26 My Dear Guests, I Am Mr. Scroll, Your Host. Welcome To Fantasy Pixel

Posted on June 12, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) NOMMOS SHORTLIST AND MORE. This year’s Worldcon announced activities to look forward to by “The African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS) at LAcon V”.

We are thrilled to be partnering with the African Speculative Fiction Society at LAcon V!

ASFS presents the annual Nommo Awards, which honor outstanding works of speculative fiction by African writers across the continent and diaspora. This year, ASFS will be announcing the shortlisted works live at LAcon via our Virtual Program! There will be introductions and contributions from the nominees, as well as a discussion about the evolution and global impact of African speculative fiction.

In addition to this Celebrating African Speculative Fiction panel, ASFS will be presenting multiple panels as part of the LAcon V Virtual Program.

The full schedule will be released August 2026.

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to chew on peri-peri chicken with Octothorpe’s John Coxon and Alison Scott in Episode 284 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Two Hugo Award-nominated podcasts collide in the fifth and final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded during this year’s Eastercon. John Coxon and Alison Scott, two-thirds of the award-winning team behind Octothorpe (absent their equally entertaining cohost Liz Batty) took me on walkabout to a nearby Nando’s so I could experience its peri-peri chicken for the first time — and we recorded not just our meal, but the hikes there and back again.

We discussed the many first-time Eastercon attendees I encountered who were there due to their podcast, Nando’s place in British culture and why it was chosen to be our venue for this episode, what they’re willing to reveal about cohost Liz Batty in her absence, how the coming of COVID-19 kickstarted the creation of Octothorpe, why they didn’t launch an old-school fanzine instead, how the first episode wasn’t even originally intended to be the first episode, why we’re still here considering 90% of podcasts don’t make it past three episodes, how to comment responsibly on fandom while being a part of fandom, the reason their letters of comment section is so important, what changed about the show once they realized people were actually listening, advice for those who’d like to start podcasts of their own, plus much more.

(3) SFF REVIEWS. Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup” in the Guardian covers Not With a Bang by Temi Oh; Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh; Atomic Coffin by Benedict Anning; The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden; and Bad Things Happen Here by Mark Morris.

(4) NOT TO BE READ OUT LOUD. “Silent Movies Jump from Screen to Page in Movie Tie-In Novels” at SFWA’s Planetside.

The first movie tie-in novels date to the rise of silent movies as mass entertainment at the beginning of the 20th century. As with movie tie-in books today, these included both novelizations of screenplays and reissues of published novels illustrated with movie stills.

The novelization of The Adventures of Kathlyn is one of the earliest movie tie-in novels. This serial began on December 29, 1913, and was shown in movie theaters through 1914. One of the action heroines of silent movies, the film’s star, Kathlyn Williams, was famous for performing with big cats. The movie took advantage of her talents and first name. Over the course of 13 episodes, the fictional Kathlyn rescues her explorer father and frees the enslaved population of a mythical kingdom. She traverses jungles, battles wild beasts, outwits the insidious Council of Three, and dodges a forced marriage to a foul prince. Each episode ended with a cliffhanger guaranteed to bring the audience back to enjoy the next installment until the story’s happy resolution.

Harold McGrath, who supplied the original story for the screenplay, wrote the novel published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company. The text was illustrated with black-and-white photos from the film. The frontispiece opposite the title page shows Kathlyn clutching the hunter Bruce, who aids her quest to rescue her father and provides a romantic interest.

Newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times also featured stories illustrated with stills from The Adventures of Kathlyn. This was designed to boost sales of the newspapers, the serial, and the book, cashing in on every possible way to keep the public intrigued by Kathlyn’s trials and tribulations. It was all coordinated, with the Chicago Tribune helping to finance the movie production in hopes of boosting their circulation. The Motion Picture News noted film screenings ended with a reminder to read about Kathlyn in the Sunday newspaper, while the newspaper stories urged fans to go to the “picture theater” to watch the next episode….

