Tag Archives: Will Jenkins

Pixel Scroll 11/25/22 As Ghu Is My Witness, I Thought Pixels Could Scroll

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(1) SFF WORKSHOP IN PAKISTAN. The first Salam Award Writers Workshop will be held March 6-10, 2023 in Lahore, Pakistan. Elizabeth Hand and Mary Anne Mohanraj are the lead instructors. Apply at the link – the deadline is December 31, 2022.

…Since 2017, The Salam Award has honored the best Pakistani and Pakistani-diaspora writing in the SFF genre. This workshop will exclusively focus on enhancing and furthering speculative fiction writing and authors.
Over the four days, participants will receive intensive instruction from award-winning writers and editors, participate in critique workshops of an existing manuscript, and craft exercises.

Applications are competitive as the seats are limited. If accepted, conference fees are PKR 40,000 and cover three meals, accommodation at LUMS, instruction costs, and all materials. Limited scholarships are available!

Highlights of the event include:  

  1. Clarion/Milford style workshop focused on Speculative Fiction genre writing
  2. SFF craft lectures and talks
  3. Participants will arrive on March 5th and depart on March 11th…

(2) AN EXPERT EYE. Charlie Jane Anders’ picks for “The 9 best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2022” appeared last week in the Washington Post.

This was the year our dreams grew teeth. The best science fiction and fantasy books of 2022 managed to combine mournfulness and rage. In them, we’re seeing the first indication of how the pandemic and our recent political turmoil might change our stories, in the form of work that’s sharper, funnier and weirder….

The list includes –

‘How High We Go in the Dark,’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu

At first, “How High We Go” — a novel in interconnected stories about the devastation from a strange disease that comes from ancient corpses unfrozen in Antarctica — seems like a simple plague tale. But Nagamatsu’s ambitions reach higher and deeper, taking the story in some truly weird directions. Each of its narratives explores human grief in new ways, and each captures something about how technology and corporate interests can distort it. But throughout, human connection provides a saving grace.

(3) A TALE OF TWO TURKEYS. Walter Jon Williams shared his “best Thanksgiving story” yesterday on Facebook. Whew!

(4) CALLING FOR HELP. Chessiecon, held in Maryland, is a Thanksgiving weekend convention with a 45-year history that continues the tradition of DarkoverCon, emphasizing the work of women creators in sff literature and art.

It is having problems this year, in particular they expect to be hit with a contractual financial penalty for failing to fill their hotel room block. A GoFundMe — “Friends of ChessieCon Unite” — has been started to raise $11,000.

After several years of shutdown and a year of staff and volunteers battling health concerns, this intimate, esoteric fan convention has found itself seriously impacted. Though they have strived to power on, attrition caused by these health issues and a diminished volunteer base has left this year’s convention and its organizers falling short of meeting the convention’s needs and obligations. Most hard-hitting is the fact that this year they have not filled their contractually obligated hotel block. There is a stiff financial penalty levied against the convention by the hotel.

We very much would like to see Chessie and her crew survive these trying years to come back strong in 2023, but to do that, we must meet our obligations for this year. Can you help us?

(5) MAKE YOUR CORNER OF THE INTERNET A GARDEN. In “How to Weave the Artisan Web”, John Scalzi, inspired by a Pablo Defendini tweet, encourages people in sff to resume blogging. Includes lots of suggestions about what to do, but first he answers the question “Why?”

Everyone should start blogging again. Own your own site. Visit all your friends’ sites. Bring back the artisan, hand-crafted Web. Sure, it’s a little more work, but it’s worth it. You don’t even need to stop using social media! It’s a “yes, and” situation, not a “no, but” one.

… Now, why should we bring back that artisan, hand-crafted Web? Oh, I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a site that’s not run by an amoral billionaire chaos engine, or algorithmically designed to keep you doomscrolling in a state of fear and anger, or is essentially spyware for governments and/or corporations? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have ads shoved in your face every time you open an app to see what your friends are up to? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that when your friends post something, you’ll actually see it without a social media platform deciding whether to shove it down your feed and pump that feed full of stuff you didn’t ask for?…

(6) SHINY. Witness History’s episode “How cat’s eyes were invented” is available at BBC Sounds.

