Tag Archives: UFO Publishing

Pixel Scroll 3/21/23 Is This The Real File? Is This Just Fan Activity? Caught In A Pixel, No Escape From 770

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(1) FUTURE SF’S ONLINE “ANTHOZINE”. UFO Publishing and Future Affairs Administration has launched a new project they term an “anthozine”.  

These stories will appear in The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI hybrid anthology/zine project. They will be published as a book on November 14, 2023, and gradually posted to the Future SF website over the course of the following months.

The antho’s preview story was posted today, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Silicon Hearts”.

“Next up is Johnny Zepter.” Steve called up the figures. At her own screen, Kate opened the spreadsheet and readied herself to make notes.

“This week, our good buddy Zee submitted four hundred and seventy-three stories to eight different outlets, of which four were accepted.” Steve nodded in appreciation. “Nice work Jay-Zee. That’s another forty quid in the kitty.”

“One percent takeup,” Kate noted. “We’re hitting the mark nicely there.”

“People’s tastes don’t change, right?” Steve said. Johnny Zepter wrote space adventure. He had a stable of half a dozen two-fisted, square-jawed action types who encountered alien planets or artifacts, defeated the locals with human ingenuity or just by punching them in what they had for faces, discovered something superficially revelatory and made a witty quip about it. Four hundred times this week alone….

Preorder the book via the links at the bottom of the story, or support them via Patreon.

(2) IN THE RUNNING. In the SFWA officer elections, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is a write-in candidate for director-at-large he told Facebook readers today.

SFWA members have until April 11 to vote in the 2023 Officer Elections.

(3) SO WHAT HAPPENED? Very early Sunday morning during last weekend’s Furnal Equinox convention the committee sent this tweet:

And later that day this update was posted to the convention’s website which only added to the mystery: “March 19, 2023 – Early Morning Disturbance”.

Update:  What we know so far..

Early this morning there was an incident near the south tower elevators that created a disturbance which spread throughout the convention level at approximately 2 am.

The events occurred as follows:

• Attendees moved down the escalators away from the south tower

• They moved across the lobby and then back upstairs towards the sky bridge to the convention center 

• Hotel security called Toronto Police Services (TPS) immediately following the incident

• The Nightingales responded shortly after hearing the attendees

• Together with the Toronto Police Service, they secured the area

• They then performed a sweep of the area

• A lockdown was initiated, and the gaming lounge was evacuated

• An “all clear” was called within two hours after no immediate threats were located.

The investigation is still ongoing. At this time we do not have more details, but will provide updates as we investigate further. Please allow us to continue to gather information and avoid spreading rumours. 

We have been assured that the convention area is safe and Furnal Equinox attendees may enjoy the final day of the event as planned.  If you have any concerns now or in the future, please feel free to contact there Nightingales in person or via email at [email protected]. Your health and safety is our top priority.

We would also like to thank the Westin Hotel security team and Toronto Police Service for their quick response and assistance on this matter. And a thank you to all attendees for your cooperation and patience.

So what happened? “Sir Tillfred Laurier” knows, having had some too-personal experience with the offender. Twitter thread starts here.

Now have you figured out the answer? There’s video of Nakedman in action on Twitter here. Or there’s a version with “censored” blocks over the peccant parts, plus furry Odin Wolf’s commentary, here.

(4) INDUSTRY PRAISE. Publishing Perspectives reports the “British Book Awards: Trade and ‘Book of the Year’ Shortlists”. Fiction and children’s fiction are strong on genre nominations. The shortlists for those categories are shown below.

…British Book Awards—sometimes called the Nibbies, as the logo reminds us—are a brand of The Bookseller, the United Kingdom’s news medium of record for the publishing industry. There are 29 award categories. …

Fiction

  • Love Marriage by Monica Ali (Virago, Little, Brown)
  • Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes (Mantle, Pan Macmillan)
  • Fairy Tale by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette)
  • Babel by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, HarperCollins)
  • The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press, Headline Publishing Group)
  • Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (Picador, Pan Macmillan)

Children’s Fiction

  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Diper Överlöde by Jeff Kinney (Puffin, Penguin Random House Children’s)
  • Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun by Tọlá Okogwu (Simon & Schuster Children’s Books UK)
  • Tyger by SF Said, illustrated by Dave McKean (David Fickling Books)
  • The First to Die at the End by Adam Silvera (Simon & Schuster Children’s Books UK)
  • Skandar and the Unicorn Thief by A.F. Steadman (Simon & Schuster Children’s Books UK)
  • Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to Being Good by Louie Stowell (Walker Books)

(5) SWIPER, NO SWIPING.  Publishers Weekly reports that “At Hearing, Judge Appears Skeptical of Internet Archive’s Scanning and Lending Program”. He does sound dubious.

