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Tag Archives: Stephen Graham Jones
Pixel Scroll 11/24/20 Do I Dare Disscroll The Pixelverse?
Posted on November 24, 2020 by Mike Glyer
(1) GRATING EXPECTATIONS. Piper J. Drake analyzes readers' reactions based on default views of history in "Marginalized people living varied and fulfilled lives in genre fiction is historically accurate" at the SFWA Blog.
Earlier this year, an author of color announced the acquisition of her new historical romance series. In direct reply to her tweet, someone publicly questioned the historical accuracy of the series. The author of color was prepared because she knew she would be challenged about "historical accuracy" and she provided an organized response. The challenger deleted her tweet but doubled down on her right to question the author and circled back to her own feed to gain sympathizer support for the attitude she was getting from the author of color because she "just asked a question." For those sympathizers, I broke down the original challenge to demonstrate why it wasn't just a question but, in reality, an insidious attack.
Let's unpack this, because one might wonder why we're even discussing historical accuracy in science fiction and fantasy. After all, these genres are fiction. Accuracy doesn't need to come into play.
But here's the thing: when the question of historical accuracy is raised regarding fiction, it's rarely — if ever — actually about facts or history.
It's about the default, the norm.
It's about what some people consider to be true simply because they've never questioned those assumptions, and the reality they default to is often wrong….
(2) SERPELL ON AFROFUTURISM. The Huntington has posted "Black Matter", in which Namwali Serpell, professor of literature at Harvard, author of The Old Drift, and recent recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke award for the best science fiction novel published in the UK, discusses the origins of afrofuturism. This is the Ridge Lecture for Literature
(3) PICKING UP AFTER PICARD. Abigail Nussbaum copes with Trek-induced anxieties in "One More Adventure: Thoughts on Star Trek: Picard", which she says ends up wasting its beloved titled character.
I watched the first few episodes of Star Trek: Picard this spring, and then stopped. I could blame a lack of time, too many shows on my schedule and not enough hours to keep up with all of them (this was the reason that I similarly ended up dropping the most recent season of Legends of Tomorrow, which I wrote up on my tumblr last week). But really, the reason was that Picard made me anxious. All new Star Trek does. I find it impossible to watch these shows without the constant awareness that the people who are the franchise's current stewards have, at best, a teaspoon's-depth understanding of what it is and why it works, and I end up feeling constantly on guard against the next travesty they're sure to commit. Which also makes me kind of sick of myself, for watching like that, being unable to let go, unable to trust the story to take me where it wants to go—even if that distrust is well earned. It's for this reason, I think, that I found this summer's new animated foray into the franchise, Lower Decks, so relaxing. The show is wall-to-wall fanservice, with absolutely no pretension of doing anything new with its material. So while the result is, inevitably, uninvolving, it's also easier to trust.
Picard, in contrast, seems designed to agitate my NuTrek anxieties….
(4) CRITICS' CHOICE. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar line up their picks of the year: "2020 books: Best science fiction, fantasy and horror" in the Washington Post. The list of five opens with —
"The Only Good Indians"
By Stephen Graham Jones
Jones, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, conjures a revenge story involving friends who are haunted by a supernatural entity. The tale calls to mind classics such as "It" and "Ghost Story." Jones's take is a fresh and enticing tale — and features a memorable foe.
(5) 'TIS THE SEASON. Journey Press hopes you'll do some gift shopping off their booklist — "Received from Galactic Journey, reposted with permission", signal boosted by James Davis Nicoll.
As you may know, the book business has been hit inordinately hard by COVID. Printing and shipping have been disrupted, but more importantly, bookstores have been locked down. Those that are open have lower foot traffic for obvious and good reasons.
For presses like mine , which have prioritized brick and mortar shops over Amazon, it's been a rough time.
With the holiday season coming up, I wonder if you might consider one or more of our books as gift possibilities — for others…and yourself. Not only would you be getting some great reading material, you'd be helping me and Journey Press out at a time when we could really use some good news. I guarantee you will enjoy all of these, as will anyone you give them to:
(6) BE EARLY BIRDS. The annual "H.G. Wells Short Story Competition" offers a £500 Senior and £1,000 Junior prize and free publication of all shortlisted entries in a quality, professionally published paperback anthology.
The theme for the 2021 HG Wells Short Story Competition will be "Mask". The competition will open in early 2021, and close in July 2021.
Get started now while we wait for them to start taking submissions.
(7) RIPPLES ON THE POND. Engadget delivered the news — "The Hugo Awards will have a video game category in 2021" with a link in the last sentence to the post here – presumably the strong case was made in the comments, or the linked article by Ira Alexandre.
…As things stand, video games won't be an ongoing fixture at the Hugo Awards. That's not unusual. The awards have consistently experimented with categories. In 2002 and 2005, for instance, it gave out awards to the best websites, but hasn't done so since. The good news is that the Hugo Study Committee will consider adding a permanent Best Game or Interactive Experience category, and there's a strong case to be made for their inclusion.
On the other hand, PC Gamer is condescending in its coverage: "The Hugo Awards are getting a videogame category—but only for 2021".
…Hold on, I hear you say, haven't games been meaningful prior to early 2020? Isn't the continued growth of the gaming industry a pretty strong signifier of how many people spend a large amount of time gaming, pandemic or no?
Well, even though videogames do have a rather large audience overlap with science fiction novels, the people who actually nominate and vote for the awards may not be a prime gaming audience. These are the same people who just last year showed that when it comes to diversity, the Hugos still have some way to go, and who reference Pong in reply to their own gaming category announcement. Back in 2006, a newly-introduced videogames category to the Hugo Awards was dropped due to lack of interest.
(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
November 24, 1985 — Ewoks: The Battle for Endor premiered on ABC. It was produced and written by George Lucas. Starring Wilford Brimley, Warwick Davis, Aubree Miller, Paul Gleason and Carel Struycken, the sequel to Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure was considered mostly harmless by critics. It is treated as canon by Lucas. It holds a 51% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born November 24, 1849 – Frances Hodgson Burnett. Four novels for us including The Secret Garden, nine shorter stories; much other work outside our field including Little Lord Fauntleroy, first loved, then hated ("an awful prig"), perhaps due for re-examining. John Clute, whom I love to agree with because it's so seldom, says "The supernatural content of [SG] is slight … but the book as a whole, like the best fantasies, generates a sense of earned transformation…. 'Behind the White Brick' stands out…. has a swing and a drive … makes one regret that FHB did not write full-length fantasies." (Died 1924) [JH]
Born November 24, 1907 — Evangeline Walton. Her best known work, the Mabinogion tetralogy, was written during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and her Theseus trilogy was produced during the late 1940s. It's worth stressing Walton is best known for her four novels retelling the Welsh Mabinogi. She published her first volume in 1936 under the publisher's title of The Virgin and the Swine which is inarguably a terrible title. Although receiving glowing praise from John Cowper Powys, the book sold quite awfully and none of the other novels in the series were published at that time. Granted a second chance by Ballantine's Adult Fantasy series in 1970, it was reissued with a much better title of The Island of the Mighty. The other three volumes followed quickly. Witch House is an occult horror story set in New England and She Walks in Darkness which came out on Tachyon Press is genre as well. I think that is the extent of her genre work but I'd be delighted to be corrected. She has won a number of awards including the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, Best Novel along with The Fritz Leiber Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, Convention Award and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. (Died 1996.) (CE)
Born November 24, 1912 – Charles Schneeman. Ten covers, three hundred interiors. Here is the May 38 Astounding. Here is the Jan 40. Here is the Nov 52. Here is the Aug 68 Riverside Quarterly. This is for Gray Lensman. This is for "The Scrambler". (Died 1972) [JH]
Born November 24, 1916 – Forrest J Ackerman. (No punctuation after the J). Pioneer and indeed a founder of fandom; collector (he was the Grand Acquisitor); editor, literary agent. Famous for wordplay, he was known as 4e, 4sj, and much else. At Nycon I the first Worldcon he and Morojo – an Esperanto nickname, they were both Esperantists – wore what he called futuristicostumes, pioneering that too. Winning a Hugo for #1 Fan Personality, never given before or since, he walked off stage leaving it, saying it really should have gone to Ken Slater. For years administered the Big Heart, our highest service award. In one of his more inspired puns, called us the Imagi-Nation. (Died 2008)
Born November 24, 1942 – Alicia Austin, 78. Fan and pro artist. Three dozen covers, four hundred eighty interiors. Inkpot; one Hugo; World Fantasy Award; Guest of Honor at ConFrancisco the 51st Worldcon; more. This Program Book page shows her logograph for L.A.Con (in retrospect L.A.con I). Artbook Alicia Austin's Age of Dreams. Here is The Last Castle. Here is Solomon Leviathan's Nine Hundred Thirty-First Trip Around the World. Here is Bridging the Galaxies. [JH]
Born November 24, 1948 — Spider Robinson, 72. His first story "The Guy with the Eyes" was published in Analog February 1973. It was set in a bar called Callahan's Place, a setting for much of his later fiction. His first published novel, Telempath in 1976 was an expansion of his Hugo award-winning novella "By Any Other Name". The Stardance trilogywas co-written with his wife, Jeanne Robinson. In 2004, he began working on a seven-page 1955 novel outline by the late Heinlein to expand it into a novel. The resulting novel would be called Variable Star. Who's read it? Oh, he's certainly won Awards. More than be comfortably listed here. (CE)
Born November 24, 1949 – Jim Warren, 71. A hundred covers, two hundred twenty interiors. Artbooks The Art of Jim Warren; Painted Worlds. Here is All Flesh is Grass. Here is Jimi Hendrix. Here is a Disney-related image (JW is an official Disney artist). He is self-taught. [JH]
Born November 24, 1951 – Ruth Sanderson, 69. Eight short stories, a score of covers, two dozen interiors for us; much other work outside our field. Two Chesleys. World Fantasy Con 2011 Program Book. Here is The Princess Bride. Here is The Snow Princess. Here is The Golden Key. Here is The Twelve Dancing Princesses, in a grayscale coloring book for adults. Here is her Little Engine That Could. [JH]
Born November 24, 1957 — John Zakour, 63. For sheer pulp pleasure, I wholeheartedly recommend his Zachary Nixon Johnson PI series which he co-wrote with Larry Ganem. Popcorn reading at its very best. It's the only series of his I've read, anyone else read his other books? (CE)
Born November 24, 1957 — Denise Crosby, 63. Tasha Yar on Next Gen who got a meaningful death in "Yesterday's Enterprise". I other genre work, She was on The X-Files as a doctor who examined Agent Scully's baby. And I really like it that she was in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, as Denise, Bruno's Moll. And she's yet another Trek performer who's popped doing what I call Trek video fanfic. She's Dr. Jenna Yar in " Blood and Fire: Part 2", an episode of the only season of Star Trek: New Voyages. (CE)
Born November 24, 1957 — Jeff Noon, 63. Novelist and playwright. Prior to his relocation in 2000 to Brighton, his stories reflected in some way his native though not birth city of Manchester. The Vurt sequence whose first novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award is a very odd riff off Alice in Wonderland that Noon describes as a sequel to those works. Noon was the winner of the Astounding Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer. (CE)
Born November 24, 1965 — Shirley Henderson, 55. She was Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She was Ursula Blake in "Love & Monsters!", a Tenth Doctor story, and played Susannah in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, a film that's sf because of the metanarrative aspect. (CE)
Lio shows why you never got that flying saucer as a kid.
Lio also prompts this note to self: Avoid horror movie pop-up books.
Pearls Before Swine discusses the challenges of writing during the lockdown.
Off the Mark has an X-ray vision of a Thanksgiving Day truth.
(11) DOCTOROW. Register at the link to watch Cory Doctorow's talk on "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" — 2020 Beaverbrook Annual Lecture Part 2 on November 30 at 12:00 Eastern. A live Q&A session will follow.
His lecture, "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" will build from his recently published book of the same name, and will respond to the current state of surveillance capitalism through a critical analysis of technological and economic monopolies.
(12) CONTESTS OF NOTE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, Haben Kelati has a piece about contests for kids. She lists three of them and I thought two were pertinent.
The Geek Partnership Society has a contest for kids to write poetry, comic books, or short stories with sf or fantasy elements, with prizes being $50-75 gift cards: Writing Contest – Geek Partnership Society.
NASA has a contest where kids imagine who they'd bring on an expedition to the Moon's south pole and one piece of technology they'd leave on the Moon to help future astronauts. Three first prizes get trips to see an Artemis-1 launch and nine second prizes get tours of the Johnson Space Center. Future Engineers :: Moon Pod Essay Contest.
(13) HE WAS FIRST. "2020 National Book Festival Highlights: Gene Luen Yang" includes video of Yang's presentation.
When Gene Luen Yang was named the 2016-2018 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, the honor represented more than just recognition for his extraordinary work. It was also a profound acknowledgment of the importance of a genre that was once relegated to being mere comics.
Yang was the fifth National Ambassador, but the first graphic novelist to receive the honor.
The Library of Congress and the Children's Book Council bestow the ambassadorship on a writer for his or her contributions to young people's literature, the ability to relate to kids and teens, and a dedication to fostering children's literacy.
In "Dragon Hoops" (First Second), Yang's first nonfiction work, he turns the spotlight on his life, his family, basketball and the high school where he once taught. In "Superman Smashes the Klan" (DC Comics), a Chinese-American teenager awakens to find his house surrounded by the Klan of the Fiery Kross.
In the video Yang recorded exclusively for the Library, he speaks eloquently about the importance of libraries in disseminating stories: "Libraries are the keepers of stories. Stories define culture, right? Whether or not we have hopeful culture or a culture that's mired in despair is completely up to the stories that we tell. It's completely up to the stories that are taken care of by our libraries, that are collected and disseminated by our libraries."
(14) WELCOME TO AARP. My fellow geezers, here's a chance to play the video games of your youth without that Atari console you wouldn't have anyway because if you did you'd have sold it by now. "Atari Video Games – Classics Available To Play Online". Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong.
