Tag Archives: Gordon Eklund

Pixel Scroll 6/4/26 What If Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March* Became The Fantastic Four?

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(0) * From Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, of course.

(1) THE PUBLISHING GRIND. Nick Mamatas tells how the sausage gets made in “How Publishing Actually Works” at The Republic of Letters. Here are a couple of excerpts.

…Doomscrollers and restackers, here is what you need to understand: publishing is a nineteenth-century production-driven manufacturing industry, not unlike the Big Three automakers, but the writers and compilers of books are artisanal creators. This contradiction is the cause of many of the anxieties and confusions experienced by aspiring novelists and even working professionals.

A production-driven industry is one that is less concerned with tailoring products toward a market and more about manufacturing large numbers of products (both units and product types), and then selling those products to another set of sellers. Those retailers are in the business of meeting the customer. The publishing industry—even leaving aside self-published ebooks—generates hundreds of thousands of books a year across all categories. This despite there being only five big publishers that do this sort of thing, and perhaps as many big retail outlets to sell the books to individual consumers.

Furthermore, publishers spend a lot of money up-front bringing books to print, but get their profits back in dribs and drabs. Booksellers sell the books, and return the ones that do not sell for a full refund. The books don’t even need to be in good shape when they return to the warehouse either. Most get Dumpstered or incinerated. (And no, “the poor” don’t want those books either, even for free.)…

… Nobody would patronize a best-seller–only shopping mall kiosk called We Bet We Have That Book You Want, even though best-sellers are most of what anyone buys. People want to walk into stores with lots of books which they have no interest in even looking at. Amazon uses the same strategy—it launched in 1994 with its slogan “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.” Amazon claimed to have millions of books in its warehouses, while the two big chains at the time had a couple hundred thousand. Attracted by the promise of endless possibilities, tons of readers made accounts and bought…Harry Potter titles and Who Moved My Cheese?, which they could have gotten anywhere else.

Ironically, it is thus not true that all publishers want is best-sellers. There is one major benefit in the best-seller: as print runs go up, per-unit costs go down, but that’s not enough. The Big Five want wallpaper, which they use to make you buy their best-sellers….

(2) YOU’RE FROM THE SIXTIES! Camestros Felapton’s series about robots in sff discusses The Doom Patrol and X-Men comics. “An Aside About the X-Men (and others)”. Here’s an excerpt:

…In earlier issues, it had been shown that the X-Men felt they needed to hide their identities as society wasn’t ready to understand them, from issue 14 the relationship with wider society becomes more fraught. Trask’s annoucement leads to a press campaign whipping up hatred of mutants, with lurid fears of a mutant take over. Having said that, Magneto had genuinely attempted to take over a country a few issues earlier with an illusionary Nazi-like army.

This is still a 1960s comic, so it is as goofy as hell. Professor Xavier arranges a TV debate with Trask. However, Xavier’s TV appearance does more harm than good. When he suggests that anybody might end up having mutant children, people take offence. On live TV Trask also reveals his solution to mutant problem: ROBOTS! Specifically, Sentinels, superpowered robots designed to protect humanity from mutants. However, as soon as Trask explains that the robots are under his command, the leader of the Sentinels explains that as their brains are superior THEY are in command. The story line doesn’t mess about: it is introduction to full on robot uprising in four panels.

It takes several issues for the X-Men to defeat the Sentinels, but once done the public reputation of mutants is somewhat improved and Professor Xavier’s advocacy is vindicated….

(3) THE WORST. James Davis Nicoll, having discussed good sff mentors, does a 180 to give us “Five Terrible or Useless Mentors in SF and Fantasy” at Reactor.

As recently discussed, many fictional protagonists have benefited from talented, inspirational mentors. However, there is another variety of mentor that, while perhaps not as useful, can be just as inspirational… or at least extremely memorable. This is the terrible mentor, the pontificator whose advice is invariably incorrect, when it is not actively harmful….

Here’s one of his picks:

Qifrey — Kamome Shirahama’s Witch Hat Atelier

No sooner did Coco discover that anyone with the right tools can perform magic than she accidentally killed her mother with a runaway spell. Under witch law, any non-witch who learns magic should have their memory erased. Instead, kindly Qifrey offers Coco the chance to study magic.

Qifrey does not spare Coco because he is benevolent. He spares her because he believes her memory holds clues that will allow him to successfully pursue a vendetta against those who hurt him. Erasing her memory would erase those clues.

In fact, the series establishes clearly that Qifrey is adept at presenting himself as a sincere friend and protector, when in fact he is coldly pragmatic about pursuing his goals. His close friend Olruggio could attest to this—if Qifrey weren’t in the habit of erasing Olruggio’s memory whenever Olruggio learns too much.

(4) POLITICAL SCIENCE. [Item by Steven French.] How Newtonian physics directly influenced American independence: “The American Revolution’s Overlooked Influence? Physics. How ‘Common Sense’ Spelled Out Astronomical Expectations for a New Nation” in The Smithsonian Magazine.

