Tag Archives: The Simpsons

Pixel Scroll 5/30/25 If They Could Scroll Me Now, That Old Karass Of Mine

Posted on by
37

(1) NANOWRIMO SITE VANISHES. [Item by Dan Bloch.] Earlier this week NaNoWriMo shut down their website without any notice.  People are commiserating on Reddit.

What a freaking waste. A huge, passionate and vibrant community founded on conquering the impossible, brought down by gross mismanagement and a refusal to listen to the community that gave it life.

I’ve been sad about this for a long time, but it’s definitely hitting home today, especially seeing the posts from people freaking out about losing their site data, since NaNoWriMo NEVER officially announced the shutdown on official channels to warn them.

We meant nothing to them, even in the end. Good riddance.

The Wayback Machine’s latest Nanowrimo.org screencap was May 27.

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) announced in March that the organization was shutting down. They offered a lengthy explanation in “The State of NaNoWriMo – A Community Update – March 2025” on YouTube.

This followed in the aftermath of a controversy that erupted the previous September when they issued an equivocal statement about using AI – and it did not go unnoticed that NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, a writing app that advertises AI-powered technology, including text rewrites – leading Zriters Board members Daniel Jose Older, Cass Morris, and Rebecca Kim Wells to immediately resign. 

(2) EXTRA CREDIT READING. Two sff news periodicals posted today:

(3) IGNYTE AWARDS VOTING OPENS JUNE 9. Public voting on The Ignyte Awards will begin June 9.

The Ignyte Awards began in 2020 alongside the inaugural FIYAHCON, a virtual convention centering the contributions and experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) in Speculative Fiction. Founded by L. D. Lewis and Suzan Palumbo, the awards were an attempt to correct representative gaps in traditional spec lit awards and have grown into a coveted and cherished addition to the awards landscape. The Ignytes seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.

(4) SAVE WHEEL OF TIME. Did a show ever have so many spokes persons? “Wheel of Time fans band together to save show after cancellation – petition gets over 50,000 signatures” says Radio Times.

Following the cancellation of The Wheel of Time after its third season, a petition has quickly racked up signatures from fans hoping to save the Prime Video fantasy show.

The petition, titled Save The Wheel of Time, has already got over 53,700 signatures and counting, with fans calling for the story to be finished and arguing that it “deserves to be told in full”.

The petition points not only to the third season’s strong critical and fan reception, but also to reported viewing figures, arguing for the show’s continuation by putting it in comparison with other fantasy shows The Rings of Power, House of the Dragon and The Witcher….

(5) FUTURE TENSE FICTION. The Future Tense Fiction story for May 2025 is “The Shade Technician,” by Harrison Cook, about urban heat and its health effects, as well as the privatization of critical infrastructure.

The response essay “The Limits of Heat Resilience” is by physician and heat researcher Pope L. Moseley.

Extreme heat is pushing up against our physiological limits. We can’t adapt our way out of the problem—we need to confront it directly.

(6) JOHN SCALZI Q&A. CollectSPACE starts their interview with an anecdote about the author’s research: “John Scalzi reconned Apollo 11 moon rock before turning it to cheese in new novel”.

…”I went to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum very specifically so I knew what the layout of the place was, so I could see the moon rock there for myself and so when I wrote about it, it would be reasonable to what is actually there,” said Scalzi in an interview with collectSPACE. “They had no idea.”

Had the docents approached him and asked why he was interested in the moon rock, they might not have believed him anyway. In “When the Moon Hits Your Eye,” released today (March 25), it is Virgil Augustine, the museum’s (fictional) executive director, who comes to realize what has happened, however impossible it might seem…

Then they follow with more conventional questions about the new book.

collectSPACE (cS): Was there a particular moment in your life that it just struck you, or how do you come up with the idea of writing a book about the moon turning into cheese?

John Scalzi: It was something that had been just rolling around my brain for a while, simply because it was just such an absurd idea that it almost felt like a challenge. You know, was this something that I could make something out of?

cS: Did you search to see if anyone else had written a book about the moon turning to cheese?

Scalzi: I didn’t, but if someone did, it wouldn’t have necessarily stopped me because there are so few super original ideas. you just accept that most of what you’re doing is not about what’s original, but what you can bring to that particular topic that nobody else has.

There are lots of children’s books about the moon being made of cheese, but they’re all picture books, so I felt that this was a pretty safe subject. Also, as soon someone mentions the topic, people are like, ‘Oh, it’s like Wallace and Gromit,’ because they go to the moon and it is cheese [in “A Grand Day Out With Wallace and Gromit” released in 1989].

This was something I was reasonably confident had been unexplored territory in the adult literature format, and certainly in the manner in which I did it, which was to structure it around a lunar cycle, rather than just one or two main characters….

(7) THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD INTERRUPT HARLAN WAS – HARLAN. Edwin L. Battistella reminisces about his introduction to parenthetical phrases in “What I learned from reading Harlan Ellison” at the OUPblog.

When I was in high school, I went through a Harlan Ellison phase….

…Stylistically, what stood out most was his use of parentheses. In the essays, Ellison used them all the time. In a random four-page section I count six parentheticals, some as long as a paragraph. Elsewhere, I found a couple that went on for more than half a page….

…Ellison used the parenthesis to amplify his outrage, to underscore his smart-alecky awareness, and even occasionally to poke fun at himself.

For a time, Elision’s style left a mark on me as a writer. I began including (what I thought were) pointed, witty asides in my essays and correspondence. I got away with it in high school, less so in college, and finally my wife convinced me to give it up. It was, she said, “too cutesy” and “distracting.”

Every now and then, I miss parentheses and trot a pair of parens out, but for the most part I’ve given them up. The style worked for Ellison, who managed to never be too cutesy and whose distractions were interesting, but I could not pull it off….

(8) BREATH MINT OR CANDY MINT? Chris Winkle argues “Why Literary Fiction Is a Genre” at Mythcreants. Here are a couple of excerpts. You’d need to read the article to see him make his case.

…In any widespread discussion of literary fiction, two contradictory ideas are bound to make an appearance. Some people advocate for one or the other, while others embrace both simultaneously. Let’s look at these two competing ideas.

  • Literary fiction as the best fiction. Under this definition, any book of any genre can be considered literary fiction if it is good enough. This means that literary fiction is simply a prestige label given to a wide variety of books we admire. Let’s call this the prestige definition.
  • Literary fiction as a distinct style of fiction. Under this definition, literary fiction has specific characteristics that distinguish it from non-literary books. These characteristics include realism, slow and detailed prose, and experimental style or form. Let’s call this the style definition.

You might think these two definitions would be at war with each other. Conceptually, they are. But while individual literary fans may take one side or the other, the community as a whole isn’t interested in resolving this contradiction. In fact, these definitions coexist by design.

That’s because both definitions are needed to send a bigger message: that literary fiction entails specific characteristics, and those characteristics are superior. Meaning, a book of any genre supposedly becomes better by adopting literary fiction conventions. That’s how it “transcends” its genre and becomes literary instead….

… This is why publishers already treat contemporary literary fiction like a genre. It’s a specific type of fiction that appeals to a specific audience of fans. Business-wise, that’s what a genre is. It’s used to match books with the readers who are inclined to purchase and enjoy them.

However, literary books don’t fit everyone’s idea of what genres are. The prestige definition is only partly responsible for this. I think a greater factor is that we love our favorite genres, so we want them to be more coherent and meaningful than they are. And when we assign meaning to them, it’s easy to make that meaning too restrictive. For instance, if we associate genres with a specific type of setting or plot, then literary books, which are distinguished by characteristics such as prose style, may seem like the odd group out….

(9) JOHN BOARDMAN (1932-2025). By Gary Farber. I was sorry to read Ansible’s report today: “John Boardman (1932-2025), US fan active since 1950 in cons, clubs and APAs, and treasurer of the 1967 Worldcon, died on 29 May aged 92.”

John was among the first fans I met in NYC fandom in the early 1970s; he and his wife Perdita lived within a long walk’s distance from my childhood home in Midwood, Brooklyn, and at the time I was first invited to the Lunarians, the NYC science fiction club that put on the annual Lunacon science fiction convention, the club met at their home, until months later when Perdita, fed up with the way fans left half-filled cups and dirty plates all over their large house, announced that she wouldn’t put up with it any more, and that the club would have to find a new meeting place.

For a time, that was Frank and Ann Dietz (Frank’s second wife) house in Oradell, New Jersey, and then we met at the Lunacon hotel in Manhattan; my memory is a bit shaky at the moment if we were using the Statler-Hilton that year or the Commodore.

John was a true character. Known to some as “the Jerry Pournelle of the left,” he was a professor of physics at Brooklyn College, a leftist, a bit deaf and thus very loud, very opinionated, and thus the parallels to Jerry. John was a founder of Diplomacy-by-mail fandom with his fanzine Graustark, a mainstay of parts of NYC fandom, a bit of a blowhard, but unforgettable.

He was always hale and hearty, speaking with a vibrant and booming voice, one you could hear as soon as you entered a party he was at, always ready for a good argument.

Among other bits of personal history, from his Wikipedia page:

“Boardman earned his BA at the University of Chicago in 1952 and his MS from Iowa State University in 1956. He then attended Florida State University to begin his doctoral studies. However, he was expelled in 1957 due to his involvement with the Inter-Civic Council and more specifically for inviting three black Florida A&M exchange students to a Christmas party.”

Also see Fancyclopedia’s entry on John Boardman.

John Boardman, right, at 1967 PhilCon. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter. “Taken with my trusty Kodak Starflash, I think”

(10) ALF CLAUSEN (1941-2025). “Alf Clausen, Emmy-winning ‘Simpsons’ Composer, Dies at 84” reports Variety. He died on May 29.

… Clausen won two Emmys and another 21 nominations for the long-running animated Fox series. He began scoring the antics of Bart, Lisa and company in 1990, during its second season, and is believed to be the most-nominated composer in Emmy history with a total of 30 nominations overall.

He also won five Annie Awards, also for “Simpsons” music. His long tenure with Matt Groening’s irreverent creation made him one of the most respected creators of animation music in TV history. His nearly 600 original scores for the series are also believed to be a record for the most written for a single TV series in America….

Clausen conducted a 35-piece orchestra every week, something producers insisted upon from the beginning. His unexpected firing in August 2017, a cost-saving move by Fox and “Simpsons” producer Gracie Films, resulted in a firestorm of protests from fans around the world….

Six of Clausen’s pre-“Simpsons” Emmy nominations were for “Moonlighting,” including two landmark episodes: the black-and-white “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” and the “Taming of the Shrew” sendup “Atomic Shakespeare.”…

… He scored nearly 100 episodes of the late 1980s puppet sitcom “Alf” (and when asked about the title, he would often quip, “no relation”)….

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 30, 1922 — Hal Clement. (Died 2003.)

By Paul Weimer: If hard science and physics could be considered “characters” in science fiction, Hal Clement is certainly the person who was able to make them so. Mission of Gravity is the premier look at this, giving an extremely weird and strange, and yet possible high gravity world. Do the characters he populates this world with work as individual characters? Not really, but what you read Clement for is the puzzles and the logic behind the hard science that makes a high gravity-distorted world like Mesklin (the planet of Mission of Gravity) possible in the first place. 

Another novel in this vein that doesn’t get much play or notice, but I ironically read before Mission of Gravity, is The Nitrogen Fix. In this book, Earth’s atmosphere has changed, radically, with the free nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere having combined into a toxic and unbreathable mix of nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and water. Did the aliens who have come to Earth change and terraform Earth for their own purposes? In the end, the transformation of Earth’s atmosphere is a puzzle that is solved, and makes sense, with a big heaping sense of irony to it all. 

Although shared worlds are not a big thing anymore, back in the 1980’s, they were all the rage. I didn’t mention it back when I wrote on Ellison (way too much to write about him) but even Harlan Ellison did a shared world, Medea. His shared planet had a bunch of writers very interested in building a realistic planet and solar system. Clement not only provided an essay on worldbuilding the astrophysics of Medea in the book, but also contributed a story. 

Once again, hard science as a character in Clement’s work. That’s what it means to me. 

Hal Clement at ConFiction (1990). Photo by Frank Olynyk. From Fanac.org site.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) MEMORIES. Steven Thompson, son of famous comics fans Don and Maggie Thompson, tells a great anecdote about the late Peter David on Facebook. It has to do with how Peter made a tribute panel to Don Thompson a terrific memory.

(14) JON DECLES PROFILE. File 770 commenter Jon DeCles – the pen name of Don Studebaker – was interviewed in 2017 by The Press Democrat about the loss of his house in a fire: “Valley fire survivor starting over with prized cuckoo clock that escaped the flames”.

It’s nearly two years since the Valley fire vaporized the Cobb Mountain home of Don Studebaker, a highly literate high-school dropout, science-fantasy writer, stage channeler of Mark Twain, devotee of ancient Greek gods, co-creator of the documentary-worthy Berkeley literary commune of Greyhaven and a decadeslong student of the nearly infinite subtleties and elements of ritual significance of the Japanese tea ceremony.

The 75-year-old Studebaker has no earthly idea when he’ll be able to call in a crane to set a new modular home roughly where the old, conventionally constructed house was. But already he contemplates special placement of the clock.

“The cuckoo is going to be the pièce de résistance,” beamed the gray-bearded, blue-eyed and kinetic Studebaker from alongside the fish-pond porch of the residence off State Route 75 that he dubbed the Rhinoceros Lodge and references fleetingly on his website home.pon.net/rhinoceroslodge. The 1950s country home was devoured along with those of 11 immediate neighbors by the historic south Lake County inferno of Sept. 12, 2015, that killed four people downhill from Cobb, charred more than 76,000 acres and destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings.

Studebaker lost almost everything he owned, but not his German cuckoo clock.

One day in June 2015, three months before the Valley fire, he’d decided for no particular reason that it was time to seek repair of the musical timepiece his wife purchased for him while on an international book tour at least two decades earlier….

… Had it not been in the shop, the clock surely would have burned in the fire that surged down Cobb Mountain toward Middletown that Saturday afternoon two years ago. …

(15) SHAKEN NOT STIRRED, DEEP UNDERGROUND. [Item by Steven French.] A complex of tunnels built after the Blitz is set to become an immersive spy museum and will also feature one of the deepest underground bars in the world: “London tunnels that inspired James Bond creator will become spy museum” reports the Guardian.

During his time in military intelligence, Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, regularly worked with Winston Churchill’s spy organisation based 30 metres below ground in a labyrinth of tunnels in central London.

The Kingsway Exchange tunnels complex, stretching out across 8,000 sq metres beneath High Holborn, near Chancery Lane underground station, hosted the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and is said to have inspired Q Branch in Fleming’s novels.

So it seems appropriate that plans to breathe new life into this long-abandoned second world war subterranean network will include a permanent exhibition about the history of military intelligence and espionage.

The Military Intelligence Museum is to collaborate with the London Tunnels company, developing the complex to showcase its original artefacts, equipment, weapons and documents in a modern hi-tech experience at the proposed new £220m London tourist attraction, which is planned to open in 2028.

(16) FEEL FREE TO STEP ON THAT BUTTERFLY. Dete Meserve’s op-ed for Space.com asks “Could time travel tourism be the next space tourism?” I admit it – I clicked.

…Up until recently, physicists believed that time travel to the past was impossible because it required unusual matter or extreme warping of spacetime. However, physicist John D. Norton has developed a new model based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity that shows time travel is mathematically possible.

His model does not rely on strange matter or intense space-time distortion, but uses a simple space-time shape that allows paths to loop back in time. This work suggests that time travel could occur under more ordinary physical conditions than previously thought.

The classic understanding of time travel centers on a fundamental problem: paradoxes. If travelers could alter even minor details of the past, the cascading consequences would either rewrite the present or eliminate the traveler’s own existence — the infamous grandfather paradox. This seemingly insurmountable obstacle led physicist Stephen Hawking to propose his Chronology Protection Conjecture, which essentially argues that the laws of physics themselves forbid backward time travel by preventing the formation of closed timelike curves.

However, groundbreaking research by Dr. Fabio Costa and Germain Tobar at the University of Queensland challenges this assumption. They’ve developed a mathematical model showing that closed timelike curves do not automatically create paradoxes. Their revolutionary model suggests that while time travelers can move and act freely in the past, the universe itself maintains consistency—events would self-adjust to prevent any logical contradictions from occurring.

This revolutionary finding has profound implications. If Norton is right — that time travel won’t require exotic materials — and Costa and Tobar are correct — that time travel doesn’t alter the future — it opens the door for time travel technology to evolve beyond fictional ideas of secret inventions or unpredictable glitches in the universe. Instead, it could follow the trajectory of other breakthrough technologies—gradually becoming accessible, eventually commercial….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Blasters and Blades podcast features author Sharon Lee speaking about a Liaden Universe® novel she co-wrote with Steven Miller: “Episode 578: Ribbon Dance by Sharon Lee”. The book was released in 2024.

