground has thawed, to see if more of the mastodon is hidden there….

…While it may be uncommon for homeowners to uncover ice age fossils poking out of their yard, the discovery of mastodon bones in Orange County is not exactly rare. In 1780, a preacher named Robert Annan found a collection of enormous bones on his farm in Wallkill, N.Y. The discovery was deemed so important that Gen. George Washington, then the commander of the Continental Army, left his troops camped at Newburgh, N.Y., and rode 25 miles in a sleigh to see the bones himself.

Washington’s viewing party gathered just a few miles from the backyard where the latest fossils were found.

“The highest concentration of mastodons in the country is in Orange County,” said Dr. Feranec, who counted about 60 findings in the area since colonial times.

Orange County is a popular resting place for mastodons because it not only offered ideal places for the animals to live, but also the right conditions to preserve them after they died….

(9) JOLLY OLE ENGLAND. “Scientists think they know why Stonehenge was rebuilt thousands of years ago” says Yahoo!

Scientists made a major discovery this year linked to Stonehenge — one of humanity’s biggest mysteries — and the revelations keep coming.

A team of researchers shared evidence in August suggesting that the Altar Stone, an iconic monolith at the heart of Stonehenge, was transported hundreds of miles to the site in southern England nearly 5,000 years ago from what’s now northeastern Scotland. Just a month later, a report led by the same experts ruled out the possibility that the stone came from Orkney, an archipelago off Scotland’s northeastern coast that’s home to Neolithic sites from that time frame, and the search for the monolith’s point of origin continues.

Now, research building on the two previous studies suggests that Stonehenge may have been reconstructed in England around 2620 to 2480 BC to help unify ancient Britons as newcomers arrived from Europe. The new study, published Thursday in the journal Archaeology International, also reveals how Neolithic people may have moved the 13,227-pound (6-metric-ton) block over 435 miles (700 kilometers) from where it originated….

…Construction on Stonehenge began as early as 3000 BC and occurred over several phases in an area first inhabited as early as 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, according to the researchers.

Previous analysis has shown that bluestones, a type of fine-grained sandstone, and larger silicified sandstone blocks called sarsens were used in the monument’s construction. The bluestones were brought from 140 miles (225 kilometers) away at the Preseli Hills area in west Wales and are thought to have been the first stones placed at the site. The sarsens, used later, came from the West Woods near Marlborough, located about 15 miles (25 kilometers) away.

Researchers believe the Altar Stone was placed within the central horseshoe during a rebuilding phase. While the exact date is unknown, the study authors believe the stone arrived between 2500 and 2020 BC.

It’s during that rebuilding phase, according to the research, that Stonehenge’s builders erected the large sarsen stones to form an outer circle and an inner horseshoe made of trilithons, or paired upright stones connected by horizontal stone beams, which remain part of the monument to this day.

The Altar Stone is the largest of the bluestones used to build Stonehenge. Today, the Altar Stone lies recumbent at the foot of the largest trilithon and is barely visible peeking through the grass….

(10) WHAT ISN’T? CBR.com argues that “Lord of the Rings Film Is Secretly a Christmas Movie”. It’s clickbait, but since I clicked…

…Unlike in The Chronicles of Narnia, Christmas was not celebrated in The Lord of the Rings, but December 25 was still a significant date in Middle-earth’s history. When Frodo first awoke in Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf told him that it was “ten o’clock in the morning on October the twenty-fourth,” which matched the timeline from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novel. Based on the order of scenes from the extended edition of the film, it seemed that the Council of Elrond was held the next day and that the Fellowship departed from Rivendell the day after that. But as revealed in the novel, an entire month passed between the Council of Elrond and the Fellowship’s departure, giving Frodo additional time to recover from his Morgul wound. When he and his companions finally set out on their journey to destroy the One Ring, it was December 25, which would have been Christmas Day in the real world. If Die Hard can count as a Christmas movie because it takes place on Christmas Eve, The Fellowship of the Ring should qualify as well…

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Star Wars Prequels Bloopers” from seven years ago. So it’s just getting ripe…

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

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.]

Pixel Scroll 8/25/23 Like A File Over Troubled Pixels I Will Scroll You Down

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(1) HOPE FOR THE JAMES WHITE AWARD. Gareth Jelley, editor and publisher of Interzone, responded to the comments about the James White Award in yesterday’s post “Are These Awards Dead or Just Pining for the Fjords?”

Thank you for the interesting post today on awards. Funnily enough, I’m becoming a big fan of James White’s writing and have one of his books on the bedside stack at the moment.

But you are right: I’ve not yet been asked about Interzone and the James White Award.

It is on my radar, though! It has been on my list of things to do as Martin McGrath and I chat once in a while on the IZ Digital Discord. But we’ve both been quite busy.

So, not 100% an ex-award yet — it is something I would definitely like to get going again, once Interzone is back on its feet.

(2) BEHIND THE SCENES. “Disney+ Celebrates ‘Star Wars: Ahsoka’ Debut with ‘Rebel Crew’ Featurette” and Animation World Network has the story.

Disney+ celebrated yesterday’s launch of Lucasfilm’s newest series, Star Wars: Ahsoka, by sharing the Rebel Crew featurette, a look behind the making of the series. The first two episodes of the show are now available. 

The show, set after the Empire’s fall, follows the former Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy.

Rosario Dawson, who reprises her The Mandalorian role as Ahsoka Tano, is joined by Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera Syndulla; Ivanna Sakhno as Shin Hati; Wes Chatham as Captain Enoch; Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker; the late Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll; David Tennant as Huyang; Temeura Morrison as Captain Rex; and Lars Mikkelsen as Grand Admiral Thrawn….

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to chow down on crispy pickled cucumbers with Lisa Morton in Episode 205 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Lisa Morton

My second guest from this year’s Pittsburgh StokerCon is Lisa Morton, a screenwriter, award-winning prose writer, author of non-fiction books, and Halloween expert.

