(0) This Scroll will be short because all day my connection to File 770 has been slower than molasses in – the month we’re in, come to think of it. Last night I received an email from my ISP customer support full of advice about what to do to optimize my blog. First on the list was updating my PHP. So I went and pushed that button. The update failed. Not for the first time. Which is why I’ve never updated beyond 7.4 come to think of it. Let’s get on with something that is news.
(1) FANS LOSE ALTADENA HOME. Bon and Tim Callahan, two well-known figures in the Mythopoeic Society, have lost their house in Altadena to the fire. Bon sent the following message to Sourdough Jackson saying “Distribute this freely”:
Update! Tim was down in Pasadena, I was at the park near JPL. I went down in AM, we reunited with Ari and Richard. Ari directed us to All Saints Episcopal Church. Pasadena Humane Soc taking in small pets.
Horrible smoke all day. Fire burned down into the flatlands part of Altadena. It’s gutted.
We are wiped out.
I MADE SURE WE GOT THE COMPUTERS OUT!
I failed to bring the Olympus and Gail’s scope [camera and small telescope]. And much more.
All my art and photography, my writing, music collection, kaput.
So we are spending night at church, going to write them a donation check before we go to wherever tomorrow.
(2) SCARY NIGHT. John Goodwin, President of Authors Services Inc. and Galaxy Press, and host of the Writers & Illustrators of the Future Podcast, spent last night safeguarding their offices while watching the nearby Hollywood Hills fire. Goodwin told Facebook readers today:
Wow! What a night. At about 5:30pm, Emily and I started hearing a bunch of fire trucks on Hollywood Blvd. We walked up to the roof of our office building in Hollywood and saw this raging about 1/2 mile away.
We spent the next few hours with the rest of the staff hosing down the building and all the surrounding plants.
Winds were gusting to 40mph and we got soaked as the water would just fly back all over us. Winds finally died down and the fire was rapidly gotten under control. (Unlike the others which are still 0% contained!)
The fire is in its last stages of being put out as you can see in the last photo.
Emily and I gonna go home now. Tonight the electricity is on at our home as compared to last night when it was off until 5:30am!
We are safe, if not worn out!
(3) WON’T BE FOOLED AGAIN. You know the joke that goes, “Good judgment is based on experience. And how do you get experience? From bad judgment.” Mark Evanier, having learned it the hard way, now exercises good judgment about convention programs, as he explains in “When Panels Go Wrong” at News from ME.
…Then I asked the audience, “How many of you have read books by Robert Heinlein?” And you can probably guess what the response was…
5. No one raised a hand.
Not a one. Not one person in that room — in the audience or on the stage — had read anything by Robert Heinlein. A lady who worked for the hotel came by to fill up water glasses for each of us and I’d bet my house that she hadn’t read anything by Robert Heinlein either….
(4) MORE ABOUT MALZBERG. The Guardian’s “Barry Malzberg obituary” by Steve Holland, published today, certainly can’t be accused of being a hagiography.
… Malzberg had aimed high, hoping to write like Mailer but emulate the success of Philip Roth and win the National Book award by the age of 26. Indifferent editors turned down more than 100 of his stories, and Malzberg was already 26 when he sold The Bed (as Nathan Herbert, 1966) to Wildcat magazine, a tenth-rate Playboy knockoff.
He struggled on until, finally, We’re Coming Through the Window (1967), a comic time-travel tale, sold to Galaxy, under the byline KM O’Donnell. A breakthrough came with Final War (1968), the story of a soldier trapped in an endless, meaningless war….
(5) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
January 9, 1980 — The Lathe of Heaven film
Forty-five years ago, New York City public television station WNET’s Experimental TV Lab project premiered their adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven. Based off the Ursula Le Guin novel of the same name, it was directed by David Loxton and Fred Barzyk.
It should be noted Le Guin, by her own writings later, was involved in the casting, script planning, script editing, and filming of the production. Thus, we’ll give scripting credits to her, Diane English and Roger Swaybill. Primary cast was Bruce Davison, Kevin Conway (earlier in Slaughterhouse-Five as Roland Weary) and Margaret Avery. It was budgeted at a quarter of a million dollars.
The Lathe of Heaven became one of the two highest-rated shows that season on PBS that year. Michael Moore writing for Ares magazine liked it saying that “The best science fiction, such as Lathe, examines humankind’s place in the universe and the products and problems created by intelligence.” It was nominated for a Hugo at Denvention Two which had Ed Bryant as Toastmaster, the year The Empire Strikes Back won. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a seventy-two percent rating.
The Lathe of Heaven is the most-requested program in PBS history. It took twelve years to clear up rights to rebroadcast it and that involved replacing the Beatles music with a cover band version. In 2000, The Lathe of Heaven was finally rebroadcast and released to video and DVD.
I’ve seen this version several times and remember as being rather well-crafted but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, probably since it came out. So I asked Paul what he remembered of it, “The adaptation very vividly brings the novella to life. The movie if anything enhances the poignant and melancholy ending of the revelation of what is really going on, and the mixed blessing of the ‘final state’ of reality. I hesitate to say that it is an improvement on the novella, but I think it is a refinement of the original work, Le Guin distilling down her original novella further. I think that the PBS adaptation might even dare to be the preferred version–I sure would have loved to have asked Le Guin about the two in that regard. There was a remake done of the movie and all I can say about that is–skip it.”
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
January 9, 1931 — Algis Budrys. (Died 2008.)
By Paul Weimer: A Swiss army knife of the science fiction and literary fields. Algis Budrys tried to do it all in his career….and probably succeeded by any reasonable metric. He started off as a science fiction writer, writing numerous short stories, and novellas in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, and moved on from there.
