2023 Splatterpunk Award Nominees

Splatterpunk Award founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene have announced the nominees for the 2023 Splatterpunk Awards, honoring superior achievement for works published in 2022 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.

They have also named the recipient of the sixth annual J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award (honoring individuals who, like Gonzalez, have made a significant impact on the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror field).

The nominees are as follows:

BEST NOVEL*

  • Playground by Aron Beauregard (Independently Published)
  • The Television by Edward Lee (Madness Heart Press)
  • Faces of Beth by Carver Pike (Independently Published)
  • Last of the Ravagers by Bryan Smith (Thunderstorm Books / Death’s Head Press)
  • Mastodon by Steve Stred (Black Void Publishing)
  • Ex-Boogeyman (Slasher vs The Remake) by Kristopher Triana (Bad Dream Books / Thunderstorm Books)

BEST NOVELLA

  • Charcoal by Garrett Cook (Clash Books)
  • Grandpappy by Patrick C. Harrison III (Independently Published)
  • Mr. Tilling’s Basement by Edward Lee (Deadite Press)
  • #thighgap by Chandler Morrison (Cemetery Gates Media)
  • Plastic Monsters by Daniel J. Volpe (Independently Published)

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “Just Another Bloodbath at Camp Woe-Be-Gone” by R.J. Benetti (Independently Published)
  • “Of The Worm” by Ryan Harding (from Splatterpunk Zine issue 13)
  • “My Chopping List” by Stephen Kozeniewski (from Counting Bodies Like Sheep, The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • “Gutted” by Bracken MacLeod (from Splatterpunk Zine issue 13)
  • “Jinx” by Bridgett Nelson (from A Bouquet of Viscera)

BEST COLLECTION

  • Always Listen To Her Hurt: Collected Works by Kenzie Jennings (Blistered Siren Press)
  • Mr. Tilling’s Basement and Other Stories by Edward Lee (Deadite Press)
  • Horrorsmut by Christine Morgan (The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • A Bouquet of Viscera by Bridgett Nelson (Independently Published)
  • Pornography For the End of the World by Brendan Vidito (Weirdpunk Books)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

  • Human Monsters edited by Sadie Hartmann and Ashley Sawyers (Dark Matter Ink)
  • Camp Slasher Lake, Volume 1 edited by D.W. Hitz and Candace Nola (Fedowar Press)
  • Counting Bodies Like Sheep edited by K. Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • Call Me Hoop edited by SC Mendes & Lucy Leitner, created by Drew Stepek (Blood Bound Books)
  • Czech Extreme edited by Lisa Lee Tone (Madness Heart Press)

J. F. GONZALEZ LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD**

  • Monica J. O’Rourke

The final ballot is composed of top recommendations from readers, critics, and the general public and then voted on by a panel of six judges. The sixth annual Splatterpunk Awards will take place at KillerCon in Austin, Texas on August 12.

The recommendation process for next year’s ballot is now open to readers, critics, and the general public. Eligible works must be first published in 2023, and must meet the definitions of either Splatterpunk or Extreme Horror. Email recommendations to [email protected]. The recommendation window will close at 11:50 p.m. Eastern on December 31, 2023. There Will Be No Extensions.

* Tie category

** The previous J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award recipients are David J. Schow, David G. Barnett, Edward Lee, John Skipp, and Clive Barker.

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 1/22/23 Look At My Fingers: Four Pixels, Four Scrolls. Zero Pixels, Zero Scrolls!

(1) SPLATTERPUNK AWARDS DEADLINE RESET. Brian Keene and Wrath James White announced on Facebook that they have extended until January 29 the last date that readers can recommend eligible works at [email protected].

…Given that readers sent in recommendations ALL YEAR LONG, we assumed the community was aware.

Obviously, we were wrong about that. And we apologize for that. We would like to assure authors who expressed disappointment about this that there were indeed recommendations already made. And that is a very good thing. Six years into this process, that’s exactly what the community needs to see — that readers are recommending your work without you reminding them or drawing it to their attention.

To further address the communities concerns, Wrath and I have decided to pause the tallying process and reopen the nominations for another 7 days. We will accept recommendations for WORKS PUBLISHED IN 2022 until midnight on Sunday, January 29th. That way, everyone who has expressed concerns has the opportunity to inform their readers and fans.

So, again… the process has been extended to next Sunday. Email your recommendations to [email protected]. After next Sunday, we will then again be accepting recs for works published in 2023.

Our apologies for any stress or duress this may have caused, and our appreciation to those who expressed their concerns in good faith….

(2) MERRIL CENTENARY. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Toronto Public Library (which IIRC is actually the largest library system in North America?) posted a celebration of Judith Merril yesterday to mark her centennial. “100 Years of Judith Merril, Science Fiction Writer and Editor” at The Buzz…About Books.

… At the same time that Merril was publishing novels, she was getting more involved in editorial and review work. This book collects and reflects upon Merril’s editorial and non-fiction work. In particular, “her twelve Year’s Best anthologies, her thirty-eight ‘Books’ columns from F&SF, and three particularly important essays.” These works were originally published between 1956 and 1969. This period marks Merril’s shift from authorship to her editorial career.

To support her daughter Ann, who created artwork and posters in support of Eugene McCarthy, Judith Merril attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Tensions were high due to the Vietnam War. After Merril witnessed the police response to the anti-Vietnam War protestors, she decided that she and her family needed to leave the United States. At the convention, a copy of the Toronto Anti-Draft Manual caught Merril’s attention. She had a friend in Toronto, a mathematics professor, and with their aid moved to Canada. She legally changed her name to Judith Merril when she become a Canadian citizen….

(3) SF ON SNL. Last night’s Saturday Night Live had two genre related segments:

(4) LOTS TO MEND. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Jeremy Renner, the MCU‘s Hawkeye, is back home after his snowplow accident. The latest pic and information released by the actor shows him undergoing PT at home and letting it be known that over 30 bones were broken in the incident. “Jeremy Renner Says His ’30 Plus Broken Bones’ Will ‘Mend’ After Accident” reports People.

…The actor, 52, shared a post on Instagram Saturday morning of himself in a bed receiving what appeared to be physical therapy.

In the caption of his post, Renner wrote, “Morning workouts, resolutions all changed this particular new years …. Spawned from tragedy for my entire family, and quickly focused into uniting actionable love.”

The Mayor of Kingstown star then said that he wanted “to thank EVERYONE for their messages and thoughtfulness for my family and I …. Much love and appreciation to you all.”

“These 30 plus broken bones will mend , grow stronger, just like the love and bond with family and friends deepens,” Renner concluded. “Love and blessings to you all…”

(5) NOVELIST SEEN FROM THE INSIDE. [Item by Steven French.] Co-screen writer of Matrix Resurrections revealed to be a massive Liverpool fan! “Aleksandar Hemon: ‘A book isn’t a car – not everything has to work’” in The Guardian.

…Tell us about your work as a screenwriter.
The sovereignty of being in my head as a novelist is enjoyable but gets burdensome. Lana and David are good friends with brilliant minds different from mine and there’s relief in that: whenever I watch The Matrix Resurrections, at no point do I think: “That’s mine, I did this,” because I never did it alone. So what I get out of screenwriting – apart from the money, which is nice – is doing something with others. The traditional bourgeois concept of literature is that it’s a way to be alone; there’s a Jonathan Franzen book of essays called How to Be Alone. But I don’t want to be alone. I want to be with people….

(6) FREE READ. Sunday Morning Transport encourages subscriptions with a sample by Benjamin C. Kinney: “The Work-Clock”.

(7) SFF PUPPETRY. “‘The Immortal Jellyfish Girl’ Review: A 26th-Century Love Story” in the New York Times.  

The first time Bug and Aurelia kiss is as romantic as can be, even if Bug has to get past his initial reaction. “That really hurts,” he says. “That stings so much!” Which is what you get when smooching a part-jellyfish humanoid.

Aurelia is the title character of “The Immortal Jellyfish Girl,” though if 23andMe still exists in her postapocalyptic world, it might locate traces of kangaroo, frog, naked mole rat and other beasties in her makeup. Above all, “she is also 100 percent puppet,” as the narrator, a mischievous masked fox in shorts and red tails, informs us.

Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock’s play, devised with help from the ensemble and presented by Wakka Wakka Productions and the Norwegian company Nordland Visual Theater at 59E59 Theaters, is indeed a puppet show, and an ambitious one at that….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

2014 [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

One of my absolutely favorite works is Seanan McGuire’s Ghost Roads series. It’s a perfect example of how excellent McGuire is as a writer with splendid, believable characters, especially Rose Marshall, the hitchhiking ghost who was a sixteen-year old prom date who never actually made it to her prom but was killed on her way there and now hitchhikes forever on America’s highways, both the real ones and the ghosts ones, a absolutely fascinating setting and a compelling story that McGuire has developed oh so very well across three novels.

(There is also three shorter pieces set here, “Good Girls go to Heaven”, “Train Yard Blues” and “The Ghosts of Bourbon Street”.) 

One of those settings is the Last Dance Diner that exists on the Ghost Roads. Of it Rose says that, “When you die on the road, if you’re lucky, a phantom rider or a hitchhiking ghost will be there, waiting, to offer you directions to the Last Dance Diner. Best malts this side of the 1950s, pie to die for, and best of all, a chance to rest, for just a little while, before moving on . . . and everyone moves on, in the end.”