After nearly three years of legal wrangling, the Internet Archive’s scanning and lending program finally got its day in court on Monday, March 20. And if Judge John G. Koeltl’s questions are any indication, the Internet Archive is facing an uphill battle.

Over the course of a 90-minute hearing on the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment, Koeltl appeared skeptical that there was sufficient basis in law to support the Internet Archive’s scanning and lending of print library books under a legally untested protocol known as controlled digital lending, and unconvinced that the case is fundamentally about the future of library lending, as Internet Archive attorneys have argued.

“To say that this case is about the ability of a library to lend a book that it owns ignores whether the library has a right to copy wholesale the book,” Koeltl offered at one point during an extended exchange with IA attorney Joseph Gratz. “Does a library have the right to lend a book that it owns? Of course,” the judge conceded. But the question at the heart of this case, he added, is “whether a library has the right to make a digital copy of a book that it owns and then lend that digital copy, which it has made without a license and without permission” to patrons. “To formulate the issue in this case as simply ‘does the library have a right to lend a book that it owns’ belies the issue in the case,” Koeltl said….

… But Koeltl peppered [the Internet Archive’s attorney] Gratz with questions throughout the hearing, appearing deeply skeptical that the Internet Archive’s fair use case was properly supported by case law, and unconvinced that the publishers’ market for library e-books was not impacted by libraries choosing to scan print books under CDL protocols.

“A library whether they hold a physical copy or not, has the ability to license an e-book from a publisher. Rather than pay that licensing fee to the publisher some libraries choose to make their own copy and to lend that copy. Why isn’t it self-evident that that deprives the publisher of the fees that the publisher could otherwise obtain from licensing an e-book to that library?” Koeltl asked.

“It is because with respect to the copies at issue in the CDL situation the question is not between OverDrive and nothing. The question is between physically lending a book to a particular patron, for which no payment would be due to a publisher, or digitally lending that book to the patron,” Gratz replied, adding that to find harm “there would need to be a reason to think that the publishers were worse off than the situation in which in which the fair use did not occur at all.” In fact, library e-book lending has grown throughout the existence of the IA’s scanning program, and actually surged during the height of the pandemic….

(6) GOING PAPERLESS? This news item seems like a parallel issue: “Students speak out about one university’s plans to have a digital-only library” at NPR.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

What’s a library like without books? My kid’s school library removed most of the books, creating a space to use in other ways. And apparently, the university system in Vermont wanted this, too. They proposed taking library books off the shelves of at least three campus libraries and offering digital copies instead. That would save money, but…

ROSIE PHELAN: I was shocked. I was really taken aback when I heard that that was happening.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Rosie Phelan is an English major who works in the library at Castleton University. That’s one of three colleges merging to create a new Vermont State University.

PHELAN: You go to a college and you expect to have these resources, and the next thing you know, they’re just taken away.

INSKEEP: Phelan insists students still use physical books….

(7) JEOPARDY! Tonight’s episode of Jeopardy! devoted an entire category to science fiction books. Andrew Porter noted these two entries gave contestants problems.

Category: Books: The Future is Now

Answer: He saw 2024 as a Hellish wasteland in his 1969 short story “A Boy & His Dog”

No one could ask, “Who is Harlan Ellison?”

***

In 2025, game shows are to the death in “The Running Man”, written by Stephen King under this pseudonym

No one could ask, “Who is Richard Bachman?”

(8) TAX SEASON. Lincoln Michel encourages authors to “Write-Off What You Know” at Counter Craft.

Business Income Means Business Deductions

On the one hand, 1099 income seems like a raw deal. You don’t get taxes taken out for you like at a standard job, meaning you owe more at tax time. And you even pay higher taxes in the FICA category. (FICA taxes include Social Security and Medicare. These are paid 50% by your employer and 50% by you. But if you’re a self-employed business, then you pay both halves.)

