Tag Archives: A. Bertram Chandler

Pixel Scroll 3/28/26 In The Well Of Scrolls, Everyone Is A Pixel

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(1) ASTERISK NEWS. SFWA’s March 27 press release “More on the Nebulas: Past, Present, and Future Conversations” included this note —

We are still waiting to hear back from Bradbury and Game finalists on award acceptance and their responses to the LLM question. Those entries are marked as provisional on the ballot.

Only one of the seven finalists originally flagged, Murderbot, has had the asterisk removed so far. The other Game Writing and five Dramatic Presentation finalists are still “provisional”.

(2) FOR THE COMPULSIVELY HONEST. Camestros Felapton offers authors who want to make their situation absolutely clear to the world a ten-level taxonomy of progressively increased use of generative AI: “Rating an absence of AI”.

….There are a bunch of other edge cases that I see people make about their work, including using AI for research but not for writing. A trickier issue is the degree to which these services are becoming embedded in web searches, web browsers and operating systems. This makes it easier for people to casually use AIs like Microsoft’s Copilot without really being aware of it.

I think it would be good if people were clear about their usage. So here is a draft of a sort of level of disclaimer/AI usage policy. This isn’t a linear scale….

… I think Levels 6 to 10 have a broad consensus of being bad. Personally, I think levels 3 and 4 are where people stumble into greater AI usage and are likely to find themselves at level 5 without really thinking about it. Level 5 is a terrible spot to sit, because it is where people who say that they don’t use AI (and sort of mean it) but ended up publishing something that does include AI…

(3) MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE. At the New Museum in New York City – “New Humans: Memories of the Future”.

New Humans explores how technological developments have inspired evolving definitions of the “human.”

New Humans: Memories of the Future will inaugurate the New Museum’s expanded building with an exploration of artists’ enduring preoccupation with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes. New Humans will trace a diagonal history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the work of more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers, highlighting key moments when dramatic technological and social changes spurred new conceptions of humanity and new visions for its possible futures….

…New Humans illuminates artists’ evolving visions of the future. The exhibition surveys the myriad shapes that humanity might take, from robots and cyborgs to haunting, seemingly alien life forms, and moves beyond the field of art by bringing together utopian architects, sci-fi filmmakers, and eccentric writers who imagine physical, virtual, and even post-human worlds….

(4) FLOCK OFF. The Sheep Detectives with Hugh Jackman comes to theaters May 8.

George Hardy, a shepherd who loves his sheep and raises them only for their wool. Every night he reads aloud a murder mystery, pretending his sheep can understand, never suspecting that not only can they understand, but they argue for hours afterwards about whodunnit. When George is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the sheep realise at once that it was a murder and think they know everything about how to go about solving it. The local cop Tim Derry, on the other hand, has never solved a serious crime in his life, so the sheep conclude they will have to solve it themselves, even if it means leaving their meadow for the first time and facing the fact that the human world isn’t as simple as it appears in books.

(5) JAMES TOLKAN (1931-2026). Actor James Tolan died March 26 at the age of 94. In the Back to the Future trilogy he played principal Mr. Strickland in the first and second films, and returned as the grandfather of his character for the third. The Back to the Future™ website profiled his career:

…After a short Navy career during the Korean War, and stints at three colleges, he got on a bus for New York City with $75.00 in his pocket and found a cold water flat where the rent equaled his VA check.  He went to work on the docks and enrolled with both Stella Adler and Lee Strasburg to learn the art of acting.  He spent 25 years in New York theater, from off off Broadway to the great White Way. Notably, he was a member of the original ensemble cast of “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

Tolkan did several movie roles while still based in New York City including “Prince of the City” (1981) for director Sidney Lumet, but moved his career to California and Canada in 1983 when he was cast in “War Games.” His most memorable film roles were as Mr. Strickland in “Back to the Future” (1985) for director Robert Zemeckis, and as Tom Cruises’s CO “Stinger” in “Top Gun” (1986).  He had a dual role in Woody Allen’s “Love and Death,” and appeared in numerous films and TV shows through 2011.

Tolkan is survived by his wife of 54 years, Parmelee, and three nieces in Des Moines, IA….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 28, 1912 — A. Bertram Chandler. (Died 1984.)

A. Bertram Chandler, my favorite Australian writer.

Did you ever hear of space opera? Of course you have. Well, the universe of Chandler’s character John Grimes is such. A very good place to start is the Baen Books omnibus To The Galactic Rim which contains three novels and seven stories. If there’s a counterpart to him, it’d be I think Dominic Flandry who appeared in Anderson’s Technic History series. (My opinion, yours may differ.) Oh, and I’ve revisited both to see if the Suck Fairy had dropped by. She hadn’t. If fact she likes him a lot. Good girl. 

Connected to the Grimes stories are the Rim World works of which The Deep Reaches of Space is the prime work. The main story is set in an earlier period of the same future timeline as Grimes, a period in which ships are the magnetic Gaussjammers, recalled with some nostalgia in Grimes’ time. They don’t say what happened to them. 

But that’s hardly all that he wrote. I remember fondly The Alternate Martians, a novella that he did. A space expedition to Mars finds themselves in the worlds of H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline. Why he chose the latter I know not as I’d never heard of him. It’s a great story well told. And fun to boot. It was first published as an Ace Double, The Alternate Martians / Empress of Outer Space. Gateway has released it as a separate epub for a mere buck ninety nine at the usual suspects. 

He wrote a reasonably large number of stand-alone-alones, so what did I like?  For a bit of nicely done horror, you can’t beat The Star Beasts — yes, I know that there’s nothing terribly original there but it’s entertaining to read; Glory Planet has a watery Venus occupied by anti-machine theocracy opposed by a high-tech city-state fascinating; and finally I liked The Coils of Time in which a scientist has created a Time Machine but now needs a guinea pig, errr, a volunteer to go back through time and see what’s there —  did it go as planned? Oh guess.

I see that he’s written but a handful of short stories, none of which I’ve read other than the ones in To The Galactic Rim. So who here has? 

He’s won five Ditmars and The Giant Killer novel was nominated for a Retro Hugo. 

All in all, I like him a lot. . Bertram Chandler, my favorite Australian writer. 

A. Bertram Chandler and Susan Wood – 1980 Norwescon – Photo by and © Andrew Porter

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) PUBLISHER TRIES TO DEFEND USE OF AI ART IN COMIC. Bleeding Cool’s Rich Johnston quotes the claims from The Moons on Mars press release followed by his own comment: “Daniel Peacock’s Comic, The Moons On Mars, Launches, Created With A.I.”

“This is where the saga begins — a universe of mystery, rebellion, and cosmic destiny… The Moons on Mars is built on a foundation of respect — respect for artists, respect for storytelling, and respect for the creative process. For 18 months, we actively sought to collaborate with several human artists to bring Daniel Peacock’s brilliant and profound story to life. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to secure the right artistic partnership in time. Rather than place this extraordinary narrative on indefinite hold, we were fortunate to meet and work with Wayne Jackson, whose vision and guidance helped us explore ethical, transparent, and responsible uses of AI to move the project forward. Our use of AI is not a shortcut and it is certainly not a replacement for human creativity. It is a tool — one we use with intention, accountability, and deep appreciation for the artistic community. …This is not an anti‑artist project. It is a pro‑storytelling project. It exists because we refused to let a powerful, meaningful story be lost to circumstance. AI allowed us to keep the momentum alive while continuing to honour the craft, the creators, and the community that inspires us. The Moons on Mars stands as an example of how AI can be used ethically — not to replace artists, but to empower stories, expand opportunities, and invite more people into the creative universe we are building.”

Says Johnston:

I am not sure that anyone reading this is going to buy that. Generative AI, especially such visual creation, is built on artwork scraped and stolen without permission from many thousands of artists, without credit or compensation. Vanguard Comics has given no reason why it is not the case in this issue.

(9) ARE SPACECRAFT CONTAMINATING MARS? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Any transfer of life-forms from Earth to Mars would complicate searches for life on the red planet or could damage any undiscovered sensitive ecosystem. Spacecraft are prepared in cleanrooms but still carry some hardy microorganisms such as bacterial spores. Bischof  et al. modelled the survival of microorganisms on and within 14 spacecraft that reached the Mars surface. They found that ultraviolet solar radiation effectively sterilizes the exterior shell of each spacecraft inflight. Exposed surfaces of landers and rovers are similarly decontaminated within days to months after landing. However, any unheated spacecraft interiors could retain viable spores for decades.

Primary research here.

(10) DARK MATTER IS A SINGING GROUP? “Scientists Are Pretty Sure They Found a Portal to the Fifth Dimension” at Popular Mechanics.

Scientists say they can explain dark matter by positing a particle that links to a fifth dimension.

While the “warped extra dimension” (WED) is a trademark of a popular physics model first introduced in 1999, research published in The European Physical Journal C in 2021 is the first to cohesively use the theory to explain the long-lasting dark matter problem within particle physics.

Our knowledge of the physical universe relies on the idea of dark matter, which takes up the vast majority of matter in the universe. Dark matter is a kind of pinch hitter that helps scientists explain how gravity works, because a lot of features would dissolve or fall apart without an “x factor” of dark matter. Even so, dark matter doesn’t disrupt the particles we do see and “feel,” meaning it must have other special properties as well….

… The study seeks to explain the presence of dark matter using a WED model. The scientists studied fermion masses, which they believe could be communicated into the fifth dimension through portals, creating dark matter relics and “fermionic dark matter” within the fifth dimension….

(11) SCIENCE EXPERIMENT FOR FILERS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This time with chocolate. Now, there is no particular reason for you to be interested in what passes for my pedestrian life. One dimension is that I try to keep in touch with old friends lest they be lost in the mists of time or even the Twilight Zone. (An aside – by the way, Rod Serling says, ‘Hi’.)

