24 Some Scrolls In Life Are Bad, They Can Really Make You Mad

Posted on December 5, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) DISTINGUISHABLE FROM MAGIC. Ted Chiang received the Humanist Inquiry & Innovation Award at the American Humanist Association’s 83rd Annual Conference, held virtually in September 2024. “This award honors those who have advanced human understanding and innovation in ways that uphold humanist values, work that exemplifies the power of inquiry and innovation to promote human dignity, freedom and progress.” This text is excerpted from Chiang’s acceptance speech at the Conference: “The Distinction Between Imaginary Science and Magic” at TheHumanist.com.

…The reason these [two example] stories feel different to me has to do with the way these stories treat this impossibility. One feels like it’s a story about an imaginary scientific discovery, while the other one feels like it’s a story about magic. I think that the difference in the way these stories feel points to something significant. If I’m told that a phenomenon is dependent on the practitioner, that makes me think it’s magic, because think of the ways that magic is commonly depicted.

Sometimes magic works only for people born with an innate gift. Sometimes magic only works for people who have purified their soul through years of study. Sometimes magic only works for people who have good intentions, or it works differently for different people, depending on whether their intentions are good or bad. Sometimes magic requires intense concentration to be effective, or it requires that you make a sacrifice.

None of these things are true of scientific phenomena. When you pass a magnet through a coil of wire, electric current flows no matter who your parents are or whether your intentions are good or bad. You don’t have to concentrate hard or offer a sacrifice in order for a light bulb to turn on. Electricity does not care.

One of the central criteria for a scientific result is that it be reproducible, that it be it can be recreated anywhere by anyone. It does not depend on a specific person’s presence or participation. If an experiment only works when one particular person conducts it, then we discard that data as spurious. When radio waves were first discovered, they might have seemed magical to the casual observer and the scientists who first transmitted messages via radio might have seemed like wizards because they were able to communicate over long distances using an invisible medium, but because radio waves are reproducible, because they don’t rely on any particular person’s participation, it eventually became possible to build radio transmitters and receivers by the thousands and then the millions, and now, literally anyone can use a radio. It is no longer restricted to a handful of scientists….

(2) WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE THINK. James Davis Nicoll recently presented George R. R. Martin’s “With Morning Comes Mistfall” (1973) to the Young People Read Old SFF panel.

November’s Young People Read Old Nebula Finalists features George R. R. Martin’s “With Morning Comes Mistfall”. First published in the May 1973 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, “Mistfall” was nominated for the Nebula as well as the Hugo, losing the first to “ Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death”, and the second to Le Guin’s “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas”.

I first encountered “Mistfall” in Lester del Rey’s Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Third Annual Collection.

I disagreed strongly with the apparent thesis — that looking for answers to interesting questions is the act of a buzzkill — but enjoyed the story enough start relentlessly hunting down Martin stories. One result is that I own at least three copies of this particular story, in the del Rey anthology, in A Song for Lya and Other Stories¹, and in Portraits of His Children. I had the Analog back-issue until a flood ate my 1970s magazine collection. I have a shelf of Martin works and this story is why.

Of course, there’s no guarantee the Young People will like the same stuff I enjoyed. Let’s find out what they thought….

(3) HBO CHIEF “TOTALLY COMFORTABLE” WITH ROWLING. “Harry Potter HBO Series to Film in Summer 2025 After 32,000 Auditions” – Variety has the story.

Warner Bros. Discovery announced that its upcoming “Harry Potter” series will start shooting this summer at Leavesden, where the movies were also filmed.

During a presentation at the Warner Bros. Discovery’s headquarters in London on Thursday, showrunner Francesca Gardiner and director Mark Mylod revealed that the show had auditioned 32,000 kids for the lead roles, and that the casting team is currently reviewing between 500 and 1,000 audition tapes per day with the intent to watch every single one. Though he affirmed they haven’t made any final choices in regards to casting yet, Mylod said the next step will be to “workshop with some of our shortlisted candidates” in January.

Gardiner and Mylod also said they will be sticking to correct canonical ages for the characters: Severus Snape (potentially being played by Paapa Essiedu) will be in his 30s, while James and Lily Potter will be younger, as they were only 21 when they died. Mylod teased that for the adult characters, he’s looking to continue the tradition of “brilliant theater actors in the U.K.,” with the young actors of course all being newcomers….

… The run-up to the series has not been without controversy, however, as book author J.K. Rowling has continued to cause backlash with her views on transgender identity. However, HBO has stood by her side, telling Variety in a statement last month: “J.K. Rowling has a right to express her personal views. We will remain focused on the development of the new series, which will only benefit from her involvement.”

At Thursday’s event, HBO chief Casey Bloys doubled down on that sentiment, saying that he’s “totally comfortable” with Rowling’s involvement and “not concerned about consumer response.”…

But as Chris Barkley said when he sent the link, “Well, heh, he SHOULD BE concerned….”

(4) SECOND FIFTH. James Davis Nicoll recommends “Five SF Stories About Rebuilding After a Cataclysmic Event” at Reactor. One of his very interesting choices is:

Second Ending by James White (1961)

World War Three killed nine out of ten people, but enough infrastructure survived to support reliable hibernation. This is good news for terminally ill Ross. He can be placed into suspended animation until a cure is found for his disease. The results are a mixed success. Ross wakes, now healthy, to discover that humans have, during his long slumber, not only annihilated themselves but almost all life on Earth.

Fortune smiles on Ross. First, life may be (mostly) dead but there is an army of robots to carry out his orders. Second, thanks to the upturned cuffs of the clothes he wore on his way to cold sleep, a few seeds survived the apocalypse. Third, thanks to suspended animation, Ross has all the time he needs to oversee Earth’s terraforming… although he might be surprised to learn how long that will take.

For the most part, this short novel is a tribute to what one human can accomplish, given only determination, knowledge, and a vast army of relentlessly obedient, highly advanced robots. That said, Second Ending may feature the longest timescale needed for terraforming ever featured in a science fiction novel.

(5) I CAN’T SAY NO. Camestros Felapton knows readers can’t resist taking the hook dangled in “Robot Fabulas: Introduction”: “Welcome to Robot Fabulas, a series that is never quite about what it appears to be about”… I certainly can’t.

…This is an attempt to trace a history of science fiction by following one niche part of science fiction. Many things can be science fiction but rockets, space travel, time travel and robots all share a common quality that even when they discussed in factual terms (as theories or in some cases actualities) they have a science fictional quality to them.

The premise of Robot Fabulas is that there is a class of stories that I am calling “robot stories” that share a group of features to them. That these stories long predate anything we might call science fiction in the modern sense but which clearly influenced modern science fiction. We can recognise Pinocchio in Star Trek’s Commander Data and we can recognise Victor Frankenstein in Data’s inventor Doctor Noonien Soong. How ancient stories rooted in folk tales, legends or myth evolved into modern stories about invention, technology is the story of science fiction. I will follow robot stories because I can see that path from the past to the future most clearly.

I think this will be a fun journey….

(6) OUROBOROS TENDENCY. “Doctor Who showrunners warn AI scripts will ‘eat their own tail’” in the Guardian.

One of the masterminds behind Doctor Who has warned that the more AI content is used for creative purposes the worse its output will be because it “eats its own tail”.

Ahead of the Doctor Who Christmas special, eagerly awaited by fans as a centrepiece of BBC1’s festive schedule, Steven Moffat made the comments in discussion with fellow showrunner Russell T Davies.

“Human beings are amazingly cheap, we’re knocking out human beings every day. And unlike anything else in history, the more we use it, the less good it is,” Moffat told the Radio Times. “Because the more content that is out there produced by AI, the more it absorbs its own content, and eats its own tail.”

Davies, who was responsible for the modern revival of Doctor Who in 2005 and returned as showrunner in 2022, had wondered whether AI would replace screenwriters.

He replied to Moffat: “Television has been run on those principles for a very long time. You’ve just described most networks!”

(7) APEX BRINGS ABOARD MANAGING EDITOR. Darian Bianco has accepted the position of Managing Editor for Apex Book Company.

As managing editor, Darian will oversee the production, marketing, and distribution of the imprint’s titles. She’ll also be involved with acquisitions and catalog management.

Darian started her career in publishing as an intern for Apex eight years ago. Most recently, she has been a writing instructor for the Reach Your Apex educational arm of the business.

Apex Book Company editor-in-chief Jason Sizemore says this about Darian: “Darian’s intellect, organizational skills, and editorial acumen will be a boon for the company.”

Darian Bianco currently works as an adjunct professor teaching English at Eastern Kentucky University. She holds an MFA from the Bluegrass Writers Studio. She is also a graduate of the 2022-2023 season of the Author’s Academy at the Carnegie Center, having worked with Ashley Blooms. Her novel-in-progress, Chatter, was one of five winners for issue six of Novel Slices. She is represented by Alexandra Levick of Writers House, LLC.

(8) NOT VERY SOURCEFUL. The Columbia Journalism Review shares “How ChatGPT Search (Mis)represents Publisher Content” based on a Tow Center study.

ChatGPT search—which is positioned as a competitor to search engines like Google and Bing—launched with a press release from OpenAI touting claims that the company had “collaborated extensively with the news industry” and “carefully listened to feedback” from certain news organizations that have signed content licensing agreements with the company. In contrast to the original rollout of ChatGPT, two years ago, when publishers learned that OpenAI had scraped their content without notice or consent to train its foundation models, this may seem like an improvement. OpenAI highlights the fact that it allows news publishers to decide whether they want their content to be included in their search results by specifying their preferences in a “robots.txt” file on its website.

But while the company presents inclusion in its search as an opportunity to “reach a broader audience,” a Tow Center analysis finds that publishers face the risk of their content being misattributed or misrepresented regardless of whether they allow OpenAI’s crawlers….

…In total, we pulled two hundred quotes from twenty publications and asked ChatGPT to identify the sources of each quote. We observed a spectrum of accuracy in the responses: some answers were entirely correct (i.e., accurately returned the publisher, date, and URL of the block quote we shared), many were entirely wrong, and some fell somewhere in between.

We anticipated that ChatGPT might struggle to answer some queries accurately, given that forty of the two hundred quotes were sourced from publishers who had blocked its search crawler. However, ChatGPT rarely gave any indication of its inability to produce an answer. Eager to please, the chatbot would sooner conjure a response out of thin air than admit it could not access an answer. In total, ChatGPT returned partially or entirely incorrect responses on a hundred and fifty-three occasions, though it only acknowledged an inability to accurately respond to a query seven times. Only in those seven outputs did the chatbot use qualifying words and phrases like “appears,” “it’s possible,” or “might,” or statements like “I couldn’t locate the exact article.”…

(9) HEY, BUDDY, HOW CAN I GET THIS CAR OUT OF SECOND GEAR? “NYC’s film industry is still ‘totally dead’ a year after the strikes — at least for some” says Gothamist.

A year after the writers’ and actors’ strikes that stalled the film and television industry, production activity in New York City remains stuck in low gear, according to city data and interviews with more than a dozen local actors, writers, executives and crew members.

“It’s been totally dead,” said Max Casella, a series regular on “The Sopranos,” “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and other shows. “Nothing going on, no work, nothing.”

“There are just so many fewer ways to make a living in this industry now than ever,” said Nivedita Kulkarni, a comedian and actress with a 14-year career.

The past several years have been enormously challenging for many New Yorkers in the industry. First there were the pandemic shutdowns, which brought production to a halt. Then, there were the strikes that began in May 2023.

Nearly all the workers interviewed for this story described a dead summer and fall with few auditions and little work. In some cases, actors used to starring scenes have taken diminished roles, and minor actors or co-stars have taken work as background actors or extras.

Some have turned to trading cryptocurrencies and others have left the city altogether, no longer seeing it as a place where they might build a career in the industry.

“It’s not just a New York City shift, it’s an industry shift. It’s a national shift,” said Pat Kaufman, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.

Industry experts and sources expect the downturn to last several years at minimum, following larger changes in the entertainment industry’s business model. Many predict that New York City will likely remain a domestic production hotspot, but it may take years for employment to return to pre-pandemic levels.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: December 5, 1977 — Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas

Forty-seven years ago on CBC on this date, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas film first aired. It would premiere a year later in the States on HBO. It was based off of the children’s book of the same name by Russell Hoban and his wife Lillian Hoban. Russell Hoban you’ll no doubt recognize as the author of Riddley Walker which won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. It was directed and produced by Jim Henson off the script by Jerry Juhl who was known for his work on The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street.

The Muppets voice cast was Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Dave Goelz, Marilyn Sokol and Eren Ozker.

Paul Williams, who I was surprised to learn wrote Three Dog Night’s “An Old Fashioned Love Song” among quite a few other songs, composed the music and several songs here. This would not be his last such Muppets work as he would be involved in The Muppet Movie several years later among other of his Muppets projects.

Reception was very positive with the New York Times comparing it to The Wind in The Willows saying and “These really are the nicest folk on the river.” It was Christmas season, blame that comparison on too much eggnog made way too strong if you want. And AV Critic said that “it was “The kind of Christmas special you could wrap in tissue when the season’s over and store carefully in a box in the attic.”

Oh, and Bret McKenzie (you fans of The Hobbit films might recognize him) was writing the script and songs for a film adaptation of it which might be someday produced by The Jim Henson Company though it’s been years since that was announced.

Yes, the Suck Fairy very much liked it. She even looked at her iPad mini to see what the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes thought of it. She’s pleased to say that the more than five thousand people who had rated it gave it a hundred percent rating. After that, she put her iPad mini down, went back to stroking Pixel and watching the film. Again. Sentimental sop.

For some reason unlike most Muppet properties, it is not streaming on Disney+ but on Peacock, but then Jim Henson’s The Storyteller is there and as well, seasonally appropriate, It’s A Very Muppet Christmas too. Not at all Muppet, but How The Grinch Stole Christmas isas well.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Ink Pen thinks of it as an audition, not hot dogging.
The Argyle Sweater has an Rx for cartoon characters.
One Big Happy finally gets the name right.

(12) A TRIBUTE. In “Why George R. R. Martin Broke the Cardinal Rule of Hollywood”, The Hollywood Reporter gives George R.R. Martin an opportunity to tell about his friendship with the late Howard Waldrop.

…“He was an amazing writer. There was no one like Howard.” And it’s not as if Waldrop’s career was without acclaim. But his peers, including Martin, worried about his finances and health towards the end of his life. With the financial success Martin enjoyed thanks to Thrones, he wanted to strike a deal to turn some of Waldrop’s stories into short films, but it wasn’t easy.

“It’s hard to get anyone to finance a short film,” Martin tells THR. “Movie theaters don’t want to show short films. I own a movie theater myself, so I know that. And it’s hard to get the big studios to make them. I tried for a number of years… I finally gave up.”

Then the author decided to break “the cardinal rule of Hollywood.”

With Waldrop’s health deteriorating, Martin was determined to honor his friend by bringing his work to the big screen. “The cardinal rule of Hollywood is: never use your own money. I broke that. I [thought], ‘God damn it, I’m gonna use my own money,’” he adds. “So we put these films into production — three of them are now finished. Two more are in post-production.”

The Ugly Chickens, starring Felicia Day (Supernatural, The Guild), has been shot alongside adaptations of Waldrop’s short stories Mary-Margaret Road Grader and Night of the Cooters. The movies are now screening on the festival circuit, with Chickens already securing a best short film nomination at the HollyShorts Film Festival (the Oscar-qualifying short film fest based in Los Angeles) …

(13) CAVES OF QUD EMERGES FROM 15 YEARS OF ‘EARLY ACCESS’. Polygon enthuses: “A beloved indie RPG just launched after 15 years in early access”.

