25 We’re Looking For Pixel Inspectors. If Interested, Call 555-MISTERPIXEL

Posted on September 6, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) DO YOU KNOW HISTORICAL SF WHEN YOU SEE IT? [Item by Steven French.] Brenda Clough presents a taxonomy of science fiction stories set in the past at Speculative Insight: “Towards a Taxonomy of Historical Science Fiction”.

A historical fantasy is a novel that is grounded in magic, or centering around dragons or such, that is set in a historical period. A Sorceress Comes to Call (2024) by T. Kingfisher is Victorian, while Jo Walton’s Lent (2019) is set in 15th century Florence. Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series has dragons fighting in the Napoleonic wars. The Brother Cadfael novels by Ellis Peters, or the Marcus Didius Falco series by Lindsey Davis, are unquestionably historical mystery novels, driven by crime-solving detectives but set in a historical period. And historical horror novels are quite common – the fictional explorations of Jack the Ripper come to mind, and many vampire novels. Other examples might be The Terror by Dan Simmons (2014), in which a monster attacks 19th century explorers trapped in the ice in Canada, or Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin (1982), about a New Orleans riverboat in 1857 assailed by a vampire.

So then we can consider: is there such a thing as historical science fiction? There must be science fiction set in the past. We don’t hear a lot about it – it’s not a major marketing category dominating the best-seller lists, like historical romance or historical fantasy. But a little digging turns up enough titles to show it really is a separate genre. So, let’s think about historical science fiction some more….

… So what is historical science fiction? The simplest historical SF involves time travel. This goes back at least to H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). If the characters have a time machine, then they can travel either to the past or to the future, and Wells has his hero do both. It’s the dream of the historian, to go back and see stuff happening, and many SF authors have had huge fun with it.

A favorite manifestation of this is what I’m going to call the ‘wow the rubes’ plot. When the Connecticut Yankee visits the court of King Arthur, in Mark Twain’s 1889 novel, he astonishes the knights of the Table Round with his ability to predict an eclipse or use lightning rods. Another example of this kind of setup is Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp (1939). The modern hero is mysteriously transported to 6th century Rome, where he wows the rubes by using double-entry bookkeeping to prevent fraud. There’s even a movie with this plot, The Final Countdown (1980), in which the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz inexplicably travels back in time to defend Pearl Harbor from the Japanese on December 7, 1941.

If you reverse this plot – if someone arrives from another planet or time to wow us – then it’s a superhero story. Superman arrives from Krypton with fantastic powers, My Favorite Martian arrives to live in an American suburb with Bill Bixby, or Mork visits from Ork to entertain Mindy.

These are fairly simple stories, but time travel can make for great subtlety. If you turn this plot inside out – if the hero arrives in the past and it’s a disaster – then you get classics like Michael Moorcock’s “Behold the Man,” a 1966 award-winning novella that Moorcock later worked up into a novel of the same title (1969). A time traveler visits the first century CE hoping to meet Jesus of Nazareth, and after many unpleasant discoveries and existential crises finds himself crucified on Golgotha….

(2) ZOOM SFF/H READING SERIES. “Strong Women-Strange Worlds” presents the “First Friday – Third Thursday QuickReads” live reading series via Zoom. Each virtual event features six authors for eight minutes each.

Our mission is to elevate the voices of women and other underrepresented gender identity authors of science fiction, fantasy, and horror; to highlight stories featuring strong female and non-binary characters; and to share these stories with readers of all ages.

Their next event is Thursday, September 18 at 7:00 pm Eastern, featuring Karen Bao, Lara Elena Donnelly, Ryan Marie Ketterer, LindaAnn LoSchiavo, Annie Mare, and Jolie Toomajan.

(3) DEEP DIVES AUTHOR CONVERSATION. Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron will appear at the Seattle Central Library on October 22. You can catch them there or watch the livestream. Register through Clarion West.

The Deep Dives conversation series brings speculative fiction authors to Seattle for conversations with local and international experts on the real-world intersections of sci-fi and science and how each can inspire and inform the other….

A Deep Dives Conversation with Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron

October 22 | 7:00 – 8:00 PM
Seattle Central Library

In Person | Streaming

VIP Reception Tickets Available

Join Cory Doctorow (Enshittification), Ed Zitron (Better Offline), and moderator Whitney Beltrán for a discussion of how reckless tech policy created an enshittogenic environment that allowed the worst people in our most structurally important corporations to turn them into vast, remorseless extraction machines, without facing any government, market, technological or labor consequences – and to learn how we can build a new, good internet that will serve as the nervous system for a 21st century where we are confronting genocide, environmental collapse and fascism.

(4) YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU. [Item by Steven French.] The Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting piece on Cormac McCarthy’s personal library. Apparently the author of the post-apocalyptic novel The Road (and also No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses etc. etc.) was a big fan of the philosopher Wittgenstein:“Two Years After Cormac McCarthy’s Death, Rare Access to His Personal Library Reveals the Man Behind the Myth” – Smithsonian Magazine reports on its tour of his home and effects.

…I was invited to the house by two McCarthy scholars who were embroiled in a herculean endeavor. Working unpaid, with help from other volunteer scholars and occasional graduate students, they had taken it upon themselves to physically examine and digitally catalog every single book in McCarthy’s enormous and chaotically disorganized personal library. They were guessing it contained upwards of 20,000 volumes. By comparison, Ernest Hemingway, considered a voracious book collector, left behind a personal library of 9,000….

…The second major discovery, discernible in his work but confirmed beyond doubt in his library, was that McCarthy was a genius-level intellectual polymath with an insatiable curiosity. His interests ranged from quantum physics, which he taught himself by reading 190 books on the notoriously challenging subject, to whale biology, violins, obscure corners of French history in the early Middle Ages, the highest levels of advanced mathematics and almost any other subject you can name.

In the living room was a pool table piled with books and a leather couch facing two tall windows and three sets of nine-foot-tall wooden bookshelves designed by McCarthy that held approximately 1,000 books. Moving closer, I saw they were nearly all nonfiction hardbacks with no obvious system of organization.

One shelf held volumes about Mesoamerican history and archaeology, along with Charles Darwin’s collected notebooks, Victor Klemperer’s three-volume diary of the Nazi years, books about organic chemistry and sports cars, and an obscure volume titled The Biology of the Naked Mole-Rat (Monographs in Behavior and Ecology). Another shelf held books about Grand Prix and Formula 1 racing, a great passion of McCarthy’s, and the collected writings of Charles S. Peirce, the American scientist, philosopher and logician, in six fat volumes of dense, difficult prose….

…McCarthy often had a pencil when he was reading and would make tiny vertical marks next to sentences that interested him and add comments in the margins in small print handwriting. Sometimes he jotted down thoughts on slips of paper that he left between the pages. Inside The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself, first published in 1565, we found him musing philosophically: “There is an intelligence to the universe (of which we are fractal) and that intelligence has a character and that character is benign. Intends well toward all things. How could it not?”

McCarthy is known for the bleak, violent nihilism in many of his novels, so it was a surprise to see him describing the universe as intelligent and well-intentioned. He was a lapsed Catholic who went back and forth on the question of God’s existence, sometimes changing his mind from one day to the next…

(5) ANTHROPIC SETTLEMENT STARTING POINT. [Item by Frank Wu.] After news outlets reported “Anthropic pays authors $1.5 billion to settle copyright infringement lawsuit” (AP News), Frank Wu sent this to a lot of pros, telling them how to apply for a piece of the settlement. And he also shared it with File 770.

ATTENTION, FELLOW WRITERS, ARTISTS, EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS. You may be entitled to boatloads of money. THIS IS NOT A JOKE OR SCAM. The lawsuit involving the theft of (possibly) your work for use by their AI has settled for $1.5 BILLION, of which you may be eligible for $3000. PER THEFT.

To apply for your slice of the settlement, (1) fill out the form at the lawsuit’s website: anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/contact Because I am guessing the 1000’s of submittals will be reviewed by AI or poorly-paid legal assistants, I recommend listing 1 theft/form rather than submitting a list in one submission.

I know that’s a lot of work, but it is also possibly 3k per violation. There’s also a phone number for the law firm handling this: 1- 877-206-2314. To see if your stuff has been stolen look in the (a) LibGen library for books and (b) the LibGen library for movies/videos: hLibGen library for movies/videos (unfortunately behind paywall); and (c) Anna’s archive. I don’t know if being in both Anna’s archive and LibGen counts as 2 thefts or 1 so I filled out a form for each. Also be sure to include if there is a copyright registration number, (starts with TX) which you can search for here: https://publicrecords.copyright.gov. Also include publication date (including the original publication), publisher and ISBN. There’s no slot for that in the form, so I put that in the TITLE entry, along with a note of whether the stolen item was in LibGen or Anna’s. If you’re a science fiction writer/artist/editor/publisher, the internet SF database is a godsend. https://www.isfdb.org (SF FANS RULE!!!) Good luck, everyone! Let’s make these thieving bastards pay – and pay YOU!

