(1) NETHERLANDS WORLDCON BID. An exploratory 2032 Worldcon bid for Maastricht, Netherlands was announced at Smofcon this weekend. That’s one of the many news items in Vincent Docherty’s roundup: “Bidders for Future Worldcons and Smofcons Heard from in Smofcon 41 Q&A Session”.

(2) BRISBANE 28 BID NEWS. Random Jones, chair of the bid to hold the 2028 Worldcon in Brisbane, Australia, has submitted their answers to Smofcon 41’s questionnaire: “Worldcon 2028 ‘Aussiecon 5’” [PDF file.]

(The other active 2028 bid is for Rwanda, Africa: “ConKigali 2028 Bid to Hold Worldcon in Africa Sends Update”.)

(3) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. The Ninth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on SF, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI will take place in the City Tech Academic Building at 285 Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn, New York on Tuesday, December 10, 2024 from 9:00am to 5:00pm in Room A-105.

The event is free and open to the public. Pre-registration for this in-person event is not required. Participants and attendees who are not affiliated with the college will need to sign-in at the security desk before entering and walking down the hallway to the right to room A-105.

The Program is at this link.

(4) PICKET LINE. “Workers go on strike at NYC’s iconic Strand Books, ask owners to pay more than minimum wage” – Gothamist has details.

Workers at Strand Books — one of New York City’s most famous book shops — walked off the job Saturday as part of a labor strike demanding they make more than minimum wage.

The store’s 110 unionized workers went on strike in the middle of the busy holiday season, leaving the shop’s “18 miles of books” to be run by a skeleton staff made up of a mix of store managers, part time non-union workers and other non-union administrative staff, according to labor organizers. The union wants their base pay to increase from $16 an hour, which is minimum wage in New York City, to $18 an hour in the first year of the contract. The workers voted to authorize a strike late last month….

…Shop steward and bookseller Brian Bermeo said the union and management are hung up over wage proposals. The union has demanded a $2 hourly raise in their first year of the contract, followed by $1.50 per hour raise in each of the second and third years.

Strand Books’ management has offered 50 cents less for each year, according to Bermeo. The two sides are due back at the bargaining table on Monday, according to a spokesperson for the store.

(5) RUOXI CHEN MOVES UP. Two-time Hugo winning editor Ruoxi Chen has joined Putnam as Executive Editor reports Publishers Weekly.

Ruoxi Chen has joined Putnam as executive editor. Chen was most recently an editor at Tordotcom Publishing, where she spent seven years editing speculative fiction, including the Hugo Award–winning novels Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo, and Riot Berry by Tochi Onyebuchi. Chen has also been recognized by the Hugo Awards for her work as an editor.

In her new role, Chen will be acquiring crossover fantasy, romantasy, and science fiction. She will report to Putnam VP and editor-in-chief Lindsay Sagnette. 

(6) DISCORDANT NOTES. [Item by Steven French.] Isaac Asimov drafted a screenplay based on McCartney’s idea of an alien musical but the former Beatle turned it down: “’It’s like they were smoking something potent’: the ‘bizarre’ Paul McCartney alien musical that never was” in the Guardian.

It is the film that never was – an unlikely sci-fi musical about aliens dreamed up by Paul McCartney half a century ago. The aliens would have landed in a flying saucer, but the project never got off the ground.

Now the former Beatle’s treatment for the film – and an expanded version by the American sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov that McCartney turned down – have been unearthed in a US archive by the authors Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, while researching a forthcoming book.

The treatment’s discovery is revealed in The McCartney Legacy, Volume 2: 1974-80, published by HarperCollins on 10 December….

…The Fab Four had made several films, including A Hard Day’s Night, and McCartney wanted his new band [Wings] to star in one. He came up with a story about a band of aliens who arrive on Earth, morphing into the members of Wings before challenging the real Wings musicians.

Spanning almost 400 words, his treatment began: “A ‘flying saucer’ lands. Out of it get five creatures. They transmute before your very eyes into ‘us’ [Wings]. They are here to take over Earth by taking America by storm and they proceed to do this supergroup style. Meanwhile – back in the sticks of Britain – lives the original group, whose personalities are being used by the aliens…”

“Nothing ever came of this because McCartney couldn’t recognize good stuff,” said Asimov in a grumpy handwritten note on the manuscript.

(7) HEADS FOR SALE. BBC checks in when “Star Wars fan from Swindon sells toy collection after job loss”.

A man who changed his name to Luke Skywalker has sold his collection of Star Wars memorabilia after losing his job.

The sale included signed items from the films, life-sized models of the cast, creatures and droids from the films.

“I need to survive. This stuff is just in a warehouse just collecting dust all the time,” Mr Skywalker said.

The auction, at Wessex Auction Rooms in Chippenham, was described as “extremely unique”….

… Mr Skywalker said: “My van blew up last week and I need a new one, so I thought I’ve still got lots.

“I’ve got the memories and I’ve got the photos, you know?”

Some of the collection included rare replica helmets, Mr Skywalker said.

“They only released 200 each in the world,” he said.

