Pixel Scroll 3/15/25 I Wish I Could Pixel Like My Captain Kate (Janeway)

(1) WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT A HOBBIT HOLE HERE. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog has posted to Bluesky a spin on the “Omelas” tale in the voice of you-know-who. Stunningly on point. Fourteen posts long. The first one is here.

OK. My quick attempt at "My Omelas, Right Or Wrong."1/XLet me tell you about this incredible place, Omelas. It’s huge, folks, absolutely beautiful. Everybody’s happy. Everybody’s winning. The economy, it's fantastic, the best economy anyone’s ever seen, believe me.

An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog (@hugobookclub.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T16:54:55.838Z

(2) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES IS SEVEN. Space Cowboy Books today launched the 7-year anniversary episode of the Simultaneous Times podcast. This episode is a collaboration with Apex Magazine.

Simultaneous Times 7 Year Anniversary Episode

Featuring stories from the pages of Apex Magazine.

  • “Then Came the Ghost of My Dead Mother, Antikleia” by Nadia Radovich. With music by Doctor Auxiliary. Read by Jenna Hanchey
  • “What Happens When a Planet Falls From the Sky?” by Danny Cherry, Jr. With music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the Jean-Paul Garnier & Jenna Hanchey

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(3) SPECIAL ACCESS TO NATURE FUTURES STORY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted the first of its four “Best of Nature Futures” short stories of the year. Because it is behind a paywall, non-Nature subscribers can’t access the original weekly stories. Fortunately SF² Concatenation has an agreement with Nature and the permission of respective writers to re-post four a year. The story “Cosmic Rentals” by Dave Kavanaugh concerns a rental store where you can literally hire “universes”… What’s not to like? …And if you scroll down below the story you will get the author’s ‘story behind the story’. You access it here.

(4) WHAT YOU WON’T SEE ON THE BALLOT. The Ursa Major Awards, the annual anthropomorphic literature and arts award, will shortly release their 2024 finalists and open public voting. But the administrators have decided to announce some rulings on the prospective nominees ahead of time.

We are about to present the list of nominees for 2024 and will open up voting soon. However, we thought it was best to first present a list of special considerations for a select few entries we have received this year.

In the Best Anthropomorphic Game category, Atlyss did receive enough nominations to place in the top 5, but because Atlyss has only been released as an “early access” title, it has been disqualified from the 2024 list.

In the Fursuit category, only one qualifying entry was given more than a single vote, therefore we felt it best to drop the category for 2024, as has been done in the past.

In the Best Anthropomorphic Music category, an album titled “Where Will the Animals Sleep” would have been in the top 5 nominations. However, as neither the content nor the author is anthropomorphic / furry, it has been disqualified.

(5) FEAR FACTOR. “Snow White Premiere: Dwarf Actor Responds to Rachel Zegler Movie Pivot” in The Hollywood Reporter.

One performer from Disney‘s new Snow White is sharing his thoughts amid the debate surrounding the launch for the live-action movie.

Martin Klebba — who has appeared in two previous versions of Snow White, including the 2012 feature Mirror Mirror that stars Julia Roberts and Lily Collins — provides the voice of Grumpy in the new movie and also serves as an advisor for the miner characters. Klebba tells The Hollywood Reporter that the recent controversy surrounding Snow White, which has led to the film’s Saturday premiere not inviting press onto the red carpet, has meant a less exciting celebration for those involved in the project that stars Rachel Zegler as the title character and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen.

“It really isn’t going to be a red carpet,” says Klebba, who emphasizes that he is very proud of the movie and cannot wait for audiences to see it. “It’s going to be at the El Capitan [Theatre], which is cool. But it’s basically going to be a pre-party, watch the movie, and that’s it. There’s not going to be this whole hoopla of, ‘Disney’s first fucking movie they ever made.’ Because of all this controversy, they’re afraid of the blowback from different people in society.”