(15) CALCULUS OR BUST. In the Washington Post, education columnist Jay Mathews says he is re-reading Have Space Suit, Will Travel and notes that Heinlein foresaw a dominance of "progressive education," where students pick the courses of interest to them. "Progressive education hard to pin down because it's everywhere"
…It is called progressive education. It took a beating in the 1950s, particularly from conservatives like Heinlein. In his novel, he describes a future time when humans are living on the moon and exploring the solar system, but the progressive commitment to student-centered learning in the United States has led to this class schedule described by the book's hero, an ambitious high school sophomore:
"Social study, commercial arithmetic, applied English (the class had picked 'slogan writing' which was fun), handicrafts .?.?. and gym." The school has no math classes beyond algebra and geometry, so the hero's father persuades him to learn trigonometry and calculus on his own to pursue his dream of going to space.
…Heinlein died in 1988 at age 80. He might be pleasantly surprised that in the real 21st century, even at a small-twon school like the one in his book, calculus is likely to be available, as well as college-level courses in chemistry and biology and reading of real literature. My visits to schools often reveal that despite Heinlein's doubts, progressive education has deepened learning with projects and topics relevant to students' lives.
(16) IN DOUBTFUL TASTE. The New York Times wants to know "Why Were Canadians Warned Not to Let Moose Lick Their Cars?"
Visitors at a Canadian national park were greeted with a rather unusual digital road sign this weekend: "Do not let moose lick your car."
The sign caught the imagination of the internet and led to questions like:
"What happens if a moose licks your car?"
"Is it really that big of a problem?"
And, perhaps most salient: "Exactly how would you stop them?"
As it turns out, the signs were put up by officials of Jasper National Park, in … Alberta, to try to stop moose from licking road salt off idling cars — a serious problem that can present dangers to the vehicles, the drivers and the moose.
Steve Young, a spokesman for the park, said … moose usually got their salt, a vital part of their diets, from salt licks… But the animals discovered that they could get the mineral from cars splashed with road salt. (It has begun snowing in Jasper, and salt can help melt ice on roads.) continues….
Oh hi, moose. We have strict instructions about your snack habits. #jasper #Alberta ?? pic.twitter.com/xSNo7YBrXS
— Carolyn Campbell (@_CLCampbell) November 15, 2020
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In "Watch Dogs: Legion" on YouTube, Fandom Games says the future London portrayed in this series "is like now, only 20 percent more Elon Musk-ified."
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, John Hertz, Michael Toman, Darah Chavey, James Davis Nicoll, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day John A Arkansawyer.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Abigail Nussbaum, Best Video Game Hugo, Cory Doctorow, DisCon III, Gene Luen Yang, Heinlein, James Davis Nicoll, Journey Press, Lavie Tidhar, Namwali Serpell, Piper J. Drake, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Star Trek: Picard, Stephen Graham Jones, vid	| 20 Replies
Pixel Scroll 11/15/20 There Was An Old Black Hole Who Swallowed A Jovian Gas Giant, I Don't Know Why It Swallowed A Jovian Gas Giant, Perhaps It Will Implode
(1) TANTALIZING TITLES. Eric Flint says he and Griff Barber are closing in on finishing 1637: The Peacock Throne, the sequel to 1636: Mission To The Mughals. What next?
…1637: THE PEACOCK THRONE is a hell of a good novel, if I say so myself. All we have left to do is write a few chapters to conclude the story arc. THIS story arc, I should say.
Yes, there will be a sequel. I'm already pondering titles. Possibilities are:
1638: A PREGNANT PAUSE
1638: THE HAJJ IS TRICKIER THAN IT LOOKS
1638: WHAT TO DO, WHAT TO DO…
1638: GIRL, YOU ARE IN SOOOOOOO MUCH TROUBLE
1638: YOU DID WHAT?????
Muahahahahaha….
(2) ABOUT FACE. "Stranger Than Something That Is Already Strange: A Conversation with Namwali Serpell" at the LA Review of Books.
… That leads right into one of my other questions. The central claim of the book is that, rather than being all that interested in the Ideal Face, we actually "love to play with faces, to make them into art." Why do you think it is so important to emphasize art and play when thinking about the face?
I think that, when you have a very dominant model of something, like the face, you have to undo it not just through examples of things that contravene it — not just through counterexamples — but you have to actually build a positive model. In thinking about what playing with the face gives to us, I needed to present it not just as a kind of denigration or a sacrilegious desecration because we have this deification of the ideal face. So, I started thinking about what playing with faces actually grants us. And I thought, well, it actually starts shifting us to entirely different models of aesthetics and ethics and emotion.
(3) MEDICAL UPDATE. Heather Rose Jones tweeted today —
Nothing quite like starting your lazy Sunday morning with a trip to ER for a pulmonary embolism. I'm ok, they're all on it. Always remember to listen to your body when it says, "Um…having a little trouble with oxygen levels here."
— Heather Rose Jones (@heatherosejones) November 15, 2020
And later –
Thank you all for the good wishes. I'm at the boring part of waiting for a room. Got my first blood thinner shot. I will probably put off pruning the roses for a bit!
Hope she's getting great care, and our wishes for a speedy return to health.
(4) LEND ME YOUR EARS. Elisabeth Moore pushes the canonical envelope at Sarah Gailey's site — "Personal Canons: Dragon Rider".
The idea that a personal literary canon is devised out of only literature has been disproven over and over again in this series of essays. Some people see comics as a key part of their development; others count anime and folktales. The very fact that the personal canon is multifaceted and multi-genre is key to the canon. And so, I want to add a key cornerstone of my canon: the audiobook for Cornelia Funke's The Dragon Rider, Part 1.
Yes. Only Part 1….
(5) CRAIG MILLER WINS ANIMATION WRITING AWARD. Writers Guild of America gives an award, through its Animation Writers Caucus, that the Guild's website calls the Animation Writing Award, informally a life-career award. Congratulations to Craig Miller, this year's winner.
The official description says it's "given to that member of the Animation Writers Caucus and/or the Guild who, in the opinion of the Board of Directors, has advanced the literature of animation in film and/or television through the years and who has made outstanding contributions to the profession of the animation writer".
And this year, in an act of madness, they decided the recipient will be me.
I'm truly honored to get this award and hope I have and can continue to live up to it.
(6) TOOT TOOT. Inspired by the Star Trek train set, the O Gauge Railroad Online Forum asks "What kind of bell and horn sounds would be authentic for a Star Ship?".
"How would you hear it in space? Do you blast the horn 4 times for warp speed? Is the bell for Impulse power?"
(7) A NOISE WITHIN. Meanwhile, "Doctor Who's sonic pioneers to turn internet into giant musical instrument" says The Guardian. "The performance comes the day before 23 November, the anniversary of the first transmission of Doctor Who in 1963 which is also Delia Derbyshire Day, in honour of the Radiophonic Workshop's leading light, who created the sound of the show's famous theme tune."
The Radiophonic Workshop has always broken new sonic ground, from the Doctor Who theme to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Now they're at it again – this time using the internet as a musical instrument.
A performance of Latency will take place at a special online event on 22 November using a technique inspired by lockdown Zoom calls. The band includes composers from the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which created soundtracks for most BBC shows from the 60s to the 90s and influenced generations of musicians from Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield to Aphex Twin, Orbital and Mary Epworth.
"The idea [of playing the internet] reflected our time," said workshop member Peter Howell. "We're all subject to the internet now in a way that we never thought we would be. And Bob and Paddy came up with an idea that is literally using what we're all relying on for a creative purpose, using something that we've all taken for granted but in an artistic way."
(8) INSIDE STORY. Publishers Weekly, in "How 'The Only Good Indians' Got Made—And How It Hopes to Revive Horror", covers the Authors Guild's From Manuscript to Marketplace panel with Stephen Graham Jones and his team. including Saga editorial director Joe Monti, marketing and publicity manager Lauren Jackson, and his agent, B.J. Robbins.
…The Only Good Indians, which received a starred review from PW and was recently named one of Time magazine's 100 must-read books of 2020, tracks the lives of four young men who, during a hunt, commit a crime against an elk and their own Blackfeet Nation tribe. After walking away from the incident, they find themselves haunted by a mysterious entity bent on revenge, and realize that there are just some things one can't take back.
What intrigued Monti about Jones's novel was how it addressed reviving the horror genre. After seeing Jordan Peele's Get Out, Monti said, he realized that "this is the way we're gonna be able to talk about race and class and culture with a level of immediacy that other genres can't"—and he believed Jones's book nailed it. But Monti wasn't the only one from Saga who saw the connection. Jackson was hooked from the prologue, going on to read the book in the course of a few days and immediately dubbing it "the Jordan Peele of Horror Literature."
Johnson argues that Jones's book is one of a number of recent releases to have proven that the horror genre isn't as narrow as its reputation. Horror is a "statement about identity" in her view: "there are layers to these tropes, and if you really look deep, it's saying a lot about who people are and what the world is like," Johnson said, adding that "the tropes have a function [and] there's something behind them."…
(9) DIRECTORIAL DEBUT. Leonard Maltin reviews "Over The Moon: A Beautiful Journey".
… Over the Moon is, like any animated feature, the work of many people but everyone I interviewed took inspiration from its director, master animator Glen Keane.
Glen spent 37 years at the Disney studio and brought to life some of the modern era's most indelible characters: Ariel in The Little Mermaid, the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, the young hero in Aladdin, the title characters in Pocahontas and Tarzan, and Rapunzel in Tangled, among others. Several years ago he won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Subject for Dear Basketball, a collaboration with the late Kobe Bryant.
This is officially his feature directing debut and as you would expect, he chose his team with care. That's why Over the Moon looks so striking and its characters are so vivid….
(10) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
1975 — Forty five years ago at Aussiecon One which had John Bangsund as Toastmaster, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin wins the Best Novel Hugo. Runner-ups were Poul Anderson's Fire Time, Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye andChristopher Priest's Inverted World. First published by Harper & Row the previous year with cover art by Fred Winkowski, it would also win the Locus and Nebula Awards for Best SF Novel and be nominated for the Campbell Memorial, Ditmar and multiple Prometheus Awards being eventually voted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.
(11) TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS.
Born November 15, 1877 — William Hope Hodgson. By far, his best known character is Thomas Carnacki, featured in several of his most famous stories and at least partly based upon Algernon Blackwood's occult detective John Silence. (Simon R. Green will make use of him in his Ghost Finders series.) Two of his later novels, The House on the Borderland and The Night Land would be lavishly praised by H.P. Lovecraft. It is said that his horror writing influenced many later writers such as China Miéville, Tim Lebbon and Greg Bear but I cannot find a definitive source for that claim. (Died 1918.) (CE)
Born November 15, 1929 — Ed Asner, 91. Genre work includes roles on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Invaders, The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends, Batman: The Animated Series and I'll stop there as the list goes on for quite some while. (CE)
Born November 15, 1930 — J. G. Ballard. I'll frankly admit that I've not read enough of him to render a coherent opinion of him as writer. What I've read such as The Drowned World is more than a bit depressing. Well yes, but really depressing. So tell me what you think of him. (Died 2009.) (CE)
Born November 15, 1939 — Yaphet Kotto, 81. As we count the Bond films as genre and I do, his first genre performance was as Dr. Kananga / Mr. Big in Live and Let Die. Later performances included Parker in Alien, William Laughlin in The Running Man, Doc in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Ressler in The Puppet Masters adapted from Heinlein's 1951 novel of the same name and he played a character named Captain Jack Clayton on SeaQuest DSV. (CE)
Born November 15, 1941 – Daniel Pinkwater, 79. The Golux (in The Thirteen Clocks, J. Thurber 1950) wears an indescribable hat; DP is almost indescribable. You may know he wrote The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death; seven dozen more; a dozen shorter stories. Sometimes he draws his own covers. He deserves fuller treatment – no – more rounded – no – expansive – anyhow, his Website is here (hint: if you want to know about the Semper admirare melongenum eggplant, find out about the talking pineapple: I can say no more). [JH]
Born November 15, 1942 – Ruth Berman, 78. Rhysling Award, Short Poem for "Potherb Gardening" (Asimov's, Dec 02); Dwarf Stars Award for "Knowledge Of" (repr. 2008 Nebula Awards Showcase). Minnesota Fantasy Award. Two novels, thirty shorter stories, a hundred thirty poems. Nonfiction Patterns of Unification in "Sylvie and Bruno" (Lewis Carroll's last novel, 1893); Who's Who in the Borderlands of Oz. Guest of Honor at Minicon 6, MarsCon 2016. More here. Often seen in the letter column of Lofgeornost. [JH]
Born November 15, 1952 – Catherine Wells, 68. Five novels, a dozen shorter stories. "Builders of Leaf Houses" won the Analog 2015 AnLab award for Best Novella. Outside our field a novel Stones of Destiny about Macbeth (re-issued as Macbeatha). Plays in a jazz trio at church with her husband on drums, rides tandem bicycle with him. Thirty in her high school (Robinson, North Dakota); she was top in a class of five; when asked "Are you in the top 20% of your class?" she answered "I am the top 20% of my class." Guest of Honor at TusCon 27. [JH]
Born November 15, 1958 – Scott Lefton, 62. Built the Hugo base for Noreascon 4 (62nd Worldcon). For the Hugo presentation at Sasquan (73rd Worldcon) by Kjell Lindgren from the Int'l Space Station via videoconference, SL made the Hugo rocket. SL's Pitcher-Plant Lamp won Popular Choice – Best 3-Dimensional in the Arisia 2017 Art Show. [JH]
Born November 15, 1972 – Vadim Panov, 48. Aircraft radio engineer who started writing. Losers Launch Wars began an urban-fantasy series "The Secret City", fourteen so far; Club Moscow began a cyberpunk series "The Enclaves", five so far. [JH]
Born November 15, 1972 — Jonny Lee Miller, 48. British actor and director who played Sherlock Holmes on the exemplary Elementary series, but his first genre role was as a nine year-old with the Fifth Doctor, "Kinda". While he's had a fairly steady stage, film, and TV career across the pond since then, it's only in the last decade that he's become well-known in the States – unless, like JJ, you remember that 23 years ago he appeared in a shoddy technothriller called Hackers, with another unknown young actor named Angelina Jolie (to whom he ended up married, until they separated 18 months later). Other genre appearances include a trio of vampire films, Dracula 2000, Dark Shadows, and Byzantium, the live-action Æon Flux movie, and the lead in the pseudo-fantasy TV series Eli Stone. (CE)
Born November 15, 1977 – Ashley Knight, 43. Loves horses, has been a Rodeo Queen. Thereafter she became the Mermaid Lady and properly wrote a Fins trilogy; three more novels. [JH]
Off The Mark supposes you know the former name better…
(13) SHOW TIME. Disney Rewards challenges fans with a "Quiz: How Well Do You Know The Mandalorian?"
