(1) HWA AI POLICY UPDATE. The StokerCon Facebook page reports that the Horror Writers Association sent members the following email about their draft AI policy.
The Horror Writers Association Statement on Artificial Intelligence and Working AI Policy Summary
The Horror Writers Association stands firmly against AI-generated creative work and will act diligently with organizational stakeholders to ensure the rights of our members and nonmembers within the writing, editing, arts, and publishing industries are protected.
The Horror Writers Association is aware of the ongoing legal and regulatory hurdles and will work to ensure our policies reflect a changing technological environment, however the Horror Writers Association only supports work from human creators and work authored by humans.
While the Horror Writers Association acknowledges the unknown challenges ahead in an ever moving and shifting landscape, the HWA will always support human authored work, first and foremost.
Lastly, the full comprehensive document will be available for all
members to read no later than January 4th, 2025.
Here is the 12-page working AI Policy in a short, easy-to-read summary
1. Use of AI Within the HWA: No generative AI software will be used by HWA workers, including generative AI tools added to pre-existing software platforms we already use.
2. Oversight: All software tools used by HWA workers will go through an approval process first. The HWA Board or a committee appointed by the Board will do that, in addition to coordinating with any logistics and enforcement.
3. Software Review: Beyond just being against the use of generative AI, we want to make sure none of our materials, or the materials entrusted to us by members, will be used to train generative AI. This means regularly reviewing all new features added to software we use, and any changes to their terms of use or privacy policies.
4. Enforcement: The Board, or any AI Oversight Committee appointed, will investigate suspected policy violations. Any action taken as a result will be done by the appropriate committees in charge of the areas where infractions happened, or by the Board itself within the HWA, including the Bram Stoker Awards and any anthologies the organization publishes (within contractual purview) and not extending to third-party providers, vendors, or partners.
5. Awards: All works submitted for Bram Stoker Award® consideration must be non-AI[1]generated works. If a work under award consideration is found to be AI-generated the work will be banned from consideration.
6. Scholarships: No works involved in the scholarship process can be AI-generated. If the resulting work is found to have been AI-generated the scholarship recipient must return all scholarship funds.
7. Publications: Submissions for official HWA publications, and HWA-branded anthologies published by our industry partners, cannot be AI-generated.
8. Membership: Prospective members who use AI-generated work to meet eligibility requirements will be denied membership. If it turns out an HWA member has failed to comply with any part of this policy their membership can be put under review.
9. Grievances: While the Committee will continue helping HWA members resolve breaches of contract, or situations that clearly go against established industry ethics, we strongly recommend you consult legal counsel before signing new contracts or renegotiating old contracts. We can point you to examples of generative AI clauses to include in your contracts moving forward.
10. Subject to Revaluation and Updates: As mentioned earlier this is an area where software and legislation are expected to undergo rapid changes. We’ll stay on top of news to keep members informed, and to update our policy as needed.
HWA volunteers will be asked to sign an agreement that they will comply with the HWA’s generative AI policy. The final policy will include a glossary of terms, documents from external organizations, tutorial videos, and other supplemental material.
Sincerely, The Board of Trustees, Horror Writers Association
(2) THE FUTURE OF BACK TO THE FUTURE. It’s on the road, where else? “‘Back to the Future’ to Close on Broadway, Rerouting DeLorean to Germany” says the New York Times (behind a paywall).
“Back to the Future,” a nostalgia-rich and spectacle-laden musical adaptation of the much-loved 1985 film, will end its Broadway run on Jan. 5, succumbing to the difficult economics of the commercial theater business.
The show had a decent run — the first performance was on June 30, 2023, and for more than a year it grossed over $1 million most weeks — but it was costly to mount and expensive to sustain; its grosses took a dive in late summer and early fall, and although it had rebounded somewhat more recently, sales were still insufficient to justify continuing. Thus far it has been seen by 720,000 people at the Winter Garden Theater.
The long-gestating show began its production life in England, and won the 2022 Olivier Award for best new musical in London’s West End, where it has been running for more than three years. It has not been so fortunate on Broadway, where it won no Tony Awards. It cost $23.5 million to capitalize, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ultimately it did not run long enough, or make enough money each week, to defray its New York costs.
But this is not the end of the line for the show. The Broadway set will move to Germany, where “Back to the Future” plans an open-ended run starting next season. The London run is ongoing, there is a North American tour now underway and productions are planned in Japan and on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.
(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to share a bowl of Cullen skink with the award-winning Wole Talabi in Episode 239 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.
Wole Talabi is the author of the critically acclaimed Nommo Award-winning novel Shigidi And The Brass Head Of Obalufon — which was also a finalist for the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the Ignyte Award — plus was named one of the best books of 2023 by The Washington Post.
He’s actually a three-time winner of the Nommo Award – because he also won in 2018 (for “The Regression Test”) and 2020 (for “Incompleteness Theories”). He’s been a finalist for the Hugo Award for his novelette “A Dream of Electric Mothers,” a story which also won him the Sidewise award for alternate history. His fiction has appeared in such magazines as Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Clarkesworld, and anthologies such as The Big Book of Cyberpunk, Africa Risen, and Nowhereville: Weird Is Other People. Many of those stories may be found in his collections Incomplete Solutions (2019, Luna Press) and Convergence Problems (2024, DAW Books).
