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Tag Archives: Rod Serling
Pixel Scroll 12/27/22 Ebenezer Scroll! Tonight You Will Be Visited By Five Pixels (Three, My Lord!)
Posted on December 27, 2022 by Mike Glyer
(1) BE THE SOCIAL MEDIA YOU LIKE. Cat Rambo counsels SFWA Blog readers about "Social Media Strategy for Writers" – and you can listen in.
You have been told, like so many writers before you, that you must have a social media presence. That nowadays, agents and publishing houses look to see how many Twitter followers you have before opening your manuscript. That it's all about connection with readers, and the only way to manage that is a fashion show of your protagonist's ball gown on BookTok with little animated birds helping you put on your stockings.
This is, in fact, not true.
A social media presence can be helpful for book promotion, certainly. But a forced, unhappy one, a presence that is mandated and labored on rather than performed for pleasure, will not be helpful. If you absolutely hate social media, then you will want to find other ways of self-marketing, which do exist. But human beings are social creatures, and most people find social media more alluring than they want to admit….
(2) TOUGH LITERARY TRIVIA. "Can you outwit Margaret Atwood? The bumper books quiz of 2022" in the Guardian. Never mind how many of the 50 questions I got right. (Okay, none – not even the one where a genre writer was the correct answer!! How can you not do better than that?)
Which author was this year elected to the US Senate? In what horror story does a vampire appear as a cat? Test your wits with questions set by authors including Atwood, Bernardine Evaristo, Ian Rankin and more…
(I got zero because I decided against dive-bombing the test, and only tried to answer the several questions I knew something about. Which wasn't enough, as the result proved.)
(3) STERLING FREE READ. "'Balkan Cosmology' by Bruce Sterling" at Medium, says the author, is "an eccentric work of scientific fabulation that's my all-too-topical farewell to Belgrade. One of my homes for many years. I could likely sell this yarn and print it somewhere, but why, if no one in the Balkans would see it anyway? An ambivalent gift for Orthodox Christmas."
…Nikola understood the sadness of this dismal fate, as a young man landing in an unmarked grave (because Serbian history abounded with similar episodes). However, Nikola lacked any proper shovel to dig his own grave. Tragically, he had to gouge his own grave with his survivalist camp-knife.
This cool, macho device featured a stout gleaming blade with a sawtooth, and also a fire-steel, a built-in whistle and a wilderness compass. However, as a grave-digging tool, a "survival knife" was a contradiction in terms….
(4) SFWA GROWS. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association has reached a membership milestone: "Championing SFF Storytellers at 2,500 Members and Beyond!"
… With that said, we want to show the SFF community what we've been up to with your valued engagement and much needed support. We've launched or continued a number of beneficial resources and programs this year for the entire SFF community. This is just a small sampling:
Safety Resources: A series of guides that help event planners and authors navigate questions around maintaining safety and privacy for events and our online presences.
Indie Pub 101: A hub of information for authors beginning a self-publishing career.
SFWA Blog series: The Indie Files and Romancing SFF blog series have helped shed light on how these two creator communities lend value to the genres.
DisneyMustPay: An ongoing endeavor with multiple peer organizations, this dedicated and tireless taskforce is still working behind the scenes to see that creators are getting what they're owed by one of the biggest entertainment and media companies in the world.
Givers Fund Grants: Awarded annually, these grants help promote the SFF genre through providing funding to projects like the South African Speculative Fiction's workshop with the South African Environmental Project, distributing SFF books for free through the Gooding Public Library Foundation, and supporting small presses and magazines such as Space Cowboy Books and Firkin Press. We've awarded over $250,000 in Givers Fund Grants since 2014, and we'd love to see those numbers grow….
(5) REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN. "What weird fandom thing will happen this January?" – Camestros Felapton asks you to help him interrogate the fannish cosmos.
I don't have firm statistical evidence that January is prone to fannish feuds, disputes or cause célèbres but something about a new year sets things in motion. Sometimes, it is a delayed reaction to stuff that happened in December (e.g. in 2020 the Courtney Milan/RWA dispute was really a late December thing that spilled over into January) and maybe people taking a break from being heavily online leads to more willingness to get het-up about stuff in the new year….
(6) IT'S NOT GUILLERMO CALLING. Victoria Strauss warns against "The 'Mexican Film Director' Scam" at Writer Beware.
If a rash of solicitations over the past few months are to be believed, there's a major rush down in Mexico to acquire film rights to books.
…These virtually identical emails are, of course, laughably bogus–from the peculiar capitalizations, to the anonymous "Hollywood Movie Agents", to the implausibility of these supposed directors bollixing up their own movie titles, to the unlikelihood of famous film folks personally soliciting authors via funny-looking Gmail accounts–but they have been briskly doing the rounds since this past summer, and I've collected quite a trove of them thanks to the many authors who've sent them to me.
Obviously a scam, in other words. But what's the endgame?
Writers who respond to their "Mexican Film Director" receive a long spiel about turning books into movies, in which the Director claims that the writer's book is in his "top 5", and promises a "guaranteed film" with a huge budget and "advance royalties" to the tune of "$400K – $2M".
Just one thing is needed for all this to happen: a screenplay! Does the author have one on hand? If not (or if they do and it inevitably fails to meet Hollywood's exacting standards), the Director is happy to provide a referral to a "movie investor" who will foot 70% of the cost of creating one….
[By Cat Eldridge.] Rod Serling statue
And perhaps across his mind there will flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. — ending words of "Walking Distance"
Not all statues, no matter how much they deserve to exist, actually exist. At least yet. Such it is with the creator of the Twilight Zone series, Rod Serling.
In doing this extended look at the statues of fantastic creatures, mythic beings and sometimes their creators, I continually come across quite fascinating stories. Such it is with this story.
In the "Walking Distance" episode of The Twilight Zone, a middle-aged advertising executive travels back in time to his childhood, arriving just a few miles away from his native town. That episode was based on Binghamton, New York, the hometown of Serling as he graduated from Binghamton Central High School in 1943.
Well, I came upon news stories that the town in conjunction with the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation and The State of New York had decided Serling should be honored by his hometown.
The Serling Memorial Foundation said it will use the grant and additional fundraising to place the Serling statue in Recreation Park next year. Note that this is the second fundraising effort as the first, a Kickstarter for $90,000, failed.
I can't find any update on the actual production of this statue, so I won't swear that it's going to happen in the time frame stated. The website for the Serling Memorial Foundation is, to put delicately, a bloody mess and says nothing about that project at all.
For now, we can show this model that was prepared of the bronze statue. It is Serling standing in front of a slightly ajar doorway with the words: "You unlock this door with the key of imagination" on the door.
Born December 27, 1917 — Ken Slater. In 1947, while serving in the British Army, he started Operation Fantast, a network of fans which had eight hundred members around the world by the early Fifties though it folded a few years later. Through Operation Fantast, he was a major importer of American SFF books and magazines into the U.K. – an undertaking which he continued, after it ceased to exist, through his company Fantast up to the time of his passing. He was a founding member of the British Science Fiction Association in 1958. (Died 2008.)
Born December 27, 1948 — Gerard Depardieu, 74. He's in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet which we all agree (I think we agree) is genre. He plays Obélix in the French film Asterix & Obélix and Asterix at the Olympic Games: Mission Cleopatra and is Cardinal Mazarin in La Femme Musketeer.
Born December 27, 1951 — Robbie Bourget, 71. She started out as an Ottawa-area fan, where she became involved in a local Who club and the OSFS before moving to LA and becoming deeply involved in LASFS. She's been a key member of many a Worldcon and Who convention over the years. She was the co-DUFF winner with Marty Cantor for Aussiecon 2. She moved to London in the late Nineties.
Born December 27, 1960 — Maryam d'Abo, 62. She's best known as Kara Milovy in The Living Daylights. Her first genre role was her screen debut in the very low-budget SF horror film Xtro, an Alien rip-off. She was Ta'Ra in Something Is Out There, a miniseries that was well received and but got poor ratings. Did you know there was a live Mowgli: The New Adventures of the Jungle Book? I didn't. She was Elaine Bendel, a recurring role in it.
Born December 27, 1969 — Sarah Jane Vowell, 53. She's an author, journalist, essayist, historian, podcaster, social commentator and actress. Impressive, but she gets Birthday Honors for being the voice of Violet Parr in the Incredibles franchise. I say franchise as I've no doubt that a third film is already bring scripted.
Born December 27, 1977 — Sinead Keenan, 45. She's in the Eleventh Doctor story "The End of Time" as Addams, but her full face make-up guarantees that you won't recognize her. If you want to see her, she's a Who fan in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. Her final Who work is a Big Finish audio drama, Iterations of I, a Fifth Doctor story. And she played Nina Pickering, a werewolf, in Being Human for quite a long time.
Born December 27, 1987 — Lily Cole, 35. She played The Siren in the Eleventh Doctor story, "The Curse of The Black Spot". She's also in some obscure film called Star Wars: The Last Jedi as a character named Lovey. And she shows up in the important role of Valentina in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Not to mention she's in Snow White and The Huntsman as Greta, a great film indeed.
Born December 27, 1995 — Timothée Chalamet, 27. First SF role was as the young Tom Cooper in the well-received Interstellar. To date, his only other genre roles have been as Zac in One & Two and of course he's Paul Atreides in Director Denis Villeneuve's Dune films.
(9) JWST OR FULL NAME? The New York Times explains "How Naming the James Webb Telescope Turned Into a Fight Over Homophobia".
The debate over the telescope cuts to the core of who is worthy to memorialize and how past human accomplishment should be balanced with modern standards of social justice.NASA
For half a decade now, influential young scientists have denounced NASA's decision to name its deep-space telescope after James E. Webb, who led the space agency to the cusp of the 1969 moon landing. This man, they insisted, was a homophobe who oversaw a purge of gay employees.
Hakeem Oluseyi, who is now the president of the National Society of Black Physicists, was sympathetic to these critics. Then he delved into archives and talked to historians and wrote a carefully sourced essay in Medium in 2021 that laid out his surprising findings.
"I can say conclusively," Dr. Oluseyi wrote, "that there is zero evidence that Webb is guilty of the allegations against him."
That, he figured, would be that. He was wrong.
…Mr. Webb, who died in 1992, cut a complicated figure. He worked with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to integrate NASA, bringing in Black engineers and scientists. In 1964, after George Wallace, the white segregationist governor of Alabama, tried to block such recruitment, Mr. Webb threatened to pull top scientists and executives out of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
Fifteen years earlier, however, Mr. Webb encountered different pressures as an under secretary at the State Department during the Truman administration. The political right, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, sought to dismantle the legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In attacking the State Department, they tried to ferret out employees they claimed were Communists and what they called "perverts" — gay Americans, in what became known as the lavender scare.
"The lavender scare, like the red scare itself, was an attack on the New Deal," noted David K. Johnson, a history professor at the University of South Florida and author of "The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government."
"Then," he added, "it turned into a moral panic."
These were bleak times. In two decades, between 5,000 and 10,000 gay employees were pushed out of government, careers and lives wrecked.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson denounced the "filthy business" of smearing diplomats. And President Harry Truman, records show, advised Mr. Webb to slow-walk the Republican investigation, while complying with its legal dictates. Mr. Webb did not turn over personnel files to Senate investigators, according to the NASA report.
In 2002, NASA named the telescope after Mr. Webb, citing his work in pushing to land a man on the moon. That decision attracted little attention, in part because the telescope was not yet built.
…But as the telescope neared completion, criticism flared. In 2015, Matthew Francis, a science journalist, wrote an article for Forbes titled "The Problem With Naming Observatories for Bigots." He wrote that Mr. Webb led the anti-gay purge at the State Department and that he had testified of his contempt for gay people. He credited Dr. Prescod-Weinstein with tipping him off, and she in turn tweeted his article and attacked Mr. Webb as a "homophobe."
Those claims rested on misidentification and that portion of Mr. Francis' article has been deleted without notice to the reader. Mr. Francis declined an interview.
As Dr. Oluseyi discovered and NASA's report confirmed, it was not Mr. Webb but a different State Department official who oversaw the purge and spoke disparagingly of gay Americans….
(10) ORDER'S ASSASSIN SERIES CONTINUES. The Traitor by D.C. Gomez, Book Two of The Order's Assassin Series, was released in November. Our favorite witch and former cop, Eric, from the Intern Diaries Series, has a new job with the Order of Witches. With no way out, he must continue his mission to clean out the Order, before he becomes the one hunted down.
Eric's search for Rafael, the Order's betrayer, is leading to a dead end. Running out of time, he decides to enlist the help of some old acquaintances in Salem's underground.
In the meantime, the Garcia Clan, the deadliest of all the shifter assassin families in the world, has been attacked. Tensions are rising as Sasha is forced back on the field to investigate and bring the culprit to justice.
With both the Order of Witches and the Garcia Clan searching for the truth, Eric and Sasha are the only ones standing between a full-on blood bath.
Available from Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
D. C. Gomez is an award-winning USA Today Bestselling Author, podcaster, motivational speaker, and coach. Born in the Dominican Republic, she grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. D. C. studied film and television at New York University. After college she joined the US Army, and proudly served for four years. You can find out more about her at www.dcgomez-author.com.
(11) WOULD YOU LIKE TO SWING ON A STAR. Call it what you will, "The Webb Telescope Is Just Getting Started" says the New York Times.
So far it's been eye candy from heaven: The black vastness of space teeming with enigmatic, unfathomably distant blobs of light. Ghostly portraits of Neptune, Jupiter and other neighbors we thought we knew already. Nebulas and galaxies made visible by the penetrating infrared eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.
The telescope, named for James Webb, the NASA administrator during the buildup to the Apollo moon landings, is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. It was launched on Christmas one year ago — after two trouble-plagued decades and $10 billion — on a mission to observe the universe in wavelengths no human eye can see. With a primary mirror 21 feet wide, the Webb is seven times as powerful as its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. Depending on how you do the accounting, one hour of observing time on the telescope can cost NASA $19,000 or more.
But neither NASA nor the astronomers paid all that money and political capital just for pretty pictures — not that anyone is complaining.
"The first images were just the beginning," said Nancy Levenson, temporary director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs both Webb and the Hubble. "More is needed to turn them into real science."
…For three days in December, some 200 astronomers filled an auditorium at the institute to hear and discuss the first results from the telescope. An additional 300 or so watched online, according to the organizers. The event served as a belated celebration of the Webb's successful launch and inauguration and a preview of its bright future.
One by one, astronomers marched to the podium and, speaking rapidly to obey the 12-minute limit, blitzed through a cosmos of discoveries. Galaxies that, even in their relative youth, had already spawned supermassive black holes. Atmospheric studies of some of the seven rocky exoplanets orbiting Trappist 1, a red dwarf star that might harbor habitable planets. (Data suggest that at least two of the exoplanets lack the bulky primordial hydrogen atmospheres that would choke off life as we know it, but they may have skimpy atmospheres of denser molecules like water or carbon dioxide.)….
(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended gives its take about "How Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Should Have Ended".
Obi-Wan and Darth Vader are face to face once again
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Bruce Sterling, Camestros Felapton, Cat Rambo, D. C. Gomez, How It Should Have Ended, James Webb Space Telescope, Rod Serling, SFWA, Victoria Strauss, Writer Beware | 28 Replies
Pixel Scroll 1/21/21 Underpeople S'top And S'tare, They Don't Bother Me
Posted on January 21, 2021 by Mike Glyer
(1) 45 PROOF. [Item by Rich Lynch.] A couple of years ago, in SFPA, I ran an essay titled "Of Beer and the Beltway" which was reprinted in the current (25th) issue of My Back Pages.
In it, I mentioned that a local craft brewery, 7 Locks, was producing a Rye Pale Ale they had named "Surrender Dorothy", the name a riff on The Wizard of Oz but also a homage to a stunt that happened at a Washington Beltway railroad bridge overpass back in the 1970s. Here's what the beer's logo looks like: Surrender Dorothy RyePA – 7 Locks Brewing
In that same issue of MBP, I noted that there had recently been modern day pranksters at work who had updated the "Surrender Dorothy" Beltway bridge stunt by spray-painting that same bridge with "Surrender Donald". And now 7 Locks has produced a limited-run Rye PA with that same name: Surrender Donald 6-packs | 7 Locks Brewing Online Shop
I didn't find out about it until today, when it was described in a short news item in The Washington Post. And since it was a limited run, it's unfortunately no longer available. I see they have beer glasses with that logo listed, so I may try to get one of them. But damn! Wish I'd known about it before today!
(2) SUPER TRAILER. The CW dropped a trailer for Superman & Lois.
(3) VIRTUAL CAPRICON. Capricon 41 begins two weeks from today. It's usually in Chicago, but will be held this year in virtual space.
We have some really amazing program lined up for you, with awesome panelists from all over the world. Check out the full schedule at https://guide.capricon.org/. This is a mostly final schedule, but note that there may still be a few changes to times and panelists to come
Don't Forget to Register! Everyone must register to access the virtual convention space. Register here.
(4) BERNIE SITS IN. A meme-driven website lets you "Put Bernie Anywhere!" The New York Times explains: "Bernie Sanders Is Once Again the Star of a Meme".
