The Washington (DC) Science Fiction Association (WSFA) has opened the submission period for the 2025 WSFA Small Press Award. It will close on March 31, 2025 at 11:59pm ET (GMT-4)
The WSFA Small Press Award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2024). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.
The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association and presented at their annual convention, Capclave, held on September 19-21, 2025 in Rockville, MD.
(1) SUSANNA CLARKE ON NATIONAL BBC RADIO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4’s Book Club devoted its programme this Sunday to Susanna Clarke’s 2020 novel Piranesi. It was short-listed for the Hugo, Nebula, Kitschies, BSFA, World Fantasy, Dragon Awards, and won the Woman’s Book Prize. It also won Hungary’s Zsoldos Péter – ‘Best Translated Novel’.
Susanna Clarke
Its plot concerns Piranesi, whose house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls, an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house – a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known…
Over four million copies have been sold worldwide. Currently, Oregon animation studio is adapting it for the big screen.
Susanna was interviewed in front of an audience who then got to ask questions.
Susanna Clarke won the Women’s Prize for Fiction with her novel Piranesi. She joins James Naughtie and a group of readers to answer their questions about this intriguing, tantalising novel.
…We didn’t know this information then because our power had failed, the internet was down, and our phones were out. A few hours later, our water stopped, and a week later, most of these services were still out. (Cellular reception is better in some areas but still not what it was.)
Completely disconnected
After the first day, it began to sink in just how disconnected we were — not just from the world but also from friends only half a mile away. It’s horrible when you start to realize how bad things are in your community and can’t reach people to see if they’re OK.
I’d expected my power and internet to be off — an ERC Broadband 100 gigabit per second fiber backbone cable was down in my front yard. However, I didn’t expect to lose my Verizon cellular service. More fool me.
Life is different without connections. I stay in touch with my friends, co-workers, and family through email, Slack, social networks, and, in a pinch, phone calls and texts. However, all of these communication methods were out. That also meant my loved ones, friends, and colleagues couldn’t reach me to ensure I was okay….
(3) HWA’S FUTURE. Mary SanGiovanni has published a wide-ranging discussion of her aspirations for the Horror Writers Association: “On the HWA” at A Writer’s Life.
So… I’d like to talk about writing organizations and the Horror Writers Association (HWA), from one professional writer to another, and to our industry at large. I have been plucking the strings of this particular harp for many years, and I think I may have, in the past, come across as critical, but that’s because I want to be proud of the HWA and see it do well. I have served as a Trustee, so I understand the inner workings to some extent. I am an Active member, and have been, on and off, for almost two decades. I see all that the organization could be and I can’t — I just can’t – give up on it without trying once more to generate some discussion about how to utilize the HWA to strengthen our position in the publishing world.
The following is what I would like the HWA or any other writing organization that I am a member of to be,- in a perfect world — or maybe just a fantasy world. If the HWA would like to use any of these ideas, please do so with my blessing and enthusiastic support. Also, please see the disclaimers which follow, as I imagine they will address any number of complaints people may have with the following essay….
Here’s an excerpt:
MISSION/FOCUS
Some years ago, the HWA opened the doors of its membership to Associate members, which, at the time, included editors, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, etc. Now, I absolutely think that it is crucial for writers (and for the organization as a representative of those writers) to work with people in other facets of the publishing industry. I believe the HWA should be able to facilitate such relationships through networking opportunities, introductions, directories, etc.
That being said, I also think that a writing organization should never lose sight of its primary goal, which is to protect the rights of and foster opportunities for writers. There are times (e.g. contracts) when the best interests of writers and the best interests of, say, publishers, may be at odds. It is important to have a steadfast supporter of writers to guide the business transactions and best practices whenever possible. That is harder to do if the writing organization’s loyalties are split between two factions. Maybe some rule or by-law (or general practice which governs decisions and official actions of the board) should generally reflect or default to writers’ interests. Perhaps the organization can find ways to work out compromises that all might be satisfied with, but writers’ interests should come first.
Also, I believe that a professional writing organization should foster an environment of professionalism — should insist on it, actually, at least in the spaces where the organization holds some dominion. Many of us think of our industry as a community or even a family of sorts, where business and pleasure in a sense often mix. Of course they do. We’re colleagues and co-workers, but also close and cherished friends, even lovers and spouses. There are people in this business I would take a bullet for. Of course we care about each other. BUT…
This is first and foremost an industry, a business. We need to treat it like one, and we need an organization, if called upon, to shepherd that professionalism. We need it to make wise and shrewd business decisions concerning the well-being of the membership. We need it to arbitrate in business matters, to support efforts of writers to demand fair treatment, equal pay (or hell, payment at all), and help navigate contractual snares, and to examine ways in which it can promote fairness and equality in the professional arena for all writers….
The stance requires one foot to be firmly on the lawn adjacent to the hedge. Day in, day out — it has amounted to quite a bit of wear and tear.
“We’ve always had an issue with our grass in general, so it’s not just that one area, but obviously because people do stand in that section…,” said Esther Park, who lives in the South Pasadena house with her family….
… The process of reseeding and fertilizing the entire front lawn is likely to take the next few months, estimated Park.
To alert those seeking photo ops, Park’s husband first put out plant labels asking folks to not step in the section, but recently had to upgrade to planting orange flags around it.
“I don’t know how much people really pay attention to that,” she said…
(5) JOSHI FELLOWSHIP TAKING APPLICATIONS. [Item by Michael J. Lowrey.] The John Hay Library at Brown University invites applications for its 2025 S. T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship in H. P. Lovecraft. The Fellowship is provided for research relating to H.P. Lovecraft, his associates, and literary heirs. The application deadline is January 17th, 2025.
The Hay Library is home to the largest collection of H. P. Lovecraft materials in the world, and also holds the archives of Clark Ashton Smith, Karl Edward Wagner, Manly Wade Wellman, Analog magazine, Caitlín Kiernan, and others. The Joshi Fellowship, established by The Aeroflex Foundation and Hippocampus Press, is intended to promote scholarly research using the world-renowned resources on H. P. Lovecraft, science fiction, and horror at the John Hay Library (projects do not need to relate to Lovecraft). The Fellowship provides a monthly stipend of $2,500 for up to two months of research at the library. The fellowship is open to students, faculty, librarians, artists, and independent scholars. Applications are encouraged for projects that make use of material not already available digitally through the Brown digital repository.
(6) HWA ANNOUNCES COMPLAINT RESOLVED. HWA’s Volunteer Coordinator Lila Denning published this statement about the resolution of complaints brought by Cynthia Pelayo and Clash Books.
In my official capacity as HWA Volunteer Coordinator, I was asked to share this information:
In response to official complaints filed by author member, Cynthia Pelayo, and publisher member, Clash Books, the HWA engaged its formal Anti-Harassment Policy and met with both parties. The HWA Board is pleased to report, that the complaint has been settled and both parties are in agreement with plans to go forward. While any terms are private between the two parties and the HWA, there are a few statements that, at the request of both parties involved, the HWA agreed to share with the larger HWA membership to eliminate confusion and/or speculation in the public sphere.