(5) WALTER SCOTT PRIZE. The BBC reports “‘Most unusual book’ wins Walter Scott historical fiction prize”.

A book which judges said “may be the most unusual book you read this year” has won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

Alice Jolly’s work The Matchbox Girl tells the story of Adelheid Brunner – a mute autistic patient of Dr Hans Asperger in the now-infamous Vienna Children’s Hospital during the 1930s, while the city is under Nazi occupation….

…Judges praised the “originality, innovation, ambition” of Jolly’s work which “confronts a topic of immense complexity in a gripping tour de force”.

“The Matchbox Girl may be the most unusual book you read this year,” they said. “For its honesty, power and storytelling dexterity, our 2026 winner will also be one of the most important.”

Jolly was part of the first ever all-British shortlist for the award.

Speaking of writing the book, she said: “I remain constantly troubled by that age of old question as to how people who were certainly not wholly ‘evil’ nevertheless found themselves drawn into appalling crimes.

“In 2018, two non-fiction books about the history of autism were published which told wildly differing stories about Dr Asperger. My book started with the simple question – who was Dr Asperger?”.

Dr Asperger is known for his work in child psychiatry and identifying Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, in 1944 – however the term “autistic psychopathy” was used until 1981.

In 1981, the British psychiatrist Lorna Wing introduced the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome.

But documents uncovered in 2018 suggested Dr Asperger sent child patients to the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna, where they were put to death by the Nazi regime.

Jolly said that as she worked on the book she realised that his forgotten colleagues were “perhaps more interesting than he was”.

She said she became obsessed with “bringing them into the light” and celebrating the ways in which they “struggled to hold onto their research, and their principles, despite finding themselves in the eye of the most evil storm of the 20th Century”.

(6) A JANE YOLEN TRIBUTE. Here is the start of Michael Swanwick’s remembrance, “Jane Yolen, 1939-2026” at Flogging Babel.

I was talking with Jane Yolen once, in her house in St. Andrews, Scotland. I told her how much I admired her prolific output of books–something like 400 then, though it’s grown since. She tried to duck the compliment by saying, “Well, yours are so much longer than mine.”

“I’ve read Owl Moon,” I said. (For those who don’t know, it’s an illustrated story sold as a ‘children’s book’ but actually a gem of a prose poem of a reminiscence, possibly true and possibly not.) “How many drafts did that take?”

“A few hundred,” she admitted.

“I rest my case,” I said….

(7) RONNIE SCHELL (1931-2026). “Ronnie Schell Dead: ‘Gomer Pyle: USMC’ Actor Was 94” reports Deadline.

Ronnie Schell, a prolific TV character actor perhaps best known for his portrayal of the amiable Pvt. Duke Slater, pal of Jim Nabors’ hayseed Gomer Pyle on the ’60s sitcom of that name, died of natural causes today at UCLA Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 94….

He worked a lot – the sff TV shows in his resume included The Girl With Something Extra, Mork & Mindy and Phil of the Future.

His genre films included Disney’s Gus, The Shaggy D.A., and The Devil and Max Devlin.

He provided voices on such animated projects as Jetsons: The Movie as well as TV series including Battle of the Planets and Smurfs.

(8) MARGARET KERRY (1929-2026). “Margaret Kerry Dead: Tinker Bell Model for ‘Peter Pan’ Was 97” – The Hollywood Reporter finds that wasn’t her only genre role.

…As a voice actress, Kerry starred on Clutch Cargo in 1959, Space Angel in 1962-64 and Captain Fathom in 1965 — those cartoons used the Syncro-Vox system, with real human lips superimposed over the animated characters’ mouths — and on The New Three Stooges in 1965. She did live segments with Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Joe DeRita as well. All were for Cambria Productions, a company led by her first husband, Dick Brown.

The 5-foot-2 Kerry had starred alongside Eddie Cantor in If You Knew Susie (1948) and was an assistant dance director on the Gloria DeHaven musical I’ll Get By (1950) when her agent sent her to Disney Studios in Burbank to audition for Peter Pan, she recalled in a 2003 interview with Jim Korkis….