In politics, as in nature, tensions can take years to build, but it takes just one stone to unleash an avalanche, one spark to ignite a wildfire. For many historians of the American Revolution, that spark was a pamphlet of fewer than 100 pages written by a newly arrived English immigrant named Thomas Paine. Throughout 1775, violent clashes between British troops and colonist rebels protesting onerous taxes inspired little talk of outright revolution. Most rebels aimed to force better terms with Britain, not sever the link. Then, in January 1776, Paine changed everything with Common Sense, a manifesto so radical that at first he didn’t even dare to sign it. It was an immediate sensation, selling 120,000 copies in three months, in Paine’s estimation, in a colonial population of just two and a half million—and that was not counting handwritten copies and knockoff editions that swept not only through America but all over Europe.

In his plea for American independence from Britain, Paine made vivid appeals to nature. Strikingly, he envisioned global politics as an astronomical system, arguing that America, rather than orbiting the central sun of England, was large and mature enough to provide its own center of gravity. “In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet,” he wrote, “and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverse the common order of nature, it is evident that they belong to different systems.” He described the “gravitating” force binding Americans, urging them to work together to determine their own fate. “We have it in our power,” he wrote, “to begin the world over again.”

Paine’s astronomical vision was taken further that April in a remarkable response published in the weekly newspaper the Pennsylvania Ledger. The writer, whose identity is lost to time, imagined taking a trip with Paine into outer space. Leaving the solar system and the “dull beaten tracks of monarchy” far behind, the space travelers discovered a vast cosmos not ruled by one dominant sun but studded with innumerable suns. The universe thus revealed the blueprint for a different kind of nation: “a republic amidst the stars.”…

(5) ON STAGE. Asian Pirate Musical is “a queer time travel musical set on Southeast Asian seas, with a genre-devouring soundtrack melding traditional instruments, 21st century Asian pop, and diasporic musical influences. Drawing on the real histories of 14th century Muslim navigator Zheng He and 19th century pirate queen Sek Yeong, alongside the imagined futures of 21st century climate survivors and 23rd century space revolutionaries, Asian Pirate Musical is a new legend on the high seas.”

Being staged Upstairs At The Gatehouse in North London from July 28-August 2. Tickets available here.

(6) PLAYSTATION ADDITONS. [Item by Steven French.] Keza MacDonald reviews a selection of new games for the PlayStation – including Wolverine, Tomb Raider and God of War –  in this week’s Guardian’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter: “From God of War to Until Dawn – seven reveals from last night’s PlayStation event”.

PlayStation’s future has looked a little uncertain these past few years. Although the PS5 has sold well and been very profitable, the brand is far from the runaway market leader it was in the PS2 days. Earlier this week, Game File dug into Sony’s most recent earnings reports to illustrate how PlayStation has been selling fewer and fewer of its own flagship games since a peak during the pandemic. About 54.1m copies of games either developed or published by Sony were sold in the 2018 financial year; in 2025, it sold 32.1m.

Sony has put out some great homegrown games since the PS5 was released in 2020, from Astro Bot to Ghost of Yōtei, but it has also had some expensive and very public failures and cancellations; PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who retired in 2024, placed big bets on live-service games and only a few panned out (hello, Helldivers). Sony also seems to have rolled back on releasing its single-player PS5 games on PC after a polite interval of time, suggesting it wants to preserve what advantage and exclusivity it has.

Meanwhile, its longtime console rival Xbox may have faded into the background as a sales competitor – the PS5 has outsold the Xbox Series S/X by approximately three to one – but it has become a strong publishing competitor, having bought up tens of development studios alongside Activision and Bethesda. Then there’s Nintendo, whose exclusive games for the Switch and Switch 2 consoles have performed significantly better than Sony’s over the last decade. (The top-selling Sony-developed PS4 game was Spider-Man, at 22.68m. The top-selling Nintendo-developed Switch game was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at … 71m.)

So what is Sony going to do in the next few years, as we enter a later stage of the PS5 lifecycle? Will it play safe, or diversify? Perhaps revive some older games for nostalgic millennials? Thanks to a State of Play live-stream last night, we now have some answers….

(7) GORDON EKLUND Q&A. Fanac.org has posted a YouTube video of “Gordon Eklund, interviewed by Andrew Hooper”.

Gordon Eklund found science fiction at 12, fandom at 15 and made his first professional sale less than 10 years later. In this charming interview, fan historian Andy Hooper, himself a long time Seattle fan, elicits stories of both the Nebula-award winning author and of the young man who stepped into Seattle’s legendary fan group, “The Nameless” before he could drive. This is a “bonus” interview, as Gordon was to have participated in a panel on the history of Seattle fandom (November 2025), but was prevented by technical difficulties. As a result, we are fortunate to have this dedicated interview, and hear about Gordon’s experiences as a young, and not so young fan, and as an accomplished professional. FYI: during this interview, there were some momentary network disruptions and the recording has been edited to remove them.