Clash would like to truly apologize for sharing untrue personal information about Pelayo, her family and representatives, while Pelayo would also like to publicly apologize for tagging authors and parties who had nothing to do with the situation on social media. Otherwise, all parties want to be clear that they are going to be at StokerCon in June 2025 and have no problem being in the same places in a professional setting. The parties involved appreciate their privacy in this matter and are ready to move on.
Finally, Pelayo, Clash Books, and the HWA Board would like to remind all members that the HWA is here to support their members. There is a formal process to deal with harassment. All parties want to encourage others in the HWA community to bring their concerns to the Board rather than taking their issues to social media.
… But over the Oct. 4-6 weekend, everyone at Warners, including the executive duo, were left reeling as Folie à Deux collapsed in its box office debut with a $37.8 million domestic opening after becoming the first comic book movie in history to receive a D CinemaScore. Phillips, according to one source, spent the weekend in seclusion on a ranch property he owns.
Domestically, Folie à Deux opened well behind DC’s 2023 The Flash ($55 million) and Marvel Studios’ The Marvels’ ($46.1 million), both of which were major bombs. It also came in behind Sony’s relatively inexpensive Morbius ($39 million).
“It is complete audience rejection,” says one source close to the film.
Overseas, Folie à Deux came in at an estimated $81 million, in line with expectations but still notably behind the first film.
While it is not the lowest North American opening for a pic based on a DC character, Joker: Folie à Deux is major stumble. Yet numerous sources tell THR that there’s no studio head in Hollywood — save perhaps for Sony Pictures’ Tom Rothman — who would have turned down making a sequel to a film that was both a commercial and critical hit. To boot, Abdy and De Luca were under orders by Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav to fill a bare cupboard after the studio’s Project Popcorn disaster, which alienated talent by sending its entire 2021 slate day-and-date to streaming service Max. Zaslav also is keen to exploit the company’s IP more fully.
“It is a collective failure, but it was right to make this movie,” says one top veteran producer and financier, who points out that Phillips is a brilliant directorwho has made Warners billions between the first Joker and The Hangover movies.
Still, observers wonder how De Luca and Abdy could have presided over a film that veered so far off course from what audiences wanted or expected.
One answer, perhaps: Phillips was given an extraordinary level of autonomy and final cut. There was no test screening, though insiders say this was a mutual decision between the filmmaker and Warners in order to preserve spoilers. That decision does stretch credulity, as the film does not have a particularly spoiler-heavy plot, and even spoilerific movies like Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Engdame had multiple test screenings…
(8) ROBERT J. COOVER (1932-2024). Author Robert J. Coover died October 5 at the age of 92. Honestly, to me, his most interesting book was The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968) about a fantasy baseball league, however, the Associated Press didn’t even mention it in their obituary:
…His notable works included “The Babysitter,” in which a night out for the parents multiplies into a funhouse of alternative realities; “You Must Remember This,” an X-rated imagining of the leads in “Casablanca,” and the novel “Huck Out West,” in which Coover continued the adventures of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.
“A lesson I learned from reading (Thomas Pynchon’s) ‘V’ has stuck with me all my life: All my work is basically comic,” he told the Boston Globe in 2014. “That’s the only thing I have ever written. Even though they’re not always viewed as such, the books are all meant as comic works.”…
The New York Times admired those books and some others, including The Public Burning.
…Political myths came into Mr. Coover’s cross hairs in “The Public Burning” (1977), a novel that reimagined the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the married couple who were convicted of conspiring to steal atomic bomb secrets for the Soviets and executed in 1953.
The novel featured the Rosenbergs and other historical figures, like Richard M. Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover, as well as two mythic characters, Uncle Sam and the Phantom, who represented the overheated rhetoric of Cold War antagonism.
…Mr. Coover was an aggressive purveyor of puns and other willfully playful devices (he once named a detective Philip M. Noir), a tendency that some critics found both energizing and exhausting….
(10) ‘ARCS’ BOARD GAME REVIEW. [Item by N.] A little late, but it seems that there was a delay on retail sales because of the East Coast port strike. Now that the strike is concluded, expect copies to show up at your local tabletop game store over the course of this month. “Arcs, from Leder Games, turns a folk card game into a space opera” at Polygon.
…Arcs: Conflict and Collapse in the Reach is yet another radical attempt at tabletop innovation. The end result, available at retail beginning Oct. 1, is a unique approach to single-session strategy wargaming that evokes classics like Risk and Twilight Imperium. But when paired with a massive day-one expansion, Arcs morphs into a mind-blowing three-session campaign game with evolving rules and curious in-fiction discoveries. It’s completely over the top in all the best ways, and there’s nothing yet released quite like it….
Film cans containing unseen footage of the Thunderbirds TV show have been found in a garden shed.
A family found the cans – light-tight containers used to enclose film – in a Buckinghamshire shed belonging to their father, who was an editor on the show and died recently.
Stephen La Rivière, from Century 21 Films which received the 22 old cans, said they mainly contained Thunderbirds material from the 1960s, including an alternative version of an episode that was never broadcast.
It is hoped the footage – filmed on the Slough Trading Estate in Berkshire – can be shown to the public as part of the series’ 60th anniversary next year….
… Carole Ann Ford, from Ilford, played Susan, granddaughter of the Doctor played by William Hartnell when the BBC show started in 1963. The character has been frequently mentioned in the recent series with Ncuti Gatwa.
During an appearance at Luton Comic Con, the actress said she wanted to return although she admitted it “would be very emotional.. very emotional”.
“I don’t know if I could survive the excitement actually, it would be intense beyond all intensity,” she said.
Carole Ann Ford, far right, says a return to Doctor Who will be emotional 60 years on
She said: “It’s not just returning, it would bring back all the memories of William Russell and Jackie and Bill [William Hartnell] and various other people who aren’t with us anymore.
“I might be a little bit overcome and start blubbing.
“I keep being reminded I’m the last one standing and it’s not something I’m happy to hear.”…
… Last year the character returned to screens in a newly colourised version of the 1963 episode, The Daleks, which was broadcast on BBC Four to mark the show’s 60th anniversary.
The actress encouraged fans to be vocal in their support of her return if there was any chance of her returning.
In an interview on BBC Three Counties Radio, she hinted that she had had “one or two” conversations about returning in the past.
“I’ve had many conversations about going back, maybe not with the right people, I don’t know,” she added.
When it was suggested her character could be recast, she joked: “They better not, I’d burn the studio down.”…
It’s difficult to make a decent military horror movie. If we want the audience to be scared, the good guys need to be scared, too — but the scariest things about life in the U.S. military are black mold in the barracks and jet fuel in the drinking water. Frightening? Yes, absolutely, but not in a Hollywood “scream queen” kind of way.
