Pixel Scroll 4/29/25 Sir Not Appearing In This Pixel

(1) BAFTA TV CRAFT AWARDS 2025. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) announced 2025 TV Craft Awards winners on April 27. The complete list of winners is at the link.

Here are the works of genre interest that took home awards.

CHILDREN’S CRAFT TEAM

  • Tom Bidwell, Jennifer Perrott, Rick Thiele, Sarah Brewerton, Anna Rackard, James Mather — The Velveteen Rabbit – Magic Light Pictures / Apple TV+

SCRIPTED CASTING

  • Isabella Odoffin — Supacell – Netflix, New Wave Agency, It’s A Rap / Netflix

SPECIAL, VISUAL & GRAPHIC EFFECTS

  • Jason Smith, Richard Bain, Ryan Conder, Chris Rodgers — The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Amazon MGM Studios / Prime Video

(2) TIME FOR NOMMO NOMS. Members of the African Speculative Fiction Society have until May 5 to nominate for this year’s Nommo Awards.

Only works of speculative fiction by an African published between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024 anywhere in the world are eligible. 

(3) WSFS BUSINESS MEETING PREPATORY TOWN HALL. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon will host its first WSFS Virtual Town Hall this Sunday, May 4 at Noon Pacific.

The WSFS Business Meeting Team will be hosting two town halls in preparation for the virtual business meetings in July. The town halls are designed for members to ask questions about the business meeting process. The town halls will be recorded and posted on the Seattle Worldcon 2025 YouTube channel for reference.

If you aren’t able to attend, please submit any questions that you’d like to have answered at businessmeetinghelp@seattlein2025.org.

Details about the town halls can be found below.

Town Hall One

When: May 4, 2025, at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC – 7)
Where: Zoom—link provided to those who RSVP
RSVP: Via Eventbrite

Topic: WSFS Business Meeting Basics: Ask your questions about what the business meeting is. How do I submit a proposal? What types of changes can I propose? What if I disagree with a proposal submitted, but would like a changed one?

Town Hall Two

When: May 25, 2025, at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC – 7)
Where: Zoom—link provided to those who RSVP
RSVP: Via Eventbrite

Topic: Virtual Business Meeting

(4) FORTNITE FANS WILL GET FIRST LOOK AT NEW STAR WARS PROPERTY. “Lucasfilm’s ‘Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld’ to Debut on Fortnite” reports Animation World Network.

Epic and Disney are launching their most expansive Star Wars collaboration in Fortnite to date with the first entirely Star Wars-themed Battle Royale Season and in-game premiere of Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld on May 2, two days ahead of its Disney+ launch. This marks the first debut of a Disney+ series in a game.

Recently announced at Star Wars Celebration, Fortnite: GALACTIC BATTLE begins May 2 and introduces new Star Wars content and gameplay to Battle Royale each week. Fans can play as Darth Jar Jar or Emperor Palpatine, while piloting ships like X-wings and TIE Fighters. The season will culminate in an epic in-game live event, “Death Star Sabotage.”

The Star Wars Watch Party island will also go live on May 2. Players will have a chance to view the first two episodes of Lucasfilm Animation’s Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld, its all-new animated shorts anthology series from creator Dave Filoni that focuses on the criminal underbelly of the Star Wars galaxy through two iconic villains: Asajj Ventress and Cad Bane.

Beyond the Star Wars Watch Party theater, players have the opportunity to fight off incoming waves of Stormtroopers using blasters and lightsabers. The standalone Star Wars Watch Party island was built in Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) using official Star Wars assets.…

(5) WRITING COMICS. Tim Susman tells “How to Write a Comic Script” at the SFWA Blog.

…The first time I tried to write a comic book script, I had no guidance about what a script looked like, but I’d read comic books and graphic novels. So I wrote up my idea for a four-to-five-page story and sent it to the editor. He sent it back with a gentle note that read, paraphrased, “This is about twenty pages worth of material.”

I was taken aback because I’d separated it into five pages. But when I looked more closely at it, I saw what he meant. I’d crammed way too much into each of those five pages. With help from the artist I was working with, I pared it down, and we got the story to the required length (with some necessary but painful cuts).

Part of the problem was—and is—that there is no definitive template for comic scripts like there is for screenplays. At the end of this post are links to comic script archives; I suggest browsing them to see how established, published writers have tackled the problem. What I’ll cover here are the basics to keep in mind when writing a comic script: collaboration, layout, and dialogue.