So the quote I’ve chosen is from the first novel of the series, Sparrow Hill Road, and concerns that Diner:  

They have good beer here, these routewitches do, and their grill is properly aged, old grease caught in the corners, the drippings of a hundred thousand steaks and bacon breakfasts and cheeseburgers scraped from a can and used to slick it down before anything starts cooking. The plate they bring me groans under a triple-decker cheeseburger and a pile of golden fries that smell like summer nights and stolen kisses—and they smell, even before the platter hits the table.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 22, 1858 Charles H. M. Kerr. He’s best remembered for illustrating the pulp novels of H. Rider Haggard. Some of his other genre-specific work includes the Andrew Lang-edited The True Story Book, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Wrong Boxand Arthur Conan Doyle‘s  “The Sign of the Four”. You can see the one of the H. Rider Haggard novels he did here. (Died 1907.)
  • Born January 22, 1906 Robert E. Howard. He’s best remembered for his characters Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Kane, less so for Kull, and is widely regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. His Cthulhu mythos stories are quite good. I believe all of these were publish in Weird Tales.  If you’re interested in reading him on your slate, you’re in luck as all the usual suspects are deep stockers of him at very reasonable prices. (Died 1936.)
  • Born January 22, 1925 Katherine MacLean. She received a Nebula Award for “The Missing Man” novella originally published in Analog in 1971. She was a Professional Guest of Honor at the first WisCon. Short fiction was her forte and her two collections, The Diploids and Other Flights of Fancy and The Trouble with You Earth People, are brilliant. I can’t speak to her three novels, all written in the Seventies and now out of print, only Missing Man is available from the usual suspects, and I’ve not read it. (Died 2019.)
  • Born January 22, 1934 Bill Bixby. Principal casting in several genre series, first in My Favorite Martian as Tim O’Hara, a young newspaper reporter for the LA Sun who discovers that alien, and then as Dr. David Banner in The Incredible Hulk seriesand in both The Incredible Hulk Returns and The Death of the Incredible Hulk films.  He shows up in a number of other genre series including Fantasy IslandTales of the UnexpectedNight GalleryThe Ghost & Mrs. Muir and The Twilight Zone (original version). He also had the lead as Anthony Blake / Anthony Dorian in The Magician series but as he was a stage illusionist, I couldn’t count it as genre… (Died 1993.)
  • Born January 22, 1940 John Hurt. I rarely grieve over the death of one individual, but damn it I really liked him. It’s rare that someone comes along like Hurt who is both talented and is genuinely good person that’s easy to like. If we count his role as Tom Rawlings in The Ghoul, Hurt had an almost fifty-year span in genre films and series. He next did voice work in The Lord of the Rings (1978) as the voice of Aragorn, and later voiced General Woundwort in seven episodes of the Watership Down TV series.. He appeared as Kane, the first victim, in Alien (and had a cameo in Spaceballs parodying that performance.) Though not genre, I must comment his role as Joseph Merrick in The Elephant Man — simply remarkable. He had the lead as Winston Smith in 1984. He narrates Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound and will later be one of two of the narrators of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. That role is simply magnificent. Ok, I’m just at 1994. He’s about to be S.R. Hadden in Contact. Did you remember he played Garrick Ollivander in Harry Potter films? You certainly remember him as Trevor Bruttenholm in the Hellboy films, all four of them in total. He’s in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull asDr. Harold Oxley, one of the few decent things about that film. Series wise, he’s been around. I’ve got him in Spectre, a Roddenberry occult detective pilot that I’ve not seen. On the Merlin live action series, he provides the voice of the Great Dragon. It’s an amazing role for him. And fitting that he’s a dragon, isn’t it? And of course, he played The War Doctor. It, despite the brevity of the screen time, was a role that he seemed destined to play. Oh, for an entire series of stories about his Doctor! Big Finish, the audiobook company, had the singular honor of having him flesh out his character in a series of stories that he did with them just before his death. I’ve heard some, they’re quite remarkable.  If I’ve missed anything about him that you feel I should’ve touched upon, do tell me. (Died 2017.)
  • Born January 22, 1965 Diane Lane, 58. I’ve got her as Ellen Aim in Streets of Fire which I count as genre. She’s Chief Judge Barbara Hershey in Judge Dredd, a film I’ll freely admit that I actually like because it catches the pop culture feel of the 2000 A.D. comics in a way the second film doesn’t. Next up for her is playing Mary Rice in Jumper. She’s been playing Martha Kent in the DC Universe films as of late.
  • Born January 22, 1969 Olivia d’Abo, 54. She makes the Birthday Honors list for being Amanda Rogers, a female Q, in the “True Q” episode on Next Generation. Setting that gig aside, she’s got a long and extensive SFF series history. Conan the DestroyerBeyond the StarsAsterix Conquers AmericaTarzan & Jane and Justice League Doom are some of her film work, while her series work includes Fantasy IslandBatman BeyondTwilight Zone, Eureka and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Argyle Sweater was recommended by Rich Lynch because he thinks John Hertz will love it. Maybe you will, too?
  • Marmaduke keeps watching the skies – and it pays off!

(11) I’M SORRY, I’LL READ THAT AGAIN. Brian Keene says the says in his weekly Substack he’s been sorting through his and J.F. Gonzalez’s archives for things that will go to the University of Pittsburgh. In the middle of a paragraph this line caught my eye:

…There are some gems among the correspondence — letters between Richard Laymon and myself, letters between Robert Bloch and Jesus….

Well, Jesus was Gonzalez’s first name. But I knew Robert Bloch and for a moment I flashed on what seemed an unexpected discovery from his fertile imagination.

(12) DISNEY’S STAR WARS PLANS IN TROUBLE? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Some aspects of Disney’s acquisition of Star Wars IP are working out great for them; others not so much. Because of underwhelming box office for several films, the concept of theatrical release for a movie a year has faltered. Partially counterbalancing that, the small screen Star Wars series on Disney+ have proved a buffer. 

Star Wars theme park attractions seem to be doing great business, but it now develops that the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser theme hotel—where 2-night immersive experiences start at mid-four-figures—will be sitting empty part of the time. Disney has canceled several “voyages“ in July, August, and September. People who had already booked for those dates have been offered a 50% discount if they will accept a different date.

TheStreet.com has the full story. “Disney’s Huge Star Wars Bet May Be in Big Trouble”.

… “A number of our readers have also noticed Facebook posts which advertise the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser and include lesser known characters. There appear to be quite a few “absolutely loved this” posts from people claiming they were guests on the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser which if you look at their profiles have no info at all, no town, school, or jobs. This leads us to question their authenticity,” Theme Park Tourist alleged.

Overall, the cancellations are more troubling than potential fake reviews. It’s possible that Disney built an attraction with tremendous appeal, but a limited audience due to price and little reason for people to visit more than once. You can take your family on a Disney Cruise for 7 nights for less than what Galactic Starcruiser costs and that’s a lot easier to justify than a two-day trip.

(13) CLEANING UP AROUND THE HOUSE. Get your Digital Dishcloth: “May Godzilla Destroy This Home Last”.

PROTECTION FROM A GIANT LIZARD – This house blessing towel will definitely keep Godzilla from destroying your or your friend’s house! And not only that, it is also the perfect home decor for all lo

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The genie makes it genre. The cat makes it perfect (???) for File 770. “Ryan George Compilation Part 1”.

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

2022 Splatterpunk Awards

Splatterpunk Award founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene announced the winners of the 2022 Splatterpunk Awards during Killercon on August 13.

The duo founded the Splatterpunk Awards in 2017 to honor superior achievement in the literary subgenres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror fiction for novel, novella, short story, collection, and anthology categories. They also created the J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award, to honor individuals who, like Gonzalez, have made a significant impact on the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror field.

SPLATTERPUNK AWARDS

BEST NOVEL

  • The Night Stockers by Kristopher Triana and Ryan Harding (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

BEST NOVELLA

  • Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca (Weirdpunk Books)

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “Next Best Baker” by Jeff Strand (from Baker’s Dozen, Uncomfortably Dark)

BEST COLLECTION

  • Beyond Reform by Jon Athan, Aron Beauregard, and Jasper Bark (Aron Beauregard Horror)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

[Tie]

  • Body Shocks edited by Ellen Datlow (Tachyon Publications)
  • Baker’s Dozen edited by Candace Nola (Uncomfortably Dark)

J. F. GONZALEZ LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

  • Clive Barker

The previous J. F. Gonzalez Award recipients are: David J. Schow, David G. Barnett, Edward Lee, and John Skipp

SPLATTERPUNK HALL OF LEGENDS INDUCTEES

  • Richard Laymon
  • Jack Ketchum
  • J. F. Gonzalez
  • Charlee Jacob
  • John Pelan
  • Gak
  • David G. Barnett

This is the inaugural class of inductees. White and Keene have created the Splatterpunk Hall of Legends, a physical memorial that will be displayed at every KillerCon event, “featuring artifacts and ephemera related to the honorees, as well as a chronicle of their individual achievements, and an eternal flame burning for each. It is to serve as a place where genre fans both young and old can pay their respects and learn more about the creators who have shaped the field.”

StokerCon 2023 Announces Next Guest of Honor

StokerCon 2023, the Horror Writers Association annual convention, will be held at the Sheraton Pittsburgh Hotel at Station Square, from June 15-18th.

Today they added a third Guest of Honor, author of Succulent PreyThe Resurrectionist, and more, Wrath James White. Find Wrath’s work here and follow him on Twitter.

At StokerCon™ 2022, they announced their first two Guests of Honor Daniel Kraus and Cynthia Pelayo.

2022 Splatterpunk Award Nominees

Splatterpunk Award founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene have announced the nominees for the 2022 Splatterpunk Awards, honoring superior achievement for works published in 2020 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.

They have also named the recipient of the fifth annual J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award (honoring individuals who, like Gonzalez, have made a significant impact on the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror field).