In 1934, the late Percy Shaw almost crashed while driving home from the pub on a foggy night in West Yorkshire, in England. 

He was saved when his headlights were reflected in the eyes of a cat and it gave him a brilliant idea. 

He invented reflective studs for the road and called them cat’s eyes. 

And wasn’t this invention behind Will Jenkins’ (aka Murray Leinster) subsequent invention of front-screen projection? Or is that just a trick of my memory? He wrote about it in an Analog science article a loonnng time ago. I see this much on the Murray Leinster official website:

Will F. Jenkins was an active inventor and most notably on December 20, 1955, patented the “Front Projection” filming method, and he sold the patent to Sherman Fairchild of Fairchild Cameras, who widely produced the method, and “Front Projection” was first used in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1970 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Star Trek’s “Amok Time”

“Jim, when I requested to Spock that it was time for his routine check-up, your logical, unemotional first officer turned to me and said: ‘You will cease to pry into my personal matters, Doctor, or I will certainly break your neck!’.”

“Spock said that?” – McCoy and Kirk, about Spock

And now for a true classic episode of the first Trek series. Fifty-two years ago on this date “Amok Time” premiered across the pond in the United Kingdom (having first aired in the U.S. in 1967).

It followed what I thought was a good awful episode, “Operation — Annihilate!”, and was written by Theodore Sturgeon whose other Trek script was the stellar “Shore Leave”. I mean seriously, what a wonderful episode that was!

It had a number of things that made it unique. It is the only episode of Trek, and when I say Trek I always mean the original series, to show scenes on Vulcan.  It was the first episode to show Ensign Pavel Chekov as the navigator, and it was the first episode to list DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy in the opening credits.

I’m going to assume that each and everyone here has seen it, right? Ok. You’re fans. So let’s not deal with the story at all. 

It has two firsts that cannot be overlooked — Leonard Nimoy first used his signature Vulcan salute and “Long live prosper” in this episode. Ok, Sturgeon was a brilliant writer, wasn’t he? 

Memory Alpha says “In Theodore Sturgeon’s original script, Kirk did not have to depend on T’Pau’s influence to justify the departure to Vulcan. He knew the officials on the other planet, and asked them to delay the ceremonies until he got Spock back from Vulcan. This planet (Altair VI in the episode itself) was named Fontana IV in the original script, as a tribute to writer and then-story editor D.C. Fontana.” 

Finally a cat version of “Amok Time” was featured in Jenny Parks’ 2017 book Star Trek Cats. Really she did. She did the same for Picard and his crew as well.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 25, 1920 — Ricardo Montalbán. Khan Noonien Singh and the first Mr. Rourke. Armando and Grandpa Valentin Avellan as well. I’m picking those as four most memorable roles he’s played and they just happen to all be genre in nature. Oh, and is Khan Noonien Singh one of the few occurrences of a non-crew character carrying over from the original series into the films? I suspect not but I can’t think of who else who did. If there is, I’m sure one of you will tell me who else did. (Died 2009.)
  • Born November 25, 1926 — Poul Anderson. My favorite ones by him? Orion Shall Rise for the mix of a personal scale story with his usual grand political stories, and all of the Flandry and van Rijn stories. I also enjoy his Time Patrol stories as well, and the two Operation Luna tales are quite fun. Not to forget the ever so entertaining The Unicorn Trade that he wrote with his wife Karen. He was quite honored with seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. I am told by reliable sources that Lis will reviewing all of the Flandry and van Rijn stories for us.  (Died 2001.)
  • Born November 25, 1926 — Jeffrey Hunter. Best known for his role as the first Captain Christopher Pike in the original pilot episode of Star Trek and the later use of that material in “The Menagerie” episode which won a Hugo at NyCon 3.  Other genre work included Dimension 5, A Witch Without A Broom, Strange Portrait (never released, no print is known to exist), Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Journey into Fear and The Green Hornet. Hunter suffered an intracranial hemorrhage while walking down a three-stair set of steps at his home in Van Nuys, California. He died in-hospital despite brain surgery. (Died 1969.)
  • Born November 25, 1941 — Sandra Miesel, 81. She has described herself as “the world’s greatest expert” on Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson. She’s written such works as Against Time’s Arrow: The High Crusade of Poul Anderson on Borgo Books and she’s written the front and back matter for many of their books. Oh, and she was recognized early as a serious fan being nominated thrice for Hugos for her writing in zines such as Yandro and Granfalloon. She co-authored The Pied Piper of Atheism: Philip Pullman and Children’s Fantasy with Catholic journalist and canon lawyer Pete Wer. 
  • Born November 25, 1950 — Alexis Wright, 72. A Waanyi (Aboriginal Australian) writer known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her novel Carpentaria which might well be genre. She has one definitely genre novel, The Swan Game.
  • Born November 25, 1951 — Charlaine Harris, 71. She is best known for the Southern Vampire series starring Sookie Stackhouse which was adapted as True Blood. I know I’ve read several of this series and enjoyed them. She has two other series, nether genre or genre adjacent, the Aurora Teagarden and Lily Bard series. 
  • Born November 25, 1953 — Michael “Orange Mike” Lowrey, 69. A fan, free citizen of the ImagiNation, husband, daddy, union leader, Esperantist, wearer of orange garments, Quaker, feminist, Irishman, Mac user, Wobbly, Hordesman, Wikipedian. He’s been active in fanzines (Vojo de Vivo) and apas, the N3F, mailing lists, Usenet, social media. The 2020 TAFF delegate. Frequent Filer! 
  • Born November 25, 1974 — Sarah Monette, 48. Under the pen name of Katherine Addison, she published The Goblin Emperor which garnered the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. She won the Spectrum Award in 2003 for her short story “Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland”.  Her first two novels Mélusine and The Virtu are quite wonderful and I highly recommend her Iskryne series that she co-wrote with Elizabeth Bear. 