Since it premiered in 2019 on Disney+, the first ever live-action Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian, has thrilled a galaxy of fans with its action-packed adventures. But how closely did you watch, and how well do you know the bounty of details? Strap on your jetpack and launch into our trivia quiz to test your knowledge and target an expert-level score.
(14) DINO TBR. Pocket's "The Ultimate Dinosaur Reading List" is a collection of links to articles about dinosaurs.
If you ever want to put things in perspective, consider this: Less time separates human beings in history from Tyrannosaurus rex than T. rex from Stegosaurus. That's right. While T. rex went extinct about 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Jurassic Period's stegosaurus roamed the Earth 83 million years before T. rex had even evolved. All told, dinosaurs ruled the planet for some 180 million years, while homo sapiens emerged a paltry 200,000 years ago.
That's just one of many reasons our fascination with the terrible lizards is wholly justified. We've curated this Brachiosaurus-sized collection of 20 great articles all about dinosaurs and the people who obsess over them, including what dinosaurs looked like, what it's like to be a paleontologist hunting for dinosaur fossils, and whether Jurassic Park could actually happen.
(15) TIME FOR A SITDOWN. In Episode 40 of Two Chairs Talking, "Lost in the labyrinth of words", Perry Middlemiss and David Grigg discuss their recent reading across a variety of genres and spend quite a bit of time on Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, her first book in 14 years.
(16) CHILD SIZED. Sideshow takes you "Behind the Scenes with The Child Life-Size Figure on ESPN's Monday Night Football". Video at the link.
Recently, football audiences, Star Wars™ fans, and Sideshow collectors alike were treated to a surprise special appearance of The Child Life-Size Figure on a themed promotional spot about The Mandalorian™ on ESPN's Monday Night Football.
Now take a look at a few adorable behind the scenes shots featuring The Child Life-Size Figure during the filming of the promo. In the charming video narrated by actor Giancarlo Esposito, the Child Life-Size Figure featured alongside a young boy with ambitions of becoming a hero like the Mandalorian.
(17) HOW TO ASTRONAUT. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination offers "How To Astronaut, With Terry Virts", in a virtual conversation on November 24 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register here.
On November 24 at 6:00 PM PDT join NASA astronaut and International Space Station commander Colonel Terry Virts in conversation with Dr. Erik Viirre of UCSD Departments of Neurosciences, Surgery and Cognitive Science and the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. How to Astronaut covers everything from training through launch, orbit, spacewalking, deep space, and re-entry. Colonel Virts and Dr. Viirre will discuss the science, emotions, and philosophies that an off-the-planet perspective can grant.
Colonel Terry Virts earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the United States Air Force Academy in 1989, and a master of aeronautical science degree in aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Selected by NASA in 2000, he was the pilot of STS-130 mission aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. In March 2015, Virts assumed command of the International Space Station, and spent over 200 days on it. Virts is one of the stars (and photographers) of the IMAX film, A Beautiful Planet, released in April 2016. He is also the author of View from Above. He lives near Houston.
Dr. Viirre has done research for the National Institutes of Health, the United States Navy's Office of Naval Research, DARPA and NASA. He is a consultant for groups such as the National Academy of Science and a variety of Virtual Reality technology companies.
(18) HONEST GAME TRAILER. In "Honest Game Trailers: Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time," Fandom Games says Crash Bandicoot is "gaming's equivalent of a C-list celebrity" and dusting off this "mutated marsupial" is like having an "HD remake" of a popular '90s franchise. The game features a Peter Lorre joke "that was ancient in the '90s."
[Thanks to Rose Embolism, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, John Hertz, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, Baby Yoda, Craig Miller, David Grigg, dinosaurs, Doctor Who, Elisabeth Moore, Eric Flint, Heather Rose Jones, Honest Trailers, Leonard Maltin, Namwali Serpell, Perry Middlemiss, Star Trek, Stephen Graham Jones, Susanna Clarke, The Mandalorian	| 31 Replies
Pixel Scroll 8/19/20 The Fandom Raspberry Blower Of Old
Pixel Town
Posted on August 19, 2020 by Mike Glyer
(1) MARVEL'S VOICES EXPANDS. This November, Marvel celebrates Indigenous history with a landmark special, Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices #1, written and drawn by some of the industry's most renowned Indigenous talent along with talents making their Marvel Comics debut.
Celebrated writer and artist Jeffrey Veregge, who just wrapped up his exhibition Jeffrey Veregge: Of Gods and Heroes at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, is leading this book alongside a team of acclaimed creators to explore the legacy and experiences of Marvel's incredible cast of Indigenous characters.
Hugo, Nebula, and Locus-award winning Black/Ohkay Owingeh writer Rebecca Roanhorse and Tongva artist Weshoyot Alvitre tell an Echotale like none before as she is set to play a critical role in Marvel Comics. Geoscientist and Lipan Apache writer Darcie Little Badger joins acclaimed Whitefish Lake First Nation artist Kyle Charles for a Dani Moonstarstory where she will face the crucial question of what her Indigenous heritage means in the new era of mutantkind. And Bram Stoker-winning horror writer Stephen Graham Jones of the Blackfeet Nation teams up with Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation artist David Cutler to revisit one of the darkest spots of X-Men history!
(2) BRIAN KEENE SPOTLIGHTS HAYWARD ALLEGATIONS. Soon after Brian Keene posted "Behind Closed Doors" supplementing his podcast's report of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct within the industry, he and Mary SanGiovanni were alerted to yet another situation involving allegations that author Matt Hayward sent inappropriate communications to several women.
Since then Keene has written three posts on the subject, beginning with "Statement Regarding Matt Hayward & Poltergeist Press" (June 26) which emphasizes:
…We believe the women. We believe writer and book reviewer Cassie 'Lets Get Galactic', who has stepped forward. And we believe those who have not stepped forward.
We have known Matt for several years. He and his wife Anna have been guests in our home. Anna's publishing company, Poltergeist Press, has published books by both of us. We consider them dear friends.
Approximately one year ago, Matt sent a series of inappropriate messages to Mary. Matt has acknowledged this and apologized for it. Mary accepted the apology because Matt was inebriated when the messages were sent, and he was going through a rough time emotionally, having just experienced the death of his best friend. Brian followed Mary's lead, and in the time since, Mary has received no further inappropriate messages from Matt. Cassie's account tells a similar story, as do the accounts of those women who have not shared their experience publicly. There is a pattern of behavior.
Again, we believe the women. And we apologize for the hurt that someone we are close to has caused you….
In a follow-up statement, "Update on Russian Translations and Poltergeist Press", Keene said:
Since that time, several of us have spoke with Anna Mulbach, wife of Matt Hayward. She wishes to continue publishing Russian language translations. The financial stability of that line impacts the livelihood of many Russian citizens, including translators and investors. The success the line has had so far is a testimony to Anna. I wish to encourage that. Further, the fact that this successful foreign-language publisher is run and operated by a woman is something else I wish to encourage, because it's something our industry desperately needs more of.
Anna has assured me that Matt will not be involved in any aspect of the Russian-language operation, including production or design.
With all that in mind, I have decided to continue working with Anna for Russian-language translations….
On August 18, Keene summarized everything in a "Final Statement on Poltergeist Press, et all".
…After that was announced. Rights for Dissonant Harmonies were reverted, and Bev Vincent and I sold it elsewhere. Geoff Cooper wanted some time to consider the reversion clause for Shades, since he is not plugged in to the business and wanted to talk to people and determine the facts before signing it. Then Anna Hayward of Poltergeist press announced that she was shutting down the company.
A few weeks later, Anna contacted several of us and indicated that she would like to keep the Russian language imprint open. It was her company — not Matt's. She assured us that Matt would not be involved in any way with the production.
And so Jeff Strand, myself, and Mary SanGiovanni released a third statement last month, which can be read here.
This will be my final statement, because quite frankly, I am sick of talking about this.
This statement is my own. I do not speak for Mary SanGiovanni (whose own final statement can be read here). I do not speak for Robert Ford, Bev Vincent, Jeff Strand, Wrath James White, Edward Lee, John Boden, Wesley Southard, Tim Meyer, Ronald Kelly or anyone else who has been impacted by this clusterfuck.
This statement will include foul language. It will include my personal opinions.
My personal opinions follow:
1. I support the victims. I have always supported the victims. Anyone who has listened to The Horror Show for the last 6 years knows that I support the victims. Anybody who has been following my career since 1996 knows that I support the victims. I was the first person to report on the then-whispered allegations involving Ed Kramer. I had my then budding-career threatened for doing so. I gave zero fucks then and I give zero fucks now. I will always support the victims. I myself am a victim, and several of the people most important in my life have been victims.
If you do not believe that I support the victims, then I respect your decision. Stop buying my books and listening to my podcasts.
2. I support and believe the victims in this case. I have seen people intimating online that the most vocal victim, Cassie, "made this all up" and others saying that she and the other victims "just want their 15 minutes of fame". I don't believe that. But I'll tell you what, motherfuckers…lets buy into your conspiracy theory for a minute. Let's say Cassie made it all up for 15 minutes of fame.
Mary SanGiovanni didn't make it up. I know. I've seen the evidence. And Mary's got an accomplished 20-year career. She doesn't need fifteen minutes of fame. I believe Mary SanGiovanni. I believe Cassie. And I believe the other women who came forward.
If my belief in these women bothers you, then I respect your decision. Stop buying my books and listening to my podcasts.
(And to the fat fuck who looks like a dropout from Juggalo college and keeps repeating this "15 minutes of fame" bullshit, I'm not going to name you here, because you don't deserve even a second of fame)….
Four more points follow.
(3) DO THE MONSTER MASK. Secret Los Angeles assures locals they will still have a haunted house to visit this year, in a new socially-distant way: "Urban Legends of Southern California are rolling in to save Halloween!"
Halloween is inevitably going to look a bit different this year with a number of highly-anticipated events canceled already, including Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights, the Queen Mary's Dark Harbor, and Oogie Boogie Bash at Disney California Adventure.
But fear not, the spooky holiday traditions will still be upheld in Costa Mesa thanks to this drive-through haunted house experience. Urban Legends of Southern California will conjure up all SoCal's most terrifying urban legends, cursed souls and monsters that have haunted residents for generations. Whether it's the mysterious winds that howl through the streets or the unnatural presences that make your hairs stand up, familiar stories will be brought to life through a series thrills.
Once you've purchased your ticket, you'll arrive in your vehicle at your allocated timeslot. From there, you'll be guided through a journey of immersive scenes, dazzling special effects, and live performances. It's bound to get your pulse racing as you scramble to lock your car door. You won't have to worry about monsters getting to close though, they'll be wearing masks and social-distancing at all times…
(4) IT'S A BREATH MINT; LESS FILLING. James Davis Nicoll tells me "the file name was something like 'how to start arguments'" — "SF or Fantasy? — Six Works That Defy Easy Classification" at Tor.com.
…See, for example, discussions about where to place The Fifth Season and Gideon the Ninth. Both works have elements generally associated with science fiction, as well as elements traditionally associated with fantasy. Hard classification will fail because the assumption that things are only one thing at a time is wrong. Utterly wrong.
[sarcasm] I am certain that having explained this so clearly, there will never be another argument on such matters. [/sarcasm]
(5) DYSTOPIAN LIFE IMITATES DYSTOPIAN ART. [Item by Olav Rokne.] In 2019, UK high school student Jessica Johnson won the Orwell Youth Prize for writing a short story depicting computer systems that undermine lower-income students by adjusting grades downwards. This spring, in response to COVID-shortened school years, the government of the UK implemented a computer system that "projected" students' grades forward based on assumptions on how they were doing — and it adjusted the grades of low-income students downwards. Jessica Johnson was one of the students adversely affected by the computer error. "Student who wrote story about biased algorithm has results downgraded" in The Guardian.
She says: "I based [the story] on the educational inequality I already saw. I just exaggerated that inequality and added the algorithm. But I really didn't think it would come true as quick as it did!"
(6) IF YOU COULD TALK TO THE ANIMALS. NPR's "Morning Edition" reminds listeners that "Orwell's 'Animal Farm,' Around For Decades, Almost Wasn't Published".
DAVID GREENE, HOST: George Orwell's "Animal Farm" turns 75 this week. The book is now considered a classic, but NPR's Petra Mayer reminds us that it almost wasn't published at all.
…MAYER: Orwell biographer D.J. Taylor says the 6-year-old nephew of one of Orwell's friends read it…
D J TAYLOR: …And reported back via his uncle that he loved it because it didn't contain any difficult words.
MAYER: But "Animal Farm" is a dark, upsetting book. The pigs take over, and bit by bit, they grow more cruel and murderous, masking each new outrage in revolutionary rhetoric. By the end, drinking liquor, snapping whips and gambling with the neighborhood farmers, they're indistinguishable from the humans they originally overthrew.
Broadly, "Animal Farm" is a fable about tyranny, but specifically, it's a satire on the Soviet revolution and how it led to Joseph Stalin's reign of terror. So why tell such a painful story in such a childish manner? D.J. Taylor says that Orwell was influenced by "Gulliver's Travels" and French fables. But also, at the time he was writing "Animal Farm," he and his first wife, Eileen, were adopting a child. So not only did he have kids on his mind…
TAYLOR: The era in which he wrote for the 10 years previous, cinema screens had been full of cartoon animals. You know, it was the great age of the Disney cartoon.
MAYER: It was, in fact, turned into a cartoon a few years after he died, but it almost wasn't a book at all. Orwell was shopping "Animal Farm" to publishers in 1944 when the Allied victory in World War II was far from assured. Again, D.J. Taylor.
TAYLOR: So this is effectively a satire of Stalin, who was then – even America regarded as avuncular Uncle Joe, you know, our great ally in the fight against Nazism.
MAYER: No one wanted to take a potshot at Uncle Joe. It took more than a year and multiple publishers, but "Animal Farm" finally came out in the U.K. in 1945, and it was a massive hit. Its success enabled Orwell to write his masterwork, "1984." When people use the adjective Orwellian today, they're almost invariably talking about "1984."
(7) HOOKED ON A FEELING. "Stephen Graham Jones on How Horror is the Puppet of Your Own Terror" at LitHub.
Brad Listi: That's interesting. It's interesting to think of it that way. I feel like when we go to read something, we're trying to feel something, or hoping to at least. And if somebody can scare the shit out of you, that's a feeling.
