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Tag Archives: Mark R. Kelly
Pixel Scroll 9/4/20 When The Scroll Comes A Filing, The Pixel Turn It Back, First From The Circle, Fifth From The Track
Posted on September 4, 2020 by Mike Glyer
(1) FREE WOLVES. The first episode of Raised By Wolves is free on YouTube – SYFY Wire has the story:
Those interested in blasting off to a distant world filled with strife and android parents are in luck: HBO Max has put the entire first episode of its new sci-fi show, Raised By Wolves, on YouTube for free.
(2) BUTLER ON BESTSELLER LIST. SYFY Wire celebrates Octavia Butler's posthumous breakthrough to the NY Times Bestseller List: "Author Octavia Butler Reaches New York Times Best Seller List, 14 Years After Her Death".
It may have taken more than 44 years since the publication of her first-ever novel, but one of Octavia E. Butler's books has finally made it into the New York Times Best Seller List — something the widely-acclaimed science fiction author had envisioned for herself several years ago.
The novel to reach the list is 1993's The Parable of the Sower, which offers an uncanny, but no less prescient glimpse at California in the early 2020s, a dystopian future where people are dealing with global climate change, as well as an economic crisis.
This is the book's first time on the NYTimes Paperback Trade Fiction list, where it currently sits at no. 13, though future weeks could see it rise, if not stay, due to both Butler's cultural impact as an author, as well as the plot's renewed relevance, given the current global climate — not unlike the surge in popularity seen by other dystopian novels following the 2016 election, such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and George Orwell's 1984. The book is currently a bestseller on Amazon, where it's also No. 1 in the African American Science Fiction category….
(3) ANTHOLOGY ROUNDUP. Mark R. Kelly, whose Science Fiction Awards Database is an incredible resource, told Facebook readers today he has expanded its usefulness in another direction: Anthologies.
Over at my science fiction awards website, sfadb.com, I have — after a year of work — greatly expanded the section about anthologies. There are now 118 pages compiling over 1400 anthologies, grouped by editor or theme and arranged chronologically, with descriptions, photos, tallies of authors and sources, and composite tables of contents. Total descriptive text on the 118 pages: about 30,000 words. There will always be more books to compile, of course, but for now I'm considering this done. Comments, corrections, and suggestions welcome.
(4) WE THE CHARACTERS. If only school had been like this: "The Daily Heller: The U.S. Constitution in Pictures" at Print Magazine.
The Constitution Illustrated (Drawn & Quarterly) is so easy to read (and inexpensive to buy) that even a man-child U.S. President might learn something about the laws, precepts and rights bequeathed to the nation he leads. R. Sikoryak, comics artist, cartoon historian and now Constitutional scholar, has drafted the styles of many of America's great past and present comic strip artists (of all religions, creeds, genders and social backgrounds) —from Alex Raymond's "Flash Gordon" to Hank Ketcham's "Dennis the Menace" to Alice Bechdel's "Dykes to Watch Out For" to Nicole Hollander's "Sylvia" to Frederick Burr Opper's "Happy Hooligan" to, whew, Art Spiegelman's "Maus," and many, many others.
(5) GREEN ASTRONAUT TO RED PLANET. The New York Times says now is the time to watch Away, Hilary Swank's Martian Odyssey.
'Away'
When to watch: Now, on Netflix.
Where has Hilary Swank been the past few years? En route to Mars. This 10-episode drama stars Swank as Emma Green, the mission commander on the first manned (womanned?) mission to Mars.
In space, disaster lurks around every asteroid. Back on earth, Emma's husband (Josh Charles) and their daughter (Talitha Bateman) face their own crises. Should Emma complete her mission or return home to care for her family? Working moms have it rough! Swank, backed by a nifty international cast, commits with her usual live-wire intensity. But the vibe remains gloomy and the heart-wringing, like the vast expanse outside the shuttle, goes on and on and on. Guess you can cry in space.
(6) FRODO AND SAM. Quite a thoughtful post by Mary Nikkel from 2019.
…By contrast, Frodo's obstacles are primarily internal. He endured a lot of those same exterior challenges as Sam, but Sam did much to absorb their impact (see the Cirith Ungol rescue). Frodo's challenges are the slow, steady erosion of a soul being asked to carry a tremendous internal darkness without being consumed by it. Everything he was became laser-focused on that monolithic spiritual and emotional task.
This is why, at the end, Frodo had to sacrifice far more than Sam. Because Sam's primary struggle was against external forces, once those external forces were alleviated, he could go home, marry, have children, live as a functional member of his community. For Frodo, the cessation of exterior pressure could do nothing to mend the way his soul had been burning from the inside out….
(7) LIFE AT THE KILNS. First Things, a religious website, hosts a conversation with Douglas Gresham: "C. S. Lewis And His Stepsons".
…For decades, despite a booming cottage industry of Lewis biographies and endless academic theorizing about the last years of Lewis's life, Douglas kept to himself the fact that Lewis struggled mightily to help his mentally ill stepson [David]. "We didn't tell anybody," he told me. "The only reason I'm releasing it now is because people should know what Jack put up with and what Warnie put up with and how heroic they were to do it at all." It is time, he added, "that people understand what Jack and Warnie went through. Jack and Warnie didn't know what the heck to do."
(8) DON'T BE A LONE ARRANGER. SPECPO, the official blog of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, tells how to "Publish More Poems" through the support of a critique group.
Here's a few ways that critique groups help you grow.
1.) Increase your output by reducing revision time.
Revision means re-vision. It's common knowledge that all writers need distance from their work in order to see it in new ways. We all use tricks to help force along the re-vision process. We change fonts, change reading locations, read it out loud, and these will do in a pinch but there is no replacement for time.
Oh, wait. Except a literal new set of writerly eyes on your poem. This is where critique groups can help in areas that beta readers cannot: we're all writers. When a writer sets their eyes on your draft, they are giving you a fresh look without you having to bury your poem in peat for seven months.
(9) DEFINING SPECULATIVE. Also at SPECPO, Melanie Stormm posted a three-panel infographic designed to answer the question "What Counts As Speculative?" Here is the first section –
(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
September 4, 1966 — At Tricon in Cleveland, Ohio, Gene Roddenberry debuted Star Trek's "Where No Man Has Gone Before" episode. It was so well received that fans there demanded that he show them the black-and-white print he had with him of "The Cage", the original Star Trek pilot. (Neither would win the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation at NyCon 3 the next year as that would instead go to Trek's "Menagerie" episode, a reworking of "The Cage".) Thus was born the popular legend that credits September 4th, 1966 as the true birth date of the Star Trek franchise.
(11) TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born September 4, 1905 — Mary Renault. ISFDB only counts her Theseus series work as genre novels (The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea) by her. Is that right? I'm not familiar with her full body of work to say if that is or is not correct. (Died 1983.) (CE)
Born September 4, 1916 – Robert A.W. "Doc" Lowndes. (Surname is one syllable, rhymes with astounds.) Founded the Stamford, Connecticut, chapter of the SF League, 1935. Edited Dynamic, Famous, Future, SF Quarterly, SF Stories; various other prozines outside our field. Founded Vanguard Records with James Blish. Four novels, fifty shorter stories, poems, under many different names. Nonfiction Three Faces of SF, The Gernsback Days (with M. Ashley), Bok (with C. Beck, H. Bok, J. Cordes, G. de la Ree, B. Indick). Guest of Honor at Lunacon 12, Boskone 10. Best-known fanzine Le Vombiteur; several more. First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 1998).
Born September 4, 1919 – Evelyn Copelman. After the Denslow-illustrated 1900 Wizard of Oz fell out of print, EC illustrated a 1944 ed'n showing the influence of the 1939 motion picture; then a 1947 Magical Monarch of Mo, and a further 1956 Wizard. Outside our field, many illustrations, another career in graphic design. (Died 2003)
Born September 4, 1924 — Joan Aiken. I'd unreservedly say her Wolves Chronicles were her best works. Of the many, many in that series, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase featuring the characters of Bonnie Green, Sylvia Green and Simon is I think the essential work to read even though The Whispering Mountain is supposed to a prequel to the series I don't think it's essential reading. (Or very interesting.) The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is certainly the one in the series I see stocked regularly in my local bookstores. (Died 2004.) (CE)
Born September 4, 1928 — Dick York. He is best remembered as the first Darrin Stephens on Bewitched. He was a teen in the police station in Them!, an early SF film which is considered the very first giant bug film. He'd showed up in myriad Alfred Hitchcock Presents, several episodes of Twilight Zone and has a one-off on Fantasy Island. He voiced his character Darrin Stephens in the "Samantha" episode of The Flintstones. (Died 1992.) (CE)
Born September 4, 1957 — Patricia Tallman, 63. Best known as telepath Lyta Alexander on Babylon 5, a series I hold that was magnificent but ended somewhat annoyingly. She was in two episodes of Next Generation, three of Deep Space Nine and two of Voyager. She did uncredited stunt work on further episodes of the latter as she did on Voyager. H'h to the latter. Oh, and she shows up in Army of Darkness as a possessed witch. (CE)
Born September 4, 1962 – Karl Schroeder, 58. A dozen novels, thirty shorter stories. With Cory Doctorow, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing SF. Essays, reviews in Analog, Bifrost (French), Locus, NY Review of SF, On Spec. Interviewed in Challenging Destiny, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed. Two Prix Aurora awards. Ventus a NY Times Notable Book. Past President of SF Canada (nat'l ass'n of SF pros). [JH]
Born September 4, 1963 – Linda Davies, 57. Six novels for us; Longbow Girl was the Mal Peet Children's Book of the Year. Several others. Escaped, as she put it, from investment banking to write fiction, naturally including financial thrillers. [JH]
Born September 4, 1963 – Mike Scott, 57. His adventures with the much-loved fanzine PLOKTA, the Journal of Superfluous Technology (= Press Lots Of Keys To Abort), involved him with the PLOKTA Cabal, two Hugos, and notoriety as Dr. Plokta. Chaired CUSFS (Cambridge Univ. SF Soc.) and led the successful bid to hold Loncon 3 (72nd Worldcon). Married the horsewoman and fan Flick, another cabalist. [JH]
Born September 4, 1972 — Françoise Yip, 48. She was a remarkably extensive career in genre productions including Earth: Final Conflict, Andromeda, Caprica, Fringe, Robocop: Prime Directives, Seven Days, Flash Gordon, Smallville, Millennium, Arrow and Sanctuary. Genre casting directors obviously like her. (CE)
Born September 4, 1973 – Jennifer Povey, 47. Seven novels, forty shorter stories; role-playing games. Horsewoman. Ranks The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress above Level 7, with which I agree. Collection, The Silent Years. [JH]
Born September 4, 1975 — Kai Owen, 45. Best known for portrayal of Rhys Williams in Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin-off I stopped watching after the first two series. He reprised his character in the Big Audio and BBC audio dramas. (CE)
(12) BOSEMAN TRIBUTE. Following the passing of Chadwick Boseman last week, the late actor has now been honored with a new piece designed by Ryan Meinerding, Head of Visual Development for Marvel Studios.
Legend. Warrior. King. Thank you to Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding for this beautiful piece of art honoring Chadwick Boseman.https://t.co/ItD7xnFTBU pic.twitter.com/UB8MCp0RSe
— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) September 3, 2020
(13) THUMB DOWN. Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson pans the remake: "Disney's New Mulan Is a Dull Reflection of the Original".
… Having affirmed its place in the firmament of animated classics, Mulan could have enjoyed a nice retirement. But Disney as it exists now is not content to let things rest, and so—after tackling live-action remakes of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Alice in Wonderland—they turned their necromancy to Mulan. Only, certain mores and cultural interests have changed in the last 22 years, meaning Disney didn't feel quite comfortable simply literalizing the 1998 film, talking dragon and musical numbers and all. Instead, they wanted a big action epic in the style of many huge movies that have come out of the Chinese film industry, only directed by a New Zealander, Niki Caro.