She’s written more than 150 short stories, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning “Tested” (from Cemetery Dance magazine) and “What Ever Happened to Lorna Winters?,” chosen for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2020. In 2010, her first novel The Castle of Los Angeles was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel. Her other novels include Malediction (nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel), Netherworld, and Zombie Apocalypse: Washington Deceased.

Her work as an editor includes the anthology Midnight Walk, winner of the Black Quill Award and nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, Haunted Nights (co-edited with Ellen Datlow), Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense, and Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852-1923, co-edited with Leslie Klinger. As a Halloween expert, Lisa wrote the definitive reference book The Halloween Encyclopedia (now in a second edition), and the multiple award-winning Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. Her screenplay credits include the feature films Tornado Warning, Blood Angels, Blue Demon, and The Glass Trap. She’s is a former President of the Horror Writers Association.

We discussed how seeing The Exorcist at age 15 changed her life, why she sometimes feels guilty about her path to publication, our memories of the late, great Dennis Etchison, the differences between trick or treating in New York vs. L.A., the weirdest thing about working in a bookstore during the pandemic, the differing ways our writing was affected by lockdown, how she myth-busted Halloween, why she doesn’t think of rejection as rejection, what she means when she says horror fiction should be more political, writing for themed anthologies, what it would take for us to turn our hand to novels, and so much more.

(4) SFF ABOVE THE 38TH PARALLEL. Ars Technica leads readers to “The strange, secretive world of North Korean science fiction”.

A plane is flying to the Philippines, gliding above “the infinite surface” of the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly, a few passengers start to scream. Soon, the captain announces there’s a bomb on board, and it’s set to detonate if the aircraft drops below 10,000 feet.

“The inside of the plane turned into a battlefield,” the story reads. “The captain was visibly startled and vainly tried to calm down the screaming and utterly terrorized passengers.”

Only one person keeps his cool: a young North Korean diplomat who has faith that his country will find a solution and save everyone. And he’s right. North Korea’s esteemed scientists and engineers create a mysterious anti-gravitational field and stop the plane in mid-air. The bomb is defused, and everyone gets off the aircraft and is brought back safely to Earth.

This story, Change Course (Hangno rǔl pakkura) by Yi Kŭmchǒl, speaks about solidarity, peace, and love for the motherland, displaying an intricate relationship between literature and politics. It was first published in 2004 in the Chosǒn munhak magazine, only to be reprinted 13 years later, around the time North Korea claimed it was capable of launching attacks on US soil.

“Political messages in every North Korean sci-fi can be hardly missed,” historian of science Dong-Won Kim, who taught at Harvard University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, told me….

(5) GALAXY QUEST NEWS. “Is Sigourney Weaver Reprising Her Role in a ‘Galaxy Quest’ Series?” Animation World Network thinks the answer is yes.

Finally, a morsel of news from the Paramount+ series adaptation of Galaxy Quest! While the project has finally made headway after a stint in production hell, we can now report that Sigourney Weaker will reprise her role as Gwen DeMarco, according to a source close to Giant Freakin Robot. Gwen will serve as a mentor-like figure for a new generation of cast members aboard the Protector, if the news is to be believed….

…The Galaxy Quest series will be produced by Mark Johnson under his Gran Via Productions banner. No other execs have been announced.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 25, 1909 — Michael Rennie. Definitely best remembered as Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still. He would show up a few years later on one of The Lost World films as Lord John Roxton, and he’s got an extensive genre series resume which counts Lost in Space as The Keeper in two episodes, The Batman as The Sandman, The Time Tunnel, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Invaders. (Died 1971.)
  • Born August 25, 1913 — Walt Kelly. If you can get them, Fantagraphics has released Pogo in six stunning hardcover editions covering up to 1960. They’re planning to do all of his strips eventually. Did you know Kelly began his career as animator at Walt Disney Studios, working on Dumbo, Pinocchio and Fantasia? (Died 1973.)
  • Born August 25, 1940 — Marilyn Niven, 83. She was a Boston-area fan who lives in LA with her husband Larry Niven. She has worked on a variety of conventions, both regionals and Worldcons.  In college, she was a member of the MITSFS and was one of the founding members of NESFA. She’s also a member of Almack’s Society for Heyer Criticism.
  • Born August 25, 1947 — Michael Kaluta, 76. He’s best known for his 1970s take on The Shadow with writer Dennis O’Neil for DC in 1973–1974. He’d reprise his work on The Shadow for Dark Horse a generation later. And Kaluta and O’Neil reunited on The Shadow: 1941 – Hitler’s Astrologer graphic novel published in 1988. If you can find them, the M. W. Kaluta: Sketchbook Series are well worth having.
  • Born August 25, 1955 — Simon R. Green, 68. I’ll confess that I’ve read pretty much everything he’s written. Favorite series? The Nightside, Hawk & Fisher and Secret History are my favorite ones with Drinking Midnight Wine the novel I’ve re-read the most. 
  • Born August 25, 1958 — Tim Burton, 65. Beetlejuice is by far my favorite film by him. His Batman is interesting. Read that comment as you will. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is definitely more Dahlish than the first take was, and Sleepy Hollow is just damn weird. Well, too damn weird for my liking. 
  • Born August 25, 1970 — Chris Roberson, 53. Brilliant writer. I strongly recommend his Recondito series, Firewalk and Firewalkers. The Spencer Finch series is also worth reading. He won two Sidewise Awards, first for his “O One” story and later for The Dragon’s Nine Sons novel. He’s had five Sidewise nominations. And he’s scripted a lot of comics, primarily Hellboy related, but also Fables, The Shadow, Doc Savage, iZombie and House of Mystery.

(7) SAND STOPS RUNNING IN THE HOURGLASS. “’Dune: Part Two’ release postponed to 2024 as actors strike lingers” reports the Portland (ME) Press-Herald.

The release of “Dune: Part Two,” one of the fall’s most anticipated films, has been postponed from November until next near, Warner Bros. confirmed Thursday.