Today we were graced with the presence of Sharon Lee, one of the nicest ladies we’ve interviewed! We had Jana S Brown (aka Jena Rey) on as a co-host, and together we produced a kick butt interview about Sharon’s love of reading and speculative fiction. And we talked about her Liaden Universe. This was a fun interview, so go check out this episode. Lend us your eyes and ears, you won’t be sorry!!

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Bill, Dan Bloch, Joey Eschrich, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “Tin Pan Alley” Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/23/25 Pixeler on the Roof

Posted on by
24

(1) 2025 HUGO VOTING BEGINS. Seattle 2025 opened Hugo Awards voting today. All ballots must be received by July 23 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

Voting by surface mail is also an option. Download a printable ballot. Print the ballot and follow the included instructions.

(2) HUGO VOTER PACKET. You can find out “What’s In The 2025 Hugo Voter Packet?” in File 770’s compilation of the HVP category indexes.

(3) NOTES FROM BELFAST. “Eastercon Reconnect” by SJ Groenewegen is a fine conreport.

… Next up was The Doctor Will See You Now, with Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Brian M. Milton, Fiona Moore, Nicholas Whyte and Catherine Sharp (moderator). The description read, ‘We’ve seen dramatic events in the Whoniverse in the last year, both in-canon and in production, from bi-generation and new companions to the return of Russel T. Davies and the first Doctor Who Christmas Specials since 2017. Our Whovian panel will discuss the highs and lows of the new era of New Who, the relationship it has to previous canons, Ncuti Gatwa’s playing of the Doctor so far, and more.’ Catherine began the panel by asking each panellist whether they were doctors… and all answered in the affirmative. An entertaining and knowledgeable discussion followed….

(4) SEMIPROZINES. The Semiprozine Directory is still being maintained by Neil Clarke at Semiprozine.org.

(5) EARLY C.L. MOORE. “Deeper Cut: C. L. Moore Before The Pulps” is discussed by Bobby Derie at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein. Here’s an excerpt from Moore’s 1934 letter to R.H. Barlow.

Ever since we were about nine a friend and I have been evolving a romantic island kingdom and populating it with a race which, inevitably, is a remnant of Atlanteans. We’ve a very detailed theology and mythology, maps all water-colored and scroll-bordered and everything, a ruling house whose geneology and family tree and so forth has been worked out in tbales and charts from the year minus—oh, just about everything that two imaginative girls could think of over the space of fifteen years. (Heavens, has it been that long?) We have songs and long sagas of heroes, and a literature full of tradition and legends, and we even made and colored a series of paper dolls to illustrate the different types and their costumes, and then there were wars and plans of battle, and we have the maps of all our favorite cities, and we’ve written a good deal of history. And that history is what I take seriously….

(6) RELIGION IN WORLDBUILDING. Last night the Chicago Public Library hosted a panel of sff writers to discuss “American Prophets: Making New Gods”. A recording can be viewed on YouTube.

Four contemporary fiction writers – N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Nghi Vo and Matthew Kirby – talk about religion in their writing, the importance of considering socio-spiritual systems when world-building and how these influence the ways their characters move through the worlds they create.

(7) MORE ABOUT DAMIEN BRODERICK. Rich Horton has written a tribute – “Damien Broderick, April 22, 1944 – April 19, 2025” – for Black Gate.

…Damien Broderick was an outstanding science fiction writer – and, to my mind, a somewhat underappreciated one. He was a tireless advocate of Australian SF, in both his anthologies and his critical work. He was an intriguing and rather iconoclastic science writer, very interested in the far future and in very speculative scientific ideas, including paranormal powers….

(8) SIMPSONS IN THE WILD. Animation Magazine is there when “’The Simpsons’ Exclusive Episode ‘Yellow Planet’ Launches on Disney+”

Today, Disney+ announced that an all-new episode of The Simpsons is now streaming exclusively on the streaming service. The full-length episode, titled “Yellow Planet,” is the show’s latest exclusive episode to hit the streamer this season, joining previous installments “The Past and the Furious” and “O C’mon All Ye Faithful.”

In “Yellow Planet,” The Simpsons are reimagined as animals in a National Geographic-style nature mockumentary. Homer and Marge navigate the ocean as whales from different series, Bart hatches as an iguana struggling to survive, and Lisa leads her flock as a finch. Along the way, familiar Springfield faces appear in unexpected roles, shaping their journeys in the wild….

(9) EARLY CLI-FI. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Changing Climates Radio 4 Extra. This short series looks at climate change through the prism of science fiction.  (Meanwhile, always seek out good sources of climate change science. 😉 )

The meteorologist, John Hammond explores the way that science fiction has served as a barometer for our wonder, curiosity and sometimes anxiety about the environment. With expert insight from Sarah Dillon – Professor of Literature and the Public Humanities and Professor of Human Geography, Mike Hulme, we find out how writers imagined – sometimes very accurately – the changing world around them.

Today, we focus on the early decades of the 20th century, a period rich in technological optimism and environmental unease.

First, we hear E.M. Forster’s chillingly prescient ‘The Machine Stops’;

A world in which people can only communicate through a machine sounds like the internet today. But this story, written in 1909, takes us to a future where the machine has become an all-powerful God.

EM Forster’s story dramatised by Gregory Norminton and first broadcast in 2001.

You can access the episode here.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

April 23, 1973 — Naomi Kritzer, 52.

By Lis Carey: Naomi Kritzer first came to my attention with the delightful short story, “Cat Pictures, Please,” about a bored, rogue, AI who identifies as a cat, enjoys cat pictures, and decides to help out those silly humans, whose lives it knows so much more about than they do. What does it want in return? More cat pictures, please!

What I didn’t know then was that this new-to-me writer had been publishing since 1999, with two trilogies, some standalone novels, and quite varied short fiction. Along the way, having grown up in Wisconsin and attended college in Minnesota, she found time to live in London and Nepal.

There were more stories of the rogue Cat AI, committed in its own way to making the world a better place for good people who like cats. These include two novels. Catfishing on CatNet is about a teenage girl, Steph, who, with her mother, is constantly moving to escape her dangerous stalker father. She has a flipphone, no smartphone, is not allowed to make friends, and has no outlet except her online friends, in the friendly atmosphere of CatNet, run by the wise, kind, and completely anonymous CheshireCat. On CatNet, Steph is “Brown Bat,” and her friends, the members of her “clowder,” have similarly anonymous names. They all have fun and companionship, and with CheshireCat’s very intelligent but inexperienced in the real world (CheshireCat has only been active for five years, and is still learning about humans), pull off a prank that winds up attracting unwanted attention to Steph, her mom, and the other kids.

Chaos on CatNet has Steph and her mother settled in Minneapolis, Steph enrolled in a high school she can expect to graduate from. She’s also making real-world friends in addition to her online clowder. One of those friends, Nell, has her own complicated family history, and a very different kind of online community, which Steph starts to explore with her. CheshireCat is also getting messages from what he believes is another AI like himself, but he doesn’t trust the AI’s approach. Of course things get complicated. Another enjoyable, satisfying book.

But Naomi has other fiction that’s very different. A short story about a “Little Free Library” where one user, instead of leaving books in exchange for books, leaves little bits of artwork, and notes, and gradually, we find out who this strange visitor is, and what’s going on in their world.

“The Year Without Sunshine,” a novelette, is another very different kind of story. The world has undergone a series of smaller disasters, followed by a catastrophe that leaves clouds thick enough to block all sunshine. We follow one community struggling to make things work with a few days of electricity a week, intermittent delivery of life-critical medications by (apparently) federal authorities, and other such intermittent and not necessarily reliable outside support. When the internet goes down, Alexis and a neighbor, Tanesha, set up a booth, “WhatsUp,” to help keep communication going among neighbors who previously relied on WhatsApp. Then someone suggests it might be good to go door to door, and find out both what people need, and what they might have that they don’t need anymore—and a bigger project, and network, starts to form.

On her list to be is Liberty’s Daughter. Beck Garrison lives on a seastead, built out of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, to be a libertarian paradise. She’s grown up comfortable and privileged, but has started doing odd jobs for pocket money. Beck is hired by a woman from the other side of the waterline, to find her missing sister. She starts to learn things she never suspected, about the seastead, her father, herself, and the world. Some people don’t want her to say anything,  or ask any more questions. This is a young adult novel, with a bright, good teenager learning to grow up in a hurry and make some big decisions.

Naomi Kritzer is a really interesting writer, who doesn’t do the same thing all the time, and somehow manages to be both realistic and positive about people. Truly a delight to read.

Naomi Kritzer

(11) NAOMI KRITZER Q&A. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Naomi Kritzer’s CatNet at this point consists of “Cat Pictures Please” which won a Hugo at MidAmeriCon II, Chaos on CatNet and Catfishing on CatNet. As one who likes this series enough that I had her personally autograph the Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories collection, I wanted to know the origin of CatNet, so I asked. Well, I also gifted her with a birthday chocolate treat, sea salt dark chocolate truffles. 

Here’s her answers: 

Naomi: The original short story was basically the collision of two things:

1. The line, “the Internet loves cat pictures,” which made me imagine a central internet-based intelligence that wanted pictures of cats.

2. Getting myself a smartphone for the first time (I was a late adopter), and discovering some of its quirks, and coming up with anthropomorphic explanations for things like bad directions. 

I mean, the Internet clearly does love cat pictures — although “the Internet” is “the billions of people who use the Internet,” not a secret sentient AI, though!

Cat: I went on to ask her how CatNet came to be…

Naomi: Do you mean in the story, how it got created? I was very vague about it in the short story but sort of heavily implied it was the result of something someone did at Google. In the novel CatNet was an experimental project from a company that was again, heavily implied to be Google.

Way, way cool in my opinion.

While putting this Birthday together, I noticed that she had two other series from when she was starting out as a writer, so I asked her to talk about them. Both are available on Kindle.

Cat: Let’s talk about your first series, Eliana’s Song.

Naomi: Eliana’s Song is my first novel, split into two pieces. I rewrote it really heavily multiple times, and each time I tried to make it shorter and it got longer. When Bantam bought it, they suggested that I split it into two books and expand each, which is what I did. 

The book actually started out as a short story I wrote while in college. It garnered a number of rejections that said something like, “this isn’t bad, but it kind of reads like chapters 1 and 36 of a novel.” I eventually decided to write the novel, and struggled for a while before realizing I could not literally use the short story as Chapter 1, I had to start over writing from scratch.

Cat: And your second series, Dead Rivers.

Naomi: Sometime around 2010 I picked up the Scott Westerfield Uglies series and really loved it. Uglies in particular followed a plotline that I really loved, in which someone is sent to infiltrate the enemy side, only to realize once she’s there that these are her people, far more than her bosses are. But she came among them under false pretenses, and she’d have to come clean! And she almost comes clean, 

doesn’t, of course is discovered and cast out, and and then has to spend the next book (maybe the next two) demonstrating her worthiness to be allowed to come back. I read this series and thought, “dang, I love this plot — I loved this plot as a kid, and reading it now is like re-visiting an amusement park ride you loved when you were 10 and finding out that even when you know where all the turns and drops are, it’s still super fun.” Like two days after that I suddenly remembered that I had literally written that plotline. It’s the plotline of the Dead Rivers trilogy. I really really love this plot, it turns out! So much that I’ve written it!

I’m not sure how well it’s aged. We were not doing trigger warnings on books yet when it came out, and the fact that the book has an explicit and fairly vivid rape scene took a lot of readers by surprise. It’s also a story that’s very much about whether someone can start out a bad guy and work their way to redemption.

Cat: Now unto your short stories. I obviously believe everyone should read “Cat Pictures Please” and Little Free Library”, both of which I enjoyed immensely. So what of your short story writing do you think is essential for readers to start with?  

Naomi: That is a good question but one I find very hard to answer about my own work! It’s a “can’t see the forest because of all the trees” problem, I think.

“So Much Cooking” would probably be at the top, though (with the explanatory note that I always attach these days — I wrote this in 2015.) And then probably “Scrap Dragon” and “The Thing About Ghost Stories.”

To date, she has two short story collections, Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories which is only available as an epub, and of course Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories which is also available in trade paper edition. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Dinosaur Comics  plans an alternate version of space travel.
  • Eek! compares villains’ brands.  
  • The Argyle Sweater envisions a medical Dr. Seuss.  (Don’t miss the poster on the wall!)
  • WaynoVision recalls an artist’s school days. 

(13) QUEEN’S OWN. A royal gift from the Boer War: “’It’s got a bit of a whiff’: Chocolate bar made in 1900 is on sale” reports BBC.

…The Queen commissioned manufacturers J S Fry & Sons, Cadbury Brothers Limited, and Rowntree and Company Limited to produce the special tins in 1899, Auctioneum said.

The tins bear the words “I wish you a happy new year”.

By the end of 1900, more than 120,000 tins had been distributed to soldiers….

Mr Stowe said while most of the chocolate bars were eaten straight away, some were sent home to loved ones or to hospitals for wounded soldiers.

“It is incredibly rare,” Mr Stowe said. “If you think over 125 years what that tin has been through – there’s been several world wars, it’s probably travelled back and forth over the Atlantic a couple of times.”

He said the chocolate bar, which is valued between £250 and £400, appealed to bidders who “might want an important piece of social history” or just a “talking point at a dinner party”.

(14) HIRING OBSTACLES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] My brother Jim, who brought this to my attention and is a late boomer himself, commented that the “Original poster is too young to have any idea what it was like before fandom became mainstream.” “Entitled coworker rejects job candidate because she’s a fan of Stark Trek: ‘She made the mistake of mentioning her hobbies during [the] interview’” at Cheezburger.com.

Keep scrolling below for this tale of an unfortunately biased manager who thought a candidate was weird and unfit simply because she was a Star Trek fan.

(15) CAT FURNITURE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The credential credenza at Viral News Flare.

(16) WHY DIDN’T ANTIMATTER DESTROY THE UNIVERSE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] When the Universe began you might have thought that matter and anti-matter would be produced in equal quantities resulting in a bigger BANG but with no physical matter left for galaxies, stars, you, me and pints of real ale at the con bar. However Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time suggests we now have an answer…

At one-one-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang, the great annihilation event should have wiped out all matter, leaving a universe of only radiation. Why still don’t know why any matter survived. Well, a new finding from the LHC brings us one step closer to understanding why there’s something rather than nothing.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Steve Shives’s Starfleet Guidance Counselor is amazing. Actually, so is everything in his “Starfleet Jobs” series: “Starfleet Historian”, “Starfleet Chaplain”, “Starfleet Lawyer”…

Trying to educate children under the constant threat of violent death presents certain challenges.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/6/25 Hail Pixels, We Who Are About To File Salute You

Posted on by
15

(1) BRADBURY IN THE WAUKEGAN MUSEUM. The Chicago Tribune is there as “Visitors get sneak peek at newly restored Waukegan History Museum”.

Walking into the almost fully restored, more than century-old, one-time Waukegan Public Library — that is now the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie — visitors can take a step back in time….

…Lori Nerheim, the historical society’s president, said part of the intent of the $15 million restoration was to give visitors a feel for the experience a young Ray Bradbury had when he spent hours there as a boy reading and nurturing the imagination which led the famed author to the writing of his books.

“We wanted to bring it back to its original look and feel,” she said of the museum operated jointly by the historical society and the Waukegan Park District. “I feel tremendous pride. I am excited to see people’s reaction.”

… To enter the building, visitors ascend a few steps before entering the door where they see a staircase on either side leading to two floors of permanent exhibits, and before them some steps going to the top, main floor containing a permanent exhibit honoring Bradbury as well as a room for research.

Before the building closed as the library in 1965, the room containing the Bradbury exhibit was the children’s reading room. He spent hours there in the 1920s and 1930s reading and developing his thirst for books. Nerheim said she hopes the environment will inspire future authors.

“I can see children today sitting in that room where Ray Bradbury sat as a child and reading books he read,” she said. “Perhaps they will be inspired to write or tell their own stories.”

Filling the bookcases in the Bradbury room are the author’s private collection of thousands of volumes he willed to the Waukegan Public Library when he died in 2012…..

(2) FAMOUS BOOKSTORE MAY REOPEN ‘NEXT WEEK’. Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego is in the process of repairing flood damage sustained in late February. On Monday their latest newsletter gave a progress report: “Flooded! Curbside Pickup Is Available!”

First, thank you to all of the customers, authors, publishers, and other community members that have reached out to offer their support in the last week. The outpouring of support has been incredibly heartwarming and has helped us get through the uncertainty of the last week. We also want to extend a special thank you to our fellow independent bookstores who have offered support including opening their spaces for last minute event venues. This is truly a special book community and one we are so happy to be a part of.

We wanted to reach out with an update on the store and forecast of what’s to come. As this situation is continually evolving, there may be additional changes, but we promise to communicate as much as possible.

The good news:
No inventory was damaged in the flooding. THE BOOKS ARE OK! The vinyl flooring is also intact and does not need to be removed. 