Caro directed the lovely New Zealand coming-of-age tale Whale Rider, which earned its young star, Keisha Castle-Hughes, an Oscar nomination for best actress. In that way, she was a fine pick for Mulan, another coming-of-age story about a headstrong young woman bucking the rigid gender norms of her place and time. In other ways—being that Caro is not from China or of Chinese descent—her hiring rang alarm bells. Disney had to proceed carefully, not wanting to tarnish valuable I.P. or create a cultural blowback that would put its corporate progressiveness under the microscope.
What has resulted from all that needle threading is a movie, out on Disney+ on September 4, that's been managed to death. The new Mulan is a sweeping action movie with lots of cool fight choreography, and yet it never musters up a sense of awe. Even the loathsome Beauty and the Beast remake was not this bland and perfunctory; that film at least had the darkly electrifying jolt of its awfulness. Mulan is not awful. It's just inert, a lifeless bit of product that will probably neither satisfy die-hards nor enrapture an entire new generation of fans.
(14) BORNE AGAIN. Nina Shepardson reviews "'Borne' by Jeff VanderMeer" at Outside of a Dog.
Although I first encountered Jeff VanderMeer through the excellent anthologies he co-edits with his wife Ann, he's better known for his fiction. His Southern Reach Trilogy and Ambergris novels are both beloved by fans of weird fiction. Borne is the first in a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic city where people scavenge for biotechnological creations that have escaped into the wild while trying to evade a giant flying bear. No, that was not a typo, there really is a giant flying bear. His name is Mord….
(15) DICELIVING. Camestros Felapton proposes an easy way for sff critics to save themselves the trouble of constantly rearranging those reviewers' clichés in "Get a free opinion about science in science fiction".
You'll need a D20 dice and the table below. Take the sentence "I believe that the science in science fiction should be X and Y" and replace X and Y with entries from the table, rolling the dice twice to get your exciting new take on the discussion….
(16) THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I heard a 2019 podcast Leonard and Jessie Maltin did with Brad Bird (Maltin on Movies — Brad Bird). Bird explained that he first visited Disney in 1968, when he was 11. Three years later, he sent them a 15-minute animated film. This was a time when character animation was at its low point, where the only studio producing character animation was Disney, who produced one film every three years. Most of the animators who started working with Disney in the 1930s were still active 30 years later, but they realized they had no successors, so Bird was recruited. He discusses his apprenticeship with the great animator Milt Kahl and then went on to study at Cal Arts, where the one class for character animators met in the basement in room A113. Bird has remained friends with many of the students in that class, including Henry Selick, Tim Burton, and John Musker, and sticks "A113" as an Easter egg in all of his films. Also discussed: what Bird did for "The Simpsons," and his surprise at being drawn as the villain Syndrome in The Incredibles.
(17) ASK NASA. NASA's Science Mission Directorate will hold a community town hall meeting with Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen and his leadership team at 12 p.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 10, to discuss updates to NASA's science program and the current status of NASA activities.
Members of the science community, academia, the media, and the public are invited to participate by joining at the link here. (If prompted, please use event number 199 074 4251, followed by event password Zk4n3G48gbd.)
To ask a question, participants can go here.
Users must provide their first and last name and organization and can submit their own questions or vote up questions submitted by others. The meeting leaders will try to answer as many of the submitted questions as possible.
Presentation materials will be available for download and a recording will be available later that day here.
(18) L. RON HUBBARD, COMMANDING. [Item by Dann.] I came across something interesting via one of my regular YouTube channels; The History Guy. THG is prepared by an actual history professor.
In this case, he was offering a window into the history of WWII vintage anti-submarine ships of the US Navy.
One of those ships, PC-815, reportedly engaged with a pair of Japanese submarines just off the northwestern coast of the United States. The sub-chasers expended all of their depth charges and had called in two blimps in pursuit of the two submarines.
In his lengthy and quite descriptive after-action report, the captain of the PC-815 claimed to have positively sunk one of the submarines and damaged the other. The after-action reports of the other US Navy air and sea vessel commanders involved in the chase did not support that claim.
Shortly thereafter, the PC-815 was diverted from coastal defense duty and was assigned to escort a ship down to San Diego for final outfitting. Upon arrival, the captain of the PC-815 had the ship moored off of some area islands and decided to conduct some nighttime gunnery exercises using those islands as targets. The islands belonged to Mexico and were defended by an installation of Mexican army soldiers.
Shortly thereafter, the captain of the ship, one L. Ron Hubbard, was removed from command and reassigned to other…non-command….duties.
If you want to skip to the part about Hubbard, it's at the 12:33 mark of the video.
Other links are to the ever-questionable Wikipedia. Those pages seem to match up well with other sites that aren't affiliated with the Scientology folks.
[Thanks to John Hertz, John King Tarpinian, Dann, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Brad Bird, C.S. Lewis, Camestros Felapton, Chadwick Boseman, Disney, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jeff VanderMeer, Leonard Maltin, Lord of the Rings, Mark R. Kelly, Marvel, Melanie Stormm, Mulan, NASA, Nina Shepardson, Octavia Butler, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, SPECPO, Star Trek
Cats Sleep on SFF:
West of the Sun
Posted on August 18, 2020 by Mike Glyer
Mark R. Kelly has been probing for books to consider for his next Black Gate column.
For Edgar Pangborn, I thought to start with his first, West Of The Sun, which I have a copy of, now sitting on my table where my cat, Potsticker, is lying, stretched out in the Bay Area heat.
And looking through my stacks, I realize I have the Old Earth Books edition, courtesy Michael J. Walsh from nearly 20 years ago. And Potsticker is sitting up.
Photos of your felines resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com
Posted in Cats Sleep on SFF	| Tagged Edgar Pangborn, Mark R. Kelly
Pixel Scroll 12/11/18 For The World Is Hollow And I Have Scrolled The Pixel
Posted on December 11, 2018 by Mike Glyer
(1) PICARD. Entertainment Weekly got the word from Alex Kurtzman: "Star Trek producer explains how Picard spin-off will be 'extremely different'".
"It's an extremely different rhythm than Discovery," [writer-director Alex] Kurtzman told EW exclusively. "Discovery is a bullet. Picard is a very contemplative show. It will find a balance between the speed of Discovery and the nature of what Next Gen was, but I believe it will have its own rhythm."
Continued Kurtzman: "Without revealing too much about it, people have so many questions about Picard and what happened to him, and the idea we get to take time to answer those questions in the wake of the many, many things he's had to deal with in Next Gen is really exciting. 'More grounded' is not the right way to put it, because season 2 of Discovery is also grounded. It will feel more…real-world? If that's the right way to put it."
(2) NO BUCKS, NO BUCK ROGERS. Also,Variety says the Picard series will be made in California to take advantage of state tax benefits: "New' Star Trek' Series to Shoot in California, Selected for Tax Credit".
CBS's new "Star Trek" series, with Patrick Stewart reprising the role of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, will shoot in California and receive a $15.6 million production tax credit.
The California Film Commission announced Monday that the untitled "Star Trek" series and eight other TV series have been selected for the latest tax credit allocations totaling $90 million under the state's expanded Film & TV Tax Credit Program 2.0.
Six recurring series already in the tax credit program and picked up for another season of in-state production have also been set for allocations — Fox's third season of "The Orville" with $15.8 million, CBS's second season of "Strange Angel" with $10 million, Fox's ninth season of "American Horror Story" ($8.9 million), and the second seasons of "MayansMC" ($7.6 million), "Good Trouble" ($6.6 million) and "The Rookie" ($4.5million).
(3) LULZINE. John Coxon and España Sheriff have launched a new online fanzine called Lulzine, focused on comedy, and comedy in science fiction and fantasy. Check out Lulzine Issue 1. The editors are still looking for material that suits the first issue's theme. (Adding stuff makes sense because Lulzine presents as a blog. But don't tell anyone I said so.)
We're hoping to add more articles to the first issue before we start the second issue just before Ytterbium (the next Eastercon). The theme of the first issue is comedy in television, so if anyone wants to pitch us articles, they can contact us at editors@lulzine.net.
(4) BREAKFAST WITH EINSTEIN. At Whatever, Chad Orzel explains "The Big Idea" behind his book Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects.
Quantum mechanics is one of the most amazing theories in all of science, full of stuff that captures the imagination: zombie cats, divine dice-rolling, spooky actions over vast distances. Maybe the single most amazing thing about it, though, is that we think it's weird.
That probably seems a strange thing to say, because quantum physics is so weird, but that's exactly the point. These are the fundamental principles governing the behavior of everything in the universe, and yet they run completely counter to our intuition about how the world works. If these are the basic rules underlying everything, shouldn't they make sense? How can the entire universe behave according to strictly quantum laws, and yet we're not intuitively aware of it?
(5) GLOBAL VIEW. Here's Mortal Engines' fascinating "Explore London 360" video –
(6) STUDY IN THIS WORLD'S HOGWARTS. Buzzfeed displays photos of "16 Libraries That Look Like Hogwarts IRL". One of them is —
2.The University of Washington Library in Seattle, Washington
(7) CREATING AN IMPRESSION. Dave Addey takes up book covers as part of his column's "Typeset in the Future" sub theme at Tor.com: "Designing the Future: Deconstructing Five Sci-Fi Book Covers". He doesn't restrict the conversation to Tor publications, I just thought this one made a good excerpt for the Scroll —
"Loss of Signal" by S. B. Divya (A Tor.com Original,2018)
…The cover's inverted planetary relationship evokes "Earthrise", a famous NASA photograph taken onboard Apollo 8 by astronaut Bill Anders….
Like "Earthrise" and Loss of Signal, 2001's intro shows our home planet far in the distance, small and insignificant when compared to the moon's barren surface in the foreground. Both images require viewers to consider their place in the universe from an entirely alien vantage point, far from the comforts of home. It's an entirely appropriate feeling for S. B. Divya's story of the first human mind to circle the moon without a body in tow.
(8) UNSTINCTION. Shelf Awareness calls attention to Torill Kornfeldt's "The Re-Origin of Species: A Second Chance for Extinct Animals".
"There is no way in which a lost species can really be brought back to life," writes Swedish science journalist Torill Kornfeldt in her fascinating debut, The Re-Origin of Species: A Second Chance for Extinct Animals. "The nearest thing we can manage is a substitute." But as each chapter reveals, the "substitutes" that many scientists think are possible would be nearly identical to–and just as astonishing as–the originals.
Kornfeldt travels the world to meet scientists who are attempting "de-extinction," the practice of bringing extinct animals back to life. In Siberia, she meets Sergey Zimov, a Russian scientist attempting to revive mammoths. And in California she speaks with Ben Novak, a young scientist trying to resurrect the passenger pigeon. Other scientists are working on the northern white rhino, a Spanish ibex called a bucardo and, yes, even a dinosaur. There are still advancements to be made in genetic research before any of these experiments could result in actual resurrected animals but, according to the scientists Kornfeldt interviews, breakthroughs are happening at an unprecedented pace. De-extinction is only a few years away from becoming reality.
(9) BUT THEN I TURNED ON THE TV, AND THAT'S ABOUT THE TIME SHE WALKED AWAY FROM ME. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Looks like Gerard Way's The Umbrella Academy won't be the only science fiction TV show based on a comic book by a famous Emo band member. Blink 182 guitarist Tom DeLonge's sci-fi graphic novel Strange Times is being turned into a show for TBS. The show will follow all-American teen Charlie Wilkins who starts investigating when his dad is abducted by aliens. He's helped by his skateboarding friends and the ghost of a girl. Of the show, DeLonge says: "My love for all things paranormal and skateboarding are sometimes only superseded by my love for offensive humor. This series combines them all into one." "Blink 182's Tom DeLonge is making his own sci-fi TV series" – NME has the story:
…The show is in development at US network TBS and will follow "five dirty teenage skateboarders who solve paranormal mysteries while being chased by Deep State government agents."
(10) WHEN IT ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY HAS TO BE THERE OVERNIGHT. "Mark Hamill reveals script for Star Wars IX will be flown to him and then immediately taken back amid intense plot leak fears" — Daily Mail has the story.
If you can't trust a Jedi Master, who can you trust? Mark Hamill has revealed the script for Star Wars Episode IX will be flown to him and he must immediately hand it back after reading it.
