Tag Archives: Simultaneous Times

Pixel Scroll 5/15/25 A Pixel A Day, Keeps The AI Away

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(1) GREGORY BENFORD CONSERVATORSHIP ANNOUNCED. Joe Haldeman today published on Facebook an announcement and statement by James Benford: “Jim Benford asked me to post this:  Court Approves conservatorship of the Estate and Person of Gregory Benford”. In addition to some information about Gregory Benford’s health, it includes allegations and insinuations about people who have been close to Gregory since his stroke in 2022.

Richard Man tries to correct the characterization about one of those people in this Facebook post.

A number of well-known sff figures comment on the two posts.

(2) LACON V REVEALS FIRST SPECIAL GUEST. The 2026 Worldcon committee, LACon V, has announced Tracy Drain as the convention’s first Special Guest.

Tracy Drain is a flight systems engineer who has helped to develop, test, and operate a variety of robotic spacecraft for deep space exploration over the past 25+ years. Her passion for space grew from an early love of science fiction – she soaked up Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica, plus sci-fi and fantasy books by the armload. With her eye on a career in space, she studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky and interned at the NASA Langley Research Center. After earning a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, she landed a full-time position at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2000.

As a systems engineer, Tracy works with teams of engineers and scientists to ensure all the parts of a spacecraft (telecommunications, thermal, power, software, etc.), the science instruments, and the mission (spacecraft/instruments, ground data system, mission design and navigation, etc.) are designed to work well together to accomplish the mission goals. Her previous missions have included the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Kepler mission (an Exoplanet hunter), the Juno mission (orbiting Jupiter) and the Psyche mission (now on its way to study an asteroid). She is currently the Chief Engineer in operations for the Europa Clipper mission which successfully launched in October 2024 and is now on its 5.5-year cruise to Jupiter. After arrival in the Jovian system, Clipper will study Europa – one of the most scientifically exciting moons in our solar system!…

(3) LACON V OPENS PROGRAM PARTICIPANT INTEREST SURVEY. The Program Division for LAcon V, the 2026 Worldcon, will be co-managed by Helen Montgomery and Dr. Meg MacDonald. Montgomery chaired Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon. MacDonald was co-Division Head for Promotions for Glasgow 2024 – A Worldcon for Our Futures.

LAcon V has a Program Overview page.

Our Program Suggestion Form is for anyone who wishes to submit an idea for a program item. This can be a panel discussion you want to see, a workshop you want someone to run, a discussion group about your favorite book or movie franchise – maybe you just have a cool panel title, or perhaps a fully formed description of a panel but no title. It’s all okay to submit! No idea is too big or too small; we want to hear them all!

And then there’s our Program Participant Interest survey, which is for anyone who is interested in being a program participant, be it on site in Anaheim or online through our virtual offerings. We expect and need hundreds of program participants. Some may be professionals in their field; others may be hobbyists or fans. No matter what, we want to know more about you! Filling out the form does not guarantee that you will be accepted as a participant, but it is the first necessary step in the process, and we’re excited to hear from you.

(4) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books has released Simultaneous Times podcast episode 87 with KC Grifant & Franco Amati.

Stories featured in this episode:

  • “Negation” by KC Grifant; music by Phog Masheeen; read by the Jenna Hanchey
  • “So I Guess I’m Not an Actual Person Anymore” by Franco Amati; music by Phog Masheeen; read by Jean-Paul Garnier

Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

(5) GENRE GRAPEVINE ON SEATTLE WORLDCON. Jason Sanford presents “Genre Grapevine’s Deep Dive into the Use of ChatGPT by Seattle Worldcon”, a public post on Patreon.

….It appears Worldcon leadership only learned that ChatGPT was used in this manner after the fact, when the person on the vetting team revealed what they’d done and said that there was no other way to complete the vetting with so few volunteers on the team. While Worldcon leadership had concerns about the use of generative AI, because ChatGPT had already been used – and because of the lack of needed volunteers on the vetting team – they decided to retroactively accept its use.

What came after is now well known: Word about the use of ChatGPT quickly spread among Worldcon volunteers and the larger genre community. 

I’m told the person on the vetting team who originally decided to use ChatGPT is no longer involved in the vetting process….

Unfortunately, none of the quoted sources was willing to go on the record as a source.

(6) DAVE RATTI OBITUARY. [By Becky Veal.] David Ratti, long time Orlando fan, passed away on May 15, 2025. He had been suffering prolonged illnesses, but the cause of death is initially listed as pneumonia and sepsis.

I don’t know when Dave first got into fandom, but I met him at Necronomicon in 1983. I was pushing my infant son Sean in a stroller when someone came up to me and tried to start a conversation. I remember thinking “another fat jerk“.  And thus I met my best friend of 40 years.

Dave was a founding member of the Orlando Science Fiction Society and the convention Oasis. We worked together editing the bid progress reports for the 1992 Orlando Worldcon, MagiCon. We ran more convention offices and other departments than I can count.

I will write a better obituary later, as I’m sure others will. I’m too exhausted with grief to do more. Dave was unique and special and wonderful in his own way. There will be many tears shed by many fans and friends, including myself.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Liō series (2006)

Nineteen years ago on this date, one of the most unusual strips to come into existence did so in the form of Mark Tatulli’s Liō. It was very easy to market globally as it had almost no dialogue except that spoken by other people in the parodies that I’ll mention in a minute as Liō and the other characters don’t speak at all, and there were no balloons or captions at all giving it a global appeal. 

Liō, who lives with his father and various monsters, i.e. Ishmael a giant squid and Fido a spider, various animals like Cybil a white cat (of course there’s a cat here, a very pushy feline indeed), aliens, lab creations, and even Liō’s hunchbacked assistant.  Why there’s even Archie, Liō’s psychopathic ventriloquist’s dummy. Liō’s mother is deceased. Though why she’s deceased is never stated. Definitely not your nuclear family here.

An important aspect of the strip is that it  will riff off other strips, and lots of them: Blondie, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes (my favorite strip ever), Cathy, Garfield, Opus, Peanuts, even Pearls Before Swine (definitely not one of my favorite strips I will readily admit) will become fodder for parody by this strip. That’s where the only dialogue is spoken. 

Tatulli on the Mr. Media podcast back a decade or so said “It’s really a basic concept. It’s just Liō who lives with his father, and that’s basically it, and whatever I come up with. I set no parameters because I didn’t want to lock myself in. I mean, having no dialogue means that there is going to be no dialogue-driven gags, so I have to leave myself as open as possible to any kind of thing, so anything basically can happen.” 

There a transcript of that podcast here as the audio quality of that interview is, as the interviewer admits, rather awful. He says that he got better after that first interview by him. 

In multiple interviews, Tatulli has said the two major contemporary influences on his style are Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams.

It’s good at offending people as this strip demonstrates.

Currently, the strip runs daily globally in more than two hundred and fifty papers. Lio is also available in collections, many of them, found in paperback and digital formats. They display rather well on an iPad. 

(8) MORE MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 15, 2015 — Mad Max: Fury Road

By Paul Weimer: I briefly mentioned Mad Max Fury Road in my recent retrospective of George Miller, but the movie deserves a bit of its own space as well. 

It came out in 2015. Thirty years after the previous entry, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I had figured that the franchise had had its end. The creation of Fury Road was a delight, and, 30 years after seeing the last Mad Max movie in a theater, I vowed to see this one, too. And so I did, one fine afternoon in May. 

I was blown away. Tom Hardy makes an excellent Mad Max, taking up Gibson’s old mantle. But the thing that struck me immediately is how little he is a part of his own movie. This is a movie about a community, and about an Imperator (Charlize Theron) and a struggle against patriarchal tyranny. Max is only a piece of his own titular film…and yet it works. What I remember about this film isn’t Max so much as Immortan Joe, and his Boys. And Furiosa. And the War Rig.

And the spectacle. Seeing this on a movie theater screen was revelatory. The scale and size of the movie, especially in the “dust storm” sequence, astonished me. My jaw hit the floor when we got to that sequence. And then we get the musician on the attacking vehicle, and a fantastic action sequence. We get moments of intimacy, and care. And utter tragedy, when Furiosa realizes her paradisiacal home is gone forever. The fiercely anti-patriarchal nature of the script.  “We are not things!”

It won six academy awards, and was also up but did not win Best Picture and Best Director. Entirely deserving, Mad Max Fury Road felt (until the recent movie Furiosa) as a capstone to the world of Mad Max. In a way, I feel like it is the one essential Mad Max movie because, as noted above, Mad Max is almost a walk-on in his own titular movie. The movie is much bigger, bolder and larger for not having Max front and center, and possibly why it is so successful. It’s the one essential Mad Max movie. It takes every theme of the previous films, adds new ones and puts it all together in a stunning performance all around.

And the Black and White conversion is fantastic.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) KGB. Ellen Datlow shared her photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB readings for May 14, 2025.

Carol Gyzander and Daryl Gregory read from recent work to a full house, despite the dreary weather.

(11) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 134 of the Octothorpe podcast, “In the Framework of Linear Time”, they “discuss the recent Seattle 2025 controversy, and also read out some letters of comment from various listeners, before getting into the real meat of the podcast: roguelikes.” An uncorrected transcript is here.

A photograph of a yellow square on a mantlepiece. On the yellow square is black text and a red shape with yellow text. The text reads “Corflu 42. 2025 FAAn Awards. Best Immutable Object: Octothorpe”. Text overlaid on the photograph reads ‘Octothorpe 134. “Don’t believe everything you read on ChatGPT.”’

(12) LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS. JustWatch gives reasons to watch “Love, Death + Robots – streaming tv show online”.

JustWatch’s latest Why-To-Watch feature spotlights acclaimed director and animator Tim Miller, the visionary behind Netflix’s genre-defying anthology Love, Death + Robots, which premieres its fourth season today (May 15, 2025). In an exclusive quote shared with JustWatch, Miller speaks to the show’s groundbreaking creative freedom and its potential to convert even the most hesitant viewer into an animation devotee.

The show’s Director Tim Miller says:

This show will make you an animation fan

There’s something for everyone [in “Love, Death + Robots”]. If you want to see artists performing at the top of their game across a variety of genres and styles, and you’re an animation fan, it’s a must-watch. If you’re not an animation fan, this is the show that might make you one.

(13) V’GER LIVES! [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Engineers at NASA say they have successfully revived thrusters aboard Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from our planet, in the nick of time before a planned communications blackout. “Voyager 1: Once ‘dead’ thrusters on the farthest spacecraft from Earth are in action again” at CNN.

Engineers at NASA say they have successfully revived thrusters aboard Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from our planet, in the nick of time before a planned communications blackout.

A side effect of upgrades to an Earth-based antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, the communications pause could have occurred when the probe faced a critical issue — thruster failure — leaving the space agency without a way to save the historic mission. The new fix to the vehicle’s original roll thrusters, out of action since 2004, could help keep the veteran spacecraft operating until it’s able to contact home again next year.

Voyager 1, launched in September 1977, uses more than one set of thrusters to function properly. Primary thrusters carefully orient the spacecraft so it can keep its antenna pointed at Earth. This ensures that the probe can send back data it collects from its unique perspective 15.5 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space, as well as receive commands sent by the Voyager team.

(14) THE KIDS HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT TEKWAR. [Item by N.] Majuular discusses “William Shatner’s TekWar: A Forgotten Franchise in Retrospect”.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, N., Becky Veal, John Coxon, Steven H Silver, Lis Carey, 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 Peer.]

Pixel Scroll 4/15/25 The Goldendoodle At Starbow’s End

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(1) UNFAIR USE. Charlie Stross told Bluesky followers that Sam Freedman’s Guardian article linked here yesterday – “The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world?” – is a case of “recycling an article of mine from 2023 without attribution” – “We’re sorry we created the Torment Nexus”.

(2) MAY THE FOURTH BID WITH YOU. “Heritage Auctions Announces ‘Star Wars Day’ Auction” and Animation World Network explains it all to you.

Heritage Auctions has launched the “May 4 Star Wars Day Entertainment Signature Auction,” which will feature over 300 lots ranging from original Star Wars movie posters to screen-used props, high-end replicas, toys, comics, and artwork. The event will conclude with a live session on May 4.

Leading the fleet is the Star Wars Sears Exclusive Set of 12 Carded Figures, the only graded example in existence. Also up for grabs is the Star Wars Sears Exclusive Set of 9 Carded Figures, which includes the highly coveted Boba Fett. These sets, authenticated by industry expert Tom Derby and AFA, are expected to surpass six figures at auction.

“These sets represent a pivotal moment in cinematic history and were among the earliest opportunities fans had to bring the Star Wars universe into their home,” said Justin Caravoulias, Heritage’s Consignment Director of Action Figures and Toys. “Finding them in such incredible condition is exceptionally rare, and the opportunity to win treasures like these on May 4 makes this auction even more special.”

Additionally, the auction features 20 pieces of original artwork from the early days of Lucas Film, including signed Star Wars Droids C-3PO Original Line Art by Alice Carter. John Alvin’s original concept paintings for the unreleased Star Wars Concert Series poster, Greg Hildebrandt’s striking portrait of Darth Vader’s funeral pyre mask, and Olivia De Berardinis’ Grogu painting are also available….

(3) SEEKING AFROSURREALISM. Gautam Bhatia has put out a submissions call for the Strange Horizons – Afrosurrealism Special Issue. Full details at the link.

…Welcome to the Afrosurrealist Special Issue, where the boundaries between the real and the unreal blur, where reality bends, time fractures, and the living and the dead exist side by side. Afrosurrealism has long given shape to our struggles, our power, and our dreams. This special issue seeks to bring those visions to life through stories that cut deep—tales that unsettle, haunt, and liberate….