The bad news:
The carpet in the children’s section was flooded and is being replaced. Additionally, they found some significant water damage in the walls on the west side of the unit as well as in the wall behind the YA section separating the front area of the store from the back room. The drywall needs to be replaced. There was also damage to the fixtures.

What does this mean?:
Mysterious Galaxy is currently closed to in-store shopping and events. If you purchased a ticket to an upcoming event, please keep a lookout for an email with more information. However, the demo has already begun and we are hoping to reopen to browsing by early next week! (*knocks on wood*)
The construction is such that it is not safe to have customers browsing at this time. However, fortunately (or unfortunately) for us, we are not strangers to running a closed bookstore, and we are ready to work through the challenges that are sure to arise in the coming weeks. 

(3) SUIT AGAINST N.E.A. OVER EXECUTIVE ORDER. “Theaters Sue the N.E.A. Over Trump’s ‘Gender Ideology’ Order” – the New York Times explains the litigation. (Story is behind a paywall.)

Several arts organizations sued the National Endowment for the Arts on Thursday, challenging its new requirement that grant applicants agree to comply with President Trump’s executive orders by promising not to promote “gender ideology.”

The groups that filed the suit have made or supported art about transgender and nonbinary people, and have received N.E.A. funding in the past. They say the new requirement unconstitutionally threatens their eligibility for future grants.

“Because they seek to affirm transgender and nonbinary identities and experiences in the projects for which they seek funding, plaintiffs are effectively barred by the ‘gender ideology’ certification and prohibition from receiving N.E.A. grants on artistic merit and excellence grounds,” the lawsuit says.

The groups are being represented in the litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said in the lawsuit that the N.E.A. rule “has sowed chaos in the funding of arts projects across the United States.” After Mr. Trump began his second term, the N.E.A. said it would require grant applicants to agree “that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” which Mr. Trump said in an executive order includes “the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”

The N.E.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit was filed in a federal court in Rhode Island on behalf of Rhode Island Latino Arts, which promotes art made by Latinos; the Theater Offensive, an organization in Boston that presents work “by, for and about queer and trans people of color”; and National Queer Theater, a New York company best known for its Criminal Queerness Festival, which presents the work of international artists with roots in countries where their sexuality is criminalized or censored.

(4) NERO GOLD PRIZE. The ultimate Nero accolade and £30,000 prize went to a non-genre (and nonfiction) book, Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love. “Maurice And Maralyn By Sophie Elmhirst Announced As Winner Of 2024 Nero Gold Prize Book Of The Year”.

(5) TOLKIEN WAS PEEVED. [Item by Steven French.] I am not sure that Tolkien’s loathing of sloppiness and love of language is quite the exclusive that the Guardian thinks it is! “’Reduced to nonsense’: JRR Tolkien’s irritation with typist revealed in archive”.

JRR Tolkien was so irritated by a careless typist’s slapdash work on one of his manuscripts that he vented his frustration in a letter that has come to light.

The Lord of the Rings author said in despair: “She reduced [my manuscript] to nonsense. I have some sympathy with the typist faced with such unfamiliar matter; though evidently she wasn’t paying much attention.”

He mocked her confusion of “poche for poetic, highballs(!) for high halls, and arias for cries”.

The letter is within a collection of largely unpublished correspondence that reflects Tolkien’s loathing of sloppiness and love of language.

It is part of an archive that includes the last major Tolkien manuscript in private hands, The Road Goes Ever On, his collaboration with the composer Donald Swann of the musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann….

(6) WELCOME TO EARTH. Gizmodo invites us to “Watch 5 Mysterious Clips From Alien: Earth’s Crashed Ship” – a series of teasers from the upcoming FX series.

…What’s about to happen is the debut of Alien: Earth, FX’s upcoming show set years before any of the Alien films. It follows a team of soldiers who investigate a ship that has crashed on Earth and are forced to deal with what it contains. We assume, of course, that it contains something that will eventually create an alien, but what exactly? …

…So here you get to see the cat get the camera put on him and walk around a bit. The key takeaway is the end where we see a computer—much like Mother in the first Alien—with a very similar “Priority One” message: “Acquisition and safe return of all organisms for analysis. All other considerations secondary.” So, this ship was sent out to find something. And find something, it did….

…We see one of the crew members in hypersleep when something goes wrong. A fire. Is this the incident that started the crash back to Earth? What caused the fire? We don’t know.

All of this is a very cool way to tease the show and it’s culminating later this week in Austin, Texas. That’s where FX has recreated the crash site of the Maginot for fans to check out at SXSW. Learn more about that here.…

(7) THE RIGHT WAY, THE WRONG WAY, AND THE JANEWAY. According to Inverse, “A Much-Demanded Star Trek Spinoff Just Got A Hopeful Update”.

…We’re talking about the possibility of Star Trek: Janeway, a series focused on the return of Kate Mulgrew as Admiral Kathryn Janeway, set sometime after the events of Prodigy and perhaps, after the events of Picard Season 3. Speaking to a crowd of fans during the official Star Trek Cruise, Mulgrew answered a question about the possibility of a Janeway-focused spinoff TV series, or, failing that, her returning to the franchise in any capacity.

“There is a conversation happening,” Mulgrew said, according to WhatCulture. “It is being pursued.”

Mulgrew has long been vocal about galvanizing fans, which partially resulted in Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 ending up on Netflix. But in terms of any new Star Trek series focusing on the post-Voyager era, nothing on the current Paramount+ slate fits that description. Strange New Worlds will run for at least two more seasons, and Starfleet Academy is expected to debut either later this year or sometime in 2026. At the same event on the Star Trek: The Cruise, Mulgrew expressed concerns that a Janeway live-action series might not live up to what fans wanted. And she also didn’t want to do a show as a “vanity project.”

(8) DUNE WHAT COMES NATURALLY. “1 of Dune’s Most Crucial Events Is Secretly Way Smarter Than Fans Realize (& It Proves Frank Herbert Was Brilliant)” asserts CBR.com.

…Frank Herbert’s masterpiece Dune emerged from various fascinating influences, beginning with an unlikely source: the Oregon coast. In 1957, after publishing his novel The Dragon in the Sea, Herbert traveled to Florence, Oregon, where he observed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s efforts to stabilize massive dunes using poverty grasses. The sight of these imposing dunes, which Herbert believed could “swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways,” sparked a deep interest in ecology and desert environments that would become central to his epic novel. The ecological themes in Dune were further shaped by Herbert’s interactions with Native American mentors, particularly Howard Hansen and “Indian Henry” Martin from the Quileute reservation. Hansen’s warning that white men were “eating the earth” and could turn the planet into a wasteland “just like North Africa” resonated deeply with Herbert, who incorporated these environmental concerns into his story….

Many science fiction novels include predictions regarding technology, but Frank Herbert deliberately stayed away from that. Instead, Herbert’s novels focus on the power of the human mind and its ability to focus on discipline to overcome fears and regain control over thoughts, feelings, and even bodily functions. Herbert summed this up in one of his most iconic quoted Dune lines:

“Fear is the mind-killer.”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

March 6, 1928 — William F. Nolan. (Died 2021.)

By Paul Weimer: Is the crystal in your palm blinking?

While he did write two sequels to it, plenty of short stories, a number of screenplays and a fair number of critical works, the name William F. Nolan means one and one thing only for me: Logan’s Run.

Well, two, if you count the movie.

The book, co-authored with George Clayton Johnson, came first. Ironically, while I read the book first, and only saw the movie some years later, the edition I read of the book first and had for years until it fell apart was one of those “movie/tv tie in” editions, that even had some stills/photos from the movie in it. So I “saw” a couple of scenes from the movie thanks to reading and re-reading this edition long before actually watching the movie.

Such a strange, wild book. 21 is the age of mandatory death., the triumph of youth. Feels very weird, today, in our sometimes gerontocratic governments. You’ll never get away from a homer, homer, homer. Casual use of drugs. Casual sex.  It’s a good thing that my parents never knew what was in the book, they’d have been shocked. A breakneck plot and scenes all across the country, from domed cities to the frozen prison of hell to Crazy Horse and the Thinker, to a Civil War re-enactment with robots! 

I did visit Crazy Horse in 2008, inspired by the novel, and was disappointed in how slow the construction has gone (far different than in the Logan’s Run timeline). It’s…worse than a tourist trap, somehow. Alas. 

But the movie is something else. The future as a giant enclosed shopping mall. Lots of things missing from the books and a very different set of confrontations–the original book has a fight with a tiger, but the movie has…house cats? And the utter disappointment that while in the book some people are escaping and becoming free, in the movie, apparently, they all were frozen into frozen food by Box, who was turned from a chilling sadist into a figure of comedy in the movie. And yet like the book, the movie subtly is suggesting that the current world order cannot stand, and in fact must change, or else. 

Yes, this birthday turned into a Logan’s Run’s remembrance rather than a Nolan remembrance. Nolan died in 2021. Requiescat in pace.

William F Nolan at Multnomah Falls

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) SIMPSONS ART AUCTION. On March 15 Heritage Auctions will hold “Cowabunga II – Celebrating the Art of The Simpsons Animation Art Showcase Auction”. Among the 300+ lots going under the hammer is this animation cel:

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror VIII “The HΩmega Man” Original Kang and Kudos Production Cel (Fox, 1997). This original production cel from The Simpsons episode “Treehouse of Horror VIII” (Season 9, Episode 4) features the iconic alien duo Kang and Kodos Johnson from Rigel 7. Taken from the first segment, “The HΩmega Man,” this rare cel captures their brief yet hilarious appearance as they witness Springfield’s demise from space. In the segment, France launches a neutron bomb at Springfield after Mayor Quimby insults the French with a “frog legs” joke. As the bomb travels through space, it flies past Kang and Kodos’ flying saucer, prompting Kang to exclaim, “What the hell was that?” This humorous moment occurs near the 2:58 timestamp, adding to the duo’s memorable cameos.

(12) AHH, ROMANCE. Booklegger tells Facebook readers how a bookstore figured into a couple’s anniversary celebration.

A few days ago I noticed a customer browsing the shelves in the science fiction/fantasy section. I asked him if there was anything I could help him find. “No, I’m doing fine, thanks,” he responded,” “but actually I do have a question I wanted to ask you.” His expression was animated and I wondered where this was heading.

He went on to tell me that he and his girlfriend were approaching their first anniversary, and that they had come to Booklegger on their first date. They were planning on re-creating that first date by visiting Dick Taylor for chocolates, and then coming to our store. He had created a little 42 page book for her as an anniversary gift, and he wondered if he could come in on the morning of their anniversary and plant the book on our shelves for her to find when they came to our shop later in the day.

I was 100% on board with this idea! What a compliment that they had their first date at our place, and what a sweet, creative surprise to mark the occasion. So this morning just as we opened Kiloe came in and showed me the book that he had created. 42 pages of things that he adores about Sarah, inside jokes between them, remembrance of fun things they’ve done together etc. And yes, it’s 42 things because they are both fans of Douglas Adams. He planted the book between Jim Butcher titles, knowing that she would browse that area….

(13) WAX ON, WAX OFF. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Goldman Sachs, in a research note Thursday (the note isn’t publicly posted) reported by Slashdot: “Goldman Sachs: Why AI Spending Is Not Boosting GDP”.

Annualized revenue for public companies exposed to the build-out of AI infrastructure increased by over $340 billion from 2022 through 2024Q4 (and is projected to increase by almost $580 billion by end-2025). In contrast, annualized real investment in AI-related categories in the US GDP accounts has only risen by $42 billion over the same period. This sharp divergence has prompted questions from investors about why US GDP is not receiving a larger boost from AI….

Or, as I think it was Cory Doctorow posted months ago, they haven’t come up with a real, usefull killer usage for the thing. I am reminded of a news story on the radio in the early oughts, after the tech bubble  collapsed, som3eone saying “they were spending money like mad, making fancy websites… and hoping that they’d eventually find a way to monetize it (they didn’t).

(14) WATER IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] One of the determinants many think is the need for water for life.

(I myself am a primacy of water man, though my former colleague, and fellow SF fan, Jack Cohen, was more broadminded than I.) Anyway, news comes that water has been discovered very early in the Universe’s history. This means that the Universe has had water in it for nearly all its time.  This boosts the prospects for life arising elsewhere before now…  Primary research here….

Of course, if you are not a primacy of water person then this news will be of lesser import…

Scientists from the University of Portsmouth have discovered that water was already present in the Universe 100-200 million years after the Big Bang. 

The discovery means habitable planets could have started forming much earlier – before the first galaxies formed and billions of years earlier than was previously thought. 

The study was led by astrophysicist Dr Daniel Whalen from the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation. It is published today (3 March 2025) in Nature Astronomy. 

It is the first time water has been modelled in the primordial universe.

According to the researchers’ simulations, water molecules began forming shortly after the first supernova explosions, known as Population III (Pop III) supernovae. These cosmic events, which occurred in the first generation of stars, were essential for creating the heavy elements – such as oxygen – required for water to exist.

The key finding is that primordial supernovae formed water in the Universe that predated the first galaxies. 

Dr Daniel Whalen, from the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation

Dr Whalen said: “Before the first stars exploded, there was no water in the Universe because there was no oxygen. Only very simple nuclei survived the Big Bang – hydrogen, helium, lithium and trace amounts of barium and boron.

“Oxygen, forged in the hearts of these supernovae, combined with hydrogen to form water, paving the way for the creation of the essential elements needed for life.”…

(15) TILT. The company’s Sunday landing was a success, however, today’s encore was not: “Private lunar lander may have fallen over while touching down near the moon’s south pole” – AP News has the story.

A privately owned lunar lander touched down on the moon with a drill, drone and rovers for NASA and other customers Thursday, but quickly ran into trouble and may have fallen over.

Intuitive Machines said it was uncertain whether its Athena lander was upright near the moon’s south pole — standing 15 feet (4.7 meters) tall — or lying sideways like its first spacecraft from a year ago. Controllers rushed to turn off some of the lander’s equipment to conserve power while trying to determine what went wrong.

It was the second moon landing this week by a Texas company under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program. Sunday’s touchdown was a complete success….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Mark Barsotti has rolled a sixth installment of his Paul Di Filippo interview: “Sci-Fi Writer Paul Di Filippo #6 ~ Weird Names & Cyberpunk Jazz Scatting”.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Mark Barsotti, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 1/4/25 Why Are All Pixels Tailless? It Makes It Easier To Walk Through Walls

Posted on by
19

(0) STATUS REPORT. A few people who follow File 770 through the RSS feed have asked why it’s broken. That’s a side-effect of having Cloudflare set to “Under Attack”, a step made necessary last week when the site was overwhelmed by bot calls on the server. We’ve gone through this before and at some point it always abates. It hasn’t yet.

Meantime, John King Tarpinian has suggested the following as superior to the current test for whether a File 770 user is human.  

(1) SCIENCE GUY GETS PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL. Bill Nye the Science Guy was among the people honored today with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Deadline has the story: “Joe Biden To Award Medal Of Freedom: Bono, Denzel Washington, Michael J. Fox And George Stevens Jr. Among Showbiz Recipients”. KIRO’s article focuses on Nye: “Bill Nye among 19 recipients of Presidential Medal of Freedom”.

…Nye gained prominence through his TV show and appearances on the sketch comedy show Almost Live! He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Cornell University and has contributed to scientific advancements, including work on the Mars Rover.

Beyond television, Nye has dedicated himself to science advocacy. He serves as CEO of the Planetary Society and champions space exploration, environmental stewardship, and science literacy. He has also authored several books to further inspire and educate audiences….

(2) CHRISTMAS U CHALLENGE FINALS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Last night was the last in the Christmas (alumni) University Challenge. The finals saw SF author Richard Morgan’s Queens’ College Cambridge team face Durham University. It was real tight: both teams had just one scientist and three artists – one artist had graduated in political science (an oxymoronic subject if ever there was). Morgan got off to a great start getting the first starter for 10 question answering with ‘Thomas Payne’. Durham led for the first quarter, then Queens’, but Durham slowly caught up to finally win 125 against Queens’ 120.

In this year’s Christmas University Challenge there was just one SF writer among all of the teams’ members and it was his team that made it through to the finals. Now, I am not saying that this relationship was causal, for if I were then I’d be in The Twilight Zone.

If you are not familiar with Richard Morgan’s work, we have a few reviews over at SF² Concatenation, including: Altered Carbon (which was adapted into a television mini-series), Black Man, Broken Angels Market Forces The Steel Remains and Woken Furies. You can see the Christmas University Challenge finals edition on Youtube: “University Challenge Christmas 2024 – E10 Final”.

(3) A.K.A. ELVIS. If you already happen to be a Robert Crais fan and a reader of his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novels, like I am, you will enjoy this long memoir about the writer and his series at CrimeReads: “Robert Crais: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics”. (The article doesn’t mention that he is a Clarion graduate, or that in every book he writes one paragraph in the style of Harlan Ellison. Sometimes I even spot it.)