(9) SOMETIMES THEY DO GROW WEARY. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Shouldn’t the writer of this article realize there’s a simple solution to this so-called fatigue? Don’t watch all these series. Certainly no one is forcing anyone to do so. “Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special Is Answer to Marvel Fatigue” in The Hollywood Reporter.

… As the MCU continues its rapid growth, both on the big-screen and on Disney+, keeping track of back-to-back movies and weekly series has become cumbersome for some audiences. While the notion of franchise fatigue when it comes to superhero movies is as much of a non-issue as it was a decade ago, with the films consistently accounting for the most ticket sales and highest box office each year, even amidst the pandemic, the number of releases leaves little breathing room to catch up before the next thing….

(10) ANTICIPATION. A famed genre filmmaker says Avatar 2 is something we should be looking forward to: “Guillermo del Toro Reviews ‘Avatar 2’ — Raves James Cameron Is a ‘Master at the Peak of His Powers’” at Yahoo!

Critics won’t weigh-in on James Cameron’s highly anticipated “Avatar” sequel for few more weeks. But if Guillermo del Toro is to be believed, then the boundary-pushing water adventure will surely dazzle audiences and the box office come December 16.

“A staggering achievement,” del Toro tweeted on Thursday. “[‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is chockfull] of majestic Vistas and emotions at an epic, epic scale.  A master at the peak of his powers…”

That’s big praise for the director behind “Titanic,” “Aliens,” and “The Terminator,” made even more meaningful by del Toro’s own cinematic chops. The Mexican filmmaker’s most recent project — a stop-motion “Pinocchio” for Netflix — is a frontrunner for Best Animated Feature at the 95th Academy Awards. Cameron and “Avatar 2” are similarly positioned in the Oscar race for Best Visual Effects….

(11) MUST COME DOWN. “Scientists Glimpse Incoming Asteroid Just Hours Before It Makes Impact” reports MSN.com.

For just the sixth time in recorded history, astronomers managed to catch a glimpse of an asteroid before it slammed into Earth.

On 19 November 2022, nearly four hours before impact, the Catalina Sky Survey discovered an asteroid named 2022 WJ1 on an inbound trajectory. A network of telescopes and scientists sprang into action, accurately calculating exactly when and where on the globe the asteroid would fall.

This is excellent news. 2022 WJ1 was too small to do any serious damage, but its detection shows that the world’s asteroid monitoring techniques are improving, giving us a better chance of protecting ourselves from falling space rocks – the big ones that might actually do some damage….