For this special issue, we are looking for:

  • Worlds that slip between the mundane and the uncanny, the ghostly and the futuristic.
  • Worlds rich with history and spirit striving to manifest—whether set in the past, present, or futures unknown.
  • Tales of hauntings, doppelgängers, liminal spaces, memories, and places that don’t stay put.
  • Give us your tales of portals that lead to nowhere, of cities that rearrange themselves overnight, of people becoming someone—or something—else.
  • Narratives that challenge traditional structures and defy linear storytelling.
  • Works that experiment with or reimagine genres like sword & soul, jujuism, cyberfunk, or Black gothic horror.
  • Visions of power, freedom, and transformation shaped by the Black experience where Blackness itself is a force that bends time, space, and destiny.

Send us your myths. Your nightmares. Your dreams wrapped in ancestral magics and spirit.

The editors for the AfroSurrealism Special invite you to submit fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

We welcome writers who are new and experienced. The submissions call is open to writers of African descent ONLY, whether based in the diaspora or in Africa….

(4) FUNNY BUSINESS. Ira Nayman recommends “Taking Humor Writing Seriously” at the SFWA Blog.

…What makes you laugh? What tries to make you laugh and fails? How do they both work, and why does one succeed where the other doesn’t? As you grow as a comic writer, you’ll start to combine in new ways what you loved in previous works, shaping those devices into something uniquely your own.

Some writers are uncomfortable with this analytical approach. They should embrace it. I once took a course in the Social and Political Aspects of Humor. One of the first things the professor said on the first day of lectures was: “You may be under the impression that analyzing humor will kill it. Most of the students who have taken the course have found that to be untrue.” I couldn’t agree more. If anything, I found my appreciation for well-written humor increased the more I analyzed it. 

This analytical approach is especially helpful when it comes to comic dialogue. Record a conversation, then compare how real people speak to how characters in comedies speak. (Spoiler: They’re very different.) In fact, great comic dialogue is like music: Not only does it have a rhythm that can be timed with a metronome, but it usually contains motifs that it repeatedly comes back to. Listen to “Who’s on First?” by Abbott and Costello, “The Argument Clinic” by Monty Python, and “Why a Duck?” by the Marx Brothers. Note, as well, how pauses can be employed as both a comic element in themselves and to allow the audience room to laugh.

Craft can and must be learned. What you do with that craft, the stories you choose to tell, and the way you choose to tell them is the art you have to provide yourself….

(5) WHO HISTORY. Last night’s BBC Radio 4 arts programme Front Row has an item (one third of the show) on Doctor Who, which we linked to in yesterday’s Scroll. But we didn’t mention it also covered the launch of a new non-fiction book on Doctor Who, Exterminate, Regenerate.  

On screen, Doctor Who is a story of monsters, imagination and mind-expanding adventure. But the off-screen story is equally extraordinary – a tale of failed monks, war heroes, 1960s polyamory and self-sabotaging broadcasting executives. From the politics of fandom to the inner struggles of the BBC, thousands of people have given part of themselves – and sometimes, too much of themselves – to bring this unlikeliest of folk heroes to life.

This is a story of change, mystery and the importance of imaginary characters in our lives. Able to evolve and adapt more radically than any other fiction, Doctor Who has acted as a mirror to more than six decades of social, technological and cultural change while always remaining a central fixture of the British imagination. In Exterminate / Regenerate, John Higgs invites us into his TARDIS on a journey to discover how ideas emerge and survive despite the odds, why we are so addicted to fiction, and why this wonderful wandering time traveller means so much to so many.

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA has released Simultaneous Times episode 86 with Thomas Broderick & Jenna Hanchey. Simultaneous Times is a monthly science fiction podcast.

Stories featured in this episode:

“A Love Story” by Thomas Broderick. Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the Jean-Paul Garnier

“A Locked Box, Bound with Chains, Buried Six Feet Deep” by Jenna Hanchey. Music by TSG. Read by the author

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(7) SHINICHIRO WATANABE Q&A. “The Creator of ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Thinks Reality Is More Dystopian Than Sci-Fi” – interview in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

Shinichiro Watanabe’s first anime, “Cowboy Bebop,” was quite an opening act. A story of space bounty hunters trying to scrape by, its genre mash-up of westerns, science fiction and noir, with a jazzy soundtrack, was a critical and commercial success in Japan and beyond. Its American debut on Adult Swim, in 2001, is now considered a milestone in the popularization of anime in the United States.

Not one to repeat himself, Watanabe followed up “Bebop” with a story about samurai and hip-hop (“Samurai Champloo,” 2004); a coming-of-age story about jazz musicians (“Kids on the Slope,” 2012); a mystery thriller about teenage terrorists (“Terror in Resonance,” 2014); an animated “Blade Runner” sequel (“Blade Runner Black Out 2022,” 2017); and a sci-fi musical show about two girls on Mars (“Carole & Tuesday,” 2019).

Now, he has returned to the kind of sci-fi action that made his name with “Lazarus,” streaming on Max and airing on Adult Swim, with new episodes arriving on Sundays. The show is set in 2055, after the disappearance of a doctor who discovered a miracle drug that has no side effects. Three years later, the doctor resurfaces with an announcement: The drug had a three-year half-life, and everyone who took it will die in 30 days unless someone finds him and the cure he developed….

Unlike your previous sci-fi projects, “Lazarus” takes place not on a distant planet or far into the future, but in our world just 30 years from now. Why was that important?

In the past, I would look at other works of fiction and get inspired by them. But this time, just watching the news and taking a look at the world, things happening right now seem more dramatic and kind of crazier than fiction. Because I was inspired by events going on in the real world, putting it too far into the future would lose that touch of reality….

The anime starts with a doomsday clock saying there are 30 days until most of humanity dies, and yet we see businesses going on like normal, talk shows interviewing artists, and more. Why did you contrast the urgency of the story with scenes like these?

That was inspired by reality and experiencing the Covid pandemic. Not everyone was acting the same way. There were people who didn’t believe in it, and there were people who didn’t wear masks. I thought the anime would be more grounded in reality if I made it so we had different reactions from the characters….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Small Change trilogy

Doing alternate history right is always hard work, but Jo Walton’s the Small Change books consisting of Farthing, Ha’penny and Half a Crown get it perfectly spot on. They’re set in a Britain that settled for an uneasy peace with Hitler’s Germany, and they are mysteries, one of my favorite genres. And these are among my all-time favorite mysteries of this niche which includes Len Deighton’s SS-GB. and C. J. Sansom’s Dominion. 

I am not going to discuss these novels in any way what so ever. Not going to do it. It’s really going to spoil it for any of you’ll who decide to read them which you really should. I can reveal that the first is a classic British manor house murder mystery complete with the proper centuries old family. Really well-crafted manor house mystery.

The audiobooks are fascinating, there being shifting narrators with Peter Carmichael whose presence is to be found in all three novels is voiced by John Keating, and Bianco Amato voicing David Kahn’s wife in Farthing, but Viola Lark being played by Heather O’Neil in Ha’penny and yet a third female narrator, Elvira, is brought to life by Terry Donnelly in Half a Crown. 

Now I’m fascinated by what awards they won (and didn’t) and what they got nominated for. It would win but one award, the Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel for Ha’Penny which is I find  a bit odd indeed given there’s nothing libertarian about that novel. 

Now Half a Crown wracked an impressive number of nominations: the Sidewise Award for Best Long Form Alternate History, Locus for Best SF Novel, Sunburst award for a Canadian novel, and this time deservedly so given the themes of the final novel a Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel.

Farthing had picked up nominations for a Sidewise, a Nebula, Campbell Memorial, Quill whereas Ha’Penny only picked a Sidewise and Lambda.

Not a single Hugo nomination which really, really surprised me. 

There is one short story set in this series, “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” which you can read in her Starlings collection that Tachyon published. It is in a fantastic collection of her stories, poems and cool stuff! 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) WE’LL MEET AGAIN, DON’T KNOW WHERE, DON’T KNOW WHEN. “‘Big Bang’ Universe Collides As Simon Helberg & Raegan Revord Join Melissa Rauch On NBC’s ‘Night Court’” at Deadline.

NBC‘s Night Court has set up a colliding of the “Big Bang” Universe as Simon Helberg (Big Bang Theory, Poker Face) and Raegan Revord (Young Sheldon) are set to guest star in the Season 3 finale airing May 6 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Night Court star and executive producer Melissa Rauch played Helberg’s wife on the CBS smash The Big Bang Theory, created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. Although who Helberg will play in the season finale is under wraps, his character is set for a game-changing cameo that could really shake things up for Abby (Rauch).

Revord will play Shelby, a teenage runaway inclined to marry her soulmate, in an homage to the Michael J. Fox episode from the original series.

Fox appeared in the second episode of the original series titled “Santa Goes Downtown,” which aired on January 11, 1984, in the role of Eddie Simms. Eddie and his girlfriend Mary (Olivia Barash) are runaway teens determined to get married, who end up in night court on shoplifting charges. The pair meet a mysterious man who claims he’s Santa Claus, or at least that’s who he claims to be, altering their lives forever. When Fox shot the guest appearance, he was a series regular on the NBC sitcom Family Ties, a few years before he would break out as Marty McFly in Back to the Future.

Additionally, Marsha Warfield will return in her iconic role as Roz from the original series. Other guest stars include Michael Urie and Ryan Hansen….

(11) UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Turning space from vacuum to vapidity, by one of my favorite columnists. “What’s more vacuous than an endless vacuum? It’s Lauren Sánchez and Katy Perry’s party in space” by Marina Hyde in the Guardian.

… In truth, how the women looked had been an overwhelming part of the buildup, and by their own design. In an Elle magazine joint interview with the passengers, Lauren showed off the hot space suits she’d personally commissioned, inquiring rhetorically: “Who would not get glam before the flight?” “Space is going to finally be glam,” agreed Perry. “Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.” A former Nasa rocket scientist said: “I also wanted to test out my hair and make sure that it was OK. So I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good – took it for a dry run.” Still want more? Because there was SO much of it. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule!” explained Lauren. “I think it’s so important for people to see us like that,” explained a civil rights activist. “This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.”

Ooof. I always thought space travel was futuristic, but this was the first time it came off as travelling back in time, in this case using their little capsule to take us back to the most ludicrous inanities of 2010s girlboss feminism….

(12) SPLISH-SPLASH. The New York Times meets “The Techno-Utopians Who Want to Colonize the Sea”. (Article behind a paywall.)

…His 304-square-foot habitat was inside the underwater buoyancy chamber that helps stabilize a floating home called SeaPod Alpha Deep. An armed security guard was in the above-water part of the structure, monitoring Koch and ensuring that the pod did not have “any visitors that we don’t want.” When my boat arrived, he threw down a cable and winched me up. Then I made my way down a 63-step spiral staircase to the circular lower chamber — a dizzying process, as the SeaPod rocked in the loudly sloshing sea. I was greeted by a beaming Koch, a bald 59-year-old German engineer with a whitened beard and a Buddha belly.

He gave me a tour, pointing to a school of sardines outside a porthole. The quarters came equipped with a bed, an exercise bike, Starlink internet and a dry toilet. A digital clock on the wall was counting down toward his 120-day goal. (The previous record was 100 days, set in 2023 by Joseph Dituri at Jules’ Undersea Lodge, off the coast of Key Largo, Fla.) “I’ve enjoyed the time, actually,” Koch said in his heavy German accent, his face greenish-blue from the light pouring in. “This is what people get completely wrong. They think that I feel like a prisoner, and I’m putting marks on the wall. My food is excellent, my booze is excellent.” A person came by to clean daily.

Koch arrived here, in small part, via a San Francisco-based nonprofit called the Seasteading Institute, which promotes “living on environmentally restorative floating islands with some degree of political autonomy.” The vision, as the Institute’s president, the “seavangelist” Joe Quirk, once told Guernica, is “startup societies where people could form whatever kind of community they wanted” — a libertarian-inflected world where, it is said, you could “vote with your boat,” relocating to a community in line with your views….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 3/15/25 I Wish I Could Pixel Like My Captain Kate (Janeway)

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(1) WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT A HOBBIT HOLE HERE. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog has posted to Bluesky a spin on the “Omelas” tale in the voice of you-know-who. Stunningly on point. Fourteen posts long. The first one is here.

OK. My quick attempt at "My Omelas, Right Or Wrong."1/XLet me tell you about this incredible place, Omelas. It’s huge, folks, absolutely beautiful. Everybody’s happy. Everybody’s winning. The economy, it's fantastic, the best economy anyone’s ever seen, believe me.

— An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog (@hugobookclub.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T16:54:55.838Z

(2) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES IS SEVEN. Space Cowboy Books today launched the 7-year anniversary episode of the Simultaneous Times podcast. This episode is a collaboration with Apex Magazine.

Simultaneous Times 7 Year Anniversary Episode

Featuring stories from the pages of Apex Magazine.

  • “Then Came the Ghost of My Dead Mother, Antikleia” by Nadia Radovich. With music by Doctor Auxiliary. Read by Jenna Hanchey
  • “What Happens When a Planet Falls From the Sky?” by Danny Cherry, Jr. With music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the Jean-Paul Garnier & Jenna Hanchey

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(3) SPECIAL ACCESS TO NATURE FUTURES STORY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted the first of its four “Best of Nature Futures” short stories of the year. Because it is behind a paywall, non-Nature subscribers can’t access the original weekly stories. Fortunately SF² Concatenation has an agreement with Nature and the permission of respective writers to re-post four a year. The story “Cosmic Rentals” by Dave Kavanaugh concerns a rental store where you can literally hire “universes”… What’s not to like? …And if you scroll down below the story you will get the author’s ‘story behind the story’. You access it here.

(4) WHAT YOU WON’T SEE ON THE BALLOT. The Ursa Major Awards, the annual anthropomorphic literature and arts award, will shortly release their 2024 finalists and open public voting. But the administrators have decided to announce some rulings on the prospective nominees ahead of time.

We are about to present the list of nominees for 2024 and will open up voting soon. However, we thought it was best to first present a list of special considerations for a select few entries we have received this year.