Collaboration

If you are lucky enough to have an artist assigned to work on the project with you, your job becomes much more manageable. The comic script is a list of instructions for the artist, and any artist can tell you how best to write instructions for them. My experience has been that artists produce their best work when they have some kind of creative input, so I suggest that your comic script leave room for the artist to bring their creativity to the project….

(6) PULLMAN’S NEXT. The Guardian is there when “Philip Pullman announces The Rose Field, the final part of Lyra’s story”.

Philip Pullman has revealed he will tell the final part of Lyra Silvertongue’s story in The Rose Field, which will come out this autumn.

It has been six years since a book about Lyra has been published – and 30 since readers first encountered her in Northern Lights, the first in Pullman’s His Dark Materials children’s fantasy trilogy. The bestselling novels, which have since been adapted into a TV seriesby the BBC, take place across a multiverse and feature “dæmons” – physical manifestations of a person’s soul that take the form of animals.

The Rose Field will be the third volume in the author’s The Book of Dust series, which expands on the His Dark Materials trilogy. It began in 2017 with La Belle Sauvage, set 12 years before Northern Lights, and continued with The Secret Commonwealth in 2019, set after the events of the original trilogy. This new book will pick up where that one left off, with Lyra alone in the ruins of a deserted city, where she has gone in search of her dæmon. Another important character from the previous books, Malcolm, has travelled towards the Silk Roads to look for Lyra.

(7) DENNIS MCCUNNEY OBITUARY. Dennis McCunney died April 29 after a long illness. He was a con-running fan who worked on numerous Northeast conventions, who lived in the New York City area. He chaired Philcon 1974, Philcon 1975 and Lunacon 34. He also worked on Albacon, Maltcon, and others. His specialties were facilities (hotel) and publications. He was part of the (unsuccessful) Philadelphia in 1977 Worldcon bid. He belonged to The Cult apa.

Mark Roth-Whitworth says: “One of my two oldest friends. We met in out late teens, long ago, in a universe far away. Lifelong fan, computer professional, hotel liaison for Philcon, and perhaps several other East Coast cons. Had a very Mark Twain look, before he started losing his hair to chemo. He’d been fighting cancer for several years.”

Twenty-one years ago he was a Guest of Honor at Capclave 2004. Alexis Gilliland’s bio for the souvenir book said in part:

Dennis McCunney is a tall and seriously lean man, and one of the very few fans who wears a suit and tie to conventions because the suit serves to bulk him up. Perhaps his mustache bulks up his face, or maybe he just wears it because it makes him look good….

[At Lunacons] Often he would sit with me in the bar, between interludes on his cellphone, and regale me with tales of the Lunarians, the small but contentious New York SF club of which he had been – for a time – a member, and how his efforts to create a lasting improvement in the arranging of Lunacon were like Sisyphus rolling his rock up the hill. He discussed the Lunarians together with their follies, fiascoes and ferocious fanfeuds, and perhaps a few other eff sounds as well.

As he was often trying to see that Lunacon ran smoothly in real time, much of what was on his mind was in the nature of who had dropped what ball, and why, with luck, it could be remedied while the con was still running. His triumphs being in the nature of getting the pocket program there on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday morning. Listening to his stories, it was amazing that he could be as calm about the situation as he appeared, but his philosophy seemed to be: “What is the best that can be accomplished in these circumstances?” Acting on that philosophy enabled him to serve as a highly effective troubleshooter of Lunacons, to the point where he earned the title of “Mr. Lunacon,” although it was never formally bestowed upon him. He worked on other conventions, of course, and it was always a pleasure to meet him at the Worldcon or elsewhere, especially when he wasn’t tasked with some super-urgent business that should have been done last week” In real – that is, mundane – life, he is an ubertechie, charged with making his company’s computers perform in a commercially viable manner….

(8) MEMORY LANE

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 29, 1981The Greatest American Hero: “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”

Forty-one years ago on this evening, The Greatest American Hero series served up the ever so sweet and rather nostalgic “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”. It starts off with Ralph, our sort of superhero, quitting twice after perceiving that he has failed badly. 

Meanwhile one of the secondary characters tells Ralph that her friend wants to go to an appearance by John Hart, the actor who played the second version of the Lone Ranger. Ralph is excited because Hart is his childhood hero. Why am I not surprised? 