(6) ERB. Repeating this item — “Edgar Rice Burroughs: High Adventure Master Has a Lasting Literary Legacy” – because this Archive Today link bypasses the National Review paywall.

… As for the world of Jurassic Park, its creator Michael Crichton was a passionate fan who in his youth read The Land That Time Forgot and other Burroughs tales pitting modern humans against fierce dinosaurs. Crichton even embedded an homage within his long-running TV series ER. One of its principal characters was Dr. John Carter.

After the phenomenal success with his 1997 film Titanic, James Cameron decided to go in an entirely different direction. He’d “forget all these chick flicks and do a classic guys’ adventure movie,” Cameron later explained to the New Yorker, “something in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold, like John Carter of Mars — a soldier goes to Mars.” The result, Avatar, remains one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.

Other authors who freely admitted the influence of Burroughs on their work included Frank Herbert (Dune) and Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles).

Edgar Rice Burroughs didn’t just inspire. He innovated. One of the first authors to incorporate and take an active role in his own publishing and licensing ventures, Burroughs also pioneered the plot device of heroic crossovers within a shared universe. One of his inner-world novels, Tanar of Pellucidar, begins with an inventor named Jason Gridley showing his latest radio set to Burroughs himself. Gridley tries to contact John Carter on Mars but picks up a distress call from Pellucidar, an underground realm whose hero, David Innes, has been captured. The next novel in the series has Gridley leading an African safari to recruit Tarzan for a rescue party into the inner world….

(7) VAMPIRE TOURISM. “20 years after ‘Twilight,’ Forks’ vampire economy is still booming” – NPR got an earful from the locals.

The Twilight books and movies transformed Forks, Wash., the remote logging town where they were set. Forks struggled after losing its main industry. Then the vampires brought an economic boost….

BAKER: My childhood, I was coming up on “Twilight,” so it would be a sin if I didn’t come here and check it out.

MARTIN: Baker is one of many people who come to Forks each year because of the “Twilight” books and movies. It’s not the only reason. The town is on the Olympic Peninsula, which is full of beautiful beaches, parks and forests. Still, there’s been a huge uptick in visitors since “Twilight.” The year after the first movie was released, the number of people who stopped by the visitor center in town jumped by about 50,000. And Forks has embraced the attention….

… MARTIN: In 2023, food, retail and accommodations made up 32% of the economy in Forks. Two decades before, it was 16%…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

September 6, 1972 — China Miéville, 53.

By Paul Weimer: China Miéville first came to my attention in the early days of my reviewing in the 2000s. This also correlated with my growing knowledge and experience with contemporary British SF. While I had been reading various British SF authors for quite some time, it was mostly a historical exercise and I was only in the early days of my reviewing seeking out actual British fiction (One of these was getting a hold of a copy of Children of Time by Tchaikovsky years before it was published in the states). So in the heady days of the 2000s, Miéville came onto my radar with Perdido Street Station.

While I was getting into the New Weird at the time (c.f. The work of Jeff Vandermeer), Perdido Street Station was a real jolt to the veins in my reading. There was a dreamlike feel to Ambergris, but Perdido Street Station, a New Weird (and retroactively in my mind) City State fantasy was something completely novel, strange and weird and wonderful. The characters, writing and evoked, from the scientist Isaac to the exotic and weird Weaver, Yagharek and the Council, among others, were wild and weird to me. The whole idea of the city of New Crobuzon, steampunk and odd magic side by side, instantly became memorable in my mind, if not unforgettable. It is the template in my mind for the very weird city. (c.f. RPGs like The Strange, I think of New Crobuzon as an inspiration for its own weirdness).

I of course eagerly read The Scar and Iron Council and found that the author’s talents extended to other places in the world of Bas-Lag as well. After a small gap, I encountered Miéville in the amazing world of The City and The City. The conceit of the book, having two cities separated by perception and stubborn training in the same space, showed me that Mievlle was far more than just a “New Weird” writer (and at that point the New Weird’s star was in decline). I’ve long thought that one could look at Gotham City and Metropolis in the same way one looks at the cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma. And when I thought I had fully grokked that book (I still need to watch the miniseries) a few years later, we run into Embassytown and his ideas on embassies, and aliens and alien language. Once again, the author has shown his adaptability, skill and vividly realized imagination.

And to this day, Miéville continues his evolution, exploration and expansion of the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy.

I have not read it, but I am curious about his collaboration with Keanu Reeves (of all people!), The Book of Elsewhere. If his past record is anything to go on, it will surprise and delight me.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Jerry King adds just the right accessory.
Jumpstart’s comparison gets criticized.
xkcd is more accurate for some measurements.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal features an irritating detective.

(10) HEARTFELT NEED. The GoFundMe for Joy and Walt Boyes continues into its third week — “Help Joy and Walt ease their medical and debt burden” — and there’s a new reason to give – see the update at the end.

We are Walt Boyes and Joy Ward, and we really need your help.

Joy is on kidney dialysis, waiting for a transplant list spot, and she’s been in and out of the hospital a lot the past two years. Joy’s medical bills are mounting up. Medicare doesn’t cover everything.

Now I’ve been injured myself, and so we have even more medical bills and costs.

Joy is legally blind, so she can’t write or edit. My work has been sporadic since COVID, and the rise of AI.

During COVID and for a while after, we lived on our credit cards, and while we’ve paid off a lot of it, there is still a bunch of debt we haven’t been able to clear.

We need help to clear our debts and our medical bills.

Here’s the update:

Yesterday by Walt Boyes, Organizer

ANOTHER JOY UPDATE— We got not-so-good news this morning from the cardiologist. Joy has beginning heart failure. She was diagnosed two years ago but it wasn’t major. Now it is. She’s going to undergo exploratory surgery to see if they can put another stent in, or rebuild her valves. Please keep her, and me, in your prayers. This will probably happen Monday.

Friends, we can certainly use any donations you have.

(11) CLANG, CLANG, CLANG. “Medway hospital revives ward book trolley after 25 years” reports BBC.

A Kent hospital has revived a book library trolley service visiting its wards after 25 years.

The scheme at Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham aims to “help support the wellbeing and recovery of patients”.

The volunteer-run trolley is to operate in the hospital’s brown zone wards every Thursday and Friday.

Richard Pemberton, the hospital’s knowledge and library service strategic manager, said: “Reading offers a lot of therapeutic benefits that complement medical treatment, helps to reduces anxiety, and stimulates cognitive function.”

He said: “Books can also help patients maintain a sense of normalcy by sparking conversations with others, combat isolation, and support emotional healing.

“There really are lots of wellbeing benefits to reading which is why we decided to bring the service back after discovering the photo in our archives.”

Patients can borrow books for as long as they wish, with returns collected during the next trolley visit.

If a patient is discharged mid-read, the hospital said they were welcome to take the book home.

The trolley has been funded by the Medway Hospital Charity with books donated by the public, volunteers and hospital staff….

(12) FOR LOVE. “San Diego bookstore owner offers low-cost weddings for LGBTQ+ couples” reports 10news.

Bookstores are the perfect place to find a good read, but at Mysterious Galaxy, the owners want to help people start their own romantic chapter with the first words being “I do.”

Matthew Berger loves the books he stocks on his shelves, but what he loves most are the stories that come to life in his cozy bookshop.

“It was just a fun thing for me to do with my sister, and we held the wedding here in the bookstore,” said Matthew Berger, co-owner of Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore.

Berger got ordained in 2023. He first saw it as an opportunity to officiate his sister’s wedding at his store and roast her in the process. But now, he says it’s time to turn the page.

“Now that I’m ordained, it feels like I might as well extend the offer to more people in the community,” Berger said.

He’s offering to officiate marriages for LGBTQ+ couples and allow them to use the shop as their venue for a low cost….

… Berger says he wants to show his support for the community in the best way he knows how.

“If there’s an opportunity to show the world that you love someone and that you are who you are, that you should absolutely take that opportunity,” Berger said.

If you’re interested in using the store for your wedding, you can visit their website or email them at [email protected].

(13) BRICKS IN SPACE. “The LEGO Ultimate Death Star set includes over 9,000 pieces and costs $1,000” – Yahoo! has an inside look.

LEGO just revealed the Star Wars Ultimate Death Star set, which is a massive beast that includes over 9,000 pieces. The company says it’s the largest LEGO Star Wars set ever made. It’s also the most expensive LEGO set ever, Star Wars or not. It costs a whopping $1,000.

It may set you back around a month’s rent, but just look at this thing. It’s a legit monster. The set ships with 38 minifigures, including characters like Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. It also comes with a stormtrooper figure in a hot tub, which is a nod to the LEGO Star Wars video games.