In the Best Anthropomorphic Game category, Atlyss did receive enough nominations to place in the top 5, but because Atlyss has only been released as an “early access” title, it has been disqualified from the 2024 list.

In the Fursuit category, only one qualifying entry was given more than a single vote, therefore we felt it best to drop the category for 2024, as has been done in the past.

In the Best Anthropomorphic Music category, an album titled “Where Will the Animals Sleep” would have been in the top 5 nominations. However, as neither the content nor the author is anthropomorphic / furry, it has been disqualified.

(5) FEAR FACTOR. “Snow White Premiere: Dwarf Actor Responds to Rachel Zegler Movie Pivot” in The Hollywood Reporter.

One performer from Disney‘s new Snow White is sharing his thoughts amid the debate surrounding the launch for the live-action movie.

Martin Klebba — who has appeared in two previous versions of Snow White, including the 2012 feature Mirror Mirror that stars Julia Roberts and Lily Collins — provides the voice of Grumpy in the new movie and also serves as an advisor for the miner characters. Klebba tells The Hollywood Reporter that the recent controversy surrounding Snow White, which has led to the film’s Saturday premiere not inviting press onto the red carpet, has meant a less exciting celebration for those involved in the project that stars Rachel Zegler as the title character and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen.

“It really isn’t going to be a red carpet,” says Klebba, who emphasizes that he is very proud of the movie and cannot wait for audiences to see it. “It’s going to be at the El Capitan [Theatre], which is cool. But it’s basically going to be a pre-party, watch the movie, and that’s it. There’s not going to be this whole hoopla of, ‘Disney’s first fucking movie they ever made.’ Because of all this controversy, they’re afraid of the blowback from different people in society.”

Klebba says that the premiere changes were due to “the controversy with Rachel” but clarifies that he had not been given direct information on why the event was altered. Zegler is known as an outspoken star who suggested in 2022 that she was not a fan of the original 1937 animated classic due to outdated plot points. Additionally, after President Donald Trump was elected in November, Zegler posted comments to social media that were critical of his victory before later apologizing….

(6) FREAKIER FRIDAY. They’re afraid, too, apparently. “Freakier Friday Teaser Trailer”. Movie in theaters August 8.

(7) DO FANNISH VALUES WORK IN SCALED-UP CONVENTIONS? Patch O’Furr analyzes the issues of “How to love the freedom of leaderless fandom, and fight the flipside of organized abuse” for furry fans at Dogpatch Press.

Do you know the story where several blind people try to describe an elephant by only touching small parts of it? Nobody can say what the whole animal is.

That happens when furry subculture talks about itself, and protests outside stereotypes by falling into its own… The Geek Social Fallacies….

…That’s the natural downside of the old-school fan values, but things were more personal when groups were smaller scale. They would put up with a few jerks because it was harder to kick them out and sustain groups. Now add decades of growth, and much bigger scale of members who don’t know each other. (Dunbar’s Number names a finite limit on how many relationships your brain can handle.) Put the problem on steroids with internet platforms we don’t own. It’s not YOU, it’s MATH….

…The math of escalating abuse

Rapid and unplanned growth of furry subculture has many unforeseeable effects. Straining the limits of conventions is one covered on Soatok’s furry cybersecurity blog: Furries Are Losing the Battle Against Scale. Convention attendance is doubling every few years and “the furry community is growing at a break-neck exponential speed.”

Security suffers without top-down management at impersonal scale, especially when the more we depend on net platforms, the more problems we have by policy. Social media is built to shift liability for moderation from owners to users. It’s their business model to be unaccountable! The point is to eliminate the cost of the editor/gatekeeper/mod layer by automating the labor and letting volunteers and peers fill in.

Peer moderation may feel like personal control, but meanwhile, bad actors can game the system with off-site advantage. Moderators may respond to simple individual incidents on-site, but can’t even see complex cross-platform abuse. That’s how responses can be weak, scattered, inconsistent, and lack resources for scale, no matter how much their hearts are in it.

If you can’t see abuse, it festers. Think of church scandals where abuser priests were shifted around from church to church. We have that too, but there’s no orders from the top. It’s from being nobody’s job. A long-time creep can use a newly minted fursona to jump from group to group, when it’s easy to change accounts and delete evidence, but an uphill battle to track them or get consequences. Different process, same outcome….

(8) REMEMBERING A CLASSIC HORROR AUTHOR. “Lisa Morton Discusses Dennis Etchison” in an installment of the Horror Writers Association’s blog series “Nuts & Bolts”.

Lisa Morton describes Dennis Etchison’s work as a “brain bombshell” that changed her idea of what horror fiction could do. When she was just starting out, Etchison had a major influence on both her art and her career. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Lisa discusses Etchison’s writing technique, his influence on her own work, and what writers today can learn from the late horror legend.

Q: Can you tell us a little about Dennis Etchison and his contributions to the horror genre?

A: To me, Dennis is one of the absolute greatest craftsmen of the horror short story. His short story collection The Dark Country came out in 1982, when most of the genre was split between Stephen King’s suburban, East Coast horror on one hand and the glorious excesses of the splatterpunks on the other, and his work fit into neither camp. It was completely unique and was the first time I’d read horror set mostly in my hometown of Los Angeles; it’s not an exaggeration to say that it made me think I might be able to write horror fiction. My all-time favorite short story is his 1993 masterpiece The Dog Park, which is one of those works of fiction that’s like a magic trick — it really gets under your skin and you’re not sure how it was done. Although I also like several of his novels, especially California Gothic, his short fiction is what I think will be remembered….

Guillermo Del Toro, Peter Atkins and Dennis Etchison in back of Mystery & Imagination Bookshop in 2013.

(9) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted photos on Flickr of the “Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series March 12, 2025” gathering where Victoria Dalpe and Jedediah Berry read from their work to a very full house.

(10) LACON V HOLDING ANAHEIM MEETING. LAcon V, the 2026 Worldcon committee, told Facebook readers how to ask to attend their meeting next weekend.

LAcon V is hosting an in-person meeting on March 22nd and 23rd at the Anaheim Hilton.

This is a good opportunity to meet some of our leadership, learn more about the convention, and possibly become part of the LAcon V team!

If you are interested in participating, and plan to be in the Anaheim area, please email us at info(at)lacon.org for further details.

(11) T. JACKSON KING (1948-2025). Author and archeologist Thomas Jackson King, Jr. died December 3, 2024. SFWA’s tribute “In Memoriam: T. Jackson King” notes he was “a prolific writer of science-fiction, horror, and urban fantasy, and an award-winning journalist. He wrote articles for The SFWA Bulletin and SFWA Handbook, and served as the SFWA Election Committee Chair.” 

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

The Girl with Something Extra series (1976)

Networks in the Sixties liked young actresses. They were either sexy, or they were cute. So let’s talk about the lead of The Girl with Something Extra series that debuted forty-nine years ago. 

That lead actress was Sally Field which tells you how deep the story was intended to be. She was a wife who had ESP, and her husband played by John Davidson never quite understood her. It was intended to be cute, really, really cute with her giving it that cuteness. 

There was other cast, but really who cared? Not the studio. It was intended to be just a vehicle for these two to be a couple as this critic noted “The plot for The Girl With Something Extra TV show immediately brings to mind another show that ended in March of 1972 after a whopping eight seasons on the air! That series of course was “Bewitched” which also featured a young newlywed couple with the wife having super-human powers that caused many problems for her and her husband.” 

The audience apparently didn’t grasp its charms, and it was canceled after one season of twenty-two half hour episodes. 

So the Apple search engine says it’s not streaming anywhere. The Flying Nun is streaming on, errr, Tubi. Any of y’all ever subscribe to that service? 

Lancer Books published a tie-in novel by Paul Farman, The Girl With Something Extra. 

I see multiple signed scripts is for sale on eBay. Press photos too. Like the one below. Aren’t they cute? Well, aren’t they?

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) DWAYNE MCDUFFIE AWARD TAKING ENTRIES. Comics Beat announced that the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is accepting submissions. “Mark Waid joins 10th annual Dwayne McDuffie Award selection committee”.

…As in previous years, the event will name one winner from five honored finalists, whose work resembles a commitment to excellence and inclusion on and off the page, much like the late Mr. McDuffie’s own efforts to produce entertainment that was representative of and created by a wide scope of human experience. Moreover, prolific comic creator Mark Waid has joined joined the selection committee which includes The Beat‘s own Heidi MacDonald, and other notable comics industry figures.

The 10th annual “Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics” is now accepting submissions at https://dwaynemcduffie.com/dmad/. The deadline is May 1, 2025 for comics published during the 2024 calendar year.

New York Times best-selling author, Mark Waid, joins a selection committee of notable comic book professionals led by industry legend, Marv Wolfman. This prestigious prize has grown exponentially in esteem since it was established in 2015 in honor of Dwayne McDuffie (1962-2011), the legendary African-American comic book writer/editor and writer/producer of the animated Static Shock, Justice League, and Ben 10: Alien Force/Ultimate Alien, who famously co-founded Milestone Media, the most successful minority-owned comic book company in the history of the industry.

The slogan for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is Mr. McDuffie’s own profound saying:

“From invisible to inevitable.”

Prolific writer/creator, Mark Waid, is “proud to be part of the DMADs”:

“As a medium and as a community—even removing from consideration the onslaught of bigotry and intolerance sweeping the U.S. as we speak—the world of comics has a responsibility to recognize, promote, and honor comics that not only employ great storytelling but are emblematic of the power of equality and inclusion. As creators, good work from anyone forces us to up our game. As readers, we’re all better off—and more entertained and educated—when we’re exposed to the widest possible variety of voices and viewpoints.”…

(15) AVENGERS ACADEMY. Anthony Oliveira, Carola Borelli and Bailie Rosenlund’s Avengers Academy Infinity Comic series on Marvel Unlimited comes to print for the first time this June.

Since launching last year, Marvel Unlimited’s hit AVENGERS ACADEMY Infinity Comic series by rising star Anthony Oliveira and visionary artists Carola Borelli and Bailie Rosenlund has become an online phenomenon, gaining a devoted fanbase who tune in each week to experience the adventures of Marvel’s most promising young heroes! This June, the acclaimed series comes to your local comic shop in AVENGERS ACADEMY: ASSEMBLE #1, a new one-shot collecting the first six issues in print for the first time!

From the X-Men to the symbiote hivemind, this eclectic group assembles fan-favorite characters from every corner of the Marvel Universe, including new sensations like Kid Juggernaut. Discover their journey to become tomorrow’s Mightiest Heroes in this masterful blend of teen drama and super hero adventure!

SCHOOL’S IN SESSION!

Welcome to Avengers Academy! Seeking to guide the next generation of super heroes, Captain Marvel recruits a misfit team of super-powered teens: CAPTAIN AMERICA OF THE RAILWAYS, BLOODLINE, ESCAPADE, MOON GIRL, RED GOBLIN, and new hero on the block, KID JUGGERNAUT! But classes are the least of their concerns as they fend off super-villain attacks, make new friends – and new foes – and learn what it really means to be Earth’s mightiest heroes. Featuring the first appearance of an all-new SINISTER SIX, this is one book you don’t want to miss!

Check out the all-new cover by Stephen Byrne and preorder Avengers Academy: Assemble #1 at your local comic shop today! For more information, visit Marvel.com.

(16) FARADAY UNCAGED. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Why do we have a lot of electricity? Faraday. I think a lot of us know who Faraday was, but this is a lovely, loving article. “Unearthed notebooks shed light on Victorian genius who inspired Einstein” in the Guardian.

…When a lab assistant at the Institution got into a brawl and was fired in February 1813, Davy remembered the 22-year-old Faraday and offered him the job – which involved taking a pay cut, but gave the young man access to the laboratory, free coal, candles and two attic rooms.

Faraday later gave an account of this job offer: “At the same time that he [Davy] gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he advised me to remain a bookbinder, telling me that Science was a harsh mistress… poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service.”

Despite Davy’s advice, Faraday accepted the job. It was a decision that would prove to be seminal for science. Over the next 55 years, while working for the Royal Institution, Faraday discovered several fundamental laws of physics and chemistry – including his law of electromagnetic induction in 1831, which illuminated the relative motion of charged particles.

It was thanks to Faraday’s trailblazing experiments at the institution that he discovered electromagnetic rotation in 1821, a breakthrough that led to the development of the electric motor and benzene, a hydrocarbon derived from benzoic acid, in 1825. He became the first scientist to liquefy gas in 1823, invented the electric generator in 1831 and discovered the laws of electrolysis in the early 1830s, helping to coin terms such as electrode, cathode and ion. In 1845, after finding the first experimental evidence that a magnetic field could influence polarised light – a phenomenon that became known as the Faraday effect – he proved light and electromagnetism are interconnected….

(17) PIXEL SCROLL TITLE EXPLANATION OF THE DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Via “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” (1922).

Probably my favorite recording (keeping in mind I’ve only listened to a fraction of the various artists’ recordings) is from Jim Kweskin’s Relax Your Mind album (more generally one of my favorite albums): “Three Songs – A Look at the Ragtime Era (Sister Kate’s Night Out) : I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”.

Here’s the first version I’ve run into (yesterday!) that shows there’s a long intro section: “Sister Kate” – song and lyrics by Vi Wickam, Paul Anastasio, Albanie Falletta | Spotify.

Lots of (current/recent) popular covers!

Dave Van Ronk “Sister Kate”.

Here’s the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band “Sister Kate”.

And here’s an unexpected cover (from the From Liverpool To Hamburg 2CD set) — The Beatles – “i wish i could shimmy like my sister Kate” (live).

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Arnie Fenner.] This “Frazetta Fridays” episode about the creation of Vampirella includes some fun history featuring Harlan, Forry, and Trina Robbins.

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

Pixel Scroll 2/20/25 The Tweel Of Rhyme Blares, “Thou Art Groot!”