Denis Villeneuve’s science-fiction sequel had been set to open Nov. 3 but will instead land in theaters March 15. With the actors strike entering its second month, “Dune: Part Two” had been rumored to be eyeing a move. Variety earlier this month reported Warner Bros. was mulling the delay.

Warner Bros. is opting to wait until its starry cast can promote the follow-up to the 2021 Oscar-winning “Dune.”…

…Dune: Part Two” is one of the biggest 2023 films yet postponed due to the ongoing strikes by actors and screenwriters. Recent releases have mostly opted to go ahead, despite lacking their stars on red carpets or on magazine covers. SAG-AFTRA has asked its members not to promote studio films during the work stoppage….

(8) NEXT DOMINO TO FALL IS TOLKIEN ANIME FILM. “‘Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim’ Release Delayed Until December 2024” reports Deadline.

New Line’s animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is moving from its April 12, 2024 release date to December 13 of next year.

The move stems from a chain reaction of Warner Bros re-dating Thursday, spurred by Legendary Entertainment’s Dune: Part Two moving from November 3 this year to March 15, 2024, which pushed that financier and producer’s other title, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, from that date to April 12, 2024.

Dune: Part Two had to move had to shift on account of the unavailability of its cast to promote during the ongoing actors strike.

War of the Rohirrim will now face off on its new December date against Sony’s reboot of The Karate Kid.

The anime feature, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, is set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original New Line Lord of the Rings trilogy. Those Peter Jackson movies, in addition to his Hobbit trilogy, always played the December year-end holiday period.

The War of the Rohirrim centers on the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the mighty King of Rohan, a character from the appendix of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Succession actor Brian Cox will provide the voice of the protagonist.

(9) FOUND ON FACEBOOK. This is a little touch of genius.

(10) DO YOU KNOW SHUTTLE LORE? The National Air and Space Museum Hackathon invites you to play Galactic Mystery. As far as I can tell I got all the questions right. Is that possible? That has never happened before!

Each year, the National Air and Space Museum holds the Air and Space Hackathon, in collaboration with Deloitte, for local students. A hackathon is a design sprint-like event with the goal of creating functioning software or hardware by the end of the event.

In the most recent Air and Space Hackathon, small teams from schools around the DC area took on the challenge of designing a web or mobile prototype aimed at a K-12 student audience. The goal of their prototype was to highlight inspiring stories of diversity in the past, present, and/or future that connects to something on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

Team Rambutan from the Governor’s School @ Innovation Park was the winner of our latest Hackathon! They created a game called “Galactic Mystery” in which users answer questions related to Space Shuttle Discovery to solve the mystery of who stole Canadarm. As players successfully progress through the game, their shuttle climbs through the levels of the atmosphere.

And now, their “Galactic Mystery” game is a reality! Anyone can play from wherever you are to test your knowledge of Space Shuttle history.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]

Pixel Scroll 6/9/19 It’s the Great Pixel, Churlie Brown!

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(1) WHITE SPACE. The public radio investigative news show Reveal included Vox Day and his foray into alt-right comics in its program “Hate in the homeland”. (He’s the topic of the second of the program’s three segments.)

The mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue and the burning of churches in Louisiana are reminders that hate crimes are on the rise in the U.S. This episode surveys the state of the white supremacist movement in America, focusing on how hate groups are spreading their message.

The first segment is a discussion with Megan Squire, a professor of computer science at Elon University who’s been studying how hate groups are using the internet to win converts. She says that despite attempts to silence extreme sites, they are finding ways to stay online.

Al Letson then explores how comic books are being weaponized by the far right to spread the message of white supremacy.

We end with a conversation with Pastor Mike McBride, founder of The Way Church in Berkeley, California. He talks about how communities of color are standing up to attacks from white supremacists.

(2) SENSITIVITY. Vicky Who Reads takes on a big YA issue with “So. Your Favorite Books Are Problematic. Now What?”

…I’ve been thinking about this since January, especially with a lot of realizations on my part about some of the books I loved when I was younger.

Books like . . .

  • Eleanor & Park, which is extremely racist to Koreans & biracial Koreans
  • Cinder, which has questionable Asian representation and worldbuilding
  • The Grishaverse, which has bad Shu (aka East Asian) rep and magic yellowface

And so many others. These are the most stark to me, because all of them include negative portrayals of identities very close to my own (I’m East & Southeast Asian), yet these were also some of my favorite books when I was 14.

And there are so many other formative YA novels that are extremely popular, and also portray some minority group(s) badly.

…(Okay, we definitely still are being hurt sometimes, but we’re letting less people hurt us.)

But these are our favorites. They hold a special place in our hearts. They’re almost untouchable.

Key word: almost.

…Are you saying we should cancel them?

No, actually. I’m not.

I know you wanted to scream “cAnCeL cUlTuRe!!!1!!11!” at me, but not today, Satan.

I don’t think mass-cancelling them will do anything. I don’t think issuing a community-wide “Six of Crows is officially cancelled for bad Asian rep!!!” statement will do anything productive, nor will it help us do better in the future.

(And some people see themselves in that rep. I don’t, but some people do, and I respect this.)

I do think, that some people might want to individually-cancel books, in different extents….

(3) CANCELLATION FOLLOWED BY LITIGATION. In the Washington Post,  Deanna Paul and Lindsey Beyer report that Jordanian American writer Natasha Tynes is suing her former publisher, Rare Bird Books, for $13 million after they cancelled her forthcoming novel They Called Me Wyatt, “about a murdered Jordanian student whose ‘consciousness’ inhabits a 3-year-old boy with speech delays.”  At issue is a tweet Tynes wrote (and withdrew) showing an African-American woman working for the Metro subway eating her breakfast on a train, (which is against the rules) and whether, as her publisher claims, this deleted tweet was about “the policing of a black woman’s body.” “An author lost her book deal after tweeting about a Metro worker. She’s suing for $13 million”.