Security around the finale is so tight that the 67-year-old is no longer allowed to keep a copy. He has yet to shoot his scenes.
The actor, who plays Luke Skywalker in the sci-fi saga, is currently in Prague where he is shooting the History Channel's Knightfall.
(11) LIGHTSABER AUCTION CANCELLED. Profiles in History responded to the controversy reported in an earlier Scroll by withdrawing the item: "Star Wars lightsaber auction pulled over origin dispute".
…However, the Original Prop Blog posted a series of videos raising doubts about the weapon, including alleged discrepancies between the lightsaber shown in that letter and the lightsaber in the auction catalogue.
There were also claims this might be a replica or prototype prop.
But Mr Roger Christian told the BBC it was one of five original lightsabers made for the film, saying: "It is real – I've got the Oscar to prove it."
(12) TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born December 11, 1957 – William Joyce, 61. Author of the YA series Guardians of Childhood which is currently at twelve books and growing. Now I've no interest in reading them but Joyce and Guillermo del Toro turned them into in a rather splendid Rise of the Guardians film which I enjoyed quite a bit. The antagonist in it reminds me somewhat of a villain later on In Willingham's Fables series called Mr. Dark.
Born December 11, 1959 — M. Rickert, 59. Usually I don't cotton with listing Awards but she's rather unusual in she's has won or been nominated for several major awards despite working largely in short fiction with I believe The Memory Garden being her only novel. "Journey into the Kingdom" was nominated for the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novelette and an International Horror Guild Award, and won the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction Her Map of Dreams won a World Fantasy Award for Best Collection and a Crawford Award, and the collection's title story was nominated for the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.
Born December 11, 1962 — Ben Browder, 56. Actor of course best known for his roles as John Crichton in Farscape and Cameron Mitchell in Stargate SG-1. One of my favorite roles by him was his voicing of Bartholomew Aloysius "Bat" Lash in Justice League Unlimited "The Once and Future Thing, Part 1" episode. He'd have an appearance in Doctor Who in "A Town Called Mercy", a Weird Western of sorts. His most recent genre appearance was as a character named Ted Gaynor on Arrow.
Born December 11, 1965 – Sherrilyn Kenyon, 53. Best for her Dark Hunter series which runs to around thirty volumes now. I confess I've not read any, so I'm curious as to how they are. Opinions? (Of course you do. Silly me.) She's got The League series as well which appears to be paranormal romance, and a Lords of Avalon series too under the pen name of Kinley MacGregor.
(13) COMICS SECTION.
This is no job for the sommelier: Bizarro
Frosty the UFOman at Bizarro.
Why can't Santa guest on Star Trek? Meme will explain.
(14) TONIGHT'S JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter has his eye on the tube. Tonight's Jeopardy!, in the category "Posthumous Books," gave the answer as: "After death, this horror author still talked about the Necronomicon in his novel, 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.'"
Wrong question: "Who is Asimov?"
(15) SKY'S THE LIMIT. In his latest Nerds of a Feather contribution,"Microreview [Book]: The Fated Sky, by Mary Robinette Kowal", Joe Sherry declares —
The Fated Sky stands well on its own but, when coupled with The Calculating Stars, is a masterpiece.
After reading The Calculating Stars (my review) earlier this year, I wrote about how Mary Robinette Kowal did more than achieve a sense of wonder, she brought the dream of spaceflight beyond the page and directly into readers hearts. The Calculating Stars was a masterful novel that will surely find a place on many Year's Best lists and a number of awards ballots. It's a lot to live up to, but the near perfection of The Calculating Stars only serves to whet the appetite for The Fated Sky.
The Fated Sky picks up a few years after the end of The Calculating Stars. There is a fledgling base and colony on the moon, regular round trip missions from the earth to the moon, and the IAC (International Aerospace Coalition) is planning for its first Mars mission. Each of the two books are tagged as "Lady Astronaut" novels and Mary Robinette Kowal won a Hugo Award for her story "The Lady Astronaut of Mars". We know how the progression of Elma's story, where she ends up. It isn't about spoiling the ending, the beauty of The Fated Sky is in the journey. In this case, a journey to Mars.
(16) BATWOMAN IN CW CROSSOVER. The Hollywood Reporter tells"How Batwoman Fit Into The CW's DC Comics World in 'Elseworlds'".
Batwoman has finally arrived on The CW. Ruby Rose's iconic lesbian superhero officially made her debut during Monday's Arrow, part two of The CW's three-part superhero crossover "Elseworlds."
With Earth-1 impacted by a magical book that altered reality, Monday's Arrow installment of The CW's big "Elseworlds" superhero crossover found The Flash's Barry (Grant Gustin), Arrow's Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Supergirl's Kara (Melissa Benoist) in Gotham to try and get to the bottom of things. Unfortunately for the heroes, a mugging (and their inability to stand down) landed the trio in jail, where they were bailed out by a mysterious figure — Kate Kane (Orange Is the New Blackgrad Rose), aka Batwoman.
(17) JUST DO IT. Mars Society president Robert Zubrin argues in the Washington Post that "We have the technology to build a colony on the moon. Let's do it." The author of The Case For Mars takes aim at current NASA plans to build a mini-space station that would orbit the moon, and instead suggests that the time has come to set up a permanent habitable structure on the lunar surface.
…As for landing people on the moon, NASA is vague about that, too. Apparently, if we wanted to build a lander sometime in the future, it would rendezvous with the Gateway for some reason and then attempt a landing.
This is all just plain weird. It's like building a big, expensive aircraft carrier, positioning it off the European coast and requiring passengers going from New York to Paris to land there first and do something (although what isn't known) until another airplane is built to pick them up to carry them to their destination. This, we suspect, is not the best way to get to France.
Rather than build this murky Gateway, which we frankly doubt the American people will understand or support, we believe the best expenditure of time and money is to simply make it a national goal to build a base on the lunar surface. Such a base would be similar to the U.S. South Pole Station and constructed for the same reasons: science, exploration, knowledge, national prestige, and economic and technological development for the benefit of the U.S. taxpayer.
…If we're serious about going to the moon, let's just go there. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, reminding us of the sort of things we as a nation once accomplished. We should resolve now to do no less.
(18) STOP AND GO. First story isn't good news: Himalayan glaciers are slowing because they've thinned enough that there's less mass to move them downhill, and their outflows provide inland water. Second story also isn't good news: Satellite images show Antarctic glaciers getting more lubrication on their way to the ocean, where they'll melt and raise ocean levels.
"Himalayan and other Asian glaciers put the brakeson"
The glaciers that flank the Himalayas and other high mountains in Asia are moving slower over time.
Scientists have analysed nearly 20 years of satellite images to come to this conclusion.
They show that the ice streams which have decelerated the mostare the ones that have also thinned the most.
"East Antarctica's glaciers are stirring"
The region has long been considered stable and unaffected by some of the more dramatic changes occurring elsewhere on the continent.
But satellites have now shown that ice streams running into the ocean along one-eighth of the eastern coastline have thinned and sped up.
If this trend continues, it has consequences for future sea levels.
There is enough ice in the drainage basins in this sector of Antarctica to raise the height of the global oceans by 28m – if it were all to melt out.
(19) GAME CENSORS. From BBC we learn that "China's new games censors take tough stance".
A panel of censors set up to vet mobile video games in China has signalled it will be hard to please.
State media reports that of the first 20 titles it assessed, nine were refused permission to go on sale.
The Xinhua news agency added that developers of the other 11 had been told they had to make adjustments to remove "controversial content".
There has been a clampdown on new video game releases in the country since March.
The authorities have voiced concerns about the violent nature of some titles as well as worries about the activity being addictive.
President Xi Jinping has also called for more to be done to tackle a rise in near-sightedness among the young – something that the country's ministry of education has linked to children playing video games at the cost of spending time on outdoor pastimes.
(20) FILMING IN NEW ZEALAND. The Hollywood Reporter shows how Peter Jackson's pioneer efforts have paid off for New Zealand: "'Avatar' to 'Mulan': Hollywood Movies Are Keeping New Zealand Busier Than Ever".
…In addition to recently hosting summer blockbusters like Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible — Fallout and the giant shark thriller The Meg, the New Zealand production uptick is indeed evidenced by the volume of high-profile projects that are in varying stages of production right now.
James Cameron is gearing up for the monumental task of shooting all three of the Avatar sequels there simultaneously early in 2019. The films were brought to New Zealand via a government deal that requires 20thCentury Fox to spend no less than NZ $500 million (about $345 million)in-country and to hold at least one of the world premieres there.
Meanwhile, Disney is just wrapping production on its live-action adaptation of Mulan, with a budget north of $100 million and Kiwi director Niki Caro at the helm. The project shot on the new stages at Kumeu Film Studios in West Auckland as well as on locations across the country. Netflix, of course, also is active in New Zealand, having recently begun filming the family fantasy series The Letter for the King in Auckland; Amazon Studios, meanwhile, is shooting the YA series The Wilds in Auckland nearby. Also courtesy of Amazon, the franchise that made New Zealand synonymous with Middle Earth is tipped to be coming back to the island nation — for many in the local industry, it's simply unthinkable that the streamer's Lord of the Rings TV series, with a rumored budget of $500 million, won't shoot there.
(21) BEST RESOURCE. Congratulations to Mark Kelly who has added contents of 15 best-of-year anthology series to his Science Fiction Awards Database site, with single-page composite tables of contents for each series, and all stories included on their authors' individual pages. (He still has more such series yet to do, for example, the Datlow/Windling series.) See "Anthologies & Collections Directory". The first 15 "bests" include–
1939 – 1963 • Asimov/Greenberg • The Great SF Stories (DAW, 1979 – 1992)
1948 – 1957 • Bleiler/Dikty • The Best Science-Fiction Stories and Novels (1949 – 1958)
1955 – 1967 • Judith Merril • Year's Best S-F (1956 – 1967)
1964 – 1970 • Wollheim/Carr • World's Best Science Fiction (Ace, 1965 – 1971)
1967 – 1975 • Harrison/Aldiss • Best SF (1968 – 1976)
1974 – 1975 • Lester del Rey • Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (Dutton, 1972 – 1976)
1971 – 1989 • Donald A. Wollheim • Annual World's Best SF (DAW, 1972 – 1990)
1971 – 1986 • Terry Carr • Best Science Fiction of the Year + Fantasy (1972 – 1987)
1976 – 1980 • Gardner Dozois • Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (Dutton, 1977 – 1981)
1983 – 2017 • Gardner Dozois • Year's Best Science Fiction (St. Martin's, 1984 – 2018)
1995 – 2012 • Hartwell/Cramer • Year's Best SF, Year's Best Fantasy (1996 – 2013)
2001 – 2004 • Silverberg/Haber/Strahan • Science Fiction Best of, Fantasy Best of (ibooks: 2002 – 2005)
2003 – 2017 • Jonathan Strahan • The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year (2004 – 2018)
2005 – 2017 • Rich Horton • The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy (Prime, 2006 – 2018)
2015 – 2017 • Neil Clarke • The Best Science Fiction of the Year (Night Shade, 2016 – 2018)
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Olav Rokne, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Olav Rokne.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Alex Kurtzman, Andrew Porter, auction, Batwoman, Chad Orzel, Dave Addey, Espana Sherriff, Hogwarts, Jean-Luc Picard, Jeopardy!, Joe Sherry, John Coxon, Mark Hamill, Mark R. Kelly, Mars, Mary Robinette Kowal, Mortal Engines, NASA, Patrick Stewart, Robert Zubrin, Star Trek, Star Wars, video games
Pixel Scroll 2/17/17 In The End, The Real Hugos Were The Friends We Made Along The Way
Posted on February 17, 2017 by Mike Glyer
(1) WHO WILL BE WHO? Would you put money on it? Bookmakers say Tilda Swinton is a favorite to become the next Doctor Who.
Actress Tilda Swinton is the frontrunner to become Doctor Who's next Time Lord, according to the latest bookmakers' odds.
The Oscar-winning British star would take over the role from departing actor Peter Capaldi, who recently announced he is stepping down from the series this year after entering the Tardis in 2013.
Ladbrokes has said Swinton, 56, has been the focus of a "huge gamble" from punters, with her odds now at 7/2 after initially having entered the market at 10/1.