Later in the episode, Ralph and Hart get to have a talk and Ralph realizes that society needs its heroes and decides to wear the suit again. 

I watched a lot of the Lone Ranger when I was rather young and never realized that there were two actors in that role. And no, I never figured out the deal with the silver bullets. Obviously that version of the Old West didn’t have werewolves. Or did it? 

And yes, it was very, very sweet to see one of the Lone Rangers sort of playing his role again. If only as a mentor. 

The Greatest American Hero series is streaming currently on Peacock.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Crankshaft gets a title suggestion. 
  • Curtis underrates the requirements of horror writing. 
  • Rubes has need for an exceptionally large pair of handcuffs. 

(10) IF I HAD A HAMMER. “Godzilla Hammer Now On Sale” reports ScifiJapan. So often these silly things turn out to be AI fakes, but since you can actually buy it on Amazon.com (among other places) I’m going with this one.

Godzilla’s foot has crushed many buildings and structures. Now you can recreate that scene by smashing a nail with the Godzilla Hammer.

Precision casting manufacturer Castem Co., Ltd. (Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture, CEO: Takuo Toda) has released the Godzilla Hammer (ゴジラハンマー, Gojira Hanmā) – a powerful, one-of-a-kind tool, casted from a 3D scan of a real Godzilla movie suit.

Castem has 3D scanned the foot of the Godzilla suit that was actually used in the filming of the Toho classic GODZILLA, MOTHRA, AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK (..Gojira Mosura Kingu Gidora Daikaijū Sōkōgeki, 2001) and obtained detailed data on the shape of the monster’s foot. The foot was then metallized in iron (dyed black) using the “lost wax method,” a precision casting method that can create particularly detailed, complex shapes in metal.

It perfectly replicates the legendary stomp of the King of the Monsters. Finished with a sleek black oxide coat and weighing 550g, this hammer has a heavy feel and lets you drive nails like Godzilla crushes cities. Turn it over and see the true sole of Godzilla’s foot—down to every epic detail!

  • Drive Nails Like Godzilla Crushes Buildings
  • Crafted from 3D Scan Data of the Actual Godzilla Used in Filming
  • Expertly Recreated in Metal Using Precision Casting

(11) AMAZING STORIES REOPENS SHORT STORY SUBMISSIONS. Lloyd Penney has announced that Amazing Stories will open for short story submissions on May 1.

 Attention, visionary science fiction writers! Amazing Stories is thrilled to announce the reopening of short story submissions for our popular weekly feature, beginning May 1, 2025.

 This is your opportunity to share your most brilliant creations with the readers of Amazing Stories! We’re seeking exceptional stories (up to 10,000 words) that will transport, enthrall, and engage your imagination.

 We offer $20 for original stories over 2500 words and $10 for shorter works or reprints. We’re looking for science fiction and especially hard science fiction!

 Ready to submit your masterpiece? Create an account and find all the details at https://submissions.amazingstories.com/

Also worth noting, we’ll also be opening submissions later in 2025 for the special issue of Amazing Stories 100th Anniversary issue that will be published in 2026!

(12) GIVE ME THE LETTERS. Long before he voiced Darth Vader, James Earl Jones was Sesame’s Street’s first celebrity guest in 1969: “Sesame Street: James Earl Jones Says The Alphabet”.

(13) LOST IN STARLIGHT. [Item by N.] Per Polygon, a teaser trailer for “Netflix’s first Korean original animated film…a sci-fi romance about two star-crossed lovers.” Lost in Starlight releases May 30.

When an astronaut leaves Earth for Mars, the vast infinite space divides star-crossed lovers in this animated romance that crosses the cosmos

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

Pixel Scroll 5/19/16 I Am Not In The Scroll Of Common Men

(1) DATA AND YAR AT TANAGRA. Seattle’s EMP Museum is opening Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds to the public on May 21. Tickets required.

Plus, be among the first to visit Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds and get an up-close look at more than 100 artifacts and props from the five Star Trek television series, spin-offs, and films, including set pieces from the original series like Captain Kirk’s command chair and the navigation console (on display for the first time to the public); Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and McCoy original series costumes; and the 6-foot U.S.S. Enterprise filming model from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Opening day is also when Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) and Brent Spiner (Data) will appear – additional charge for photos and autographs, naturally.

(2) OMAZE WINNER. SFWA’s Director of Operations Kate Baker learned during the Nebula conference that she was the Omaze winner, and will join Chris Pratt on the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 set.

