The United States Postal Service announced today it will issue a stamp featuring one of the greats of science fiction, the late Ursula K. Le Guin, in 2021. The stamp portrays Le Guin in front of a scene from one of her Hugo-winning novels The Left Hand Of Darkness. And how appropriate is it that the art for the stamp was done by three-time Hugo winner Donato Giancola?
The 33rd stamp in the Literary Arts series honors Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), who expanded the scope of literature through novels and short stories that increased critical and popular appreciation of science fiction and fantasy. The stamp features a portrait of Le Guin based on a 2006 photograph. The background shows a scene from her landmark 1969 novel “The Left Hand of Darkness,” in which an envoy from Earth named Genly Ai escapes from a prison camp across the wintry planet of Gethen with Estraven, a disgraced Gethenian politician. The artist for this stamp was Donato Giancola. The art director was Antonio Alcalá. The words “three ounce” on this stamp indicate its usage value. Like a Forever stamp, this stamp will always be valid for the value printed on it.
But it’s America, so in the press release Le Guin gets named after Yankee catcher Yogi Berra who’s getting a stamp this year, too.
(1) UK LOCKDOWN BEGINS. “England is going into a month (at least) of hard lockdown,” says Jonathan Cowie – see details at SF2 Concatenation. About that sff/science news publication Cowie reassures:
We have enough articles in and thirty or so book reviews in hand for a spring edition of SF² Concatenation in January.
If lockdown ends as planned in December, then there’ll also be a pre-Christmas Best of ‘Futures’ short story. If not then we’ll roll it into the Spring edition.
(2) ISS AT 20. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Today’s (Tues Nov 3) Science section of the New York Times is mostly about the International Space Station, celebrating “20 years of…”, including a two-page spread with like a dozen short items, three of which are by Mary Robinette Kowal. It looks like these are reprinted.
(3) NEW TAFF REPORT PUBLISHED. John Coxon’s 2011 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund trip report is now available. Covers his perambulations through Canada and the USA, and attending Renovation (the 69th World Science Fiction Convention).
We’ve been talking a lot at Polygon about whether it’s possible for science fiction to model a positive future. Your earliest science fiction books felt utopian, but your recent books, especially the Little Brother series,is much more cynical and concerned about America. Has the way you think about technology and the possibility for a positive future changed since your early books?
I don’t know, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is definitely a complicated utopia, because it supposes that a non-monetary mechanism for allocating resources would just become money again, right? That it would just turn into another unequal rich-get-richer society. So it is, in some ways, a critique of the utopian idea of reputation economics.
Walkaway is about utopianism, in the sense that it’s a book in which crises are weathered. One of the things I recognized when I went out on tour with that book and started talking to people about it is that utopianism is not the assumption that nothing will go wrong. Being an engineer who builds a system on the assumption that it won’t break doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. That’s the thing that makes you decide we don’t need lifeboats for the Titanic.
Instead, being hopeful and utopian means believing that when things break down, we can rebuild them. One of the things we’re living through right now is people acting as though we have lost, as a species, the ability to weather big global crises, like we want to build the pyramids with Egyptian technology or something. Like it’s the practice of a lost civilization that we will never recover. To be an optimist, or to be utopian, is to believe that we can rise to challenges.
Not that challenges will be vanquished once and for all — even if you built a stable system where everything worked well, that system would be subjected to exogenous shocks….
(5) THE COMMONWEALTH, ER, FEDERATION OF PLANETS. The Royal Mail is taking pre-orders for their Star Trek Special Stamps.
Our Star Trek Special Stamps and limited edition collectibles celebrate classic characters from the ground-breaking TV series and big-screen blockbusters.
The Royal Mail blurb says of this panel —
Twelve new illustrations celebrate British actors who have boldly explored the final frontier as Starfleet captains or crew members.
(6) HEARD THAT VOICE BEFORE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] SNL alum Darrell Hammond, who does a GREAT impression of Sean Connery, sent out a tweet with a highlight reel of his Connery dueling on Jeopardy! with Will Farrell as Alex Trebek.
Sorry to hear of the passing of #SeanConnery, my condolences to his family. Always loved doing my silly impressions of him, RIP ????????
“Mr Connery you wear me out!“ “You didn’t say that last night when I was pumping moo goo gai pan all over your tonsils!”pic.twitter.com/v1lUYS0MFV
(7) SESSIONS OBIT. John Sessions, an English actor whose genre credits include Gormenghast, The Adventures of Pinocchio, Dr Who, Outlander, and the audiobook versions of Asterix, died November 2. He was 67.
In the 2014 Doctor Who episode “Mummy on the Orient Express,” he provided the voice of Gus, a sentient computer controlling the titular train. He also co-created and starred in the cult ’90s comedy series Stella Street and made TV appearances in Skins, Outlander, and Friday Night Dinner.
His impeccable impression of his late friend Alan Rickman, which you can watch here, proved especially popular over the years.
(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
November 3, 1967 — “I, Mudd” first aired as the eighth episode of the second season of the original Trek series. Written by Stephen Kandel from a story by Gene Roddenberry, it was directed by Marc Daniels. It reprised the character of Harry Mudd as played Roger C. Carmel who first appeared in “Mudd’s Women”, a season one episode. Although Kandel is the credited writer on the episode, though David Gerrold performed an uncredited extensive rewrite. Carmel was rumored to have been planned to reprise the character on Star Trek: The Next Generation but died before that could happen. He did voice the character in “Mudd’s Passion”, an episode of the animated series.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born November 3, 1921 — Charles Bronson. He didn’t do he a lot of genre acting but I’ve got him in One Step Beyond as Yank Dawson in “The Last Round” and he’s in The Twilight Zone in “Two” as The Man opposite Elizabeth Montgomery as The Women. He was also in Master of The World which is based on the Verne novels Robur the Conqueror and its sequel Master of the World. (Died 2003.) (CE)
Born November 3, 1925 – Monica Hughes, O.C. Twenty novels, half as many shorter stories, for us, not counting three dozen children’s books of which some are SF; various others. Dress designer in London and Bulawayo. Codebreaker in the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Gardener. Beachcomber. Phoenix Award, Hal Clement Award, Vicky Metcalf Award, Alberta Ross Annett Award. Order of Canada. (Died 2003) [JH]
Born November 3, 1929 — Neal Barrett, Jr. Heavily nominated for many awards including a number of Hugos but he never won any. He was Toastmaster at LoneStarCon 2. He was prolific writing over two dozen novels and some fifty pieces of short fiction including a novelization of the first Dredd film. As good much of his genre work was, I think his finest, best over the top work was the Wiley Moss series which led off with Pink Vodka Blues. He’s generously available at usual digital suspects. (Died 2014.) (CE)
Born November 3, 1933 – Jack Harness. Among much else he was the Fan With Too Many Names; Scribe JH, Jxtn Muir, Hawkman, the Golux; these bred variations, like “Wheet-wheet”. They all had origins. He’d been Hawkman in the Chicon III (20th Worldcon) Masquerade. Thurber’s Golux in The Thirteen Clocks wore an indescribable hat, Jack wore indescribable shirts. He dreamed up card games, fanart, cooking. For a while LASFS (L.A. Science Fantasy Society) played strange poker; I believe he invented Soft Shoe, where you could shuffle off to bluff a low. Once he sat staring upward so long that other players demanded to know what he was doing; he answered “I’m worshiping the ceiling”; this was put into song. The LASFS Secretary has been the Scribe ever since his term; he wrote, not the minutes, but the Menace of the LASFS; this too stuck. I could go on, but I won’t. (Died 2001) [JH]
Jack Harness cover for APA-L
Born November 3, 1933 — Jeremy Brett. Still my favorite Holmes of all time. He played him in four Granada TV series from 1984 to 1994 in a total of 41 stories. One web source said he was cast as Bond at one point, but turned the part down, feeling that playing 007 would harm his career. Lazenby was cast instead. (Died 1995.) (CE)
Born November 3, 1942 — Martin Cruz Smith, 78. Best remembered for Gorky Park, the Russian political thriller, but he’s also done a number of genre novels in The Indians Won (alternate history), Gypsy in Amber and Canto for a Gypsy (PI with psychic powers) and two wonderful pulpish novels, The Inca Death Squad and Code Name: Werewolf.
Born November 3, 1946 – Kathryn Davis, 74. Two novels, four shorter stories for us. Six other novels. Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, Morton Dauwen Zaubel Award, Lannan Award for Fiction. “When you are lost in the uncanny woods of this astonishing, double-hinged book [Duplex], just keep reading, and remember to look up. Kathryn Davis knows right where you are”, NY Times 20 Sep 13. [JH]
Born November 3, 1956 — Kevin Murphy, 64. Best known as the voice and puppeteer of Tom Servo for nine years on the Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was also the writer for the show for eleven years. I’m surprised the series was never nominated for a Hugo in the Long Form or Shot Form. Does it not qualify? (CE)
Born November 3, 1957 – Dan Hollifield, 63. Editor of Aphelion. Two short stories there, collection Tales from the Mare Inebrium. Has read The Past Through Tomorrow, Ishmael, Rainbow Mars, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jane Austen, and Dickens. [JH]
Born November 3, 1963 — Brian Henson, 57. Son of Jim Henson, he co-owns and runs the Jim Henson Company. Can we all agree that The Happytime Murders should never have been done? Thought so. Wash it out of your consciousness with Muppet Treasure Island or perhaps The Muppet Christmas Carol. If you want something darker, he was a puppeteer on The Witches, and the chief puppeteer on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And he voices Hoggle in Labyrinth. (CE)
Born November 3, 1968 – Janni Lee Simner, 52. Seven novels, thirty shorter stories. “Five Reasons Not to Self-Publish” in Reflection’s Edge, “Folkroots” about Icelandic folklore in Realms of Fantasy after Thief Eyes. Judy Goddard Award. Guest of Honor at CopperCon 31, TusCon 41. [JH]
Born November 3, 1995 – Kendall Jenner, 25. This top model and Kardashian relative wrote two SF novels (with a sister and ghostwriters). The amazing astounding planetary startling thing is that she did it at all; hard even for us to imagine in 1939. [JH]
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Wondermark’s entry “In which Armageddon awaits” illustrates a plan to unite humanity. But we are dealing with humans, after all. [H/t to David Langford.]
The Far Side often has thoughts I’ve never thunk before – this one’s about flying saucers.
(11) PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM. In “Honest Trailers: National Treasure” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say if you like historical mysteries, National Treasure “places the setting on ‘easy’ for a scavenger hunt anyone can figure out –even kids and Americans!”
(12) PREFERRED FUTURE. Sf writer Ariel S. Winter’s CrimeReads article “In A Pandemic World, We’re All Engaging In Speculative Fiction” says the speculative future we’re thinking about now is one where we can see our friends, not socially distance, and not wear face masks.
… “Wearing surgical face masks was [Laughton’s] least favorite part of being in a hospital. He hated the warm, damp feeling of his own breath coating his cheeks and nose, but it was the law.”
When I wrote that scene, the idea that I would be legally required to wear my own face mask in the months before the novel came out was impossible. The future I was writing towards was focused on humanoid, self-aware, artificial intelligences rather than the fictional pandemic that had given rise to the AI’s power. Artificial intelligence was the part of my novel that I envisioned for the future, not a plague.
While all fiction writing could be called a thought experiment, writing about the future is a special kind of thought experiment that doesn’t just ask how particular events affect particular people, but how collective historic events affect the way all people live. If one thing changes—technology, biology, history—what does life look like then?
(13) REACTIONS PREFERRED. In “Honest Game Trailers: Amnesia: Rebirth,” Fandom Games says this is a game for gamers who like solving “puzzles prepared for learning-impaired monkeys” with characters who chug far too much laudanum.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ. Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, Lise Andreasen, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, John Coxon, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day johnstick.]