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a fierce advocate of fair wages and a former presidential candidate who lost the Democratic nomination to now-President Biden. And thanks to his practical clothing choices he is also now the center of a seemingly endless flood of altered pictures that dominated some corners of the internet in the hours after Mr. Biden's socially distanced inauguration on Wednesday.
Amid the dark suits and bright coats dotting the Capitol steps, Mr. Sanders was photographed sitting masked, cross-legged and bundled up in a bulky coat and mittens against the frigid weather in Washington, D.C. Soon after, the image, taken by the photographer Brendan Smialowski for Getty Images, began to circulate on social media inserted into a wide array of photographs and scenes from movies and artworks….
I am once again asking you to join the Avengers Initiative pic.twitter.com/zhXnhBMehV
— Ashley K. (@AshleyKSmalls) January 21, 2021
I am once again asking you to give me the rank of master. #Bernie @HamillHimself @starwars pic.twitter.com/AhnfvpmxED
— Olivia Reckley (@oliviareckley) January 21, 2021
Keep 'em coming ? #BernieBeams #BernieSanders #StarTrek https://t.co/lnaEBERt6U
— Star Trek (@StarTrek) January 22, 2021
Lord of the rings. Featuring me!! #Bernie #BernieSanders #berniesmittens pic.twitter.com/ijk76hYjKr
— Bernie Mittens (@bernieBlunders) January 21, 2021
I was talking to Deadpool the other day and he needed to go. Something about a Weekend at Bernie's… pic.twitter.com/O2N6huj9ld
— Jonathan Cohen (@JonC9173) January 21, 2021
The Old Spice must flow #Bernie #Dune #scifimemes pic.twitter.com/GkYbkUJnL1
— Retro Atomic Radio (@RetroAtomRadio) January 22, 2021
(5) NIGHTMARE FROM DEL TORO. "Searchlight Sets Guillermo del Toro's 'Nightmare Alley' for December" reports Yahoo! Entertainment.
Searchlight Pictures has updated its 2021 release calendar, dating Guillermo del Toro's "Nightmare Alley" for December 3. The date puts del Toro's latest in the thick of the 2021-2022 awards season. Searchlight appears to be following the same release plan it gave del Toro's last movie, "The Shape of Water," which started its U.S. theatrical rollout on the first weekend of December. "The Shape of Water" debuted at the Venice Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion, and it seems likely "Nightmare Alley" will show up on the fall film festival circuit.
Del Toro's "Nightmare Alley" is adapted by the filmmaker, and film critic Kim Morgan, from the 1946 William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name. The ensemble cast includes Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Rooney Mara, and David Strathairn…
(6) CASE IN POINT. The Hugo Book Club blog is going through all the Hugo-shortlisted dramatic presentations in order to see how the art of SFF cinema has evolved over time. The third post in the series is: "Hugo Cinema Club: 1960 Gets In The Zone".
In 1960, for example, Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling seems to have been mostly unaware of the award until some two weeks later when a delegation of California-based fans who had just returned from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania visited the CBS offices to hand him a three-pound chrome rocketship on September 22.
The fans — including Bjo and John Trimble, Rick Sneary and Forrest J Ackerman — were greeted warmly by the television legend, who had also earned his fourth Emmy that summer….
(7) DISTAFF SUPERHEROES. The Women of Marvel podcast announced a special celebrating Marvel's heroes will debut in April. Women Of Marvel #1 will spotlight iconic characters from the X-Men to the Avengers in a collection of tales by an all-female lineup from throughout the entertainment industry.
Kicking things off will be comics legend Louise Simonson with a must-read introduction. Simonson will be followed by some of the hottest rising stars in the graphic novel industry. Nadia Shammas punches the glass ceiling with an action-packed She-Hulk adventure, Elsa Sjunneson grits her way to the front line with a tale about Captain Peggy Carter, Sophie Campbell goes feral with a bone-grinding Marrow story, video game and comics writer Anne Toole gets gritty in the streets of Hell's Kitchen, and Natasha Alterici of Heathen fame charges sword-first into the Marvel Universe with a revelatory tale about Rogue and Mystique. With astonishing art from new and established artists Kei Zama (Transformers, Death's Head), Eleonora Carlini (Power Rangers, Batgirl), Skylar Patridge (Resonant, Relics of Youth), Joanna Estep (Fantastic Four, Fraggle Rock) and more, readers are sure to come away powered up and ready to slay.
2006 — Fifteen years ago at L.A.con IV, Serenity wins the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Serenity was the film that finished off the story that started in the much beloved by fans Firefly series that aired briefly on FOX. Other finalists that year were Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Batman Begins and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It currently holds a phenomenal ninety-one percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
Born January 21, 1858 – Anna Dodd. Short stories, novels, essays and other nonfiction e.g. criticism for The Art Journal, In and Out of Three Normandy Inns, Talleyrand. Fluent in French and Italian. Some say Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward was inspired by AD's novel for us The Republic of the Future, subtitled Socialism a Reality, but it's no joyous forecast. (Died 1929) [JH]
Born January 21, 1921 – Charles Eric Maine. A score of novels, as many shorter stories. Here is a cover for his fanzine The Satellite – not to be confused with this. Many applaud his Mind of Mr Soames. Also detective fiction, engineering, radio, television, film. (Died 1981) [JH]
Born January 21, 1923 – Judith Merril. Four novels, thirty shorter stories; book reviews for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; half a dozen collections e.g. The Best of JM and posthumous Homecalling; a dozen annual Year's Best SF ("a practically flawless anthologist" – Anthony Boucher). Introduced and commented on Canadian broadcasts of Doctor Who. Co-founded Milford Writers' Conference. Toronto Public Library's Merril Collection named for her. SF Hall of Fame. (Died 1997) [JH]
Born January 21, 1925 — Charles Aidman. He makes the Birthday Honors for having the recurring role of Jeremy Pike on The Wild Wild West, playing him four times. Other SFF appearances include Destination Space, The Invaders, Twilight Zone, Mission: Impossible and Kolchak the Night Stalker to name but a few of them. (Died 1993.) (CE)
Born January 21, 1929 – Arthur Jean Cox. Two novels, a score of shorter stories. Active in his local club – a six-year string of perfect attendance at weekly meetings, eight terms as an officer – and cons e.g. Pacificon I the 4th Worldcon. Essays, letters, reviews in Amazing, Astounding, Fantasy Times, F & SF, Riverside Quarterly, SF Chronicle, SF Review. (Died 2016) [JH]
Born January 21, 1938 — Wolfman Jack. Here because I spotted him showing up twice in Battlestar Galactica 1980 presumably as himself if I trust IMDb as it doesn't list a character for him. He does have genre character roles having been in the Swamp Thing and Wonder Women series plus two horror films, Motel Hell and The Midnight Hour. (Died 1995.) (CE)
Born January 21, 1939 — Walter C. DeBill, Jr., 82. An author of horror and SF short stories and a contributor to the Cthulhu Mythos. Author of the Observers of the Unknown series about a Lovecraftian occult detective which is collected is two volumes, The Horror from Yith and The Changeling. They don't appear to be in print currently. (CE)
Born January 21, 1947 – Cherith Baldry, age 74. Sixty novels, seventy shorter stories, for us, some under different names; a dozen other books; plays; essays, letters, reviews in Banana Wings, Focus, Vector. [JH]
Born January 21, 1956 — Geena Davis, 65. Best remembered genre wise I'd say for being in Beetlejuice but she also appeared in Earth Girls Are Easy and Transylvania 6-5000. She's done some one-offs on series including Knight Rider, Fantasy Island and The Exorcist. Yes, they turned The Exorcist into a series. (CE)
Born January 21, 1956 — Diana Pavlac Glyer, 65. Author whose work centers on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. She teaches in the Honors College at Azusa Pacific University in California. She has two excellent works out now, The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community and Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings. (CE)
Born January 21, 1972 –Tracy Falbe, age 49. Ten novels. Has read Dracula, Empire of the Summer Moon, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Paradise Lost, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. "I want to create someone you want to root for and then give him some disappointing traits. I might infuriate a reader…. I'll at least know that I provoked emotion." [JH]
Frank and Ernest meet a gingerbread man with arthritis.
(11) BAD FLASHBACK. Sam Besanti, in "What Is Marvel's Heroes Reborn And Why Can't We Shake This Feeling of Impending Doom?" at AV Club, says Marvel Entertainment (the whole company, not just the movie or comic book divisions) sent out a Cryptic Tweet with a teaser announcing the birth of "Heroes Reborn" and speculators are speculating what Marvel means by this.
Today, Marvel Entertainment—that's the whole company, covering the movies, the comics, and the games—posted a curious teaser that simply had the name Heroes Reborn and "whatever happened to Earth's mightiest heroes?" underneath. We don't know specifically what that means, but there is one obvious implication, and based on the… oh, let's say mixed reaction that the post is getting on Twitter, a lot of Marvel fans are coming to the same conclusion….
(12) X-MEN. X-Men Legends #1 hits stand on February 17. The series "will dive into the rich history of the X-Men to tie up loose ends, resolve long-standing plot danglers, and reveal shocking truths that will change the past and future of the X-Men!" Take a first look at the interior artwork here.
X-Men history will be revisited and revealed when X-MEN LEGENDS #1 debuts next month. This first-of-its-kind series will feature the return of the franchise's most influential creators—including Louise Simonson, Chris Claremont, and more— in all-new, in-continuity stories set during their groundbreaking runs. Starting things off will be Fabian Nicieza with a two-part tale that finally reveals the truth behind one of the most talked-about mutant mysteries: Adam-X and his startling connection to the Summers bloodline!
Introduced during Nicieza's explosive work on the X-Men in their nineties heyday, the beginnings of this storyline can be traced back to 1993's X-Men #23. Since then, X-Men fans have endlessly speculated, theorized, and debated what became known as the "third Summers brother" mystery. Now, all will be answered as one the most infamous comic book plot danglers of all time is resolved!
(13) BIG SHOT. [Item by JJ.] Arnold Schwarzenegger posted video of himself receiving his first dose of coronavirus vaccine at the Dodger Stadium mass vaccination site. He celebrated the moment by slipping in a line from his film — "Come with me if you want to live!"
(14) NARNIA IS NOT INERRANT. Joe R. Christopher has a short essay titled "Was Aslan Wrong about Jadis's Plan of Attack?" published in Mythprint 57:4, Whole No. 395 (Winter 2020): 8-9 (for sale at the link.) The answer is "Yes, he was."
(15) HE MUST BE GOING. Larry Correia says Facebook "banned me from my own group because of what I MIGHT say." Correia has been temporarily banned from FB from time to time, but I've never before heard of a ban where a person can still post on his own wall, which is where Correia announced he'll be curtailing his FB presence. Not actually ending it: "There's a few groups I use here that I can't get the equivalent resource anywhere else yet." All that he told his FB followers has been turned into a post for Monster Hunter Nation: "A Farewell to Facebook" [Internet Archive link].
Jon Del Arroz in a new YouTube video said he is amused by this turn of affairs, because he claims Correia had long ago kicked him out of his group.
…The post is kind of making the rounds that Larry Correia was banned from his own Facebook group after a couple of years. I'm kind of laughing about this, I'm not, going to lie, because Larry Correia actually ordered that I would be banned from his Facebook group a couple years ago for my quote wrong think or wrong meaning as it were this always happens with the libertarian crowd…
Truthfulness is not JDA's strong suit, however, he's banned here, so why not from Larry's FB group, too?
(16) BIG AND GRAY. Satellite images may take over from aircraft when it comes to surveying this endangered population: "Elephants counted from space for conservation".
…And all the laborious elephant counting is done via machine learning – a computer algorithm trained to identify elephants in a variety of backdrops.
"We just present examples to the algorithm and tell it, 'This is an elephant, this is not an elephant,'" Dr Olga Isupova, from the University of Bath, said.
"By doing this, we can train the machine to recognise small details that we wouldn't be able to pick up with the naked eye."
The scientists looked first at South Africa's Addo Elephant National Park.
"It has a high density of elephants," University of Oxford conservation scientist Dr Isla Duporge said.
"And it has areas of thickets and of open savannah.
"So it's a great place to test our approach.
"While this is a proof of concept, it's ready to go.
"And conservation organisations are already interested in using this to replace surveys using aircraft."
Conservationists will have to pay for access to commercial satellites and the images they capture.
But this approach could vastly improve the monitoring of threatened elephant populations in habitats that span international borders, where it can be difficult to obtain permission for aircraft surveys.
(17) A ROSE WAR BY ANY OTHER NAME. The Folger Shakespeare Library podcast Shakespeare Unlimited brings us "Shakespeare and 'Game of Thrones'".
Based on his knowledge of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays, Harvard's Dr. Jeffrey R. Wilson knew just how HBO's Game of Thrones would play out. Jon Snow, the illegitimate son, was a Richard III type, who would win the crown (and our hearts, in a love-to-hate-him kind of way). But Daenerys Targaryen, as a kind of Henry VII, would defeat him in battle and win it back, restoring peace and order. Turns out he was wrong about all of that.
But as Wilson kept watching, he began to appreciate the other ways Game of Thrones is similar to Shakespeare—like the way that both Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin's stories translate the history of the Wars of the Roses into other popular genres….
(18) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter witnessed another stumper on tonight's Jeopardy!
Final Jeopardy: British Writers
Answer: When Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926, this British fellow writer tried to find her with the help of a spiritual medium.
Wrong questions: Who is George Orwell? and Who is George Bernard Shaw?
Correct question (only 1 contestant got it right): Who is Arthur Conan Doyle?
(19) A MISSION. Pierre Pettinger, the well-known costumer who along with his wife Sandy received the International Costumers Guild's 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award, published a new space opera in October, The Road From Antioch.
The pilgrim ship Antioch is destroyed just short of the New Vatican. Someone is stealing critical shipments in the Chemosh Empire. Two worlds of the Laanyr Clan Heer have been attacked. Small vessels are buzzing the Rivnyera World Ships.
Who is behind these incidents? Terrorists? Rebels? The mysterious Cherek? Or someone else entirely? The nations of the Orion Arm must join forces and find the culprits.
The investigation ranges from the space around the planet Ans to the fields of Inohr Dan Nool to the supposedly primitive planet of Cordwainer. Join an Admiral, a Catholic Sister, a Knight Militant, an Ensign, a Great Mind, an Inspector and a Herdmaster as they seek out the perpetrators of these odd occurrences.
(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Jimmy Kimmel Live aired this wild animation last night – "Goodbye Donald Trump".
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, John Hertz, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Tammy Coxen, Pierre Pettinger, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Arnold Schwarzenegger, beer, Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo, Bjo Trimble, Capricon, Chronicles of Narnia, Guillermo del Toro, Jeopardy!, Joe Christopher, John Trimble, Jon Del Arroz, Larry Correia, Marvel, Pierre Pettinger, Rich Lynch, Rod Serling, Serenity, Shakespeare, Superman, Twilight Zone, X-Men
Pixel Scroll 1/17/21 He Was A File, She Was A Scroll, Can I Make It Any More Obvious?
(1) NICHOLAS WHYTE TAKES ON 2021 HUGO & SITE SELECTION DUTIES. DisCon III's new WSFS Division Head is Nicholas Whyte, who announced on Facebook he is taking the place of Jared Dashoff, who resigned in response to the committee's internal handling of some new Hugo policies that have since been revoked.
… I have been appointed the new Division Head of the WSFS Division, which is the part of the Worldcon that admininsters the Hugo Awards, the Business Meeting which reviews the rules, and the Site Selection process for the 2023 Worldcon (currently contested between Chengdu, China and Memphis, Tennessee) – the three obligatory things that every Worldcon must do.
I was previously the Administrator of the Hugo Awards in 2017 and 2019, and one of the deputy administrators last year; and also Division Head for Promotions at the London Worldcon in 2014. I had not anticipated having any executive role this year, but life does not always work out as we expect.
The Hugos have had some reputational issues to deal with. Having fought off direct assault by ill-wishers in 2015 and 2016, some pretty significant mistakes were made more recently. Many of those were outside the immediate responsibility of the Hugo Administrators, including most notably the awful botching of last year's Hugo ceremony and the Hugo Losers Party in 2019, and the hostile response from some in the community to the winners of the award for Best Related Work in both of those years (cases where I very much stand by the eligibility decisions that were made by teams that I was a part of).
I have made mistakes as well, and I hope that I have learned from them. In particular, it's clear, not least from the problems that arose in the last few days, that the Hugos as a whole need to be less siloed and need to improve communication in both directions with the rest of the Worldcon and with the wider stakeholder community (as my work colleagues would put it). DisCon III had already started putting structures in place that would improve this side of things, and I look forward to working with those and building on them.
(2) OLDEST SFF BOOKSTORE. "At Bakka-Phoenix, the beloved sci-fi and fantasy bookstore, you can let your geek flag fly" in the Toronto Star.
In the summer of 1982, Margaret Atwood walked into Bakka Books looking for a copy of "The Hobbit." Robert J. Sawyer, the celebrated Canadian science-fiction writer who was then working behind the counter, couldn't believe his luck.
"It was pretty amazing — she knew all about the store and how we specialized in fantasy and science fiction," Sawyer recalls of his encounter at the bookstore when it was in its first home on Queen Street near John Street.