Still, a good military horror movie isn’t impossible. The stakes just need to be a bit higher, the monsters a bit bigger and the heroes a bit harder. And the terror most often isn’t from the supernatural: The biggest bogeyman for the military in horror movies is usually the government, just like in real life….
1. “Aliens” (1986)
“Alien” is probably the greatest sci-fi horror movie ever made, so it only stands to reason that a sequel that employs space Marines to fight the aliens is going to make for the best military horror movie ever. Indeed, “Aliens” has everything the original has: a scary monster (the Xenomorphs), a great hero (Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley) and a lot of people to shockingly kill off one by one. It’s even scarier because the audience knows exactly that, aside from the threat of getting ripped in half, what makes “Aliens” so frightening is being hunted and overrun by a swarming enemy — an enemy you know is going to impregnate you orally and stick you to a wall for the baby to exit via your chest. It doesn’t get much better (or worse, depending on who you ask) than that….
The Wall is maybe the most iconic setting in Game of Thrones. Constructed by Bran the Builder in the Age of Heroes, it marks the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. Some three hundred miles long and several hundred feet high in most places, it is one of the wonders of the world. Of course, the wall is no normal wall; it is built of ice and carries potent magical protections.
Originally meant to keep the Others out of the Realms of Men, for most of its history, it instead kept the Wildlings of the North out of the Seven Kingdoms. The Wall is home to The Night’s Watch. This order of men sworn to defend the Wall and the Realms of Men has built a number of castles into the Wall. Along with the Red Keep, it is one of the major setting locations of the story.
The Wall has now been rendered in stunning detail in LEGO. Done by the talented Anuradha Pehrson (you can find their Flickr here), this immersive build has over 200,000 pieces. It’s a truly massive build and includes several sections of The Wall and vignettes combined into one. The model takes up a full 5 ft x 5 ft square and is about 4.5 ft tall. Due to having several elements and scenes, it is not consistent on one scale.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, N., Michael J. Walsh, Michael J. Lowrey, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The Washington (DC) Science Fiction Association (WSFA) has announced the finalists for the 2024 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction:
“Baby Golem” by Barbara Krasnoff, Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World’s Oldest Diaspora, ed. by Michael A Burstein, Fantastic Books (2023); and
“Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer, Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 200 (May 2023) ed. by Neil Clarke
“A Bowl of Soup on the 87th Floor” by Kai Holmwood, Dreamforge Magazine, Issue 10 (March 2023) ed. by Scot Noel
“By the Works of Her Hands” by LaShawn M Wanak,Never Too Old to Save the World: A Midlife Calling Anthology, ed. by Alana Joli Abbott & Addie King, Outland Entertainment (February 2023)
“Interstate Mohinis” by M. L. Krishnan, Diaboloical Plots, Issue 100B (June 2023) ed. by Kel Coleman
“Machines” by Jennifer R. Povey, Game On!, ed. by Stephen Kotowych & Tony Pi, Zombies Need Brains (July 2023)
“Nothing But the Gods on Their Backs” by Alex T. Singer,Metaphorosis, (June 2023) ed. by B. Morris Allen
“Six Meals at Fanelli’s” by Annika Barranti Klein, Fusion Fragment, Issue 16 (April 2023) ed. by Cavan Terrill.
The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction, and showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2023). An unusual feature of the selection process is that the voting is done with the identity of the author and publisher hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.
The winner is chosen by members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org), and the award will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on September 27 – September 29 at the Rockville Hilton & Executive Meeting Center, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD.
ITEM ONE: As we emerge from the cold and cloudless days of January and February, you would think that the prospect of sunny days, baseball, international football (soccer), the open swimming pools and children playing outside would bring some joy to my soul.
Every year for the past forty years or so, the coming of the so-called “Daylight Savings Time” fills me with sadness, anxiety, moodiness and lastly, anger. (Yes, I only appear to be a mild-mannered reporter for a daily metropolitan daily sf news zine.)
Because myself and most of my fellow North Americans have lost an hour’s sleep. And why?
Because the farmers, blah, blah, blah. And the kids getting on the bus in the dark, blah, blah. And commerce and businesses flourish, blah, blah, blah…
When I was a young lad in the mid-1960’s, the prospect of time travel (in this fashion) was novel and exciting. Forward into the future and then returning back into the past a few months later was a perfectly appealing idea to my young mind.
But, as I got older, my priorities and attitude towards DST gradually changed. Just the thought of the approaching date brought on bouts of gnawing and persisting dread. Changing the clocks forth and back became (and still are) a hassle. And the loss of an hour’s sleep every spring is just plain wrong.
I’m not going to bore everyone with its history, musings, opinions or statistics about whether we should choose to sat in “standard” or “daylight” time or why the DST should be hunted down with pitchforks and torches, staked through the heart and left burning in the noonday sun.
Instead, I will leave you with a well known Native American aphorism:
“Only a white man would have you believe you could cut a foot off the top of the blanket, sew it onto the bottom of the blanket, and you’d be left with a longer blanket.”
Contact your congressional representative and Senators; they are the only ones who can kill this stupid and unhealthy abomination once and for all.
Enough. Said.
ITEM TWO: On the morning of February 5, 2024, my audio interview with Dave McCarty was published here on File770.com.
As many of you may know, I distribute the daily “Pixel Scroll” and other standalone news items on eight sff Facebook groups and on the Bluesky app. (I have mostly avoided posting on X/Twitter since September 2023.) If there is something more important or pressing at hand, like an exclusive interview with Dave McCarty for example, I post a File 770 link to a more widespread group of forty groups…well, actually, thirty-nine as of today. Let me explain…
That particular morning, I started posting the interview to my usual group but when I came up to the Washington Science Fiction Association, I had to pause because I was served with a notice that stated that my posting privileges had been suspended:
“Your profile been (sic) suspended in this group. The admin has temporarily turned off your ability to post, comment and earn contribution points in the group until February 23, 2024, 10:19 AM.”
I was flabbergasted for several reasons, the first of which was that I had not received any notice of the suspension from any of the administrators, there was no previous indication of any trouble before that day.
Since I was locked out of the page, there was no way to send a message to an admin, so I decided to shout out on my own page:
To the Washington Science Fiction Association Facebook Page:
While posting my latest File 770 column this morning, I found out that the admins of the Washington Science Fiction Association suspended my posting privileges on their page for three weeks. Apparently they found my most recent dispersing news on a regular basis either offensive and/or disturbing.
I have done my best to pass along vital and accurate information there for some time and I am HIGHLY upset that I was suspended without notification or an adequate explanation. Do I need to point out the parallels to what happened recently regarding the Chengdu Long List nominees?
As a journalist, I resent being effectively censored in this fashion; sf fans have every right to be informed, whether the news is for good or for ill, especially during these tumultuous times in sf fandom.
While I recognize that they have every right to run their page as they see fit, I find this action egregious, unnecessary and a disservice to the other members of the group. As a result of these actions I will be leaving the group later today.