Boskone has a deaf attendee who would like to attend and providing ASL Interpreters is not in our budget. They have contracted to get their own ASL Interpreters at the cost of about $1200 for the one day they are attending. We are creating a GoFundMe to raise money, to first give to them to pay for the Interpreters, and second (if we raise more than this year’s Interpreters cost) to start a fund for future years should Interpreters be necessary again.
They’ve raised $573 of their $1200 goal as of this writing.
(2) NEXT RESNICK COLLECTION. UFO
Publishing will soon be releasing a Mike Resnick collection of Harry the Book
stories titled The
Hex is In: The Fast Life and Fantastic Times of Harry the Book: “Introducing:
The Hex is In”
This book will collect, for the first time, all fifteen Harry the Book stories Mike has written. These stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies and magazines spanning a decade. Several of them were only published in the United Kingdom, and one has never been published anywhere at all.
…Harry the Book yarns are humorous fantasy set in the alternate version of New York where magic is real and fantastical creatures are commonplace. In fact, this is a shared setting with Mike’s Stalking the Unicorn series.
Harry the Book is a bookie who takes bets on everything from horse races to dancing contests to political campaigns. And — always — the hex is in. Unscrupulous magicians meddle with the odds forcing Harry and his motley crew (which includes a four-hundred-pound flunky, a six-foot-ten zombie, and a lovelorn wizard) to scramble, dealing with the consequences.
These stories are written in a unique voice–meant to emulate and pay tribute to Damon Runyon (author of Guys and Dolls and other stories). Runyon was the bard of the New York underbelly of the early 20th century, celebrating the hustlers, gamblers, and gangsters of the era.
…Carol Resnick, Mike’s wife who is a Runyon fan and for whom Mike wrote these stories, will pen the introduction.
(3) MORE REASONS TO VISIT THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT. Mythcon 51, the
gathering of the Mythopoeic Society, will be held July 31-August 3 in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. The theme will be The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien —
This year’s Mythcon theme provides multiple opportunities to explore the Other in fantasy and mythopoeic literature. Tolkien spoke in “On Fairy-stories” of “the desire to visit, free as a fish, the deep sea; or the longing for the noiseless, gracious, economical flight of a bird.” We invite discussion about the types of fantasy that are more likely to put us into contact with the alien, such as time portal fantasy and space travel fantasy. In addition to Inklings, some writers who deal particularly well with the truly alien who might be explored include Lovecraft, Gaiman, Le Guin, Tepper, and others….
Rivera Sun is the Author Guest of Honor:
Rivera Sun is a change-maker, a cultural creative, a protest novelist, and an advocate for nonviolence and social justice. She is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection, The Roots of Resistance, and other novels. Her young adult fantasy series, the Ari Ara Series, has been widely acclaimed by teachers, parents, and peace activists for its blending of fantasy and adventure with social justice issues…. Rivera Sun’s essays have been published in hundreds of journals nationwide. She is a frequent speaker and presenter at schools, colleges and universities, where The Dandelion Insurrection has been taught in literature and political science courses. Rivera Sun is also the editor of Nonviolence News, an activist, and a trainer in making change with nonviolence. Her essays and writings are syndicated by Peace Voice and have appeared in journals nationwide. She lives in an Earthship house in New Mexico.
David Bratman is the Scholar Guest of Honor:
His earliest contribution to the field was the first-ever published Tale of Years for the First Age, right after The Silmarillion was published. Since then he’s published articles with titles like “Top Ten Rejected Plot Twists from The Lord of the Rings,” “Hobbit Names Aren’t from Kentucky,” and “Liquid Tolkien” (on Tolkien and music). He’s been co-editor of Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review since 2013, and has written or edited its annual “Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies” since 2004. David edited The Masques of Amen House by Charles Williams and contributed the bio-bibliographical appendix on the Inklings to Diana Pavlac Glyer’s The Company They Keep.
French fashion house Louis Vuitton made headlines last week with an eye-catching campaign for its Pre-Fall 2020 collection: A star-studden homage to pulpy genre paperbacks from the 1980s. In it, Léa Seydoux is menanced by a giant spider, Samara Weaving deals with a valentine from a werewolf, and Jaden Smith stares down a robot apocalypse.
The titles for the fake paperbacks were made up for the lookbook, but the art was not. It’s from veteran illustrators, and much of it was used on the covers of actual books from the same era.
The postage stamp looks like a postage stamp is supposed to look… But it’s not a postage stamp, not really, because its country of origin is Sealand—a metal platform about the size of a tennis court, off the English coast. Sealand is one of the quirky, strangely numerous states known as “micronations,” or self-proclaimed polities with no legal recognition. Some of them, to simulate legitimacy or at least make a little money, have issued their own flags, passports, coins, and yes, postage stamps.
Laura Steward, curator of public art at the University of Chicago, who organized an exhibition at the 2020 Outsider Art Fair in New York of stamps from micronations and other dubiously defined places, believes that these tiny squares are more than a toss-off: They’re art, proof of imagination, and rather sophisticated bids for public recognition….
What’s the micronation stamp with the most interesting story?
I’m drawn to Celestia, the Nation of Celestial Space. James Thomas Mangan, founder of Celestia, registered the acquisition of “outer space” with the Recorder of Deeds and Titles in Cook County, Illinois, on January 1, 1949. Magnan laid claim to outer space to prevent any one country from establishing hegemony there. Later in 1949, he banned all atmospheric nuclear tests, and notified the United Nations of his decision.
(6) KELLY OBIT. Paula Kelly, the
actress, singer and dancer who starred in the film version of Sweet
Charity and earned an Emmy nomination for her turn on Night
Court, died February 9. She was 76. Kelly’s genre appearances included
The Andromeda Strain (1971), and
Soylent Green (1973).
Kelly was married to British director Donald Chaffey (One Million Years B.C.)
from 1985 until his death in 1990.
(7) MCLARTY
OBIT. Ron McLarty, the character actor who also became a published author thanks
to a rave from Stephen King, died February 8 at the age of
72, according to The Hollywood Reporter. I remember him as Detective
Frank Belson in Spenser
for Hire. His first onscreen role came in The
Sentinel (1977). He also was in Kevin Costner’s The
Postman (1997). However, it’s his audiobook work that really
drew him into the orbit of genre
McLarty was a leading audiobook narrator; since the 1990s, his 100-plus credits included work for such authors as King, Danielle Steel, David Baldacci, Anne Rice, Richard Russo, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, Scott Turow and George W. Bush.
In 2001, McLarty persuaded the small company Recorded Books to produce his third novel, The Memory of Running, directly onto tape as an audiobook. (The actor also narrated what is believed to be the first recorded audiobook of an unpublished novel.)
King heard it and loved the story — about a 43-year-old man who, after his parents die, takes a cross-country road trip on an old Raleigh bicycle to find his sister’s body — and in 2003 devoted one of his “The Pop of King” columns in Entertainment Weekly to it, calling Memory “the best book you can’t read.”
The endorsement sparked a bidding war among publishers that led to McLarty getting a reported $2 million from Penguin that included rights to release the novel in 2004 (and later two others) in the traditional way….
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
February 11, 1970 — Hammer Films’ Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed premiered. Directed by Terrence Fisher, it starred Peter Cushing, Freddie Jones, Veronica Carlson and Simon Ward. It was the fifth Hammer film that featured Baron Frankenstein. The screenplay was by Bert Batt, with the story written by Anthony Nelson Keys and Bert Batt. Critics thought it was one of the better Hammer films in quite some time, and it holds a sixty eight percent rating among the nearly three thousand who rated it over at Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch it here.
February 11, 1991 – Today is the 29th broadcast anniversary of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Clues” that Filer Bruce D. Arthurs wrote. (“Story by” Bruce, final teleplay credit shared with Joe Menosky.)
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 11, 1887 — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Russian writer of Polish extraction who John Clute likes a lot. His works are translated into English by Joanne Trumbull. Clute describe his short stories as “the extravagances of Absurdist SF and the generic opportunism of Fantastika”. And miracle of all miracles, he’s available at the usual digital sources including The Letter Killers Club which sounds amazing. (Died 1950.)
Born February 11, 1908 — Tevis Clyde Smith, Jr. He did several short stories with a Robert E. Howard, “Diogenes of Today”, “Eighttoes makes a play” and “ Red Blades of Black Cathay”. Donald M.Grant would publish them together in the Red Blades of Black Cathay collection. The title story originally appeared in Oriental Stories, an offshoot of Weird Tales. (Died 1984.)
Born February 11, 1910 — L. T. C. Rolt. English writer whose enthusiasm for heritage railways is writ large in his 1948 Sleep No More collection of supernatural horror stories which tend to be set in rural railways. (Simon R. Green may be influenced by him in his Ghost Finders series which often uses these railways as a setting.) Some of these stories were adapted as radio dramas. Sleep No More isavailable from Kindle. (Died 1974.)
Born February 11, 1915 — Pat Welsh. She was the voice of E.T. in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. She was also the voice of Boushh in Return of the Jedi who Lucas hired because of her raspy voice which he thought gave the character an ambiguous voice. Those two films and Waterloo Bridge, a Forties film, are her entire acting career. (Died 1995.)
Born February 11, 1926 — Leslie Nielsen. I know the comic, bumbling fool who delighted generations of film goers. But his first starring role was as Commander John J. Adams in one of the finest SF films of all time Forbidden Planet. I am most decidedly not a fan of his later films but I think he’s brilliant here. (Died 2010.)
Born February 11, 1920 — Daniel F. Galouye. His work appeared in Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction In the Fifties and Sixties. He also wrote five novels including Simulacron-3 which was made into Roland Emmerich’s Thirteenth Floor. His first novel, Dark Universe was nominated for a Hugo but came in second at Chicon III to Stranger in a Strange Land. (Died 1976.)
Born February 11, 1939 — Jane Yolen, 81. She loves dark chocolate and I send her some from time to time. She wrote me into a novel as a character, an ethnomusicologist in One-Armed Queen to be precise in exchange for finding her a fairytale collection she wanted. Don’t remember now what it was other than it was very old and very rare. My favorite book by her is The Wild Hunt, and I love that she financed the production of Boiled in Lead’s Antler Dance which her son Adam Stemple was lead vocalist on.
Born February 11, 1948 — Robert Reginald. He’s here because of two Phantom Detective novels he wrote late in his career which are mostly popcorn literature. (The Phantom Detective series started in 1936 so he used the Robert Wallace house name.) He has two series of some length, the Nova Europa Fantasy Saga and War of Two Worlds. Much of what he wrote is available from the usual digital sources. (Died 2013.)
Born February 11, 1950 — Alain Bergeron, 70. He received an Aurora Award for Best Short Story for “Les Crabes de Vénus regardent le ciel” published In Solaris number 73, and a Sideways Award for Alternate History for “Le huitième registre” (translated in English as “The Eighth Register” by Howard Scott).
Born February 11, 1953 — Wayne Hammond, 67. He’s married to fellow Tolkien scholar Christina Scull. Together they’ve done some of the finest work on him that’s been done including J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book and The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide.
Most of organized fandom spent 2019 getting on board with the idea that maybe inviting Vic Mignogna to your convention is a bad idea. The whisper network about the once prolific voice actor finally went public as several women came forward with their stories of harassment. Most conventions decided Mignogna was not remotely worth the hassle (finally), and the vast majority of his appearances were cancelled.
It’s important to note that not all of them of were.
You see, there are still a number of conventions that think it’s a good idea to invite a man with that many allegations of harassment against them in their doors….
(11) PROXIMITY TO THE CORONA. [Item
by Jonathan Cowie.] It
is well known that Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother is alive and well in China what
with new mobile users having to have their face scanned and geo-positioned
etc. Now the State has turned this into an app that it is claimed
can help keep people safe from coronavirus: “China
launches coronavirus ‘close contact detector’ app”.