Gordon Eklund discovered fandom through the ads in the back of the science fiction magazines. That led to fanzines, including “Cry of the Nameless” and soon to his first club meeting of the Nameless Ones in 1960, in the room above Bill Austin’s much loved bookstore. In this recording, Gordon tells his origin story, tales of the Nameless Ones, and of Seacon 1961, his first convention and first Worldcon. Anecdotes include the pro who wanted to show everyone how he could light matches with his feet, the hospitality of Robert Heinlein and how Harlan shot craps with the bellhops to make his carfare to Hollywood. You’ll hear about Gordon’s evolution to award-winning author, and how the Nebula nomination for his first published story led to the sale of his first novel, as well as how he came to collaborate with E.E. “Doc” Smith. This entertaining interview runs the gamut from serious discussions about Gordon’s work to fannish topics such as which APAs are more boring. It’s a window on the fandom of the early 60s, as well as what came after. Finally, it’s great fun and strongly recommended.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 4, 1960 — Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 66.

By Paul Weimer: Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an author I found, and then lost and then found again. She in the meantime had been writing prolifically, in multiple genres and fields, but had fallen off of my radar for a good long while.

It all started in the 1990s when I picked up The Sacrifice, the first of her Fey novels. The high concept drew me immediately. A world-conquering empire of Elves sweeping everyone before them…and then they run into the speedbump of Blue Isle, which has a power to resist the Fey that they themselves don’t even quite suspect. Suddenly the easy conquest is not so easy and over the next several books, Rusch explored this conflict from multiple vantage points and perspectives.

And then, someone Rusch fell off of my personal radar. Too many other new authors, perhaps. Or I didn’t follow her into mysteries and other subgenres such as media-tie ins, of which she has written or coauthored a fair number of, in multiple universes, and often under other names as well, ranging from Star Trek to Roswell. 

It wasn’t until my early official reviewer days that I picked up Rusch again, as she helped vitalize the xenoarchaeology novel subgenre with the Wreck series. I was offered a review copy of Diving into the Wreck, and my fond memories of The Fey stood me in good stead as I dug into Boss’ story.

Since then I’ve been following Rusch on her blog and Patreon, where she has fearlessly and openly discussed and educated on the craft and business of writing. Anyone seriously interested in either should follow and read what Rusch has to say.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) DARK HORSE UNIONIZATION SUCCEEDS. “Dark Horse Voluntarily Recognizes Staff Union” reports Publishers Weekly.

Dark Horse Comics has voluntarily recognized Dark Horse Workers United as a collective bargaining representative under standards established by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), per a statement from interim CEO Jay Komas, and has reached out to the union’s attorney to initiate the appropriate next steps in the bargaining process.

The announcement comes just over a week since employees of the comics publisher and its retail arm, Things From Another World, announced their intent to unionize with Communications Workers of America (CWA), Local 7901….

(11) INDIE COMICS PUBLISHER CLEARS OUT THE COMICS VAULT FOR 90 DAYS. Silverline Comics is running a sale. 

A lot of comic book publishers were negatively impacted by the collapse of Diamond Comics, the insane legal aftermath of its bankruptcy and the disruption of the industry. To recoup some of its losses and to give fans a boost, indie publisher Silverline Comics is having a summer sale.

“This is a really good opportunity for fans to catch up on a missed issue or two, or get a whole series,” said CEO/Founder and Editor-In-Chief Roland Mann. “The comics are all printed and ready to go with each order.” This includes Mann’s own title, Cat & Mouse, which recently launched a new mini-series for its 30th anniversary.

According to Silverline’s CFO, Barb Kaalberg (creator of Divinity), “It’s not just comics. A lot of our artists have donated some fantastic original art to the sale. Others are doing commissions on our behalf.” The publisher also has graphic novels, promotional items, posters, and special editions available as well.

The Silverline Summer Spectacular Sale is on here. The sale will last through early August.

Silverline’s current comics are crowdfunded, and also distributed traditionally to retail shops by PhilBo Distribution.

(12) THE MONTH IN STREAMING. JustWatch has released the top 10 charts for movie and TV streaming in the month of May. [Click for larger images.]

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

Pixel Scroll 11/2/25 I Saw A Pixel Chasing A Pixie

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(1) TRANS-ATLANTIC FAN FUND WANTS YOUR OPINION. Sandra Bond has sent two important TAFF documents: Taffluorescence 10, her final newsletter as European administrator, and TAFF EU treasurer Claire Brialey’s latest financial report is here: “Accounts2022-2025.pdf”.

Sandra Bond adds: “You’ll see from T10 that the question has arisen of whether the presumed 2026 TAFF race should send a North American fan to Eastercon or to Eurocon. No doubt many fans will have an opinion on this, and very likely some of them will debate it in the File 770 comments, if you’re good enough to open your pixels to such debate — which I hope you will.”

So what do you think? Should the next North American TAFF delegate’s destination be Eastercon (Birmingham, UK) or Eurocon (Berlin, Germany)?

(2) 2025 WORLD FANTASY AWARDS. The 2025 World Fantasy Awards were announced today. Among the winners is the novel The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, which also won a Hugo Award this year. (See the link for the complete list of winners.)