We discussed his love of combining contradictory ideas, why failing is an important step toward success, how optimism can be a choice (and why making that choice could also make the world a better place), how to convince others who might fear hurting your feelings you truly want their honest criticism, whether AI could ever actually be intelligent or create art, what he means when he says he often writes “two or three people in a room science fiction,” how a friend’s gift of a story seed led to the longest piece in his new collection, the things he learned from writing his first novel which are helping him write his second, the secret to writing successful flash fiction, the accidental catalyst which launched his editing career, the stubbornness that keeps him going both on the page and in the ring, and much more.
(4) WOLE TALABI Q&A. And you can get a second serving of Talabi in thisImaginize World interview: “Our Future and Challenging Perspectives with Wole Talabi”.
Nigerian science fiction author Wole Talabi describes into his unique writing process, shaped by his engineering background and the concept of convergence problems….
One of the questions was about the meaning of “Africanfuturism”.
WOLE: Africanfuturism is a bit of an interesting term because if someone asks you, “What are the defining literary features of Africanfuturism?” It would be very difficult to point to specific markers and say, “It’s stories that contain this, that contain that. That use this particular style.” There’s no unifying literary feature of it. It’s more of a geographically influenced genre, where it’s focused on the continent of Africa, on the history, on the culture. It basically centers Africa and moves outwards.
And I think, sometimes that’s a misconception some people have is that they think every Africanfuturist story is only about Africa. But I think in my work, especially, in my Africanfuturist stories and in other Africanfuturist stories as well, some of Nnedi Okorafor’s works and Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s as well, the central focus of the story is African, but the theme that we are working with, the larger theme is something that applies generally, globally….
(5) WHAT ABOUT THOSE SAYING NO TO NANOWRIMO? [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Just to let you know what’s been happening with NaNoWriMo since they refused to ban AI: someone I know very well, Morgan Hazlewood, replied when I asked her about her “November writing project”, replied, “there is a reason I am calling it my November project. Pretty much every group I know has disassociated from the parent group, but the people who found each other through the project are sticking together. And most of us are still doing our own challenges.”
(6) CAREER DERAILED. Sophia McDougall was asked whether there could ever be a third book in the Mars Evacuees universe. The answer is sad.
…It’s been long enough now that I don’t think there’s any reason not to give the frank answer to this question.
I did consider it. I had a plot worked out. Unfortunately these things aren’t always (or often) up to us.
The initial contract was for two books.
Around the time the first book was coming out, I wrote this incredibly mild feminist piece in the New Statesman about the gender discrepancy in bookshop displays and how it made me feel.
And then a certain prominent bookshop chain threatened me. It let my publicist know it didn’t want me in its shops to promote my book, because it didn’t know what I might do. And then, it decided not to carry the second book, which basically guaranteed it would not sell well.
Maybe those things are unrelated, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. My agent and publisher largely abandoned me, (it didn’t help at all that my initial editor, who loved the book, had sadly been away with cancer for much of this period) and as sales were obviously disappointing, there was no question of a new contract for a third book. And that’s why I haven’t published a book since….
(7) ROCKY HORROR GAME. CNET gave it a whirl: “We Played the New Retro Rocky Horror Show Game. Here’s What It’s Like”.
The antici…. pation can finally be over if you’ve been waiting for the Rocky Horror Show game adaptation. Announced early this month, The Rocky Horror Show Video Game is a retro-styled 2D side-scrolling platform game with chiptune versions of well-known songs from the show including The Time Warp and Dammit Janet. It’s been released for Nintendo Switch and for PC on Steam, with Xbox and PlayStation versions due later this month ahead of Halloween….
…A boss fight with Frank-N-Furter amounts to throwing objects at the character until they lose parts of their costume. Whenever Brad takes damage, he’s stripped down to his tighty-whitey underwear.
While the game is very limited in its design and gameplay, it may still be worth checking out for hardcore Rocky Horror fans for its retro aesthetic and enjoyable 8-bit soundtrack. For everyone else, even at about $10, it might be a time warp best left to Rocky Horror completists.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Anniversary: Star Trek’s “Spectre of the Gun” (1968)
Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. Where the laws do not operate, there is no reality. – Spock to McCoy, at the OK Corral.
Fifty-six years this evening on NBC, Star Trek’s “Spectre of the Gun” first aired. It was written by former producer Gene L. Coon (under the name of Lee Cronin) and directed by Vincent McEveety.
It had one of the larger guest casts — Ron Soble as Wyatt Earp, Bonnie Beecher, Charles Maxwell as Virgil Earp, Rex Holman as Morgan Earp, Sam Gilman as Doc Holliday, Charles Seel as Ed the bartender, Bill Zuckert as Johnny Behan, Abraham Sofaer as the Melkotian Voice and Ed McCready as Barber.