China has launched an app that allows people to check whether they have been at risk of catching the coronavirus.
The ‘close contact detector’ tells users if they have been near a person who has been confirmed or suspected of having the virus.
People identified as being at risk are advised to stay at home and inform local health authorities.
The World Health Organization says the official name for the new coronavirus will be Covid-2019.
“We now have a name for the disease and it’s Covid-19,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.
It comes after the death toll from the virus passed 1,000. Tens of thousands of people have been infected.
The word coronavirus refers to the group of viruses it belongs to, rather than the latest strain.
Researchers have been calling for an official name to avoid confusion and stigmatisation.
“We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease,” the WHO chief said.
“Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatising. It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks”
Until now, all the pictures of the sun have been straight-on head shots. Soon, scientists will be getting a profile.
NASA and the European Space Agency are set to launch a joint mission on Sunday to provide the first-ever look at the sun’s poles. Previous images have all been taken from approximately the same angle, roughly in line with the star’s equator.
…After the NASA/ESA probe called Solar Orbiter takes off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, it’ll use Venus and Earth’s gravity to propel itself outside that equatorial plane where all the planets in our solar system orbit the sun. Orbiter eventually will be able to look down onto the poles of the sun.
There are many reasons why scientists want to know more about the sun’s poles. They think the poles might be driving some important aspects of space weather throughout the solar system, which can impact spacecraft and even humans on Earth. “It has real world effects on our satellites, our GPS, our power grid and things like that,” McComas says.
NASA is at a critical juncture in its push to get people back to the moon by 2024, with key decisions expected within weeks.
This effort to meet an ambitious deadline set by the Trump administration last year faces widespread skepticism in the aerospace community, even as the new head of human spaceflight at NASA insists that it can succeed.No one has been to the moon since 1972, even though, back in 2004, then-President George W. Bush laid out several goals for NASA, including a “return to the moon by 2020 as the launching point for missions beyond.”
…In March of 2019, however, Vice President Pence announced that “it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years.”
That would mean a remarkable speedup for NASA, which had been working toward a moon landing in 2028. In September, a member of Congress asked Ken Bowersox, who was the acting associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA, how confident he was that the U. S. would have boots on the moon by this new, earlier deadline.
“How confident?” Bowersox replied. “I wouldn’t bet my oldest child’s upcoming birthday present or anything like that.”
(15) ARSENAL OF THE FUTURE. Mr. Sci-Fi, Marc Scott Zicree, pays
a visit to Modern Props.
Star Trek! Men in Black! Blade Runner! Starship Troopers! Name your favorite sci-fi movie or TV show of the last forty years, and Modern Props has probably made some of the coolest things in it!
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian,
Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, James Davis Nicoll, Michael Toman, Karl-Johan Norén, Alex
Shvartsman, Lynn Maudlin, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Michael J. Walsh, and
Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770
contributing editor of the day Acoustic Rob.]
(1) UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH. The Royal Mail Visions of
the Universe stamps are being issued in celebration of the Royal
Astronomical Society’s 200th Anniversary.
A collection of eight Special Stamps with stunning images depicting astronomical features and phenomena studied by British astronomers and astrophysics over the centuries.
The Mandalorian, created by Jon Favreau, has become the de facto flagship show for Disney+, with the Star Wars series introducing the world to Baby Yoda, easily the breakout character of 2019.
During the earnings call, Iger also said Disney+ had reached 28.6 million paid subscribers as of Monday, less than three months after launch.
The CEO also revealed premiere windows for two of the streaming platform’s anticipated Marvel Studios shows. August will see the debut of TheFalcon & the Winter Soldier, Marvel’s first Disney+ series, which will be followed in December by WandaVision, which stars Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Scarlet Witch and Vision, respectively.
5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?
I was in college when I first read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since then, I’ve read it at least five times. I find new things in it every time. It has blown my mind in so many ways, and really inspired me to challenge worldbuilding elements that I had always taken for granted. I really love the way the book uses both researcher and character points of view. It’s one of the works that really got me to pay close attention to the kinds of drive and conflict that point of view changes can create.
(4) MUSIC INSPIRED BY DHALGREN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] From the Newton (MA) Tab, Feb
5, 2020 —
SPOTLIGHT ON
House of the Ax is a haunted performance installation, inspired by the labyrinthine novel “Dhalgren” by Samuel R. Delaney [sic]. The performers [missing comma sic] Rested Field, are a Boston-based experimental ensemble, invested in exploring alternative modes that integrate both deterministic and improvisatory strategies….
There is one workshop and two perforamnces scheduled. Open free rehearsal/workshop is Friday, Feb. 7, 6-9pm and will feature an open discussion about surveillance, performativity, anonymity, and bullying, particularly in online spaces. Performances are Saturday, Feb. 8, 6-9PM and Sunday, Feb 7, 2-5pm. At the Durant-Kenrick House and Grounds, 286 Waverly Ave., Newton. Tickets are $15….
(5) HUGO CHAT. YouTuber Kalanadi presents 2020 Hugo
Nomination Recommendations. At the site, the video is supplemented with a list
of resources including File 770’s Best Series eligibility compilation by
JJ.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY.
February 7, 1940 — Walt Disney’s movie Pinocchio debuted.
February 7, 1992 — The Ray Bradbury Theater aired “The Utterly Perfect Murder” episode. Based on a short story by Bradbury, it concerns the long plotted revenge of a boy tormented in his childhood who now thinks he has plotted the utterly perfect murder. It’s directed by Stuart Margolian, and stars Richard Kiley, Robert Clothier and David Turri. You can watch it here.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 7, 1931 — Gloria Talbott. A spate of Fifties films earned her the title of Scream Queen including The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, The Cyclops, I Married a Monster from Outer Space and The Leech Woman. Her longest role was on Zorro as Moneta Esperon. She retired from acting in her mid-Thirties. (Died 2000.)
Born February 7, 1950 — Karen Joy Fowler, 70. Michael Toman, in an email asking OGH that we note her Birthday today, says that he has “A Good Word for one of my favorite writers” and so do I. Her first work was “Recalling Cinderella” in L .Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol I. Her later genre works are Sarah Canary, the Black Glass collection and the novel The Jane Austen Book Club, is not SF though SF plays a intrinsic role in it, and two short works of hers, “Always” and “The Pelican Bar” won significant awards. Her latest genre novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, is being adored far and wide.
Born February 7, 1952 — Gareth Hunt. Mike Gambit in The New Avengers, the two-season revival of The Avengers that also starred Joanna Lumley as Purdey and Patrick Macnee as John Steed. Quite excellent series. He was also Arak in the Third Doctor story, “Planet of The Spiders”. (Died 2007.)
Born February 7, 1955 — Miguel Ferrer. You likely best remember him as OCP VP Bob Morton in RoboCop who came to a most grisly death. Other notable genre roles include playing FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield on Twin Peaks and USS Excelsior helm officer in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. In a very scary role, he was Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning in Brave New World. Lastly I’d like to note that he did voice work in the DC Universe at the end of his life, voice Martian Manhunter (J’onn J’onzz) in Justice League: The New Frontier and Deathstroke (Slade Joseph Wilson) in Teen Titans: The Judas Contract. (Died 2017.)
Born February 7, 1960 — James Spader, 60. Most recently he did the voice and motion-capture for Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron. No, I did not enjoy that film, nor the Ultron character. Before that, he played Stewart Swinton in Wolf, a Jack Nicholson endeavor. Then of course he was Daniel Jackson in Stargate, a film I still enjoy though I think the series did get it better. He also plays Nick Vanzant in Supernova andJulian Rome in Alien Hunter.
Born February 7, 1962 — Eddie Izzard, 58. I’m going to give him Birthday Honors for being a voice actor in the Netflix series Green Eggs and Ham where he voices Hervnick Z. Snerz, an arrogant, overbearing businessman. No idea if that’s a character from the book or not. He’s also had roles in the awful reboot of The Avengers series as a film, Shadow of the Vampire, Alien Invasion, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and The Lego Batman Movie.
Born February 7, 1908 — Buster Crabbe. He also played the lead role in the Tarzan the Fearless, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers series in the Thirties, the only person to do though other actors played some of those roles. He would show up in the Seventies series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as a retired fighter pilot named Brigadier Gordon. (Died 1983.)
Her Own Bootstraps, written by Amy Veeres, performed by Jacob Dudman Extracting a dangerous Time War weapon from an irresponsible scientist, the Doctor arrives on Krakatoa in 1883 to destroy it. Problematically, the scientist is also in Krakatoa to steal the weapon. This is where she found it before the Doctor stole it from her. Trapped in a paradox, the Doctor must overcome a future he cannot change.
A future that has already happened.
The Meaning of Red, written by Rod Brown, performed by Nicola Bryant The TARDIS accidentally strands Peri alone on the inhospitable world of Calleto. Taking refuge with the planet’s only colonists, she waits and waits, but the Doctor doesn’t return. Her only hope lies in discovering the secrets of this planet.
It’s that, or she dies.
Blue Boxes, written by Erin Horakova, performed by Mark Reynolds Death stalks the phone lines.
UNIT’s been inundated with prank calls. Bored, the Doctor agrees to help Liz investigate. Quickly immersed in the world of phone line hackers, it is revealed that they’re being killed, one-by-one. With the death toll rising, the Doctor will have to use all his cunning and wits to defeat a foe he can’t even talk to.
He’ll also have to use a blue box. Just not the one you’re expecting.
The Shattered Hourglass, written by Robert Napton, performed by Neve McIntosh The Time Agency has been meddling with time ever since its inception. Of all the days in history, today is a day that will define the agency forever.
Today is the day of their greatest achievement. Today is the day they removed an entire galaxy from the timeline.
Today is the day the Doctor’s shutting them down.
(9) EVEN BIGGER FINISH. Also on the way is a River Song and Captain Jack Harkness team-up.
At last! – …River Song and Captain Jack Harkness cross paths for the first time in their zig-zagging timelines. Will the universe ever be the same again? Alex Kingston co-stars along with Camille Coduri, also returning as Jackie Tyler.
The Lives of Captain Jack volume three will be released in March 2020, and is available on pre-order from today from £19.99, exclusively from the Big Finish website.
Actor John Barrowman said: “Alex Kingston and I have talked about this for years. We knew that the fanbase always wanted River and Jack to meet, or to cross timelines, and we just never knew when it would happen. Alex and I were always game for it and, thanks to Big Finish, this is where it’s happening.
“It’s like Jack is the male River and River is the female Jack. There are all sorts of comparisons in their behaviours and how they react; the verve and vivacious passion they have for solving problems; getting to the heart of the action and adventure; the determination to get what they want, but also the sadness behind both of their eyes.”
Co-star Alex Kingston added: “I’ve always imagined that, when River’s not on adventures with the Doctor, she’s somewhere having fun with Captain Jack. I’ve always had that at the back of my head.
“John Barrowman and I get on so well, and whenever we’ve met at conventions, it’s the one request that the fans have come up with more than any other. We have a lot of fun together so it’s something we’ve both been pushing independently for. I was so thrilled to find out that our dream has come true.”
Crush by Guy Adams Captain Jack takes Mrs Tyler on a luxury cruise in space.
Mighty & Despair by Tim Foley On a distant planet in the far future, two travellers have come looking for a mythical hero.
R&J by James Goss From ancient battles to eternal wars A pair of time-cross’d lovers take the stars
The Lives of Captain Jack volume three will be released in March 2020, and is available on pre-order from today at £19.99 as a download and £24.99 as a collector’s edition CD box set (which also unlocks a free download version on release). This exclusive Big Finish pre-release price will be held until the set’s general release at the end of May 2020.
(10) PAPERBACK WRITERS. At Counterpunch, Ron Jacobs’
long introduction eventually leads to a review of PM Press’ second in a series of pulp fiction reviews, Sticking
It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950
to 1980.