OTOH, you can and should lower your freelance tax bill with business deductions. Just as a regular company takes deductions, you get to take them as a solo business. The money you can write off lowers the income that is taxed, thus lowering your tax bill….

And from there he goes into more tax return issues.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1965 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is one of my favorite SF works. I knew it had won a well deserved Hugo at NyCon 3 but I hadn’t realized it was nominated the previous year at Tricon. Isn’t that a tad unusual?

It had been first published in If magazine in five parts starting in the December 1965 issue. It was then published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1966.  The Penguin Publishing Group has it for sale at the usual suspects as does what I suspect is one pirate publisher as it has no copyright information. 

Now I really think that everyone here has read this novel but keeping with our very firm policy of absolutely no spoilers, I won’t say anything beyond the fact that I think that this is one of his best novels and I’ve throughly enjoyed it each and every time I’ve experienced it. Characters, stetting and story — what’s not to really like here? 

So now to our most superb Beginning…

I SEE IN Lunaya Pravda that Luna City Council has passed on first reading a bill to examine, license, inspect—and tax—public food vendors operating inside municipal pressure. I see also is to be mass meeting tonight to organize “Sons of Revolution” talk-talk. 

My old man taught me two things: “Mind own business” and “Always cut cards.” Politics never tempted me. But on Monday 13 May 2075 I was in computer room of Lunar Authority Complex, visiting with computer boss Mike while other machines whispered among themselves. Mike was not official name; I had nicknamed him for Mycroft Holmes, in a story written by Dr. Watson before he founded IBM. This story character would just sit and think—and that’s what Mike did. Mike was a fair dinkum thinkum, sharpest computer you’ll ever meet. 

Not fastest. At Bell Labs, Buenos Aires, down Earthside, they’ve got a thinkum a tenth his size which can answer almost before you ask. But matters whether you get answer in microsecond rather than millisecond as long as correct? 

Not that Mike would necessarily give right answer; he wasn’t completely honest. 

When Mike was installed in Luna, he was pure thinkum, a flexible logic—“High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L”—a HOLMES FOUR. He computed ballistics for pilotless freighters and controlled their catapult. This kept him busy less than one percent of time and Luna Authority never believed in idle hands. They kept hooking hardware into him—decision-action boxes to let him boss other computers, bank on bank of additional memories, more banks of associational neural nets, another tubful of twelve-digit random numbers, a greatly augmented temporary memory. Human brain has around ten-to-the-tenth neurons. By third year Mike had better than one and a half times that number of neuristors. 

And woke up.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 21, 1915 — Ian Stuart Black. British screenplay writer best known for scripting two First Doctor stories, “The Savages” and “The War Machines” (with Kit Pedler and Pat Dunlop) and a Third Doctor story, “The Macra Terror”. He wrote thirteen episodes of The Invisible Man as well as episodes of One Step Beyond, The Saint, Star Maidens and Danger Man. (Died 1997.)
  • Born March 21, 1931 — Al Williamson. Cartoonist who was best known for his work for EC Comics in the ’50s, including titles like Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, and for his work on Flash Gordon in the Sixties. He won eight Harvey Awards, and an Eisner Hall of Fame Award. (Died 2010.)
  • Born March 21, 1936 — Margaret Mahy. New Zealand author of over a hundred children’s and YA books, some with a strong supernatural bent. She won the Carnegie Medal twice for two of her fantasy novels, The Haunting and for The Changeover, something only seven authors have done in total. (Died 2012.)
  • Born March 21, 1947 — Terry Dowling, 76. I was trying to remember exactly what it was by him that I read and it turned out to be Amberjack: Tales of Fear and Wonder, an offering from Subterranean Press a decade ago. Oh, it was tasty! If it’s at all representative of his other short stories, he’s a master at them. And I see he’s got just one novel, Clowns at Minnight which I’ve not read. He’s not at all deeply stocked at the usual digital suspects but Kindle has this plus several story collections. 
  • Born March 21, 1947 — Don Markstein. He was the creator and sole maintainer of Don Markstein’s Toonpedia which is subtitled “A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge”. It is an encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation started in 2001. He said, “The basic idea is to cover the entire spectrum of American cartoonery.” (Died 2012.)
  • Born March 21, 1956 — Teresa Nielsen Hayden, 67. She is a consulting editor for Tor and is best known for Making Light, a blog she shares with her husband Patrick and which may yet resume activity. She is also one of the regular instructors for the Martha’s Vineyard writing workshop Viable Paradise.
  • Born March 21, 1970 — Chris Chibnall, 53. A showrunner for Doctor Who and the head writer for the first two (and I think) best series of Torchwood. He first showed up in the Whoverse when he penned the Tenth Doctor story, “42”.  He also wrote several episodes of Life on Mars. He’s been nominated for a Hugo three times for work on Doctor Who, “Rosa” at Dublin 2019, “Resolution” CoNZealand and for “Fugitive of the Judoon” at DisCon III.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Pickles has an unexpected Star Wars reference.