Stephen Graham Jones: It is. Horror can change your behavior. It can make you turn off the lights in your house in a different sequence at eleven o'clock at night. It can make you edge along the wall to get to your bed instead of just walking brazenly across the middle of your bedroom floor. I love that horror puts you on a string like that. It turns into a puppet, a puppet not necessarily of the the writer, but a puppet of your own terror and your own dread. I think that's beautiful.
August 19, 2007 — Highlander: The Source premiered. The final film of the story that spanned both the film and television series, it saw the return of Adrian Paul reprising his character of Duncan MacLeod from Highlander: The Series and the fourth film, Highlander: Endgame. He also produced along with Peter S. Davis and William N. Panzer while Brett Leonard directed. The screenplay was Mark Bradley and Steven Kelvin Watkins from the story by the former. Reception was universally negative if not downright hostile with it being the first film in the series not to get a widescreen distribution. SciFi Channel instead aired it. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a richly deserved 19% rating. (CE)
Born August 19, 1894 – H.W. Wesso. After covers for Amazing, painted every Astounding cover under W. Clayton (Jan 30 – Mar 33; H. Bates ed.), then more, also Astonishing, Marvel, Strange Tales, Thrilling, five dozen in all; eight hundred interiors. Here is the Jan 30 Amazing. Here is the Jan 38 Astounding. Here is an interior from a 1930s Astounding; I haven't found the date more exactly, can you? Here is an interior from the Jan 41 Thrilling. Again I recommend Di Fate's Infinite Worlds. (Died 1948) [JH]
Born August 19, 1921 — Gene Roddenberry. Oh, you know who he is. But did you know he wrote a lot of scripts for Have Gun – Will Travel? Indeed, his script for the show, "Helen of Abajinian" would win the Writer's Guild of America award for Best Teleplay in 1958. (Died 1991.) (CE)
Born August 19, 1930 — D.G. Compton, 90. SWFA Author Emeritus whose The Steel Crocodile was nominated for the Nebula Award. The Unsleeping Eye, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe in the U.K., was filmed as Death Watch which the Audience Reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes actually like giving it a 60% rating. His two Alec Jordan near-future police stories are superb. Nearly everything he wrote of a genre nature is available from the usual digital suspects save Hot Wireless Sets, Aspirin Tablets, the Sandpaper Sides of Used Matchboxes, and Something That Might Have Been Castor Oil. (CE)
Born August 19, 1938 — Richard N. Farmer. Author of Islandia Revisited, a sequel to Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia. No idea it was if authorized but I'm betting it wasn't as it's not in print in either print or digital editions currently. (Died 1987.) (CE)
Born August 19, 1938 –Diana Muldaur, 81. Student of Stella Adler. First woman President of the Acad. Television Arts & Sciences. Two Star Trek appearances (original series), later Katherine Pulaski, M.D., in The Next Generation. Voiced another physician in animated Batman (1992-1994). One appearance in The Hulk (1979). Don't blame CE for omitting her, these things are hard. [JH]
Born August 18, 1945 – Roseanne di Fate. Teacher, mostly of nursery school, another hard thing; last position at Vassar, my grandmother's college. Andrew Porter did a biography of R & Vincent in Algol 21 (Tim Kirk artwork! Bester interview of Heinlein! Benford on knowledge! Brunner on the art & craft of SF! Lupoff book reviews!). OGH's appreciation here. (Died 2014) [JH]
Born August 19, 1947 – Dwain Kaiser. Active fan in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Used-book shop owner; had several, all called Magic Door; at his death he was operating his fourth, in Pomona (L.A area). Founded a Las Vegas SF Society, thus repaying Arnie Katz, one of whose fanzines (with Lenny Bailes) let DK know there was such a thing as fandom. Published many zines and took part in apas. OGH's appreciation here; you will want to know more, but this is the best I can do for now. (Died 2017) [JH]
Born August 19, 1950 — Jill St. John, 70. She's best remembered as Tiffany Case, the Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever. She was the first American to play a Bond girl. She shows in The Batman in "Smack in the Middle" and "Hi Diddle Riddle" as Molly. And she played Jennifer Holmes in the 1960 film version of The Lost World. (CE)
Born August 19, 1952 — Jonathan Frakes, 68. Best known for his portrayal of Commander William T. Riker in Next Gen though I'm fond of his voicing David Xanatos on the Gargoyles series which had at least five Trek actors doing voice work. Interesting bit of trivia: For a time in the Seventies, he worked for Marvel Comics at cons as Captain America. He has directed more than 70 television episodes, including episodes of five Trek series, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Librarians and The Orville. (CE)
Born August 19, 1961 – Randy Smith, 59. Wrote up the Hugo Awards Ceremony for the ConJosé Souvenir Book (60th Worldcon). Long helpful in the San Francisco area, currently a director of SFSFC (San Francisco SF Cons, the non-profit that hosted the 51st, 60th, 76th Worldcons; Westercon 53, 64, 66; and like that) and now tired but not exhausted having chaired its liaison committee for the 78th Worldcon we just virtually had. Relations with John Blaker a model of ecumenism (which, should they read this, they will blushingly try to disclaim). [JH]
Born August 19, 1988 – Veronica Roth, 32. Six novels, a dozen shorter stories. Divergent a NY Times Best Seller; it and first sequel sold five million copies before film version of Divergent released. Her gaze upon the world, says John Clute, is cuttingly sharp; she is said to be reading the Bible; "cuttingly sharp" could be said of Isaiah, though he did not give us dystopias; beyond that is beyond my pay grade. [JH]
Ziggy shows that wile you can fool some of the people all of the time, you can't fool the bird.
(11) FOLLOW THE MONEY. In "The Big Idea: Thomas Levenson" at Whatever, the author of Money for Nothing tells about the famous figure who unexpectedly had to learn the hard way that what goes up must come down.
…Then it happened again. Deep into that story, I came across this: a stray mention that [Isaac] Newton had lost £20,000–roughly four million dollars in 21st century money–in a financial scam that happened exactly three centuries ago this year, an event called the South Sea Bubble. Afterwards, he told his niece that he could "calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of the people."
That's where Money for Nothing got its start: wondering why the smartest man of his day, someone who could surely do the math to expose the flaw in the South Sea scheme, got it so badly and expensively wrong. The book that's finally here has traveled from that starting point to a much bigger and (I hope) more fascinating narrative: how the wild ferment in ideas and ambitions in Britain in the late seventeenth century that we now call the scientific revolution created a culture of number and measurement that mattered in the daily life of those who lived through it. From there, and how, as the Bubble played out, that disaster produced something very new: the modern financial capitalism that still plays out in all our lives, with all its wealth and woe….
(12) GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE.
Yesterday my wife actually floated the idea of writing NCC-1701 on the side of our minivan and if you think I'm not going to turn this into an excuse to get a full-fledged nacelle stripe painted on both sides then you don't know me, friend. pic.twitter.com/hNOqkFQvTo
— Neil Shurley ??? (@ThatNeilGuy) August 18, 2020
Back in the Seventies there was a San Diego fan who had his van painted as the Enterprise's shuttlecraft. The guy went by the name of "James T. Kirk" which I guarantee you doesn't make it any easier for me to search for a photo.
(13) SEPARATED AT BIRTH. Gizmodo relays scientific speculation about the question: "Does Our Sun Have a Long-Lost Twin?"
…The Oort cloud is the most distant region in the solar system, residing much farther than the outer planets and the Kuiper Belt. Unlike the Kuiper Belt, which is shaped like a donut, the Oort cloud is a massive and thick spherical shell that envelopes the entire solar system. The inner Oort cloud starts at around 1,000 AU from the Sun (in which 1 AU is the average distance from Earth to the Sun), while its outer edge stops at around 100,000 AU.
This region of space is filled with billions, possibly trillions, of rocky and icy objects left over from the formation of the solar system. According to the new paper, the overabundance of material presumed to exist in the outer Oort cloud is the result of our Sun's early stint as a binary system.
To date, computers trying to simulate the formation of the solar system have failed to reproduce the proportion of objects seen in the outer realms of the Oort cloud and the scattered disc—a specific population of trans-Neptunian objects outside of the Kuiper Belt. As a result, the origin of the outer Oort cloud is "an unsolved mystery," according to the paper, authored by astronomers Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian.
The new paper presents an elegant solution to the overpopulation problem: a second sun.
"A stellar companion to the Sun would increase the chance of trapping objects from the birth cluster of the Sun," wrote Loeb in an email. "The Sun and its companion act as a fishing net that traps objects gravitationally as they pass near one of the two stars and lose energy by kicking it slightly."
(14) EIGHTY-EIGHT KEY DATES. Delish charts "88 Food And Drink Holidays You Need To Mark On Your Calendars For Free Food".
Besides the typical holidays that call for extravagant food spreads and homemade meals, there are tons of national food days that should be on your radar. They don't all require a celebration but if you're ever looking for an excuse to have a themed dinner or to drink a certain liquor by the truck load—you should keep some of these days in mind.
A pair of these fall on April 2 — National Burrito Day, National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day – which shouldn't inconvenience exotic burrito connoisseur John Scalzi.
(15) CORDWAINER BIRD OF A DIFFERENT FEATHER. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] "Burke's Law S01E06 Who Killed Alex Debbs?" on YouTube is a 1963 episode of Burke's Law written by Harlan Ellison. Ellison fans recall that he used the name "Cordwainer Bird" for work he disowned. Well, this episode is about the murder of Alex Debbs, founder of Debonair, a magazine vaguely like Playboy. The joke editor of the magazine is….Cordwainer Bird, and Bird is played by Sammy Davis Jr.! Bird's appearance begins after the 16-minute mark. Burgess Meredith also appears as a very nearsighted cartoonist.
(16) ORIGINS. "Where Did Penguins Come From? Scientists Say It's Not Antarctica" reports NPR's "All Things Considered."
The image of a penguin might bring to mind an endless march across windswept ice. The reality of penguins is a bit different, says Grant Ballard of Point Blue Conservation Science.
GRANT BALLARD: There's actually only two species of penguin that really love ice.
Only two species. Many others live in warmer waters.
BALLARD: So an emperor penguin could conceivably be dealing with something like minus 70 degrees or even colder than that, especially with wind chill. But a Galapagos penguin is encountering temperatures that are around 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
KELLY: So how did penguins evolve with such different lifestyles? A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has some answers.
RAURIE BOWIE: We've been able to resolve several long-standing questions about penguin evolution, in particular where penguins originated.
FADEL: Rauri Bowie of UC Berkeley is an author on that study. He says there's been a long debate about where the first penguins evolved. Was it Antarctica or farther north in New Zealand, as others have suggested?
KELLY: Well, armed with genetic evidence from 18 species of modern-day penguins, his team has an answer.
BOWIE: Which turned out to be along the coast of Australia and New Zealand and nearby islands of the South Pacific.
KELLY: They say that happened around 22 million years ago.
FADEL: From there, the penguins surfed on a circular current at the bottom of the world.
…KELLY: If there is one thing the paper makes clear, it's that the evolution of penguins is far from black and white.
(17) WASHED UP ON THE SHORES OF THE INTERNET. During my search for neglected Scroll titles today I rediscovered this gem by Will R. from 2015.
Just scroll right down and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip,
that started from this vile hive,
aboard this tiny ship.
The Esk were mighty pixeled fen,
the Blogger brave and sure,
the Filers ticked the box that day,
for a three hour tour,
a three hour tour.
Discussion started getting rough,
the tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the filking of the fearless crew
the comments would be lost.
The ship's now lodged for good inside this
Highly trafficked file,
with Gilligan,
the Blogger too,
The reverend and the SMOFs,
the wombat red,
the dissenters and the grinning fan,
here in Gilligan's File.
(Ending verse)
So this is the tale of our castaways,
they'll be here for a long, long time.
They'll have to make the best of things,
it's an uphill climb.
The first Esk and the Blogger too
will do their very best,
to make the others comfortable
With their sordid rhetoric.
No threads, no lights, no time travel,
not a single luxury.
They'll have to see what they can grow,
like NASA's Mark Watney.
So join us here each day my friends,
you're sure to get a smile,
from countless dumbstruck Trufen brave…
here in Gilligan's File!
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Stephen Colbert tells Late Show viewers, "You Owe Kevin Costner An Apology For 'The Postman.'" The parting shot is a corker.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Brian Keene, James Davis Nicoll, Olav Rokne, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, Danny Sichel, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, and John Hertz for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ky.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Animal Farm, Brian Keene, Cordwainer Bird, Darcie Little Badger, George Orwell, Halloween, Harlan Ellison, James Davis Nicoll, Jeffrey Veregge, John Scalzi, Kevin Costner, Marvel, Mary SanGiovanni, Matt Hayward, Olav Rokne, Rebecca Roanhorse, Stephen Colbert, Stephen Graham Jones, The Highlander, The Postman, Will R.	| 34 Replies
Pixel Scroll 8/15/20 To Clickfinity And Beyond!
(1) RECONVENE REPORT. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] ReCONvene, the one-day virtual con of NESFA, was this afternoon, so I paid my ten dollars and attended via Zoom.
It was worth devoting much of the afternoon to it for just one conversation, the Worldbuilding in Speculative Fiction panel which had Ellen Kushner as moderator with P. Djèlí Clark, Cerece Rennie Murphy, Carlos Hernandez and, to my utter delight, Aliette de Bodard. I learned much about the writers and their worlds that I didn't know. Like all items it allowed conversations among the fans as a text feed — I didn't listen in too very much of that but they were getting a lot of participation.
Earlier on, Modernizing Fairy Tales and Myths with Adam Stemple as moderator had Victor Lavalle, Seanan McGuire, Catherynne Valente and Rebecca Roanhorse as panelists. Like the other Zoom groups I listened to, it was flawless in its sound and video. Lots of personal ethnic background here as basis for storytelling — most excellent.
The panels were good and they used Discord for follow up chats which I'll admit I skipped. There was a tour of the art show which is less interesting than being there, but the writers were the reason to be there and they even did Kaffeeklatsches, solo conversations with authors, so I listened to Justina Ireland who I was hearing of for the first time and turned out to be fascinating.
All in all, it was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. If Boskone is virtual next February (and I wouldn't count against it being so), I'll certainly pay for a virtual membership based on his trial run which was organized well and easy to use.