One group are a handful of my old college mates (worryingly, now from a disturbing near half-century ago!). These are from my alma mater’s old SF group Hatfield PSIFA (now Hertfordshire University PSIFA) and in-between annual reunions we keep in contact. Because Hatfield specialised in engineering and science, it is no surprise we were all STEM students and semi-regularly e-mail each other, over this and that, especially science. And, being SF fans, often topics that tickle straddle the two: science fact and science fiction. This month’s topic is SFnal-adjacent in that it concerns whether communication faster than the speed of light is possible? At this point some Filers may well be having a Spock eyebrow moment, but not every physicist is a strict Einstein adherent. Such ardent Einstein-philes may draw upon light cones and say that FTL means you can travel back in time and so negate causality… While this is true in the broad light-cone sense, once you accept that we live in a universe where time has a one-direction arrow, then half the light-cone diagram goes. (This is ‘preferred slicing’ and is an accepted technique used in analysing things like the cosmic background radiation.) Once you have done that, it is then easy – even I can do it – to mathematically prove that you cannot go back in time using faster than light even if to observers two people travelling at different speeds see time passing at different rates: time dilation.) And so with this consideration FTL is possible without a threat to causality.

Our seasonal topic was prompted by Sabine Hossenfelder’s latest offering at her YouTube Channel where this month she has rallied against group-think physicists (that’s nearly all of them) in a 19-minute video. She is known for being outspoken but has not uttered this heresy so vehemently until now. (She fears that an AI unbounded by group-think will give physicists a clue as to FTL possibilities in the coming decade and so wants to nail her flag to the mast.) Now, my friends do find her full argument a little heavy going (especially since we lost our physicist colleague [and SF² Concatenation co-founder] Graham Connor, and I particularly find it hard work as I’m an environmental scientist [into human ecology, climate change and Earth system science] who finds calculus and high maths a tad impossible despite my legs like a gazelle and bionic blood).

However, along the way in our e-mail exchanges we often get side-tracked down intriguing, and even fun, avenues. Here, one of these may interest Filers, especially those with kids with whom they wish to nurture an interest in science… You can measure the speed of light in your kitchen using a microwave and some chocolate.  The great thing is that you can eat your results after! (Well, I am all for keeping science biological.) There is a YouTube video on this. (Thanks to Old Age PSIFAn, mega-mathematician, master real-ale brewer, squaxx dek Thargo and Chair Shoestringcon 1: Polycon John W.)  It is only three-and-a-half minutes long, so enjoy (and perhaps you may be tempted to do the experiment with your kids).

The video is below. (Remember, good science is much better than bad SF.) Let’s tread boldly…

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Ersatz Culture, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 3/28/25 I Just Scrolled In From Pixel-Land, And Boy Are My Fans Tired

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(1) CONGRATULATIONS ON EPISODE 250! Scott Edelman invites listeners to rip into roti with writer Tim Paggi in the impressive milestone Episode 250 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Tim Paggi

My guest for the 250th episode of Eating the Fantastic is playwright, poet, and fiction writer Tim Paggi, whom I met at December’s Charm City Spec event where he read an excerpt from his recently published novella How to Kill Friends and Eviscerate People. His poetry chapbook “Workforced” won the 2015 Plork “Play/Work” Award for Creative Writing and Publication Arts. His next book, The Other Side of the Hallway, will be released later this year. He holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore. Additionally, for the past 15 years, he’s been giving ghost tours around the neighborhoods of Fells Point and Mt. Vernon.

We discussed the story behind his X-Files-inspired juvenilia, the reason he demanded a refund from Barnes & Noble for a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, why a writing teacher (wrongfully) accused him of plagiarism, how the beginning of the pandemic was also the beginning of his fiction writing career, whether his recent Cthulhu references were intentional or unavoidable, why the Severance TV show has him feeling anxious (it’s probably not the reason you think), the C-word he avoids using in his fiction, whether facing down audiences on stage helped him deal with rejections on the page, the many reasons he loves cosmic horror, the drunkest group he ever led through Baltimore on a ghost tour, and much more.

(2) OPT-IN OR OPT-OUT OF SCRAPING? The UK’s Society of Authors received over 1,000 responses to their survey of members and authors on the Government’s proposal to change copyright law as part of its consultation on Copyright and AI, and “96% of authors surveyed believe an opt-out system would negatively impact the creative industries”. “SoA report into authors’ views on the AI and Copyright consultation”.

The survey focused on authors’ views on the key topics covered by the Government’s  consultation on Copyright and AI, including: (i) a proposal to introduce a text and data mining (TDM) exception into copyright law, which would allow tech companies to use copyright-protected works without permission, unless the author had explicitly opted out; (ii) transparency, labelling and enforcement measures, and (iii) AI in education.

The government proposed that, rather than having the right to opt in to allowing your work to be exploited by machine learning (the current situation), you would be presumed to have agreed unless you actively opted out. On this question, 96% of respondents believed this would have a negative impact on the creative industries with 91% reporting that they have no experience with opting out; and 82% saying that opting out each of their individual copyright-protected works would negatively impact their business. 

In the comments provided by authors:

  • An overwhelming majority expressed their strong opposition to an opt-out system, calling instead for the current opt-in system to be upheld. Many made the point that our industry has been relying on a permission-based system successfully for decades and it would be hugely unfair to change that for the benefit of one sector.
  • Many respondents helpfully elaborated on the various ways in which opting out simply does not work. For example, robot.txt can be circumvented or ignored, there is no way for authors to know when they need to opt out, and it is technically impossible to remove scraped material from a system, even if the option to opt-out is exercised.
  • Respondents repeatedly raised the same concerns about the damaging impact the government’s policy proposal would have on creators’ livelihoods in the long term, on industry diversity and representation, and the devaluation of the creative work.

58% of respondents were concerned that preventing their website being ‘crawled’ or ‘scraped’ for machine learning by opting out could negatively affect their discoverability online. There was particular concern here from illustrators who use their website and social media to showcase their work but now feel that the risks outweigh the benefits.

(3) ANIME GOES UNDER THE HAMMER. “Studio Ghibli and Anime Icons Power Heritage’s Record-Setting $1.49 Million Art of Anime: Vol. VI” reports Heritage Auctions.

Kiki’s Delivery Service Senior Witch and Cat Production Cel (Studio Ghibli, 1989).

Leading the charge was an electrifying lineup of Studio Ghibli masterpieces, headlined by a rare production cel of the elusive “Senior Witch” from Kiki’s Delivery Service, which cast a spell at $48,000 — one of the highest totals ever realized for the 1989 film. Another Kiki standout, a charming Key Master setup of the title character peering into a brick oven, fired up at $16,000. Beloved Ghibli titles like Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso and Grave of the Fireflies excelled over the course of the event, and not surprisingly, a significant production cel featuring the beloved Catbus from the final moments of My Neighbor Totoro trundled away for $13,000….

…Beyond Ghibli, the auction was packed with legendary titles that flexed their muscle across the bidding floor. Berserk claimed the highest price in the sale with a staggering $85,000 for a harmony cel setup created by master art director Shichiro Kobayashi. The cel, an atmospheric piece originally created for a home video release, stands as one of the most important Berserk artworks ever sold at auction — a fitting tribute to the late Kentaro Miura’s dark fantasy epic.

Akira, the cyberpunk juggernaut that helped bring anime into global consciousness, made a bold showing with two rare production backgrounds of Neo-Tokyo’s dystopian skyline, which sold for $11,000 and $8,500. Macross fans powered fierce bidding on original concept art, including Shoji Kawamori’s VF-1J Valkyrie ($18,000) and Haruhiko Mikimoto’s character concept of protagonist Hikaru Ichijyo ($11,000)….

(4) HOW THEY COMPLETED THE MISSION. The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY will host an exhibit on stunt work in “MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—Story and Spectacle” beginning April 18.

Variety has more details: “’Mission: Impossible’ Exhibition Coming to Museum of Moving Image”.

Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) will launch a major initiative celebrating the “Mission: Impossible” franchise on April 18. The exhibition will spotlight star and producer Tom Cruise’s commitment to practical stunt work (think clinging to the face of the Burj Khalifa, as well as to the sides of various planes, trains and automobiles), and explore how the series combines technical ingenuity in service of storytelling, character development and performance. It opens ahead of the Memorial Day Weekend release of the eighth film in the series, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”

Sections of the exhibition, entitled “Mission: Impossible — Story and Spectacle,” will be devoted to each film in the series, with a focus on that film’s key stunt or action sequence, along with unique behind-the-scenes content that offers insight on how the death-defying stunts were prepared for and filmed, complemented by related production artifacts. Paramount Pictures produces the films.

(5) WATERSTONE’S PRIZE. [Item by Steven French.] A book inspired by a game the author’s family played during lockdown has won this year’s Waterstones children’s book prize reports the Guardian.  “The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods wins Waterstones children’s book prize”

The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please was announced as the winner of the £5,000 award, voted on by Waterstones booksellers, at a ceremony on Thursday evening.

The book tells the story of Rene, who opens a cafe beside an enchanted wood and prepares to serve the finest cuisine with the help of a waiter, Glumfoot, only to discover that the locals have a very odd palette, favouring disgusting foods.

“The story grew from a game my wife, son and I would play during lockdown”, said Please. His wife, Jess, would pretend to be a “pompous chef”, his son, Axel, would play the “downtrodden waiter”, while Please himself would act the part of a demanding customer.

“The dynamic of these three characters was so rich, the setting so loaded with potential, and the opportunity to showcase my long-practised and long-underappreciated art of rearranging food to look funny, made the story impossible to resist”, said Please.

Please is a writer, animator and illustrator whose works include the 2011 stop motion animated film The Eagleman Stag, which won a Bafta for best short animation. His debut novel, The Expanded Earth, will be published 3 April.

(6) BECOMING MEDIA SAVVY. Gideon P. Smith tells SFWA Blog readers about “Successfully Talking to the Press About Your Art: Plot It, Don’t Pants It!”

…Their questions will likely be very generic if they haven’t read your work, which results in uninteresting copy. There are two ways to combat this:

  • Create a playbook of answers to generic questions. These answers should be concise but add something unique about your work. You can predict generic questions by considering what anyone who hadn’t read something might ask. (e.g. “What is the book about?” “What was your inspiration?”) or by reviewing prior interviews. 
  • However, the better way to help them create a strong story is to suggest questions. This may sound counterintuitive given they are the interviewer, but you are the expert—on yourself, your work, and your story. You know what makes your book unique, whether it’s an unusual magic system, scientific influence, or personal connection. Most journalists will appreciate your taking a proactive approach if you highlight what’s unique or provide interesting angles. It makes their job easier.