(12) EVANGELIZING FOR SUPERGIRL. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Some of the comic book nerds in the book club with me have all been quite impressed with Tom King’s latest work Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which James Gunn has listed as the direct inspiration for the upcoming Supergirl movie. It’s eligible for the Hugo this year — and I think it’s something a lot of Worldcon folks would love. Smart, fun, serious, high adventure. “Kara Zor-El Unbound” at the Hugo Book Club Blog.

… These aren’t stories about saving the universe, defeating galactic tyrants, or challenges with world-shattering consequences. But the fact that the stakes are more personal shows what matters to Supergirl, and the human scale of the story makes it highly engaging.

On a technical level, this is a superhero comic book, but the writing takes much of its inspiration from heroic fantasy. This is a story about a sword-wielding hero and sidekick traveling across distant landscapes on a quest and getting pulled into side adventures. Given that it takes cues from the heroic fantasy work of Fritz Leiber, Woman of Tomorrow seems like something that would appeal to many Worldcon attendees….

(13) THEY’VE BEEN HAD. “These Painters Regret Their Dealings With Scam Artists” – and the New York Times introduces them to us.

… It seemed too good to be true — and it was.

What happened next followed a pattern seen in nearly a dozen attempts at defrauding artists of their paintings and money that were reviewed by The New York Times. In each case, young artists were offered an attractive price for artworks by “collectors” who sent them checks to cover the price of the work and the cost of shipping it. Each of them was then asked to forward the shipping fee by money order to a person who was arranging the delivery.

Ginsberg sent $2,060 to the aptly named Linda Shady, who was supposed to be a shipping agent based in Fond du Lac, Wis. That name turned out to be fictitious and the person apparently used fake identification to cash the money order before Ginsberg was told by his bank that the $6,210 check he had received — more than he asked for — had not cleared.

“That was when I realized it was fraud,” Ginsberg said.

Cybercrime experts said fake check scams were growing. Though it did not study art scams per se, a study published in February by the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network tallied more than $124 million in damages from more than 40,000 cases involving fraudulent foreign money offers or fake checks.

Most of the cases start with an email from a fictitious person, a subset of the surge in phishing that has greatly increased the vulnerability of communications online. A study by the tech security company SlashNext projected that there were more than 255 million phishing attacks in 2022 through email, mobile and other online channels. That was 61 percent higher than the rate of phishing attacks the company tallied a year before….

(14) BE THE MAN WHO BOUGHT THE MOON (NECKLACE). [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Christie’s is having an online-only auction (closing 28 March) of meteorites & meteorite-related objects. Several of the items have had their origin traced to the Moon, Mars, or a specific asteroid. “Deep Impact: Lunar, Martian, and Other Rare Meteorites”.

Perhaps the crown jewel (so to speak) of the auction is Lot #1—an 18 inch single-strand necklace, consisting of 48 8.25 mm beads derived from Lunar material. One particular asteroid, NWA 12691, has been sectioned for display and sale. Apparently some of the smaller bits from that were formed into these beads.

The estimated price for the necklace is $140,000-$200,000, though the top bid as I write this is a mere $10,000. There are a scant few items in the auction with a higher estimate, but none of those is likely to make as fine a red carpet display.

The catalog description notes:

Fastened with a white gold clasp and knotted when strung, each of these lunar beads are of the highest quality. As is the case with any other lunar feldspathic breccia, each bead is composed of fragments of olivine, pigeonite, augite, ilmenite and signature white anorthite — which is rare on Earth but common on the Moon. The different minerals and lithologies were naturally bound together by a melt of lunar regolith, the result of repeated impacts on the lunar surface prior to the collision responsible for launching NWA 12691 to Earth. 