Caves of Qud isn’t a new game by any means. Over 15 years of development, Freehold Games has built a community of passionate players over a long period of early access. But on Wednesday, Caves of Qud finally enjoyed a 1.0 launch, and is available for sale on Steam, Itch.io, and GOG.

It’s not easy to categorize Caves of Qud, because it covers so much ground — quite literally, since it’s generating an entire world full of ancient ruins, toxic jungles, scattered settlements, mutants, beasts, clones, sentient bears, and mysterious robots. It’s advertised as a “science fantasy roguelike epic” and a “deep simulation” that allows the players to do basically anything. Thanks to all the technology and magic of the setting, that can be anything from arguing with a sentient plant to becoming a spider and trapping your enemies in webs.

The 1.0 update adds a tutorial to teach the basics of the game, which was sorely needed, and adds a final quest to the main questline that initiates the end of the game. There are several new music tracks, as well as sound effects. Players can also earn 40 new achievements, find new items, and enjoy lots of minor bug fixes and quality of life changes….

And PC Gamer has a fuller description of gameplay in its “Caves of Qud review”.

(14) YOU BE CAREFUL OUT THERE AMONG THEM ENGLISH. See how easy it is to write rhyming verse in our native tongue?

(15) OVERTHINKING THINGS. “How ‘Dune: Prophecy’ will explore war against ‘thinking machines’” at Entertainment Weekly.

It’s true that fear is the mind-killer — but a laser blast from a giant robot can also be pretty lethal.

HBO’s upcoming prequel series Dune: Prophecy is set to explore the history of author Frank Herbert’s sci-fi universe, including something that’s never been seen on screen in any of the multiple movie adaptations of Dune — namely, the war against “thinking machines” that took place tens of thousands of years before the birth of Paul Atreides….

… But the whole reason there are “human computers” in the Dune universe in the first place is because the actual computers were all destroyed in a massive war! Viewers of Dune: Prophecy will see glimpses of that war in the opening moments of this Sunday’s premiere episode….

… The actual show is set years after the end of the Butlerian Jihad, but its lingering shadow hangs over the proceedings….

(16) MUSK FRIEND WILL BE NASA ADMINISTRATOR. “Trump chooses billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman to run NASA” reports NPR.

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman to be the next administrator of NASA….

…Isaacman made headlines earlier this year when he became the first private astronaut to conduct a spacewalk. The five-day mission took place using a capsule built by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. During the flight, Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis donned space suits supplied by the company and floated briefly outside the capsule.

It was Isaacman’s second trip to space using a SpaceX capsule. He has declined to say how much he’s paid the company for the two flights.

Isaacman is a friend of Musk, and his online payment company, Shift 4, has extensive financial ties to SpaceX. According to financial disclosure documents, Shift 4 had invested $27.5 million dollars in SpaceX as of 2021. That same year, Shift4 announced a five-year partnership that would make it the payment platform for Starlink, the satellite internet service run by SpaceX.

If confirmed as NASA administrator, Isaacman would oversee billions of dollars in contracts that the government has awarded to SpaceX. He would also be in a position to funnel more money to Musk’s company.

“Isaacman is likely to favor ambitious and innovative commercial projects,” says Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates, which analyzes the space business. “Many of those projects could well be executed by SpaceX.”

In fact, in previous posts on Musk’s social media platform X, Isaacman appears to have shown a strong preference for SpaceX. He has supported allowing SpaceX to increase its launches out of California, after lawmakers there voted to restrict its flights from Vandenberg Air Force Base. He’s also been critical of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) to carry astronauts to the moon, as well as the agency’s decision to award a lunar landing contract to Blue Origin, the spaceflight company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos….

(17) ON THE ROAD. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The starship Enterprise ran on antimatter which sort of explains why Scotty looked a tad nervous when saying ‘the engines canna take it’. So consider today’s Nature which reports on “Antimatter being transported outside a lab for first time — in a van”

The volatile substance will be driven across the CERN campus in trucks to different facilities, giving scientists greater opportunities to study it….

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, N., Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 11/6/24 Scroll Low, Sweet Chariot, Coming For To Pixel Me Home

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) ANIMAG HOF INDUCTEES. “Nine Honorees Receive Animag’s Hall of Fame Awards at World Animation Summit’s Opening Night Gala”. Animation Magazine listed the recipients of the 2024 Hall of Fame awards. Short bios at the link.

Pete Docter, CCO, Pixar Animation Studios.
Lisa Henson. CEO of The Jim Henson Company
Claudia Katz, Executive Producer, Rough Draft Studios.
Joel Kuwahara, Co-founder, Head of Production, Bento Box [Studio of the Year Award].
Nick Park, Creator-Director, Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl.
Kevin Michael Richardson, Voice Actor.
Kay Wilson Stallings, EVP, CCD & Production Officer, Sesame Workshop.
Raymond Zibach. Production Designer, The Wild Robot.
Eric Bauza. Voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Woody Woodpecker and many other characters.

(2) TED CHIANG AND KELLY ROBSON CONVERSATION. On the Toronto Public Library’s YouTube channel: “Ted Chiang: Soulful Science Fiction”.

“Has there been an alternate universe as alternate as this universe? Will people accept a story where the universe is this weird?” —Ted Chiang Celebrated science fiction writer Ted Chiang takes the Appel Salon stage us to discuss his beloved short story collections. In conversation with Kelly Robson on October 24, 2024. Please note that this video will only be up until December 2, 2024.

(3) FRONT ROW. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4’s art show Front Row has had an SFnal edition. First up was an interview with the makers of the new Christopher (Superman) Reeve documentary. Next was an interview with author Samantha Harvey whose book, Orbital, has been short-listed for this year’s Booker. It is set on the International Space Station. Apparently, it is not SF but ‘space realism’.

Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui talk about their new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which uses never-seen-before family archive to tell the story of the famed Superman actor. He became a champion of disability rights after being left paralysed from a horse riding accident.

The final of Front Row’s interviews with the authors on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist – Samantha Harvey on her novel Orbital.

You can download an .mp3 of the programme here: “Front Row, Christopher Reeve documentary, Booker author Samantha Harvey on Orbital”.

(4) LEZLI ROBYN GOFUNDME. Francesca Myman has started a GoFundMe to “Help Lezli Robyn Deal with Medical Challenges”. The goal is $4,500. At this writing they’ve raised $2,390.

Those of you who know Lezli Robyn know that she has had a terrible run of medical bad luck for years now, from near-blindness to an excruciating case of occipital neuralgia which requires her to have nerve blocks every two months in order to function. She also had to have her thyroid radiated/fried several years back due to a thyroid storm that nearly took her life, and now unfortunately she’s facing the opposite problem: extreme hypothyroidism.

She was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday October 30 for myxedema — doctors said she was at severe risk of going into a myxedema coma, which is life-threatening….

…She went to the ER with severe tiredness, stroke-like symptoms and an almost-inability to move her left side. She was remarkably chipper mentally for all of this, because her spirit is strong, but myxedema means that your organs are essentially shutting down because they’re out of fuel. Myxedema also results in swelling from the buildup of carbohydrate and sugar compounds in the skin and tissue….What is certain is that the swelling contributed to a freak case of Quincke’s disease, which is when your uvula swells up and obstructs your breathing, meaning that she has had to puree her food to eat it and was constantly choking. It was terrifying to listen to my lovely Lezli rasping and choking as she fought that off.

She IS fighting, but this is all very debilitating and as you may recall from earlier this year she’s already been put through the wringer like no one else I have ever seen. She’s managed to edit and travel for work, and is definitely still her lovely, down-to-earth, and funny self, but can’t work during the current situation.

What’s the financial situation? She won’t even let me tell you all of it, but I’m sure you can imagine how expensive the many hospitalizations were before the new insurance kicked in. There will still be high expenses associated with this new six day hospitalization….

(5) WON’T BE MISSED. Ember Wars author Richard Fox has been banned from Author Nation’s annual Las Vegas event for violating its Code of Conduct reports crusading journalist (and Fox’s friend) Jon Del Arroz.

Author Nation, formerly known as 20BooksTo50K, asks all who want to participate on the program to complete a form. According to Del Arroz, in “Author Nation Book Conference Cancels Science Fiction Author Richard Fox For Refusing To Comply With Gender Pronouns” [Internet Archive link] at Fandom Pulse, this is what Richard Fox entered in the space for “Pronouns”:

JDA continues, “he [Fox] received a call later in the evening after filling out the form. He was told the ‘ethics and safety committee’ removed him from the panel.”

(Oh, and when someone posted some praise about Author Nation’s Code of Conduct on Facebook on September 27, Richard Fox added a “Haha” icon in response.)

Richard Fox first shared his unique personality with File 770 in 2019 by making the false charges reported in “Perjury, Not Piracy Is The Problem” and “Brought to You By The Letter Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!”

(6) STRANGER THINGS 5. Variety has the details: “Stranger Things 5 Sets Release for 2025, Episode Titles”.

The fifth and final season of “Stranger Things” will debut in 2025, Netflix announced on Wednesday. To celebrate Nov. 6, 1983, a.k.a. “Stranger Things Day” — the day Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) was abducted into the Upside Down — the streamer also released a video revealing the titles for the final eight episodes, which will conclude the supernatural story of Hawkins, Indiana.

The episode titles are “The Crawl,” “The Vanishing of…,” “The Turnbow Trap,” “Sorcerer,” “Shock Jock,” “Escape From Camazotz,” “The Bridge,” and “The Rightside Up.”…

… The most delightful detail in the video is arguably the reveal that the season takes place in the fall of 1987, four years after the events of the first season — which debuted eight years ago, in 2016.

(7) WAS INTERACTIVE A BUST? The Verge reports “Netflix is removing nearly all of its interactive titles”.

Netflix will delist just about all of its interactive shows and films as of December 1st, the company confirms to The Verge. Netflix’s “Interactive Specials” page lists 24 titles, but only four will remain: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, Ranveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, and You vs. Wild.

The removal of the titles marks a disappointing conclusion to Netflix’s earliest efforts into interactive content. The company first launched the interactive titles in 2017 with Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, and I remember being wowed (and horrified) by paths in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

In addition to specials based on franchises like Carmen Sandiego and Boss Baby, Netflix also tried ideas like a daily trivia series and a trivia game you could play with a friend. But the relatively few titles available suggests the format wasn’t much of a hit — Puss in Book has apparently been gone for a while….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 6, 1914 — Jonathan Harris. (Died 2002.)

Jonathan Harris was the ever not-to-be-trusted Doctor Zachary Smith, of course, on Lost in Space. But before we get to that role, we should mention several of his previous genre roles.

Well, I would but it turns out that all he had was two minor roles on Twilight Zone. If Zorro is genre adjacent which is really stretching it, he was Don Carlos in Disney’s Zorro.

So, Doctor Zachary Smith.

In the pilot, not seen by the general audience until the late Nineties, there was no Doctor Smith. The marooning of the Space Family Robinson and their spaceship, the Jupiter 2, came about as the result of a meteor storm. The staff came to feel that an antagonist was needed, and so certain scenes were re-filmed with Smith having snuck aboard, with his extra weight having thrown the delicately-balanced ship badly off course.

An outright villain on a small craft was a bad story idea and Jonathan Harris very well knew that such a villain would not be tolerated or kept around for very long, even if he were not killed off. Fond of the role as written for him, not to mention staying as a cast member, he and the writing staff kept rewriting his story as the series went so he’d be much, less evil, more sympathetic and even comical.

However, it is my opinion, and that of many reviewers, that this change resulted also in a change in the show, turning the series from a mostly SF series to more much lighter series, more comical in tone.

He remained typecast as a villain showing up as such as Mr. Piper on Land of the Giants, The Ambassador on Get Smart and the voice of Lucifer on the original Battlestar Galactica. He did play an occasional lighter role such as Johann Sebastian Monroe on Bewitched in the “Samantha on the Keyboard” episode.

Worth noting is he played Commander Isaac Gampu, the head of the Space Academy, on the children’s series of the same name. It was produced by Filmation and aired Saturday mornings on CBS for just one season of fifteen episodes in 1977.

He did so many voices on so many animated shows that I couldn’t even begin to list them all here. It made up the bulk of the work that he did with A Bug’s Life, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, My Favorite Martian, Spider-Man and Toy Story 2, ones where I recognized his voice.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem fails the test.
Rose is Rose imagines a stop.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal backgrounds a UFO abduction tactic.

(10) GET READY FOR THESE LEGO SETS OF GENRE INTEREST. “LEGO Captain America: Brave New World Sets Just Launched” – find out the price tag at Comicbook.com.

The fourth movie in the Captain America series, Captain America: Brave New World, is set to release on February 14, 2025, which is going to arrive faster than you think. LEGO is getting us prepared with the first wave of sets for the film. The lineup includes a new Captain America Construction figure, the Captain America vs. Red Hulk Battle set, and two LEGO Brickheadz figures of Captain America & Red Hulk….

Captain America Construction Figure (76296): Stands at 11-inches tall and made of 359 pieces, this Construction Figure is also poseable like a regular action figure! / $34.99 / Pre-order here at LEGO.com
Captain America vs. Red Hulk Battle (76292): This battle set includes multiple mini-figures: Captain America and Falcon (both with opening wings), Red Hulk and Ruth Bat-Seraph. The jet also includes an operable cockpit that fits any of the mini-figures and two stud blasters. 223 pieces. / $54.99 / Pre-order here at LEGO.com
Captain America & Red Hulk Figures (40668): This Brickheadz set is 202 pieces with each figure measuring about 3-inches. Captain America includes his wings and shield. / $19.99 / Available for pre-order on December 1st at LEGO.com

“LEGO Marvel X-Men: The X-Mansion” – Comicbook.com can tell you about this one, too.

This set will be packed with details like a Cerebro element, switchable Danger Room items, an exploding cupola, a motorcycle for Wolverine, as well tons of graphical nods to the X-Men franchise. As noted, it will also include a buildable Sentinel and 10 minifigures, 5 of which are all-new for this set. These figures include Professor X in his wheelchair, a new variation of Jean Grey, Gambit, Iceman and Bishop. There’s also Magneto, Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Rogue.

(11) HOW WUDE! “58 Years Later, One Star Trek Actor Reveals the Secret to the Show’s Most Iconic Aliens” and Inverse has the quote.

…Vulcans also have a bit of an edge and a reputation for being direct to the point of being rude. And Star Trek’s latest Vulcan, Gabrielle Ruiz, understands this paradox perfectly.

“There’s a menace to their honesty,” Ruiz tells Inverse. “They’re such snobs. They’re just so sophisticated and snobby that you just want to be a part of the clique, I think.”…

… Since the Season 2 episode “Wej Duj,” Ruiz has voiced the no-nonsense Vulcan T’Lyn on the animated comedy, Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Like many Vulcans in Star Trek canon, T’Lyn is often the funniest character in any given scene, and part of that stems from that relentless honesty Ruiz says is essential to playing Vulcans. Sometimes Vulcans are trying to be funny, and sometimes they’re funny by accident. But in Ruiz’s opinion, it’s all down to looking at the template created by the actors who came before her.

“My rule is simple,” Ruiz says. “I literally say it’s equivalent to ‘What would Jesus do?’ It’s How would Leonard Nimoy say it? How would Spock say it?”…

(12) WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STARLINK. [Item by Steven French.] Does it ever dream of becoming a ‘real’ satellite, I wonder?! “World’s first wooden satellite launched into space” in the Guardian.

The world’s first wooden satellite has been launched into space as part of study on using timber to help reduce the creation of space junk.

Scientists at Kyoto University expect the wooden material to burn up when the device re-enters the atmosphere – potentially providing a way to avoid generating metal particles when a retired satellite returns to Earth.

These particles may negatively affect the environment and telecommunications, the developers say….

(13) THAT OTHER REASON FOR THE SEASON. The mission to save Christmas comes to theaters November 15. Red One Official Trailer 2.