Atwood's visit to pick up some Tolkien was a testament to the role the bookstore (now named Bakka-Phoenix Science Fiction and Fantasy Bookstore) plays in the literary community — not just in Toronto but beyond city borders too. On the cusp of celebrating its 50th anniversary, Bakka-Phoenix is the oldest sci-fi and fantasy specialty bookstore in the world. It's long been a hub for aficionados of a genre that is rarely awarded more than a couple of shelves at most big-box bookstores. It's the kind of bookstore that's for fans of space operas and dystopian fiction, for readers hungry for the latest William Gibson saga and for those on the prowl for a rare Harlan Ellison story collection. "Bakka has always been a mecca to me," says Sawyer.
(3) CAPTAIN JACK. Deadline reports "'Torchwood' Star John Barrowman Touches Fans With Ianto Shrine Visit"
Actor John Barrowman, who portrayed Captain Jack Harkness on Torchwood, has set off a Twitter frenzy with a post depicting a visit to a show landmark in Cardiff, Wales.
Barrowman posted a selfie in front of a shrine to the show's Ianto Jones, who was Capt. Jack's lover on the show and tragically died in his arms in a mini-series episode, Children of Earth.
On Friday, Barrowman paid an incognito visit to the impromptu shrine set up to honor the Ianto character in Cardiff, a site near where the series was filmed. The shrine is still very popular with fans 11 years after the television series death….
Out for my walk and nobody knew it was me paying some respect to #Ianto Jb #captainJackharkness #torchwood #whovian #doctorwho #Cardiff #hub pic.twitter.com/QZ2xexClUH
— John Barrowman MBE (@JohnBarrowman) January 15, 2021
(4) EVERMORE PARK ALSO A COVID CASUALTY. [Item by David Doering.] As of yesterday, Evermore Park has cancelled any future performances at the park and has let the creative team go. Basically, the park will only be open for event rentals and strolling through. A sad loss due to Covid. Had it opened one year before or one year later, it might well have made it. "Evermore Park cancels winter production, dozens of employees laid off" at Yahoo!
Dozens of employees at Evermore Park in Pleasant Grove were laid off this week after it was decided there would be no winter-themed production, as well as other financial issues largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(5) A REAL FANNISH TED TALK.FANAC.org will host a fannish TED talk on Saturday, January 23 when author, editor, and past Worldcon chair Ted White will be interviewed by John D. Berry via Zoom. Time: 4 pm EST. Participants are limited. To get the Zoom log-in, please RSVP to [email protected] .
Ted White will be talking about his long history in fandom and some of the interesting people he has encountered along the way. Ted is considered by many to be the current patriarch of fannish fandom. He has been active since the very early 1950s, both publishing fanzines and in clubs from Virginia to New York. We have more different fanzine titles of Ted's on FANAC.org than any other faned. In addition to the many titles he edited on his own, he has published many collaborative fanzines going back to the 1950s.
Ted has also chaired several conventions, including the 1967 Worldcon – the last Worldcon in New York. As a professional in the science fiction field, he has written stories, articles, and novels. He was the editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic magazines, and has written extensively about the music industry.
John D. Berry has known and worked with Ted for over 50 years so he knows the questions to ask. And Ted has said that no topic is off the table.
(6) HORROR CELEBRITY. "'Glamour Ghoul' reveals Vampira, Hollywood's 'original Goth'" – Scott Bradfield reviews her biography in the Los Angeles Times.
You didn't need to be a pubescent boy (or his father) to fully appreciate the charms of Maila Nurmi — a.k.a. Vampira — when she first appeared on late-night KABC-TV in the spring of 1954. But it didn't hurt. She was tall, beautiful and frightening and she screamed like a banshee, climaxing each howl with a lewd lick of her full lips, which even in black-and-white glistened bloodily. Her pale body was almost a caricature of an hourglass figure, like one of those inexplicably bountiful women featured in the pinups of Joaquin Alberto Vargas, for whom Nurmi had modeled only a few years earlier. But what made Vampira most memorable was the jokes she slyly delivered at machine-gun speed: pop, pop, pop. She came heavily armed with oodles of sexy, macabre puns and she wasn't afraid to use them.
In the early days, Vampira was asked by a Los Angeles Tribune columnist to tell a little bit about herself.
"There isn't much to tell," she said. "I was born in Lapland. … I have an owl for a house pet. I have a 19-inch waist, 38-inch bust and 36-inch hips. My earliest recollection as a child is that I always wanted to play with mice. I'm very anti-social. I simply detest people. I don't like snakes; they eat spiders, and I'm very fond of spiders." Asked how she felt about children, she didn't miss a beat: "Oh yes … delicious."…
(7) BATWOMAN SPEAKS OUT. "New Batwoman Javicia Leslie always wanted to be a superhero" she tells the Washington Post.
Last year, Javicia Leslie was asked on a podcast what she wanted her next acting role to be.
"I said I wanted to be a superhero," Leslie recalled recently toThe Washington Post.
In July, just two months after stating her desire, the star of "God Friended Me" and "The Family Business"answered the call to a bat-signal put up in the sky just for her — finding out she was the new star of the CW's "Batwoman." The announcement instantly made her the new face of the network's successful tradition of televised superheroes….
… One norm going away is the trademark black eye makeup that every on-screen bat-hero since Keaton has worn under the mask — Rose eventually parted with itand Leslie will also decline.
"Being a woman of color, it was important that we didn't black out my eyes," Leslie said. "We wanted to play with light instead of playing with darkness to help accentuate me being a black woman in playing this role."
(8) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.
Rod Serling wore Botany 500 brand suits.
— Source: Wikipedia
(9) BOB SURYAN OBIT. Bob Suryan died January 17. The Norwescon group made the announcement.
Bob Suryan has passed away today. He was very active in the Seattle Astronomical Society, and Norwescon (including chairing a couple of the conventions). He loved history and folks enjoyed chatting with him about all sorts of things. He had his ups and downs with health over the years and about a week and half ago was admitted to the hospital due to lots of pain. Sadly this turned out to be stage four lung cancer.
(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
January 17, 1992 — Freejack premiered. It starred Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger, Rene Russo and Anthony Hopkins. The screenplay was written by Steven Pressfield, Ronald Shusett (who was also the producer) and Dan Gilroy. We consider it to be very loosely adapted from Robert Sheckley's Immortality, Inc. (Great work. The serialised version as "Time Killer" in Galaxy was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel.) It was not at the time well-liked by either critics or reviewers, not is it currently liked among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes as it is carrying a 25% rating and there's a lot who have expressed an opinion — over fourteen thousand so far. (CE)
(11) TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS.
January 17, 1899 — Nevil Shute. Nevil Shute. Author of On the Beach. It originally appeared as a four-part series, The Last Days on Earth, in the London weekly Sunday Graphic in April 1957. It was twice a film. He has other SF novels including An Old Captivity which involves time travel and No Highway which gets a review by Pohl in Super Science Stories, April 1949. There's In the Wet and Vinland the Good as well. (Died 1960.) (CE)
Born January 17, 1923 – Alva Rogers. Changing the name of the prozine Astounding to Analog has been applauded by some; AR wrote a Requiem. Fan Guest of Honor at Westercon XV. Co-chaired Baycon, the combined Westercon XXI and 26th Worldcon, famous in song and story. Co-edited Rhodomagnetic Digest 62, its last issue; AR's wife Sidonie wrote a profile of Al haLevy and AR drew one. After SR died, AR married Andi Shechter, famous in song and story. (Died 1982) [JH]
January 17, 1927 — Eartha Kitt. Though you'll have lots of folks remembering her as Catwoman from the original Batman, she appeared in but four episodes there. Genre wise, she was in such series as I-Spy, Mission: Impossible, Matrix, the animated Space Ghost Coast to Coast and the animated My Life as a Teenage Robot. Film wise, she played Freya in Erik the Viking, voiced Bagheera in The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story and was Madame Zeroni In Holes. (Died 2008.) (CE)
Born January 17, 1930 – Dean Dickensheet. Active in LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Soc.) during Shangri L'Affaires days, was the Bartender in The Musquite Kid Rides Again. Next door, edited Men and Malice; Great Crimes of San Francisco. His part in Coventry was a reminder of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Died 1983) [JH]
January 17, 1931 — James Earl Jones, 90. His first SF appearance was in Dr. Strangelove as Lt. Lothar Zogg. And I think I need not list all his appearances as Darth Vader here. Some genre appearances include Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Flight of Dragons, Conan the Barbarian as Thulsa Doom and I actually remember him in that role, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, did you know the 1995 Judge Dredd had a Narrator? Well he's listed as doing it, and Fantasia 2000 as well. (CE)
January 17, 1935 — Paul O. Williams. A poet who won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer for The Breaking of Northwall and The Ends of the Circle which are the first two novels of his Pelbar Cycle. I've not read these, so be interested in your opinions, of course. (Died 2009.) (CE)
Born January 17, 1952 – Tom Deitz. A score of novels. Guest of Honor at Phoenixcon 8. Gainesville State College faculty member of the year, 2008. Phoenix Award. Co-founded local SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) barony. (Died 2009) [JH]
January 17, 1962 — Jim Carrey, 59. His first genre film is Once Bitten whose content is obvious from its name and which get a mere thirty-nine percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. The 'dorable Earth Girls Are Easy was next followed up by Batman Forever in which he played a manic Riddler that I rather liked, then there's the The Truman Show which was way cool. So may we not talk about How the Grinch Stole Christmas? (SHUDDER!) We settled last year that we think that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is genre. And I think that I'll stop there this time. (CE)
Born January 17, 1967 – Wendy Mass, Litt.D., age 54. Ray Bradbury volume for Authors Teens Love. Of course I put that first, what Website do you think this is? A score of novels for us, half as many others; nonfiction e.g. Stonehenge, John Cabot. Schneider Award for A Mango-Shaped Space. Has read The Phantom Tollbooth and The Secret Garden. [JH]
January 17, 1970 — Genndy Tartakovsky, 50. Like Romulan Ale, animation style is a matter of taste. So while I like his work on Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars, I can understand why many SW fans don't as it's definitely an acquired taste. He also is responsible for directing the animated Hotel Transylvania franchise. (CE)
Born January 17, 1971 – Nomi Burstein, age 50. Technical writer, freelance editor. Collects neologisms, e.g. jan howard finder's "bytelock". Fanzine, Burstzine (with husband Michael Burstein). Years of patiently fielding questions about Jewish observance. Co-founder (with MB) of the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet. [JH]
Born January 17, 1981 – Rachelle Rosenberg, age 40. Color artist for Marvel, e.g. this and this and this. [JH]
Don't just snarf it down is The Far Side's advice.
(13) YOU SAY YOU WANT AN EVOLUTION. "How 'WandaVision' Star Elizabeth Olsen Transformed Her Performance For Every Genre-Bending Episode", a Q&A at Yahoo! Entertainment.
What was the difference between what you did the '50s, versus when you were in the '70s, '80s and '90s?
The '70s women were allowed — it was almost like there is was a relaxation of women and social behavior, and so that would affect their voices and the tone that they can take. Instead of it being kind of a higher and level [like in the '50s]. The '70s, even though it's this really strange "Brady Bunch" aspirational time in sitcom land, women were able to have a bit more control, something that grounded them a bit more in their voice. Then as we got into the '80s, there were the teachable moments, and how sincere everything was, that was really funny. And then as we move into the arts and into the '00s and the 2010s, the sitcom becomes really cynical. The humor, like "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Modern Family" becomes incredibly cynical. And that's what we found comforting for whatever reason as a society.
It was fun when we were in this boot camp to not only chart the physical changes, as tools, but to also [discover] what comedy was for that time. "Rosemary's Baby" is a film and "Brady Bunch" is on television, it doesn't make any sense to me. But for whatever reason, that's what that's what the consumer was watching at home.
(14) UNDER THE LIGHTS. Cheryl Morgan fills in Cora Buhlert's readers about her online zine – "Fanzine Spotlight: Salon Futura".
Why did you decide to start your site or zine?
When I set up Wizard's Tower Press, one of the things I wanted to do was create a semiprozine for non-fiction. It turned out that there wasn't a market for such a thing at the time, and it closed after 9 issues. Then last year I saw Nicholas Whyte bemoaning the lack of interest in the Fanzine category of the Hugos. I'd already come to the conclusion that I needed some form of discipline to ensure I made time to read and review books, so I decided to relaunch Salon Futura as a fanzine. Thus far it has worked in that I have read a lot more books. I figure that if I ever get on the Hugo ballot again there will be a flood of new people voting in that category to stop me winning, and that will be the other objective achieved.
(15) VINTAGE OPINIONS. Gilbert Seldes lectures on science fiction in this 1953 recording of a WNYC broadcast "Science fiction writing" from The NYPR Archive Collections.
This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.
Seldes discusses the science fiction genre. He opens with a story about a science fiction story about the atomic bomb preceding the actual bomb, and the government's response.
He speaks of the symbolism of the extraterrestrial as a symbol for invaders from behind the Iron Curtain.
Seldes notes that there is a lot of science fiction that he does not deem to be of good quality, but does speak very highly of Ray Bradbury and H. G. Wells
(16) CHINESE SFF MOVIE. The Shimmer Program announced "Another Chinese science fiction film, 'The Soul' has been released on big screen! The thriller is adapted from Jiang Bo's story 'The Soul Transplanting Skill' and directed by Cheng Wei-hao." (The Soul is not to be confused with Pixar's Soul).
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Lise Andreasen, John Hertz, JJ, David Doering, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Joe Siclari, Olav Rokne, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Bakka Phoenix Books, Batwoman, Cheryl Morgan, Cora Buhlert, DisCon III, Evermore Park, Fanac.org, Gilbert Seldes, Hugo Awards, John Barrowman, John D. Berry, Nicholas Whyte, Robert J. Sawyer, Rod Serling, Shimmer Program, Ted White, Torchwood, Vampira, Wandavision
Pixel Scroll 7/21/20 Slexip Was I Ere I Saw Pixels
Posted on July 21, 2020 by Mike Glyer
(1) AN EXPERIMENT. Samuel R. Delany has written a novel called Shoat Rumblin, His Sensations and Ideas. Not sff, but it is Delany.
…At one point, Vladimir Nabakov said that Madame Bovary was really just an extremely well-written fairytale. There's one sense in which, unlike other of my books, that was what I was hoping to accomplish with Shoat Rumblin. The book was never finished to my satisfaction, although I wrote an ending for it. Through looking over it again, I'm at least contented with what I've done—if still uncertain how believable it is. As I've said on Twitter, it's an experiment in gay pornography and realistic storytelling. Parts of it are funny and parts of it, I confess, I think are pretty grim. Overall, I'd call it a comedy rather than a tragedy, if only because it does have a happy ending, however believable or unbelievable you find it. I'm also hoping that this makes it intriguing enough for some of you to take a chance on it.
(2) TOR FOR TWO. "John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal Chat About Sci-Fi, Writing Processes, and More!" at Tor.com. There's both a video and a transcript at the link.
… MRK: One of my favorite things is when I introduce a reader to an author who is, by any metric except to this reader, more famous than I am. And they have never heard of them. And they're like, "oh, this new author Ursula K. Le Guin, I love her books!" (laughs)
JS: You're like; I don't know how to break this one to you, but… But, that actually brings up a really interesting point which is that because science fiction and fantasy is, as a literature, as opposed to every other aspect of media, because it is still sort of niche where you come into the genre matters. Because, if they come in with you, then a lot of your antecedents or people who influenced you will be new to them. And to them, those classics will seem almost derivative or not up to date. I've had that happen sometimes where people will read me first, especially people who are under the age of 35. They'll read me first and then they'll go backwards into someone like Heinlein and then they're like—"hmm, I don't know—his stuff's OK, but I kind of like yours better." And I'm like, well—one, thank you, and two, it's definitely because this is the path that you took into this genre. And, it's still something that is very possible to do in this genre that I don't know if in mainstream it will happen as much.
(3) RUSSIAN AROUND. "'Sputnik' Trailer: A Cosmonaut Brings an E.T. Invasion Back to Earth in Gory 'Alien' Homage" – IndieWire sets the frame:
While a space traveler's greatest fear is typically what's waiting out there in the great unknown, what they bring back to Earth could be much, much worse. That's the premise of Russian filmmaker Egor Abramenko's feature debut "Sputnik," a sci-fi chiller with the stately echoes of Ridley Scott's classic "Alien." Set in the 1980s, "Sputnik" blends creature-feature effects with heady extraterrestrial thrills. An official selection of the canceled 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, the movie debuts from IFC Midnight in select theaters and on VOD August 14. Watch the trailer for the film below….
Here's the YouTube intro:
Due to her controversial methods, young doctor Tatiana Yurievna (Oksana Akinshina) is on the precipice of losing her medical license. Her career may not be over, though. After she's recruited by the military, Tatiana is brought to a secure science research facility to assess a very special case, that of Konstantin Sergeyevich (Pyotr Fyodorov), a cosmonaut who survived a mysterious space accident and has returned to Earth with a unique condition: there's something living inside of him that only shows itself late at night. The military has nefarious plans for it. Tatiana wants to stop it from killing Konstantin. And the creature itself thrives on destruction.
(4) FLAME ON. Entertainment Weekly reports "Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon begins casting".