(2) THE ANSWER. Robert J. Sawyer has a piece in The Star today: "Robert J. Sawyer: We're all living in a science-fiction novel now".
As soon as Toronto let customers eat on restaurant patios again, I made a beeline for Orwell's Pub — best dang chicken wings in the city. The indoor restaurant was closed, and Chris, the guy who usually tends bar, was serving. When he came by my table, he quipped, "Seems like we're all living in a Robert J. Sawyer novel now."
I was surprised he knew who I was. Despite Orwell's being a cosy "Cheers"-style "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" place, as a non-drinker, I'm usually invisible to bartenders. But Chris was right: we are living in a science-fiction novel now, and a dystopian one at that.
Since my latest novel, "The Oppenheimer Alternative," is about the Manhattan Project, I often get asked what should be the next big-science undertaking with an all-but-unlimited budget bringing together our brightest minds.
My answer: developing a general antiviral technique, rather than an endless succession of vaccines targeting one, and only one, specific virus. The old method is why our annual flu shots are sometimes ineffective; we'd guessed wrong about which strain of flu would become prevalent. It's also why we've never had a vaccine against the common cold, which is caused by a vast, ever-mutating range of coronaviruses.
Viruses aren't even alive. They're just bits of genetic code encased in a protein shell, sometimes (as with the novel coronavirus plaguing us now) slicked down with a fatty coating. And that's it.
(3) FREEDOM AT MIDNGHT. Somtow Sucharitkul will give away free eBook versions of three of his YA novels from August 17-19, starting at midnight Pacific time.
The Snow Dragon https://amazon.com/dp/B07B2HT4C3
Vampire's Beautiful Daughter https://amazon.com/dp/B07FZSMM28
Stone Buddha's Tears https://amazon.com/dp/0990014258
(4) FUTURE FREE READS. Ellen Datlow told HWA today about the dark fantasy reading coming out for free on the Tor.com website in the next few weeks:
"Wait for Night" by Stephen Graham Jones, a horror story -September 2 (which is when his novella Night Of The Mannequins will also be out).
"The Little Witch" by M. Rickert, a dark fantasy novelette-October 28
"On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera" by Elizabeth Bear, a dark fantasy novelette-November 18
(5) THE REINVENTED COUNTRY. "HBO's 'Lovecraft Country' Brings Viewers To A World Of Monsters, Magic and Racism" – an NPR Morning Edition transcript.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Here's the thing about being a Black nerd who loves science fiction, fantasy and superhero stories. Often, you wind up admiring work created to glorify people who are the exact opposite of you. That's something the aptly-named bookworm Atticus Freeman tries to explain while telling a female friend about the latest novel he was reading on a long bus ride, the 1912 book "A Princess Of Mars" and its star, planet-jumping hero John Carter.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LOVECRAFT COUNTRY")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) You said the hero was a Confederate officer.
JONATHAN MAJORS: (As Atticus Freeman) Ex-Confederate.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) He fought for slavery. You don't get to put a ex in front of that.
MAJORS: (As Atticus Freeman) Stories are like people. Loving them doesn't make them perfect. You just try to cherish them and overlook their flaws.
DEGGANS: That could be something of a mission statement for the "Lovecraft Country," a series based on the recent novel of the same name. The book and series reference the work of renowned horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft, known to have racist views about African Americans. The show compares the work of Lovecraftian (ph) supernatural beings which could have sprung from his books to the racism Black people faced in 1950s-era America.
Atticus Freeman, played by "Da 5 Bloods" costar Jonathan Majors, is a Korean War veteran who returns home to find his missing father. Before long, he's enlisted help from his Uncle George, played by Courtney B. Vance, and his friend Letitia, played by Jurnee Smollett. They must travel across the country from Chicago to follow a clue. And along the way, they run into a not-too-helpful police officer who informs them Black people aren't allowed in the area after dark.
JAMIE HARRIS: (As Sheriff Eustace Hunt) Any of y'all know what a sundown town is?
MAJORS: (As Atticus Freeman) Yes, sir. We do.
HARRIS: (As Sheriff Eustace Hunt) Well, this is a sundown county. If I'd have found you after dark, it would have been my sworn duty to hang every single one of you from them trees.
MAJORS: (As Atticus Freeman) It's not sundown yet.
DEGGANS: But when the police officer and his buddies try to lynch the trio, everyone is attacked by huge, teethy, flesh-eating monsters who chase them into a cabin. Uncle George, who's just as much of a bookworm as Atticus, has an idea of what they might be facing.
…At a time when the world is still reeling from seeing a Black man die with a white policeman's knee on his neck, there is no better moment for HBO's gripping "Lovecraft Country" to reinvent a supernatural tale.
(6) FLOURISHNG MAGIC. Rebecca Roanhorse tells the New York Times: "'We've Already Survived an Apocalypse': Indigenous Writers Are Changing Sci-Fi". Tagline: "Long underrepresented in genre fiction, Native American and First Nations authors are reshaping its otherworldly (but still often Eurocentric) worlds."
When Cherie Dimaline was growing up near Penetanguishene, a small town on the Georgian Bay in Ontario, her grandmother and great-aunts told her stories about a werewolf-like monster called the rogarou. It wasn't spoken of as a mythical creature but as an actual threat, the embodiment of danger in a place where Indigenous women face heightened risk of violence.
"This wasn't like, here's a metaphor," she said. "They would say, 'The rogarou's out, and he's really hungry.'"
Decades later, Dimaline, a member of the Métis Nation in Canada, was working on a novel about a woman whose missing husband reappears with no memory of her, seemingly under a spell. She needed a charismatic villain, and when the rogarou — a wily trickster figure in Métis oral traditions — popped into her head, she realized the creature had never been given its due in popular culture.
That flash of inspiration turned into "Empire of Wild," a genre-bending novel whose modern Indigenous characters confront environmental degradation, discrimination and the threat of cultural erasure, all while battling a devious monster….
(7) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman hopes you all will accept his invitation to polish off prawn pizza with Stephen Dedman on Episode 125 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.
This episode I have breakfast while Australian writer Stephen Dedman has dinner 12 hours in my future.
Stephen has published more than 100 short stories, some of which I was privileged to publish back when I was editing Science Fiction Age magazine. You can find many of those stories in his collections The Lady of Situations (1999) and Never Seen by Waking Eyes (2005). His novels, which include The Art of Arrow Cutting (1997), Foreign Bodies (1999), Shadows Bite (2001), and others, have been Bram Stoker, Aurealis, William L. Crawford, and Ditmar Award nominees. He's also written role-playing games, stageplays, erotica, and westerns. And he at one time worked as a "used dinosaur parts salesman," a job which had me extremely curious — and as you listen to us chat and chew, you'll find out all about it.
We discussed how the Apollo 11 moon landing introduced him to science fiction, what his father told him which changed his plan to become a cartoonist, the huge difference the Internet made in the lives of Australian writers, his creative trick for getting his first poem published, what acting taught him about being funny in the midst of tragedy, his former job as a used dinosaur parts salesman, the way page one tells him whether he's got a short story or novel idea, how Harlan Ellison became the first American editor to buy one of his stories, and much more.
(8) MIND'S EYE. At LitHub, Kathleen Rooney discusses "How Fiction Allows Us to Inhabit Animal Consciousness".
For centuries, human thinking—at least in the West—has been dominated by the notion, said to have originated with Aristotle, of the Scala Naturae, or the Ladder of Life. Also known as the Great Chain of Being, this concept establishes a hierarchy in which all life forms can be arranged in ascending degrees of perfection with humans, conveniently, at the topmost rung. Even after Darwin came along and replaced this model with his considerably less vertical Tree of Life, the idea of the human mind as the apex of biological consciousness has persisted.
Increasingly, in the face of climate catastrophe, more humans are beginning to question their hubris. In the introduction to their 2017 book Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, the editors note: "Some scientists argue that the rate of biological extinction is now several hundred times beyond its historical levels. We might lose a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century." This, the arguable point of no return, affords a chance to examine the received belief in human exceptionalism. Science writing in particular and nonfiction in general have much to say regarding the similarities between human and non-human minds, but fiction offers opportunities to explore this interconnectedness as well. After all, if fiction has the power to show us another individual's private and interior uniqueness, then why not depict animals possessing such interiority?
(9) YOU KNOW IT IN YOUR BONES. Skeleton Hour is a new monthly horror literature webinar series presented as an Horror Writers Association event in collaboration with The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles.
Each panel will be an hour long and bring together 3-5 authors to discuss a specific topic in horror with a moderator guiding the discussion. Panels will take place on Zoom, with the audience able to ask questions in the chat window. The series launches Friday, August 28th, with the first panel focused on 70s-90s throwback horror including authors of novellas from the Rewind or Die series published by Unnerving Press: Mackenzie Kiera, Stephen Graham Jones, Lisa Quigley, and Jessica Guess, as well as noted subject matter expert Grady Hendrix!
Register for the Zoom webinar here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2C6hfS-ARoGvvNontWmiqg. The event will also be live streamed by HWA on Facebook and YouTube.
(10) PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. Be sure to consult NASA's Guide to Near-light-speed Travel before blasting off.
So, you've just put the finishing touches on upgrades to your spaceship, and now it can fly at almost the speed of light. We're not quite sure how you pulled it off, but congratulations! Before you fly off on your next vacation, however, watch this handy video to learn more about near-light-speed safety considerations, travel times, and distances between some popular destinations around the universe.
(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
August 15, 1984 — The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension premiered. Directed by and produced by W.D. Richter (with co-production by Neil Canton), the screenplay was by Earl Mac Rauch who did nothing else of a genre nature. Primary cast was Peter Weller, Ellen Barkin, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Lloyd. Initial critical response was generally negative with a few claiming the script was unintelligible. More than one said it was too hip for its good. No, it didn't do well at the box office but has since become a cult film, and the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give an excellent 70% rating. (CE)
Born August 15, 1771 – Sir Walter Scott, Bt. Lawyer, reviewer, antiquarian, poet, novelist; in the last three, fantastic elements recur; in the last two, by his doing; his reputation has soared, fallen, soared again. He may yet prove timeless. He wrote "Breathes there the man with soul so dead" and "Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!" Rossini, Donizetti, Schubert, Beethoven set his words to music. His baronetcy became extinct upon the death of his son. (Died 1832) [JH]
Born August 15, 1858 — E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on more than sixty books of children's literature including the Five Children Universe series. She was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a socialist organization later affiliated to the Labour Party. (Died 1924.) (CE)
Born August 15, 1907 – Jack Snow. Wrote Who's Who in Oz (1954), rightly praised by Anthony Boucher ("Recommended Reading", Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Mar 55). By then JS had written two Oz novels of his own, five darker short stories for Weird Tales. When Frank Baum, the first and arguably best Oztorian, died in 1919, JS offered to succeed him – age 12; he was turned down. Matching or at least harmonizing with Baum's style has been elusive ever since; Who's Who which could neither treat at length nor argue is masterly, as Boucher noted. (Died 1956) [JH]
Born August 15, 1917 — John Joseph McGuire. Best remembered as a co-writer with H. Beam Piper of A Planet for Texans, Hunter Patrol, Crisis in 2140 and The Return, all of which I've read. His solo fiction was a bare handful and I don't think I've encountered it. The works with Piper are available from the usual digital suspects as is a novella of his called The Reason Prisoner. It's listed as being public domain, so's free there. (Died 1981.) (CE)
Born August 15, 1932 — Robert L. Forward. Physicist and SF writer whose eleven novels I find are often quite great on ideas and quite thin on character development. Dragon's Egg is fascinating as a first contact novel, and Saturn Rukh is another first contact novel that's just as interesting. (Died 2002.) (CE)
Born August 15, 1933 – Bjo Trimble, 86. (There should be a circumflex over the j, an Esperantism indicating the pronunciation "bee-joe", but the software won't allow it.) Omnifan preceding Bruce Pelz. Her vitality and wit sparked LASFS (L.A. Science Fantasy Soc.) out of a slump, authored SF con Art Shows (for which she still refuses credit), led a letter-writing campaign that saved Star Trek from being scrapped (see On the Good Ship "Enterprise"), flourished in fanart, concocted cons and costumes. Received the Big Heart (our highest service award) in 1964, possibly the youngest ever; Inkpot, 1974 (its first year); Fan Guest of Honor at Dragon*Con 1995 the 6th NASFiC (North America SF Con, since 1975 held when the Worldcon is overseas). She and husband John have the Life Achievement Award from the Int'l Costumers Guild. They were early Baroness and Baron in the Society for Creative Anachronism, where she has the Order of the Laurel (arts & sciences), both the Order of the Pelican (service). Together co-chaired Westercon 23; were Fan Guests of Honor at ConJosé the 60th Worldcon. [JH]
Born August 15, 1934 – Darrell K. Sweet. Three hundred fifty covers for us, seventy-five interiors; perhaps 3,000 images all told. Here is Space Cadet. Here is Beyond the Blue Event Horizon. Here is The Dictionary of SF Places. Here is The Eye of the World. Here is "The Gap Dragon and Princess Ivy". Artbook, Beyond Fantasy. Graphic Artist Guest of Honor at Tuckercon the 9th NASFiC; World Fantasy Con 2010; LoneStarCon 3 the 71st Worldcon which had to celebrate him posthumously. (Died 2011) [JH]
Born August 15, 1943 — Barbara Bouchet, 77. Yes, I've a weakness for performers who've shown up on the original Trek. She plays Kelinda in "By Any Other Name". She also appeared in Casino Royale as Miss Moneypenny, a role always noting, and is Ava Vestok in Agent for H.A.R.M. which sounds like someone was rather unsuccessfully emulating The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It will be commented upon by Mystery Science Theater 3000. (CE)
Born August 15, 1945 — Nigel Terry. His first role was John in A Lion in Winter which is at least genre adjacent, with his first genre role being King Arthur in Excalibur. Now there's a bloody telling of the Arthurian myth. He's General Cobb in the Tenth Doctor story, "The Doctor's Daughter", and on the Highlander series as Gabriel Piton in the "Eye of the Beholder" episode. He even played Harold Latimer in "The Greek Interpreter" on Sherlock Holmes. (Did 2015.) (CE)
Born August 15, 1952 – Louise Marley, 68. A score of novels (some under other names) including both a Glass Harmonica and a Mozart's Blood, as many shorter stories. Interviewed in Fantasy, Locus, Strange Horizons, Talebones. Two Endeavour Awards (note spelling; named for Captain Cook's ship). Before authoring, sang with the Seattle Opera. See this autobiographical note. [JH]
Born August 15, 1958 — Stephen Haffner, 62. Proprietor of Haffner Press which appears to be largely a mystery and genre reprint endeavor though he's published such original anthologies as Edmond Hamilton & Leigh Brackett Day, October 16, 2010 and the non-fiction work Thirty-Five Years of the Jack Williamson Lectureship which he did with Patric Caldwell. (CE)
Born August 15, 1964 – Carla Sinclair, 56. Editor of Net Chick. Author of Signal to Noise. Co-founder of bOING bOING. [JH]
Born August 15, 1972 — Matthew Wood, 48. He started out as, and still is, a sound engineer but he also became a voice actor with his best know role being that of General Grievous in The Revenge of the Sith and The Clone Wars. He often does both at the same time as on the 2013 Star Trek into Darkness where he was the surviving sound editor and provided the ever so vague additional voices. (CE)
Bizarro turns another phrase inside-out.