… Then, in 1985, his father died. When Crais went back to Louisiana to help sort things out, he discovered that, after forty-five years of marriage, his mother “had never written a check, paid a bill, used a credit card.” Crais had to teach her how to do all that, “and I was mad, angry, confused. I thought I would write about it, so I could understand it.”

He started a book about a woman who comes to a private detective, desperate to find her missing husband, a man who had always taken care of every detail of her life, and now she was completely unable to cope. Crais modeled the detective a bit after himself, with his own worldview and sense of humor (and taste in shirts), and over the course of the book and its many revelations, the detective helps guide the woman, named Ellen Lang, into a true sense of herself, until, by the end of the book, she can look at the detective, Elvis Cole, and say, “I can do this. I can pull us together….I won’t back up. Not ever.” She’s even the one who shoots the main villain with Cole’s .38, holding the gun just the way Cole’s friend, Joe Pike, showed her.

He named the book The Monkey’s Raincoat, after a Japanese haiku, an agent sent it out, and…it was rejected by nine publishers, before Bantam bought it as a paperback original. It went on to win Anthony and Macavity awards, get nominated for an Edgar, and eventually end up on the list of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Book Sellers Association….

(4) UNBEARABLE OVERSIGHT. The BBC reports “Paddington In Peru snubbed by Bafta for new family film award”.

The latest Paddington movie will not be nominated for a new Bafta award for children’s and family films after being left off the category’s longlist.

Paddington in Peru was the top-earning British film of 2024 at the UK box office and was expected to be a frontrunner for the new award, which is intended to “celebrate the very best films appealing to inter-generational audiences”.

However, it has been overlooked by Bafta jury members for best children’s and family film.

Paddington does have a chance of a nomination in another category, though, after being included on the longlist for best British film….

(5) PUBLIC DOMAIN 2025. What has been unbound this year from the shackles of copyright? The Public Domain celebrates the most notable items in its roundup “Happy Public Domain Day 2025!”

…Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain, but there are three main types of copyright term for historical works which cover most cases. For these three systems, newly entering the public domain today are:

  • works by people who died in 1954, for countries with a copyright term of “life plus 70 years” (relevant in UK, most of the EU, and South America);
  • works by people who died in 1974, for countries with a term of “life plus 50 years” (relevant to most of Africa and Asia);
  • films and books (incl. artworks featured) published in 1929 (relevant solely to the United States).

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 4, 1998 — Babylon 5: In the Beginning

By Paul Weimer:

Babylon 5: In the Beginning

Where it all began, chronologically, although it came out after the 4th season. 

The story of Babylon 5: In the Beginning is one that had been told through the first four seasons–the Earth Minbari War and the revelation of who and what Commander Sinclair was…or will be. We’d seen scenes of this (and its framing story set in the future) here and there in the first four seasons, and would see more in the fifth season.

The plot? With a framing story set decades ahead of the actual main line of Babylon 5 during the reign of Londo, In the Beginning takes us from the tragic first contact between the Humans and Minbari (with Arthurian overtones to the whole affair), through the actual conduct of the war, all the way to the “Battle of the Line” and the siege of Earth.  Here of course we have one of the pivotal moments in the entire fictional history of the Babylon 5 verse — the capture of pilot Commander Sinclair, and how it ended the war…and started a new era of peace. Or hoped for peace. (It did, of course, rock the very foundations of Minbari society).  The story of In the Beginning is…how the Babylon Project came to be. Or, to be clear, In the Beginning tells the story of how we got the setup for the events of the entire series.

You can see the improvements in CGI between the first season and this movie, especially in the spacecraft. While all of that in general has not aged that well, there is a striking improvement over those several years. 

In general, the movie has the strengths and weaknesses of the series, and especially the movies of the series, but shows a lot more polish than, say, In the Beginning.  Great themes, some excellent dialogue, sometimes some rather stilted scenes. If you have seen Babylon 5 the series, you know what you are in for. 

This movie does try and play “bingo” with plot points and revelations, which can make it feel a little soulless at times. And although the non framing bits takes place earlier than the rest of the series, it is not the place to start the series. (Heck, to be sure, I don’t even think The Gathering, the ostensible Pilot, is where you should start Babylon 5).

But back to In the Beginning, the other advantage to the movie is that if you have missed some of the clues in the course of the series, this is where we get the foundations of the Human-Minbari relationship. Which, if you think about it…is one of the major loglines of the entire series. (Or maybe even intended to have been the main logline). 

(7) COMICS SECTION.

How to gift wrap a book… my cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2024-12-21T11:13:17.562Z
  • Tom Gauld compares New Year’s resolutions.

Happy New Year! (my cartoon for @newscientist.bsky.social)

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-01-01T10:04:17.610Z
  • And if you haven’t made any resolutions, he’s here to help.

My new year’s resolution generator for @theguardian.com. Let me know what you get!

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-01-04T10:00:24.452Z

(8) DESIGNING WOMAN. Bruce Sterling admires Laura Kampf’s repurposing of tech and other debris in “Some Public Limits of Everyday Weirdness (2025)”.

…Laura Kampf scavenges, but she’s never simple or thrifty about it. Laura Kampf is a technically advanced European-Union woman who is sometimes sponsored by tool companies. She rescues her materials from a planetary avalanche of first-world industrial debris — there’s nothing much for her to be “thrifty” or “simple” about, because that native junk of late-capitalism arrives in landslides. Sometimes the objects she repurposes are already quite weird when they arrive at her doorstep. Leftover German electronic-espionage cabinets have been a particular Laura Kampf favorite — NATO spyware, transformed into her tool-chests.

Laura Kampf will treat this objet-trouvee junk material with a tender designer’s concern. She will clean it, round and bevel its corners, remove all its splinters, and likely repaint it. This debris will be re-imagined and rebuilt with many dainty, user-friendly touchpoints. Then it’s no longer mere junk, because it becomes laurakampfian. Often her creations look quite 1960s European design-modernist. They look rather Achille Castiglioni, back when the Milanese design maestro was repurposing old tractor seats….

(9) A MAN’S HOME IS HIS CASTLE. I suppose after you’ve been a TV star for 30 years you really should be rich enough for this: “The Simpsons May Actually Be Living in A ‘Palace,’ According to Viral Diagram of Their Home” at Cracked.com.

…Last week, Redditor RocketShipUFO1106 headed to The Simpsons subreddit with a comprehensive, illustrated floor plan of the iconic light-pink abode. Upon first glance, the interior of 742 Evergreen Terrace looks like, well, just that. Boasting several in-show staples — living-room fireplace, two-car garage, iconic orange couch — it’s decked out in all its late ‘80s glory, ready for whatever wacky hijinks Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa or Maggie bring into its four walls. 

But as several fans noted, seeing its size and amenities all laid out in yet another form of 2D raised several questions about the iconic cartoon property — namely, how the hell could Homer and Marge afford such a high-end home on a nuclear plant operator’s salary?…

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

Pixel Scroll 12/26/24 Clicks! Clicks! The Scroll Was Full Of Clicks!

Posted on by
19

(1) SMELLING BEE. “How Much Does Our Language Shape Our Thinking?” in The New Yorker begins with a rant against the prevalence of the English language, however, there are some interesting anthropological bits, too:

…Western writers have long assumed that human beings have an inherently limited capacity to describe some senses, with olfaction ranking as the most elusive. We can speak abstractly about colors (red, blue, black) and sound (high, low, loud). With smell, though, we usually give “source-based” references (“like cut grass”). But the cognitive scientist Asifa Majid, now of Oxford, and the linguist Niclas Burenhult, of Lund University, in Sweden, have shown that this needn’t be the case. They discovered that the Jahai, hunter-gatherers living at the border of Malaysia and Thailand, have a rich vocabulary of abstract smell words. One Jahai term, itpit, refers to the “intense smell of durian, perfume, soap, Aquillaria wood, and bearcat,” Majid and Burenhult report. Another, cnes, applies to “the smell of petrol, smoke, bat droppings and bat caves, some species of millipede, root of wild ginger, leaf of gingerwort, wood of mango tree.” Subsequent research has found large olfactory lexicons in at least forty other languages, among them Fang, Khmer, Swahili, and Zapotec.

It makes a difference. In a study that Majid and Burenhult conducted a decade ago, Jahai and English speakers were asked to identify and name twelve smells, including cinnamon, turpentine, gasoline, and onion. English speakers, despite their greater familiarity with the odors, faltered….

…Twenty years ago, abstract smell vocabularies seemed ridiculous. Burenhult studied the Jahai language for a decade, even writing a doctoral dissertation on its grammar, before Majid asked him to run a battery of tasks that revealed Jahai speakers’ exceptional way of talking about smell. Other linguistic features once assumed to be universal-such as tenses, personal pronouns, and even, potentially, a distinction between nouns and verbs-have turned up missing when greater numbers of languages have been scrutinized. Likewise, we’ve enlarged our sense of the metaphors used to map concepts. English describes acoustic pitch using a verticality metaphor (high-low), but a study by experts in musical cognition found that people around the world use at least thirty-five other mappings, such as small-big, alert-sleepy, pretty-ugly, tense-relaxed, summer-winter, and-in the case of some traditional Zimbabwean instrumentalists-“crocodile” (low pitch) and “those who follow crocodiles” (high pitch)….

Everett’s book revels in such discoveries, which multiply the conceivable differences separating languages. In a recent review of the research literature, the language scientist Damián E. Blasi, along with Majid and others, listed the many cognitive domains that English seems to affect, including memory, theory of mind, spatial reasoning, event processing, aesthetic preferences, and sensitivity to rhythm and melody.”

(2) DISSECTING THE TEASER. After you watch the short Doctor Who promo video below, The Hollywood Reporter stands ready with a “’Doctor Who’ Season 2 Trailer: Scene-by-Scene Breakdown of 2025 Preview”.

Is That Donna Noble?

Eagle-eyed fans may have been a little surprised to spot a magazine containing a promotional picture for the Doctor Who 2023 specials featuring Noble actress Catherine Tate.

In a whirlwind couple of seconds, we see the Doctor and the occupants of what looks like a soccer-loving barbershop (in what’s certainly not the U.K.) sucked out into some kind of cosmic storm. If you look closely at the magazines fluttering by, you can spot a magazine with the aforementioned image….

(3) DAVIES AND MOFFAT Q&A. Inverse introduces its interview with the pair, “19 Years Later, ‘Doctor Who’ Brings Back Its Best Collaboration — For Potentially The Last Time”, saying, “Nineteen years ago, TV magic happened: Steven Moffat wrote his first Doctor Who story for showrunner Russell T Davies…”.

…Davies: Because what you get, Steven, is a fool because he throws away huge movie franchises every time he does a Doctor Who story.

Moffat: So do you.

Davies: There’s River Song — could be bigger than James Bond every day, and now there’s the Time Hotel that could run for 20 years as a television show.

Moffat: You know you’ve got an idea that’s good enough for 45 minutes of Doctor Who if you’ve got a movie idea. If you just pissed away a franchise, yeah, I might give you 45 minutes….

(4) UNIVERSITIES PRESERVING SFF. Fanac.org’s next “FANAC Fanhistory Zoom” is “Out of the Ghetto and into the University: SF Fandom University Collections”. To attend, email fanac@fanac.org.

Most of us are collectors (or at least accumulators) of science fiction memorabilia. And others are researchers and historians. Our first program should be interesting to all of you. We will be interviewing the Curators of three of the largest library collections specializing in science fiction, fanzines, comics and other related materials.

Come to find out what is in their collections, what they want for their collections, and how to use them. January 11, 2025 – 2PM EST, 11 AM PST, 7PM GMT London, and 6AM AEDT (sorry) Sunday, Jan 12 Melbourne

(5) VIDEOS FROM NINTH CITY TECH SCIENCE FICTION SYMPOSIUM. Videos from panels held at the Ninth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on SF, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI have been posted to YouTube. There’s also a gallery of photos taken during the event by Andrew Porter.

This is the direct link to the YouTube video playlist.

Jason W. Ellis, Associate Professor of English and Coordinator, City Tech Science Fiction Collection at New York City College of Technology says:

Our sign-in sheet recorded 58 attendees, but I’m guessing the attendance across the day was between 75-100 people as some folks, including students, didn’t sign-in. I even heard one positive take on the symposium via the telephone grapevine from a past colleague who I didn’t know attended. In any event, it took an army to chow down 10 pizzas at lunch!

(6) CLASSIC COMIC STRIP COLLECTIONS. These used to make ideal holiday gifts. CBR.com gives us the “10 Best Comic Strip Collections, Ranked”. “…The best comic strip collections feature the best comic strip titles and probably contain strips significant to its legacy and/or offer insight into its creation….”

Coming in at number six:

Pearls Before Swine: Sgt. Piggy’s Lonely Hearts Club Comic: A Comic Strip Collection About Life, Death, and Everything in Between

Starring anamorphic animals named after the animals they are, Pearls Before Swine explores themes of death, meaning, and the world’s chaos with irony and visual humor. It’s named after the Bible verse, Matthew 7:6, which contains the phrase, “Do not cast your pearls before swine,” meaning don’t impart wisdom on those who won’t appreciate it. This is a pun because Rat, a cynical and snarky loudmouth, often feels this is what he’s doing when talking to Pig, a literal swine who is kind-natured and naïve. Pearls Before Swine also stars Goat, a character often annoyed at Rat and Pig because he’s more educated and informed than them, and a family of crocodiles who always fail at killing their zebra neighbors.

Roughly half the strips in Pearls Before Swine treasuries, which collect the strips in the previous two collections, have notes under them from Pearls Before creator Stephen Pastis. Pearls Before Swine: Sgt. Piggy’s Lonely Hearts Club Comic is the first Pearls Before Swine treasury and showcases where it all began. The strips in this book were made before Pastis started drawing himself as a character to make meta-commentary, but it still had plenty of other laughs, including a strip where Pig orders bacon and says it’s a “pig-eat-pig world.”

(7) RAY, BART AND HOMER. Phil Nichols’ Bradbury 100 podcast devoted a recent episode to “Ray Bradbury and The Simpsons”, tracking down every reference the series has made to Ray.

A few weeks ago, there was a new episode of The Simpsons which was entirely based on the works of Ray Bradbury. “Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes” is not the first time Ray has been referenced by the show. In fact, the number of Bradbury allusions across all of The Simpsons (i.e. on TV, in comics, and in books) now totals: thirteen.

In this episode I detail them all!

Many of them are represented by audio clips. But there are a few gags which are purely visual, including the comic-book and book appearances, and so I’ll present a few of them below. (Click on the images to embiggen!)

(8) PARTY TIME. People’s Elizabeth Rosner tells how “I Spent the Weekend at Neil Patrick Harris’ Murder Mystery Party—and Lived to Tell the Tale”.

…Saturday evening, the drama reached its peak during a lavish five-course dinner under a heated tent. The menu featured a Crenn Caesar salad, savoy cabbage, steak wing lamb, and soy custard, paired with fine wines. But before dinner was over, the chef’s driver, Charlie Carr, was killed.

The tension escalated when a dinner guest was poisoned for suggesting Sinclair’s death wasn’t an accident, putting her in the killer’s crosshairs.

In the end, we learned the killer and his motive…

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Galaxy Quest

By Paul Weimer: Galaxy Quest — the best movie about Star Trek fandom of all time? 

Very possibly yes. 

In the days before The Orville (which has neatly taken up the Galaxy Quest banner in some ways), Star Trek’s self importance was sometimes overweening. Oh you could see and find some deflation of the seriousness of movies like Star Trek the Motion Picture now and again in the Star Trek canon (Star Trek IV in particular).  But the strong desire and passion of fans was something that was mocked for a long time, and by William Shatner himself. 

On December 20, 1986, the infamous “Get a Life” sketch was aired on Saturday Night Live. It’s worth seeing if you haven’t seen it. People forget that at the end Shatner “recants” his rant against the fans and says he was just channeling “Evil Kirk”. Everyone remembers how for the first 6 minutes of the episode he rips and destroys the enthusiasm and geeky intense interest of those same fans. 

So, Galaxy Quest is a corrective, I feel, to that sketch and those perceptions. And at the time I saw Galaxy Quest in 1999, I had been to one Star Trek convention (with Marina Sirtis and George Takei). I knew and know the passions of people for a property, a franchise, an imaginary future. I share them, after all.

Galaxy Quest channels all that, and with love and respect, but knowing how silly its own source material is, uses it. From the funky controls on the bridge, to the “choppers” in a passageway that Sigourney Weaver’s character calls out as being stupid, the movie shows the absurdity of following a property so closely. And yet in showing the absurdity of it, it also shows the love, respect, care and humanity of fans of a property. (Consider how the fans come together to help land the remnants of the ship). It’s a movie that touches the heart and knows when to cut from horror, to comedy, to moments of tenderness and pathos.  There are few episodes, or movies of the actual Star Trek than can say the same.