SPLATTERPUNK HALL OF LEGENDS. Also, with the advent of the fifth annual Splatterpunk Awards, White and Keene have created the Splatterpunk Hall of Legends, a physical memorial that will be displayed at every KillerCon event, “featuring artifacts and ephemera related to the honorees, as well as a chronicle of their individual achievements, and an eternal flame burning for each. It is to serve as a place where genre fans both young and old can pay their respects and learn more about the creators who have shaped the field.”

The initial honorees will be Richard Laymon, Jack Ketchum, J.F. Gonzalez, Charlee Jacob, John Pelan, Gak, and David G. Barnett (winner of the 2019 J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award). Their induction will occur August 13 at KillerCon 2022 in Austin, Texas. The Splatterpunk Hall of Legends will be open to attendees August 12-14.

SPLATTERPUNK AWARD NOMINEES

BEST NOVEL

  • Don’t Go To Wheelchair Camp by David Irons (Severed Press)
  • Trench Mouth by Christine Morgan (Madness Heart Press)
  • The Maddening by Carver Pike (Independently Published)
  • The Devoured And The Dead by Kristopher Rufty (Death’s Head Press)
  • The Night Stockers by Kristopher Triana and Ryan Harding (The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • Left To You by Daniel J. Volpe (D&T Publishing)

BEST NOVELLA

  • Midnight In The City Of The Carrion Kid by James G. Carlson (Gloom House Publishing)
  • Only The Stains Remain by Ross Jeffery (Cemetery Gates Media)
  • Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca (Weirdpunk Books)
  • A Roll Of the Dice by Matt Shaw (Independently Published)
  • Sacrament by Steve Stred (Black Void Publishing)
  • Talia by Daniel J. Volpe (Independently Published)

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “The Martini Club” by Aron Beauregard (from Beyond Reform, Aron Beauregard Horror)
  • “Fireflies and Apple Pies” by Thomas R. Clark (from The God Provides, St. Rooster Books)
  • “Sun Poison” by Stephen Kozeniewski (from Battered, Broken Bodies, Independently Published)
  • “Start Today” by Justin Lutz (from Teenage Grave, Filthy Loot)
  • “Abigail” by Daemon Manx (Terror Tract Publishing)
  • “Next Best Baker” by Jeff Strand (from Baker’s Dozen, Uncomfortably Dark)

BEST COLLECTION

  • Beyond Reform by Jon Athan, Aron Beauregard, and Jasper Bark (Aron Beauregard Horror)
  • Black Tongue And Other Anomalies by Richard Beauchamp (D&T Publishing)
  • Sinister Mix by Brian Bowyer (Independently Published)
  • Shattered Skies by Chris Miller (Death’s Head Press)
  • Twisted Tainted Tales by Janine Pipe (Pipe Screams Press)
  • May Cause Ocular Bleeding by Nikolas P. Robinson (Independently Published)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

  • Body Shocks edited by Ellen Datlow (Tachyon Publications)
  • Between A Spider’s Eyes edited by River Dixon (Potter’s Grove Press)
  • Bludgeon Tools edited by K. Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • Gorefest edited by K. Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)
  • Baker’s Dozen edited by Candace Nola (Uncomfortably Dark)
  • Battered, Broken Bodies edited by Matt Shaw (Independently Published)

J. F. GONZALEZ LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD*

  • Clive Barker

SPLATTERPUNK HALL OF LEGENDS INDUCTEES**

  • Richard Laymon
  • Jack Ketchum
  • J. F. Gonzalez
  • Charlee Jacob
  • John Pelan
  • Gak
  • David G. Barnett

*The previous J. F. Gonzalez Award recipients are: David J. Schow, David G. Barnett, Edward Lee, and John Skipp

**In 2017, authors Wrath James White and Brian Keene founded the Splatterpunk Awards to honor superior achievement in the literary subgenres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror fiction for novel, novella, short story, collection, and anthology categories. In addition, they also created the J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award, to honor individuals who, like Gonzalez, have made a significant impact on the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror field.

Pixel Scroll 4/9/21 I Have Heard the Pixels Scrolling, Each to Each

(1) WHEN THE DOORS OPEN, WHO WILL COME IN? The Los Angeles Times interviewed people who rely on convention business to measure the distance between reopening and recovery. “California reopening: When will huge conventions come back?”

The San Diego Convention Center hosted about 135,000 visitors two years ago for Comic-Con, the four-day celebration of comic books and pop culture.

…But even when state restrictions lift, experts acknowledge, it may be a year or more before California convention centers host the kind of mega-crowds that flocked to Comic-Con, NAMM and E3 in past years.

“We anticipate that shows will be smaller starting off and getting back up to speed hopefully next year,” said Ellen Schwartz, general manager of the Los Angeles Convention Center. “As we get into the last quarter of this calendar year and start the new year, we’re hopeful that the business will come back to closer to where it was before the pandemic.”

Among the reasons for the smaller events: State officials say COVID-19 protocols for large-scale indoor events will still require testing or vaccination verifications, which could exclude some would-be attendees. The state has yet to release details of those requirements.

Also, surveys show that many business travelers still don’t feel safe meeting face to face indoors with thousands of strangers. Some elements of future events are likely to be conducted via streaming video, accommodating virus-cautious attendees who want to stay home.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends against attending large indoor gatherings, saying they increase the risk of spreading COVID-19.

Rachel “Kiko” Guntermann, a professional costume maker who previously attended five or six conventions a year, including Comic-Con, said she would not feel safe returning to a large convention even though she has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“Conventions were a center of my life for a while, and now the idea of being in a vendor hall with that many people makes me want to dry heave,” she said….

(2) FRANKENSTAMP AND FRIENDS. A set of Classic Science Fiction stamps will be issued by Great Britain’s Royal Mail on April 15. Preorders are being taken now.

A collection of six Special Stamps celebrating the imagination and artistic legacy of classic science fiction.

The issue coincides with the 75th anniversary of the death of HG Wells and the 70th anniversary of the publication of The Day of the Triffids.

Each stamp features a unique interpretation by a different artist illustrating a seminal work by a classic British science fiction author

Two First Class, two £1.70 and two £2.55 stamps presented as three horizontal se-tenant pairs.

Click for larger images.

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to grab a slice of pizza with Nebula Award-winning writer A. T. Greenblatt in episode 142 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

A.T. Greenblatt

A. T. Greenblatt’s short fiction has appeared in Strange HorizonsUncannyBeneath Ceaseless SkiesClarkesworldFiresideLightspeed, and other magazines. She won the 2019 Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “Give the Family My Love,” and is also on the current Nebula Awards ballot for her novelette “Burn or The Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super.” She was also a Nebula finalist for 2018. She has also been a Theodore Sturgeon Award finalist as well as a Parsec Award finalist. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise and Clarion West workshops, and has been an editorial assistant at the flash fiction magazines Every Day Fiction and Flash Fiction Online.

We discussed the writing workshop-induced panic which caused her to begin writing her latest Nebula Award-nominated story, how the Viable Paradise workshop helped kick her writing up a notch, why she prefers Batman to Superman, the importance of revisions, critique groups, and community, what’s to be learned from rereading one’s older work, why she’s a total pantser, her love of Roald Dahl, something she wishes she’d known earlier about the endings of stories, how much of writing is being able to keep secrets and not explode, and much more.

(4) 2021 SFPA POETRY CONTEST AND JUDGE ANNOUNCED. The 2021 Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) Speculative Poetry Contest will be open for entries from June 1 through August 31, with Sheree Renée Thomas serving as guest judge of the contest. Full guidelines here.

Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and editor. Her work is inspired by myth and folklore, natural science and Mississippi Delta conjure. Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books) is her first all prose collection. She is also the author of two multigenre/hybrid collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of LIfe and Shotgun Lullabies (Aqueduct Press) and edited the World Fantasy-winning groundbreaking black speculative fiction Dark Matter anthologies (Hachette/Grand Central). 

Sheree is the associate editor of the historic Black arts literary journal, Obsidian: Literature & the Arts in the African Diaspora and editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

The 2021 SFPA Speculative Poetry Contest is open to all poets, including non-SFPA-members. Prizes will be awarded for best unpublished poem in three categories: Dwarf (poems 1–10 lines [prose poems 0–100 words]); Short (11–49 lines [prose poems 101–499 words]); Long (50 lines and more [prose 500 words and up]). Line count does not include title or stanza breaks. All sub-genres of speculative poetry allowed in any form.

Prizes in each category (Dwarf, Short, Long) will be $150 First Prize, $75 Second Prize, $25 Third Prize. Publication on the SFPA website for first through third places. Winners will be announced and posted on the site October 1.

(5) IN EXTREMIS. The new This Is Horror podcast features Wrath James White talking about Extreme Horror, Uncomfortable Writing, and The Resurrectionist.

Wrath James White is a former World Class Heavyweight Kickboxer, a professional Kickboxing and Mixed Martial Arts trainer, distance runner, performance artist, and former street brawler, who is now known for creating some of the most disturbing works of fiction in print. His books include The ResurrectionistSucculent Prey, and The Teratologist with Edward Lee.

(6) PLUCKED OFF THE SLUSHPILE. [Item by rcade.] Though many novelists would tell the story of how they first became published as a heroic triumph of talent and perseverance over rejection and adversity, the science fiction author Stephen Palmer credits something else entirely in a new interview with SFFWorld: “Interview with Stephen Palmer”.

My route to publication was the one too few people talk about – pure chance. Random luck is a far larger player in getting published than most people realize, partly because writers don’t want to believe they have little or no agency in their own success, and partly because the odds against success are so huge nobody wants to face them. I was plucked off the slush pile because I sent in the right novel at the right time. Tim Holman remembered it when he and Colin Murray were seeking new British writers, and he contacted me. But it could have been so different. In December 1993 me and my then wife were about to move house, and for reasons too unpleasant to detail here we weren’t going to leave a forwarding address. A few days before we departed a letter popped through the letterbox. It was from Tim Holman, writing back to me a full year after I’d sent him an extract of Memory Seed, telling me he wanted to read more. If I’d moved a week earlier I might not be an author now…

 Palmer’s debut novel Memory Seed is being  republished by Infinity Plus. He got the rights back from Orbit for that book and Glass nine years ago but the original files were lost. He bought copies, removed the pages and did the OCR scanning himself.