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(1) THE MURDEROUS MONTH OF MAY. Apple TV+ announced today “Apple’s new sci-fi series “Murderbot” to make global debut May 16, 2025”. They also released two photos of Murderbot, one with the helmet, the other without.

Today, Apple TV+ unveiled a first look at “Murderbot,” its highly anticipated comedic thriller created by Academy Award nominees Chris and Paul Weitz (“About a Boy,” “Mozart in the Jungle”) and starring Emmy Award winner Alexander Skarsgård (“Succession,” “Big Little Lies”), who also serves as executive producer. The 10-episode sci-fi series will make its global debut on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Friday, May 16, 2025 followed by new episodes every Friday through July 11.

Based on Martha Wells’ bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-winning book series of the same name, “Murderbot” is a sci-fi thriller/comedy about a self-hacking security construct who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients. Played by Skarsgård, Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe.

The ensemble cast also includes Noma Dumezweni (“Presumed Innocent”), David Dastmalchian (“Oppenheimer”), Sabrina Wu (“Joy Ride”), Akshay Khanna (“Critical Incident”), Tattiawna Jones (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) and Tamara Podemski (“Outer Range”).

(2) FROM CLIMATE EXTREMES TO HISTORIC BALKAN ORIGINS OF VAMPIRISM. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Modern fantasy lore has it that Transylvania is the home to vampires, creatures from the past that feed of the presently living for their immortality… Way back in the 1990s, following the fall of the Iron Curtain that divided Europe we (members of the SF² Concatenation  team and the former NW Kent SF Society had a series of E. Europe science and SF cultural exchanges with Romanian and Hungarian fan (and scientist fan) partners.  As part of this I was lucky enough to have a guided tour of Transylvania.  I also got to visit Jimbolia, an ethnically Hungarian town in Romania surrounded on three sides by a border with Serbia. Actually, I got to visit it with SF fans three times over the years…

This brings us up to today, and academics from Jimbolia Technology Highschool, as well as the University of Oradea (Romania), have found Transylvanian chronicles, diaries, and official records from the 16th century that illuminate extreme climate events of that time — the 16th century was part of what is known as the “Little Ice Age”. They found that prolonged heat waves, often associated with droughts and unusually cold winters, could affect agricultural production, leading to food shortages, forced migration, and social instability… 

Primary research Gaceu, O. R. et al (2025)  “Reconstruction of climatic events from the 16th century in Transylvania: interdisciplinary analysis based on historical sources”, Frontiers in Climate, vol. 6, pre-print.

All of which brings to mind whether such events could have been attributed by peasant locals to the mystical? (Other research has previously shown that witch burnings in Germany increased in rural areas around the time of crop failures associated with climate events.)

While vampires were popularised in the west with Stoker’s 19th century novel, we must remember that it was in the 17th century the Greek librarian of the Vatican, Leo Allatius, produced the first methodological description of the Balkan beliefs in vampires (Greek: vrykolakas) in his work De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus (“On certain modern opinions among the Greeks”) a few decades after the 16th century climate extreme events in the area described by this latest research. 

(3) BROCCOLI IS OFF THE MENU. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] In a shake-up worthy of a James Bond martini, the Broccoli family has relinquished control of that storied movie franchise. It will be Amazon MGM Studios forging the way forward. “James Bond Shake-Up: Amazon Takes Creative Control of Franchise” at The Hollywood Reporter.

The James Bond movie franchise has gotten a shake-up, with Amazon MGM Studios and Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli forming a new joint venture to house the movie property’s intellectual property rights.

Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon MGM Studios will gain creative control of the James Bond franchise, while Wilson and Broccoli will remain co-owners of the 60-year-old property. In 2022, Amazon acquired MGM, including a vast catalog with more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows.

Since the MGM acquisition, Amazon has held rights to distribute all of the James Bond films, and following completion of the joint venture transaction will control the creative on future productions.

“We are grateful to the late Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for bringing James Bond to movie theatres around the world, and to Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli for their unyielding dedication and their role in continuing the legacy of the franchise that is cherished by legions of fans worldwide. We are honored to continue this treasured heritage, and look forward to ushering in the next phase of the legendary 007 for audiences around the world,” Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said in a statement on Thursday….

Variety thinks they can explain “Why Amazon Took Control of James Bond; Next 007 Movie Remains in Limbo”.

…And even as every actor with a British accent has seen themselves tipped to slip into Bond’s designer tux, development on a follow-up has stalled. There’s still no director, no story, and no script for a new installment, sources say, and without those elements little progress has been made on finding a new leading man. Though there has been a character bible circulating around the studio and a few informal meetings with potential creative talent, shooting on a new movie is at least a year away. That’s been a source of frustration at Amazon, which spent $8.5 billion to buy MGM four years ago, in no small part because of the ties to Bond. Even with the initial acquisition, Amazon MGM only owned 50% of the franchise and was relegated to being a passive partner when it came to artistic choices.

Rumors have swirled for years that the Broccolis have clashed with Amazon over the direction of Bond. The family felt the e-commerce giant was a poor home for the elegant secret agent and bristled at its efforts to expand the scope of the franchise, while Amazon executives were frustrated by the glacial pace of getting a new film off the ground, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The company managed to get the Broccolis to sign off on a reality competition spinoff show, “007: Road to a Million,” but other attempts to revitalize the property have yet to bear fruit.

Amazon MGM’s joint venture with the Broccolis is unique in that it is not an outright sale. The family will retain an ownership stake. However, the Broccolis, who controlled everything from casting to marketing decisions, will release their grip on the series. That will allow Amazon MGM to move more quickly to figure out how to keep Bond relevant….

(4) SCIENCE BOOKS RECOMMENDED. Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks in Nature: “Poetry on Mars and robots on Earth: Books in brief” (behind a paywall). One of his selections is —

Waiting for Robots

Antonio A. Casilli Univ. Chicago Press (2025)

US founding father Thomas Jefferson used dumbwaiters — small lifts that carry meals — during his extravagant dinners. There seemed to be no human intervention, but the lifts were operated by enslaved basement staff. As sociologist Antonio Casilli acutely observes, today too, artificial-intelligence systems are made to seem automated, often by overlooked and underpaid workers.

And here’s the cover of another choice:

(5) LGBTQ IDENTIFICATION GROWS. “Nearly One in 10 U.S. Adults Identifies as L.G.B.T.Q., Survey Finds” – in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

Nearly one in 10 adults in the United States identifies as L.G.B.T.Q., according to a large analysis from Gallup released Thursday — almost triple the share since Gallup began counting in 2012, and up by two-thirds since 2020…..

…The increases have been driven by young people, and by bisexual women.

Nearly one-quarter of adults in Generation Z, defined by Gallup as those 18 to 27, identify as L.G.B.T.Q., according to the analysis, which included 14,000 adults across all of Gallup’s telephone surveys last year. More than half of these L.G.B.T.Q. young adults identify as bisexual.

Among all respondents, 1.3 percent identified as transgender, up from 0.6 percent in 2020. That is higher than other large surveys have found in recent years…

(6) LGBTQ VIDEOS BACK ONLINE. The City reports “NYC Schools Restore LGBTQ Videos Yanked by PBS Following Trump Executive Order”.

In response to a blizzard of executive orders from President Donald Trump, the Public Broadcasting Service recently erased a series of videos made in partnership with New York City Public Schools focused on LGBTQ history.

This week, the city’s Education Department found a new home for them: its own website.

The short films draw on material from the city’s LGBTQ-focused curriculum, part of a series called “Hidden Voices” that seeks to elevate a broad range of underrepresented groups students learn about in their social studies classrooms.

The videos profile prominent LGBTQ people such as the feminist thinker Audre Lorde and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. They also survey key historical moments, including the mass dismissal of queer government employees during the Lavender Scare of the 1940s-’60s and the 1969 Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village, widely considered a catalyst of the modern LGBTQ rights movement….

(7) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. There’s a new episode of the monthly science fiction podcast produced by Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA. Simultaneous Times Episode 84 has stories by Marisca Pichette & Eric Fomley.

Stories featured in this episode:

“Press Release from a Utopia on the Way Down” by Marisca Pichette; with music by TSG; read by Jenna Hanchey

“The Thing You Never Were” by Eric Fomley; with music by Phog Masheeen; read by the Jean-Paul Garnier

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 20, 1988 — Ray Bradbury Theatre’s “Gotcha”

Thirty-seven years ago on this evening, Ray Bradbury Theatre’s “Gotcha” first aired on HBO. It like a lot of genre series can now found streaming on Peacock. 

In the episode, a lonely man dressed as Oliver Hardy at a masquerade party meets a lonely woman dressed as Stan Laurel, it seems nothing short of a match made in heaven. But a game of Gotcha! may just test their newfound romance a little too much. Or will it? Being Bradbury what’s your guess? 

It was based off his short which was published in Terry Carr’s The Year’s Finest Fantasy, Volume 2 but the romance shown here wasn’t in that story as Bradbury added it in here. 

The cast was Saul Rubinek and Kate Lynch, and it was directed by Brad Turner who has done a lot of genre series work including seventeen episodes of The Outer Limits. The casting of Saul Rubinek and Kate Lynch was absolutely perfect. 

Reception for it is generally excellent. As Scared Stiff puts it: “GOTCHA is incredible. It’s another great tale in this series and it reminded me a great deal of the beginning of Twilight Zone: The Movie with Dan Aykroyd turning into a monster. This tale starts off so slow and cheerful that the turn to terror was very impactful. I really enjoyed this. As a horror fan you can’t ask for much more. I highly recommend it.” 

Yes, I liked it very much. I think the story here is sharper, more sure of who the characters are than a lot of his stories in this series was which were more interested in the gimmick that drove the story.  

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) AT LAST THE LAST. “The Last Of Us: HBO Sets Season 2 Premiere Date” reports Deadline. (Behind a paywall.)

HBO has finally revealed when audiences can expect the new season of The Last of Us.

Season 2 will debut on April 13 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, which means it’ll be picking up the Sunday marquee time slot from The White Lotus after the third season of Mike White’s series concludes. As always, the episodes will be available to stream on Max at the same time that they air on HBO.

Along with the date announcement, HBO also released a few new character posters featuring Ellie (Bella Ramsey), Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever)….

(11) DON’T FORGET TO BITE ON THIS CLICKBAIT. “Could Michael Sheen be the first Welsh Doctor Who?” asks Nation Cymru. And for what it’s worth, Sheen once said on an episode of Staged (his show with David Tennant) he had been considered, then “they wanted to go in another direction” as the show biz cant goes.

Michael Sheen is among the favourites to become the next Doctor Who.

The actor has been named among the frontrunners for the prized role by the bookies, who have installed him at 6/1 to become the next occupant of the Tardis after news broke that the current Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, looks set to stand down after two series.

There’s never been a Welsh Doctor Who – and with the modern incarnation of the series being filmed in Cardiff, it would be the perfect moment for a native of Wales to enter the Tardis.

Sheen, of course, lives in Wales and has shown his unswerving commitment and dedication to Welsh culture with the launch of the Welsh National Theatre.

There are others who think so too.

Writing for the Standard while pondering potential candidates for the role, media commentator Vicky Jessop wrote: “We’ve never had a Welsh Doctor before – might it be time to change that, once and for all? A longtime friend of David Tennant, Sheen also recently announced that he was becoming a “not for profit” actor, meaning he’s pledged to give away large chunks of his salary to charity and focus on doing jobs he loves. Long story short: his paycheque might actually be affordable for the beleaguered BBC.”

Other names in the running include Crown lead Josh O’Connor, Slow Horses actor Jack Lowden and Hobbit star Richard Armitage.

After 10th Doctor, David Tennant, surprised everyone by returning as the 14th Doctor, 11th Doctor Matt Smith has also been mentioned as a possibility for another stint in the Tardis.

(12) WOLF TICKETS. Metro News says “Amazon Prime Video viewers are stumbling upon ‘best’ comedy series in years”.

TV fans have been binge-watching both seasons of ‘engaging’ show Wolf Like Me which was recently added to the streamer free for subscribers.

The series follows single father Gary (Josh Gad) who lives in Adelaide with his daughter Emma (Ariel Donoghue) as he strikes up a relationship with Mary (Isla Fisher).

Both Gary and Emma are still emotionally traumatised after the death of her mother Lisa seven years ago, so when Mary enters the pictures and is able to connect with Emma she is a welcome addition to the family.

However, Mary is hiding baggage of her own that she fears may hurt Gary and Emma: she is a werewolf.

On Google, Wolf Like Me fans have been urging everyone to watch the hidden gem series which has flown under the radar since it first aired on Stan and Peacock in 2022….

(13) LIKE YOU NEED TEENY TINY BRANDING IRONS FOR ANTS. BBC finds “Dorset micro artist sets world record for smallest Lego sculpture”.

A micro artist has set a new Guinness World Record for creating the smallest handmade sculpture.

David A Lindon, from Bournemouth, said the creation took months of planning and months of creating to bring to life.

He set the world record for his sculpture of a red Lego piece which measures 0.02517mm by 0.02184mm.

Mr Lindon, an engineer by trade who started work as a micro artist in 2019, says the sculpture is about the same size as a human white blood cell.

He’s become known for his work creating miniature pieces of art, including three microscopic re-creations of Van Gogh masterpieces on a watch mechanism which sold for £90,000.

Mr Lindon’s latest creation, which was crafted from a piece of red Lego brick, was measured by the team at Evident Scientific using a light microscope….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Love Hurts Pitch Meeting” – beware spoilers.

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

Pixel Scroll 12/11/24 If You Stare At A Scroll Too Long, It Dissolves Into Pixels

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(1) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. For Andrew Porter it was a short walk to yesterday’s City Tech SF Symposium in Brooklyn. He brought his camera with him and shot these photos during the “Asimov/Analog Writers Panel”.

L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, moderator Emily Hockaday, senior managing editor of Analog and Asimov’s SF magazines. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Emily Hockaday. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Sakina Hoefler. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(2) SKYWALKER SHELTERS IN PLACE. The Franklin Fire has forced several well-known celebrities to evacuate, but some haven’t left.

