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Tag Archives: Cowboy Bebop
Pixel Scroll 1/7/22 It's All Fun And Games Till Someone Pixels A File
(1) WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE DEPLOYMENT WILL AIR. "NASA to Host Coverage, Briefing for Webb Telescope's Final Unfolding" the space agency announced.
NASA will provide live coverage and host a media briefing Saturday, Jan. 8, for the conclusion of the James Webb Space Telescope's major spacecraft deployments.
Beginning no earlier than 9 a.m. EST, NASA will air live coverage of the final hours of Webb's major deployments. After the live broadcast concludes, at approximately 1:30 p.m., NASA will hold a media briefing. Both the broadcast and media briefing will air live on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the agency's website.
As the final step in the observatory's major deployments, the Webb team plans to unfold the second of two primary mirror wings. When this step is complete, Webb will have finished its unprecedented process of unfolding in space to prepare for science operations.
(2) KETTER INTERVIEWED ABOUT DREAMHAVEN BREAK-IN. The DreamHaven Books break-in reported in yesterday's Scroll made local news on the Fox affiliate, who interviewed owner Greg Ketter: "Minneapolis comic store owner frustrated after continued robberies".
(3) BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. "Golden Globes Will Not Be Livestreamed This Weekend" reports Deadline.
The controversy-plagued Golden Globes looks set to return this weekend, but no one will see it online or otherwise. "This year's event is going to be a private event and will not be livestreamed," an HFPA spokesperson said. "We will be providing real-time updates on winners on the Golden Globes website and our social media."
…NBC revealed on May 10 that it would not air the Golden Globes this year due to the diversity issues involving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
The network, in a statement at the time, said it continues to believe that the HFPA is "committed to meaningful reform" but "change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right."
(4) LEVAR BURTON. A reminder that the LeVar Burton Reads podcasts are also available on Stitcher. The latest is "To Jump is to Fall" by Stephen Graham Jones.
"To Jump is to Fall" by Stephen Graham Jones
A spy narrates his thoughts as he jumps from an airplane and freefalls toward his government target.
(5) DISCON III PANEL VIDEOS. The recorded panels of the 2021 Worldcon, DisCon III, are now available to attending members and virtual members. The recordings should remain available through the month of January 2022.
1. Go to the DisCon III schedule page:
https://discon3.org/schedule/
2. Use the Log In button in the top left corner of the page.
3. On the convention schedule, look for items with a View Replay button.
(6) DISCON III ART SHOW. Lisa Hertel reported on Facebook that DisCon III's art show sales were approximately $32,000 across 33 artists.
(7) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman worries that the Omicron surge will keep him away from future conventions, but that doesn't erase the fun he had in D.C. where he recorded five episodes of his podcast, including "Breakfast on Eggs Benedict with Fonda Lee".
Fonda Lee
Fonda Lee won both a World Fantasy Award and an Aurora Award for her novel Jade City, which was also nominated for Nebula, Seiun, and Sunburst Awards. That first installment of her Green Bone Saga, an epic urban fantasy, was followed by Jade War, which was nominated for both the Dragon and Aurora Awards. Jade Legacy, the third book in her series, was released in November of 2021. Her young adult novels Zeroboxer and Exo were both Andre Norton Award finalists. She holds black belts in karate and kung fu, which probably came in handy when it was time for her to write Shang-Chi for Marvel Comics.
Because Fonda is a fan of Eggs Benedict, we headed to the Lafayette restaurant in the Hay Adams Hotel, where I'd been informed by Tom Sietsema of the Washington Post we could find an excellent incarnation of that dish.
We discussed what it was like finishing the final book in her Green Bone Saga trilogy during the pandemic, her secret for keeping track of near 2,000 pages of characters and plot points, why every book project is terrifying in its own way, how much of the ending she knew at the beginning (and our opposing views on whether knowing the ending helps or hurts the creative process), the warring wolves inside her as she writes the most emotionally difficult scenes, why she starts to worry if her writing is going too smoothly, the framing device that became far more than a framing device, why her natural length for processing ideas is the novel rather than the short story, and much more.
(8) BEBOP PETITION REACHES 100K. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] According to Dazed's Günseli Yalcinkaya, the Change.org petition "Save the live action cowboy bebop" has now garnered over 100,000 signatures.
Following news of the cancellation, co-executive producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach took to Twitter to voice his disappointment: "I truly loved working on this. It came from a real and pure place of respect and affection. I wish we could make what we planned for a second season, but you know what they say, men plan, God laughs."
…As petition numbers grow by the minute, perhaps it won't be long until Netflix takes note and we can confidently say: See you soon, space cowboy.
(9) THE BOYS. Amazon Prime dropped a teaser trailer for The Boys – Season 3. Coming June 3.
The Boys is an irreverent take on what happens when superheroes, who are as popular as celebrities, as influential as politicians and as revered as Gods, abuse their superpowers rather than use them for good. It's the powerless against the super powerful as The Boys embark on a heroic quest to expose the truth about "The Seven", and their formidable Vought backing.
(10) MILLER OBIT. Wild Cards author John Joseph Miller died January 5 announced DreamForge Magazine.
We are deeply saddened to hear that John Jos. Miller passed away yesterday. Our deepest sympathies to John's wife, family, and friends. We were fortunate to work with John on Ghost of a Smile in 2019 and Don't Look Back in the recently released DreamForge Anvil Issue 6. He's best known for his work in the Wildcard Series edited by George RR Martin. His last story with us, Don't Look Back, is a Satchel Paige baseball story. John was a Fellow of the Society for American Baseball Research and was an authority on America's Negro league baseball of the 20th Century. In his honor, read "Don't Look Back" in Dreamforge Anvil Issue 6.
(11) WILLIAM CONTENTO (1947-2021). William G. Contento known for his annual bibliographical roundups of sff in the Eighties and Nineties (originally with Locus' Charles N. Brown), died December 13, 2021. His family obituary is here.
…Bill retired in 2012. Bill's obsession besides his family, was science fiction, a collector, an author and authority on anthologies and source material. Using his cataloging mind, his home computer and working with other collaborators who shared his passion Bill authored and coauthored at least 14 titles. Some of his reference works were more than 500 pages. Eventually he was able to put them on CDs. His indexes are linked by the Library of Congress, The British Library, MIT's library to name a few. Google his name to see a list of all his labors of love….
(12) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1961 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Sixty-one years ago, ITV first aired The Avengers. Original cast was Ian Hendry and Patrick Macnee. Hendry left after the first series; Steed than became the primary male character, partnered with a succession of female partners. The series would last for six seasons and one hundred and one episodes. We of course have our favorite female partner but that's not for us to say here. After it ended in 1969, John Steed would be paired with two new partners on The New Avengers, a series that ran for two seasons in the mid-Seventies.
Born January 7, 1899 — F. Orlin Tremaine. He was the Editor of Astounding from 1933 to 1937. It's said that he bought Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness without actually reading it. Later as Editor at Bartholomew House, he brought out the first paperback editions of Lovecraft's The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror. He wrote a dozen or so short stories that were published in the pulps between 1926 and 1949. (Died 1956.)
Born January 7, 1912 — Charles Addams. Illustrator best known for the Addams Family which he first drew in 1932 and kept drawing until his death. Needless to say there have been a number of films using these characters of which The Addams Family is my favorite. Linda H. Davis' Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life is well worth seeking out and reading. (Died 1988.)
Born January 7, 1913 — Julian S. Krupa. Pulp cover and interior illustrator from 1939 to 1971 who graced Amazing Stories and Fantastic. In the Thirties, he also contributed art to fanzines, including Ad Astra. His grandson said that "his Grandfather did all the illustrations for the training films for the first Nuclear Submarines and was a friend to Admiral Rickover. And then continued to do early training films for NASA." (Died 1989.)
Born January 7, 1928 — William Peter Blatty. Novelist and screenwriter best known for The Exorcist though he was also the same for Exorcist III. The former is by no means the only genre work that he would write as his literary career would go on for forty years after this novel and would include Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing: A Fable which he renamed Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing: A Hollywood Christmas Carol and The Exorcist for the 21st Century, his final work. (Died 2017.)
Born January 7, 1955 — Karen Haber, 67. Wife of Robert Silverberg. I fondly remember reading her Hugo-nominated Meditations on Middle Earth anthology, not to mention the three Universe anthologies she did with her husband which are most excellent. I don't remember reading any of her novels but it's hardly a certainty that I didn't as even when my memory was a lot better than is now, I hardly remembered all the genre fiction I've read. So those you've read her, please tell me what she's like.
Born January 7, 1957 — Nicholson Baker, 65. Ok ISFDB lists him as having two SFF novels, The Fermata and House of Holes. The Wiki page him lists those as being two out of the three erotic novels that he's written. Not having read them, are they indeed erotic SFF? I see that ESF say they're indeed SFF and yes are erotic. H'h.
Born January 7, 1961 — Mark Allen Shepherd, 61. Morn, the bar patron on Deep Space Nine. Amazingly he was in Quark's bar a total of ninety-three episodes plus one episode each on Next Gen and Voyager. Technically he's uncredited in almost all of those appearances. That's pretty much his entire acting career. I'm trying to remember if he has any lines. He's also an abstract painter whose work was used frequently on DS9 sets. For all practical purposes, this was his acting career.
(14) COMICS SECTION.
Lio might be a young Harryhausen.
(15) GET VACCINATED. GeekWire witnesses when "Mr. Spock beams down for vaccine-boosting billboard campaign".
…The first round of the campaign, organized by Nimoy's family and L.A. Care Health Plan with the blessing of ViacomCBS, has been in the works in Los Angeles since last May…
My Dad believed strongly in creating awareness for respiratory disease, he would have loved this billboard! #covid19 #covidvaccine #LLAP @nimoycopdfilm @StarTrek @LACareHealth pic.twitter.com/RjGDeanZiT
— Julie Nimoy (@JulieNimoy) November 1, 2021
(16) BOWIE THE ACTOR. [Item by Alan Baumler.] BBC's appreciation of the film roles of Davie Bowie, almost all genre. "The underrated genius of David Bowie's acting". For some reason, can't quite put my finger on it, they kept casting him for roles playing someone out of place who did not quite fit in.
… It's unsurprising that this most mercurial of artists, with his visual sensibility and many alter-egos, would be drawn to film. Yet, while Bowie's legendary status in music is beyond question, quantifying his contribution to cinema as an actor is more complicated. In the three decades between The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and The Prestige (2006), Bowie appeared in dozens of films but – despite that span of credits – only a few of these roles came close to making the most of his talent. When we leave aside the many cameos – of which the uncontested crème de le crème is Bowie solemnly adjudicating a runway walk-off in Zoolander – and the forgettable flops – the less said about Just a Gigolo, the better – we are left with only a handful of performances. Yet those acting roles that did manage to effectively exploit Bowie's gifts are easily enough to secure his status as a cinema icon. When matched with an inventive director, Bowie could be an unforgettable screen presence….
(17) DEER DEPARTED. RedWombat's Bambi rewatch thread starts here.
(Okay, yes, obviously I knew that Grandma, have had two children, had done it twice, but it would have been in the Fifties and sex was clearly very different then and involved vacuuming the house in pearls until you caught pregnant.)
— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) January 7, 2022
(18) WAVES OF SFF. Ron Jacobs reviews Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction 1950-1985 in "Some Hazy Cosmic Jive" at CounterPunch.
…If the reader previously dismissed science fiction as juvenile or foolish, this introductory survey of its radical possibilities is heartily recommended. It could easily change your mind. If the reader is already familiar with this genre, this text will come as an intelligent and inspired discussion of the genre during one of its most creative and fertile periods. Visually delightful and intellectually astute, it should provide each and every reader with a list of books to add to their to-read queue.
(19) NOT JUST A PHASE. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Artist/illustrator Will Quinn did this piece based on the Saul Bass movie Phase IV (1974). It was riffed by Joel and the Bots in the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-) in its KTMA season (1988-1989).
Daily bunny no.1628 is feeling antsy
(A Patreon reward for @DrWho42!) pic.twitter.com/DBVsRGBfr5
— Will Quinn (@willquinnart) January 7, 2022
(20) WHERE IT'S AT. I always like to have a science item towards the end of the Scroll.
well everyone knows the heart is located in the butt thats just science so take your pick bud https://t.co/vIw2tBEyic
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) January 3, 2022
(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Live from 2011, "'Doctor Who on Holiday' by Dean Gray".
It combines Green Day's "Holiday" with Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2" and "Doctorin' The TARDIS" by The Timelords (better known as The KLF). "Doctorin' The TARDIS" itself takes a sample from "Rock and Roll Part 2″." From Wikipedia: "Dr Who on Holiday is the second track from the mash up album, American Edit created by Dean Gray (a collaboration of Party Ben and Team 9).
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, Ben Bird Person, Scott Edelman, Will R., Rich Lynch, Nicki Lynch, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Chuck Tingle, Cowboy Bebop, David Bowie, DisCon III, Doctor Who, DreamForge Magazine, DreamHaven Books, Fonda Lee, Golden Globes, Greg Ketter, James Webb Space Telescope, John Joseph Miller, Julie Nimoy, Leonard Nimoy, LeVar Burton, Lisa Hertel, NASA, Scott Edelman, Stephen Graham Jones, Ursula Vernon, Wild Cards, Will Quinn, William G. Contento
Pixel Scroll 12/21/21 Pixeland Is The Scrolliest Place On Earth
(1) LET US REMEMBER THE TWENTY-FIRST OF DECEMBER. It's already dark out! Oh, wait – today's the Winter Solstice! No wonder. Let NASA Ames Research Center tell you all about it.
(2) RAYTHEON. Social media criticism for DisCon III's acceptance of Raytheon sponsorship money splashed onto some of the Hugo ceremony participants. The committee issued this statement:
Harassment is not acceptable. Responses should be directed to DisCon III and not at the finalists or winners who were uninvolved in our decisions.
— DisCon III – The 79th Worldcon (@worldcon2021) December 21, 2021
Cora Buhlert commented:
I would have hoped for a more strongly worded statement by DisCon III, but this part I full co-sign. The Hugo finalists had no idea about Raytheon sponsoring the ceremony until the ceremony started, many are furious about this and yet several have been harrassed https://t.co/VYTChqk3f2
— Cora Buhlert (@CoraBuhlert) December 21, 2021
(3) WORLDCON ACCESSIBILITY ISSUES. Mari Ness, who navigates convention space in a wheelchair, summarizes her experiences with DisCon III, which she ultimately decided against attending: "Are we really doing this again? Discon III, accessibility, and genre cons" at Blogging with Dragons.
Discon III turned out to be my worst Worldcon ever – one of my worst genre events, ever.
And I didn't even go….
(4) THE GAME'S AFOOT. Congratulations to James Nicoll Reviews on posting their 2000th review today: "Just Lots of Little Frames", about Greg Stafford, Jeff Richard, and Jason Durall's 2021 The Runequest Starter Set, which is a starter set for Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha . As always, the footnotes are great!
(5) FIFTY THOUSAND BEBOP FANS CAN'T BE WRONG. Yahoo!'s Jeff Yeung has an updated report about the ongoing Cowboy Bebop petition:
Netflix's recent cancellation of the live-action Cowboy Bebop has left many fans disappointed, and now more than 50,000 of them have signed a petition to bring the show back for a second season."
"I truly loved working on this," the show's co-executive producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach said on Twitter after Netflix's decision. "It came from a real and pure place of respect and affection. I wish we could make what we planned for a second season, but you know what they say, men plan, God laughs." He added that the team "had so much cool sh*t planned" for Cowboy Bebop's second season."
(6) SUITE MEMORIES. Covert J. Beach gives a full rundown on the party suite he used for his "loosely invitational" parties at DisCon III (which also ended up being the location for the Chengdu Victory Party when "it turned out that the suite that had been earmarked for Chengdu had been given away.")
….At over 1800 sqft the Suite was bigger than my Condo, complete with full kitchen (I even baked something) and a full washer-dryer. To do it justice I brought three bags of booze rather than just two, discovering in the process that the Briggs and Riley Baseline Carryon is a fantastic piece of luggage to carry booze. It is the perfect width for most long whisky tins. It took two full trips of the car to move the party kit to the hotel, and two back (the 2nd return load which totally packed the car is picured), with a third supplementary trip each way. I caused a lot of bemusement with the valets.
The Convention had a bartender on tap over zoom so people could get advice on what drinks to make. I hear a number of calls were made from the room in the suite called "The Library" where the bartender was amazed at the variety the Capclave/Balticon Scotch Cabal put together (I don't bring it all.) Much was drunk….
(7) TOP SHELF. Polygon offers its picks of "The best fantasy and sci-fi books of 2021". In alphabetical order by author's last name, so no definitive number one ranking.
…If you love books then you know: They aren't just escapism, they also inspire introspection, making us think harder about the world we live in. This is precisely the promise of great science fiction and fantasy — categories we've chosen to consider in a list together, as fantastic books continue to blur the line between the two speculative genres (and besides, we love to read them all). These 20 books span genres and perspectives — from space operas, to Norse mythology retellings, to romances with a dash of time travel. But all of them gave us something new to consider.
In a year with so many incredible choices, it was hard to narrow down the list. So we've also included some of our favorite runners up….
(8) WOMEN OF MARVEL. In March, Women Of Marvel #1 will continue highlighting Marvel's female heroes in an all-new collection of tales.
A Squirrel Girl and Black Widow team-up against a maniacal villain in a story that explores the complexities of super hero identities by Hugo award winning writer Charlie Jane Anders
An action-packed Shanna the She-Devil and Silver Sable short sees the jungle ladies battle against wild animal poachers by award winning video game script writer Rhianna Pratchett
A dark Jessica Jones tale of compulsion and redemption from celebrated creator Jordie Bellaire and drawn by rising star Zoe Thorogood
A fun-filled page-flipper of Black Cat's greatest failures and latest triumphes by novelist Preeti Chhibber and superstar artists Jen Bartel, Marguerite Sauvage and more!
The Marvel Comics writing debut of artist Mirka Andolfo and much more!
(9) MILAN MEMBER OF JURY IN HIGHLY-PUBLICIZED CASE. [Item by rcade.] The romance novelist Courtney Milan revealed on Twitter that she was a juror in the trial that led to truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos being sentenced to 110 years in prison for the 29-vehicle crash in Colorado that killed four people in 2019. The brakes on his truck failed while he was descending mountains on Interstate 70, leading to the accident after he didn't veer off into a runaway truck lane.
Milan wrote this on December 14 in tweets she subsequently deleted (Archive.today copy below):
I'm going to write something longer about this, but I just have to say this right now: 110 years is unjust. I feel sick with how unjust this is.
I don't feel like I can say much right now because my brain keeps stuttering out on this, but my brain will come back online at some point.
I was on the jury in this case and if I had known this was the mandatory minimum for a kid who made some really bad decisions at exactly the wrong time, I would absolutely have engaged in jury nullification.
The severity of the sentence, which must be served consecutively, has brought international attention to the case. A Change.org petition asking Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to grant clemency or a commutation to Aguilera-Mederos has received over 4.5 million signatures.
Before becoming a full-time romance writer, Milan was a law professor at Seattle University School of Law and clerk to Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, according to the Washington Post.
A male juror in the case told Fox 31 the sentence was "100-fold of what it should have been" and had this reaction when it was handed down: "I cried my eyes out."
(10) STEP RIGHT UP. Signal boosting Connie Willis' appeal for Locus subscriptions and donations. If she were here she'd say click to support Locus today.
(11) ORENSTEIN OBIT. Inventor Henry Orenstein, responsible for many popular toys including Transformers, died December 14. The New York Times paid tribute: "Henry Orenstein, 98, Dies; Force Behind Transformers and Poker on TV".
…He refashioned himself as a toy inventor (he held dozens of patents) and broker. During the Toy Fair in Manhattan in the early 1980s, he saw a Japanese-made toy — a tiny car that could easily change into an airplane — and recognized more elaborate possibilities.
"He started playing with it and said, 'This is the best thing I've seen in at least 10 years,'" recalled Mrs. Orenstein, who, as Carolyn Sue Vankovich, met her future husband in 1967 when she was demonstrating Suzy Homemaker at the Toy Fair. "He had the sparkle he got when he got excited."
Mr. Orenstein put together a deal between Hasbro and the Japanese manufacturer, Takara, which led to Hasbro's introduction in 1984 of Transformers, toy robots that could turn into vehicles or beasts. They would become hugely popular, spawning an animated television series and a movie franchise.
"Ideas don't come in little pieces," Mr. Orenstein told Newsweek in 2016. "It's in, it's out. It's there or it's not," he said. "I was just an inventor. You needed a big company to do what I thought should be done: making real transformations from complex things to other complex things."…
1965 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] ?Fifty-six years ago one of the best Bond films premiered in the form of Thunderball. Directed by Terence Young, it was the fourth Bond film off a screenplay by Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins off yet another Fleming novel. The original screenplay was by Jack Whittingham but it wasn't used.
Need I say that Sean Connery plays Bond here? Well this will be only the first time that Connery plays Bond based off this novel as he'll play him in Never Say Never Again which was executive produced by Kevin McClory, one of the original writers of the Thunderball story. McClory had the filming rights of the novel following a very long legal battle dating from the Sixties.