And the casting is perfect. Tim Allen as the clueless captain? Sigourney Weaver, whose sole job is to repeat the computer? The late Alan Rickman, horrified he has, by Grabthar’s Hammer, been permanently typecast? Tony Shalhoub as the slacker chief engineer? All of the cast understood the assignment and give the movie their all. The movie is peppy, doesn’t flag, and entertains thoroughly. It satirizes and respects and loves Star Trek, and its fans. 

Also, in 2020, inspired by this movie, I went out of my way in my trip around the “Utah 5” to see Goblin Valley State Park, where the alien planet with the beryllium mine (and the rock monster) was filmed. Friends, it is as alien and weird as the movie makes it out to be.

Never give up, never surrender may be Captain Taggart’s catchphrase, but it’s some damn fine advice for life, too.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) ALTERNATE GALAXY QUESTS. Cracked.com has selected “25 Trivia Tidbits About ‘Galaxy Quest’ on Its 25th Anniversary”.

For the final Christmas of the 20th century, Santa dropped off an extra special gift to movie lovers: Galaxy Quest, a Star Trek parody that’s also so much more. 

In it, Tim Allen plays egotistical actor Jason Nesmith whose claim to fame was portraying the Captain Kirk-like lead, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, in the cheesy 1980s sci-fi show Galaxy Quest. Years after Galaxy Quest has concluded, Nesmith and his co-stars are scraping by with personal appearances at sci-fi conventions. Things take a twist, though, when real-life aliens — who have mistaken Galaxy Quest as real — abduct the actors to help save them from an extraterrestrial warlord.

In the 25 years since its release, the movie has turned into a legitimate cult hit, and so, to mark its 25th anniversary, here are 25 behind-the-scenes tidbits about it…

Here are two particularly juicy tidbits – imagine Galaxy Quest helmed by the same director as Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis, and with a different cast.

21 Why Ramis Left the Project

According to Dean Parisot, who ultimately directed Galaxy Quest, “The studio wanted Tim Allen to do it, but Harold didn’t want to do it with Tim.” Additionally, producer Mark Johnson said, “Harold didn’t do the movie because we couldn’t cast it. The people we went to all turned it down, and by the time we got to Tim Allen, Harold couldn’t see it.”

20 Ramis’ Pick

Ramis had originally wanted Alec Baldwin for the lead. Other casting choices proposed were Steve Martin and Kevin Kline.

(12) ALL SINGING, ALL DANCING, ALL GRINCHING. Cat pointed out a huge oversight in yesterday’s Scroll – I should have followed his Grinch TV memory with a link to Martin Morse Wooster’s “Review of ‘Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas – The Musical’”, an account of the stage production from 2016.

I saw Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas!—The Musical last night at the National Theatre in Washington.  From the musical’s website and Wikipedia, I learned that this musical has been around since 1994 and has played in 41 other cities in the U.S. before it showed up in Washington….

….You know the plot.  The citizens of Whoville are looking forward to Christmas when they can get lots of stuff and eat many sugary treats.  Then that mean Grinch shows up and steals all their stuff.  But why?  Deprived childhood? Acid reflux? The answer here is that the Grinch is tired of all the noise the Whovians make.  At that point I started cheering the Grinch on….

(13) IF YOU CAN SAY SOMETHING NICE. [Item by Steven French.] As a counterweight to all the doom mongering about AI, here’s a positive news report for the Xmas season: “NHS to begin world-first trial of AI tool to identify type 2 diabetes risk” in the Guardian.

The NHS in England is launching a world-first trial of a “gamechanging” artificial intelligence tool that can identify patients at risk of type 2 diabetes more than a decade before they develop the condition.

More than 500 million people worldwide have type 2 diabetes, and finding new ways to spot people at risk before they develop the condition is a major global health priority. Estimates suggest 1 billion people will have type 2 diabetes by 2050.

The condition is a leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes and lower limb amputation. It is often linked to being overweight or inactive, or having a family history of type 2 diabetes, although not all those diagnosed are in those categories.

Now doctors and scientists have developed a transformative AI tool that can predict those at risk of the condition as much as 13 years before it begins to develop.

The technology analyses electrocardiogram (ECG) readings during routine heart scans. It can detect subtle changes too small to be noticed by the human eye that could raise the alarm early about a patient on the road to getting type 2 diabetes.

It could enable early interventions and potentially help people avoid developing the condition altogether by, for example, making changes to their diet and lifestyle….

(14) SCIENCE IN THE ASTIN FAMILY TREE. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] This short documentary discusses “The AD-X2 Controversy” — in which the evaluation of the effectiveness of a car battery additive led to the firing (and later reinstatement) of the head of the National Bureau of Standards Allen Astin. The documentary features interviews with Astin’s son John Astin and grandson Sean Astin. Further details in the Wikipeida here: “AD-X2”.

(15) ‘TIS ALWAYS THE SEASON THERE. “Mars orbiters witness a ‘winter wonderland’ on the Red Planet” – Space.com shares ESA’s photos.

Hoping for a white Christmas this year? Well, even if there’s no snow where you live, at least you can enjoy these images of a “winter” wonderland on Mars.

Taken by the German-built High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter in June 2022, and by NASA’s NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on September 2022, these images showcase what appears to be a snowy landscape in the Australe Scopuli region of Mars, near the planet’s south pole.But the “snow” seen here is quite different from what we have on Earth.

In fact, it’s carbon dioxide ice, and at Mars’ south pole, there’s 26-foot-thick (8-meter-thick) layer of it year-round. (These image was actually taken near the summer solstice, not the winter one — it’s very cold here all year long.)…

(16) INTERNATIONAL CHRISTMAS STATION. We’re a little bit late picking this up, folks! “Space Station Astronauts Deliver a Christmas Message for 2024”.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/25/24 Scrollin’ Pixelettes And Watching Captain Han Solo — Now Don’t Tell Me I’ve Nothin’ To Do

Posted on by
30

(1) SQUELCHING A SQUID LEAK. In “Netflix subpoenas Discord to ID alleged Arcane, Squid Game leaker”, Polygon looked at the court papers.

Netflix is looking toward Discord for help in figuring out who, exactly, is leaking unreleased footage from some of its popular shows. The Northern District of California court issued a subpoena on Thursday to compel Discord to share information that can help identify a Discord user who’s reportedly involved in leaking episodes and images from Netflix shows like Arcane and Squid Game.

Documents filed alongside the subpoena specifically call out an unreleased and copyrighted image from the second season of Squid Game, posted by a Discord user @jacejohns4n. In an interview linked on the user’s now deleted X account, published on Telegram, the leaker claimed responsibility for the self-described “worst leak in streaming history,” where episodes of Arcane, Heartstopper, Dandadan, Terminator Zero, and other shows were published online. Netflix confirmed in August that a post production studio was hacked.

“One of our post production partners has been compromised and footage from several of our titles has unfortunately leaked online. Our team is aggressively taking action to have it taken down,” a Netflix representative told press at the time….

…The documents filed in November do not necessarily indicate a lawsuit; Digital Millennium Copyright Act laws allow copyright holders to file DMCA subpoenas without attached lawsuits. Copyright holders use this tactic to identify anonymous users on platforms like Discord, YouTube, X, and Reddit. Discord is currently fighting South Korean publisher Nexon over “improper and overly burdensome” DMCA subpoenas. “Discord is committed to fulfilling its obligations under the law, but acting as your copyright assertion partner is not one of them,” a Discord lawyer wrote to Nexon in a letter published as part of the case….

(2) BALLOONS, BEARS AND MORE, OH MY! [Item by Daniel Dern.] While driving over the weekend, listening to the radio, I happened to happen (on one of our local NPR stations) on part 1 (of 2) of Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics one-hour podcasts on the Macy’s Day Parade. Episode 1 started with “what does the parade cost,” and, while not answering that question, went into a fascinating look at the logistics, history (early on they had live bears!), getting/making a float, etc. (Part 2 is/will be “brick’n’mortar” which I may pass on)

Here’s the link (to audio and transcript): “Is Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Its Most Valuable Asset?”

(3) PILE HIGH YOUR MT. TSUNDOKU. NPR compiled a list of 351 “Books We Love” from 2024. Sixty-two of them are science fiction and fantasy.

NPR’s annual, interactive reading guide – is back with over 350 new recommendations from 2024. Discover picks by NPR staffers, including Ari Shapiro, Nina Totenberg, Eric Deggans, Steve Inskeep, Linda Holmes, and trusted critics such as Fresh Air’s Maureen Corrigan. 

(4) AND THEY ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT SFF! The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog touts a fanwriter: “SFF Criticism Needs Iconoclasts Like Brian Collins”.

…Brian Collins writes fearlessly, expressing opinions that seem heartfelt even when they go against the public consensus. Some of their iconoclasm can likely be chalked up to the hotheadedness of youth — but at the same time, this willingness to disregard tin gods can lead to interesting insight. This is most evident when they tackle more complex matters in their Observatory editorials. Their piece on Starship Troopers is one of our favourite critiques of Heinlein published in recent memory. To quote from the editorial: 

“Starship Troopers is one of the most famous and misremembered “canonical” SF novels; and unfortunately, no matter how you look at it, it also set a horrible precedent from which the genre still has not recovered. It’s totally possible the genre will never recover from such an impact so long as there are creative minds in the field (and by extension likeminded readers) who believe in Heinlein’s argument: that sometimes extermination is the only option.”

(5) SPEAKING OF INCONOCASTS. “’Wicked’ Costume Designer Explains Why Movie’s Ruby Slippers Aren’t Red” in People.

…When Paul Tazewell, costume designer for Wicked, was creating his own shoes for this year’s film, he went back to the original source material for inspiration. And it turns out, Baum never intended for those shoes to be red at all.

“They’re not ruby,” Tazewell tells PEOPLE of the original shoes. “In the book, they were these odd little silver boots.”

But because The Wizard of Oz was made in technicolor for 1939, the studio wanted to take advantage of the ability to showcase the many colors it had at its disposal, so Gilbert Adrian, costume designer for MGM, strayed outside the 1900 novel by L. Frank Baum.

Tazewell took the original book concept as his starting point and went from there….

(6) ANOTHER HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR. Gizmodo reports, “Doctor Who’s ‘War Games’ Serial Makes a Colorful Return”.

…Earlier today, BBC revealed it’ll be re-releasing 1969’s “The War Games,” the final 10-part black-and-white serial that made up Doctor Who’s sixth season. That’d be notable on its own, but the network’s going the extra step by presenting it in color for the first time. In the serial, the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and Companions Jamie and Zoe learn an alien called the War Lord has plucked soldiers from Earth history and brainwashed them into fighting each other so he can use the survivors as an army to conquer the galaxy. In the decades since, it’s been dubbed one of the most important Who episodes, and we were pretty high on the cliffhanger for its penultimate episode back in 2010.

But this new version of “War Games” isn’t just getting a splash of color, it’s also coming with an updated score and visuals. Interestingly, those changes may also affect how the Doctor regenerates into Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor. Whereas the original version is a trippy, almost nightmarish sequence as he’s forced into his new look and pleads for the transformation to stop, the trailer for the technicolor airing hints at a process more in line with the show’s now default glowing flames around his body….

(7) THE SIMPSONS TAKE INSPIRATION FROM BRADBURY. “’Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes’ Is the Show’s Best Anthology Episode in Years [Review]” enthuses Bloody Disgusting.

The Simpsons’ Ray Bradbury-inspired horror and sci-fi anthology episode strikes gold with clever parodies, concise writing, and hilarious gags.

The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror” specials were certainly the animated series’ first foray into anthology storytelling, but hardly the only time that they’ve dipped their toe into this water. 36 seasons in, The Simpsons has done “Simpsons Bible Stories,” “Simpsons Tall Tales,” “Simpson Christmas Stories,” and even “Thanksgiving of Horror.”…

… “Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes,” unsurprisingly, is an ode to Ray Bradbury, which the episode fully embraces. In many ways, it’s a successful counterpoint to “Treehouse of Horror IV’s” Night Gallery influence, except this time it’s riffing on Bradbury rather than Rod Serling. The episode’s triptych of supernatural societal stories is cleverly divided into different decades — the 1950s, an exaggerated sci-fi-skewing present, and a dystopian future — which makes for a strong enough structure that allows The Simpsons to flex its prophetic muscle, while it also wryly mocks the past and the present. It’s also a smart decision to use Lisa as the audience to the Illustrated Man’s (Andy Serkis) stories. Lisa is the one who listens to these subversive stories, but she’s not the protagonist in all three vignettes….

(8) A REASON FOR VIEWING. Abigail Nussbaum’s “Recent Movie Roundup 37” at Asking the Wrong Questions contains a highly qualified recommendation for Coppola’s Megalopolis.

..But for all of these problems—and without, to be clear, even suggesting that Megalopolis is not a bad movie—it must also be noted that it is not at all boring to watch. Partly this is simply because the cast—which also includes Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, and Robert De Niro—commit fully to the material no matter how absurd or nonsensical (Plaza, in particular, sinks her teeth into her rather iffy character with the zeal of a lion tearing meat off freshly-killed prey). Partly it’s that there are some beautiful images—Driver and Emmanuel balancing on steel beams among the city’s skyscrapers, building-sized statues of classical virtues collapsing in despair, human silhouettes flashing, stories tall, on the sides of buildings as a disaster strikes the city. But mostly, I think, it’s that Megalopolis is like no other movie you have seen or are likely to see, so obviously the product of a singular vision—and of that vision’s limitations, of time and age taking their toll on what was once a sharp talent—that you can’t help but appreciate it. It’s a terrible movie, but one that is terrible in its own, entirely unique way….

(9) TODAY’S DATE.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born November 25, 1926 — Poul Anderson. (Died 2001.)

By Paul Weimer: One of my heart authors in the classical mode of SF is Poul Anderson, not far behind Zelazny and Vance in that ranking. My first known encounter with Poul Anderson’s work was, interestingly enough, Boat of a Million Years in 1989, years after my first encounters with Zelazny and Vance and the only one of the three I picked up as a grown up, first.  I think there was a favorable couple of blurbs that got me interested.  Unlike Vance and Zelazny, my older brother wasn’t into Anderson, so I missed him in my early SF education. But after reading Boat of a Million Years, about a set of immortals living through history (Highlander style!), I started seeking out his work, both his fantasy and his larger oeuvre of science fiction. I had loved the episodic historical vignettes of the characters as they live throughout human history, and I wanted more. I was hooked, friends.

I quickly found the theme of a lot of Anderson’s work: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” seems to be the keystone of what his characters try to do, time and again, across time and space. And his characters do that, be they time patrol veterans, heroes living through history, Imperial officers trying to stave off the end of their empire, or post-apocalyptic sea captains exploring and making contact with other societies trying to rebuild Earth. The odds may be stacked, the game may seemingly be doomed, but Anderson’s heroes plod on, doing the best that they can. (Kind of reminds you of Prince Corwin of Zelazny’s Amber, doesn’t it?) 

And I found the historical motifs and how they add into his worldbuilding to be immersive, detailed and utterly enthralling. He does this in novels, both SFnal (such as his time patrol and other time travel novels) and historical fiction (such as The Golden Slave) where we are set in ancient and even prehistoric times. He does this also in imaginary societies as well. His Maurai novels and stories (such as Orion Shall Rise) are set on a future post-apocalyptic Earth, and Anderson has had a lot of fun in reimagining and mixing customs, societies and ideas from the past into his future world’s new civilizations.  An overseas Empire very much like the British Empire–but run by the Polynesians. Raiders and brigands form the heartland of what was once America…but ones that use airships.  He does this elsewhere, throughout his work, I could go all day with his historical motifs, but will just list one more for space: his Dominic Flandry portion of his future space history is very clearly an Empire in the Roman model…and Dominic Flandry is desperately trying to stave off its collapse, with plots, motifs and gambits taken from actual Roman history a plenty. 

The more you read, the more you know, the deeper the work of Poul Anderson becomes. (The power of the story “Uncleftish Beholding”, for example, where he describes a nuclear test just using Anglo-Saxon words, shows his power with linguistics.  And I haven’t even touched the sadness of The Broken Sword, the absolutely fun of A Midsummer’s Tempest, the genre-defining Three Hearts and Three Lions, and much more. His Science Fiction is his major chord, but his fantasy is definitely present as a noticeable minor chord in the fugue of his work.

My favorite Poul Anderson story is the one I keep coming back to, again and again and again. I consider it one of the definitive and best time travel stories ever written. No, it’s not “Delenda Est”, where Manse Everard must fix history after rogue time travels make Rome lose to Hannibal. That might get second place.  No, my pride of place must go to “Flight to Forever”, where an inventor finds that going backwards is much harder (and after a certain amount of time, seemingly impossible) and so goes ever more forward into the future, looking for a way back to his home timeline. It’s got strange future societies, a tragic love story, immersive detail and worldbuilding, and a sympathetic and engaging and driven main character. It does everything that Anderson does, in one novella length piece.