Other names in the running include Death In Paradise's Kris Marshall at 4/1, Broadchurch's Olivia Colman at 5/1 and Maxine Peake, best known for Dinnerladies and Shameless, at 8/1.
(2) REACTION. In the Scroll two days ago I excerpted Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Book View Café column, "There's a Bimbo on the Cover Verse 8: Who Reads Reviews, Anyway?", which humorously displays her scars from a Locus review of her fiction by Mark R. Kelly.
Kelly read the column and replied –
Odd. I haven't reviewed short fiction for Locus since 2001. And the general comments about Analog that she quotes was from one of my first columns, in 1988!
(3) SUCCESS. Tony C. Smith's Kickstarter for Everyone: Worlds Without Walls has funded.
I'm so pleased for all the writers involved. This is now a great showcase for them. This is a time to open doors and knock down walls not build them up. This anthology is my little answer to highlighting and showcasing just what this beautiful world has to offer.
Smith celebrated reaching this milestone by announcing he has added to the book "an amazing story from top speculative writer Lavie Tidhar!"
(4) DOUBLY FANTASTIC PODCAST. Once upon a time, Scott Edelman's guest on the Eating the Fantastic podcast edited the prozine Fantastic. He is the celebrated (and at times controversial) Barry N. Malzberg.
My guest loves Ben's more than any other NYC deli, and who am I to turn down Barry N. Malzberg, who among other things, was winner of the first John W. Campbell Award for his novel Beyond Apollo, and both a Hugo and Nebula Award finalist for stories I published when I was the editor of Science Fiction Age magazine?
One unusual aspect to this episode is that it features as mere onlooker a writer deserving of his own episode someday—Paul Di Filippo, who felt compelled to come along and witness this recording. After all, the first of his more than 100 published stories was a Malzberg homage!
Barry and I discussed why being able to sell his first drafts was so important at the beginning of his writing career, how his debut short story collection came to be published under the pseudonym K. M. O'Donnell, what it was like to edit both Amazing and Fantastic magazines during the late '60s, the identity of his greatest discovery during his years at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, what's up with the long-promised movie version of Beyond Apollo, how Harry Harrison could have (but didn't) shut down the filming of Soylent Green, and more.
(5) EYEWITNESS. Zen Cho, inspired by Likhain's "Letter to Apex Editors Re: The Intersectional SFF Roundtable," has written about her experiences with Requires Hate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew, in "Being an itemized list of disagreements".
I am writing this for two sets of people. One set is the people who were targeted by RH/BS and friends or were otherwise made to feel that fandom was a hostile place because of her conduct and that of her friends and supporters.
The second set is the people of colour/non-white people who continue to interact with RH/BS. Those who participate in roundtables with her, include her stories in their anthologies, and boost her work and opinions as though she is a totally normal, OK person who has never indulged in public, worryingly detailed fantasies of violence against other human beings in her life.
To this second audience: you can talk to and work with anyone you want. We need to talk to people we disagree with, and hanging out with a person online doesn't of itself mean you condone their behaviour. However, I want you to make sure you have thought carefully about what you are doing…
(6) WITH MANY OTHER WORDS. Adam Whitehead at The Wertzone lists the "Longest SFF Novels of All Time" in an epic post worthy of his topic. Note — after you get past #1 the titles should be more familiar.
Varney the Vampire by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest 667,000 words • 1845-47 This long novel was serialised in "penny dreadfuls" of the mid-19th Century and chronicles the adventures of Sir Francis Varney, a vampire. This book's genre credentials have been disputed (with the suggestion that Varney is actually a madman rather than a real vampire), but there seems to be a general acceptance that the book is a genuine work of the fantastic, and the longest SFF work ever published in one volume (which it was in 1847). The book was also influential on Bram Stoker's later Dracula(1897) and introduced many of the tropes of vampire fiction, including the "sympathetic vampire" protagonist.
(7) BRADBURY FILM FEST AT IU. "Ray Bradbury: From Science to the Supernatural" will be the focus of a special four-day film series at IU Cinema on Indiana University's Bloomington campus beginning March 24. The series, which includes lectures and panel discussions, was programmed by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies.
7 p.m. March 24, "Bradbury TV and Shorts Program" — The series kicks off with a unique gathering of short subjects, including the 1962 Oscar-nominated "Icarus Montgolfier Wright," scripted by Bradbury and George Clayton Johnson. This animated film showcases paintings by Joseph Mugnaini, the illustrator closely associated with Bradbury's books. Other short items include Bradbury stories adapted for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Twilight Zone."
7 p.m. March 26, "It Came From Outer Space" — Bradbury fans and scholars will have the opportunity to view the 1953 feature film based on an original Bradbury concept and screen treatment. Paper optic glasses will allow the audience to watch the film in 3-D — a unique opportunity to see this classic Jack Arnold-directed film as it was originally intended.
6:30 p.m. March 27, "A Sound of Different Drummers" and 9:30 p.m. March 27, "Fahrenheit 451" — This double bill showcases two adaptations of Bradbury's classic novel "Fahrenheit 451." The evening begins with "A Sound of Different Drummers," an uncredited television adaptation of Bradbury's novel for the 1957 season of "Playhouse 90," followed by a screening of the well-known 1966 film adaptation by François Truffaut. The intermission will include a panel discussion of the fascinating history surrounding these two landmark productions. Separate tickets are required for each film.
3 p.m. March 28, "Moby Dick" — On its final day, the series closes with two films that showcase the broad range of Bradbury's own screenwriting talents. The first is John Huston's 1956 production of the classic novel, which was an early success that secured Bradbury's Hollywood reputation. A panel discussion will be held following this film and before the evening screening of "Something Wicked This Way Comes."
6:30 p.m. March 28, "Something Wicked This Way Comes" — Directed by Jack Clayton, this is the result of a 30-year arc of creativity that transformed an original Bradbury short story into a script, a novel and finally a successful film production.
IU Cinema director Jon Vickers has worked closely with Bradbury Center director Jonathan Eller and the center's senior advisor, Phil Nichols, to develop the program for the Bradbury film series.
"Every session has fascinating cultural connections," said Eller, an IUPUI Chancellor's Professor who is also the editor of Bradbury's early collected stories and the author of two Bradbury biographies. "The Academy Award-nominated 'Icarus Montgolfier Wright,' a story of our quest to reach the moon, was screened in the Kennedy White House just as those dreams were beginning to move toward reality."
(8) GETTING THERE. Con or Bust helps fans of color go to SFF cons. It is funded through donations and an online auction held annually. The group's first newsletter includes a link to available memberships in upcoming cons, plus an account of how many donated memberships were used. For example —
Worldcon 75 donated 25 attending memberships and 25 hotel room nights, all of which have been claimed; three memberships donated by individuals have also been claimed.
(9) TODAY'S BIRTHDAY GIRL
Born February 17, 1912 — Andre Norton
(10) LADY BUSINESS. The editors of Lady Business have provided their "2017 Hugo Nomination Recommendations".
Another year, another Hugo nomination season! Once again, nominations for the Hugo Awards are open, to anyone who is currently a member of this year's upcoming Worldcon in Helsinki, last year's Worldcon in Kansas City, or next year's Worldcon in San Jose, CA ["a.k.a., my neck of the woods. Come to San Jose! We'll all hang out!! It'll be great!!!" — KJ]. Nominations are open until mid-March (March 17th or 18th, depending on your time zone), so that's plenty of time to read all those things you've been meaning to get to before nominations close… right?
Never fear, the editors of Lady Business are here to provide our suggestions as you decide what to prioritize on your TBR. Of course, this is by no means a comprehensive list of everything that might be worthy of a Hugo nomination, nor is it meant to be. It's just a selection of some of the things we loved in 2016, and a few reasons why we loved them, along with some books, stories, and shows we're still hoping to check out ourselves. Each editor's opinions are their own, although we suspect you'd find a fair amount of agreement if we had sat down to discuss our picks.
Here's an excerpt —
"43 Responses to 'In Memory of Dr. Alexandra Nako'" by Barbara A. Barnett — You might guess from my selections in this category that I enjoy short stories that take advantage of unusual storytelling formats, and you'd be right. A fascinating and creepy story that gets the feel of an Internet comments section just right. [KJ]
"The Fifth Gable" by Kay Chronister — This is a beautifully written and haunting and somewhat disturbing (I love it) story about creation and having children and loss. I'm not sure what more I can say about it that won't spoil the reading experience, aside from that the language and imagery is lovely and haunting. Definitely worth a read. [Ira]
"From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review" by Marie Brennan — This story, told in the form of letters to the editor in a scientific journal, is set in the Lady Trent series but also stands alone. Great on its own, and it also gives a good taste of my favorite currently active series. [KJ]
(11) BATMAN TRIBUTE. In "Batman from beginning to retirement and beyond," says Carl Slaughter, "The brooding knight broods in front of friends, foes, partners, himself, and time."
(12) LARRY CORREIA'S BOOK TOUR. Baen Books announced that Larry Correia will tour the U.S. between July 28-August 10th in support of his latest novel, Monster Hunter Siege.
Monster Hunter Siege is the sixth novel in the Monster Hunter series. When Monster Hunter International's top hunter was given a tip about some hunters who had gone missing in action, he didn't realize their rescue mission would snowball into the single biggest operation in MHI's history. This exciting series is urban fantasy with muscle—and guns!
City Store Confirmed
Friday, July 28, 2017 Tampa/St. Petersburg Books at Park Place 6:00-7:00PM
Saturday, July 29, 2017 Tampa Bay Comic Con Tampa Bay Comic Con
Monday, July 31, 2017 New Orleans Garden District Books 6:00-7:30PM
Tuesday, August 01, 2017 San Antonio Twig 6:00-8:00PM
Wednesday, August 02, 2017 Austin Half Price Books 7:00-8:00PM
Thursday, August 03, 2017 Dallas Half Price Books 7:00-8:00PM
Friday, August 04, 2017 Minneapolis Uncle Hugo 5:00-7:00PM
Saturday, August 05, 2017 Seattle University Books 6:00-7:00PM
Monday, August 07, 2017 Portland Powell's Pending
Tuesday, August 08, 2017 San Diego Mysterious Galaxy 7:30-8:30PM
Wednesday, August 09, 2017 Phoenix Poisoned Pen 7:00-8:00PM
Thursday, August 10, 2017 Salt Lake City-Layton Barnes & Noble 7:00-8:00PM
Upcoming appearances by other Baen authors are listed on the publisher's official calendar.
(13) THE MIDNIGHT HOUR. If Star Wars toys are your thing, get ready for you and your roll of hundred-dollar bills to stay up late. "Disney plans midnight 'Star Wars' event to unveil 'Last Jedi' toys".
Walt Disney Co and major retailers will release the galaxy's newest "Star Wars" toys at a Sept. 1 midnight event ahead of the holiday debut of the next film in the saga, "The Last Jedi," company executives told Reuters.
The marketing push called "Force Friday II" is a sequel to an event Disney used to build buzz for merchandise tied to the 2015 movie "The Force Awakens."
(14) HE SAID… Are the writers for Beavis and Butthead now working for New Scientist? "Far-off asteroid caught cohabiting with Uranus around the sun". Or maybe it's just me….
A rare Trojan asteroid of Uranus has been found, following the same orbit as the planet. Its existence implies there could be many more of these companion asteroids, and that they are more common than we thought.
A Trojan asteroid orbits the sun 60 degrees ahead of or behind a planet. Jupiter and Neptune have numerous Trojans, many of which have been in place for billions of years. These primordial rocks hold information about the solar system's birth, and NASA has just announced plans to visit several of them in the 2020s and 2030s.
But Saturn and Uranus live in a rougher neighbourhood: the giant planets on either side of them yank Trojans away through their gravitational pull. So Saturn has no known Trojan, and Uranus had only one.
(15) RELEASE PRESS. And while we're in that news neighborhood. "At ease, future astronauts: NASA solving 'space poop' problem".
…But what if they're stuck in a spacesuit for days on end? Not so easy.