Chris B.
During the course of that day, several friends offered advice and support, which, for the most part, I appreciated. Several suggested I reach out to the administrators to find out what the problem was. I wasn’t very receptive to doing that because I was very upset and the aggrieved party; so why would I do that?
Two friends intervened on my behalf and made inquiries on my behalf. One reported in a direct message:
“Sent your message to the three admins. I’m guessing what set this off was the piece with the McCarty interview.”
I did not hear back from anyone else about this that day. And so, at a little after 10pm, the Washington Science Fiction Association page had one less member.
My other friend sent me the following message in the early morning hours of the next day:
“Chris, you were paused by the moderator because they were traveling and could not monitor posts.”
I sent back the following message:
“Well, that’s a troubling explanation. Was this applied to everyone? Or just me? Because without a notification to me or on the page, it felt like I was being targeted.
Also the period of time described in the suspension notice wasn’t for a period of days but weeks.
So yeah, I’m having a hard time believing this.”
As of today, I have not been contacted by any of the admins involved nor have I been given an adequate explanation for their actions or offered an apology.
My reason for airing my grievance here and now is two-fold; this incident has been simmering with me for over five weeks and I felt the need to let loose before I lose my sanity, self esteem or both. Secondly, this is not my first rodeo with unresponsive page admins and frankly I’m becoming more and more disenchanted with social media and Facebook in particular.
And at its best, Facebook is a wonderful tool to keep in touch with friends and share ideas and opinions. But I am beginning to realize that for me, the pervasive and oftentimes intrusive effects of social media may outweigh its benefits.
Lately, I have been contemplating leaving Facebook for good. Incidents like this just nudge me a little further towards doing that.
ITEM THREE: And then there was the matter of D.G. Valdron’s essay on Medium.com.
On February 18, Mr. Valdron, who describes himself on the website as a “Canadian Speculative Fiction and Pop Culture writer”, published an article that was ominously titled “Moral Compromise and the Lesson of the Hugos”.
Mr. Valdron, in an imperious and somewhat solemn tone, vaguely (and, mind you, without attribution) outlined the problems regarding the Chengdu Worldcon:
In 2023, the World Science Fiction Convention was held in Chengdu, China.
This was a little bit controversial, given the Chinese government’s genocidal actions regarding Ughyers and Tibetans, their authoritarian police state shtick, etc. But everyone went along with it. Why rock the boat?
The problem came with the Hugo Awards.
Now, the thing with the Hugos, is that everyone submits nominations, the Hugo Awards Committee vets the nominations, and a final list gets put out for the fans and convention members to vote on by secret ballot. Now, that’s how I understand it. I might have gotten some detail wrong, but I believe that’s the gist. It doesn’t matter.
Here’s what matters:
The Hugos were corrupted. The Hugo Awards Committee turns out to have been screening out the works of American, English and Chinese creators, on behalf of the Chinese government. Basically, anyone whose novel or background was critical of the Chinese government, or even politically sensitive, like mentioning Tibet, was dropped from the list.
But you know what strikes me?
It’s how trivial this is.
Forgive me, I’m sure it’s important to the people involved. Careers and friendships ended, a community rocked.
But let’s get a grip. Most people in North America have never even heard of the Hugos. Most people in North America are not science fiction writers, or readers. Hell, most people in North America are not readers.
The Hugos aren’t the Nobels, or the Pulitzers. In the larger scheme, they’re a minor award, restricted to a literary/social subculture which might result in a few extra sales and an ego boost.
No one’s life was at risk. No one’s freedom was imperiled. No huge sums of money, no public safety.
This was a small trivial thing.
In my cynical side, I suspect that most times, people would make the wrong moral choice, but hopefully, in the face of more pressure, or intimidation or incentive than this. Maybe I just want people to suffer more.
Anyway, we’ve been down this path before you and I. Sorry to belabour it. How we treat each other is a hobby horse of mine. I’ve had my tests, and I’ll have more. I’ve dealt with them.
What about you?
I’m SO GLAD you asked, sir.
Now, to be fair, Mr. Valdron is entitled to his opinion. And granted, what happened with the Chengdu Worldcon and the 2023 Hugo Awards is definitely not as important as the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, the current battle between democracy and fascism in the United States or our ever increasing concerns over climate change and various environmental crises all over the world.
What really ticked me off about D.G. Valdron’s article is his rather cavalier attitude towards what happened, the Hugo Awards and general air of disapproval of the fandom that supports it.
Fantasy, science fiction and horror is, despite the bleating of insufferable academics and mainstream literary critics, a vital part of the tree of literature, and whose roots run a millenium or two deep.
Modern sff literature (and fandom) started over a hundred years ago when teenagers in the US and United Kingdom began to correspond, meet, talk and write about their mutual fascination.
And out of those meetings came conventions, cosplay, and generations of aspiring publishers, writers, editors, artists, game creators, filmmakers, and commentators, like myself.
I have had the privilege of growing up in a period of this history to witness sff grow from being considered a freakish sideshow to becoming a dominant force in world culture.
And the Hugo Awards, for better or worse, have provided all of us with an invaluable anecdotal, year by year snapshot of what people thought about fantastic literature and the visual arts. Readers, writers, editors, artists and publishers look to it as a bellwether of the field’s vitality.
So, no this is NOT “a small trivial thing,” Mr. Waldron.
And I find it very disappointing to see a member of our own community like yourself thinking so little of the situation as to look down your nose at the sff fandom and its history under the pretense of high handed criticism.
There is a term for this Mr. Waldron.
It is called “bad form”.
ITEM FOUR: Having a little notoriety in your life can be fun. I have been a fan guest of honor at three conventions (Windycon in 2019, Astronomicon in 2021 and Confusion in 2023), a panelist art auctioneer at local, regional conventions and at Worldcons. I’ve been nominated for a Hugo Award twice (and may have even won one).
But speaking personally, I don’t go out of my way to seek it out. I know myself well enough to know that if my ego were well fed on a regular basis it would be to the detriment of myself and my family and friends.
So, as you can well imagine my quandary as the Chengdu Worldcon story grew exponentially, my name (as well as my co-author, Jason Sanford) popped in all sorts of media outlets like the Guardian (UK), NBC News, the Associated Press and the New York Times among others.
I was even interviewed by Andrew Linbong for National Public Radio, which, as a listener of fifty-plus years, was the thrill of a lifetime as far as I’m concerned.
But, there’s a downside as well. While I and Jason received universal praise for our reporting, we were also reminded that there are a lot of cranks out there who were more than willing to let the air out of tires, so to speak.
There were several that stood out; sff author Larry Correia was irked because of Jason and I had previously reported on and commented negatively against his involvements in the Sad/Angry/Rabid Puppy wars a decade ago. Frankly, having someone like Correia upset with me is a badge of honor as far as I’m concerned. (See my post on Bluesky.)