(3) 2025 BRITISH FANTASY AWARDS. The British Fantasy Awards 2025 were presented November 1. O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade won Best Fantasy Novel. You can find the rest of the winners at the link. 

(4) TRICK OR TREAT. Cora Buhlert explains these holiday traditions are relatively new to Germany in “Halloween 2025 – with Bonus Skeleton Warriors”.

… Halloween gradually became known in Germany via American movies and TV shows – It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was on TV all the time, when I was a kid, and The Simpsons have been providing Halloween episodes for more than thirty years – and also via people who’d spent time in the US as exchange students or tourists as well as via the US soldiers stationed in many parts of Germany. By the 1990s, my university had an annual Halloween Party. There also were private Halloween parties. I hosted a few for my friends. Decorations and costumes were still homemade, because you couldn’t buy anything suitable. In 1994, I brought back some cheap Halloween decorations  and candy I’d bought at a dollar store in the US and it was a sensation. Now you can buy stuff like that in every German supermarket.

Around the turn of the Millennium, Halloween trickled down from Americaphile twentysomethings into the teen and child demographic, spurred on by the candy, costume and novelty industry who saw a chance to make some extra bucks. Trick or treating first took hold in regions, which did not have native trick or treating traditions, and then spread across the country. In our neighbourhood, we got the first trick or treaters in the early 2000s. The first time it happened, we didn’t even have any candy, but I had to dig into my personal chocolate stash to supply the kids.

By now, Halloween is mainstream in Germany, though not nearly as huge as it is in the US. You can buy decorations and costumes and special candy and kids ringing your doorbell on October 31 is to be expected. However, Halloween is still controversial, because there are people who view it as some newfangled American import and an overly commercialised holiday without meaning. The two big Christian churches also don’t like Halloween. Not because of some kind of Satanic panic, but because they feel it encroaches on their holidays – All Hallow’s Day for the Catholics and Reformation Day for the Lutherans. Never mind that Halloween predates Reformation Day by centuries. October 31 is actually a public holiday in my part of Germany, but that’s because of Reformation Day not Halloween.

On Thursday, October 30, I was out and about and chanced to hear our local radio station asking its listeners whether they preferred Halloween or Reformation Day – which is a stupid question anyway, because October 31 is both….

(5) MAKING BOOK. At The Nerd Daily, Gareth Powell discusses the decisions he made while “Compiling A Collection” of his short fiction.

Over the past two decades, I’ve produced a sizeable body of short stories. The trouble was, in comparison to my novels, very few people had read them. Many had been published in magazines, anthologies or small press collections, while others had yet to see print. This meant many readers familiar with my novel-length work were entirely unaware of this facet of my written work.

Therefore, I was delighted when Titan Books agreed to publish a collection of my selected short fiction, pulling 32 of the best of these stories into a widely published volume for the first time.

My first dilemma was whether to revise them.

Together, these 32 stories mapped the outline of my career as a writer, starting with ‘A Necklace of Ivy’ that dates back to the early 1990s, and the Gibson-influenced ‘Morning Star’ and ‘Silver Bullet’ from the early 2000s.

Obviously, I’ve grown and changed as an author, and maybe if I were writing them today, I would have written some of those earlier stories differently. So, there was a temptation to go back and revise the earlier work.

However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that doing so would be somehow dishonest. If I changed them, they wouldn’t be the same stories anymore. They’d feel airbrushed. And by tidying them up, I knew I’d run the risk of killing what made them special.

So, I decided to settle for correcting typos and factual errors, but leave the stories essentially as they first appeared, with only the most minor and necessary of revisions suggested by my editor.

I think the result feels more authentic, and more representative of the journey I’ve been on all these years. And with these corrections in place, I’m happy to consider this collection now contains the definitive, author-approved versions of these pieces.

(6) SEATTLE FANHISTORY ZOOM. Fanac.org’s next FanHistory Zoom Session on November 22 is about the history of Seattle fandom. The program features John D. Berry, Gordon Eklund, Andy Hooper, Suzanne (Suzle) Tompkins with Jerry Kaufman as moderator.  Attendance is free. To attend, contact [email protected]. 

(7) GRANT CANFIELD (1945-2025). Artist Grant Canfield died October 21 at the age of 79 reports the November Ansible. Winner of the 1999 Rotsler Award, he was nominated seven times for the Best Fanartist Hugo (and is someone Bill Rotsler himself said should have won it.) Grant’s art first appeared in Crossroads, Science Fiction Review and Beabohema.  About the same time he started selling professional gag cartoons to national magazines, getting published in the Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Boys Life, Parade, The National Enquirer and many men’s magazines.

An architectural artist, it was almost a trademark of Canfield’s style to make generous use of straightedge, lettering guides, lay-down graphics (such as brick patterns, sparkles, cross-hatching, or flagstones), or other tools of his profession. His line had the authority of a quality set of 00 to 09 drafting pens. One of his specialties was the absurd machine, or robot, plausible but clearly pointless. Canfield was also adept at ogres, trolls, goons, oafs, and monstrosities of all kinds.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

November 2, 1988 — Doctor Who’s “The Happiness Patrol”

The first part of Doctor Who’s “The Happiness Patrol” aired thirty-seven  years ago on this date. 