Bizarro on snobs.
(14) SETTING DOWN THE S.H.I.E.L.D. "'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.': Behind the Scenes of the Emotional Series Finale" – a New York Times Q&A with showrunners Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon.
…The resulting series, "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," went on to have a successful seven-season run on ABC, which ended Wednesday with a complex two-hour series finale. That didn't seem especially likely after its rough debut in 2013. Some critics wanted flashier connections to Marvel cinema — where was Iron Man? — and the show had to operate in the shadow of the movies: The existence of magic couldn't be acknowledged until it was first revealed by the 2016 film "Doctor Strange" first; "life-model decoys," a kind of android, weren't permissible until an android character appeared in "Avengers: Age of Ultron."
But about halfway through its run, the show began reinventing itself, with characters ping-ponging through space, time and alternative realities. Once the writers freed themselves of the timeline and narrative restraints established by the movies (and even ignored a few), the series started to soar.
"We could just make up our own stories," said Jed Whedon. "It was liberating."
In the final season, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents hopped around different decades, with a pit stop in the 1980s that provided pure pop-geek joy. (Agent Coulson as Max Headroom? Check.)
But the show never lost its emotional core: the relationship between Agents Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), who crossed the galaxy more than once to be together, only to be repeatedly pulled apart. In the finale, they reunited, as Fitz helped the ragtag team save both S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Earth from a takeover by an alien android race.
(15) IT ONLY MAKES HIM MAD. "Bald Eagle Sends Government Drone Into Lake Michigan" reports the New York Times.
… A squabble in the sky over Lake Michigan left one bald eagle victorious and one government drone mangled and sunken.
Hunter King, a drone pilot at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, was surveying an area of the lake near the state's Upper Peninsula last month when the drone started "twirling furiously" after it indicated that a propeller had been torn off.
"When he looked up, the drone was gone, and an eagle was flying away," said the department, whose name is abbreviated E.G.L.E.
A couple who regularly spends time watching eagles go after sea gulls in the area witnessed the battle but were surprised when they learned that it was a drone that had been downed in the fight, the department said….
The department speculated that the eagle could have attacked because of a territorial dispute, because it was hungry "or maybe it did not like its name being misspelled."
(16) THE WORM TURNS. NPR asks"Could Giving Kids A 50-Cent Pill Massively Boost Their Income Years Later?"
It's one of the cheapest ways to help kids in extremely poor countries: Twice a year, give them a 50-cent pill to kill off nasty intestinal parasites. Now, a landmark study finds the benefits carry over long into adulthood — and the impact is massive. But dig deeper and the issue quickly becomes more complicated — and controversial.
To understand why, it helps to start at the beginning, when newly minted economist — and future Nobel prize winner — Michael Kremer says he stumbled into this study by lucky happenstance.
It was the mid-1990s and Kremer was visiting Kenya. "I mean I was on vacation. I wasn't there for a research trip or something," he recalls.
Kremer, who had spent a year after college teaching at a school in Kenya, decided to look up a friend from that project. And at their get-together, the friend mentioned to Kremer that he was about to start a new aid program to help elementary school children — including by giving them deworming pills.
The parasites aren't just bad for kids' health. They can make a child too listless to pay proper attention in school or so sick she misses many school days.
Kremer, who had recently gotten his doctorate in economics, says he was struck by an idea: "I suggested that if he chose twice as many schools and then they initially started working in half of them and then later expanded [the deworming to the other half], I could measure the impact of what they were doing."
…The experiment, which involved about 32,000 children, also turned deworming into a popular form of aid. That's because the first set of results, released in 2004 by Kremer and a collaborator, Edward Miguel of University of California, Berkeley, showed that giving the kids the pills reduced absenteeism and dropping out of elementary school by a fourth — from 28% to 21%.
(17) WE INTERRUPT THIS DESSERT. Serious Eats reminds people of "The History of Astronaut Ice Cream".
There may be no novelty sweet more polarizing than astronaut ice cream. Those who adore it praise its light, crunchy texture, and a flavor that is still unmistakably creamy and sweet. Its detractors will say biting into it is akin to chomping down on a piece of chalk: powdery and unnatural. And for those who have never tried it, the entire concept of eating ice cream stripped of all liquid may seem downright bizarre. But even though so-called astronaut (or to be more precise, freeze-dried) ice cream isn't the most popular of novelty treats, its longevity proves that it has found a small, but fiercely loyal fan base.
Even its creator has been a little surprised at the product's staying power….
[Thanks to amk, Andrew "Eagle Eye" Porter, Somtow Sucharitkul, Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Olav Rokne, Michael Toman, Dan Bloch, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Buckaroo Banzai, Cat Eldridge, drones, Elizabeth Bear, Ellen Datlow, M. Rickert, Rebecca Roanhorse, reCONvene, Robert J. Sawyer, Scott Edelman, Somtow Sucharitkul, Stephen Dedman, Stephen Graham Jones	| 43 Replies
Pixel Scroll 7/15/20 Who Would Open This Can Of Words?
Posted on July 15, 2020 by Mike Glyer
(1) ONE WEEK LEFT TO VOTE FOR HUGOS. CoNZealand today reminded members the deadline is nearing – voting closes Wednesday, July 22 at 23:59 PDT (UTC-7), which in New Zeland is Thursday, July 23 at 18:59 NZST (UTC+12).
(2) PEAKE ARCHIVE PRESERVED. The British Library has acquired the Visual Archive of writer, artist and illustrator Mervyn Peake, best known for his series Gormenghast.
.. Mervyn Peake's Visual Archive comprises over 300 original illustrations, including drawings from his critically acclaimed Gormenghast series, together with original illustrations for his own books for children Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor and Letters From a Lost Uncle and other classic works of English literature, such as Treasure Island, The Hunting of the Snark, Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm,and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Also included are unpublished early works, preliminary sketches, and drawings of famous literary, theatrical and artistic figures such as Laurence Olivier and W.H. Auden. This acquisition brings Peake's archive together in one place, making it fully accessible to the public for the first time.
Mervyn Peake was an English writer, artist and illustrator, best known for creating the fantasy trilogy Gormenghast. A Royal Academy trained artist of great versatility and inventiveness, he has been seen as arguably the finest children's illustrator of the mid-20th century. Combining technical mastery with an innate ability to evoke fear, delight and wonderment in young readers, he redefined the cosy nature of children's book illustrations.
Despite his originality, Peake's fondness and respect for the work of other artists is evident in the archive, from the influence of Hogarth, Doré and Blake to Dickens' illustrator Phiz and Boys' Own artist Stanley L. Wood.
The archive is notable for Peake's exquisite Treasure Island illustrations from 1949, which remain some of his finest work, described by critics as 'tense, eerie and dramatic' and 'one of the few editions which have come near to meeting the demands of the author's text'. Treasure Island was Peake's favourite book and his love for the story is evident in the archive from the watercolour illustrations he painted aged 15, to the large number of preliminary sketches and annotated proofs which show his commitment to perfecting the 1949 edition.
(3) STORYBUNDLE. Available for the next three weeks: "The Glitter and Hope Bundle – Curated by Cat Rambo".
I think I speak for all of us when I say that 2020 has not gone exactly how I expected it to, and this StoryBundle has been no exception. I originally conceived of it as a hopepunk centered bundle, but as I sorted through possibilities, I found less punk than plenty of hopeful stories that reminded me that hope comes in all sorts of forms, not all of them as in your face as hopepunk.
Hope can find its origin in friendship, whether on an alien planet or a New York street corner. It can come from writing, in a myriad shades as multi-colored as the ink in which it's inscribed. It glitters at the bottom of Pandora's box, waiting to escape. Waiting to provide comfort and lightand renewed vigor for the fight….
… For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you're feeling generous), you'll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.
Diamondsong – Escape 01 by E.D.E. Bell
The Burglar of Sliceharbor by Jason A. Holt
Modern Surprises by Joan Marie Verba
The Traveling Triple-C Incorporeal Circus by Alanna McFall
If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus seven more more books, for a total of eleven.
Diamondsong – Capture 02 by E.D.E. Bell
Tales of the Captain Duke – Vol. 1-4 by Rebecca Diem
The Voyage of the White Cloud by M. Darusha Wehm
Community of Magic Pens by Atthis Arts Anthology
Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo
Missing Signal by Seb Doubinsky
The Legacy Human – Singularity 1 by Susan Kaye Quinn
(4) SCIENCE FICTION IS NEVER ABOUT THE FUTURE. (William Gibson and Margaret Atwood have both said so; the name of the person who actually said it first escapes me at the moment.) Abigail Nussbaum's "The Political Hugo" discusses "the nominees on this year's Hugo ballot that feel most relevant to our crazy, confusing political moment, and why I'd like them to win." She advocates that the Hugo should be appropriated as an award for topical fiction.
….We're coming off a decade in which the Hugo struggled with its own definition, and with a troupe of interlopers who claimed to want to save it from those who would "politicize" it. It's a decade in which the award's diversity has advanced considerably, with more women, POC, and LGBT people being recognized than ever before. And yet at the same time, the Hugo can be inward-looking (some might say that this is inevitable, given its nature and voting system). Its politics are often internal politics–as much as it reflected trends in the broader political discourse, the Puppy debacle was the ultimate in inside baseball. I would like this year's winners to be more outward-looking, to reflect the upheaval in the world and the simple fact that we are all participating in that upheaval, whether we want to or not. What I want to write about in this post are the works on this year's Hugo ballot that, besides being excellent examples of their type, speak to some of the issues we've been seeing in the real world.
(5) A VELDT OF THEIR OWN. "Why Exposing Kids To Horror Might Actually Be Good For Them" – that's what Stephen Graham Jones contends in a post for CrimeReads.
…But, I know: horror? Don't kids need "safe" programming, not nightmare fuel? My take is . . . no. Childhood already has a lot of the hallmarks of a horror movie, I think. Kids are small in a big place, they have no real power, they don't know how even the simplest parts of the world work. Doors stretch dauntingly high, shadows can hold anything. Parents say one thing, mean another, and then take it all back anyway, change the rules for no reason other than that they "say so." And everyone is always telling kids that the minute they're alone, without tether to a trustworthy adult, that's when the predators of the world will pounce, spirit them away to a place they never come back from.
Pretty terrifying, right?
My take is that when kids engage horror stories, they kind of . . . recognize that feeling, that terror, that uncertainty, that unfairness, and they maybe even understand that they're not alone in feeling it. They're not "weird," they're just human. Fear is our default setting. It's what happens when you evolve on a savanna where everything wants to eat you.
(6) BEATTS AND BORDERLANDS BOOKS UPDATE. "Authors, Customers Demand Borderlands Books Owner Divest from Store" – Publishers Weekly does a roundup.
… Some sponsors have publicly denounced Beatts on Twitter, including several who have reached out privately to PW to confirm that they will not renew their sponsorships.
One of the authors expressing such sentiments was children's book author Maggie Tokuda-Hall, who has cohosted several "lovely" literary events there, including a May fundraiser with Rebecca Roanhorse and N.K. Jemisin that netted $6,000 for the store. In an email to PW, Tokuda-Hall wrote that it is her "dearest hope that Alan will divest from the store, and allow the staff and community to reclaim the space. The staff does not deserve to be associated with these allegations."…
…Mary Robinette Kowal, who is the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, told PW last week that a Tor representative called her and asked if she wished to cancel a scheduled July 23 virtual event for her new release, Relentless Moon.
"If your publisher comes to you and asks if you still want to do an event…maybe not," Kowal said, adding that she was not "100% convinced" that she had made the right decision. "I don't like the ripple effects," she explained: canceling the event also "punishes" the store's general manager, Jude Feldman, and its four other employees. "The decision an author has to make is a lot messier than the decision an individual customer has to make," Kowal added. "It's the thing we're doing because it's the only tool we have."
Kowal disclosed that she sent an email to Beatts before Tor canceled the event, writing that "I needed him to step back from the store and to address his drinking." Most of the other sources PW spoke to also referred to Beatts' drinking habits; a former employee described the store to PW as having a "heavy drinking culture."
In her capacity as SFWA president, Kowal said that it would be "inappropriate" for the organization to address these specific allegations, but that it has been discussing "the larger problem" of how to report unethical or abusive behavior within the science fiction and fantasy community. SFWA has recently implemented a diversity, equity, and inclusion committee, which will, among other tasks, explore ways to deal with such situations in ways that are "sustainable and safe."
… Beatts dismissed the suggestion that he divest himself from the store by transferring ownership to [Jude] Feldman. "I cannot see any way in which Borderlands can possibly operate without me," he wrote. "I've discussed this with Jude and she agrees. That is not an option." Feldman, in addition to being the store's general manager for 19 years, has been Beatts's significant other for about 20 years….
(7) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
July 1997 — Christopher Golden's The Lost Army was released by Dark Horse Comics. The first of seven Hellboy novels that Golden would write for Dark Horse over the next decade, it bore a cover done by Mike Mignola who also provided interior illustrations. It would have French and Spanish editions as well. It was the very first of the twelve original Hellboy novels done by Dark Horse over a twenty year period. If you're interested all of them are available from the usual digital suspects.