NASA has taken steps to address the problem and recently announced the winner of the Space Poop Challenge, a competition organized by its NASA Tournament Lab (NTL), hosted by the HeroX crowdsourcing initiative.
The winner of the prize was Thatcher Cardon, a family physician, Air Force officer and flight surgeon, whose system "MACES Perineal Access & Toileting System (M-PATS)," who utilized his knowledge of keyhole surgery to develop his design.
The competition was aimed at finding a safe, medically sound solution from taking waste away from astronauts' bodies if confined for a long period of time.
…More than 5,000 proposed solutions from a total of 19,000 registered competitors from over 150 teams from "every country and continent on Earth (including Antarctica) participated, according to a press release.
(16) HE ROCKS IN THE TREETOPS ALL THE DAY LONG. Who among the 4 main Robins is the best? Batman, Ra's al Ghul, Nightwing, Red Hood, and the Robins provide insight and opinion.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Mark-kitteh for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Nigel.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Adam Whitehead, Baen Books, Barry N. Malzberg, Batman, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University, Con or Bust, Disney, Doctor Who, Hugo Awards, Lady Business, Larry Correia, Lavie Tidhar, Mark R. Kelly, Maya Kaathryn Bonhoff, NASA, Paul Di Filippo, Ray Bradbury, Robin, Scott Edelman, Star Wars, Tony C. Smith, Uranus, Worldcon 75, Zen Cho
Pixel Scroll 2/15/17 Do These Protocol Breeches Make My Throne Look Fat?
(1) RETURN OF INCOME. Jim C. Hines has posted the first results from his annual survey of novelist income.
Let's start by looking at how much our authors made in 2016 before taxes or expenses. The total ranged from a few dollars to almost five million. Eight novelists made more than a million dollars (before taxes) in 2016.
I admit, I was a little surprised by this, and wondered if maybe people were exaggerating or hit an extra zero. Fortunately, the survey also asked for an identifier (name or other) and an email address for anyone who wanted to be informed of the survey results. Looking at who was reporting these numbers, I believe they're accurate.
Average Income: $114,124
Median Income: $17,000
(I think the median is more useful than the average, here. The average is pulled up significantly by those very successful outliers.)
Much more data, sliced and diced various ways, at the post.
(2) NEW AWARD FOR PAKISTANI SF. The inaugural Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction will be given this year. The new short story award, intended to "promote science fiction and related genres of writing in Pakistan," is named for Dr. Albus Salam, one of the pioneers of science in Pakistan.
The website's administrator says some Pakistanis may see pirated copies of sf movies, when it comes to written sf there's little awareness —
I don't know if science fiction as a genre even exist for Pakistani readers. When you go to book stores, you don't find any books other than religous ones or text books needed for school curriculum. How can an average reader than get exposure to different genres of writing and specially fiction?
Eligible for the award are original, previously unpublished English-language stories of 10,000 words or less by persons residing in Pakistan, or of Pakistani birth/descent. (The complete guidelines are here.) Entries must be received by July 31.
The winner will receive a cash prize of Rs 50,000, a review by an established literary agent, a review from a professional editor, with the potential for publication by Tor.com.
The award judges for 2017 are sf writers and critics: Jeff VanderMeer, Usman Malik, and Mahvesh Murad.
(3) I LOST ON… Jeopardy! devoted a category to "Sci-Fi Books" on February 14. I only knew the $1,000 question – you're bound to do better. (The correct reply will display if you scroll over the dollar amount.)
I didn't get this one despite having read the damn book!
Thomas in this James Dashner sci-fi book awakens being "jerked upward like an old lift in a mine shaft"
(4) NANOWRIMO'S POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. Tom Knighton, in an article for PJ Media headlined "Supposedly Nonpolitical Writers Group Goes Hard Left", criticizes a message he received from NaNoWriMo .
Unfortunately, the minds behind NaNoWriMo don't seem to appreciate what that word "apolitical" really means. How do I know? Because of this email the Internet-based creative writing project sent to its mailing list late last week.
Dear [Name],
As a creative writing nonprofit, we're not a political organization. We don't endorse candidates or support any particular party. In an ideal world, we would focus only on empowering people to write.
Yet we find ourselves in a time where people's ability to tell their stories—and even to safely exist—is at stake….
So while we are not a political organization, we feel moved to take action.
In response to the executive order, as well as any future government efforts that threaten people's basic freedoms, we will:
Celebrate creativity over apathy, diversity over fear, and productivity over despair.
Welcome all stories and continue to make NaNoWriMo a safe space for all writers.
Advocate for the transformative power of storytelling to connect people and build a better world.
If you have concrete ideas for how we can work toward these goals (or if you have feedback about anything in this message), please share your thoughts.
That wasn't all. Oh, no, not by any means. They also took issue with President Trump's desire to end the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
There are a few things about NaNoWriMo that one must consider before truly understanding the context of the above email. First, there are no prizes for NaNoWriMo. "Winners" are basically all who complete a book, and the prize is…well, you wrote a book. Not insignificant considering how few people who talk about books ever finish one, but that's about it.
Further, since it is basically an internet writers group/contest, President Trump's executive order will have precisely zero impact on it. None.
In short, there's absolutely no reason for Grant Faulkner to put his name on an email about a piece of political hay that impacts his operation in no way, shape, or form.
The email is more about virtue signaling, a way to tell progressives that NaNoWriMo is with them — and screw the right-leaning members of the email list! Of course, it's also possible they couldn't imagine that anyone on their list actually leans right politically.
(5) THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. The Shimmer Program has posted Sanfeng's "Science Fiction in China: 2016 in Review". I found it an interesting contrast with U.S. society – people generally were happy to hear about President Obama's tastes as an sf fan, but what if he had announced a plan to co-opt science fiction to further his policies?
SF as National Agenda
Historically, the trajectory of Chinese SF was heavily influenced by top-down political forces at times. Recently it begins to receive continuous and influential support from the governments at all levels. On the one hand, following the tradition of focusing on 'science' in science fiction, the government re-emphasizes SF as a useful instrument for popularizing science and improving citizen's scientific literacy. On the other hand, due to the high popularity and penetration rate of SF media, it is conceivable that the so-called 'SF industry' is often adopted in governmental agenda for creative and cultural industry development.
In a central government's paper regarding promoting citizens' science literacy issued by State Council in February 2016, it is explicitly stipulated that the government shall support science fiction writing as part of popular science writing. More details were revealed in a later talk given by Han Qide, president of China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), announcing that CAST will set up a national award for SF and host international SF festivals. The story reached the climax when Vice Chairman Li Yuanchao attended 2016 National SF Convention held in September 2016 and gave a speech at the opening ceremony warmly encouraging SF writing.
The post also tells about the 30th anniversary Galaxy Awards, and the inaugural winners of a new set of Chinese sf awards.
At its 30th anniversary, Galaxy Awards were presented on the evening of September 8th. Best Novel was awarded to Dooms Year by He Xi. Three days later, the ceremony of 7th Chinese Nebula Awards was held in National Library of China. The top award Best Novel was awarded to Jiang Bo for Chasing the Shadows and the Lights, which is the final installment of his epic Heart of Galaxy trilogy.
A couple of new SF awards are noteworthy. First 'Droplet Awards', named after a powerful and terrifying alien weapon in TBP, were organized by Tecent to call for submission of SF screenplays, comics and short videos. Best Screenplay was awarded to Day after Day by Feng Zhigang and Best Comics to The Innocent City by Yuzhou Muchang. Besides, First 'Nebula Awards for Chinese SF Films' were presented at a ceremony held in Chengdu in August 2016. Best SF Movie was given to a 2008 children SF movie CJ7 directed by Stephen Chow. Best SF Short Film was awarded to Waterdrop, a highly praised fan film of TBP, directed and produced by Wang Ren.
The Shimmer Program has also compiled a list of works from China eligible for 2017 Hugo nominations.
(7) TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF, SET A SPELL. Co-Geeking's Erik Jensen is an American married to a Finn (Eppu) and living in the U.S. He has written a column of advice to fans going to the Worldcon this summer: "How to Helsinki: Concerning Finns". There are quite a few do's and don'ts, for example —
DO give people space – Finns expect a lot of it and they will give you a lot of it in return. If you're talking to a Finn and they back away, don't chase them. They're probably not trying to get away from you, they're just resetting comfortable boundaries. (See previous points.)
DO take your shoes off if you visit a private residence – so you don't track in dirt that your host then has to clean up. Most Finnish homes have places for taking off and putting on shoes right by the front door….
…DON'T suggest getting together unless you want to make concrete plans – "We should do lunch some time" is just a casual pleasantry in the US. It's an expression of general good will with no commitment attached. In Finland it is a commitment to future plans and Finns will expect you to follow through.
DON'T make small talk – if you're in conversation with a Finn and feel like there's an awkward silence, don't try to fill it. For most Finns, silence is not awkward at all, but comfortable. The conversation will start again when someone has something to say.
And Eppu has put together an index to cultural resources published by Worldcon 75.
"Finland: A Very Short Guide For Your First Trip" (Facebook)
"Finland: An Assortment of Notes and Information" (in Progress Report 1)
"Finnish Fandom: Some Unique Characteristics" (in Progress Report 1)
"Finnish Foods and Where to Find Them" (in Progress Report 3)
"Hotels: Understanding the Differences between Countries" (in Progress Report 3)
"Non-Fandom Things to Do in Helsinki, If You Have the Time" (in Progress Report 2)
"Älä hätäile! Don't Panic! A Short Guide for Pronouncing Finnish" (in Progress Report 2)
February 15, 1903 — The first Teddy bear goes on sale.
Toy store owner and inventor Morris Michtom places two stuffed bears in his shop window, advertising them as Teddy bears. Michtom had earlier petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt for permission to use his nickname, Teddy. The president agreed and, before long, other toy manufacturers began turning out copies of Michtom's stuffed bears, which soon became a national childhood institution
February 15, 1950 — Walt Disney's animated feature Cinderella opens in theaters across the United States.
(9) TODAY'S BIRTHDAY BOY
Born February 15, 1950 — Matt Groening, cartoonist; creator of The Simpsons.
(10) FORD'S IN HIS FLIVVER. Stephen Baxter has an op-ed in the February 11 Financial Times, "Dude, where's my flying car?" He looks at flying cars, based on Uber's announcement that they are launching a flying car development project. Examining the way flying cars are portrayed in movies from Metropolis through Back To the Future and Thunderbirds Are Go, he concludes that it's more likely that monorails and electric cabs will be the future's preferred form of transportation and "flying cars will remain a plaything of the super-rich–and a dream (perhaps in virtual reality) for the rest of us."
Note – you will probably hit a paywall using the direct link. I was able to access and read the article through a Google search.
(11) LITTLE BUNDLES OF JOY. And maybe not all that little, when you pop for the maximum sized bundle.
There's a Humble Bundle of sff books from Subterranean Press.
And elsewhere, a Steampunk Storybundle, curated by Cat Rambo.
Both are limited-time offers.
(12) NEW BIMBO VERSE. Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff continues her Book View Café series with "There's a Bimbo on the Cover Verse 8: Who Reads Reviews, Anyway?" and a story of the Analog Mafia.
They reviewed my book in Locus magazine.
The way Mark Kelly synopsized it,
I barely recognized it,
but they reviewed my book in Locus magazine.
True story. In fact, it happened repeatedly with my Analog stories….
(13) ETHICS BEYOND THE STRATOSPHERE. At Dreaming About Other Worlds, Aaron has reviewed Nobody Owns the Moon: The Ethics of Space Exploitation by Tony Milligan.
In Nobody Owns the Moon, Milligan begins his inquiry from the ground up, so to speak, starting with the fundamental question of whether space exploration itself can be ethically justified at all, specifically focusing on whether manned space exploration is justifiable. By starting at such a fundamental level, Milligan indicates that he is going to tackle the questions at hand without presuming that anything is justified. Instead, Milligan works through each issue with as few preconceptions as possible, examining both the arguments for and against the proposition being examined. This can seem frustratingly indecisive at times, because with most questions there is no clear cut answer one way or the other, because there are pros and cons to every position. The end result is that for most such questions, the answer lies in choosing which is the best of a flawed collection of alternatives, not in choosing the one that is clearly correct.