Tired and sweaty after hours of work, I sat down to check my phone as we planned to grab something to eat. There in my Twitter feed was a message from a new follower; Omaze. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the company, they partner with a celebrity and charity, design a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a random donor, (and here is the most important part) — raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for deserving charities around the world….

I quickly followed them back and responded. That’s when I found out that I was a finalist for the grand prize and to satisfy their partners and sponsors, they wanted to do a short Skype interview that evening.

Unable to contain my excitement, I rushed around my room, curling my hair, refreshing make-up, doing cartwheels, moving furniture, opening blinds, you know — normal things.

As 6:00 CST hit, I took a deep breath and answered the call….. That’s when they sprung the surprise.

 

(3) CLARKE AHEAD. Award Director Tom Hunter has posted at Medium “14 ways I’m thinking about the future of the Arthur C. Clarke Award”.

8. Governance & succession planning

As mentioned in my section on charitable status, the Clarke Award is currently administered by just 3 volunteers. Could we do more if we had more people involved?

A fair few people have promoted themselves to me as viable candidates over the years, but while many have been keen to have a say in the running of the award (or just like telling me they could do a better job with it) right now one of the reasons the award has weathered its troubles so well has been because of our ability to move faster on key decisions than a continual vote by committee model would likely have allowed us.

Still, as I look to the future again, there are many potential advantages to be gained from our increasing our board membership, not least the fact that when I first took this role a decade ago I only planned to stay for 5 years.

I changed my mind back then because of the need to build a new financial resilience into the award to keep it going, but one day sooner or later I intend to step down after I’ve recruited my replacement.

Padawans wanted. Apply here.

(4) ANTIQUE ZINE. This APA-L cover by Bea Barrio glowed in the dark when it was originally made – in the 1970s. Wonder if it still does?

https://twitter.com/highly_nice/status/732782065591160833

(5) MASKED MEN. Comic Book Resources boosts the signal: “Dynamite Announces ‘The Lone Ranger Meets the Green Hornet: Champions of Justice”.

What is the connection between the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet? Dynamite Entertainment’s new “The Lone Ranger Meets the Green Hornet: Champions of Justice” series has the answer. CBR can exclusively reveal that writer Michael Uslan and artist Giovanni Timpano are reuniting for the new series, a crossover 80 years in the making.

According to an official series description,

The first chapter, entitled “Return With Us Now,” creates a world of carefully researched alternative history in 1936. Readers will learn whatever happened to The Lone Ranger and discover his familial link to the emergence of a man who is a modern day urban version of The Lone Ranger himself. What is the blood connection of The Green Hornet to The Lone Ranger? What is the link of Olympic runner Jesse Owens to The Green Hornet? What role does Bat Masterson play in The Lone Ranger’s New York adventure? What intense rift tears a family apart just when America desperately needs a great champion of justice? The shocking answers lie in the landmark new series ‘The Lone Ranger Meets the Green Hornet: Champions of Justice!’

(6) DEARLY BELOVED. Lit Brick has done a comic about “If you were a dinosaur, my love”.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born May 19, 1944 — Before Peter Mayhew was Chewy he was Minaton in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, his first role.

Peter Mayhew in character

(8) FLORSCHUTZ OUT. Max Florschutz explains why he pulled his book from a contest: Unusual Events Has Been Removed From SPFBO 2016”.

All right, guys, it’s official. I just heard back from Mark Lawrence, the head of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, and now that the competition has begun, my book could not be moved to another reviewer, so instead, I’ve elected to withdraw my entry from the competition (for the reasons for doing so, see this post here). It’s sad that it had to be done, but I feel my reasons were sound.

Florschutz outlined reasons for asking for his book to be reassigned in a previous post, “When Did Ethnicity and Sex Become the Most Important Thing?”

Bear with me for a moment, and take a look at these few excerpts from a book review I read this morning, posted on a fantasy review blog (which you can find here, though I’m loathe to give them a link after perusing the site since it’s a little messed up). I’d been poking around the place since they are a participating member of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, a contest between 300 different self-published fantasy books, and Unusual Events is one of those titles. This site is the one that will be handling Unusual Events review.

I’m not sure how I feel about that now. In fact, I may request to have it passed to another site, since I’m pretty sure I can already see how its going to go. Because I’ve been reading their other reviews, and I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Let’s look at some quotes:

Otherbound is that last sort of book.