Written by Graeme Curry, it was intended (by him and the other writers) to be a parody of Thatcherism, with Helen A representing Margaret Thatcher herself. As you can see in the picture below, she may or may not have more than passing resemblance to The Iron Lady.  

This was the Seventh Doctor so Sylvester McCoy was The Doctor and Sophie Aldred was Ace, who is still one of my favorite companions, and there’s one episode they did where I’m still cursing them for the emotional cruelty they did to her. Not saying which episode that was of course. 

The guest performers were Shelia Hancock as Helen A. with David John Pope as Kandy Man. 

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, referred to this story in his 2011 Easter sermon, on the subject of happiness and joy. Really. Truly. So what is the story that he so truly liked? 

They find themselves on a colony that is under the dictatorship of Helen A. where sadness and misery are capital crimes, and killjoys, which is anyone who, well, sad, are executed on the spot by  female assassins known only as The Happiness Patrol. 

Now this being the Whovian reality, we also have, according to the Tardis Wiki, “The Kandyman was a pathological, psychopathic android, employed as an executioner by the egocentric Helen A. It delighted in inflicting torture and destruction with confectionery. One of its favourite methods was drowning people in pipes filled with its ‘Fondant Surprise’, a thick solution composed of boiling liquid candy.”  

Needless to say the Seventh Doctor had to defeat Helen A., the Killjoys, the Kandyman and assorted less than sweet individuals in this episode. That they did in the usual Whovian manner, though the Seventh Doctor put his slightly darker twist on it.

About this parody of The Iron Bitch, errr, Thatcher and her years in power? The story makes it very apparent that it what is happening here. Remember the Miners Strike under her and her violent suppression of it? Well, this colony has an oppressed underclass of workers – depicted here as a literally different species. So they turn out to be miners. And they are victims of Helen A.’s regime. “Well, they may not look like it,” the Doctor tells Ace, “but they’re on the edge of starvation. No sugar in the pipes.” Sugar being their only food.

I can’t really discuss the critical response to it at the time as they give away way the much of the plot when they reviewed it. Suffice it to say that some like it, some thought it was utter shite because of the anti-Thatcher spin (need I note which papers they wrote for?), some never warmed to the Seventh Doctor so every episode got a blah at best review.

Me, I thought it was a fun story though stretching what was a thin plot over three episodes was just not a great idea. 

It got novelized and the story expanded even more, oh god. Big Finish brings the Kandyman back in the Eighth Doctor: Ravenous story. Again, oh god why? 

We’ll let Helen A. have the final words, “And don’t forget, when you smile, I want to see those teeth.”

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) OUT OF POWER. “Super Sentai: Japanese series that inspired Power Rangers reportedly ending” reports BBC.

A Japanese superhero series that inspired the hugely popular Power Rangers TV and movie franchise from the 1990s is ending after 50 years, local media report.

Super Sentai will go off air as sales from merchandise and events have not been enough to cover production costs, reports say. Its broadcaster TV Asahi declined to comment on “future programming”, according to the Asahi newspaper.

The series premiered in 1975 and its formula – five teens who transform into colourful masked fighters to battle aliens – served as the blueprint for Power Rangers in the US and many other superhero shows that aired in Asia.

It also served as a launchpad for the careers of many Japanese actors.

Super Sentai was much more than a TV series. The show that aired weekly was essentially an advertisement for toys, clothes, costumes and collectibles.

For animation and toy fans outside Japan, it served as a gateway to the country’s colourful superhero and comic book culture.

Similar shows like Choudenshi Bioman and Hikari Sentai Maskman were dubbed in English and developed cult followings in the Philippines.

In the Super Sentai series, the superhero team, made up of three men and two women, is led by a fighter in a red suit – as in Power Rangers. The rest of team is colour-coded, green or black for the second-in-command, followed by blue, yellow and pink.

Every episode also followed the same sequence – starting with martial arts and swordfights and ending with a battle between their robot spaceship and a giant alien in the end. A large part of its appeal is the live-action animation, which in the 1980s and 1990s bordered on crude….

(11) RIDDLEY WALKER PANEL DISCUSSION. Russellhoban.org presents a panel discussion on Russell Hoban’s 1980 novel Riddley Walker, recorded on 16th February 2025 as part of the “Hoban100” Russell Hoban centenary celebrations. Participants:

  • Wieland Hoban, panellist, is a composer and translator who is currently working on a music theatre version of Riddley Walker; he’s also one of Russell Hoban’s sons.
  • Eli Bishop, panellist, is an ensemble member in the San Francisco Neo-Futurists, a writer and illustrator of comics, and the creator and maintainer of the Riddley Walker Annotations website: errorbar.net/rw
  • Dr. Kate Laity, panellist, is an author, scholar, filmmaker, and arcane artist who teaches medieval literature, film, gender studies, digital humanities, and popular culture. kalaity.com
  • Diana Slickman, host and moderator, is an alumna of the Chicago Neo-Futurists, current Theater Oobleck ensemble member, and the creator of the SA4QE event in which readers publicly share quotations from Russell Hoban’s books to celebrate his birthday each year.
  • Dave Awl, co-host, is an alumnus of the Neo-Futurists theater company in Chicago and the founder of the Russell Hoban online community as well as the creator of the original Russell Hoban website, The Head of Orpheus: ocelotfactory.com/hoban

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

Fanac.org’s “FanHistory Project Zoom” Announces Five Sessions

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Edie Stern has created five new FanHistory Project Zoom Sessions that will bring viewers together with panelists who will speak from long personal experience about clubs, fanzines, and sff writing.