My partner Juli alerted me that some wag on Reddit had heard my interview with Dave McCarty and had come to the startling conclusion that I was actually in cahoots with him to cover up his complicity in the scandal. To which I replied that he had obviously seen far too many episodes of The Traitors reality competition show to be reasoned with.
I was very heartened when I read that both Samantha Mills (author of the acclaimed short story “Rabbit Test”) and Adrian Tchaikovsky (who wrote The Children of Time series) had both decided not to acknowledge their Hugo Awards in the wake of the Chengdu scandal.
Adversely, I received a bit of backlash from some people once I let it be known that I was going to keep my Hugo Award more as a keepsake and family heirloom than a personal achievement.
I might have felt the same way as Ms. Mills and Mr. Tchaikovsky if I was sitting at home watching the Hugo Awards Ceremony at home and found out later that my presence on the ballot was dubious at best and that many Chinese writers and fans were most likely disenfranchised from the process.
But, I went to China, had the time of my life, made the speech of my life and felt a close affinity for this award I thought I had rightly won. If anything, I wanted to be reminded of the trip, the people I met and befriended and the devastating revelations that followed.
Well, for a very vocal fringe minority of people, keeping this Hugo Award was tantamount to rooting for Lex Luthor, killing baby seals, helping the Houston Astros win the 2017 World Series or actually being a communist.
I laughed off nearly all of this outrage as either sour grapes, jealousy, pettiness or “virtue signaling”. In the course of all of this sturm and drang, I posted the following on Bluesky:
This generated a (unnecessarily snarky) response from @afab boyfriend:
It’s responses like these, that seemingly come out of the social ether that occasionally bother me, referring back to my general unease about social media. I don’t know this person and they CLEARLY don’t know me and yet it seems my comment struck a nerve that needed a pointed response. And I get it; I admit that in the past, I too, have sought out people I don’t know to comment on how reprehensible I thought their opinions or positions were, but tried to do so from a reasonable point of view and not to make it personal enough to hurt someone’s feelings.
THIS comment was meant to be both condemning AND personal.
Two things happened after I posted this; two days later, on Sunday March 10th, I fumbled my understanding of GMT time and Eastern Daylight Time (DAMN YOU AGAIN, DST) and as a result, both Juli and I logged onto the Glasgow Worldcon site three hours too late to nominate anything for this year’s Hugo Awards for the first time in more than a decade.
Even more ironically, I began to hear from friends and acquaintances who openly stated that despite my recusal of future nominations in my speech at the Chengdu Hugo Award Ceremony and my public statement on March 8th, people were still nominating me in the Best Fan Writer category.
Their reasons ranged from they viewed my “win” in Chengdu as invalid and they wanted me to have another chance or that my works from 2023 were quite worthy of consideration.
I have to admit that the idea of being nominated again in light of what happened last year excites me, but the other side of that coin brings feelings of despair.
Do I actually deserve another nomination? Would I be depriving someone else of a nomination? And, what if I get that email in the next week or so; am I allowed to change my mind?
My partner Juli says that she will abide by and support any decision I make, which is one of the many reasons why I love her so much.. The few friends I have asked about this dilemma all said I should take the nomination.
The Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) announced at Capclave on September 30 that Naomi Kritzer won the 2023 WSFA Small Press Award for best short fiction published by a small press in 2023.
Kritzer’s winning story is “The Dragon Project”, published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 186 (March 2022), edited by Neil Clarke.
The award was announced by Capclave Chair Aaron Pound.
The other finalists for the 2023 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction were:
“Ashes of a Cinnamon Fire” by R. Z. Held, Shattering The Glass Slipper, ed. by Crystal Sarakas and Rhondi Salsitz, Zombies Need Brains, LLC (June 2022); and
“At the Lighthouse, Out by the Othersea” by Juliet Kemp, Uncanny Magazine, Issue 47 (July/August 2022) ed. by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas; and
“In the Belly of the Whale” by Angus McIntyre, Trenchcoats, Towers, and Trolls: Cyberpunk Fairy Tales, ed. by Rhonda Parrish, World Weaver Press (January 2022); and
“Not the Youngest, Nor the Prettiest, But Someone Else” by Alyse Winters, Shattering The Glass Slipper, ed. by Crystal Sarakas and Rhondi Salsitz, Zombies Need Brains, LLC (June 2022); and
“Possession” by Taylor Jones, Reckoning, #6 (September 25, 2022), ed. by Aicha Martine Thiam and Gabriela Santiago; and
“Simons, Far and Near” by Ana Gardner, Cast of Wonders, episode 485 (February 6, 2022) ed. by Katherine Inskip; and
“This Living Hand” by Marie Brennan, Sunday Morning Transport, (February 13, 2022) ed. by Julian Yap and Fran Wilde.
The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction, and showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2022). An unusual feature of the selection process is that the voting is done with the identity of the author and publisher hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story. The winner was chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association and was presented at their annual convention, Capclave, held at the Rockville Hilton, Rockville, MD.
(0) Short Scroll today – no reason, just not as many things I wanted to include.
(1) LE GUIN’S BEST BOOKS. The New York Times takes a look at why Ursula K. Le Guin matters: “Her powerful imagination turned hypothetical elsewheres into vivid worlds governed by forces of nature, technology, gender, race and class a far cry from our own.” “The Essential Ursula K. LeGuin”.
In her 2009 essay “On the Frontier,” Ursula K. Le Guin took stock of an abstraction endemic to both the American West, where she was raised, and her chosen genre of science fiction. Interplanetary wars, galaxy-spanning empires, brave men bounding toward their next conquest — all this action rests on a notion of the future as inchoate, waiting to be made. But that’s never been true, she argued, in America or her fiction. “The future is already full,” she wrote. “It is much older and larger than our present, and we are the aliens in it.”…
(2) THE TRIMBLES. Maggie Thompson posted this photo taken at Comic-Con showing her flanked by John and Bjo Trimble. Bjo recently turned 90.
(3) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA has released episode 66 of Simultaneous Times, a monthly science fiction podcast. Stories featured in this episode are:
“Cost of Living” by Mike Morgan; with music by Fall Precauxions
“We’re All Family Here” by Mark Soden Jr.; with music by Phog Masheeen
After a decade of waiting, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” fans will finally get an author-backed screen adaptation of the beloved young adult novels on Dec. 20. The series will arrive on Disney+ with two episodes, followed by weekly drops….
The teaser opens with voiceover from Virginia Kull as Percy’s mother, Sally Jackson. “The stories that I have told you about Greek gods and half-bloods — they are real,” she says over images of Camp Half-Blood, Percy on the elevator to Olympus, Ares (Adam Copeland) and different confrontations with monsters….
Percy Jackson & The Olympians tells the fantastical story of a 12-year-old modern demigod, Percy Jackson, who’s just coming to terms with his newfound supernatural powers when the sky god Zeus accuses him of stealing his master lightning bolt. Now Percy must trek across America to find it and restore order to Olympus.