(7) DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE? Maybe not, it’s been awhile! But now Forbes’ Ollie Barder reports:  “The Decades Long Rights Battle Over ‘Macross’ And ‘Robotech’ Has Finally Been Resolved”.

This has been one of the longest running legal battles in anime and I never thought I would see it resolved in my lifetime….

As to the details of what this agreement entails, this is what the official press statement has to say:

“Tokyo based BIGWEST CO.,LTD. and Los Angeles based Harmony Gold U.S.A. announced an agreement regarding the worldwide rights for the legendary Macross and Robotech franchises. This expansive agreement signed by both companies on March 1, 2021, ends two decades of disagreements and will allow Bigwest and Harmony Gold to chart a new path that will unlock the great potential of both the Macross and Robotech franchises worldwide. The landmark agreement immediately permits worldwide distribution of most of the Macross films and television sequels worldwide, and also confirms that Bigwest will not oppose the Japanese release of an anticipated upcoming live-action Robotech film. The agreement also recognizes Harmony Gold’s longstanding exclusive license with Tatsunoko for the use of the 41 Macross characters and mecha in the Robotech television series and related merchandise throughout the world excluding Japan. Moving forward, both parties will cooperate on distribution regarding future Macross and Robotech projects for the benefit of both franchises.”

(8) PUTTING THE EVIDENCE TOGETHER. “French police on trail of international gang of Lego looters”The Guardian has the story.

French police say they are building a case against an international gang of toy thieves specialising in stealing Lego – and they have warned specialist shops and even parents to be aware of a global trade in the bricks.

The alert comes after officers arrested three people – a woman and two men – in the process of stealing boxes of Lego from a toy shop in Yvelines, outside Paris, last June. Under questioning, the suspects, all from Poland, reportedly admitted they were part of a team specialising in stealing Lego sought by collectors.

“The Lego community isn’t just made up of children,” one investigator told Le Parisien newspaper. “There are numerous adults who play with it; there are swaps and sales on the internet. We’ve also had people complaining their homes have been broken into and Lego stolen.”

Van Ijken cited a Cafe Corner Lego set that cost €150 when it was released to shops in 2007 selling in its original box for €2,500 last year.

Lego looting appears to be a global business, according to reports in the US, Canada and Australia, where numerous thefts have been reported over the last five years. In 2005, San Diego police arrested a group of women found to have €200,000 worth of Lego.

(9) THE UNKINDEST CUT. [Item by rcade.] The acclaimed weird fiction author Jeff VanderMeer is sickened by the actions of one of his new neighbors in Tallahassee, Florida:

Someone bought a house a few streets down and just cut down 30 mature pine trees — in the spring. I wonder if they know there’s little they could do in their lives to make up for the wildlife they just slaughtered. I know we’ll be getting survivors in the yard for weeks to come.

I’m planting two sycamores and some river birch, mayhaw next week and then also seeking out some of the pine saplings to protect them. We have 8 mature pines in the yard and not a damn one is getting cut down. …

Developers are trying to eat this city alive and we have, purportedly 55% canopy, although I imagine it’s a lower percentage after the predation of the past few years.

A Florida law enacted in 2019 made it much harder for cities and counties to stop property owners from removing trees. Tallahassee and the surrounding county have 78 miles of roads shaded by oak, hickory, sweet gum and pine trees and the city’s tree canopy coverage is among the largest in the U.S.

Noted for elements of ecofiction in his works, VanderMeer has filled his Twitter feed with photos of area trees and wildlife.

(10) NEW BOOK: HUMMINGBIRD SALAMANDER. Carmen Maria Machado has done a Q&A with Jeff VanderMeer for Interview: “Can Author Jeff VanderMeer Save Us from Extinction?”

[From the Introduction] A scroll through Jeff VanderMeer’s Twitter account yields all manner of birds, flowers, trees, bird feeders, backyard wildlife, and the occasional portrait of his housecat, Neo. By and large, it seems such joyous, benevolent content that it’s surprising it comes from the same hands as one of the most subversive, experimental, apocalyptic, and politically daring fiction writers at work in America today. 

…Another of his passions involves his ongoing project of “rewilding” his half-acre yard on the edge of Tallahassee. In order to combat natural-habitat destruction, VanderMeer has reintroduced native plants and trees to encourage the return of local wildlife. The fruits of VanderMeer’s tweets spring directly from the myriad animals, insects, organisms, and flowering flora that have returned to his homegrown micro nature-preserve. (“Right now, during migration season,” he reports, “we have about 300 yellow-rumped warblers in the yard and another 400 pine siskins, along with ruby-crowned kinglets, Baltimore orioles, orange-crowned warblers, hermit thrushes, cedar waxwings, etc.”) Will VanderMeer save our planet? Can it even be saved at this point? These are the real mysteries of our era…. 

MACHADO: It’s a bit like watching this pandemic unfold. We’re botching it all up, and you can’t help but feel like it doesn’t have to be this way. Do you think you’re a cynic about wildlife and the climate crisis?

VANDERMEER: I think that fixing the climate crisis should be more ingrained in our discussions and it’s not. Even in fiction, I see a lot of green-tech solutions that are totally divorced from actually dealing with what’s going on in the landscape. The other day I saw that Elon Musk had gone from chastising the oil industry to being like, “We need to mine for our SpaceX platform so that we have energy for our rockets.” Those are the kinds of things that get to me. One reason I push so hard for wildlife and for habitat is that I just don’t think we can make it through without them. We can’t just green-tech our way into some kind of solution. We have to change how we actually interact. And I do think we can all make small changes in how we do things that can really help us. In that way, I’m not cynical. People ask about hope all the time, which in a very absurdist way cracks me up because there’s always this question of, “Is it too late?” And it’s like,

“Well, what are you going to do if it’s too late? You really have no choice but to try to do the best things possible to get out of this.” Next cheery question!

(11) ROSWELL AWARD. The Roswell Award and Women Hold Up Half the Sky – Virtual Celebrity Readings & Awards will happen on Saturday, May 22 at 11 a.m. Pacific.  The Roswell Award finalist judge is Wesley Chu.

We received some truly incredible stories from 60 different countries this season.

Make sure to save the date for May 22 if you want to experience exciting new sci-fi stories, chat with competition participants from around the world, and hear our celebrity guest readers!

(12) HUMMEL OBIT. The Washington Post has an obituary for Joye Hummel by Harrison Smith.  Hummel was hired by William Moulton Marston as a secretary and then went on to write Wonder Woman scripts until 1947.  Historians credit her as being the first woman to write scripts for Wonder Woman. She died April 5. “Joye Hummel, first woman hired to write Wonder Woman comics, dies at 97”.

In March 1944, shortly before Joye Hummel graduated from the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school in Manhattan, she was invited to meet with one of her instructors, a charismatic psychologist who had been impressed by her essays on a take-home test.

Over tea at the Harvard Club, professor William Moulton Marston offered her a job — not in the classroom or psych lab, but in the office of his 43rd Street art studio. He wanted Ms. Hummel to help him write scripts for Wonder Woman, the Amazonian superhero he had created three years earlier and endowed with a magic lasso, indestructible bracelets, an eye-catching red bustier and a feminist sensibility.Ms. Hummel, then 19, had never read Wonder Woman; she had never even read a comic book. But Marston needed an assistant. His character, brought to life on the page by artist H.G. Peter, was appearing in four comic books and was about to star in a syndicated newspaper strip. He was looking for someone young who could write slang and who, perhaps most importantly, shared his philosophy and vision for the character. “You understand that I want women to feel they have the right to go out, to study, to find something they love to do and get out in the world and do it,” Ms. Hummel recalled his saying. She was “astonished and delighted” by the job offer, according to historian Jill Lepore’s book, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman,” and soon began writing for the comic. “I always did have a big imagination,” she said.

Ms. Hummel worked as a Wonder Woman ghostwriter for the next three years, long before any woman was publicly credited as a writer for the series. As invisible to readers as Wonder Woman’s transparent jet plane, she was increasingly recognized after Lepore interviewed her in 2014. Four years later, she received the Bill Finger Award, given to overlooked or underappreciated comic book writers at the Eisner Awards….

(13) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • April 9, 1955 — On this date in 1955, Science Fiction Theatre first aired in syndication. It was produced by Ivan Tors and Maurice Ziv.  It ran for seventy eight episodes over two years and was hosted by Truman Bradley who was the announcer for Red Skelton’s program. The first episode “Beyond” had the story of a test pilot travelling at much faster than the speed of sound who bails out and tells his superiors that another craft was about to collide with his. It starred William Lundigan, Ellen Drew and Bruce Bennett. You can watch it here.