…In the late 1960s, I spent many hours at the various drugstore newsstands in my suburban town reading for free. It was at one such establishment where I discovered Mickey Spillane, Harlan Ellison, Frederick Pohl, Herman Hesse, and the Harvard Lampoon, among others. I would finish up my morning newspaper route on Saturdays and head to the drugstore in the local shopping center. There I would meet up with other newspaper carriers and eat breakfast. That was where I had my first cup of coffee. After the three or four of us delivery boys finished breakfast, I would head to the newsstand to catch up on the newspapers I didn’t deliver and the magazines I didn’t want to buy and my parents didn’t subscribe to. After a quick survey of this media, I would scan the paperbacks and find one to read. If, after a half hour or so of reading, I was intrigued I would buy the book. Usually, the cashier didn’t care what I was buying. Sometimes, however, the cashier would be some uptight older woman or a wannabe’ preacher and they would refuse to sell me the paperback. This usually meant that I would go back to the newsstand and ultimately walk out with the book without paying for it. My library of paperback fiction resided in a box under my bed in the room I shared with one of my brothers. It was mostly made up of pulp novels featuring seedy criminals, badass private eyes, sexy covers, science fiction speculations, and fiction/new journalism popular with hippies and freaks—Herman Hesse, Ken Kesey and Tom Wolfe come immediately to mind.
Unlike its titular character, the horrors of writer/director Leigh Whannell‘s Invisible Man remake will be fully perceived by the naked eye. In the new and terrifying official trailer for the upcoming film, Elisabeth Moss‘ Cecilia tries to leave her abusive boyfriend, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), only for him to literally punch through a car window to get her back.
[…] “There have been a lot of great Dracula movies and a lot of great werewolf movies, but I feel the Invisible Man is kind of the Aquaman of this stable of monsters,” Whannell told SYFY WIRE during our visit to the project’s Australian set. “With this film, I feel like it wants to be more serious tonally. Not to say there aren’t moments with the characters where there might be levity, but it’s not a tonal thing. I wanted to make something that was like a vise that was tightening on people, which doesn’t leave much room for one-liners.”
(12) IN ALL HUMILITY. Gary L.M. Martin, author of Sleeping
with Hitler’s Wife, dispenses genre wisdom on his Amazon
author page. He begins —
Let’s talk about the dismal state of scifi/fantasy novels:
1) There are basically five kinds of scifi/fantasy novels:
a) teenagers with magical powers fighting vampires in Brooklyn;
b) teenagers surviving a post-nuclear wasteland;
c) a moody boy/girl growing to become warrior/magician/king;
d) everyone fighting World War II again, in outer space; and
e) “Hard” scifi, with 200 pages of description of how to drive a moon buggy.
For the most part, there are only five kinds of scifi, because people only can write what they’ve already read. So what you end up reading are bad imitations of bad imitations of bad imitations, and so on….
(13) DOUGLAS FAMILY ALBUM.
April 2017, Beverly Hills. Kirk Douglas presides over Michael’s first Ant-Man suit fitting for ANT-MAN AND THE WASP. pic.twitter.com/kE9Kpq4Lff
(14) SHOCKING! A clip from The Late Show: “Patton
Oswalt Is Shocked When Stephen Colbert Tells Him To Skip “The Hobbit.”
The Tolkien stuff begins at 5:51.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Frank
Olynyk, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Daniel Dern, and Andrew Porter
for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor
of the day Daniel Dern.]
…Neither realized how difficult it would be to find, acquire and get permission to use the letters.
They searched archives at UCLA, AFI, the academy, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Library at Boston University. They reached out to auction houses and families with personal collections.
Lang even hired private detective David Gurvitz to track down relatives for permission to publish the letters. “The copyright was with the writer, not the receiver,” he said.
(2) WE ASKED FOR IT. Saturday’s Scroll works hard for a
living linked to The Guardian’s list of best books of the 21st
Century, leading some of us to ask what a journalist would have picked in 1919
as the best books of the early 20th Century. The legendary Kyra took up the
challenge —
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz The Hound of the Baskervilles Five Children and It The Phoenix and the Carpet Peter Pan The Scarlet Pimpernel I Am A Cat The House of Mirth The Story of the Amulet The Enchanted Castle A Room With a View Anne of Green Gables The Man Who Was Thursday The Wind in the Willows The Secret Garden Howard’s End O Pioneers! The Valley of Fear My Antonia
(3) YE OLDE DAYS. Fanac.org just scanned and posted
9 of the 12 issues of my genzine Scientifriction
published between 1974 and 1983. I recommend Dave Locke’s column “Beyond the
Shift Key” in issue
#11 (1979) as perfectly illustrating the kind of faneditorial diplomacy I am
known for and alluded to in comments yesterday…. and provoked Dave to yank my
chain —
“What is your shtick this time” [Mike] queried me. “If I ask for fanhumor, what are you going to give me? Will you pretend to write a pain story while actually telling everyone why you think science fiction writers should be individually certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture?”
“I’ve never believed that SF writers should – “
He waved his hand again. “It was just an example,” he said. “And if I show a preference for something that will bring in a little discussion, what then?” He looked at me in a severe manner. “Will you draw a framework to support the philosophy that fandom has many direct parallels with the practice of cannibalism, and somehow use it to talk about the time you fell out of a rollercoaster into the cotton candy concession?”…
(4) DRINK TANK. Or if you prefer a really fresh fanzine,
there’s The
Drink Tank 413 – “Dublin 2019” edited by Chris Garcia and Alissa McKersie.
Cover by Vanessa Applegate.
We take a look at the Dublin WorldCon through the eyes of Chairman James Bacon, Hugo nominee Chuck Serface, all-arounf good guy Fred Moulton, the photos of Jim Fitzpatrick, and a MASSIVE trip report by Chris! Cover is by Vanessa Applegate!
(5) INSIDE BASEBALL. Dorothy Grant raises a good question
about fictional realism in “How
long does recovery take?” at Mad Genus Club.
…In Science Fiction and Fantasy, we often employ handwavium – healing spells, regen(eration), nannites, divine favour, what have you. And that’s excellent, when needs must, the plot drives, and it’s worldbuilt in. (Who wouldn’t go to the clinic if they could?)
…Actually, that last sentence is an interesting source of complications. Who wouldn’t? Why would they be unable to get there, or to use it? What’s it like to be a person with more consequences for every risk than those around you, and how does that change their plans? As Brandon Sanderson put it in his Second Law of Magic, “Limitations are more interesting than powers.”
(6) MAIL EARLY FOR HALLOWEEN. The US Postal Service will release
its Spooky
Silhouettes stamp issue on October 11.
The Spooky Silhouettes stamps feature digital illustrations with Halloween motifs rendered as black silhouettes in eerily backlit windows. The images include a cat with an arched back beneath a raven perched on a bare tree branch, all against a yellowish-green background; two ghosts against an orange background; a spider and a web against a red background; and three bats against a purple background.
(7) COSMONAUT OBIT. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] Siegmund Jähn, the first German person in space, has died
aged 82. Because he was from East Germany and went into space with the Soviets,
his contributions to space explorations were sadly ignored in West Germany
until the unification. I had never even heard of Siegmund Jähn until the 1990s,
even though I shared the usual SFF geek’s interest in all things space.
Siegmund Jähn was also the first and likely
only person to officiate at a wedding in space. During his spaceflight in 1978,
Jähn took along a doll of Sandmännchen (Little Sandman), star of a popular East
German children’s program (though West German kids loved it, too, and I had a
Little Sandman doll as a kid, courtesy of my Great Aunt Metel from East
Germany). It just happened that his Soviet colleague Valeri Bykovski had also
brought along a toy, a doll named Masha from some Russian children’s program.
And on a lark, Jähn married the two dolls aboard Soyuz 31. The doll wedding was
apparently filmed, though the footage was never broadcast, because East German
television objected to Little Sandman getting married.
In addition to “Deep Space Nine,” Eisenberg also had roles in the TV movie “Amityville: The Evil Escapes” and the features “The Horror Show,” “Playroom” and “Beverly Hills Brats,” all in the late 1980s.
(9) TODAY’S DAY.
September 22 — Hobbit Day sponsored by the American Tolkien Society. “Tolkien Week is observed as the calendar week containing September 22, which is always observed as Hobbit Day. Tolkien Week 2019 will begin Sunday, September 22 and end Saturday, September 28.”
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.
September 22, 1968 — Irwin Allen’s Land of the Giants aired “The Crash”, the first episode of the series. Starring Gary Conway and Don Matheson, it would last two seasons.
September 22, 1973 — The Canadian-produced series The Starlost aired its first episode. The program was originally conceived by Harlan Ellison, who changed his credit to “Cordwainer Bird” and ran away from it as fast as he could.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 22, 1917 — Samuel A. Peeples. Memory Alpha says that he’s the person that gave Roddenberry the catch phrase he used to sell Trek to the network: “[As] fellow writer Harlan Ellison has credited him with the creation of one of the most famous catch phrases in Star Trek-lore, ‘[Gene Roddenberry] got “Wagon Train to the stars” from Sam Peeples. That’s what Gene said to me. They were at dinner and Sam Peeples, of course, was a fount of ideas, and Gene said something or other about wanting to do a space show and Sam said, “Yeah? Why don’t you do Wagon Train to the stars?”’” (Died 1997.)
Born September 22, 1952 — Paul Kincaid, 67. A British science fiction critic. He stepped down as chairman of the Arthur C. Clarke Award in April 2006 after twenty years. He is the co-editor with Andrew M. Butler of The Arthur C. Clarke Award: A Critical Anthology. He’s also written A Very British Genre: A Short History of British Fantasy and Science Fiction and What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction.
Born September 22, 1954 — Shari Belafonte, 65. Daughter of Harry Belafonte, I first spotted her on Beyond Reality, a Canadian series that showed up when I was living in upstate Vermont. You most likely saw her as Elizabeth Trent in Babylon 5: Thirdspace as that’s her most well-known genre performance.
Born September 22, 1982 — Billie Piper, 37. Rose Tyler, companion to the Ninth and Tenth Doctors. She later starred as Brona Croft/Lily in the Penny Dreadful series. Not really genre, but she‘s in the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke and The Shadow in the North where she’s Sally Lockhart, a Victorian orphan turned detective.
Born September 22, 1971 — Elizabeth Bear, 48. I’ve enjoyed many of her novels down the years including Ancestral Nights. I’m also fond of her very early SF in the form of the Hammered, Scardown and Worldwired novels. And now you get you get to hear the very first time she read one of her stories, “The Chains That Refuse” as she let us put it up on Green Man.
Born September 22, 1981 — Maria Ashley Eckstein, 38. She’s voice of Ahsoka Tano on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and Star Wars Forces of Destiny. She also voices Dagger on the Ultimate Spider-Man series. Did we mention she’s 38? Not 27 or 37? 38!
Born September 22, 1985 — Tatiana Maslany, 34. Performer of the multiple clones role in Orphan Black. Show won the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form in 2015 for its “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried” episode. She’s currently voicing in Aja & Queen Coranda in 3Below: Tales of Arcadia.
Born September 22, 2001 — Ghreat Revelation of Ghughle, age (if that’s really applicable) 17. As Fancyclopedia 3 puts it, “Ghughle is a new and obscure fannish ghod whose Ghreat Revelation occurred to Steven H Silver on September 22, 2001 at a SMOFCon planning meeting. Within five minutes, the first schism happened when Erik Olson insisted on spelling the ghod’s name “Ghugle.” The Ghospel of Ghughle first appeared in Argentus 2 (2002).
(12) COMICS SECTION.
Pearls Before Swine presents a reductio ad absurdum about sensitivity in publishing.