Your playbook should help readers quickly identify your book’s genre and subgenre, then draw them in with an intriguing hook. Make it personal—within your comfort zone—so readers connect with you and your work. Finally, ensure the interview ends with clear information on where to find you and your work (social media, website, book links)…

(7) MORE ON BBC RADIO 4. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] As it happened, got home and yesterday afternoon BBC Radio 4’s Feedback programme had an item on this. “Announcement of the end of an era on Radio 4.” Ex pat Brits were fairly pissed off, as were those in the Republic of Ireland who like to listen to the BBC. It looks like some final decisions have to be made.

Andrea Catherwood shares exclusive news of the end of a long-running Radio 4 programme. Frequent contributors and the programme’s commissioning editor give their thoughts on the well-known brand as it nears its final episode.

BBC Sounds is soon to become unavailable outside of the UK. Listeners from all over the world have been in touch to voice their disappointment about the changes, and we’ve heard in particular from people in the Republic of Ireland who tune into BBC Radio content from north of the border. Will the geo-blocking cause unintended political ramifications? Andrea discusses the issue with Shane Harrison, former BBC correspondent in Dublin.

(8) IT’S ALL ABOUT ME. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency teaches everyone how to be a staggering bore in “The Art of Asking a Question to a Literary Festival Panel”.

The key to asking a successful question at a literary festival panel is preparation. You’ll want to have every detail of the preface to your question prepared, such as your name, age, and entire medical history. Don’t worry about the actual question; you can make that up as you go along….

(9) TODAY’S DAY.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 28, 1912 — A. Bertram Chandler. (Died 1984.)

A. Bertram Chandler, my favorite Australian writer. 

Did you ever hear of space opera? Of course you have. Well, the universe of Chandler’s character John Grimes is such. A very good place to start is the Baen Books omnibus of To The Galactic Rim which contains three novels and seven stories. If there’s a counterpart to him, it’d be I think Dominic Flandry who appeared in Anderson’s Technic History series. (My opinion, yours may differ.) Oh, and I’ve revisited both to see if the Suck Fairy had dropped by. She hadn’t. If fact she likes him a lot. Good girl. 

A. Bertram Chandler

Connected to the Grimes stories are the Rim World works of which The Deep Reaches of Space is the prime work. The main story is set in an earlier period of the same future timeline as Grimes, a period in which ships are the magnetic Gaussjammers, recalled with some nostalgia in Grimes’ time. They don’t say what happened to them. 

But that’s hardly all that he wrote. I remember fondly The Alternate Martians, a novella that he did. A space expedition to Mars that find themselves in the worlds of H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline. Why he chose the latter I know not as I’d never heard of him. It’s a great story well told. And fun to boot. It was first published as an Ace Double, The Alternate Martians / Empress of Outer Space. Gateway has released it as a separate epub for a mere buck ninety nine at the usual suspects. 

He wrote a reasonably large number of stand-alone-alones, so what did I like?  For a bit of nicely done horror, you can’t beat The Star Beasts — yes, I know that there’s nothing terribly original there but it’s entertaining to read; Glory Planet has a watery Venus occupied by anti-machine theocracy opposed by a high-tech city-state fascinating; and finally I liked The Coils of Time in which a scientist has created a Time Machine but now needs a guinea pig, errr, a volunteer to go back through time and see what’s there —  did it go as planned? Oh guess.

I see that he’s written but a handful of short stories, none of which I’ve read other than the ones in To The Galactic Rim. So who here has? 

He’s won five Ditmars and The Giant Killer novel was nominated for a Retro Hugo. 

All in all, I like him a lot. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) A JARRING EXHIBIT. [Item by Steven French.] Well, I like science-fiction and I really like pickles, so maybe this is the art show for me! “Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off – fantastical sci-fi visions with a side order of pickles” in the Guardian.

There’s a lot of art about birth, death and rebirth, but not a lot of it uses pickles. Preserves, however, are all over Polish artist Rafał Zajko’s biggest solo show yet. Big jars of brine filled with salty cucumbers and little figurines in the shape of cryogenic preservation chambers. That combination of the fantastically sci-fi and the mundanely everyday is Zajko’s hallmark. The young London-based artist has spent the past few years showing ceramic and concrete sculptures filled with flights of cybernetic romanticism and nods to vaping, baking and pickling.

In The Spin Off, as this show at Focal Point Gallery in Southend is called, he has gone on a deep dive into a vast mess of ideas about longevity and rebirth. The centre of the space is dominated by an ovoid floor sculpture that gets moved and reshaped throughout the week. Laid across its surface, ceramic tiles are assembled to look like a map of planetary systems or control panels for alien spaceships, covered in incomprehensible knobs, buttons and displays. Circular sections of it can be lifted out and replaced with items from the cabinets on the wall: little concrete eggs, ceramic kaiser rolls, jars of pickles…

(13) LEAVIN’ ON A JET PLANE. Nature reports “75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving”.

The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.

The trend was particularly pronounced among early-career researchers. Of the 690 postgraduate researchers who responded, 548 were considering leaving; 255 of 340 PhD students said the same.

Trump’s administration has slashed research funding and halted broad swathes of federally funded science, under a government-wide cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk. Tens of thousands of federal employees, including many scientists, have been fired and rehired following a court order, with threats of more mass firings to come. Immigration crackdowns and battles over academic freedom have left researchers reeling as uncertainty and disruption permeate all aspects of the US research enterprise.

Nature asked readers whether these changes were causing them to consider leaving the United States. Responses were solicited earlier this month on the journal’s website, on social media and in the Nature Briefing e-mail newsletter. Roughly 1,650 people completed the survey.

Many respondents were looking to move to countries where they already had collaborators, friends, family or familiarity with the language. “Anywhere that supports science,” wrote one respondent. Some who had moved to the United States for work planned to return to their country of origin…

(14) WILL SUCCESS SPOIL THEM? [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Sarah Thwaites considers what success means for indie game developers: “These games were indie smash hits – but what happened next?”

It is now more or less impossible to put a precise figure on the number of video games released each year. According to data published by the digital store Steam, almost 19,000 titles were released in 2024 – and that’s just on one platform. Hundreds more arrived on consoles and smartphones. In some ways this is the positive sign of a vibrant industry, but how on earth does a new project get noticed? When Triple A titles with multimillion dollar marketing budgets are finding it hard to gain attention (disappointing sales have been reported for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the Final Fantasy VII remakes and EA Sports FC), what chance is there for a small team to break out?

And yet it does happen. Last year’s surprise hit Balatro has shifted more than 5m copies. Complex medieval strategy title Manor Lords sold 1m copies during its launch weekend. But what awaits a small developer after they achieve success? And what does success even mean in a continuously evolving industry?

(15) ALTADENA FIRE CONSEQUENCES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Science journal cover story: “Toxic Legacy”:

The wildfire that swept through Altadena, California, in January burned houses and cars as well as vegetation, generating smoke that contained a complex mix of toxic chemicals. Weeks later, these chemicals still cling to the soil and remaining structures. Researchers are working intensively to understand the lingering hazards of such urban wildfires. See page 1343.

Also, “In The Ashes”:

Little is known about the long-term effects of wildfires that burn into urban areas, which are becoming more common. Wildfire torched more than 1000 structures near Boulder, Colorado, in 2021 and more than 2000 structures in the Hawaiian town of Lahaina in 2023, where 102 people died. In 2022, a committee formed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found gaping holes in our understanding of what’s in the smoke and ash from wildland-urban fires, and what it could mean for people’s health.

(16) OPERATION SURPRISE PACKAGE. [Item by Steven French.] A new article in Astra Astronautica asks if there is a moral imperative to ‘seed’ the universe with life and answers in the negative: “One day we might seed the universe with life. But should we?” at Phys.org.

Suppose humanity was faced with an extinction-level event. Not just high odds, but certain-sure. A nearby supernova will explode and irradiate all life, a black hole will engulf the Earth, a Mars-sized interstellar asteroid with our name on it. A cataclysm that will end all life on Earth.

We could accept our fate and face our ultimate extinction together. We could gather the archives from libraries across the world and launch them into space in the hopes that another civilization will find them. Or we could build a fleet of arks containing life from Earth. Not people, but bacteria, fungi and other simple organisms. Seed the universe with our genetic heritage. Of all of these, the last option has the greatest chance of continuing our story. It’s an idea known as directed panspermia, and we will soon have the ability to undertake it. But should we?

The idea of directed panspermia has been discussed since at least the 1970s. Carl Sagan and others even entertained the possibility that life on Earth is the result of directed panspermia from another civilization. But a recent study in Acta Astronautica looks at the idea from an ethical and philosophical perspective, asking what the moral cost of such an endeavor is….

(17) MORE MARS MOLECULES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] More news coverage on the Mars rover’s detection of long chain molecules in “Mars rover detects long-chain carbon molecules” in this week’s Science journal.

Meteorites carry cargoes of fatty acids that come not from life, but from chemical reactions in the early Solar System, and they could have easily doused the surface with fatty acids early in Martian history, says Eva Scheller, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Or the acids could have evolved on Mars from the Kerogen-like particles that Curiosity detected—which might them-selves be abiotic in origin.

This is so, but here’s the deal, irrespective of whether or not these molecules have a biological origin the thing is that such putative biosignatures can survive for millions of years does suggest that the trace remains of any real life may still be detectable today….

(18) CHINA’S FUTURE SPACE MISSIONS. “As NASA faces cuts, China reveals ambitious plans for planetary exploration” – Ars Technica tells what they are.

China created a new entity called the “Deep Space Exploration Laboratory” three years ago to strengthen the country’s approach to exploring the Solar System. Located in eastern China, not far from Shanghai, the new laboratory represented a partnership between China’s national space agency and a local public college, the University of Science and Technology of China.