Reception from critics was decidedly mixed but Dilys Powell of The Sunday Times said that "The cinema was a duller place before 007." The box office was fantastic as it earned out one hundred and forty million against a budget of under ten million. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather excellent seventy-three percent rating.
Born December 21, 1898 — Hubert Rogers. Illustrator during the Golden Age of pulp magazines. His first freelance work was for Ace-High, Adventure, Romance, and West. In '42, he started doing covers for Astounding Science Fiction which he would do until '53. He did the cover art for the '51 edition of The Green Hills of Earth, the '50 edition of The Man Who Sold the Moon and the '53 edition of Revolt in 2100. (Died 1982.)
Born December 21, 1928 — Frank Hampson. A British illustrator that is best known as the creator and artist of Dan Dare, Pilot of The Future and other characters in the boys' comic, The Eagle, to which he contributed from 1950 to 1961. There is some dispute over how much his original scripts were altered by his assistants before being printed. (Died 1985.)
Born December 21, 1929 — James Cawthorn. An illustrator, comics artist and writer who worked predominantly with Michael Moorcock. He had met him through their involvement in fandom. They would co-wrote The Land that Time Forgot film, and he drew "The Sonic Assassins" strip which was based on Hawkwind that ran in Frendz. He also did interior and cover art for a number of publications from the Fifties onwards including (but not limited to) Vector 3, New Worlds SF, Science Fantasy and Yandro. (Died 2008.)
Born December 21, 1937 — Jane Fonda, 84. I'm sure everyone here has seen her in Barbarella. Her only other genre appearances are apparently voice work as Shuriki in the animated Elena of Avalor series, and in the Spirits of the Dead, 1968 anthology film based on the work of Poe. She was the Contessa Frederique de Metzengerstein in the "Metzengerstein" segment of the film.
Born December 21, 1948 — Samuel L. Jackson, 73. Where to start? Did you know that with his permission, his likeness was used for the Ultimates version of the Nick Fury? It's a great series btw. He has also played Fury in the Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Avengers: Infinity War and showed up on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. too! He voiced Lucius Best (a.k.a. Frozone) in the Incredibles franchise, Mace Windu in The Phantom Menace and The Clone Wars, the Afro Samurai character in the anime series of the same name and more other genre work than can be listed here comfortably so go ahead and add your favorite role by him.
Born December 21, 1943 — Jack Nance. Let's just say he and David Lynch were rather connected. He's in Henry Spencer in Eraserhead, he had a small role as the Harkonnen Captain Iakin Nefud in Dune and he's Pete Martell in Twin Peaks. He's also a supporting role as Paul, a friend of Dennis Hopper's villain character in Blue Velvet but even I couldn't stretch that film to be even genre adjacent. (Died 1996.)
Born December 21, 1944 — James Sallis, 77. Ok he'd be getting a Birthday today if only for his SJW cred of giving up teaching at a college rather than sign a state-mandated loyalty oath that he regarded as unconstitutional. But he also does have a short SFF novel Renderings more short fiction that I can count, a book review column in F&SF and he co-edited several issues of New Worlds Magazine with Michael Moorcock. Worthy of a Birthday write-up!
Born December 21, 1966 — Kiefer Sutherland, 55. My he's been in a lot of genre undertakings! I think that The Lost Boys was his first such of many to come including Flatliners, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, The Three Musketeers, voice work in Armitage: Poly-Matrix, Dark City, more voice work in The Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration, Marmaduke and Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Mirrors, and yes, he's in the second Flatliners as a new character.
Tom Gauld's alternate history drives the world of a well-known Christmas carol.
A festive cartoon for @GdnSaturday / @GuardianBooks #kingwenceslas #jackreacher pic.twitter.com/T2pF3fn7NH
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) December 19, 2021
(15) SWEDEN ACQUIRES A STEED. "Dark Horse Comics to Be Acquired by Gaming Giant Embracer Group" – The Hollywood Reporter has the story.
Dark Horse Comics properties such as Hellboy and The Umbrella Academy are finding a new home. The indie comics publisher has agreed to be sold to Embracer Group, the Swedish video game conglomerate. The deal is expected to close in early 2022….
(16) THE RAIN IN NEW SPAIN STAYS THE LAUNCH AGAIN. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Astronomers have once again been told they must wait a bit to open their Big Present—launch of the James Webb space telescope. The latest, and hopefully the last, delay has pushed the launch until Christmas day. This one-day delay is due to expected advert weather conditions. "Delay pushes NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launch to Christmas morning" at CNN.
The highly anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has been delayed yet again — this time because of interference by Mother Nature.
Now, the telescope is expected to launch on December 25 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
The launch window opens Christmas morning at 7:20 a.m. ET and closes at 7:52 a.m. ET. Live coverage of the launch will stream on NASA's TV channel and website beginning Saturday at 6 a.m.
The news of adverse weather conditions came shortly after NASA shared that the Launch Readiness Review for the telescope was completed on Tuesday….
(17) ABOUT THE WESTERN SPELLING OF A CHENGDU GOH'S NAME. [Item by SF Concatenation's Jonathan Cowie.] Given the fuss some make over pronunciation, I am a little reluctant to wade in here (though I have lost count of the number of times my own name has been mispronounced, misspelled and even an alternate used (well, this last is a bit debatable but suffice to say my first name is not the one I am commonly known as – and no it wasn't my choice).) There are simply far more important things to get exercised about: human rights, political rights (*cough* Hong Kong) and climate change to name but a few. Anyway…
How do you spell Sergei Lukyanenko / Lukianenko? Well, conversions to the Latin alphabet are always problematic. I do not know about the US, but here in Brit Cit William Heinemann published Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series. If that is his commonly-used publishing name in the West then arguably it would be best to use that so that folk can internet search out his work.
(18) LIFE IMITATES ART. You know the humorous motorcade bits that interrupted the Hugo Awards ceremony? Well, Andrew Porter did not have to leave Washington without seeing the real thing. Here's his photo of a motorcade taken from his Shoreham Hotel window.
Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter
(19) IN BEAUTIFUL BURBANK. "The Mystic Museum In Southern California Is Full Of Fascinating Oddities And Vintage Items" — Only In Your State's article includes a photo gallery.
The Mystic Museum is a small museum dedicated to the occult, paranormal, mysticism, and horror. If you find yourself fascinated by the macabre, then consider it the place for you!
(20) HOLIDAY WHO. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Artist/illustrator Colin Howard did this piece on the 2003 animated Doctor Who serial "Scream of the Shalka":
Happy Christmas Everybody!!!
Here's my final artwork for Scream of the Shalka,hope you like it??!! pic.twitter.com/UIatoFUNNg
— Colin Howard (@ColinHowardArt) December 21, 2021
(21) THE OTHER GRAND CANYON. Microsoft News for Kids reports: "Orbiter discovers 'significant amounts of water' in Grand Canyon-like area of Mars".
A researcher orbiter circling around Mars has discovered "significant amounts of water" underneath the surface of an area on the red planet similar to the Grand Canyon, according to the European Space Agency.
The orbiter, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, was launched by the European Space Agency along with the Russian Space Agency in 2016 and has been orbiting Mars ever since, with the goal of learning more about the gases and the possibility of life on the planet.
Recently, the orbiter was scanning an area of Mars called Valles Marineris, using the Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector instrument, or FREND, which can detect hydrogen on and up to 3 feet underneath Mars' soil.
The Valles Marineris is a 2,500-mile-long canyon on Mars with parts that are 4 miles deep. Not only is it 10 times longer and 4 times deeper than the Grand Canyon, but the Valles Marineris' length is nearly as long as the entire United States.
Data collected from the instrument from May 2018 to Feb. 2021 showed the middle part of the canyon contained a large amount of water, indicating some form of life could possibly be sustained. The findings were published in the solar system journal Icarus on Wednesday….
(22) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In "Spider Man: No Way Home Pitch Meeting" on Screen Rant, Ryan George, in a spoiler-filled episode, has the producer watch the five Spider-Man movies before Tom Holland shows up so he can understand the many special guest stars in this one. "How are we going to market this film without revealing all the crazy stuff?" the producer asks. "Leaks!" the writer says.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Ben Bird Person, rcade, Bonnie McDaniel, SF Concatenation's Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Andrew Porter, Charlie Jane Anders, Colin Howard, Connie Willis, Cora Buhlert, Courtney Milan, Covert J. Beach, Cowboy Bebop, DisCon III, James Davis Nicoll, James Webb Space Telescope, Locus, Mari Ness, Mars, Marvel, Ryan George, Sergey Lukianenko, Tom Gauld, Transformers
Pixel Scroll 12/17/21 I'm Hermione The Eighth I Am
(1) SAVE THE BEBOP. The Change.org petition to "Save the live action Cowboy Bebop" now has over 18,000 signatures. Comic Book Resources' Kellie Lacey's report "Cowboy Bebop Fans Launch Petition to Save the Cancelled Netflix Series" notes:
Cowboy Bebop premiered on Nov. 19 but was axed by the streaming service less than three weeks later, on Dec. 9….
…Several fans have left comments along with signatures on the petition. One such message says, "I loved the anime, and I loved this live-action adaptation. Please, please, produce more!" Other signees expressed their gratitude and sympathy for the creators, saying, "This team put a lot of hard work into this project for the sake of the fans and deserve to see the vision through to its full potential."…
(2) WORLDCON CHAIR ON BBC. BBC World's Victoria Fritz had DisCon III chair Mary Robinette Kowal on the air, and tweeted the video clip afterwards.
Feel like you've been living in a dystopian sci-fi novel the last 2 years? Yeah, you and me both.
How will the sci-fi community respond to the pandemic & has it foreseen other life- changing events? Here's Hugo award winner @MaryRobinette on @BBCWorld with me pic.twitter.com/n0W5KWZaTC
— Victoria Fritz (@VFritzNews) December 16, 2021
(3) SILVERBERG STREAK. Robert Silverberg maintained his record of participating in consecutive Worldcons since he attended his first in the Fifties when his previously-recorded conversation with DisCon III GoH Nancy Kress was shown as part of the program on December 16.
(4) PUT THEM ON THE MAP. Aviation pioneers Sally Ride and Bessie Coleman have been honored by having features on Pluto named after them reports NASA.
More than 60 years after Bessie Coleman broke the bonds of terra firma to become the first African American woman and Native American to earn a pilot's license, Sally Ride blasted off aboard shuttle Challenger to become the first American woman in space.
The lives and accomplishments of both women aviation pioneers have now been honored with the naming of landmarks on Pluto. The International Astronomical Union recently approved the names "Coleman Mons" and "Ride Rupes" for two large geological features on the southern hemisphere of Pluto, which itself was explored for the first time by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.
Members of the New Horizons mission team proposed the names to the IAU, in line with a convention that Pluto features include those named for "historic pioneers who crossed new horizons in the exploration of the Earth, sea and sky."
"Sally Ride and Bessie Coleman were separated by generations, but they are forever connected by their great achievements, which opened doors for women and girls around the world," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "In breaking barriers they motivated so many women to pursue dreams – and careers – they didn't think were possible, and their sheer persistence and pursuit of equality inspire people to this day."
(5) DID YOU HEAR? Spock's ears have been donated to the Smithsonian. The National Air and Space Museum website shared the details: "The Iconic Ears of Mr. Spock".
Is there a more iconic set of ears in science fiction than those of Mr. Spock? The half-human, half-Vulcan science officer, first portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek: The Original Series and subsequent films, was known for his shrewd intelligence, his cool logic, and his pointed ears.
We are excited to share that a new prop from Star Trek has joined our collection: a set of Spock ear tips from Nimoy's personal collection. These ear tips were made for Nimoy to transform into Mr. Spock in the filming of The Original Series and were taken home from set by the actor, who hand-built a display box to keep them safe. We are honored that his children Adam and Julie and the Nimoy family have donated his father's keepsake ears to the National Air and Space Museum.
"When he finished filming the original Star Trek series in 1969, my father brought home a small memento to commemorate his three years of dedicated work on the original series—a pair of Spock's Vulcan ears," Adam Nimoy shared with us regarding the donation. "Mounted in a black box, those ears have been in our family for over fifty years as a tribute to Dad's outstanding performances as Mr. Spock and the inspiration and hope that Star Trek have given to generations of fans all over this planet. Today it's my honor to donate the iconic Spock ears to the National Air and Space Museum, home to the starship Enterprise studio model, where they can be experienced by visitors firsthand. The donation honors Beit T'Shuvah and the Leonard Nimoy COPD Research Fund at UCLA, two organizations supported by our family and dedicated to the Vulcan salutation of long life and prosperity."…
(6) TREK AUCTION. You can't own Spock's ears, but you're just in time to bid on Yeoman Rand's signature red Starfleet Uniform with integral miniskirt and black leather, zippered knee boots. They will go on the block in Heritage Auction's specialty Star Trek Auction on February 22. "Minis Are Maximum Fashion in Star Trek".
The 1960s were fashionably wild! Vibrantly colored fabrics were cut into new styles and shapes that hadn't been seen before. Defiant and rebellious not only on the street but also making their impact on movies and TV shows. It's not surprising to me that Star Trek would also be fashion-forward with the designs of futuristic uniforms. Bill Theiss designed the instantly recognizable utilitarian Starfleet uniforms, but it wasn't until Grace Lee Whitney "Yeoman Rand" herself approached Theiss with the idea of implementing the fashion styles of the day that miniskirts emerged!…
Some of the other gear that will be sold includes –
William Shatner "Captain Kirk" (3) Piece Alternate Universe from the Episode: "Mirror, Mirror" of Star Trek: The Original Series.
Leonard Nimoy "Spock" (2) Piece Alternate Universe Ensemble from the Episode: "Mirror, Mirror" of Star Trek: The Original Series.
George Takei "Lt. Sulu" (3) Piece Ensemble from the Episode: "Mirror, Mirror" of Star Trek: The Original Series.
BarBara Luna "Marlena" Starfleet Blue Duty Uniform from the Episode: "Mirror, Mirror" of Star Trek: The Original Series.
(7) PULLMAN ADAPTED FOR STAGE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Sarah Hemming reviews The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage, an adaptation of Sir Philip Pullman's 2017 novel playing at the Bridge Theatre through February 28.
Pullman has said the story is about consciousness, but it's also about conscience. Moral quandries come thick and fast for young Malcolm (the show's protagonist): first instructed by nuns to keep silent about the baby hidden in their priory; then directed by the sinister Marisa Coulter (Ayesha Dharker, silkily nasty) to turn informant on parents and teachers. In this parallel world, despotic religious organisation The Magisterium is tightening its grip on society. As Malcolm and Allee discover, 'good' is a concept that can be moulded to terrible ends…
…Adapted for stage by Bryony Lavery and directed by fleet wit and customary clarity by Nicholas Hytner, the tale becomes a swirling maelstrom of ideas around a firm core of basic humanity. On Bob Crowley's versatile set, beautifully atmospheric video work (Luke Halls) and lighting (Jion Clark) keep the narrative moving, inundating the space with teeming rain and raging waters.
(8) AMBITIOUS VIRTUAL CON. The schedule has been posted for FanFiAddict's TBRCon 2022, which will be streaming live from January 23-30. More detail about the individual panel items is at the landing page. (Click for larger image.)
(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1971 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Fifty years ago, Diamonds Are Forever premiered. It was based off the Ian Fleming novel of the same name that he wrote at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica. It had been published in 1956. It was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli from the screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz.
It is the sixth and final film to star Connery, who returned to the role having declined to reprise the role in On Her Majesty's Secret Service which instead had George Lazenby in that role, the shortest tenure of any actor in that role.
Critics in general loved it with Roger Ebert saying that it is "great, absurd fun, not only because it recalls the moods and manners of the sixties (which, being over, now seem safely comprehensible), but also because all of the people connected with the movie obviously know what they are up to." It cost just seven million to make and returned nearly one hundred and twenty million at the box office. Very impressive indeed. It doesn't have the greatest of ratings at Rotten Tomatoes currently getting just a fifty-eight percent rating from audience reviewers.
Born December 17, 1929 — Jacqueline Hill. As the history teacher of Susan Foreman, the Doctor's granddaughter, in the role of Barbara Wright she was the first Doctor Who companion to appear on-screen in 1963, with her speaking the series' first lines. (No, I don't know what they are.) Hill returned in a Fourth Doctor story, "Meglos" as the Tigellan priestess Lexa. She also appeared on two genre anthologies, Out of This World and Tales of The Unexpected. (Died 1993.)
Born December 17, 1930 — Bob Guccione. The publisher of Penthouse, the much more adult version of Playboy, but also of Omni magazine, the SF zine which had a print version between 1978 and 1995. A number of now-classic stories first ran there such as Gibson's "Burning Chrome" and "Johnny Mnemonic", as well as Card's "Unaccompanied Sonata" and even Harlan Ellison's novella, Mephisto in Onyx which was on the Hugo ballot at ConAdian but finished sixth in voting. The first Omni digital version was published on CompuServe in 1986 and the magazine switched to a purely online presence in 1996. It ceased publication abruptly in late 1997, following the death of co-founder Kathy Keeton, his wife. (Died 2010.)
Born December 17, 1944 — Jack L. Chalker. I really, really enjoyed a lot of his Well World series, and I remember reading quite a bit of his other fiction down the years and I loved his short story collection, Dance Band on the Titanic. Which of his other myriad series have you read and enjoyed? I find it really impressive that he attended every Worldcon from except one, from 1965 until 2004. One of our truly great members of the SF community as was a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association and was involved in the founding of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. I was surprised that his Hugo nominations were all for not for his fiction, but twice for Best Amateur Magazine for his Mirage zines at Chicon IIII and Discon, and once for Best Non-fiction Book for The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Critical and Bibliographic History at MagiCon. (Died 2005.)
Born December 17, 1945 — Ernie Hudson, 76. Best known for his roles as Winston Zeddemore in the original Ghostbusters films, and as Sergeant Darryl Albrecht in The Crow. I'm reasonably sure his first SF role was as Washington in Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, a few years before the first Ghostbusters film. Depending on how flexible your definition of genre is, he's been in a fair number of genre films including Leviathan, Shark Attack, Hood of Horror, Dragonball Evolution, voice work in Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial, and, look there's a DC animated movie in his resume! as he voiced Lucius Fox in the superb Batman: Bad Blood. He's in the just out Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Born December 17, 1953 — Bill Pullman, 68. First SF role was as Lone Starr in Spaceballs, a film I'll freely admit I watched but once which was more than enough. He next appears in The Serpent and the Rainbow which is damn weird before playing the lead in the even weirder Brain Dead. Now we come to Independence Day and I must say I love his character and the film a lot. Post-Independence Day, he went weird again showing up in Lake Placid which is a lot of fun and also voiced Captain Joseph Korso in the animated Titan A.E. film. Which at least in part was written by Joss Whedon. He reprises his Thomas J. Whitmore character in Independence Day: Resurgence which I've not seen.
Born December 17, 1954 — J.M. Dillard, 67. Yes, I know this is a pen name but I'm interested only in her Trek output tonight. She's written at least fifteen tie-ins starting with Star Trek: Mindshadow in the mid Eighties And her last seemingly being Star Trek: The Next Generation: Resistance in the late Oughts. She also wrote one of the many, many non-fiction works that came out on Trek, Star Trek: 'Where No One Has Gone Before': A History in Pictures, which was actually largely written by Roddenberry's assistant on a work for hire contract as a another book that didn't get published, a woman named Susan Sackett. Memory Alpha has the story here.
Born December 17, 1973 — Rian Johnson, 48. Director responsible for the superb Hugo nominated Looper, also Star Wars: The Last Jedi which was Hugo nominated and Knives Out. I know, it's not even genre adjacent. It's just, well, I liked Gosford Park, so what can I say about another film deliciously similar to it? He has a cameo as an Imperial Technician in Rogue One, and he voices Bryan in the BoJack Horseman series which is definitely genre.
Born December 17, 1975 — Milla Jovovich, 46. First SFF appearence was as Leeloo de Sabat in The Fifth Element, a film which still gets a very pleasant WTF? from me whenever I watch it. She was also Alice in the Resident Evil franchise which is seven films strong and running so far. I see she shows up as Milady de Winter in a Three Musketeers I never heard of which is odd is it's a hobby of mind to keep track of those films, and plays Nimue, The Blood Queen in the rebooted Hellboy.
Bizarro shows the latest eye test.
(12) MARVEL REVISITS 1962. It turns out that June 1962 was an important month in the history of Marvel comics – it's the month Spider-Man made his debut in Amazing Fantasy #15. But that wasn't the only thing going on, and the forthcoming Marvel: June 1962 Omnibus highlights these Marvel milestones:
Thor first held aloft the hammer Mjolnir.
Hank Pym donned his cybernetic helmet, becoming Ant-Man.
The FF squared off against Namor and Doctor Doom.
Kid Colt mixed it up with the Circus of Crime.
Millie the Model got mixed up in more Hanover hijinks.
Patsy and Hedy worked on their frenemy-ship.
Star-crossed lovers dealt with the ups and downs of romance, all while tales of horror and fantasy stories crept from the pages of titles like Strange Tales.