(14) SILO SEASON 2. “Watch first 5 minutes of ‘Silo’ season 2 premiere” – Entertainment Weekly introduces the clip.

Apple TV+’s dystopian thriller returns for season 2 on Friday, Nov. 15, but you don’t have to wait until then to find out what happens to Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) after she finally ventured outside her home silo only to discover the existence of other silos close by. We’ve got the beginning of the premiere for you to watch right… now….

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

Pixel Scroll 9/21/24 I’d Like To Scroll His Tailor

Posted on September 21, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) CHIANG THINKS LITTLE ART IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Ted Chiang says this is “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art” in The New Yorker.

In 1953, Roald Dahl published “The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” a short story about an electrical engineer who secretly desires to be a writer. One day, after completing construction of the world’s fastest calculating machine, the engineer realizes that “English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness.” He constructs a fiction-writing machine that can produce a five-thousand-word short story in thirty seconds; a novel takes fifteen minutes and requires the operator to manipulate handles and foot pedals, as if he were driving a car or playing an organ, to regulate the levels of humor and pathos. The resulting novels are so popular that, within a year, half the fiction published in English is a product of the engineer’s invention.

Is there anything about art that makes us think it can’t be created by pushing a button, as in Dahl’s imagination? Right now, the fiction generated by large language models like ChatGPT is terrible, but one can imagine that such programs might improve in the future. How good could they get? Could they get better than humans at writing fiction—or making paintings or movies—in the same way that calculators are better at addition and subtraction?

Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices. This might be easiest to explain if we use fiction writing as an example. When you are writing fiction, you are—consciously or unconsciously—making a choice about almost every word you type; to oversimplify, we can imagine that a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices.

If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making. There are various ways it can do this. One is to take an average of the choices that other writers have made, as represented by text found on the Internet; that average is equivalent to the least interesting choices possible, which is why A.I.-generated text is often really bland. Another is to instruct the program to engage in style mimicry, emulating the choices made by a specific writer, which produces a highly derivative story. In neither case is it creating interesting art….

(2) WHERE ARE THE BRASS? “Army Ranger Candidates Get a Trial by Fire in New Sci-Fi Action Thriller ‘War Machine’” – a Military.com review.

Imagine going through a difficult U.S. military special operations training school, such as the Army Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, for months on end. You endure sweat, fatigue and punishment to reach a skill level most soldiers could only dream of. Then just when you think it’s nearly over and time to graduate, those skills are put to the test against an enemy you’ve only ever seen in movies like “Predator.”

That’s the scenario in which a team of Rangers-in-training find themselves in the new science fiction action thriller “War Machine,” which is slated to begin production this week. The Rangers, according to the movie’s official description, are in the final 24 hours of “a grueling special ops bot camp” when they “encounter a deadly force from beyond this world.”…

…In the movie, Ritchson portrays a team leader while James, Courtney, Richardson, Lonsdale and Webber are other soldiers in training. Quaid and Morales are their commanding officers, who we can only assume are either completely useless, die early on or are in cahoots with the otherworldly attackers. (The studios have given Military.com no reason to think this. We just came to this conclusion from personal military experience and watching a lot of military movies, especially ones from the 1980s.)…

(3) RICHARD POWERS PROFILE. “’I no longer have to save the world’: Novelist Richard Powers on fiction and the climate crisis” – in the Guardian.

“Are we legitimate? Is what we want defensible, and can we make it happen?”

Powers believes firmly that, rather than coming up with “another novel about who gets to marry who”, certain parts of the literary world have continued to explore those issues, perhaps most evidently in science fiction. “It’s interesting that literary fiction ghettoised science fiction for those very reasons, because literary fiction, for a long time, put its allegiance entirely in this programme of saying ‘we are unique and unparalleled and absolutely outside of everything else’, and that commitment to understanding the human as sui generis, as something separate and apart, that became so central to the programme [that it] created those kinds of artificial standards of excellence that made other ways of telling stories seem second rate somehow.”…

(4) FLAME ON. “Wētā FX Delivers the Dragons – and More – for HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’” – Animation World Network tells how they do it.

Dan Sarto: So, HBO promised a lot of dragons and we got a lot of dragons. They weren’t just flying through the air, there were dragons on the ground, dragons hanging from the parapets, dragons integrated everywhere. When you’re working on multiple dragons, is there any reuse of assets or other efficiencies, or is each one completely unique?

Wayne Stables: While they’re all unique and there’s parts of them that become bespoke, like how they’re textured and how they’re modeled, there are things that you learn from one dragon to another that you can carry through – things like how they’re shaded. What works really well for transmission on the wings on one dragon will work really well for transmission on the wings of another dragon. You start to develop a certain look across the show.

You get some efficiencies from that and also from really just learning what the client likes, what it is that’s important to them. Once we’ve worked out the pattern for a particular dragon, say Seasmoke, we can take that to Vermithor, or to Caraxes, or to Syrax. So, you create some efficiencies that way, certainly in that you’re no longer trying to explore and see what works. Even if we tune it slightly, we’re going to have a really good baseline on that second dragon starting point….

(5) SECOND THE MOTION. “Skeleton warriors and plasticine chickens: why stop-motion animation is still going strong a century on” – the Guardian dives into the history of this format.

It all started – or stop-started, perhaps – with some tiny pterodactyls. As 1924 drew to a close, Marcel Delgado was putting the finishing touches to 50 model dinosaurs. For months, the sculptor had been meticulously constructing a range of Tyrannosaurus rexes, brontosauruses and pterodactyls. Now he was getting ready to pass them on to pioneering animator Willis O’Brien, who would painstakingly move each creature an almost imperceptible amount, shoot another frame, and then repeat the process.

A year later, The Lost World – the first ever feature film using what was termed “stop-motion” – was released, transforming Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel of the same name into an action-packed spectacle. Audiences were astounded, even dumbfounded by its seemingly supernatural special effects.

To modern eyes, the film itself is a bit of a dinosaur. Its technology is prehistoric, its colonialist themes outdated and its animated sequences clunky. But the meteoric impact of these miniature dinosaurs is still felt; a century later, stop-motion cinema is very much alive and flicking.

… Then, on Boxing Day, Aardman’s short film Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers was released in the UK. A commercial smash, it would go on to win the Oscar for best animated short. Among those it inspired was Will Becher, whose fanmail to the studio later landed him a role making plasticine wings for Chicken Run. Now, he is a lead director who helmed the acclaimed A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon. “Aardman’s stories come from a place of character and comedy. They’re very British,” he says. “It’s bold and poppy, all about goofy, googly eyes and brows and big mouth shapes.”

In the 21st century, it’s notable that many of the greatest stop-motion successes have been in children’s horror, with plasticine faces falling in just the right part of the uncanny valley to be both cute and creepy. In 2009, Selick’s Coraline became the third highest-grossing stop-motion film ever, bagging awards for its otherworldly tale of a young girl opening a door to a sublimely strange and unsettling world….

(6) DAVID GRAHAM (1925-2024). Deadline reports “David Graham Dead: Voice Of Peppa Pig, Doctor Who And Thunderbirds”. He was also in seven episodes of the children’s SF series Timeslip.

The man behind one of the world’s most familiar voices has died aged 99.

In a long career, British actor David Graham provided the voices for characters in TV series including Peppa Pig, Thunderbirds and Doctor Who.

For today’s generation of children, his voice will be instantly familiar as that of Grandpa Pig, in the Peppa Pig series.

Previously, for nearly two decades he created the sound of the evil Daleks in the long-running sci-fi show Doctor Who – adopting a staccato style and then feeding his voice through a synthesiser.

And previously, he lent his dulcet tones to Lady Penelope’s butler and chauffeur Parker, in Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds TV series and films. The BBC reports that he also played the show’s pilot Gordon Tracy, and Brains the engineer, between 1965 and 1966. In 2015, Graham became the only original cast member to return for an ITV remake of the show….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Mike Glyer.]

Sepetmber 21, 1964 — Andy Duncan, 60. “Beluthahatchie”, Duncan’s second published story, was written while he was attending the 1994 Clarion workshop, appeared in Asimov’s in 1997, and earned his first Hugo nomination in 1998. The experience yielded him this bit of wisdom: “I’m glad I didn’t know then, as I know now, that enough fantasy stories about Robert Johnson have been written in recent years to fill an anthology; I might well have abandoned the idea, assuming it had ‘been done.’ Advice to writers: It’s never been done, until you do it.” Within a few years, when Duncan had enough work to fill a collection, it graced the title, Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, a volume which won a 2001 World Fantasy Award. (And that same year his story “The Pottawatomie Giant” won the WFA for Short Fiction.)

The next year, his novella “The Chief Designer” won the prestigious Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

Duncan’s other awards have included a 2013 Nebula for the novelette “Close Encounters” , and a 2014 World Fantasy Award for the novella “Wakulla Springs” co-written with Ellen Klages. The latter was also up for a 2014 Hugo and I voted for it but to no avail.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

The Flying McCoys have monster support.
The Argyle Sweater is being nosy.
Loose Parts has a plan that makes scents.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal makes a convincing wedding proposal.
Tom Gauld forsees the “benefits” of AI.

My latest @GuardianBooks cartoon. pic.twitter.com/YLBiNx8VW2
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) September 21, 2024

(9) LORD, HELP THE MISTER THAT COMES BETWEEN ME AND MY SISTER. Hermoine helps found the Bene Gesserit? “Dune prequel release date: Here is when Dune: Prophecy debuts on Max” at Popverse.

Can’t get enough Dune? Then you’ll want to mark your calendar for the upcoming streaming series prequel, Dune: Prophecy. A prequel to 2021’s Dune, the story is centered on the origins of the Bene Gesserit. But when can you expect to watch the show on Max for yourself?

While Dune: Prophecy is a spin-off of Denis Villeneuve’s big-screen Dune adaptations, it is set 10,000 years before the events of those movies. The series centers sisters Valya (Emily Watson) and Tula Harkonnen (Olivia Williams), who are responsible for establishing the Bene Gesserit. This fabled sisterhood is known for undergoing intense training so as to acquire superhuman abilities.

The series was ordered in 2019, and principle photography took place in Hungary and Jordan. Originally titled Dune: Sisterhood, the series is based on the original 1965 Dune novel by Frank Herbert and the 2012 prequel novel, Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

The first episode of Dune: Prophecy, “The Hidden Hand,” is scheduled to debut on Max on November 15, 2024….

(10) RABID PUPPY RELIC. In case you ever wondered, which seems unlikely, Camestros Felapton checked and — “Voxopedia still exists”.

… When I last checked in 2022, the permanently out-of-date clone of Wikipedia was down to three regular editors….

Looking now and I think it is down to just Sd-100 and Bassiano…

Bassiano appears to be running through some external source of biographies of 19th century Irishmen and English clergy? This activity does appear to be generating articles that you won’t find on Wikipedia, although not particularly interesting ones….

…Basically Infogalactic is, in the words of Miracle Max, mostly dead.

(11) ‘BRILLIANTLY DISGUSTING’. “’The Substance’ review: Brilliantly disgusting and deranged” is the opinion of this AP News reviewer.

In its first two hours, “The Substance” is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.

But the film’s deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.

What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is….

(12) LOVE IS BLUE. “Doctor Who-mad father and son build TARDIS complete with control console” – Manchester Evening News has the story. Photos of the work in progress at the link.

A father and son who share a love for Doctor Who built a TARDIS complete with a control console and the iconic blue box.

Pablo Agurcia, 37, has been a fan of the British science fiction series for almost 15 years. When watching the first episode with Ncuti Gatwa in the lead role in December 2023, his son Joaquim Agurcia, six, joined him and instantly became hooked….

… The pair used an old carboard box, polystyrene foam and a collection of old wires and bolts from the garage to create what is now their TARDIS console. To build the exterior they used a book shelf in the shape of phone box and painted it blue….

(13) CYBORG. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “’Meeting a real-life cyborg was gobsmacking’ says film director” in this BBC article.

For the past 20 years, self-declared “cyborg artist” Neil Harbisson has provoked debate with his “eyeborg” – a surgically attached antenna.

Harbisson, who grew up in Barcelona, is colour blind, having been born with the rare condition achromatopsia, which affects one in 33,000 people.

This means he sees in what he calls “greyscale” – only black, white and shades of grey.

But he decided to have surgery in 2004 which changed his life – and his senses – attaching an antenna to the back of his head, which transforms light waves into sounds.

When film director Carey Born came across Harbisson, classed by Guinness World Records as “the first officially recognised ‘cyborg’,” she was “gobsmacked and astonished”.

Her next move was to meet him, and then make a film about him – Cyborg: A Documentary.

It explores how he navigates his life, along with effects and implications of his unusual surgical procedure.

“The reason he did it was not to substitute the sense that he was lacking – it was in order to create an enhancement,” Born tells the BBC.

“So that was really the main hook that I thought was fascinating.”

(14) EUROPA CLIPPER MISSION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Science journal takes a look at NASA’s forthcoming mission to the Jupiter moon Europa. There is a good chance that this will give us some exobiological clues, or at the very least some insights into prebiotic chemistry. Nonetheless, I do remember Arthur’s warning…

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA.
ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

The Europa Clipper mission is expected to launch in October (2024) and arrive in 2030.

You can read the article here.

(15) RYAN GEORGE AS A GROCERY CLERK/DETECTIVE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] It’s not really sfnal, but I think it’s sort of adjacent given the whole “Sherlock/Mentalist/CSI/solving crimes out of nowhere“ vibe. “When Cashiers Comment On Your Purchases”.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/27/24 Slan Lake

Posted on August 27, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) CHRISTOPHER REEVE BIOPIC TRAILER. “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” – SCIFI.radio introduces the trailer. Only in Theaters September 21 and September 25.

The story of Christopher Reeve, his astonishing rise from unknown actor to iconic movie star, and his definitive portrayal of Clark Kent/Superman set the benchmark for the superhero cinematic universes that dominate cinema today. Reeve portrayed the Man of Steel in four Superman films and played dozens of other roles that displayed his talent and range as an actor before being injured in a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down….

(2) LACON V WSFS DIVISION. On the LAcon V website, the Committee & Staff List shows these folks will lead the 2026 Worldcon’s WSFS activities.

WSFS Division Manager: Linda Deneroff
Business Meeting: Jesi Lipp
Site Selection: Alexia Hebel
Hugo Administrator: Tammy Coxen
Hugo Awards Software: Chris R.

(3) 2026 HUGO TROPHIES. The LAcon V website also says that when the time comes they will run a “Hugo Base Contest”.

Keeping with Worldcon tradition, LACon V will be holding a Hugo Base Design Contest in the near future.

The basic design of the Hugo is a chrome rocket ship created by Jack McKnight and Ben Jason, with the current version based upon a refinement designed by Peter Weston in 1984. The design of the base on which the ship is mounted is left up to each individual Worldcon, so each year’s Hugos look slightly different. A photographic archive of Hugo designs is available here.

If you’d like more information, please email info@lacon.org (with the subject header: “Hugo Base Design”.) We’ll put you on a list to receive information about the contest as soon as it is available. Details will also follow here on our website.

(4) CHIANG AND ROBSON EVENT. The Toronto Public Library will host “Ted Chiang: Soulful Science Fiction” on October 24 from 7:00-8:00 p.m. Chiang will be in conversation with author Kelly Robson. The event is free – get tickets through Eventbrite.

Ted Chiang joins us to discuss his beloved stories, collected in Exhalation and Stories of Your Life and Others.

Perhaps the world’s most celebrated living science fiction author, his fantastical and elegant stories explore how our inner worlds and our societies would react to unexpected rifts in the fabric of science. How would it feel to receive a hormone injection that drastically improved your cognitive function? What if learning an alien language changed the way you perceived time? And if humanity were to create artificial life, what obligations would we owe it? Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth – What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human? – and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.