Klebba says that the premiere changes were due to “the controversy with Rachel” but clarifies that he had not been given direct information on why the event was altered. Zegler is known as an outspoken star who suggested in 2022 that she was not a fan of the original 1937 animated classic due to outdated plot points. Additionally, after President Donald Trump was elected in November, Zegler posted comments to social media that were critical of his victory before later apologizing….

(6) FREAKIER FRIDAY. They’re afraid, too, apparently. “Freakier Friday Teaser Trailer”. Movie in theaters August 8.

(7) DO FANNISH VALUES WORK IN SCALED-UP CONVENTIONS? Patch O’Furr analyzes the issues of “How to love the freedom of leaderless fandom, and fight the flipside of organized abuse” for furry fans at Dogpatch Press.

Do you know the story where several blind people try to describe an elephant by only touching small parts of it? Nobody can say what the whole animal is.

That happens when furry subculture talks about itself, and protests outside stereotypes by falling into its own… The Geek Social Fallacies….

…That’s the natural downside of the old-school fan values, but things were more personal when groups were smaller scale. They would put up with a few jerks because it was harder to kick them out and sustain groups. Now add decades of growth, and much bigger scale of members who don’t know each other. (Dunbar’s Number names a finite limit on how many relationships your brain can handle.) Put the problem on steroids with internet platforms we don’t own. It’s not YOU, it’s MATH….

The math of escalating abuse

Rapid and unplanned growth of furry subculture has many unforeseeable effects. Straining the limits of conventions is one covered on Soatok’s furry cybersecurity blog: Furries Are Losing the Battle Against Scale. Convention attendance is doubling every few years and “the furry community is growing at a break-neck exponential speed.”

Security suffers without top-down management at impersonal scale, especially when the more we depend on net platforms, the more problems we have by policy. Social media is built to shift liability for moderation from owners to users. It’s their business model to be unaccountable! The point is to eliminate the cost of the editor/gatekeeper/mod layer by automating the labor and letting volunteers and peers fill in.

Peer moderation may feel like personal control, but meanwhile, bad actors can game the system with off-site advantage. Moderators may respond to simple individual incidents on-site, but can’t even see complex cross-platform abuse. That’s how responses can be weak, scattered, inconsistent, and lack resources for scale, no matter how much their hearts are in it.

If you can’t see abuse, it festers. Think of church scandals where abuser priests were shifted around from church to church. We have that too, but there’s no orders from the top. It’s from being nobody’s job. A long-time creep can use a newly minted fursona to jump from group to group, when it’s easy to change accounts and delete evidence, but an uphill battle to track them or get consequences. Different process, same outcome….

(8) REMEMBERING A CLASSIC HORROR AUTHOR. “Lisa Morton Discusses Dennis Etchison” in an installment of the Horror Writers Association’s blog series “Nuts & Bolts”.

Lisa Morton describes Dennis Etchison’s work as a “brain bombshell” that changed her idea of what horror fiction could do. When she was just starting out, Etchison had a major influence on both her art and her career. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Lisa discusses Etchison’s writing technique, his influence on her own work, and what writers today can learn from the late horror legend.

Q: Can you tell us a little about Dennis Etchison and his contributions to the horror genre?

A: To me, Dennis is one of the absolute greatest craftsmen of the horror short story. His short story collection The Dark Country came out in 1982, when most of the genre was split between Stephen King’s suburban, East Coast horror on one hand and the glorious excesses of the splatterpunks on the other, and his work fit into neither camp. It was completely unique and was the first time I’d read horror set mostly in my hometown of Los Angeles; it’s not an exaggeration to say that it made me think I might be able to write horror fiction. My all-time favorite short story is his 1993 masterpiece The Dog Park, which is one of those works of fiction that’s like a magic trick — it really gets under your skin and you’re not sure how it was done. Although I also like several of his novels, especially California Gothic, his short fiction is what I think will be remembered….