For access, send a note to [email protected] with “Zoom” in the title.

The first of these session is scheduled for later this month:

October 25, 2025 – Gannetfandom – From the North East Fan Group to Eastercon, with Harry Bell, Rob Jackson, Ian Maule, Kevin Williams and moderator Sandra Bond

Time: 2pm EDT, 1pm CDT, 11am PDT, 7pm BST (London), and Sunday, October 26 at 5pm AEDT (Melbourne)

Description: Started in the 1970s, this North East UK Fan Group was a center for fannish activity. From publishing to convention running, the Gannets made their mark with active and distinctive fanac. Who were the Gannets (and how did they get that name)? How did they get started? What did they do? How did they get their distinctive identity? Join us as we explore the history of Gannetfandom.

SCHEDULE FOR FUTURE SESSIONS

  • Saturday, November 22, 2025 at 3pm EST, 2pm CST, 12 Noon PST, 8pm GMT (London) and Sunday, November 23 at 7am AEDT (Melbourne) – Seattle Fandom, From the Nameless Ones to the 21st Century, with John D. Berry, Gordon Eklund, Andy Hooper, and Suzanne Tompkins, and moderator Jerry Kaufman
  • Saturday, January 10, 2026 at 4pm EST, 3pm CST, 1pm PST, 9pm GMT (London) and Sunday, January 11 at 8AM AEDT (Melbourne)- Astrid Anderson Bear, and the Family that Built Worlds, with interviewer Joe Siclari
  • Saturday, February 21,2026, 6pm EST, 3pm PST, 11pm GMT (London), and Sunday, February 22 at 10am AEDT in Melbourne and 9:30am ACDT in Adelaide, When Fandoms Met in Sydney – Gary Mason interviewed by Perry Middlewiss and Leigh Edmonds
  • Saturday, March 21, 2026, at 2pm EDT, 11am PDT, 6pm GMT London, and Sunday, March 22 at 5am AEDT Melbourne (sorry), Alex Mui, A Graphic History of Fandom, with interviewer Edie Stern

Past Sessions are all available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/FANACFanHistory)

2018 Novellapalooza

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[Editor’s note: be sure to read the comments on this post for more novellas and more Filer reviews.]

By JJ: I’m a huge reader of novels, but not that big on short fiction. But the last few years, I’ve done a personal project to read and review as many Novellas as I could (presuming that the story synopsis had some appeal for me). I ended up reading 31 of the novellas published in 2015, 35 of the novellas published in 2016, and 46 of the novellas published in 2017 (though a few of those were after Hugo nominations closed).

The result of this was the 2016 Novellapalooza and the 2017 Novellapalooza. I really felt as though I was able to do Hugo nominations for the novella category in an informed way, and a lot of Filers got involved with their own comments. So I’m doing it again this year.

The success and popularity of novellas in the last 4 years seems to have sparked a Golden Age for SFF novellas, with Tor.com, Subterranean Press, NewCon Press, PS Publishing, Book Smugglers, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Tachyon bringing out a multitude of works, along with the traditional magazines Asimov’s, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Analog – so there are a lot more novellas to cover this year. By necessity, I’ve gotten to the point of being more selective about which ones I read, based on the synopsis being of interest to me.

It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book despite not feeling that the jacket copy makes the book sound as though it is something I would like – and to discover that I really like or love the work anyway. On the other hand, It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book which sounds as though it will be up my alley and to discover that, actually, the book doesn’t really do much for me.

Thus, my opinions on the following novellas vary wildly: stories I thought I would love but didn’t, stories I didn’t expect to love but did, and stories which aligned with my expectations – whether high or low. Bear in mind that while I enjoy both, I tend to prefer Science Fiction over Fantasy – and that while I enjoy suspense and thrillers, I have very little appreciation for Horror (and to be honest, I think Lovecraft is way overrated). My personal assessments are therefore not intended to be the final word on these stories, but merely a jumping-off point for Filer discussion.

I thought it would be helpful to have a thread where all the Filers’ thoughts on novellas are collected in one place, as a resource when Hugo nomination time rolls around. Which of these novellas have you read? And what did you think of them?

I’ve included plot summaries, and where I could find them, links to either excerpts or the full stories which can be read online for free. Short novels which fall between 40,000 and 48,000 words (within the Hugo Novella category tolerance) have been included.