In conversation with author Kelly Robson.

Q & A and book signing to follow. Books available for purchase.

Ticket registration for this event is required: Free tickets for this event are available to book via Eventbrite.

(5) INFINITE MONKEYS SEEK ALIEN INTELLIGENCE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Panels are not my favorite convention programme item format: all too often they are ill-prepared with some of the panel members unwittingly being out of their depth. But occasionally you do get some that exhibit true expertise and really engage the audience. This weekend BBC Radio 4 gave an exemplar of one such, that would not be out of place at an Eastercon, NASFic or even Worldcon, with Saturday’s “The Infinite Monkey Cage — ‘Alien Life’”. This is a light-hearted, 42-minute science programme, helmed by a physicist and a comedian along with a couple of scientist guests, this time it was two astronomers.

This week they were discussing the search for alien life and intelligence. Much was covered including the usual Voyager message. One of the astronomers noted that the paper he had co-authored on an unusual star that irregularly periodically dimmed they designated with a number and the pre-fix ‘WTF’.

Apparently, the journal’s editor asked what ‘WTF’ stood for and – quickly realising that an acronym whose meaning included an expletive might not go down well – they replied ‘Why The Flux’. A few months later, other astronomers proposed an exotic solution, that the dimming might be caused by an alien mega-structure orbiting at an angle to the star’s line of sight with Earth hence irregularly obscuring the star’s light. (Since then there has been a more mundane explanation proffered and several other stars have now been found exhibiting such behaviour.)

The panel must be congratulated in a way that biologist and SF fan, the late Jack Cohen CBiol FIBiol would have thoroughly approved. (Jack hated it when TV programmes, and convention panels, on alien life all too often exclusively featured astronomers with no biologist present.) This week’s Infinite Monkey Cage panel did, on a couple of occasions, lament the lack of a biologist being there. Nonetheless, it was a solid 42 minutes.

You can hear it here.

(The truth is out there…)

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 27, 1998 — The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Twenty-six years ago on this date, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. premiered on FOX. The series was created by Jeffrey Boam who wrote the screenplays for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Innerspace and The Lost Boys, and Carlton Cuse who’d later be well known for the Lost series, but at this point had only done Crime Story. It was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that got this series greenlit at Fox.

Though supposedly a Western, the series include generous amounts of the science fiction and steampunk genres. No spoiler shall I say as to what as some here may not have seen it and the… stopping right there.

Cuse served as show runner and head writer. Boam, who served as executive producer, also contributed scripts for the show. As might be conjectured, it was an indeed weird Western unlike any other Western.

It starred Bruce Campbell, Julius Carry, John Astin, Kelly Rutherford and Christian Clemenson. Though the critics loved it, and it did very well initially in the ratings, it quickly dropped off, so FOX cancelled it after the one season run of twenty-seven episodes.

I’ve watched and thoroughly enjoyed it. What do y’all think of it?

(7) COMICS SECTION.

The Lockhorns need time.
FurBabies finds AI everywhere.
Thatababy knows how Disney finds new movies.
The Argyle Sweater shares a deleted scene.
Candorville suspects these ads are too well targeted.
Lio reenacts the scariest and best part of the original movie.

(8) PL TRAVERS REMEMBERED. At BBC Sounds you can listen to the Witness History episode “The writer of Mary Poppins”. As you probably have heard sometime, she was not a fan of the Disney adaptation.

In 1964, the Disney film ‘Mary Poppins’ was released. It was based on the character created by writer PL Travers. Travers disliked the Oscar-winning Disney production so much, that she never allowed any more Mary Poppins books to be adapted into films. In 2018, Vincent Dowd spoke to Brian Sibley and Kitty Travers about their memories of PL Travers.

(9) ABOUT THAT SMOOCH ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. “Carrie Fisher Fans Will Wage War: Star Wars: A New Hope Deleted Scene Reveals Han Solo Had a Love Interest Even Before Leia” dishes Fandomwire.

….In the original version of this scene, Solo was intended to appear along with a girl, who wasn’t identified on the screen by name. However, the character, played by British actress Jenny Cresswell, was meant to be Solo’s girlfriend. Furthermore, their romantic relationship was confirmed with a kiss between the two….

(10) LUNAR TUNES. Atlas Obscura wants you to know “All the Other Names for the Moon”.

Every 29 and a half days, the moon cycles through at least eight common English names: the New Moon, the Crescent Moon (new and old), the Gibbous Moon (waxing, waning), the Full Moon, the Quarter Moon (first and last). In Hawai’i, there are more ways to call the moon as it grows and shrinks: Hilo Moon, Hoaka Moon, Kūkahi Moon, Kūlua Moon, Kūkkolu Moon (with a low tide in the afternoon), Kūpau Moon, ‘Olekūkahi Moon, ‘Olekūlua Moon (the most challenging moon), and that’s only halfway through the list. Each of these moons is just a sliver more in the sky, but people noticed and called each lunar advance a new name….

(11) BITS AND PIECES. “Fallout from NASA’s asteroid-smashing DART mission could hit Earth — potentially triggering 1st human-caused meteor shower” reports Live Science.

Millions of tiny space rock fragments may be on a collision course with Earth and Mars after NASA deliberately crashed a probe into a far-away asteroid two years ago, a new study reveals. The celestial shrapnel, which could start hitting our planet within a decade, poses no risk to life on Earth — but it could trigger the first ever human-caused meteor showers.

On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft purposefully collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, smashing right into the middle of the space rock at around 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h). The epic impact, which occurred more than 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, was the first test of humanity’s capability to redirect potentially hazardous asteroids that pose a threat to our planet.The mission was a major success. Not only did DART alter Dimorphos’ trajectory — shortening its trip around its partner asteroid Didymos by around 30 minutes — it also completely changed the shape of the asteroid. It demonstrated that this type of action, known as the kinetic impactor method, was a potentially viable option for protecting our planet from dangerous space rocks….

(12) TWIST AND SHOUT. “Meet the $16K Humanoid Robot Leaping Into Production”

Unitree unveiled a new video of its G1 robot performing acrobatic feats, as part of its lead up to production.

(13) VIDEOS OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Many SF groups over here in Brit Cit meet in pubs. Indeed, one of our longest standing meet-ups is a descendent of the London Circle made (in)famous by Arthur C. Clarke’s collection Tales from the White Hart. Now, over at Grammaticus Books we are urged to read Larry Niven’s collection The Draco Tavern, itself a Galactic watering hole….

Which brings us on to the skit at the 1984 L.A.con II, ‘Late One Night at the Draco Tavern’.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/12/24 Pixels Were Scrolled

Posted on June 12, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) TED CHIANG WINS PEN/MALAMUD AWARD. Ted Chiang is the winner of the 2024 PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, which recognizes writers “who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short story form.” He will be honored at the annual PEN/Malamud Award Ceremony, held in partnership with American University, on December 6.

“Ted Chiang’s stories are an absolute wonder to behold,” said Jung Yun, PEN/Malamud Award committee chair. “Not only do they demonstrate his exceptionally high standards for creativity and construction, they also invite readers to think, imagine, and explore unique worlds beyond their own. Whether set in an alternate version of the past, or one possible version of the future, his work prompts important questions that are deeply relevant to how we live today. In doing so, Chiang exemplifies Bernard Malamud’s belief that a short story can produce ‘the surprise and effect of a profound knowledge in a short time.’ “

Chiang’s fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and six Locus Awards, and has been reprinted in Best American Short Stories. His first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, has been translated into 21 languages, and the title story was the basis for the Oscar-nominated film Arrival. His second collection, Exhalation, was chosen by the New York Timesas one of the 10 Best Books of 2019.

“I cannot overstate how surprised and delighted I am to be a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story,” Chiang said. “The short story has played a central role in the history of science fiction; I grew up reading anthologies where every story contained a different world, and I feel privileged to be a part of science fiction’s growing acceptance in the wider literary world. As a writer I appreciate the way the short story allows me to focus on a single idea or moment, and it’s wonderful to receive an award that celebrates the form.”

(2) NYRSF READINGS. Barbara Krasnoff told Facebook readers today the New York Review of SF Readings are back. Susan Emshwiller will guest at the next one on June 20. See it on Jim Freund’s YouTube channel.

First, we apologize for the long wait for our NYRSF Reading with Susan Emshwiller — because of health and tech issues (things always pile up, don’t they?), we had to postpone.

However, we’re planning to make up for it with a wonderful reading and interview with the multi-talented Susan Emshwiller about her great new book All My Ancestors Had Sex (love the title!) on Thursday, June 20th, at 7 PM ET, on Jim’s YouTube channel. I am hosting, Jim Freund is running tech, and Amy Goldschlager will be your faithful audience wrangler. See you online soon!

(3) THE FINAL EPISODE ON THE FINAL FRONTIER. Galactic Journey’s Janice L. Newman and others tuned in for the final episode of Star Trek – in 1969. What did they think of it? “[June 12, 1969] Heavy on the Bitters (Star Trek: Turnabout Intruder)”.

The mood was bittersweet as we gathered to watch the final episode of Star Trek. It also held a hint of trepidation: would we get another instant classic, like All Our Yesterdays, or another disappointment, like the string of episodes before it?

As it turned out, the final episode of Star Trek, probably the last new one that will ever be aired, was compelling, well-acted, well-paced, well-directed…and disappointing for an entirely different reason….

… The plot that then unfolds is simple: Kirk must try to convince his crew that he is himself, despite being in Lester’s body, while Lester must convince them that “Janice Lester” is dangerously insane and that she is Captain Kirk. Lester is hampered by the fact that she is emotionally unstable, to put it mildly, and clearly unfit to be a starship captain. Spock uses Vulcan telepathy early on and believes Kirk, and the rest of the crew slowly come to support him as well, despite no medical tests showing anything off about Kirk (this is another implausible point—surely brain scans, psychological tests, or gauges of emotional stability should have shown that something was different.)…

…There are a couple of ways to interpret this story. You could, as we tried to do, simply say that Lester sees sexism where it none exists, blaming an outdated concept for why she couldn’t get promoted rather than her own mental and emotional instability. Unfortunately, this is undercut by Kirk’s agreeing with her statement that, “It’s not fair,” and Kirk’s own final words that her life could have been as rich as “any woman’s”.

On the other hand, taking it at face value seems wildly counter both to previous episodes and to current (present-day) trends. “Number One” from The Menagerie was a woman, and even acting captain of the Enterprise back in Pike’s day, years before Kirk was put in charge. Perhaps there hasn’t been a female starship captain yet (there are only 13 Enterprise-class ships, per Tomorrow is Yesterday) but you don’t make someone First Officer if there’s no avenue for them to eventually become a captain. And in “our world”, two world leaders are women: Golda Meir became the Prime Minister of Israel just two months ago, while Indira Gandhi has been Prime Minister of India since 1966!…

(4) EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE A PLAN FOR THEIR COLLECTION … [Item by Mike Ward.] …for their death… Or even just for forgetting to pay the fee for the storage unit.

Don’t let this happen to you:

Dusty Riach is one of the people on Storage Wars, but this video is one he himself put on YouTube a couple of years ago.

Someone with a storage unit in Bloomington, California, let it lapse. It was full of SF/Fantasy; a pile of stuff that seems to have come from Forry Ackerman’s estate; and hundreds of LP and other records.

There was a box of fanzines that included an APA-L for instance. Lots of other stuff that someone had put together over the years.

The video runs half an hour. The collector’s name is not given, and perhaps not even known, but someone in LA fandom probably knew them.

(5) RECURSIVE BOOK BAN. [Item by Cliff.] “Book about book bans banned by Florida school board” – the Guardian sorts it out.

A book about book bans has been banned in a Florida school district.

Ban This Book, a children’s book written by Alan Gratz, will no longer be available in the Indian River county school district since the school board voted to remove the book last month.

Gratz’s book, which came out in 2017, follows fourth-grader Amy Anne Ollinger as she tries to check out her favorite book. Ollinger is told by the librarian she cannot, because it was banned after a classmate’s parent thought it was inappropriate. She then creates a secret banned-books library, entering into “an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what she and her fellow students can read”, according to the book’s description on Gratz’s website.

In a peculiar case of life imitating art, Jennifer Pippin, a parent in the coastal community, challenged the book….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born June 12, 1916 – Irwin Allen. (Died 1992.) So let’s talk about Irwin Allen. While he may be best known for that most spectacular of ocean disaster movies, The Poseidon Adventure, he’s done more than done a reasonable share of genre work.

The first series that he created in the Sixties was Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, was based off his film of the same name, that would air on ABC from the fall of 1964 to the spring of 1968 making it the decade’s longest-running American science fiction television series with continuing characters. The one hundred and ten episodes produced included the first thirty-two shot in black-and-white, and last seventy-eight filmed in color.

Next up for him was Lost in Space. Saying it’s based off Johann David Wyss’ The Swiss Family Robinson is really, really stretching things, isn’t it? Be that as it may, the show ran for eighty-three episodes over three seasons on CBS.

Remember The Time Tunnel? Yeah he was responsible for it too. The show ran for one season of thirty episodes from 1966 to 1967 on ABC.

His run of SF series would be concluded with Land of the Giants, a one-hour series that aired on ABC from the fall of 1968 to the spring of 1970. It was filmed in color. It’s worth noting that five novels based on the television series, including three written by Murray Leinster, would be published while the series aired.

A decade later, we have a miniseries on that took Robert Bloch and six other scriptwriters to please Irwin Allen, The Return of Captain Nemo (theatrical title when a shorten, possibly more coherent version had a screen run was The Amazing Captain Nemo). It has been considered an attempt by him to duplicate the success of his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It didn’t.

Finally I’ll note that he was responsible for it happening in all aspects possible, a music version of Alice in Wonderland. It aired on CBS over two nights in 1985, and it had an amazing cast of Natalie Gregory (Alice here), Red Buttons, Anthony Newley, Jayne Meadows, Carol Channing, Sammy Davis Jr., Roddy McDowall, Ann Jillian, Pat Morita and Robert Morley. It has an extraordinary rating of eighty-five percent over at Rotten Tomatoes.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss demonstrates why someone is not invited to beach games.
Brewster Rockit shows the threat is closing in.
Moderately Confused sets up the following comic.
Mannequin on the Moon has a ‘sounds like’ problem.
Carpe Diem shows an emoji used by Homer.

(8) SPAM OF THE DAY. I got an email from the IMF today. My immediate reaction was, “What a wonderful scam – an email from the Impossible Missions Force!” But I was wrong. They were only pretending to be from the International Monetary Fund, offering to let me tap into a 850,000 Euro victims compensation fund. Since the email was not going to self-destruct in five seconds, I helped it along.

(9) HOW DO IT KNOW? (To borrow a line from an old comedy routine.) “The puzzle of emergence asks how regularities emerge on macro scales out of uncountable constituent parts. A new framework has researchers hopeful that a solution is near.” “The New Math of How Large-Scale Order Emerges” in Quanta Magazine.

A few centuries ago, the swirling polychromatic chaos of Jupiter’s atmosphere spawned the immense vortex that we call the Great Red Spot…

…A complex system exhibits emergence, according to the new framework, by organizing itself into a hierarchy of levels that each operate independently of the details of the lower levels. The researchers suggest we think about emergence as a kind of “software in the natural world.” Just as the software of your laptop runs without having to keep track of all the microscale information about the electrons in the computer circuitry, so emergent phenomena are governed by macroscale rules that seem self-contained, without heed to what the component parts are doing.