Guillermo Del Toro, Peter Atkins and Dennis Etchison in back of Mystery & Imagination Bookshop in 2013.

(9) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted photos on Flickr of the “Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series March 12, 2025” gathering where Victoria Dalpe and Jedediah Berry read from their work to a very full house.

(10) LACON V HOLDING ANAHEIM MEETING. LAcon V, the 2026 Worldcon committee, told Facebook readers how to ask to attend their meeting next weekend.

LAcon V is hosting an in-person meeting on March 22nd and 23rd at the Anaheim Hilton.

This is a good opportunity to meet some of our leadership, learn more about the convention, and possibly become part of the LAcon V team!

If you are interested in participating, and plan to be in the Anaheim area, please email us at info(at)lacon.org for further details.

(11) T. JACKSON KING (1948-2025). Author and archeologist Thomas Jackson King, Jr. died December 3, 2024. SFWA’s tribute “In Memoriam: T. Jackson King” notes he was “a prolific writer of science-fiction, horror, and urban fantasy, and an award-winning journalist. He wrote articles for The SFWA Bulletin and SFWA Handbook, and served as the SFWA Election Committee Chair.” 

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

The Girl with Something Extra series (1976)

Networks in the Sixties liked young actresses. They were either sexy, or they were cute. So let’s talk about the lead of The Girl with Something Extra series that debuted forty-nine years ago. 

That lead actress was Sally Field which tells you how deep the story was intended to be. She was a wife who had ESP, and her husband played by John Davidson never quite understood her. It was intended to be cute, really, really cute with her giving it that cuteness. 

There was other cast, but really who cared? Not the studio. It was intended to be just a vehicle for these two to be a couple as this critic noted “The plot for The Girl With Something Extra TV show immediately brings to mind another show that ended in March of 1972 after a whopping eight seasons on the air! That series of course was “Bewitched” which also featured a young newlywed couple with the wife having super-human powers that caused many problems for her and her husband.” 

The audience apparently didn’t grasp its charms, and it was canceled after one season of twenty-two half hour episodes. 

So the Apple search engine says it’s not streaming anywhere. The Flying Nun is streaming on, errr, Tubi. Any of y’all ever subscribe to that service? 

Lancer Books published a tie-in novel by Paul Farman, The Girl With Something Extra. 

I see multiple signed scripts is for sale on eBay. Press photos too. Like the one below. Aren’t they cute? Well, aren’t they?

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) DWAYNE MCDUFFIE AWARD TAKING ENTRIES. Comics Beat announced that the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is accepting submissions. “Mark Waid joins 10th annual Dwayne McDuffie Award selection committee”.

…As in previous years, the event will name one winner from five honored finalists, whose work resembles a commitment to excellence and inclusion on and off the page, much like the late Mr. McDuffie’s own efforts to produce entertainment that was representative of and created by a wide scope of human experience. Moreover, prolific comic creator Mark Waid has joined joined the selection committee which includes The Beat‘s own Heidi MacDonald, and other notable comics industry figures.

The 10th annual “Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics” is now accepting submissions at https://dwaynemcduffie.com/dmad/. The deadline is May 1, 2025 for comics published during the 2024 calendar year.

New York Times best-selling author, Mark Waid, joins a selection committee of notable comic book professionals led by industry legend, Marv Wolfman. This prestigious prize has grown exponentially in esteem since it was established in 2015 in honor of Dwayne McDuffie (1962-2011), the legendary African-American comic book writer/editor and writer/producer of the animated Static ShockJustice League, and Ben 10: Alien Force/Ultimate Alien, who famously co-founded Milestone Media, the most successful minority-owned comic book company in the history of the industry.

The slogan for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is Mr. McDuffie’s own profound saying:

“From invisible to inevitable.”