Natasha Tynes, an award-winning Jordanian American author who lost a book deal following claims of online racism, is suing her publishing house for $13 million. The lawsuit, filed in California on Friday, alleges that Rare Bird Books breached its contract and defamed her, causing “extreme emotional distress” and destroying her reputation.

… On the morning of May 10, the World Bank communications officer and mother of three tweeted a photo of a black female Metro worker who was breaking the D.C. region transportation agency’s rules by eating breakfast on a train….

…Hours later, Rare Bird released a statement, calling Tynes’s tweet — which it described as the policing of a black woman‘s body — “something truly horrible.”

As The Washington Post previously reported, in response to the tweet, Rare Bird announced it had decided not to distribute her book. “We think this is unacceptable and have no desire to be involved with anyone who thinks it’s acceptable to jeopardize a person’s safety and employment in this way,” the company announced on Twitter.

By the following day, the publisher had announced plans to halt shipments of the book and postpone the publication date while taking the “appropriate next steps to officially cancel the book’s publication.” Preorders for the novel were also canceled, even though sales had skyrocketed, court documents say.

… Court papers also said she temporarily returned to Jordan on May 21, fearing her family “would be the subject of violence, reprisals and harassment at the hands of a mob incited by Rare Bird if she remained in the United States.”

“What Rare Bird has done to Natasha Tynes is just beyond abhorrent,” said attorney William Moran, who is representing Tynes. “I’ve never seen a publisher throw an author under the bus like this before.”

(4) RIPLEY: BELIEVE IT. Sigourney Weaver chats with Parade about the 40th anniversary of Alien and her future roles: “Sigourney Weaver Reminisces on Her Career, Alien, Avatar and the New Ghostbusters“

…She’ll soon head back to New Zealand, where she’s been at work filming the live and CGI portions of the long-awaited, effects-driven Avatar sequels. (Because her Avatar character died at the end of the 2009 original, she’ll be playing someone new in the next four installments, the first of which is scheduled for the big screen in 2021.) She’s also set to reunite with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in the new Ghostbusters, due July 2020. “It’s going to be crazy working with the guys again!” she says. She won’t reveal any details except to confirm she’s reprising her role as hauntee Dana Barrett.

(5) CLEARANCE. Heather Rose Jones sorts her garage in anticipation of a “Yes, I’m ready to admit I’m not doing SCA any more” giveaway open house in “The Great SCA Gear Divestment Project”.

…The hardest part of this process isn’t the “stuff” itself, but the investment I put into making and adapting things for my “ideal medieval environment”. Some of those things I only enjoyed a few times. Some were still in the process of being perfected. But here’s the thing: I’m *not* using them. And I have no rational expectation of using them in the future. And I’d rather that someone else used them to help build *their* “ideal medieval environment” rather than having the stuff continue to collect dust in my garage.

There’s been a recurring theme in my life of needing to distinguish between living the life I will truly enjoy, and trying to live a fantasy life that I only *want* to want. Let me unpack that. The example I usually use to illustrate this struggle is My Fantasy Canopy Bed.

(6) HEERMAN SHARES EXPERIENCES. The Odyssey Workshop’s “Interview: Graduate Travis Heermann (Part 1 of 2)” includes advice about Kickstarter campaigns.

Your latest novel, The Hammer Falls, was funded on Kickstarter in only twelve hours. Congratulations on both a successful Kickstarter and on the release of a new novel! You wrote a post in 2016 for the Odyssey blog on running a Kickstarter. Would you share some tips for getting the word out about Kickstarters? How did you encourage people to participate?

The key is stoking up your friends, family, and fans. 90% of this campaign’s backers were friends, family, fans, and repeat business people who had supported my Kickstarters in the past. And then you have to ask. For many of us, that’s the hardest part.

For this campaign, I used several strategies to get the word out:

1. Facebook ads. Resulted in no traffic AT ALL. It’s like going back to an abusive, gold-digging ex, and you think it’ll be different this time…

2. Posting on Facebook. Way, way, way less useful than it used to be. Their algorithms make sure your link doesn’t get seen by anybody. Posting a textual message to your wall and then posting the link in the comments helps with this somewhat,but the results were not nearly as good as the campaign I ran in 2015.

3. Posting on Twitter. Similar problem to Facebook with its incomprehensible black box algorithm. Practically no engagement.

4. Posting updates in previous Kickstarter campaigns, so that all my previous backers could see that I had a new project coming. Theoretically, these are my staunchest supporters, most likely to come back for another go.

5. Appealing to my email list. This is where nearly half of the contributions came from. These are people I send communications to regularly. I got about a 30% click-through from the email list to the campaign. Not everybody who clicked contributed, but that’s a good click-through ratio….

(7) NOT A HIPPPOPOTAMUS. NPR’s Liza Graham reports that Sarah Gailey’s “‘Magic For Liars’ Asks, What If You’re Actually Not Magic?”

You are not the chosen one. You don’t get to leave your humdrum life behind and go to the mysterious school where they teach magic. You will not discover powers you never dreamed you had. The reason you don’t fit in socially is not because you’re a once-in-a-generation sorcerer. Your blemishes and aches and colds and unfulfilled longings will not miraculously fade away as you become the marvelous creature you were always meant to be. You are not magic.

But your twin sister is.