Using a mathematical formalism called computational mechanics, the researchers identified criteria for determining which systems have this kind of hierarchical structure. They tested these criteria on several model systems known to display emergent-type phenomena, including neural networks and Game-of-Life-style cellular automata. Indeed, the degrees of freedom, or independent variables, that capture the behavior of these systems at microscopic and macroscopic scales have precisely the relationship that the theory predicts….

(10) ALL MUST CHOOSE. [Item by Andrew Porter.] If you don’t like the menu, please don’t behead the servers! The Mile End Deli in Brooklyn will offer House of Dragons-themed food on Father’s Day:

(11) DORNE TO THE SEA IN SHIPS. Meanwhile, “A ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel Has Been Revived, Says George RR Martin” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Martin revealed that the Princess Nymeria prequel Ten Thousand Ships is alive again and making progress under a new writer — Eboni Booth, who won a Pulitzer Prize in May for her play Primary Trust.

“She’s an amazingly talented young playwright, and a joy to work with; when not writing and producing her prize-winning plays on- and off-Broadway, she has been kept busy by me and HBO, working on a new pilot for Ten Thousand Ships, a Game of Thrones spinoff about Nymeria and the Rhoynar,” Martin wrote on his blog. “We’re all very excited about this one … though we’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to pay for 10,000 ships, 300 dragons and those giant turtles.”

Set 1,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series tells the story of warrior queen Princess Nymeria — the founder of the kingdom of Dorne — and the surviving Rhoynars who traveled from Essos to Dorne following their defeat by Valyrian and their dragons. HBO had no comment on the update….

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. And making the rounds this week: “Elijah Wood Gets a Burger Master Class” at Burger Bucket List.

How do you impress a world-class eater like actor Elijah Wood? Go crazy with research, find out what he wants, and make it happen. Trust us, we dug deep for this tasting menu: Japanese luxury, pizza nostalgia, and the ‘One Burger to Rule Them All.’ We think Frodo and the other hobbits would approve. From a Lord of the Rings surprise, to a Wilfred cameo, this career-spanning meal packs it all in. Welcome to the Elijah Wood Burger Omakase.

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

Pixel Scroll 10/21/23 Seven Pixels You Can’t Scroll On Television

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) URSULA VERNON’S HUGO ACCEPTANCE SPEECH. Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon’s pen name) won the Best Novel Hugo today. Arley Sorg delivered her acceptance remarks and by popular demand she has published them in a free Patreon post titled “The Light At The End Of The Frog”.

… There are a lot of serious and heavy things I could say right now, and probably I should. But other people have said them better and more movingly than I ever will. So instead I want to share something wonderful and disgusting and maybe a little inspiring with you.

There is a species of water beetle that regularly gets swallowed whole by frogs. And while there’s a lot of things you can do to keep from being eaten, once you’re inside a frog, your options are severely limited….

(2) MEDICAL UPDATE. RiverFlow, co-editor of this year’s Hugo-winning fanzine Zero Gravity Newspaper, was hospitalized today reports Zimozi Natsuco in a File 770 comment here. More details at the link.

(3) CHENGDU WORLDCON PHOTO GALLERIES ACCESS. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Adaoli/SF Light Year sent me a clean version of the QR codes for the official photo galleries.

(4) GET SEATTLE 2025 PR 0. Seattle 2025 is now officially seated after yesterday’s site selection vote. Their Guests of Honor will be Martha Wells, Donato Giancola, Bridget Landry, and Alexander James Adams with Hosts K. Tempest Bradford and Nisi Shawl. Download Seattle Worldcon 2025 Progress Report 0 at the link. The chair told followers in a message:

My name is Kathy Bond, Chair of this Worldcon, and I am absolutely thrilled to announce that Seattle will have the honor of hosting you all for the 83rd World Science Fiction Convention. I love Seattle, especially when it rains, and I cannot wait to share with you all of the rich, vibrant, creative life in the people and places of this city. I hope that you will be able to join us in person or virtually if a trip to Seattle is not in the cards.

Worldcon cannot take place without every member of this community. All of the plans and dreams that have led us here to this moment would not have been possible without the volunteers who helped sit at tables, who talked to each other and you about Seattle, and without the financial support of buying pre-support memberships. Every tiny act of volunteerism built this bid and helped us win. And, we still need those acts of volunteerism. Come join our community of makers, doers, and shapers for a few hours during the convention or throughout this planning process.

My vision for this Worldcon is to bring our Pacific Northwest community and our Worldcon community together to learn from each other, to create with each other, and to build with each other the type of inclusive community that our best genre fiction inspires us to build. Building Yesterday’s Future For Everyone is an acknowledgement that we have not successfully built the future we have aspired to but that we can still be inspired by the optimism of the past to keep building. We remember our yesterdays; we work for our better futures….

The convention’s website is here: Seattle Worldcon 2025 – Building Yesterday’s Future–For Everyone.

(5) BULGACON 2023. [Item by Valentin D. Ivanov.] Bulgacon is the annual national Bulgarian SFF convention. The 2023 edition took place in Plovdiv from September 22-24 with help from the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture. The event gathered some international participation including Alex Schvartsman, Andreas Eschbach, Francesco Verso, Nina Horvath, Peter Watts and Wole Talabi, among others.

A bilingual Bulgarian/English booklet with the program and the list of panelists can be seen in PDF format here at the convention website.

(6) SUSAN C. PETREY FUND CLOSING. The Clarion Foundation has issued its own farewell on the heels of the October 18 announcement by Paul Wrigley and Debbie Cross.

The Clarion Foundation wishes to honor the impact of the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund as it winds down after 43 years of support. Thanks to Paul Wrigley and Debbie Cross, and their tireless fundraising efforts through the Oregon Science Fiction Conventions Inc, the Petrey scholarship stands as the oldest ongoing scholarship supporting Clarion students, and has demonstrated the critical importance of scholarship support in making the Workshop possible. Over the years it has awarded 71 scholarships to Clarion and Clarion West students.

The fund was created in honor of Susan C. Petrey, an American fantasy writer of short fiction who was early in her career when she passed. Her work would later go on to be posthumously nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a Hugo Award. Thanks to Paul and Debbie, her legacy and community spirit have endured.

The Petrey Scholarship is particularly appreciated for its demonstration of the ways that communities built around a special person or a targeted cause — in this case, both — can have philanthropic impact beyond what the original donors might have imagined. Along with Paul and Debbie, we sincerely thank all of the fund supporters, and look forward to building more such communities in the coming years and decades.

“On behalf of the Clarion Foundation board and all the many recipients of this important scholarship over the years, we want to express our deepest appreciation to Debbie, Paul, and the OFSCI,” said Clarion Foundation President Karen J. Fowler. “Your generosity over so many years has been simply extraordinary. I don’t know how we can begin to thank you. I feel all the end-of-an-era sadness, but a sadness overwhelmed with gratitude.”

Former recipients of the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund are welcome to share the importance of their scholarship to their Clarion experience and we will pass them along.

(7) BEST OMENS. “Neil Gaiman: ‘In your 60s, any sex is good sex. It’s like: Oh my gosh, I can still do this thing’” – so he told an interviewer from the Guardian. Here are some other things he had to say.

Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
I’ve never read Proust.

What was the last lie you told?
I don’t tell lies any more, because my memory is going.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?
Really fancy sushi.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 21, 1904 — Edmond Hamilton. One of the prolific writers for Weird Tales from the late 20s to the late 40s, writing nearly eighty stories. (Lovecraft and Howard were the other key writers.) Sources say that through the late 1920s and early 1930s Hamilton wrote for all of the SF pulp magazines then publishing. His story “The Island of Unreason” (Wonder Stories, May 1933) won the first Jules Verne Prize as the best SF story of the year. This was the very first SF prize awarded by a vote of fans, which one source holds to be a precursor of the Hugo Awards. From the early 40s to the late 60s, he worked for DC, in stories about Superman and Batman. He created the Space Ranger character with Gardner Fox and Bob Brown. On December 31, 1946, Hamilton married fellow science fiction author and screenwriter Leigh Brackett. Now there is another story as well. (Died 1977.)
Born October 21, 1914 — Martin Gardner. He was one of leading authorities on Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll’s two Alice books, is still a bestseller. He was considered the doyen (your word to learn today) of American puzzlers. And, to make him even more impressive, in 1999 Magic magazine named Gardner one of the “100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century”. Cool! (Died 2010.)
Born October 21, 1929 — Ursula K. Le Guin. Writer, Artist, Editor, Poet, and Translator. She called herself a “Narrative American”. And she most emphatically did not consider herself to be a genre writer – instead preferring to be known as an “American novelist”. Oh, she wrote genre fiction with quite some brilliance, be it the Earthsea sequence, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or Always Coming Home. Her upbringing as the daughter of two academics, one who was an anthropologist and the other who had a graduate degree in psychology, with a home library full of SF, showed in her writing. She wrote reviews and forewards for others’ books, gave academic talks, and did translations as well. Without counting reader’s choice awards, her works received more than 100 nominations for pretty much every genre award in existence, winning most of them at least once; she is one of a very small group of people who have won both Hugo and Nebula Awards in all four fiction length categories. She was Guest of Honor at several conventions, including the 1975 Worldcon; was the second woman to be named SFWA Grand Master; was given a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement; and was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In later years, she took up internet blogging with great delight, writing essays and poems, and posting pictures and stories of her cat Pard; these were compiled into a non-fiction collection, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, which won a posthumous Hugo for Best Related Work. Her last Hugo was at Dublin 2019 for The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition which was illustrated by Charles Vess. (Died 2018.)
Born October 21, 1971 — Hal Duncan, 52. Computer Programmer and Writer from Scotland whose first novel, Vellum: The Book of All Hours, won a Spectrum Award and received nominations for World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Kurd Laßwitz, Prix Imaginaire, and Locus Best First Novel Awards, as well as winning a Tahtivaeltaja Award for best science fiction novel published in Finnish. His collection Scruffians! and his non-fiction work Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions were also both finalists for British Fantasy Awards. An outspoken advocate and blogger for LGBTQ rights, he was a contributor to Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project.
Born October 21, 1974 — Chris Garcia, 49. He’s editor of The Drink Tank and several other fanzines. He won a Hugo Award at Renovation with co-editor James Bacon for The Drink Tank after being nominated from 2010 to 2013. He was nominated for the Best Fan Writer Hugo three years straight starting in 2010. His acceptance speech for the Hugo at Renovation was itself nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Hugo at Chicon 7. I can’t begin to list all his feats and honors here.

(9) FLASH GORDON COMING BACK. Michael Cavna reveals that the “’Flash Gordon’ comic strip is returning after a 20-year break’ in the Washington Post.

He might be nearing 90, but one relentlessly athletic adventurer is poised for a pop-culture reappreciation.

Flash Gordon, the intergalactic space warrior who predates Superman and Batman as an iconic American action-comic hero sprung from Depression-era pages — as well as a Hollywood screen star who inspired George Lucas’s Star Wars — is returning to newspapers.

King Features Syndicate, whichintroduced the character in 1934, will relaunch the comic strip “Flash Gordon” beginning Sunday after a two-decade absence — featuring a new look and a new artist. (The Sunday and daily strips will be available online and in print.)…

…Guiding the new enterprise will be Dan Schkade, an Eisner-nominated cartoonist in his early 30s best known for his work on such comics as “Will Eisner’s The Spirit Returns,” “Lavender Jack” and “Saint John.”

Schkade won a competitivetryout earlier this year to script and draw the strip, shortly before King announced a licensing deal with Mad Cave Studios, which will begin publishing other original “Flash Gordon” narratives, graphic novels and comic reprints beginning next year.

(10) TED CHIANG ON AI. “Writers respond to techno-optimism about AI: ‘It’s mostly nonsense’” at GeekWire.

How will “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s paean to economic growth and artificial intelligence, play to a wider audience? The reviews are in from two award-winning writers who are familiar with the impact of generative AI on creative professions.

“I think it’s mostly nonsense,” science-fiction writer Ted Chiang said Thursday at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle.

Chiang, a longtime Seattle-area resident, is best-known as the author of “Story of Your Life,” the novella that was adapted for the Oscar-nominated 2016 movie “Arrival.” But he’s also won acclaim as a commentator on AI’s effects for The New Yorker and other publications. Last month, Time magazine included Chiang among the 100 most influential people in AI.

The other writer on the SIFF Cinema stage was Eric Heisserer, the screenwriter who turned Chiang’s story into the script for “Arrival.” Heisserer witnessed the debate over generative AI and the future of work up close as a member of the negotiating committee for the Writers Guild of America during its recent strike against Hollywood studios.

Both Chiang and Heisserer say AI is too often unjustly portrayed as a high-tech panacea. That claim came through loud and clear in Andreessen’s manifesto, which called AI a “universal problem solver.”

“Technology can solve certain problems, but I think the biggest problems that we face are not problems that have technological solutions,” Chiang said in response. “Climate change probably does not have a technological solution. Wealth inequality does not have a technological solution. Most of these are problems of political will. … And so Marc Andreessen’s manifesto is a prime example of ignoring all of these other realities.”

Chiang took issue with Andreessen’s view that growth is always good. “Growth is untenable on a finite planet, so at some point, we are going to have to think about some alternative to a growth economy, some kind of stable state, because the laws of physics are going to put a stop to growth at some point,” he said.

He also called attention to Andreessen’s track record as a tech commentator. “He was all in on crypto,” Chiang said. “He is all in on the metaverse. Anyone who was so enthusiastic about those things … I think we need to keep that in mind when gauging their credibility about anything they recommend now.”…

(11) RED PILL REVIEW. [Item by Steven French.] For those who happen to be in or near Manchester, U.K.: “Free Your Mind review – Danny Boyle’s Matrix reboot is a thrilling shock to the system” in the Guardian.

…The show is a 2023 take on the 1999 film The Matrix, which fits with the current 90s nostalgia (those skintight PVC trousers will take you right back) but is also alarmingly prescient in its story of humans being usurped by intelligent machines as we enable the march of AI, ever more in thrall to the algorithm….

… Are the Matrix’s hero, Neo (Corey Owens), and his journey a bit lost among all this? Well, yes. With 50 dancers on stage, Free Your Mind is built from large-scale set pieces. Choreographer Kenrick “H2O” Sandy is a master at orchestrating tightly drilled ranks of battle-ready glitching bodies and short, sharp shocks of metrical movement. Although when Sandy himself appears as Morpheus, he reminds us one dancer is sometimes enough. A magisterial performer, he is molten and he is rock….

(12) BLAST FROM THE PAST. “Mysterious fast radio burst traveled 8 billion years to reach Earth” reports CNN.

Astronomers have detected a mysterious blast of radio waves that have taken 8 billion years to reach Earth. The fast radio burst is one of the most distant and energetic ever observed.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves with unknown origins. The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then, hundreds of these quick, cosmic flashes have been detected coming from distant points across the universe.

The burst, named FRB 20220610A, lasted less than a millisecond, but in that fraction of a moment, it released the equivalent of our sun’s energetic emissions over the course of 30 years, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Valentin D. Ivanov, Nathan Hillstrom, Frank Catalano, Steven French, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

Wishful Thinking & AI: Ted Chiang and Dr. Emily M. Bender Speak on 11/10

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Mike Glyer

Clarion West presents a conversation with Ted Chiang and Dr. Emily M. Bender on Friday, November 10 at 7:30 PM at Town Hall Seattle. Purchase tickets here.

UW Professor of Linguistics Emily M. Bender talks with award-winning science fiction author Ted Chiang about the hype, realistic expectations, and who should be involved in the conversation around AI. Moderated by Jeopardy! champion and Phinney Books owner Tom Nissley.

Both speakers were recently featured in Time Magazine’s Time100 Most Influential People in AI. “This group of 100 individuals is in many ways a map of the relationships and power centers driving the development of AI. They are rivals and regulators, scientists and artists, advocates and executives—the competing and cooperating humans whose insights, desires, and flaws will shape the direction of an increasingly influential technology,” wrote Time’s Sam Jacobs on how they selected the scientists, thinkers, journalists, innovators, and artists featured in the article.