(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born April 9, 1906 – Victor Vasarely.  Grandfather of op art, like this, and this (Supernovae, 1961).  Here is The Space Merchants using some of VV’s Folklore Planetario for the cover.  (Died 1997) [JH]
  • Born April 9, 1911 George O. Smith. His early prolific writings on Astounding Science Fiction in the 1940s ended when Campbell’s wife left him for Smith whom she married. Later stories were on Thrilling Wonder StoriesGalaxySuper Science Stories and Fantastic to name but four such outlets. He was given First Fandom Hall of Fame Award just before he passed on. Interestingly his novels are available from the usual digital sources but his short stories are not. (Died 1981.) (CE) 
  • Born April 9, 1913 George F. Lowther. He was writer, producer, director in the earliest days of radio and television. He wrote scripts for both Captain Video and His Video Rangers and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.  You can see “The Birth of The Galaxy” which he scripted for the first show here as it is in the public domain. (Died 1975.) (CE) 
  • Born April 9, 1915 – Charles Burbee.  One of our best fanwriters, of the brilliant but biting type (if you like that, as well as admiring it, you can change but to and).  Fanzine, Burblings; co-edited Shangri L’Affaires awhile.  Fan Guest of Honor at Westercon 27.  You can see The Incompleat Burbee here (part 1) and here (part 2).  Burbeeisms still circulate, like AKICIF (All Knowledge Is Contained In Fanzines) – sometimes without his mocking tone, a neglect he would have mocked.  (Died 1996)  [JH]
  • Born April 9, 1937 – Barrington Bayley.  A dozen novels, fourscore shorter stories, some under other names (“Michael Barrington” for work with Michael Moorcock).  Two collections.  Interviewed in InterzoneVector; on the cover of V223 for a Mark Greener article.  (Died 2008) [JH]
  • Born April 9, 1937 Marty Krofft, 84. Along with Sid, his brother, are a Canadian sibling team of television creators and puppeteers. Through Sid & Marty Krofft Pictures, they have made numerous series including the superb H.R. Pufnstuf which I still remember fondly all these years later not to forget Sigmund and the Sea MonstersLand of the Lost and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. (CE) 
  • Born April 9, 1949 Stephen Hickman, 72. Illustrator who has done over three hundred and fifty genre covers such as Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer and Nancy Springer’s Rowan Hood, Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest. His most widely known effort is his space fantasy postage stamps done for the U.S. Postal Service which won a Hugo for Best Original Art Work at ConAndian in 1994. (CE) 
  • Born April 9, 1954 Dennis Quaid, 67. I’m reasonably sure that he first genre role was in  Dreamscape as Alex Gardner followed immediately by the superb role of Willis Davidge in Enemy Mine followed by completing a trifecta with Innerspace and the character of Lt. Tuck Pendleton. And then there’s the sweet film of Dragonheart and him as Bowen. Anyone hear of The Day After Tomorrow in which he was Jack Hall? I hadn’t a clue about it. (CE) 
  • Born April 9, 1972 Neve McIntosh, 49. During time of the Eleventh Doctor, She plays Alaya and Restac, two  Silurian reptilian sisters who have been disturbed under the earth, one captured by humans and the other demanding vengeance. Her second appearance on Doctor Who is Madame Vastra in “A Good Man Goes to War”. Also a Silurian, she’s a Victorian crime fighter.  She’s back in the 2012 Christmas special, and in the episodes “The Crimson Horror” and “The Name of the Doctor”. She’s Madame Vastra, who along with her wife, Jenny Flint, and Strax, a former Sontaran warrior, who together form a private investigator team. Big Finish gave them their own line of audio adventures. (CE) 
  • Born April 9, 1980 – Jill Hathaway, age 41.  Two novels.  Teaches high-school English, bless her.  Has read Cat’s Cradle, Tender Is the NightNative Son.  [JH]
  • Born April 9, 1981 – Vincent Chong, age 40.  Two hundred twenty covers, sixty interiors.  Artbook Altered Visions.  Here is Shine.  Here is the Gollancz ed’n of Dangerous Visions.  Here is G’s Left Hand of Darkness.  Here is Ghost Story.  [JH]
  • Born April 9, 1990 – Megan Bannen, age 31.  Two novels, one just last year.  “An avid coffee drinker and mediocre ukulele player…. in her spare time, she collects graduate degrees from Kansas colleges and universities.”  Or so she says.  [JH]

(15) COMICS SECTION.

(16) PRINCE PHILIP RIP. The Cartoon Museum in London noted the passing of its Patron HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh has been Patron of The Cartoon Museum in London for over 20 years. In 1949 he and the young Princess Elizabeth attended the Royal Society of Arts and listened to a speech by the great British cartoonist H. M. Bateman, calling for a national museum of cartoons.

He has given the museum continuous support and with his great love of humour he admired the genre of British cartooning. In 1994 he opened the museum’s exhibition on Giles, who drew for the Daily and Sunday Express from 1943 – 1991. The Duke of Edinburgh owned several Giles cartoons in his private collection; Giles was his favourite cartoonist – he admired his social observations, gentle humour, and depictions of the Royal Family.

The monarchy have been a persistent (and easy) target of cartoonists and caricaturists for 300 years, from Gillray and Beerbohm to Scarfe, Bell, Rowson and Peter Brookes – but the Duke of Edinburgh could always see the funny side in any situation, and took humorous depictions of himself in his stride. In 2002 Prince Philip opened an exhibition of cartoons on the Kings and Queens (300 Years of Cartoons about the Monarchy), and in 2006 he opened London’s first museum of cartoons.

The Cartoon Museum, its Trustees, Staff, and the cartooning community are saddened to hear Prince Philip has passed away, and send their deepest condolences to H. M. The Queen and his family.

(17) TO BOLDLY GO…WHO KNOWS WHERE? SYFY Wire reports  “New ‘Star Trek’ film set for summer 2023, as studios shuffle several releases”. Just don’t ask what it will be about.

Star Trek is bolding coming back to the big screen… two years from now. Paramount Pictures confirmed Friday that a brand-new Trek film will hit theaters on June 8, 2023. While the project is currently untitled and plot details are non-existent, we suspect this is the movie currently being written by The Walking Dead alum, Kalinda Vasquez.

(18) SANDMAN CROSSOVER. There’s a Q&A with the authors in “Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez preview their Locke & Key Sandman crossover” at Entertainment Weekly.

…Written and illustrated by the Locke & Key creative team of writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, with the blessing of The Sandman co-creator Neil GaimanHell and Gone is set in 1927, during the opening sequence of The Sandman in which Morpheus, the King of Dreams, is held captive by the human sorcerer Roderick Burgess. Mary Locke, an ancestor of the Locke children who populate the main Locke & Key story, reaches out to Burgess to see if his occult society can help her save her brother’s soul from hell…. 

GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ: I started buying Sandman from the newspaper stand near my house once they started selling the Spanish edition here in Chile. They started publishing from the eighth issue, in which they introduce Death, and from then on they did the entire run. I remember reading that very first issue and was immediately hooked by the storytelling. And then when we get into the Doll’s House story line, I immediately realized it was going to be something really big and cool, and I ended up collecting the entire series. At the time I was reading Sandman, I was just daydreaming about eventually making a comic book myself, but living in such a small country where we don’t have a huge publishing industry, especially back then, it felt impossible.

(19) UNSOUND EFFECTS. “2021 Oscar-Nominated Short: “Yes-People'” on YouTube is an Icelandic animated film, directed by Gisli Darri Hallsdottir, that is an nominee for best short animated film, and is presented by The New Yorker.

“Yes-People” follows several Icelanders as they navigate minor daily conflicts—on their way to work, or to school, or while grocery shopping.

(20) PETRIFIED DINO GIZZARDS. Megafauna swallowed bigger stones than their avian descendants: “These Rocks Made a 1,000-Mile Trek. Did Dinosaurs Carry Them?”

The gastroliths were found in Jurassic-aged mudstones in a rock formation called the Morisson. A rainbow of pinks and reds, the Morisson formation brims with dinosaur fossils, including those of sauropods, such as Barosaurus and Diplodocus, as well as meat-eaters such as Allosaurus.

But the rocks, which are similar to gastroliths dug up elsewhere, were found on their own without any dinosaur remnants. To get a clue as to how they had ended up in modern-day Wyoming, the team crushed the rocks to retrieve and date the zircon crystals contained inside, a bit like studying ancient fingerprints.

“What we found was that the zircon ages inside these gastroliths have distinct age spectra that matched what the ages were in the rocks in southern Wisconsin,” said Malone, now a doctoral student studying geology at the University of Texas at Austin. “We used that to hypothesize that these rocks were ingested somewhere in southern Wisconsin and then transported to Wyoming in the belly of a dinosaur.

“There hasn’t really been a study like this before that suggests long-distance dinosaur migration using this technique, so it was a really exciting moment for us.”

(21) FOSSILIZED STINK. Or maybe dinos were shying rocks at this creature to get rid of the smell? “Beast of five teeth: Chilean scientists unearth skunk that walked among dinosaurs” at Yahoo!

A fossil of a skunk-like mammal that lived during the age of dinosaurs has been discovered in Chilean Patagonia, adding further proof to recent evidence that mammals roamed that part of South America a lot earlier than previously thought.

A part of the creature’s fossilized jawbone with five teeth attached were discovered close to the famous Torres del Paine national park.

Christened Orretherium tzen, meaning ‘Beast of Five Teeth’ in an amalgam of Greek and a local indigenous language, the animal is thought to have lived between 72 and 74 million years ago during the Upper Cretaceous period, at the end of the Mesozoic era, and been a herbivore…

(22) JUST IN TIME. The sixth season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow premieres Sunday, May 2.

The Legends continue their new mission to protect the timeline from temporal aberrations – unusual changes to history that spawn potentially catastrophic consequences. When Nate, the grandson of J.S.A. member Commander Steel, unexpectedly finds himself with powers, he must overcome his own insecurities and find the hero within himself. Ultimately, the Legends will clash with foes both past and present, to save the world from a mysterious new threat.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Michael J. Walsh, Frank Olynyk, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, rcade, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, John Hertz, Andrew Porter, James Bacon, Scott Edelman, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Greg Hullender, with an assist from rcade.]

2021 Splatterpunk Award Nominees

Best-selling authors and Splatterpunk Award founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene have announced the nominees for the 2021 Splatterpunk Awards, honoring superior achievement for works published in 2020 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.