Besides his SFF writing, Anderson wrote poetry, helped found the Society for Creative Anachronism, was trained as a physicist, and also wrote and sang filk, primarily with his wife. If the title Renaissance Man means anything, it is he who can claim it.  Sadly, and tragically, I never met him in person.  More happily given just how big his oeuvre is, both in short stories and in novels, there is still plenty of Poul Anderson I have not yet read. I plan to, next year for File 770, start tackling the NESFA Press collections of Anderson like I did with the Zelazny.  Watch the skies!

Poul Anderson

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) IS THIS A MORAL ISSUE? “Ask A&L” tackles the question “Should I Sit Through the Movie’s Closing Credits?” – a New York Times article (unlocked to bypass the paywall).

Q: Is it morally correct to stay seated until the end of the credits in a cinema?

I’ve thought about this question my entire adult life! I think a lot of other people have, too. But to answer it, we have to think about what movie credits do, and why they’re there at all….

…It does seem like studios want you to watch all the credits, at least for their biggest movies. How can I tell? Because movies from Marvel and DC insert scenes after the credits roll that fill in key details about an upcoming sequel, or contain Easter eggs for fans of the franchise. Not everyone will stay, but people invested in the ongoing story will. And in a theater, you can’t just fast-forward through the credits to watch that post-credits scene….

(13) PLEASE BE SEATED. ViralNewsFlare asks, is your living room complete without one? “Dragon Sofas: A Fusion of Myth and Comfort for Unique Interiors”.

In the realm of innovative furniture design, dragon-inspired sofas have emerged as one of the most exciting trends, blending fantasy with luxury. These extraordinary seating pieces are not just functional but also serve as bold statement pieces for any home or lounge area. Dragon sofas, with their plush textures, intricate details, and mythological symbolism, bring an enchanting and otherworldly element to any space. Whether you’re a fantasy lover or simply want a unique centrepiece for your living room, these dragon sofas offer the perfect combination of comfort and style….

(14) TABLE OF LUNAR CONTENTS. A cannonball wrapped in an enigma: “It’s Official: Scientists Have Confirmed What’s Inside The Moon” says ScienceAlert.

Well, the verdict is in. The Moon is not made of green cheese after all.

A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. This, researchers hope, will help settle a long debate about whether the Moon’s inner heart is solid or molten, and lead to a more accurate understanding of the Moon’s history – and, by extension, that of the Solar System….

… They made several interesting findings. Firstly, the models that most closely resembled what we know about the Moon describe active overturn deep inside the lunar mantle.

This means that denser material inside the Moon falls towards the center, and less dense material rises upwards. This activity has long been proposed as a way of explaining the presence of certain elements in volcanic regions of the Moon. The team’s research adds another point in the “for” tally of evidence.

And they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth – with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That’s about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon.

The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That’s very close to the density of iron….

(15) DELIVERY SPECIALIST. “Firefly Aerospace completes Blue Ghost moon lander for January 2025 SpaceX launch” at Space.com.

Firefly Aerospace’s moon lander is ready for its upcoming lunar voyage.

The company announced its Blue Ghost lunar lander completed environmental testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in mid-October and is now ready to be shipped to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA and SpaceX plan to launch the lander from Launch Complex 39A atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a six-day window that opens no earlier than mid-January 2025. The mission is known as “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”Blue Ghost will carry a variety of payloads to the moon, some of which are in support of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. CLPS pairs scientific payloads developed by NASA with commercial lunar landers headed for the moon on private missions….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Jim Janney says, “I know Worldcon is over, and this doesn’t seem to have any fannish connection, but it’s too good not to pass on.” Quite so! Enjoy the Haggis Wildlife Foundation’s documentary: “The Elusive Scottish Haggis”. (Is there any other kind?)

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

Pixel Scroll 11/12/24 I Spent A Year Pixeled For Scroll Purposes

Posted on by
15

(1) I DON’T BELIEVE MY EARS. Episode 7 of Scott Edelman’s Why Not Say What Happened? podcast recalls “Archie Goodwin’s Marvel Bullpen Parkour”.

A regrettable reminder to wish a dead comic book friend happy birthday sent me down a Marvel memories rabbit hole, reminding me of what it was like to know Stan Lee before he had hair, the cherry pie that almost got me fired, the day Archie Goodwin did parkour across Bullpen furniture, Len Wein turning us into a Mickey Mouse operation, Marie Severin’s most inventive prank, my faux fight with Don McGregor, performing Time Square guerrilla theater with Steve Gerber, the time I was on Candid Camera (or was I?), and more.

A mid-’70s Marvel Bullpen pic of Scott Edelman in Mickey Mouse ears with Irene Vartanoff, Chris Claremont, Bonnie Smith, and Roger Slifer.
A mid-’70s Marvel Bullpen pic of Scott Edelman in Mickey Mouse ears with Irene Vartanoff, Chris Claremont, Bonnie Smith, and Roger Slifer.

(2) REMEMBERING JOHN NIELSEN-HALL. Motorway Dreams, a publication of the late John Nielsen-Hall’s collected fan writing, has been released as an Ansible Editions ebook on the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund site. It’s a free download, however, they hope you will be moved to use the donation button and contribute to the informal fan fund associated with his favorite convention, The Corflu Fifty.

John Nielsen-Hall was first active in UK fandom from the late 1960s to the late 1970s as a central member of London’s iconoclastic “Ratfandom”; in the early days he signed himself John Hall or John N. Hall. He returned to fandom in the 1990s, participating in email lists, and in 2005 began to publish again with Motorway Dreamer, a title he’d chosen early in his fan career but never before used. Motorway Dreams echoes this title and (in the cover lettering) his fondness for Comic Sans. It’s an eclectic mixture ranging from knockabout Ratfan reminiscences and convention reports to travelogues and thoughts on rock music, living with John Brunner and his wife Marjorie (an uninhibited and much admired memoir), Buddhism (which he adopted during his long absence from fandom), big cars, collecting ancient artefacts, the horrors of dialysis, and even some literary criticism. He died in September 2024 and is much missed. This collection was assembled as a memorial.

Over 66,000 words. Cover artwork by Harry Bell from Motorway Dreamer #3 (2006) ed. John Nielsen-Hall.

(3) IS THIS THE RECORD? “The Worst Spaceship Of All Time Is On A New Sci-Fi Show” claims Giant Freakin Robot.

…When a fictional starship is designed badly, it’s usually because the ship in question is part of a sci-fi project that’s as bad as it is. And yet the worst sci-fi starship ever created is, somehow, not part of the worst piece of science fiction ever made. It’s on a kind of good, new science fiction series called The Ark….

…The Ark is set in a future where the Earth is rapidly becoming uninhabitable. The whys and hows of this aren’t all that important and aren’t fully explored by the show. What matters is that humans need a new home and so The Ark program was conceived to build ships that would take us somewhere else.

The series begins aboard Ark One, flying through space mid-mission. The crew is in stasis for the long voyage, there’s a disaster, and most of the command crew is killed. The survivors wake up, and the only people left are junior officers and civilians….

The aesthetic failures of this design could be dismissed as being due to an attempt at realism. That excuse won’t work, because that’s not what’s going on.

For instance, those spinning rings may look like they are there to create gravity with centrifugal force. They aren’t. This is where the stasis pods were kept. Once everyone wakes up, they never go in that section of the ship again. Instead the crew spends all its time in the parts of the ship without any gravity creating spin, and yet there seems to be plenty of gravity in them.

So why the spinning rings then? No idea, they’re just there and no one on the ship ever mentions them.

That’s the case with most of Ark One. Nothing about it serves any purpose. The Ark’s hero ship is a bunch of non-specific pieces jammed together for no reason. The people inside the ship don’t seem to know most of it, outside of the command area at the front and the very strange biodome on top exists.

The biodome, by the way, also makes no sense. When running out of food, the crew decides to grow crops in there, because it’s a big open space. Why was a big, empty, exposed, dome-shaped area on top of the ship? It’s never addressed….

…It’s also unclear why the ship has stasis pods or why the entire crew was sleeping in them. Once the accident wakes them up, they seem to be able to activate the ship’s hyperspace drive and get almost anywhere in a few days or hours. In fact, along their journey, they encounter other identically ugly and stupid Arks, all of which have fully active and awake crews….

(4) MEET ‘THE SIMPONS’ DIRECTOR. On November 20 the Los Angeles Breakfast Club presents “The Simpsons: From Sketch to Screen with David Silverman”. Tickets available at the link.

After graduating from UCLA in 1983, David Silverman worked as a freelance illustrator and animator until, in 1987, he landed a job animating on The Tracey Ullman Show — where The Simpsons began. Animating on all 48 shorts led to David directing the first shows of The Simpsons. Starting with the Christmas Special in December 1989, and then the premiere episode the following month, David soon became Supervising Animation Director and a producer on The Simpsons. All told, he has directed 24 episodes and has won 4 Emmys along the way.

When no one was looking, David snuck away from The Simpsons to work at DreamWorks (The Road to El Dorado – co-director), Pixar (Monsters, Inc. – co-director), and Blue Sky (Ice Age, Robots – writing and boarding). But, he came back to the show full-time at the end of 2003 and directed The Simpsons Movie. In 2012, David directed and co-wrote the short film The Longest Daycare about Maggie Simpson, which earned him an Academy Award nomination.

(5) A MONSTER’S DOZEN. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s roundup of recent young adult books includes some genre related works: “Young adult books roundup – reviews”.

Liz Hyder won the older readers’ category in the Waterstones children’s book prize for her memorable debut Bearmouth. Now, in The Twelve (Pushkin), Kit and her friend Story must travel back in time to find Kit’s sister, who goes missing close to an ancient stone circle on the eve of the winter solstice. Channelling the dark menace of classic British fantasy writers such as Susan Cooper and Alan Garner, this is a beguiling tale of ancient magic, good and evil, deeply rooted in the Welsh landscape. Haunting illustrations by Tom de Freston add to the eerie atmosphere….

(6) A PRESIDENT IN A RED STATE. Entertainment Weekly watches as “Harrison Ford hulks out in new ‘Captain America 4’ trailer”.

…The trailer culminates with its tensest moment: President Ross collapsing to the ground at what looks like a White House press conference, holding out his hand as he begins to transform. He then emerges from flames as the Red Hulk. 

“You want me? Come and get me!” Sam [Wilson] taunts as he faces off against the newly morphed president before a backdrop of D.C.’s famous blossoming cherry trees.

(7) BRUCE BOSTON (1943-2024). Poet Bruce Boston died November 11. His wife, Marge Simon, announced his passing saying, “He is at peace, it was his wish. If you would like to donate a couple of dollars or more to your local Humane Society, that would be wonderful.”

While best known for his poetry, Boston also published more than a hundred short stories and the novels Stained Glass Rain and The Guardener’s Tale, the latter a Bram Stoker Award Finalist.

Boston has won the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award for speculative poetry a record seven times, and the Asimov’s Readers’ Award for poetry a record seven times. He has also received a record four Bram Stoker Awards for solo poetry collections, and was named SFPA’s first Grand Master in 1999.

He was the poet guest of honor at the World Horror Convention in 2013.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest (1974)

This is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication by Doubleday (cover art by Tom Lewis) of Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest. 

Let’s raise a tankard of our favorite beverage on honor of the author who wrote it and the work itself. 

It would win the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and be nominated for the Locus, Nebula and World Fantasy awards as well.  

THESE MAY BE SPOILERS. THINK OF THEM AS PIXELS SLEEPING UNDERFOOT.

It was in a world where Shakespeare was the Great Historian, all the events depicted within his plays were historical fact. Some of the plays depicted technology more advanced than existed then, Anderson just said that this world was more technologically advanced than our world. And the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are also part of this world.

The novel takes place in the era of Cromwell and Charles I, but the characters deal with the English Civil War which is coeval with an Industrial Revolution.

This is under spoilers for an obvious reason — One of the guards sent to escort Jennifer when she is being used as bait in a trap for the catching of Prince Rupert is named “Nehemiah Scudder”. That was the name of the First Prophet in Heinlein’s “If This Goes On—” first serialized in 1940 in Astounding Science-Fiction. 

The Old Phoenix tavern here appears in several of Poul Anderson’s short stories as a nexus between worlds.

I ASSUME YOU AVOIDED WAKING ANY OF THE PIXELS? GOOD? YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.

Lester Del Rey said in his August 1974 If review that it is “a fantasy I can recommend with pleasure.” 

It is available in print and digital editions. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • F Minus warns this is what book reading might soon be like.
  • Zack Hill works on a new hero’s supporting cast.
  • Bizarro is about gifts superheros don’t want.

(10) ANIMATED SHORT BASED ON STEPHEN KING STORY. ScreenRant introduces “Lily – written by Stephen King – a DARK CORNERS film” in their article “First Stephen King Written Animated Short Adapts Short Story From 1968”.

One of Stephen King‘s earliest short stories, “Here There Be Tygers,” has now been turned into an animated short film. King remains one of the most iconic and prolific horror authors of all time, writing novels like It, Carrie, The Shining, and Misery, among others, as well as many short stories. “Here There Be Tygers” was first published in Ubris magazine in 1968 before appearing in his Skeleton Crew collection in 1985. King’s short story follows a third-grader who discovers a tiger hiding out in the school bathroom and the scary encounters that follow.

Dark Corners Films now releases an animated short film called Lily, which adapts the events of King’s “Here There Be Tygers.” The short film, which clocks in at just under 10 minutes, is told mostly in black-and-white, with splashes of bold red and green to help convey some of the story’s key themes and moments….

(11) VARIATIONS ON A THEME. “’What If…?’ S3 Trailer Previews the Marvel Series’ Final Season” – Animation Magazine sets the scene.

Marvel’s animated series What If…? returns in Season 3 for its culminating adventure through the multiverse. Watch as classic characters make unexpected choices that will mutate their worlds into spectacular alternate versions of the MCU. The Watcher (voice of Jeffrey Wright) will guide viewers as the series traverses new genres, bigger spectacles and incredible new characters….

…Season 3 features fan-favorite characters like Captain America/Sam Wilson, The Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes, Hulk/Bruce Banner, The Red Guardian, Captain Peggy Carter, Agatha Harkness, Shang-Chi, Storm the Goddess of Thunder, and numerous others…. 

(12) IT IS A QUESTION OF SCALE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In 1964, in a paper that looked at the hypothetical detectability of alien civilisations, Soviet physicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed a three-point scale – the Kardashev scale – for technological civilisations.  It is an energy-based scale with type-1 Kardashev civilisations harnessing all the energy falling on their home planet, type-2 harnesses the entire energy output of their home star, and type-3, their galaxy.

Currently our planet is between 0 and 0.5 on the scale. (And thank goodness our galaxy does not host a type-3 civilisation…)

Physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time asks whether we will ever become a Type 1 civilisation. This means harnessing around 10,000 times more than we currently do to become a fully-fledged Type 1.

Warning: in the 20-minute vid Matt does refer to our ‘A.I. overlords’ and ‘A.I. successors’: I keep on telling people that the machines are taking over, but no-one ever listens… “How Can Humanity Become a Kardashev Type 1 Civilization?”

Imagine a world where humanity masters every planetary resource available to it – our first step on the famous Kardashev scale of technological advancement. How distant is that step? Will we even become a true Type-1 civilisation, and how can we get there?

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

Pixel Scroll 9/30/24 Don’t Scroll Me – I’m Pixelectric!

Posted on by
16

(1) CLARKE AWARD OPENS FOR 2024 TITLES. The Arthur C. Clarke Award today announced that submissions are now officially open for next year’s award.

The prize is now open to novels written in English by an author of any nationality, provided that the novel is published for the first time by a UK publisher between January 1 and December 31, 2024.

The deadline for submissions is December 31. This year’s judges are:

(2) IT IS THE END, MY FRIEND. Variety blabs: “’The Simpsons’ Series Finale Wasn’t Really Its Last Episode”. Beware spoilers.

“The Simpsons” kicked off its Season 36 premiere on Sunday with what the show dubbed its “series finale.” Hosted by an animated version of former “Simpsons” writer Conan O’Brien, the episode opened with “The Simpsons” characters and other notables entering a Dolby Theatre-esque venue (technically, the “Dolby-Mucinex Theatre”) to celebrate the show’s ending.

“It’s such an honor to be with you all for the series finale of ‘The Simpsons,’” O’Brien said in his opening monologue. “I knew I was the right man for the job because I’ve hosted the last episode of three of my own shows and counting… Well, it’s true. Fox has decided to end the Simpsons. This show was such a special part of my early career, so being here means the world to me. Also. I left a sweater in the writer’s room in 1993 this is the only way they’ll let me get it back….

“Now, not many people know this, but Fox has been trying to end it for years,” O’Brien added. “When the very first episode aired in 1989 the viewers agreed on one thing: It wasn’t as funny as it used to be, and their expressions of hatred could serve as a history of modern communication technology. Fox executives, unaccustomed to criticism of any kind, immediately caved to public pressure and decided to end ‘The Simpsons’ in 1990.”

O’Brien then showed what he said were the original cuts of scenes from famous “The Simpsons” episodes, such as 1990’s “Bart the Daredevil” and 2000’s “Little Big Mom,” in which Homer died for real. “Many now classic episodes were originally conceived as series finales,” O’Brien said….