Born July 15, 1606 – Rembrandt van Rijn. Draftsman, painter, printer. Among the greatest visual artists. Master of light, texture, portraiture. We can claim his mythological pictures; perhaps also his Biblicals, at least when like The Evangelist Matthew and the Angel showing, besides what believers would deem historical, some element that could only be imagined. Here is The Sacrifice of Isaac. Here is Pallas Athena. Here is The Abduction of Persephone. See what he could do with a few lines. (Died 1669) [JH]
Born July 15, 1779 – Clement Moore. He was a Professor of Biblical Learning. "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was published anonymously; for twenty years he did not acknowledge it; some scholarship indicates he was not the author; and it must be said he owned slaves and opposed Abolition. But consider the poem as an achievement of fantasy – particularly since St. Nicholas was a 4th Century bishop in what is now Turkey. (Died 1863) [JH]
Born July 15, 1917 – Robert Conquest, Ph.D. For us, a novel, a few shorter stories, a few poems; five Spectrum anthologies with Kingsley Amis. Many other writings. Politically a conservative, and a brilliant one, which is a pain or a joy depending on your point of view (note that I put pain on the left and joy on the right). He might not like being remembered most for this, but we do: "SF's no good, they bellow till we're deaf. But this looks good. Well then, it's not SF." (Died 2015) [JH]
Born July 15, 1918 — Dennis Feltham Jones. His first novel Colossus was made into Colossus: The Forbin Project. He went on to write two more novels in the series, The Fall of Colossus and Colossus and the Crab, which in my opinion became increasingly weird. iBooks and Kindle have the Colossus trilogy plus a smattering of his other works available. ((Died 1981.) CE)
Born July 15, 1931 — Clive Cussler. Pulp author. If I had to pick his best novels, I'd say that would be Night Probe and Raise the Titanic, possibly also Vixen 03. His real-life National Underwater and Marine Agency, a private maritime archaeological group found several important wrecks including the Manassas, the first ironclad of the civil war. (Died 2020.) (CE)
Born July 15, 1944 — Jan-Michael Vincent. First Lieutenant Jake Tanner in the film version of Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley which somehow I've avoided seeing so far. Is it worth seeing? Commander in Alienator and Dr. Ron Shepherd in, and yes this is the name, Xtro II: The Second Encounter. Not to mention Zepp in Jurassic Women. (Don't ask.) As Airwolf counts as genre, he was helicopter pilot and aviator Stringfellow Hawke in it. (Died 2019.) (CE)
Born July 15, 1957 — Forest Whitaker, 63. His best-known genre roles are Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as Saw Gerrera and in The Black Panther as Zuri. He's had other genre appearances including Major Collins in Body Snatchers, Nate Pope in Phenomenon, Ker in Battlefield Earth for which he was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor, Ira in Where the Wild Things Are, Jake Freivald In Repo Men (anyone see this?) and he was, and Host of Twilight Zone. (CE)
Born July 15, 1958 – Pat Molloy, 62. Chaired ConCave 1980-1982, Con*Stellation IV & VII, DeepSouthCon 25 (some use Roman numerals, some don't); Fan Guest of Honor at DSC 27, 52. After twenty years of the Rebel Award, co-founded and named the Rubble Award; punished by being given the Rebel Award. DUFF (Down Under Fan Fund) delegate (with Naomi Fisher), attended the 2001 Australian nat'l convention. [JH]
Born July 15, 1963 — Brigitte Nielsen, 57. Red Sonja! What a way to launch your film career. Mind you her next genre were 976-Evil II and Galaxis… She starred as the Black Witch in the Nineties Italian film series Fantaghiro, and played the Amazon Queen in the Danish Ronal the Barbarian. (CE)
Born July 15, 1964 – Elspeth Kovar, 56. Wrote the Joe Mayhew memorial for the Chicon 6 Souvenir Book (58th Worldcon); see her con report in File 770 137, p. 28 (PDF). Chaired Capclave 2006. Active in WSFA (Washington, D.C., SF Ass'n). Not true that one of her cats was in an iron lung and on dialysis. [JH]
Born July 15, 1967 — Christopher Golden, 53. Where to start? The Veil trilogy was most excellent as was The Hidden Cities series co-authored with Tim Lebbon. The Menagerie series co-authored with Thomas E. Sniegoski annoyed me because it never got concluded. Straight On 'Til Morning is one damn scary novel. (CE)
Born July 15, 1983 – Tristan Tarwater, 37. Author of fantasy, comics, and RPG (role-playing games) bits. Six novels, recently The Marauders' Island, laced with coconut wine, salt, and magic; a few shorter stories. Among her books read are the Vinland Saga (i.e. Makoto Yumimura's), The Fifth Season, Blake's Complete Illuminated Books, and The Glass Bead Game. Website here. [JH]
(9) COMICS SECTION.
Bliss shows an oblivious new father.
Rhymes With Orange talks plant medicine.
(10) BILL'S BIOPIC. Will this film be called The Shat Story? "William Shatner Wants Chris Pine To Play Him In Future Biopic" says We Got This Covered.
Shatner recently appeared as a guest via virtual chatroom at this year's Galaxy Con, and given the prolific career he's enjoyed in his 89 years, the idea of bringing his story to the big screen was sure to be on the minds of the collective Star Trek fandom.
"I want to play myself. I don't want to die!," Shatner said when asked who he'd like to have star in such a feature. "I don't know. Chris Pine? Why doesn't he play me? A good looking, talented guy,"
(11) SEEMS LEGIT. Another LEGO collectible.
Commemorating 2020 with #LEGO toys!#covid19 #coronavirus #ToiletPaperEmergency #toiletpaperwars #toiletpapercrisis #toiletpapergate #ToiletPaperPanic pic.twitter.com/qt1Tll2OKM
— Reviewer 2 (@GrumpyReviewer2) March 20, 2020
(12) IT'S DEAD, JIM. LitHub revisits 1965 and "What Our First Close Look at Mars Actually Revealed" – tagline: "The Disappointment of a Blighted Planet."
…Scarcely anyone had been prepared for what frame seven revealed, much less what they saw in the next dozen images. "My God, it's the moon," thought Norm Haynes, one of the systems engineers. There were craters in the image, all perfectly preserved, which meant the planet was in bleak stasis. The crust hadn't been swallowed by the churn of plate tectonics, but, more important, the surface hadn't been worn down by the ebb and flow of water. Preserved craters meant there had been no resurfacing, no aqueous weathering of any kind resembling that of the Earth. As with the moon, it appeared there had never been any significant quantity of liquid water on the surface—no rainfall, no oceans, no streams, no ponds.
Stunned, the Mariner 4 team didn't publicly release the images for days as they tried to understand the implications of what they were seeing.
(13) GREEN CHEESE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I think the cheesy commercial for this is news
Second only to seeing @TheGreenKnight in theaters: playing The Green Knight RPG at home.
[Thanks to John Hertz, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title cedit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Abigail Nussbaum, Alan Beatts, Borderlands Books, Cat Rambo, Hellboy, Lego, Mars, Mary Robinette Kowal, Mervyn Peake, Stephen Graham Jones, StoryBundle, The Green Knight, William Shatner	| 10 Replies
Pixel Scroll 5/17/20 Quit Airing Those Gripping Hands Through The Zoom
Posted on May 17, 2020 by Mike Glyer
(1) TIME TO BOW OUT. Bruce Sterling's blog at WIRED, which he's been writing since 2003, is ending: "Farewell to Beyond the Beyond".
…If there are no big events due to pandemic, and nobody's shopping much, either, then it's mighty hard to keep a magazine empire afloat in midair. Instead, you've gotta fire staffers, shut down software, hunt new business models, re-organize and remove loose ends. There is probably no looser-end in the entire WIRED domain than this weblog.
…Although I wrote tons of "original content" elsewhere, long text-form essays like this were vanishingly rare on "Beyond the Beyond." The blog never trolled for any viral hits, or tried to please any patrons. Also, I never got paid anything for my blogging, which was probably the key to the blog's longevity. This blog persisted with such ease, because there was so much that I didn't have to do.
…Also, the ideal "Beyond the Beyond" reader was never any fan of mine, or even a steady reader of the blog itself. I envisioned him or her as some nameless, unlikely character who darted in orthogonally, saw a link to some odd phenomenon unheard-of to him or her, and then careened off at a new angle, having made that novelty part of his life. They didn't have to read the byline, or admire the writer's literary skill, or pony up any money for enlightenment or entertainment. Maybe they would discover some small yet glimmering birthday-candle to set their life alight.
(2) ANTICLICK BAIT, BUT DON'T BLAME THE PARK SERVICE. Does Gizmodo think putting the President's name in this headline generates more clicks? If so, they're wrong . I only looked because Daniel Dern recommended the link. "These Social Distancing Posters Are the Best Thing the Trump Administration Has Done for Parks". Very clever stuff! Then I went to the National Park Service's Twitter feed and found the source art.
The posters have an important mission: promote social distancing in parks during the covid-19 pandemic, reduce the spread of disease in parks, and promote virtual opportunities and experiences at parks. To be fair, the posters have been around for a few weeks now, but these gems clearly haven't received the attention they deserve….
Be safe and remember to keep your social and physical distance… from wildlife too!#FindYourPark #SocialDistancing pic.twitter.com/M9BCsJb2Hs
— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) April 16, 2020
And that's not the only clever thing with a genre twist that they've posted. Another is:
What "park" house would you be sorted into??
SLOBBERIN?
Powerful, Moody, Drooler?
GRYFFINDOG?
Social, Energetic, Barker?
RAVENPAW?
Intelligent, Independent, Nocturnal ?
HUFFLEBUFF?
Gruff, Majestic, Grazer?
?#FindYourPark pic.twitter.com/aBkeNPexxl
— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) May 2, 2020
(3) RESOURCES FOR THE SUMMER SCARES PROGRAM. The Summer Scares 2020 reading list has been augmented by an array of videos:
A playlist of videos about the Summer Scares program, including resources for libraries to use to promote horror at their own libraries. Summer Scares is brought to you by the Horror Writers Association, Book Riot, Library Journal/School Library Journal, and United for Libraries.
Here's the one from Stephen Graham Jones:
(4) VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. SF Geeks go where only two men have gone before: "Thirty-six Thousand Feet", in The New Yorker.
…Most submarines go down several hundred metres, then across; this one was designed to sink like a stone. It was the shape of a bulging briefcase, with a protruding bulb at the bottom. This was the pressure hull—a titanium sphere, five feet in diameter, which was sealed off from the rest of the submersible and housed the pilot and all his controls. Under the passenger seat was a tuna-fish sandwich, the pilot's lunch. He gazed out of one of the viewports, into the blue. It would take nearly four hours to reach the bottom.
…The submarine touched the silty bottom, and the pilot, a fifty-three-year-old Texan named Victor Vescovo, became the first living creature with blood and bones to reach the deepest point in the Tonga Trench. He was piloting the only submersible that can bring a human to that depth: his own.
For the next hour, he explored the featureless beige sediment, and tried to find and collect a rock sample. Then the lights flickered, and an alarm went off. Vescovo checked his systems—there was a catastrophic failure in battery one. Water had seeped into the electronics, bringing about a less welcome superlative: the deepest-ever artificial explosion was taking place a few feet from his head.
If there were oxygen at that depth, there could have been a raging fire. Instead, a battery junction box melted, burning a hole through its external shell without ever showing a flame. Any instinct to panic was suppressed by the impossibility of rescue. Vescovo would have to come up on his own.
(5) MCWHORTER OBIT. Noted Burroughs collector George McWhorter (1931-2020), whose work in the sff field came after a long and fruitful career in music, died April 25. Legacy has details of both careers, as well as his family history.
…George's most celebrated collection is the Edgar Rice Burroughs Memorial Collection, which he developed as a tribute to his mother Nell Dismukes McWhorter, who taught him to read when he was just five years old. "She tried everything," George recalls, "Dickens, Dumas… but when she got to Burroughs, I was hooked!" The largest institutional collection of Burroughs in the world, this vast and comprehensive collection of rare editions, toys, posters, games, photographs, and film has attracted scholars and fans to the University of Louisville for more than thirty years.
In 1986 George was named Curator of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Collection, a fitting title for a man who has furthered scholarship, preserved unique treasures, and brought worldwide attention to Burroughs. Looking toward the future, George has established an endowment to provide continuous support for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Memorial Collection. In 2008, he designated a bequest for an endowed chair and curatorship. He also has been working with Burroughs Bibliophiles on their own gifts and bequests.
May 17, 1987 — The Return Of The Six Million Dollar Man And The Bionic Woman first aired. The series were loosely based off on Cyborg by Martin Caidin and The Bionic Woman by Kenneth Johnson. Michael Sloan wrote the screenplay which was based on the story he and Bruce Lansbury wrote. Lee Majors co-stars here with Lindsay Wagner. Martin Landau, Lee Major II and Gary Lockwood guest star. It was the fourth highest rate show of genre week, and holds a 82% approval rating among the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
Born May 17, 1913 — Peter B. Germano. Though neither of his SF novels was of great distinction, The Interplanetary Adventures and The Pyramids from Space (written as Jack Berlin), his scriptwriter duties are as he did work on The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Lost, Battle of the Planets and the revival version of The Next Step Beyond, do warrant his being noted here. (Died 1983.) (CE)
Born May 17, 1918 – Darrell Richardson. Baptist minister, authority on Frederick Faust (who wrote as "Max Brand") and Edgar Burroughs, collector (30,000 books, 20,000 pulps). Early member of Cincinnati Fantasy Group. Co-founded Memphis SF Ass'n, who named their Darrell Award for Mid-South regional work after him. Served as a director of the Nat'l Fantasy Fan Federation; compiled An Index of the Works of Various Fantasy Authors 1947-1948 and An Index of Various Fantasy Publications 1947-1948. Member of First Fandom. Big Heart, Lamont, Phoenix awards. (Died 2006) [JH]
Born May 17, 1919 – Ronald Cassill. Lieutenant in U.S. Army; two exhibits of his artwork in Chicago; two stories reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Atlantic Monthly "first" prize, O. Henry short-story prize, American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature; Fulbright, Guggenheim fellowships; Rockefeller grant; Professor of English, Brown University. (Died 2002) [JH]
Born May 17, 1926 – Ludvík Soucek. Probably still the best-known Czech SF author. Wrote also about puppet theater, photography, book printing. A dozen books, as many collections. (Died 1978) [JH]
Born May 17, 1946 – F. Paul Wilson. Sold to Analog while still in medical school, now an osteopath. Medical thrillers, interactive scripts e.g. FTL Newsfeed. Urban mercenary Repairman Jack first appeared in N.Y. Times best-seller The Tomb. Three Prometheus Awards, including the first (1979), most recently Lifetime Achievement (2015). Fifty novels in our field, sixty shorter stories, letters & reviews in Janus, SF Review, N.Y. Review of SF. [JH]
Born May 17, 1948 – Amanda Cockrell. Professor at Hollins University. Historical and other fiction for adults, young adults, children, under her own name and pseudonyms. Among us, novels about deer dancers (Daughter of the Sky, two more), goddesses (Persephone, Aphrodite, Athena), horse catchers (When the Horses Came, two more); six others; What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay named one of the best children's books of 2011 by The Boston Globe. [JH]
Born May 17, 1954 — Colin Greenland, 66. His partner is the Susanna Clarke, with whom he has lived since 1996. The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the British 'New Wave' in Science Fiction study is based on his PhD thesis. His most successful fictional work is the Plenty series that starts with Take Back Plenty and continues with Seasons of Plenty, The Plenty Principle and wraps up with Mother of Plenty. In the Eighties and Ninties, he was involved in the editorial work ofFoundation: The Review of Science Fiction and Interzone. (CE)
Born May 17, 1958 – Dave Sim. Perpetrator of Cerebus the Aardvark. Twenty covers and interiors for Phantasy Digest, Dark Fantasy, Borealis. Harvey Award; Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame. [JH]
The Flying McCoys seem to be in the middle of a monstrous misunderstanding.