Not much is known outside of China about the laboratory, but it has recently revealed some very ambitious plans to explore the Solar System, including the outer planets. This week, as part of a presentation, Chinese officials shared some public dates about future missions.

Space journalist Andrew Jones, who tracks China’s space program, shared some images with a few details. Among the planned missions are:

2028: Tianwen-3 mission to collect samples of Martian soil and rocks and return them to Earth

2029: Tianwen-4 mission to explore Jupiter and its moon Callisto

2030: Development of a large, ground-based habitat to simulate long-duration human spaceflight

2033: Mission to Venus that will return samples of its atmosphere to Earth

2038: Establishment of an autonomous Mars research station to study in-situ resource utilization

2039: Mission to Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, with a subsurface explorer for its ocean…

(19) LETTING IT OUT OF THE BAG. “Black Bag Movie Review: Does This Sexy Spy Thriller Deliver?” asks Erin Underwood.

Black Bag pairs Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in a sizzling, high-stakes spy thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh. This sleek, action-packed film explores trust, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. But does it deliver on the thrills? In this review, I break down the story, analyze standout performances, and reveal what makes Black Bag different from typical spy films.

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mark Roth-Whitworth for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 3/28/24 Did You Ever Dance With The Pixel In The Pale Scroll Light?

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(1) JAMES A. MOORE (1965-2024). [Item by Anne Marble.]Horror and fantasy author James A. Moore died March 27. Christopher Golden made the announcement in a concise obituary on Facebook.

Celebrated horror and fantasy author James A. Moore passed away this morning at the age of 58. Moore was the author of more than fifty horror and fantasy novels, including the critically acclaimed Fireworks, Under The Overtree, Blood Red, the Serenity Falls trilogy (featuring his recurring anti-hero, Jonathan Crowley) and the grimdark fantasy series Seven Forges and Tides of War. Moore also co-wrote many novels and stories with his longtime collaborator Charles R. Rutledge. 

His early career highlights included major contributions to White Wolf Games’ World of Darkness, and he was especially proud of his first comic book script sale, to Marvel Comics original series set in the world of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. A prolific and versatile writer, Jim wrote novels based on various media properties, including Alien, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Avengers. 

He was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award three times, for his novel Serenity Falls, in the long fiction category for Bloodstained Oz, a collaboration with Christopher Golden, and as editor (with Golden) for the groundbreaking horror anthology The Twisted Book of Shadows, for which the pair won the Shirley Jackson Award. 

Beyond his work, Jim Moore was a much-beloved figure in the horror community, a tireless champion of other writers and their work, who mentored dozens of new writers, relentlessly urging them to pursue their desire to tell stories. He is survived by his wife, Tessa Moore, and his legions of readers. No wake or funeral is planned, but a celebration of life will be held sometime in April.

And on his own blog Golden has written a longer and more personal remembrance: “James A. Moore”.

Many writers are remembering Moore as a supportive friend and a mentor.

A couple of GoFundMe campaigns were established by Camp Necon to help James A. Moore (and his family). There was one established to help him during a cancer battle, and there was a more recent one established to help both him and his wife with medical expenses after he beat cancer: “Fundraiser for James A. Moore by Camp Necon : Please Help Jim & Tessa Moore (COVID-19 Expenses)”.

Now a GoFundMe has been started for his memorial expenses.

“Fundraiser by Christopher Golden : James A. Moore Final Wishes and Memorial Expenses”.

This is hard to do. Jim would’ve hated it. He received so much help from so many of you over the past five years, through cancer and Covid and surgeries and job loss and housing loss and amputation. We did two major GoFundMe campaigns during that time. Over the past year, there were moments we talked about doing a third one, but Jim hated the idea of asking again, no matter how much trouble he was in. Sympathy fatigue is real, and so many other people needed help, too.

Jim is going to be cremated. The expense for that is nothing compared to a funeral and a casket and a burial plot, but it’s still costly. I also want to be able to gather everyone together to have a Celebration of Life in a way that honors him. If we could wait a few months, we could risk doing it outside, but I know that everyone is feeling raw and would like to do it sooner. I’d like to do it on a Saturday or Sunday in April.

I’ve set the goal of this GFM to $6K to pay for both his cremation (and associated expenses) and the memorial gathering. I’m not sure it will be enough, but we’ll see. PLEASE NOTE that any monies received over and above the costs of those two things will be given directly to Jim’s wife, Tessa, to help her as she sorts out her next steps. These years have been hard enough, and we’d like to do all we can to help at this time.

(2) WORLDBUILDING ON EARTH. “Arkady Martine in Singapore: On Sci-Fi City Planning and What Makes a ‘City of the Future’” at Reactor.

…Usually in a sci-fi setting, the city functions as a snapshot in time that helps to illustrate how characters engage with their environment; for Martine, this might involve how long it takes for a character to get to their job, or if they even have a job to get to at all. It is not so much concerned with planning, or what drives planning decisions. “Fiction in general, and science fiction specifically, is bad at thinking about city planning as a discipline,” she explains. “Mostly because it feels absolutely dull, it’s worse than economics. I say this as someone who’s trained as a city planner and who loves it very much and actually finds it deeply fascinating and exciting and horrifically political.” More often than not, she finds that the idea of a constructed, planned city in science fiction—with some exceptions—is simply a given. 

“In the US they go on and on…that planning is some kind of neutral process, and that the point of a planner is to be a facilitator,” says Martine. “This is why I ended up in politics and policy and not in planning, because to be perfectly honest, it’s bullshit.” She cites the origins of Victorian infrastructure as a starting point for the western view that the constructed environment determines behavior, “which is that there are too many people and too little space and it’s not sanitary, which is all true.” The solution is not actually ‘everyone has to live in a perfect little garden house,’ but that’s the ideal that is constructed.”…

(3) PURPLE FRIENDS AND OTHERS. “’IF’ Trailer — Ryan Reynolds’ Imaginary Friend Comes to Life” – Collider introduces the movie, which arrives in theaters on May 17.

IF focuses on a young girl with the unique ability to see not only her own imaginary friends but also those of others, particularly the ones left behind by their human companions. These forgotten imaginary beings, once vital to the lives of many children, find themselves lonely and at risk of being forsaken indefinitely. In their desperation, they ally themselves with the girl, seeing her as their last chance to be recalled and cherished again before it’s too late.

(4) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 106 of Octothorpe promises a “Fitter Happier Healthier Eastercon”. Which, of course, you want, right?

Octothorpe 106 is now available! You can listen to it while at Eastercon, while travelling to Eastercon, or in defiance of the occurrence of Eastercon. We discuss, er, Eastercon. We talk about transcripts a little, too, before discussing awards, science fiction, cricket, and games. It’s basically a pretty representative episode, is what we’re saying.

Three ponies in the style of My Little Pony adorn the cover. The left-hand one is orange, and has a six-sided die as a cutie mark. The central one is teal, and has a rainbow Apple logo for a cutie mark. The right-hand one is blue, and has a Hugo Award for a cutie mark. They look like they are having a nice time. The words “My Little Octothorpe 106” appear at the top, and the words “Podcasting Is Magic” appear at the bottom.

(5) PASSING THE PLATE. 13th Dimension ranks “13 Delectable ALEX ROSS Collector Plates”. A whole gallery of images here, naturally.

3. Christmas with the Justice League of America (Warner Bros. Studio Store, 2000). Harking back to some of the classic covers of DC’s Christmas With the Super-Heroes specials, Ross creates a jubilant yuletide scene, literally framed with a bit of melancholy. The classic satellite era League (along with Ross favorites Captain Marvel and Plastic Man) celebrate in their own unique ways: The toast between Martian Manhunter and Red Tornado; Black Canary hanging on Green Arrow’s shoulder; Hawkman and Hawkgirl observing the strange Earth custom of decorating the tree; and my favorite, Green Lantern making the tree lights with his power ring. But all of this is superseded by the Man of Steel beckoning the Dark Knight to let his often-lonely crusade rest for the night, and come inside and join the celebration.

(6) LIADEN UNIVERSE® NEWS. Sharon Lee announced that the  eARC (electronic Advance Reading Copy) of Ribbon Dance is now available from Baen Books.

Also, a spoiler discussion page has been set up for those folks who have read the eARC and Want To Talk About It. Here is that link.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 28, 1912 — A. Bertram Chandler. (Died 1984.) Tonight’s Scroll features a Birthday for a writer from Australia — A. Bertram Chandler. 

Did you ever hear of space opera? Of course you have. Well, the universe of Chandler’s character John Grimes was such. A very good place to start is the Baen Books omnibus of To The Galactic Rim which contains three novels and seven stories. If there’s a counterpart to him, it’d be I think Dominic Flandry who appeared in Anderson’s Technic History series. (My opinion, yours may differ.) Oh, and I’ve revisited both to see if the Suck Fairy had dropped by. She hadn’t.

A. Bertram Chandler

Connected to the Grimes stories are the Rim World works of which The Deep Reaches of Space is the prime work. The main story is set in an earlier period of the same future timeline as Grimes, a period in which ships are the magnetic Gaussjammers, recalled with some nostalgia in Grimes’ time. 

But that’s hardly all that he wrote. I remember fondly The Alternate Martians, a novella that he did. A space expedition to Mars that find themselves in the worlds of H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline. Why he chose the latter I know not as I’d never heard of him. It’s a great story well told. And fun to boot. It was first published as an Ace Double, The Alternate Martians / Empress of Outer Space. Gateway has released it as a separate epub for a mere buck ninety nine at the usual suspects. 

He wrote a reasonably large number of stand-alone-alones, so what did I like?  For a bit of nicely done horror, you can’t beat The Star Beasts — yes, I know that there’s nothing terribly original there but it’s entertaining to read; Glory Planet has a watery Venus occupied by anti-machine theocracy opposed by a high-tech city-state fascinating; and finally I liked The Coils of Timeenin which a scientist has created a Time Machine but now needs a guinea pig, errr, a volunteer to go back through time and see what’s there —  did it go as planned? Oh guess.

I see that he’s written but a handful of short stories, none of which I’ve read other than the ones in To The Galactic Rim. So who here has? 