… Kerry got the job, reported for work the next Tuesday and on and off for the next six to nine months, she moved around “a great big soundstage that seemed to go on forever” wearing her own one-piece bathing suit and her hair in a bun and being observed by Marc Davis (one of Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men”) and other animators.

“There was no one for me to react to. I had to imagine almost everything,” she said. “There was an occasional prop like huge scissors or a wire-frame keyhole or something. Most of the time it was just me pretending to be looking up from under something or walking around.”…

…She appeared as a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) — she said after a studio light caught fire, Mickey Rooney “dragged me into this little two-inch deep stream on the set so I’d be safe from any flames” — and in Our Gang comedy shorts and took dancing lessons from Nico Charisse, husband of Cyd Charisse.

She showed up in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and The Star Maker (1939) and was a stand-in for Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet (1944), then tap-danced and sang as the daughter of Cantor and Joan Davis’ characters in If You Knew Susie. It was Cantor who gave her the stage name Margaret Kerry….

… “You remember the scene where [Tinker Bell] falls over backward in Wendy’s dresser drawer?” she asked Korkis. “Well, they had me falling over backward onto a mattress. The mattress was about a half-inch thick, or at least it seemed that thick, and I went over backward and went thud. The look of my face of surprise and pain was identical to the one Tink has in the finished film.”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born June 12, 1916 – Irwin Allen. (Died 1992.)

So let’s talk about Irwin Allen. While he may be best known for that most spectacular of ocean disaster movies, The Poseidon Adventure, he’s done more than done a reasonable share of genre work.

The first series that he created in the Sixties was Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, was based off his film of the same name, which aired on ABC from the fall of 1964 to the spring of 1968 making it the decade’s longest-running American science fiction television series with continuing characters. The one hundred and ten episodes produced included the first thirty-two shot in black-and-white, and last seventy-eight filmed in color.

Next up for him was Lost in Space. Saying it’s based off Johann David Wyss’ The Swiss Family Robinson is really, really stretching things, isn’t it? Be that as it may, the show ran for eighty-three episodes over three seasons on CBS.

Remember The Time Tunnel? Yeah he was responsible for it too. The show ran for one season of thirty episodes from 1966 to 1967 on ABC.

His run of SF series would be concluded with Land of the Giants, a one-hour series that aired on ABC from the fall of 1968 to the spring of 1970. It was filmed in color. It’s worth noting that five novels based on the television series, including three written by Murray Leinster, would be published while the series aired.

A decade later, we have a miniseries on that took Robert Bloch and six other scriptwriters to please Irwin Allen, The Return of Captain Nemo (its theatrical title when a shorter, possibly more coherent version had a screen run was The Amazing Captain Nemo). It has been considered an attempt by him to duplicate the success of his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It didn’t.

Finally, I’ll note that he was responsible for it happening in all aspects possible, a music version of Alice in Wonderland. It aired on CBS over two nights in 1985, and it had an amazing cast of Natalie Gregory (Alice here), Red Buttons, Anthony Newley, Jayne Meadows, Carol Channing, Sammy Davis Jr., Roddy McDowall, Ann Jillian, Pat Morita and Robert Morley. It has an extraordinary rating of eighty-five percent over at Rotten Tomatoes.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit has a plan for rejections.
Wondermark overpaid to be fleeced.
Yaffle mixes genres.
xkcd applies the trend of flipping to geology.

(11) ANALYZING THE WHO HIATUS. The New York Times tries to answer the question: “‘Doctor Who’ Is in Limbo. What Does That Mean for Fans?”

What do the changes mean for the future of the series?

Although the show has not been canceled, it appears to have entered an indefinite hiatus.

The Cardiff, Wales-based production company Bad Wolf, whose founders worked with Davies on “Doctor Who” throughout the reboot era, said on Instagram on Wednesday that they were leaving. And Davies, the “It’s A Sin” and “Years and Years” writer who returned to the franchise in 2023, is out, too.