Milligan is also concerned with only dealing with questions that result from actions that are within the realm of possibility. To this end, he spends a fair amount of time examining the question of whether terraforming a planet to be more Earth-like is possible before he gets into the question of whether it is ethical. As he points out, examining a question that could never possibly come to pass is simply idle speculation. To a certain extent, almost all of the questions Milligan addresses in the book are somewhat hypothetical – no one is currently actually mining asteroids or terraforming Mars, but as he outlines in the book, they are all within the realm of reasonable possibility, and thus it is worthwhile to consider their the ethical implications.
(14) FIXING THE SCIENCE IN SCIENCE FICTION. Joe Stech, of Compelling SF, asks you to help him decide which of his guidelines to work on first.
Every so often I receive engaging story submissions that have wonderful writing and great human elements, but contain clearly implausible science. This can pull readers out of the story and potentially mar an otherwise excellent work.
I've been thinking about working with scientists to create a series of writer's guides to help with this pain point, and I was hoping you could help me out by letting me know which subjects you'd find most useful in such a series. The idea is that we'd provide a general overview of the topic and then give some specific tips regarding common misconceptions that we've seen. If you have a moment please let me know what you think via the following survey:
A Survey About Science Fiction Writer's Guides
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfoME88hE2nuDpuX9JZKsl9GSL-8lRYbBux2phjdwsSDtxMVg/viewform?c=0&w=1
Feel free to share the survey link with others that might have an interest.
(15) CHURCHILL'S LOST ESSAY ABOUT ALIENS. An unpublished essay by Winston Churchill about the possibility of life on other worlds is the subject of an article by Mario Livio in the latest issue of Nature. According to the BBC:
The document was uncovered in the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri, by the institution's new director Timothy Riley….
Churchill was a prolific writer: in the 1920s and 30s, he penned popular science essays on topics as diverse as evolution and fusion power. Mr Riley, director of the Churchill Museum, believes the essay on alien life was written at the former prime minister's home in Chartwell in 1939, before World War II broke out.
It may have been informed by conversations with the wartime leader's friend, Lindemann, who was a physicist, and might have been intended for publication in the News of the World newspaper.
It was also written soon after the 1938 US radio broadcast by Orson Welles dramatising The War of the Worlds by HG Wells. The radio programme sparked a panic when it was mistaken by some listeners for a real news report about the invasion of Earth by Martians.
Dr Livio told BBC News that there were no firm plans to publish the article because of issues surrounding the copyright. However, he said the Churchill Museum was working to resolve these.
(16) SAME BAT CHANNEL, NOT SAME BAT. Carl Slaughter sent a link to "The Evolution of Batman in Television and Film, 1943 – 2016."
(17) THE GOOD STUFF. Aliette de Bodard has put up her awards eligibility and recommendations post.
I feel like I should start with the usual call to action/disclaimer: if you're eligible to vote for any of the awards (Nebulas/Hugos/etc.), then please do so, even if you felt you haven't read enough. It's a big field and few people can claim to have read everything that came out last year–and generally the people who recuse themselves from voting tend to be marginalised folks, which skews ballots. So please please vote?
Here is an excerpt from her recommendations.
Novelettes
I enjoyed Fran Wilde's JEWEL AND HER LAPIDARY: set in a universe where gems hold magic but can drive people mad, JEWEL concerns itself with the fall of that kingdom, and the desperate straits in which it leaves its princess and her companion. This is a heart wrenching tale of power, friendship, and two women's struggle to survive.
Marjorie Liu's "The Briar and the Rose" (which I suspect is a novelette, from Navah Wolfe's and Dominik Parisien's The Starlit Wood) is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty with a twist: a swordswoman falls in love with Rose–but Rose is only herself one day of the week, when the witch who occupies her body has to rest… I loved the characters and their relationship, and the quest undertaken by the swordswoman to free Rose.
Alyssa Wong's "You'll Surely Drown Here if You Stay": a weird Western with a lovely friendship at its core, a tale of the desert, magic, belonging, and the weight of the dead. Definitely sticks in the mind.
Christopher Kastensmidt's Elephant and Macaw Banner is sword and muskets set in colonial Brazil, following the adventures of Gerard van Oost and Oludara in a land filled with strange creatures. It's a series of linked novelettes (with gorgeous cover art), and it's great fun. Two volumes came out last year: A Torrential Complication and A Tumultuous Convergence.
(18) SIRI. In "The Voice (Siri)–a 48 hr film" on Vimeo, Yonatan Tal imagines what Siri would do if confronted with too many inane questions, including knock-knock jokes and "Where can I get some drugs?"
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Steven H Silver, JJ, Mark-kitteh, Joe H., Peter J, John M. Cowan, John King Tarpinian, Aaron, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dawn Incognito.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Aliette de Bodard, Batman, Carl Slaughter, Cat Rambo, Droplet Awards, Eppu Jensen, Erik Jensen, Galaxy Awards, Humble Bundle, Jim C. Hines, Locus, Mark R. Kelly, Maya Kaathryn Bonhoff, NaNoWriMo, Nebula Awards for Chinese SF Films, Salam Award, SFF in Translation, Shimmer Program, Siri, StoryBundle, Subterranean Press, T.L. Knighton, Walt Disney, Winston Churchill, Worldcon 75
Pixel Scroll 11/26/16 And Pixel, When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Scroll
Posted on November 26, 2016 by Mike Glyer
(1) ELLISON KICKSTARTER FULLY FUNDED. The Harlan Ellison Books Preservation Project Kickstarter has blown past its $100,000 goal. The total raises at this time is $102,409, with four days to go.
(2) TELL ME YOU'RE KIDDING. CinemaBlend says Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may give us more Howard the Duck.
In case you've somehow forgotten about Howard the Duck's surreal appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy, he was briefly spotted in a display case during the main movie as part of The Collector's…well, collection. Later in the post-credits scene when The Collector sat by his destroyed museum, Howard (voiced by Seth Green) sat nearby and criticized the eccentric entity for letting Cosmo the Spacedog lick his face. Funny enough, James Gunn didn't originally plan on including Howard the Duck in Guardians of the Galaxy because the original post-credits scene was supposed to tease Avengers: Age of Ultron. When Captain America: The Winter Soldier "stole" that, Gunn and editor Frank Raskin noticed in their existing footage that Beneicio del Toro looked to the side at a box, thus providing a way to sneak Howard in and redeem the character a little bit for that movie of his that still occasionally haunts our dreams.
With or without Howard the Duck's participation, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hits theaters on May 5, 2017.
(3) BRUCE SCHNEIER. What's he been doing since he worked on E Pluribus Hugo? The Daily Dot reports on his recent testimony before Congress — "Bruce Schneier: 'The Internet era of fun and games is over'"
Internet pioneer Bruce Schneier issued a dire proclamation in front of the House of Representatives' Energy & Commerce Committee Wednesday: "It might be that the internet era of fun and games is over, because the internet is now dangerous."
The meeting, which focused on the security vulnerabilities created by smart devices, came in the wake of the Oct. 21 cyberattack on Dyn that knocked Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and other major web services offline….
Here's how he framed the Internet of Things, or what he later called the "world of dangerous things":
As the chairman pointed out, there are now computers in everything. But I want to suggest another way of thinking about it in that everything is now a computer: This is not a phone. It's a computer that makes phone calls. A refrigerator is a computer that keeps things cold. ATM machine is a computer with money inside. Your car is not a mechanical device with a computer. It's a computer with four wheels and an engine… And this is the Internet of Things, and this is what caused the DDoS attack we're talking about.
He then outlined four truths he's learned from the world of computer security, which he said is "now everything security."
1) 'Attack is easier than defense'
Complexity is the worst enemy of security. Complex systems are hard to secure for an hours' worth of reasons, and this is especially true for computers and the internet. The internet is the most complex machine man has ever built by a lot, and it's hard to secure. Attackers have the advantage.
2) 'There are new vulnerabilities in the interconnections'
The more we connect things to each other, the more vulnerabilities in one thing affect other things. We're talking about vulnerabilities in digital video recorders and webcams that allowed hackers to take websites. … There was one story of a vulnerability in an Amazon account [that] allowed hackers to get to an Apple account, which allowed them to get to a Gmail account, which allowed them to get to a Twitter account. Target corporation, remember that attack? That was a vulnerability in their HVAC contractor that allowed the attackers to get into Target. And vulnerabilities like this are hard to fix. No one system might be at fault. There might be two secure systems that come together to create insecurity.
3) 'The internet empowers attackers'
4) 'The economics don't trickle down'
The engineers at Google, Apple, Microsoft spent a lot of time on this. But that doesn't happen for these cheaper devices. … These devices are a lower price margin, they're offshore, there's no teams. And a lot of them cannot be patched. Those DVRs are going to be vulnerable until someone throws them away. And that takes a while. We get security [for phones] because I get a new one every 18 months. Your DVR lasts for five years, your car for 10, your refrigerator for 25. I'm going to replace my thermostat approximately never. So the market really can't fix this.
Schneier then laid out his argument for why the government should be a part of the solution, and the danger of prioritizing surveillance over security.
We're now at the point where we need to start making more ethical and political decisions about how these things work. When it didn't matter—when it was Facebook, when it was Twitter, when it was email—it was OK to let programmers, to give them the special right to code the world as they saw fit. We were able to do that. But now that it's the world of dangerous things—and it's cars and planes and medical devices and everything else—maybe we can't do that anymore.
That's not necessarily what Schneier wants, but he recognizes its necessity
(4) BIG DATA. Mark R. Kelly spent a busy day updating the Science Fiction Awards Database, that indispensable research tool —
2016 Anlab, Asimov's Readers, and Dell Magazine results
— posted Saturday 26 November 2016 @ 5:33 pm PST
More 2016 results: the readers' polls from Analog and Asimov's magazines, and the Dell Magazine Undergrad Awards, reported in Asimov's magazine.
AnLab: 93 new and updated pages
Note the Analog readers' poll now has a poetry category. Also, first page in this index for Alvaro Zinos-Amaro.
Dell Magazines Awards: 37 new and updated pages
Note these awards have a new dedicated website: http://www.dellaward.com/
Asimov's Reader Awards: 91 new and updated pages.
Also updated: 2016 Results
Assorted 2016 results
Updated today:
Big Heart 2016
First Fandom 2016
WSFA Small Press 2016
Dwarf Stars 2016
Copper Cylinder 2016
(5) REACHING A MILESTONE. Adam Whitehead celebrates a decade of blogging in "10 Years of the Wertzone: Listing the Classics".
Occasionally I award a particularly special book, video game, movie or TV show the honour of being a "Wertzone Classic". To be a classic, the work has to both be excellent and also to have withstood the test of time and emerged as a true defining work in its field. The following is a complete list of all works to be awarded a "Classic" award since the start of the blog in 2006. I would strongly recommend all of these works to anyone interested in science fiction and fantasy, be it in print or on screen.
The list includes 30 books.
(6) VISITS WITH ROBERT SILVERBERG. At Locus Online, "Russell Letson reviews Alvaro Zinos-Amaro".
Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Fairwood Press 978-1-933846-63-7, $16.99, 274pp, tp) August 2016. Cover by Patrick Swenson.
Robert Silverberg's career has spanned more than half the history of modern American science fiction: he began reading SF magazines in 1948, during the ''Golden Age,'' and by 1954 was writing for the pulps, producing the first entries in a bibliography that now runs to 600-plus items of fiction and booklength nonfiction alone. Between receiving a Hugo Award for ''Most Promising New Author'' in 1956 and attaining SFWA Grand Master status in 2004, Silverberg has been in a position to meet nearly everyone of consequence in the SF field, sell to nearly every editor (and do plenty of editing himself), and explore nearly every market niche, while also (for a while) carrying out parallel careers turning out carefully-researched nonfiction and pseudonymous, non-SF yard-goods.
(7) A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
"To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life." — W. Somerset Maugham
(8) BOB FELICE OBIT. Cynthia Felice told her Facebook readers, "My beloved and much-loved husband of 55 years, Bob Felice Sr. died yesterday. While his death was sudden and swift, it was not unexpected, not even by him."