He’s won five Ditmars and The Giant Killer novel was nominated for a Retro Hugo. 

All in all, I like him a lot. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) SOUNDS FAMILIAR. From the New York Times: “Like My Book Title? Thanks, I Borrowed It.” Just like the Scroll item headlines here, yes?

You see it everywhere, even if you don’t always recognize it: the literary allusion. Quick! Which two big novels of the past two years borrowed their titles from “Macbeth”? Nailing the answer — “Birnam Wood” and “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” — might make you feel a little smug.

Perhaps the frisson of cleverness (I know where that’s from!), or the flip-side cringe of ignorance (I should know where that’s from!), is enough to spur you to buy a book, the way a search-optimized headline compels you to click a link. After all, titles are especially fertile ground for allusion-mongering. The name of a book becomes more memorable when it echoes something you might have heard — or think you should have heard — before.

This kind of appropriation seems to be a relatively modern phenomenon. Before the turn of the 20th century titles were more descriptive than allusive. The books themselves may have been stuffed with learning, but the words on the covers were largely content to give the prospective reader the who (“Pamela,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Frankenstein”), where (“Wuthering Heights,” “The Mill on the Floss,” “Treasure Island”) or what (“The Scarlet Letter,” “War and Peace,” “The Way We Live Now”) of the book.

Somehow, by the middle of the 20th century, literature had become an echo chamber. Look homeward, angel! Ask not for whom the sound and the fury slouches toward Bethlehem in dubious battle. When Marcel Proust was first translated into English, he was made to quote Shakespeare, and “In Search of Lost Time” (the literal, plainly descriptive French title) became “Remembrance of Things Past,” a line from Sonnet 30.

(10) YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING. “Liu Cixin: ‘I’m often asked – there’s science fiction in China?’” he told the Guardian.

…Science fiction was a rarity in China when Liu was growing up because most western books were banned. Living in a coal mining town in Shanxi province as a young man, he found a book hidden in a box that once belonged to his father. It was Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne, and Liu read it in secret, and in doing so forged a lifelong love of science fiction….

(11) BREAD FOR CIRCUSES. “The film fans who refuse to surrender to streaming: ‘One day you’ll barter bread for our DVDs’” in the Guardian. Anybody who’s bought an ebook from Amazon doesn’t need a natural disaster to convince them about the advantages of owning physical media.

When a hurricane struck Florida in 2018, Christina’s neighborhood lost electricity, cell service and internet. For four weeks her family was cut off from the world, their days dictated by the rising and setting sun. But Christina did have a vast collection of movies on DVD and Blu-ray, and a portable player that could be charged from an emergency generator.

Word got around. The family’s library of physical films and books became a kind of currency. Neighbors offered bottled water or jars of peanut butter for access. The 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The ’Burbs was an inexplicably valuable commodity, as were movies that could captivate restless and anxious children.

“I don’t think 99% of people in America would ever stop to think, ‘What would I do if I woke up tomorrow and all access to digital media disappeared?’ But we know,” Christina told me. “We’ve lived it. We’ll never give up our collection. Ever. And maybe, one day, you’ll be the one to come and barter a loaf of bread for our DVD of Casino.”…

(12) IN SPACE NOBODY CAN HEAR YOU LAUGH. “Spaceballs: 12 Behind the Scenes Stories of Mel Brooks’ Ludicrous Sci-Fi Adventure” at Moviemaker. Here’s one I never thought of:

Spaceballs Was Also Inspired by It Happened One Night

One of the biggest reference points for Spaceballs wasn’t a sci-fi film, but a Frank Capra classic, 1934’s It Happened One Night. The film was the first to sweep the top five Oscar categories — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress.

The film follows an heiress (Claudette Colbert) who flees her dull groom on her wedding day and falls for a cool regular guy played by Clark Gable. “We took that same basic plot and shot it into space!” Brooks wrote in his memoir.

In Spaceballs, Princess Vespa of Planet Druidia (Daphne Zuniga) flees her dull groom, Prince Valium, on her wedding day, and falls for a cool regular guy named Lone Starr (Bill Pullman).

(13) DON’T ASK? “Artemis astronauts will carry plants to the moon in 2026” reports Space.com. Strangely, neither this article nor the NASA press release it’s based on say what specific plants will be part of the experiment.

The first astronauts to land on the moon in more than half a century will set up a lunar mini-greenhouse, if all goes according to plan.

NASA has selected the first three science experiments to be deployed by astronauts on the moon’s surface on the Artemis 3 mission in 2026. Among them is LEAF (“Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora”), which will study how space crops fare in the exotic lunar environment.”LEAF will be the first experiment to observe plant photosynthesis, growth and systemic stress responses in space-radiation and partial gravity,” NASA officials wrote in a statement Tuesday (March 26) announcing the selection of the three experiments….

(14) WAS HE LOST IN SPACE? Dan Monroe investigates “Whatever Happened to ROBBY The ROBOT?”

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Slashfilm covers (and uncovers) “The Most Controversial Costumes In Sci-Fi History”.

The worst superhero costume in history, space bikinis, and a leather trenchcoat that sparked a media frenzy — sci-fi costumes don’t get much more controversial than this.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Anne Marble, Kathy Sullivan, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 11/14/22 One Scroll Makes You Pixel, The Other Makes You Smaug

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(1) DESTINATION FOR THE STARS? The New York Times’ Blake Gopnik reports that last week Christie’s auction house broke records by selling more than $1.5 billion in art from the estate of Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who died in 2018. Although a lot of high art went under the hammer, his pop culture holdings, including sf art, did not and may have a different fate.  

… It all made me think of Allen as the kind of person who might have enjoyed buying, and owning, a $15 million Stradivarius violin and a $12 million Mickey Mantle baseball card and a $10 million stamp from British Guiana.

But there was one work in the sale — a real outlier — that meshed with stronger, more focused feelings that I seemed to glimpse when I met with Allen. Hanging among pieces by the certified geniuses of Western “high” art at Christie’s sat a dreamy, sunset scene of teen-girls-in-nature, painted in 1926 by the American Maxfield Parrish, best known for his truly great work in commercial illustration. It called to mind the tremendous excitement that Allen showed, a decade ago, when he had me look at a series of paintings that had been used, sometime in the 1950s or ’60s, I’d guess, for reproduction on the cover of science-fiction novels or magazines: I remember seeing weird Martian landscapes, galactic skies and maybe a rocket ship or two.

I can’t confirm those memories, right off the bat, because none of those pictures ended up at Christie’s. (Even though you could say that Allen’s Botticelli has some extraterrestrial strangeness to it, if only because of its distance from today’s culture, and that his paintings by Salvador Dalí and Jacob Hendrik Pierneef might work with stories by Philip K. Dick.) But I do remember that in our interview Allen’s enthusiasm for those objects from so-called “popular” culture seemed much more intense, and heartfelt, than the feelings he expressed for masterpieces that had cost him thousands of times more.

And that may be born out in the future that seems in store for those sci-fi objects, different from the fate of the ones sold into private hands at Christie’s. Last month, a spokesperson for Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, founded by Allen in 2000 — his sister Jody Allen is its current chair — told The Times that more than 4,000 objects of un-fine art and culture from the Allen estate, valued at some $20 million, were due to end up among its holdings, and I can only hope that the sci-fi paintings will be among them. (A representative from Vulcan, the Allen company in charge of his estate, later weighed in to say that the bequest to MoPOP was not final and that Vulcan could not confirm the exact number or type of objects in it. As when their boss was alive, his Vulcans play their cards close to their chests.)…

(2) AO3’S FANZINE SCAN HOSTING PROJECT. “AO3’s fanfiction preservation project: Archivists are digitizing zines to save fan history” reports Slate.

Archive of Our Own is probably best known as the place to read fans’ carefully crafted Harry Potter prequels or Lord of the Rings stories millions of words long. But the fanfiction website also has a lesser known, though no less important mission: to save older fanfic that’s at risk of disappearing. A new initiative, the Fanzine Scan Hosting Project, aims to make fan stories and art from physical fanzines accessible through the Archive, preserving pieces of history previously confined to university libraries, scattered eBay sales, and forgotten corners of attics….

Over the last year or so, however, Open Doors’ Fan Culture Preservation Project has expanded, finally giving them room to launch the Fanzine Scan Hosting Project. So far, they’re making their way through the backlog of scans that Zinedom has already accumulated, which Dawn estimates is “a couple thousand.”

These came from various sources, with Dawn doing a lot of outreach herself simply by searching Facebook for names she came across in zines and making phone calls. Janet Quarton, a Scottish Star Trek zine publisher and preservationist, scanned about 500 zines herself in 2013. But even Zinedom’s digital collection is only a fragment of what’s out there. One Zinedom participant has a collection of around 8,000 physical zines from the Star Trek fandom alone, and digs out the appropriate copies if Dawn is contacted by someone looking to save something in particular.

Open Doors is now preparing to post on the Archive those zines from Zinedom’s backlog which they already have permission to share. Some of these overlap with online zine archives that they’ve been previously importing, like the Kirk/Spock archive. But new requests and permissions have also been coming in since the announcement, and it will be an ongoing process, with volunteers working hard to convert and edit each individual zine.

(3) THE RIGHT WORD? Nisi Shawl was still in search of an answer that hits the spot when I looked at Facebook this afternoon:

What’s the word for the kind of apology you get that blames you for what went wrong?

(4) HORROR WRITING VETERANS. The Horror Writers Association blog has been running a “Veterans in Horror Spotlight” series. Here’s an example: “Veterans in Horror: Interview with Jonathan Gensler”.

What role, if any, did reading and writing play during your military service?

I still have stacks of my journals from the whole nine-year period sitting on my bookshelf, unread to this day.  I had written poetry and journaled most of my teenage years up to that point, but when I got out of the service I stopped journaling and writing almost completely for reasons I haven’t quite grasped.  That was over 15 years ago.  Reading, on the other hand is something I have never stopped doing.  These combat deployments were well before I had anything like an e-reader, so it was physical books all the way.  I must have lugged around a ridiculous amount of books with me. The big ones that hit me the hardest while deployed are still some of my favorites: Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, Epictetus’ The Enchiridion, my first readings of Ender’s Game and that series. I got my first copy of House of Leaves while deployed to Iraq and that copy is scrawled with my own footnotes and reflections, and is falling apart at the seams.  And then of course, King finished out The Dark Tower while I was deployed so I had those tomes sent to me and to tote around as well. So, yeah, I filled my spare hours with both reading and writing, quite a bit of both.