The volume arrives in June 2022. In the tradition of the recent Marvel: August 1961 omnibus which celebrated the Fantastic Four's debut, the Marvel: June 1962 Omnibus will collect every comic from this month of Marvel milestones: Journey Into Mystery (1952) #83; Amazing Fantasy (1962) #15; Tales To Astonish (1959) #35; Kathy #18; Life With Millie #18; Patsy Walker #102; Kid Colt, Outlaw #106; Fantastic Four (1961) #6; Linda Carter, Student Nurse #7; Millie The Model #110; Strange Tales (1951) #100; Tales Of Suspense (1959) #33; Love Romances #101; Incredible Hulk (1962) #3; Gunsmoke Western #72; Patsy And Hedy #84 And Rawhide Kid (1955) #30.
(13) SUPERINFLATION. "Up, up and they pay: $2.6M winning bid for Superman #1 comic" – AP News has the story.
A rare copy of a Superman #1 comic book that sold on newsstands for a dime in 1939 was purchased for $2.6 million in an auction.
The comic showing Superman leaping over tall buildings on the cover was sold Thursday night to a buyer who wishes to maintain a secret identity, according to ComicConnect.com, an online auction and consignment company.
The seller, Mark Michaelson, bought the comic in 1979 from its original owner and kept it in a temperature-controlled safe. Michaelson, now semi-retired and living in Houston, paid his way through college by buying and selling comics….
(14) CHECKING IN. Androids and Assets podcast about the "political economy of science fiction" did a Q&A with Cat Rambo: "Where You From: In conversation with Cat Rambo".
Marshall and Steve sit down with the brilliant and ever didactic Cat Rambo to discuss their newest book You Sexy Thing. Out now.
(15) WHAT KEEPS HIM WATCHING? [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Mythbuster's Adam Savage lists his favorite media for 2021 in this YouTube video. Among them are Dune, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, The Good Place, Loki, and Project Hail Mary.
(16) WALK, DON'T WALK. Camestros Felapton and Timothy the Talking Cat conspire to give us "The Cat Who Walks Through Omelas".
…Camestros: Well…OK…let's go with that then. It's called "Omelas" and it is like a really excellent version of Bristol.
Timothy: Great! Well, that was a great story. Could have done with more action but at least it was wholesome and positive and featured pirates.
Camestros:…but there's a twist…
Timothy: Oh no! I should have seen that coming! There's always a twist!…
(17) A DIZZYING EXPERIENCE. You can see all the finalists and vote in the Best Illusion of the Year Contest 2021 at the link.
In this pandemic era the Contest needs your support more than ever. Any amount that you can contribute will ensure that the Contest remains free for all who enjoy spectacular misperceptions, and also for the contestants who submit illusions from anywhere in the planet, completely free of charge.
(18) THE PLAN FROM S.A.N.T.A. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert presents "A Conspiracy Carol".
It's Christmas Eve, and Santa is about to certify the Naughty & Nice List in the Klaus of Representatives, when he's interrupted by a "Stop the Sleigh" rally, fueled by the shadowy internet cult "Scrooge-Anon." Will Christmas survive a full-scale tinsel-rection led by Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene? Only Santa and Mrs. Claus stand in their un-merry way.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Ben Bird Person, Dan Bloch, Bill, Dann, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Adam Savage, Bessie Coleman, Camestros Felapton, Cat Rambo, Cowboy Bebop, DisCon III, Marvel, Mary Robinette Kowal, Nancy Kress, NASA, Philip Pullman, Pluto, Robert Silverberg, Sally Ride, Spock, Stephen Colbert, Superman, Timothy the Talking Cat
Pixel Scroll 12/11/21 The Scroll In The High Pixel
(1) REACHING OUT. Kate Elliott distills her sff experience into a Twitter thread, which starts here.
One thing I've learned after 30 years in the sff field is to not waste my time trying to get the approval of people who will never give it or only give it conditionally or without reciprocity, so find your peeps as you can. I wish it wasn't as tough as it can sometimes be.
— either Kate Elliott is in revisions or her book is (@KateElliottSFF) December 10, 2021
And I have stuck to that rule (I actually can't afford to attend that many cons regardless). Because I remember the people who were (genuinely) friendly without conditions when I ventured as a stranger into this community & that is the model I aspire to now I'm part of the scene.
(2) COWBOY BEBOP. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Science fiction author Wesley Chu (The Lives Of Tao, The Walking Dead: Typhoon) posted this "hot take" on Twitter:
Hot take: Live action Cowboy Bebop will find a second life and eventually achieve a cult following like Firefly.
— Wesley Chu (@wes_chu) December 10, 2021
He followed it up with a link to the petition "Save the live action Cowboy Bebop" posted in yesterday's Pixel Scroll: "Make me a prophet, friends! Sign the petition to save Cowboy Bebop." The petition now has over 2,000 signatures.
(3) IN AND OUT OF FLUX. Camestros Felapton, in "Review: Doctor Who Flux", assesses how nu-Who's thirteenth season with the Thirteenth Doctor wrapped up. Beware spoilers!
…So where does that leave Flux and why was it not so terrible despite all that? As I've joked before, it was a shaggy-dog story where lots of things happen but most of it doesn't really matter. Events strung together but without a substantial narrative arc can be entertaining. These kinds of "just a bunch of stuff that happened" plots make millions when they are Fast & Furious movies. I don't know what the first big example of this approach is but I suspect that is the James Bond film You Only Live Twice which makes not a bit of sense but has so many memorable fragments that it feels like it has a story there. F&F is worse to some degree because that narrative fragmentation splits over multiple films i.e. I can remember lots of scenes from those movies but I have to actively think about elements to work out which film it was from (at least from about F&F5)….
(4) SIGNING OFF. "Nichelle Nichols Appears for Final Comic-Con Events in L.A. amid Conservatorship Battle" reports Yahoo!
…Nichelle Nichols, one of the stars of the original Star Trek series and a pioneering recruiter of women and minorities for America's space program, made her final convention appearance before her many fans as part of a three-day farewell celebration at L.A. Comic-Con over the weekend.
Best known for playing communications officer Nyota Uhura aboard the starship Enterprise, the iconic actress, singer and dancer — who turns 89 on Dec. 28 — signed autographs, posed for photos and attended an early birthday celebration, where she briefly but joyfully kicked up her heels and danced. Nichols was also the subject of tribute panels throughout the convention, though she did not make any public statements.
An active figure on stage, TV and music since the early 1960s, Nichols' public and professional life has been slowed since she was diagnosed with dementia in 2018, and she has also been at the center of a conservatorship battle. However, she was all smiles during her many appearances on her retirement tour at Comic-Con LA. Nichols was seen waving, blowing kisses and flashing Star Trek's famous Vulcan salute to the many fans who turned out to bid her farewell….
(5) FROM THE ARCHIVES. [Item by Bill.] Metafilter just finished a series of posts over the last week in which highlighted "short speculative fiction stories published by online magazines that are no longer publishing, or that are on hiatus, but whose interesting archives remain online" — Posts tagged with magazinearchives / MetaFilter.
(6) PRAISING WITH FAINT DAMS. Is James Davis Nicoll's Young People Read Old SFF panel impressed by this Lafferty Hugo-winner? Please…stop laughing.
This month's Young People Read Old Hugo Winners presented me with a dilemma. "Eurema's Dam" by R. A. Lafferty shared the 1973 Hugo for Best Short Story with "The Meeting" by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl. How to choose between two works the voters found worthy? The answer, it seems, was in having read "The Meeting", which is about commandeering a developmentally deficient child's body so the body can house the brain of a superior child. Since I don't actively dislike my Young People, I went with the story I didn't remember anything about, a story that only might annoy them, rather than the story I remembered all too well and was absolutely certain would enrage them.
R. A. Lafferty was a beloved author of whimsical fantasies. My brain lacks the proper receptors and I don't see the appeal. I am aware I am in the minority here. Perhaps my Young People will see the virtues in Lafferty's writing to which I am blind. Let's find out!
(7) TIME AFTER TIME. The latest episode of CSI Skill Tree, a series on videogames, worldbuilding, storytelling, and possible futures, is focused on the 2019 game Outer Wilds, about unraveling the mysteries of a solar system caught in a time loop. The guests are game director and designer Randy Smith (Thief series, Waking Mars, JETT: The Far Shore) and Luc Riesbeck, a space policy and research analyst at Astroscale U.S.
(8) FUTURE SEASON'S GREETINGS. The Bristol Board has copies of the original space-themed covers by Frank R. Paul for the Christmas issues of Forecast, Hugo Gernsback's radio and electronics magazine of the Fifties and Sixties. Here's an example.
(9) THANKS FOR THE MEMORY HOLE. "Feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell's estate" – the Guardian has the story.
The estate of George Orwell has approved a feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which reimagines the story from the perspective of Winston Smith's lover Julia.
… Publisher Granta said that Julia understands the world of Oceania "far better than Winston and is essentially happy with her life". As Orwell puts it in Nineteen Eighty-Four, "in some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda … She also stirred a sort of envy in him by telling him that during the Two Minutes Hate her great difficulty was to avoid bursting out laughing. But she only questioned the teachings of the Party when they in some way touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her."
"She has known no other world and, until she meets Winston, never imagined one. She's opportunistic, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. She routinely breaks the rules but also collaborates with the regime whenever necessary. She's an ideal citizen of Oceania," said Granta. "But when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston Smith in a long corridor, she impulsively hands him a note – a potentially suicidal gesture – she comes to realise that she's losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world."
Orwell's estate said it had been "looking for some time" for an author to tell the story of Smith's lover, and that Newman, who has previously been longlisted for the Women's prize and shortlisted for the Guardian first book award, "proved to be the perfect fit"…
(10) WHO DREW. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Artist Colin Howard who did book and VHS covers for Doctor Who in the 1980s-1990s has announced a new art book: Timeslides: The Doctor Who Artwork of Colin Howard.
Colin Howard's art graced the covers of around thirty VHS releases, and for the first time ever, they're collected together in Timeslides: The Doctor Who Art of Colin Howard.
Join Colin as he opens his personal archive and takes you on a tour of his Doctor Who universe – from iconic videos to book covers, from illustrations to private commissions. Featuring original sketches, unpublished designs, and a fascinating commentary, Timeslides takes you further behind the scenes than ever before.
1992 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-nine years ago, The Muppet Christmas Carol premiered as directed by Brian Henson (in his feature film directorial debut) from the screenplay by Jerry Juhl. Based amazingly faithfully off that story, it starred Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge with a multitude of Muppet performers, to wit Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Ed Sanders, Jerry Nelson, Theo Sanders, Kristopher Milnes, Russell Martin, Ray Coulthard and Frank Oz. I must single out Jessica Fox as the voice of Ghost of Christmas Past.
Following Jim Henson's death in May 1990, the talent agent Bill Haber had approached Henson's son Brian with the idea of filming an adaptation. It was pitched to ABC as a television film, but Disney ended up purchasing it instead. That's why it's only available on Disney+ these days.
Critics in general liked it with Roger Ebert being among them though he added that it "could have done with a few more songs than it has, and the merrymaking at the end might have been carried on a little longer, just to offset the gloom of most of Scrooge's tour through his lifetime spent spreading misery." (Those songs were by Paul Williams, another one of his collaborations with the Jim Henson Company after working on The Muppet Movie.) Box office wise, it did just ok as it made twenty-seven million against production costs of twelve million, not counting whatever was spent on marketing. And audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather ungloomy rating of eighty-eight percent.
Born December 11, 1926 — Dick Tufeld. He's best known, or at least best recognized, as the voice of the Robot on Lost in Space, a role he reprises in the feature film. The first words heard on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea are spoken by him: "This is the Seaview, the most extraordinary submarine in all the seven seas." He's been the opening announcer on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Woman, Thundarr the Barbarian, Fantastic Four and the Time Tunnel. (Died 2012.)
Born December 11, 1945 — Zienia Merton. She's best remembered for playing Sandra Benes in Space: 1999. She played Ping-Cho during a series of First Doctor stories. She had roles on Dinotopia, the Sarah Jane Adventures and Wizards vs. Aliens. (Died 2018.)
Born December 11, 1944 — Teri Garr, 77. A long history of genre film roles starting in Young Frankenstein as Inga before next appearing in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as Ronnie Neary. Next is the horror film Witches' Brew where she was Margaret Lightman. She voices Mary McGinnis in Batman Beyond: The Movie, a role she has does on a recurring basis in the series. Series wise, shows up uncredited in the Batman series in the "Instant Freeze" as the Girl Outside the Rink. And of course, she's Roberta Lincoln in Star Trek's "Assignment Earth" episode. (I once found a site that the spin-off series had actually been made.) She has a number of other genre roles, none as interesting as that one.
Born December 11, 1954 — Richard Paul Russo, 67. Winner of two Philip Dick Awards, first for Subterranean Gallery, and later for Ship of Fools. Subterranean Gallery was also nominated for a Clarke Award. He apparently stopped writing genre fiction quite some time ago.
Born December 11, 1957 — William Joyce, 64. Author of the YA series Guardians of Childhood which is currently at twenty books and growing. Now I've no interest in reading them but Joyce and Guillermo del Toro turned the early ones 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, 62. Short story writer par excellence. She's got three collections to date, Map of Dreams which won a World Fantasy Award, Holiday and You Have Never Been Here. Her two novels The Little Witch and The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie are most excellent, and are available from the usual digital suspects. Her collections unfortunately are not.
Born December 11, 1962 — Ben Browder, 59. 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 called "The Once and Future Thing, Part 1". He'd have an appearance as sheriff in the Eleventh Doctor story, "A Town Called Mercy", a Weird Western of sorts.
Born December 11, 1965 — Sherrilyn Kenyon, 56. Best known for her Dark Hunter series which runs to around thirty volumes now. I realize in updating this birthday note that I indeed have read this first several of these and they were damn good. 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. She has won two World Fantasy Awards, one for her short story, "Journey Into the Kingdom", and one for her short story collection, Map of Dreams.
The Far Side shows the alien takeover is ready to begin.
(14) FOR YOUR WISHLIST. Connie Willis wrote a long Facebook post hawking her American Christmas Stories collection.
…Stefanie Peters and David Cloyce Smith and the other editors at Library of America did all the heavy lifting, scouring all sorts of obscure books and magazines, finding thousands of stories for us to choose from, and getting all the necessary permissions and releases. All I did was read a bunch of stories, suggest some stories they'd missed, and write the introduction.)
Between us, we found mysteries, horror stories, Westerns, science-fiction stories, ghost stories, police procedurals, and fantasies, stories by famous authors like Bret Harte and John Updike and stories by writers you've never heard of, like Pauline Hopkins and John Kendrick Bangs. Stories by African-American authors writing in the post-Civil War South, by Chinese-American authors writing about California's Chinatown, by authors of vastly different backgrounds writing about Alaskan and Puerto Rican and Nebraska Christmases.
And we found stories written in all different keys, from cynicism to sentimentality, from nostalgia to urban angst. And comedy. So many Christmas collections focus solely on serious or uplifting stories, but humor's been a staple of the American Christmas story since Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, and I was really happy we were able to include humorous stories by Shirley Jackson, Robert Benchley, Leo Rosten, Joan Didion, and Damon Runyon.
(Especially Damon Runyon. We would have included all his Christmas stories if we'd had room, and all of O. Henry's, but alas, there were length constraints–and permissions we weren't able to get. And in addition, we didn't want this collection to be a carbon copy of every other Christmas anthology we'd ever read. Which is why O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi" and the "Christmas won't be Christmas" piece by Louisa May Alcott aren't in the book. Sorry. But they've been reprinted virtually everywhere, and if we included them, we'd have had to leave out stories by both O. Henry and Alcott that you might not have read before.).
We also included lots of other wonderful stories, like Langston Hughes' wistful "One Christmas Eve" and Edna Ferber's "No Room at the Inn" and Ben Hecht's "Holiday Thoughts" Jacob Riis's "The Kid Hangs Up His Stocking" and Jack London's "Klondike Christmas" and Dorothy Parker's "The Christmas Magazines and the Inevitable Story of the Snowbound Train."
For you science-fiction, fantasy, and horror fans, there's Cynthia Felice's "Track of a Legend," Mildred Clingerman's "The Wild Wood," Steve Rasnic Tem's "Buzz," Ray Bradbury's "The Gift,"and Raymond E. Banks's "Christmas Trombone."" (And a story of mine that they chose, "Inn.")…
And don't forget to register for the Library of America's American Christmas Stories conversation with Connie Willis, Nalo Hopkinson, and Penne Restad on December 15 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.
(15) I READ YOU FIVE BY FIVE. Two more of James Davis Nicoll's thematic look-back posts at Tor.com.
"Five SFF Books in Which Valuable Is Not the Same as Powerful".
… Perhaps some fictional examples are in order, since historical examples would no doubt set the comments on fire (so let's please avoid that)….
Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler (1980)
No person works as hard to find and gather humanity's psionic adepts as Doro. Doro has invested millennia tracking down, gathering, and breeding mutants to ensure that they survive and flourish. Thanks to Doro's endless work, the genes for psionic talents have been concentrated and encouraged to flourish.
However, this long-standing project had nothing to do with any particular concern for mutant-kind or a belief in orthogenesis. Doro is a psychic predator. Mutant minds are tasty and their appropriated bodies provide him with comfortable temporary accommodation. Worse, the psychics are quite aware of Doro's appetites. They simply lack the means to resist him. The best that shape-shifting immortal Anyanwu can do is to play a weak hand as well as she can, using Doro's desire for a peer to limit the damage he does to her kin.
"Abandon All Hope: Five Extremely Pessimistic SF Classics".
… But pessimism is nothing new, of course. Olden time SF authors were enormously pessimistic, producing works every bit as sour and gloomy as the most morose works penned by today's authors. Don't believe me? Here are five intensely depressing SF novels from the long, long ago. I recommend each and every one of them, if only to cast your current circumstances in a more favourable light….
(16) GALACTIC OPPORTUNITY. Space Cowboy Books will host an online reading and interview with Janice L. Newman, author of "At First Contact," on December 14. Register here.
Join us for a reading and interview with Janice L. Newman about her new book At First Contact, a touching trio of romances in a speculative vein. From the edge of space, to the shadows of the paranormal, to the marvels of the mystical.
(17) BANK ON IT. Seneca Falls goes all-in on It's A Wonderful Life. "This New York Town Is Honoring A Beloved Holiday Movie's 75th Anniversary" at Forbes.
… "We also say that we don't think that Frank Capra intended Bedford Falls to be one place," said Law. "It is every place that people hold dear to our hearts."
Regardless, Law noted that Seneca Falls has welcomed actress Karolyn Grimes, who played Zuzu Bailey, since her first visit there in 2002.
"She has introduced us to other cast members, relatives of cast members and others associated with the film," said Law. Other visiting actors have ranged from Jimmy Hawkins, who played Tommy Bailey, to Jeanine Roose, who played younger Violet Bick.
Grimes also helped to make the It's A Wonderful Life Museum a reality, after being talked to about the need for a place where film fans can reminisce and honor its meaning….
Here's the link to The Seneca Falls It's A Wonderful Life Museum website.
It's a Wonderful Life was filmed entirely in California, as were most movies at that time.
However, Seneca Falls has long believed itself to be the inspiration for Bedford Falls…
(18) GHASTLY TIMING. The New York Ghost Story Festival started December 11 and continues online. It's free. Watch live on You Tube, or view any time later.
See the December 11 event with Kathe Koja, Brian Evenson, Rudi Dornemann and Jeff Ford:
Still to come —
Tuesday, December 14, 8:00 p.m. Eastern with David Surface, Brenda Tolian, Pat Wehl, and Joshua Rex here
Friday, December 17, 8:00 p.m. Eastern with Kevin Lucia, Jo Kaplan, and Eric Guijnard here.
Saturday, December 18, 7:00 p.m. Eastern with Sarah Langan, Kevin Brockmeier, John Langan, and Angela Slatter here
(19) W76 WOULD LIKE ITS $4K BACK. Twitter shut down Jon Del Arroz' account under his own name, but he's started another. Think about how good his lawyer must be that he was able to defend Jon against allegations of being a racist.
(20) MARTIAN MUD. "China's Mars Rover Has Amassed Reams Of Geological Data" reports Nature.
Some surface features, such as possible sedimentary material and mud volcanoes, hint at the past flow of water, so scientists are looking for clues that there was once water or ice below the surface. This is "of great scientific interest" because it might provide evidence of an ancient ocean, says Bo Wu, a planetary scientist at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
(21) ON YOUR HEAD BE IT. "The Sorting Hat Tells All In The Harry Potter Reunion" on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
On another night last week Jennifer Lawrence appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Near the end of their second segment, they discussed genre movies. After the 3:00 mark, Colbert gets a little flustered when Lawrence reveals how little she knows about the Lord of the Rings movies. Nominally, the main topic of the interview is Lawrence's to-be-released movie Don't Look Up, which definitely has a genre premise.