There are no official casting breakdowns yet available, but many are speculating about the potential lead characters based on Martin's book. Fire & Blood covers 150 years and includes the rise and fall of many leaders in Westeros so it's not clear which characters and time period will be the focus of the series. But sources tell EW that the famed Dance of Dragons – the Targaryen Civil War that occasionally referenced in GoT that ripped apart Westeros – will be tackled at some point in the series. What would make sense is if the first season (or two) led up to those events. Some fans have suggested the show could also be an American Horror Story-style anthology series, covering a vastly different time period in each season.
(5) RELATIONSHIPS FOR THE LONG HAUL. In "The Big Idea: Michael R. Underwood" at Whatever, the author argues there's a sorely neglected big idea.
"Happily Ever After."
A famous phrase that signals the end of many stories, from faerie tales to action movies to romance novels. Growing up, so many of the tv, film, comics, books, and more that I experienced said – implicitly, if not explicitly – that once a couple overcame whatever big trial happened in act three, the relationship itself was smooth sailing.
And depending on how you read those stories, it says something worse. It says that long-term, committed relationships are boring, or that they're only interesting when they're falling apart. "Happily Ever After" doesn't prepare anyone for the lived reality of making a long-term relationship work. Sometimes the best romance works will illustrate those challenges and joys on the way, because romance writers are grand masters of characterization. But getting into my first romantic relationships, I had few fictional models for what it was like to negotiate the higher-level challenges and opportunities posed by a committed partnership. And being a storyteller by trade, that lack of narrative models became especially frustrating.
With Annihilation Aria, I set out to add to the count of works that unpack "Happily Ever After" and show that a committed couple can be exciting protagonists as well….
(6) VANDERMEERS' FANTASY COLLECTION. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer preview The Big Book of Modern Fantasy at LitHub, including the Table of Contents: "On the Biggest Collection of Fantasy Tales Since WWII". Plenty of names you know here.
…The truth is, a book of modern fantasy is a treasure trove of marvels, a cabinet of curiosities, and, perhaps more importantly, a strong, strong testimony to the importance of imaginative literature, of non-realist literature, and of traditions other than the Anglo Saxon. We, personally, have been enriched by these stories and lifted up by them. We hope readers will find their own favorites and fond memories from reading herein.
(7) CAPCLAVE CHANGES PLANS. Bill Lawhorn, Capclave 2020 Chair, says they're going virtual. The event will be over the same weekend, but won't start until Saturday.
Due to the novel coronavirus, the Capclave team has made the decision to be virtual this year. We will be holding Capclave October 17-18. Yes, this is two days, but we will run longer on Sunday than is typical. We will be focused on presentations, panels, and small group activities such as author readings or discussions.
Going virtual does present the opportunity to include people who would likely not be able to participate in a normal year. Keep an eye on our website and social media for news regarding new participants.
We plan to use Zoom for most activities, but we are looking at adding a text chat area via Discord as well. We will be updating our Code of Conduct to reflect the online nature of the convention. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact [email protected]
Born July 21, 1929 — John Woodvine, 91. First role in our realm is as Macbeth at Mermaid Theatre back in the early Sixties. Shortly thereafter he's Badger in Toad of Toad Hall at the Comedy Theatre before being The Marshal in the Fourth Doctor story, "The Armageddon Factor". He did show up on The Avengers several times, each time as a different character, and he was Singri Rhamin for the episodes of Danger Man. He's in An American Werewolf in London as Dr J. S. Hirsch, but shortly thereafter he's Master West 468 in The Tripods and Prior Mordrin in the Knights of God children's SF serial. Finally, he's Justice Dimkind in A Perfect State which is at least genre adjacent. (CE)
Born July 21, 1933 — John Gardner. Grendel, the retelling of Beowulf from the monster's viewpoint, is likely the only work he's remembered for. Gudgekin The Thistle Girl (and Other Tales) are genre fairy tales as are The King of the Hummingbirds (and Other Tales); A Child's Bestiary is, well, guess what it says it is. Mickelsson's Ghosts, his final novel written before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident, is a ghost story. (Died 1982.) (CE)
Born July 21, 1944 – David Feintuch. Campbell Award (as it then was) for Best New Writer. Nine novels, of which seven portray Space navy officer Nick Seafort, translated into Czech, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish. Said he'd completed an eighth, of which no more has emerged. (Died 2006) [JH]
Born July 21, 1950 — Asenath Hammond. She was was a fan who was a member of NESFA, New York City and LASFS fandoms. She was married for a time to Rick Sternbach. Mike has a write-up on her here. (Died 2010.) (CE)
Born July 21, 1950 – Bill Kunkel. Cartoons (sometimes as "Potshot") in Algol, Checkpoint, The Frozen Frog, Trap Door; Chunga seemed to energize him, he gave it much (for the end, see here and here; corflu = mimeograph correction fluid, loc = letter of comment). Comics: DC, Marvel, Harvey; primary scripter for Richie Rich. Pro wrestling: photographed for, edited, published Main Event magazine, hosted The Main Event radio show, energized Pro Wrestling Torch, cartoons and columns for Wrestling Perspective. Video games: Electronic Games, Tips & Tricks magazines; designed a dozen games; memoir, Confessions of the Game Doctor. (Died 2011) [JH]
Born July 21, 1951 — Robin Williams. Suicides depress me. I remember a bootleg tape of a performance of him and George Carlin in their cocaine fueled days. No, not even genre adjacent but damn brilliant. Such manic energy. Genre wise, he was brilliant in most everything he did, be it Mork & Mindy, Hook which I adore, The Fisher King, Bicentennial Man or Jumanji. (Died 2014.) (CE)
Born July 21,1952 – Kathy Tyers, 68. Ten novels, half a dozen shorter stories translated into Dutch and German. A Star Wars novel was a NY Times Best Seller. Two CDs of folk music (she plays flute, Irish harp). Worked with Christopher Parkening on his memoir Grace Like a River. Lives in Montana. [JH]
Born July 21, 1956 – Todd Dashoff, 64. Chaired Philcon 1988 and the Millennium Philcon – what else should we name a Worldcon at Philadelphia in 2001? Knows Harry Warner upheld the rule that the local con there is Phillycon and only a Worldcon there is Philcon. Knows this rule has not been followed since 1947 and meanwhile (after HW's death) a comics con has been calling itself Phillycon. Has been PSFS' (Phil. SF Soc.) President and Treasurer. Stalwart helper from locals to Worldcons. Fan Guest of Honor (with wife Joni, another shining star) at Lunacon 46. [JH]
Born July 21, 1960 – John Wardale, 60. Balloon sculptor, hair braider, costumer, photographer, patiently giving balloon and braid workshops for beginners too. A pleasure, if that word may be used, to judge "Angels Take Motown" at Detcon the 11th NASFiC (North America SF Con, since 1975 held when the Worldcon is overseas) by Janine & John Wardale, Sharon & Hall Bass, which we awarded Best Motown Entry (Journeyman Class). Has also taught Science: Energy + Time = Change. [JH]
Born July 21, 1976 – Stephanie Law, 44. Two dozen covers including books in German and Polish, also cards and other games. Featured in Spectrum (six times) and Locus. Best in Art Show, DragonCon 2015. Art Guest of Honor at BayCon 2015, JordanCon 10, Philcon 2019; was scheduled for the 13th NASFiC this year. Artbook, Descants and Cadences. Website here. [JH]
Born July 21, 1976 — Jaime Murray, 44. If you watch genre television, you've most likely seen her as she's been Helena G. Wells in the Warehouse 13, Stahma Tarr in Defiance, Fiona/the Black Fairy In Once Upon a Time, Antoinette in The Originals, and Nyssa al Ghul in Gotham. Film wise, she was Livinia in The Devil's Playground and Gerri Dandridge in Fright Night 2: New Blood. (CE)
Bizarro reports it was a hard day at the Frankenstein factory.
Garfield shows what would be – for these aliens – a fate worse than death.
Incidental Comics' Grant Snider calls this "Contemplation."
New comic! Contemplation pic.twitter.com/d4eYOW702R
— Grant Snider (@grantdraws) July 20, 2020
(10) CHEATERS EVER PROSPER. "An author bought his own book to get higher on bestseller lists. Is that fair?" The Guardian says it doesn't break the rules of the Sunday Times.
For any author, being able to describe yourself as a bona fide bestseller is key to conferring your career with a certain gravitas – and will often bring you even more sales. In the UK, while most book charts are tallied by Nielsen BookScan, the Sunday Times bestseller list – like the New York Times chart in the US – has become the gold standard. But making the bestseller list isn't necessarily as straightforward as tallying sales. Not all is fair in romance and war (and other genres) when it comes to getting to the top of the charts.
Take the case of Mark Dawson, a British writer who just over a week ago hit No 8 on the Sunday Times hardback list with his thriller The Cleaner, released by the independent publisher Welbeck at the end of June. This is a great achievement for any author or small publishing house, but Dawson had done something remarkable: he bought 400 copies of his own book, at a cost of £3,600, to push his sales high enough to make the top 10….
(11) LOOKING FOR CHANGE. "More Resignations, but No Sign Yet of a Change in Gaming Culture" – the New York Times surveys the field.
First, a popular esports tournament was canceled. Next, top gaming studio executives stepped down. Then, a prominent talent management agency for video game streamers laid off its employees and closed.
The stream of reports of sexual harassment and assault in the gaming industry that began in June has continued unabated, as more women — and some men — have come forward with accusations of mistreatment.
Despite the actions that companies have taken in response to individual incidents, gaming experts say they are hesitant to call the moment an inflection point for an industry with a long and difficult history of sexist behavior and abuse. This is not the first time women have spoken up. In 2014, in what is known as Gamergate, women faced death threats for criticizing the gaming industry and its culture. Last year, women again came forward with stories of abuse in what was seen as gaming's #MeToo moment.
So few expect the resignations this time to quickly change a culture that for decades has often been hostile to women.
"You can fire people all day long," said Kenzie Gordon, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Alberta who studies how games can be used to prevent sexual and domestic violence. But "if only the individual people are held accountable, that doesn't have any impact on the culture of the organization as a whole, necessarily."…
(12) THE MARTIAN YAWNICLES. "One Challenge for Future Mars Explorers? Boredom." So says Kate Greene at LitHub.
… It's conditions such as these—monotony, idleness, tedium, sensory deprivation, loneliness—that concern NASA psychologists who want to send a crew to Mars. Using existing technologies, a trip to the red planet will take 200 to 300 days of travel. Most of the time will be spent inside a cramped capsule. There will be a communication delay with Earth of up to 24 minutes due to a span of hundreds of millions of miles. Real-time chatting or video calls with friends and family and mission support will be an impossibility—the limitation is the speed of light—that no new technology would be able to overcome.
Mars crews would likely need to operate with a high level of autonomy because of this communication delay. Many people believe autonomy, which implies freedom of choice, can stave off boredom. Indeed, work imbued with personal meaning can be a potential solution, but it can't fix everything.
In addition to the isolation and sensory deprivation, there will still be repetition of meals and routines and clothing and conversations between crewmembers. The workloads will still likely be full of tedium, with narrow margins for error. In short, a mission to Mars has the perfect ingredient list for boredom and disaster borne of boredom.
(13) WHAT WILL YOU MAKE FROM THIS? "A New Artificial Material Effectively Cannot Be Cut" — which they've dubbed Proteus, rather than 'nocuttium' or whatever; Slashdot has the story.
Researchers from the University of Stirling, UK, have embedded ceramic spheres in aluminum foam to create a material that couldn't be cut with angle grinders, power drills or water jet cutters. "They dubbed it Proteus after the shape-shifting Greek god, for the way the material metamorphosed in different ways to defend against attacks," reports New Scientists
(14) THE SWARM. Could "swarm 3-D printing" become an endless opportunity for unanticipated results?
…What they appear to have developed is a kind of mobile robotic 3D printing concept. As you can see in the video, dual independent 3D printers are temporarily fixed to specific locations on a grid. From these locations the devices will print within a controlled zone (which AMBOTS calls a "Chunk").
After completing a layer of a chunk, a mobile robot picks up each 3D printer and moves them to another spot on the grid where they can then access another chunk. By moving the 3D printers repeatedly through a series of access points they are able to build the entire structure — without interfering with each other.
Check out our newest demo video of our Swarm 3D Printing Platform, printing a 1,000 mm X 350 mm honeycomb artwork. Leave a comment and let us know what you think! #3Dprinting #AdditiveManufacturing #AMBOTS pic.twitter.com/nLMPKpWEZN
— AMBOTS (@Ambots3D) July 16, 2020
(15) IMPERFECT CREATION. Now wait a minute. It was his own show! Yet ScreenRant says there were "10 Things Rod Serling Disliked About The Original Twilight Zone". Well, here's one we all disliked for sure.
9. Those Damn Commercials
One beast Serling struggled with during the run of The Twilight Zone continues to be an irritant today. That has to do with lightweight commercials that tended to deflate the intensity of a suspenseful Twilight episode.
"However moving and however probing and incisive the drama," mused Serling at a UCLA speaking engagement in 1971, "it cannot retain any thread of legitimacy when after 12 or 13 minutes, out comes 12 dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In "Honest Trailers: Cowboy Bebop" on YouTube, Screen Junkies takes on the classic anime series, where everyone chain smokes and the gloomy atmosphere is heightened by introspective sax solos.
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, Lise Andreasen, John Hertz, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Ann VanderMeer, Bill Lawhorn, Capclave, House of the Dragon, Jeff VanderMeer, John Scalzi, Mars, Mary Robinette Kowal, Michael R. Underwood, Rod Serling, Samuel Delany, Twilight Zone
Pixel Scroll 7/4/20 She Has Loosed The Fateful Lightning Of Her Terrible Swifts' Scorn
(1) YARNSPINNER. Cora Buhlert will be taking up the challenge a little differently this year, but she is running a post to hold herself accountable: "The 2020 July Short Story Challenge – Day by Day".
What is the July Short Story Challenge, you ask? Well, in July 2015, Dean Wesley Smith announced that he was planning to write a brand new short story every day during the month of July. The original post seems to be gone now, but the Wayback Machine has a copy here. At the time, several people announced that they would play along, so I decided to give it a try as well. And then I did it again the following year. And the next. And the next. If you want to read my post-mortems of the previous July short story challenges, here are the posts for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Because I've already done the July short story challenge five years in a row now and always found the experience very rewarding, I'm aiming for a repeat this year. Though for now, I'm only committing to doing this for a week, which is already half over. If things are going well, I'll keep going, though I'm not sure if I can do the entire July this year, because Worldcon is at the end of the month and that will eat up my time and attention.
(2) TRAILER TIME. The Old Guard on Netflix is a film about immortal mercenaries starring Charlize Theron.
Led by a warrior named Andy (Charlize Theron), a covert group of tight-knit mercenaries with a mysterious inability to die have fought to protect the mortal world for centuries. But when the team is recruited to take on an emergency mission and their extraordinary abilities are suddenly exposed, it's up to Andy and Nile (Kiki Layne), the newest soldier to join their ranks, to help the group eliminate the threat of those who seek to replicate and monetize their power by any means necessary.
(3) CLASS IS IN SESSION. In each episode of the "Science Fiction University" podcast, Driftglass and Blue Gal discuss one work of classic science fiction plus one science fiction movie. The two pieces share a theme, whether it be time travel, unreliable narrators, dystopias, etc. The most recent episode is "Episode 5: How HBO's Westworld Went South".
(4) TURN ON, TUNE OUT. The New Yorker revisits "The Walkman, Forty Years On".
…Hosokawa noted how listeners used the devices to tame the unpredictability of urban spaces, with all of their unexpected intrusions and loud noises. Wearing headphones functioned both as a personal "Do Not Disturb" sign and an alternate soundtrack to the cacophony of the city. This was a new form of human experience, engaged disengagement, a technological shield from the world and an antidote to ennui. Whenever nerves frayed or boredom crept in, one could just hit Play and fast-forward life a little. One of the first Westerners to grasp the import of this new human capacity was the author William Gibson, a pioneer of the genre of science fiction called cyberpunk, who wrote years later that "the Sony Walkman has done more to change human perception than any virtual reality gadget."
Extract from John F. Kennedy's Remarks at a Dinner Honoring Nobel Prize Winners of the Western Hemisphere — April 29, 1962:
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
Jefferson died on this day in 1826. (So did John Adams.)
July 1970 — Fifty years ago, Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber was published by Doubleday. It's quite rare to find a copy these days because most of the copies were accidentally pulped by the publisher in error when the order went out to destroy remaining copies of Zelazny's older book Creatures of Light and Darkness. It was the first novel in his Amber series. It was nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award but lost out to Mary Stewart's A Crystal Cave. A comic adaptation was done by Terry Bisson, and a TV adaptation is supposed being produced by the creators of the Walking Dead series.