In the hills of western Massachusetts, the mid-summer breeze carries the scent of honeysuckle and the sound of genius. This is Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and of its best-known artist-in-residence, John Williams.
The maestro actually lives in Los Angeles, but he says Tanglewood is where he’s done some of his best work. “Its effect on me is very spiritual and very exciting,” he said. “And I’ve written so much music here, so many film scores in this place. Right here, I come every summer – ‘Star Wars’ films, ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Schindler’s List,’ ‘Harry Potter,’ a great percentage of that work done physically here.”
And what astonishing work it is.
Williams is the most-honored movie composer of all time, with five Academy Awards (so far). And he has 51 Oscar nominations, more than any other living person. Only Walt Disney has more.
“I know you’re a very modest man…” said correspondent Tracy Smith. “But do you ever allow yourself that moment to step back and say, ‘Wow. Look what I’ve done!'”
… Fresh, indeed: Williams has recently reworked some of his movie music for violin, specifically for the instrument of Anne-Sophie Mutter, one of the greatest violinists ever to pick up a bow.
(14) X-FILES IMPACT. “Geena
Davis just made children’s TV more feminist”, a piece by Ann Hornaday
in the Washington Post about the efforts of the Geena Davis Institute to
promote gender equity in Hollywood, has this paragraph quoting the institute’s
president, Madeline Di Nonno:
Di Nonno recalls being commissioned by 21st Century Fox in 2017 to validate the ‘Scully effect,’ wherein Gillian Anderson’s character in ‘The X-Files’ inspired girls and young women to go into scientific fields. ‘We found that 63 percent of the women who are working in STEM today attribute it to that character,’ Di Nonno says.
Receding water levels in Spain’s Valdecañas Reservoir has exposed a stone monument dating back to between 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.
Unusually warm weather produced drought conditions across much of Europe this past summer, including Spain. The lack of rain, while a headache for farmers and gardeners, has resulted in the complete re-emergence of an ancient megalithic site known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, as reported in The Local.
Debut novelist Christina Dalcher has been awarded The Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2019 for her thought-provoking and suspenseful dystopian thriller VOX, which imagines a near future in which an evangelical sect has taken control of the US and women have been limited to speaking just a hundred words a day.
(17) PASTURES OF PLENTY. A catalog of links to these book reviews can be found at Friday’s Forgotten Books: The name of the reviewer comes first, then the name of what they reviewed.
Patricia/Abbott: Beautiful Ruins by Jesse Walter
Stacy Alesi: The G List: Fiction Reviews 1983-2013
Angie Barry: New Orleans Mourning by Julie Smith
Brad Bigelow: Angry Man’s Tale by Peter de Polnay
Paul Bishop: The Cowboy and the Cossack by Clair Huffaker
Les Blatt: Sealed Room Murder by Rupert Penny; The Case of the Fighting Soldier by Christopher Bush
Elgin Bleecker: Zero Avenue by Dietrich Kalteis
Joachim Boaz: Orbit 4, edited by Damon Knight
John Boston: Amazing: Fact and Science Fiction Stories, October 1964, edited by Cele Goldsmith Lalli
Brian Busby: The Silver Poppy by Arthur Stringer
Joseph J. Corn: “The First Successful Trip of an Airship” by A. I. Root, Gleanings in Bee Culture, 1 January 1905
Martin Edwards: Dear Laura by Jean Stubbs
Peter Enfantino: Atlas (proto-Marvel) horror comics, September 1952
Peter Enfantino and Jack Seabrook: DC war comics, September 1975
Will Errickson: The Nightrunners by Joe R. Lansdale; Slob by Rex Miller
José Ignacio Escribano: Murder in the Maze by “J. J. Connington” (Alfred Walter Stewart); Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie
Curtis Evans: Sudden Death by Freeman Wills Crofts
Olman Feelyus: The Girl from Nowhere by “Rae Foley” (Elinor Denniston); No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase
Paul Fraser: New Worlds SF, August 1965, edited by Michael Moorcock (Jeremiah Cornelius)
Barry Gardner: Down in the Zero by Andrew Vachss
Kathleen George: Scoundrels edited by Gary Phillips
John Grant: This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith; The Courilof Affair by Irène Némirovsky (translated by Sandra Smith)
Aubrey Hamilton: The Gourmet Detective by Peter King; The Defendants by John Ellsworth
Bev Hankins: Thrones, Donations by Dorothy L. Sayers and Joan Paton Walsh; The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North; False Scent by Ngaio Marsh; The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat by Claudia Bishop
Rich Horton: Tanith Lee stories; Why Do Birds? and stories by Damon Knight; Wil McCarthy stories; Howard Waldrop stories; Steve Rasnic Tem stories
Jerry House: The Silent Death by “Maxwell Grant” (Walter B. Gibson); originally in The Shadow Magazine. 1 April 1933, edited by John Nanovic; Thriller Comics Library, 6 November 1956, “Dick Turpin and the Double-Faced Foe” written by Joan Whitford, story illustrations by Ruggero Giovanni
Kate Jackson: Stairway to an Empty Room and Terror Lurks in Darkness by Dolores Hitchens; Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie and Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making as edited by John Curran
Tracy K: More Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham
Colman Keane: Darwin’s Nightmare by Mike Knowles
George Kelley: The Great SF Stories 13 (1951) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
Joe Kenney: Omerta by Peter McCurtin; Fire Bomb by “Stuart Jason” (James Dockery)
Rob Kitchin: Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum (translated by Felicity David); Tightrope by Simon Mawer
B. V. Lawson: Final Proof by Marie R. Reno
Evan Lewis: “Waterfront Wildcat” (text story) by Robert Turner, Crash Comics, November 1940
Steve Lewis: “Small Chances” by Charlaine Harris, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September/ October 2016, edited by Janet Hutchings; The Wiseman Originals by Ron Goulart; Wedding Treasure by David Wilson
Mike S. Lind: The Madhouse in Washington Square by David Alexander
John O’Neill: The Quiet Invasion by Sarah Zettel
Matt Paust: Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
James Reasoner: Stampede by “Yukon Miles” (Dan Cushman)
Richard Robinson: The Man in My Grave by Wilson Tucker
Sandra Ruttan: Sob Story by Carol Anne Davis
Gerard Saylor: Locked Doors by Blake Crouch
Steven H Silver: “The Button Molder” by Fritz Leiber, Whispers magazine, October 1979, edited and published by Stuart David Schiff; SF Commentary edited and published by Bruce Gillespie
Victoria Silverwolf: Worlds of Tomorrow, September 1964, edited by Frederik Pohl; Counterfeit World aka Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye
Kevin Tipple: Parker Field by Howard Owen
“TomCat”: Seeds of Murder by (F.) Van Wyck Mason; “The Case of Murder on D. Hill” aka “D zaka no satsujin-jiken” by “Edogawa Rampo” (Hirai Tar?), first published in Shin-Seinen, January 1925, and as translated by William Varteresian
Mike Tooney: Old-Time Detection, Summer 2019, edited by Arthur Vidro
David Vineyard: Prelude to a Certain Midnight by Gerald Kersh
Bill Wallace: The Day of the Monkey by David Karp; The White People by Arthur Machen; Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties & the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius by Gary Lachman
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Alive at the Autoplex”
on Vimeo, Zachary Loren Jones explains how bingewatching “Survivor”
can help you survive a cosmic catastrophe!
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Cora Buhlert, Mike Kennedy, Darrah
Chavey, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, James Bacon, and Andrew
Porter for some of these stories. Title
credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Chip Hitchcock.]
(1) PRESENT AT THE CREATION. Craig Miller distributed flyers for his
forthcoming Star Wars memoir at San Diego Comic-Con. The four-page
fold-over can be seen at his Facebook page. Here’s the placeholder cover:
(2) HOYT ON THE BUBBLE? A call to delete Wikipedia’s entry
for Sarah A. Hoyt is also under consideration: “Wikipedia:Articles
for deletion/Sarah Hoyt”. Some of the supporting arguments are:
Of eleven sources on the page, all but one source back to either Archive.org remnants of her old personal website or to her husband’s website.
The final source on the page is a podcast.
Some of the content appears plagiarized from other websites or promotional materials from the publisher such as book jacket author bio text. The text of the Writing section appears copied verbatim from fan site https://www.risingshadow.net/library/author/567-sarah-a-hoyt.
(3) LAUGHTER ON THE RIGHT. Meanwhile, today’s post at According
To Hoyt comes from guest blogger Frank J. Fleming who offers “Frank
Tips for Writing Satire”.
…Just make sure you’re making fun of someone your audience doesn’t like, because if you make fun of someone they do like, that’s what you call “bad satire.” And then you’re going to get mobbed and probably doxxed. A good strategy for that is to own multiple houses.
Ha, you idiots; I wasn’t even at that house you doxxed! That was a burner home!
(4) THE ROCKET RETURNS. The Mysterious Bookshop is offering
a new edition of Anthony Boucher’s legendary 1942 novel Rocket
to the Morgue, which features characters based on his science fiction
writing contemporaries. New introduction by F. Paul Wilson.
Legendary science fiction author Fowler Faulkes may be dead, but his creation, the iconic Dr. Derringer, lives on in popular culture. Or, at least, the character would live on if not for Faulkes’s predatory and greedy heir Hilary, who, during his time as the inflexible guardian of the estate, has created countless enemies in the relatively small community of writers of the genre. So when he is stabbed nearly to death in a room with only one door, which nobody was seen entering or exiting, Foulkes suspects a writer. Fearing that the assailant will return, he asks for police protection, and when more potentially-fatal encounters follow, it becomes clear to Detective Terry Marshall and his assistant, the inquisitive nun, Sister Ursula, that death awaits Mr. Foulkes around every corner. Now, they’ll have to work overtime to thwart the would-be murderer?a task that requires a deep dive into the strange, idiosyncratic world of science fiction in its early days.
With characters based heavily on Anthony Boucher’s friends at the Manana Literary Society, including Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and Jack Parsons, Rocket to the Morgue is both a classic locked room mystery and an enduring portrait of a real-life writing community. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, the book is a must-read for fans of mysteries and science fiction alike.
“Issues of immigration, issues of identity, all these things, they’re not new, and they’ve been there for a long time,” she says.
Okorafor talks and writes from experience. The graphic novel introduces Future through an extended scene at LaGuardia, where she queues up for screening along with aliens of all shapes and sizes, as well as a little white girl who yanks on her locks. At the checkpoint, she is pulled aside for a second screening by a security guard who asks invasive questions about whether the baby in her belly is human. The confrontation is ripped straight from an incident in 2009, when a TSA officer at LaGuardia took Okorafor to a private room to squeeze each of her four-and-a-half-foot locks for hidden contraband. Preoccupied with her hair, the officer missed the bottle of pepper spray that Okorafor had forgotten to remove from her bag. In LaGuardia, that misdirection allows the character to carry the alien through, undetected.
As an author, Okorafor travels a lot, and it’s become clear to her that airport and border crossings are more about control than safety.
“It’s the space between, a place of contention, a place of displacement, a place of fear, a place of identity,” she says. “It’s where you become very aware of all the things that you are and what they mean, in the context of where you are. And depending on who you are, that place can feel very hot or it can feel very chill.”
As you know, I do not use my connection to you on the web page or Facebook/Twitter to move outside the subjects of books, reading and writing. I am going to break that rule now.