It’s not a full globe, like the actual Death Star. It’s more of a cross-section of the interior. This lets collectors recreate various locations from the movies, like the trash compactor, Palpatine’s throne room and Princess Leia’s jail cell. There’s also a tractor beam control unit, a shuttle hanger and more….

(14) SHINY. Yes, we can use radioactive plants for lighting. What could possibly go wrong? “Scientists have created rechargeable, multicolored, glow-in-the-dark succulent plants” at CNN.

Glow-in-the-dark plants bright enough to light up streets at night may sound like the stuff of science fiction or fantasy.

But scientists have already made plants that emit a greenish glow. They are even commercially available in the United States.

A group of Chinese researchers has just gone even further, creating what they say are the first multicolored and brightest-ever luminescent plants.

“Picture the world of Avatar, where glowing plants light up an entire ecosystem,” biologist Shuting Liu, a researcher at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou and co-author of the study published August 27 in the journal Matter, said in a statement….

… To make the plants glow, Liu and her fellow researchers injected the leaves of the succulent Echeveria “Mebina” with strontium aluminate, a material often used in glow-in-the-dark toys that absorbs light and gradually releases it over time.

This method marks a departure from the traditional gene-editing technique that scientists use to achieve this effect, following a model pioneered by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology….

(15) TIMEY WIMEY STUFF. [Item by Steven French.] This is very cool! “Physicists create a new kind of time crystal that humans can actually see” reports Phys.org.

Time crystals may sound like something out of science fiction, but they take their inspiration from naturally occurring crystals, such as diamonds or table salt.

Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek first proposed the idea of time crystals in 2012. You can think of traditional crystals as “space crystals.” The carbon atoms that make up a diamond, for example, form a lattice pattern in space that is very hard to break apart.

Wilczek wondered if it would be possible to build a crystal that was similarly well organized, except in time rather than space. Even in their resting state, the atoms in such a state wouldn’t form a lattice pattern, but would move or transform in a never-ending cycle—like a GIF that loops forever.

Wilczek’s original concept proved impossible to make, but, in the years since, scientists have created phases of matter that get reasonably close….

(16) A TRIO OF STAR TREK-THEMED MUSIC VIDEOS. [Item by Daniel Dern.]

Star Trek – The Bluegrass Edition

Star Trek but it’s Cheers – TNG x Cheers Intro

Star Trek (TOS) theme song with lyrics (a cappella arrangement)

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Frank Wu, Daniel Dern, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 12/12/24 Somewhere Over The Ringworld

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) AWARD UPDATE. Emily Hockaday, Analog/Asimov’s Senior Managing Editor, says the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices usually presented at the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium has been put “on hiatus over 2025 due to personal commitments, but we hope to offer it again the following year.”

(2) CHRISTIE’S SFF ART AUCTION SCORECARD. Christie’s has posted the results of its December 12 “Science Fiction and Fantasy” auction. Sandra Miesel speculates, “The price for the Ender’s Game art must be some kind of record!” The John Harris cover art fetched ten times its estimated value.

(3) A BIT OF ALL RIGHT. Who says the internet has no sense of humor? (Oh, I did… Never mind.) Camestros Felapton lightens our day with “Dahrk Snarl the Blood-Axe Wielder: A Cosy Vignette”.

[Simon Goquickly] Dear Mr Snarl, how wonderful to meet you in person.
[Snarl] I need a job.
[Simon Goquickly] Of course, of course and this is quite a resume you have here!
[Snarl] I got the wizard to write it.
[Simon Goquickly] Ah, I see – that would be Karl the Angstomancer, the cursed conjurer of Battlehaven. How is he these days?
[Snarl] Dead. Eaten by a beetle.
[Simon Goquickly] Oh dear. Eaten by beetles! What a ghastly fate.
[Snarl] A bettle. Just the one. Karl was in very small pieces at the time….

(4) ART VS. ARTIST. Nathan Deuel, a teacher at UCLA, discusses literary writers in terms that will be familiar to sff fans: “Writers I Have Met; Or, On Learning That Cormac McCarthy Was a Creep” at Literary Hub.

…The clock is ticking and I need to teach Bradbury and I’m speed-reading a Vanity Fair piece with growing alarm. Had I wanted to know more than what I already knew about Cormac? What do we know about Thomas Pynchon, for instance? How much was life enhanced by reading those New York Times profiles of Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, or Lore Segal?…

…I need to get to class. I’m walking and trying to puzzle out how I feel and why I think I am so mad. What do we search for in stories? It’s one thing to teach Bradbury’s ideas about state control and personal freedom. It’s another thing to walk to class and try to privately mourn… what? That Cormac was a bad dude? That one of my favorite writers was a monster? Here’s the deal: I do not know what to think and I can’t say exactly why….

..How much did it matter whether or not I had met the author? What role did imaginary or real people play in whether a book had the juice to keep us thinking about it years later? Why do stories stay with us and demand reading and re-reading? What was I learning as I struggled to reckon with what I knew and had not known about Cormac?…

…Just what am I getting at, with my paltry memories of famous writers? In my most cherished little stories, I seem to care whether or not writers were nice to me and people like me. The imbalance is inescapable. The world is cruel. Why do we write and why do we read? What power do we grant others over us? Especially when they’re so good at telling us stories we want to hear?…

(5) AI IS CONTROVERSIAL POINT IN ANIMATION INDUSTRY DEAL. “Animation Guild Leaders Say They’re Voting ‘No’ on Tentative Deal” – The Hollywood Reporter tells why.

Tensions over The Animation Guild‘s controversial new tentative contract spilled into public view on Tuesday as the ratification vote for the deal began.

Three members of the union’s sprawling negotiating committee posted on social media that they personally will be voting “no” on the tentative contract that they helped to bargain, primarily due to concerns about provisions covering generative AI. But that same day, the union’s chief negotiator said the agreement improved on recent deals “by a good margin” and warned that not ratifying the agreement could be “dangerous,” risking losing more work in Los Angeles.

The Animation Guild’s 56-person negotiating committee consisted of a “table team” of 29 members that met across the table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and a support team of 27 members. Both teams weighed in on proposals and changes to proposals, but only the table team voted on the tentative agreement — and largely voted favor of the deal. Two of the negotiating committee members that posted on Tuesday were part of the support team, while one served on the table team.

“I believe the AI and outsourcing protections in this contract are not strong enough — and in my opinion — could lead to the loss of lots of jobs,” Mitchell vs. The Machines writer-director Mike Rianda posted on Instagram on Tuesday. Adding that there were gains in the contract, like pay increases and health benefits improvements, Rianda argued that the pact’s A.I. protections give “sole power to the employer to make us use A.I. however they see fit.”…

(6) OVERSHADOWED. “Westeros Conquered Middle-earth” in Matt Goldberg’s opinion at Commentary Track.

It’s been over twenty years since The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and I’m not sure we’ll ever get that magic back. Director Peter Jackson couldn’t do it with the lackluster and tonally confused Hobbit trilogy. The Rings of Power on Amazon feels like a prime example of Mid TV where a lot of money was spent to make something that’s not bad, but also not all that interesting, and certainly not as good as the thing it’s meant to evoke. The best Lord of the Rings thing of the past twenty years is probably the video game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and even the story pales next to its gameplay mechanics.

While Lord of the Rings kicked off a string of fantasy film imitators throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, the future of fantasy storytelling on screen went to Game of Thrones. It pulled the genre in a more “realistic” direction meant to echo the violence and politicking of 15th century England, and others have assumed that fantasy will only appeal to modern audiences if it’s people using violence to jockey for position. This is a far cry from the Lord of the Rings, the world fell in love with where power is a corruptive force and inflicting violence, while necessary in war, is not necessarily what makes a hero.

Sadly, the new animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim feels more in line with the hit HBO series of the 2010s than the hit Peter Jackson movies of the 2000s. Even though the animated movie, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, wears the clothing of Jackson’s movies with musical cues borrowed from Howard Shore’s unforgettable scores and Eowyn (Miranda Otto) providing the narration, these trappings only serve to highlight the distance between Rohirrim and the Oscar-winning trilogy….

(7) TOLKIEN’S HERSTORY. Meanwhile GameRant+ is still betting on our willingness to click on LOTR-related links like “The Strongest Female Characters In Middle-Earth”. I know I am….

…Plenty of the movers and shakers in Middle-earth are women, starting in the realm’s earliest history and carrying right through to the later times when the last of the Elves finally sailed into the West. The protectors of Doriath, the foe of Morgoth, and the slayer of the Nazgul were exploits carried out by the strongest women in Middle-earth.