(12) BOGUSAURUS? “Christie’s Pulls T. Rex From Auction, Citing Need for ‘Further Study’” reports the New York Times. The exact problem seems to be that it is a too much of a model specimen.

…The T. rex, which the auction house called Shen, had been billed as the first skeleton of its species to appear at auction in Asia. A Christie’s news release touted the specimen as “museum standard” and “a world-class specimen.”

But questions about the fossil were raised in recent weeks, when a lawyer for the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, a fossil company in South Dakota, reached out to Christie’s about similarities between Shen and another T. rex skeleton, named Stan, which Christie’s had sold in 2020 for a record $31.8 million.

Although Stan was auctioned off, the Black Hills Institute retained intellectual property rights on the specimen, allowing it to continue selling painted polyurethane casts of the skeleton, which are currently priced at $120,000 each.

Peter Larson, the company’s president, said in an interview that when he first saw a photo of Shen, the skeleton Christie’s was preparing to auction in Hong Kong, he noticed that the skull looked similar to Stan’s skull, including holes in the lower left jaw that Mr. Larson said were unique to Stan. Mr. Larson and his colleagues at Black Hills had examined the particularities of Stan’s bones over three decades after excavating the specimen starting in 1992.

Mr. Larson said that it appeared to him that the owner of Shen — who was not identified by Christie’s — had bought a cast of Stan from Black Hills to supplement the original bones….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l Danehy-Oakes.]

Pixel Scroll 6/29/22 I Want To Scroll, What The Pixel On The Table Number 5 Is Scrolling!

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(1) MARCEAU RAISES ISSUE ABOUT H.A.G. PRESIDENT. Author Caitlin Marceau tweeted yesterday that she has made the decision to leave the Horror Authors Guild (a different organization than the Horror Writers Association) due to Facebook comments made by the group’s newly-appointed president Don Smith on his own page. Smith was appointed President of HAG after D.A. Roberts stepped down, as Roberts announced June 14 on Facebook. Thread starts here.

(2) OTHER TIMES. Oliver Brackenbury of the Unknown Worlds of the Merril Collection podcast interviews Galactic Journey’s Gideon Marcus about alternate history fiction: “Alternate Histories”.

(3) A BARBARIAN’S BIRTHDAY. The Cromcast shares another Howard Days recording, this time of a panel to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Conan the Barbarian film: “Howard Days 2022 – Part 6 – Conan the Barbarian at 40!”

In this recording from Saturday, June 11, Paul Sammon shares comments and stories related to his involvement with the first two Conan movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger .

(4) BEYOND PEEVED. The Guardian tells how the superhero show The Boys enraged its rightwing fanbase, because they apparently did not realize that The Boys was supposed to be satire: “Why superhero satire The Boys turned off its rightwing fanbase”.

There seems to be a low-key competition within the culture at the moment as to who can produce the worst sort of fan. For years, Star Wars has been the far and away winner, with fans bitching and crowing like wounded animals any time the series dares to venture out of its very narrow parameters. And Rick and Morty had a decent shot at the title a few years ago, when fans furious that their favourite show had the temerity to hire a female writer published her personal details online.

But now, thanks to a large and increasingly dunderheaded minority, it would appear that the show with the worst fans alive is currently Amazon’s The Boys. These fans have just twigged that the show’s main villain is actually a villain, and they’re absolutely furious….

(5) MURRAY LEINSTER SIGHTING. A Virginia news site remembers the Dean of Science Fiction on the date he once received a statewide honor: “Editorial: The Virginia writer and inventor who predicted the internet and the multiverse” in The Roanoke Times.

We’ve opined on a number of heavy topics in recent weeks. Today we’re going to take a breather, and contemplate space, time, alternate realities and the possibility of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations.

In this instance, especially on this day, these topics have a Virginia connection.

Thirteen years ago, the General Assembly passed a resolution declaring June 27, 2009, as William Fitzgerald Jenkins Day.

Who the heck, you might wonder, is Will Jenkins?

…Jenkins, who died in 1975, is today remembered above all else as an author, but his most enduring work was not published under his own name. He used a nom de plume, Murray Leinster (pronounced LEN-ster).