For three years, I have kept quiet about Donald Trump and his effort to be President of the U.S. I am not a political activist. I am a writer of fantasy adventure books, and while I have opinions about politics and people involved in politics, I pretty much keep them to myself. My writing speaks for me. My writing is my voice to the larger world. But a few weeks back I listened to a young journalist speak about the importance of standing up for what you believe if you love your country. He said that if you had a platform, you had an obligation to use it. He said if you have a voice, you needed to use it. He said, finally, that writers need to write about what matters – in some form, in some way, at some time…
Brooks speaks out at length.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 23, 1888 — Raymond Chandler. He of the hard boiled detective genre is listed by ISFDB as doing some stories of a genre nature, to be exact ”The Bronze Door”, “The King In Yellow”, “Professor Bingo’s Snuff” and “English Summer: A Gothic Romance”. I’ve neither heard it nor read these. So who here has? “The King In Yellow” is in the Raymond Chandler megapack I just downloaded from iBooks so I will read it soon. (Died 1959.)
Born July 23, 1910 — Kendell Foster Crossen. He was the creator and writer of stories in the Forties about the Green Lama and the Milo March detective and spy novels. Though the latter is not genre, the former is as the Green Lama had supernatural powers. In the Fifties he began writing SF for Thrilling Wonder Stories, including the Manning Draco stories about an intergalactic insurance investigator, four of which are collected in Once Upon a Star: A Novel of the Future. None of his SF is on iBooks or Kindle alas. (Died 1981.)
Born July 23, 1914 — Virgil Finlay. Castle of Frankenstein calls him “part of the pulp magazine history … one of the foremost contributors of original and imaginative art work for the most memorable science fiction and fantasy publications of our time.” His best-known covers are for Amazing Stories and Weird Tales. “Roads,” a novella by Seabury Quinn, published in the January 1938 Weird Tales, and featuring a cover and interior illustrations by him, was originally published in a extremely limited numbers by Arkham House in 1948. It’s now available on iBooks though not Kindle. (Died 1971.)
Born July 23, 1923 — Cyril M. Kornbluth. I certainly read and liked The Space Merchants and The Syndic which are the two I remember reading these years on. Given his very early death, he wrote an impressive amount of fiction, particularly short fiction. Wildside Press has all of his fiction available on iBooks and Kindle in a single publication. (Died 1958.)
Born July 23, 1947 — Gardner Dozois. He was the founding editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies (and was editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction for twenty years, getting multiple Hugo and Locus Awards for those works. His writing won the Nebula Award for best short story twice, once for “The Peacemaker”, and again for “Morning Child”. Being Gardner Dozois: An Interview by Michael Swanwick covers everything he wrote to that date. (Died 2018.)
Born July 23, 1956 — Kate Thompson, 63. Author of the New Policeman trilogy which I highly recommend. Though written for children, you’ll find it quite readable. And her Down Among the Gods is a unique take on a Greek myths made intimate.
Born July 23, 1970 — Charisma Carpenter, 49. She’s best remembered as Cordelia Chase on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. She was also Kyra on Charmed and Kendall Casablancas on Veronica Mars. She was Sydney Hart in Mail Order Monster and Beth Sullivan in the direct to video Josh Kirby… Time Warrior! Franchise.
Born July 23, 1982 — Tom Mison, 37. Ichabod Crane, the lead on Sleepy Hollow. Ok did anyone here actually watch it? I had the best of intentions but never caught it. The only time I saw him was he showed up on Bones in a cross-over episode. He’s The Mime in the forthcoming Watchmen series
Born July 23, 1989 — Daniel Radcliffe, 30. Harry Potter of course. (Loved the films, didn’t read the novels.) Also, Victor Frankenstein’s assistant Igor in Victor Frankenstein, Ignatius Perrish in Horns, a horror film, and Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Old Vic in London.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
The Argyle Sweater has a novel idea – at least, Rich Horton says, “I’d read the novel in which the Salem witches did this!”
Exactly 110 years ago this Thursday, French inventor Louis Blériot became the first person to fly an airplane across the English Channel, the body of water separating the United Kingdom and France.
To honor the achievement, another French inventor plans to make his own cross-Channel trip this week — but he’ll attempt to do so while riding a flying hoverboard that looks strangely similar to the one used by Spider-Man villain the Green Goblin.
The trip will require a mid-Channel refueling,
though inventor Franky Zapata is said to be considering doing
this while hovering above a ship rather than landing on one so he can claim a
non-stop flight. In an interview with The Guardian,
Zapata (who recently overflew this year’s Bastille Day parade) laid out
his plans to make the attempt to cross from Calais to Dover. Contrasting the
Bastille Day flight to the Channel crossing, he is quoted as saying, “I used 3%
of the machine’s capabilities [on Bastille Day] and I’ll need 99% for the
Channel. It won’t be easy at all and I reckon I’ve a 30% chance of
succeeding.”
Things I have in common with my biological half-brother Rick that I don’t share with my adopted family:
Candy. We stopped by the store and I grabbed an Almond Joy, because I like to keep an emergency snack around my hotel room in case of sudden hunger. Apparently this is also Rick’s preferred candy bar.
Tattoos. My adopted family did not approve of them. Everyone in my biological family has them; I personally have six. At one point Rick and I were cruising around Hollywood looking for a tattoo parlor to give us matching brother-sister ink, but we couldn’t find anybody good so abandoned that idea for now.
Fearlessness. I flew down on one of those small commuter jets, and Katrina asked if it was scary, and I didn’t know what to say. I have a twisted scariness threshold and so does Rick. We both enjoy terrifying experiences like horror films and we both confessed we’d love to see a ghost or monster or alien or sasquatch or chupacabra or other similar frightening thing. He’s more outdoorsy and used to do crazy things involving motorcycles and championship fights. I’m the inside type and get my kicks from litigation deadlines and murdering my fellow video game players (and writing action-adventure stories, that too). We are a clan of warriors and although we occasionally ripple with anxiety, we also tend to have rock steady nerves….
Nasa has outlined more details of its plans for a landing craft that will take humans to the lunar surface.
The plans call for an initial version of the lander to be built for landing on the Moon by 2024; it would then be followed by an enhanced version.
The news comes as work was completed on the Orion spacecraft that will fly around the Moon in 2021.
This mission, called Artemis-1, will pave the way for the first attempt to land since 1972.
The presolicitation notice to industry calls for proposals on an initial lander design capable of carrying two people down to the Moon’s South Pole in 2024.
Companies will then be given the option to develop an enhanced lander capable of carrying four astronauts to the lunar surface. It would also be able to stay for longer, including through the two-week lunar night.
This lander would support Nasa’s plans for a “sustainable” return to the Moon that would eventually involve the construction of an outpost on the surface.
Iron Age roundhouses, Roman burials and Saxon pottery have been discovered in a “hugely important and hitherto unknown settlement”.
The seven month-long dig in Warboys in Cambridgeshire also uncovered “a rare example” of “early Saxon occupation mingled with the latest Roman remains”.
Archaeologist Stephen Macaulay said: “We almost never find actual physical evidence of this.”
The settlement reverted to agricultural use after the 7th Century.
(15) SUPERMAN’S BREAKFAST. Here’s a 3-minute video with “uncut
footage of George Reeves directing test of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes commercial at
his home”
Hackers who breached a Russian intelligence contractor found that it had been trying to crack the Tor browser and been working on other secret projects, the BBC has learned.
Tor is an anonymous web browser, used by those wishing to access the dark web and avoid government surveillance.
It is very popular in Russia.
The hackers stole some 7.5 terabytes of data from SyTech, a contractor for Russia’s Federal Security Service FSB, and included details of its projects.
It is not clear how successful the attempt to crack the anonymous browser was, as the method relied heavily on luck to match Tor users to their activity.
Hackers from a group known as 0v1ru$ gained access to the company on 13 July, and replaced its internet homepage with a smug smiley face often used by internet trolls.
…On the Midway’s deck sits a white Sea King helicopter painted with the famous 66 squadron number and painted on the nose of the helicopter are the silhouettes of five Apollo capsules. But walk around to the other side of the helicopter and you’ll see the number “68” painted on the other side.
If you head about 800 kilometers to the northwest, to Pier Three at the former Alameda Naval Air Station and go aboard the USS Hornet Museum, on her aft flight deck you will see another Sea King, also painted with a large “66” on the side of her fuselage. The Sea King on display on the Hornet was used in the movie Apollo 13, which is why it retains its markings from the helicopter carrier Iwo Jima, which was the recovery ship for that mission. The helicopter was obtained from the Navy and restored off-site before being hoisted aboard the Hornet. The museum has several other helicopters that are painted like the recovery aircraft for the American space program, including a Piesecki HUP-25 Retriever of the type used to ferry John Glenn from the USS Noa to the carrier USS Randolph following his Friendship 7 orbital flight in 1962, and a UH-34 Seahorse of the type used for the Gemini and Apollo recoveries.
The real Helo 66, the one in the Apollo 11 documentary and all of those famous Apollo era photographs, crashed into the ocean off the coast of San Diego in 1975. That helicopter, BuNo 152711, was lost in a tragic accident during training to hunt Soviet submarines.
The Republic of Ireland’s postal service has apologised for spelling “the moon” wrong in Irish on its new commemorative stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landing.
The postal service, known as An Post, launched the stamps last week.
Four astronauts are featured on the stamps with Irish ancestry.
The Irish word for moon is “gealach”. But the stamp accidently spelled it “gaelach”, which means being Gaelic, Irish or relating to the Scottish Highlands.
Instead of reading “The 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing”, it now reads “50th Anniversary of the First Landing on the Irish”.
[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge,
Martin Morse Wooster, rcade, Mike Kennedy, Rich Horton, Carl Slaughter,
Contrarius, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to
File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
(1) NOVEL IDEA: READ THE WORDS. Audible’s new program to run text along side its audiobooks is
now in beta testing — “Audible’s
Captions Program Stirs Fears, Frustration Among Publishers”. Publishers
Weekly posts quotes from those questioning whether Audible has these
rights, and if the program violates copyright.
…At least one major publisher, Simon & Schuster, has already deemed the program illegal. In a statement released by a spokesperson, S&S said: “We have informed Audible that we consider its Captions program to be an unauthorized and brazen infringement of the rights of authors and publishers, and a clear violation of our terms of sale. We have therefore insisted that Audible not include in Captions any titles for which Simon & Schuster holds audio or text rights.”
The Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild issued statements that also said Audible’s contracts do not give the company the right to create a text product. “Existing ACX and Audible agreements do not grant Audible the right to create text versions of audiobooks, whether delivered as a full book or in segments,” the Guild statement noted. “The Captions program appears to be outright, willful copyright infringement.”
Audible's forthcoming Audible Captions initiative will let you "read" an audiobook while you listen by scrolling a text transcription of the entire audiobook–in effect, an ebook. Would seem to raise some pretty serious rights concerns. @AuthorsGuildhttps://t.co/hS3EXQdJym
(2) DOODLE. The July 18 Google Doodle is a 4-minute
animation of the Apollo 11 mission narrated by astronaut Michael Collins.
50 years ago, NASA’s Apollo 11 mission changed our world and ideas of what is possible by successfully landing humans on the surface of the moon?—and bringing them home safely?—for the first time in history. Today’s video Doodle celebrates this moment of human achievement by taking us through the journey to the moon and back, narrated by someone with firsthand knowledge of the epic event: former astronaut and Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins.
The French army is to create a “red team” of sci-fi writers to imagine possible future threats.
A new report by the Defence Innovation Agency (DIA) said the visionaries will “propose scenarios of disruption” that military strategists may not think of.
The team’s highly confidential work will be important in the fight against “malicious elements”, the report states.
It comes amid efforts by the French to innovate its approaches to defence.
(4) CROWDFUNDING SUCCESS. Paul Winters closed the “Help Gahan Wilson find his way”GoFundMe to further donations, saying they have enough. They raised $63,165.
Thank you to everyone who donated to Gahan’s gofundme. The response was amazing. We have stopped taking donations. We think that we have raised enough to take care of Gahan. Negotiations have begun again with the State and we believe that in a few months time, he could be back on State aid. Gahan is doing well. He retains his sense of humor and he is well cared for with constant support from his family. This is, and continues to be, a hard road. I’m sure there are many of you out there who have gone through this (or, are going through it). Again, Gahan’s family thanks all of you for helping. We will keep the campaign up (without taking more donations) so that we can continue putting up the updates.