[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Bill, Ben Bird Person, Chris Barkley, Joey Eschrich, SF Concatenation's Jonathan Cowie, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson, part of "The Hugo Pixel Scroll Winners" series.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged 1984, Camestros Felapton, Connie Willis, Cowboy Bebop, Doctor Who, Frank R. Paul, James Davis Nicoll, Janice L. Newman, Jon Del Arroz, Kate Elliott, Mars, Nichelle Nichols, R.A. Lafferty, Stephen Colbert, video games, Wesley Chu, Young People Read Old SF
Pixel Scroll 12/10/21 That's No Moon – It's A Harsh Scrollstress
(1) FOR US, THE LIVING. The announcement that Cowboy Bebop won't get a second season prompted Ryan Proffer to start a "Save the live action cowboy bebop" petition at Change.org.
"For those people who want a second (or more) of the live action cowboy bebop. It wasn't a direct copy of the anime but the world they put together was amazing and deserve a second season."
It had almost reached its goal of a thousand signatures when checked this afternoon.
(2) ANALOG AWARD FOR EMERGING BLACK VOICES. Kedrick Brown's story is the winner of the inaugural Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices reports Locus Online. The award was announced yesterday during the Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium. The other finalists were Yazeed Dezele, Erika Hardison, and Jermaine Martin. (Locus did not report the story titles.)
The winning story will be purchased and published in Analog, and the author receives one year of monthly mentorship sessions. The finalists receive one mentorship session with Analog editors including a critique of their submission and a chance to ask questions about the field.
The members of the judging panel for 2021 were Steven Barnes, Nisi Shawl, Kim-Mei Kirtland, Trevor Quachri, and Emily Hockaday.
(3) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. Gillian Polack, who spoke at yesterday's Symposium, presents an expanded version of her paper, "The Problem of Susan Australia, or, The Tyranny of Distance" in this video.
(4) SECOND FIFTH. John O'Neill analyzes "The Controversy over Nebula Awards Showcase 55, edited by Catherynne M. Valente" at Black Gate.
I'm hearing grousing about the latest Nebula Awards Showcase, edited by the distinguished Catherynne M. Valente.
This is the 55th volume in the long-running series, and the second to be published directly by SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America. As is customary, it contains the complete Nebula award-winning stories, as selected by that august body, as well as a tasty selection of the other nominees, as selected at the whim of the editor.
Well — not exactly. And that seems to be the crux of the problem. For the first time I can remember, the Nebula Awards Showcase contains only one of the winners from last year, A. T. Greenblatt's short story "Give the Family My Love," originally published in Clarkesworld. All the others — including the winners in novelette, novella, and novel category — are represented only by brief excerpts….
(5) AFROFUTURISM. At the SFWA Blog, Maurice Broaddus says adults "notoriously underestimate middle school students" and talks about "writing stories more through the lens of Black joy rather than Black trauma" in "Black Joy and Afrofuturism for Young Readers".
…One way to define Afrofuturism is that it centers joy and hope. Black joy is the tenacity and audacity of Black culture. It exists outside and indifferent to the gaze of dominant culture. It recalls that Black people had life, history, and culture before, during, and outside of the dominant culture's racial caste system. It basks in the beauty of what it means to be a people and a culture.
It is Black art that centers ourselves, who we are, who we could be, enjoying that totality without guilt….
(6) STATE LAWS TO AID LIBRARY ACCESS TO EBOOKS TARGETED BY PUBLISHERS GROUP SUIT. "AAP Sues to Block Maryland, New York Library E-book Laws" reports Publishers Weekly.
The Association of American Publishers filed suit December 9 to stop a new library e-book law in Maryland from taking effect on January 1, claiming that the law, which would require publishers who offer to license e-books to consumers in the state to also offer to license the works to libraries on "reasonable" terms, is unconstitutional and runs afoul of federal copyright law…
The Association of American Publishes explained the reasons for their suit in a statement on their website:
…"Maryland does not have the constitutional authority to create a shadow copyright act or to manipulate the value of intellectual property interests," commented Maria A. Pallante, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers and former head of the United States Copyright Office. "It is unambiguous that the U.S. Copyright Act governs the disposition of literary works in commerce—and for that matter, all creative works of authorship. We take this encroachment very seriously, as the threat that it is to a viable, independent publishing industry in the United States and to a borderless copyright economy."
The complaint, filed in federal court in Maryland, argues that the Maryland law is preempted by the United States Copyright Act, unconstitutionally interferes with interstate commerce, and violates the Constitution's Due Process clause by mandating vague and unspecified licensing requirements….
(7) WALKING THE RED CARPETS OF MIDDLE-EARTH. Twenty years sure went by fast! Polygon says "The Lord of the Rings cast premiere photos are priceless 2001 nostalgia". They're really good photos in any event.
…The hype was already real by the time promotion for The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring ramped up. In April 2000, the internet-exclusive trailer for Fellowship was downloaded from Apple Trailers 1.7 million times in its first 24 hours, breaking a record set by Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. (Compare that, though, to the present-day record: Spider-Man: No Way Home's first trailer, released in August and viewed 355.5 million times in the first 24 hours.) But by May 2001, the time had come to reassemble the fellowship … for many, many, many step-and-repeat red carpet opportunities.
Photographic evidence of the high-stakes press gauntlet for Fellowship suggests that Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, and Liv Tyler (bringing some much-needed femininity to the red carpet bro-out) had a decent time flying around the world to preach the blockbuster word…
(8) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to eavesdrop on a mid-'70s Marvel Bullpen reunion with Bob Budiansky in episode 160 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.
Bob Budiansky
This episode's guest, Bob Budiansky, is a old Marvel Bullpen pal… When I was working at mid-'70s Marvel Comics and decided I no longer wanted to edit their line of British reprint books, I got yet another SUNY Buffalo student and newspaper coworker, Jay Boyar, to take my place, and then when he moved on, he recommended Bob. And that serendipity is how his 20-year career at Marvel Comics was born.
Bob's led a multifaceted comics career as a writer, artist, and editor. He's written (among other things) The Avengers and all 33 issues of Sleepwalker, a character he co-created, plus most of Marvel's run of The Transformers, for which he came up with the names of most of the original Transformers, including Megatron. In fact, his contributions to that franchise were so great that in 2010 he was inducted into the Transformers Hall of Fame.
…We discussed the vast differences between the hoops we each had to jump through to get hired back then, why the Skrulls were responsible for him liking DC better than Marvel as an early comics fan, the serendipitous day he attended a wedding and learned the origin of the Golden Age Green Lantern from its creator, why he stopped reading comics in high school … and how Conan the Barbarian got him started again, which Marvel Bullpen staffer saw his art portfolio and suggested he consider a different career, what it was like to witness the creation of Captain Britain, how got his first regular gig drawing covers for Ghost Rider, his five-year relationship developing 250 Transformers characters for Hasbro, and much more.
(9) EATING ONLY SOME OF THE FANTASTIC. The Offing posted G.G. Russey's grimm but grotesquely funny "Hansel & Gretel: The Fully-Restored Vegan Version".
… After three days of wandering, the hungry children came upon a gingerbread house mortared with frosting. Hansel rushed over to take a bite.
"Stop, Hansel! You can't just eat a stranger's house! It could contain animal products!"…
(10) TWO-PART HARMONY. Now on Fanac.org's YouTube channel: Wrong Turns on the Wallaby Track: Australian SF Fandom 1936-60, Leigh Edmonds, Perry Middlemiss in 2 parts.
In this delightful Fan History Zoom (Dec 2021), historian Leigh Edmonds provides both context and details of Australian Science Fiction Fandom in the early days. Beginning with an introduction to Australian history of the period by Perry Middlemiss, the session entertainingly describes the important fans, and clubs from the beginnings in Sydney with a Science Fiction League branch, to the Futurian Society of Sydney and the Thursday night group. Leigh provides both entertaining and instructive insights, from the parallels to US fannish history, to the Australian group whose "main form of entertainment was feuding", and the impact on science fiction readers of the Australian wartime embargo on the import of unnecessary items. He discusses the uniquely Australian barriers to becoming a professional writer in the field, the banning of Weird Tales on moral grounds and more….
Leigh Edmonds is an Australian historian, and honorary research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre in Australian History (CRCAH) at Federation University in Ballarat, Australia. He is also a very long term science fiction fan. Perry Middlemiss is a fanwriter and editor as well as a former Worldcon chair.
Note: To begin Leigh had technical difficulties for the first 10 minutes so his portion begins after an excellent, but slightly long, introduction by Perry Middlemiss.
(11) CHRIS ACHILLEOS (1947-2021). Artist Chris Achilleos died December 6. His work has appeared in Heavy Metal, on book covers including series based on Conan the Barbarian, Doctor Who and Star Trek, as well as collections of his own work. Collections of his art include Amazona, Sirens, and Beauty and the Beast. Since 1990 he has mostly worked in designing fantasy trading cards as well as selling prints and original works of art.
2003 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Eighteen years ago, Big Fish premiered. It was directed by Tim Burton from the screenplay by John August which he did off of Daniel Wallace's Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions. The cast is, if I must say so myself, amazing: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham, Carter Alison Lohman, Robert Guillaume, Marion Cotillard, Steve Buscemi and Danny DeVito. Did critics like it? Generally quite so. ReelThoughts said of it, "Big Fish is a clever, smart fantasy that targets the child inside every adult without insulting the intelligence of either." The box office was modest at best, making just under one hundred twenty-five million against seventy million in production costs not counting marketing. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a most excellent rating of ninety percent.
Born December 10, 1815 — Ada Lovelace. Lovelace was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and his wife Lady Byron. She was an English mathematician and writer, principally known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Genre usage includes Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine, Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers and Crowley's Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land. (Died 1852.)
Born December 10, 1903 — Mary Norton. Author of The Borrowers which won the 1952 Carnegie Medal from the UK's Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals recognizing the novel as the year's outstanding children's book by a British author. She would continue to write these novels for three decades. Hallmark turned one into a film in the early Seventies. Her novels The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons which was nominated for a Retro Hugo at Dublin 2019, and Bonfires and Broomsticks would be adapted into the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks in the same period. (Died 1992.)
Born December 10, 1927 — Anthony Coburn. Australian writer and producer who spent most of his career living and working in the U.K. He was closely involved in the earliest days of Who to the extent that it's believed it was his idea for the Doctor's travelling companion, Susan, to be The Doctor's granddaughter. He wrote four scripts for the show, of which Only An Unearthly Child was used. His never produced "The Masters of Luxor" Who script was released by Big Finish Productions as adapted by Nigel Robinson. Titan Books has previously released it as a novel. (Died 1977.)
Born December 10, 1928 — John Colicos. You'll remember him as being the first Klingon ever seen on Trek, Commander Kor in the "Errand of Mercy" episode. (He'd reprise that role as the 140-year-old Kor in three episodes of Deep Space Nine.) He'll next show up as Count Baltar in the original Battlestar Galactica continuity throughout the series and film. He'll even show up as the governor of Umakran in the Starlost episode "The Goddess Calabra". He also played three roles on the original Mission: Impossible. (Died 2000.)
Born December 10, 1946 — Douglas Kenney. He co-founded National Lampoon in 1970 along with Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman. With Beard alone in 1969, he wrote Bored of the Rings. Kenney died after falling from a 35-foot cliff called the Hanapepe Lookout in Hawaii. It was ruled accidental. Chris Miller, co-writer of Animal House with him and Harold Ramis, paid homage to him by naming the main character in Multiplicity Doug Kinney, a variation on his name. (Died 1980.)
Born December 10, 1953 — Janny Wurts, 68. Illustrator and writer. She's won three Chesley Awards, plus a HOMer Award for her Servant of the Empire novel. I strongly recommend the Empire trilogy that she co-authored with Raymond E. Feist, and her excellent That Way Lies Camelot collection was nominated for a BFA.
Born December 10, 1960 — Kenneth Branagh, 61. Branagh's better genre work includes his roles as Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. As a Director, I'm only seeing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Thor — anyone know of anything else genre related? Is Hercule Poirot genre adjacent? I think so.
Born December 10, 1984 — Helen Oyeyemi, 37. I like it when a birthday results in my adding to my audiobook listening list. She's resident in Prague now and her take on European folktales that surround her there is particularly sharp in Mr. Fox, which was nominated for an Otherwise Award, off that well known tale. And White is for Witching has all the makings of a damn fine haunted house story. Now one should not overlook her Icarus Girl, her first novel, which is fascinating. I've not encountered Gingerbread, her latest novel.
Yes, science fiction and crime fiction can be combined: The Far Side.
@AdamSacks explains NFTs:
If I gave this neon colors and drew Frodo holding a bong, could I get rich selling it as an NFT? pic.twitter.com/j08BGNBOkq
— Adam Sacks (@AdamSacks) October 18, 2021
(15) WHAT IF? SPINOFF. Captain Carter, recently featured in Marvel Studios' What If, will report for duty in her very own comic series this March. Jamie McKelvie will write the series and design the character's brand-new look. McKelvie will be joined by rising star artist Marika Cresta, known for her recent work on Star Wars: Doctor Aphra.
The five-issue limited series introduces Captain Carter in an adventure that will find Peggy Carter as a woman out of time, facing the reappearance of an old foe in modern day and deciding what she stands for as the wielder of the shield.
A reality where Agent Peggy Carter took the Super-Soldier Serum instead of Steve Rogers is turned upside down when the World War II hero is pulled from the ice where she was lost in action decades before. Peggy struggles to find her footing in a modern world that's gotten a lot more complicated – cities are louder, technology is smarter and enemies wear friendly faces. Everyone with an agenda wants Captain Carter on their side, but what does Peggy want? And will she have time to figure it out when mysterious forces are already gunning for her?
(16) VOLUNTEER FOR DISCON III. Here is another reason to become a virtual volunteer for next week's Worldcon.
12+ hours of virtual volunteering gets you an unpublished novel by me in addition to a free virtual pass to the convention!
Worldcon is less than a week away – don't forget to sign up. https://t.co/gZcFv21QOM
— Mary Robinette [email protected]? (@MaryRobinette) December 9, 2021
(17) CARBON-BASED UNITS. The Guardian's Daniel Aldana Cohen hopes Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Ministry for the Future, has the answer: "How will humanity endure the climate crisis? I asked an acclaimed sci-fi writer".
…The first lesson of his books is obvious: climate is the story. Compared with the magnitude of the crisis, this year's United Nations climate summit, Cop26, was a poorly planned pool party where half the guests were sweating in jeans, having forgotten their swimming suits. If you're reading this, you probably know what climate science portends – and that nothing discussed in Glasgow was within rocket range of adequate. What Ministry and other Robinson books do is make us slow down the apocalyptic highlight reel, letting the story play in human time for years, decades, centuries. The screen doesn't fade to black; instead we watch people keep dying, and coping, and struggling to shape a future – often gloriously.
I spoke to Robinson recently for an episode of the podcast The Dig. He told me that he wants leftists to set aside their differences, and put a "time stamp on [their] political view" that recognizes how urgent things are. Looking back from 2050 leaves little room for abstract idealism. Progressives need to form "a united front," he told me. "It's an all-hands-on-deck situation; species are going extinct and biomes are dying. The catastrophes are here and now, so we need to make political coalitions."…
… Robinson's elegant solution, as rendered in Ministry, is carbon quantitative easing. The idea is that central banks invent a new currency; to earn the carbon coins, institutions must show that they're sucking excess carbon down from the sky….
(18) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter witnessed tonight's Jeopardy! contestants overlooking the author of Frankenstein.
Final Jeopardy: 19th Century British Authors.
Answer: She called herself "the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity" in an introduction to one of her novels.
Wrong questions: Who is George Elliot? and Who is Emily Bronte?
Correct question: Who is Mary Shelley?
(19) ENTERPRISING ARTIST. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Artist Alain Gruetter did this piece based on Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005) featuring the Xindi-Aquatics and Xindi-Insectoids from their third season (2003-2004).
Xindi Insectoids from star trek enterprise… a recent commission. pic.twitter.com/xSzY7ghQHb
— Bagboss (@Alaingruetter) December 10, 2021
(20) IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN A BELL. Wings now, but pixels in the future. More than a dozen people, including William Shatner, are being awarded their astronaut wings by the US government, however, they may be among the last. "First on CNN: The US gives Bezos, Branson and Shatner their astronaut wings" at CNN.
…The Federal Aviation Administration will […] award Commercial Space Astronaut Wings to […] eight people who flew on Blue Origin's New Shepherd spacecraft, three who flew on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, and to the four members of the SpaceX crew who spent three days in space in September, CNN has learned.
But the space tourism industry shouldn't get used to this generous allocation of wings from the federal government. In a twist, the FAA has decided to end the entire Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program on January 1. After that, the FAA will simply list the names of everyone who flies above the 50-mile threshold, the US-recognized boundary of space, on a website….
(21) STICKY SUBJECT. CBR presents an extended look at Spider-Man and Doc Ock's first fight from No Way Home.
Much to Peter Parker's confusion, Otto Octavius appears on an overpass bridge and demands to know what has happened to his machine. When Peter doesn't have any answers, Doctor Octopus begins throwing cars, endangering the lives of the civilians nearby.
(22) SECOND SERVING OF HEDGEHOG. Could Jim Carrey's mustache here be the phoniest of all time?
(23) HALO THE SERIES. This first-look trailer for Halo was shown during The Game Awards last night. Halo the series will be streaming in 2022 on Paramount+.
Dramatizing an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant, Halo the series will weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kayinsky, Ben Bird Person, Lise Andreasen, Jennifer Hawthorne, Chris Barkley, Jeffrey Smith, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna), part of "The Hugo Pixel Scroll Winners" series.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Afrofuturism, Alain Gruetter, Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices, Bob Budiansky, Catherynne M. Valente, Chris Achilleos, City Tech Science Fiction Symposium, Cowboy Bebop, DisCon III, Fanac.org, Gillian Polack, Jeopardy!, John O'Neill, Kim Stanley Robinson, Leigh Edmonds, Lord of the Rings, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, Nebula Awards, Perry Middlemiss, Scott Edelman, Spider-Man, William Shatner
Pixel Scroll 12/9/21 They'd Rather Be Scrolled
(1) DIANA RIGG ESTATE. Bonhams is auctioning the Estate of the Late Dame Diana Rigg on December 14 starting at 10:00 GMT . You can inspect items online by using the search in this link: "Bonhams : Collections: Including: The Contents of Stanley House, The Estate of the Late John Schaeffer, The Estate of the Late Dame Diana Rigg".
AN ITALIAN GUNNER'S STILETTO DAGGER
With sharply tapering blade of triangular section graduated on one side from '1' to '120', hilt comprising writhen swelling iron quillons and pommel, and swelling writhen dark horn grip en-suite and set with numerous brass nails, 40cm (15 3/4in) long
(2) STOP AND SHOP. DisCon III has posted the Dealers Room Map for those who will be physically present.
(There also will be a Virtual Dealer's Room.)
(3) CAN'T EVEN PREDICT THE PRESENT. In WIRED, Canadian sf writer Madeline Ashby denounced cyberpunk as antiquated. "It's Time to Reimagine the Future of Cyberpunk".
CYBERPUNK IS LIKE cyberspace: instantly recognizable, but so ubiquitous as to be intangible. An aesthetic movement and a commentary on capitalism, it can be a genre, a subjectivity, an adjective, a political approach, a time period. (Though the same could be said of the words Renaissance or Victorian.) It can tackle artificial intelligence, embodied identity, digital immortality, or simply, in the case of Pat Cadigan's Synners, whether a marriage can survive electronic pornography addiction. Like the best fiction, cyberpunk still slips on like a pair of fingerless gloves, even if—in the 21st century, partially situated in the future it imagined—it's hard to see where fiction ends and reality begins….
… Considering the world has caught up with, if not surpassed, the genre's imagination, its place in fiction might be limited, or limiting, in the way that rehashing Tolkien might be limiting for a fantasy writer. This is one of the challenges of telling a future-set story: Eventually time catches up, like a rubber band snapping back into shape. And sometimes it stings. Readers often assume that authors are happy when they "predict" future events "correctly," but rarely are we asked about the queasy feeling of watching one's worst vision come to pass. Describing his debut novel for CrimeReads, Lincoln Michel says, "The Body Scout is an attempt to replace the 'cyber' in cyberpunk with flesh and look at what happens when the human body becomes the major realm of technological innovation and corporate control … These days, the greatest dystopian novel might be the evening news."…
(4) HEX. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Sarah Hemming reviews Hex, a musical adaptation of "Sleeping Beauty" now playing at Britain's National Theatre.
The theatre's seasonal family show, Hex. is a new musical that flips the story (of Sleeping Beauty), reaching beyond the 'happily ever after' to give Princess Rose a chance to make some decisions and furnishing the prince with a back-story (his mother is an ogre with a taste for human flesh).
But most notably, Hex shifts the focus of the tale. Here the 'wicked fairy' gets to tell her side of the story; it turns out that Fairy (played by Rosalie Craig) is not a mean old ratbag, but a lonely and loveable little comic oddball who longs to do good. Rather than setting out to do mischief, she is summoned to the palace by an exhausted king and queen who are desperate to get their daughter to sleep. What happens next depends on the subtle distinction between a blessing and a hex and is a mistake Fairy spends the next century trying to repair.
(5) CAN YOU DIG IT? [Item by Mlex.] Map a tunnel through the center of the earth in a 4D visualization. Another app you never knew you needed, and you do: SuperTunnel Simulator.