Tim Weeks, director and auctioneer at Wessex Auction Rooms and Bargain Hunt expert, said: “We had a packed room and more than 500 live online bidders from around the world….

(8) DEVIL AT A BLUE ADDRESS. “How Easy Rawlins Built a Real Estate Empire, One Crime Novel at a Time” in the New York Time. (Link bypasses paywall.)

…Easy is a Black World War II veteran who fled the Jim Crow South for a better life in Los Angeles. In “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the 1990 classic that started both the series and Mosley’s career, Easy takes his first case so he can pay his mortgage and uses a windfall to add a rental property. The ups and downs of real estate continue as a recurring theme and story engine, especially in the early books, where the remedy for some tax lien or underwater mortgage is often to solve whatever mystery is driving the plot.

Now, two decades of buying and holding later, Easy is flush. As he explains in “Farewell, Amethystine,” his 12 buildings have a total of 101 rental units that a friend manages for a 0.8 percent fee. Subtract that commission along with mortgage payments and general upkeep, and his take-home is $26,000 a year in 1970 (the year the novel takes place), which, adjusted for inflation, would be about $217,000 today.

“I wasn’t rich,” Easy says. “But I sure didn’t need to be going out among the hammerhands and scalawags in the middle of the night.”

Let’s dispense with the obvious: Easy Rawlins is a fictional character [created by Walter Mosley]. Nevertheless, I’m here to tell you that his story has much to teach us about small landlording — America’s most enduring side hustle…

(9) TODAY’S DAY.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

By Paul Weimer: Once there was a shared world anthology. In a real sense, it was the ur-shared world anthology, created by several fantasy writers and written by many authors. A creation of one of the Great Cities of fantasy, a city of contradictions. A City on the edge of Empire. A city that was sprawling. A city that was cramped. A city with more reprobates, dark magicians, heroes, villains, witches, and more per square block than any other. A city of endless adventure. 

That city, the City of Sanctuary, that anthology and its many sequels, was Thieves’ World, created by Robert Asprin which was published forty years ago.

I came to Thieves’ World in the first rush of playing AD&D in the early 1980’s. Thieves’ World was tailor-made for a D&D locale, and in fact my brother and I had the boxed set of the RPG module before we actually touched the module. That early module, as unforgiving and sometimes spartan as other modules of the time meant that we really had to read the books in order to understand the setting deeply, even given all the maps, encounter tables and the like (it really was and is one of the best setting modules) My brother read the first two, first, before I did. I remember looking at the cover of the first one and asking my brother who these people were (it’s the cover with Lythande, Hanse and a mystery character, with One Thumb ready to serve them a round) .

At the time, Discworld was an ocean away and I would not encounter it for more than a decade. There was of course Lankhmar (and, no surprise, we had that D&D module too) . So Thieves World was, for me, for many years, the definitive and one true fantasy city.  Lots of invented fantasy cities in games I ran (and my brother ran) that didn’t take place in Sanctuary and its environs took place in expys of it. 

And then there were the stories themselves. A wide range of fantasy authors, some of whom I followed into other work (Asprin, for instance, right into the Myth series) and others that would become heart authors later (like Poul Anderson). Janet Morris. Jody Lynn Nye. And many, many others, borrowing, using and changing these characters.  My older brother, who played thieves in D&D more than I liked the shades of grey characters and series even more than I did. I was always interested in the high magic and magical doings in the stories. Hanse Shadowspawn, son of a God, who kills another God. Lythande, whom today we might call a trans man, keeping his birth gender a secret, but as a result having quite potent magical powers. The strange spell that hits One-thumb, a dastardly magical trap. Again, for many years, other than Lankhmar, and some of the work of Zelazny (whom I only learned recently was invited but didn’t get to write in Thieves World), Thieves’ World’s anthologies were the sword and sorcery standard for me, with an emphasis on the dark sorcery. My brother might have been interested in thiefly doings, dark magic and fighting (and sometimes using it) was my deal.

Eventually the series petered out after a respectable number of volumes, side novels and the like. It did inspire a lot of other shared world series (such as Heroes in Hell) , and very probably, the most enduring of the shared worlds, Wild Cards. 

But it occurs to me that the story of Sanctuary, of an edge-of-the-empire garrisoned town (with apologies to Sting) in a Empire that itself eventually topples and falls, leaving Sanctuary to its own devices is a story that is timeless. And given very recent events (hello, Syria), ever-fresh.

Meet you for a drink at the Vulgar Unicorn? My treat. Just bring your sword (or if you have a handy spell, then that) and your wits, the Maze is a dangerous place.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

• Frank and Ernest develop new superheroes.
• Rhymes with Orange takes us inside a superhero counseling session.
• The Argyle Sweater  is indistinguishable from a miracle.
• The Flying McCoys wonders whether Santa’s sled will be led by the red-nosed reindeer or a guy with a red-S.

(12) STRANGER THINGS ON STAGE. Entertainment Weekly keeps track of casting in “’Stranger Things’ Broadway play adds season 5 newcomer, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ alum T.R. Knight”.