The nominees are recommended by readers, fans and peers. The nominees are as follows.

BEST NOVEL

1. Pandemonium by Ryan Harding and Lucas Mangum (Death’s Head Press)
2. Tome by Ross Jeffery (The Writing Collective)
3. Dust by Chris Miller (Death’s Head Press)
4. Slaughter Box by Carver Pike (Self-Published)
5. Gone To See The River Man by Kristopher Triana (Cemetery Dance Publications)
6. They All Died Screaming by Kristopher Triana (Blood Bound Books)
7. The Magpie Coffin by Wile E. Young (Death’s Head Press) 

BEST NOVELLA 

1. The Slob by Aron Beauregard (Self-Published) *
2. Bella’s Boys by Thomas R. Clark (Stitched Smile Publications)
3. Juniper by Ross Jeffery (The Writing Collective)
4. Red Station by Kenzie Jennings (Death’s Head Press)
5. True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik (Grindhouse Press)
6. The Night Silver River Run Red by Christine Morgan (Death’s Head Press)
7. How Much 2 by Matt Shaw (Self-Published)

BEST SHORT STORY

1. “The Incident at Barrow Farm” by M. Ennenbach (from Cerberus Rising, Self-Published)
2. “Full Moon Shindig” by Patrick C. Harrison III (from Visceral: Collected Flesh, Death’s Head Press)
3. “Phylum” by Tom Over (from The Comfort Zone and Other Safe Spaces, NihilismRevised)
4. “Footsteps” by Janine Pipe (from Diabolica Britannica, Keith Anthony Baird)
5. “Next In Line” by Susan Snyder (from Devour the Earth, Madness Heart Press)
6. “My Body” by Wesley Southard (from Midnight In the Pentagram, Silver Shamrock Publishing)
7. “The God In The Hills” by Jon Steffens (from The God In the Hills, Filthy Loot Press)

BEST COLLECTION

1. War of Dictates by John Baltisberger (Death’s Head Press)
2. Cerberus Rising by M. Ennenbach, Chris Miller and Patrick C. Harrison III (Self-Published) **
3. The Essential Sick Stuff by Ronald Kelly (Silver Shamrock Publishing)
4. Rhapsody In Red by Peter Molnar (Stitched Smile Publications)
5. Visceral: Collected Flesh by Christine Morgan and Patrick C. Harrison III (Death’s Head Press) ***
6. The Comfort Zone and Other Safe Spaces by Tom Over (NihilismRevised)
7. Blood Relations by Kristopher Triana (Grindhouse Press)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

1. Chew On This edited by Robert Essig (Blood Bound Books)
2. Brewtality edited by K. Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)
3. Welcome To the Splatter Club edited by K. Trap Jones (Blood Bound Books)
4. Worst Laid Plans edited by Samantha Kolesnik (Grindhouse Press)
5. Crash Code edited by Quinn Parker (Blood Bound Books)
6. If I Die Before I Wake Vol. 3: Tales of Deadly Women and Retribution edited by R.E. Sargent and Steven Pajak (Sinister Smile Press)
7. Psi-Wars: Classified Cases of Psychic Phenomena edited by Joshua Viola (Hex Publishers)

* Qualifies due to being significantly revised from its original edition. 

** Qualifies as a collection, rather than an anthology.

*** Qualifies as a collection, rather than an anthology.

A panel of judges composed of professionals, critics and scholars in the field will now begin the process of reading each nominated work, and selecting a winner for each category. Winners will be announced at KillerCon, taking place in Austin, Texas this August. If national health concerns prevent a physical convention, then the winners will be announced in an online ceremony instead.

In addition to the winners, author and editor John Skipp will receive the annual J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award honoring his significant contributions to the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror. Previous recipients are David J. Schow, David G. Barnett and Edward Lee.

The administrators added these notes of interest regarding this year’s awards:

While each category normally has five nominees (six if there is a tie), press will note that each category for this year contains seven. That is due to the overwhelming response in recommendations from the public this year. More new readers were engaged with Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror in 2020, leading to an increase in public response. As such, Wrath and Brian decided to extend the nominees to seven for each category, to better serve the community.

Building on a trend we pointed out in 2019, this year saw a continued significant increase in the number of women and authors who identify as female writing Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror. The recommendation process evidenced readers and fans mentioning a number of new female voices.

Splatter Westerns (which combine elements of Splatterpunk or Extreme Horror with the traditional Western genre) were clearly a favorite among readers in 2020, as evidenced both in the nominees and in the recommendations.

[Thanks to Dann for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 1/28/21 And I Looked And Behold A Pale Pixel, And Their Name Who Sat On Them Was ´Scroll Title´

(1) ALL THAT JAZZ. Elle M. has a fascinating commentary on the difference between worldbuilding and lore. Thread starts here. A few quotes follow —

They also use the author of Harry Potter as a compelling example of where lore gets injected at the expense of worldbuilding.

(2) TRENDY PLACES. Sarah Gailey’s Stone Soup blog is hosting “Building Beyond,” an “ongoing series about accessible worldbuilding. Building a world doesn’t have to be hard or scary — or even purposeful. Anyone can do it. To prove that, let’s talk to both a writer and a non-writer about a worldbuilding prompt.” For “Building Beyond: Robot Dating”, editor Brian J. White and writer Suzanne Walker imagine where they’ve gone on a date with a giant robot.

Gailey’s dry synopsis should make you very curious to read the post:  

…Brian’s date is the foundation of a story about a robot who is learning to live in the world, and who just so happens to be inhabiting a city of decadences. Suzanne’s date is the beginning of a world in which robots and humans regularly go out together, and frogs have learned to cater to the complicated ecosystem of needs that arise in such relationships. 

(3) UNDER THE HARROW. Constance Grady and Vox’s critic at large Emily VanDerWerff undertake a “Harrow the Ninth discussion: profound grief and terrible puns” at Vox.

Constance Grady: I have a hard time working out exactly how I feel about volume two of this trilogy. Harrow the Ninth is a trickier book than Gideon the Ninth, in the same way that bitchy, conniving Harrow is a trickier protagonist than sweet basic jock Gideon.

First of all, there’s the problem of tone. Gideon mined enormous amounts of tension and humor out of the contrast between its lurid goth world and Gideon’s straightforward “it looks like a sword, I want to fight it” worldview and her dirty jokes. That’s part of what helps puncture the grandiosity of Muir’s worldbuilding and keep everything feeling accessible and human-scale, no matter how complicated the mythology might be.

But Harrowhark worships all the lurid skeletal nonsense around her with a religious intensity, and she considers boning jokes prurient. So the easy laughter of the first volume fades away: The jokes are meaner in Harrow than they were in Gideon, and darker….

(4) MRS. PEEL, WE’RE NEEDED. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the January 23 Financial Times, Peter Aspden writes about the 60th anniversary of British TV series The Avengers, which was first broadcast in January 1960.

The plots (of The Avengers), in the meantime, got crazier.  In 1967’s ‘Epic,’ from the fifth season, Peel is kidnapped by a Teutonic film director named ZZ von Schnerk, who is filming a movie called The Destruction Of Emma Peel, for which he needs to kill her in real, or reel, life.  The self-referntiality was off the scale, now.  ‘Gloat all you like, but I am the star of his picture, says captive Peel to the villiainous director, and anyone interested in meta-texts.

Like so many of the fashions of the 1960s, Rigg only lasted a couple of seasons. She left to star in her own Bond Film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which she showed that her range extended further than understated self-mockery (in fairness, she had also already played Cordelia opposite Paul Scofield’s Lear) by providing one of the franchise’s few genuinely heartbreaking endings.  Peel’s farewell to Steed was itself a rare poignant moment, a peck on the cheek with a final piece of womanly advice:  ‘Always keep your bowler on it times of stress.  And watch out for diabolical masterminds.’

(5) SPLATTERPUNK AWARDS. [Item by Dann.] Nominations are open for the 2021 Splatterpunk Awards through February 14.  Brian Keene and Wrath James White have been experiencing….ummm…difficulties in getting valid nominations.  Someone nominated HP Lovecraft who, being dead, is ineligible.  Also, he hasn’t published anything new in the last year.  Also, also, he hasn’t published anything that is close to being Splatterpunk.

Midnight Pals over on Twitter has the theoretic exchange where Brian and Wrath try to explain how this is supposed to work.  (I’m pretty sure that Dean Koontz didn’t nominate HP Lovecraft.)

The awards will be presented during a ceremony at the 2021 Killercon Convention, taking place in Austin, Texas.

In addition to the Splatterpunk Awards, author John Skipp will receive this year’s J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the field.

(6) FLOWER POWER. Galactic Journey’s Vicki Lucas encounters a classic of the Sixties: “[January 28, 1966] The Book as Rorschach Test (Flowers for Algernon)”.

…Try as I might, I have great difficulty thinking of this novel as a science-fiction story. It could be conceived of as a psychological thriller, but no one dies except a mouse. It is deeply psychological and delves as far into the brain as anyone can get right now, accepting Freudian analysis as routine, while it is Jung’s “individuation” that the main character, Charlie Gordon, seeks without a guide except for his reading.

…I recommend this book, no matter its genre, and hope that anyone who reads it finds him- or herself touched by the plight of both those who are “exceptional” on the low end and those “exceptional” on the high end.

What will you see in it?

I see five stars.

(7) TAPPING INTO TED WHITE. Fanac.org posted a second installment of Ted White’s livestreamed interview, conducted by John D. Berry.

Ted White has been a science fiction fan for over 70 years, as well as an artist, fanzine editor and publisher, professional writer, editor and jazz critic. Interviewer John D. Berry has known Ted for more than 50 years. 