Born July 4, 1878 – Frank Papé. Five dozen covers, a hundred interiors, more outside our field; an Arabian Nights, an Odyssey, a Pilgrim's Progress, a collection of the Psalms, a Robin Hood, a Robinson Crusoe, a Sigurd and Gudrun; Cabell, Cervantes, Anatole France, Rabelais, Sabatini, Shakespeare, Spenser, Suetonius; an Indian and a Russian Story Book; Golden, Ruby, Diamond Fairy Books; Uncle Ray's Corner (Ramon Coffman). Here is a Penguin Island. Here is a Silver Stallion. Here is a moment from Alfred Clark's As It Is in Heaven. Here is Christian conquering Apollyon. Here is Falcon the Hunter from The Russian Story Book. (Died 1972) [JH]
Born July 4, 1883 – Rube Goldberg. A top cartoonist and not only for The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts (1914-1964); in 1915 his salary at the New York Evening Mail was $50,000 a year (go ahead, do the calculation); several comic strips including Mike and Ike (They Look Alike); 1948 Pulitzer Prize for this editorial cartoon. First President of the Nat'l Cartoonists Society, namesake of the Reuben Award. Here is his postage stamp. Here is a Website. We should've had a 100th Birthday exhibit at the 41st Worldcon but I didn't think of it and neither did you. (Died 1970) [JH]
Born July 4, 1901 — Guy Endore. American novelist and screenwriter whose 1933 The Werewolf of Paris novel holds the same position in werewolf literature that Dracula does for vampire literature. It was filmed as The Curse of The Werewolf for which he wrote the screenplay. Stableford also praises his horror story, "The Day of the Dragon". He worked on the screenplay for Mark of the Vampire starring Bella Lugosi. (Died 1970.) (CE)
Born July 4, 1904 — William Meader. A long history in genre video starting with When Worlds Collide and The War of The Worlds. All of his appearances were uncredited as was the case in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and The Absent Minded Professor, and even his appearances on Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Get Smart!, Batman, Wild, Wild West and even Munster, Come Home! (Died 1979.) (CE)
Born July 4, 1941 – Howard Frank, Ph.D. Director of the Information Technology Office at DARPA (Defense Adv. Research Pjts. Agency, U.S. Dept. of Defense), then Dean of the School of Business at U. Maryland. Internet Hall of Fame. Moskowitz Archive Award. The Frank Collection; Great Fantasy Art Themes from the Frank Collection (both with Jane Frank). (Died 2017) [JH]
Born July 4, 1947 – Ann Layman Chancellor. Costumer, filksinger, graphic artist. Phi Beta Kappa (Classics), College of William & Mary; M.F.A., Boston University School of Theater Arts. Assistant Professor of Design at U. Iowa, then U. New Orleans, then State U. N.Y. at Oneonta. Parade Artist, New Orleans Mardi Gras; Ass't Costume Dir., Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis); full-body costumes, heads, hardware, motion systems, Sesame Street. Art Director, Kalki (Cabell Society) 1971-1984. Fan Guest of Honor at DeepSouthCon 24. Drew the Lady of Cups (no, not the Queen) for the Fantasy Showcase Tarot Deck. Costumes, Creatures, and Characters for the 38th Worldcon. Here she is as Maleficent (shown with Cortlandt Hull's Ming) at the 29th. Here she is as Black Orchid at the 37th. Substantial artwork for the 46th. Here is a minor adventure with her at the 51st. (Died 1998) [JH]
Born July 4, 1949 — Peter Crowther, 71. He is the founder (with Simon Conway) of PS Publishing where he's editor now. He edited a series of genre anthologies that DAW published. And he's written a number of horror novels of which I'd say After Happily Ever and By Wizard Oak are good introductions to him. He's also done a lot of short fiction but I see he's really available in digital form for much of short fiction or novels at the usual digital suspects. (CE)
Born July 4, 1958 – Lynn Gold, 62. Active fan in the San Francisco Bay area, and more widely as a filksinger. With Lee & Barry Gold (no relation) published The Golden Gait Songbook for ConFrancisco the 51st Worldcon. Co-founded FanFare Music, the non-profit parent of Consonance; chaired Consonance 2001 and 2003-2004, Toastmistress at Consonance 2011; Interfilk Guest (traveling-filker fund) at NEFilk 10 (Northeast Filk Convention). Guest of Honor at LepreCon 25, Loscon 28. [JH]
Born July 4, 1967 — Christopher McKitterick, 53. Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, a program at the University of Kansas that supports an annual series of awards, lectures, classes, workshops, the Campbell Conference, and AboutSF, a resource for teachers and readers of science fiction. He's also a juror for and Chair of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel from 2002 onward. And yes, he does write genre fiction with one novel to date, Transcendence, more than a double handful of stories, and being an academic, critical essays such as "John W. Campbell: The Man Who Invented Modern Fantasy and the Golden Age of Science Fiction" which was published in Steven H. Silver's Hugo nominated Argentus. (CE)
Born July 4, 1977 — David Petersen, 43. Writer and illustrator of the brilliant Mouse Guard series. If you haven't read it, do so — it's that good. He published a few years back The Art of The Mouse Guard 2005 – 2015 which though expensive is stunning as a look at his series. It almost got developed as a film but got axed due to corporate politics. IDW published The Wind in The Willows with over sixty of his illustrations several years back. (CE)
Born July 4, 1983 – Milena Wójtowicz, 37. A talkative optimist, a devoted lover of dogs, statistical yearbooks, books, Internet comics, and Christmas lights.Six novels, three dozen shorter stories, a dozen translations. Among her characters are beautiful princesses, insidious dragons, neglected dogs, but even princesses have no influence on the roles the author will write for them. Here is the cover for Wrota (Polish, "gate"). [JH]
Born July 4, 1989 — Emily Coutts , 41. She plays the role of helmsman Keyla Detmer on Discovery. She's also her mirror universe counterpart, who is the first officer of that universe's Shenzhou. (I like the series and am definitely looking forward to it when it jump a thousand years into the future next season!) She was in one episode of the SF series Dark Matter and in Crimson Peak, a horror film but that's it for genre appearances. (CE)
Today's Breaking Cat News is the culmination of an entire week of strips about different genre fandoms.
Mixed fannish marriage
Classic Doctor Who fandom
The one thing they can all agree on!
(9) HAT TIP. SYFY Wire's "Fangrrls" probe "How Legends Of Tomorrow Paid Tribute To The Roots Of Fanfiction"
…The whole episode, titled "The One Where We're Trapped on TV," is a campy delight with fun twists on major TV shows, but the Star Trek parody in particular is pretty special. Sara and Ava play the roles of Kirk and Spock, respectively, and the series goes so far as to have them kiss on the bridge.
It's a significant moment for a few reasons. First, it's just plain delightful to see all the K/S (the original ship name for Kirk and Spock) sexual tension play out on screen. Second, having queer characters assume the roles of characters who have long been queered by fandom affirms how viewers have read the original characters for decades. And perhaps the coolest part of all is that in so doing, Legends pretty clearly nods to one of the roots of queer fanfic: slash.
(10) SERLING INTERVIEWED BY GUNN. "Interview With Rod Serling (1970)" on YouTube is an interview with Rod Serling about sf on television that James Gunn did for the Center for the Study of Science FIction at the University of Kansas in 1970.
(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] "Horror Europa With Mark Gatiss" on YouTube is a 2012 BBC documentary that is a sequel to "A History of Horror." The documentary is devoted to a discussion of great German, Belgian, French, Spanish, and Italian horror films and includes interviews with directors Dario Argento and Guillermo Del Toro and a visit to the Slovakian castle where Nosferatu was filmed.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Jerry Kaufman, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, JJ. Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, Michael Toman, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus, who found something July Fourthish in yesterday's item about BionicSwifts.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Cora Buhlert, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Fangrrls, James Gunn, Mark Gatiss, Rod Serling, Roger Zelazny, Science Fiction University
Pixel Scroll 5/2/20 This Pixel Scroll Title Made From 60% Recycled Material
(1) SIGNAL BOOST. Julie C. Day's Weird Dream Society, a charity anthology with all proceeds going to RAICES (The Refugee And Immigrant Center For Education And Legal Services), is in the pre-order stage.
Playful, whimsical, or dark, but always thoughtful and tinged with the inexplicably weird, the Weird Dream Society brings together some of the most innovative creators in speculative fiction. Most of the book consists of reprints with a few new stories to round it out.
The anthology includes stories by Nathan Ballingrud, Carina Bissett, Gregory Norman Bossert, Karen Bovenmyer, Christopher Brown, Emily Cataneo, Julie C. Day, Michael J Deluca, Gemma Files, A.T. Greenblatt, Nin Harris, Chip Houser, James Patrick Kelly, Marianne Kirby, Kathrin Köhler, Matthew Kressel, Jordan Kurella, Premee Mohamed, Sarah Read, Sofia Samatar, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Steve Toase, and A.C. Wise.
In addition to his fictional work, author and artist Gregory Norman Bossert generously donated the anthology's cover illustration.
Proceeds from this charity anthology go to support RAICES, the nonprofit agency that promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to under-served immigrant children, families, and refugees. With offices in Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio, RAICES is "a frontline organization in the roiling debate about immigration and immigrants in the world."
Paul Jessup has reviewed the project for Vernacular Books:
…But I've never been one for rules or guidelines, and really neither is this collection. I will say, I knew a few of these stories ahead of time, they were favorites published in off beat anthologies and magazines back in the day, so seeing them here was a joy and a promise of things to come. You know an anthology is going to be good when you recognize some of your favorites right away….
Weird Dream Society will be released May 26, 2020. Pre-order eBook: Amazon | Kobo | B&N Nook; Pre-order Paperback: Amazon | Barnes&Noble. Find out more at Twitter, their website, and Goodreads.
(2) PROFIT SHARING. It's the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. J.K. Rowling is observing it a bit differently than usual. "JK Rowling donates £1m to two charities"
Today's the 22nd anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, but I'm going to be honest and say that it feels inappropriate to talk about fictional deaths today. Too many people are losing loved ones in the real world. 1/4
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 2, 2020
JK Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter adventures, is donating £1m to charities supporting vulnerable people during the lockdown.
Half of the money will go to Crisis which helps homeless people, and half to Refuge to support victims of domestic abuse.
Rowling's donations come amid #HarryPotterDay on Twitter.
Saturday also marks the anniversary of one the author's major events in her stories.
On Twitter, Rowling said: "Today's the 22nd anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, but I am going to be honest and say that it feels inappropriate to talk about fictional deaths.
"Too many people are losing loved ones in the real world."
Rowling, who wrote many of her Harry Potter stories while living in Edinburgh, said many vulnerable people who were homeless or in an abusive relationship were suffering at this time.
(3) COMMUNITY RALLIES. Shelf Awareness reports an epic fundaising success to help comics and book stores.
In five days, #Creators4Comics raised $433,166 for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) to support comics stores and indie bookstores hurt by Covid-19. The group's charity auction featured 635 separate auctions on Twitter and other platforms by comics creators, authors and celebrities.
"Comic shops and indie bookstores have supported so many of us," said Kami Garcia, author of the graphic novel Teen Titans: Raven, who brought the organizers together. "They aren't just places where we buy books and comics. These stores are places where we find belonging."
Among the participants were Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Patton Oswalt, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Joe Hill, Shannon Hale, Mike Mignola, Brad Meltzer, Mariko Tamaki, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Marissa Meyer, Danielle Paige, Gene Luen Yang, Tom King, Bryan Edward Hill, Jason Aaron, Marc Guggenheim, Gail Simone, Vita Ayala, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Cassandra Clare, Marieke Nijkamp, Margaret Stohl, Jock, Mico Suayan, and G. Willow Wilson. Seth Meyers, Damon Lindeloff and Robert Kirkman made generous matching donations.
Since March 13, 135 comics retailers and their households have received more than $150,950 in financial assistance for rent, food and essential medications from Binc–more than double the amount distributed last year to this sector of the book industry. In total, 722 comic book stores have now applied for aid….
(4) GENRE PALADIN. Joshua Gillingham takes up the cudgels "In Defense of Genre Fiction".
…Well, some might say that reading genre fiction is a bit like ordering pulled-pork sandwiches over and over, that it makes you predictable (i.e. boring). Others might add that writing genre fiction is little more than an act of trying to resuscitate long-dead tropes while trying to pass off cheap imitations as original work. Given these two stereotypical notions, especially within the writing community, there can be a lot of shame or defensiveness around reading or writing these kinds of stories. Therefore, I feel the need to present an argument in defense of genre fiction, its readers, and its writers….
(5) SERLING SILVER. Herbie J. Pilato continues his "Writing for Your Life" series with "Rod Serling and 'The Twilight Zone'" at Medium.
The development and execution of The Twilight Zone and its induction into the annals of TV history is a story of an obsessive need for acceptance on many levels.
Submitted for your approval:
Exhibit A: Rod Serling, Zone's creator, executive producer, central writing force, and charismatic host. The show's popularity preyed upon his endless reservoir of ideas, originally inspired by his obsession with the past and his preoccupation with aging, mixed in with a measure of courage and faith, and the survival techniques he learned in the army….
(6) AHH NATURE. "Sir Tim Cattenborough Presents The Life Cycle of a Novel" – a Camestros Felapton production.
[A stunning new nature documentary by world famous publisher, naturalist and national treasure Sir Timothy Cattenborough]
Our beautiful planet Earth. From up here on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro we can see the vast vistas of nature's own miracles and what greater miracle can there be than the majestic novel — one of the natural world's most miraculous miracles.
Here I am in the forests of Borneo gazing in wonder at the spectacular site of thousands of novels making their nests among the natural shelving of the great pine trees of northern Scandinavia. Whether it is these great majestic creatures of the plains of Patagonia or the more common domesticated novel of these rolling hills of Southern England, the novel is a familiar sight to us all.
But very few people have ever managed to see the hidden lifecycle of a novel. How are they born? How do they grow? And how, via the miracle of evolution do they reproduce? Today, via special cameras disguised as robots disguised as librarians we have, over a gruelling five minute project, at last gained unique footage of the novel's lifecycle….
(7) MAY THE FOURTH. This will make your Starbucks mocha grande seem cheap by comparison. NBC Los Angeles tells Star Wars fans "Blue Milk on May the Fourth, You Can Have".
…Scum & Villainy Cantina, in Hollywood, can kindly help us locate the cosmic libation, however.
The "Star Wars"-sweet venue, which also celebrates a number of different fandoms via a host of events, will celebrate May the Fourth by offering 21+ fans Wretched Blue Milk Snack Packs for $11.38 each.
(8) TEMPTING TIDBITS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Not directly SF (although McPhee has written about Freeman Dyson, just not here.)
The Patch, John McPhee's newest [in 2019] (and 7th) collection of short pieces, has two parts:
six long sports or sport-related articles (mostly golf) (~ 90 pages)
"an album quilt" — ~130 pages of dozens of his shorter articles (or excerpts from same)
In case "John McPhee" and "new collection of short pieces" isn't enough to make you borrow or buy the book, here's links to 3 sections of quilt, and if these aren't enough to get you to borrow or buy this book (and, by extension, proceed to read more of his books), well, then more wouldn't help.
1, "Pools and pools and pools of chocolate — fifty-thousand pound, ninety-thousand pound, Olympus-length pools of chocolate…"
2. [Found via Google Books.] "When Martha, my youngest daughter, was seventeen, her English teacher–Mrs. Thomas–write forty-seven vocabulary words on the blackboard and told the class to write a short composition using all forty-seven words: aspersion, audacious, avarice, blanch…"
(DPD notes, in searching for this, by omitting McPhee's name, the above search's results includes "A Glossary for the Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith".)
3, McPhee tries an eary word processor – quoted in "The Machine That Was Going To Tranquilize This Scene Was Locked Away In A Quiet Cubicle".
"Joseph Martin, computer methodologist at the [New York] Times, has been pursuing for some years what he describes as 'the ideal philosophy of creating a newspaper'… you start by 'capturing the keystroke at the origin.'"
(DPD notes, the first URL does not contain the full text of what's in the book.)
May 2, 1952 — Tales Of Tomorrow aired its "Red Dust" episode. As the copy provided not the network says, "The first human mission to another solar system loses 2 crew on a red dust-covered planet, which once had an advanced civilization. Due to allergies, neither of the shipmates got anti-radiation shots, so the remaining crew aren't concerned about their own return to Earth. But then the red dust starts to appear everywhere on the space ship." It was directed by Don Medford from a script by Irving Elman from the play by noted SF writer Theodore Cogswell, a member of the First Fandom Hall of Fame. His "The Wall Around the World" novelette as published in the September 1953 issue of Beyond Fantasy Fiction was nominated for a Retro Hugo at Noreascon 4. The cast was Fred Stewart, Lex Barker, Skedge Miller and Robert Patten. You can watch it here.
Born May 2, 1890 — E. E. "Doc" Smith. Best-known for the Lensman and Skylark series. I note that multiple sources say he is called the father of space opera. Is he indeed that? Another author I know I've read quite a lot of but would be hard pressed to say exactly what I've read decades on. (Died 1965.)
Born May 2, 1921 — Satyajit Ray. Bengali filmmaker, screenwriter, graphic artist, lyricist, music composer and writer who is here for his genre fiction which fortunately has been translated into English as most of us don't read Bengali. Over a decade recently, three collections came in English The Diary of a Space Traveller and Other Stories, Classic Satyajit Ray and The Collected Short Stories) with most of his genre work in the collection. There are nine stories involving Professor Shonku, his most popular SF character. (Died 1992.)
Born May 2, 1924 — Theodore Bikel. He was on Next Generation playing the foster parent to Worf in the "Family" episode playing CPO Sergey Rozhenko, ret.. That and playing Lenonn in Babylon 5: In the Beginning are the roles I want to note. Bikel also guest-appeared on The Twilight Zone in "Four O'Clock" as Oliver Crangle. Well there is one minor other role he did — he voiced Aragorn in the animated The Return of the King. By the way, Theodore Bikel's Treasury of Yiddish Folk & Theatre Songs is quite excellent. (Died 2015.)