Ivy Gamble, PI, protagonist of Sarah Gailey’s Magic For Liars, has lived with disappointment for years. She wasn’t the chosen one — single and solitary in her 40s, she couldn’t be less chosen if she tried. But she’s smart and damn good at her job, and she keeps going. Until one day, she’s called into the magicians’ school — Osthorne Academy, where her brilliant sister is now a faculty member — to investigate a case no magician can crack….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 9, 1925 — Keith Laumer. I remember his Bolo series fondly and read quite a bit of it. Can’t say which novels at this point, though Bolo definitely and Last Command almost certainly. The Imperium and Retief series were also very enjoyable though the latter is the one I’d re-read at this point. Amazon and iBooks have decent though not complete ebooks listings for him, heavy on Imperium and Retief, no Bolo. (Died 1993)
  • Born June 9, 1930 — Lin Carter. He is best known for his work in the 1970s as editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. As a writer, His first professional publication was the short story “Masters of the Metropolis”, co-written with Randall Garrett, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1957. He would be a prolific writer, average as many as six novels a year. In addition, he was influential as a critic of the fantasy genre and an early historian of the genre. (Died 1988.)
  • Born June 9, 1934 — Donald Duck, 85. He made his first appearance in “The Wise Little Hen” on June 9, 1934. In this cartoon, Donald and his friend, Peter Pig, lie their way out of helping the titular little hen tend to her corn. 
  • Born June 9, 1943 — Joe Haldeman, 76. Whether or not, it was written as a response to Starship Troopers as some critics thought at time, The Forever War is a damn great novel. No surprise that it won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards. 
  • Born June 9, 1949 — Drew Sanders, 70. He’s an LA resident who’s active in con-running and costuming. He has worked on many Worldcons and is a member of LASFS and SCIFI, and has been a officer of both groups. He co-chaired Costume-Con 4 in 1986.
  • Born June 9, 1954 — Gregory Maguire, 65. He is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West based of course on the Oz Mythos; Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister retelling the tale of Cinderella; and Mirror, Mirror, a revisionist retelling of the Snow White tale. Well you get the idea. He’s damn good at this schtick.
  • Born June 9, 1961 — Michael J. Fox, 58. The Back to The Future trilogy stands as one of the best SF series ever done and his acting was brilliant. Since 1999 due to his Parkinson’s Disease, he’s has mainly worked as a voice-over actor in films such as Stuart Little and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Prior to his diagnosis, he performed on Tales from the Crypt and directed “The Trap” episode. He would return to live action performing in 2014, bless him, with The Michael J. Fox Show series. 
  • Born June 9, 1967 — Dave McCarty, 52. He’s a Chicago-area con-running fan who chaired Chicon 7. He also headed the Chicago Worldcon Bid who lost out in 2008 and was victorious in 2012. He is married to fellow fan Elizabeth McCarty. He was the Hugo Administrator for Loncon (2014), MidAmeriCon II (2016), and for Worldcon 76 (2018).
  • Born June 9, 1981 — Natalie Portman, 38. Padmé Amidala in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. She also played Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta. (Very weird film.) And, of course, Jane Foster in Thor and Thor: The Dark World.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Brevity explains why a leprechaun might object to Judy Garland singing her old standard.

(10) DUBLIN 2019. Now live — Dublin 2019 Irish WorldCon Member’s Page.

Hello and welcome members of Dublin 2019, An Irish WorldCon! This page has been created as a place where WorldCon members can chat, share information, sell memberships or swap accomdation with each other. This is not an official page and as such is not regulated by WorldCon staff. Please treat each other with respect and dignity. Can’t wait to see ye in Dublin this August!

(11) MINTY FRESH. A whole flock of coins celebrating the first manned Moon landing are on sale from the U.S. Mint. Here’s one in gold struck at West Point.

(12) GOING MONTHLY. At Galactic Journey, Gideon Marcus cheers Fred Pohl’s latest (1964) plans for IF: [June 8, 1964] Be Prepared! (July 1964 IF).

IF Worlds of Science Fiction, Galaxy’s scrappy younger sister, has also launched a big operation, the result of a long-ranged plan.  For years, the magazine has been a bi-monthly, alternating publication with Galaxy.  Now, editor Fred Pohl says it’s going monthly.  To that end, he lined up a slew of big-name authors to contribute enough material to sustain the increased publication rate.  Moreover, Pohl intends IF to be the adventurous throwback mag, in contrast to the more cerebral digests under his direction (Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow.  Or in his words:

“Adventure.  Excitement.  Drama.  Color.  Not hack pulp-writing or gory comic-strip blood and thunder, but the sort of story that attracted most of us to science fiction in the first place.”

Frankly, it was Galaxy that got me into SF in 1950, so I’m not sure I want a return to the “Golden Age”.  But I’m willing to see how this works out, and in fact, this month’s issue is encouragingly decent, as you shall soon see.

(13) DIFFERENCES IN THE ORIGINAL. Luke, I am your second cousin twice removed on your mother’s side: “The Original ‘Empire Strikes Back’ Script Shows Darth Vader Wasn’t Supposed to Be Luke’s Father” at Yahoo! Entertainment.

George Lucas once described his own father as a “domineering, ultra right-wing businessman”-a man who is largely believed to have inspired the relationship between Luke and Anakin Skywalker. In 1980, The Empire Strikes Back revealed that Darth Vader was actually Luke’s father, a twist that has become one of the most famous father-son stories of the century. That reveal marked a pivotal moment in the Star Wars franchise-one that turned this into a decades-long narrative about fathers and sons that has resonated in virtually every major plot point of the eight films in the Skywalker Saga.

But that major twist almost didn’t even happen. A transcript of what is allegedly the original script for The Empire Strikes Back has appeared online and includes a number of key differences.

(14) UNWANTED SJWCS. You know that plastic polluting the sea you always hear about? “Garfield phones beach mystery finally solved after 35 years”.

A French coastal community has finally cracked the mystery behind the Garfield telephones that have plagued its picturesque beaches for decades.

Since the 1980s, the Iroise coast in Brittany has received a supply of bright orange landline novelty phones shaped like the famous cartoon cat.

Anti-litter campaigners have been collecting fragments of the feline for years as they clean the beaches.

…The beach-cleaning teams had long suspected that a lost shipping container – perhaps blown overboard – had regurgitated its precious orange cargo. But they had never been able to find it.

(15) THREE MILE (SAND) ISLAND. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the Martian wind: “Exploring The Mysterious Origins Of Mars’ 3-Mile-High Sand Pile” at NPR.