I’m fairly certain I discovered it on Tumblr, recommended by one of those blogs which include lists of books that are commendable for their diversity.

Okay, that’s … interesting. A little background on the title. I guess that’s important? Let’s see what happens if we go further.

… fantasy novels are written by and about (and quite possibly for) white men who like running around with swords saving the world.

Uh-oh. Okay. Sensing a theme here, but—

As I said, it’s an incredible story, and honestly, I’d probably have loved the book even if both of the leads were white and straight.

Wait, what?

So they’re saying that it’s also likely that they wouldn’t have liked the book had the main characters been, to use their own words “white and straight”? The book would be inferior simply because of the color of the main character’s skin or their sexual orientation?

….Now, to get back to something I said earlier, I’m considering contacting the SPFBO 2016 ringleaders and asking to have my book moved to another reviewer. And no, it’s not because my book is “… written by and about (and quite possibly for) white men who like running around with swords saving the world.” because it isn’t. But more because now I know that there’s a very high chance that that fact is what the reviewer is going to fixate on regardless. My sex, and my ethnic heritage, as well as that of the characters I wrote, is going to matter to her more than the rest of what’s inside the book’s pages. More than the stories those characters experience, the trials that they undergo.

(9) TEACHING WRITING. “’Between Utter Chaos and Total Brilliance.’ Daniel José Older Talks About Teaching Writing in the Prison System” – a set of Older’s tweets curated by Leah Schnelbach at Tor.com.

(10) PURSUED. David M. Perry profiles Older at Pacific Standard “Daniel José Older and Progressive Science Fiction After Gamergate”.

The Internet trolls picked a bad week to call Daniel José Older “irrelevant.” As we meet in the opulent lobby of the Palmer House Hotel in downtown Chicago, his young-adult book Shadowshaper is sitting on a New York Times bestseller list. He’s in town because the book was been nominated for the Andre Norton Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America, which is holding its annual Nebula conference in Chicago. Best of all, he’s just signed a contract for two sequels. There’s also his well-reviewed adult fiction, the “Bone Street Rumba” series. By no standard of publishing is this person irrelevant.

So why the trolls? They’re coming after Older for the same reason that he’s succeeding as a writer?—?his urban fantasy novels actually look like urban America (including the ghosts) and he’s got no patience for the bros who want to keep their fantasy worlds white.

(11) DAMN BREAK. Kameron Hurley charts the history of hydraulic pressure in sf: “The Establishment Has Always Hated The New Kids”.

…Though there has been momentum building for some time, a backlash against the backlash, I’d say it wasn’t until about 2013 when publishing started to catch up. Ann Leckie wrote a space opera (a woman wrote a space opera! With women in it! AND PEOPLE BOUGHT IT SHOCKING I KNOW AS IF NO ONE HAD BOUGHT LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS OR ANYTHING BY CJ CHERRYH OR OCTAVIA BUTLER), and it swept the awards. We Need Diverse Books was able to organize the conversation about the overwhelming whiteness of publishing, bringing together disparate voices into one voice crying out for change in who writes, edits, and publishes books, while the first Muslim Ms. Marvel comic book (written by a Muslim, even!) broke sales records.

The water has been building up behind the damn for a long time, and it’s finally burst.

Watching the pushback to this new wave of writers finally breaking out from the margins to the mainstream has been especially amusing for me, as I spent my early 20’s doing a lot of old-school SF reading, including reading SFF history (I will always think of Justine Larbalestier as the author of The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction). I was, of course, especially interested in the history of feminist science fiction. Women have always written SFF, of course, but the New Wave of the 60’s and 70’s brought with it an influx of women writers of all races and men of color that was unprecedented in the field (if still small compared to the overall general population of said writers in America). This was the age of Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, Sam Delany, and nutty young upstarts like Harlan Ellison. These writers brought a much needed and refreshing new perspective into the field. They raised the bar for what science fiction was. And so the writing got better. The politics and social mores being dissected got more interesting and varied, as one would expect when you introduce a great wave of writers into a field that was happy to award the same handful of folks year after year. They shook up the field. They changed science fiction forever. The established pros had to write their hearts out to catch up….

(12) KEN LIU’S OPINION OF HOGWARTS. Rachel Swirsky did a “Silly Interview with Ken Liu who HAS THE SCHEMATICS for a Time Turner!”

RS: Speaking of Harry Potter, if you could send your kids to Hogwarts, would you?