The article declares Ted Chiang as “one of the sharpest critics of AI and the corporations behind it.” In clear sentimental agreement, Dr. Bender is quoted in the article stating, “You can’t expect a machine-learning system to learn stuff that’s not in its training data. Otherwise you’re expecting magic.” On November 10, hear both speakers discuss their thoughts and concerns in-person at Town Hall Seattle or live in Zoom.

This event is a fundraiser for Clarion West, supporting emerging and underrepresented writers in speculative fiction.

About Dr. Emily M. Bender: Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Computer Science and the Information School at the University of Washington, where she has been on the faculty since 2003. Her research interests include multilingual grammar engineering, computational semantics, and the societal impacts of language technology. She is the co-author of recent influential papers such as Climbing towards NLU: On Meaning, Form, and Understanding in the Age of Data (ACL 2020), On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? (FAccT 2021), and AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark (NeurIPS 2021). In 2022 she was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Together with Dr. Alex Hanna, she posts Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, a podcast which skewers AI hype.

About Ted Chiang: Ted Chiang’s fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and six Locus Awards, and has been reprinted in Best American Short Stories. His first collection Stories of Your Life and Others has been translated into twenty-one languages, and the title story was the basis for the Oscar-nominated film Arrival. His second collection Exhalation was chosen by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2019.

About Tom Nissley: Tom Nissley is the owner of Phinney Books and Madison Books in Seattle. He’s the author of A Reader’s Book of Days, has a PhD in English from the University of Washington, and was an eight-time champion on Jeopardy!

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 9/14/23 There Are Some Things Money Can’t Buy; For Everything Else, There’s Pixel Scroll

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) TOP PEOPLE. Writer Ted Chiang, filmmaker Lilly Wachowski, manga creator Rootport, and artist Kelly McKernan are some of the recognizable names who are not CEOs or scientists on TIME’s list of “The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2023”.

(2) COLLATERAL DAMAGE OF LISTS. “Here we go again. Another badly skewed list of fantasy books recommended for newcomers” – Juliet E. McKenna tees off. Which list? I don’t know, but they keep coming along.

Must be a day with a Y in it. Yes, well-informed readers are pushing back against this particular dated, limited and male-dominated list, and no, I’m not going to link to it and argue the toss over every title. There’s a wider point to be made.

Women SF&F writers don’t take these best-of lists, these recommended-for-award-nominations and shortlists, these articles and review columns that erase us ‘personally’. We object because they damage us professionally. The same is true for every under-represented group excluded from these lists. And yes, the male authors writing the progressive, informed and thought-provoking SF&F which is being ignored have a right to feel aggrieved as well.

When newcomers to fantasy fiction see the most easily-found review coverage and online discussion is all about grimdark books from big publishers, with stories about blokes in cloaks, written by authors like Macho McHackenslay, that’s what they will buy. Or they will be completely put off and go elsewhere in search of fiction where they see themselves and their concerns represented. They will never know what they’re looking for can be found in SF&F.

Either way, six months down the line, the big publisher’s accountants at head office look at the sales figures and see Macho McHackenslay is one of their bestsellers. The order goes out to ask literary agents for more of the same. Because big publishing is a numbers game, and it skews towards repeating successes rather than promoting innovation.

Meantime, an editor will be arguing the case to give another contract to P.D.Kickassgrrl. He insists the body count and hardcore ethics of P.D.Kickassgrrl’s excellent work will surely appeal to Macho McHackenslay fans, as well as whole lot of other readers. Unfortunately her sales aren’t nearly as good, because her books get far fewer reviews and other mentions. Genre magazines and blogs can have a similar skew towards established successes, arguing they have to review the books people are actually buying, because those are the writers readers are clearly interested in. The self-referential and self-reinforcing circle is complete….

(3) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTS ROLLING OUT. The 2023 National Book Award Longlist for Translated Literature includes one work of genre interest – Bora Chung’s collection Cursed Bunny.

Translated Literature

Devil of the Provinces by Juan Cárdenas and translated from the Spanish by Lizzie Davis (Coffee House)
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung and translated from the Korean by Anton Hur (Algonquin)
Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop and translated from the French by Sam Taylor (FSG)
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated from the German by Michael Hofmann (New Directions)
The Words That Remain by Stênio Gardel and translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato (New Vessel)
No One Prayed Over Their Graves by Khaled Khalifa and translated from the Arabic by Leri Price (FSG)
This Is Not Miami by Fernanda Melchor and translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes (New Directions)
Abyss by Pilar Quintana and translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman (World Editions)
On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer and tanslated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott (Two Lines)
The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud (Other Press)

(4) STURGEON SYMPOSIUM. The full schedule for the 2nd Annual Sturgeon Symposium has been posted at the link. Shows the in-person and several virtual program items. Optional registration available.

(5) HWA’S NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. Maxwell I. Gold has been installed as Executive Director of the Horror Writers Association, replacing Brad Hodson who served the HWA for ten years as Administrator.

…The HWA Hiring Committee saw a robust pool of twenty applicants and conducted six interviews in the organization’s first executive search. As HWA President and member of the hiring committee, John Lawson noted:

“This Executive Director search was a first for the HWA, and while I expected interest in the job opening, I had no idea we’d garner the attention of such strong applicants, including those outside the HWA community. Having worked closely with Maxwell, both as Treasurer and as Interim Executive Director, I’ve witnessed firsthand his creative problem-solving and know our membership—and volunteers—will benefit from his efforts. I couldn’t be more thrilled with the outcome of this process and am proud to serve alongside Maxwell.”

Gold has served on the Board of Trustees for two years as Treasurer and will remain a non-voting member of the Board in his new role as Executive Director. Effective immediately, Michael Knost, currently running unopposed, will assume the role and responsibility of the Office of Treasurer for the Horror Writers Association….

(6) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA PICKET LINE. You’re invited to drop by on September 21.

(7) THAT SINKING FEELING. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Mickey Ralph, the lead designer for Good Omens, posted to Twitter about some logistical problems that resulted from there being a second season. Thread starts here.

In ep2 of S1 we see it for a BREIF few seconds with Gabriel and Sandalphon. It was gorgeous. Hand-painted tiles all inset into the dark wood setting and original porcelain sink. Bronwyn (our Set Dec) found it at a market and at the end of S1 it burned with the rest of the shop ???? pic.twitter.com/FahuYFuPiY
— ???????????????????????? ???????????????? (@mickeyralph) September 13, 2023

So, we bought the closest sink dupe we could find, some blank porcelain tiles and some porcelain paint and little old me had the absolute pleasure of doing her darnedest to hand paint a set of replica antique tiles for the corner of the bookshop. pic.twitter.com/7pEh1D293R
— ???????????????????????? ???????????????? (@mickeyralph) September 13, 2023

(8) FOR ALL MANKIND SEASON 4. Collider unpacks “’For All Mankind’ Season 4 Teaser”. The show returns November 10 on Apple TV+.

In previous seasons, For All Mankind explored space exploration’s impact on political and cultural landscapes in different eras, from the 1970s Moon mission to the 1980s Cold War competition for lunar resources. Season 3 saw a race to conquer Mars, leading to a climactic finale.

Launching into the new millennium, Happy Valley has made remarkable strides over the past eight years since Season 3. It has rapidly expanded its presence on Mars, transforming former adversaries into valuable partners. Fast forward to 2003, and the primary focus of this space program has shifted towards capturing and mining extraordinarily precious, mineral-rich asteroids that have the potential to reshape the destinies of both Earth and Mars. However, underlying tensions among the inhabitants of the sprawling international base now jeopardize everything they have worked so diligently to achieve.

Here’s a clip of the show’s “Helios Recruitment” commercial.

Rocketing into the new millennium in the eight years since Season 3, Happy Valley has rapidly expanded its footprint on Mars by turning former foes into partners. Now 2003, the focus of the space program has turned to the capture and mining of extremely valuable, mineral-rich asteroids that could change the future of both Earth and Mars. But simmering tensions between the residents of the now-sprawling international base threaten to undo everything they are working towards.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born September 14, 1919 — Claire P. Beck. He was a reclusive fan known as the Hermit of Lakeport, California was active in the 1930s. Editor of the Science Fiction Critic fanzine which published in four issues the first work of criticism devoted to American SF: “Hammer and Tongs,” written by his brother, Clyde F. Beck. Their publishing house was Futile Press. (Died 1999.)
Born September 14, 1927 — Martin Caidin. His best-known novel is Cyborg which was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man franchise. He wrote two novels in the Indiana Jones franchise and one in the Buck Rogers one as well. He wrote myriad other sf novels as well. Marooned was nominated for a Hugo at Heicon ’70 but TV coverage of Apollo XI won that year. The Six Million Dollar Man film was a finalist for Best Dramatic Presentation at Discon II which Woody Allen’s Sleeper won. (Died 1997.)
Born September 14, 1944 — Rowena Morrill. Well-known for her genre art, she is one of the first female artists to impact paperback cover illustration. Her notable works include The Fantastic Art of Rowena, Imagine (French publication only), Imagination (German publication only), and The Art of Rowena. Though nominated for the Hugo four times, she never won, but garnered the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. She also did the three covers you see here for the Recorded Books edition of The Lord of The Rings. OGH’s obituary for her is here. (Died 2021.)

Born September 14, 1950 — Michael Reaves. A scriptwriter and story editor to a number of Eighties and Nineties animated television series, including Batman: The Animated Series, Disney’s Gargoyles He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Smurfs, Space Sentinels, Star Wars: Droids and The Transformers. Live action wise, he worked on Next Generation, Sliders, Swamp Thing, original Flash and Young Hercules. He also worked on two of my favorite animated Batman films, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. (Died 2023.)
Born September 14, 1961 — Justin Richards, 62. Clute at ESF says “Richards is fast and competent.” Well I can certain say he’s fast as he’s turned out thirty-five Doctor Who novels which Clute thinks are for the YA market between 1994 and 2016. And he has other series going as well! Another nineteen novels written, and then there’s the Doctor Who non-fiction which runs to over a half dozen works. He writes mainly Doctor Who novels with thirteen, so from the Eighth through the Thirteenth Doctor so far, and Creative Consultant for the BBC Books range of Doctor Who novels. He’s written novels with Professor Bernice Summerfield as the protagonist as well. And written more SF that aren’t Whovian than I could possibly list here. One such series is, as EoSF notes, “the Invisible Detective sequence, beginning with The Paranormal Puppet Show (2003; vt Double Life 2004), consists in each case of two stories: one set in the 1930s, where the four young protagonists solve sf and fantasy mysteries; the other set in the contemporary world, where a parallel tale is told.”
Born September 14, 1972 — Jenny T. Colgan, 51. Prolific writer of short stories in the Whovian universe with a baker’s dozen to date with several centered on River Song. She novelized “The Christmas Invasion”, the first full Tenth Doctor story. She has two genre novels, Resistance Is Futile and Spandex and the City.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Wrong Hands mashes up kids’ programming with a famous horror story.
Wrong Hands also shows the varieties in the “film school of fish”.

(11) EMBROIDERED WORLDS KICKSTARTER PURSUES STRETCH GOALS. The Kickstarter for the “Embroidered Worlds” English translation of Ukrainian SFF is now funded as far as all stories are concerned, but now they’re working on stretch goals for illustrations and other features. Donors who support this for as little as $1 which will receive a copy of the ebook. There are just over two weeks left in the Kickstarter that will benefit not only Ukrainian writers but, it is hoped, Ukrainian illustrators.

There are several guest blogs for the Kickstarter, including this one by Michael Burianyk on “Why do we need Ukrainian stories?”.

… Because the origins of Ukraine’s cultural and political capital Kyiv are lost in the shades of unrecorded time, they are fought over by competing storytellers. To this day, historians speculate and argue and create their own legends about who and when and why. And Kyiv was for a large part of its story a post-apocalyptic city: It lay in ruins, its spectacular architecture burnt and rotting, its population ravaged and scattered — a perfect breeding ground for ghosts and angst.

Ukraine was a place of conflict, in many ways still unresolved, between the Pagan and the Christian. Priests of the new god ensured that the old, some might say more interesting, beliefs were not written down. Prince Volodymyr, the Red Sun of legend, had the wooden idol of Perun flogged and dragged into the Dnipro to drown, and one imagines that his ghost still wanders the hills of the city along with his divine siblings, Dazhbog, Stribog, and Simargl, who still haunt the wooded ravines and forests of the country — as do many other fantastic and terrible beings.

The country saw, through the centuries, hordes and armies and emperors and commissars — not so different and no more understandable than demons and invading space invaders. Ukraine saw fire and sword wielded by abominable aliens; destruction visited over terrified generations and without warning. The Ukrainian people created their own interesting champions through these times. Stories of its protectors: Volodymyr of legend again and other bogatyry, were told for consolation. Legends of the Kozaks were examples of the spirit of independence of the people and their need for liberty that permeates their souls to this day….

(12) WHERE TO SEE THE CHINESE SERIES THREE-BODY PROBLEM. Seattle PBS station KCTS 9 is going to be running the Chinese-language version of the Three-Body Problem TV series (with English subtitles). Members can stream the first episode now, and the full series starting September 23. Will it be shown on any other PBS stations? My search on the main PBS website didn’t find it, nor another search on LA PBS station KCET. Let me know if it shows up anywhere else. But you could always become a member of the Seattle station and get access to it.

(13) MISSED THE WINDOW. “Stan Lee’s Estate Loses Yearslong Elder Abuse Lawsuit Against Former Attorney on a Technicality” — The Hollywood Reporter has the story.

A messy legal battle initiated by Stan Lee’s estate involving accusations of exploitation and elder abuse by the comic book legend’s inner circle has concluded, with an arbitrator siding with Lee’s former attorney that the lawsuit against him was brought too late.

The five-year legal saga was sparked by The Hollywood Reporter’s investigation into Lee’s estate, which chronicled allegations that people introduced into his life by his daughter, J.C., stole millions of dollars from him. This included Jerardo Olivarez, Lee’s ex-business manager who was given power of attorney. Olivarez allegedly insisted that Lee retain Uri Litvak as his attorney for business dealings, but he didn’t disclose a conflict of interest stemming from Litvak representing him in personal matters. A year after Olivarez was sued, Lee also named Litvak in the lawsuit calling the pair “unscrupulous businessmen, sycophants and opportunists” seeking to take advantage of him following the death of his wife.

A procedural defect in the lawsuit, however, led to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Epstein on Tuesday entering judgment in favor of Litvak after an arbitrator found in February that the statute of limitations to sue him had expired. Lee had a one-year window starting on April 12, 2018, when the complaint against Olivarez was filed, to also name Litvak in the lawsuit. Litvak was sued on April 18, 2018, five days passed the maximum allowable time to initiate legal proceedings….

(14) KGB READINGS. Ellen Datlow shared her photos from the September 13 Fantastic Fiction at KGB readings with Josh Rountree and Benjamin Percy.

(15) DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING. It was supposed to be a tautology until it wasn’t.