Number one on the list is still waiting for her close-up:

Melian

Wife Of King Thingol And Mother Of Luthien

Out of all the notable characters in Middle-earth, Melian is one of the few who has yet to appear in any on-screen adaptations. A Maiar on the same level as the Wizards who would follow in her footsteps, Melian chose a different life when she arrived in Middle-earth. The Vala she served was Yavanna, and when she met Prince Elwe, who would eventually become King Thingol, she took on a mortal form to be his queen.

Melian not only protected her husband’s kingdom using her power, but she also mentored a young Galadriel, who would use the same magic to protect her realm of Lothlorien. Melain and Thingo had one child, a girl named Luthien, who would challenge her mother when it came to heroic exploits.

(8) SLF WANTS ART. The Speculative Literature Foundation has put out an open call for its “Illustration of the Year 2025”, a piece of original artwork combining fantasy and science fiction themes to be featured on the SLF website, monthly e-newsletter and social media accounts and used as a visual element of SLF’s marketing material and swag throughout the year. Submissions are being taken through January 15, 2025. The winner will be announced in February 2025. Full guidelines at the link.

The winning artist will receive $750.00 and will be announced, along with the selected artwork, on the SLF’s website and social media and in a press release.

(9) A MUSEUM FOR BOGUS BOOKS. “’These are magic books’: bringing imaginary works of literature to life” – the Guardian tells how it’s being done.

At a small, unassuming exhibit in midtown Manhattan, you can see the lost translation of Homer’s single comic epic, judge the art design on Sylvia Plath’s unpublished manuscript Double Exposure – squabbled over by her mother and husband Ted Hughes, it supposedly disappeared in 1970 – or examine the one remaining copy of Aristotle’s Poetics II: On Comedy, the influential treatise on theater thought to have burned at a Benedictine Abbey in 1327 (at least, according to Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel The Name of the Rose). The extremely rare collection of books, on display at the Grolier Club until 15 February, spans texts from ancient Greece to 20,000 years in the future, when the Book of the Bene Gesserit populated the libraries of Dune. The one commonality? None of them exist….

…“It takes a certain suspension of disbelief to even consider having an exhibition of the imaginary,” said [Reid] Byers, a multi-hyphenate bibliophile who has also worked as a Presbyterian minister, a welder and a C language programmer, on a recent tour of the exhibition….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born December 12, 1976 — Tim Pratt, 48.

By Paul Weimer: In both his straight up name and his pen names, Pratt has written a slew of novels, having “graduated” to novels after a run of shorter fiction that culminated with his Hugo award winning story “Impossible Dreams”. That short story’s parallel universe heart is something that I see and encounter again and again in his fiction. Parallel universes, adjacent dimensions, demiplanes, and the like populate many of his novels, one way or another.

It was in his Pathfinder tie-in work that I first started reading his novels, proceeding through the kindle serial Heirs of Grace and into his even more ambitious work. I want to highlight these two.

The Axiom novels are a fun trio of space opera novels, revolving around a freight and salvage ship, the White Raven, accidentally finding the secret to a dread Alien race, the titular Axiom, whose awakening would spell doom for humanity. The crew of the White Raven, in a breezy trio of reads that belie their doorstopper status catapult themselves from frying pans to fires as they are literally on the front line of trying to protect humanity from an existential threat.

But it is the Doors of Sleep books that I think Pratt really hits all cylinders. The premise is deceptively simple, our protagonist Zaxony has, for reasons slowly revealed in the unfolding of the story, been granted a blessing and a curse. Every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new parallel world. As far as he can tell, he can’t ever “go back”, either. And so with a tone often reminiscent of Doctor Who and Sliders, Zaxony finds himself traveling from world to world.

The novel is clever in that it starts us in media res, Zaxony has been through this for nearly three years of personal time when the novel begins, so we get to see how he’s adapted and tried to deal with his gift. In fashion reminiscent of both Doctor Who and Sliders, it emerges that Zaxony isn’t the only person who can travel the worlds…but Zaxony’s gift makes him a target. The pair of novels go down easy and are a fun read and are my current Tim Pratt favorites.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro suggests a way to improve.
Dinosaur Comics loves writing SF, except for the writing part.

(12) THE 442ND. Airing now at the BBC World Service or available from BBC Sounds for another year, “Purple Heart Warriors”.

Time-travelling drama about the Japanese American legends of US military history – inspired by real events. The story of the 442nd Regiment fighting the Nazi German army in World War Two. An original six-part drama, released from 9th December 2024. Written by Oscar nominee Iris Yamashita and narrated by Will Sharpe.

(13) A TOUR OF DEVELOPMENT HELL. Sifting Variety’s annual list of unproduced scripts, Gizmodo has culled “The 10 Most Intriguing Sci-Fi and Horror Scripts on This Year’s Black List”.

…Here are the 10 we would be most excited to see from the 2024 list (via Variety; you can check out the full list here), all hailing from the sci-fi, horror, and fantasy realms….

For one example:

The 13th Hour by Anna Klassen

“When a group of teenagers repair an old clock with a mysterious 13th numeral, they are granted an extra hour where their actions have no consequence.”

Something tells us there will be consequences, eventually, for the tinkering kids—their magical control of time notwithstanding.

(14) SMASH THE STATE (BUT NOT THE POTTERY). Nature has a report based on a study titled “There and back again: local institutions, an Uruk expansion and the rejection of centralisation in the Sirwan/Upper Diyala region” from Cambridge Core.

Excavations in northeastern Iraq have unveiled neatly stacked bowls dating to more than 5,300 years ago that bear evidence of organized societies and whose abandonment points to eventual rejection of the state.

Mesopotamia was home to the world’s most ancient cities and state institutions, such as the Copper Age Uruk civilization. Claudia Glatz at the University of Glasgow, UK, and her collaborators excavated a Copper Age site that, in its final phase, shared close cultural ties with Uruk. They found mass-produced bowls with bevelled rims (pictured) that indicate the existence of institutions that fed large numbers of people, perhaps labourers, often with meat stews, traces of lipids on the pottery and nearby animal bones suggest.

The team found evidence of multiple consecutive periods of occupation at the site, but no signs that it was ultimately abandoned because of violent attacks or a natural disaster. Urbanism did not make another appearance in the region for some 1,500 years. The evidence suggests that the region’s population deliberately dispersed — and that the formation of state-level institutions is not an inevitable trend, the authors write.

(15) EFFECT MASKING COVID. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] From Nature:

What would have happened if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn high-grade masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? A modelling study¹ has estimated just how sharply transmission might have dropped.

Determining the effect of masks on viral transmission is difficult, and most studies so far have been affected by limitations such as small sample sizes. To overcome this issue, Richard Sear at the University of Surrey, UK, developed a model of transmission using data from the UK National Health Service COVID-19 app. The app, which ran on mobile phones between 2020 and 2023, logged information about infections and the length of time users came into contact with each other.

Sear built on a previously published analysis² of 240,000 positive COVID-19 tests and 7 million contacts — instances in which app users were notified that they had been exposed to the virus. He estimated that if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn N95 or FFP2 masks — both highly effective at filtering particles — the rate of COVID-19 transmission would have dropped by a factor of 9.

Research here: https://journals.aps.org/pre/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevE.110.064302

(16) COZYING UP TO SPACE JUNK. “Spacecraft makes daring approach of metal object in Earth’s orbit” – Mashable has details.

A Japanese spacecraft has made a daring approach to a discarded rocket in Earth’s orbit.

The mission — undertaken by the satellite technology company Astroscale — intends to eventually remove the 36-foot-long spent rocket stage, but has first tested its ability to rendezvous with the problematic object (one of 27,000 space junk objects larger than 10 centimeters in orbit).

The pioneering space endeavor is called Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan, or ADRAS-J.

“Ending 2024 with a historic approach!” Astroscale posted online. “Our ADRAS-J mission has achieved the closest ever approach by a commercial company to space debris, reaching just 15 meters [almost 50 feet] from a rocket upper stage.”

This rocket stage, weighing three tons, is the upper part of the Japanese Space Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) H2A rocket, which launched the Earth observation GOSAT satellite in 2009. The greater space debris removal mission is part of JAXA’s “Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration” project, which seeks a proven way to remove problematic space junk from orbit…

(17) SMALL BUT TOUGH. CNN learns that “’Conan the Bacterium’ is extremely radiation-resistant for a surprising reason”.

A type of bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” for its ability to survive the harshest of extremes, can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than those that would kill a human being — and the secret to its success is rooted in an antioxidant.

Now, scientists have uncovered how the antioxidant works, unlocking the possibility that it could be used to protect the health of humans, both on Earth and those exploring beyond it in the future.

The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids.

Together, this powerful trilogy is more effective in protecting against radiation than manganese combined with just one of the other components, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences….

…“We’ve long known that manganese ions and phosphate together make a strong antioxidant, but discovering and understanding the ‘magic’ potency provided by the addition of the third component is a breakthrough….,” said study coauthor Brian Hoffman, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, in a statement.