KL: I’d have to ask my kids. Personally, I’m not a big fan of sending them away to boarding school because I want to spend more time with them. Parents get so little time with their children as is… But if they really want to go and learn magic, I’ll support them. And I hope they work hard to challenge the rather authoritarian system at Hogwarts and engage in campus activism.

(13) THERE WILL BE WALRUS. Steve Davidson did a silly interview of his own — with Timothy the Talking Cat, at Amazing Stories.

ASM: What kind of cat are you (alley, purebred,,,?), or is that kind of inquiry offensive?  Do cats themselves make such distinctions?

TTTC: I’m glad you asked. Some people have claimed that I am a British Shorthair cat. However, my cousin had a DNA test and apparently my family are actually the rare French Chartreux breed. This is an important distinction and finally shows what liars those people are who have accused me of being a Francophobe, ‘anti-French’ and/or in some way prejudiced against France, the French and anything remotely Gallic. People need to understand that when I point out that France is a looming danger to all right thinking people in America and other countries as well, like maybe Scotland or Japan. I really can’t stress this enough – the French-Squirrel axis is real and it is plotting against us all. This why Britain needs to leave the European Union right now. I have zero tolerance for those who say we should wait for the referendum – that is just playing into their hands. But understand I am not anti-French as my DNA proves. Squirrels like to say ‘Timothy you are such a Francophobe’ as if that was a dialectical argument against my well thought out positions. They have no answer when I point out that I am MORE French than Charles DeGaulle. Squirrels just can’t think straight about these things. Notice that if you even try and type ‘Francophobe’ your computer will try to turn it into ‘Francophone’ – that is how deep the Franco-Squirrel conspiracy goes. Squirrel convergence happens at high levels in IT companies these days – that is how I lost my verification tick on Twitter.

I don’t talk to other cats these days. Frankly many of them are idiots….

(14) HENRY AND ERROL. The editors of Galactic Journey and File 770. Two handsome dudes – but ornery.

(15) CRITERIA. Dann collects his thoughts about “That Good Story” at Liberty At All Costs.

In a conversation I am having at File 770, I was asked to define what makes a science fiction/fantasy book “great” for me.  Rather than losing these radiant pearls of wisdom to the effluence of teh intertoobery, I thought I would cement them here in my personal record….

Stay Away From Check Boxes Whoo boy.  I can smell trouble burning at the other end of the wire already.

“Check box” fiction really undermines the quality of my reading experience.  What is “check box” fiction?  It is a story that includes elements indicating diversity in the cast of characters that has zero impact on the the story.

In a reverse of the above, I’d like to suggest N.K. Jemisin’s “The Fifth Season” as a good example of not doing “check box” fiction.  One cluster of protagonists included a character that is straight, one that is seemingly bi-sexual, and one that is decidedly homosexual.  They have a three-way.

And while the more patently descriptive passages of those events didn’t do much for me, the fact that their respective sexuality helped inform their motivations and moved the story forward made the effort in describing their sexuality worthwhile reading.  She also did a reasonable job at expressing how physical appearances differed based on regionalism.  [There were one or two other moments that could be considered “check box(es)”, but for the most part it wasn’t a factor in this book.]

IMHO, including a character that is “different” without having that difference impact the story is at the very least a waste of time that detracts from the story and at the very worst insultingly dismissive of the people that possess the same characters.

(16) IT AIN’T ME BABE. The Guardian got some clickbait from speculating about the identity of Chuck Tingle. Vox Day denies it’s him. Zoë Quinn doesn’t know who it is. The reporter, despite taking 2,000 words of interview notes, also is none the wiser.

Theories abound online: is Tingle Lemony Snicket? The South Park boys? Some sort of performance artist – perhaps the “Banksy of self-published dinosaur erotica” as someone once called him on Twitter? Last year, Jon Tingle – apparently the son of Chuck – appeared on a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread to share unsettling insights into his father: “Yes, my father is very real. He is an autistic savant, but also suffers from schizophrenia. To make it very clear, my father is one of the gentlest, sweetest people you could ever meet and is not at all dangerous, although he does have a history of SELF harm … I would not let him be the butt of some worldwide joke if I didn’t have faith that he was in on it in some way. Regardless, writing and self-publishing brings him a lot of joy.” If this is all a joke, it’s hard to know where it starts or where to laugh….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Will R., JJ, and Tom Hunter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus.]