Born May 2, 1925 — John Neville. I've mentioned before that Kage considered Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to be one of her favorite films and John Neville was one of the reasons that she did so. You can read her review here. Among his other genre roles, Neville had a prominent recurring role in The X-Files as The Well Manicured Man. And he showed up playing Sir Isaac Newton on The Next Generation in the "Descent" episode. (Died 2011.)
Born May 2, 1941 — Paul Darrow. He's best remembered for playing Kerr Avon in Blake's 7. He also had two appearances on Doctor Who, playing Captain Hawkins in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a Third Doctor story, and later Trekker in Timelash, a Sixth Doctor story. He also played Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Link" in the Science Fiction series. (Died 2019.)
Born May 2, 1942 — Alexis Kanner. His first genre appearance was on The Prisoner where he so impressed McGoohan in the "Living in Harmony" episode that he created a specific role for him in the series finale, "Fall Out" where he stands trial. He also has an uncredited role in "The Girl Who Was Death" in that series. His final known acting role was as Sor in Nightfall based off the Asimov story of the same name. (Died 2003.)
Born May 2, 1946 — David Suchet, 74. Though rather obviously better remembered as Hercule Poirot, he does show up on in a Twelfth Doctor story, "Knock Knock," simply called Landlord. Don't let don't deceive you. He's appeared in some other genre work from time times to time including Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, Harry and the Hendersons, Dr. No: The Radio Play, Wing Commander, Tales of the Unexpected and Peter Pan Goes Wrong.
Born May 2, 1946 — Leslie S. Klinger, 74. Editor and annotator of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Frankenstein, as well as Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen, and the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. I particularly recommend his Sandman annotations as Gaiman was actively involved in them and they're quite interesting.
Born May 2, 1948 — Bob Null. Very long-time LASFS member who was the club's VP for an equally long period. Fancyclopedia 3 say that "He also sat on the Board of Directors, and frequently handled logistics for local conventions including both Loscon and local Worldcons, and was always one of those nearly invisible hard-working people who make fandom work. He is a Patron Saint of LASFS." (Died 2010.)
Grant Snider of Incidental Comics captures the present season of the world.
New comic! Uncertainty pic.twitter.com/XeRfRKUbH7
— Grant Snider (@grantdraws) April 23, 2020
(12) JOB LOSSES. Condolences to gifted editors Diana M. Pho, Diana Gill, and Melissa Frain who were among Macmillan's COVID-19 employee layoffs.
1) Knowing the grapevine whispers, we're going public: in early April Macmillan announced layoffs in response to COVID-19. I've been let go from Tor w/ @dianagill @frain in editorial & Alison Bunis in marketing. Our last day is May 1. It's been heartbreaking. We'd love your help.
— Diana M. Pho ? (@writersyndrome) April 29, 2020
(13) JUST WHAT WE NEED. Tipper Gore will be happy to hear that "Deezer develops AI to detect explicit song lyrics". But what's their stand on shaving cream?
Streaming service Deezer is developing technology to automatically detect explicit content in songs.
The company has been looking into the issue because record labels often fail to identify offensive lyrics when they submit songs, it explained.
In fact, it said, a "substantially large part" of its library did not have a tag indicating whether or not a song contained strong language or themes.
In response, it is researching a way of automatically flagging up such content.
Although the technology is not yet "fit for tagging songs as explicit in a fully automated manner," it could be used to help humans identify potentially explicit material.
The problem has grown exponentially bigger over the last couple of years, with profanities cropping up ever-more frequently in mainstream pop songs by the likes of Ariana Grande and Beyonce.
Added to that, a streaming service like Deezer can receive up to 40,000 new tracks every day, making it impossible for humans to review all the lyrical content.
Parents are particularly keen to screen out explicit content – but while mainstream services like Deezer, Apple and Amazon Music offer the ability to "turn off" explicit songs, the results are patchy at best.
(14) LIGHTNING AND LIGHTNING BUGS. "Random House Copy Chief: Stand Tall, Wordsmiths! (But Choose Your Battles)" – a print summary of a linked 25-minute interview; includes realization that singular "they" was necessary. (From 2019.)
Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer is not a fan of the word "very."
"It's not a dreadful word," he allows, but "it's one of my little pet words to do without if you can possibly do without it."
"Very" and its cousins "rather" and "really" are "wan intensifiers," Dreyer explains. In their place, he advises that writers look for a strong adjective that "just sits very nicely by itself" on the page. For example, "very smart" people can be "brilliant" and "very hungry" people can be "ravenous."
Dreyer gets the final say over questions related to grammar, style and clarity at Random House. Now he's sharing his writing advice in the new book Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.
"Words are my business, and the meaning of words is my business," he says. "To watch language twisted and distorted — that gets under my skin and makes me unhappy."
(15) IRON (LIFTING) MAN. "Game of Thrones actor breaks 501kg deadlift record".
Game of Thrones actor Hafthor Bjornsson has set a world deadlifting record by lifting 501 kg (1,104 lbs).
Bjornsson, a powerlifter who portrayed Ser Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane in the HBO series, broke the record at his gym in his native Iceland.
He lifted the barbell for two seconds, before dropping the weights and roaring in delight.
The event was streamed by sports broadcaster ESPN and filmed for Bjornsson's YouTube channel.
Bjornsson, who is 2.05m tall (6ft 9in), previously won the World's Strongest Man competition in 2018.
(16) KNITS UP THE RAVELED SLEEVE OF SPACESUITS. Richard Trenholm's CNET article "Dreams of the future: How sci-fi sees sleep" dates to 2018, but its references – like this one to the Culture – make it timeless.
…A much smarter option for dodging the duvet is employed by space pirate captain Kraiklyn in Ian M Banks' novel Consider Phlebas. He could put each side of his brain to sleep individually so he could stay constantly awake and no one could sneak up on him in bed. The downside was that his personality changed depending on whether his left or right brain was in charge.
Generally, though, catnap-compressing contraptions are surprisingly rare in speculative fiction — it seems sleep is just too fundamental a human requirement for even sci-fi writers to mess with. Still, that doesn't stop us trying out all manner of apps and sleep trackers to improve the quality of our kip….
(17) ABOUT SF'S PREDICTIVE POWERS…. Kevin Polowy, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story "Terry Gilliam, '12 Monkeys' screenwriters reunite, admit they 'had no clue' when creating film's fictitious virus" says that when he asked 12 Monkeys co-screenwriter David Peoples what research he did about designing the virus in the film, he said, "How about not at all? We had no clue," a thought seconded by director Terry Gilliam.
The sci-fi story follows a prisoner (Bruce Willis) plucked by scientists to time travel (though the filmmakers prefer to think of it as "mind travel") to the mid-'90s to discover the root of the virus, which is thought to be generated by an anarchist faction known as The Army of the 12 Monkeys.
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. "Conspiracy Cruise" on Vimeo is a short film by Brad Abrahams that asks what happens when members of conspiracy fandom on a cruise are attacked by the conspiracy!
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, Julie C. Day, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Camestros Felapton, comic books, comics, Diana Gill, Diana M. Pho, Game of Thrones, J. K. Rowling, Joshua Gillingham, Julie C. Day, May the Fourth, Melissa Frain, Paul Jessup, Rod Serling, Star Wars, Terry Gilliam, Timothy the Talking Cat, Twilight Zone
Pixel Scroll 3/21/20 Social Distancing Warriors
(1) UK EASTERCON CANCELLED. Concentric, the 2020 Eastercon, was cancelled today. The con was to have been held April 10-13 in Birmingham, UK. Thread starts here.
This is not a decision we have taken lightly as there has been a lot of hard work put into the planning thus far, however the committee and the hotel feel that this is the right thing to do. 2/5
— Concentric 2020 (@2020Concentric) March 21, 2020
(2) SERLING'S BASEBALL DRAMA TO AIR. "Rod Serling's lost baseball show to make return" – the Fifties show has been re-created by students and Anne Serling will narrate.
If there's one thing we could all use right now, it's baseball — in any form. Well, how about a baseball story written by none other than "The Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling?
On March 25, when we would otherwise be preparing for Opening Day, Cincinnati's WVXU-FM will be streaming Serling's radio drama, "O'Toole From Moscow."
Written in 1955 — four years before "The Twilight Zone" debuted — the show is set during the Cold War and follows a Soviet Embassy worker who loves the Brooklyn Dodgers and skips town with a "comrade who suddenly becomes the greatest slugger ever for the Cincinnati Reds" — no word on if this slugger also ripped off his sleeves the way Ted Kluszewski did.
… The drama, which featured an appearance from Hall of Fame manager Leo Durocher, only aired once on NBC, and no recordings were ever made. Fortunately, Cincinnati journalist John Kiesewetter managed to hunt down the original script, and then edit it into a radio drama. With help from actors at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Anne Serling — Rod's daughter — to provide the narration, the show was recorded in November and now awaits its debut.
Rod Serling's "O'Toole From Moscow" aired only once on NBC in 1955.
It was not filmed or recorded. But now…
…it's coming to life on our airwaves thanks to the talents of @UC_CCM, @TVKiese, @TheRedKeys, and others!
Details here: https://t.co/HrBliAoDWR
3/25 at 8 PM! pic.twitter.com/7FLHwiw7fr
— 91.7 WVXU (@917wvxu) March 18, 2020
(3) FILLING THE VACANCY. K. Tempest Bradford and Lou Antonelli have been exchanging barbs over his write-in candidacy to become a SFWA director-at-large. Bradford's thread starts here.
Nor does the candidate they support. Not every elected person in the org needs to agree, of course. It's best if there are multiple points of view and experience and respectful disagreement. That's how adults roll.
Lou Antonelli does not act like an adult.
— K Tempest #DiversityJedi Bradford (@tinytempest) March 21, 2020
Antonelli's comments include —
To Tempest Bradford and the other s-f hate mongers:
If I am insane, why am I not in a psych hospital?
If I am a criminal, why aren't I in jail?
If I am such a loser, then why am I a successful small newspaper owner, with increasing circulation and advertising?
— Lou Antonelli (@LouAntonelli) March 20, 2020
What the heck? I have more twitter followers than ever before?
The latest one said "I got your note about writing-in you for director at large. We don't agree on everything… but I wrote your name in because you are going to drive Mary Robinette Kowal nuts. I'd sort of like that."
(4) BOOKSTORE GOFUNDME. Nancy Hanger's Star Cats Books in Vermont hopes to raise $7,500: "Save Star Cat Books in the time of Covid-19".
Don't let Covid-19 kill this bookstore!
Most Vermonters have already decided to shelter at home, and even at mid-day roads are close to empty. Fixed costs continue. The owner of Star Cat Books has a compromised immune system, but fears she must stay open for the few people who are looking for books for their kids or themselves. "Just closing" for two months, which is the shortest period the experts project this to last, guarantees the store will close forever. Even if two months is enough to end the risk, business will not return to normal at once.
(5) ORDER UP. Meanwhile, Jeff VanderMeer is lending a hand to his local Tallahassee bookstore Midtown Reader with sales of signed copies of his books, plus this special offer to receive a unique autographed item —
Our local bookstore is amazing and I want to thank my readers for being amazing. You've already been a huge boon to Midtown Reader. Thanks for considering this new special offer. I've also volunteered to help w/ their curb-side delivery of book orders locally.
— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) March 20, 2020
(6) TIME AGAIN TO POP THE LID. Alasdair Stuart's The Full Lid barrels onward – here a link to the issue for 20th March 2020.
This week, there's a look at how Netflix often write genre fiction kids very well, focusing on Lost in Space, Locke & Key and October Faction. We've also got a look at Marieke Nijkamp, Manuel Preitano, Jordie Bellaire and Clayton Cowles' excellent Barbara Gordon YA graphic novel The Oracle Code. An interview with Marieke is planned for a future issue too (Although it did sneak into the Contents page here. Barbara Gordon folks, best hacker in the business).
We're also ramping up Signal Boost as multiple creatives and creative industries struggle under the growing changes to the fabric of modern life. If you have a project you'd like over 500 extra sets of eyes on, do get in touch.
(7) FREE PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. Forthcoming issues and a lot of digital archives can be accessed free announced PW's President, George Slowik.
We will make the digital magazine available to everyone regardless of whether you subscribe starting with the current issue (March 16, 2020).
Everyone can now access the digital edition of PW from www.digitalpw.com or from the PW app on iOS and Android.
Additionally, articles, past bestsellers lists and the reviews database, which includes a search feature and the reviews listed by genre, will be made available to all.
And last, I am very pleased to share access to our recently launched archive database. The archive includes 7,597 past issues, 676,133 pages, 400,000 book reviews, 5,000 author profiles and interviews and, beginning in 1895, bestseller lists.
March 21, 1989 — Gor II, also known as Outlaw of Gor, premiered. It is a sequel to Gor and is directed this time by John Cardos. It is based on the Gor series by John Norman, but varies quite a bit from the original Outlaw of Gor novel. It starred Urbano Barberini, Rebecca Ferratti, Donna Denton, Russell Savadier and, yes, Jack Palance. You can see it here as lovingly critiqued on Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
Born March 21, 1915 — Ian Stuart Black. British screenplay writer best known for scripting two First Doctor stories, "The Savages" and "The War Machines" (with Kit Pedler and Pat Dunlop) and a Third Doctor story, "The Macra Terror". He wrote thirteen episodes of The Invisible Man as well as episodes of One Step Beyond, The Saint, Star Maidens and Danger Man. (Died 1997.)
Born March 21, 1931 — Al Williamson. Cartoonist who was best known for his work for EC Comics in the '50s, including titles like Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, and for his work on Flash Gordon in the Sixties. He won eight Harvey Awards, and an Eisner Hall of Fame Award. (Died 2010.)
Born March 21, 1944 — Lorene Yarnell. She was actually part of Shields and Yarnell, a well-known mime team, but you will know her as Dot Matrix on Spaceballs. She had a few previous genre appearances including being a villain named Forimicida on Wonder Women, and Sonia on The Wild Wild West Revisted. (Died 2010.)
Born March 21, 1944 — Hilary Minster. He appeared twice on Doctor Who, one in a Third Doctor story, "Planet of the Daleks" and before that in a Second Doctor story, "Genesis of the Daleks." He also was in "Achilles Heel", an episode of The Tomorrow People, and he had a minor role in The Girl in a Swing film based on the Richard Adams novel. Finally, he was Fritz, a German soldier, in Timeslip, a children's SF series. (Died 1999.)
Born March 21, 1946 — Timothy Dalton, 74. He is best known for portraying James Bond in The Living Daylights and License to Kill but is currently in The Doom Patrol as Niles Caulder, The Chief. As I've said before, go watch it now! He also was Damian Drake in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Sir Malcolm on the Penny Dreadful series and Lord President of the Time Lords (Rassilon) during the time of Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. He went to theatre to play Lord Asriel in the stage version of His Dark Materials.
Born March 21, 1946 — Terry Dowling, 74. I was trying to remember exactly what it was by him that I read and it turned out to be Amberjack: Tales of Fear and Wonder, an offering from Subterranean Press a decade ago. Oh, it was tasty! If it's at all representative of his other short stories, he's a master at them. And I see he's got just one novel, Clowns at Minnight which I've not read. He's not at all deeply stocked at the usual digital suspects but Kindle has this plus several story collections.
Born March 21, 1947 — Don Markstein. He was the creator and sole maintainer of Don Markstein's Toonpedia which is subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge. It is an encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation started in 2001. He said, "The basic idea is to cover the entire spectrum of American cartoonery." (Died 2012.)
Born March 21, 1956 — Teresa Nielsen Hayden, 64. She is a consulting editor for Tor Books and is well known for her and husband, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Making Light superb weblog, Back in the Eighties, they published the Izzard fanzine. And she has three pieces in The Essential Bordertown, edited by Delia Sherman and Terri Windling.
Born March 21, 1985 — Sonequa Martin-Green, 35. She currently plays Michael Burnham on Discovery which is now I believe in its third series. She had a brief recurring role as Tamara in Once Upon a Time, and a much longer recurring role on The Walking Dead as Sasha Williams but I've never seen her there as zombies hold no interest to me. Well Solomon Grundy does… And she was in the Shockwave, Darkside film.
The last cartoon in this daily dose of Far Side classics involves a very subtle genre movie reference.
Mother Goose and Grimm speculates about what happened to the late, great Mr. Peanut when he reached the afterlife.
(11) COMIC BOOK EVENT POSTPONED. Free Comic Book Day is also a casualty of the coronavirus outbreak — "Free Comic Book Day 2020 Postponed".
As the impact and spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to evolve, Diamond Comic Distributors is aware that Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) will be impacted to varying degrees throughout the world. With that in mind, Diamond Comic Distributors has made the difficult decision to postpone the event to a date later in the Summer.
"The severity and timing of the impact of the COVID-19 virus can't be predicted with any certainty, but the safety of our retailer partners and comic book fans is too important to risk. As always, we appreciate your enthusiasm for and support of the comic industry's best event and look forward to celebrating with you later in the Summer," said Diamond Founder and CEO, Steve Geppi.
Free Comic Book Day 2020 offers a selection of 47 titles available absolutely free at participating local comic shops across the United States and around the world….
(12) TOO LATE THE PHYSICIAN. AP reports: "China exonerates doctor reprimanded for warning of virus".