SuperTunnel is an educational tool that simulates a hole through Earth, indicating where in the world you would end up if you were to dig in a certain direction
(6) WHERE DOES THE EXPANSE GO FROM HERE? "The Expanse Season 6 Interview: Short Season, Future Plans?" at Gizmodo.
Cheryl Eddy, io9: If you had to sum up season six with a single overarching theme, what would it be?
Daniel Abraham: The necessity of normal people to do the good thing in order to get us through. I mean, so much of this is about not just one hero—not just finishing up a conflict with two guys having a fistfight on a catwalk. [It's about] everybody just being a little bit better in order to make things better, recognizing people's humanity, recognizing people's place, giving room to each other, giving respect to each other—the kind of banal goodness that actually makes society better.
Naren Shankar: I think recognizing the inherent humanity in others is really part of the season in the big way. I'm trying to remember what we wrote on the board [in the writer's room]. Remember we always would write the theme…
Ty Franck: Normally we would have had a theme looking at us every day as we worked. And this was the first year we didn't do that. So now we're just fumbling around like dumbasses [laughs].
(7) BURY ME NOT ON THE LONE PRAIRIE. Yahoo! reports "'Cowboy Bebop' Canceled at Netflix After One Season".
… The 10-episode series failed to find much love upon its debut, with both critics and audiences alike largely split on it. The show holds just a 46% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 54% audience approval. In her review for Variety, Caroline Framke wrote "Netflix's live-action remake of 'Cowboy Bebop' tries to be so much all at once, and appeal to so many different potential audiences, that it ends up struggling to forge an identity of its own….
(8) OCTOTHORPE. In Octothorpe episode 46, John Coxon is afraid, Alison Scott is in Portugal, and Liz Batty is an absolute unit. They discuss Smofcon, and Worldcon site selection, and picks. "And in the middle we have a worryingly serious conversation about COVID that you can skip if you want to."
Listen here! "Is My Head Extremely Solid, Or What".
2006 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Fifteen years ago at L.A. Con IV where Connie Willis was the Toastmaster, Serenity, the film that wrapped up the short-lived Firefly series, won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Other nominated works that year were Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Batman Begins and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Most critics agreed with Hugo voters, with Roger Ebert in particular saying that it was "made of dubious but energetic special effects, breathless velocity, much imagination, some sly verbal wit and a little political satire." Unfortunately, the box office for it was dismal as it made forty million against production costs of, ooops, forty million. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a near perfect ninety-one percent rating.
Born December 9, 1900 — Margaret Brundage. An illustrator and painter who is now remembered chiefly for having illustrated Weird Tales. Here is her first cover for them. She's responsible for most of the covers for between 1933 and 1938. Wiki claims without attribution that L. Sprague de Camp and Clark Ashton Smith were several of the writers not fond of her style of illustration though other writers were. She'd win the the Retro Hugo at CoNZealand for Best Professional Artist after being nominated four times before. And she's a member of the First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 1976.)
Born December 9, 1902 — Margaret Hamilton. Most likely you'll remember her best as The Wicked Witch and her counterpart in Kansas in The Wizard of Oz. She would appear later in The Invisible Woman, along with much later being in 13 Ghosts, a horror film, and a minor role in The Night Strangler, a film sequel to The Night Stalker. (Died 1985.)
Born December 9, 1934 — Judi Dench, 87. M in a lot of Bond films. Aereon in The Chronicles of Riddick, Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love which is at least genre adjacent, Society Lady in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Miss Avocet in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Her very first genre film in the late Sixties, A Midsummer Night's Dream, was poorly received by critics and I recall her role being a mostly nude and sexy faerie. No, I'm not mentioning Cats. Really I'm not.
Born December 9, 1944 — Eric Saward, 77. Script editor and screenwriter during the Sixth Doctor's time. He wrote "Earthshock", "Resurrection of the Daleks" and "Revelation of the Daleks". He was forced to resign because he was blamed for numerous scenes of graphic violence and darker themes during the first season of the Sixth Doctor.
Born December 9, 1952 — Michael Dorn, 69. Best remembered for his role as the Klingon Worf in Trek franchise. Dorn has appeared on-screen in more Star Trek episodes and movies as the same character than anyone else. He also played at least one other character in the Trek universe. Though rumored to be appearing in the second season of Picard, that is not happening after all. In that, he joins a long list of actors so rumored.
Born December 9, 1953 — John Malkovich, 68. I was pondering if I was going to include him then decided that his performance in Being John Malkovich, which won him a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor, was enough for me to include him. What a strange role that is! He also shows up in the dreadful Jonah Hex film and played Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach in the Crossbones series which is at least genre adjacent. He also appeared in Mutant Chronicles, though, and there was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well.
Born December 9, 1970 — Jennifer Brozek, 51. She picked up a Hugo nomination at Sasquan for Best Editor Short Form for the Beast Within 4: Gears & Growl steampunk anthology (she also edited numbers 2 and 3 in the series). Her novel The Last Days of Salton Academy garnered a Stoker nomination.
Born December 9, 1970 — Kevin Hearne, 51. I have really enjoyed the Iron Druid Chronicles in its audio narrative form. Though I'll confess that I've not yet read the spin-off series, Oberon's Meaty Mysteries I'm planning to. Yeah it really, really does exist. Sausages figure prominently, a given as Oberon is a canine.
(11) SCROLL TITLE EGOBOO. [Item by Daniel Dern.] This (substitute "your name" for YOURNAMEHERE, of course) seems to find (many) previous winners. (https://file770.com/?s=%22contributing+editor+of+the+day+YOURNAMEHERE%22&submit=Search) or, from the top of a scroll, in the search box, including the double-quotes "contributing editor of the day YOURNAMEHERE".
Depending on your name, you might get some false positives, since OGH sometimes tweaks the fullname, e.g. "Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Streetcar-Named-Dern", which is why I've just used my first name in my search string.
(12) YOUR JEOPARDY! HOSTS. It's not forever, but they're sticking around for now. "'Jeopardy!': Mayim Bialik, Ken Jennings to Host Rest of Season 38".
Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings, who have been sharing hosting duties for season 38 following the Mike Richards debacle, will continue to serve in the same capacity into 2022. Producers Sony Pictures Television said Wednesday that the duo will remain hosts through the end of the syndicated game show's current 38th season, which ends July 29.
(13) BURSTING FORTH. In the Washington Post, Steven Zeitchik says that "3-D anamorphic outdoor ads" are about to become reality. Amazon has begun advertising "The Wheel of Time" on Oceazn Outdoors's 3-D billboards in Picadilly Circus and Times Square. These ads could eventually be personalized based on "what a sensor picks up from passerrby." "A 'Wheel of Time' 3D image could be the future of advertising".
…Two weeks ago, the British agency that worked on the "Wheel of Time" spot, Amplify, brought it to Times Square. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
In that ad, actress Rosamund Pike, whose character Moiraine represents "the light," reaches out her hand, beckoning for help. The Fade, an agent of "the darkness," reaches out his mouth, looking for a city bus to devour. The effect can give passersby the impulse to duck and is a leap ahead of the area's famous steaming cup of soup.…
The Dark One's forces have arrived in London, Piccadilly Circus but Moiraine rises to meet them. #TheWheelOfTime premieres November 19th, come join the fight? ?? pic.twitter.com/1C2VEsWVT2
— Amazon Prime Video UK (@primevideouk) November 15, 2021
(14) NOT UNDEAD YET. Reboots: Undead Can Dance by Mercedes Lackey, just named as the 2021 SFWA Grandmaster, and Cody Martin, author of the Secret World Chronicle braided novel series, and two previous entries in the Reboots series, was released by Caezik Notables on November 30.
Say hello to Humph the Boggart, the principled, down-on-his-luck private detective, Skinny Jim the zombie, and Fred the werewolf, in this film noir style space opera.
Humans aren't alone anymore—in fact, they share a planet with undead and near-dead beings, living in…semi-harmony, depending on who you ask!
This is the world of Reboots—where zombies, vampires, and werewolves live side-by-side with humans, taking whatever jobs they can in order to coexist peacefully. So, what better job to give almost-dead or dead beings, than one that consists of no air, cosmic radiation, and a lack of life-sustaining essentials?
In comes a cast of interesting, unique, and downright paranormal creatures as they travel through space.
(15) ADMIRATION SOCIETY. Scalzi was amused, too, and retweeted this discovery:
I kinda love that when you google "famous science fiction authors" you get a series of dignified photographs of people and then you get to @scalzi pic.twitter.com/YzuIj8i4Ma
— skullsinthestars – Black lives matter (@drskyskull) December 6, 2021
(16) 'TOON BID. The facetious "Saskatoon in 2067 WorldCon Bid Progress Report 2021" begins —
Progress has been smooth, if nonexistent, on getting things in place for our filing (anticipated by the World-con Business meeting of 2062 at the latest.
We are making early preparations for a restaurant guide for the event, but have little luck identifying restaurateurs willing to commit to deals, menus, locations, or existing, in 2067.
We are currently seeking co-chair, preferably who will be under the age of 80 for the con, so born after 1987. There are a couple of candidates at the moment, but so far the youngest interested party is Jukka Halme, who will be 100 at the time of the con….
Read the whole thing at the link.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Take a virtual tour of the Toronto Library's "Spaced Out: 50 Years of the Merril Collection" exhibit, continuing through December 31 (more info here.)
This video is a guided tour of the library's exhibit, Spaced Out: 50 Years of the Merril Collection, in the TD Gallery at the Toronto Reference Library, an exhibit showcasing some of the exciting, strange and wonderful things held by our Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy.
The Merril Collection dates back to 1970, when science-fiction author and editor Judith Merril donated 5,000 books to Toronto Public Library to found what was at first called the "Spaced Out Library".
Visit the exhibit to learn more about the collection and speculative fiction, the literature of the "what-if." This kind of literature explores the outer reaches of human imagination — our most spectacular dreams and darkest fears.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Chris Barkley, Mlex, Michael J. Walsh, Kent Pollard, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson. This is the first in his suggested series "The Hugo Pixel Scroll Winners."]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Alison Scott, Cowboy Bebop, cyberpunk, Diana Rigg, Jeopardy!, John Coxon, John Scalzi, Judith Merril, Ken Jennings, Kent Pollard, Liz Batty, Madeline Ashby, Mayim Bialik, Octothorpe, Serenity, Spaced Out Library, The Expanse
Pixel Scroll 11/23/21 Scrolling, Scrolling, Scrolling, Pixelhide!
(1) KEEPING THE RR IN GRRM. Thanks to checks from George R.R. Martin and his fellow investors, a moribund Santa Fe, NM railroad is being revived as the Sky Railway, open to riders on December 3. Martin told readers of Not a Blog:
On December 3, right here in New Mexico, we will be opening the Sky between Santa Fe and Lamy.
Sky Railway, to be precise.
That's the new name of the old Santa Fe Southern, the historic short-haul railroad originally build by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe back in the nineteenth century. Largely moribund since 2012, the railway was acquired in 2020 by a group that included me, Bill Banowsky (founder of Magnolia Films and Violet Crown Cinemas), bestselling mystery author Douglas Preston, and five other prominent Santa Feans (Margaritas may have had something to do with our decision). We've been busy ever since restoring and refurbishing the cars, repairing the tracks and tressels, replacing old seats, fixing broken windows, even installing a new engine into one of our old locomotives. All of which took longer and cost more than we had originally anticipated… but hey, that's pretty much always the case….
(2) DOOMSLAYER. In "Kim Stanley Robinson on Science Fiction and Reclaiming Science for the Left", Jacobin's Daniel Aldana Cohen interviews the author.
DAC: What is your mood on climate politics in fall 2021? What developments are keeping you up at night? What developments are making you optimistic that we can avoid the worst?
KSR: I'm scared by the latest IPCC report, which confirms that we are in terrible trouble — on the edge of catastrophe. And we need to act fast.
I'm encouraged by the discoveries that I've made since writing The Ministry for the Future. I wrote that book mostly in 2019. That's like a previous geological era now, because of the pandemic. Certainly the timeline that I portrayed in Ministry for the Future, which was vague and notional anyway, is shot, because things are happening faster in the mitigation front.
The catastrophes are coming faster than scientists predicted, but within the range of their predictions. The response is picking up, because the pandemic was a slap in the face. I didn't know about the Network for Greening the Financial System: 89 of the biggest central banks trying to figure out how to tweak finance towards green work.
I didn't know that there were actual papers in Nature quantifying the possibilities of pumping water out from under the big glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. I wrote about them in Ministry for the Future, but I wrote about them as if they were not yet in existence — when they already had been for a few years. So I was behind the curve in some ways.
(3) STOP THE $CAM. "Tolkien estate blocks 'JRR Token' cryptocurrency" – the Guardian has the story.
The Road might go "ever on and on" for Bilbo Baggins, but it has come to a sharp end for the developer of a cryptocurrency called JRR Token, after the estate of JRR Tolkien took legal action to block it.
The Lord of the Rings-themed cryptocurrency, with the tagline "The One Token That Rules Them All", launched in August. It came with a video endorsement from Billy Boyd, the actor who played Pippin in the films, and the head-scratching claim that "Saruman was trying to unify Middle Earth under centralised rule whereas the fellowship wanted decentralisation. Cryptocurrency is literally a decentralised network."
The Tolkien estate was not convinced. It took action almost immediately via the World Intellectual Property Organization's arbitration procedure, where it argued that the product infringed its trademark rights to JRR Tolkien's name, and that the domain name was "specifically designed to mislead internet users into believing that it and the website to which it resolves have some legitimate commercial connection" with Tolkien….
See, the estate might not have minded if these fellows had started the relationship off right, by paying them a bunch of money (not cryptocurrency, of course.)
(4) JODOROWSKY STORYBOARDS AUCTIONED. On the other hand, Christie's is doing quite well accepting Euros: "Film storyboards for doomed 1970s version of Dune sell for €2.7m" reports the Guardian.
The storyboards for the doomed 1970s film version of sci-fi classic Dune have sold for €2.66m ($3m) at auction, about 100 times the expected price.
Long considered a mythical object by sci-fi fans, the notebook of drawings for the film by Franco-Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky triggered a bidding war at Christie's in Paris.
The film project was supposed to bring together some major stars of the period, including Salvador Dalí, Mick Jagger and Pink Floyd – but fell apart after four years of preparation due to lack of funding.
The auction went down to two determined bidders, with an American eventually emerging victorious.
Christie's admitted their initial valuation for the drawings – between €25,000 and €35,000 – had failed to account for the spike in interest triggered by the new version of the film starring Timothée Chalamet, which has topped box offices around the world.
(5) MAZE BRUNNER. The New Yorker tells "How the World's Foremost Maze-Maker Leads People Astray". "Adrian Fisher has devoted the past four decades to bringing back mazes, long regarded as historical curiosities. He has created more than seven hundred—including one on a skyscraper in Dubai and another that's now reproduced on Britain's five-pound note."
…[Archbishop] Runcie's dream gave him an idea: Fisher wrote to the letters page of the London Times, briefly outlining the maze's long history as a Christian symbol and noting that, as in the Archbishop's dream, a maze's goal is typically reached not by "pressing toward the center" but, rather, by "returning almost to the edge," in order to find the proper path. In his signature, Fisher styled himself a "Maze Consultant," and, before long, this stealth marketing had reeled in a customer, and Minotaur's first public commission. Lady Elizabeth Brunner, a former actress who was married to a chemical magnate, invited Fisher to tea. Over scones and jam, she wondered aloud whether he might create an Archbishop's Maze, inspired by Runcie's words, in her garden at Greys Court, a Tudor manor house in Oxfordshire….
(6) WARHAMMER AGAINST HATE GROUPS. It is unknown what the inciting incident (if any) was for this, but Games Workshop put out a very strong statement about not wanting any real-life hate groups represented at their events and stores: "The Imperium Is Driven by Hate. Warhammer Is Not." The full statement is at the link.
…That said, certain real-world hate groups – and adherents of historical ideologies better left in the past – sometimes seek to claim intellectual properties for their own enjoyment, and to co-opt them for their own agendas.
We've said it before, but a reminder about what we believe in:
"We believe in and support a community united by shared values of mutual kindness and respect. Our fantasy settings are grim and dark, but that is not a reflection of who we are or how we feel the real world should be. We will never accept nor condone any form of prejudice, hatred, or abuse in our company, or in the Warhammer hobby."
If you come to a Games Workshop event or store and behave to the contrary, including wearing the symbols of real-world hate groups, you will be asked to leave. We won't let you participate. We don't want your money. We don't want you in the Warhammer community….
(7) PAY ATTENTION TO THIS CLEVER WRITING, DAMMIT! "Why Does Everyone In Netflix's Cowboy Bebop Talk Like That?" – Gita Jackson tells Vice readers the answer.
What happens when fans of Joss Whedon grow up and start working in television and movies? Netflix's remake of Cowboy Bebop.
I can't say for sure if the writers and showrunners on Bebop were, like I once was, huge fans of Buffy or Angel, the two shows that put Whedon on the map. Based on the way the characters speak, it sure sounds like it, though. Over the years, I've begun to notice more and more "Whedonspeak," as the phenomenon used to be called, in mainstream television and movies. Describing the qualities that make dialogue sound Whedonesque is now difficult though, because those qualities are ubiquitous.
….Characters in Whedon's shows talk a lot, and they talk in very particular ways. Characters are often imprecise in their language, letting sentences trail off as they struggle to articulate themselves. They turn nouns into verbs and vice versa. They say "thing" or "thingy" or "stuff" in place of more descriptive terms. Often these characters metatextually comment on their surroundings or the environments they're in, usually in a sarcastic or snarky way. The tone of this is pretty "wink wink, nudge nudge," as if the writers are speaking through the characters to the audience, rather than the characters commenting on the situation they are in….
When Buffy Summers says, "Well, if this guy wants to fight with weapons, I've got it covered from A to Z, from axe to… zee other axe," that's a prime example of Whedonspeak. When, in long-running BBC show Doctor Who, the titular Doctor says, "This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff," that is also Whedonspeak. This clip, where the lead characters of Star Wars movie The Rise of Skywalker say "They fly now? They fly now!" to each other shows you how far the phenomenon of Whedonspeak has spread….
(8) BEES KNEES. Diana Gabaldon's interview in the Guardian contains a not-very-subtle dig at George R.R. Martin: "Outlander author Diana Gabaldon: 'I needed Scotsmen because of the kilt factor'".
…Fans have been waiting for it since 2014, when Written in My Own Heart's Blood left them hanging, but Gabaldon has been somewhat delayed by the television adaptation of her series, which kicked off that year and on which she is a consultant. Go Tell the Bees, in which Jamie and Claire have finally been reunited with their time-travelling daughter Brianna and her family in 1779 North Carolina, only for the American revolution to cast its shadow over their lives, also runs to more than 900 pages.
I feel sorry for George RR Martin – his show caught up with him. But they'll never catch me
"It was definitely more of a challenge to write, mostly because of the chronology, which was very complicated," she says. In any event, seven years is less time than fans of George RR Martin have been holding on for the sixth Game of Thrones novel; Gabaldon has, incidentally, included a chapter in her latest doorstopper called The Winds of Winter – a "nod or a dig, depending on how you want to interpret it" at Martin's writing speed.
"Poor George, I feel very sorry for him," she says. "What happened is that his show caught up with him, and he then met with the showrunners and he told them what he was planning to do in that book, so that they could then write accordingly. Only they didn't write accordingly, they took his stuff, and distorted it and wrote their own ending, which wasn't at all what he had in mind but used all the elements that he told them."
1963 — Fifty-eight years ago, "An Unearthly Child", the very first Doctor Who story, began airing on the BBC. Scripted by Australian writer Anthony Coburn, the serial introduced William Hartnell as the First Doctor and his original companions of Carole Ann Ford, the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman, with Jacqueline Hill and William Russell as school teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton.
Reception was mixed with The Mail, Daily Worker and Television Today liking it very much while the Guardian was rather unimpressed by it. Current critics think it's fine if a bit long in the latter two parts. There's a story that it was cancelled after this series due to quite poor ratings before being revived a month later but that makes no sense give the short turn-around time between the two series. It has a sixty-eight percent rating currently among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch it here.
Born November 23, 1887 — Boris Karloff. Where do I start? Well, consider the Thirties. He portrayed Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein, and Imhotep in The Mummy. And he played a great pulp character in Dr. Fu Manchu in The Mask of Fu Manchu too! Now let's jump forward to the Sixties and the matter of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! which featured him as both the voice of The Grinch and the narrator of the story as well. I know I've skipped four decades of that means not a word about such as Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where he was the latter. (Died 1969.)
Born November 23, 1914 — Wilson Tucker. Author and very well known member of fandom. I'm going to just direct you here to "A Century of Tucker" by Mike as I couldn't say anything about him that was this good. (Died 2006.)