As is the case with the invention of front screen projection, while you may not have personally read a Murray Leinster story, odds are extremely high that you’ve been entertain by a book or movie built on themes that he was the first to tackle — or at least the first to tackle in a manner that left a memorable impression through the decades.

Case in point, his 1945 story “First Contact,” which the General Assembly resolution billed as “the first science fiction story to present the dramatic scenario of the first meeting between earthlings and aliens.” The phrase “first contact” has since been used so often in that context that it’s understood to refer to a first encounter of the extraterrestrial kind….

(6) PULLMAN PROTESTS. Sheffield Hallam University in the UK has shuttered its English literature program, because the current UK government considers it a “low value” degree, which caused angry reactions from many prominent writers, including Philip Pullman: “Philip Pullman leads outcry after Sheffield Hallam withdraws English lit degree” in The Guardian.

The award-winning author Philip Pullman has said the study of literature “should not be a luxury for a wealthy minority of spoilt and privileged aesthetes” after it emerged that Sheffield Hallam University is to pull its English literature degree from next year.

He was one of a number of writers to raise concerns about the university’s decision to stop teaching the standalone degree and incorporate it instead into a broad-based English degree, a year after the University of Cumbria took similar action.

A Sheffield Hallam spokesperson confirmed that English literature was among a small number of its courses that were being either suspended or closed, largely due to lack of demand. They said the changes would not involve job losses….

(7) DOROTHY J. HEYDT (1942-2022). Author Dorothy J. Heydt, the originator and first editor of the Star Trek Concordance (1969), died this month reported Seanan McGuire on Twitter. Memory Alpha notes that beginning in 1967 her series of Star Trek stories, “Dorothy and Myfanwy” were published in Ruth Berman’s fanzine T-Negative. The Wikipedia credits her with the invention of the first widely used Vulcan conlangs for that series.

Its words were picked up and used by other fan fiction authors such as Claire Gabriel. One term, ni var, meaning “two form”, an art form in which two contrasting aspects of a subject are compared, is still used on Star Trek: Enterprise, as the name of a Vulcan ship and on Star Trek: Discovery as the new name of the planet Vulcan itself.

She also had poetry and articles published in the first Trek fanzine, Spockanalia.

Later she was an active participant in the Usenet newsgroups rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. She wrote numerous short stories and two novels. Many of her stories appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, or in collections edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, including the Sword and Sorceress series, and stories in the Darkover series shared world. 

(8) BILLY WOLFENBARGER (1943-2022). Author and poet Billy Wolfenbarger died June 26. In addition to short fiction and poetry, he wrote columns and contributions for fanzines, especially Bill Bowers’ Outworlds and Xenolith. Two years ago William Breiding fulfilled the late Bowers’ vision of gathering these works in a book – Language at Midnight – now available at eFanzines. Breiding’s introduction shares some of that history:

In 1973 Bill Bowers published The Lizard Speaks by Billy Wolfenbarger in Outworlds 15, the 3rd anniversary issue, as a “book” inclusive to that issue. He then did an overrun of 50 “books” (a mimeographed pamphlet) that he distributed to its author and other interested parties. This was the culmination of an affectionate editor/writer relationship between Bill Bowers and Billy Wolfenbarger that dated as far back as 1964 and the Bill Bowers/Bill Mallardi fanzine Double:Bill.

In 1974 Bowers ran Wolfenbarger’s first “Language At Midnight” column in Outworlds 19. The column continued through Outworlds 26, published in 1975, then hopped over to Bill’s Xenolith in 1977 and ran there until 1980, when Billy stopped writing the column. Billy had a scattershot of other pieces in Bill’s publications—prose and verse—but never another “Language At Midnight” column, which had its own cast of characters and feel to it. (“Where it’s always midnight in October.”)

(9) MEMORY LANE. 

1972 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Fifty years ago, at the very first L.A. Con, we saw Poul Anderson’s “A Queen of Air and Darkness” novella which has been published in F&SF, the April 1971 edition, win the Hugo for Best Novella. (Mike says he both nominated and voted for it.)