US authorities have charged a man in connection with the theft of a pair of ruby red slippers worn by actress Judy Garland as Dorothy in the 1939 classic movie “The Wizard of Oz” nearly 20 years after they were stolen from a museum in Minnesota.
On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted Terry Jon Martin on one count of theft of a major artwork for allegedly stealing “an object of cultural heritage from the care, custody, or control of a museum,” according to court documents filed in the US District Court of Minnesota. The slippers were valued at least $100,000, court documents stated….
BBC Sounds has recording of the Witness History interview with John Kelsch, one of the people who founded the Judy Garland Museum from which the slippers were taken in 2005: “The Wizard of Oz: The stolen ruby slippers”.
(6) CHRIS CALLAHAN (1944-2023). Chris Callahan, an active Washington Science Fiction Association member in the 1990s and earlier, died June 10. Rich Lynch notes, “She was one of the many people who worked on the 1998 Baltimore Worldcon and I am especially grateful to her for volunteering as a proofreader for the Souvenir Book. She saved me from many embarrassing typos, and had some valuable insights on how it ended up being put together.”
Callahan was part of the WSFA Players who performed Alexis Gilliland’s parody musical “2001 A Space Opera” at the 1974 Worldcon.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born August 18, 1925 — Brian Aldiss. Much honored, he’s was named a Grand Master by SFWA and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. I’ll single out his Helliconia series, Hothouse and The Malacia Tapestry as my favorites. He won a Hugo at Chicon III for “The Long Afternoon of The Earth”, another at Conspiracy ’87 for Trillion Year Spree which he co-authored with David Wingrove. He’s well known as an anthologist and SF writer with Space, Time and Nathaniel, a collection of short stories being his first genre publication. He’s edited far too many collections to know which one to single out, but I’m sure that the collective wisdom here can make recommendations. (Died 2017.)
Born August 18, 1931 — Grant Williams. He is best remembered for his portrayal of Scott Carey in The Incredible Shrinking Man though he will have the role of the psychopathic killer in Robert Bloch’s The Couch. Of course, he shows in Outer Limits, he plays Major Douglas McKinnon in “The Brain of Colonel Barham”. And he’s Major Kurt Mason in The Doomsday Machine. (Died 1985.)
Born August 18, 1934 — Michael de Larrabeiti. He is best known for writing The Borrible Trilogy which is noted by several sources online as being an influence by writers in the New Weird movement. Ok folks, I’ve not read so please explain how The Borrible Trilogy influences that literary movement as it doesn’t seem like there’s any connection. (Died 2008.)
Born August 18, 1954 — Russell Blackford, 69. Writer resident in Australia for awhile but now in Wales. Author of Terminator 2: The New John Connor Chronicles, and editor of the Australian Science Fiction Review in the Eighties. With Van Ikin and Sean McMullen, he wrote Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction. And he wrote Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination: Visions, Minds, Ethics.
Born August 18, 1955 — Tom Flynn. Journalist who edited Free Inquiry magazine from 2010 until his death. He waged a decades-long crusade against Christmas. Seriously he wrote a book titled The Trouble with Christmas. His only work was his Galactic Rapture/Messiah Gamesspace opera which ran to six volumes. Only one volume, The Destroyer’s Creed, is available from that company shall be named and it’s quite expensive. (Died 2021.)
Born August 18, 1958 — Madeleine Stowe, 65. She’s in the Twelve Monkeys film as Kathryn Railly, and she’s in the Twelve Monkeys series as Lillian in the “Memory of Tomorrow” episode. Her other genre work was a one-off in The Amazing Spider-Man which ran for thirteen episodes nearly forty years ago where she was Maria Calderon in “Escort to Danger” in that series, and she also played Mia Olham in Impostor which was scripted off Philip K. Dick’s “Impostor” story.
Born August 18, 1966 — Alison Goodman, 47. Australian writer who’s won three Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Speculative Fiction for Singing the Dogstar Blues, The Two Pearls of Wisdom and Lady Helen and the Dark Days Pact. The Two Pearls of Wisdom was nominated for an Otherwise Award.
Born August 18, 1967 — Brian Michael Bendis, 56. He’s both writer and artist, a still uncommon occurrence. Did you know he’s garnered five Eisner Awards for both his creator-owned work and Marvel Comics? Very impressive! He’s the primary force behind the creation of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, launching Ultimate Spider-Man which is an amazing series which I read on the Marvel Unlimited app.
Queer Lodgings is a queer-led podcast covering all things Tolkien. Join Alicia, Grace, and Leah (and sometimes Tim), a group of fans and scholars, semi-monthly as we discuss Middle-earth from a lgbtq+-focused, intersectional, antiracist, and non-christian perspective.
They’re beginning to post transcripts of some episodes, and Reid provides in this issue of her Substack.
(9) FLY LIKE IT’S 1999. Plans are afoot for “The Eagle Has Landed” Documentary which will explore the legacy of the iconic Eagle Transporter from Space: 1999. The project’s director/creator Jeffrey Morris is launching a Kickstarter campaign on August 28 to bring it to life.
Meet the Visionaries: Icons of the Eagle Legacy
Click here to learn more about who will join Jeffrey Morris in the documentary, including:
Brian Johnson: Visual Effects Artist / Creator of the Eagle Nick Tate: Captain Alan Carter in Space: 1999 Barbara Bain: Dr. Helena Russell in Space: 1999 Charles Duke: Astronaut / Apollo 16 Lunar Module Pilot Kevin J. Anderson: Bestselling Sci-Fi Author / Space: 1999 Fan Bill George: Visual Effects Supervisor Robert Meyer Burnett: Filmmaker / Film Culture Podcaster
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Jean-Paul L. Garnier, Olav Rokne, Rich Lynch, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The Washington (DC) Science Fiction Association (WSFA) has opened the submission period for the 2023 WSFA Small Press Award. It will close on March 31, 2023.
The WSFA Small Press Award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2022). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.
The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association and presented at their annual convention, Capclave, held on September 29 – October 1, 2023 in Rockville, MD.
The Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) announced on October 1 that Steven Harper is the winner of the 2022 WSFA Small Press Award for best short fiction published by a small press in 2021. Harper’s honor was revealed during Capclave in Rockville, MD.
“Eight Mile and the City” by Steven Harper, from When Worlds Collide, ed. by S. C. Butler & Joshua Palmatier, Zombies Need Brains, LLC (July 2021), is the winning story.
The award was announced by Capclave Guest of Honor Ursula Vernon, the only 3-time winner of the WSFA Small Press Award.