Previous research has shown that Deinococcus, known as the most radiant-resistant life-form in the Guinness World Records, can survive outside of the International Space Station for three years. The hardy bacteria can also withstand acid, cold and dehydration.

…For [a] previous study, the team measured the amount of manganese antioxidants in the cells of the bacteria. The researchers found that the amount of radiation that a microorganism could survive was directly related to its amount of manganese antioxidants. So the more manganese antioxidants present, the more resistance to radiation….

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Pixar – Outtakes/Bloopers Collection” compiled in years gone by.

Watch and enjoy a wonderful compilation of hilarious bloopers from three hit Pixar films; A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monsters, Inc. (2001).

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

Pixel Scroll 6/13/23 We Should Have Thought Of That Before We Used The Force

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) BUMMER, MAN. Camestros Felapton studies a claim about sff readers in “The downbeat end”.

…So the dire warnings of what might happen if “cosy horror” got a foothold in the horror community was that horror would be assimilated by the evil forces who had already eaten science fiction. That spawned a new discussion which is best summed up by a tweet from a very notable sf&f editor:

@EllenDatlow “It’s sad (to me) that sf devolved to a state that readers can’t take unhappy/downbeat endings. While Fiction Editor at OMNI Magazine, I was known for publishing downbeat sf and most readers had no problem with it-because the stories were great.“

A major issue with these kinds of current-state-of-the-genre is they can become so nebulous. With the cozy horror arguments people ranged from film, tv, children’s media, classics, short fiction, long fiction and so on. However, I think it is fair to look at Datlow’s comment in terms of short fiction….

Camestros puts it to the test based on his opinions about the endings of recent Hugo-winning short stories.

(2) FANZINE SCHOLARSHIP. in “’Doc’ Weir Revisited”, Douglas A. Anderson corrects a scholarly statement he once made about the question of what was the first booklet published about Tolkien?

His original choice by ‘Doc’ Weir has proven to be only a manuscript. So now the real first is…?

Anderson wields such magical fanzine fan names as Bruce Pelz and Ted Johnstone in his search.

(3) WOMEN SHOW PINBALL WIZARDRY. “Belles & Chimes, a pinball league ‘run by women, for women,’ makes some noise in a pastime where women were once consigned largely to the display cases” says the New York Times in “Not Your Father’s Pinball Arcade. But Maybe Your Mother’s.”

When Rachel Karlic and her sister, Rebecca Hinsdale, were students at Western Michigan University, they sometimes played pinball with their friend Kate Porter in a 24-hour video rental store near campus. The store was called Video Hits Plus, with the Plus maybe referring to the basement attractions, which, in addition to the pinball machines, included an air hockey table and a pornographic video section.

After graduating, the three women went their separate ways, eventually reuniting in Chicago in 2011. This was around the time that pinball machines, after nearly dying out in the early 2000s from competition with home gaming consoles, started becoming more popular again.

It helped that new machines were more complex, with modern electronics and mechanical features like the motorized skyscraper on the 2021 Godzilla machine. The numbers of avid players grew, as did the number of competitions and tournaments. Many of these events were sanctioned by the International Flipper Pinball Association, which ranks players globally.

In Chicago, one of the hubs of pinball’s resurgence was a onetime record store in the Logan Square neighborhood. The back of the store housed a selection of pinball machines, and if you bought something, you could play the machines for free. In 2014, James Zespy, the owner of the store, transformed it into a pinball and arcade bar called Logan Arcade.

That’s where, in 2017, Ms. Karlic, Ms. Hinsdale, Ms. Porter and their friend Tavi Veraldi started the Chicago chapter of the Belles & Chimes. Founded in 2013 in Oakland, Calif., Belles & Chimes bills itself as “an international network of inclusive women’s pinball leagues run by women, for women.” The Chicago chapter has about 50 members and hosts two seasons of league play every year….

(4) PROBLEM SOLVED, UHH… [Item by Bill.] AI’s that train on copyrighted works seem to be a concern of many Filers.

Japan has solved that problem: “Japan Goes All In: Copyright Doesn’t Apply To AI Training” at Technomancers.ai.

In a surprising move, Japan’s government recently reaffirmed that it will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training. The policy allows AI to use any data “regardless of whether it is for non-profit or commercial purposes, whether it is an act other than reproduction, or whether it is content obtained from illegal sites or otherwise.” Keiko Nagaoka, Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, confirmed the bold stance to local meeting, saying that Japan’s laws won’t protect copyrighted materials used in AI datasets.

English language coverage of the situation is sparse. It seems the Japanese government believes copyright worries, particularly those linked to anime and other visual media, have held back the nation’s progress in AI technology. In response, Japan is going all-in, opting for a no-copyright approach to remain competitive.

This news is part of Japan’s ambitious plan to become a leader in AI technology. Rapidus, a local tech firm known for its advanced 2nm chip technology, is stepping into the spotlight as a serious contender in the world of AI chips. With Taiwan’s political situation looking unstable, Japanese chip manufacturing could be a safer bet. Japan is also stepping up to help shape the global rules for AI systems within the G-7….

(5) STAN THE MAN. Yahoo! says “Stan Lee” is a fan-service documentary released by Disney+ that will drop on June 16. “’Stan Lee’ Review: A Tasty Documentary About the Visionary of Marvel Makes the Comics Look Better Than the Movies”.

There’s a moment in “Stan Lee,” David Gelb’s lively and illuminating documentary about the visionary of Marvel Comics, that’s momentous enough to give you a tingle. The year is 1961, and Lee, approaching 40, is burnt out on comics. It’s a form he has never taken all that seriously, even though he’s been working at it since 1939, when he started, at 17, as a gofer for Timely Comics. (Within two years he’d become the company’s editor, art director, and chief writer.) The comics he creates get so little respect that he tries to hide his profession when asked about it at cocktail parties.

In 1961, though, Lee receives a directive from Martin Goodman, the publisher of the company that’s about to be renamed Marvel. He is ordered to devise a team of superheroes that can compete with DC’s Justice League (who have become the fulcrum of the so-called Silver Age of Comics). Lee, weary of superheroes, is ready to quit the business. But his wife, the English-born beauty Joan Lee, suggests that he create the kind of characters he has always been talking about — a more realistic brand of comic-book figure, one that ordinary people could relate to.

With nothing to lose, he comes up with the Fantastic Four as a new breed of superhero: characters with a dash of angst and a host of ordinary problems — they bicker and nurse their anger and anxiety, they worry about things like paying the rent, and in the case of The Thing they have some serious self-esteem issues….

(6) CORMAC MCCARTHY (1933-2023). Cormac McCarthy died June 13 at the age of 89 reports NPR. While SFE argues for a couple of his earlier works having traits of horror, his one acknowledged sff novel is The Road, set in postapocalyptic America, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It also won Spain’s Premio Ignotus (2008), McCarthy’s only major sff award.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1966 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Our Beginning this time is that of Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17. Yes, it won a Nebula (along with Flowers for Algernon) and was nominated for a Hugo at NyCon 3 which was the year that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress won.

Delany intended to have Babel-17 originally published as a single volume with the “Empire Star” novella, but this did not happen until a reprint twelve years ago. That didn’t happen when it was published first by Ace Books fifty-seven years ago.

If you’re so inclined, Jo Walton did a rather good review of it over at Tor here.

And for our Beginning…

…Here is the hub of ambiguity.
Electric spectra splash across the street.
Equivocation knots the shadowed features
of boys who are not boys;
a quirk of darkness shrivels
a full mouth to senility
or pares it to a razor-edge, pours acid
across an amber cheek, fingers a crotch,
or smashes in the pelvic arch
and wells a dark clot oozing on a chest
dispelled with motion or a flare of light
that swells the lips and dribbles them with blood.
They say the hustlers paint their lips with blood.
They say the same crowd surges up the street
and surges down again, like driftwood borne
tidewise ashore and sucked away with backwash, only to slap into the sand again,
only to be jerked out and spun away.
Driftwood; the narrow hips, the liquid eyes,
the wideflung shoulders and the rough-cast hands, the gray-faced jackals kneeling to their prey.
The colors disappear at break of day
when stragglers toward the west riverdocks meet young sailors ambling shipward on the street…
—from Prism and Lens

IT’S A PORT CITY.

Here fumes rust the sky, the General thought. Industrial gases flushed the evening with oranges, salmons, purples with too much red. West, ascending and descending transports, shuttling cargoes to stellarcenters and satellites, lacerated the clouds. It’s a rotten poor city too, thought the General, turning the corner by the garbage-strewn curb.

Since the Invasion six ruinous embargoes for months apiece had strangled this city whose lifeline must pulse with interstellar commerce to survive. Sequestered, how could this city exist? Six times in twenty years he’d asked himself that. Answer? It couldn’t.