La Cucaracha crosses aliens and masks for a topical laugh.
(9) ANOTHER ENTRY FOR YOUR HVP. Cora Buhlert, 2020 Best Fan Writer Hugo finalist, has put her Hugo Voter Packet online as well. Here is a link where you can download it in the e-book format of your choice here.
(10) MORE LAUGHS. NPR takes notes as "Greg Daniels Moves His Comedic Spotlight To Absurdity In The Afterlife".
For more than 30 years, Emmy Award-winning television writer, director and producer Greg Daniels has spun comedy from the threads of ordinary life, turning its frustrations and awkward moments into such hit shows as The Office, Parks And Recreation, and King of the Hill.
Now he's reflecting on these notions again in Upload, a futuristic comedy on Amazon Prime — but this time they play out in the afterlife too. He's also behind the upcoming Netflix satire Space Force, launching May 29, starring Steve Carell.
Greg Daniels' humor has all the makings of the British comedies he reveres, including Fawlty Towers and the original, British version of The Office.
"There's something wonderful about the awkwardness of it and their kind of enjoyment of a pathetic situation that always appealed to me," Daniels says.
…The problems in Daniels' upcoming Netflix show Space Force include a military leader who doesn't listen to the scientists around him. His new sci-fi comedy Upload explores the inequalities — and inhumanity — that emerges as advanced, expensive, digital technologies hit the market.
"These technologies are introduced and they all seem great. And then, you know, the law of unintended consequences kicks in and they are kind of flawed or sometimes outright evil when they're actually executed," Daniels says.
In Upload, only the wealthy get to experience an idyllic afterlife in the expensive, leafy resort called "Lakeview." Even the commercial for Lakeview feels eerily familiar.
(11) LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS. Disney Parks posted a video flashback to Halloween 2019: "Jack Skellington reigns at Disney's Not-So-Spooky Spectacular!"
Because we are halfway to Halloween, we are traveling back in time to last fall when Magic Kingdom Park was in the skeletal hands of the Pumpkin King. Join him in front of Cinderella Castle for a frightfully mischievous night of fireworks and creeps during Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.
(12) HER REAL CHILDREN. NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro interviews author Curtis Sittenfield: "Hillary Without Bill? 'Rodham' Imagines What Could Have Been".
A young Hillary Rodham, madly in love with the man she met at Yale Law School, abandons her own path and heads to Arkansas. Slowly she starts to uncover Bill Clinton's many infidelities and makes a choice.
What would have happened if Hillary Rodham had never married Bill Clinton?
"So in real life, Bill Clinton proposed to Hillary Rodham twice and she said no. Both times. And then he proposed a third time and she said yes," says author Curtis Sittenfeld. "And in my version, she says no. The third time, too. And she goes her own way." Sittenfeld's new book Rodham follows Hillary as she goes on to become a law professor, and then a politician.
On wanting to write speculative fiction about someone who's been written about so much already
Well, doesn't everyone? Isn't it a totally natural impulse? So actually, it's funny because I agree with you that so much has been written about Hillary. And it was sort of in reaction to that that I think I wrote this book. So in the lead-up to the 2016 election, I was invited to write essays about Hillary, and I would decline because I felt like every possible thing there was to say about Hillary had been said. She had been analyzed from every angle.
And then an editor at Esquire magazine invited me to write a short story from Hillary's perspective. And I accepted, and writing that story was this kind of strange exercise where I realized that the question was not, what do the American people think of Hillary Clinton, but what does Hillary Clinton think of the American people? And it turned out that that I had 400 pages worth of thoughts to say on that. So it was actually trying to sort of flip the narrative, and instead of making her the one who's scrutinized, like giving her a voice — which, of course, is a totally fictionalized voice, like she did not write this book. I wrote this book.
(13) HE'S A CRITIC. [Item by Daniel Dern.] And I'll say it in case nobody else will (although I'm sure they will), "This robot really sucks." "An R2-D2 Robot Vacuum Is Exactly the Chore Droid I'm Looking For". Be sure to watch the video!
(14) THEY'RE CRITICS TOO. "Coronavirus: Author Neil Gaiman's 11,000-mile lockdown trip to Scottish isle" – BBC says a local politician is outraged.
The SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford, who is the MP for the island, told the Sunday Times the author's journey was unacceptable.
He said: "What is it about people, when they know we are in the middle of lockdown that they think they can come here from the other side of the planet, in turn endangering local people from exposure to this infection that they could have picked up at any step of the way?"
Mr Gaiman – whose main family home is in Woodstock in the USA – has owned the house on Skye for more than 10 years.
(15) THE MASTER SPACE. The Iron Sky "Dictator's Cut" is online.
(16) BACK TO THE FUTURE REUNION. Josh Gad's stay-at-home show Reunited Apart summons Christopher Lloyd, Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson and even Huey Lewis to reminisce about the 1985 movie.
Great Scott! Things get heavy during Episode Two of "Reunited Apart" as Josh is joined by the creative geniuses behind the Back to the Future trilogy.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Something sure to please that little bit of pyromania in everyone.
Match Chain Reaction – Space Rocket built with Matches TAKES OFF 1 Million matches is a lot of matches, which means lighting them all together is a lot of fire. The way it burns is crazy to watch. It took me a lot of hard work and time to make this rocket.
[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Dennis Howard, Martin Morse Wooster, Daniel Dern, Todd Mason, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, IanP, JeffWarner, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day the cryptic Daniel Dern.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Back to the Future, Bruce Sterling, Burroughs Bibliophiles, Cora Buhlert, Disneyland, Edgar Rice Burroughs, George McWhorter, Horror Writers Association, Iron Sky, Neil Gaiman, R2-D2, robots, Stephen Graham Jones, Summer Scares	| 36 Replies
2019 World Fantasy Awards Judges
Posted on December 5, 2018 by Mike Glyer
The 2019 World Fantasy Awards Judges have been announced.
Nancy Holder (USA)
Kathleen Jennings (Australia)
Stephen Graham Jones (USA)
Garry Douglas (United Kingdom)
Tod McCoy (USA)
The judges will be reading and considering eligible materials until June 1, 2019. All forms of fantasy are eligible, e.g. epic, dark, contemporary, literary.
Qualifications: All books must have been published in 2018; magazines must have a 2018 cover date; only living persons are eligible.
The award categories are: Life Achievement; Best Novel; Best Novella (10,001 to 40,000 words); Best Short Story; Best Anthology; Best Collection; Best Artist; Special Award??Professional; Special Award??Non?Professional.
The awards will be presented at World Fantasy Convention 2019 , to be held Thursday, October 31 through Sunday, November 3, 2019, at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel. Through May 20, 2019, an attending membership costs $225, which does not include the Awards Banquet. Banquet tickets will be available in Summer, 2019. Information and forms can be found on the website.
Posted in Awards	| Tagged Garry Douglas, Kathleen Jennings, Nancy Holder, Stephen Graham Jones, Tod McCoy, World Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Convention
2020 World Fantasy Convention Announces Guests
Posted on November 6, 2018 by Mike Glyer
World Fantasy Convention 2020 in Salt Lake City officially opened for registration at the close of this year's WFC in Baltimore. The Salt Lake committee so far has named five guests:
Stephen Gallagher – British author of many novels and screenplays, including episodes of the fan favorite Dr. Who and the television drama series Eleventh Hour. A new television reboot of Gallagher's debut novel, Chimera, is currently being produced.
Stephen Graham Jones – award-winning author of sixteen novels, including his latest, Mapping the Interior, which was a finalist for this year's World Fantasy Award.
Anne Groell – Executive Editor for Penguin Random House, Ms. Groell has worked in the fantasy genre for more than twenty-five years. Her current author list includes George R.R. Martin, Terry Brooks, and Robin Hobb.
David Cherry – An award-winning artist of renown, Mr. Cherry is known for his work in the science fiction and fantasy genre. He is the former president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists.
Tracy and Laura Hickman – Utah locals who will serve as toastmasters for the 2020 World Fantasy Convention. Tracy is a NYT Bestselling author and game creator, who first became known for his work on the Dragonlance series. He and his wife, Laura, currently write together.
"We're excited about our confirmed guests," said Ginny Smith, co-chair of the 2020 World Fantasy Convention. "We have a great lineup so far, and soon we'll announce the addition of several more professionals in the fantasy genre."
The convention's theme is "Fairyland was Nothing Like This" (< i>quote from "Finian's Rainbow")
Utah is proud of its pioneering heritage. Like the pioneers who traveled vast distances to explore strange new lands, fantasy and horror have journeyed far from their origins. From folklore and fairy tales to dystopia and steampunk, who could have foreseen the genre as it exists today? This con will highlight books and authors who have pioneered new trends in fantasy and horror over the years. Discussion panels will explore sub-genres of fantasy — the elements that have changed through the decades and those that have remained the same. Who blazed the trails in the genre's beginnings, and who are the pioneers of today's fantasy and horror markets?
WFC is an annual gathering of authors, publishers, book dealers, artists, editors, agents, and serious-minded fantasy fans. "For fantasy authors, WFC is pretty much a must," says award-winning and NYT bestselling author David Farland, from Saint George, UT. "Not only do writers get to learn from the best of the best in the field, but it's also an important convention when it comes to meeting editors and agents, and doing business in general."
Posted in Conventions	| Tagged Anne Groell, Dave Farland, David Cherry, Laura Hickman, Stephen Gallagher, Stephen Graham Jones, Tracy Hickman, World Fantasy Convention
2017 Novellapalooza
Posted on November 26, 2017 by JJ
[Editor's note: be sure to read the comments on this post for more novellas and more Filer reviews.]
By JJ: I'm a huge reader of novels, but not that big on short fiction. But the last couple of years, I've done a personal project to read and review as many Novellas as I could (presuming that the story synopsis had some appeal for me). I ended up reading 31 of the novellas published in 2015 and 35 of the novellas published in 2016 (though a few of those were after Hugo nominations closed).
Last year, the result of this was the 2016 Novellapalooza. I really felt as though I was able to do Hugo nominations for the novella category in an informed way, and a lot of Filers got involved with their own comments. So I decided to do it again this year.
The success of Tor's novella line seems to have sparked a Golden Age for SFF novellas, with Subterranean Press, NewCon Press, PS Publishing, and Book Smugglers jumping on the bandwagon, as well as the Big 3 magazines and the online fiction venues – so there are a lot more novellas to cover this year. Toward the end, I've gotten to the point of being more selective about which ones I read, based on the synopsis.
It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book despite not feeling that the jacket copy makes the book sound as though it is something I would like – and to discover that I really like or love the work anyway. On the other hand, It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book in such a case, and to discover that, indeed, the book doesn't really do much for me.
Thus, my opinions on the following novellas vary wildly: stories I thought I would love but didn't, stories I didn't expect to love but did, and stories which aligned with my expectations – whether high or low. Bear in mind that while I enjoy both, I tend to prefer Science Fiction over Fantasy – and that while I enjoy suspense and thrillers, I have very little appreciation for Horror (and to be honest, I think Lovecraft is way overrated). My personal assessments are therefore not intended to be the final word on these stories, but merely a jumping-off point for Filer discussion.
I thought it would be helpful to have a thread where all the Filers' thoughts on novellas are collected in one place, as a resource when Hugo nomination time rolls around. Which of these novellas have you read? And what did you think of them?
Please feel free to post comments about any other 2017 novellas which you've read, as well.
(Be sure to rot-13 any spoilers.)
Posted in Book Reviews	| Tagged Adam Christopher, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alan Baxter, Alec Nevala-Lee, Alexander Jablokov, Alison LIttlewood, Andrew Neil Gray, Anne Charnock, Ben Aaronovitch, Bud Sparhawk, Caitlin Kiernan, Cassandra Khaw, Catherine Wells, Charles E. Gannon, Clive Barker, Connie Willis, Corey J. White, Damien Broderick, Dave Hutchinson, David Erik Nelson, Desirina Boskovich, Dianna Gunn, Ellen Klages, Emma Newman, Howard V. Hendrix, J.S. Herbison, James Blaylock, James S.A. Corey, Jeff VanderMeer, Jeffrey Ford, Jeremiah Tolbert, JJ, John Alfred Taylor, John Burnside, John Scalzi, Juliette Wade, Jy Yang, Kevin Hearne, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Liz Ziemska, Lois McMaster Bujold, Marie Brennan, Martha Wells, Martin L. Shoemaker, Matt Wallace, Maurice Broaddus, Michael F. Flynn, Michele Tracy Berger, Mira Grant, Neil Williamson, Nnedi Okorafor, Novellapalooza, Orson Scott Card, Paul Cornell, Peter S. Beagle, Peter Straub, R. Garcia y Robertson, Rachel Pollack, Richard Chedwyk, Richard Chizmar, Robert Reed, Robert Silverberg, Rose Lemberg, Sarah Pinsker, Seanan McGuire, Simon Clark, Simon Morden, Stephanie Burgis, Stephen Graham Jones, Stephen King, Stephen Volk, Tor.com
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