Who?, which was turned into a film is probably the most famous of his works or the one that has still the most resonance, today. It was turned into a film in the 1970’s and shown on the BBC (and as it turns out, WPIX) in the 70’s and 80’s. Dr. Martino is injured in an accident in East Germany and is encased, including his entire head, in a metal suit. (It looks laughable today, almost silly). Questions of identity revolve around Martino…is he really Martino? Is he someone from the other side of the Iron Curtain posing as the scientist? (Cold War, remember!). Is he really Martino, or was, but his cyborg existence means he’s really someone else now? Elliott Gould plays the guy trying to figure it all out. Taut and interesting.
My favorite of his, though, is not Who?, but, rather, is Rogue Moon. It’s really a novella by conventional standards today although it probably was published as a novel. While my colleague and head honcho of SF Signal John DeNardo, as I recall, only found it middling, Rogue Moon, when I picked it up, I found to be a fantastic classic Big Dumb Object book…a mysterious alien installation on the moon, which our protagonists find is a maze of deathtraps that are explored by means of telepresence clones from people running their copies on Earth. But the whole purpose of the labyrinth and the people journeying through it…that, that would be telling.
Beyond his SF writing, did much more. Budrys wrote and published fanzines. He wrote criticism and reviews (and probably is better known for that than his fiction these days). But that’s not all. Budrys edited science fiction magazines, and was the publisher of Tomorrow Speculative Fiction (which he also wrote for, under different names) and lots more. He taught at Clarion, was part of the Writers of the Future program, and I am probably forgetting some of wide and varied career, each of which could take up this space in discussing any of his individual talents. Again, he was a Swiss army knife of a SF personage, with a lot to recommend him and his excellent work and contributions to the SF field. He died in 2008.
(7) HIGHBROW PARODY. Polygon reviews a sendup of a classic computer game: “Doomguy explores art in recreation of classic Doom level”.
Who knew Doomguy was so cultured? Doom: The Gallery Experience is a silly little recreation of Doom, but with wine and art instead of demons in hell. You can play it for free right on itch.io. Created by Filippo Meozzi and Liam Stone, Doom: The Gallery Experience is described as a parody of the “wonderfully pretentious world of gallery openings.” And it’s beautiful. Doomguy, donning glasses instead of a helmet, casually sips wine and contemplates a variety of art from different cultures and eras. You’ll find some money laying around, used to purchase items in the gift shop, as well as hors d’oeuvres that’ll fill up your cheese meter. (Essential!)
To put it simply, it’s a new age, and E1M1: Hangar has been renovated for the art lovers. Beyond contemplating the beauty of art recreated in the style of Doom, you can also click links attached to each piece to learn more on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website….
(8) SLOW-MOVING LAVA. Ellis Nelson reviews “ERUPTION”, written by James Patterson based on Michael Chrichton’s idea.
Recently I discovered that one of my favorite authors had left behind an unpublished book. Michael Crichton died suddenly in 2008, and I’ve missed his scientific and historical thrillers. I really looked forward to diving into what would probably be his last book. The problem is that Crichton left behind the idea for the book, and I haven’t been able to determine if he wrote any of the actual book. His widow entrusted James Patterson to write/complete the novel….
… The idea is solid and apparently Crichton gathered notes and research for the project for years. The problem is that this book doesn’t read like the fast-paced thrillers Michael Crichton was known for. The first eighty percent of the book is a slow slog watching bureaucrats maneuver for the impending disaster. Things do pick up in the last twenty percent of the book, which is where all the action occurs. It’s a shame the reader must wait that long….
(9) NOT GENRE AT ALL. On the other hand, think how many fans eat these cookies. “Girl Scouts are retiring two cookie flavors: S’mores and Toast-Yay!” – NPR breaks the news.
The two soon-to-be departed cookie flavors leaving the Girl Scout lineup may not even be ones you’ve heard of, unless there’s a Girl Scout in your family.
“At the close of the 2025 cookie season, two beloved cookie flavors, Girl Scout S’mores and Toast-Yay!, will be retired,” Girl Scouts of the USA announced in a January 7 press release.
Girl Scout S’mores, based on the classic campfire snack, were first introduced in the 2017 season. Toast-Yays, inspired by French toast flavors and stamped with the Scout trefoil, popped into existence in 2021….
(10) OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS? “Jurassic Park Remake With Realistic Raptors Goes Viral” – Newsweek has details.
Jurassic Park fan has remade one of the most iconic scenes from the film with scientifically accurate dinosaurs.
CoolioArt, a self-confessed dinosaur enthusiast and 3D animator, updated the velociraptors using fresh information learned in the three decades since Jurassic Park‘s 1993 release.
Instead of the completely hairless, lizard-like creatures created by Spielberg and his production, CoolioArt gives them a dense plumage of dark feathers that come together at the elbows to form rudimentary wings. This results in a bird-like look, which is apparently how they actually appeared in the Early Cretaceous Period, 145.5 million to 99.6 million years ago….
… The scene in question takes place near the end of the film, and shows Tim, Lex and Alan hunted in the visitor’s centre by a team of raptors. Take note, however, that the animal depicted by the artist in this remake is not a velociraptor.
“They’re an oversized Deinonychus Antirrhopus,” writes CoolioArt under their video on YouTube, “as was the case in the books and original film, just incorrectly lumped into the genus Velociraptor, making them ‘Velociraptor Antirrhopus’. Not Velociraptor mongoliensis, the animal we know as velociraptor.”
Why the change of dinosaur? Velociraptors measured a tiny 1.6 ft high and weighed just 35lbs, so if they wouldn’t have been much of a threat to humans. The real Deinonychus was also smaller than this depiction, but still very much able to fight a full-sized adult person.
Here’s a longer clip: “Jurassic Park With SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE Raptors [Animation] Part 1”.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Paul Weimer, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