It was a particularly strong field that year with the other works being Arthur C. Clarke’s “A Meeting with Medusa”, Larry Niven‘s “The Fourth Profession”, John Brunner’s “Dread Empire” and Gardner R. Dozois’s “A Special Kind of Morning”. 

It would remain in print thereafter showing up immediately in Terry Carr’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year and Lloyd Biggle Jr.’s Nebula Award Winners 7. Anderson put in several collections including, not unsurprisingly, The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories. Currently, of course, it is in the NESFA volumes. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 29, 1919 — Slim Pickens. Surely you remember his memorable scene as Major T. J. “King” Kong in Dr. Strangelove? I certainly do. And of course, he shows up in Blazing Saddles as Taggart. He’s the uncredited voice of B.O.B in The Black Hole and he’s Sam Newfield in The Howling. He’s got some series genre work including several appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, plus work on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Night Gallery. (Died 1983.)
  • Born June 29, 1920 — Ray Harryhausen. All around film genius who created stop-motion model Dynamation animation. His work can be seen in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (his first colour film) which was nominated for a Hugo at Detention, Jason and the Argonauts, Mighty Joe Youngand Clash of the Titans. I’ve got him voted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame twice, in 1996 and 2008. Any idea why?  (Died 2013.)
  • Born June 29, 1943 — Maureen O’Brien, 79. Vicki, companion of the First Doctor. Some forty years later, she reprised the role for several Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio works. She had a recurring role as Morgan in The Legend of King Arthur, a late Seventies BBC series. Her Detective Inspector John Bright series was well received.
  • Born June 29, 1947 — Michael Carter, 75. Best remembered for being Gerald Bringsley in An American Werewolf in London, Von Thurnburg in The Illusionist and Bib Fortuna in the Return of the Jedi. He plays two roles as a prisoner and as UNIT soldier in the Third Doctor story, “The Mind of Evil”. 
  • Born June 29, 1950 — Michael Whelan, 72. I’m reasonably sure that most of the Del Rey editions of McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series was where I first noticed his artwork but I’ve certainly seen it elsewhere since. He did Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls cover which I love and many more. And there’s a wonderful collection of his work available, Beyond Science Fiction: The Alternative Realism of Michael Whelan.
  • Born June 29, 1956 — David Burroughs Mattingly, 66. He’s an American illustrator and painter, best known for his numerous book covers of genre literature. Earlier in his career, he worked at Disney Studio on the production of The Black Hole, Tron, Dick Tracy and Stephen King’s The Stand. His main cover work was at Ballantine Books where he did such work as the 1982 cover of Herbert’s Under Pressure (superb novel), the 2006 Anderson’s Time Patrol and the 1983 Berkley Books publication of E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith Triplanetary.
  • Born June 29, 1957 — Fred Duarte, Jr. His Birthday is today and this long-time Texas fan was well eulogized by Mike here upon his passing several years back. 
  • Born June 29, 1963 — Judith Hoag, 59. Her first genre role was in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as April O’Neil followed by being in Armageddon playing Denise Chappel and then a Doctor in A Nightmare On Elm Street. She filmed a cameo for another Turtle film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, but it was deleted. She’s got one one-offs in Quantum Leap, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Strange World, The Burning Zone, X-Files, Carnivàle and Grimm. Her lady genre role was in The Magicians as Stephanie Quinn.

(11) ORIGINAL HORROR ANTHOLOGY BY POC. Following a successful Kickstarter, Death In The Mouth: The Best of Contemporary Horror, a horror anthology showcasing BIPOC and other ethnically marginalized writers and artists from around the world edited by Sloane Leong and Cassie Hart, will be released October 1 and is available for pre-order.

Sloane Leong is a cartoonist, artist and writer of Hawaiian, Chinese, Mexican, Native American and European ancestries. She’s written and drawn two acclaimed graphic novels, Prism Stalker and A Map to the Sun, and has short fiction credits with Fireside Magazine, Dark Matter Magazine and Entropy Magazine. She’s also co-edited the anthology Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales: Oceania Edition. Sloane is currently living on Chinook land near what is known as Portland, Oregon.

