(1) DRAMA. “JK Rowling Edinburgh Trans Rights Play ‘TERF’ Primed For Protests” reports Deadline. The play will be presented during the Edinburgh Fringe next month.

…Penned by Joshua Kaplan, a Hollywood writer whose credits include HBO’s Tokyo Vice, TERF imagines a confrontation between Rowling and the stars of Harry Potter over her views on transgender rights.

The production is topical given Rowling’s near-daily pronouncements and hardened rhetoric on how trans rights have come into conflict with women’s rights. Her posts on X (once Twitter) have put her further at odds with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint in recent months, and Kaplan sees TERF as a “family conversation” between loved ones with differing views.

In the real world, there have been public exchanges between Rowling and the Harry Potter stars as recently as this year. In April, Rowling accused Radcliffe and Watson of being “cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights.” Radcliffe told The Atlantic that he was saddened by Rowling’s stance.

Staged by veteran Edinburgh Festival Fringe producers at Civil Disobedience, TERF (an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist usually deployed in a pejorative context) had to change venue from Saint Stephens Theatre to the Assembly Rooms amid concerns over the controversy the play was attracting.

Barry Church-Woods, the co-founder of Civil Disobedience, said that the team is now putting security and other measures in place for protests. He told Deadline that they anticipate audience members could attempt to disrupt the play as it is performed.

“We expect that most people, if they’re intending on disrupting what we’re doing, that will happen in the auditorium of the theatre. We have processes in place that are going to deal with that,” said the producer, who has previously worked on Edinburgh shows with the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race star Courtney Act….

(2) GLASGOW 2024 PUBLISHES FINAL PROGRESS REPORT. This week the Worldcon published its sixth electronic Progress Report, which due to there having been a PR #0 is numbered Progress Report 5. Download the PDF here. Cover by Sara Felix.

PR5 includes news from all areas including:

• A final update from Convention Chair Esther MacCallum-Stewart
• A list of our 6,000+ registered members and ticket holders
• Membership statistics and demographics, with 33 countries represented from around the globe
• Practical information to help attendees arrive in and enjoy their time at the convention, from site maps to badge collection arrangements and discounted local travel passes
• Full details and timings for our Special Events – including the Hugo Award Ceremony, Masquerade, Opera, Orchestra, theatrical performances, concerts, and dances
• Updates on Volunteering, Accessibility and Childcare Services, as well as our approach to Sustainability
• Our updated Code of Conduct, which all members and ticket holders are expected to abide by when attending the convention in person or online.

(3) DOCTOR WHO REPORT CARD. “’Doctor Who: Disney Deal, Ncuti Gatwa & Russell T Davies In Spotlight” reports Deadline.

Those lucky enough to attend May’s Disney‘s upfronts at the North Javits Center were treated to clips, teases and appearances from some of the world’s biggest stars.

In the spotlight from the Bob Iger-led Mouse House were hits from the Disney stable including The Acolyte, Welcome to Wrexham, Abbott Elementary and a wealth of ESPN sports shows. The combined budget must have been astronomical.

But almost completely absent from the upfront festivities was Doctor Who, the iconic British sci-fi series that Disney+ now co-produces with the BBC following what was undoubtedly one of the biggest global TV show deals of the past decade. Doctor Who was handed a minor bit of real estate at the North Javits, but its lack of front-and-center placement may spin a yarn about the series’ position in the Disney priority log nearly three years on from the deal being struck.

… Following the conclusion of the the first Disney-BBC Doctor Who season several weeks ago, Deadline has taken the opportunity to analyze its performance both locally and across the pond, its critical reception and just what the future has in store for the deal. Noises that it may not last beyond its initial two seasons are already reverberating around international TV circles, and one source close to the production tells us that they feel its future hangs in the balance already. Disney, the BBC, and co-producers BBC Studios and Bad Wolf all declined Deadline’s interview requests for this article….

(4) DOROTHY VAUGHAN DEDICATION. “NASA Johnson to Dedicate Building to Dorothy Vaughan, Women of Apollo”.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will recognize legendary human computer Dorothy Vaughan and the women of Apollo with activities marking their achievements, including a renaming and ribbon-cutting ceremony at the center’s “Building 12,” on Friday, July 19, the eve of the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

At 9 a.m. CDT, NASA Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche will begin with a discussion about the importance of Vaughan and the women of Apollo’s contributions to the agency’s lunar landing program and their significance to today’s Artemis campaign. Other highlights include a poetry reading, a recital by Texas Southern University’s Dr. Thomas F. Freeman Debate Team, and a “Women in Human Spaceflight” panel discussion….

…Following the program, the ribbon-cutting ceremony will begin at Building 12, which will thereafter be named the “Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Women of Apollo.” The dedication is a tribute to the people who made humanity’s first steps on the Moon possible.

(5) CAGE MATCH. “’Spider-Noir’: Li Jun Li Cast In Amazon’s Marvel Series” – Deadline has the story.