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Honest Trailers does “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, delivering its on-brand snark:

…Stephanie Shu co-stars as their daughter Joy, a character whose complex journey takes her to the edge of madness and back, playing both a teenager struggling to connect with her mom and an omnipotent nihilist seeking to destroy the universe. So of course she lost the Oscar to Jamie Lee Curtis as a mean lady with a funny voice… Let’s just pretend this was a makeup for True Lies….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Olav Rokne, Kathy Sullivan, Rich Lynch, Alex Shvartsman, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Tom Becker.]

Pixel Scroll 2/11/20 I Saw A File Drinking A Pixel Colada At Trader Vic’s. Its Scroll Was Perfect

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(1) SIGNS OF THE TIMES. A GoFundMe asks donors to “Help fund ASL Interpreters for Boskone”.

Boskone has a deaf attendee who would like to attend and providing ASL Interpreters is not in our budget.  They have contracted to get their own ASL Interpreters at the cost of about $1200 for the one day they are attending. We are creating a GoFundMe to raise money, to first give to them to pay for the Interpreters, and second (if we raise more than this year’s Interpreters cost) to start a fund for future years should Interpreters be necessary again.  

They’ve raised $573 of their $1200 goal as of this writing.

(2) NEXT RESNICK COLLECTION. UFO Publishing will soon be releasing a Mike Resnick collection of Harry the Book stories titled The Hex is In: The Fast Life and Fantastic Times of Harry the Book: “Introducing: The Hex is In”

This book will collect, for the first time, all fifteen Harry the Book stories Mike has written. These stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies and magazines spanning a decade. Several of them were only published in the United Kingdom, and one has never been published anywhere at all.

…Harry the Book yarns are humorous fantasy set in the alternate version of New York where magic is real and fantastical creatures are commonplace. In fact, this is a shared setting with Mike’s Stalking the Unicorn series.

Harry the Book is a bookie who takes bets on everything from horse races to dancing contests to political campaigns. And — always — the hex is in. Unscrupulous magicians meddle with the odds forcing Harry and his motley crew (which includes a four-hundred-pound flunky, a six-foot-ten zombie, and a lovelorn wizard) to scramble, dealing with the consequences.

These stories are written in a unique voice–meant to emulate and pay tribute to Damon Runyon (author of Guys and Dolls and other stories). Runyon was the bard of the New York underbelly of the early 20th century, celebrating the hustlers, gamblers, and gangsters of the era.

…Carol Resnick, Mike’s wife who is a Runyon fan and for whom Mike wrote these stories, will pen the introduction.

(3) MORE REASONS TO VISIT THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT. Mythcon 51, the gathering of the Mythopoeic Society, will be held July 31-August 3 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The theme will be The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien —

This year’s Mythcon theme provides multiple opportunities to explore the Other in fantasy and mythopoeic literature. Tolkien spoke in “On Fairy-stories” of “the desire to visit, free as a fish, the deep sea; or the longing for the noiseless, gracious, economical flight of a bird.” We invite discussion about the types of fantasy that are more likely to put us into contact with the alien, such as time portal fantasy and space travel fantasy. In addition to Inklings, some writers who deal particularly well with the truly alien who might be explored include Lovecraft, Gaiman, Le Guin, Tepper, and others….

Rivera Sun is the Author Guest of Honor:

Rivera Sun is a change-maker, a cultural creative, a protest novelist, and an advocate for nonviolence and social justice. She is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection, The Roots of Resistance, and other novels. Her young adult fantasy series, the Ari Ara Series, has been widely acclaimed by teachers, parents, and peace activists for its blending of fantasy and adventure with social justice issues….
Rivera Sun’s essays have been published in hundreds of journals nationwide. She is a frequent speaker and presenter at schools, colleges and universities, where The Dandelion Insurrection has been taught in literature and political science courses. Rivera Sun is also the editor of Nonviolence News, an activist, and a trainer in making change with nonviolence. Her essays and writings are syndicated by Peace Voice and have appeared in journals nationwide. She lives in an Earthship house in New Mexico.

David Bratman is the Scholar Guest of Honor:

His earliest contribution to the field was the first-ever published Tale of Years for the First Age, right after The Silmarillion was published. Since then he’s published articles with titles like “Top Ten Rejected Plot Twists from The Lord of the Rings,” “Hobbit Names Aren’t from Kentucky,” and “Liquid Tolkien” (on Tolkien and music). He’s been co-editor of Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review since 2013, and has written or edited its annual “Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies” since 2004. David edited The Masques of Amen House by Charles Williams and contributed the bio-bibliographical appendix on the Inklings to Diana Pavlac Glyer’s The Company They Keep.