Prolific writer/creator, Mark Waid, is “proud to be part of the DMADs”:

“As a medium and as a community—even removing from consideration the onslaught of bigotry and intolerance sweeping the U.S. as we speak—the world of comics has a responsibility to recognize, promote, and honor comics that not only employ great storytelling but are emblematic of the power of equality and inclusion. As creators, good work from anyone forces us to up our game. As readers, we’re all better off—and more entertained and educated—when we’re exposed to the widest possible variety of voices and viewpoints.”…

(15) AVENGERS ACADEMY. Anthony Oliveira, Carola Borelli and Bailie Rosenlund’s Avengers Academy Infinity Comic series on Marvel Unlimited comes to print for the first time this June.

Since launching last year, Marvel Unlimited’s hit AVENGERS ACADEMY Infinity Comic series by rising star Anthony Oliveira and visionary artists Carola Borelli and Bailie Rosenlund has become an online phenomenon, gaining a devoted fanbase who tune in each week to experience the adventures of Marvel’s most promising young heroes! This June, the acclaimed series comes to your local comic shop in AVENGERS ACADEMY: ASSEMBLE #1, a new one-shot collecting the first six issues in print for the first time!

From the X-Men to the symbiote hivemind, this eclectic group assembles fan-favorite characters from every corner of the Marvel Universe, including new sensations like Kid Juggernaut. Discover their journey to become tomorrow’s Mightiest Heroes in this masterful blend of teen drama and super hero adventure!

SCHOOL’S IN SESSION!

Welcome to Avengers Academy! Seeking to guide the next generation of super heroes, Captain Marvel recruits a misfit team of super-powered teens: CAPTAIN AMERICA OF THE RAILWAYS, BLOODLINE, ESCAPADE, MOON GIRL, RED GOBLIN, and new hero on the block, KID JUGGERNAUT! But classes are the least of their concerns as they fend off super-villain attacks, make new friends – and new foes – and learn what it really means to be Earth’s mightiest heroes. Featuring the first appearance of an all-new SINISTER SIX, this is one book you don’t want to miss!

Check out the all-new cover by Stephen Byrne and preorder Avengers Academy: Assemble #1 at your local comic shop today! For more information, visit Marvel.com.

(16) FARADAY UNCAGED. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Why do we have a lot of electricity? Faraday. I think a lot of us know who Faraday was, but this is a lovely, loving article. “Unearthed notebooks shed light on Victorian genius who inspired Einstein” in the Guardian.

…When a lab assistant at the Institution got into a brawl and was fired in February 1813, Davy remembered the 22-year-old Faraday and offered him the job – which involved taking a pay cut, but gave the young man access to the laboratory, free coal, candles and two attic rooms.

Faraday later gave an account of this job offer: “At the same time that he [Davy] gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he advised me to remain a bookbinder, telling me that Science was a harsh mistress… poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service.”

Despite Davy’s advice, Faraday accepted the job. It was a decision that would prove to be seminal for science. Over the next 55 years, while working for the Royal Institution, Faraday discovered several fundamental laws of physics and chemistry – including his law of electromagnetic induction in 1831, which illuminated the relative motion of charged particles.

It was thanks to Faraday’s trailblazing experiments at the institution that he discovered electromagnetic rotation in 1821, a breakthrough that led to the development of the electric motor and benzene, a hydrocarbon derived from benzoic acid, in 1825. He became the first scientist to liquefy gas in 1823, invented the electric generator in 1831 and discovered the laws of electrolysis in the early 1830s, helping to coin terms such as electrode, cathode and ion. In 1845, after finding the first experimental evidence that a magnetic field could influence polarised light – a phenomenon that became known as the Faraday effect – he proved light and electromagnetism are interconnected….

(17) PIXEL SCROLL TITLE EXPLANATION OF THE DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Via “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” (1922).

Probably my favorite recording (keeping in mind I’ve only listened to a fraction of the various artists’ recordings) is from Jim Kweskin’s Relax Your Mind album (more generally one of my favorite albums): “Three Songs – A Look at the Ragtime Era (Sister Kate’s Night Out) : I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”.