In part 2 of the January 23, 2021 interview, Ted talks about how he began writing professional science fiction, and the influence of Marion Zimmer Bradley, Terry Carr, Bob Tucker and others. There are anecdotes of the New York Fanoclasts and of how the bid for the 1967 NyCon3 came about. 

Ted discusses “The Club House” column in Amazing Stories, responsible for bringing many into fandom in the early 1970s, and speaks of his many fanzine collaborations, along with challenges along the way. This Zoom interview was very well received by all the attendees, who clamored for more. Look for the next part of the interview.

(8) WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE. Camestros Felapton risked his eyeballs – will you? “I watched Star Trek – Lower Decks”.

…Pitched as humorous, adult-orientated animated series in the Star Trek universe, the series creator is Mike McMahan, a lead writer from Rick and Morty. However, the show’s humour is both less crude and less imaginative than that show, indeed overall it pitches itself at ‘amusing’ rather than ‘funny’. The obvious comparison is with The Orville, rather than Galaxy Quest or John Scalzi’s Redshirts….

(9) IMAGINARY PAPERS. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination has published the fifth issue of Imaginary Papers, a quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination. (Use this link to subscribe for future issues.)

Issue #5 features writing from games critic Emma Kostopolus, on the space opera game Mass Effect 3 (2012), and writer and educator Malik Toms, on John Sayles’ The Brother from Another Planet (1984), as well as a piece from me about the collection Scotland in Space (2019).

 (10) MEMORY LANE.

  • 2000 — Twenty one years ago at Chicon 2000, Galaxy Quest, a DreamWorks film, would win the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation. It would edge out The Matrix (which lost by just three votes), The Sixth SenseBeing John Malkovich and The Iron Giant. It was directed by Dean Parisot. Screenwriters David Howard and Robert Gordon worked off the story by David Howard. It’s considered by many Trekkies to the best Trek film ever made. 

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born January 28, 1820 – Vilhelm Pedersen.  First illustrator of Hans Christian Andersen; a hundred twenty-five in the five-volume 1849 edition.  Indispensable like Tenniel’s for Lewis Carroll.  Here is “The Top and Ball”.  Here is “The Flying Trunk”.  Here is “Hyldemor”.  Here is “Thumbelina”.  (Died 1859) [JH]
  • Born January 28, 1834 – Sabine Baring-Gould.  Anglican priest, author of fiction, folklorist.  Grandfather of the Holmes scholar.  Wrote “Onward, Christian Soldiers” (music by Sir Arthur Sullivan).  This edition including Curious Myths of the Middle Ages and Were-wolves appeared recently.  (Died 1924) [JH]
  • Born January 28, 1929 Parke Godwin. I’ve read a number of his novels and I fondly remember in particular Sherwood and Robin and the King. If you’ve not read his excellent Firelord series, I do recommend you do so. So who has read his Beowulf series? (Died 2013.) (CE)
  • Born January 28, 1931 – Komatsu Sakyô.  (Personal name last, Japanese style.)  Leading Japanese SF author.  Most famous for Japan Sinks.  Two shorter stories in this collection.  Author Guest of Honor at Nippon2007 the 65th Worldcon – of which, incidentally, you can see my report here (PDF).  (Died 2011) [JH]
  • Born January 28, 1957 – Joanne Findon, Ph.D., age 64.  Assistant Professor of English at Trent Univ. (Peterborough, Ontario).  Two novels for us.  “I blame my two lifelong passions – writing fiction and studying the past – on … Lloyd Alexander.”  More here.  [JH]
  • Born January 28, 1959 Frank Darabont, 62. Early on, he was mostly a screenwriter for horror films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream WarriorsThe Blob and The Fly II, allminor horror filmsAs a director, he’s much better known as he’s done, The Green MileThe Shawshank Redemption and The Mist.  He also developed and executive-produced the first season of The Walking Dead. He also wrote Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that I like a lot. (CE) 
  • Born January 28, 1961 – Michael Paraskevas, age 60.  Illustrator and animation producer.  With his mother Betty, books and television Maggie and the Ferocious BeastMarvin the Tap-Dancing Horse.  MP encouraged BP, which I think is cool.  A score of books, some with her, some not.  Spaceships and many other things at MP’s Website.  [JH]
  • Born January 28, 1981 Elijah Wood, 40. His first genre role is as Video-Game Boy #2 in Back to the Future Part II. He next shows up as Nat Cooper in Forever Young followed by playing Leo Biederman In Deep Impact. Up next was his performance as Frodo Baggins In The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit films. Confession time: I watched the very first of these. Wasn’t impressed.  He’s done some other genre work as well including playing Todd Brotzman in the Beeb’s superb production of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. (CE) 
  • Born January 28, 1985 Tom Hopper, 36. His principal genre role was on the BBC Merlin series as Sir Percival. He also shows up in Doctor Who playing Jeff during the “The Eleventh Hour” episode which would be during the time of the Eleventh Doctor. He’s also Luther Hargreeves in The Umbrella Academy which is an adaptation of the comic book series of the same name, created by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. (CE) 
  • Born January 28, 1986 – Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, age 35.  This historic champion track & field athlete has recently written half a dozen children’s fantasies with Elen Caldecott, may the name be for a good omen.  Here’s the latest I know of.  [JH]
  • Born January 28, 1998 Ariel Winter, 23. Voice actress whose shown up in such productions as Mr. Peabody & Sherman as Penny Peterson, Horton Hears a Who!DC Showcase: Green Arrow as Princess Perdita and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns as Carrie Kelly (Robin). She’s got several one-off live performances on genre series, The Haunting Hour: The Series and Ghost Whisperer. (CE)

(12) COMICS SECTION.

At xkcd Randall Munroe has a couple more installments on his living in a scaled world series:

(13) SPACE UNICORNS SOUND OFF. You have until February 8 to make your voice heard: “Uncanny Celebrates Reader Favorites of 2020!”

We’ve set up a poll for Uncanny readers to vote for their top three favorite original short stories from 2020. (You can find links to all of the stories here.)

The poll will be open from January 11 to February 8, after which we’ll announce the results. We’re excited for you to share which Uncanny stories made you feel!

snazzy certificate will be given to the creator whose work comes out on top of  the poll!

(14) CON CALLS ON FANS FOR HELP. “Otakon Discusses Future, Asks for Donations” reports the Anime News Network. Their 2021 event is scheduled to be held at Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. from August 6 to 8. Last year’s Otakon was cancelled.

Otakorp president Brooke Zerrlaut announced in a newsletter on Thursday that the organization is requesting donations for the first time. The Otakon convention’s staff are continuing to evaluate plans for 2021 and noted that the event may “potentially close” permanently.

The newsletter explained that Otakorp, a volunteer-run non-profit organization, runs the annual Otakon convention dedicated to Asian culture. Because of the cancelation of Otakon 2020 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization is in a “precarious position.”

(15) A WRITER’S BEGINNING AND END. Book and Film Globe in“The Tragedy of Karl Edward Wagner” reviews a documentary about the acclaimed fantasy writer and editor.

The makers of the new Vimeo documentary, The Last Wolf: Karl Edward Wagner, have trained their lens on an elusive horror and fantasy writer with a cult following. Besides the stories of supernatural and psychological terror collected in In a Lonely Place (1983) and Why Not You and I? (1987), Wagner spun tales about Kane, a hero sometimes compared to Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, who wanders and fights his way through a fantasy realm peopled with brigands, thieves, sorcerers, monks, and shapeshifters. This body of work exceeds the better-known Conan mythos in its sexuality and violence, tropes that Wagner used with uneven results.

Wagner was also a longtime editor of the Year’s Best Horror Stories series, showcasing the work of Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Brian Lumley, Elizabeth Hand, David J. Schow, T.E.D. Klein, Charles L. Grant, Dennis Etchison, and dozens of others in the field. A few of these scribes appear in The Last Wolf, with especially vivid remembrances coming from Campbell and Etchison. Peter Straub, who wrote a foreword to In a Lonely Place, also has a lot to say.

…The sources interviewed in The Last Wolf render a portrait of an ambitious youth who collected paperbacks, became well known to the staff of a used bookshop in Knoxville through constant visits, and liked to freak out his nephews with spooky tales as they lay in their beds by an open window. While still in high school, Wagner meets a charming young woman, Barbara Mott, on a double date. He later marries her. His career enters high gear in the 1970s as he churns out stories, but not novels, and he stays busy writing and editing through the 1980s and 1990s, almost right up to his death.

“The Fourth Seal” is about a scientist looking to cure cancer. Wagner became the victim of something comparable its destructiveness. The Last Wolf doesn’t skirt around the plunge into alcoholism that drew growing concern on the part of Wagner’s peers in the weird field and led to the end of his marriage. Some of the recollections are hard to take. 

(16) BUY BUTLER. The London Review Bookshop’s Author of the Month is Octavia E. Butler.

Our Author of the Month for February is the American Science Fiction writer Octavia E. Butler.

In her many sometimes interlocking works Butler asks questions about race, gender and, pre-eminently, hierarchy in startling ways, and to offer equally startling versions of possible futures, often dystopian, that are uncannily like the present. This is extraordinary writing, written against the grain of gender and race prejudice and against the grain of Butler’s own persistent writer’s block.

Start with her masterpiece Kindred. We’re next to certain you won’t stop there.

(17) A GLIMPSE OF SF HISTORY. Samuel R. Delany reminisced about Judith Merril in a Facebook post.