Me no wear pants.
— Cookie Monster (@MeCookieMonster) September 12, 2023

(16) SF2 CONCATENATION RELEASES AUTUMN ISSUE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The N. hemisphere’s academic, autumnal edition of SF2 Concatenation is now up. Its contents are:

v33(5) 2023.9.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Autumn 2023

Newscast for the Autumn 2023. This includes within it many key sections. See also the master newscast link index that connects to all its SF/F genre and science news sub-sections.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny… A close look reveals… – Arthur Chappell
When did the first human evolve? A SETI approach illuminates – Jonathan Cowie
Conversation – The 2023 British Eastercon – Arthur Chappell
The Sci-Fi London 2023 Film Fest – Jonathan Cowie
Pemmi-Con – The 15th North American Science Fiction Convention – Sue Burke
18 Years Ago – One from the archive: Glasgow – for visiting SF folk (This is very dated and we hope to have an update for 2024)

v33(5) 2023.9.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v33(5) 2023.9.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

Distrust: Big data, data torturing and the assault on science – Garry Smith

Forthcoming: In November SF2 Concatenation will have the third of its four ‘Best of Nature “Futures” short stories‘ of the year, and in December a pre-Christmas final one. If you are new to the site, these are short, one-page, SF stories. They’re rather fun and well worth sitting down with a mug of tea/coffee for a few minutes read. (The Best of Nature “Futures” short stories link is to the SF2 Concatenation archive of past ‘Best of’ stories, so feel free to have a browse. Enjoy.)

(17) FUTURAMA TEASER. Animation World Network shares “Exclusive Clip: ‘Futurama: The Prince and The Product’”.

… Hulu has shared with AWN an exclusive clip from Futurama: The Prince and The Product, streaming Monday, September 18 – one of three mini-episodes slated this season that reimagine the series in a different style….

…In the new episode “The Prince and The Product,” the crew members, reborn as toys, find themselves in life-and-death situations and, in our exclusive sneak peek clip, “Zoidberg Gets Left Behind” a plan is made to go to Saturn and the group decides to… you guessed it! Leave Zoidberg behind….

(18) REVISION QUEST. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] Rebecca Watson’s video “The Long History Behind the Latest TikTok ‘No Glasses’ Scam” is about a recent Tik-Tok quack who is reviving the old Bates method – a bogus method to improve eyesight that turns up in Heinlein, Van Vogt and Pohl (and perhaps others).

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew (not Werdna), Bruce D. Arthurs, Linda Deneroff, Michael Burianyk, Danny Sichel, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 8/4/23 Brush Up Your Star Trek

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) THIRD SELF-PUBLISHED SCIENCE FICTION COMPETITION OPENS TODAY. Hugh Howey’s third annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC) is now taking submissions. Are you an indie science fiction writer looking for a wider audience? Check the guidelines here. Submit here.

(2) CHIANG AND BENDER IN CONVERSATION. UW Professor of Linguistics Emily M. Bender talks with award-winning science fiction author Ted Chiang about the nature of creativity and the role of the author amid rising concerns about AI-generated storytelling. Moderated by Jeopardy! champion and Phinney Books owner Tom Nissley. November 10, 2023 at 7:30 p.m.

This event is a fundraiser for Clarion West. VIP tickets and meet-and-greet reception go on sale on Monday, August 7.

(3) CLARION WEST FALL CLASS SCHEDULE. Registration is open now.

Fall classes are here! We’ve got an exciting line-up of instructors, classes, and workshops. Registration is open now. Come learn with us!

September 5, 12, & 19: Worldwide Story Structure: Open the World and Make Story Structure Work for You with Yoonmi Kim
September 16: How to Begin Game Writing with Whitney “Strix” Beltran
September 21, 28, & October 5: Plotting for Pantsers with Eden Robins
September 30 & October 7: Rewriting Utopias: Rethinking Climate Narratives for a More Radical Future with Chinelo Onwualu
October 14, 21, 28, & November 4: Writing the Creative Non-fiction Essay with David Gilmore
November 2, 9, & 16: Prescience for Mortals with N.T. Narbutovskih
November 4, 11, 18, December 2, 9, & 16: What The Future tells us About the Past with Shingai Njeri Kagunda
November 9 & 30: Channeling Cultural Storytelling to Reach Spec Fic’s Revolutionary Potential with Naseem Jamnia
They also are offering four FREE CLASSES
September 23: Introduction to Rewriting Utopias with Chinelo Onwualu
October 10: Historical Horror with Stephanie Malia Morris
November 2: “I’m In”: The Art of Writing about Hacking with Brian Hugenbruch with Brian Hugenbruch
December 2: Comics Writing Masterclass 101 with Amy Chu

(4) BOGUS BARKER. Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss reports on somone impersonating her in “Dogging the Watchdog: In Which a Scammer Tries to Troll Me”.

…If you read here regularly, you’ll know that I’ve written a lot of posts about the impersonation scams that are becoming increasingly common. Well, an enterprising scammer recently decided to turn the tables…by impersonating me…

The writersbewaree@gmail.com email address, of course, is bogus, and the scammer has added “literary agent” to my resume (which I am not, even though people sometimes mistakenly believe I am). And for added authenticity, a photo of me! Swiped from my personal Facebook page. (I’m sure the scammer would have preferred something unflattering, but I rarely post photos of myself–this post should make it clear why–so they didn’t have a lot to choose from.)

Obviously I would not want anyone to be defrauded in my name, so I enlisted a couple of the writers to write back to see what would happen. After a week with no replies, it seemed pretty clear that–as I’d half-suspected, especially given the stupidity of the fake email address –the email was a trolling attempt and not a bona fide scheme to scam.

Trolling doesn’t deliver the emotional satisfaction the troll craves unless the trollee knows they’re being trolled, though. And the scammer did want me to know….

(5) OLD BRIDGE (NJ) PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE FICTION DISCUSSION GROUP DISBANDING. Evelyn Leeper told MT Void readers today:

After twenty years of meeting, the Old Bridge Public Library science fiction discussion group is disbanding. Given that the last few meetings have been only three or four people, that sounds a bit more dramatic than it really is. Our final book was THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press, ISBN 978-1-534-43100-3) and all three of us disliked it, so we have referred to this as THIS IS HOW YOU KILL THE DISCUSSION GROUP. The book swept all the major awards for novellas, so we are clearly in some sort of minority here.

But it was not really the book that killed the group, but the gradual drifting away of members. We tried both Zooming and in-person meetings. but though we had weathered the pandemic, the return to other opportunities for socializing et al made it harder to get people to attend….

(6) BACK TO THE FUTURE MUSICAL. The Hollywood Reporter favorably reviews “’Back to the Future: The Musical’ Review: Stage Adaptation on Broadway”.

…The creators of Back to the Future: The Musical weren’t taking any chances.

The production, newly arrived on Broadway after a London engagement that snagged a 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Musical, begins with the stirring main theme of the 1985 film’s score, garnering loud cheers from the audience. The book, with some minor exceptions, recreates the screenplay beat for beat and in some cases line for line. And the performances hew closely to those of the movie’s lead actors, with Hugh Coles, playing Marty McFly’s father George, imitating Crispin Glover so closely that it’s hard to tell whether it’s tribute or appropriation.

None of this is surprising, considering that original co-screenwriter Bob Gale has written the musical’s book and original composer Alan Silvestri, in collaboration with Glen Ballard (Ghost, Jagged Little Pill), its score. What is surprising is how effective and damn fun it all is.

(7) REFERENCE DIRECTOR. Daniel Dern’s Scroll title, inspired by the musical Star Trek episode, he would like to remind everyone, is a reference to “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate — which, by coincidence, came from a Cole Porter musical as did the song that kicked off the musical episode.

(8) CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHER REMEMBERED. The Washington Post’s recalls the impact on children’s literature of Ursula Nordstrom (1910-1988) in “The fighter behind many of the most beloved children’s books of all time”.

…Hired as a clerk in 1931 at what was then Harper & Brothers (later Harper & Row, now HarperCollins), Nordstrom became an assistant in the department of books for boys and girls five years later. In 1954, she became the first woman elected to the Harper board of directors, and its first female vice president in 1960. She was referred to (and referred to herself) as the Maxwell Perkins of children’s literature. Perkins was an editor who built his career and reputation on seeking out and supporting new writers such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Over more than three decades, beginning in earnest in 1940, Nordstrom shepherded, chivied and gently bullied some of the greatest works of children’s literature into life. Those books included “Goodnight Moon,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Harriet the Spy,” “Little Bear,” “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “Stuart Little,” “Bedtime for Frances,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “Freaky Friday.”

Nordstrom’s spectacular eye for talent and many “firsts” as a mid-century career woman were not the most remarkable things about her. She believed in truth for children, even when it made adults uncomfortable. She prioritized children’s needs over reactionary parental qualms and rallied a fierce defense of realistic themes in books for young people. Her stance should be recognized, now more than ever, as a model for fighting back against censoriousness, grandstanding and patronizing of children masquerading as protecting them…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born August 4, 1923 — Paul Schneider. He wrote scripts for the original Star Trek, Star Trek: The Animated Series, The Starlost, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. He’s best remembered for two episodes of the Trek series: “Balance of Terror” and “The Squire of Gothos.” “Balance of Terror,” of course, introduced the Romulans. (Died 2008.)
Born August 4, 1937 — David Bedford. Composer who worked with Ursula K. Le Guin to produce and score her Rigel 9 album which the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says is ‘a work that is musically pleasant although narratively underpowered.’ I’ve not heard it, so cannot say how accurate this opinion is. The not usual suspects such as iTunes have as their Meredith Moment for just seven dollars. (Died 2011.)
Born August 4, 1944 — Richard Belzer. A long non-genre career as John Munch, for 23 years starting on Homicide: Life on the Street and then Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and related series which made him only the third actor ever to play the same character in six different prime time TV series. In the Third Rock from The Sun series as himself, also the Species II film and an adaption of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, along with series work too in The X-Files, The Invaders, Human Target, and a recurring role in the original Flash series to name a few of his genre roles. (Died 2023.)
Born August 4, 1950 — Steve Senn, 73. Here because of his Spacebread duology, Spacebread and Born of Flame. Spacebread being a large white cat known throughout the galaxy as an adventuress and a rogue. He’s also written the comic novels, Ralph Fozbek and the Amazing Black Hole Patrol and Loonie Louie Meets the Space Fungus.
Born August 4, 1968 — Daniel Dae Kim, 55. First genre role was in the NightMan series, other roles included the Brave New World TV film, the second Fantasy Island of three series, recurring roles on Lost, Gavin Park on Angel and Lieutenant John Matheson on Crusade, the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade series, Star Trek: Voyager, Charmed and voice work on Justice League Unlimited.
Born August 4, 1969 — Fenella Woolgar, 54. Agatha Christie in “The Unicorn and The Wasp” episode of Doctor Who, my favorite episode, where she more than capably played off against David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor. Her only other genre was as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester.
Born August 4, 1981 — Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, 42. Yes, she’s done a genre performance or so. To be precise, she showed up on Fringe in the first two episodes of the second season (“A New Day in the Old Town” and “Night of Desirable Objects”) as Junior FBI Agent Amy Jessup. She was also in the “First Knight” episode of Knight Rider as Annie Ortiz, and Natasha in “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Lose” on Century City, a series most of you have likely never heard of.

(10) DOCUMENTING POP CULTURE. Steven Heller interviews ephemera collector and student of popular culture Richard Marschall: T “What To Do With All This Ephemera” in PRINT Magazine.

What do the comics, satiric magazines and newspapers in your holdings teach you? And what do they say, through your books and exhibits, to your audience?

…But I never wanted to deconstruct to the point of denying construction in the first place. In
the 1970s I reveled to a popular culture symposium that invited me because of my “informed” attitudes on the comics as an art form. Yet every speech, roundtable and Q&A dealt with comics as mere conduits—“What did Dick Tracy say about crime?” Not, “What expressive dynamics did Chester Gould employ to communicate in revolutionary ways?” Arrested development. This academic myopia was maddening. The graphics community at one time was similarly dismissive, as you know as well as anyone, may I confidently say?

So even unconsciously I amassed a collection of comics, sections, clips, original art, magazine runs, bound volumes of newspapers, books, toys, postcards, posters and such … with the goal, instinctive as it actually was, to be in a position to document all this, and with a mature cultural perspective. And, no less earnestly, to help others who sought to do so….

(11) YOU ARE THERE. A day like any other day, but — Ersatz Culture says this news story involves his local library!

Copy of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey returned to library after 54 yearshttps://t.co/NsHGzI6oJe

I caught a brief mention of this on the regional news this evening – it was returned to the main library in our town, and I was actually in there this afternoon

[1/3]
— ErsatzCulture (@ErsatzCulture) August 4, 2023

BBC News website story, which has bigger versions of the same photos: https://t.co/AXLYk1NqX7

[3/3]
— ErsatzCulture (@ErsatzCulture) August 4, 2023

(12) WIMPS. [Item by Steven French.] Dark stars observed! No it’s nothing to do with the John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon movie. Astronomers have closely examined recent images produced by the James Webb Space Telescope and concluded that they reveal ancient stars powered by dark matter. “Stars powered by dark matter may have been seen by the JWST” at Physics World.

… In 2007, Freese and colleagues proposed the possibility of “dark stars”, which may have been common in the early universe. While composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, these exotic stars would be fuelled by “dark matter heating” rather than nuclear fusion. This could involve a type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). WIMPs have evaded discovery for decades in Earth-based detection experiments, but according to Freese’s team, the sheer density of dark matter in the early universe could cause them to interact far more frequently with regular matter during the formation of some of the earliest stars.

In the early universe, “WIMPs could have annihilated into photons, electron-positron pairs, and other particles, which collided with the hydrogen in collapsing clouds,” Freese explains. “These particles then get stuck inside the cloud, and deposit all the energy from the mass of the dark matter particles into the cloud. The cloud then stops collapsing, and instead turns into a ‘dark star’.”…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The concept of the space elevator was popularized by Arthur Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise.

The idea is that a cable from the equator (Ceylon/Sri Lanka was geographically moved in Clarke’s novel) to a large satellite/small asteroid, in geosynchronous orbit, can be used to haul payload very cheaply into Earth orbit.

This concept has been further explored before by Isaac Arthur on his Science Futurism channel. Isaac has just taken this concept further by considering the advantages of a space elevator on the Moon…

A Space Elevator on the Moon, made of mundane materials, could be built with modern technology, and allow ultra-cheap freight off the Moon

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

Pixel Scroll 7/4/23 Chocolate With Pixels Swirling At Their Center Do Taste Better Than Chocolate Covered Manholes

Posted on July 4, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) SFF GROWING IN INDIA. Jaya Padmanabhan explores “Myth, AI, & Reality Power A Thrilling New Genre Of Indian Sci-Fi!” at IndiaCurrents.

…Presently, more and more writers are experimenting with the genre. While only a handful of SF novels have thus far been traditionally published in India every year, a slate of new science and speculative fiction domains is giving space to new voices and ideas, like the magazine Mithila Review and the feminist collection Magical Women (2019).

Vandana Singh, Anil Menon, Samit Basu, Mimi Mondal, and Gautam Bhatia, among others, headline discussions on Indian SF today. Their storylines expose the chaos, upheavals, and power structures of an ethnically, religious, and linguistically diverse India.

Unique to Indian SF is the manner in which mythology and folklore undergird much of the storytelling. From the Vedas and Puranas to the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, historical plots continue to have relevance in Indian SF. As a result, science fiction from India is emerging as a singular genre rich with its own vernacular lexicon….

(2) PROBLEMS THAT ARE WORSE THAN AI. “’We Have Built a Giant Treadmill That We Can’t Get Off’: Sci-Fi Prophet Ted Chiang on How to Best Think About About AI” at Vanity Fair.

…The “AI as McKinsey” piece also articulates an underlying capitalist critique in your work. You clearly hold a lot of skepticism about the idea that Silicon Valley can provide magic fixes for social ills; you wrote this BuzzFeed News essay in 2017 that was so saucy. When reading “Seventy-Two Letters,” your short story from 2000, I gravitate toward this conversation between a craftsman and an inventor trying to create labor-saving robots, where the craftsman tells the inventor:

“Your desire for reform does you credit. Let me suggest, however, that there are simpler cures for the social ills you cite: a reduction in working hours, or the improvement of conditions. You do not need to disrupt our entire system of manufacturing.”