SPOILER ALERT. GO DRINK WHISKEY WITH JONAH HEX. In the episode, having been found trespassing into Melkotian space, Captain Kirk and members of his crew are sent to die in a surreal re-enactment of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Not surprisingly aliens are behind this entire affair, testing humans before they make contact with them by inquiring about Kirk’s refusal to kill. They finally grant the Enterprise permission to approach their planet. END OF SPOILER. WAS HEX GOOD COMPANY? NO?
and END OF SPOILER. WAS HEX HIS TACITURN SELF?
The first I know the use a setting similar to this was the First Doctor two years previously, “The Gunfighters”. A later splendid use is Emma Bull’s Territory.
I will note that the budget wasn’t available to shoot on location on a full set, so instead a Western street of false building fronts and no sides was used.
It’s considered one of the finest episodes of the original though Keith R.A. DeCandido of Tor.com inexplicably decided to criticize the episode for its historical inaccuracies. Eh?
Christian Science Monitor and Hollywood Reporter both put it in their top 20 original Star Trek episodes, and the A.V. Club ranked this episode as one of top ten “must see” episodes of the original series.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Moderately Confused is not impressed.
- Reality Check says there is another.
- The Argyle Sweater criticizes the menu.
- The Other Coast illustrates the problem with a future dream.
(10) MARVEL’S HAWKEYE COMING OUT ON DISCS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Having just (re)watched Marvel’s Hawkeye series (Season 1, which is all that’s out so far), includes a bunch of deleted scenes and bonus material – great fun, well worth the time! — I was commending it to a friend who doesn’t subscribe to The Mouse That Streams (Disney+)…and a quick easy web search turns up that it (along with Loki Season 2) will be out (for sale) in “4K Ultra HD Dolby Vision along with Atmos audio,” (Blu-Ray) on December 3, 2024, as “Marvel Studios’ Hawkeye – The Complete First Season,”, according to Marvel and also Collider.com (“Available to pre-order from October 31, 2024.”)
Extras (“bonus content”) will include deleted scenes, gag reel, a “making of” and other documentary/behind-the-scenes stuff,” and possibly some physical collectibles. (I’m going to request this from my library, so I’m not concerned with physical ephemera.)
(I’m also seeing some plain old DVD and Blu-Ray Hawkeye Season 1 disks, on eBay, dunno whether they’re legit, but either way, unlikely to have any/all of the bonus materials.)
‘Nuff scrolled!
(11) BE STILL MY BEATING HEART. “Science Names 2024 Irish Horror Movie Oddity One of the Scariest Films Ever Made” – Movieweb tells why.
Every year, the Science of Scare project gathers together 250 people to help determine the most frightening horror movies ever made. While Scott Derrickson’s 2012 film Sinister and the 2020 UK film Host have been trading the top spots since the project began in 2020, a new independent horror movie has emerged out of Ireland this year to crack the Top 20, beating out a number of other 2024 films that were nowhere to be seen.
According to science, Damian McCarthy’s Oddity is now one of the scariest horror movies in history based on the data that was collected from a fresh group of 250 people that screened a plethora of spooky films throughout the year. Premiering at the South by Southwest festival back in March, Oddity made its way to the streaming service Shudder on September 27, and has been giving people the creeps ever since. Certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a critical ranking of 96%, its audience score sits at a healthy 78% from over 1,000 fan reviews, with many people echoing the results of the scientific study by calling it one of the most “terrifying” movies they’ve ever seen….
…Are you wondering how science was able to determine which horror movies are the most terrifying of all? We’re glad you asked, because it’s simple, really. Each person involved in the study is hooked up to a monitor that measures their heart rate, and, as the Science of Scare project tells it:
“With heart rate (BPM), the higher the number, the faster the movie got our audiences’ blood pumping, an indicator of excitement and fear as part of your fight or flight instinct. On the other hand, heart rate variance (HRV) measures the time in between each beat of your heart. The lower the heart rate variance the more stressed our audience members became, a good indicator of slow burn fear and dread.”…
(12) I VOTE FOR ‘YUCK’. “Ketchup in space: ‘You gotta squirt it out’” – a BBC video.
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick has recorded a video demonstration of what happens to ketchup in a zero gravity environment.
Dominick said “some interesting science stuff” was happening during the display, which he filmed aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday before departing for Earth.
In a post on X, he said: “Everyone I’ve shared it with either thinks it is awesome or gross. Nothing in between.”
(13) FOUR RETURN FROM ISS; ONE HOSPITALIZED. “SpaceX Crew-8 astronaut hospitalized in Pensacola after Dragon splashdown, in ‘stable condition’” reports Space.com.
The astronauts of Crew-8 were taken to a Florida hospital as a precaution, shortly after their successful splashdown on Friday (Oct. 25), NASA said.
The SpaceX Crew-8 group of four astronauts was evaluated at Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola, a hospital nearby their splashdown site in the Atlantic Ocean, a NASA representative told Space.com via email. A newer update from NASA issued at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) said one astronaut, described as “in stable condition,” will remain behind in the hospital “as a precautionary measure.”…
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Brian Z.]