Panics, riots, burnings, twice cannibalism—

The General looked from the silhouetted loading-towers that jutted behind the rickety monorail to the grimy buildings. The streets were smaller here, cluttered with Transport workers, loaders, a few stellarmen in green uniforms, and the horde of pale, proper men and women who managed the intricate sprawl of customs operations. They are quiet now, intent on home or work, the General thought. Yet all these people have lived for two decades under the Invasion. They’ve starved during the embargoes, broken windows, looted, run screaming before firehoses, torn flesh from a corpse’s arm with decalcified teeth.

Who is this animal man? He asked himself the abstract question to blur the lines of memory. It was easier, being a general, to ask about the “animal man” than about the woman who had sat in the middle of the sidewalk during the last embargo holding her skeletal baby by one leg, or the three scrawny teenage girls who had attacked him on the street with razors (—she had hissed through brown teeth, the bar of metal glistening toward his chest, “Come here, Beefsteak! Come get me, Lunch meat…” He had used karate—) or the blind man who had walked up the avenue, screaming.

Pale and proper men and women now, who spoke softly, who always hesitated before they let an expression fix their faces, with pale, proper, patriotic ideas: work for victory over the Invaders; Alona Star and Kip Rhyak were great in “Stellar Holliday” but Ronald Quar was the best serious actor around. They listened to Hi Lite’s music (or did they listen, wondered the General, during those slow dances where no one touched). A position in Customs was a good secure job.

Working directly in Transport was probably more exciting and fun to watch in the movies; but really, such strange people—

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born June 13, 1943 — Malcolm McDowell, 80. My favorite role for him was Mr. Roarke on the rebooted Fantasy Island. Of course, his most infamous role was Alex in A Clockwork Orange. Scary film, that. His characterization of H. G. Wells in Time After Time was I thought rather spot on. And I’d like to single out his voicing Arcady Duvall in the “Showdown” episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Remember the Will Smith starred Wild Wild West film? Here is the same premise with Jonah Hex instead.
Born June 13, 1945 — Whitley Strieber, 78. I’ve decidedly mixed feelings about him. He’s written two rather good horror novels, The Wolfen which made a fantastic horror film and The Hunger. But I’m convinced that his book Communion about his encounter with aliens is an absolute crock.
Born June 13, 1949 — Simon Callow, 74. English actor, musician, writer, and theatre director. So what’s he doing here? Well, he got to be Charles Dickens twice on Doctor Who, the first being in “The Unquiet Dead” during the time of the Ninth Doctor and then later during “The Wedding of River Song”. He’d also appear, though not as Dickens, on The Sarah Jane Adventures as the voice of Tree Blathereen in “The Gift” episode. I’ve not watched the latter. How are they? He was The Duke of Sandringham in the first season of Outlander.
Born June 13, 1953 — Tim Allen, 70. Jason Nesmith in the beloved Galaxy Quest, winning a much deserved Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. (What was running against it that year?) He actually had a big hit several years previously voicing Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story which would be the first in that film franchise.
Born June 13, 1963 — Audrey Niffenegger, 60. Her first novel was The Time Traveler’s Wife. She has stated in interviews that she will not see the film as only the characters in the novels are hers. Good for her. Raven Girl, her third novel about a couple whose child is a raven trapped in a human body, was turned into performed at the Royal Opera House.
Born June 13, 1968 — Marcel Theroux, 55. Author of The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase, and his Strange Bodies novel won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His Far North is a sf novel set in the Siberian taiga. Yes, that’s a novel I want to read.
Born June 13, 1969 — Cayetana Guillén Cuervo, 54. She’s got the role of Irene Larra in El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time), a Spanish SF series which sounds fascinating but which I’ve not seen. Anyone here seen it? Not fond of captioning, but I’d put up with it to see this.
Born June 13, 1981 — Chris Evans, 42. Captain America in the Marvel film franchise. He had an earlier role as the Human Torch in the non-MCU Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I think this makes him the only performer to play two major characters in either the DC or Marvel Universes.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater’s Oz pun is one of the worst ever. Oh, yes.
Tom Gauld realizes brainstorming affects certain brains differently.

My cartoon for the latest @newscientist pic.twitter.com/C9y59TZbsm
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) June 12, 2023

(10) ZOMBIE CHOW. Food & Wine makes sure we’re paying attention when “General Mills Adds ‘Carmella Creeper’ to Monster Cereal Lineup”.

…”Carmella Creeper is the long-lost cousin of Franken Berry as well as a zombie DJ with an edgy sound who is always the life of the party,” General Mills explains. “Complete with a fierce attitude and looks to match, Carmella is ready to shake things up at the Monsters’ haunted mansion with her limited-edition cereal featuring caramel-apple-flavored pieces with colored Monster marshmallows.”

That wasn’t the only scary cereal-related announcement of the week. General Mills added that all six Monsters will come together in a single box later this year with the debut of Monster Mash Remix cereal. Carmella Creeper will be joining Boo Berry, Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Fruit Brute, and Yummy Mummy in a limited-time marshmallow-filled cereal combo. (Yes, this is similar to the previous Monster Mash cereal that was released for the Monsters’ 50th anniversary in 2021 — but this time, Carmella has been invited to the Monster Party.)…

It's official—a new face is joining the Monster Cereals for the first time in 36 years.

Carmella Creeper is getting her own caramel apple cereal, and she's also joining a reworked version of Monster Mash Cereal, which brings the whole gang together in one box! pic.twitter.com/unQLh7PdHw
— Cerealously ???????? (@cerealouslynet) June 7, 2023

(11) THE DINO RHINO WITH THOROUGHBRED LEGS. “Svetz! Watch out fpr that rampaging prehistoric rhino!” “This Prehistoric Giant Rhino Was ‘Taller Than a Giraffe’” reports Smithsonian Magazine.

…The giant rhinoceros roamed Eurasia sometime between 20 million and 35 million years ago. The extinct behemoth stretched over 26 feet long and weighed almost as much as five elephants. Now, paleontologists have unearthed partial remains of a new species of giant rhino in China, according to a study published last week in the journal Communications Biology….

The prehistoric beast stood nearly 16 feet tall on four bony legs similar to giraffes and weighed between 11 to 20 metric tons, which is equivalent to about three to five African elephants, Science Alert reports. Based on the size of the skull, the rhino had a long thick neck, a deeper nasal cavity, and a short trunk similar to that of a modern-day tapir, reports the BBC. The vertebrae fossils suggest the new species had a more flexible neck than other species of giant rhinoceroses, the researchers explain in a statement.

Deng suggests that the rhino’s thin legs were great for running, and its head could reach the highest leaves from the treetops, Gizmodo reports….

(12) CATCHING THE WAVES ON LUNA. The Conversation believes “Building telescopes on the Moon could transform astronomy – and it’s becoming an achievable goal”.

…Several types of astronomy would benefit. The most obvious is radio astronomy, which can be conducted from the side of the Moon that always faces away from Earth – the far side.

The lunar far side is permanently shielded from the radio signals generated by humans on Earth. During the lunar night, it is also protected from the Sun. These characteristics make it probably the most “radio-quiet” location in the whole solar system as no other planet or moon has a side that permanently faces away from the Earth. It is therefore ideally suited for radio astronomy.

Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic energy – as are, for example, infrared, ultraviolet and visible-light waves. They are defined by having different wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Radio waves with wavelengths longer than about 15m are blocked by Earth’s ionoshere. But radio waves at these wavelengths reach the Moon’s surface unimpeded. For astronomy, this is the last unexplored region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and it is best studied from the lunar far side.

Observations of the cosmos at these wavelengths come under the umbrella of “low frequency radio astronomy”. These wavelengths are uniquely able to probe the structure of the early universe, especially the cosmic “dark ages” – an era before the first galaxies formed.

At that time, most of the matter in the universe, excluding the mysterious dark matter, was in the form of neutral hydrogen atoms. These emit and absorb radiation with a characteristic wavelength of 21cm. Radio astronomers have been using this property to study hydrogen clouds in our own galaxy – the Milky Way – since the 1950s.

Because the universe is constantly expanding, the 21cm signal generated by hydrogen in the early universe has been shifted to much longer wavelengths. As a result, hydrogen from the cosmic “dark ages” will appear to us with wavelengths greater than 10m. The lunar far side may be the only place where we can study this….

(13) SFF LIFE IN CHENGDU. “China’s Sci-Fi Hub |Why Sci-Fi Creators Keep Coming Here for Inspiration?” – a video interview with author Wanxiang Fengnian, winner of the Chinese Nebula Award. Subtitled in both English and Chinese.

Chengdu, despite being a geographical lowland in China, undoubtedly stands as the highland of Chinese science fiction. Countless Chinese science fiction writers have found their inspiration here. From a unique coffee shop, an area full of local lifestyle, to the largest natural history museum in Southwest China, the ubiquitous sci-fi scenes are like a string of keys to the door of the marvelous universe, attracting countless sci-fi fans. As a science fiction writer who has settled in Chengdu for many years, how does Wanxiang Fengnian draw inspiration here and perfectly combine reality and sci-fi creation?