China has exonerated a doctor who was officially reprimanded for warning about the coronavirus outbreak and later died of the disease, a startling admission of error by the ruling Communist Party that generally bodes no challenges to its authority.
The party's top disciplinary body said the police force in Wuhan had revoked its admonishment of Dr. Li Wenliang that had included a threat of arrest.
It also said a "solemn apology" had been issued to Li's family and that two police officers, identified only by their surnames, had been issued "disciplinary punishments" for the original handling of the matter.
(13) ESCAPE. Atlas Obscura illustrates "How Soviet Science Magazines Fantasized About Life in Outer Space".
A tall stele rises from a deeply cratered surface, casting a long, ominous shadow past a row of smaller towers. Straight lines connect the structures to each other, like streets on a map or the projected moves in a game of cosmic chess. The Earth floats serenely in the dark sky, next to the logo that reads Tekhnika—molodezhi, Russian for Technology for the Youth, a Soviet popular science magazine that launched in 1933. The magazine cover, from 1969, illustrated an article highlighting photographs from Luna 9, the Soviet unmanned spacecraft that was the first to survive a landing on the Moon a few years earlier.
This imagined moonscape is one of more than 250 otherworldly images from the upcoming, visually delightful book, Soviet Space Graphics: Cosmic Visions from the USSR, by Alexandra Sankova, director and founder of the Moscow Design Museum, which collaborated on the book with her.
(14) SEEN YOU SOMEWHERE BEFORE. ScreenRant matches up "10 Pairs of Famous Movies That Used The Same Set".
5 Blazing Saddles & John Carter – Vasquez Rocks
Key examples of both include Blazing Saddles, which used the rocks to portray the harsh terrain of the Western desert, and John Carter, which used them to convey the harsh terrain of Mars.
Speaking of Star Trek, one of the first uses of this location was in the original series, when Kirk had to go down to an alien planet and battle a lizard-human to death. The episode made the locale a common go-to for Westerns and science fiction films looking to create foreign landscapes.
(15) LAURENTIANS, REASSEMBLE! BBC reports "Diamond samples in Canada reveal size of lost continent".
Canadian scientists have discovered a fragment of an ancient continent, suggesting that it was 10% larger than previously thought.
They were studying diamond samples from Baffin Island, a glacier-covered land mass near Greenland, when they noticed a remnant of North Atlantic Craton.
Cratons are ancient, stable parts of the Earth's continental crust.
The North American Craton stretched from present-day Scotland to North America and broke apart 150m years ago.
Scientists chanced on the latest evidence as they examined exploration samples of kimberlite, a rock that often contains diamonds, from Baffin Island.
(16) YIELD OF THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. The outbreak inspired France24's English-language service to look at the ways genre creators have already thought about the problem in "Dystopia vs reality: Sci-fi movies are helping us gain a critical outlook on society."
As COVID-19 spreads throughout the world, we take at a look at certain sci-fi movies and dystopian novels that had perhaps predicted certain consequences of such an outbreak. In this edition, we also explore the influence and the critical outlook that TV series can have on science and innovation but also politics and society at large.
(17) NO STATUE OF LIMITATIONS? I don't feel too broken up about the predicament as stated in the NBC Sports headline, but they did get me to click and find out about the "curse" – maybe you will too. "Coronavirus could prevent Hanshin Tigers from breaking the Curse of the Colonel".
…The finger-lickin' curse was placed on the team following their triumph in the 1985 Japan Series over the Seibu Lions. Revelers took to the streets of Osaka in celebration of their favorite team's first championship, and many of them gathered on Ebisu Bridge for a familiar ritual.
Japanese baseball fans are like soccer fans. They don't stoically sit in the grandstand and only make noise when prompted to by organ players or jumbotrons. They have chants and songs for all sorts of occasions and for every player, with brass instrumental accompaniments. Japanese baseball, you see, actually encourages fun.
So there upon the bridge, they sang the songs for each of the victorious players and selected a member of the crowd who most looked like each of the players, and gave them the honor of jumping down into the canal below. This was all well and good until they got to Randy Bass, who had just won the series MVP award for the Tigers. There weren't any Caucasian guys in the crowd, so the revelers purloined a statue of Colonel Sanders from outside of a nearby KFC and tossed it into the canal.
This has since been regarded as a karmically poor decision, as the Tigers proceeded to finish under .500 for the next 18 years.
The idea that the team had been cursed by making the Colonel sleep with the fishes quickly spread. Numerous attempts were made to recover the statue to no avail, and the proprietor of the KFC outlet was apologized to, but nothing could seem to cure the team's misfortune….
[Thank to Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kenned, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Michael Toman, Rich Lynch, Alan Baumler, Mlex, Alasdair Stuart, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Alasdair Stuart, Concentric, Eastercon, Jeff VanderMeer, K. Tempest Bradford, Lou Antonelli, Publishers Weekly, Rod Serling
Media Birthday Christmas Party
Compiled by Cat Eldridge:
Born December 25, 1924 — Rod Serling. Best remembered for the original and certainly superior Twilight Zone and Night Gallery with the former winning an impressive three Hugos. He's also the screenwriter or a co-screenwriter for Seven Days in May, a very scary film indeed, as well as The New People series, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Town Has Turned to Dust, UFOs: Past, Present, and Future and Planet of the Apes. ISDB lists a lot of published scripts and stories by him. (Died 1975.)
December 25, 1965 — BBC's Doctor Who aired the very first of its holiday episodes "The Feast Of Steven". Running about twenty-four minutes, this First Doctor story survives only in stills and video fragments. It's worth noting that Jean Marsh who was once married to future Third Doctor Jon Pertwee was a cast member here as Sara Kingdom who BBC does not consider a Companion.
December 25, 1992 — Roald Dahl's The BFG premiered on ITV in the U.K. It's based on his decades-old novel of that name. It was directed by Brian Cosgrove and scripted by John Hambley. The film was dedicated to animator George Jackson as he had worked on quite a few Cosgrove Hall productions prior to his passing some years earlier. This film is also the last and only posthumous role of Ballard Berkeley, the voice of the Head of the Army, who died four years earlier. Well received by critics and viewers alike, it's now a cult classic (don't groan) with a 65% rating among reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
December 25, 1999 — The film that is an acknowledged homage to Trek, Galaxy Quest premiered. It's directed by Dean Parisot from a script by David Howard and Robert Gordon. It has a cast of Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, and Daryl Mitchell. Chicon 2000 would of course award the Hugo it deserved (yes, I'm biased) beating out The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich and The Iron Giant.
December 25, 2005 – Doctor Who "The Christmas Invasion" premiered. This episode features the first full-episode appearance of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and is also the first specifically produced Doctor Who Christmas special in the series history as the ones before were considered just part of a series. It included Companion Rose Tyler as played by Billie Piper and Rose's mother, Jackie, as played by Camille Coduri.
December 25, 2008 — The Spirit premiered. It was written and directed by Frank Miller and starred Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson, Dan Lauria, Paz Vega, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson. It's based as you know on Will Eisner's most excellent The Spirit. To say it bombed would be an understatement as it lost tens of millions of dollars, critics for the most part really didn't like it and it currently has a rating of 14% among reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
Posted in Like Show Business | Tagged Cat Eldridge, Doctor Who, Galaxy Quest, Roald Dahl, Rod Serling, The Spirit, Will Eisner
Pixel Scroll 11/9/19 You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Pixel Scrolls
Posted on November 9, 2019 by Mike Glyer
(1) VIEW TRANSIT OF MERCURY ON MONDAY. These occur on average about 13 times each century. The next one won't be until the year 2032. Let EclipseWise tell you about Monday's event in "2019 Transit of Mercury".
On Monday, 2019 November 11, Mercury will transit the Sun for the first time since 2016. The transit or passage of a planet across the face of the Sun is a relatively rare occurrence. As seen from Earth, only transits of Mercury and Venus are possible….
Observing the Transit
Since Mercury is only 1/194 of the Sun's apparent diameter, a telescope with a magnification of 50x or more is recommended to watch this event. The telescope must be suitably equipped with adequate filtration to ensure safe solar viewing.
(2) SUPERNATURAL EPISODE RECAP. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the latest episode of Supernatural a character was introduced who said she made her living as "the number-one purveyor of non-authorized 'Supernatural' collectibles on Etsy." She also wrote fiction set in the Supernatural universe, although it wasn't clear if this was fan fiction or professional fiction. But what made the fiction distinctive was that instead of the typical Supernatural episode, which has, for 15 thunderous seasons, pitted Sam and Dean Winchester against vampires, assorted monsters, and the forces of Hell itself, the fan fiction had the Winchester brothers doing laundry and other chores. This made the stories very popular.
The episode didn't do much with the main character other than having her deal with another character who was struggling with writer's block. "The only way to deal with writer's block is to write," she said.
This is the first TV episode I've seen where fan fiction characters were referred to in the episode…
(3) THE NEW NUMBER TWO. When John Hertz looked at Walter Day's Science Fiction trading cards he noticed that a photo of Isaac Asimov appears on both Asimov's and Arthur C. Clarke's cards in the online gallery. It brought to mind an anecdote about the two authors which is retold in the "Isaac Asimov FAQ" at Stason.org.
5.5 What is the Asimov-Clarke treaty?
The Asimov-Clarke Treaty of Park Avenue, put together as Asimov and Clarke were travelling down Park Avenue in New York while sharing a cab ride, stated that Asimov was required to insist that Arthur C. Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Isaac Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second best for himself). Thus the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three reads "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer".
(4) SIGHTS TO SEE. Fanac.org's Joe Siclari called attention to recent additions to their online collection, photos from the 1959 Worldcon, and scans of calendars featuring work by two great fanartists, George Barr and Tim Kirk.
Thanks to Karol DeVore Sissom, we are scanning photos from the collecton of Howard DeVore. Today, we put up 19 photos from Detention from Howard's collection.Scans by Joe Siclari. http://www.fanac.org/worldcon/Detention/w59-p00.html.
We also added two calendars today, one from 1960 (George Barr) and the other from 1969 (Tim Kirk). They're now in a directory set aside for calendars, and I'm sure there will be more as we go forward. Scans by Joe Siclari. You can see it at: http://fanac.org/fanzines/Calendars/.
(5) CAREER CHANGE. "In today's political climate, battling supervillains might seem an easier gig" — "X-Men's 'Rogue' is now a Liberal MP"and The Star has the story.
Actor-turned-politician Lenore Zann is finding a second act in politics just as one of her most well-known roles finds a second life on the streaming screen.
Zann, a longtime New Democrat MLA from Nova Scotia, arrived in Ottawa this week as a newly elected Liberal MP.
Rogue, the character Zann voiced in the iconic 90s X-Men: The Animated Series, will be on Disney's new streaming service along with the rest of the superhero team when that service launches in Canada next week….
(6) MALTIN PODCAST. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In Leonard and Jessie Maltin's podcast with James Gray, they talk about cosplay beginning at minute 14, when Gray asks, "At what point did adults start dressing up like Captain America at Comic-Con?" and then segue into Martin Scorsese's complaint about the MCU films not being cinema. Gray argues that the decline in the humanities in the past decade meant that more young people don't have as deep a knowledge of film as previous generations do. At minute 20, they switch to deep and interesting film talk.
Gray never discusses why he decided to make a sf film with Ad Astra, although he did say he enjoyed working with Donald Sutherland.
Also, Leonard Maltin revealed at the end of the podcast that he always sits through the credits because "the movie isn't over until you've been threatened with civil and criminal prosecution."
(7) MEET MARY SUE. The Rite Gud podcast introduces listeners to a bit of fanspeak in "Writing Mary Sues, or What Even IS a Mary Sue?". Go direct to the podcast here.
In this episode, special guest Jennifer Albright of Have You Seen This? drops by to talk about Mary Sues, a term used to describe an overly-perfect female character created as a self-insertion wish fulfillment vehicle for the author. The discussion traces the expression Mary Sue back to its origin in Star Trek fanfiction and tries to grapple with its current usage. Does Mary Sue mean anything anymore? Is it a misogynistic term? Is Rey from Star Wars a Mary Sue? Is James Bond a Mary Sue? Does it really matter if a character is a Mary Sue?
(8) BOOKS FRANK MILLER LOVES. Shelf Awareness brings you "Reading with… Frank Miller", best known for Daredevil, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and 300.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, because he went for impossible adventure.
Your top five authors:
Isaac Asimov: He was the godfather of modern science fiction. He took us beyond the rocket ships and bug-eyed monsters.
Raymond Chandler: For his urban romantic poetry that celebrated 1940s Los Angeles.
Dashiell Hammett: His town was San Francisco; his dialogue was clipped, yet wildly evocative. His heroes were tough and very, very alone.
Dorothy B. Hughes: She brought a distinctly feminine edge to the hard-boiled genre and, in her own way, was ready to take us to darker places than any of the rest.
Mickey Spillane: For his pounding and frenetic portrait of New York City in the post-World War II era.
(9) URBAN MYTH. Snopes debunks "The Strange Case of Time Traveling Rudolph Fentz" – for a very genre-related reason.
In 1950, a New York City police officer who was working missing-persons cases examined the body of an approximately 30-year-old man that was brought into the morgue. The man had shown up in the middle of Times Square at 11:15 p.m. that evening, "gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he'd never seen them before," then was quickly hit and killed by cab when he tried to cross a street against the traffic lights.
The pockets of the deceased's clothing held multiple pieces of coinage and currency of forms that had not been produced for several decades, yet many of them were in mint condition. His possessions also included items from types of businesses that no longer existed in New York City (i.e., a bill from a livery stable and a brass slug from a saloon), a letter postmarked in 1876, and cards bearing the name Rudolph Fentz with an address on Fifth Avenue….
(10) SERLING DOCUMENTARY. The Hollywood Reporter learned from a film that will hit theaters next week that "'Twilight Zone' Creator Rod Serling Feared He'd Be Forgotten".
Rod Serling remains one of the more influential writers in the annals of science fiction. As creator of The Twilight Zone, he took took viewers to strange dimensions and pushed the boundaries of what the genre could do. Yet, part of him feared he would not leave a lasting legacy. That's one of the topics tackled in Remembering Rod Serling, a new documentary that will be unveiled Nov. 14 in theaters via Fathom Events to celebrate The Twilight Zone's 60th anniversary.
Born November 9, 1886 — Ed Wynn. He appeared on The Twilight Zone in "One for the Angels" which Sterling wrote specifically for him. He appeared one more time on the series in, "Ninety Years Without Slumbering". He provided the voice of the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland and played The Toymaker in Babes in Toyland. No doubt his best-remembered film appearance was in Mary Poppins as Uncle Albert. Bet you can name the scene he's best remembered for! (Died 1966.)
Born November 9, 1921 — Alfred Coppel. Have I ever mentioned how much I love pulp? Everything from the writers to the artwork to the magazines themselves are so, so cool. And this writer was one of the most prolific such authors of the Fifties and Sixties. That he was also a SF writer is an added bonus. Indeed, his first science fiction story was "Age of Unreason" in a 1947 Amazing Stories. Under the pseudonym of Robert Cham Gilman, he wrote the Rhada sequence of galactic space opera novels aimed at a young adult market. Wiki claims he writing under A.C. Marin as well but I cannot find any record of this. (Died 2004.)
Born November 9, 1924 — Alan Caillou. The Head in the Quark series. If you have to ask… Last role was Count Paisley in Ice Pirates and his first was on the One Step Beyond series. (Died 2006.)
Born November 9, 1924 — Lawrence T. Shaw. A Hugo Award-winning fan, author, editor and literary agent. In the Forties and Fifties, Larry Shaw edited Nebula, Infinity Science Fiction and Science Fiction Adventures. He received a Special Committee Award during the 1984 Worldcon for lifetime achievement as an editor. (Died 1985.)
Born November 9, 1954 — Rob Hansen, 65. British fan, active since the Seventies who has edited and co-edited numerous fanzines including his debut production Epsilon. And he was the 1984 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate. His nonfiction works such as Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK: 1930-1980, lasted updated just a few years ago, are invaluable.
Born November 9, 1973 — Gabrielle Miller, 46. Her first genre series was Highlander: The Series. And yes, she had long red hair in it. That's followed by M.A.N.T.I.S., Outer Limits, X-Files, The Sentinel, Dead Man's Gun, Stargate SG-1, Viper, Poltergeist, Welcome to Paradox… oh, you get the idea.
Born November 9, 1974 — Ian Hallard, 45. He was on Doctor Who as Alan-a-Dale in "Robot of Sherwood", a Twelfth Doctor story; in Sherlock as Mr Crayhill in "The Reichenbach Fall"; and he played one of the original directors of Doctor Who, Richard Martin, in An Adventure in Space and Time. And he wrote "The Big Four" episode with Mark Gatiss for the Agatha Christie series.
(12) JFK. Gideon Marcus (Galactic Journey) is lining up fans who are interested in a free alternate history story.
What if JFK hadn't been all we lost on Nov. 22, 1963?
Follow, like, and retweet/share for a FREE copy of our newest short story: "Sad All Over"
Scheduled for release Nov. 22, 2019. pic.twitter.com/CBiAmGBKVC
— Journey Press (@PressJourney) November 1, 2019
(13) C.S. LEWIS BIOGRAPHY. Publishers Weekly does a Q&A with Harry Lee Poe: "New Biography Examines C. S. Lewis's Earliest Reading Life ".