(5) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott
Edelman invites you to slurp matzoh ball soup with Will Eisner
Award-winning writer/editor Mark Evanier as
his Eating the Fantastic podcast turns 100.
Evanier started his comic book career way back in 1969, and over the years has written issues of Blackhawk, Groo the Wanderer, DNAgents, and (like me) Welcome Back, Kotter. He worked as Jack Kirby’s production assistant, which eventually resulted in his award-winning book Kirby: King of Comics. He’s won multiple Will Eisner Awards, as well an an Inkpot Award and a Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award.
Our meal took place at Canter’s Delicatessen in Los Angeles, resulting in a sense of terroir greater than any other episode. As you’ll hear, he’s eaten there with both Jack Kirby and Stan Lee over the years — though not together — and he has plenty to say about both of them.
He’s also celebrating this milestone by introducing a new icon, one which better represents what the show’s all about.
By the way, those 100 episodes have featured 165
guests in 173 hours and 19 minutes of ear candy.
If we do not acknowledge the gender bias of the early space program, it becomes difficult to move past it. One of the most compelling things about NASA is its approach to failure. Failure is not penalized in its culture; it is valued for the things that it can teach to save lives or resources in the future. As Bobak Ferdowsi, a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has said, “our best mistakes are the ones we can learn from.”
What are the lessons to be learned from NASA’s failure to fly women during the Apollo era?
The most recent lesson emerged in April, when NASA had scheduled a spacewalk that was, quite by accident, staffed by two female astronauts. The agency had to restaff the spacewalk because it had only one spacesuit that was the correct size for both women.
This is not an indictment of NASA in 2019. But it does demonstrate a causal chain that begins with the Apollo program and leads through to present-day staffing choices.
— Jessica O’Donnell ???? (@heckyessica) July 17, 2019
(7) MOON SUITS. The Washington Post’s feature about
astronaut wear,“How
To Dress For Space”, is a little less woke:
Explore five iconic spacesuits in 3-D and more than 50 years of spaceflight in a dialogue between The Washington Post’s space industry reporter Christian Davenport and fashion critic Robin Givhan.
…Christian: Unlike mission patches for other flights, the Apollo 11 patch did not have the names of the crew members. Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins felt their names should be left out because the flight represented all of humankind and the 400,000 people involved in the Apollo program.
…Robin: I love that there was so much attention paid to the idea that we are doing this for peace, for exploration and for scientific discovery. Despite how big and potentially intimidating this suit could be, it is not, it looks like a happy uniform. And the patches are so Boy Scout.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
July 19, 1972 — The Thing With Two Heads starring Rosie Greer and Ray Milland stalked into theaters.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 19, 1883 — Max Fleischer. Animator, film director and producer. He brought such animated characters as Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman to the screen and was responsible for a number of technological innovations including the Rotoscope and Stereoptical Processes. (Died 1972.)
Born July 19, 1927 — Richard E. Geis. I’m reasonably sure I met him at least once when I was living out there. Interesting person. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer twice; and whose science fiction fanzine Science Fiction Review won Hugo Awards for Best Fanzine four times. His The Alien Critic won the Best Fanzine Hugo once in a tie with Algol), and once in sole first place. And yes, I enjoyed reading the Science Fiction Review. I’ve not any of his handful of genre novels, and certainly haven’t encountered his soft core porn of which there’s a lot. (Died 2013.)
Born July 19, 1937 — Richard Jordan. Actor who was in Dune as Duncan Idaho, Logan’s Run as Francis, and the Queen of Air and Darkness help him, Solarbabies as Grock. He also the lead in Raise the Titanic as Dirk Pitt, a perfectly awful film as well. Not to mention he was Col. Taylor In Timebomb, a film that got a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 33%. (Died 1993.)
Born July 19, 1947 — Colin Duriez, 72. Yes, an academic, this time devoted to Lewis and Tolkien. Author of such works as J. R. R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend, The C. S. Lewis Chronicles: The Indispensable Biography of the Creator of Narnia Full of Little-Known Facts, Events and Miscellany and, errr, Field Guide to Harry Potter. Well money is nice, isn’t it?
Born July 19, 1950 — Richard Pini, 69. Husband of husband-and-wife team responsible for creating the well-known Elfquest series. I’d say more but there’s nought information to be had on him.
Born July 19, 1957 — John Pelan, 62. Committed (more or less) the act of opening serial small publishing houses in succession with the first being Axolotl Press in the mid-Eighties where he published the likes of de Lint and Powers (before selling it to Pulphouse Publishing) followed by Darkside Press, Silver Salamander Press and finally co-founding Midnight House. All have been inactive for quite awhile now and he’s been editing such anthologies as Tales of Terror and Torment: Stories from the Pulps, Volume 1 for other presses though even that has happened for some years.
Born July 19, 1963 — Garth Richard Nix, 56. Writer of children’s and young adult fantasy novels, to wit the Keys to the Kingdom, Old Kingdom, and Seventh Tower series. The Ragwitch which I read quite some time ago is quite excellent and being a one-off can give you a good taste of him without committing to a series.
Born July 19, 1969 — Kelly Link, 50. First, let me note that along with Ellen Datlow, she and her husband Gavin Grant were responsible for the last five volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. They all did a magnificent job. All of collections, Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners and Get in Trouble are astonishingly good. And she’s much honoured having won a Hugo Award, three Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award and received a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Born July 19, 1976 — Benedict Cumberbatch, 43. Confession time: I really didn’t care for him in the Sherlock Holmes series, nor did I think his Khan In Star Trek Into Darkness was all that interesting but his Stephen Strange In Doctor Strange was excellent. He did do an superb job of voicing Smaug inThe Hobbit and his Grinch voicing in that film was also superb. I understand he’s the voice of Satan in Good Omens…
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Free Range reveals the head of the alien invasion force.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing on July 20, 1969, the U.S. Postal Service is pleased to reveal two stamp designs commemorating that historic milestone. Additional details are coming about the date, time and location for the first-day-of issue ceremony.
One stamp features a photograph of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin in his spacesuit on the surface of the moon. The image was taken by astronaut Neil Armstrong. The other stamp, a photograph of the moon taken in 2010 by Gregory H. Revera of Huntsville, AL, shows the landing site of the lunar module in the Sea of Tranquility. The site is indicated on the stamp by a dot. The selvage includes an image of the lunar module.
(12) ROBOTECH REBOOT. Titan Comics announced at SDCC 2019 plans to publish Robotech Remix #1 – a radical reimagining of the sf mecha anime classic.
A new Robotech saga starts now! Robotech is reborn from the ashes of Event Horizon! New writer Brenden Fletcher (Motorcrush, Isola) and artist Elmer Damaso (Robotech/Voltron, Marvel Mangaverse) boot up Robotech: Remix, an all-new series that will take beloved characters and iconic mecha to places fans have never seen before
First airing in the USA in 1985, Robotech was the gateway to anime for many fans – capturing their imagination with its epic generational storyline involving war, romance, and, of course, the transforming Veritech fighters that defend the Earth against extra-terrestrial attacks.
Produced by Harmony Gold USA, the original 85-episode series delved into humanity’s struggle against a series of alien invasions, from the gigantic Zentraedi to the mysterious Invid, battling for control of advanced alien technology that crash-landed on Earth.
Thank you for joining this month’s edition of Galactoscope, where we plow through all the books that came out this most recent month of June/July 1964! Don’t thank us; it’s all part of the job…
Times Two
Time Travel has been a staple of the genre since before the genre had been formalized. H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine is still a classic, and it was written last century. In the Journey’s short tenure, we have encountered at least a dozen tales involving chronological trips, with notable books including John Brunner’s Times without Number and Wallace West’s River of Time, not to mention the stand-out tales, All you Zombies!, by Robert Heinlein (and his less stand-out tale, By His Bootstraps) and The Deaths of Ben Baxter, by Robert Sheckley.
This month, we have two variations on the theme, both invoking time in their title:
… A few days before that fateful day in 1988, he had been visiting his sister-in-law’s farm when he saw something that got his heartstrings tugging and his wheels turning: a two-year-old goose who had been born with no feet, struggling to follow his fellow geese across a gravel road.
“Because I’m a Shriner,” Gene later told People magazine, “my natural instinct was to help him.” First, he tried making a fowl-sized skateboard, figuring the goose the could push along with one stump while balancing on the other, but no dice. The goose was patient, though, and Gene soon hit on a solution: a pair of patent leather baby shoes, size 0 and stuffed with foam rubber. By the time Jessica got home from school, the goose was running pell-mell around the yard, tugging at the other end of the leash. Soon, they were calling him Andy.
… Twelve-year-old Jessica may have been over Andy, but Gene’s friend at the Hastings Tribune, Gary Johansson, saw the goose’s potential. He wrote up a few lines, and almost overnight, Andy went 1980s-viral. “We had newspapers from all over the world contacting us and wanting to do stories,” says Jessica. He got on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where he shared billing with Isabella Rossellini and Martin Short. Reader’s Digest did a profile, and Peoplesplurged on a photo spread. When Nike learned that Andy preferred their brand of baby shoes, they sent him a crate, making him almost certainly the first goose to get a major sponsorship deal.
…But it couldn’t last. On October 19, 1991, Gene and Nadine got the kind of phone call every goose owner dreads. “Is Andy OK?” asked an anxious voice on the other end. A couple of Hastings residents had been out metal detecting in a local park, and had found a dead goose sporting telltale sneakers. The Flemings rushed out to the hutch. There were fresh footprints in the dirt, much bigger than size 0. Andy and his mate Paulie were nowhere to be found…
All around the world, there are conspiracy theorists who believe the Earth is flat. And their community seems to be growing, judging by attendance at flat Earth conferences and events.
Flat Earthers say YouTube was key in helping them spread their message. One researcher found that of attendees at a flat Earth conference, nearly all said they first came to the idea through the video-sharing platform.
The Google-owned company says it’s taking action to prevent conspiracy videos from reaching large numbers of people.
So how – and why – did YouTube enable the flat Earth community to grow?
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Hampus
Eckerman, Daniel Dern, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Terry Hunt,
Scott Edelman, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories.
Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Robert Whitaker
Sirignano.]
(1) SUPERPHILATELY. Royal Mail have a series of Marvel superhero
stamps out later this month.
Various first day covers, presentation packs, framed prints etc. are available
now for pre-order:
Treat the Marvel super fan in your life to this superb Presentation Pack which includes all 15 of Royal Mail’s brand new Marvel stamps illustrated by Alan Davis; the ten First Class Super Hero stamps plus the comic strip miniature sheet, which carries an additional five stamps. Packed with bonus features including:
All ten original Super Hero pencil sketches by Alan Davis printed behind each stamp.
An original specially commissioned fold-out illustration by Marvel comic book artist Neil Edwards, featuring each of the ten Super Heroes pitted against their nemeses.
A set of stickers including sound effects, logos and comic book narratives to help you create your own Super Hero adventure.
A separate protective carrier for the stamp miniature sheet featuring a striking image of Thanos.
(2) GAIMAN SERIES. American Gods Season 2 starts March 10. Starz
has released several promos and a featurette. Neil Gaiman appears in the first
one.
When Shadow Moon is released from prison, he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday and a storm begins to brew. Little does Shadow know, this storm will change the course of his entire life. Left adrift by the recent, tragic death of his wife, and suddenly hired as Mr. Wednesday’s bodyguard, Shadow finds himself in the center of a world that he struggles to understand. It’s a world where magic is real, where the Old Gods fear both irrelevance and the growing power of the New Gods, like Technology and Media. Mr. Wednesday seeks to build a coalition of Old Gods to defend their existence in this new America, and reclaim some of the influence that they’ve lost. As Shadow travels across the country with Mr. Wednesday, he struggles to accept this new reality, and his place in it.