Here are the links to the rest of the series.

(5) BOOKSTORE REBOUNDS FROM ARSON ATTACK. “L.A. book emporium the Iliad recovering from mysterious fire” reports the Los Angeles Times. The bookstore’s GoFundMe has been an enormous success. The owner asked for $5,000 to cover his insurance deductible. “The response has topped $34,000, sparing him the need to file a claim at all.”

…The cause of the blaze remains unknown. Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott said it has been ruled undetermined.

[Iliad owner] Weinstein said he believes an arsonist started the fire. It appeared that books the store leaves outside for the community to browse were stacked in a pyramidal shape next to the entry door and lit, he said.

An inscrutable motive was suggested by 15 to 20 copies of a flyer Weinstein said he found taped to the sides of the building. It was a collage of conspiratorial references — the Irish and South African flags, a photo of the burned-out cabin where policeman-turned-killer Christopher Dorner died, an address of a nearby home, and a handwritten letter attributed to Alex Cox, a deceased figure in a complex family homicide case depicted in a Netflix documentary….

(6) AMAZON WORKFORCE CUTS COMING. Reuters has learned “Amazon to lay off thousands of employees”. (And last week, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc said it would cut more than 11,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce.)

… The cuts, earlier reported by the New York Times, would represent about 3% of Amazon’s corporate staff. The exact number may vary as businesses within Amazon review their priorities, the source told Reuters.

The online retailer plans to eliminate jobs in its devices organization, which makes voice-controlled “Alexa” gadgets and home-security cameras, as well as in its human-resources and retail divisions, the person said. Amazon’s time frame for informing staff remained unclear….

(7) THE ART OF FANHISTORY. Garth Spencer’s name was chosen from the hat to be Corflu Pangloss’ Guest of Honour. He has published the speech he gave “revealing the hideous basic truths of fandom” in Obdurate Eye #21.

…There was a time when I thought every other country seems to have a published fanhistory; why shouldn’t a Canadian fanhistory be published? Maybe I could compile it, from any information I could gather. Then I got strange responses like “Who are you? Why are you asking me questions? Who sent you? I’m not responsible!” So, I learned that There Are Things Fans Must Not Put on Record. More to the point, my search to find out what people can be expected to do, when to expect it, and how to defend yourself, is not the first thing people think of when they think of fanhistory….

(8) A MEMORY PROMPT. Daytonian in Manhattan’s “The Lost ‘Furness House’ — 34 Whitehall Street” is an article about the NYC headquarters building for the steamship line A. Bertram Chandler once worked for.

In 1891, Christopher Furness, owner of the Furness Line of steamships, and Henry Withy, head of the shipbuilding firm Edward Withy & Co., merged their businesses to form Furness, Withy & Co., Ltd.  Starting out with 18 vessels, by the outbreak of World War I, it sailed more than 200–and it was ready for a new New York City branch office building….

Andrew Porter reminds readers that he published Chandler’s autobiographical “Around the World in 23,741 Days” in Algol 31. You can read it here.

…One very early—but remarkably vivid—memory I have is of a Zeppelin raid on London during World War I. can still see the probing searchlights, like the questing antennae of giant insects and, sailing serenely overhead, high in the night sky, that slim, silvery cigar. I can’t remember any bombs; I suppose that none fell anywhere near where I was. It is worth remarking that in those distant days, with aerial warfare in its infancy, civilians had not yet learned to run for cover on the approach of raiders but stood in the streets, with their children, to watch the show….

(9) READ COMPLETE MOORE REMARKS ON KEVIN O’NEILL. [Item by Danny Sichel.] At the request of the New York Times, Alan Moore wrote an obit for Kevin O’Neill which was too long to publish. Jeet Heer posted it to Twitter.(O’Neill did the art for Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)

(10) WOOSTER EULOGY. Philanthropy Daily, where he was a contributor, paid tribute to him in “Martin Morse Wooster, RIP”.

…In addition to writing for Philanthropy Daily, Martin was a senior fellow at the Capital Research Center, and contributed significantly to research on philanthropy and especially the issue of donor intent. Martin’s contributions to questions around philanthropy, charity, and donor intent can scarcely be overstated. How Great Philanthropists Failed remains the leading book on donor intent and the history of failed philanthropic legacies.

Martin’s work has appeared everywhere from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Reason, and numerous other publications.

Martin will be sorely missed by all of us at Philanthropy Daily and countless others who have benefited from his important work.

(11) MEMORY LANE.

1985 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Shadow Chasers 

Before we get started on talking about today’s essay, may I note that this was the day fifty-eight years ago that Santa Claus Conquers The Martians premiered was well? It was considered one of the worst genre films ever released, bar none.

Thirty-seven years ago this evening a series premiered on ABC, receiving almost no notice: Shadow Chasers. Let’s talk about the show before we turn to a brief autopsy on its numbers.

LOOK— I SEE BIGFOOT COMING WITH SPOILERS!

British anthropologist Jonathan MacKensie (Trevor Eve who played Peter Boyd in the excellent Waking the Dead forensic series) works for the fictional Georgetown Institute Paranormal Research Unit (PRU). MacKenzie’s department head, Dr. Julianna Moorhouse (Nina Foch), withholds a research grant to force him into investigating what she says is a haunting involving a teenage boy. He is paired with flamboyant tabloid reporter Edgar “Benny” Benedek.

Benny and Jonathan do not get along, but manage to solve the case without killing each other. The episodes continued in this vein, with Jonathan and Benny grudgingly learning to respect and admire each other, in the fashion of American cop shows.

LOOK IT WASN’T REALLY BIGFOOT, WAS IT? 

Now for the rating autopsy I promised.

So understand that it was on ABC as I said for just ten episodes of its sad existence with the last four shows being broadcast solely on the Armed Forces network. Just how bad was its existence? It was the lowest-rated of a one hundred and six programs during the 1985-1986 TV season.

Why so, you ask? Well that’s easy. It was broadcast against NBC’s The Cosby Show and Family Ties and CBS’s Magnum P.I. and, later on, Simon & Simon on CBS. It didn’t stand a chance. 

Indeed, local ABC affiliates within a few weeks in started preempting the series for other programming.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 14, 1907 — Astrid Lindgren. Creator of the Pippi Longstocking series and, at least in the States, lesser known Emil i Lönneberga, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, and the Six Bullerby Children series as well. In January 2017, she was calculated to be the world’s eighteenth most translated author, and the fourth most translated children’s writer after Enid Blyton, H. C. Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.  There have been at least forty video adaptations of her works over the decades mostly in Swedish but Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter was an animated series in Japan recently. (Died 2002.)
  • Born November 14, 1932 — Alex Ebel. He did the poster for the first Friday the 13th film, and his cover illustration for The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin published by Ace Books in 1975 is considered one of the best such illustrations done. I’m also very impressed with The Dispossessed cover he did as well as his Planet of Exile cover too. His work for magazines includes Heavy Metal, Space Science Fiction and Fantastic Story Magazine. (Died 2013.)
  • Born November 14, 1950 — Elliot S. Maggin, 72. A writer for DC Comics during the Bronze and early Modern ages of comics where he helped shaped the Superman character. Most of his work was on Action Comics and Superman titles though he did extensive work elsewhere including, of course, on the Batman titles.
  • Born November 14, 1951 — Beth Meacham, 71. In 1984, she became an editor for Tor Books, where she rose to the position of editor-in-chief. After her 1989 move to the west coast, she continued working for Tor as an executive editor which she just retired from.  She does have one novel, co-written with Tappan King, entitled Nightshade Book One: Terror, Inc. and a handful of short fiction.  A Reader’s Guide to Fantasy that she co-wrote wrote Michael Franklin and Baird Searles was nominated for a Hugo at L.A. Con II. She has been nominated for six Hugos as Best Professional Editor or Best Editor Long Form.
  • Born November 14, 1959 — Paul McGann, 63. Yes, he only did one film as the eighth incarnation of the Doctor in the 1996 Doctor Who: The Television Movie, but he has reprised that role in numerous audio dramas, and the 2013 short film entitled The Night of the Doctor.  He also appeared in “The Five(ish) Doctors” reboot. Other genre appearances include The Pit and the Pendulum: A Study in Torture, Alien 3, the excellent FairyTale: A True Story, Queen of the Damned and Lesbian Vampire Killers.
  • Born November 14, 1963 — Cat Rambo, 59 . All around great person. Past President of SFWA.  She was editor of Fantasy Magazine for four years which earned her a 2012 nomination in the World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional category. Her novelette Carpe Glitter won a 2020 Nebula, and her short story “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain” was a 2013 Nebula Award finalist.  Her impressive fantasy Tabat Quartet quartet begins withBeasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, and Exiles of Tabat, and will soon be completed by Gods of Tabat. She also writes amazing short fiction as well.  The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers is her long-standing school for writers that provides her excellent assistance in learning proper writing skills through live and on demand classes about a range of topics. You can get details here.  Her latest, You Sexy Thing, was a stellar listen indeed and I’m very much looking forward to the sequel.
  • Born November 14, 1969 — Daniel Abraham, 53. Co-author with Ty Franck of The Expanse series which won a Hugo at CoNZealand. Under the pseudonym M. L. N. Hanover, he is the author of the Black Sun’s Daughter urban fantasy series.  Abraham collaborated with George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois to write the Hunter’s Run. Abraham also has adapted several of Martin’s works into comic books and graphic novels, such as A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel, and has contributed to Wild Cards anthologies. By himself, he picked up a Hugo nomination at Denvention 3 for his “The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics” novelette. 

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • Speed Bump knows of one effect that’s not special at all!