Here’s the first version I’ve run into (yesterday!) that shows there’s a long intro section: “Sister Kate” – song and lyrics by Vi Wickam, Paul Anastasio, Albanie Falletta | Spotify.

Lots of (current/recent) popular covers!

Dave Van Ronk “Sister Kate”.

Here’s the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band “Sister Kate”.

And here’s an unexpected cover (from the From Liverpool To Hamburg 2CD set) — The Beatles – “i wish i could shimmy like my sister Kate” (live).

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Arnie Fenner.] This “Frazetta Fridays” episode about the creation of Vampirella includes some fun history featuring Harlan, Forry, and Trina Robbins.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/10/19 There Have Always Been Starpixelers At Scrolled Comfort Farm

(1) EUROVISION. In “Eurovision 2019 Is Here: Science Fiction Fans, Rejoice!”, Tor.com’s James Davis Nicoll supplies plenty of examples to show that “Although Eurovision itself may not be exactly SF, some of the pieces are definitely science fiction-adjacent. The visuals are often glorious, and the show as a whole is well worth viewing.”

(2) THEY’RE BACK. The Bounding Into Comics Facebook group was restored on May 9. Supposedly they still don’t know why it was shuttered, apart from a notice that they had violated “the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.”

…As you can see the last post was our Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer article, which was posted on May 6th.

When we asked for further clarification on why the page was taken down. We did not receive a response.

While it’s still unclear exactly why Facebook took down our page, we are glad that it has been restored. And we are extremely grateful and truly humbled by the fan support we received after the page was taken down.

While we are happy to continue publishing to our Facebook audience. We do plan on continuing to grow our presence on other social media platforms including MeWe and Gab.

(3) LOCUS COLLECTION PRESERVED. Duke University Libraries announced a prized acquisition — “Locus Collection Tracks the Stars and Universe of Sci-Fi”.

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University has acquired the archives of the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, publisher of Locus, the preeminent trade magazine for the science fiction and fantasy publishing field.

The massive collection—which arrived in almost a thousand boxes—includes first editions of numerous landmarks of science fiction and fantasy, along with correspondence from some of the genre’s best-known practitioners, including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Octavia E. Butler, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), Dean Koontz, Robert A. Heinlein, and hundreds more.

…A tireless advocate for speculative fiction, [founder Charles N.] Brown was also a voluminous correspondent and friend to many of the writers featured in the magazine. Many of them wrote to him over the years to share personal and professional news, or to quibble about inaccuracies and suggest corrections. The letters are often friendly, personal, humorous, and occasionally sassy.

Reacting to a recent issue of Locus that featured one of her short stories, the science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler wrote, “I am Octavia E. Butler in all my stories, novels, and letters. How is it that I’ve lost my E in three places in Locus #292? Three places! You owe me three E’s. That’s a scream, isn’t it?”…

(4) ANOTHER COUNTY HEARD FROM. The New York Times’ Glenn Kenny works hard to resist the movie’s charms in “‘Tolkien’ Review: A Fellowship That Rings Obvious”.

Directed by Dome Karukoski from a script by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford, this picture about the pre-fame days of the author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” teems with many on-the-nose moments. And it does so while hewing so strongly to the Distinguished British Biopic ethos (including the “England: Land of Magnificent Sunsets” trope) that it teeters on the edge of genuine obnoxiousness. Surprisingly, the emphatic score by the customarily more nuanced Thomas Newman is one of the prime offenders.

Nevertheless, “Tolkien” manages several scenes of credible emotional delicacy. And it doesn’t shy away from the conspicuously literary, treating the writer’s explorations of Wagner (sparked by his love interest and future wife Edith, played by Lily Collins) and passion for philology (sparked by chats with the intimidating professor Joseph Wright, played by Derek Jacobi) with a commendable amount of detail.