(4) HIGH FASHION WHELAN. Forbes reveals“How Famed Science Fiction Artist Michael Whelan’s Art Wound Up In Louis Vuitton’s New Campaign” .

French fashion house Louis Vuitton made headlines last week with an eye-catching campaign for its Pre-Fall 2020 collection: A star-studden homage to pulpy genre paperbacks from the 1980s. In it, Léa Seydoux is menanced by a giant spider, Samara Weaving deals with a valentine from a werewolf, and Jaden Smith stares down a robot apocalypse.

The titles for the fake paperbacks were made up for the lookbook, but the art was not. It’s from veteran illustrators, and much of it was used on the covers of actual books from the same era.

(5) POSTAGE DUE. Atlas Obscura extols “The Joy of Collecting Stamps From Countries That Don’t Really Exist”.

The postage stamp looks like a postage stamp is supposed to look… But it’s not a postage stamp, not really, because its country of origin is Sealand—a metal platform about the size of a tennis court, off the English coast. Sealand is one of the quirky, strangely numerous states known as “micronations,” or self-proclaimed polities with no legal recognition. Some of them, to simulate legitimacy or at least make a little money, have issued their own flags, passports, coins, and yes, postage stamps.

Laura Steward, curator of public art at the University of Chicago, who organized an exhibition at the 2020 Outsider Art Fair in New York of stamps from micronations and other dubiously defined places, believes that these tiny squares are more than a toss-off: They’re art, proof of imagination, and rather sophisticated bids for public recognition….

What’s the micronation stamp with the most interesting story?

I’m drawn to Celestia, the Nation of Celestial Space. James Thomas Mangan, founder of Celestia, registered the acquisition of “outer space” with the Recorder of Deeds and Titles in Cook County, Illinois, on January 1, 1949. Magnan laid claim to outer space to prevent any one country from establishing hegemony there. Later in 1949, he banned all atmospheric nuclear tests, and notified the United Nations of his decision.

(6) KELLY OBIT. Paula Kelly, the actress, singer and dancer who starred in the film version of Sweet Charity and earned an Emmy nomination for her turn on Night Court, died February 9. She was 76. Kelly’s genre appearances included The Andromeda Strain (1971), and Soylent Green (1973). Kelly was married to British director Donald Chaffey (One Million Years B.C.) from 1985 until his death in 1990.

(7) MCLARTY OBIT. Ron McLarty, the character actor who also became a published author thanks to a rave from Stephen King, died February 8 at the age of 72, according to The Hollywood Reporter. I remember him as Detective Frank Belson in Spenser for Hire. His first onscreen role came in The Sentinel (1977). He also was in Kevin Costner’s The Postman (1997). However, it’s his audiobook work that really drew him into the orbit of genre

McLarty was a leading audiobook narrator; since the 1990s, his 100-plus credits included work for such authors as King, Danielle Steel, David Baldacci, Anne Rice, Richard Russo, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, Scott Turow and George W. Bush.

In 2001, McLarty persuaded the small company Recorded Books to produce his third novel, The Memory of Running, directly onto tape as an audiobook. (The actor also narrated what is believed to be the first recorded audiobook of an unpublished novel.)

King heard it and loved the story — about a 43-year-old man who, after his parents die, takes a cross-country road trip on an old Raleigh bicycle to find his sister’s body — and in 2003 devoted one of his “The Pop of King” columns in Entertainment Weekly to it, calling Memory “the best book you can’t read.”

The endorsement sparked a bidding war among publishers that led to McLarty getting a reported $2 million from Penguin that included rights to release the novel in 2004 (and later two others) in the traditional way….

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • February 11, 1970 — Hammer Films’ Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed premiered. Directed by Terrence Fisher, it starred Peter Cushing, Freddie Jones, Veronica Carlson and Simon Ward. It was the fifth Hammer film that featured Baron Frankenstein. The screenplay was by Bert Batt, with the story written by Anthony Nelson Keys and Bert Batt.  Critics thought it was one of the better Hammer films in quite some time, and it holds a sixty eight percent rating among the nearly three thousand who rated it over at Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch it here.
  • February 11, 1991 – Today is the 29th broadcast anniversary of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Clues” that Filer Bruce D. Arthurs wrote. (“Story by” Bruce, final teleplay credit shared with Joe Menosky.)