There are no upcoming episodes on the show’s slate (bar a previously announced animated series for preschoolers), and nothing more can be produced until a new team is chosen.

On social media, fans have dubbed this new period “the Wilderness Years 2.0,” in reference to the 16-year gap between Sylvester McCoy’s final episode as the Doctor in 1989 and Christopher Eccleston’s first in 2005….

View this post on Instagram

(12) BRING IT BACK ALIVE. Meanwhile, here are some of Charlie Jane Anders’ ideas about “How to Bring Back Doctor Who” at Happy Dancing.

…One of the great innovations of the 2005 relaunch was having companions who were from present-day England and frequently returned home to visit their family and/or loved ones. This made Doctor Who more explicitly a portal fantasy, which is excellent, and allowed the companions to feel more grounded in reality.

I think, however, it might be time to return to having companions who are a bit more unusual in their own right. And here’s where I think of something like One Piece, where every member of Monkey D. Luffy’s crew is a colorful character with a fancy backstory. Maybe it’s time for another companion from the future, or the distant past. Maybe we could get someone a bit more akin to Captain Jack Harkness, who did travel in the TARDIS occasionally but never quite settled in as a companion.

It would also be interesting to have companions with more personal issues of their own, not focused quite so much on their relationship with the Doctor — and maybe no more companions who are at the center of a great mystery in which they’re the MacGuffin rather than the detective. My ideal companion would be Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride: constantly chasing revenge against the person who did them wrong, while the doctor tries to temper their fury and every adventure brings them closer to their goal. (Doctor Who did this a bit with Graham in Jodie Whitaker’s first season, but only a bit.)…

(13) HELP THE SOAPBOX COMMUNITY PRINT SHOP AND ZINE LIBRARY. The Soapbox is a community print shop and zine library in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Philadelphia, PA. The studio has to move to a new location (there is no option to stay in the current studio location) and the owners say “the costs of this move are dire.” Gillian Lee, Project Special Collections Cataloging Librarian, University of Pennsylvania, and Board member, The Soapbox Community Print Shop and Zine Library, asks people to contribute here: “The Soapbox Studio Move Fundraiser”.

The Soapbox is the only community printshop in West Philly and one of the only zine libraries in Philadelphia, and they are in a truly urgent financial situation. There is one part-time studio coordinator and all other work, including working with architects and budgeting for this move, is done by dedicated, hardworking volunteers.

If community printing, low-cost book arts educational programming, and free public zine libraries are important to you, please consider donating or sending to a friend or colleague. If you are a Philadelphian like me and can take a class or donate, please do so; see the list of class offerings here. Financial support is truly make or break for the organization at this time. Fundraiser link

(14) NOT UNIQUE. [Item by Steven French.] A pair of philosophers explore the notion of ‘substrate flexibility’ with regard to alien consciousness with the accompanying article giving a nod of the head to the alien in Project Hail Mary: “Consciousness likely not unique to earthlings, paper says” at Phys.org.

Does consciousness depend on flesh and blood? The answer is almost certainly no, according to Eric Schwitzgebel, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. In a new working paper, Schwitzgebel and Jeremy Pober, a former UCR graduate student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon, assert that consciousness is likely possible in life forms made of very different stuff. Think of the five-limbed alien with a rocklike exterior in the recent blockbuster movie “Project Hail Mary.”

Schwitzgebel and Pober do not attempt to define consciousness; they proceed from the heuristic premise that it’s a real and recognizable phenomenon. Instead, they ask a narrower question: Must it be tied to the biology found on Earth?

(15) YOU CAN CALL ME AL. According to NPR, “’Algorithm’ comes from the name of a Uzbek mathematician”.

It’s a simple word that has developed a sinister connotation: algorithm. For many of us, algorithms help determine what we watch, read and listen to — in the process, confirming our tastes and biases, and creating ideological echo chambers.

The word might not seem like one that would get much consideration from the Holy See. But last month in his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV addressed the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. The word “algorithm” came up 19 times….