… “We don’t have a gravimeter on the surface of Mars, but we do have accelerometers,” he says, “and gravity is just an acceleration.”

You may not think of gravity that way, but you can, and scientists do.

So with the help of engineers Stephen Peters and Kurt Gonter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he was able to adjust the way the data from the RIMU were handled; that gave Lewis his gravimeter.

He knew just what he wanted to do with it: Try to figure out how a 15,000-foot-tall mountain could form in the middle of Gale crater, the crater Curiosity landed in.

(16) RAKSURA. Nina Shepardson reviews The Siren Depths by Martha Wells for Outside of a Dog.

In the third installment of Martha Wells’s Books of the Raksura series, Moon finds himself with exactly the opposite problem from what he’s used to. As he finally starts to settle into his home at Indigo Cloud, he discovers that another group of Raksura has taken an interest in him—and because of Raksura society’s complex rules, they may be able to force him to take up residence with them instead. Combined with gradually emerging hints about the reasons behind the Fell’s repeated attacks on Raksura settlements, this makes for a tense and dramatic story.

(17) CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. Paul Weimer tells what he likes about a new novel in “Microreview [book]: Velocity Weapon, by Megan E. O’Keefe” at Nerds of a Feather.

In Velocity Weapon, Megan O’Keefe takes her talents honed in steampunk fantasy and expands her oeuvre to an intriguing interplanetary space opera.

…The novel has lots of interesting ideas right down to character beats. Sanda’s war-manifested disability, the loss of a leg, is an abiding and recurring problem for her throughout the book. The author doesn’t trivialize the loss of the limb with magic future tech, especially given the impoverished, solitary future she now lives in, and we can see and understand the frustration that a soldier feels when so horrendously injured. On a similar beat, back in the past, Biran’s unexpected change in role and status when he is fruitlessly simply trying to find his sister means that he has to level up into a leadership role quickly.The author does a great job showing how he has to rise to this challenge and deal with the issues emerging from his rise. The two siblings, even though separated in time and space, make a strong core of a resonant pair of main characters to support action, plot and theme….

(18) UNDONE. Watch the first official teaser for Undone, a genre-bending animated series starring Rosa Salazar and Bob Odenkirk destined for Amazon Prime.

[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Dann, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]

Pixel Scroll 5/1/19 The Pixel That Can Be Scrolled Is Not The True Pixel

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(1) FUTURE TENSE. This month’s entry in the Future Tense Fiction series is “The Song Between Worlds” by Indra Das, author of the award-winning novel The Devourers.

Each month, Future Tense Fiction—a series of short stories from Future Tense and ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our lives—publishes a story on a theme. The theme for April–June 2019: space settlement.

It was published along with a response essay “What Would Sound Be Like on Mars?” by the astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz of the Adler Planetarium.)

… Sound is a relatively simple physical phenomenon, but the way our minds shape it can be complex. It’s a wave, but not the same kind of wave one might see in the ocean, where the medium (water, in the case of the ocean) travels toward or away from us. If sound waves were like ocean waves, we would not be able to speak to one another without blowing a constant breeze toward the listener, which is (generally speaking) not what happens. Rather, sound waves travel by creating collisions between the molecules of air between us and the origin of the sound….

(2) SURVEILLANCE STATE. In The Atlantic, Lily Meyer reviews “Two ambitious new novels build techno-futures in which surveillance offers disturbing new threats” — “Science Fiction’s Preoccupation With Privacy”.

…The only character in Dark Constellations not interested in controlling others is Piera, a disaffected Stromatoliton biologist whose alienation from her male co-workers and from the overreach of her company leads her to cut herself off—from people, and from broader systems. She privately refers to her employer as “the animal of the state unleashed,” but remains at Stromatoliton, satisfying her voyeuristic curiosity even as the future of Argentine privacy is in question. With Piera, Oloixarac seems to underscore the impossibility of stepping away from power in a world in which science overrides ethics. Piera may consider herself an observer rather than a participant, but she remains complicit in the global expansion of surveillance….

(3) BRIANNA WU. Media people covering last weekend’s synagogue shooting in San Diego tapped Brianna Wu for comment about the shooter’s 8chan connection.

…Whether the Internet is creating hate groups or just serving as a gathering place, one thing has become clear: What happens online doesn’t stay there.

Brianna Wu is a software engineer who lives in Massachusetts. In 2014, she was targeted in something called Gamergate, in which men threatened female video game players and developers. The harassment started mainly on 8chan.

“They threw bricks through my windows. They sent me hundreds upon hundreds of death threats, rape threats,” Wu says. “I’ve had people from 8chan follow me around just to let me know, ‘I’m near you and could hurt you if I wanted to.’ “

Wu, who is running for Congress, says the solution is simple. “We need dedicated FBI agents that understand online culture to look at these kinds of extreme crimes and prosecute them,” she says.

…The message is trickling to the campaign trail. Brianna Wu, a software engineer who is running as a Democrat for a House seat in Massachusetts, told me she is “angry” that law enforcement has not done more to rein in 8chan, which has also been connected to the circulation of child pornography and is a place where people are frequently doxxed. 

After Wu herself was targeted on the website in 2014 with death threats during the Internet culture war known as Gamergate, she says she says she documented “tons of illegal activity” on 8chan and shared her findings with the FBI. She believes it’s possible the recent shootings could have been avoided if law enforcement took greater action, she said, and wants to increase funding for the FBI to investigate online crime if elected to Congress. 

“We need to fund a specific task force within the FBI that is very tech literate and tasked to prosecute these types of online crimes,” she said. More from Wu:

(4) CAMERAS ROLL ON PICARD. They’ve begun to “Make it so” — “Star Trek: Patrick Stewart’s Picard TV Show Starts Filming” at ScreenRant.