(5) SOMETHING FOR YOUR BRAIN’S POKÉMON CENTER. NPR’s Vincent Acovino calls “‘Pokémon Detective Pikachu’ — Go!”

Have you ever questioned the moral fabric of the Pokémon universe?

Sure you have. For starters: In what kind of world would “Pokémon battles” — in which two humans force two excessively cute creatures to a fight until one of the beasts faints — constitute an acceptable social convention? And isn’t the whole Trainer/Pokémon relationship more than a little … problematic? Who decided that wild Pokémon, who demonstrate a level of intelligence several degrees above that of other animals, should live out their lives under the constant fear of capture and exploitation by humans?

Your enjoyment of Pokémon Detective Pikachu will likely depend on your degree of investment in these sorts of existential questions.The strength of the film lies in the way it playfully undermines the Poké-verse, poking holes in a thing that, when reduced to its essentials, seems just real silly. Much like last year’s Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, Pokémon Detective Pikachu looks itself in the mirror and remarks on what it sees there. And while it doesn’t pull off the trick nearly as well, there’s something admirable about a film that isn’t afraid to have some fun with a property so established — and beloved — by its core audience.

(6) ALL THE BEST: Following Paula Guran’s announcement of the contents of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019, Jason has completed his “Collated Contents of the Year’s Bests (2018 Stories, Links)” over at Featured Futures.

Welcome to the third annual linked collation of annuals or “year’s bests.” As the contents of the Afsharirad, Clarke, Datlow, Guran, Horton, and Strahan science fiction, fantasy, and horror annuals have been announced, they have been combined into one master list with links to the stories which are available online. (The only one not yet integrated is the BASFF, which will likely be announced late in the year.) Hopefully, you’ll enjoy some of them and that will help you decide which annual or annuals, if any, to purchase.

(7) VAMPIRELLA’S PRIEST. Christopher Priest is writing Vampirella comics now. ComicsBeat questioned him about it — “Why Priest Added Vampirella to His Iconic List”

Deanna Destito: Before jumping into this, were you a Vampirella fan? What appealed to you about this project?

Christopher Priest: No, I wouldn’t call myself a Vampirella fan (which is sure to annoy Vampirella fans!), although I was certainly aware of the character. But I’d guess I viewed the property nostalgically. Fondly, for sure, but if I thought of Vampirella at all I thought of her in a kindly past-tense, as an artifact of the 1970s and my misspent youth….

(8) BEHIND THE SCENARIOS. I learned from this interview there’s a book of notes, too! “Getting Transreal: An Interview with Rudy Rucker” at B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

Your companion book, Notes for Million Mile Road Trip, is actually longer than the novel! The idea of following up reading a novel with that kind of metadata is fascinating; can you tell us more about it?

It’s hard to write a novel. It takes a year or maybe two years of tickling the keyboard at your desk or using a laptop in a cafe, and doing that pretty much every day, even on the days when you don’t know what comes next. This is where writing a volume of notes comes in. When I don’t have anything to put into the novel, I write something in the notes. I might analyze the possibilities for the next few scenes. Or craft journal entries about things I saw [that day]. Or describe some the people sitting around me, being careful not to stare at them too hard. Or think about how hopeless it is to try to write another novel, and how I’ve been faking it all along anyhow. The more I complain in my notes, the better I feel. I publish the finished Notes in parallel with with the novel, not that I sell many copies of the notes. Long-term, the notes will be fodder for the locust swarm of devoted Rucker scholars who are due to emerge any time now from their curiously long gestation in the soil.