… The etymology of the word is a strange one, according to Rob Watts, a journalist and host of RobWords, a popular YouTube channel about word origins and usage. “It just sounds like a mathematical term,” he notes. Instead, it invokes a specific mathematician, he says: the 9th century Persian Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi.

“It’s actually the Latin take on that name al-Khwarizmi that we’re invoking when we use the word algorithm,” Watts says.

But it’s taken a rather convoluted journey to reach us a dozen centuries later. The modern word algorithm traces back to the Latin algorismus through French (algorisme) and English (algorism). It also got “somewhat conflated with the term “arithmetic” before arriving in its current form, Watts says….

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

Pixel Scroll 6/11/26 I’m Sorry, Did You Pay For The Entire Scroll Or Just The Five Pixels?

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) 2027 WORLD FANTASY CON IN UK? It looks like World Fantasy Con might be returning to the UK, under the leadership that ran it in 2025.

HWS Events under Karen Fishwick and Allen Stroud are planning a joint Fantasy Con/World Fantasy Con in Birmingham UK from September 24-26, 2027. Karen has announced it on the main WFC Facebook page. And it has a Facebook event: Fantasycon 2027 with World Fantasy Convention.

Fantasycon 2027 will include some aspects of World Fantasy Convention including the World Fantasy Awards.

This is alongside all the usual Fantasycon content of panels, readings, books, art and social activities.

Unfortunately this schedules WFC in opposition to EuroCon Lisbon 2027, being held in Portugal between September 23-26, 2027.

(2) PITCH IN FOR TED WHITE’S FUNERAL. A GoFundMe has been launched to help the late Ted White’s daughter cover his funeral expenses: “Support Kit with Cremation Costs”.

Arielle White, who most of us know as Kit, is facing an incredibly difficult time after the loss of her father, Ted White. Ted was terminal and in palliative care at a nursing home. He had a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) in place, so when his condition worsened, he was not taken to the hospital. Kit was called because he only had hours left, but sadly, Ted passed away just five minutes before she arrived. Throughout his illness, Kit has been visiting him regularly and working tirelessly to get his affairs in order.

Ted did not leave a Will, and Kit is his only living heir. While she is doing everything she can to honor his memory and manage his estate, the process is complicated and will take time to resolve. In the meantime, Kit does not have the funds needed to cover cremation costs and other urgent funeral expenses.

We are asking for your help to support Kit during this heartbreaking time. Any amount you can give will help her take care of these immediate needs and ease some of the burden she is carrying. Kit is deeply grateful for your kindness and support. Your generosity will make a real difference as she navigates this loss.

(3) WOMEN’S PRIZE 2026. No works of genre interest were among the winners of the Women’s Prize announced today: “Women’s prize: Virginia Evans wins for fiction and Lyse Doucet takes award for nonfiction” in the Guardian.

Debut novelist Virginia Evans has won this year’s Women’s prize for fiction, while the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet took home the nonfiction award, also for her debut.

Evans’s The Correspondent and Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul were announced as the winners at a ceremony in central London on Thursday evening, with each author awarded £30,000.

(4) NASA’S VERY MANNED SPACE MISSION. Of course you noticed this little detail when you looked at the photo of the Artemis III crew in yesterday’s Scroll. I know I did! “NASA addresses criticism over all-male Artemis III mission astronauts” at NBC News.

…NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attempted to address these criticisms head-on Wednesday.

“I have seen reactions ranging from disappointment to outrage,” he said in a statement.

Isaacman said that some astronauts may not have been selected for the Artemis III flight because they are already on tap for expeditions to the International Space Station or because their training and skill sets make them more suitable for future Artemis missions, during which astronauts are expected to land on the moon.

“The Astronaut Office assigns the crew that gives the mission the best chance of meeting its objectives, taking into account many factors, including the background and expertise of the astronauts, such as test pilot experience, development work on specific programs, and availability,” he said…

… NASA has promised since 2023 that it will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon during the Artemis program. However, the agency removed that language from some of its websites last year, a move that appeared tied to President Donald Trump’s push against diversity, equity and inclusion….