The Franklin fire is raging through California’s Malibu coast, causing evacuations and ravaging homes while some celebrities like Mark Hamill shelter in place.

Hamill took to Instagram on Tuesday to share with fans that he would not evacuate his California home, with the “Star Wars” star telling his 6.2 million followers on the platform to “stay safe.”

“We’re in lockdown because of the Malibu fires. Please stay safe everyone! I’m not allowed to leave the house, which fits in perfectly with my elderly-recluse lifestyle,” Hamill wrote.

Hollywood legend Dick Van Dyke is also one of the celebrities in the affected area, saying on Facebook that he evacuated the area with his wife Arlene.

The Franklin Fire continued to explode in size overnight and covers 3,983 acres as of Wednesday morning with 7% containment, according to CalFire. Late Tuesday night, officials said 2,667 had burned. It was fueled by strong Santa Ana winds and low humidity, a dangerous combination prompting red flag warnings in the region through Wednesday evening….

Others who have evacuated include Cher, Eagles rocker Don Henley, and Cindy Crawford.

(3) PRODUCERS GUILD AWARDS. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a nominee in documentary category for the 36th annual PGA Awards. The complete list of nominated documentaries is at the link. That is the first and only PGA category announced so far.

(4) THESE GHOSTS WANT TO BE SEEN. [Item by Steven French.] The UK’s “Society of Authors calls for celebrity memoir ghostwriters to be credited” – the Guardian tells why.

The SoA’s call comes following writers expressing frustration in recent months about celebrities writing books at a time when author incomes are in decline. Last year, Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown was criticised over her novel, Nineteen Steps, which was ghostwritten by Kathleen McGurl. While Brown publicly acknowledged McGurl’s work in an Instagram post, critics said that McGurl’s name “should be on the cover”.

(5) GHOSTLY GIFTS. [Item by Steven French.] If anyone happens to be in the Chicago area: “Ghoulish Mortals – St. Charles, Illinois” in Atlas Obscura.

JUST WEST OF CHICAGO, THERE is a little spot of spooky in the charming downtown of St. Charles, Illinois. Ghoulish Mortals is made up of equal parts immersive haunted house-style vignettes, macabre art gallery, and pop culture collector gift shop.

Haunting organ music leads you down the quaint downtown sidewalks and into the dark mysterious doors. As you make your way exploring through the shop, you will travel through a haunted mansion, a fortune teller’s tent, an 80s living room inspired by Stranger Things, a killer clown circus, abandoned hospital operating room, cannibal swamp cabin, and even come face to face with Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. 

If you love horror movies, true crime, the occult, oddities, or fantasy, leaving this shop empty-handed is nearly impossible!

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES PODCAST. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA presents episode 81 of “Simultaneous Times – Eric Fomley & Adele Gardner”. Stories featured in this episode:

(7) RHYSLING AWARD CHAIR NAMED. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the 2025 Rhysling Award Chair will be Pixie Bruner.

Pixie Bruner (HWA/SFPA) is a writer, editor, mutant, and cancer survivor. She lives in Atlanta, GA, with her doppelgänger and their alien cats. Her collection The Body As Haunted was published in 2024 (Authortunities Press). She co-curated and edited Nature Triumphs : A Charity Anthology of Dark Speculative Literature (Dark Moon Rising Publications). Her words are in/forthcoming from Space & Time Magazine, Hotel Macabre (Crystal Lake Publishing), Star*Line, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Dreams & Nightmares, Angry Gable Press, Punk Noir, and many more. She wrote for White Wolf Gaming Studio. Werespiders ruining LARPs are all her fault.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Thirty-two years ago, The Muppet Christmas Carol premiered, directed by Brian Henson (in his feature film directorial debut) from the screenplay by Jerry Juhl. 

Based amazingly faithfully off that beloved story, it starred Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge with a multitude of Muppet performers, to wit Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Ed Sanders, Jerry Nelson, Theo Sanders, Kristopher Milnes, Russell Martin, Ray Coulthard and Frank Oz, to name just some of them. 

I must single out Jessica Fox as the voice of Ghost of Christmas Past, a stellar performance indeed. 

Following Jim Henson’s death in May 1990, the talent agent Bill Haber had approached Henson’s son Brian with the idea of filming an adaptation. It was pitched to ABC as a television film, but Disney ended up purchasing it instead. That’s why it’s only available on Disney+ these days. 

Critics in general liked it with Roger Ebert being among them though he added that it “could have done with a few more songs than it has, and the merrymaking at the end might have been carried on a little longer, just to offset the gloom of most of Scrooge’s tour through his lifetime spent spreading misery.” 

Ebert added of Caine playing Scrooge that, “He is the latest of many human actors (including the great Orson Welles) to fight for screen space with the Muppets, and he sensibly avoids any attempt to go for a laugh. He plays the role straight and treats the Muppets as if they are real. It is not an easy assignment.” 

They did give him his own song which showed us the cast.

Those songs were by Paul Williams, another one of his collaborations with the Jim Henson Company after working on The Muppet Movie.

Box office wise it did just ok, as it made twenty-seven million against production costs of twelve million, not counting whatever was spent on marketing. And that Christmas goose. 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather ungloomy rating of eighty-eight percent.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) ‘INNER LIGHT’ WRITER HAS SHOW IN DEVELOPMENT. Inverse reports: “32 Years Later, One of Star Trek’s Most Celebrated Writers is Launching a Gritty Sci-Fi Show”.

The writer responsible for the most celebrated episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, is launching a new gritty sci-fi series. As reported by Deadline, Morgan Gendel — writer of TNG’s “The Inner Light” — has just secured a deal with Welsh broadcaster S4C, Hiraeth Productions, Canada’s Fun Republic Pictures and Karma Film, to develop a new “eco-thriller” science fiction show currently titled Isolation. The in-development series will focus on an ensemble of characters attempting to combat climate change in the near future, who also encounter an extraterrestrial force capable of direct contact with human minds.

“There’s a whole ‘Inner Light,’ kind of linkage here, to the extent that both deal with alien technology and the human brain,” Gendel tells Inverse. “And you’ve got a team thrown together isolated from humanity to one extent or another. Those are not intentional [parallels]. My writing often puts people in a pressure cooker to see what emotions or truths boil out of them.”…

(11) SURREALISM OF GENRE INTEREST. John Coulthart assembles a gallery of “The art of Jean Ransy, 1910–1991” at { feuilleton }.

… All the same, Jean Ransy may fit the Surrealist bill even if he doesn’t seem to have had any lasting connections with those groups who regarded themselves as the official guardians of the Surrealist flame. Ransy was Belgian artist which makes him Surrealist by default if you subscribe to Jonathan Meades’ proposition that Belgium is a Surrealist nation at heart. (Magritte wasn’t a Surrealist, says Meades, he was a social realist.)

Ransy’s paintings appear at first glance like a Belgian equivalent of Rex Whistler in their pictorial realism and refusal to jump on the Modernist bandwagon. Whistler and Ransy were contemporaries (Whistler was born in 1905) but Whistler’s paintings were much more restrained even when outright fantasy entered his baroque pastiches. The “metaphysical” vistas of Giorgio de Chirico are mentioned as an influence on Ransy’s work so he was at least looking at living artists, something you never sense with Whistler. There’s a de Chirico quality in the tilted perspectives and accumulations of disparate objects, also a hint of Max Ernst in one or two paintings….

Le chemin de ronde au visage soleil (1985).

(12) JUSTWATCH SHARES 2024 TOP 10 LISTS. What were the most-watched movies and TV shows on streaming services in 2024? JustWatch compiled these year-end Streaming Charts based on user activity, including: clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as ‘seen’. This data is collected from >45 million movie & TV show fans per month. It is updated daily for 140 countries and 4,500 streaming services.

2024 was packed with standout streaming hits. Movies like “Civil War”, “Oppenheimer”, and “The Fall Guy” drew huge audiences with their mix of action and drama. On the TV side, shows like “Shogun”, “Fallout”, and our streaming charts champion “The Bear” kept viewers hooked all year long. Whether it was blockbuster films or binge-worthy series, there was something for everyone. These titles set the tone for another exciting year in entertainment.

(13) WE STAND CORRECTED. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian says people have jumped to the wrong conclusion about an image in the trailer we ran yesterday: “Emaciated zombie in 28 Years Later is not Cillian Murphy, sources confirm”.

When the trailer for Danny Boyle’s belated zombie sequel 28 Years Later released on Tuesday, the less-than-rosy-cheeked appearance of the first film’s star, Cillian Murphy, did not escape comment.

A scene in which a strikingly skinny member of the undead suddenly rears up, naked, behind new star Jodie Comer was taken as confirmation of rumours that Murphy had returned for an appearance in the new film….

…Yet the Guardian can reveal that the actor playing “Emaciated Infected” in the film, due for release in June 2025, is not Murphy but rather newcomer Angus Neill.

Neill, an art dealer specialising in old masters, was talent-spotted by Boyle, who was much struck by his distinctive looks. Neill also works as a model, with his professional profile suggesting he has a 28-inch waist….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Ryan George takes us inside the “Elf Pitch Meeting” – one of the retro reviews stockpiled in anticipation of his baby arriving.

Will Ferrell is one of the most successful comedy actors of our time – but back in 2003, it was kind of a surprise to see him leading a Christmas movie as a giant non-elf. Elf ended up becoming a holiday classic, but it still raises some questions. Like what happened to that poor nun? Why didn’t the news reporter follow up on anything? Is Buddy the elf actually kind of creepy? So check out the pitch meeting that led to Elf to find out how it all came together!

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 11/13/24 I’ve Been To Pixels But I’ve Never Scrolled To Me

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(1) DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE. Paul Lynch’s book Prophet Song, set in a near future Ireland, is the 2024 Fiction Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Lynch’s novel also received the Booker in 2023.

(2) THE BOOKSHELF IS THEIR COSTAR. Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin have launched a weekly newsletter called Shelfies, in which they get people to talk about their favorite bookshelf, and their connection with the books on it. Shurin declares, “It is unashamedly us snooping at people’s shelves.”

Take a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves! We love books – and we’re the sort of people who love checking out other people’s collections! With Shelfies, we’ve asked a wide range of readers, authors and collectors from all walks of life to share not just their shelves with us – but the books that changed them.

From novelists to video game designers, scientists and film makers, and from London to Singapore, Ghana, Australia and New York and all points in between, Shelfies is a unique dose of book love directly into your inbox – sharing our love of books, with you.

(3) AMAZON EDITORS PICKS OF THE YEAR. Today Amazon posted: “Announcing the Best Books of 2024, as chosen by the Amazon Editors”. These two novels of genre interest are listed:

  • The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

(4) SFPA OFFICER ELECTION RESULTS. Starting January 1, 2025, Diane Severson Mori will be Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association.

(5) ONCE MORE INTO THE AIRLOCK, DEAR FRIENDS. On the Seattle Worldcon 2025 blog, Cora Buhlert pays tribute to a Poul Anderson novel that was a Hugo finalist in 1961, the last time the Worldcon was in the city. “Fantastic Fiction: Knights versus Aliens: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson”.

Science fiction often begins with a question of “what if”? And in 1960, Poul Anderson asked just such a question: What if aliens attempting to invade the Earth encountered a troop of medieval knights? And what if the knights won the ensuing struggle? This is the premise of The High Crusade, one of the most offbeat and entertaining science fiction novels of the early 1960s….

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboys Books of Joshua Tree, CA has produced the eightieth episode of their Simultaneous Times podcast with stories by Elena Sichrovsky and Colin Alexander.

From the pages of Radon Journal.

Stories featured in this episode:

“Tonight We’re Wearing Waste Bags” by Elena Sichrovsky; Music by Patrick Urn; Read by Jenna Hanchey

“Dreamer, Passenger, Partner by Colin Alexander; Music by Phog Masheeen; Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: The Running Man (1987)

By Paul Weimer: Possibly the best of the Schwarzenegger SF movies of the late 1980’s. Yes, better than The Terminator, better than Predator, possibly on a par with Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The Running Man remains a biting satire of fascism, authoritarianism, consumerism, game shows, and a whole lot more. 

The authoritarian hellhole that the United States, using violent game shows as an opiate to the masses is really on point, decades later, rather more plausible than ever. Some of the best (and by best, I mean scary) are some of the commercials and interstitial bits in between the actual Running Man show. The show where a man climbs a rope, trying to grab dollars with a vicious pack of dogs underneath him…or the neo-Puritanism revealed when an announcer shockingly reveals Amber may have had several lovers in a year.

Arnold strides through this film and carries it on his charisma, as a package deal with Richard Dawson, who plays Damon Killan as an evil version of his Family Feud persona. They have the best rapport and the movie sings when they finally meet each other. (I was surprised on a rewatch how long the movie actually takes to put the two of them in the same room as each other). I also think the movie hits the right level of action, adventure, social commentary, and humor. 

And then there are the betting pool scenes. Long before betting truly has taken over sports, and a lot of other things, the betting on the TV show seemed to me at the time to be “over the top” (who would bet on a game show)?  Naive me didn’t believe it…but in the years since, it makes absolute and corrosive sense that the general public would in fact bid on the game show and the deaths on the show. I mean, if The Running Man was made today, Draftkings would be advertising on The Running Man.

Sadly, given recent events…I think it might be too naive in thinking that the ending, where the crimes of the state being revealed lead to revolution and change, can actually be realistic in this day and age. But I can dream, right?

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Cora Buhlert celebrated the recent holiday with “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Halloween Special: ‘The Tomb of Sibor’”.

I don’t have any Egyptian looking trinkets in my collection, so this Olmec head my Dad brought back from Mexico years ago will have to do.

…“Remember, girls, we are looking for the Lost Tomb of Sibor. Scorpia, since your people hail from the Crimson Waste, you have knowledge of this wasteland that the Horde lacks…”

“Yes, but…”

“So I get why you need Scorpia. But why am I here, Shadow Weaver?”