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 11, 1887 — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Russian writer of Polish extraction who John Clute likes a lot. His works are translated into English by Joanne Trumbull. Clute describe his short stories as “the extravagances of Absurdist SF and the generic opportunism of Fantastika”. And miracle of all miracles, he’s available at the usual digital sources including The Letter Killers Club which sounds amazing. (Died 1950.)
  • Born February 11, 1908 — Tevis Clyde Smith, Jr. He did several short stories with a Robert E. Howard, “Diogenes of Today”, “Eighttoes makes a play” and “ Red Blades of Black Cathay”. Donald M.Grant would publish them together in the Red Blades of Black Cathay collection. The title story originally appeared in Oriental Stories, an offshoot of Weird Tales. (Died 1984.)
  • Born February 11, 1910 — L. T. C. Rolt. English writer whose enthusiasm for heritage railways is writ large in his 1948 Sleep No More collection of supernatural horror stories which tend to be set in rural railways. (Simon R. Green may be influenced by him in his Ghost Finders series which often uses these railways as a setting.)  Some of these stories were adapted as radio dramas.  Sleep No More isavailable from Kindle. (Died 1974.)
  • Born February 11, 1915 — Pat Welsh. She was the voice of E.T. in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. She was also the voice of Boushh in Return of the Jedi who Lucas hired because of her raspy voice which he thought gave the character an ambiguous voice. Those two films and Waterloo Bridge, a Forties film, are her entire acting career. (Died 1995.)
  • Born February 11, 1926 — Leslie  Nielsen. I know the comic, bumbling fool who delighted generations of film goers. But his first starring role was as Commander John J. Adams in one of the finest SF films of all time Forbidden Planet. I am most decidedly not a fan of his later films but I think he’s brilliant here. (Died 2010.)
  • Born February 11, 1920 — Daniel F. Galouye. His work appeared in Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction In the Fifties and Sixties. He also wrote five novels including Simulacron-3 which was made into Roland Emmerich’s Thirteenth Floor. His first novel, Dark Universe was nominated for a Hugo but came in second at Chicon III to Stranger in a Strange Land. (Died 1976.)
  • Born February 11, 1939 — Jane Yolen, 81. She loves dark chocolate and I send her some from time to time. She wrote me into a novel as a character, an ethnomusicologist in One-Armed Queen to be precise in exchange for finding her a fairytale collection she wanted. Don’t remember now what it was other than it was very old and very rare. My favorite book by her is The Wild Hunt, and I love that she financed the production of Boiled in Lead’s Antler Dance which her son Adam Stemple was lead vocalist on. 
  • Born February 11, 1948 — Robert Reginald. He’s here because of two Phantom Detective novels he wrote late in his career which are mostly popcorn literature. (The Phantom Detective series started in 1936 so he used the Robert Wallace house name.) He has two series of some length, the Nova Europa Fantasy Saga and War of Two Worlds. Much of what he wrote is available from the usual digital sources. (Died 2013.)
  • Born February 11, 1950 — Alain Bergeron, 70. He received an Aurora Award for Best Short Story for “Les Crabes de Vénus regardent le ciel” published In Solaris number 73, and a Sideways Award for Alternate History for  “Le huitième registre” (translated in English as “The Eighth Register” by Howard Scott). 
  • Born February 11, 1953 — Wayne Hammond, 67. He’s married to fellow Tolkien scholar Christina Scull. Together they’ve done some of the finest work on him that’s been done including J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book and The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. 

(10) MIGNOGNA STILL AROUND. At Nerd and Tie, Trae Dorn tells about “Kitchener Comic Con and Creating a Hostile Convention Culture”.

Most of organized fandom spent 2019 getting on board with the idea that maybe inviting Vic Mignogna to your convention is a bad idea. The whisper network about the once prolific voice actor finally went public as several women came forward with their stories of harassment. Most conventions decided Mignogna was not remotely worth the hassle (finally), and the vast majority of his appearances were cancelled.

It’s important to note that not all of them of were.

You see, there are still a number of conventions that think it’s a good idea to invite a man with that many allegations of harassment against them in their doors….