Harry Lee Poe, a professor of faith and culture at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., pores over the first 20 years of C. S. Lewis's life in Becoming C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis (1898-1918), the first of a three-volume biography of Lewis by Poe.
Why did you decide to look so closely at these first 20 years of Lewis's life?
Virtually all of Lewis's biographers have puzzled over why he devoted most of his spiritual biography, Surprised by Joy, to his first 20 years. As I first began to read the letters of young Jack Lewis from the time when he first went away to school, I realized why Lewis thought his childhood and youth were so important in his conversion. During this period, he developed all of his major tastes about what he enjoyed in life and what he hated. Many of the ideas that he would pursue in both his scholarly work and his popular writings have their genesis in his teenage years. Whether books like The Allegory of Love and A Preface to Paradise Lost, or The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity, many of the ideas found in these books were topics of Lewis's interest in letters to [lifelong friend] Arthur Greeves when he was 16 and 17….
(14) THEY DIDN'T JUST HANG AROUND. BBC reports "'Astonishing' fossil ape discovery revealed".
Fossils of a newly-discovered ancient ape could give clues to how and when walking on two legs evolved.
The ability to walk upright is considered a key characteristic of being human.
The ape had arms suited to hanging in the trees, but human-like legs.
It may have walked along branches and even on the ground some 12 million years ago, pushing back the timeline for bipedal walking, say researchers.
Until now the earliest fossil evidence for walking upright dates back to six million years ago.
(15) VINTAGE MOONDUST UNCORKED. Smithsonian Magazine: "NASA Opens Pristine Tube of Moon Dust From the Apollo Missions". Tagline: "Studying the lunar material will help scientists understand the best way to analyze new samples from future missions to the moon"
NASA scientists recently opened a sample tube of rock and soil collected on the moon during Apollo 17. The tube remained unopened for nearly 47 years, and it is the first time NASA scientists have broken in to a fresh moon sample in over four decades. Researchers are using the lunar dirt to test next-generation sampling tools in preparation for the next time humans fly to the moon.
The sample tube holds about 15 ounces of lunar regolith, or loose rocky material from the surface. Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt collected the material during mission in December of 1972, NASA's last crewed mission to the moon. The sample, 73002, was taken from a two-foot-long tube that the astronauts drove into a landslide deposit in a feature called the Lara Crater. A second sample, 73001, is scheduled to be opened in January.
(16) A WIDE CANVAS. SYFY Wire's video series is after big game this time — "Behind the Panel: On the hunt for Treasury Editions".
In the latest installment of SYFY WIRE's Behind the Panel, we're roaming the halls of New York Comic Con while searching for an elusive Treasury Edition: MGM's Marvelous Wizard of Oz. True story: That was the first-ever collaboration between Marvel and DC. But their second collaboration was a true game changer: Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man.
That's right, the unthinkable crossover already happened in 1976, with a follow-up sequel in 1981. Only the Treasury Edition format could fully capture the twin heroic icons of comics as they had their inevitable battle before their equally inevitable team-up to save the day. For the time, Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man was the comic book equivalent of a blockbuster movie. That Treasury Edition is long out of print, but fans may be lucky enough to spot it at comic conventions.
(17) FROM THE LETTERZINE ZEEN. Kim Huett shares another gem from his files with readers of Doctor Strangemind. "One of the reasons I find nosing through old fanzines so worthwhile are the contemporary reactions to stories and authors. It's always fun to discover reviews of the big names back when they were just starting out. As you can probably imagine I was most pleased to find what I suspect was the first critical reaction to Ursula Le Guin." — "In the Beginning"
… Take for example consider the following comments by US fan, Earl Evers, who reviewed the contents of the April 1964 issue of Fantastic Stories of Imagination in his fanzine, Zeen #2 within weeks of it hitting the shelves. In the process of reviewing this magazine, story by story, he had the following to say about what was one of Ursula K. Le Guin's earliest published stories…
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Kim Huett also shared this link for… reasons:
Here's an #Owlkitty video which more than adequately explains exactly why Tolkien didn't feature cats in either Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. Yes, the right cat would make a great Balrog or an excellent Nazgal mount except cats have minds of their own and I can't imagine Sauron would like that (besides, they would stare right back at him and it doesn't take an All Seeing Eye to find that sort of behavior annoying):
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, John Hertz, Rich Lynch, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, RS Benedict, Olav Rokne, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Kim Huett, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Arthur C. Clarke, C.S. Lewis, DC Comics, Detention, Earl Evers, Fanac.org, Frank Miller, George Barr, Gideon Marcus, Harry Lee Poe, Isaac Asimov, Joe Siclari, Kim Huett, Leonard Maltin, Martin Morse Wooster, NASA, Rod Serling, Supernatural, Tim Kirk, X-Men
Pixel Scroll 9/28/19 "This Title Is Too Hot" Said Glyerlocks. "And This One Is Too Long!"
Posted on September 28, 2019 by Mike Glyer
(1) HAUNTING VERSES. Science Fiction Poetry Association's Halloween readings can be listened to at the link.
SFPA's Halloween Poetry Reading shares our enjoyment of speculative poetry with a broader audience, increases awareness of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and promotes the individual poets who take part. All SFPA members are welcome to submit one audio file per person of themselves reading one of their spooky, haunting, ghoulish, or humorous Halloween or horror poems.
(2) HE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE. Timothy the Talking Cat chooses the nuclear option for an answer to the question "How Come Cats are All the Same Size?" at Camestros Felapton.
….Here I am at the Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire or "CERN" in Geneva. Only here at the pinnacle of modern sub-atomic particle research can scientists determine the minute differences in cat length. To better understand our question I have taken two dogs and placed them within the seventeen mile long Large Hadron Collider. Within this massive apparatus, the two dogs will be accelerated to extraordinarily high speeds until, somewhere close to the Swiss-France border the two dogs will collide resulting in a cascade of elementary dog-particles.
(3) ADDAMS CHOW. The International House of Pancakes is on the movie's marketing bandwagon — "New! Addams Family Menu".
Our new Addams Family menu has a Kooky Kids Combo that will make you do the mambo. And for a limited time, kids eat free every day from 4-10pm with the purchase of an adult entree!
Don't forget to see @MeetTheAddams in theaters October 11. pic.twitter.com/MNUZVgYcq8
— IHOP (@IHOP) September 20, 2019
(4) OH, WHAT A FINANCIAL WEB WE WEAVE. Anthony D'Alessandro, in the Deadline story "Spider-Man Back In Action As Sony Agrees To Disney Co-Fi For New Movie, Return To MCU: How Spidey's Web Got Untangled" says that Sony and Disney made a pact whereby Disney puts up a quarter of the cost for the third Tom Holland Spider-Man film and gets a quarter of the profits, returning Spider-Man to the MCU for Spider-Man 3 and one other MCU film.
This is also a big win for Sony here in continuing a series that will likely give it another $1 billion-plus-grossing film along with an 8% distribution fee or higher. Additionally, the deal keeps intact the creative steering of Disney's Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, who led two of the best and most profitable fan-pleasing pics in the Spidey film canon to $2 billion worldwide.
(5) TWILIGHT BEEB. BBC Radio 4's documentary You're Entering Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone is available to listen to at the website for another four weeks.
October 1959, America was deep into the 'age of unease' as viewers took their first steps into 'another dimension, not only of sight & sound but of mind. Their 'next stop, The Twilight Zone.
…Rod Serling, America's most famous television playwright, astonished people with his announcement that he was to explore the realms of science fiction and fantasy in a new anthology show. Like Dennis Potter starting up Dr Who. But Serling, an impeccable liberal haunted by war, racial strife & the possibilities of nuclear Armageddon smuggled stories of conscience, doubt and possibility into 5 seasons of a remarkable show that has never died & has been revisited for a fourth time with Jordan Peele as host. In truth, nothing can match a realm of the American weird that Serling made uniquely his own.
In this special Radio 4 Extra documentary Alan Dein hears from Serling's family, veteran directors Richard Donner & John Frankenheimer, actors Earl Holliman (star of the first ever episode) & Jean Marsh as well as the writers Jonathan Lethem & David Thomson & Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker. 2 Twilight Zone radio episodes accompany the documentary.
(6) JOKER AUDIENCE WARNING. Dell Cameron, in "U.S. Military Issues Warning to Troops About Incel Violence at Joker Screenings [Updated]" at Gizmodo, says the military has issued an warning to troops (which they obtained) saying that screenings of Joker could be attacked by incels and to be careful when attending them.
The U.S. military has warned service members about the potential for a mass shooter at screenings of the Warner Bros. film Joker, which has sparked wide concerns from, among others, the families of those killed during the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado.
The U.S. Army confirmed on Tuesday that the warning was widely distributed after social media posts related to extremists classified as "incels," were uncovered by intelligence officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
September 28, 1858 — First photograph of a comet.
September 28, 1990 — I Come In Peace (aka Dark Angel) premiered. Starring Dolph Lundgren, it scores 31% on Rotten Tomatoes.
September 28, 2012 — Looper premiered. Starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt, it scored 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and lost to The Avengers for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, Hugo Award in 2013.
Born September 28, 1909 — Al Capp. Cartoonist responsible of course for the Li'l Abner strip. Is it genre? Of course. (Died 1979.)
Born September 28, 1913 — Ellis Peters. Writer of two excellent ghost novels, The City Lies Four-Square and By This Strange Fire. These alas are not available on iBooks or Kindle. (Died 1995.)
Born September 28, 1923 — William Windom. Commodore Matt Decker, commander of the doomed USS Constellation in "The Doomsday Machine" episode, one of the best Trek stories told. Norman Spinrad was the writer. Other genre appearances include being the President on Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Major in "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" episode of Twilight Zone and Ben Victor in the "The Night of the Flying Pie Plate" story of The Wild Wild West. This is a sampling only! (Died 2012.)
Born September 28, 1926 — Bernard Behrens. He voiced Obi-Wan Kenobi in the BBC radio adaptations of the original trilogy. He also was Gustav Helsing in Dracula: The TV Series, played several different characters on the War of the Worlds and The Bionic Woman series and was even in a Roger Corman film, Galaxy of Terror. The latter scored 33% at Rotten Tomatoes begging the question whether any film he did score well there? (Died 2012.)
Born September 28, 1934 — Janet Horsburgh. She's likely best remembered as Katie O'Gill in Darby O'Gill and the Little People. She was also Anne Pilgrim in The Trollenberg Terror and Jeannie Craig in The Day the Earth Caught Fire. (Died 1972.)
Born September 28, 1935 — Ronald Lacey. He's very best remembered as Gestapo agent Major Arnold Ernst Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark. (A series where they should've stopped with first film.) he's actually in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as Heinrich Himmler though it's uncredited role. One of his first genre appearances was as the Strange Young Man in The Avengers episode "The Joker". In that same period, he was the village idiot in The Fearless Vampire Killers which actually premiered as The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck. And he's in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension as President Widmark. This is but a thin wafer of his genre roles so do feel free to add your favorite. (Died 1991.)
Born September 28, 1946 — Jeffrey Jones, 73. I see his first SFF role was as Mayor Lepescu in Transylvania 6-5000 which followed by being in Howard the Duck as Dr. Walter Jenning / Dark Overlord. He recovered from that movie flop by being Charles Deetz in Beetlejuice, and Dick Nelson in Mom and Dad Save the World. He's Uncle Crenshaw Little in Stuart Little, and I see he shows in Sleepy Hollow as Reverend Steenwyck. He's does series one-offs in The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, Amazing Stories and The Outer Limits.
Born September 28, 1950 — John Sayles, 69. I really hadn't considered him a major player in genre films but he is. He's writer and director The Brother from Another Planet and The Secret of Roan Inish; andhe wrote the scripts of Piranha, Alligator, Battle Beyond the Stars, The Howling, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Spiderwick Chronicles.
Born September 28, 1966 — Maria Pilar Canals-Barrera, 53. She's getting Birthday Honors for being the voice of Hawkgirl on Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. She's also voiced Commissioner Ellen Yindel in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and voiced Rio Morales, the mother of the Spider-Man, Miles Morales, on the Ultimate Spider-Man series. I just picked this to watch as it's look very good.
Born September 28, 1967 — Mira Sorvino, 51. She's Sara in Falling Skies in a recurring role in the last two seasons, and she's Amy Whelan in Intruders. She voices Ingrid Cortez on Spy Kids: Mission Critical, and she's Tess Chaplin in The Last Templar.
(9) FUTURE TENSE. At Slate, the new Future Tense story is Marcy Kelly's "Double Spiral". Tagline: "Read a new short story about genetic testing, privacy, and profit."
She was lucky.
Lucky, and then unlucky, and then lucky again, she thought, guiltily, seeing this child on the subway.
It was obvious, instantly. The shape of his head. The low-set mouth. The boy's mother turned toward Rada and she looked away, not wanting to be caught staring.
The response essay, "Crossing the Germline" is by Josephine Johnston, an expert on the ethical, legal, and policy implications of biomedical technologies.
…Primarily as a result of our seemingly benign interest in family trees, several U.S. companies have already amassed proprietary databases of DNA from 26 million customers. There are an estimated 15 million samples in Ancestry's database, while 23andMe says it has tested 10 million customers. Having learned that a minority of traits, such as Huntington's disease or cystic fibrosis, can be explained by single genetic differences, scientists are now bringing big data approaches to genome sequencing to calculate "polygenic risk scores" quantifying the likelihood that people will develop schizophrenia, graduate from high school, or score highly on IQ tests.
(10) PATREON. WIRED's article "Jack Conte, Patreon, and the Plight of the Creative Class" by Jonah Weiner, a profile of Patreon creator Jack Conte, includes this interesting statistic —
The most popular musician on Patreon is the extremely online singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer, who has more than 15,000 patrons and doesn't disclose her earnings.
…By and large, he (Conte) says, Patreon privileges those creators who tend toward higher-frequency output and whose fans regard them as (mistake them for?) dear friends. 'Amanda Palmer loves her fans and they love her,,' Conte adds. 'They actually feel love for her. That's a particular type of artists. Not every artist wants that vulnerable, close, open relationship with their fans. Like, really tactically: Do you run fan-art contests> Do you respond to comments on Twitter> Do you sell soap–do a weird fun thing with your fans then send them a thing in the mail, thanking them for what they contributed>' If not, don't count on making your rent via Patreon.
(11) TODAY'S CONSPIRACY THEORY. Someone who thought it would enhance the paranoid theme of his latest blog post asked why Dan Simmons' official site today is displaying the message "We'll be up and running soon" – essentially an "under construction" sign. The blogger wonders, did someone hack it to show displeasure about the author's Thunberg comments? Maybe the blogger's lack of research is what should be suspected. The Internet Archive shows this message has been on Simmons' front page for over a year — https://web.archive.org/web/20180804122809/http://dansimmons.com/.
(12) SKELETON IN THE GARDEN. Yahoo! News learned the truth is out there – in this case, buried under a pile of dirt: "Family dig up Jurassic fossil hidden by 'god-fearing' Victorian ancestors for 170 years".
A man whose Victorian ancestors buried a giant Jurassic fossil because it threatened their religious beliefs has put it on display 170 years later.
Cider brandy maker Julian Temperley knew that a Jurassic period 90 million-year-old ichthyosaurus fossil was buried in the garden at his family's home in Thorney, Somerset.
But his god-fearing ancestors kept it hidden for years after its discovery in 1850, worried they would be 'denying God' by flashing it around.
When recent flooding forced him to dig the stunning relic up for good, Mr Temperley paid £3,000 for it to be cleaned – and he's now having its image printed on his cider brandy bottles.
(13) FIGURES. Titan Merchandise previewed their DC Hero Titans, which will be showcased in Booth #2142 at New York Comic-Con starting October 3.
(14) MORE UNDERWATER REAL ESTATE. LAist heralds a new attraction in Downtown Los Angeles: "A Childhood Obsession Led To This New Atlantis-Themed DTLA Escape Room".
How a childhood obsession led to DTLA's new Atlantis escape room:https://t.co/TAfkaR9PtN
— LAist (@LAist) September 28, 2019
There are more than 2,000 escape rooms across the country, with hundreds available here in Los Angeles. One of the most popular homes for escape rooms, Escape Room L.A., opens one of their most ambitious projects to date this weekend: Atlantis.
Escape room designer John Hennessy said that the idea for this room has been brewing for a long time.
…We went to a media preview and tried out the new game. The story begins with an eccentric professor who, like Hennessy, is obsessed with Atlantis. The professor has discovered how to open a portal to Atlantis, with your mission involving a search for the mysterious MacGuffin of the Poseidon Crystal.
You start inside the professor's office, solving clues to activate his machine and open up the portal. The professor gifts your group with the ability to breathe underwater through a special hand stamp (just go with us here) and four Atlantean pendants.
Note: whenever you start out with an item in an escape room, you're always going to need to use that item somewhere else. A door opens, and you're whisked away to Atlantis.
[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, John A Arkansawyer, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson, who found one that was "Just right."]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Atlantis, Camestros Felapton, Dan Simmons, dinosaurs, Future Tense, Marcy Kelly, Patreon, Rod Serling, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, Spider-Man, The Addams Family, Timothy the Talking Cat, Titans, Twilight Zone