“Because you are Force Captain, Catra. And because Scorpia didn’t want to go without you.”

“I’ll get you for this, Scorpia.”

“So lead the way, Scorpia. You do know where the tomb is, don’t you?”

“Yes, but… I don’t think this is a good idea, Shadow Weaver. The Tomb of Sidor is an accursed place. My people shun it and never go there.”

“Silly barbaric superstition. The Tomb of Sidor contains something of great value to the Horde and I mean to retrieve it for Lord Hordak. And now go, Scorpia. Take us to the Tomb.”

“Yes, but it’s your funeral.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Hush, Catra, she’ll hear you.”…

(10) WET WORK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It may be that there are sub-surface mini-seas on some of the moons of Uranus!

The Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986 revealed an unusually off-centred planetary magnetic field. Nine US and one Brit researchers have now re-examined the Voyager Solar wind data set. It reveals that Uranus was hit by a Solar windstorm at the time of the craft’s encounter with the planet. This Solar windstorm offset the planet’s magnetic field.

Similar observations in the Saturn system reveal that when its moons with sub-ice surface water orbit outside of the protection of Saturn’s magnetic field, probes cannot detect water-group ions; this is because they have been swept away by the Solar wind. The researchers therefore hypothesise that the absence of water-group ions when Voyager 2 passed by might not be due to an absence of moons sub-surface water but due to the Solar windstorm that was raging at the time that swept those ions away.  It could be that some of Uranus’ moons do have sub-surface water. They hypothesise that Uranus’s two outer moons, Titania and Oberon, are more likely candidates for harbouring liquid water oceans.

The primary research paper is Jasinski, J. M. et al. (2024) “The anomalous state of Uranus’s magnetosphere during the Voyager 2 flyby”. Nature Astronomy, Pre-print.

(11) MOOR OR LESS. “Utility in Britain Offers Free Electricity to Grow Clean Energy” – a New York Times article. Link bypasses the paywall.

Were Heathcliff to roam the blustery moors around Wuthering Heights today, he might be interrupted by a ping on his cellphone saying something like this: The wind is raging, so power is cheap. It’s a good time to plug in the car.

OK. So the 18th-century literary occupants of these windswept hills received no such pings.

But Martin and Laura Bradley do. They live in Halifax, an old mill town below the wuthering, or windy, heights of West Yorkshire. And when a squall kicks up, producing a surplus of electricity from wind turbines on the moor, their phones light up with a notification, like one that informed them of a 50 percent discount one Saturday in October….

…Octopus Energy, the country’s biggest electricity supplier, runs nine wind turbines on those hills. When it’s gusty, and power is abundant, it offers discounts. The Bradleys say they save upward of 400 pounds ($517) a year. Octopus says it not only attracts customers but also persuades communities that they benefit from new energy infrastructure.

“We’ve got these famously bleak, windy hills,” said Greg Jackson, the company’s chief executive. “We wanted to demonstrate to people that wind electricity is cheaper, but only when you use it when it’s windy.”…

(12) THE DEATHS FROM TROPICAL STORMS AND HURRICANES IN THE USA HAVE BEEN GREATLY UNDERESTIMATED. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In climate-change science fiction, people die in major climate events: cf. the film The Day After Tomorrow or the climate fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson.

In the real world, people die all the time and this enables demographers to calculate the number of expected deaths. Usually only a score or more deaths are associated with US tropical storms.  These are due to obvious things like drownings or being hit by wind-blown debris.

Two US demographers have now looked the number of excess deaths (those above the expected death rate) between 1930 and 2015. They have found that there are an average of 7,000 – 11,000 excess deaths in the months following a tropical storm or hurricane. These deaths are mainly from infants (less than 1 year of age), people 1 – 44 years of age, and the black population. (Presumably the elderly were safe in a refuge while young adults were protecting property and so in harm’s way? But the very elderly also took a big hit.) The researchers did not look at the death certificates of all (around 100,000) those excess deaths over this eight-and-a-half decade period and so do not know exactly what it was they died of. This, they say, needs to be the subject of future research.

The primary academic paper is Young, R. & Hsiang, S. (2024) “Mortality caused by tropical cyclones in the United States” Nature, vol. 635, p121-128.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Disney Debuts ‘The Boy & The Octopus’, Taika Waititi’s Holiday Tale Starring a CG Cephalopod” – Animation Magazine introduces the four-minute short.

A Disney Holiday Short: The Boy & The Octopus follows the journey of a child who discovers a curious octopus has attached to his head during a seaside vacation. After returning home, the boy forms a true friendship with the octopus by introducing his new companion to his life on land — harnessing the power of the Force with his Jedi lightsaber, playing with his Buzz Lightyear action figure, and imagining Santa Claus’ route around the world with the map on his wall — before taking the lovable octopus out into the world to experience the joy of the holidays, hidden under his Mickey Mouse beanie….

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

Pixel Scroll 10/10/24 I Ride An Old Anti-Gravity Paint, My Partner Favors Cavorite

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(1) NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE. Korean author Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature reports Publishers Weekly. (There are no genre elements present in the descriptions of Han Kang’s work in “What to read: Han Kang” at NobelPrize.org, or in the “Han Kang” Wikipedia article.)

Han Kang. Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

…One of only 18 women to be awarded global literature’s highest honor, she is the first South Korean writer to win the prize and the first Asian laureate since 2012, when the Nobel was awarded to Chinese author Mo Yan.

“Han Kang’s visible empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives, is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy, the body that administers the prize. “In her oeuvre,” he added, quoting from the Committee’s citation, “Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”…

(2) FORMER FRAZETTA HOME IN FLORIDA UNHARMED BY STORM. Frank Frazetta’s daughter reassured fans that the Frazetta Art Gallery in Boca Raton, FL was undamaged by Hurricane Helene. (This is not the Frazetta Art Museum which is in Pennsylvania.)

This paragraph distinguishes the Frazetta Art Gallery from the Museum:

…For Frazetta fans, it’s an essential destination, since it contains dozens of pieces of Frazetta artwork, paintings, newspaper strips, comic book pages, and a nice selection of personal artwork Frazetta executed as gifts for his wife, Ellie, and other family members. The personal work on display gives viewers a true feeling of intimacy, of being part of Frazetta’s inner circle, since most of them have never been reprinted….

(3) ELECTORIAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A few years ago, because of the Sad Puppies Affair (which, contrary to popular belief, was not a Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode), there was much debate in fandom as to how we vote on the Hugo short-list.  Now, better late than never, this week’s edition of Nature has an article on electoral systems,  “Which Is The Fairest Electoral System?”  

Scientists hope to explore whether some approaches are more likely to promote democratic resilience or to stave off corrosive partisanship. Such answers might inform policy, but differences in interpretation are inevitable when it comes to politics. “Democracy is a complex system,” says Lee Drutman, a political-science researcher at New America, a think tank in Washington DC. There can be multiple ways to parse the data, he says.

A Hugo-type system is briefly mentioned…

There are sub-variants in FPTP (first past the post) systems: ranked-choice voting, which is used, for instance, in Australia, ensures a majority winner. Voters rank all candidates or parties; the lowest-ranked candidate drops out and their supporters’ second-choice preferences are tallied, and so on until a single candidate surpasses a 50% threshold. And run-off elections, such as those in France, when the two leading parties are voted for in a second round, ensure a direct national face-off.

Interestingly the piece has two conclusions. One that ranked choice has benefits, but a contrary view 2) is that this pushes folk to limited options. Here the article calls for more political parties in the US rather than the two big ones.  In Hugo terms this would translate as increasing the number in the short-lists.

(By the way, personally I have no preference: I just share out of interest and am not advocating anything.)

(4) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 120 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Activate Liz” —

We do rather fewer letters of comment than last episode, and then we let Liz do her favourite topic of all: STATISTICS.

Listen here: Octothorpe (Podbean.com). Read the unedited transcript of the episode here.

Words read ‘Octothorpe 120: Introducing Judge Coxon. “I am the lore”’. They are around a picture of John as a Judge in the style of *2000AD*, holding a big stack of books. The logo of the Clarke Award may or may not appear in the artwork.

(5) ATWOOD PICKS A CARD. Margaret Atwood appeared on NPR to publicize her new collection called, Paper Boat: New And Selected Poems: 1961-2023. They played clips of her answers to questions on the Wild Card program. “Writer Margaret Atwood plays a game of ‘Wild Card’”.

MARTIN: When I asked the question [about envy], though, you asked for a definition – envy that you suffered or had to manage or other people’s envy of you?

ATWOOD: Yes.

MARTIN: Is that – does that happen a lot?

ATWOOD: It has, certainly. Yeah. So what I said to young writers who had had a sudden success, I said, within a couple of years, you will have three nasty, vicious personal attacks from people you don’t know.

MARTIN: What were the attacks that were leveled at you in your first couple years of success?

ATWOOD: (Laughter) Some of them were quite funny. So a lot of it had to do with hair – Medusa hair, frizzy hair, you know, name something about hair. Yes, and one of them wrote a satirical fairy tale in which I bit the heads off men and made them into a pile and turned into an octopus. Figure that out.

MARTIN: So you were a Medusa-haired man hater.

ATWOOD: Yeah. And power mad, ladder-climbing…

MARTIN: Oh, power mad?

ATWOOD: Yes. Power-mad, ladder-climbing witch.

MARTIN: Oh, wow. I mean, that’s evocative.

ATWOOD: I thought so too.

(6) REMEMBERING J.G. BALLARD. “Diary: Deborah Levy on J. G. Ballard” at Book Post.

J. G. Ballard, England’s greatest literary futurist, changed the coordinates of reality in British fiction and took his faithful readers on a wild intellectual ride. He never restored moral order to the proceedings in his fiction because he did not believe we really wanted it. Whatever it was that Ballard next imagined for us, however unfamiliar, we knew we were in safe hands because he understood “the need to construct a dramatically coherent narrative space.”

When it came to anything by Ballard, genre really did not matter to me; his fiction could have been filed under “Tales of Alien Abduction” or “Marsh Plants” and I would have hunted it down. Despite our difference in generation, gender, and literary purpose, it was clear to me that he and I were both working with some of the same aesthetic influences: film, surrealist art and poetry, Freud’s avant-garde theories of the unconscious….

…The reach of his imagination was never going to fit with the realist literary mainstream but I was always encouraged by his insistence that he was an imaginative writer.
“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”

Good on you, Jim.

His highly imagined landscapes and abandoned aircraft and stopped clocks and desert sand were located in his head—and anyway he preferred driving fast cars to walking. He once sent me a photograph of the Heathrow Hilton and told me it was his spiritual home. …

 (7) BUSTED. Was Chuck Tingle’s “true identity” revealed today? That’s what author C.J. Leede was hoping we’d think, til you-know-who caught them in the act.  

(8) THOU SHALT NOT PASS. “The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes” — an excerpt from a 404 Media’s post.

A group of Wikipedia editors have formed WikiProject AI Cleanup, “a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.”

The group’s goal is to protect one of the world’s largest repositories of information from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued Google search results, books sold on Amazon, and academic journals.

“A few of us had noticed the prevalence of unnatural writing that showed clear signs of being AI-generated, and we managed to replicate similar ‘styles’ using ChatGPT,” Ilyas Lebleu, a founding member of WikiProject AI Cleanup, told me in an email. “Discovering some common AI catchphrases allowed us to quickly spot some of the most egregious examples of generated articles, which we quickly wanted to formalize into an organized project to compile our findings and techniques.”…

(9) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboys Books presents episode79 of the “Simultaneous Times” podcast with Pedro Iniguez, Lisa E Black, and Addison Smith.

  • “Sneeze” by Pedro Iniguez. (Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier)
  • “Of Course I Still Love You” by Lisa E Black. (Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the author.)
  • “Residual Traces” by Addison Smith. (Music by Fall Precauxions. Read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier.)
  • Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

Simultaneous Times is a monthly science fiction podcast produced by Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Anniversary: Barbarella film (1968)

Oh, Barbarella. 

I didn’t quite get why it was so controversial when I first saw it, it was a bowdlerized version of the already bowdlerized version Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy. This was on a local channel in New York City in the 1980’s. I thought it was a funny but rather goofy looking SF movie, although of course Jane Fonda was something to look at.

(My father was upset at her being in the movie, something I did not understand for years until I understood her politics…and my own family’s politics, better)

I finally got to see the uncut and real version in the early 2000’s on DVD.  And then I could finally see what I was missing. Did it add a lot to the actual movie besides the visuals? No, but what visuals!  I slotted it in the same space as Woody Allen’s Sleeper, as a science fiction movie that talked about sex, and around sex, a lot. But going on the other visuals, the sets, costume design and props (including the infamous Excess Pleasure Machine) were just mind boggling in both of the versions I’ve seen.  Too, the actual cinematography is mesmerizing, the camera knows where to linger, where to bring our attention in sometimes rather chaotic and baroque set pieces. I have not yet seen a 4k version of the film, but that is something I do very much need to see sometime, to see it at the maximum fidelity and clarity.  

Is it great cinema? No. But it is great art. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE COMICS REUNION. “Deadpool and Wolverine officially return in 2025, Marvel confirms” – GamingBible has the story.

…For those who miss the bromance between Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine, you’re in luck because the pair are officially returning in 2025.

Their antics won’t play out on the big screen but upon the pages of comics instead.

The Deadpool/Wolverine series comes from writer Benjamin Percy and artist Joshua Cassara. This partnership, much like Deadpool and Wolverine, is a match made in heaven.

Fans who enjoyed the bloody violence of the film needn’t worry that the comics will strip that action away…

(13) BEGINNING OF A FASCINATION. CrimeRead’s Jeremy Dauber outlines “A Brief History of the Rise of Horror in 19th Century America”.