(5) DRONES CROSS A LINE. New Scientist reports “Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time”.

Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare.

The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed.

“We tried it,” says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. “It’s a test. We never implemented it [more widely].”

The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage “Terminator mode”, in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets.

“We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”

With no way to tell what the automated drones had seen or targeted, human-piloted drones were sent into the area after the test to manually check results. Victims included “a couple of soldiers, one truck”, says Kokhanovskyy. While there is no recording of the automated drones attacking these targets, it was concluded that the drones had killed them.

Kokhanovskyy says that he was not at the test personally but that it was carried out by an unnamed military unit near the cities of Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar as part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive push. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions about the test or the current legal position on the use of fully autonomous weapons….

…While there is no official international ban on autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called for one, saying last year that “there is no place for lethal autonomous weapon systems in our world”.

The UN has said that there are concerns that such weapons could violate international humanitarian and human rights laws by removing human judgement from warfare. There is also a risk that autonomous systems could make mistakes, either attacking soldiers or equipment from the same side or striking civilians….

(6) ‘ALL ASHORE!’ ON THE RIVERWORLD. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Riverworld Odyssey, due to be published in August 2026, is available from Bud’s Art Books for $75.

The odyssey through Riverworld is a riverboat tour with four stops: The Contest, The Relaunch, The Quest Completed, and Riverworld Revisited. At each stop along the “river,” we are invited to go “ashore” to partake of the aforementioned fiction, essays, and speeches.

Fiction by Farmer includes the novel River of Eternity, first written in 1952, but not published until 1983 by science fiction specialty publisher, Phantasia Press; the earliest published Riverworld stories, “The Day of the Great Shout,” and “Riverworld”; the excerpt “Riverworld War”; and the stories Farmer wrote for the two shared-world anthologies in the ’90s: “Crossing the Dark River,” “A Hole in Hell,” “Up the Bright River,” and “Coda.”

Introductions, essays, and speeches by Farmer provide significant historical insight to the series. Letters to luminaries such as Fredric Pohl, Ejler Jakobsson, Richard Posner, Phyllis Grann, and Roger Zelazny include four different outlines describing forthcoming Riverworld tales.

Fellow “shipmates” on the riverboat odyssey have kindly supplied essays exploring different aspects of Farmer’s celebrated series and career, including Alex Berman, John Gregory Betancourt, Michael Croteau, Tracy Knight, Paul Spiteri, Bruce Sterling, and Mary Turzillo.

The gorgeous wraparound cover painted by Mark Wheatley features Peter Jarius Frigate, Alice Hargraves, Sir Richard Frances Burton, and Joe Miller attempting a shortcut across Riverworld in a hot air balloon.

(Available in both a Softcover and a Signed Hardcover Limited Edition)

The most comprehensive examination of Phillip Jose Farmer’s award-winning sci-fi/fantasy series! Signed by Berman, Betancourt, Croteau, Knight, Spiteri, Sterling, Turzillo, and Wheatley! Clocking in at almost six hundred pages, Riverworld Odyssey is a journey through every piece of associated fiction, every pertinent essay, letter, article, and speech, every item of ephemera the editors at Meteor Press could gather, in one Brobdingnagian volume, to tell the story — the history — of one of science fiction’s greatest series! Meteor Press, 2026.

Not yet published. Expected 8/31/26.

Daniel Dern notes: I’m a happy occasional buyer of stuff from/via Bud’s – and always enjoy reading the email and snail-mail updates. Often some great stuff/great bargains. I’ll be looking to see if my library will get it! (I love lots of PJF, going on periodic search’n’binge-reads.)

(7) EARLY TUBES. Heritage Auctions’ Intelligent Collector celebrates “100 Years of Television Design”.

… Who wouldn’t want to watch an episode of I Love Lucy on an Eisenhower-era set? So don’t touch that dial as we look back on seven iconic designs from the Golden Age of TV….