Born November 23, 1916 — Michael Gough. Best known for his roles in the Hammer Horror Films from the late Fifities and for his recurring role as Alfred Pennyworth in all four films of the Tim Burton / Joel Schumacher Batman series. His Hammer Horror Films saw him cast usually as the evil, and I mean EVIL! not to mention SLIMY, villain in such films as Horrors of the Black Museum, The Phantom of the Opera, The Corpse and Horror Hospital, not to overlook Satan's Slave. Speaking of Doctor Who, Gough appeared there, as the villain in "The Celestial Toymaker" (1966) and then again as Councillor Hedin in "Arc of Infinity" (1983). He also played Dr. Armstrong in "The Cybernauts" in The Avengers (1965) returning the very next season as the Russian spymaster Nutski in "The Correct Way to Kill". Gough worked for Burton again in 1999's Sleepy Hollow and later voice Elder Gutknecht in Corpse Bride. He would mostly retire that year from performing though he would voice later that Corpse Bride role and the Dodo in Burton's Alice in Wonderland. (Died 2011.)
Born November 23, 1951 — David Rappaport. I remember him best as Randall, the leader of the gang of comically inept dwarves in Time Bandits who steal the map to the Universe. I'm reasonably sure that it's the only thing he'll be remembered for of a genre nature having looked up his other works and found them to be decidedly minor in nature. Most of them such as The Bride, a low budget horror film, were artistic and commercial disasters. It is said that his death by suicide in 1990 is one of the reasons cited by Gilliam for there not being a sequel to Time Bandits. (Died 1990.)
Born November 23, 1955 — Steven Brust, 66. Of Hungarian descendant, something that figures into his fiction which he says is neither fantasy nor SF. He is perhaps best known for his novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos, one of a scorned group of humans living on a world called Dragaera. All are great reads. His recent novels also include The Incrementalists and its sequel The Skill of Our Hands, with co-author Skyler White. Both are superb. His finest novel? Brokedown Palace. Oh, just go read it. It's amazing. And no, I don't love everything he's done. I wrote a scathing reviewing of Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille that he told us at Green Man that he might be the only person who liked the novel. Freedom & Necessity with Emma Bull is decidedly different but good none the less and his Firefly novel, My Own Kind of Freedom, is stays true to that series. He's quite the musician too with two albums with Cats Laughing, a band that includes Emma Bull, Jane Yolen (lyrics) and others. The band in turn shows up in Marvel comics. A Rose For Iconoclastes is his solo album and "The title, for those who don't know, is a play off the brilliant story by Roger Zelazny, "A Rose For Ecclesiastes," which you should read if you haven't yet." Quoting him again, ""Songs From The Gypsy" is the recording of a cycle of songs I wrote with ex-Boiled-in-Lead guitarist Adam Stemple, which cycle turned into a novel I wrote with Megan Lindholm, one of my favorite writers." The album and book are quite amazing!
Born November 23, 1966 — Michelle Gomez, 55. Best known genre role is Missy, a female version of The Master on Doctor Who from 2014 to 2017, for which she was nominated for the 2016 BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress. I admit having grown up with Roger Delgado as The Master so later performers playing this role took a bit of getting used but she made a fine one. She is also Mary Wardwell in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. She plays Talia Bauerin in Highlander: The Raven which apparently is a very short-live spinoff from the Highlander series. And she shows up in the Gotham series for two episodes simply as The Lady. She is now playing Madame Rouge on the Doom Patrol.
Born November 23, 1967 — Salli Richardson-Whitfield, 54. Best known genre role is as Dr. Allison Blake on Eureka which apparently in syndication is now called A Town Called Eureka. H'h? I'm reasonably sure her first genre role was as Fenna / Nidell in the "Second Sight" of Deep Space Nine but she charmingly voiced Eliza Mazda, the main human character, on the Gargoyles series! She shows up as the character named Dray'auc in "Bloodlines" on Stargate Sg-1 and had a role on a series called Secret Agent Man that may or may have existed. She was Maggie Baptiste in Stitchers, a series that lasted longer than I expected it would.
Born November 23, 1970 — Oded Fehr, 51. Actor from Israel whose most well-known genre roles are as the mysterious warrior Ardeth Bay in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, and as Carlos Oliveira (or his clone) in three of the Resident Evil films: Apocalypse, Extinction, and Retribution. (His Mummy roles no doubt led to his casting in voice roles in Scooby-Doo in Where's My Mummy? and as The Living Mummy in the animated Ultimate Spider-Man and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.) On Charmed, he played the demon Zankou, the main villain of the show's seventh season. He's had an impressively long list of appearances on TV series, including recurring roles on Once Upon A Time, Stitchers, V, and The First, a series about the first mission to Mars. He has also voiced characters on numerous other animated features and series. He appeared in the third season of Discovery as Fleet Admiral Charles Vance.
(11) BIRTHDAY P.S. — CELEBRATING BORIS KARLOFF'S BIRTHDAY! [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] Born November 23rd, 1887, Boris Karloff would have celebrated his birthday today.
He was a gentle giant who charmed children of all ages, while thrilling their parents in beloved tales of classic terror. The wonderful Boris Karloff was born on November 23rd, 1887, and is the subject of a new, full length, screen documentary, written and produced by Ronald Maccloskey, entitled "Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The "Monster."
"Karloff, The Uncanny" became Frankenstein's "Monster" to generations of adoring movie goers but, at his core, was a cultured gentleman, loving father, and hard working performer who co-created the legendary Screen Actor's Guild in his quest for equal rights for actors all over the world.
His cinematic legacy is incalculable. William Henry Pratt was a cultured, lovely soul whose presence enriched the timeless fabric of motion pictures, television, radio, and the Broadway stage, and became the most enduringly beloved actor in the checkered history of classic "Horror Films." Here is my affectionate remembrance of this gentle giant … the undisputed "King of Horror" …the one and only Boris Karloff. "The Thunder Child: Vertlieb's Views: The Life of Boris Karloff".
(12) COMICS INDUSTRY UNIONIZING. "Image Comics' Union Organizing: Will Others In Comic Book Industry Follow?" – The Hollywood Reporter has a progress report.
…But on Nov. 1, staffers from Image Comics — home to Spawn, The Walking Dead and Savage Dragon franchises — formed a union called Comic Book Workers United (CBWU), with 10 of the 12 eligible staffers voting to organize and go public. The employees were assisted by organizers from the Communications Workers of America, a labor giant organizing workers across multiple industries.
…While unions are a long-standing reality for the movie-making parent companies of publishers like DC and Marvel, the comic book industry has historically been resistant, with publishers having fired creators discussing the possibility in the past. No creative guild exists solely for comic book freelancers; the Writers Guild of America's minimum basic agreement is based upon work developed for broadcast rather than print, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America only recently voted to admit comic writers and graphic novelists. "We're crafting membership requirements for this new group of creators," SFWA president Jeffe Kennedy says of the organization's current position.
Of the nine goals the CBWU lists on its website, there is an obvious through-line, visible via repeated requests for transparency in terms of workload and employer expectations; the group asks for the opportunity to provide "white glove attention for all the books we publish … in reasonable proportion to the actual quantity of output we generate."…
(13) SIGHTED BY SOCIAL MEDIA'S HUBBLE TELESCOPE. John Scalzi explains the growth on his 2008 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award.
15 Year Old Me: What's my future?
Carnival Fortune Teller: I see you in your fifties. Most people are at work, but you're at home, in a bathrobe, eating snacks.
Me: Is this usual?
FT: Most days, yes.
Me: Do I have a job?
FT: Debatable.
Me: So I'm a failure?
FT: Debatable. pic.twitter.com/xVJP71d2zO
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) November 23, 2021
Well that's clearly his awards shelf… so I'm guessing the coveted "Socrates' Brain" for his work in… I'm gonna go with children's philosophical literature circa 1996…
— Chris Duncan (@ChrisDuncle) November 23, 2021
It's a powdered wig, obviously, atop a Hugo, also obviously. I mean, where do *you* put *your* powdered wig? https://t.co/B1uzFgbrTH
(14) STAR TREK MAKES HISTORY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I saw an episode of "The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek" on the History Channel. The episode, narrated by Gates McFadden, was about the animated series of 1973-74. The show's creators were proud that it is the only version of Star Trek to win an Emmy for writing (others have won for makeup) and that it was the first version of Star Trek to feature Native American mythology. Larry Niven and David Gerrold were both interviewed about their scripts for the series; Niven's was the rare episode where a character died on Saturday morning cartoon television.
The Center Seat: 55 Years Of Star Trek is a multi-episode documentary series that takes viewers on the definitive in-depth journey behind the scenes of one of the greatest landmark franchises of all time: Star Trek. Celebrating the show's 55th anniversary, each episode focuses on a different chapter in the groundbreaking program's history, starting with its inception at Lucille Ball's legendary production company Desilu. Interviews with the cast, crew and experts reveal never-before-heard backstage stories and offer fresh insights. No stone is left unturned, including lesser-known aspects of the franchise like The Animated Series and Phase II. Additionally, The Center Seat features one of Leonard Nimoy's final in-depth Trek interviews. Star Trek is the most iconic television science-fiction saga of all time and remains more popular than ever. The Center Seat details how it began, where it's been, and how it's boldly going where no television series has gone before!
(15) DUEL. Artist Will Quinn did this piece based on David Lynch's Dune (1984):
Daily bunny no.1583 challenges you to a battle of knifes
(A Patreon reward for @DrWho42!) pic.twitter.com/BhenSrIxaU
— Will Quinn (@willquinnart) November 23, 2021
(16) NEEDS A CINEMATIC MULLIGAN. Screen Rant declares these are "10 Cheesy Sci-Fi Movies That Deserve Remakes". Or maybe not, with this on their list —
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957)
Plan 9 From Outer Space is often regarded as the worst movie of all time, and the making of it is well documented in the Tim Burton biopic Ed Wood, which is about the titular eccentric writer and director. However, as bad as it is, there are a lot of great ideas in it.
As outrageous as it sounds, the movie's narrative of extraterrestrials attempting to stop humanity from creating a doomsday device that could destroy the universe is oddly relevant. With so much war and nuclear weapons that could be detonated at any time, a Plan 9 From Outer Space could be shockingly dramatic and could play out like an episode of Black Mirror.
(17) AR ON AI. Amber Ruffin answers the question, "Why Does Artificial Intelligence Always End Up Being Racist?"
…There's a medical algorithm that favors white patients over sick or black ones, which is unforgivable in a system that already treats black people like an afterthought. Unfortunately in America getting appropriate health care is a lot like playing chess: when you're white you always get to go first. That's why my strategy and either one is to just yell "King me!" and see if i get anything extra…
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In "Honest Trailers: Shang-Chi And The Legend of Ten Rings" on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say the movie is about "the ultimate power fantasy: Kicking your dad's ass" and the film combines Jackie Chan comedy, wuxia super action, and "the CGI toilet slurry of a Marvel third act."
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Jennifer Hawthorne, N., Ben Bird Person, Chris Barkley, Steve Vertilieb, John A Arkansawyer, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Chris S.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Alejandro Jodorowsky, Amber Ruffin, Boris Karloff, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cowboy Bebop, Diana Gabaldon, Doctor Who, Dune, George R. R. Martin, Honest Trailers, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Scalzi, Joss Whedon, Kim Stanley Robinson, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Star Trek, Steve Vertlieb, Will Quinn
Pixel Scroll 11/21/21 Tom Swift And His Scrolling Pixel
(1) SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME TRAILER. Initially shown this week in theaters with Ghostbusters: Afterlife – now everyone can see it.
For the first time in the cinematic history of Spider-Man, our friendly neighborhood hero's identity is revealed, bringing his Super Hero responsibilities into conflict with his normal life and putting those he cares about most at risk. When he enlists Doctor Strange's help to restore his secret, the spell tears a hole in their world, releasing the most powerful villains who've ever fought a Spider-Man in any universe. Now, Peter will have to overcome his greatest challenge yet, which will not only forever alter his own future but the future of the Multiverse.
(2) NEEDS MORE INGREDIENTS. Lise Andreasen got a look at this headline and replied:
Maybe it's a bit more complicated than that headline? Like, there's Frankenstein?
@file_770 https://t.co/NB7yLXwVjs
— Lise "Massachusetts-havet" Andreasen (@lise_andreasen) November 21, 2021
With Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback, H.G. Wells invented the genre of science fiction. https://t.co/x126fHhDYo
— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) November 20, 2021
(3) RADICAL SCIENCE FICTION. Joachim Boaz posted the introduction to PM Press's Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985 (2021),edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre on his website Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations! "The Introduction to Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985, ed. Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre (2021)".
Boaz' review says:
…It is a must buy for any SF fan of the era interested in exploring the larger world behind the texts. Considering the focus of my website and most of my reading adventures over the last decade, I can unabashedly proclaim myself a fan of the New Wave SF movement–and this edited volume is the perfect compliment to my collection and interests….
The first paragraph of the authors' introduction begins –
The "long sixties," an era which began in the late 1950s and extended into the 1970s, has become shorthand for a period of trenchant social change, most explicitly demonstrated through a host of liberatory and resistance movements focused on class, racial, gender, sexual, and other inequalities. These were as much about cultural expression and social recognition as economic redistribution and formal politics. While the degree to which often youthful insurgents achieved their goals varied greatly, the global challenge they presented was a major shock to the status quo.,,,
(4) BEAGLE ADAPTATION REMEMBERED. "Why The Last Unicorn Is the Best Animated Movie You've Never Seen" – Paste Magazine's Lacy Baugher Milas makes her case.
Though the animated film The Last Unicorn will turn 40 years old in 2022, it's still largely considered a cult classic. The sort of movie that a certain kind of nerdy Gen-Xer or elder millennial will enthusiastically yell about with strangers whenever it happens to come up in casual conversation, but that most average moviegoers almost completely missed out on. Part of the reason for that is that 1980s animated films were generally more interested in making money than being art, and the Disney renaissance spearheaded by critical and commercial hit The Little Mermaid was still several years off.
But it's also because The Last Unicorn is simply unlike anything else that existed at the time. From the stacked voice cast that included everyone from Mia Farrow and Alan Arkin to Angela Lansbury and Christopher Lee, to the earnestly twee soundtrack by the band America and its general refusal to fit into neat narrative boxes, it is a film that consistently makes surprising and unexpected choices of the deeply risky sort we still don't often see today.
(5) ON BOARD THE BEBOP. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, Christina Lee uses the example of Cowboy Bebop to explain that different races often see anime characters as being of their own race. "Netflix's 'Cowboy Bebop' reignites a debate: Is Jet Black a Black anime character?"
Actor Mustafa Shakir sounds starry-eyed when he explains why he said yes to playing Jet Black, one of the central characters of Netflix's new "Cowboy Bebop." Shakir had become a devotee of the anime show, which originally aired in Japan in the late '90s and then helped launch Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block in the fall of 2001. "My thought was, this is like a gateway drug into anime," he says, which was the case for many U.S. viewers who had yet to understand that not all anime is kiddie fare.Shakir, best known for playing Bushmaster on "Luke Cage," was particularly intrigued by the way this anime paid loving tribute to American jazz, most explicitly through the character of Jet, an ex-cop and the paternal leader of an interstellar bounty-hunting crew, who named his spaceship — what else? — the Bebop.
But translating "Cowboy Bebop" to live action and satisfying the sky-high fan expectations around this beloved space-western was an imposing endeavor. The most persistent question on set was, "Is this Bebop-y enough?" ("That's a real term, you know?" Shakir deadpans.) …"Cowboy Bebop" adds yet another layer to that debate: What happens when a production studio tries to assign race to a pop culture artifact where race is hinted at but not always made explicit? The race and appearance of all the main characters have been debated on Twitter, Reddit and TikTok, but incensed online commentators went as far as smearing Shakir's casting as "blackwashing" — a play on "whitewashing" and an accusation often lobbed at Black anime fandom in cosplay and fan art.
The original "Cowboy Bebop" does feature explicitly dark-skinned characters the Netflix version made sure to include. And in the accompanying art book, "The Jazz Messengers," series creator Shinichiro Watanabe said that when developing the anime, he "paid a lot of attention to skin color." But the original anime never mentions or discusses race; it stands to reason that in a near future where Earth was all but obliterated, its ideas about race would have vanished along with it.
(6) SFF IN TRANSLATION. "How Do You Say 'Quidditch' in Yiddish?" – Tablet Magazine has "The inside story of how 'Harry Potter' was translated into Yiddish." (From 2020.)
… This tension has proved productive for Viswanath and his sisters, all of whom are involved today in various Yiddish projects—which is how Arun came to the idea of translating Harry Potter. What better way to pass on the legacy of Yiddish to another generation, he thought, than to translate one of the most popular works of children's literature of all time? Seized with this inspiration, Viswanath began spending evenings away from his job at a tech startup translating the first book of the series, not knowing if he'd ever be permitted to publish it.
As it turned out, though, he wasn't the only one.
When Rowling's agent Blair connected Viswanath with Olniansky, the Swedish publisher found himself with what he described as "a pleasant problem": He'd already been contacted by another Yiddish translator who had also begun translating the first Harry Potter novel. Given the significance of the project, Olniansky did not feel qualified to personally decide between the manuscripts, and so he submitted samples of both translations to two expert reviewers—Jean Hessel, the Swedish government's official for Yiddish at the Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore, and Mikhoel Felsenbaum, the noted Yiddish postmodern novelist living in Israel.
"Both of them picked Arun's translation," Olniansky told me, "so that's the way we went."…
(7) LOST AND FAUN. The Lesser-Known Writers blog introduces us to "Arthur MacArthur":
…He published very little. One short story is known, "Told in the Mid-Watch," in Sea Stories Magazine, 20 December 1922. (He claimed he gave up short story writing because it was too restrictive.) And he published only one novel, After the Afternoon (New York: D. Appleton-Century, [October] 1941), though it was retitled Aphrodite's Lover and given a racy cover when it was reprinted in paperback in 1953.
After the Afternoon tells the story of the faun Lykos in Crete, who, after a tryst with Aphrodite, becomes a human being, endowed with immortality and able to enter the human body, male or female, of his choice. He passes through various incarnations, one at the bizarre court of an Egyptian king….
(8) REMEMBERING THE FOUNDER. The other day members celebrated the birthday of Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association founder Suzette Haden Elgin (1936-2015) by giving a reading of her poetry.
Poems by Suzette Haden Elgin read by SFPA board members Rocky Road to Hoe – read by Richard Magahiz No Contact – Read by Diane Severson Mori As for the Universal Translator – read by Jean-Paul L. Garnier
(9) RYAN OBIT. Voice actor and past ASIFA president Will Ryan died November 19 at the age of 72 reports Deadline. Ryan had a vast resume of genre credits, beginning with the pteranodon Petrie from Universal's animated classic, The Land Before Time.
He'd go on to amass more than 100 screen credits in his nearly four-decade career…
Ryan voiced Willie the Giant for The Walt Disney Company in numerous projects over a 35-year period, last doing so in 2020. He voiced Peg-Leg Pete in the Oscar-nominated animated short Mickey's Christmas Carol, reprising the role 30 years later in the Mickey Mouse short, Get a Horse!, which was also nominated for an Oscar. He also voiced the latter character, among others, in the beloved Disney Afternoon series DuckTales, and portrayed several, including a herd of Ogres, in Adventure of the Gummi Bears, which was the first animated series from Walt Disney Television. Ryan also had the opportunity to portray Tigger and Rabbit, and to provide the singing voice of Eeyore, for the long-running Disney Channel series Welcome to Pooh Corner, which aired twice a day for 17 years.
Throughout his career, Ryan also lent his voice to such classic animated films as The Little Mermaid, An American Tail, Thumbelina and A Troll in Central Park, along with multiple G.I. Joe series, the 1986 animated series Teen Wolf, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Family Guy and many more projects.
He also "wrote over 100 songs for Disney and the Jim Henson Company, seeing his songs get recorded by Mickey, Donald, Goofy and the gang; Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and the gang; The Cat-In-The-Hat, Horton the Elephant, the Grinch and the gang; the Pointer Sisters, the Saguaro Sisters, Patti LaBelle, and more."
1973 — Forty-eight years ago, the film that launched the Westworld franchise premiered. Westworld was created by Michael Crichton wrote the screenplay and directed the film. It was produced by Paul N. Lazarus III. It starred Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin and James Brolin in the three primary roles. You may have noticed Majel Barrett as Miss Carrie, The Madame of the Westworld bordello.
Reception by critics was generally superb with Variety saying it had "superbly intelligent serio-comic story values." And the Los Angeles Times called it "a clever sci-fi fantasy." The New York Times which I swear doesn't like SF films was the lone dissenting major newspaper as regards this film. Box office was great making almost eight million against a budget of just a million and a quarter. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it an excellent rating of seventy percent. It was nominated for a Hugo at DisCon II, the year Sleeper won.
It was followed by a sequel, Futureworld which got nominated for a Hugo at Suncon, and a really short-lived CBS series, Beyond Westworld (five episodes). The HBO Westworld TV series is now in its third season with a fourth in production. The present series has not been nominated for a Hugo yet.
Born November 21, 1851 — T. O'Conor Sloane. Editor of the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, from 1929 to 1938. And earlier on, Scientific American, from 1886 to 1896. (Died 1940.)
Born November 21, 1924 — Christopher Tolkien. He drew the original maps for the LoTR. He provided much of the feedback on both the Hobbit and LoTR and his father invited him to join the Inklings when he was just twenty-one years old, making him the youngest member of that group. Suffice it to say that the list is long of his father's unfinished works that he has edited and brought to published form. I'll leave to this august group to discuss their merit as I've got mixed feelings on them. (Died 2020.)