(9) LORD WINSTON OBIT. Zombie Squad, an international network of dogs and other pets dedicated to protecting society from the walking dead, paid its respects on Saturday to Lord Winston, the indefatigable West Highland terrier who inspired the group’s creation in 2013 and had served as its official leader until his death on 21 April, aged nearly 15. Despite losing the use of his back legs following a series of operations, Lord Winston – via his British owner – posted daily messages and regular videos on Twitter, where prospective new members continue to be welcomed at @ZombieSquadHQ.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 10, 1863 Cornelius Shea. As the authors of SFE put it, “author for the silent screen and author of dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF), prolific in many categories but best remembered for marvel stories using a fairly consistent ‘mythology’ of dwarfs, subterranean eruptions, and stage illusion masquerading as supernatural magic.” To my surprise, only two of his novels are in the Internet Archive. 
  • Born May 10, 1886 Olaf Stapledon. Member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Star Maker contains the first known description of what are now called Dyson spheres. (Neal Asher currently is making the best use of these in his Polity series.) He wrote about a baker’s dozen novels of which iBooks has pretty much everything available at quite reasonable prices. I know I read and enjoyed Star Maker many years ago but don’t recall what else I read. (Died 1950.)
  • Born May 10, 1895 Earl Askam. He played Officer Torch, the captain of Ming the Merciless’s guards, in the 1936 Flash Gordon serial. It’s his only genre appearance though he did have an uncredited role in a Perry Mason film where the SJW credential was the defendant in a Perry Mason murder case, The Case of Black Cat. (Died 1940)
  • Born May 10, 1899 Fred Astaire. Yes, that actor. He showed up on the original Battlestar Galactica as Chameleon / Captain Dimitri In “The Man with Nine Lives” episode. Stunt casting I assume.  He had only two genre roles as near as I can tell which were voicing The Wasp in the English language adaptation of the Japanese Wasp anime series, and being in a film called Ghost Story. They came nearly twenty years apart and were the last acting roles he did. (Died 1987.)
  • Born May 10, 1935 Terrance Dicks, 84. He had a long association with Doctor Who, working as a writer and also serving as the programme’s script editor from 1968 to 1974. He also wrote many of its scripts including The War Games which ended the Second Doctor’s reign and The Five Doctors, produced for the 20th year celebration of the program. He also wrote novelisation of more than 60 of the Doctor Who shows. Prior to working on this series, he wrote four episodes of The Avengers and after this show he wrote a single episode of Space: 1999 and likewise for Moonbase 3, a very short-lived BBC series. 
  • Born May 10, 1963 Rich Moore, 56. He’s directed Wreck-It Ralph and co-directed Zootopia and Ralph Breaks the Internet; he’s has worked on Futurama. Might be stretching the definition of genre (or possibly not), but he did the animation for “Spy vs. Spy” for MADtv. You can see the first one here:
  • Born May 10, 1969 John Scalzi, 50. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever read by him. What would I recommend if you hadn’t read him? The Old Man’s War series certainly as well as the Interdependency series are excellent. I really have mixed feelings about Redshirts in that it’s too jokey.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) MARVEL 1000. Marvel’s celebration of its 80th Anniversary will include a new epic comic book issue to celebrate the legacy of the Marvel Universe: Marvel Comics #1000.

Featuring 80 creative teams with luminaries from both classic and current comic books (and beyond!), this oversized one-shot will be packed with pages spanning across generations of Marvel’s iconic Super Heroes – with cover art from legendary artist Alex Ross!

Among those individuals, some of whom teased the project on social media this week, are long-time Marvel veterans — including Roy Thomas, Peter David, Gerry Conway, and Adam Kubert — and current creators — including Saladin Ahmed, Gail Simone, Chip Zdarsky, and Kris Anka — as well as talents outside of comics, like filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas, and basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

(13) THE WORD FROM PORTALES. Locus Online’s “2019 Williamson Lectureship Report” quotes GoH Alex Rivera, criminalist Cordelia Willis (daughter of Connie) and others —

“We’re living in a time of walls,” said filmmaker Alex Rivera when introducing Sleep Dealer at the start of the 43rd Williamson Lectureship April 4-6, 2019 in Portales NM. “It’s a global obsession. How do we tell stories in such a world? In my film, I try to cross the consciousness of walls by looking at them, through them, and beyond them.”