(3) Q&A WITH GERARDO SÁMANO CÓRDOVA. The Horror Writers Association continues: “Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Gerardo Sámano Córdova”.

…Time to daydream: what are some aspects of LatinX history or culture – stories from your childhood, historical events, etc — that you really want our genre to tackle? (Whether or not you’re the one to tackle them!)

I would love to read a horror book set during the Mexican Revolution. Such a complex time socially, politically, and ideologically.

Who are some of your favorite LatinX characters in horror?

Juan from Mariana Enriquez’s Our Share of Night is such a complex, vivid character, the Kentukis from Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin (although I’m not sure if the Kentukis qualify as LatinX – or proper characters for that matter, regardless, the idea of them as voyeurs and masks is wonderful).

Who are some LatinX horror authors you recommend our audience check out?

Mariana Enríquez, Samanta Schweblin, Fernanda Melchor, Bernardo Esquinca, Monica Ojeda, Carmen María Machado, Gabino Iglesias, Amparo Dávila….

(4) CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN CENTENARY CONFERENCE. The Tolkien Society will host an online “Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference” on November 23-24. It’s a free event — register at the link.

Confirmed speakers (in alphabetical order):

  • Douglas A. Anderson — editor of The Annotated Hobbit
  • Nicholas Birns — author of The Literary Role of History in the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Sara Brown — lecturer on Tolkien, and Language and Literature Department Chair at Signum University
  • Sonali Chunodkar — researcher on secondary beliefs in Tolkien’s works
  • Michael D. C. Drout — editor of Beowulf and the Critics, and J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia; co-editor of Tolkien Studies
  • Vincent Ferré — Tolkien scholar, lecturer and translator, and editor of Dictionnaire Tolkien
  • Dimitra Fimi — co-editor of A Secret Vice
  • Verlyn Flieger — editor of Smith of Wootton Major, The Story of Kullervo, and The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun; author of Splintered Light
  • William Fliss — Tolkien archivist at Marquette University’s Raynor Library
  • John Garth — author of Tolkien and the Great War, The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and Tolkien at Exeter College
  • Christopher Gilson — chief editor of Parma Eldalamberon and leading member of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship
  • Nick Groom — author of Twenty-First-Century Tolkien
  • Peter Grybauskas — editor of The Battle of Maldon: together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth
  • Wayne G. Hammond — co-editor of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Roverandom
  • Andrew Higgins — co-editor of A Secret Vice
  • Thomas Honegger — co-editor of Sub-creating Arda and Laughter in Middle-earth: Humour in and around the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Carl F. Hostetter — editor of The Nature of Middle-earth and Vinyar Tengwar
  • John Howe — artist who has illustrated covers for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The History of Middle-earth
  • Yvette Kisor — researcher on medieval literature and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Kristine Larsen — writer and researcher on science and astronomy in Tolkien’s works
  • Alan Lee — artist who has illustrated The Lord of the Rings, The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Númenor
  • Ted Nasmith — artist who has illustrated The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales
  • Richard Ovenden — Bodley’s Librarian and co-editor of The Great Tales Never End
  • John D. Rateliff — author of The History of The Hobbit
  • Robin Reid — researcher on Tolkien fandom, fan fiction, and race in Tolkien’s works
  • Christina Scull — co-editor of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and Roverandom
  • Brian Sibley — author of The Fall of Númenor
  • Chris Smith — the Tolkien editor of HarperCollins
  • James Tauber — researcher on corpus linguistics and digital humanities for Tolkien’s works

(5) HORROR QUARTET. Gabino Iglesias reviews “4 New Horror Books Filled With Eldritch Terrors and Other Frights” in the New York Times: Laird Barron’s collection, Not A Speck of Light: Stories (Bad Hand Books); Hildur Knutsdottir, The Night Guest (Tor Nightfire), translated from the Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal; Richard Thomas, Incarnate (Podium Publishing); Sinophagia: A Celebration of Chinese Horror (Solaris), translated and edited by Xueting C. Ni. Behind a paywall.

(6) THANKS FOR NOTHING, GUV. “California Gov. Newsom vetoes AI safety bill that divided Silicon Valley” reports NPR.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Sunday vetoed a bill that would have enacted the nation’s most far-reaching regulations on the booming artificial intelligence industry.

California legislators overwhelmingly passed the bill, called SB 1047, which was seen as a potential blueprint for national AI legislation.

The measure would have made tech companies legally liable for harms caused by AI models. In addition, the bill would have required tech companies to enable a “kill switch” for AI technology in the event the systems were misused or went rogue….

(7) STOP THAT TRAIN! “SpaceX grounds its Falcon rocket fleet after upper stage misfire” – breaking news at Spaceflight Now.

SpaceX’s Falcon rocket fleet was grounded for the third time in three months after a second stage problem occurred Saturday following the successful launch of a Dragon Capsule carrying two crew to the International Space Station. The suspension in flights comes as the company prepares to launch two solar system exploration missions in October with narrow launch windows.

SpaceX said the Falcon 9 second stage that launched NASA’s Crew 9 mission failed to correctly perform a firing of its Merlin Vacuum engine less than 30 minutes after releasing Dragon Freedom into a planned 117×128 mile (189×206 km) orbit.

The engine firing is designed to prevent the rocket body from becoming space debris by driving the stage into the atmosphere for a destructive reentry. Any debris was supposed to fall harmlessly into the ocean in an area previously identified in warnings to mariners and aviators.

“Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn,” SpaceX said in a social media post, shortly after midnight EDT on Sunday. “As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.”

The mishap has prompted an investigation from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which oversees the company’s launch licenses. SpaceX is currently in dispute with the FAA over fines related to Falcon 9 activities at Kennedy Space Center and delays gaining authorization for the fifth test flight of its Starship vehicle from Starbase in Texas.

“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX NASA Crew-9 mission,” the FAA said in a statement issued on Monday. “No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation.”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark film

Thirty-three years ago on this date, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark premiered. It was directed by James Signorelli from a script by Sam Egan, John Paragon, and of course Cassandra Peterson who is as you know the person behind the campy facade of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. 

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark of course has a history. 

In 1981, six years after the death of Larry Vincent who was Sinister Seymour, host of a LA weekend horror show called Fright Night, the producers decided to bring the show back but with a hostess this time thinking she would have greater appeal to a male audience. So the station sent out a casting call, and Peterson auditioned and won the role. 

Producers left it up completely to her to create the role’s image. She and her best friend, Robert Redding, they designed, according to ScreenRant, “Elvira’s character after famous horror hostess Vampira, as well as Charles Addams’ popular character Morticia, and incorporating a Valley Girl spunk into their dark beauty after producers rejected her original idea to look like Sharon Tate’s character in The Fearless Vampire Killers.” 

About the use of elements of Vampira… ScreenRant notes, “Maila Nurmi, who had portrayed the iconic horror hostess Vampira for The Vampira Show in the ’50s, thought that Cassandra Peterson copied her character in creating Elvira. She promptly sent the production a cease-and-desist letter. Nurmi argued that both characters wore black skin-tight dresses, had black hair, heavily applied makeup, and even closed episodes with similar catch phrases.” The cease-and-desist letter was a failure as the lawyers successfully argued in Court that all the elements of Elvira were standard horror tropes. 

It took upwards of three hours to do her makeup and get her into that dress.  It, like the dress worn by Anjelica Huston in The Addams Family Values, was hideously uncomfortable. Keep in mind that she also wore six-inch stilettos as well. 

She’s really the only cast that matters here as this is Her Vehicle.  

Unfortunately for the box office the distributor went dramatically out of business without warning the day before it came out without having produced or distributed most of the prints, so it would only ever appear on five hundred screens instead of the twenty-five hundred that was intended, so it ended up losing a lot of money despite only costing seven-and-a-half million to produce. (Her costume was undoubtedly the most expensive thing in the film.) 

Some critics liked it with Anton Bitel of Little White Lies noting that “Elvira is all sarky, smutty sex positivity, making a prominent display of her two best assets: her verbal wit, and her ability to laugh at everything and everyone including, first and foremost, herself.” Other critics didn’t like it such as Steve Crum of the Kansas City Kansan who said, “There’s nothing dark about Elvira’s cleavage.” And then his review dissected its failure. 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it an excellent sixty-five percent rating.  

She would shoot a series of Coors Light commercials of which this is one.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) LOOK! UP IN THE SKY! Eh, no, it’s not Superman.

This Thanksgiving, Spider-Man makes his grand return to the streets and skies of New York City. Set to debut during Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade® on November 28, Marvel and Macy’s will premiere an all-new Spider-Man balloon, inspired by and in honor of the iconic art style of comic book legend John Romita Sr.

Spider-Man first debuted in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1981, later making his debut as Marvel’s first larger-than-life balloon in 1987. Spidey quickly became a favorite of Parade watchers and fans at other events for over a decade. After the original balloon was retired, Spidey made his return to the Parade in 2009, running as part of the Parade until 2014.

The 98th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will air Thursday, November 28th in the U.S. on NBC and stream on Peacock.

(11) DOUGH SHORTAGE. “Terry Gilliam Says He Doesn’t Have Enough Money to Make ‘The Carnival at the End of Days’” – World of Reel has the story.

Terry Gilliam has had such a hard time trying to fund his last few projects that he’s hinted about retirement. However, back in April, fansite Gilliam Dreams reported that the director was set to direct a new, maybe final, film, titled “The Carnival at the End of Days.”

This past May, Gilliam claimed he had found funding for ‘Carnival.’ We already know that Johnny Depp will play Satan and that the rest of the cast would be composed of Jeff Bridges, Adam Driver and Jason Momoa. A January 2025 shoot was being eyed. (via Premiere)

No surprise, five months later, Gilliam is now telling Czech media that he doesn’t have the sufficient funds to make ‘Carnival,’ and that he would have to creatively compromise his vision to make it happen (via Novinky)….

(12) THERE IS JUST ONE SCULPTURE ON THE MOON. So says Atlas Obscura. “There Is Just One Sculpture on the Moon”. And it is?

ACROSS THE MANY MISSIONS TO the Moon over the years, countless bits of flotsam and jetsam have been deposited on the lunar surface. From Soviet sensors to a couple of golf balls, there are roughly 800 manmade objects up there. There is, however, one of them that’s different than the others. In 1971, the crew of Apollo 15 left a piece of aluminum, 3.3 inches long, on the lunar surface. It is called Fallen Astronaut, and it is the first (and only) art installation on our closest neighbor. (The Moon Museum, a ceramic wafer etched with drawings by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and others may or not have been snuck aboard Apollo 12.)

(13) GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY’S REFERENTIAL NOOK. The 42 Collective on Facebook shared this IRL homage:

 The Cafe at the End of the Universe. For when Milliways has too many options and you just want a coffee or tea.

At Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, CA, USA. -Timothy Transue

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

(14) AND THE WINNERS ARE… “’Flow’ and ‘La Voix des Sirènes’ Swim Home with Ottawa Intl. Animation Festival’s Top Prizes” – Animation Magazine has the complete list of award winners at the link.

Gintz Zilbalodis animated feature Flow and Gianluigi Toccafondo’s short La Voix des Sirènes (The Sirens’ Voice) were honored with the top prizes at this year’s Ottawa Intl. Animation Festival on Saturday.

An expansion of Zilbalodis’s student film Aqua (2012), Flow has been a festival darling since its debut at the Cannes and Annecy Festivals earlier this year. Janus Films/Sideshow will be released in U.S. theaters on Nov. 22. The beautifully crafted feature centers on a cat that is trying survive a water-drenched, human-free world with a few other animal companions. Latvia’s official entry in the Oscar race, it will be released by Sideshow/Janus Films in U.S. theaters on Nov. 22

A timeless film that uses a captivating mixed media approach, La Voix des Sirènes (The Sirens’ Voice) is the latest film from award-winning director Toccafondo. The short also picked up the top prize at Fest Anca in Slovakia earlier this year.

This year’s DGC Award for Best Canadian Animation winner, In the Shallows (dir. Arash Akhgari), showcased a unique combination of animation techniques, digging into the dangerous allure of mass media intoxication. Akhgari also receives $1000 CAD courtesy of the Directors Guild of Canada as a part of the award….

[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 John A Arkansawyer.]

Under the Influence of Ray Bradbury: A Roundup

Posted on by
3

(1) A BRADBURY BUSINESS CARD. Featuring Ray’s work as a “creative consultant” on a pair of major developments.

(2) TREEHOUSE PRESENTS. The 35th installment of The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” series, this episode will be released on November 3, 2024.

According to a Variety article published in July, there will also be a “Treehouse Presents” parody of Bradbury this season:

…“Treehouse of Horror” won’t be the only spooky “Simpsons” event this season, as the producers announced that a “second scary trilogy” will focus on a trio of stories inspired by Ray Bradbury. Dubbed “Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes,” Selman said the stories will be “dark and funny and in the Halloween spirit.”

Conrad noted it is under the umbrella of “Treehouse Presents.” Inspired by Selman reading Bradbury, she and other writers found several more episodes to parody. Among guest stars on that episode: Andy Serkis.

Groening noted that Bradbury once slammed the show in the press after its launch. He eventually met Bradbury, who said he had a bone to pick with the show because it borrowed from a “Twilight Zone” episode he had written. “He was mad,” Groening said of the late writer. “I wonder what Ray Bradbury would think about this episode. Oh wait!”

Quipped Selman: “Hopefully his estate is equally loving.”

As currently scheduled, the 35th “Treehouse” will run right after Halloween, while the Ray Bradbury episode will air in November….

(3) RAY’S DC COMICS ALTER EGO. Brian Cronin recalls “When Supergirl Had to Solve Ray Bradbury’s Abduction!” at CBR.com.

Today, based on a suggestion from reader Fred K., I take a look at the time that Supergirl had to solve Ray Bradbury’s abduction!

Julius Schwartz, the then-editor of the Superman titles, was Ray Bradbury’s first science fiction agent and Schwartz was acquaintances with a lot of those writers, which explains why Isaac Asimov also has appeared in this feature during Schwartz’s time on the Superman titles.

The story, written by Jack C. Harris and drawn by Don Heck and Joe Giella, opens with Supergirl awaiting a flight carrying famed author Brad Reynolds (Ray Bradbury) into town…

However, shockingly enough, Reynolds/Bradbury VANISHES!…

(4) A FOCUSED GROUP. “Bradbury, Wrights, Claude: Obstacles? What Obstacles?” asks Forbes.

“Obstacles,” said Henry Ford, “are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.”

Actually, that thought alone would be worth the price you paid to read it here. But I get paid to write, so here’s a little bit on Ray Bradbury, the Wright brothers, and Albert Claude.

Surely everyone knows who the Wright brothers were and most of us have read the books of Ray Bradbury. (I would hope.) But who was Albert Claude, what’s he got to do with the other guys, and why should we care?

They were all giants, pioneers, overachievers, and civilization changers. And they all faced obstacles that could probably stop any one of us. But not them….

…[Ray] Bradbury’s success and stature were unequalled, but this was not a given, considering his journey. He reached his teens and then young adulthood during the Great Depression, and his family’s finances were in a bad way when he graduated high school. As a result, he could not attend college. That didn’t stop young Ray.

“When I graduated from high school,” he said, “it was during the depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.” He added, “Libraries raised me. I am indeed a child of the libraries.”

And the rest has been history: Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man. Who hasn’t read them?

(5) SPEAKING OF THAT LIBRARY. Bradbury’s hometown held this event in August: “Waukegan salutes famous son Ray Bradbury at Dandelion Wine Festival” reports the Chicago Tribune.

…Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan on Aug. 22, 1920, and died June 5, 2012. He was an author and screenwriter in fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery. Some of his most famous works include “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and his short-story collection, “The Martian Chronicles.”

“It’s really exciting. He got his love for writing and reading at the Carnegie Library — which is going to be opening this fall,” she said. “The park district had bought the old library and has been working furiously on renovations and restoring the library and adding on to it. Re-creating the library where Ray Bradbury went as a kid and was in the library for hours. This is an exciting time to celebrate. He is a hometown hero.”

The Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie will feature the Bradbury room, which will be designed to look the way it was when the author frequented the library as a child. It will contain his personal papers willed to the Waukegan Public Library and an interactive element to the permanent exhibit…

(6) CONNIE WILLIS. Connie Willis’ novel Roswell included this dedication page, (Click for larger images.)

(7) SOMEBODY’S GONNA HAVE TO GO BACK AND GET A SHITLOAD OF DIMES! “Ray Bradbury used 98 dimes to write the first draft of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ on a coin-operated typewriter” – Boing Boing counted.

Before PCs and word processors, coin-operated typewriters were an option for people who couldn’t afford their own machines. You could find them in places like train stations, libraries, and hotels. These typewriters offered a pay-as-you-go typing service, making them accessible to travelers, students, and writers.