 Li Jun Li (Wu Assassins) is set as a series regular opposite Nicolas Cage in Spider-Noir, the upcoming MGM+ and Prime Video live-action series based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir.

From executive producers/co-showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot and Sony Pictures Television, Spider-Noir tells the story of an aging and down-on-his-luck private investigator (Cage) in 1930s New York who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero.

Li will play a singer at the premier nightclub in New York. In addition to Cage, she joins previously cast Lamorne Morris as Robbie Robertson….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 19, 1969 – Kelly Link, 55.

By Paul Weimer: Genius Grant recipient. Small Press Owner, Small Beer Press. Anthologist.

Oh, and just perhaps the best short fiction fantasist of our age. 

 No biggie, right? I think of her work, be it ”Magic for Beginners”, “The Faery Handbag” or “The Hortlak” or any of the numerous other stories she’s written, as being in an overlapping series of subgenres that are centered in magic slipstream realism. To this core central subgenre, Link ably adds elements of urban fantasy, horror, mystery, into this basic dough and bakes rather tasty treats of stories that linger in the mind and in the soul. 

 I think of Link as a magic realist counterpart to Ted Chiang: her actual output of stories is not actually all that massive. She is careful with word choice and writing, shaping words and sentences to sublime effect. Link’s stories are never to be skimmed over, ever. You will, in the end, regret it.  Her work needs and demands attention, and sometimes, like the work of Liz Hand, I feel like as a reader I am “not in her league” and don’t always grok what she is doing in a story. (To be fair the kind of fantasy Link writes is stuff I do not commonly read besides her fabulous work.

But that’s really wrongheaded of me to make her seem inaccessible. In fact, like Chiang, I think of Link as an excellent ambassador for genre fiction in the worlds of literary fiction, luring readers from outside the genre into it, hopefully to stay. Certainly “Magic for Beginners” is probably the one story I would hand to someone who hasn’t read much or any contemporary fantasy and wanted to give it a try.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

• Thatababy continues crossing over into neighboring strips.
• Carpe Diem looks at dummy status symbols.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal reveals the thoughts of a science fictional parent.
• Arlo and Janis debate chucking some old clothes.

(8) WHAT IF? Check out the next trio of covers in the monthly Disney What If? variant cover series, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Avengers and X-Men.

The new covers see Goofy, Donald, and Daisy fill in for Wolverine, Captain America, and Black Widow for their iconic team-up in Uncanny X-Men #268; Mickey, Minnie and more enter the X-Men’s revolutionary Krakoan age that kicked off in House of X #1, and the gang assembling for one of the Avengers’ most pivotal moments, the “Disassembled” storyline, in Avengers #500. For more information, visit Marvel.com.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #59 DISNEY WHAT IF? VARIANT COVER BY GIADA PERISSINOTTO

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #61 DISNEY WHAT IF? VARIANT COVER BY PAOLO MOTTURA

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #63 DISNEY WHAT IF? VARIANT COVER BY FRANCESCO D’IPPOLITO

(9) REMEMBERING H.R. PUFNSTUF. The LA Breakfast Club will host “Sid Krofft: 55 Years of Weird” on September 4. Tickets at the link.

CELEBRATE ALL THINGS KROFFT, INCLUDING PUFNSTUF’S ANNIVERSARY! On September 6, 1969, the world was introduced to the series H.R. PufnStuf and with it, the zany genius of brothers Sid and Marty Krofft! In the decades that followed, Sid & Marty continued to innovate TV, films, live shows and even theme parks with their signature style of puppetry, visuals and storytelling.

Join us on September 4th to witness Sid Krofft’s honorary initiation into The LA Breakfast Club! We’ll then join Sid on a rollicking discussion about the beloved projects that define his groundbreaking career.

Sep 04, 2024, 7:00 AM – 9:00 AM

The Los Angeles Breakfast Club, 3201 Riverside Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90027, USA

(10) IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE LIVED… “A newly-discovered dinosaur may have spent part of its life underground” NPR has learned.

…Now there is a new dinosaur species on the paleontology block, Fona herzogae.

HAVIV AVRAHAMI: Small plant-eating dinosaurs – they were bipedal. If you took, like, a Komodo dragon tail and attached it to the back of an ostrich, that’s kind of what Fona would have looked like.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

That’s Haviv Avrahami. He’s a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University and was part of the team that identified this new dino. They published their research in the scientific journal The Anatomical Record this month.

AVRAHAMI: It was a small dinosaur. It was about 7 feet long, so probably would have been as long as Shaq would have been if he was laying down….

(11) HORRIFYING HUMOR. From Twilia’s Art: “Peter Lorre & Vincent Price being a chaotic duo”.

Vincent Price and Peter Lorre were in 3 Roger Corman films together, and the two shone as a hilariously odd couple. I would gladly watch their chemistry in any film! So here’s a compilation of all my favorite bits of them.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Daniel Dern.]