Cat Rambo says of Cynthia, "[She] is an SF writer and was the SFWA ombudsman (currently the position's held by the amazing Gay Haldeman) for years, solving member problems with serenity and grace."
November 26, 1862 — Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson sends a handwritten manuscript called Alice's Adventures Under Ground to 10-year-old Alice Liddell.
(10) TODAY'S BIRTHDAY BOYS
Born November 26, 1909 — Eugene Ionesco
Born November 26, 1922 — Charles Schulz
November 26, 1926 – Poul Anderson
Born November 26, 1853 — William "Bat" Masterson. (John King Tarpinian sent this one in because, "The theme song from the TV show still reverberates between my ears.")
(11) ANIMAL ASTRONAUTS. The art is irresistible and the story is cute. Krypton Radio tonight will air an interview with STEM children's book author Andrew Rader.
Buckle up, space fans, for an intriguing conversation with Andrew Rader, author of the upcoming children's book Mars Rover Rescue, and its predecessor, MC Longneck's Epic Space Adventure. Andrew has a PhD in human space flight from MIT, and works professionally as an aerospace engineer. This gives him a unique perspective when it comes to creating educational children's books that can ignite the imaginations of young budding future scientists. The new book has already blown past its goal on Kickstarter, and now the second book about the self-assured "giraffestronaut" is well into stretch goal territory….
Tune in this evening at 9 pm PT / Midnight ET for the first broadcast of this fascinating interview with Andrew Rader. Your hosts this evening are Susan Fox and Gene Turnbow….
(12) NEXT STEPS. Cat Rambo begins her blog post "Nattering Social Justice Cook: Prepare to Ride, My People" with a list of links to disturbing post-election news, then tells how she plans to move forward.
The world is broken. Love isn't enough to fix it. It will take time and effort and blood and sweat and tears. It will stretch some of us almost to the breaking point and others past it. We must help each other in the struggle, must be patient and kind, and above all hopeful. We must speak out even when we are frightened or sad or weary to the bone….
In my opinion. You may disagree, and that's fine. This is what I think and what's driving my actions over the next four years. I am going to speak up and object and point things out. I am going to support institutions that help the groups like the homeless, LGBT youth, and others whose voting rights have been stolen and whose already too-scant and under threat resources are being methodically stripped away.
I am going to continue to insist that honesty, tolerance, and a responsibility for one's own words are part of our proud American heritage, the thing that has often led us along the path where, although there have been plenty of mistakes, there have been actions that advanced the human race, that battled the forces of ignorance and intolerance, and that served as a model for the world. That "liberty and justice for all" are not hollow words, but a lamp lifted to inspire us and light our way in that direction.
I will continue to love in the face of hate, to do what Jesus meant when he said hate the sin while loving the sinner. I will continue to teach, formally and by setting an example of what a leader, a woman, a good human being should do, acknowledging my own imperfections so I can address them and keep growing and getting better at this human existence thing. If I see a fellow being in need, I will act, even if it means moving outside my usual paths.
(13) DOGGONE IT. Adam-Troy Castro sees no reason for feudin' and fussin' over awards:
I have won a few significant (if in prestige second-tier) awards at this gig, and on those occasions, I won because some folks thought that I had written the best story, and by God, that is less complicated, and more satisfying than AGITATING FIGHTING COMPLAINING CAMPAIGNING FRETTING RAGING AND DECLARING ENEMIES FOR MONTHS ON END could possibly be. It certainly was. I don't have a Hugo or a Nebula or a Stoker, and may never get one, but by God I came close a bunch of times, and each time it was without the help of a carefully-managed campaign by hundreds of yahoos screaming bile. It was just me, putting words down, getting what acclaim I got all on my own, and that was *it*. Again, it feels better.
Since Gustav Gloom, I have gotten that feeling just being beamed at by kids.
And on top of that? Typing THE END at the close of work of fiction, and knowing, *knowing*, that it's a superior piece of work, is where that great feeling comes first.
(14) CANCEL THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS. Now we know what the Sad Puppies are waiting on –
Every time more than half a crowd doesn't like me I console myself with the thought that I killed with the Electoral Audience.
— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) November 26, 2016
(15) IT'S ON THE BAG. Fan artist Jose Sanchez – who provided the back covers of my past two paperzines – announces his online shop http://www.shopvida.com/collections/jose77sanchez, which he touts as a place "where you can find my artwork on new apparel products that can make great gifts-especially now in the holidays!"
(16) RON GLASS' TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE. You can watch "I of Newton" on YouTube. Teleplay by Alan Brennert based on a short story by Joe Haldeman.
[Thanks to Steve Green, Cat Rambo, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Adam Whitehead, Adam-Troy Castro, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Bruce Schneier, Cat Rambo, Gene Turnbow, Guardians of the Galaxy, Harlan Ellison, Jason Davis, Krypton Radio, Mark R. Kelly, Robert Silverberg, Ron Glass, Russell Letson, Susan Fox, Twilight Zone
Pixel Scroll 7/1/16 I Have No Mouse And I Must Fafhrd
Posted on July 1, 2016 by Mike Glyer
(1) A BOOK OWNER'S LIFE. Locus Online's Mark R. Kelly writes a personal blog, and his newest post is a memoir, "15 Ways of Buying a Book, Part 1".
Way #1:
The first books of my own, that I bought with my own money and at my own selection, were purchased through a classroom Scholastic Books catalog, in the 6th grade, that is, in 1966-1967. My family lived in Reseda, California, and I attended Vanalden Elementary School, a few blocks from our home. The school was a set of bungalows, separate structures holding two classrooms each, raised off the ground with a crawl-space below and a short set of steps up to the classroom door. A few times a year, pamphlet catalogs were passed out to all the students, listing a selection of titles and prices. We would take the catalogs home, consult with our parents, then return order forms to class with appropriate payment. The books cost 35 or 50 cents each. They were typically special Scholastic editions, short little paperbacks the size of old Ace Doubles, or larger thinner paperbacks for nonfiction. Everyone's orders would be consolidated into a single order for the classroom, mailed in, and three or four weeks later, a big box would arrive in class and the selections eagerly distributed. (You can imagine: the box would have three copies of this book; five of these; one of this…)
Always being rather obsessive about keeping lists, I have maintained detailed purchase (and reading) records since I was 15 years old (on sheets of paper, later copied to logbooks, later copied to databases), and at some point reconstructed such lists from before that age. So I know exactly which books I bought when.
The three I remember from this 6th grade classroom source, and still have, are Martin Gardner's Science Puzzlers, Isaac Asimov's Environments Out There, and Howard Pease' Mystery at Thunderbolt House. The Gardner likely reflected my interest in puzzles from that Things to Make and Things to Do volume I've described in that earlier post; the Asimov, a thin book about the solar system, from my recently discovered interest in astronomy. (My first interest in astronomy was seeing a stack of textbooks, called A Dipper Full of Stars, in a cabinet in my 6th grade classroom, and asking to borrow one. I've alluded to this in previous posts.)
(2) FINDING WAYS TO DONATE. Here's a signal boost for JJ's answer in comments to Tasha Turner's wish for "a nationwide and worldwide Internet place to go and see places in need."
One of the commenters on Greta's blog linked to this:
DonorsChoose.org. Support a classroom. Build a future. Teachers all over the U.S. need your help to bring their classroom dreams to life. Choose a project that inspires you and give any amount.
search by science fiction
You can also search for projects in the highest poverty areas, nearest to being completed, closest to the deadline date, a specific age/grade range, or projects in or near your current location or your hometown.
(3) UNKNOWN CHRISTMAS COMPANION. ScreenRant says who is a mystery: "Doctor Who 2016 Christmas Special Features 'Different Guest Companion'".
Though his newest companion, Bill (played by newcomer Pearl Mackie) has already been introduced, speaking to Doctor Who Magazine, Moffatt has confirmed that her debut will be at the start of Season 10 in 2017, and the Doctor will have a different guest companion for the Christmas Special:
"We'll introduce [Bill] in the first episode of 2017, and she'll run through that series. She'll not be in Christmas [2016], because that would blow the series launch … So there'll be somebody else – a different, guest companion – this Christmas, like how River Song played the companion role in last year's Special."
Of course, this now leads everyone to wonder who might join Capaldi in the TARDIS.
(4) EXEC COMMENTS ON TREK FAN FILM GUIDELINES. Axamonitor has a thorough article covering what a CBS representative has said about interpreting the new guidelines.
John Van Citters, CBS vice president of product development for CBS Consumer Products appeared on the hour-long program, Engage: The Official Star Trek Podcast, which was released June 28, to explain the studios' intent behind the guidelines, why they're guidelines instead of rules and to clarify some of the guidelines' specific restrictions regarding run-times, audio dramas, props and costumes…..
An Arms Race
AXANAR MEETING Van Citters was one of two CBS officials who met with Axanar producer Alec Peters in August 2015, followed by a warning of possible legal action.
Van Citters observed that fan productions had spiraled into something "larger and larger," that had become "something of an arms race about how many Hollywood names could be attached. … That's not really in the spirit of fan fiction."
The guidelines, by prohibiting that kind of competition for involving industry professionals, level the playing field for newer and smaller fan productions, he added.
Not the End of Fan Films
Van Citters disputed some characterizations of the guidelines as a means to end fan films. Instead, he said they mark the first time a major copyright holder has ever given any guidelines for unfettered use of a major piece of its intellectual property with just guidelines.
He noted that while the guidelines' restrictions may seem counterintuitive, they are meant to protect fan films for the long term, and to "cure some abuses that have been out there, and to refocus this around the fan experience … and around creating more stories rather than this kind of arms race about talent and fundraising."
(5) PACKING IRON. Richard Foss is quoted in KCET's story about "The Culinary Historians of Southern California".
With the Cook Bear as their mascot–the only other place he has appeared is in the Pan-Pacific Cookbook published in 1915–CHSC keeps to their mission statement, "Dedicated to pursuing food history and supporting culinary collections at the Los Angeles Public Library", by taking the money raised from membership dues ($30 a year), fundraising dinners and regular cookbook sales (typically after the events) and giving it to the library. To date the group has donated over $100,000…..
Special Events Chair Richard Foss, who also lectures regularly on a variety of food history topics, sees interest in the subject growing. "The Culinary Historians of Southern California is a club for anyone with any level of interest in food and food history," said Foss, a journalist, food historian, and author of two books, "Rum: A Global History" and "Food in The Air and Space: The Surprising History of Food and Drink in the Skies". "It's as much about anthropology as it is about history and it's really about food as a transmittor of cultural values."
Richard Foss, a CHSC Board Member, demonstrates how to use an antique waffle iron during a talk on dining in California during the Victorian era at the Workman-Temple Homestead Museum in the City of Industry earlier this year. || Image provided by Richard Foss
(6) HOWARD AWARDS. Black Gate has the winners of the 2016 Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards, announced in June at the REH Days celebration in Cross Plains, Texas.
(7) COSTUMERS AHOY! Costume-Con 36 (2018) in San Diego has picked its hotel and set a date. The con will take place May 11-14, 2018 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Mission Valley. The hotel is adjacent to the Hazard Center Mall (which offers several restaurant options) and it is across the street from the San Diego Trolley.
(8) TOLKIEN AT WAR. On the anniversary of the first day of the Somme, Joseph Loconte muses about "How J.R.R. Tolkien Found Mordor on the Western Front". Loconte's book A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918 was released a year ago.
IN the summer of 1916, a young Oxford academic embarked for France as a second lieutenant in the British Expeditionary Force. The Great War, as World War I was known, was only half-done, but already its industrial carnage had no parallel in European history.
"Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute," recalled J. R. R. Tolkien. "Parting from my wife," he wrote, doubting that he would survive the trenches, "was like a death."
The 24-year-old Tolkien arrived in time to take part in the Battle of the Somme, a campaign intended to break the stalemate between the Allies and Central Powers. It did not.
The first day of the battle, July 1, produced a frenzy of bloodletting. Unaware that its artillery had failed to obliterate the German dugouts, the British Army rushed to slaughter.