At the Civil War’s end, under a quarter of Americans lived in cities; by the end of the Great War, the proportion was almost exactly half. All those people moving to the cities—both from rural America and from abroad— changed things. Size created anonymity, the possibility of losing yourself in the crowds, remaking yourself, if you so chose. . . . or getting lost, and not always by your choice. Increasingly, the streets were lit by electric light, and the machines inside them were powered the same way; but that simply swapped a new set of shadows and terrors for the old ones. The horrors of the next decades were, all too frequently, industrial and mass-produced: whether they came from the chatter of guns or the whirr of a film projector, they cast an eye on progress, and murmured about what lay beneath.

Start, perhaps, with that newly electrified white city, Chicago. In 1893, its World’s Columbian Exposition, or World’s Fair, was an announcement of America’s newly flexing muscles: its willingness to be broad-shouldered, to play a leadership role in world affairs, to stride into the future. And yet, inside the city limits, there sat a haunted castle. This castle, though, had no clanking chains, no Gothic ghost or Salem witch; it had a psychopath who used modern tools—the soundproofed room, the knockout gas-bearing pipes, and of course, the three-thousand-degrees-Fahrenheit kiln—to disable, kill, and dispose of guests who checked into his World’s Fair Hotel at 701 Sixty-third Street. And why did H. H. Holmes do it? For his part, when eventually caught, he had a simple, and chillingly modern, explanation: “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.”…

(14) I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR. SFFAudio reminds us that once upon a time Robert Bloch urged authors to swear to uphold “ROBERT BLOCH’S CREDO FOR FANTASY WRITERS”.

(15) JUSTWATCH MARKET SHARE REPORT. As the third quarter of 2024 comes to an end, JustWatch has released their latest data report on market shares in the US. As usual, they based our report on the 13 million JustWatch users in the US selecting their streaming services, clicking out to streaming offers and marking titles as seen.

SVOD market shares in Q3 2024
Global streaming giant: Prime Video managed to keep its first-place rank, with a 1% lead against Netflix. Meanwhile, Max is managing to stay ahead of major competitors Disney+ and Hulu.

Market share development in 2024
Disney+ and Hulu both gained momentum with a +1% subscriber boost by September. While Netflix and Max stumbled with a -1% decline each, revealing a shake-up in the streaming rivalry.

(16) IF YOU INSIST ON WATCHING. “Too Scared to Watch Horror Movies? These 5 Tips May Help” says the New York Times (paywalled).  

The October ritual of watching horror movies in the lead-up to Halloween can be exhilarating. Unless, of course, you can’t quite stomach the gory and gruesome, or even the spooky and spine-tingling….

…If you’re someone who wants to indulge in the season but dreads jump scares and buckets of blood, here are five tips that could help even the biggest scaredy cats among us start to open up to the world of horror.

The first two tips are:

Embrace the Spoiler

The first and best line of defense is to read the plot in advance. If you’re feeling brave, go for just a synopsis, but there’s no reason to be a hero. I sometimes read an entire plot in great detail before watching, especially with films I know will tap into my weak spot: movies about demonic possession. Unlike with other genres, knowing what will happen in horror doesn’t necessarily detract from the experience of watching. Your heart will most likely still pound. You will probably still jump. And the visuals and sounds will probably still shock. Knowing what comes next may simply help keep the anxiety and uncertainty in check.

The Smaller, the Better

Nothing against the big-screen experience, but going small, by watching on your phone or a tablet, can go a long way. Not only will you have a sense of control that a crowded theater with speakers blaring hellish soundscapes can’t provide, you will also be able to make adjustments. If it gets too loud or chaotic, turn down the volume. If it gets too visually scary, turn down the brightness or flip the device down. Sometimes for the most intense scenes, it’s better to just hear the movie without seeing it, or to watch without sound….

(17) QUITE A TAIL. And for your viewing pleasure, The Copenhagen Post recommends “Reptilicus”.

Next time you’re looking for a Danish film to watch, spare a thought for Denmark’s only giant monster film ‘Reptilicus’ – a 1960s cult-classic with puppets, bad acting, bazookas, and a prehistoric reptilian beast rampaging through Amager…

… Reptilicus is the name for two monster films about a giant, prehistoric reptile which decides to attack Denmark.

Shot simultaneously, one film is in Danish (1961) and the other is from the USA in English (1962). Both films have a near identical cast (except for one actress) and two directors (Poul Bang – Danish, and Sidney Pink – English) who took turns throughout each shooting day to create two of the most iconic, kitsch and downright unintentional masterpieces to grace Danish screens.

The plot tells of a Danish miner in Lapland who accidentally digs up a section of a giant reptile’s tail from the frozen ground. The section is flown to the Denmark’s Aquarium in Copenhagen, where it is preserved in a temperature-controlled room for scientific study.

Of course they don’t put anyone competent in charge of monitoring it but instead choose a bumbling buffoon (the legendary Dirch Passer). The room is left open and the section begins to thaw and regenerate….

(18) FILLING UP WITH GAS. According to TechRadar, “Toyota’s portable hydrogen cartridges look like giant AA batteries – and could spell the end of lengthy EV charging”.

Toyota is showcasing a series of sustainable developments at the Japan Mobility Bizweek later this month – including its vision of a portable hydrogen cartridge future, which could apparently provide ‘swappable’ power for next-gen hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs).

Originally a project of Toyota’s mobility technology subsidiary Woven (formerly Woven Planet), the team produced a working prototype of a hydrogen cartridge back in 2022 but has since developed the idea further… and appears to be running with it.The latest cartridges are lighter and easier to transport, with Toyota claiming the current iteration has been developed with the experience the company has gained in reducing the size and weight of the hydrogen tanks used in its fuel cell electric vehicles….

…Put simply, the cartridges would allow fuel cell electric vehicle drivers to swap out their power source when hydrogen levels run low, rather than having to refuel at a station like you typically would with a fossil fuel-powered car.

But Toyota also feels that these refillable and renewable cartridges could be used in a multitude of situations, such as to generate electricity in a fuel cell to power the home or even providing hydrogen to burn for cooking.

In fact, Toyota and the Rinnai Corporation are exhibiting a stove at Japan Mobility Bizweek that does just that. Similarly, in emergency situations, the hydrogen cartridge could be removed from the car and used to power any applicable device in the case of a blackout, for example….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Paul Weimer, Danny Sichel, Lise Andreasen, 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 Daniel “All Is Wells” Dern.]

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.]

Pixel Scroll 7/16/24 Oh You’ll Never See My Shade Or Hear The Sound Of My Feet, While There’s A Scroll Over Pixel Street

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(1) GLASGOW 2024 DELAYS BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA. The WSFS Standing Rules required publication of this year’s Business Meeting Agenda by July 17. However, Glasgow 2024 today announced that agenda “will be delayed until Friday, 19th July 7pm (BST/UTC+1)”. X.com thread starts here.

Glasgow 2024 has received 50 items, including new business and items passed on from the prior Worldcons. And they have put up this chart to justify the delay in producing the agenda.

In the meantime, File 770 has published the text of more than 20 of these proposals. Here are the links.

  • Motion to Abolish the Retro Hugos Submitted to 2024 Business Meeting
  • WSFS 2024: Motion to Add Human Rights and Democracy Standards to Worldcon Site Qualifications
  • WSFS 2024: Three Resolutions
    • SHORT TITLE: APOLOGY RESOLUTION
    • SHORT TITLE: CHENGDU CENSURE RESOLUTION
  • SHORT TITLE: MAKE THEM FINALISTS RESOLUTION
  • WSFS 2024: Cleaning Up the Art Categories
  • WSFS 2024: Meetings, Meetings, Everywhere
  • WSFS 2024: Transparency in Hugo Administration
  • WSFS 2024: Irregular Disqualifications and Rogue Administrators
  • WSFS 2024: Independent Hugo Administration
  • WSFS 2024: No Illegal Exclusions
  • WSFS 2024: When We Censure You, We Mean It
  • WSFS 2024: And The Horse You Rode In On
  • WSFS 2024: Three Standing Rules Change Proposals
  • SHORT TITLE: “NO, WE DON’T LIKE SURPRISES, WHY DO YOU ASK?”
  • SHORT TITLE: “STRIKE 1.4”
  • SHORT TITLE: MAGNUM P.I.
  • Two More Proposed WSFS Constitutional Amendments for 2024
  • SHORT TITLE: MISSING IN ACTION
  • SHORT TITLE: THE WAY WE WERE
  • WSFS 2024: Popular Ratification
  • WSFS 2024: Site Selection by the Worldcon Community

    • Also along the way File 770 has published these drafts. Whether they have been submitted, or their final wording, is not known at this time.

    File 770’s reprints from the Journey Planet #82 “Be the Change” issue included two more proposals. Whether any or all were submitted to the Business Meeting is not known.

    (2) LAST DAYS TO VOTE FOR THE HUGOS. There are only four days left to vote in the 2024 Hugo Awards and to download this year’s Hugo Voting Packet. 

    Voting closes at 20:17 GMT on 20 July because that will be 55 years *to the minute* since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first landed on the moon in 1969!

    Instructions about how to vote and the way to download the Hugo Voting Packet are on the Glasgow 2024 website.

    (3) COMMUNITY ANSWERS OCTAVIA’S BOOKSHELF’S CALL. “Black Woman-Owned Bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf Is Getting Closer And Closer To Funding Goal To Keep Doors Open” reports Blavity. At this writing, Octavia’s Bookshelf has raised $83,780 of the $90,000 goal.

    ….According to Pasadena Now, the Black woman-owned business Octavia’s Bookshelf was founded by Nikki High, a former corporate communications employee at Trader Joe’s who left corporate America to accomplish one of her biggest goals: owning a bookstore. The name of her shop was inspired by Octavia Butler, who was known for her science fiction novels. When she opened her doors in February 2023, she was immediately embraced by her neighborhood and got more than enough support to move into a bigger space.

    Due to traffic slowing down in the store, High is asking her community and the general public for help to remain in business; she set up a GoFundMe page….

    …Due to lack of funding, she was forced to cut the shop’s regular events, group discussions, children’s readings and workshops, but she hopes to be able to offer these services again soon once she raises enough money.

    Despite the hurdles she faces, High is unwilling to throw away her dreams.

    “I still know that this is a viable business,” High told Pasadena Now, “and this space is crucial to our community.”

    (4) LEGGO MY LEGO. “Get bricks quick: collectible Lego sets fuel growing black market” says the Guardian.

    A black market for highly valuable Lego sets is being built brick by brick, and authorities are trying to knock it down.

    Lego sets are highly sought after, by kids and their parents as well as adult collectors.

    But it’s not all fun and games. Bad actors who know the resale value of these sets are increasingly cashing in, while law enforcement aims to bust such Lego theft rings.

    Police in Oregon last week recovered 4,000 stolen Lego sets worth more than $200,000, according to law enforcement. Ammon Henrikson, 47, the owner of a retail store called Brick Builders in Eugene, was arrested and accused of knowingly purchasing the allegedly stolen goods for a fraction of their retail price and then reselling them, a local CBS channel reported….

    … Two people were arrested in Los Angeles last month in connection with more than 2,800 stolen Lego sets. In April, California police arrested three men and a woman after discovering stolen Lego sets worth a combined $300,000. Some of the stolen sets included the 921-piece Millennium Falcon, typically priced around $85, the 6,167-piece Lord of the Rings Rivendell set, worth $500, and the 1,458-piece Porsche 911 set, worth $170.

    Meanwhile, overseas, French police announced in 2021 that they had begun building a case against an international gang of toy thieves specializing in Lego….

    (5) CLARION WEST MATCHING. The Clarion West Writers Workshop can leverage your donation this week. More information here.

    The Sherman Family Foundation has offered a Week Five Matching Challenge, doubling any donations made this week up to $2,000! Donations made to Clarion West support free and low-cost programming for writers and readers year-round.

    (6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books presents episode 77 of their monthly podcast “Simultaneous Times” with Phoenix Alexander & F.J. Bergmann.

    Stories featured in this episode:

    • “Loamblood” by Phoenix Alexander — read by the author
    • “Surgery for Dummies” by F.J. Bergmann — read by Jean-Paul Garnier

    Music by Phog Masheeen. Theme music by Dain Luscombe

    Heather Wood in 1988. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter

    (7) A. HEATHER WOOD (1945-2024). Publishing pro and folk singer A. Heather Wood died at Stony Brook Memorial Hospital on July 15 at the age of 79. At one time she was assistant to Tor’s President and Publisher Tom Doherty, and a consulting editor for Tor Books. She was also well-known in the folk music community as part of The Young Tradition, a 60s English group.

    We applied a tiny bit of that musical talent on Noreascon Three’s (1989) program SF Tonight, where I played Ed McMahon to Tappan King’s Johnny Carson, and Heather Wood was our kazoo-playing answer to Doc Severinsen.

    She also was known as part of World Fantasy Convention’s “Musical Interlude,” which featured pros singing in a folk revue.

    Her website, which lists her many accomplishments, is here.

    (8) IVAN GEISLER (1944-2024). [Item by Jeanne Jackson.] Ivan Geisler, longtime member of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, passed away July 2, 2024 of congestive heart failure and old age.

    I was first informed this afternoon by Sherry Johnson, his ex-wife. Although Ivan was quickly found by his neighbors after his passing, and his dog Brownie returned to the shelter Ivan had adopted her from, there had been some difficulty locating contact information for friends and relatives.

     According to Sherry, memorial arrangements have not yet been organized. As Ivan was a veteran of the United States Army, it is likely the Veterans’ Administration will be involved in his funeral.

     Ivan joined DASFA over 30 years ago. He was a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy, and also an avid amateur astronomer—he was an active member of the Denver Astronomical Society long before he found his way into DASFA.

    (9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

    [Written by Paul Weimer.]

    July 16, 1928 — Robert Sheckley. (Died 2005.)