With a mix of old and newcomer talent on both sides of the camera, the Picard series looks to follow in Discovery‘s footsteps and blend old-fashioned Star Trek tropes with fresh sci-fi ideas and a more modern tone. Of course, this show has an advantage over CBS All Access’ first Star Trek series in that it’s not a prequel and has more freedom to play around with its storytelling, as opposed to having to work around classic lore and mythology. Something like the Star Wars sequel trilogy has certainly gotten a passionate fan response by bringing back old characters for new adventures, so it’ll be very interesting to see how Trekkies take to Picard’s story continuing by comparison.

(5) CARL BRANDON ORIGIN STORY. The Jeanne Gomoll-edited Carl Brandon, by and about the hoax fan Terry Carr co-created long ago, is available for order from Lulu ($16.00).

Terry Carr recounts the invention of an imaginary black science fiction fan named Carl Brandon, one of the field’s most (in)famous hoaxes. In addition to Carl Brandon’s complete history, this volume includes his J.D. Salinger parody, “The Cacher of the Rye;” a more current parody by Carl Brandon 2.0, “The Kvetcher on the Racists;” and an essay by Samuel R. Delany, “Racism and Science Fiction.” To quote Carr: “In the late fifties, several of the fans of the Bay Area…presented fandom with a new fanwriter who was quickly acclaimed as one of the best writers around and who was, not incidentally, the first prominent fan who was black.” Read the book for more of this fascinating tale. All proceeds go to the Carl Brandon Society, which promotes discussions on race at conventions and conferences, and through its support of the Parallax and Kindred literary awards, and the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund.

(6) JOHN SLADEK. The paperback edition of New Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek was informally launched at the UK Eastercon and the promised ebook is now available reports David Langford. Both can be ordered from Ansible Editions. Trade paperback 9″ x 6″, 255pp, ISBN 978-0-244-15877-4. $20 plus local postage from Lulu.com: click button below. Ebook in the usual formats at £5.50: again, click button below.

(7) FREE DOWNLOAD. Of more fannish interest, a free ebook reissue of Terry Carr’s 1986 collection Fandom Harvest has been posted on David Langford’s TAFF page as an incitement to give generously to the fund. He adds, “Many thanks to Bob Silverberg for allowing his 1986 introduction to be included and to the original publisher John-Henri Holmberg for his afterword and general approval. Carol Carr has given her blessing to this reissue.”

Langford further notes – “For anyone interested in acquiring the Sladek or the Brandon paperback: both are published via Lulu.com, which currently has a 15%-off discount code ONEFIVE that’s good until 2 May.”

(8) HARLEQUIN ART. The Bristol Board features nine pieces of Steranko art done for an edition of a Harlan Ellison story.

Repent Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man!, a portfolio of illustrations by Jim Steranko, done as an adaptation of a short story that was written by Harlan Ellison. the last plate is a 3-D pinup.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 1, 1905 — Edna Mayne Hull. Wife of A.E. van Vogt. And yes, she too wrote genre fiction. Her initial sale, “The Flight That Failed”, appeared in the November 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under chosen author credit of “E.M. Hull” though eventually she used her own name. She has but one novel of her own, Planets for Sale, and one with her husband, The Winged Man, and only a dozen stories, one with A.E. Van Vogt & James H. Schmitz. (Died 1975.)
  • Born May 1, 1924 — Terry Southern. Screenwriter and author of greatest interest for the screenplay from Peter George’s original novel, Two Hours to Doom (as by Peter Bryant) of Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb directed (and in part written) by Stanley Kubrick. He was also involved in scripting Barbarella. (Died 1995.)
  • Born May 1, 1946 — Joanna Lumley, 73. No, she was no Emma Peel, but she was definitely more than a bit appealing in the New Avengers as Purdey. All twenty-six episode are out on DVD. Her next genre out was Sapphire & Steel whichstarred David McCallum as Steel and her as Sapphire. Skip forward nearly near twenty years and find her playing The Thirteenth Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death in Comic Relief special. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp_Fw5oDMao
  • Born May 1, 1948 — Terry Goodkind, 71. You obviously know he is. I’ve read some of the Sword of Truth series. It’s ok, but not really my cup of Earl Grey Tea Hot. Epic fantasy isn’t something that I really read a lot of to be honest preferring epic sf instead. 
  • Born May 1, 1952 — Andrew Sawyer, 67. Librarian by profession, critic and editor as well who an active part of fandom. He is the Reviews Editor for Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction. I’ve also got him doing Upon the Rack in Print, a book review column in Interzone and elsewhere and contributing likewise the Rust Never Sleeps column to Paperback Inferno as well. He hasn’t written much fiction, but there is some such as “The Mechanical Art” in the Digital Dreams anthology.
  • Born May 1, 1955 — J. R. Pournelle, 64. That’s as in Jennifer, the daughter of the Jerry we know. She’s here because she wrote Outies (Mote Series Book 3) which I confess she sent me a digital galley of years ago but I still need to take a look at. The first novel in the series is great. 
  • Born May 1, 1956 — Phil Foglio, 63. He won the Best Fan Artist Hugo Award in 1977 and 1978. He later did work for DC, First and Marvel Comics including the backup stories in Grimjack. He and his wife are responsible for the exemplary Girl Genius, a three-time Best Graphic Story Hugo winner.
  • Born May 1, 1957 — Steve Meretzky, 62. He co-designed the early Eighties version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy video game with the full participation of Douglas Adams. SF Encyclopedia notes that he did also a space opera themed game, Planetfall and its sequel A Mind Forever Voyaging in the Eighties as well. He also did the definitely more erotic Leather Goddesses of Phobos as well. 

(10) DC WOULDN’T HAVE NEEDED A SEQUEL. On CBR.com, Vivian Achieng thinks MCU characters are relatively wimpy and there are at least “25 DC Characters That Are More Powerful Than Thanos.”