Judith Merrill [sic] (Boston, 21 Jan 1923—Toronto, 12 Sept 1997), was—for the last years of her life, one of my best friends in the science fiction world, and thus, like all of her friends, to me she was “Judy” and I—to her—was “Chip.” We could never quite agree about where we met. During the time I was sharing a room with my friend, Bob Aarenberg, at the St. Marks Arms, on West 113th St., in NYC, and in our upstairs neighbor Randy Garrett took me to a party in Greenwich Village, where I met her and talked with her quite a while. But a few years later, she had no memory of that meeting. But as a kid I’d read her collaborations with C. M. [K]ornbluth (the Gunner Cade books), and thoroughly enjoyed them; I’d read a handful full of her stories—”Only a Mother,” which I felt was okay, but also “Dead Center” which I felt was much stronger (and still do after several rereadings of both and others)—but the writings of hers that meant most to me was her critical work….

(18) BUT THEY DID. James Davis Nicoll remembers “Five SF Empires That Seemed Too Big to Fail”, by authors Andre Norton, Phyillis Eisenstein, John Scalzi, Walter Jon Williams, and H. Beam Piper.

(19) FOR THE EAR AND THE EYE. Cora Buhlert’s spotlight series detours to visit with the creator of a semiprozine: “Not-a-Fanzine Spotlight: Simultaneous Times”.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?

…The Simultaneous Times Newsletter started when the pandemic lockdowns started. Usually I’m at my bookstore six days a week, and since we specialize in science fiction, most of my conversations center around the genre. Immediately I began to miss the conversations and my customers, so I started the newsletter as a way to stay connected with science fiction fans. Since then it has just grown. But we still give free subscriptions. I thought people would prefer to get a letter in the mail over receiving an email.

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

Several members of my team, including myself, have a background in radio. When we all started talking about starting a podcast we decided that we wanted to produce the program the way that radio shows were produced in the past. Really take the radio arts approach instead of going with modern trends in podcasting. Since then we’ve even teamed up with the radio station KZZH 96.7 in Northern California, so our program did end up on the air.

The Newsletter is print because I wanted to put something physical in people’s hands, especially during this time of not being able to see each other. That being said, I have started to put the back issues on our website, so the archive is available to everyone

(20) IT’S PEOPLE! Shiv Ramdas comments on a trending topic. Thread starts here.

(21) THE SINS OF STARSHIP TROOPERS. [Item by Dann.] The guys at Cinema Sins have  “Everything Wrong With Starship Troopers in 19 Minutes or Less”. (Parenthetically, I’m not looking for the 5,681st iteration of “The book is better than the movie” or the 12,259th iteration of “Verhoeven never read the book!”.  I like ’em both for different reasons.  And the Cinema Sins guys are great.)

(22) TINGLE REVIEWED IN THE GUARDIAN. [Item by PhilRM.] Here are words I never expected to read in the Guardian: “’My Antifa Lover’: I read the weirdest Trump-era erotica so you don’t have to” by J. Oliver Cromwell.

…In recent years, Amazon’s e-books market has nurtured a flourishing cottage industry of self-published romance and erotic literature – and the Trump years have inspired many to put pen to paper. The most successful authors (most write under pseudonyms) are known for their prolific publication, thesaurus-aided descriptions of the human anatomy, and responsiveness to current events.

The surreality of the past four years was particularly generative of their creative juices. With the Trump era now drawn to a chaotic close, we decided to review four of the most memorable entries in this niche literary genre.

I’m strangely drawn to the title “My Antifa Lover”, although slightly disappointed that Conroy opted to review Chuck Tingle’s Pounded In The Butt By The Handsome Physical Manifestation Of Tromp’s [sic] Twitter Ban That Should’ve Come Years Sooner But Fine Now That It’s Here High Five rather than the frankly superior Domald Tromp [sic] Pounded In The Butt By The Handsome Russian T-Rex Who Also Peed On His Butt And Then Blackmailed Him With The Videos Of His Butt Getting Peed On. No, I have no idea how the internet got us here either, really.

I feel compelled to note that the reviewer gave Tingle’s work 5/5.

(23) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In the 1780s, a charismatic healer caused a stir in Paris. An amusing video about the history of Mesmer’s methods and how he influenced medicine in the late 18th Century. Vox recalls The phony health craze that inspired hypnotism”.

Scientific progress in the 18th century in Europe, a period known as the “Age of Enlightenment,” was demystifying the universe with breakthroughs in chemistry, physics, and philosophy. But medical practices were still relying on centuries-old treatments, like leeching and bloodletting, which were painful and often ineffective. So when Franz Anton Mesmer, a charismatic physician from Vienna, began “healing” people in Paris using an alternative therapeutic practice he called “animal magnetism,” it got a lot of attention. Mesmer claimed that an invisible magnetic fluid was the life force that connected all things and that he had the power to regulate it to restore health in his patients. He was a celebrity figure until the King of France, Louis XVI, commissioned a group of leading scientists to investigate his methods in 1784. Benjamin Franklin headed the commission, and they debunked the existence of the magnetic fluid in the first-known blind experiment. Mesmer was ruined, but “mesmerism” didn’t end there. The report also acknowledged that Mesmer’s methods were making his patients feel better, which they attributed to the power of the human imagination. This experiment ultimately laid the groundwork for our understanding of the placebo effect and inspired an evolution of Mesmer’s practice into something more recognizable today: hypnotism.

[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Dann, Andrew Porter, Cora Buhlert, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Mlex, Joey Eschrich, Rob Thornton, Michael J. Walsh, PhilRM, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer, who has ridden the fourth horse once before.]

2020 Splatterpunk Awards

Best-selling authors and Splatterpunk Awards founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene announced the winners of the 2020 Splatterpunk Awards on August 8 during the virtual KillerCon. The awards honor superior achievement for works published in 2019 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror. An image of the award trophy, which might be a little strong for young viewers, is here.

BEST NOVEL

  • Lakehouse Infernal by Christine Morgan (Deadite Press)

BEST NOVELLA

  • One For the Road by Wesley Southard (Deadite Press)

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “Angelbait” by Ryan Harding (from The Big Book of Blasphemy, Necro Publications)

BEST COLLECTION

  • Dirty Rotten Hippies and Other Stories by Bryan Smith (Grindhouse Press)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

  • And Hell Followed, edited by Jarod Barbee and Patrick C. Harrison III (Death’s Head Press)

J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award

  • Edward Lee, author and editor

Honoring his significant contributions to the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror. Previous recipients are David J. Schow and David G. Barnett.

2020 Splatterpunk Awards Shortlist

Best-selling authors and Splatterpunk Award founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene have announced the nominees for the 2020 Splatterpunk Awards, honoring superior achievement for works published in 2019 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror. The nominees are recommended by readers, fans and peers.

While each category normally has six nominees, the Best Novel category for this year contains seven due to a tie in the recommendation process.

The nominees are as follows.

BEST NOVEL

1. Carnivorous Lunar Activities by Max Booth III (Cinestate/Fangoria)
2. Killer Lake by W.D. Gagliani and David Benton (Deadite Press)
3. Reception by Kenzie Jennings (Death’s Head Press)
4. Lakehouse Infernal by Christine Morgan (Deadite Press)
5. Merciless by Bryan Smith (Grindhouse Press)
6. Toxic Love by Kristopher Triana (Blood Bound Books)
7. They Kill by Tim Waggoner (Flame Tree Press)

BEST NOVELLA

1. White Trash Gothic Part 2 by Edward Lee (Section 31 Productions)
2. Saint Sadist by Lucas Mangum (Grindhouse Press)
3. Weeping Season by Sean O’Connor (Uafas Press)
4. How Much To..? by Matt Shaw (Self-Published)
5. One For the Road by Wesley Southard (Deadite Press)
6. Paradise, Maine by Jackson R. Thomas (Alien Agenda Publishing)


BEST SHORT STORY

1. “Breaking the Waters” by Donyae Coles (from Pseudopod)
2. “Angelbait” by Ryan Harding (from The Big Book of Blasphemy, Necro Publications)
3. “Censered” by Christine Morgan (from And Hell Followed, Death’s Head Press)
4. “Shoulder Pain” by Chandler Morrison (from Macabre Museum Magazine)
5. “Param” by Susan Snyder (from Trigger Warning: Body Horror, Madness Heart Press)
6. “Norwegian Woods” by Jeremy Wagner (from The Big Book of Blasphemy, Necro Publications)


BEST COLLECTION

1. Dead Sea Chronicles by Tim Curran (Bloodshot Books)
2. Various States of Decay by Matt Hayward (Poltergeist Press)
3. Dawn of the Living Impaired, and Other Messed-Up Zombie Stories by Christine Morgan (Death’s Head Press)
4. This Is A Horror Book by Charles Austin Muir (Clash Books)
5. Dirty Rotten Hippies and Other Stories by Bryan Smith (Grindhouse Press)
6. Resisting Madness by Wesley Southard (Death’s Head Press)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

1. And Hell Followed, edited by Jarod Barbee and Patrick C. Harrison III (Death’s Head Press)
2. The Big Book of Blasphemy, edited by Regina Mitchell and David G. Barnett (Necro Publications)
3. Dig Two Graves, edited by Jarod Barbee and Patrick C. Harrison III (Death’s Head Press)
4. Midnight In The Graveyard, edited by Kenneth W. Cain (Silver Shamrock Publishing)
5. The New Flesh: A Literary Tribute to David Cronenberg, edited by Sam Richard and Brendan Vidito (Weirdpunk Books)
6. Polish Extreme, edited by Edward Lee & Karolina Kaczkowska (Necro Publications)

A panel of judges composed of professionals, critics and scholars in the field will now begin the process of reading each nominated work, and selecting a winner for each category. Winners will be announced at KillerCon, taking place in Austin, Texas from August 7-9.

In addition to the winners, author and editor Edward Lee will receive the annual J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award honoring his significant contributions to the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror. Previous recipients are David J. Schow and David G. Barnett.