Please feel free to post comments about any other 2018 novellas which you’ve read, as well.

(Please be sure to rot-13 any spoilers.)

(fair notice: all Amazon links are referrer URLs which benefit non-profit SFF fan website Worlds Without End)

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Pixel Scroll 11/4/16 A Squat Gray Scroll Of Only Thirty-Four Pixels

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(1) ELECTION NIGHT HANDBOOK. Nicholas Whyte has been doing our homework for us: “I thought you might be interested in my preview of the US election on Tuesday – now available here: Apco’s Guide to Election Night 2016.

“Or to download from Slideshare here.”

As election day in the United States draws near, all eyes will be on early voting numbers and eventually official returns. Our resident election expert, Nicholas Whyte, prepared this guide to knowing what it will take to win and when we’re likely to know the outcome. Keep it handy!

(2) THAT CLOSE. Says John King Tarpinian, “Ray Bradbury missed landing on the moon by a month and Marty McFly missed the Cubs by one year.” From Entertainment Weekly, “Michael J. Fox congratulates the Cubs: ‘Only off by a year, not bad”.

Last year, Back to the Future writer Bob Gale explained to Sports Illustrated why he picked a Cubs win as a major plot point in the futuristic comedy.

“I’m from St. Louis originally,” he said at the time. “I’m a big baseball fan. You grow up in St. Louis, you automatically become a Cardinals fan. And of course I always followed the Cubs because how could you not? With the Cubs folklore of being the lovable losers that never get there, it was just a natural joke to say, ‘What is the most absurd thing that you could come up with?’”

(3) CARTOON MUSEUM LANDS IN CLOVER. A piece on the sfexaminer.com website by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez called “Recently Displaced Cartoon Art Museum Finds New Home in SF” discusses how the Cartoon Art Museum, which thought it was going to close in 2015 because of San Francisco’s ridiculous rents, has found a new one on Fisherman’s Wharf.

Kashar said the new space is “comparable” in size to the old one on Mission Street, though it’s one floor shorter. “We get to design it, too,” she said, which wasn’t an option with the old space.

“It’s got this really nice-looking facade,” she said, which is brick and looks similar to the nearby historic Cannery.

“For us, we wanted a place that was easy to get to, had street level visibility. It’s gorgeous,” she said.

The new space was made possible in part by a loan from San Francisco’s Nonprofit Displacement Mitigation Fund, which has helped keep nonprofits in San Francisco during the rental crisis.

Kashar said the museum will announce fundraising efforts for the new location soon.

In the meantime, she hinted at one of the first new exhibits for the museum when it opens in 2017: the Summer of Love’s 50th anniversary.

That includes Wimmen’s Comix and Underground Comix, San Francisco staples from The City’s anti-establishment comics past.

(4) DAVE LALLY THAWING OUT. A few words about Icecon from Dave Lally.

Just back from freezing Reykavik (brrrrr!) and gosh is booze* (and indeed food) expensive there.

Tho the local fen, in the middle of their Gen Election to their Althing — whose building was just across the road from the main Icecon social bar! — were welcoming and very friendly.

Total number was about 120 (including overseas fen — giving them support and encouragement– from other Nordic countries and from US, UK, Ireland etc.)

Icecon 2 is scheduled for 2018. It will alternate with the every-two-years Icelandic Festival of Literature.

(*) 2nd highest tax on alcohol-exceed only by Norway!

Lally wrote this while on his way to the Eurocon in Barcelona, where the weather is warmer for smoffing.

(5) STOP OVERLOOKING HER! Sarah Gailey winds up the resentment machine and lets fly in the insightful and entertaining post “Women of Harry Potter: Ginny Weasley Is Not Impressed” at Tor.com.

Ginny let herself be impressed once. She let herself be impressed by Harry Potter—the Boy Who Lived, big brother’s best friend, Quidditch star. She let herself be impressed, and she let herself be infatuated, and she let herself blush and hide. She let herself be soft.

And into that moment of softness—of weakness—she wound up vulnerable. And look at how that turned out.

Ginny Weasley is angry. She’s angry because she let her mind become a chew toy for a sociopath. She’s angry because she hurt people, and she doesn’t care that she was just a puppet for Tom Riddle, that doesn’t matter, she still hurt people. She’s angry because nobody noticed. She’s angry because everyone forgets. She’s constantly having to remind them that she went through it, she spoke to him, he spoke back. And when he spoke back, it wasn’t just an endless deluge of taunts about her parents or jabs at her youth or threats to kill her. Harry’s never had a conversation with Voldemort, never really talked to him.

Ginny has.

(6) ALLERGIC TO WORK. Camestros Felapton’s post “A Tale of an Encyclopedia in Graphs” analyzes how much work all those new members are doing on the Voxopedia (which is to say, Infogalactic). The answer? They’re doing squat.

Adding more members isn’t impacting on the number of new pages being added because the new members aren’t doing anything.

The problem with becomes clearer when looking at the proportion of edits per person.

Two people alone account for nearly 70% of all the edits in the data set.