Born November 21, 1942 — Al Matthews. Performer, best known for his appearance as Gunnery Sergeant Apone in Aliens. Other genre films were Omen III: The Final Conflict, The Sender, Superman III, The Fifth Element and Tomorrow Never Dies. He stated on his website that he was the first black Marine in the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam to be meritoriously promoted to the rank of sergeant, quite an honor indeed. (Died 2018.)
Born November 21, 1945 — Vincent Di Fate, 76. Artist and Illustrator who has done many SFF book covers and interior illustrations since his work first appeared in the pages of Analog in 1965. He was one of the founders of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA), and is a past president. In addition to his Chesley Award trophy and 7 nominations, he has been a finalist for the Professional Artist Hugo 11 times, winning once at Seacon '79; two collections of his artwork, Infinite Worlds: The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art and Di Fate's Catalog of Science Fiction Hardware, have been Hugo finalists as well. He was Artist Guest of Honor at the 1992 Worldcon, for which he organized their Art Retrospective exhibit. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2011. You can see galleries of his works at his website.
Born November 21, 1953 — Lisa Goldstein, 68. Writer, Fan, and Filer whose debut novel, The Red Magician, was so strong that she was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer two years in a row. Her short fiction has garnered an array of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominations, as well as a Sidewise Award. The short story "Cassandra's Photographs" was a Hugo nominee at Nolacon II and Nebula finalist as well, and "Alfred" was a World Fantasy and Nebula finalist; both can be found in her collection Travellers in Magic. The quite excellent Uncertain Places won a Mythopoeic Award. You can read about her work in progress, her reviews of others' stories, and other thoughts at her blog which is one of the better ones I've read: https://lisa-goldstein.dreamwidth.org/
Born November 21, 1965 — Björk, 56. Who bears the lovely full name of Björk Guðmundsdóttir. I like Icelandic things. And I've got boots of her band somewhere around here I'm sure. She's here for The Juniper Tree which is a 1990 Icelandic film directed and written by Nietzchka Keene which is based on "The Juniper Tree" tale that was collected by the Brothers Grimm. She's one of five performers in it. Oh, and because her last album Utopia explored that concept even using cryptocurrency as part of the purchase process.
Born November 21, 1982 — Ryan Carnes, 39. He was in two Tenth Doctor stories, "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" in which he played Laszlo. He played Kit Walker / The Phantom in the miniseries of the same name which I've never even heard of until now, and has the lead as Chris Norton in Beyond the Sky, an alien abductee film.
In the Bleachers shows some golfers who don't seem to have their priorities in order.
Tom Gauld on supply chain problems faced by the magical realism industry.
My cartoon for yesterday's @GdnSaturday / @GuardianBooks #supplychainissues pic.twitter.com/ERiFPmf1Pv
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) November 21, 2021
(13) BABY YODA ON SNL. Last night on Saturday Night Live Baby Yoda showed off his new tattoos and talked about all the fun he was going to have in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
(14) ATTENTION MAMMOTH ENTHUSIASTS. Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist, will do a live presentation: "Nat Geo Live: How to Clone a Mammoth" on The Broad Stage in Los Angeles on January 27-28, 2022. Tickets are available at the link.
Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? National Geographic Emerging Explorer Beth Shapiro is one of the scientists investigating this intriguing possibility. From deciding which species should be restored to anticipating how revived populations might be overseen in the wild,the technical challenges and ethical considerations of de-extinction are substantial. Join Shapiro for a vivid exploration into the extraordinary cutting-edge—and controversial—science that is being used today to resurrect the past.
(15) HOWDY STRANGER. In the Washington Post, Ashley Spencer profiles Finn Wolfhard, who is interviewed because of his performance in Ghostbusters: Afterlife but became "one of the most recognizable young actors in the world: for his work on "Stranger Things." "Finn Wolfhard, star of 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife,' doesn't really want to be famous".
… Talking to Wolfhard now, the candidness remains. His answers, even the ones that hint of rehearsed, PR-approved sound bites, lack the disquietingly poised delivery that many young stars learn to perfect. Instead, Wolfhard uses "like" with reckless teenage abandon and meanders off course with details and anecdotes that excite him. There's a lengthy tale about a tipsy Rami Malek imparting advice at a 2016 Critics Choice Awards after-party — "Did you really have fun tonight?" the older star implored of Wolfhard. "Because if you're doing any of this stuff and you're not having fun, you need to stop it immediately" — and an apologetic f-bomb as Wolfhard marveled at how "crazy" it is that he will potentially be the same age in "Stranger Things 5" as his older co-stars Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton were when they started the show.
Wolfhard shares "a lot" of scenes with Heaton in "Stranger Things 4," which was delayed by covid and is finally due to arrive next summer, and said they became "incredibly close" during filming. In fact, he found a new appreciation for most of his castmates over the chaotic past two years. "When you start a show that young, there's drama and there's rivalries because it's like school. And then you become older, and you stop caring," he said. "I think it's actually such an incredible thing to come back to each other and be like, 'Wow, I really understand you. We're all going through this thing together. I love you.'?"…
(16) BEST CAPTURE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This video from the Royal Ocean Film Society argues that Spielberg's 2011 The Adventures of Tintin was the best of the motion capture animated films of 2005-10 and the only one still worth watching today.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Tex Avery predicts the Internet in his 1949 cartoon "The Home of Tomorrow."
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Ben Bird Person, Lise Andreasen, Joel Zakem, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Baby Yoda, Cowboy Bebop, Ghostbusters, H. G. Wells, Harry Potter, Joachim Boaz, Lise Andreasen, Peter S. Beagle, Saturday Night Live, SFF in Translation, SFPA, Spider-Man, Stranger Things, Suzette Haden Elgin, Tex Avery
Pixel Scroll 11/15/21 The Ones Who Stalk Away From Scrollmelas
(1) GOT THAT RIGHT. The imminent Hugo voting deadline – November 19 – caused Camestros Felapton to call forth a special GIF: "Deep from within the sarcophagi of time, a preternatural force awakens!" Remember what the Robot on the original Lost In Space said: "When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!"
(2) I SEE BY YOUR OUTFIT THAT YOU ARE A COWBOY. Christina Tucker tells Slate readers there's a lot wrong with the new version: "Netflix Cowboy Bebop review: Another underwhelming live-action anime adaptation".
Cowboy Bebop, directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, remains one of the most iconic anime of all time. Lauded by mainstream critics and anime fans alike for its visual style, Yoko Kanno's soundtrack, and its explorations of mortality, nihilism, and identity, Cowboy Bebop has enjoyed an excellent reputation since its 1998 premiere. And stateside, it is especially renowned for being many Americans' first experience with anime, first airing in English on Cartoon Network in 2001 as part of the nascent Adult Swim programming block. All told, it remains one of the most beloved anime by new and old fans, who still praise it as a must-watch and a modern classic.
This legacy, however, is something of an albatross around the neck of Netflix's 2021 live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop. Netflix's take on the show has a love-hate relationship with its source material, retaining the premise and almost every single character from the original and re-creating and referencing memorable shots and scenes, but adding original elements like comically trite dialogue, embarrassing dramatic turns, and an original and unengaging plotline that only pull focus from the core story it's trying to adapt. The result only creates unfavorable comparisons with the original and is likely to turn off both fans of the original and newcomers. If this Cowboy Bebop accomplishes anything, it's to highlight the quality of the original series, justifying many anime fans' belief that trying to translate anime series from one medium to another never works out….
(3) VISIT WITH THE EATON COLLECTION. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA will have an online "Spotlight on the Eaton Science Fiction Library" on Tuesday, November 30 at 4:00 p.m. Pacific.
Join us for an in depth interview about the behind the scenes at one of the world's largest public collections of science fiction. Sandy Enriquez and Andrew Lippert of the Eaton library will share how you can utilize the collection and some of the many treasures contained within. Learn about SF from an academic perspective.
Register for free here at Eventbrite
(4) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Also available is Space Cowboy Books' podcast "Simultaneous Times" featuring readings of "Tips for Living Out-of-Synch for the Frequent Time Traveler" by A.C. Wise (read by Jean-Paul Garnier) and "Premium Resurrection Pack $99" by by Renan Bernardo (read by Jean-Paul Garnier & Zara Kand).
(5) NEW STOKERCON GOH. StokerCon2022 has added Jennifer McMahon as its sixth GOH. The convention takes place in Denver from May 12-15 next year.
Jennifer McMahon is the author of The Children on the Hill and ten other novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Promise Not to Tell and The Winter People. She lives in Vermont with her partner, Drea, and their daughter, Zella. Visit her at Jennifer-McMahon.com or connect with her on Instagram @JenniferMcMahonWrites and Facebook @JenniferMcMahonBooks.com.
She joins a GoH lineup that includes John Edward Lawson, Sheree Renée Thomas, Ernest Roscoe Dickerson A.S.C., Gemma Files, and Brian Keene.
(6) FOR YOUR STOCKING. Is this the first time that the Library of America has offered this kind of a deal on a book edited by an SFWA Grandmaster? American Christmas Stories:
Library of America and Connie Willis present 150 years of diverse, ingenious, and uniquely American Christmas stories
Ghost stories and crime stories, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, humor, and horror; tales of Christmas morning, trees, gifts, wise men, and family dinners everywhere from New York to Texas to outer space: this anthology is an epiphany, revealing the ways Christmas has evolved over time—and how the spirit of the holiday has remained the same. Ranging from the advent of the American tradition of holiday storytelling in the wake of the Civil War to today, this is the best and widest-ranging anthology of American Christmas stories ever assembled.
…Available now. Clothbound 467 pages. List price: $29.95. Web Store price: $22.50 | With coupon code LIB2021: $19.12 .
(7) CELEBRITY CRUSH. Adam Driver told Graham Norton Show viewers why he will never go to Comic-Con again.
… The Oscar nominee then elaborated, describing his experience at SDCC as more than a little constricting. "I didn't know the rules of Comic-Con," he said. "I got in at the hotel at 2 in the morning… and I'm like, 'Maybe tomorrow I'll go get a coffee.' And they're like, 'Oh no, you can't get a coffee.' I'm like, 'Well, maybe I'll get a coffee in the hotel.' They're like, 'No, you can't get a coffee in the hotel.'"
Driver went on to explain that he was given the option of wearing either an Iron Man mask or a Darth Vader mask in order to leave. "'If you want to go outside,' they're like, 'Put a mask on so nobody knows who you are.'"
This doesn't happen only to Star Wars actors. John King Tarpinian remembers being one of Ray Bradbury's five escorts at Comic-Con and "that was a pain traversing the hall." And if they wanted to give a Darth Vader mask to Adam Driver, what mask would they have had Ray put on?
(8) ROLL ON IN. Billy Todd touts Wheel of Time fandom in "Welcome to the Family: An Open Letter to Old and New Fans of The Wheel of Time" at Tor.com.
…Worrying about new fans—and any talk of gatekeeping around the series—is historically out of character for the Wheel of Time fandom. I've participated in many sci-fi and fantasy franchise fandoms in the past 40 years, and I remain amazed at how open, inclusive, and downright familial the Wheel of Time fanbase is. I have been an active fan since cramming pages between junior high classes in 1992. After I finished my friend's copy of The Shadow Rising, our friend group fell into a hole of geeking out over these books. I never made it out of that hole. Shortly thereafter, in the days before the World Wide Web, I discovered the Robert Jordan USENET newsgroup and its population of Darkfriends who modeled rational, good-natured, respectful debate online.
It took many years before I realized this was not how the rest of the Internet was going to turn out….
(9) PRE-PREDATOR ON THE WAY. "Predator Prequel Starring Indigenous Actress Amber Midthunder Reveals Title Prey , Summer 2022 Release Date" reports Yahoo!
Amber Midthunder is making her mark on the Predator franchise with its next installment.
Entitled Prey, the upcoming prequel will premiere on Hulu in summer 2022, it was announced Friday during Disney+ Day.
"Set in the world of the Comanche Nation 300 years ago, the action-thriller follows Naru, the skilled warrior who fiercely protects her tribe against a highly evolved alien predator," a plot summary from Disney reads.
Midthunder, 24, celebrated the news on Instagram, sharing an image of herself in the film with the franchise's extraterrestrial villain lurking behind her in the shadows.
A post shared by Amber Midthunder (@ambermidthunder)
(10) DREAM TIME. By the way, Melanie Stormm is very inventive but she didn't have to make up the two tweets she included in today's "Emails From Lake Woe-Is-Me — Fit the Fourteenth":
@neilhimself I'll thank you not to go appearing in the middle of the night to @deliasherman my wife telling here she knows perfectly well how to fix what's wrong with her novel–or if you really must, to see to it she doesn't wake up before you've told her the solution.
— Ellen Kushner (@EllenKushner) November 11, 2021
Sorry Ellen… https://t.co/hILAordooO
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) November 11, 2021
(11) NEW BUCKELL COLLECTION ANNOUNCED. Apex Publications has acquired a new short story collection from Tobias S. Buckell titled Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance and Other Stories. It's scheduled to come out next year. Apex has also acquired the trade paperback rights to his four-book Xenowealth series (Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, Sly Mongoose, and The Apocalypse Ocean).
Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling and World Fantasy Award-winning author born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, which influence much of his work.
Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance and Other Stories is Tobias S. Buckell's seventh short fiction collection and is comprised of 15 stories, several of which are original to the collection or were previously only available through his Patreon.
1968 — Fifty-three years ago on NBC, Star Trek's "The Tholian Web" first aired on this date. It was written by Judy Burns, her first professional script, and Chet Richards, his only such script. She would later write scripts for myriad genre series including Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man and Fantasy Island.
Primary guest cast was Sean Morgan as Lt. O'Neil, Barbara Babcock as the voice of Loskene who was the Tholian commander and Paul Baxley as Captain of the Defiant. It is considered by critics and fans alike to be one of the best Trek episodes done though it did not get a Hugo nomination unlike a lot of other Trek episodes.
In a two-part episode of Enterprise, "In a Mirror, Darkly", it is told that the Defiant has reappeared in the Mirror Universe of Archer's time, where it is salvaged by the Tholians and later stolen from them by the Terran Empire.
Born November 15, 1877 — William Hope Hodgson. By far, his best known character is Thomas Carnacki, featured in several of his most famous stories and at least partly based upon Algernon Blackwood's occult detective John Silence. (Simon R. Green will make use of him in his Ghost Finders series.) Two of his later novels, The House on the Borderland and The Night Land would be lavishly praised by H.P. Lovecraft. It is said that his horror writing influenced many later writers such as China Miéville, Tim Lebbon and Greg Bear but I cannot find a definitive source for that claim. (Died 1918.)
Born November 15, 1929 — Ed Asner. Genre work includes roles on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Invaders, The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends, Batman: The Animated Series and I'll stop there as the list goes on for quite some while. What's your favorite genre role by him? (Died 2021.)
Born November 15, 1933 — Theodore Roszak. Winner of the Tiptree Award for The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, and the rather excellent Flicker which is well worth reading. Flicker is available at the usual suspects, though no other fiction by him other than his Japanese folktales is. Odd. (Died 2011.)
Born November 15, 1939 — Yaphet Kotto. If we count the Bond films as genre, and I do, his first genre performance was as Dr. Kananga / Mr. Big in Live and Let Die. Later performances included Parker in Alien, William Laughlin in The Running Man, Doc in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Ressler in The Puppet Masters adapted from Heinlein's 1951 novel of the same name and a horrid film that it is, and he played a character named Captain Jack Clayton on SeaQuest DSV. (Died 2021.)
Born November 15, 1942 — Ruth Berman, 79. She's a writer of mostly speculative poetry. In 2003, she won the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem for "Potherb Gardening ", and in 2016 for "Time Travel Vocabulary Problems". She was the winner of the 2006 Dwarf Stars Award for her poem "Knowledge Of". She's also written one YA fantasy novel, Bradamant's quest. In 1973, she was a finalist for the first Astounding Award for Best New Writer. She edited the Dunkiton Press genre zine for a decade or so. She was nominated for Best Fan Writer Hugo at Baycon (1968). Impressive indeed.
Born November 15, 1972 — Jonny Lee Miller, 49. British actor and director who played Sherlock Holmes on the exemplary Elementary series, but his first genre role was as a nine year-old with the Fifth Doctor story, "Kinda". While he's had a fairly steady stage, film, and TV career across the pond since then, it's only in the last decade that he's become well-known in the States – unless, like JJ, you remember that twenty-three years ago he appeared in a shoddy technothriller called Hackers, with another unknown young actor named Angelina Jolie (to whom he ended up married, until they separated eighteen months months later). Other genre appearances include a trio of vampire films, Dracula 2000, Dark Shadows, and Byzantium, the live-action Æon Flux movie, and the lead in the pseudo-fantasy TV series Eli Stone.
Bizarro has a hilarious Zoom panel.
(15) A SHOW RECAP. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Last night on Bob's Burgers, a group of teenagers came in to the burger joint and asked to play a game which was clearly Dungeons and Dragons but which was called something else. The dungeon master got Bob's attention because she ordered the Burger of the Day when everyone else was getting plain old cheeseburgers. The dungeon master made a move where she turned everyone into goblins and they played goblin characters instead of their regular characters. Bob saw that she was being creative and explained to her his creative outlet was creating the Burger of the Day every day. The gamers played very late but ordered big breakfasts before they left so Bob was tired but happy after meeting gamers.
(16) FERAL STATES. "Neal Stephenson Predicted the Metaverse. His New Book Imagines Something Even Stranger." Laura Miller reviews Termination Shock at Slate.
A maestro of the dramatic opener, Neal Stephenson began his 2015 novel, Seveneves, with the line "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." That's a hard act to follow, but he gives it the old college try in his latest, Termination Shock, heralded, when first announced, as the celebrated science-fiction author "finally" taking on the subject of global warning. Termination Shock begins with the queen of the Netherlands piloting a business jet in an emergency landing at the Waco airport, a maneuver that goes terribly wrong when her plane's landing gear collides with a herd of feral hogs that, chased by an oversize alligator, swarm the airstrip.
Like a lot of plot twists in Termination Shock, this scenario is not as outlandish as it seems. Frederika Mathilde Louisa Saskia, a fictional character, is apparently the daughter of the real-life King Willem-Alexander, who in 2017 revealed that he had been moonlighting as a commercial airline pilot for more than 20 years. (He said that he found it a "relaxing" hobby.) Saskia, as the queen—who is one of the novel's central characters—calls herself, has inherited a taste for this pastime from her father. As for the feral swine, they are partly an allusion to a viral tweet defending private ownership of assault rifles in the event that "30-50 feral hogs" run into a yard in which small children are playing. The internet found this argument hilarious, but feral hogs are in fact a dangerous and destructive invasive species in many parts of the U.S. The novel's second central character, Rufus, a former farmer turned professional hog exterminator, knows this all too well….
(17) GAS SITUATION. CNBC also has an interview with the author: "Neal Stephenson on 'Termination Shock,' geoengineering, metaverse".
How did you get interested in this subject and become fascinated with it enough to base a novel on it?
I've been hearing about the idea for a number of years. I'm interested in history. I'm interested in science and the physics of the planet. And so, the idea that a volcano could erupt somewhere and affect temperatures all over the planet is a natural, fascinating topic for me. Over the last decade or two, it's become increasingly clear that the CO2 content in the atmosphere is a huge problem, and that it's getting worse fast, and we're not really being very effective. Despite efforts by a number of people to draw attention to the problem and and push for emissions reductions, that number is still climbing rather rapidly and probably will keep climbing for a while. So rolling that together in the brain of the science fiction novelist, that looks like the basis for a story that that's got that technical angle to it, but that's also got a strong geopolitical and personal storytelling basis.
(18) OUT OF THE WILDERNESS AT LAST. The Guardian's David Smith profiles the new Vonnegut documentary: "Unstuck in Time: the Kurt Vonnegut documentary 40 years in the making".
… In 1994 Weide took the author back to his childhood home in Indianapolis. Vonnegut is seen touching imprints of his child-size hand, and the hands of of other family members, that remain in concrete poured in the 1920s. The project received a boost when Vonnegut's brother, Bernie, handed over some 16mm home movies that had been gathering dust in a closet.
But the memories also carried pain. In 1958 his beloved sister, Alice, died of breast cancer days after her husband drowned in a train accident. Weide reflects: "He would say how much he missed his her and how 'she taught me what was funny; she imbued my sense of humour; we thought the same things were funny'.
"A lot of what they thought was funny had to do with a lot of good comedy, which is a tragedy befalling other people. If they saw somebody fall down on the street in Indianapolis, they'd laugh about it for years sometimes. He talked a lot about his sister in very fond terms. He never was that vocal specifically about how her death affected him but his daughter says in the film all these years later, 'I don't think he can even now get his arms around it'."…
(19) FAMILIAR PLAYBOOK. Yes, John Scalzi has seen these plays run before on social media.