One of those conventions is Kitchener, Ontario’s Kitchener Comic Con. …

(11) PROXIMITY TO THE CORONA. [Item by Jonathan Cowie.]  It is well known that Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother is alive and well in China what with new mobile users having to have their face scanned and geo-positioned etc.  Now the State has turned this into an app that it is claimed can help keep people safe from coronavirus: “China launches coronavirus ‘close contact detector’ app”.

China has launched an app that allows people to check whether they have been at risk of catching the coronavirus.

The ‘close contact detector’ tells users if they have been near a person who has been confirmed or suspected of having the virus.

People identified as being at risk are advised to stay at home and inform local health authorities.

(12) THE NAMING OF VIRUSES. It’s a difficult matter: “Coronavirus officially named Covid-19, says WHO”.

The World Health Organization says the official name for the new coronavirus will be Covid-2019.

“We now have a name for the disease and it’s Covid-19,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.

It comes after the death toll from the virus passed 1,000. Tens of thousands of people have been infected.

The word coronavirus refers to the group of viruses it belongs to, rather than the latest strain.

Researchers have been calling for an official name to avoid confusion and stigmatisation.

“We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease,” the WHO chief said.

“Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatising. It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks”

(13) HERE COMES THE SUN. “Polar Express: New Spacecraft Will Explore Elusive Parts Of The Sun”.

Until now, all the pictures of the sun have been straight-on head shots. Soon, scientists will be getting a profile.

NASA and the European Space Agency are set to launch a joint mission on Sunday to provide the first-ever look at the sun’s poles. Previous images have all been taken from approximately the same angle, roughly in line with the star’s equator.

…After the NASA/ESA probe called Solar Orbiter takes off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, it’ll use Venus and Earth’s gravity to propel itself outside that equatorial plane where all the planets in our solar system orbit the sun. Orbiter eventually will be able to look down onto the poles of the sun.

There are many reasons why scientists want to know more about the sun’s poles. They think the poles might be driving some important aspects of space weather throughout the solar system, which can impact spacecraft and even humans on Earth. “It has real world effects on our satellites, our GPS, our power grid and things like that,” McComas says.

BBC adds some details: “Solar Orbiter: Sun mission blasts off”.

Europe’s audacious Solar Orbiter probe has lifted off on its quest to study the Sun from close quarters.

The €1.5bn (£1.3bn) mission is packed with cameras and sensors that should reveal remarkable new insights on the workings of our star.

Scientists want to better understand what drives its dynamic behaviour.

The spacecraft launched aboard an Atlas rocket, which lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 04:03 GMT (23:03 local time Sunday).

The Sun will occasionally eject billions of tonnes of matter and entangled magnetic fields that can disrupt activity at Earth.

The worst of these storms will trip the electronics on satellites, interfere with radio communications and even knock over power grids.

Researchers hope the knowledge gained from Solar Orbiter (SolO) will improve the models used to forecast the worst of the outbursts.

(14) MOON SHOT. NPR listens to the skeptics: “A Moon Landing In 2024? NASA Says It’ll Happen; Others Say: No Way”.

NASA is at a critical juncture in its push to get people back to the moon by 2024, with key decisions expected within weeks.

This effort to meet an ambitious deadline set by the Trump administration last year faces widespread skepticism in the aerospace community, even as the new head of human spaceflight at NASA insists that it can succeed.No one has been to the moon since 1972, even though, back in 2004, then-President George W. Bush laid out several goals for NASA, including a “return to the moon by 2020 as the launching point for missions beyond.”

…In March of 2019, however, Vice President Pence announced that “it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years.”

That would mean a remarkable speedup for NASA, which had been working toward a moon landing in 2028. In September, a member of Congress asked Ken Bowersox, who was the acting associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA, how confident he was that the U. S. would have boots on the moon by this new, earlier deadline.

“How confident?” Bowersox replied. “I wouldn’t bet my oldest child’s upcoming birthday present or anything like that.”

(15) ARSENAL OF THE FUTURE. Mr. Sci-Fi, Marc Scott Zicree, pays a visit to Modern Props.

Star Trek! Men in Black! Blade Runner! Starship Troopers! Name your favorite sci-fi movie or TV show of the last forty years, and Modern Props has probably made some of the coolest things in it!

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, James Davis Nicoll, Michael Toman, Karl-Johan Norén, Alex Shvartsman, Lynn Maudlin, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Michael J. Walsh, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Acoustic Rob.]