(14) HAPPY NEW YEAR. Lois McMaster Bujold pointed out to her Goodreads followers that the next Penric book Knot of Shadows garnered a starred review in Publishers Weekly. The Subterranean Press hardcover is due to be released on January 1. [Update: Bujold’s author page shows the Kindle edition of Knot of Shadows came out last year in October, so this will be a new hardcover edition, but not a new release per se.]

Temple sorcerer Penric and demon Desdemona return in this page-turner fantasy mystery from Bujold, the 11th in the series (after The Assassins of Thasalon) and possibly the best yet. Penric and Desdemona, the chaos elemental who shares his body, are joined by Alixtra and her own demon, Arra, to help the healers of the Mother’s Order in Vilnoc with an unusual case: a corpse has revived and is now shouting gibberish. Penric discovers that the victim is not one but two dead people—a man slain by death magic and a ghost that has begun animating his body. Death magic is so rare that even Desdemona has never witnessed it performed. A supplicant offers their own life to ensure that the Bastard, Penric’s god, will kill their target. This ritual opens multiple quandaries: Who is the corpse? Were they the supplicant or the target? And where is the other party to the death prayer? Penric remarks that “this case is bound to get ugly and sad”—and indeed it does, in the most creative of ways. Bujold has her protagonists combine mundane and mystical investigative methods to unravel the questions at hand, creating a truly enticing mystery. Series fans and new readers alike will want to savor this intricate , unusual case.

(15) WORLD MUSIC. “Ludwig Göransson Discusses His Globe-Trotting ‘Wakanda Forever’ Score” in Variety.

… The challenge, Göransson says, was to find a new sound for the African kingdom of Wakanda and its grief-stricken people while also trying to imagine the sound of Prince Namor’s undersea kingdom of Talokan, whose origins lay in Mexico’s ancient Mayan civilization.

Göransson consulted musical archaeologists and spent two weeks in Mexico City collaborating with Mexican musicians. He auditioned “hundreds of ancient instruments,” from clay flutes to unusual percussion instruments, and saw paintings of Mayans playing on turtle shells, among dozens of similar musically inspirational moments. He discovered the “flute of truth,” a high-pitched whistle-like woodwind instrument, and vowed to incorporate the “death whistle,” which has a piecing sound like a human scream.

By day, Göransson recorded with Mexican musicians, and by night, he was recording with Mexican singers and rappers. “I was using the morning sessions to put together beats and songs that we would use later that day with the artists,” the composer reports….

(16) ON THE GRIPPING HAND. Leaflock™ The Ent™ from WETA Workshop is only fifteen hundred dollars… The image of this veteran of the attack on Isengard “Contains two (and a half) Orcs, squashed, pinned and/or crushed by the Ent’s wrath.”

(17) MAKE IT GO. And if you have any money left after buying the Ent, you can order the Volkswagen-built Star Trek captain’s chair that goes 12mph – assuming it truly exists, which the Verge says should not be taken for granted.

…Assuming all of this is real, of course. Volkswagen has a recent history of lying to people. This time, the company seems to be fairly transparent that it’s a one-off marketing stunt, while also suggesting that “it will be available for test drives at various locations.” Hopefully that means citizens of Norway will soon be able to prove its capabilities….

(18) COMING FROM DUST. The short film Jettison will be released online December 7 by DUST & Film Shortage.

A restless young woman ships off to fight an interstellar war, only to struggle with the effects of being cut off from her home by both time and space.

(19) BELA WINS. “The 20 best horror villains of all time”, according to Entertainment Weekly.

…But for every icon of the macabre, there are a much larger number of deranged dentists, serial-killing Santa Clauses, and sorority house murderers who don’t quite rank as highly in the frightening food chain. In fact, it’s been a while since a character came along and asserted his or herself as the next count of the Carpathians or chainsaw-wielding maniac. Whoever steps up next has some big shoes to fill, because these are the crème de la crème when it comes to history-making evildoers….

1. Dracula

Dracula is the most influential horror villain of all time. The Count stalks like a slasher, murders in droves like a serial killer, and is the inspiration for every single vampire movie made after 1931. Dracula’s vast powers, and his immortality, make him the most formidable of any killer on this list, and while Bela Lugosi is most often associated with the character, it was Sir Christopher Lee who made the Count the vile, sadistic creature of the night.

Lee gave the character a grandiose feel thanks to his imposing height, and there was a sexuality the villain exuded which made him irresistible to women. Unlike his colleague and friend, Peter Cushing, Lee loathed reprising the role because Hammer wasn’t faithful to Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. “I wanted to play Stoker’s character,” Lee explained. “It wasn’t remotely like the book.”

You’ll also enjoy Horror of Dracula (1958).

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Dream Foundry has released the video of “Fantasy? On MY Spaceship?! Blending Science and Sorcery” on their YouTube channel. Features panelists Valerie Valdes, Tobias Buckell, and Bogi Takács.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Danny Sichel, David Doering, Andrew (not Werdna), 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).]

Pixel Scroll 3/31/19 Those Who Do Not Learn Their Pixel Scrolls Are Doomed To Repeat Them

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(1) HARD SF FOR HARD MONEY. In a field where a lot of magazines release their content free, you wonder how they survive. Here’s one answer to that question.Compelling Science Fiction editor Joe Stech says “Compelling Science Fiction is going to a paid subscription model”.

I’m proud that over the last three years we’ve released 63 phenomenal stories and paid professional rates to 57 wonderful authors. However, over the last three years I’ve also spent a significant amount of money keeping the magazine afloat. Year one I spent a lot, and years two and three leveled out to almost break-even (but revenue stopped growing). Based on these numbers, I’ve decided that I need to go to a subscription-only model to keep the magazine strong and growing.

(2) ANNE BUJOLD ART. Lois McMaster Bujold wrote on Facebook –

Recently, the work of my daughter Anne Bujold, presently an artist-in-residence at the Appalachian Center for Craft, was showcased by the local TV folks. They did an excellent job, I thought. The segment is now up on YouTube:

(3) EXPLOSIVE TOPIC. Steve Davidson is peeved at anyone who would call A. Bertram Chandler’s books “popcorn” reading:

I don’t care what anyone says: A. Bertram Chandler’s works are not “popcorn”.
Popcorn does not win awards, except at popcorn festivals…

Two of his stories are the UR tales for “humans locked in an alien zoo (The Cage) and “mutated rats take over” (Giant Killer); both were frequently included in anthologies of SF through the 80s.

Harlan Ellison was so impressed with his short story Frontier of the Dark that he talked ‘Jack’ into expanding it into a novel; then, when Chandler admitted he didn’t have his own copy of the original manuscript, Ellison pulled his copy of Astounding and sent it off (and the novel was written)

He wrote about major social issues in the 60s, well before they became mainstream…

(4) A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY. Eric Flint preceded a very brief political opinion with a long introduction about why he rarely talks politics on Facebook. (See the opinion at the link.)

I don’t usually post political comments on my Facebook page for the same reason I don’t use my novels to expound my own political philosophy.

In a nutshell, It’s false advertising. My novels (and other pieces of fiction) purport to be entertainment, not political screeds. If I want to write political screeds, nothing prevents me from doing so. In point of fact, I _have_ written political screeds. Plenty of them. If you were to compile my various political writings done in the quarter of a century or so when I was a socialist activist, they would add up to several volumes worth.

But I wasn’t trying to make a living from those political writings, and so I didn’t try to pass them off to the unsuspecting public as “entertainment.” I didn’t do it then, and I’m not about to do it now.

Albeit watered down, I feel somewhat the same way with regard to my Facebook page….

(5) GENRE INFERIORITY COMPLEX.The Guardian’s Sam Jordison convinces himself this is no longer an issue: “‘Screw the snobbish literati’: was Kurt Vonnegut a science-fiction writer?”

I’m willing to concede that people may see things differently. The New York Times obituary may have been fulsome in its praise for Vonnegut, but it also noted that publishing Slaughterhouse-Five helped him to “shed the label of science fiction writer”. Vonnegut was painfully aware of this stigma; in an essay called Science Fiction, he wrote: “I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labelled ‘science fiction’ … and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”

(6) KURT AND RAY. Open Culture remembers when they had TV shows on the same year — “Discover Ray Bradbury & Kurt Vonnegut’s 1990s TV Shows: The Ray Bradbury Theater and Welcome to the Monkey House”.

…I never know exactly when to take Vonnegut seriously. He also calls TV everybody’s “rotten teacher” and says “I’m sorry television exists,” but he had long been a TV writer in its “so-called golden days,” as John Goudas put it in a Los Angeles Times interview with Vonnegut in 1993, when his seven-episode run of Kurt Vonnegut’s Monkey House, hosted by himself, would soon come to a close. Vonnegut found himself very pleased by the results, remarking of his stories that “TV can do them very well,” and especially praising “More Stately Mansions,” above, starring an irrepressible Madeline Kahn, whom he called “a superb actress.”

Another very direct, witty speculative writer in the same year’s issue of The Cable Guide, Ray Bradbury, appeared with Vonnegut as part of two “dueling, short features,” notes Nick Greene at Mental Floss, “under the auspices of promoting the authors’ upcoming cable specials,” Monkey House and The Ray Bradbury Theater. Bradbury was also an old media hand, having written for radio in the 50s, and seeing adaptations of his stories made since that decade, including one on Alfred Hitchcock’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Like Hitchcock, when it came time for his own show, The Ray Bradbury Theater in 1985, Bradbury introduced the episodes and became a public face for thousands of viewers….

(7) WHEN I’M (IN) ’64. Galactic Journey’s Victoria Lucas reacts to the adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel: “[March 31, 1964] 7 Faces and 7 Places (The movie, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao)”.

If you saw my review of Finney’s Circus of Dr. Lao back on June 16, 1962 you would know why I went to such (literally) lengths to see this movie.  It did not disappoint, but I did object to the interpolations of a soppy romance and a hackneyed Western takeover-the-town plot.  The “Circus” was filmed, according to sources, on the MGM back lots, although some of those Culver City hills must be pretty rough if that’s so.  My theory is that filming on location was out due to the many roles of Tony Randall, who plays Dr. Lao, the Abominable Snowman, Merlin, Apollonius of Tyana, Pan, The Giant Serpent, and Medusa.  All those makeup and costume changes (to say nothing of any other cast) must have needed the workshop of famed makeup artist William Tuttle and a large selection of MGM costumes, as well as (not credited) costumer Robert Fuca.