    By Paul Weimer: I came to Robert Sheckley’s work through an oblique angle. Somehow, through all of the reading I did in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I missed or didn’t recognize, his short story work (although it’s dollars to donuts I came across a story of three in the many anthologies I read during that period. (And a check in the writing of this shows a couple of Sheckley stories in 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories).  But I didn’t recognize his work and his genius and his skill until 1992. 

    Sheckley in the 1990s. Photo by John Henley

    Yes, it wasn’t until the movie Freejack came around that I started looking for Sheckley’s work specifically, since the movie proudly announced in its credits that it was based on “Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley”.  Yes, this is the movie where Emilio Estevez is a car driver transported to the future, with Mick Jagger (!) of all people as the major antagonist.

    The name sounded familiar even so, and so, as was my practice at the time (Total Recall leading me to Philip K. Dick in similar fashion), I decided that I needed to investigate his work, starting with Immortality, Inc. The novel was very different than the movie by a long show, but I was immediately hooked on his writing. 

    I found his work sharp, twisty, clever, devilishly entertaining, and especially for his short stories, with a sting in the tail. It was no wonder to me that his work has been so adapted so frequently, and with such great effect. And while science fiction is generally not explicitly in the prediction business, “The Prize of Peril” pretty accurately and sharply predicts and shows the consequences of television devoted and focused on Reality Television for clicks. “The Perfect Woman” shows the consequences of wanting the perfect mate, straight from the factory, and the consequences of a lack of quality control.  

    My favorite Sheckley story might surprise, but it is “Death Freaks” from the “Heroes in Hell” shared world verse. With the ability of throwing anyone who is anyone into their shared world version of Hell, the editors got a story from Sheckley involving the Marquis de Sade, Baudelaire, Lizzie Borden, Jesse James, and an 8th Century BC Greek Hoplite. Sheckley, perhaps out of all of the authors in the series, best “understood the assignment” and let his imagination run wild.  It’s a story that’s a lot of fun and full of the unexpected, entertaining all along the way. That’s what Sheckley could, and did do, with his fiction.

    (10) COMICS SECTION.

    (11) LADY DEADPOOL. “New ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer Teases Even More of Lady Deadpool” promises Yahoo!

    Ten days ahead of the film’s release, Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine has a new trailer and TV spot.

    Set to the tune of Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey,” one of the first shots in the trailer shows the mysterious Lady Deadpool’s red boots and up past her signature belt to show the ends of blonde hair without landing on her face.

    And a week ago was this: “Deadpool & Wolverine & The Bachelorette”.

    Everyone seemed to like the Deadpool Bachelorette spot last night but can we talk about the episode? Thought Jenn made some strong choices, except for sending my countryman Brendan packing. Marcus is easy on the eyes, Grant was a little much and the day trading thing, but I get it. Two Sams will get confusing so slightly leaning towards Sam N. Jenn’s mom might have been the highlight and Melbourne, Australia, felt like a Hugh shout out so bit of a lowlight there. Overall, great start. What was I talking about again?

    (12) FOR MONSTER TOURISTS. Atlas Obscura lists “11 Museums Dedicated to Monsters”.

    Monsters have roamed the human consciousness as long as there has been one, from tales around the campfire, to the tomes of antiquity, to the modern cineplex. And sometimes those monsters leap off the page or the screen, and out of our imaginations. Sightings of cryptids and other frightful creatures have spanned millennia, often taking place in the darkest corners of the world. Luckily there are lots of ways to get to know these fantastical creatures—especially when enthusiasts create museums or exhibits dedicated to their lore….

    …In Point Pleasant, West Virginia, is a museum dedicated to the state’s most widely known cryptid: the Mothman. The only collection dedicated to the half-moth, half-man creature, the Mothman Museum celebrates this harbinger of misfortune, who has been spotted in Appalachia on and off since 1966. Much further in the past, stories of massive sea monsters off the Icelandic coast have stricken fear into the hearts of sailors. The Skrímslasetrið in Bíldudalur, Iceland, covers the history of these encounters. According to the museum, two of the monsters most endemic to Iceland’s waters are the hafmaður (Sea Man) and the skeljaskrímsli (Shell Monster), but there are more. From a four-legged beast that terrorized 18th-century France to an amphibious water demon in Japan, here are a few of our favorite places to get up close to monsters in relative safety…

    (13) READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP. “Gnatalie is the only green-boned dinosaur found on the planet. She will be on display in L.A.” announces NBC News.

    The latest dinosaur being mounted at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles is not only a member of a new species — it’s also the only one found on the planet whose bones are green, according to museum officials.

    Named “Gnatalie” (pronounced Natalie) for the gnats that swarmed during the excavation, the long-necked, long-tailed herbivorous dinosaur’s fossils got its unique coloration, a dark mottled olive green, from the mineral celadonite during the fossilization process.

    While fossils are typically brown from silica or black from iron minerals, green is rare because celadonite forms in volcanic or hydrothermal conditions that typically destroy buried bones. The celadonite entered the fossils when volcanic activity around 50 million to 80 million years ago made it hot enough to replace a previous mineral….

    (14) IT’S A TWISTER AUNTIE EM! “What Twisters gets right — and wrong — about tornado science” opines Nature

    When Hollywood producers showed up a few years ago at Sean Waugh’s office, he couldn’t wait to show them his thunderstorm-tracking equipment. Waugh, a meteorologist at the US National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, is a big fan of the 1996 film Twister, which stars Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as leaders of a tornado-chasing research team. And now, Hollywood was asking Waugh his opinion on how the science in the next film in the Twister franchise should look.

    On 17 July, when the film is released internationally, the world will see how Waugh’s recommendations panned out. Like its predecessor, the new Twisters film focuses on characters who are storm chasers: Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a researcher traumatized by past weather disasters and Glen Powell a social-media star racing for footage of the biggest and baddest tornadoes. But science has an even bigger role in the plot of the new film than it had in the original, say Waugh and other researchers who worked as consultants for Twisters. It not only shows advanced radar data and highlights links between climate change and tornadoes, “it’s an incredible opportunity to inspire the next generation of scientists”, Waugh says….

    (15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George’s “Battlefield Earth Pitch Meeting” tells why the movie was made – not that you didn’t already know.

    [Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Anne Marble, Joe Siclari, Jeanne Jackson, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]

Pixel Scroll 5/15/24 Goodbye Yellow Brick Scroll, May the Dogs of Pixelry Howl

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(1) AND THE WINNING NAME IS… You weren’t holding your breath waiting for them to quit kidding around and reveal the final title, were you? Well, if you were, inhale! Variety has it: “’Agatha All Along’ Sets September Premiere Date on Disney+”.

…The “WandaVision” spinoff “Agatha All Along” has set its Disney+ premiere date.

The series will debut with two episodes on Sept.. 18. The announcement was made during the Disney upfront presentation to advertisers in New York on Tuesday.

Series star Kathryn Hahn took the stage with co-stars Joe Locke and Patti LuPone, who confirmed the series’ title after a number of changes. The show was first called “Agatha: House of Harkness.” The title appeared to change to “Agatha: Coven of Chaos” by July 2022, and then to “Agatha: Darkhold Diaries” in September 2023….

(2) THE CASE FOR PLAIN ELVES. [Item by Danny Sichel.] This video essay by Perseus Grim argues “Why Fantasy Worlds SHOULD Be Stuck in Medieval Times”.

(3) MILLENNIA BEFORE DUNE. “Dune: Prophecy: first trailer for female-led prequel TV series” – the Guardian sets the frame.

The first trailer for the much-anticipated TV prequel to the recent Dune movies promises a female-fronted look at life 10,000 years before.

Dune: Prophecy will follow the roots of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood led by the Harkonnen siblings, played by Emily Watson and Olivia Williams. Later members of the sect are played by Rebecca Ferguson and Charlotte Rampling on the big screen.

It is inspired by the novel Sisterhood of Dune, written by Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert, the elder son of Frank Herbert, who wrote the original Dune novels….

(4) RAGE REQUIRED. Stephanie Burt plumbs “The Radical Worldmaking of Joanna Russ” in The Nation.

“From now on, I will not trust anyone who isn’t angry.” The science-fiction writer Joanna Russ set down those words in 1984. They might have been Russ’s motto. From her 1968 novel Picnic on Paradise, about a time-traveling, take-no-prisoners female assassin named Alyx, to her 1975 pathbreaking lesbian and feminist novel The Female Man, to her collection of essays on feminism, What Are We Fighting For?, in 1997, Russ wrote unsparingly, if also elegantly, against those elements in society that keep women, especially lesbians, from becoming our best selves. Her novels and essays sometimes cut themselves short; other times, they cut to the bone. They could make room for hope, and for solidarity, and for erotic joy. Russ saw what was wrong with the world we know, how much needless pain it contains on account of gender roles—and she let herself stay angry about it, too.

Divisive in her lifetime, admired within the world of science fiction then and now, Russ has recently become the seventh sci-fi writer, and the third female one (after Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin), to get a whole Library of America volume. Assembling four novels (Picnic on Paradise, The Female Man, On Strike Against God, and We Who Are About To…) along with shorter stories, the Library of America volume helps the reader understand the scale and scope of her talents as a prose stylist and a writer of metafiction. And it lets readers see—in Russ, and in the 1970s feminism that nurtured her—not only the rage but also the hope that her astringent imagination found…

(5) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA has released episode 75 of the Simultaneous Times podcast. The stories featured in this episode are:

  • “Memory Scars” by Adele Gardner; with music by TSG
  • “The Good Twin” by Marie Vibbert; with music by Phog Masheeen

Theme music by Dain Luscombe. Listen to all episodes on your favorite podcast player or at Podmatic.

(6) BEWARE TINY SPOILER. In The Hollywood Reporter: “Doctor Who Boss Russell T Davies on Callbacks, Villains and Disney Notes”. Sort of tiny spoiler here.

There’s a moment where the Doctor uses his Sonic Screwdriver to enable Ruby’s (the Doctor’s companion, played by Millie Gibson) phone to call her mum, even though they are thousands of years apart. That’s a lovely callback to your 2005 episode “The End of the World,” where the Ninth Doctor (Eccleston) did the very same thing for his companion Rose.

Yes, it is. It’s what he’d do. I remember sitting writing that thinking, “Oh gosh, I did that. I’ve done that before.” And then I thought, “Well, I did it 19 years ago and this is a brand new audience. But it’s very important that she doesn’t feel separated and abandoned from her family.” So there’s no way he couldn’t do it again, because it’s a good scene. It’s what he’d do, it needs reminding.

This time, when Ruby gets her phone zapped, she says, “How much did that cost?” Rose wouldn’t have thought of that. There’s something a lot more savvy about it. Ruby’s very aware of that 50 quid she got for a gig last night. And that’s her first question, “What does that cost?” I like that.

(7) ELENA STEIER (1958-2024). Comics creator Elena Steier died March 1 of cancer. The family obituary is in the Hartford Courant.

…An accomplished illustrator, author, and cartoonist, Steier created several comics and strips, such as The Ramp Rats (for the Detroit Metropolitan News), The Goth Scouts (for The South Shore Monthly Newspaper) and The Vampire Bed and Breakfast (a self-published comic book)….

Cartoonist Mike Lynch has put together an extensive tribute.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 15, 1909 – James Mason. (Died 1984.) I do believe the first time I saw James Mason acting was in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest where he had the role of Phillip Vandamm, a Cold War spy. Three years after this, he’d be on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour as Warren Barrow in the “Captive Audience” episode. 

James Mason as Captain Nemo driving the getaway submarine.

Now let’s turn to what he did as genre roles. The one you most likely remember him from is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea where he was Captain Nemo. Surely you remember his fight with the squid? The film was personally produced by Walt Disney, something he rarely did.

He’s Hendrik van der Zee in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, based off that story. He may or may not be the Flying Dutchman. Let’s say the film is ambiguous. Deliberately. 

He was Rupert of Hentzau in The Prisoner of Zenda which is at least genre adjacent, isn’t it? Well I think it is. Truly great silly film, and an amusing role for him. 

In Journey to the Center of the Earth, he was Sir Oliver S. Lindenbrook, a professor. He was not the first choice here as Clifton Webb had been cast but turned it down as he said he could not play the part because it was such a physical part. Mason said later that he delighted in doing his stunts here.

He played Polidori in the Frankenstein: The True Story, a thirteen-episode series. Now let’s recall that Dr. Polidori did not appear in the original novel, but was rather based on the character of Dr. Pretorius from Universal Pictures’ Bride of Frankenstein, but named after John Polidori, an acquaintance of author Mary Shelley.

Finally he’s in Salem’s Lot as Richard K. Straker.

 Very impressive as a performer I’d say. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Eek! depicts overreaction to criticism
  • The Argyle Sweater is proud of its bad video game titles.
  • Carpe Diem reveals something we never knew about flying saucers.

(10) BODY DOUBLES. “’3 Body Problem’ Renewed for Season 2 at Netflix” reports Variety.

“3 Body Problem” has been renewed for at least one more season at Netflix — the streamer says that the number of seasons and episodes will be announced at a later date.

It appears that the greenlight will take the series to its finale, as creators David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo noted in a statement that they “get to tell this story through to its epic conclusion.” In an April interview with Collider, Benioff said the team would “need at least three, maybe four seasons to tell the whole story.”

Based on the novels by Liu Cixin, “3 Body Problem” follows how a decision made by a young woman in 1960s China reverberates across space and time into the present day, driving a group of scientists to join forces with an unorthodox detective to confront a major threat to humanity.

(11) A SONG OF ICE OR FIRE. While some think the new portrait of King Charles makes it look like he’s trapped in flames or swimming in blood, Filer Carl says the portrait of King Charles looks a bit like Han Solo frozen in carbonite. You decide!

Portrait of Britain’s King Charles by artist Jonathan Yeo.

(12) YESTERDAY’S VIDEO. We take you now to the year 2015 to enjoy the “’Star Wars Fan’ – Official ‘Rocket Man’ Parody”.

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