(14) SUMMER CAMP. Turner Classic Movies helps viewers understand some of their fare this month with the help of sff: “What Is Camp? These Sci-Fi Movies Explain”.

This June, TCM is getting campy. In this episode of Film 101, we examine what the term “camp” means by looking at four sci-fi camp classics airing on TCM this month: Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), Queen of Outer Space (1958), Barbarella (1968), and The Apple (1980).

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Bill, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 10/18/19 What Pixel Should A Poor File Scroll For All Tomorrow’s Entries

Posted on October 18, 2019 by Mike Glyer

(1) COLLECTIBLE PAPERBACKS SPOTLIGHTED. [Item by Andrew Porter.] This daily series of short videos concentrate on vintage and collectible paperbacks. It began barely more than a month ago, and so far, nearly 50 have been uploaded to Gary Lovisi’s YouTube channel.

Episodes have covered (starting with the most recent): Hardboiled Crime Fiction “Frank Kane” with Ron Lesser GGA covers; Dell 10¢ Paperbacks; Edgar Rice Burroughs “John Carter” inspired Pulp SF “Jon Kirk of Ares”; Sherlock Holmes Books; Sleaze “Kozy Books” Series; “The Thing” SF Horror in Paperback; ” UK Cherry Tree Books; Sexy Digest GGA Sleaze; Mysterious Bookshop NYC Tour; “Shuna” Jungle Girl Series; Best Rare US Dime Novels; Hardboiled Pulp Fiction Books; Rare British “World Fantasy Classics”; Fredric Brown early Bantam Paperbacks; “Boardman Bloodhound Books”; Checkerbooks US Paperback Book series; Gold Star “The New Tarzan Book Series”; British Gangster Digests; “Avon Science Fiction Reader” Series; Early Avon SF Fantasy & Horror.

(2) PETER RABBIT DEUX. The sequel arrives in theaters next Easter.

In PETER RABBIT™ 2: THE RUNAWAY, the lovable rogue is back. Bea, Thomas, and the rabbits have created a makeshift family, but despite his best efforts, Peter can’t seem to shake his mischievous reputation. Adventuring out of the garden, Peter finds himself in a world where his mischief is appreciated, but when his family risks everything to come looking for him, Peter must figure out what kind of bunny he wants to be.

(3) TOLKIEN GENESIS. Verlyn Flieger’s Scholar Guest of Honor Address for the 2019 Mythcon, “The Arch and the Keystone”, can be read online at Mythlore.

…Moving forward is more challenging. How can we contrive to move forward when, like Alice’s Red Queen, we have to run faster and faster just to stay in place? The growing body of writing both by and about Tolkien ensures that not only can we no longer read the unknown book I discovered in 1956, we can’t even all read the same book in 2019. We have too many opinions based on too much information from too many sources to come to a consensus. In spite of his fame, in spite of his position at the top of the heap, in spite of The Lord of the Rings’ established position as Waterstone’s Book of the Century, the world has and probably will continue to have trouble agreeing on who/what he is….

(4) BACK IN COSTUME. The Washington Post’s Tim Grieving interviews Mystery Science Theatre 3000 founder Joel Hodgson about why he returned to the series and why he is involved in Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Live, which is playing in Washington DC this weekend. “‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ takes its audience down memory lane — with an eye on the future”.

…This weekend, Hodgson, 59, will sport the red jumpsuit for the first time since 1993 and bring the Great Cheesy Movie Circus Tour to the National Theatre, a live version of the MST3K format familiar to fans: making fun of bad movies — in this case, the British schlockfest “Circus of Horrors” (1960) and the 1986 kung fu flick “No Retreat, No Surrender” — interspersed with sketches.

(5) SF CONFERENCE IN CHINA. At Yunchtime, Mlex shares what he’s found out about “Chinese Science Fiction Conference 2019”, a November event sponsored by Science & Fantasy Growth Foundation.

…With the fourth annual conference scheduled to take place very soon in Beijing Nov 2019, I thought I would delve a little deeper into the conference and the organization behind it.
The 2019 conference will, for the first time, include participants from outside of China. These include Andrei Heim, Kevin Anderson, Leonard Mondrino, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Neil Clarke.
The Conference theme for 2019 is divided into tracks: “science fiction + culture”, “science fiction + technology”, “science fiction + science”, “sci-fi + film” “, science fiction + games”, “science fiction + youth.”
Organizationally, I get the impression that this has a professional team, strategizing about how to capitalize on the popularity of science fiction in China today, and that they are looking for not only ideas, but actual talent….

On Nov. 2-3, China Sci-Fi Conference 2019 will be held in the Garden Expo Park in Fengtai District, Beijing.
There are 6 special forums involving multiple links in the Sci-Fi ecosystem, including Culture, Technology, Science Popularization, Film and Television, Games & Youth. pic.twitter.com/2nPBjK5GgT
— SGF (@Scififoundation) October 18, 2019

(6) BACK TO DUBLIN. I’m a bit overdue to link to España Sheriff’s conreport, “Worldcon 2019 in Dublin”.

…Besides the art show and print shop, Warehouse One was also housed several cool displays and craft items. There were half a dozen large scale lego constructions, including a massive Star Wars one by James Shields, a Community Drawing Wall, and a wall of art by Irish artist, including some Steve Dillon comic pages and Ian Clark’s wonderful Dublin 2019 artworks. There was programming in the Odean movie theatre screen rooms, and next door at the Gibson hotel, and some of it looked quite good. But ultimately when deciding what to see I factored in the walk there and back, and unless there were two items one after another there just didn’t seem worth it – by the end I attended no programming at Point Square excepting the art show and artist reception. In retrospect the 7-day LUAS transit pass would have been a good idea, but we didn’t see that option in time.

(7) BACK IN 1938. Let the LA Times’ Michael Rechtshaffen tell you about a cinematic discovery: “Review: Unreleased 1938 silent sci-fi film ‘As the Earth Turns’ boasts analog ingenuity”. The 45-minute film will be shown tonight in Glendale, CA.

Had Steven Spielberg been a 16-millimeter camera-toting teen in the 1930s, his home movies might have looked like “As the Earth Turns,” a black-and-white, silent 45-minute science-fiction film about a peace-crazed scientist named Pax who attempts to persuade the world to put down its weapons by inducing extreme climate change.
Made by Richard H. Lyford, a 20-year-old Seattle-based budding playwright and filmmaker who would go on to work as a Disney animator and Oscar-winning documentary director, the digitally restored 1938 original has been outfitted with a period-appropriate score by contemporary composer Ed Hartman.

(8) CROWDED FRAME. Variety headline: “Record 32 Animated Feature Films Submitted for Oscars”.

“The Addams Family,” “Frozen II,” “Toy Story 4,” “Abominable” and “The Secret Life of Pets 2” are among the record 32 movies submitted for the animated feature film category at the 2020 Oscars.
Last year’s Academy Awards race boasted 25 entries, while 2017 had 26 and 2016 had 27 (a then-record).

(9) ROAD MAP. This week’s Nature offers “Tips from a Pulitzer prizewinner” — author Cormac McCarthy. Though this advice is for writing research papers, it’s good, general writing advice…

• Use minimalism to achieve clarity. While you are writing, ask yourself: is it possible to preserve my original message without that punctuation mark, that word, that sentence, that paragraph or that section? Remove extra words or commas whenever you can.
• Decide on your paper’s theme and two or three points you want every reader to remember. This theme and these points form the single thread that runs through your piece. The words, sentences, paragraphs and sections are the needlework that holds it together. If something isn’t needed to help the reader to understand the main theme, omit it.
• Limit each paragraph to a single message. A single sentence can be a paragraph. Each paragraph should explore that message by first asking a question and then progressing to an idea, and sometimes to an answer. It’s also perfectly fine to raise questions in a paragraph and leave them unanswered.
• Keep sentences short, simply constructed and direct. Concise, clear sentences work well for scientific explanations. Minimize clauses, compound sentences and transition words — such as ‘however’ or ‘thus’ — so that the reader can focus on the main message.

(10) WHERE’D SHE GO? NPR’s Scott Tobias sighs, “‘Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil’ Clips Angelina Jolie’s Wings”.