(8) SFF EVENT IN LISBON. Free admission to Contacto 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal on April 4-5.

Imaginauta (a literary publisher of speculative fiction), in partnership with the Library of Marvila and BLX, the Libraries of the Network of Municipal Library of Lisbon are pleased to present the 2nd Edition of Contact – Literary Festival of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

FREE ENTRY FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY

Come live two days filled with activities for whom a world just is not enough.

– Book Fair

– Book Launching

– Sessions with Portuguese authors

– Thematic areas (Harry Potter, Star Wars, Steampunk)

– Board games and narratives

– Speeches

– Movie theater

– Stories Counters

– Exhibitions

– Live performances

– Stand-up comedy

– Medieval Bar

– Activities for schools

Come join the new generation of science fiction and fantasy!

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • March 31, 1969 — Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five, published.
  • March 31, 1987 – Max Headroom made his television premiere.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 31, 1844 — Andrew Lang. To say that he is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales is a bit of understatement. He collected enough tales that twenty five volumes of Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books  for children were published between 1889 and 1913. That’s 798 stories. If you’re interested in seeing these stories, you can find them here. (Died 1912.)
  • Born March 31, 1932 — John Jakes, 87. Author of a number of genre series including Brak the Barbarian. The novels seem to fix-ups from works published in such venues as Fantastic. Dark Gate and Dragonard are his other two series. As  Robert Hart Davis, he wrote a number of The Man From UNCLE novellas that were published in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine. The magazine apparently only existed from 1966 to 1968.
  • Born March 31, 1934 — Richard Chamberlain, 85. His first dive into our end of reality was in The Three Musketeers as Aramis, a role he reprised in The Return of Three Musketeers. (I consider all Musketeer films to be genre.) some of you being cantankerous may argue it was actually when he played the title character in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold which he did some years later. He listed as voicing the Jack Kirby created character Highfather on the superb Justice League: Gods and Monsters but that was but a few lines of dialogue I believe. He was in the Blackbeard series as Governor Charles Eden, and series wise has done the usual one-offs on such shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Boris Karloff’s Thriller, Chuck and Twin Peaks. 
  • Born March 31, 1936 — Marge Piercy, 83. Author of He, She and It which garnered won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction novel. Of course she also wrote Woman on the Edge of Time doomed to be called “classic of utopian speculative sf”. 
  • Born March 31, 1943 — Christopher Walken, 76. Yet another performer whose first role was in The Three Musketeers, this time as a minor character, John Felton. He has a minor role in The Sentinel, a horror film, and a decidedly juicy one in Trumbull’s Brainstorm as Dr. Michael Anthony Brace followed up by being in Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone as Johnny Smith. Damn, I’d forgotten he was Max Zorin, the villain in A View to a Kill! H’h, didn’t know he was in Gibson’s New Rose Hotel but then I haven’t then I haven’t actually seen it yet. And let’s wrap this up by noting his appearance in The Stepford Wives as Mike Wellington.
  • Born March 31, 1960 — Ian McDonald, 59. I see looking him up for this Birthday note that one of my favorite novels by him, Desolation Road, was first one. Ares Express was just as splendid. Now the Chaga saga was, errr, weird. Everness was fun but ultimately shallow, Strongly recommend both Dervish House and River of Gods. Luna series at first blush didn’t impress me, so other opinions sought. 
  • Born March 31, 1962 — Michael Benson. 57. Author of Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece. His earlier book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes featured an intro by Clarke. Benson is an artist and journalist who also mounts shows of astronomical art and who advocates for such things as keeping the Hubble telescope operating. His site is here.
  • Born March 31, 1971 — Ewan McGregor, 48. Nightwatch, a horror film, with him as lead Martin Bell is his first true genre film.  That was followed by The Phantom Menace and him as Obi-Wan Kenobi, a role repeated in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith and The Force Awakens. His latest role of interest, well to me if to nobody else, is as Christopher Robin in the film of the same name.

(11) US AT A GLANCE. Camestros Felapton is back from the multiplex — “Review: Us (spoiler free)”.

So I like horror best in small doses. I like a taste of it, circumscribed by the way horror overlaps with other genres (thrillers, fantasy and science-fiction). So I probably shouldn’t have gone to see Us.

Jordan Peele’s first film Get Out, was just about the right ratio for me. Undoubtedly scary and tense but also full of interesting ideas. The final premise was knowingly absurd and tapped into that rich seam of conspiratorial mythology of secret societies and grand sinister designs of powerful people.

Us has all of that and quite a lot more. There are no shortage of horror movie tropes in the film, indeed at a given moment the film plays along with standard styles of horror movie but only for awhile and then it moves on….

(12) PERMAFROST. At Rapid Transmissions, Joseph Hurtgen reviews Alastair Reynolds’ Permafrost and finds the parallels with La Jetee — and 12 Monkeys by way of La Jetee — are hard to miss, and make the book enjoyable.

The book wrangles a great deal over the time paradox. The time paradox wrangling is enough to make your head spin and the characters in the novel throw up more than once as a result of time travel paradox complications.

Paradoxically, Reynolds never has the characters reflect on the absurdity of humans developing futuristic technologies–nuclear power, time travel, artificial intelligence–while persisting in myopia about their impact on the environment. Reynolds isn’t treading new material here, Asimov discussed the problem of science’s interest in doing science over and above environmental concerns in The God’s Themselves (1972). But Reynolds’ story is quick, fun, and is sure to give you the feels. 

(13) A WORD FROM SOMEBODY’S SPONSOR. Daniel Dern writes:

I don’t know if this qualifies as a “Meredith Moment,” but, via KinjaDeals via io9, you can get 2 months of Kindle Unlimited for $1/month, before it automatically goes to the normal $10/month — not as cheap as the free 1-month trial, but good for 2x as long. I’ll be giving it a try, soon. (The deal is available for another month or so, but I’ll probably sign up today or tomorrow)

More info at the post: “Turn Off the Internet and Read Some Damn Books – Kindle Unlimited Is $1 For Two Months”.

(14) MORE DC. As announced this weekend at WonderCon: “DC Universe Unveils Expanded Digital Comics Library, STARGIRL Suit, & More at WonderCon!”

At no extra charge or increase in the price of a subscription, DC Universe subscribers will be able to enjoy access to DC’s enormous digital comics library, starting in April of 2019. (Each of these comics will appear at least 12 months after it was first published). That’s over 20 thousand comic books!

Daniel Dern notes: “This brings DC/U closer to Marvel’s streaming offering, which is ‘many comics each week once they’re at least 6 months old’ and 25,000+ comics. I’ll know (somewhat) more once I log onto my DC/U account and browse.”

(15) PUT ON YOUR AVENGERS FACE. Yahoo! enthuses: “Ulta and Marvel Are Launching an Avengers Makeup Collection, and the Prices Are Heroic”.

The star of the collection is arguably the Eyeshadow Palette (above), which includes 15 colors — mostly shimmers with a few mattes thrown in — for just $20. Under a lid that reads “Courageous. Tenacious. Fearless. Legendary,” you’ll find the aptly named shades Hero Vibes (copper shimmer), Games Changer (burnished gold), Save The World (champagne shimmer), Amazed (cream matte), Gauntlet (burgundy shimmer), Super Charged (mauve taupe matte), Out Of This, World (khaki brown shimmer), Last Shot (vanilla shimmer), Cosmic (eggplant shimmer), Smash (olive green shimmer), Legend (dirty aqua shimmer), Reassemble (smoky navy matte, I’ve Got This (ivory shimmer), Built For Battle (peach nude shimmer), and Fearless (moss graphite shimmer).

(16) WE THE FUTURE PEOPLE. In “Sci-Fi Writers Are Imagining a Path Back to Normality”, WIRED touches base with contributors to the anthology A People’s Future of the United States, edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams

Tobias S. Buckell on metaphors:

“Nora K. Jemisin was just saying on Twitter the other day that in science fiction we have this venerable tradition of using metaphor to dig at some of these problems—like race and power and structure and history—and that it’s been a mistake, because in the past we would always use the metaphor assuming that our fellow readers and fans of the genre were following along, getting the metaphor, and it turns out that they weren’t. In other words, you needed to be way more in-your-face and say, ‘This is what I’m trying to say.’ Because they were looking at a metaphor of an alien that is powerless and out on the fringes of society—and that that society was being racist toward, and things like that—and then when they were done with that story they’d say, ‘That poor alien,’ and they’d never make the implicit connection.”

(17) ARMSTRONG’S PURSE. Space.com shares a flock of photos as “Smithsonian Debuts Apollo 11 ’50 Years from Tranquility Base’ Exhibit”.

The Apollo 11 “50 Years from Tranquility Base” display case was installed on Monday (March 25) at the Washington, D.C. museum, opposite its Space Race gallery on the first floor. The exhibit offers a look at almost two dozen artifacts that flew on board the July 1969 Apollo 11 mission that landed Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in the Sea of Tranquility on the surface of the moon.

“’50 Years from Tranquility Base: Humanity’s First Visit to Another World’ highlights some of the smaller artifacts the crew needed to live and work on their way to and on the moon. Of particular interest are Neil Armstrong’s Omega chronograph, which hasn’t been on public display for over 20 years at least, and some of the items found in Armstrong’s purse,” said Jennifer Levasseur, a curator in the space history division of the National Air and Space Museum.

(18) TIME LORD. Beautiful video: “The guardian of the sands of time”.

Adrian Rodriguez Cozzani has a passion for time, the way it flows and the way we keep track of it. For nearly 30 years he has been crafting beautiful hourglasses and sundials by hand in his small workshop in Trastevere, a colourful neighbourhood in Rome, Italy.

[Thanks to ULTRAGOTHA, Cat Eldridge, Joseph Hurtgen, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Mlex, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Darren Garrison.]