(14) 124C41. Hephzibah Anderson’s profile of John Brunner focuses on his novel Stand on Zanzibar (taking the typical “sci-fi predicted it, gosh!” angle) in today’s BBC Culture post “The 1969 sci-fi that spookily predicted today”.

…Though it divided critics on publication, Zanzibar has come to be regarded as a classic of New Wave sci-fi, better known for its style than its content. This seems a pity. When an excerpt appeared in New Worlds magazine in November 1967, an editorial claimed that it was the first novel in its field to create, in every detail, “a possible society of the future”.

There’s irony in some of what Brunner got wrong. He assumed, for instance, that the US would have at last figured out how to provide adequate, inexpensive medical care for all by 2010. Other inaccuracies are sci-fi staples – guns that fire lightning bolts; deep-sea mining camps; a Moon base. And yet, in ways minor and major, that ‘future society’ nevertheless seems rather familiar today. For example, it features an organisation very similar to the European Union; it casts China as America’s greatest rival; its phones have connections to a Wikipedia-style encyclopaedia; people casually pop Xanax-style ‘tranks’; documents are run off on laser printers; and Detroit has become a shuttered ghost town and incubator of a new kind of music oddly similar to the actual Detroit techno movement of the 1990s.

(15) NEBULA REVIEWS. A full rundown of all the nominees for “The 2018 Nebula Awards” is preceded by an analysis of this year’s kerfuffle at Ohio Needs A Train.

The accusations of slate-building, especially as it’s so close to the Hugos being basically completely turned aside for a couple of years there by slating antics 4, led to tensions running fairly high and people running fairly hot on the issue. The SFWA, for its part, says that it wants to take this sort of thing seriously and is looking into ways to try to keep stuff like this from taking over, without (as of the time of this writing) mentioning what steps it may be taking. I suppose that’s fine, but it’ll be interesting to see if anything is different about the nomination process next year.

(16) LODESTAR REVIEWS. Lodestar Award Finalist Reviews by Sarah Waites at The Illustrated Page.

(17) FANTASY LITERATURE’S NOVELLA HUGO REVIEWS. Despite the name, the Fantasy Literature site reviews science fiction, fantasy, and speculative horror, as well as comics and graphic novels.

Best Novella

(18) WRIGHT OF WAY. Steve J. Wright has completed his Best Novelette Hugo Finalist reviews

Novelette

(19) SPACE PASTA. SYFY Wire reveals “Saturn’s rings are hiding moons shaped like frozen ravioli. Here’s why.”

Even from beyond its cosmic grave, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft continues to amaze us with the things it unearthed during its Saturn flybys — like the moons that have been lurking in its rings for billions of years.

When Cassini ventured as close as it would ever get to Saturn, it imaged the moons (which look like space ravioli) in enough detail to reveal that they were covered in the same stuff as its iconic rings. Some of them were even blasted with icy particles from nearby Enceladus. The posthumous images from Cassini’s flyby have given scientists unprecedented close-ups of these really weird satellites.

(20) CRIMESTOPPER. Keith R.A. DeCandido’s Great Superhero Movie Rewatch reaches the films inspired by Chester Gould’s iconic cop — “’Contact Dick Tracy at once’ — RKO’s Dick Tracy Features” at Tor.com.

While he’s pretty much a pop-culture footnote in the 21st century, Dick Tracy was a household name in the 20th. Created by Chester Gould for the eponymous comic strip in 1931, Dick Tracy saw the hard-boiled detective stop a bunch of over-the-top criminals with cutting-edge technology. Gould foresaw the advent of smart-watches with Tracy’s “two-way wrist radio,” and the character was hugely popular.

It wasn’t long before Tracy was adapted to the big screen, first with movie serials in the 1930s and then four one-hour feature films in the 1940s….

[Thanks to Steve Green, Jason, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, mlex, Cat Eldridge, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories, Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]