Before nightfall, 19,240 British soldiers — Prime Minister David Lloyd George called them "the choicest and best of our young manhood" — lay dead. That day, 100 years ago, remains the most lethal in Britain's military history.
Though the debt is largely overlooked, Tolkien's supreme literary achievement, "The Lord of the Rings," owes a great deal to his experience at the Somme. Reaching the front shortly after the offensive began, Tolkien served for four months as a battalion signals officer with the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers in the Picardy region of France.
(9) TRACKING MALZBERG'S COLUMN. Mike Resnick wanted to be sure I understood what really happened:
I'm told that File 770 ran a piece saying that Galaxy's Edge, the magazine I edit, had pulled Malzberg's column on Judy Merril due to protests. Nope. We pulled the entire May-June issue in which it appeared at the end of June 30, so we could post the July-August issue on our web page on July 1 (today). This has been our practice since the first issue, 4 years ago. Anyone who wants to read the May-June 2016 issue (#20) is welcome to buy it in epub, .mobi, or paper. Honest.
Thanks to a commenter here, I had already posted the correction by the time Mike reached out to me on Facebook. However, I'm happy to repeat the explanation and clear up the impression created by yesterday's report.
(10) MALZBERG READERS. Today there were more reactions what Barry Malzberg said about Judith Merril in Galaxy's Edge.
@sl_huang notable bec his previous columns also denigrate (dead) authors, but more so the women than the men @jasonsanford
— cat ??? (@charlesatan) July 1, 2016
@jasonsanford going back thru past columns, it's a venue where Malzberg roasts the dead, although he seems to be extra harsh on women…
(11) TODAY'S BIRTHDAY BOY
July 1, 1899 – Charles Laughton. When Ray Bradbury went to Disneyland for the first time it was with Captain Bligh and the Hunchback and Doctor Moreau. Bradbury also originally wrote the play "Merry Christmas 2116" as a vehicle for Laughton and Elsa Lanchester.
(12) SEARCHING FOR FANNISH MUSICAL LYRICS. Rob Chilson left a comment in the About area asking for help.
I wonder if you or your readers can help me.
40 years less 2 months ago, at MidAmeriCon, I sat in on a reading of a musical version of "The Enchanted Duplicator" — my intro to the classic. It was MCed by Filthy Pierre (Erwin Strauss) who if I recall correctly adapted it to the stage. The others sang the songs and I mumbled along low enough not to disturb them. I've now spent a couple of hours on the net looking for one song that started: "Roscoe gave fan an arm of iron to help him pub his zine" and had the chorus, "But for a quarter or a loc, somebody else cranks the damn machine. For a quarter or a loc, a quarter or a loc. A quarter or a three-line ell-oh-cee." Or words to that effect.
Can anyone point me at the lyrics?
One thought — is there anything like this in "The Mimeo Man", which dates to that era?
(13) AT LIS CAREY'S LIBRARY. Posted the other day, Lis Carey's review of an audio version of the Hugo-nominated novella: "Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor (author), Robin Miles (narrator)".
….Except that Binti has won a scholarship to Oomza University, a very distinguished school–and on another planet. Her family is shocked at the very idea that Binti would actually accept it and go–but their dreams are not her dreams, and she does. And on her way there, the ship she's on is attacked and boarded by the Meduze, an alien species that has a very real and serious grievance against Oomza University…..
(14) ANTICIPATION? A writer for the Huffington Post contends "A Dystopian Novelist Predicted Trump's Campaign Slogan in the '90s".
….Whatever the case, it seems sci-fi writer and unofficial Queen of the Galaxy Octavia Butler predicted the slogan a couple of decades ago. Nearly 20 years before Trump trademarked the term, she wrote about a character named Senator Andrew Steele Jarret, a harbinger for violence in her 1998 book Parable of the Talents.
You can see an excerpt outlining Jarret's use of the phrase "make American great again" below:
TMW you see a presidential slogan in a dystopian sci-fi novel set in 2032 being used today. #OctaviaButler #trump pic.twitter.com/jhAZKSLUEM
— oligopistos (@oligopistos) June 30, 2016
(15) ILVERMORNY INK. It wasn't only Elizabeth Warren having fun, says Entertainment Weekly — "J. K. Rowling's Ilvermorny inspires excellent jokes from Massachusetts' government officials"
Later, Governor Charlie Baker's office even gave a good-natured statement to The Boston Globe about Ilvermorny, which has supposedly resided on Mount Greylock for hundreds of years without detection.
"The governor believes that small businesses are the backbone of the economy whether they are owned by witches or mortals, and because the institution has operated for nearly 400 years without incident, the administration plans to revisit the matter sometime in the next century or two," Baker's office told the paper in a statement. "The Department of Revenue's spell-detecting technology procurement will be in its final stages at that time."
The Boston Globe also talked to John Dudek, manager of Mount Greylock State Reservation's Bascom Lodge, who said that the mountain's weather does sometimes create a supernatural effect.
"It's a little bit like The Shining here when you're alone at night," Dudek said. "There are days when we're just locked in clouds and you can't see anything."
(16) WHAT IT MEANS TO GROW. Bishop O'Connell writes about "Growing as a Writer, and as a Person" at A Quiet Pint.
Yes, I've improved as a writer, but for me, being a better writer is inextricably tied to being a better person. Unfortunately, growth and improvement is never a singular, instantaneous event. It happens over a long period of time, sometimes so slow that, like the proverbial frog in the pot of slowly warming water, it goes entirely unnoticed until you have some context. When it happens, it can be embarrassing (see above, and we're still not talking about it) but mostly it's wonderful to see, clearly and starkly, just how much progress has been made. In this post I talked about how much I learned about the tropes and stereotypes I'd blindly fallen into and how I work to rise above them. I say work not achieved, because I still have a long way to go. This fact was brought into harsh relief as I was editing The Returned.
(17) 48 HOURS. Here's a bulletin of interest from The Onion that should keep parents everywhere concerned: "Investigators: First 48 Hours Most Critical In Locating Missing Children Who Entered Portal To Fantastical World".
"As soon as we learn a child has disappeared down a pool of light underneath their staircase or through a strangely shaped attic door they had never before noticed, we must act fast to assemble search parties and cover as much enchanted territory as possible," said investigator Joe Phillippe, who urged parents to contact authorities immediately if they believed their child had passed into a gleaming world of crystal palaces or been transported back in time to the age of King Arthur. "If they're not found within that critical 48-hour window, children typically become disoriented in the thick fog and dense forest of a land where it's always night, or they're led astray by a well-dressed fox who promises to take them to a place where kids can play all varieties of games. At that point, they become almost impossible to locate."
[Thanks to Rose Embolism, Cat Rambo, Steve Davidson, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged AxaMonitor, Barry N. Malzberg, Bishop O'Connell, Black Gate, Costume-Con, Doctor Who, J. K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jason Sanford, JJ, Lis Carey, Mark R. Kelly, Mike Resnick, Octavia Butler, Ray Bradbury, Rob Chilson, Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards, Star Trek, Tasha Turner
Never-Winner Land
Posted on July 23, 2014 by Mike Glyer
Mark R. Kelly has added the first set of FAQs, tallies and pages of statistics to his superb Science Fiction Awards Database (which started life as the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards.)
SFADB now provides an overall tally of the top winners and nominees of "Major Career Awards" and "Major Awards" — the SF Hall of Fame, SFWA Grand Master, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Andre Norton, British Fantasy, British SF, Campbell Memorial, Chesley, Arthur C. Clarke, International Fantasy, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Theodore Sturgeon, and James Tiptree, Jr. awards.
Who is the biggest winner of all time by this yardstick? Dave Langford, with 33 major awards – 29 Hugos, 1 British Fantasy Award and 3 British Science Fiction Awards.
I haven't won enough Hugos (interrupted by shouts of "Like hell!!") – I mean, to get above the SFADB event horizon as a winner.
But you will find me under "Total Losses." What makes it more bearable is that I'm on the same rung (tied for 11th place) with David G. Hartwell, Kim Stanley Robinson, George R.R. Martin and Gene Wolfe.
And an amazing number of my friends are ranked in the tenderly named "Never Winner" category — folks who have accumulated lots of nominations without ever taking home the hardware, though their work has been held in high esteem to have been recognized so often.
Tied for second are Michael A. Burstein and Steven H Silver and further down the list are Guy H. Lillian III, Steve Stiles, Arthur D. Hlavaty, Evelyn C. Leeper, Taral Wayne, Andrew Hooper, Jerry Pournelle, Harry O. Morris, Jr., Bob Devney, Mark Plummer, Timothy Lane and Grant Canfield.
There's a separate breakout for All Awards and Polls. Robert Silverberg occupies the top of this pyramid with 262 nominations. Appropriately for an sf writer, that practically puts him in another universe. He has 64 more than that the next person on the list, Ursula K. Le Guin.
Kelly has also created pages for UK Awards, Canadian Awards (Lloyd Penney shows up twice), and Australian Awards (where it is revealed that Bruce Gillespie is the Langford of the Antipodes.)
Do visit the SF Awards Database — it's a labor of love and one of the genre's most valuable research sites.
Posted in Awards	| Tagged Mark R. Kelly, SFADB
April Fails Day
Mark R. Kelly notified his Facebook readers around noon today, "Locus Online's traditional April 1st spoofs, this year by Hal Graftswey, Paoli du Flippi, and L. Ron Creepweans, are now posted." Those who waited too long missed out — within three hours Kelly yanked the items in response to what he termed a "kerfuffle" and posted this apology:
We would like to offer our apology for the offensive April Fool's post that was published on the site today. The April Fool's pieces were not seen by the Locus HQ staff before being posted — it was an ugly moment this morning when we saw the post already online, and we immediately took steps to remove it. Of course, being after the fact, it was too late, and the offense had already happened.
We did not find the post funny at all, and it does not reflect in any way the opinions of the magazine staff. We apologize for it appearing under our auspices.
The offending article was "WisCon Makes Burqas Mandatory for All Attendees" by L. Ron Creepweans. The Creepweans pseudonym is also part of the Locus April 1st tradition but after Kelly deleted the piece Lawrence Person revealed himself as the author.
Person also posted an archival copy on his BattleSwarm blog. It begins:
Today the SF3 ruling committee for the Madison, Wisconsin-based feminist SF convention WisCon announced that starting this year, all attendees would be required to wear burqas.
Person has been contributing April 1st gags to Locus Online since 2002. He explained why he selected WisCon as the target of this year's satire:
For those tuning in for the first time, this was a direct jab (in humorous form) at WisCon's previous decision to yank their Guest-of-Honor invitation to Elizabeth Moon for daring to voice (in the mildest possible form) politically incorrect thoughts about certain aspects of modern Islam.
Meanwhile, commenters at Locus Online responded to its apology by continuing to berate the staff and demanding assurances against future offenses. Mark R. Kelly was provoked into ending the April Fool's tradition:
I always thought that SF/F readers were more tolerant, less apt to take offense, than other folks; but apparently not. (Death threats!). So, no more April 1st spoofs ever.
Posted in Skiffy	| Tagged Elizabeth Moon, Lawrence Person, Locus Online, Mark R. Kelly, Wiscon
Out of the Amazon
Locus Online was one of the casualties when Amazon cut ties to its California affiliates to avoid having to comply with changes in the state's sales tax collection laws.
Mark R. Kelly explains the conflict on his blog. He also satisfies fans' curiosity about how much it's worth for a big portal like Locus Online to be an affiliate:
These commissions are typically $200-300 a month. Nothing like living wages, but enough to cover my personal book expenses, in most months.
Kelly ends by musing about ways to get back on the gravy train.
One solution would be to move to a new state. Or rehost the website's affiliation in some other state, somehow. Hmm.
Is there such a thing as a Swiss internet account?
Posted in Like Show Business	| Tagged Amazon, Locus Online, Mark R. Kelly
File 770, Mike Glyer's fanzine about the news of sf fandom.
"...the 770 blog, that wretched hive of scum and villainy..."
-- John C. Wright
"A fanzine about cats and the books their owners read" -- Camestros Felapton
2018 Hugo Award Winner!
Electronic editions of the fanzine, posted at eFanzines.com:
File 770 #166, July 2016
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