(3) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading
series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Carrie Laben and Molly
Tanzer on Wednesday, March 20 at the KGB Bar starting at 7 p.m.
Carrie Laben
Carrie Laben is the author of A Hawk in the Woods, coming from Word Horde in March 2019. Her work has appeared in such venues as Apex, The Dark, Indiana Review, Okey-Panky, and Outlook Springs. In 2017 she won the Shirley Jackson Award in Short Fiction for her story “Postcards from Natalie” and Duke University’s Documentary Essay Prize for the essay “The Wrong Place”. In 2015 she was selected for the Anne LaBastille Memorial Writer’s Residency and in 2018 she was a MacDowell Fellow. She now resides in Queens.
Molly Tanzer
Molly Tanzer is the author of Creatures of Will and Temper, Creatures of Want and Ruin, and the forthcoming Creatures of Charm and Hunger. She is also the author of the weird western Vermilion, which was an io9 and NPR “Best Book” of 2015, and the British Fantasy Award-nominated collection A Pretty Mouth. She lives in Longmont, Colorado, with her cat Toad.
The KGB Bar is at 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)
in New York.
(4) FANHISTORY. Rob Hansen has added a section on “REPETERCON – the 1964 Eastercon” to his British fanhistory site THEN. Includes vastly amusing conreport excerpts such as –
ARCHIE MERCER:
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line – in the opposite direction.
Therefore, when at half past four on the Thursday I quit work an hour early, saddled my trusty scooter Laideronette and set off for Peterborough – which lay towards the north-east – naturally I travelled south-west. Peterborough was pulling hard in the opposite direction, however, and Laideronette responded strongly to its attraction. First I found it hard to stay in top gear, then impossible. Before long I found it increasingly difficult to stay in third gear, then in second.
Abandoning all thoughts of circumnavigating the globe to approach Peterborough from the far side, I coaxed Laideronette into Bridgwater at not much more than walking pace and drew up thankfully outside the Walsh abode. There the Mercatorial effects were off-loaded and transferred to the mighty Walsh automobile, and soon in company with Tony, Simone and Sarah I was following half the milk tankers in the South of England on the road to London….
…This year I again volunteered as a panelist, which is always fun. I was on several panels with friends I met last year. One of the panels, “What in Hell Do We Want from Horror?” was partly inspired by my horror and philosophy class from last semester….
(6) A SHORT HISTORY OF TIME
ON SCREEN. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] There
have been roughly a bajillion MCU movies over the
past decade plus. Have you ever wondered which hero racked up the most
cumulative screen time? Well, Hannah Collins at CBR.com did (“Marvel Cinematic Universe Heroes
Ranked, According to Screen Time”). If you check out the story, be
sure to click through to the second page or you’ll be left wondering why that guy
made the top of the list and why that other guy was left off
entirely…
Marvel Studios celebrated its ten-year milestone with a major character cull courtesy of the Snap-happy villain, Thanos, in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. With half of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s population erased, the trailers for the film’s sequel, Avengers: Endgame feature a depressingly empty world where our heroes are now few and far between.
[…] For the sake of brevity, we’ll only be including major heroes [in our screen time ranking]. By “major,” we mean heroic characters central to the MCU’s over-arching story who have starred in multiple films, so don’t expect to see the likes of Shuri, Wong, the Warriors Three, et al make the cut. With that caveat, let’s get on with the list, in ascending order.
(7) IT’S SHOWTIME. Scott
Edelman made it to the Captain Marvel world
premiere tonight in Hollywood.
(8) WHAT’S THAT WORD? SHAZAM! is in theaters April 5. (If only
Gomer Pyle had lived long enough to see it.)
We all have a superhero inside us, it just takes a bit of magic to bring it out. In Billy Batson’s (Angel) case, by shouting out one word—SHAZAM!—this streetwise 14-year-old foster kid can turn into the adult Super Hero Shazam (Levi), courtesy of an ancient wizard. Still a kid at heart—inside a ripped, godlike body—Shazam revels in this adult version of himself by doing what any teen would do with superpowers: have fun with them! Can he fly? Does he have X-ray vision? Can he shoot lightning out of his hands? Can he skip his social studies test? Shazam sets out to test the limits of his abilities with the joyful recklessness of a child. But he’ll need to master these powers quickly in order to fight the deadly forces of evil controlled by Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Strong).
I was a bit old to buy into the teen-set antics of Beverly Hills, 90210, perhaps his most notable claim to fame. As I’ve made it my business of following talent closely associated with the genres of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I am aware of his greater contributions to Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1992), The Fifth Element (1995), and J. Michael Strazzynski’s Jeremiah.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled
by Cat Eldridge.]
Born March 4, 1946 — Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, 73. Author of The Keltiad series. Blend traditional Celtic legends and mythology unto a technologically advanced civilisation and.. well, it was awful. Her might have been marriage to Morrison is more interesting.
Born March 4, 1954 — Catherine Anne O’Hara, 65. First genre role role was in the most excellent Beetlejuice as artist Delia Deetz followed by being Texie Garcia in Dick Tracy, a film I’ll be damn if I know what I think about. She voices most excellently Sally / Shock bringing her fully to, errr, life in The Nightmare Before Christmas. I see she’s in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events as Justice Strauss. Lastly, and no this is by no means a complete listing of what she has done, she was on Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events as Dr. Georgina Orwell.
Born March 4, 1965 — Paul W.S. Anderson, 54. Genre director with a long record of films starting with Mortal Kombat. After that, he directed Event Horizon which developed a cult following on DVD, Soldier (fascinating tale, look it up), Resident Evil, Alien vs. Predator, Resident Evil: Afterlife, The Three Musketeers, Resident Evil: Retribution and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Monster Hunter is forthcoming from him and despite the title is not from the Puppy author that you might expect it is. It stars his wife Milla Jovovich who he first directed in Resident Evil: Extinction.
Born March 4, 1966 — Paul Malmont, 53. Author of the comic strips, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril and Jack London in Paradise which blends pulp tropes and SF elements including using as protagonists Heinlein and Asimov. He wrote the first four issues of DC Comics’ Doc Savage series with artist Howard Porter.
Born March 4, 1973 — Len Wiseman, 46. Producer or Director on the Underworld franchise. Director of the Total Recall remake. Also involved in Stargate, Independence Day, Men in Black and Godzilla in the Property Department. Sleepy Hollow series creator and producer for much of it, wrote pilot as well. Producer for much of Lucifer as well and is the producer for the entire first series of Swamp Thing. Also produced The Gifted.
(11) CAN’T GO ANY LOWER? YES
HE CAN. The misguided attention-seeking missile that is Jon Del Arroz ran a
blog post today with the headline “Women
Lie About Rape” [Internet Archive link]. This is just offensive.
The #MeToo movement went completely out of control this last year and a half, destroying men’s lives, dragging them through mud, and more often than not, during incidents that are complete falsehoods like in the case of our supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The last remaining fortune cookie factory in San Francisco is on the verge of closure, thanks to sky-high rents and new technology, but its owner says he will never give up the family business, writes Lucy Sherriff.Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, in the city’s Chinatown, is the last factory of its kind in the area, after competitors were forced to close when overheads became too expensive.
The family-run factory opened its doors on Ross Alley in 1962, and uses the same recipe to this day, as well as retaining the traditional machinery used to make Chinese fortune cookies.
“Even I don’t know the recipe,” co-owner Kevin Chan, whose mother and uncle founded the store, told the BBC. “It’s my mum’s secret.”
Chan, who stays up until 3am at night writing the fortunes which are inserted into the cookies, says he’s proud the store remains open, but he’s facing an uncertain future.
“My rent is $6,000 a month. Three years ago, it was $1,400. But I’m not going to just walk away. I’m not going to give up. I will keep going for as long as I can.”
Seth Rogen is stepping into The Twilight Zone. The star of Knocked Up and Neighbors will star in an upcoming episode of the CBS All Access revival of the classic sci-fi/fantasy franchise that became famous for its twist endings, eerie characters and unsettling theme song.
[.. ] No word yet on Rogen’s character nor any hints about the episode that he appears in. […]
Rogen joins a parade of notable names who will star in the high-profile revamp of Rod Serling’s classic television franchise, which aired from 1959-64 and ranked No. 3 on the WGA’s list of 101 Best Written Series. Jordan Peele will host the show while previously announced guest stars for the anthology series revival include Greg Kinnear, Kumail Nanjiani, John Cho,Ike Barinholtz, Taissa Farmiga, Ginnifer Goodwin, Luke Kirby, Sanaa Lathan, Adam Scott, Rhea Seehorn, Alison Tolman, Jacob Tremblay, Jessica Williams, DeWanda Wise, and Steven Yeun.
Planning permission has been sought for a new restaurant in London’s Soho intended to reflect the DC Multiverse.
[…Soho] is now home to many famous restaurants, is where many chains began and is full of private members dining/drinking clubs […] And it is where the world has traditionally come, bringing their own cuisine with them, only to mash it up with others, fused into new forms.
The planning application states, in part:
The restaurant will be rooted within the DC Multiverse, taking visitors on a culinary adventure through the many fictional Universes famous for their superhero residents such as Batman, Superman and Wonderwoman [sic]. The style and design of the DC Multiverse is heavily influenced by the Art Deco period with the style prominent within its publications and film and television work. The restaurant will not be a ‘theme park’ with literal sets and costumes from the franchise, but it has the intention to invite guests to experience the DC Universe without breaking the fourth wall- the imaginary wall that separates the audience from the performance.
[…] The proposed design will accommodate a lounge Bar (Pennyworth’s) and a dining area with entertainment- reminiscent of the 1930s era (Iceberg Lounge). The North Nave – a fine dining experience (Dichotomy Fine Dining) and the South Nave (an Immersive Dining Experience) are proposed as separate, intimate dining experiences.
Other DC influences mentioned in the Bleeding Cool article include “the Wayne
Manor pit seen in the Dark Knight movies, and The Arkham Asylum dining area.”
Lovely, I just can’t wait to taste gruel à la Arkham Asylum.
Dumbo’s trailers have featured “Baby Mine” — the Academy Award-nominated song written for the original — before. First it was Norwegian singer Aurora covering the song; now, Arcade Fire is trying their hand at the lullaby. The version debuted in a small clip from the upcoming film that Disney posted on its Twitter account.
[Thanks To
JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, John King
Tarpinian, Michael O’Donnell, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of
these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
For nearly 50 years, this call has summoned the beloved animated Great Dane wherever help is needed.
Here’s Scooby-Doo!—brought to you by the U.S. Postal Service®. This Forever® stamp issuance highlights the popular canine sleuth and his new Scooby-Doo DOO GOOD Campaign. (Issued 7/14/2018.)
In 2018, the U.S. Postal Service celebrates dragons, the high-flying, fire-breathing mythological creatures that have roamed our imaginations for millennia. (Issued 8/9/2018)
The U.S. Postal Service celebrates magic, an art form that has entertained America for centuries. This sheet of 20 stamps features digital illustrations of five classic illusions: a rabbit in a top hat (production), a fortune teller using a crystal ball (prediction), a woman floating in the air (levitation), an empty bird cage (vanishing), and a bird emerging from a flower (transformation). (Issued 8/7/2018)
America’s first woman in space, Dr. Sally Ride (1951-2012), inspired the nation as a pioneering astronaut, brilliant physicist, and dedicated educator. (Stamp issued 5/23/2018)
Designed to pique the curiosity of the viewer, each stamp features a collage of face, symbols, drawings, and numbers that represent the complexity and interconnectedness of the STEM disciplines. (Issued 4/6/2018)
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian and John Hertz for the story.]