The other finalists for the 2021 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction were:
“The Birdsong Fossil” by DK Mok, Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, (April 2021) World Weaver Press ed. by Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Norie Tamura, Rajat Chaudhuri, and Sarena Ulibarri;
“Dress of Ash” by Y. M. Pang, Seasons Between Us: Tales of Identities and Memories, ed. by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law, Laksa Media Groups Inc. (2021);
“Fisherman’s Soup” by Kristina Ten, Mermaids Monthly, (May 26, 2022) ed. by Julia Rios, Meg Frank, and Ashley Deng;
“From the Ashes Flew the Ladybug” by Alexandra Seidel, The Deadlands, Issue 7 (November 2021) ed. by E. Catherine Tobler;
“Laughter Among the Trees” by Suzan Palumbo, The Dark Magazine, Issue 69 (February 2021) ed by Sean Wallace;
“Space Pirate Queen of the Ten Billion Utopias” by Elly Bangs, Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 138 (November 2021) ed. by John Joseph Adams;
“Standing Orders” by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Derelicts, ed. by David B. Coe and Joshua Palmatier, Zombies Need Brains, LLC (July 2021);
“A Stranger Goes Ashore” by Adam R. Shannon, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 328 (April 22, 2021) ed. by Scott H. Andrews; and
“A Universe All to Himself” by Ryan Priest, Metaphorosis, (April 2021) ed. by B. Morris Allen.
(1) IT’S A HIT! NASA’s DART mission crashed into the targeted asteroid today.
IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch from #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera, as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully collides with asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium and poses no threat to Earth. pic.twitter.com/7bXipPkjWD
For the first time in history, NASA is trying to change the motion of a natural celestial body in space. Now that a spacecraft successfully hit the asteroid Dimorphos — the science is just getting started.
To survey the aftermath of the impact, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will launch in 2024. The spacecraft, along with two CubeSats, will arrive at the asteroid system two years later.
Hera will study both asteroids, measure physical properties of Dimorphos, and examine the DART impact crater and the moon’s orbit, with the aim of establishing an effective planetary defense strategy.
The Italian Space Agency’s Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, will fly by Dimorphos to capture images and video of the impact plume as it sprays up off the asteroid and maybe even spy the crater it could leave behind. The mini-satellite will also glimpse Dimorphos’ opposite hemisphere, which DART won’t get to see before it’s obliterated.
The CubeSat will turn to keep its cameras pointed at Dimorphos as it flies by. Days, weeks and months after, we’ll see images and video captured by the Italian satellite that observed the collision event. The first images expected back from LICIACube could show the moment of impact and the plume it creates.
The LICIACube won’t be the only observer watching. The James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Lucy mission will observe the impact. The Didymos system may brighten as its dust and debris is ejected into space, said Statler, the NASA program scientist.
But ground-based telescopes will be key in determining if DART successfully changed the motion of Dimorphos.
A federal intelligence office charged with matters related to aviation has a new logo ― and it suggests the organization is tracking more than just known aircraft.
The logo of the National Intelligence Manager-Aviation shows a series of aircraft as well as a UFO….
See, the genesis of this post comes from my editing on Starforge. This titan of a book is now in the Beta phase, which means looking for typos, misspelled words, misplaced quotation marks, and all that jazz. However, it also means going through and ensuring proper capitalization of proper nouns. At which point, I ran into a bit of a conundrum. Said conundrum led me to Google, which in turn pointed me to this post from 2009 concerning a similar issue in Fantasy writing—though note that it does as well address Science Fiction as well.
Anyway, what is this conundrum? Well, before we dive into it directly, I have a sort of pop quiz for you. You can do it in your head, but if you’re really determined you can bring out a pen and pencil and do the classic grade-school exercise. It’ll only take a moment either way, but here we go. Correctly capitalize the following sentence:
“The terran vehicle rolled up the hill, backed by dozens of terran marines.”
That’s it. Got it? Placed those capital letters where they belong? Okay, check out the answers after the break….
… Here we have He-Man and Skeletor in the style of the 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon (currently streaming here), for which the designs of the characters were updated. I don’t normally buy all of the He-Man and Skeletor variants (and there are a lot of them), but I like these two, since they are quite different from the standard versions, including redesigned accessories. Though I’ll give 2002 Skeletor’s sword to my Keldor figure, since it actually is Keldor’s sword.
The third new arrival is Mantenna, a member of the Evil Horde and the closest thing Masters of the Universe has to a bug-eyed monster….
…Supernatural is a hard show to discuss without needing to put an asterisk on all the things it did wrong. It was frequently toxic, misogynistic, and struggled mightily with its female characters who were all either victims or the embodiment of pure evil. Not exactly the most fertile grounds for growing relatable characters who fit the bill for underrated witches. And yet Supernatural has not one, but two of the most underrated witches in all of modern television. There is ongoing antagonist Rowena, who pesters and plagues the Winchesters over the course of multiple seasons, but Rowena, played by Ruth Connell, defies the regular run of the mill baddie legacy most other female villains on the show get saddled with. She Is funny, she has sexual agency, she is emotionally complex and has her own deep backstory that drives her to do the things she does beyond the standard demon-possession fare of most other women on the show. Rowena is a match for the Winchesters, and often an unwitting ally, and she gets to be smart, beautiful, and charismatic season after season. She is only underrated in that she has been somewhat overshadowed in popularity by similarly love-to-hate/hate-to-love demon Crowley….
(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1987 – [By Cat Eldridge.]ALF: The Animated Series (also known as ALF on Melmac) premiered on NBC thirty five years ago on a Saturday morning. Though it lasted two years which you would think would give it over fifty episodes, it had two seasons of just thirteen episodes instead.
WARNING: PREACHING MODE ENGAGED
Interestingly it has a long runtime of thirty minute in an era where most cartoon series had twenty to twenty six minutes of time so that as much junky product as possible could be pushed unto the young viewing audience. Buy! Buy! Buy! Who cares about your teeth!
PREACHING MODE OFF
It was created by Paul Fusco (the only acting talent who returned here.) He is the puppeteer and voice of ALF on ALF and was the creator, writer, producer, and director of the series, and Tom Pratchett, the co-creator of ALF who shows his most excellent taste by being involved in the writing of The Great Muppet Caper. If you’ve not seen the latter, it’s on Disney + right now.
(No, I’m not plugging Disney +. Just noting the Angry Mouse has a lot of interesting product in his vast pockets. I personally am avoiding Him like the bubonic plague for the time being.)
Why the human characters didn’t appear is rather simple — the shows premise is that ALF is traveling to various places on his home-world of Melmac. It was a prequel to the ALF, depicting ALF’s life back on his home planet of Melmac before it exploded. How well they did this ive no idea as I’ve not seen it.
Now want weird? Really frelling weird? It was paired with ALF Tales, a spin-off of this series, that had the astonishingly weird premise of characters from that series were playing various characters from fairy tales. Now this series only lasted twenty-one episodes.
It apparently never got reviewed by the critics, not altogether surprisingly. Amazon and Tubi, should you care, are streaming it. Personally I’d go watch ALF instead if I were you as it’s actually really great.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 26, 1866 — Winsor McCay. Cartoonist and animator who’s best remembered for the Little Nemo strip which ran between The Wars and the animated Gertie the Dinosaur film which is the key frame animation cartoon which you can see here. He used the pen name Silas on his Dream of the Rarebit Fiend strip. That strip had no recurring characters or theme, just that a character has a nightmare or other bizarre dream after eating Welsh rarebit. What an odd concept. (Died 1934.)