"Online debate" usually means "person who did not ask for a debate accosted by legions of trolls slapping down rhetorical device cards in a ploy to exhaust them," so the fact "online debate" has been dealt catastrophic damage is a feature, not a bug. https://t.co/q69kBoZVS8
(20) DOO DOO OVER. James Davis Nicoll tells Tor.com readers about "Five Time Travel Stories Where Things Get Rather Messy".
Who among us has not dreamed over getting a do-over? Perhaps this time around, one could defer the two-hour discourse on the history of stirrups until the second date, leave the nearly-red hot frying pan to cool a little longer, or at the very least, take steps to ensure that some major historical debacle never happens, changing the course of human events for the good of all. Armed with knowledge of how things played out in the original timeline, surely one could shape a more perfect history!
That's in reality. In fiction, of course, there's no plot if everything goes as expected. Thus, these five works about altering timelines that did not, alas, work out entirely to plan….
(21) GENRE ADJACENT NEWS. "'It's like hunting aliens': inside the town besieged by armadillos" – the Guardian says North Carolina is not welcoming their new overlords.
…."It's like hunting aliens," said Bullard, who is more used to hunting feral pigs. "We know nothing about them. We can't seem to kill them easily. They show up unexpectedly. And their numbers have just exploded."
…An emerging theory for this advance of armadillos is the climate crisis. The animals dislike freezing conditions and global heating is making winters milder, turning northern parts of the US more armadillo-friendly. Around Sapphire [NC], the armadillos happily root around in the dirt with their snouts and claws, feasting on insects at elevations above 4,000ft. "We just don't have those really cold winters any more and I'm sure that's helped them," said Olfenbuttel.
The armadillos have made it into Missouri, Iowa and even the southern reaches of Nebraska. Barriers such as rivers aren't a problem – the animals can hold their breath for up to six minutes and walk on the riverbed, or even inflate their intestines to float across to the other side….
(22) ROBOTS UNDERGROUND. In the Washington Post Magazine, David Montgomery reports on the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, held in a giant cavern in Louisville, in which robots competed to see how many "humans" (mannequins with sensors) they could rescue in a simulated underground disaster.
…In this scenario, meticulously constructed for the finale of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge — an elaborate three-year, $82 million Pentagon robotics competition — something bad has happened to humans underground, and the robots are coming to the rescue. Spot and its robo-teammates and competitors — dozens of walking, driving and flying robots — were on a scavenger hunt for "survivors" (mannequins giving off body heat and vocal sounds) and objects such as cellphones, backpacks and helmets. The robots scored points by sending the objects' locations back to their human teammates. Finding all the objects meant exploring a trap-filled labyrinth with a half-mile of passages, featuring three made-from-scratch environments: urban, with a subway, storeroom and offices; a tunnel (a mock mine shaft); and a cave, a claustrophobic mash-up of spelunking's greatest hits….
(23) WEIRD WEST. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Here's an art collage piece by Lauren Fox (@LaurenFoxWrites):
Here is my very first commission, generously requested by @DrWho42. I call it Weird West, as the commission request was dinosaurs fighting cowboys in ancient ruins. https://t.co/3IRoAzq24y https://t.co/WO6J3Bfh3B pic.twitter.com/cCeXcMDFVL
— Lauren Fox (@LaurenFoxWrites) November 15, 2021
(24) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Jennifer Hawthorne.] This video isn't short but it's good. It does a thorough breakdown of both the Starship Troopers book and the film, plots and themes both, and toward the end compares them to Haldeman's Forever War. "If Veterans Ruled the World".
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Alan Baumler, Steven French, Jennifer Hawthorne, Ben Bird Person, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Adam Driver, Apex Publications, Camestros Felapton, Connie Willis, Cowboy Bebop, James Davis Nicoll, John Scalzi, Kurt Vonnegut, Lauren Fox, Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury, robots, Space Cowboy Books, Starship Troopers, StokerCon, The Predator, Tobias Buckell, Wheel of Time
Pixel Scroll 10/20/21 Roll Over Harkonnen And Tell Shai-Tchovsky The News
Posted on October 20, 2021 by Mike Glyer
(1) KRESS Q&A. DisCon III has posted an "Interview with Author Guest of Honor Nancy Kress" conducted by staff member Dr. Karen Purcell.
(2) FALLEN LEAVES AND HEROES. Brian Murphy shares ten spooky sword and sorcery stories for October: "Ten Sword-and-Sorcery Tales For the Haunting Season" at Goodman Games.
…Here in New England, I find that as the leaves begin to turn and October shadows lengthen, so too do my thoughts drift from my natural sword-and-sorcery bent toward the nether regions of horror. Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, classic Hammer movies and bad slasher films, bring it on, all of it.
But I'm also reminded that I need not necessarily choose between the two. Sword-and-sorcery after all is bedfellows with horror. Though he loathed the term, Karl Edward Wagner described S&S as "a fascinating synthesis of horror, adventure, and imagination … the common motif is a universe in which magic works and an individual may kill according to his personal code."…
(3) FIRST REFLECTIONS. Tom Shapira analyzes how the Holocaust was reflected in 1950s horror comics: "The Dead Come Back: Mid-Century Horror Comics & The Holocaust".
We've come a long way since Art Spiegelman's Maus. When the first collected edition published in 1986, it appeared to be a singular and wholly unimagined thing: a comic-book — garishly colored, childishly-plotted things that were mostly concerned with muscled men in tights — about the Holocaust. German philosopher Theodore Adorno once claimed that "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric"…so how can one justify the writing and drawing of comic-books?!
Flash-forward to 2021 and it's clear that Maus has long stopped being a singular event. There are many more comics about the Holocaust including two graphic adaptations of The Diary of Anne Frank (one of which recently got a movie treatment), A Family Secret, Yossel, The Boxer, Hidden, and even the superhero genre feeling confident enough to take on the subject with the likes of Magneto: Testament….
(4) HE-MAN AND SHE-RA. The Rogues in the House podcast has dedicated an entire episode to "Masters of the Universe".
(5) START AT THE TOP. And work your way down. Mark Lawrence has finally received a satisfactory result from his recent battles with Kindle Direct Publishing. The updated saga is here. "My attempts to get sense from KDP".
… At this point, having aired the first version of this blog post, I get advice from self-publishing experts. Email Jeff Bezos they say. So I do.
I find his email address and email him, explaining that I understand the email will land with one of his team of assistants but that I would appreciate any help in the issue (which I then lay out).
Additionally, I remember that: hey, I'm actually published by Amazon – my Impossible Times trilogy is published by 47North (there's a story or two in there to be told one day!), one of Amazon's own publishing imprints. So, I also email one of the people involved in the production of those books, and she very kindly agrees to reach out to someone she knows at KDP.
A day later I get an email from the Executive KDP team! This was on October 7th. A phone call from America follows and I get to speak to a human. A charming and helpful American human called Jeremy. He tells me that both my email to Jeff Bezos and to 47North reached his desk and either one would have prompted the call. So, at least you don't have to be published by Amazon and sell 100,000+ books for them before they'll listen.
However – we still had another 13 exciting days to go!…
(6) SKEPTICAL RESPONSE. Following a Last Dangerous Visions progress report, J. Michael Straczysnki fielded criticisms that the writer list (as so far revealed) lacks diverse representation. His explanations prompted further discussion in a thread Karen Osborne kicked off here.
Yeah. They'd already cut down enough of the original accepted-by-Ellison content (some by attrition, some by "oh boy, this story just makes no damn sense now") to make room for some actual contemporary material.
— Naomi Kritzer ?? (@NaomiKritzer) October 20, 2021
appearing in THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS than pretty much anyone marginalized, because they're a lot more likely to think "Harlan Ellison, the GENIUS" rather than "Harlan Ellison, the creep."
(7) SET DECORATION. Gaiman's co-author, the late Terry Pratchett, will be acknowledged again in the sequel: "Good Omens season 2: Neil Gaiman's tribute to Terry Pratchett on set" – Metro News has the story.
…Terry's scarf and hat also appeared in the first season of the show.
Several Good Omens fans shared how much they loved the dedication to Terry on set, with one writing: 'It warms my heart to see Terry Pratchett still represented. I miss the wit and wisdom of his books.'
Terry is here in spirit and hat and scarf. When we shoot in the bookshop we will hang them in there but for now they are here on his chair. #GoodOmens2 pic.twitter.com/vUbraCk5P9
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) October 19, 2021
(8) GET YOUR KICKS. Publishers Weekly interviews the master of a comics industry financial model: "Crowdfunding a Publishing House: PW Talks with Spike Trotman".
…Lots of prose and comics publishers have used crowdfunding to bring out new work, but few have been doing it as long or as well as C. Spike Trotman, publisher/CEO of Chicago-based independent comics publisher Iron Circus Comics. Trotman recently wrapped up her 30th Kickstarter campaign, The Woman in the Woods and Other North American Stories, a new volume of comics stories by indigenous creators which raised more than $330,000 (the goal was $20,000) in September, marking more than $2 million raised by Trotman through the platform since 2009. But beyond the quantitative success, Trotman has led the way in using crowdfunding as part of a scalable publishing business model that brings unique projects from diverse creators into the mainstream comics and trade book distribution system.
… "I have one foot in international distribution through old-fashioned methods and one foot in the world of Kickstarter," she said. "I'm distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, a division of Ingram that specializes in the quirky small press lines."
She explained that it is not a prevalent strategy for crowdfunders because book distributors generally expect presses to put out at least 10 books per year. "A lot of crowdfunders can't manage 10 books for trade bookstores, and I understand because it's really hard. What got me through the door, in addition to volume, was that I had made the step between exclusively self-distributing through conventions or a website, and a larger company like Ingram. I was already reaching out to comic stores and independent bookstores, emailing them PDFs of my books and my catalog, and giving them special discount codes if they ordered from me direct."
By the time she approached Ingram, Trotman already had more than 40 retailers placing orders. "We couldn't fulfill the wholesale orders of 40 or 45 stores and run the business, so it's good they were able to work with us."…
(9) END OF THE CYCLE. Hollywood Insider examines "The Rise and Fall of Young Adult Dystopian Adaptation Franchises".
The year is 2014, the Oscars release a selfie of the world's biggest movie stars, Justin Bieber's mugshot surfaces, Emma Watson speaks at the United Nations for gender equality, 'The Fault in Our Stars' popularizes the infinity sign; just about everything seems right in the world. As someone who lived and breathed the culture of 2014, everything in the world of pop-culture just seemed easy.
There is a bitter-sweet existence in knowing that decades have passed since the beginning of 'Harry Potter' with eight films from 2001-2011 earning 7.7 billion USD from the box office. Or the next successful franchise, 'Twilight' with five films from 2008-2012 earning 3.3 billion USD from the box office. Both YA franchises were the kick-start to a rapid incline of young adult dystopian films centered around political impact, connections, love, and loss. Ultimately the success of pop culture, income, and fan-bases from the 'Harry Potter' and 'Twilight' franchises became the reason as to why studios reached out to the most popular young adult novels in order to try and gain that same impact for more films. So much so that the number of franchises that were successful compared to the ones that failed before their sequel is rather devastating. At the same time, some films give off the apparent reason as to why they failed with lousy acting, even poorer attention to storyline adaptation, timing, and in cases simply didn't work for audiences.
… With the success of the previous films mentioned, studios began to create anything they thought would be comparable or better than the previous successors. But, with the heavy amount of failures as opposed to the successes, the amount of YA dystopian fiction adaptations diminished into almost nothing. Nowadays, studios are choosing to create YA films targeting important meanings or values such as gay relationships, movements such as Black Lives Matter, or the realism of cyberbullying….
1967 – Fifty-four years ago on this evening, NBC first aired Star Trek's "Doomsday Machine" which was scripted by Norman Spinrad. It was the sixth episode of the second season. The principal guest star was William Windom as Commodore Matt Decker. The episode is considered one of the finest of the series with the TV Guide ranking it the fourth best, and SciFiNow recently ranked it the tenth best episode of the original series. The special effects and much of the episode were digitally remastered fifteen years ago. And yes, it was nominated for a Hugo at Baycon, one of five Trek episodes so nominated that Con with the Harlan Ellison scripted "The City on the Edge of Forever" being the winner.
Born October 20, 1882 — Bela Lugosi. He's best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 film franchise Drácula. He came to hate that he played that character feeling he'd been typecast which he certainly had. Now tell me what's your favorite film character that he played? (Died 1956)
Born October 20, 1905 — Frederic Dannay. One half with Manfred Bennington Lee of the writing team who created Ellery Queen. ISFDB lists two Ellery Queen novels as being genre, And on the Eight Day and The Scrolls of Lysis, plus a single short story, " A Study in Terror". (Died 1982.)
Born October 20, 1916 — Anton Diffring, A long career with many genre roles which I'll note but a few of here. He was Fabian in Fahrenheit 451 who the sixty-eighth anniversary of the novel we noted yesterday, Graf Udo Von Felseck of Purbridge Manor in The Masks of Deaths (a rather well-crafted Holmes film) and he played De Flores, a neo-Nazi in "Silver Nemesis", a most excellent Seventh Doctor story. (Died 1989.)
Born October 20, 1923 — Erle Korshak. He's a reminder of how old fandom is. He discovered SF in 1934 with the August Astounding magazine and became a very serious collector in 1937 according to several sources. By 1939 he was a well-known fan and one of the leaders of the Moonstruck Press publishing house which was created to created a bibliography of all fantasy books. He was part of the leadership triumvirate of Chicon 1, the 1940 Worldcon. He later founded a publishing house whose first major work was Everett F. Bleiler's The Checklist of Fantastic Literature in the late Forties, a pioneering work of SF bibliography. This was followed by major works by Heinlein, Bester, Fredric Brown and other SF suthors. He was absent from fandom from the late 50s for thirty years, then rejoined fandom and was attending cons with his children. He was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1996, and won the Barry R. Levin Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Lifetime Collectors Award in 2001. (Died 2021.)
Born October 20, 1934 — Michael Dunn. He's best remembered for his recurring role on the Wild Wild West as Dr. Miguelito Loveless attempting to defeat our heroes over and over, but he has had other appearances in genre television. He would be Alexander, a court jester, in the Trek "Plato's Stepchildren" episode and a killer clown in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea's "The Wax Men" episode. He was even in the Get Smart! pilot as Mr. Big. (Died 1973.)
Born October 20, 1937 — Emma Tennant. To the manor born and a lifelong supporter of Labour, ISFDB lists nine of her novels as being as SFF. As the Literary Encyclopedia says " Her work is feminist, magical and wicked, and uses the fantastic and the Gothic to interpret and explore everyday women's roles." I've not read her, so do tell me about her please if you've read her! (Died 2017.)
Born October 20, 1958 — Lynn Flewelling, 63. The lead characters of her Nightrunner series are both bisexual, and she has stated this is so was because of "the near-absence of LGBT characters in the genre and marginalization of existing ones." (As quoted in Strange Horizon, September 2001) The Tamír Triad series is her companion series to this affair.
Born October 20, 1966 — Diana Rowland, 55. New Orleans writer with a fascinating job history that includes cop, a crime scene investigator, and a morgue assistant. She's best known for her Kara Gillian series and White Trash Zombie series. Her only award is a Phoenix Award, a lifetime achievement award for a science fiction professional who has done a great deal for Southern Fandom, given by DeepSouthCon.
The Far Side — Two eyes? Two arms? Weird number!
(13) BLACK PANTHER #200. Marvel's Black Panther comics will reach its milestone 200th issue in January. To celebrate, Black Panther #3 will be an oversized issue with bonus stories celebrating the past and foreshadowing the future of the Black Panther and the world of Wakanda. (Click on gallery for larger images.)
Writer John Ridley will introduce a new hero who rises up to protect the people of Wakanda while T'Challa finds his life and role as Black Panther thrown into turmoil! Fans will be able to witness the beginning of this new hero's journey before seeing him become a key player of Ridley's run in future issues.
In addition, the main story in the 200th issue of BLACK PANTHER will see T'Challa face off against the X-Men! With assassins closing in and Wakanda's faith in him shaken, T'Challa goes to visit Storm on the newly terraformed Mars. But this will not be a happy reunion as T'Challa has ulterior motives for his visit. And back home, Shuri discovers who is behind the attacks on Wakanda's secret agents — a revelation that will change everything.
(14) SCHWAB Q&A. "V.E. Schwab's New Graphic Novel Returns to her Villains Series", and Publishers Weekly did an interview with her.
Publishers Weekly: The power you gave Charlotte is a truly horrifying one: When she looks at someone's reflection, she can vividly foresee the moment of their death. How did you come up with that?
V.E. Schwab: It's the very first power I ever created for the Villains universe. In the first iteration of Vicious, I had as my main character a man who arrives in this city and two warring groups of people try to recruit him, the Heroes and the Villains. They're essentially gangs. This character had this ability to see deaths in reflective surfaces, and I loved that ability. The story didn't work. I ended up just stopping for a minute to write the backstories for the gang leaders, and that's where I got the Victor and Eli story which would go on to be the series. But I always was looking for someone to give this power to. The way that the powers work in this world is that they're tied to near-death experiences. You can't just give the power to anyone; you almost have to retroactively figure out the person from the power. So I had to figure out what circumstance puts Charlotte into the situation where she has a near-death experience that leads to this ability.
(15) AT THE SCREENING. At Black Gate, Matthew David Surridge reviews an interesting-looking animated fantasy film called The Spine of Night: "Fantasia 2021, Part XXXII: The Spine Of Night"
…The feature film it was bundled with was the movie I'd been most eagerly looking forward to at Fantasia, and it did not disappoint. The Spine of Night, written and directed by the team of Morgan Galen King and Philip Gelatt, is billed as a feature-length animated sword-and-sorcery film for adults in the vein of the Heavy Metal movie. And it very much is that. It's more serious than Heavy Metal in many ways, but the violence and cosmic scope is if anything even greater….
(16) SPACE CUISINE CHALLENGE. This is not your father's space ice cream — or — chow, chow, chow — or — "NASA Announces Winners of Deep Space Food Challenge". (The chosen teams are listed at the link.)
Variety, nutrition, and taste are some considerations when developing food for astronauts. For NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge, students, chefs, small businesses, and others whipped up novel food technology designs to bring new solutions to the table.
NASA has selected 18 U.S. teams to receive a total of $450,000 for ideas that could feed astronauts on future missions. Each team will receive $25,000. Additionally, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) jointly recognized 10 international submissions.
NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency's website will air a show on the Deep Space Food Challenge at 11 a.m. EST Nov. 9 with details about the competition, winning solutions, and what could be next for the teams.
Special guests during the show will include celebrity chef Martha Stewart and retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who will announce the winners of two awards honoring international teams that demonstrated exceptional innovation. Other participants will include retired CSA astronaut Chris Hadfield and celebrity chef Lynn Crawford…
(17) LIKE THAT WHALE IN OREGON? "The often untold story of cleaning up dead kaiju finally coming to theaters next year" promises SoraNews24. I knew I'll be holding my breath.
…And coming 4 February, 2022, a truly bold experiment in the genre is set to take place. Daikaiju No Atoshimatsu (lit. "The Great Monster's Remains", tentative English title: Kaiju Cleanup) marks the first time veteran film studios Shochiku and Toei have teamed up on a single feature. Perhaps the reason two companies were needed is that this movie boasts the largest monster in Japanese movie history.
However, it's dead for pretty much the whole film….
That's because Daikaiju No Atoshimatsu picks up where most tokusatsu films leave off. The evil kaiju collapses in defeat, the hero walks off into the sunset, and credits roll, but also those poor extras who have already been through so much, now have a gigantic rotting corpse to dispose of….
(18) VINTAGE VINELAND. A study published in Nature finds "In tree rings and radioactive carbon, signs of the Vikings in North America" reports NBC News.
… Previous studies have established there was such a cosmic ray event in the year 993 that for a few months caused greater than usual levels of radioactive carbon-14 in the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere.
Trees "breathe" carbon dioxide as they grow, and so the researchers used that radioactive carbon signature to determine which of the annual growth rings seen in cross-sections of the wood was from 993, Kuitems said.
They then used a microscope to count the later growth rings until the bark of the wood, which gave them the exact year the tree had stopped growing — in other words, when it had been felled by the Norse.
To their surprise, each of the three pieces of wood they tested was from a tree cut down in 1021, although they were from three different trees — two firs and probably one juniper….
(19) LOST AND FOUND. Cowboy Bebop's "The Lost Session" teaser debuts online. The live-action remake arrives at Netflix November 19.
(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In "Squid Game Pitch Meeting" on Screen Rant, Ryan George, in a spoiler-packed episode, confuses the producer, who thinks the game is in the Shark Tales universe. But why are the bad guys pretending to be PlayStation buttons?
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Dann, Cora Buhlert, Lise Andreasen, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll | Tagged Black Panther, Canadian Space Agency, Cowboy Bebop, crowdfunding, DisCon III, dystopia, Good Omens, J. Michael Straczynski, kaiju, Kickstarter, Kindle Direct Publishing, Last Dangerous Visions, Mark Lawrence, Masters of the Universe, Matthew David Surridge, Nancy Kress, Naomi Kritzer, NASA, Neil Gaiman, Ryan George, Spike Trotman, Terry Pratchett, The Rogues in the House, V. E. Schwab, Vikings

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