When we talk about the MCU blockbuster, Avengers: Infinity War, we cannot fail but mention the wrecking ball that was Thanos, and his infinity gauntlet of course. For the very first time, earth’s mightiest heroes, The Avengers, look to have met their match. All their powers, tech and a snarky Star-Lord were not powerful enough to stop Thanos’ crusade to save the universe. Fingers crossed for Captain Marvel. The superheroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe can appear to be underpowered compared to other superheroes. This isn’t a knock on Captain America or Iron Man or the rest, but they don’t compare characters from other franchises. If characters from other universes happened to show up in Infinity War, we think the fight against Thanos would have ended a tad differently. In fact, some wouldn’t even need the support of the Avengers and could take the Mad Titan out all on their own.

Granted, Thanos is not an easy walk over. Without the Infinity Gauntlet, he is as strong or stronger than Thor with fair speed to match, he is pretty much indestructible, and has scientific knowledge greater than anyone on Earth, which in turn makes him a master strategist. He also has access to cosmic power which he can use to release blasts from his hands and eyes. With the Infinity Gauntlet, however, he can manipulate all of reality, time, space and the minds and souls of others. He looks pretty unbeatable, right? Wrong! Here is a list of 25 characters from Marvel’s arch enemies, DC, which can very well handle the threat that is Thanos….

(11) RIPLEY! BELIEVE IT OR NOT. “Sigourney Weaver surprises high school cast of Alien: The Play” – CNET has the story.

… “I’m so excited to be here,” Weaver told them. “I’m representing all the Alien fans from all over the universe … I think what you’re doing is so cool and so important.”

Another video shows one high school student yelling, “I love you, you’re my childhood hero! I can’t believe you’re here right now!” before hugging Weaver.

The whole play is online –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX3VaFG7AvU

(12) SFF IN TRANSLATION. Rachel Cordasco’s “Love in the New Millennium [Why This Book Should Win]” is one in a series of thirty-five posts about every title longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. 

Love in the New Millennium by Can Xue, translated from the Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (Yale University Press)

Love in the New Millennium is a work of operatic magical realism; a book with many layers, many shifting romantic relationships, and no clear plot. Like Frontier, one of Can Xue’s previous novels, Love invites us into the hazy, sometimes frustratingly-elusive worlds of a handful of characters, many of whom are desperately trying to find a “home.”…

(13) CHALLENGE FOR THE WIKIPEDIA. UnDark discusses “What a Deleted Profile Tells Us About Wikipedia’s Diversity Problem”

You’ve probably never heard of Clarice Phelps. If you were curious, you might enter her name into Google. And, if you had done so anytime between September of last year and February of this year, you would likely have found her Wikipedia entry. The nuclear scientist is thought to be the first African-American woman to help discover a chemical element; she was part of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory team that purified the radioactive sample of berkelium-249 from which the new element, tennessine, was created. But on February 11, 2019, in the middle of Black History Month and on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Phelps’s page was deleted. The optics, as they say, weren’t good.

The deletion came after a brief but intense dispute between Wikipedia contributors over whether Phelps met the site’s criteria for notability. Ordinarily, such editorial spats are considered a feature of the crowdsourced encyclopedia, not a bug. If one of the site’s hundreds of thousands of active contributors mistakenly or purposely adds incorrect information, the wisdom of the crowd will ensure that truth prevails.

But in the case of Phelps, the crowd made the wrong call, and the site’s rules facilitated that. The entire spectacle revealed just how much work remains to be done to address the systemic biases that disproportionately keep women and people of color out of Wikipedia’s pages.

(14) UNLIKELY STEPS. Scoffers can’t believe the discovery, or that military authorities tweeted about it — “‘Yeti footprints’: Indian army mocked over claim”.

The Indian army has claimed to have found footprints of the yeti, sparking jokes and disbelief on social media.

The army tweeted to its nearly six million followers on Monday that it had discovered “mysterious footprints of mythical beast ‘Yeti’ at the Makalu Base Camp [in the Himalayas]”.

(15) IT BITES. CNN’s AJ Willingham says “The ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ trailer is out and people are having visceral reactions to it”.

https://twitter.com/marrowing/status/1123225691900657664

People are weird about teeth, and always have been. According to dental researcher Rosemary Wells, ancient cultures had a variety of ways of dealing with baby teeth, as described in her essay “The Making of an Icon: The Tooth Fairy in North American Folklore and Popular Culture:”

(1) the tooth was thrown into the sun; (2) thrown into the fire; (3) thrown between the legs; (4) thrown onto or over the roof of the house, often with an invocation to some animal or individual; (5) placed in a mouse hole near the stove or hearth or offered to some other animal; (6) buried; (7) hidden where animals could not get it; (8) placed in a tree or on a wall; and (9) swallowed by the mother, child or animal.

That’s right, people have historically been so freaked out by teeth they used to THROW THEM INTO THE SUN. Dental anxiety is real! You can’t just stick a full set of veneers in any old cartoon character and expect people to not be traumatized!

(16) PTERRY WEEPS. Chip Hitchcock advises a trigger warning should accompany BBC’s video: “Leuser rainforest: Baby orangutans rescued from Indonesia’s pet trade”.

Baby orangutans on the island of Sumatra are being captured and sold as pets, but charities are working to rescue the animals and confront the owners.

(17) HIGH-PRICED COLLECTIBLE. “Star Wars Bib Fortuna toy prototype sells for £36k” – BBC has the story.

A prototype of a Star Wars toy has sold for £36,000 at auction.

The 1980s master model of Bib Fortuna, a male Twi’lek who lived on Tatooine, had an estimate of £12,000.

It sold at Thornaby-based Vectis Auctions along with prototypes of an ewok called Logray which fetched £12,000, and an Emperor’s royal guard which reached £28,800.

Auctioneer Kathy Taylor said the three “relatively unknown” characters had “beaten all expectations”.

They had been made in America by Kenner for the production of the toys in Europe by Palitoy, which was based in Coalville, Leicestershire.

…Ms Taylor said the master models are larger and more detailed than the final figures sold in toy shops.

(18) RESISTANCE. Season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale arrives June 5 on Hulu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcTvQx1Wot0

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