And Mark-kitteh points out in a comment:

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics , wikipedia gets 800 new articles per day. (No word on how many then fail notability checks, so the real figure may be lower). Based on that Voxipedia needs an couple of orders of magnitude more activity just to keep up.

I wonder how much editing activity you need to just keep up with really basic facts, like people dying?

(7) JUMPER OBIT. Fans recently learned of the death of Joyce Potter McDaniel Jumper (1937-2013). Her death notice is posted here.

Lee Gold shared the news, and her husband Barry added, “We lost track of Joyce in 2013. She called to tell us she was moving to Minneapolis-St. Paul, but never followed up with her new address. Former Long Beach fan Vic Koman posted on Facebook about SFWA looking for the rights to republish some of Dave’s works, so Vic wanted to help find Joyce. After Lee sent him a few bits of information (DOB, maiden name), he tracked down the unfortunate information: Joyce Potter McDaniel Jumper: born January 12, 1937; died December 20, 2013.”

Information about David McDaniel here.

(8) BIG HERO 6. “Big News for Disney’s BIG HERO 6” from Scifi4me.com.

If having Disney XD creating an animated series for Big Hero 6 is not exciting enough, then the news that most of the original voice cast will return for it should get the fans revved up. The Mouse House had confirmed working on a project based off the 2014 Academy Award winning box office hit (over $650 million) this spring. This sweetens the deal.

Inspired by the Marvel comic of the name, Big Hero 6 will continue where the film ended with the continuing adventures of 14-year-old tech genius Hiro, his lovable, cutting-edge robot Baymax and their friends Wasabi, Honey Lemon, Go Go, and Fred as they protect their city from scientifically enhanced villains. At the same time, they are also balancing out regular life as new students at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology.

Returning actors are: Maya Rudolph (Aunt Cass); Jamie Chung (Go Go); Scott Adsit (Baymax); Alan Tudyk (Alistair Krei); Ryan Potter (Hiro); Genesis Rodriguez (Honey Lemon); David Shaughnessy (Heathcliff); and, of course, Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee (Fred’s dad). Damon Wayans, Jr and T.J. Miller have left the cast. Khary Payton (The Lion Guard) will take over Wasabi and Brooks Wheelan (Saturday Night Live) will play Fred.

(9) SEVENTIES SF IS BACK. Its publication derailed over 40 years ago, Gordon Eklund’s Cosmic Fusion is touted as a breakthrough book that never happened. You can see what you missed by shelling out a few bucks to Amazon.

Cosmic Fusion was originally written between January 1973 and September 1982, a mammoth 300,000-word epic novel of “science fiction, sex, and death.” Unpublished due to an editorial change at the original publishing company, Eklund has now revised it for its first publication. As he writes in his introduction: “Cosmic Fusion was intended to be the book that broke me out of [science fiction’s midlist]. It was the Big Ambitious Novel I was going to write because I wanted to write it…” So here it is, a vintage tale written by Gordon Eklund at the peak of his power as a writer, never before seen…until today!

(10) ESCHEW SURPLUSAGE. Here’s part of the writing advice C. S. Lewis sent to a fan in 1956, from Letters of Note.

What really matters is:–

  1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
  2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
  3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

(11) MORE AWARDS. Matthew Bowman says two awards were started in reaction to the controversy about the Hugos. We all know about the Dragon Awards, which he discusses at the beginning of his post “A Tale of Two Awards” at The Catholic Geeks. Here’s Bowman’s introduction to the second.

The Rampant Manticore

The Rampant Manticore, as I said, was also in large part a reaction to what happened with the Hugos; but it takes a very different focus and a very different way of handling the problem.

For one, the Manticores will be presented at HonorCon, but — like that convention — they are adminstered by the Royal Manticoran Navy. The RMN, named after the military in the books they honor (no pun intended), is the Official Honor Harrington Fan Association. It’s sanctioned by the author, David Weber, and beloved by the publisher for how this organization of several thousand members gets people to read (and buy) this bestseller among bestsellers. The RMN is of course chiefly concerned with the Honor Harrington series, but cheerfully encompasses all military genre fiction. As a result, the Manticores have a heavy focus on military science fiction and fantasy.

The Manticores are also taking an opposite tack from the Flight of Dragons; instead of opening it up to everyone (or even just supporting memberships like Wordcon and the Hugos), they put very particular limits on who can vote. You have to either attend HonorCon itself, or have been a member of the fan association for a full year and taken at least two exams (these are really easy exams, don’t worry).

(12) UNCLE 4E. Forry Ackerman’s 100th birthday is coming late this month. Here’s a placeholder, from the last print issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland.

del-toro-4e-quote-min

(13) EVERYBODY EXAGGERATES HIS RESUME. Jimmy Kimmel hires Doctor Strange.

(14) BACK HOME IN THE JUNGLES OF INDIANA. Han Solo and Indy reunited in the same film! Raiders of the lost Dark.

[Thanks to Gregory Benford, Lee Gold, Andrew Porter, Janice Gelb, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day M. C. Simon Milligan.]