Born September 26, 1872 — Max Erhmann. Best remembered for his 1927 prose poem “Desiderata” which I have a framed copy hanging here in my work area. Yeah big fan. Genre connection? Well calling it “Spock Thoughts”, Nimoy recited the poem on Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy, his 1968 album. (Died 1945.)
Born September 26, 1941 — Martine Beswick, 81. Though she auditioned for Dr. No, she was instead cast in From Russia with Love as Zora. She also appeared as Paula Caplan in Thunderball. She would appear in One Million Years B.C. opposite Raquel Welch. She made several Hammer Studio films including Prehistoric Women and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.
Born September 26, 1944 — Victoria Vetri, 78. I do have a very expansive definition of SF and she definitely gets here by being in the Sixties pulp film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth as Sanna, and a lost world film called Chuka playing Helena Chavez. She’d also in be a bit of forgotten horror in the role of Rosemary’s Baby as Terry Gionoffrio. But actually she enters SF lore by way of a role she didn’t do. Vetri has been incorrectly identified in myriad sources as playing the role of the human form of a shape-shifting cat in the Trek’s “Assignment: Earth” episode, a role actually played by April Tatro. As she notes, she has brown eyes and that actress has blue eyes. She had a handful of genre appearances — The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Batman as Florence of Arabia, Mission: Impossible and Land of Giants.
Born September 26, 1956 — Linda Hamilton, 66. Best known for being Sarah Connor in The Terminator film franchise and Catherine Chandler in the Beauty and the Beast series. She also played Vicky Baxter in Children of the Corn, and Doctor Amy Franklin in King Kong Lives. She would be Acacia, a Valkyrie in “Delinquents” of the Lost Girl series, a role she would reprise in two more episodes, “End of a Line” and “Sweet Valkyrie High”.
Born September 26, 1957 — Tanya Huff, 65. Her Confederation of Valor Universe series is highly recommended by me. And I also give a strong recommendation to her Gale Family series. Let’s not forget the cat friendly Keeper’s Chronicles series. I’ve not read her other series, so I’ll ask y’all what you’d recommend.
Born September 26, 1968 — Jim Caviezel, 54. John Reese on Person of Interest which CBS describes as a “crime drama”. Huh. He was also Detective John Sullivan in Frequency, and Kainan in Outlander. And yes he played Number Six in the unfortunate reboot of The Prisoner.
Born September 26, 1985 — Talulah Riley, 37. Miss Evangelista in “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead”, two Tenth Doctor stories. She also portrays Angela in Westworld, and she shows up in Thor: The Dark World as an Asgardian nurse.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
The Far Side visits a fairy tale figure in retirement.
(12) ROCKY HORROR. Today’s also the anniversary of this movie’s release:
While filming Congo, I sat on top of a Volcano talking to Tim Curry about that movie. He said one of the coolest things was that it saved a number of small indie theaters from going under, because they knew that two nights a week Rocky was going to do big business. https://t.co/dvtd6sYm4G
…Michael Long, we’re told, has a metal plate in his head — “probably from military surgery” — and this metal plate deflected the bullet away from his brain and into his face. He later emerges from reconstructive surgery all Hasslehoffed-up at the 11:57-minute mark. This means there’s been at least one commercial break before we even see Hasselhoff in Knight Rider.
Frankly, the fact that the show needed a talking car after that setup is fascinating. Today, if the premise of Knight Rider were floated as a prestige drama all about the nature of identity and the existence of false identities, you can’t imagine a studio executive saying, “Yeah, but what if he had a talking car, too?”
The soap opera-esque origin story of Michael Knight’s face was actually a brilliant starting point for the series. By Season 2 episode “Goliath,” we learn that there’s an evil version of Michael Knight — Garthe Knight — also played by Hasselhoff, with a small, sleazy mustache and a soul patch. (The fact he looks like Michael Knight is because Michael Knight’s new face was based on Garthe’s, not the other way around.)…
(14) IT’S ELEMENTRY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Entertainment Weekly discusses what happened when a scientist visited The Big Bang Theory set and found uranium!
…. During the tour, the physicist noticed one of the props in Leonard and Sheldon’s apartment. Prady says, “People always ask what that thing on the wall post was, it was this wooden box that was actually an antique Geiger counter. The physicist looks at it and goes, ‘That’s an old Geiger counter.'” (A Geiger counter is a device used to detect radiation).
It turns out the Geiger counter was more than just a unique prop….
(15) SCARY FOOD. Fortunately, these horrifying “Hallowieners” are baloney says Snopes.
…The Paper Museum is a frustrating read. The microcosm inside the museum is described in abundant, at times excessive detail, while the world outside of it is a nebulous blank that may as well be made of air. Since we only follow Lydia, who basically never leaves the museum, the significance of a world without paper is lost because we never get to see that world….
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This clip of Alasdair Beckett-King satirizing a “popular space show: appeared last year. “Every Episode of Popular Space Show™”.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cora Buhlert, Hampus Eckerman, Jeffrey Smith, Daniel Dern, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]
The Washington (DC) Science Fiction Association (WSFA) has announced the finalists for the 2022 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction:
“The Birdsong Fossil” by DK Mok, Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, (April 2021) World Weaver Press ed. by Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Norie Tamura, Rajat Chaudhuri, and Sarena Ulibarri;
“Dress of Ash” by Y. M. Pang, Seasons Between Us: Tales of Identities and Memories, ed. by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law, Laksa Media Groups Inc. (2021);
“Eight Mile and the City” by Steven Harper, When Worlds Collide, ed. by S. C. Butler & Joshua Palmatier, Zombies Need Brains, LLC (July 2021);
“Fisherman’s Soup” by Kristina Ten, Mermaids Monthly, (May 26, 2022) ed. by Julia Rios, Meg Frank, and Ashley Deng;
“From the Ashes Flew the Ladybug” by Alexandra Seidel, The Deadlands, Issue 7 (November 2021) ed. by E. Catherine Tobler;
“Laughter Among the Trees” by Suzan Palumbo, The Dark Magazine, Issue 69 (February 2021) ed. by Sean Wallace;
“Space Pirate Queen of the Ten Billion Utopias” by Elly Bangs, Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 138 (November 2021) ed. by John Joseph Adams;
“Standing Orders” by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Derelicts, ed. by David B. Coe and Joshua Palmatier, Zombies Need Brains, LLC (July 2021);
“A Stranger Goes Ashore” by Adam R. Shannon, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 328 (April 22, 2021) ed. by Scott H. Andrews; and
“A Universe All to Himself” by Ryan Priest, Metaphorosis, (April 2021) ed. by B. Morris Allen;
The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction, and showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2021). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.
The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction
Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on September 30 – October 2, 2022 at the Rockville Hilton & Executive Meeting Center in Rockville, Maryland 20852