As Disney continues to plunder its animated IP for live-action remakes, where these films fall on the spectrum of pointlessness has to do with how closely they adhere to the source. The remakes that simply copy the material from one format to the other, like Beauty and The Beast or Aladdin, have been consistently enervating whereas the ones that attempt a full gut rehab, like Dumbo or the excellent Pete’s Dragon, at least have the benefit of an independent artistic vision. In this particular creative desert, every droplet of water counts.
The 2014 fantasy Maleficent wasn’t a remake of Sleeping Beauty so much as an alternative telling, an act of playful revisionism that relates to the original as the novel and Broadway musical Wicked relates to The Wizard of Oz. The main twist — that Maleficent isn’t evil, but a wronged fairy taking revenge on a duplicitous king — riffs cleverly on the idea that everyone has their reasons. The film also nests other bits of commentary inside, like questioning whether Prince Phillip and Princess Aurora could have fallen in love so quickly or snickering at the notion that Aurora could dodge Maleficent’s curse by hiding in the woods for 16 years. But it works best as a vehicle for Angelina Jolie, whose enhanced cheekbones and villainous cackle suggested the making of a camp icon.
…Mistress of Evil loses the emotional stakes of the first film, which were rooted in a terrible injustice and the unlikely bond between Maleficent and the cursed princess she comes to adore. There’s a good angle here about the destructive potential of myth, tied to the stories that unfairly poison Maleficent in the human world, but Jolie goes missing for long stretches of the film as Ingrith does her scheming. And while it’s a pleasure to see Pfeiffer lay into a regal villain, it’s odd to see a Maleficent film with so little Maleficent, and all the giggly little sprites in the world can’t make up for it. Jolie was born to play the role, and the best strategy would have been to let her.

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY.

October 18, 2016 — The new edition of The Star Trek Encyclopedia by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda was released. They were production staff on Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It was illustrated by Doug Drexler. Now a two volume. set with a slip case, it has five hundred new entries.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 18, 1917 — Reynold Brown. Artist responsible for many SF film posters. His first poster was Creature from the Black Lagoon which Mike included in a recent post, with other notable ones being Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Mothra vs. Godzilla. (Died 1991.)
Born October 18, 1938 — Barbara Baldavin, 81. She was a recurring performer on Trek first as Angela Martine in “Balance of Terror” and “Shore Leave”. She would also appear in the final season’s “Turnabout Intruder” as communications officer Lisa. After that, she had one-offs on Fantasy Island and The Bionic Woman. She retired from the business in 1993.
Born October 18, 1938 — Dawn Wells, 81. Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan’s Island which y’all decided was genre. She and Tina Louise are the last surviving regular cast members from that series. She had genre one-offs on The Invaders, Wild Wild West and Alf.
Born October 18, 1944 — Katherine Kurtz, 75. Known for the Deryni series which started with Deryni Rising in 1970, and the most recent, The King’s Deryni, was published in 2014. As medieval historical fantasy goes, they’re damn great.
Born October 18, 1951 — Jeff Schalles, 68. Minnesota area fan who’s making the Birthday Honors because he was the camera man for Cats Laughing’s A Long Time Gone: Reunion at Minicon 50 concert DVD. Cats Laughing is a band deep in genre as you can read in the Green Man review here.
Born October 18, 1951 — Pam Dawber, 68. Mindy McConnell in Mork & Mindy. She did very little other genre work, Faerie Tale Theatre and the Twilight Zone being the only other shows she did. She was however in The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything as Bonny Lee Beaumont which is based off the John D. MacDonald novel of the same name. Go watch it — it’s brilliant!
Born October 18, 1960 — Jean-Claude Van Damme, 59. Cyborg, the Universal Soldier film franchise and Time Cop are but three of his genre films. And he’s in some films in ways that aren’t necessarily apparent, i.e. he was an uncredited stunt double in Predator, and he had a cameo in Last Action Hero.
Born October 18, 1964 — Charles Stross, 55. I’ve read a lot of him down the years with I think his best being the rejiggered Merchant Princes series. Other favorite works include the early Laundry Files novels and both of the Halting State novels.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater believes in ghastly puns, especially at Halloween.
JJ says, “Somehow I don’t think this was quite what Campbell had in mind for psience.” —

this is a bee gee board pic.twitter.com/GbToqPPW4g
— zombie ninja kittens (@47zombiekittens) December 1, 2016

(14) CELEBRATING LONGEVITY. “Wonder Woman gets monumental, all-star 750th issue” – SYFY Wire has the story.

Wonder Woman is getting a special giant-sized comic book to commemorate an upcoming landmark issue.
Today, DC Comics announced it will assemble an all-star roster of writers and artists who will pack the 96-page super-sized one-shot with stories and artwork that chronicle the Amazonian princess from the 1940s all the way through to today. Contributing to the issue are long-time Wonder Woman scribes Greg Rucka and Gail Simone, along with the book’s current writer, Steve Orlando.

(15) THE LATEST COUNT. John Kelly in the Washington Post has a profile of Dick Dyszel, who played “Count Gore De Vol” in Washington’s creature feature on Channel 20 from 1979-87. The count is still busy, with his website, (countgore.com), and streaming short films on Vimeo. “The horror! Homegrown Count Gore De Vol is back for some Halloween high jinks” (2018 article.)

…I asked Dick which movies scared him as a kid growing up in Chicago. Not many, he said. “What I really liked were the big bug movies: ‘Them.’ ‘Tarantula.’ Things like that.”
In fact, Dick said he didn’t actually see the movie that scared him the most.
“I’m being very honest: There was a trailer I saw in the movie theater,” he said. “There was a closet door opening and some thing came out of the closet. It scared the living daylights out of me. I left the theater. Let’s face it, it’s a cheap horror thing: the unknown coming out of a door.”
Cheap but effective, just like Count Gore.

(16) SOUND RETREAT. SYFY Wire hopes this house may do as much for visiting writers as it did for the original owner: “Stephen King’s Bangor home to serve as archive, writers’ retreat”.

Great news, Stephen King fans … and aspiring writers! The Victorian mansion in Bangor, Maine, that King and his wife Tabitha have called home for decades has been reorged as a nonprofit and will open its ornate bat-decorated gate to scholars and authors.
The Bangor City Council on Wednesday approved the Kings’ request to rezone their home, per a story from Rolling Stone. Going forward, the red mansion at 47 West Broadway where the Kings raised their three children will serve as an archive of King’s work, while a guest house next door would serve as a writers’ retreat. The archive was previously at the Kings’ alma mater, the University of Maine….

(17) THE TIFF SPREADS. Another country objects to a map shown in this animated movie: “Abominable: A DreamWorks movie, a map, and a huge regional row”, followup on a Pixel from a few days ago.

Malaysian censors have ordered a scene to be cut from DreamWorks film Abominable before it is screened there – because of a brief glimpse of a map.
It is the third South East Asian country to take offence at the scene in the film, a Chinese co-production.
The contentious map shows the “nine-dash line”, which China uses to show its claims in the South China Sea.
Parts of the sea and various island groups are claimed by five other Asian countries, as well as China.
Vietnam has already pulled the movie – while Philippine politicians are calling for a DreamWorks boycott.
It might be merely a backdrop in an animated movie – but it shines a spotlight on one of the world’s hottest territorial disputes.

(18) SOME HOBBY. Meet “The man who owns 1,000 meteorites”.

On Christmas Eve 1965 a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite exploded over the Leicestershire village of Barwell.
It was one of the largest and best recorded meteorite falls in British history: witnesses reported a flash in the sky accompanied by a loud bang, followed by a thud as one of the first pieces of space rock landed on the ground. As news of what happened emerged, the media descended on the village and a frantic search for the hundreds of scattered fragments began.
For nine-year-old Graham Ensor, who lived nearby, it was an event that would change his life, sparking an enduring passion for space rocks. The former lecturer now owns about 1,000 specimens, which experts believe could be the largest private collection in the UK.

(19) LOAFING AROUND. Kitchen Overlord celebrates this literary occasion with a ghastly looking baked good: “Dune Week: Spice Stuffed Sandworm Bread”. At the end of the post there are links to even more Dune-inspired recipes.

Since you honor my sietch with your visit, I will share the secrets of creating a proud, impressive, spice-scented effigy of the Great Maker of Arrakis….

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “The Truth About Test Screenings” on Vimeo, SHAZAM! director David F. Sandberg gives an insider’s view of when test screenings matter and when they don’t.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Mlex, Chip Hitchcock, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, John Hertz, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

The Underground Railroad Wins Pulitzer Prize

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Mike Glyer

Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad has won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The citation says Whitehead’s book was chosen “For a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America.”

As the publisher describes the story:

In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

The Pulitzer Prize, worth $15,000, goes to “distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.”

The winner was determined by a jury composed of Eric Banks (Chair), Director, New York Institute for the Humanities, New York University; Lan Samantha Chang, Director and May Brodbeck Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Iowa Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa; Mary Ann Gwinn, Book Editor, Seattle Times.

Overcoming a historic mainstream bias, in the past two decades speculative fiction has contended for the Pulitzer several times. In 2016 Kelly Link’s Get in Trouble: Stories was one of two finalists, while past winners have included The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (2007) and The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001).

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The Underground Railroad Wins Pulitzer Prize