Cassie Hart is a Māori/Pākehā author and editor from New Zealand. She has been an Australian Shadow, Hugo, and Sir Julius Vogel award finalist across the years, co-winning an SJV for Best Collected works for the anthology, Tales for Canterbury, and is a finalist for Best Edited Works in the Australian Shadow Awards 2021. Her supernatural suspense novel, Butcherbird, releases from Huia in 2021.

The anthology includes these authors and artists:

  • Jolie Toomajan – “Water Goes, Sand Remains”, with art by Jabari Weathers
  • Yah Yah Scholfield – “They Will Take Up Serpents”, with art by Makoto
  • ChiIsha Karki – “Welcome to Labyrinth”, with art by Natalie Hall
  • Endria Richardson – “Wind Up Teeth”, with art by Tsulala
  • Johnny Compton – “No Hungry Generations”, with art by Pierre Roset
  • Arasibo Campeche – “Drowned in Mindfulness”, with art by Michael Deforge
  • K-Ming Chang – “The Three Resurrections of my Grandfather”, with art by Sloane Hong
  • Reno Evangelista – “Her Apocrypha”, with art by Jess Hara
  • Catherine Yu – “Balloon Girl”, with art by Joy San
  • Daphne Fama – “The Pleiades”, with art by Alicia Feng
  • Beatrice Iker– “They’ll Keep You Gestated”, with art by Molly Mendoza
  • Cassie Hart – “She”, with art by Weiwei XuC
  • Pam Zang – “Alice or Rose or Aurora or Allerleuirah or Belle, on the Occasion of the Burial of the Beast”, with art by Charlotte Gomez
  • P. H. Low – “Tongue is a Void”, with art by JaeHoon Choi
  • Kelsea Yu – “The Obedient Son”, with art by Audrey Murty
  • JL Akagi – “Henry Watanabe and the Wandering Hand”, with art by Bhanu Pratap
  • Amaranta Sepulveda Durán – “The Mother-Wound”, with art by Vivian Magaña
  • Sloane Leong – “Paradise”, with art by Solomon Enos
  • Rivers Solomon – “Some of us are Grapefruit”, with art by Junko Mizuno
  • Ras Cutlass – “Melinda and the Grub”, with art by Naomi Butterfield
  • R.S.A. Garcia – “A Bonfire in the Night”, with art by Zhang Hetian
  • Jessica Cho – “On Tattered Wings”, with art by Lina Wu
  • M. L. Krishnan – “The Eggshell Sanctuary”, with art by Julie Benbassat
  • Priya Chand – “Never Lie to Me” with art by Congming
  • Karin Lowachee – “The Black Hole of Beaumort”, with art by Allissa Chan
  • Darcie Little Badger – “Homebody”, with art by Apolo Cacho

(12) IS IT TIME FOR YOUR MOUNT TSUNDOKU TO ERUPT AGAIN? [Item by BGrandath.] Matt of Bookpilled is IMHO one of the best SF reviewers on BookTube, he has a great respect for classic SF. He is going to have an auction of vintage books on Sunday and I thought some Filers might be interested. These are the two links to the event he discusses in the video. (1) Whatnot – Vintage SF & Fantasy Book Clearout Livestream by thriftalife #books, and (2) Bookpilled – Etsy.

(13) A LIVING SKIN COVERING FOR ROBOTS HAS BEEN CREATED. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In The Terminator film franchise, the hideous form of the robotic Terminators were covered by biological skin. This has now been developed for real by researchers in Japan. They have developed a living-skin consisting of cells and extracellular matrix, as a human-like and self-healing coverage material for robots. It was flexible and felt like skin. If scratched it could even heal. However, this artificial living skin was prone to drying out. To avoid such drying, building perfusion channels within and beneath the outer skin so as to mimic blood vessels to supply water, as well as the integration of sweating glands in the skin equivalent, need to be developed. (See Kawai, M. et al (2022) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matt.2022.05.019 Matter, vol. 5 1-19.)

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers:  Diablo Immortal,” Fandom Games says this version of Diablo meant for phones is yet another example of how “a thing you love is processed by the same garbage-content processing machine” that is ruining entertainment today. The game is so focused on making you by stuff to make the play enjoyable that the only people who can afford it are “Saudi princes and whales who badly need a gambling intervention.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Cora Buhlert, Steven H Silver, BGrandath, Christian Brunschen, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]