The Upside Down continues taking over Broadway as the cast for the U.S. version of Stranger Things: The First Shadow continues to grow.

Louis McCartney will reprise his role of young Henry Creel/future Vecna from the London West End production when the show makes its stateside debut in New York next year. But among the new batch of casting unveiled Wednesday is Alex Breaux, who’s already playing a mysterious series regular character in Stranger Things season 5, which premieres on Netflix in 2025. Fans only caught a glimpse of him on the show in a behind-the-scenes sneak peek, revealing him in a black militarized uniform holding an automatic rifle.

On stage, Breaux will play the new Dr. Martin Brenner, a role played by Patrick Vaill in the London stage version and Matthew Modine on the Netflix series.

Another piece of interesting casting: Grey’s Anatomy alum and The Flight Attendant actor T.R. Knight will hit the stage as Victor Creel, Henry’s father. Horror icon Robert Englund played the character on the series, while Michael Jibson took the role for the London production.

Also joining the Broadway cast are Alison Jaye (Shameless) as young Joyce Maldonado, Burke Swanson (Back to the Future: The Musical) as young Jim Hopper Jr., Broadway newcomer Nicky Eldridge as young Bob Newby, Emmy nominee Gabrielle Nevaeh (Nickelodeon’s That Girl Lay Lay) as Bob’s sister Patty, Rosie Benton (Patriots) as Henry’s mother Virginia, and Andrew Hovelson (Lucky Guy) as Hawkins High Principal Newby.

The production will give U.S. audiences a look at the prequel to Stranger Things that also ties into the events of the highly anticipated fifth and final season of the show. The play follows Henry Creel’s arrival in town with his family in 1959 Hawkins. It’s based on an original story by Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer, Jack Thorne, and Kate Trefry. Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin serve as director and co-director, respectively….

(13) ABOUT TABLETOP GAMES. [Item by Steven French.] Tim Clare, who was diagnosed as autistic while researching a book on how games connect people, discusses how board games offer a refuge from a noisy, chaotic world and lists his top five: “’Playing games turns me into a person who makes sense’” in the Guardian.

As a phenotype, autism is very loosely defined (“If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person,” goes the old saying). It has a lot in common with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conception of games; there’s no single trait, he said, common to all games that excludes everything not a game. Rather, we must rely on “family resemblances”. The best we can do is point to a bunch of activities and say: “These things, and things like them, are games.”

Tabletop games are a vast, sprawling island chain of loosely federated states, each with its own laws and customs. Trying to sum them all up in a neat little Baedeker feels measly, incomplete. Again, there are miles of open water between chess and Crokinole, Dungeons & Dragonsand Votes for Women. Each offers me different ways to unmask and connect….

(14) BACK IN ROTATION. We learn from The Hollywood Reporter that “’The Wheel of Time’ Season 3 Has a Premiere Date and Teaser”.

The Amazon-owned streamer has set a March 13 premiere date for the fantasy drama’s third season. Prime Video also released a first teaser for the coming season at São Paulo’s CCXP24 convention.

In the teaser (watch it below), Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) warns that she has seen “a thousand thousand futures” — and that there are none in which both she and Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski), the young man who may hold the future of humanity in his hands as the Dragon Reborn, survive….

(15) DIM PROSPECTS. “The world asked NASA for help in its greatest crisis: They just said that “it’s not possible” reports EcoNews.

…Solar power from space has been an interesting concept since Isaac Asimov first described it in the context of 1940s science fiction. The concept is simple: put solar panels in an area with constant daylight, and the transformed solar energy is converted to microwaves and transmitted to the earth, where it is transformed back to electricity.

This approach would provide a constant and uninterrupted power supply, unlike the ground-based solar power dependent on sunlight. Although it seems the perfect answer to the world’s energy problems, the technical and financial issues have proved too difficult.

NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy published a catastrophic report on SBSP’s vision. The findings were clear: SBSP will not be economically feasible shortly. The report shows that the costs of deploying space-based solar power systems remain prohibitive, and current research indicates that prices can be as much as 80 times more costly than on-ground solar systems.

In this case, the total lifecycle cost of these systems would be astronomical and much higher than that of land-based renewable technologies such as solar and wind power. NASA’s report also discussed the environmental effects of SBSP….

(16) HARD TO BELIEVE. Variety sets the scene: “Dick Van Dyke Sings and Dances Again at 98 in Coldplay Music Video”. Dick Van Dyke will be 99 on December 13 (coincidentally my sister’s birthday, too).  

Dick Van Dyke is the star of Coldplay‘s music video for the band’s latest single, “All My Love,” which sees the 98-year-old Hollywood legend dancing barefoot and duetting with frontman Chris Martin.

Directed by Spike Jonze and Mary Wigmore, the seven-minute video is more like a short film as Van Dyke — who turns 99 on Dec. 13 — reflects on his nearly eight-decade career…. 

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., Mark Roth-Whitworth, John King Tarpinian, 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 (cue Bert Lahr on vocals) Dern.]