To use the typewriter, you would insert a coin or token, and it would unlock for a specific period of time. Once the time was up, the machine would lock again, requiring another coin to continue typing. Typically, these typewriters had a timer mechanism that would stop the carriage return when time ran out, ensuring that users paid for every minute of use.

In 1949, Ray Bradbury typed a short story, “The Fireman,” on a coin-operated typewriter. He spent $9.80, which is equivalent to around $110 today, over a span of nine days in the basement of UCLA’s Powell Library to complete his manuscript. The story was the basis for his novel, Fahrenheit 451….

(8) YOU DON’T SAY! “Sir Elton John is stunned to learn the true story behind his famous Rocket Man hit” claims Daily Mail.

Sir Elton said: ‘Rocket Man was our first ever number one record I think. And it was on the Honky Chateau record. 

‘It was a pretty easy song to write a melody to, because it’s a song about space so it’s quite a spacious song.’

The hit was certified as Double Platinum and was listed in Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 songs of all time.

It’s space theme is obvious, with many comparing it to David Bowie’s Space Oddity.  

But Bernie [Taupin] then revealed an additional source of inspiration. 

He said: ‘It was actually a song inspired by Ray Bradbury from his book of science-fiction short stories called The Illustrated Man. 

‘In that book there was a story called The Rocket Man, which was about how astronauts in the future would become sort of an everyday job so I kinda took that idea and ran with it.’

Shocked, his friend replied: ‘Do you know, I never knew that…’ 

(9) BOTH FEET ON THE GROUND. Michael Caines’ review of Remembrance: Selected correspondence of Ray Bradbury, edited by Jonathan R. Eller, starts with an ironic anecdote: “Remembrance: Selected correspondence of Ray Bradbury” in the Times Literary Supplement.

The joke was not lost on him: Ray Bradbury, whose imagination was always winging away to Mars or the fantastical future, suffered for much of his life from a fear of flying. Flying by aeroplane, at least. “Balloons are more my speed”, he confessed in 1966 to François Truffaut, who had urged him to come to the Venice Film Festival for a screening of Fahrenheit 451.

A couple of years later Bradbury had to decline another invitation, this time to receive two literary awards in Florida. One of them was for his essay “An Impatient Gulliver Above Our Roofs”, published in Life, which he had written after spending some time with astronauts at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. He had travelled to Houston to meet “all those fast people”, he explained, “via a very slow train”. But his schedule at the time of the awards was “full to the brim”, and getting to Florida, for this non-flyer, “would be a task that would put strain on Jules Verne’s hero in Around the World in 80 Days”. He suggested that one of those fast people should stand in for him.

(10) RAY’S RUSSIAN FANS. “Behold Soviet Animations of Ray Bradbury Stories” at Open Culture.  

Sergei Bondarchuk directed an 8‑hour film adaptation of War and Peace (1966–67), which ended up winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Picture. When he was in Los Angeles as a guest of honor at a party, Hollywood royalty like John Wayne, John Ford, and Billy Wilder lined up to meet the Russian filmmaker. But the only person that Bondarchuk was truly excited to meet was Ray Bradbury. Bondarchuk introduced the author to the crowd of bemused A‑listers as “your greatest genius, your greatest writer!”…

… Another one of Bradbury’s shorts, There Will Come Soft Rain, has been adapted by Uzbek director Nazim Tyuhladziev (also spelled Nozim To’laho’jayev). The story is about an automated house that continues to cook and clean for a family of four unaware that they all perished in a nuclear explosion. While Bradbury’s version works as a comment on both American consumerism and general Cold War dread, Tyuhladziev’s version goes for a more religious tact. The robot that runs the house looks like a mechanical snake (Garden of Eden, anyone?). The robot and the house become undone by an errant white dove. The animation might not have the polish of a Disney movie, but it is surprisingly creepy and poignant….

(11) PLAYING WITH FIRE. Here’s a 1981 op-ed by Ray. (Click for larger image.)

(12) CENTENNIAL DOCUMENTARY. Four years ago, WaukeganTV produced a documentary for the Bradbury centennial: “Bradbury 100 – A Green Town Story”.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian and Alan Baumler for these stories.]

Pixel Scroll 7/27/24 The Roads Must Scroll

Posted on by
24

(1) MONTELEONE’S NEW SUBSTACK REPEATS OLD MESSAGE. Author Thomas F. Monteleone, who early in 2023 was ousted from the Horror Writers Association for violating its Code of Conduct, today launched a Substack newsletter with “Allow Me To Introduce Myself”, which rehearses many of the views that he was expressing on Facebook and in video interviews when HWA removed him from membership.

Sheena Forsberg also has screencaps of the newsletter in a thread on X.com: “Oh.. JFC. Tom Monteleone’s back.. I suspect this wasn’t what your friends and colleagues meant when they urged you to go the substack route.”.

(2) CASHING IN ON FANHISTORY. [Item by Chris Barkley.] A copy of the pamphlet that triggered the Exclusion Act at the first Worldcon in 1939, which yesterday’s Scroll reported was up for auction, went for $750 reports Stellar Books & Ephemera.

(3) 1929: THE GENRE GETS A NAME. Jim Emerson’s year-by-year history Futures Past will reach 1929 in the latest volume due in August.

FUTURES PAST is dedicated to all those amazing people who helped to shape our modern world by giving us a sense of wonder, by showing us possible futures and addressing social issues long before they touched the mainstream, and by simply daring to ask, “what if…” Our goal is to keep alive the people, works and memories of a great genre and introduce them to a whole new generation of readers, thinkers and dreamers.

You can download an excerpt: “The Stirrings of a New Genre”

…One of the feature articles for 1929 is an extensive look at the evolution of the term “science fiction” which was not called that until this year.  In fact, the word “science” was not coined until the early 1800s, and that is where this article begins….

(4) STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES Q&A. In the New York Times: “Stephen Graham Jones, Author of ‘I Was a Teenage Slasher’, on His Reading Life”. (Gift link bypasses Times paywall.)

How do you sign books for your fans?

I cross my name out then write it for real. I can’t use markers on grabby paper. That raspy sound makes me crawl out of my skin like Mr. Krabs, molting….

What do your English department colleagues at the University of Colorado Boulder make of your horror writing?

Lot of them read it, and talk to me about it. It’s nice to work with faculty without that inbuilt prejudice against genre. Or, I’m a little bit tall, so it’s tricky to look down your nose at me. Unless you lean just way back….

(5) SHARING EXPERTISE. “Show up, love the process, don’t follow trends: insider tips on how to write a book” – the Guardian publicizes a creative writing podcast.

The novelist and podcaster Elizabeth Day, host of the How to Fail series, has created a “podclass” to answer those questions and more, hosted by three publishing pros: novelist Sara Collins, agent Nelle Andrew and publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove. Here, the four share their key advice for getting a book out into the world.

One of Sara Collins’ tips is:

3. Pay attention

Writing is a way of filtering the world. The best writers are the ones who make an art of paying attention, who find joy in being curious. Curate a notebook (to be honest, in my case it’s mostly in the notes app on my phone). Make a note of anything that strikes you. One of the best feelings about being in the midst of a project is how you can become a tuning fork, alive to the material that wants to find its way in. Everything is copy, as Nora Ephron said.

Episode 1 of How To… Write A Book is available at Apple Podcasts and many other places.

Sara Collins is the bestselling novelist and screenwriter currently serving as a judge for the 2024 Booker Prize. Her debut novel, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, won the Costa book awards in 2019 and she later wrote the TV screenplay. Nelle Andrew is a literary agent and former Agent of the Year at the

British Book Awards, and Sharmaine Lovegrove is the co-founder and managing director of Dialogue Books, an inclusive imprint at a major publishing house. Each of them is an expert in one stage of the publishing journey…. and all are literary nerds (in the best possible way).

(6) SMOKED PENGUIN WILL NOT BE ON THE MENU. “’The Penguin’ Comic-Con Activation Evacuated After Fire Breaks Out” reports Variety.

A fire broke out in the building hosting the San Diego Comic-Con activation for the HBO series ”The Penguin,” causing the venue to be evacuated on Friday evening. The alarm was sounded in the midst of the press preview for the activation. Members of the media, including reporters from Variety, were escorted outside by officials at roughly 7:30 PM. Update: The activation is now back up and running. There were no injuries.

A representative for the San Diego Police Department confirms that a three-alarm fire was reported at the venue on 5th Avenue and E Street in the city’s downtown area. The fire began in a Brazilian steakhouse that was also in the building….

… The multi-level installation for “The Penguin” involved an elaborate, immersive experience that put attendees inside the seedy and cavernous criminal hang-out dive known as the Iceberg Lounge, first seen in the 2022 film “The Batman.” The HBO crime series is a spin-off of the Matt Reeves-directed blockbuster, with Colin Farrell reprising his role as the villainous gangster Oswald Cobblepot. The Comic-Con activation represents the most lavish promotional push yet for the DC Comics series….

(7) STAR WARS AUCTION ITEMS GO FOR UP TO SEVEN FIGURES. Variety listens to the cash register chime as “’Star Wars’ Y-Wing Miniature, Princess Leia Bikini Sold at Auction”.

A filming miniature of a Y-Wing Starfighter helmed by Gold Leader, who aided Luke Skywalker in destroying the Death Star in 1977’s “Star Wars: A New Hope,” sold for a whopping $1.55 million Friday at Heritage’s July Entertainment Auction.

Another highlight of the collection was a Princess Leia gold bikini costume from Jabba the Hutt’s scenes in 1983’s “Return of the Jedi,” which sold for $175,000. The ensemble includes seven pieces from Industrial Light & Magic chief sculptor Richard Miller’s collection–a bikini brassiere, bikini plates, hip rings, an armlet and bracelet….

… Other items featured at the Heritage auction included final movie poster artwork for “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” by Bob Peak, which sold for $106,250. Paramount’s 1986 sci-fi film was directed by Leonard Nimoy, who also played Spock. Additionally, a piece of John Alvin’s concept art for his 1982 “Blade Runner” movie poster fetched $100,000….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 27, 1968 — Farah Mendlesohn, 56.

By Paul Weimer: I would not say that Farah Mendlesohn is twice the science fiction reviewer and critic that I am. I would say that she is perhaps three or four times the science fiction reviewer and critic that I am. Mendlesohn has a strength and depth to her analysis and writing that I can’t even approach even on the best of days. She remains and will probably always remain the lightspeed barrier of criticism that I will never ever reach, but I will still try.

Farah Mendelsohn. Photo by Scott Edelman

Her best work, her deepest and perhaps her most essential work is her book on the work of Robert Heinlein, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein. Although many on the far right hate it for not being hagiographic enough about Heinlein and his work, I have found her views instructive, interesting, and more than one occasion has caused me to reassess what I had just read myself. I got into a pattern over on the SFF Audio podcast where we were doing Heinleins regularly. Each time, I dipped into the Pleasant Profession to see what Farah had to say, and each time, I came away with a new perspective and new point of view, even with books such as Farnham’s Freehold. The Pleasant Profession is a mandatory read if you want to dig deeper into any Heinlein title that you are thinking of reading or re-reading. It amazes me that it had to be crowdfunded to come into existence, Mendlesohn has done plenty of other publications, of course, including the Cambridge Guide to Science Fiction, works on Diana Wynne Jones, A short history of fantasy and plenty more. I think of her work as my gateway (and perhaps yours, reader) into the academic side of science fiction, a country I will never enter, but perhaps can wave at from not far from the border.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) BRINGING UP BABY. A snippet of fascinating comics history in “The Strafford – 777 West End Avenue” at Daytonian in Manhattan.

…Iancu Urn Liber was born in Eastern Romania where he suffered intense antisemitism.  Upon immigrating to America, he changed his name to Jack Lieber.  In the spring of 1920, Jack married Celia Solomon and they moved into The Strafford.  Two years later, on December 28, 1922, they welcomed their first son, Stanley Martin Lieber.  Like his father had done, Stanley would change his name, becoming Stan Lee–the creative leader of Marvel comic books….

The same article includes an unrelated bit of interesting Titanic history.

(11) STAR TREK NEWS. Variety was at Comic-Con when they unveiled “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Section 31, Lower Decks First Looks”.

The “Star Trek” Universe uncloaked a litany of first looks during its epic panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday, including panels for the third season of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” the fifth and final season of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” and the first television feature film in the franchise, “Star Trek: Section 31.”

(12) CREATURE COMMANDOS. “Creature Commandos Teaser Unveiled, New DC Studios Logo” – Deadline sets the frame.

James Gunn beamed in from the Superman set Friday at Comic-Con to show off the new teaser for Max’s animated series Creature Commandos, which he wrote all seven episodes on. Premiere date is December.

In the footage… Viola Davis reprises her role as Amanda Waller. She walks Captain Flag down to inner prison areas where we’re introduced to a bunch that’s crazier than the Suicide Squad: Weasel, The Bride, G.I. Robot, Dr. Phosphorus, Frankenstein and Nina Mazursky.

“These assholes aren’t human,” Waller tells Rick Flag. G.I. Robot later pops up, “It’s been oh., so long since G.I. Robot sent Nazis back to hell!”…

(13) SDCC’S SIMPSONS PANEL FEATURES VIDEO OF KAMALA HARRIS QUOTING LINE FROM SHOW.  It’s not a new video, as you can learn from reading beyond the clickbait headline. “Kamala Harris Surprises ‘Simpsons’ Fans With Message at Comic-Con” in The Hollywood Reporter.

The Simpsons panel at San Diego Comic-Con saved a final surprise for last, as the event ended with a resurfaced video message from Vice President Kamala Harris.

After introducing the final clip as coming from a “super fan,” Matt Groening — who created the animated Fox series that is soon to launch its 36th season — set up footage of a laughing Harris delivering a well-known line from a previous “Treehouse of Horror” episode. The clip was recorded years ago by a group of University of Chicago students who were tasked with getting an elected official to recite the Simpsons quote.

“We must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom,” Harris said in the clip. It led to big cheers from the crowd, who appeared to assume that the moment was filmed for the panel, given that no context was given about the clip.

The quote is from season eight’s “Treehouse of Horror VII” that aired Oct. 27, 1996, just ahead of that year’s presidential election between then-President Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. The episode’s segment features aliens Kang and Kodos impersonating the two candidates, with the Clinton imposter delivering the muddled message during a public event….

(14) KEPLER’S LEGACY. Phys.org explains how “Kepler’s 1607 pioneering sunspot sketches solve solar mysteries 400 years later”.

“Kepler’s legacy extends beyond his observational prowess; it informs ongoing debates about the transition from regular solar cycles to the Maunder Minimum, a period of extremely reduced solar activity and anomalous hemispheric asymmetry between 1645 and 1715,” Hayakawa explained.

“By situating Kepler’s findings within broader solar activity reconstructions, scientists gain crucial context for interpreting changes in solar behavior in this pivotal period marking a transition from regular solar cycles to the grand solar minimum.”

“Kepler contributed many historical benchmarks in astronomy and physics in the 17th century, leaving his legacy even in the space age,” said Hayakawa.

“Here, we add to that by showing that Kepler’s sunspot records predate the existing telescopic sunspot records from 1610 by several years. His sunspot sketches serve as a testament to his scientific acumen and perseverance in the face of technological constraints.”

Sabrina Bechet, a researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, added, “As one of my colleagues told me, it is fascinating to see historical figures’ legacy records convey crucial scientific implications to modern scientists even centuries later.

“I doubt if they could have imagined their records would benefit the scientific community much later, well after their deaths. We still have a lot to learn from these historical figures, apart from the history of science itself. In the case of Kepler, we are standing on the shoulders of a scientific giant.”

(15) THAT EYE GUY. “’Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Season 2 Trailer: More Sauron” is Deadline’s simple verdict.

Amazon Prime, once again, spared no expense in banging the drums –literally– for its hit series, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power at Comic-Con. Today’s Hall H panel fired up with composer Bear McCreary leading a big drum percussion and choir with themes from Season 2 of the hit series.

That’s not all — an orc stormed on stage screaming his support of Adar. Also, you know it’s a special moment in Hall H when they open up the massive wrap-around 180-degree-plus screens.

Last night, Amazon celebrated the Aug. 29 launch of Season 2 with a cast and showrunner reception decked out ala Lord of the Rings with a golden flowers and dark forests theme at Venue 808 last night before stirring up a 6,500-strong filled Hall H with the new trailer….

As for the trailer – the YouTube blurb says:

About The Rings of Power Season 2: Sauron has returned. Cast out by Galadriel, without army or ally, the rising Dark Lord must now rely on his own cunning to rebuild his strength and oversee the creation of the Rings of Power, which will allow him to bind all the peoples of Middle-earth to his sinister will. Building on Season 1’s epic scope and ambition, Season 2 of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power plunges even its most beloved and vulnerable characters into a rising tide of darkness, challenging each to find their place in a world that is increasingly on the brink of calamity. Elves and dwarves, orcs and men, wizards and Harfoots… as friendships are strained and kingdoms begin to fracture, the forces of good will struggle ever more valiantly to hold on to what matters to them most of all… each other.

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