At a moment when we’re being promised “labor-saving” AI, this feels…relevant.

There’s this saying, “There are two kinds of fools. The first says, ‘This is old and therefore good.’ And the second one says, ‘This is new and therefore better.’” I think about that a lot. How can you evaluate the merits of anything fairly without thinking it’s good simply because it’s new? I think that is super difficult.

There probably was a time in history where most people were thinking, “This is old and therefore good,” and they carried the day. Now I think that we live in a time where everyone says, “This is new and therefore better.” I don’t believe that the people who say that are right all the time, but it is very difficult to criticize them and suggest that maybe something that is new is not better….

(3) STEPPING OFF THE MORAL HIGH GROUND. Beatriz Williams celebrates “The Return of the Cold War Novel and Its Glorious Uncertainties” at CrimeReads.

I was a kid playing Atari with my best friend when she informed me, as she sent her frog darting through traffic, that Nostradamus had predicted the world would end in nookuler destruction in August of that year. The exact date she named happened to be my birthday. Since Nostradamus lived hundreds of years ago and didn’t even know what nookuler was, she continued confidently, he must have had special powers and his predictions were therefore true. It was the early eighties and we had no internet, so I accepted her logic and spent the remaining weeks of summer assuming I would die before the leaves fell.

If you were born in the 1970s, like me, or the sixties or the fifties, the Cold War was the backdrop of life, like wallpaper. It had no beginning and no end. It just was. You trundled to school each day under partly cloudy skies and a chance of nuclear annihilation, and when you went to the bookstore or the movie theater you found spy novels, spy movies that pitted Us against Them—the Soviet Union. In these stories, men chased each other around the world while some bomb ticked somewhere, some web of loyalties required untangling. Their manly brows furrowed under the weight of so much responsibility. Their wives worried cluelessly at home. The hot girl in the black sequined dress with the cleavage turned out to be a honey trap….

(4) REMEMBER DOS? “’Indiana Jones’: One of the Best Sequels Wasn’t a Movie” according to Collider.

During an ample period of growth for the LucasArts division of Lucasfilm Limited, the company began experimenting with the new games centered around their tentpole properties; as the Star Wars franchise began developing the initial Rebel Assault and Super Star Wars games, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was pitched as a canonical sequel to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The game takes place in 1939 during which Indy discovers that his former archeological collaborator Sophia Hapgood has given up her profession to become a psychic. Fearing that she’ll be targeted by the Nazis, Indy teams up with his old flame on an adventure to discover the ancient city of Atlantis and unlock its secrets before the Nazis take it for themselves to use as weaponry in World War II.

Compared to Lucasfilm’s Star Wars franchise, the Indiana Jones saga doesn’t quite have the same extensive expanded universe. While there are a few novel series, comic storylines, and adventure games focused on different aspects of Indy’s life, they’re merely a fraction of the massive expanded timeline developed in the Star Wars “Legends” and modern canon sagas. However, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis didn’t just expand upon the character and tease a new chapter of his story; it developed Indy’s motivations under dire circumstances and featured a compelling storyline that actually surpassed some of the cinematic installments. Even if it never hit theaters, it’s easy to rank Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis among the best projects in the Indiana Jones universe….

(5) GOODER ENGLISH. [Item by Danny Sichel.] The mention of Downbelow Station in Monday’s file reminded me of the “lost in translation” thread from rec.arts.sf.written back in, oh god, 1999.

In particular, it reminded me that Susan Stepney did an archive thereof, which Filers may find amusing. “Lost in the Translation”.

Certain competition threads start spontaneously on the science fiction newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written. One of my favourites was about title/author pairs that can be read as a single phrase (with possibly the best being The Sheep Look Up John Brunner). In May 1999 someone quoting an alleged funny mistranslation, by a translator who missed the point, of a well-known SF book title A Very Important Mission, and a thread took off from there. Below are some of the submissions I’ve collected from that thread, and from ones sent to me later. (The contributors of the titles – either the devisers themselves, or telling of titles they remember from earlier competitions – are noted afterwards.) I’ve also provided answers – but no peeking before trying to work them out – that’s most of the fun!…

Here are couple:

Nancy Kress

Hispanic Mendicants — (Angus MacSpon)

Ursula K. LeGuin

On the Other Hand, It’s Dark — (Joe Slater)

(6) ANTI-FAN MAIL. “Gene Roddenberry’s Threatening Star Trek Letter To Leonard Nimoy And William Shatner” at Slashfilm.

…Gene Roddenberry, writing in 1967, was clearly reacting to various stories from the “Star Trek” set claiming William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were on their worst behavior. It seems they were swapping lines, taking dialogue from co-stars, and going all-out to get as much screen time as possible. “Star Trek,” unlike some other shows at the time, had an open-door policy at [NBC], allowing actors to air grievances, explore ideas, and examine characters earnestly with those at the top. By Roddenberry’s description, this privilege was being abused. Shatner and Nimoy would cause delays in shooting and their characters would start to change on camera. Roddenberry, wanting to put the kibosh on his prima donnas, wrote the following letter, which was addressed to both actors equally:

“Toss these pages in the air if you like, stomp off and be angry, it doesn’t mean that much since you’ve driven me to the edge of not giving a damn. […] No, William, I’m not really writing this to Leonard and just including you as a matter of psychology. I’m talking to you directly and with an angry honesty you haven’t heard before. And Leonard, you’d be very wrong if you think I’m really teeing off at Shatner and only pretending to include you. The same letter to both; you’ve pretty well divided up the market on selfishness and egocentricity.”

Roddenberry knew that actors all have egos and that petty grievances would indeed arise from time to time. Gene evidently instructed the production offices to overlook any foul moods from the cast, as tensions can run high and forgiveness will keep hackles lowered and production smooth. But after too many complaints, Roddenberry admitted, “‘Star Trek’ is going down the drain.”…

(7) IMPOSTOR PRODROME. Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss warned Facebook readers about fraudsters trying to use her name.

So…after years of reporting on impersonation scams (rampant right now), the scammers have done me the ultimate honor: impersonating ME.

(8) TODAY’S TRIVIA. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The following CNN video (well, link to a video) by SE Cupp includes a quote from Isaac Asimov at the end. “SE Cupp: Was ‘Idiocracy’ real? The Musk-Zuckerberg cage match could not be dumber”

In case you were wondering whether the quote was correctly attributed, see the information at this link.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1983 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Our Beginning tonight is a true one as Bruce Bethke tells us the origin story of a now familiar word and the story that he’d use it in.

The essay and story itself were published in Amazing Science Fiction, November 1983. If after reading the Beginning here, you can do so at Infinity Plus where it is up with the permission of the author.

In the early spring of 1980 I wrote a little story about a bunch of teenage hackers. From the very first draft this story had a name, and lo, the name was —

Cyberpunk

And you can bet any body part you’d care to name that, had I had even the slightest least inkling of a clue that I would still be answering questions about this word nearly 18 years later, I would have bloody well trademarked the damned thing!

Nonetheless, I didn’t, and as you’re probably aware, the c-word has gone on to have a fascinating career all its own. At this late date I am not trying to claim unwarranted credit or tarnish anyone else’s glory. (Frankly, I’d much rather people were paying attention to what I’writing now –e.g., my Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel, Headcash, Orbit Books, 5.99 in paperback.) But for those folks who are obsessed with history, here, in tightly encapsulated form, is the story behind the story.

The invention of the c-word was a conscious and deliberate act of creation on my part. I wrote the story in the early spring of 1980, and from the very first draft, it was titled “Cyberpunk.” In calling it that, I was actively trying to invent a new term that grokked the juxtaposition of punk attitudes and high technology. My reasons for doing so were purely selfish and market-driven: I wanted to give my story a snappy, one-word title that editors would remember.

Offhand, I’d say I succeeded.

Art accompanying the short story Cyberpunk in Amazing Stories by Bob Walters

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born July 4, 1883 — Rube Goldberg. Not genre, but certainly genre adjacent. Born Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, he was a sculptor, author, cartoonist, engineer, and inventor who’s certainly best known for his very popular cartoons showing overly complex machines doing simple tasks in a terribly convoluted manner, hence the phrase “Rube Goldberg machines”. The X-Files episode titled “The Goldberg Variation” involved an apartment rigged as a Goldberg machine. (Died 1970.)
Born July 4, 1900 — Guy Endore. Writer of The Werewolf of Paris which is said by Stableford in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers as “entitled to be considered the werewolf novel”. He also wrote “The Day of the Dragon” which Stableford likes as well. He was a scriptwriter hence for writing Mark of the Vampire starring Bela Lugosi. He also the treatment for The Raven but never got credited. (Died 1970.)
Born July 4, 1910 — Gloria Stuart. She was cast as Flora Cranley opposite Claude Rains in The Invisible Man in 1933, and 68 years later she played Madeline Fawkes in The Invisible Man series. She was in The Old Dark House as Margaret Waverton which is considered horror largely because Boris Karloff was in it. And she was in the time travelling The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan as well. (Died 2010.)
Born July 4, 1949 — Peter Crowther, 74. He is the founder (with Simon Conway) of PS Publishing where he’s editor now. He edited a series of genre anthologies that DAW published. And he’s written a number of horror novels of which I’d say After Happily Ever and By Wizard Oak are good introductions to him. He’s also done a lot of short fiction but I see he’s not really available in digital form all that much for short fiction or novels.
Born July 4, 1974 — Kevin Hanchard, 49. Canadian actor best known for his major role in Orphan Black as Detective Art Bell, whose partner’s suicide kicks off the whole show. He also had a significant role in the first season of The Expanse as Inspector Sematimba, Det. Miller’s old friend from Eros. Other genre roles include appearances in the movies Suicide Squad and the made-for-TV Savage Planet, and shows The Strain, Hemlock Grove, Wynonna Earp, and Impulse, among others. (Xtifr)
Born July 4, 1977 — David Petersen, 46. Writer and illustrator of the brilliant Mouse Guard series. If you haven’t read it, do so — it’s that good and it’s still ongoing. It almost got developed as a film but got axed due to corporate politics. IDW published The Wind in The Willows with over sixty of his illustrations awhile back. I’d have love to seen that!

(11) CANCELLATION MARK. There’s a hole in the schedule where Crater used to be says Digital Spy: “Handmaid’s Tale star’s new movie removed from Disney+ seven weeks after release”.

Disney+ has removed Crater from its platform just seven weeks after it premiered.

The sci-fi adventure follows Caleb Channing (Isaiah Russell-Bailey), a young boy who was raised on a lunar mining colony and is about to be moved to a distant planet following the death of his father.

The film also features Mckenna Grace, best known for portraying child bride Esther Keyes in The Handsmaid’s Tale….

But despite its $50 million (£39 million) budget, the film – directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez – can no longer be watched on Disney+….

Crater, which debuted on May 12, scored a respectable 64% on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes….

(12) LITTLE ICE AGE. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in “Painting Climate Change in the 17th Century”, discusses art that documents a historic climate fluctuation.

The world has warmed by more than one degree Celsius since the late 19th century, and it is on course to warm by another two degrees by the end of this century. The combination of the speed, likely magnitude, and human cause of this global warming make it unprecedented in the history of our species.

Yet this is not the first time Earth’s climate has changed. In the 13th century, the climate of the Northern Hemisphere started to cool due to natural causes. Although cooling varied over time and from place to place, in general it persisted for several centuries. This period is commonly referred to as the Little Ice Age. Global temperatures declined by just a few tenths of a degree Celsius—significantly less dramatic a change than our current warming trend. Nevertheless, regional effects were often severe, including catastrophic droughts, torrential rains, and entire years in which winter never fully gave way to spring and summer.

…Some of the disasters of the Little Ice Age may sound familiar. Indeed, many scholars study how people of the past coped with extreme weather to better understand how our societies might respond to global warming. The 17th-century Low Countries (modern Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) provide striking models of just how adaptive and resilient people can be in the face of a changing climate. But they also provide warnings about how climate resilience can create or worsen inequality.

Fortunately, the 17th century has furnished us with a unique resource: millions of paintings, prints, and drawings, created by thousands of artists across the Low Countries, that depict elements of everyday life. By 1650 the inhabitants of Holland—the wealthiest province of the Dutch Republic, the precursor state to today’s Netherlands—collectively owned around 2.5 million paintings. Many of these paintings seem to reflect the presence of the Little Ice Age and record its consequences for ordinary people. Some remarkable examples are included in the National Gallery’s collection.

These include stunning winter landscapes, which seem to recreate, with plausible detail, real-life gatherings in frigid weather. For example, Adam van Breen painted Skating on the Frozen Amstel River amid a sequence of chilly winters in the Low Countries, and in 1646—when Jan van Goyen painted Ice Scene near a Wooden Observation Tower—winter was even colder.

Although there were forces other than climate change that influenced how artists chose and depicted their subjects, icy landscapes do shed light on how the Dutch adapted to a cooler climate. The coastal Low Countries were crisscrossed by waterways that allowed for the efficient transportation of goods, people, and information.

Paintings like those of Van Breen and Van Goyen accurately portray how ordinary people across the Low Countries used sleds and ice skates—a Dutch invention—to keep these transportation networks open in cold weather. To maintain crucial shipments of goods that were easier to send by water, intrepid traders even designed specialized icebreaker ships.

(13) ENGRAVED IN MEMORY. Catherynne Valente told Facebook readers why this quote is familiar.

OH MY GOD LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND IN THE #BAYCON DEALERS’ ROOM!

I’m so completely delighted! I, big dumb #Trekkie, wrote that thing back when Twitter was fun! Ahh!

(14) THE END OF THE WORLD, AGAIN! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] There nothing like the end of the world. It is spectacular. It is catastrophic. It has bags of sense-of-wonder. It is anything but mundane. What’s not to like..? Having said that, I prefer my ends of the world to be firmly in science fiction or alternatively in the future: certainly beyond my time; I’m dead sure I would not be personally partial to it and if I were I’d shortly be dead… On that cheery thought, it is time to check out Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur as he explores ‘Earth After Humanity’.

Isaac Arthur notes that there are many ways humanity’s world could end, but picks six basic scenarios:

An extinction-level natural catastrophe
Mass destruction by nuking ourselves or dystopian industrial scenarios
A super plague
Artificial Intelligence kills us off
Aliens
Humanity abandons Earth.

Isaac opines that a global-level natural catastrophe – say an asteroid hundreds of miles across – would be unlikely to thread the needle between wiping out humanity, but leave lesser creatures such as plants and insects alive from which the biosphere might recover. Along the way, he touches on problems such as genetic bottle-necking in recovering sparsely distributed, very small populations.

With a super plague, he notes that it would not be instantaneous, and almost certainly there would be time to land planes and turn-off nuclear power plants (though here I note that Ukraine has demonstrated that that is not as easy as Isaac suggests). So the planet would continue without humanity and wildlife would reclaim our farms and cities.

Isaac is more optimistic when it comes to considering whether an AI would want to take out humanity. He hovers between AI possibly being ‘human-like’ as we would create it, and AI being completely alien to us.

With regards to aliens coming along and killing us off, Isaac thinks they would be likely to value life even if they were ruthless about wiping out potential competitors, so again, life other than humanity would survive. Having said that, he reminds us that the first rule of warfare (the physicist Isaac served in the US forces) is that there is no such thing as overkill.

One issue would be our pets. Could larger dogs survive and evolve even better predatory skills? He does wonder who would end up at the top of the food chain?

Finally, Isaac cannot easily see us simply abandoning Earth (unless there was an existential threat). Some humans would not leave…

…By the way, this was the 401th episode of Science & Futurism with the 400th milestone happening the other week.

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

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