Here’s the most unfortgettable pick:

Philco Predicta (1958)

Arguably the most recognizable vintage set ever made, the Predicta’s floating picture tube looks like something straight out of The Jetsons. Created by industrial designer Herbert Gosweiler, this innovative model is a prime example of “the future according to the ’50s” and has become a pop culture icon, with examples appearing in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Toy Story 2, and on the cover of Elton John’s 1981 studio album, The Fox. Though coveted by collectors today, initial sales of this set slumped due to reliability issues resulting from heat generated by the disconnected cathode ray tube in Predicta’s base.

(8) JANE YOLEN OBITUARY. Jane Yolen’s daughter announced that the beloved writer died today. File 770’s tribute is here: “Jane Yolen (1939-2026)”.

Jane Yolen at a recent Boskone. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 11, 1971 — P. Djèlí Clark, 55.

By Paul Weimer: P. Djèlí Clark is another author, like Max Gladstone, that I slept on at first, but have made up for lost time. I missed The Black God’s Drums entirely, even with its alternate civil war verse. Then, his novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015 came out, and I somehow missed it in the tsunami of other stories and novels that came out in 2019. But it was sometime during the Pandemic that a friend suggested I try it, that it would be up my alley.

Was it ever! A police procedural set in an alternate magical fantasy world where Egypt was a 19th century world power because The Magic Has Returned was so my jam. I devoured it avidly. As is my wont when I discover an author, I went back to The Black God’s Drums, and went forward from there. Clark has written in a couple of verses now. The Dead Cat Tail Assassins in particular is a lot of fun, and Ring Shout is a must read for fans of Sinners. There is an ever widening variety of verses that Clark is creating, and as you might notice, most of them are alternate histories. The aforementioned Dead Cat Tail Assassins felt a little odd (however tasty it was) in that it was a completely invented secondary world. It was like having a piemaker suddenly present me with a chocolate cake.

However, I do think the Djinn verse is still my favorite, as he has the most material set in that single verse, exploring it, developing the characters and the extremely rich setting. There is a real appeal and reversal of the colonial pattern of the tragedy of the “Scramble for Africa”, with Egypt taking the role of a world power instead thanks to having a strong lead in magic.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Ink Pen has a delayed response.
xkcd plays with the beam.
Dork Tower would say laughing is crying.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal points out what it could be doing.

(11) FILLING UP THE DOCKET. ComicsBeat reports “Archie Comics is having a lot of legal woes”.

An article at the website of fintech company 9fin has been quietly making the rounds in the last few days. Reported by Maria Heeter and Laurie Tomassian, the article lays out recent lawsuits and financial controversies at Archie Comics Publications. This article is very well written and researched and the underlying matters are quite complicated so Just Go Read The Article.

If you are in a rush, a (very) short version is that in 2022 Jonathan Goldwater, the co-owner of Archie, and son of the company’s co-founder, signed a deal with finance company Raven Capital, receiving a $40 million loan from them, and also signing an $80 million development deal giving former Raven principal and occasional movie producer James Masciello the right to develop “secondary Archie characters.”

Since then, Raven has been trying to get Goldwater to pay back the debt, and Masciello first fell out with Raven and then died suddenly. Raven sued Goldwater last October in an attempt to get payment, but they seem to have been particularly outraged by the August 2025 announcement that ACP had signed a deal with Universal for a new Archie movie with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Hail Mary Project) to direct, Tom King writing the screenplay, and Emma Watts producing. I’ll let 9fin explain what happened next:

“Less than two months later, lenders from Raven Capital Management filed a lawsuit in New York Superior Court accusing Jonathan Goldwater — the son of an Archie Comics Publications founder and the company’s co-chief executive officer — of going behind Raven’s back to sell Universal the rights to Archie intellectual property. Goldwater’s lawyers fired back, accusing Raven of angling for control of one of the longest-running brands in comic book history just as Goldwater cinched a lucrative movie deal — and threatened to kick Goldwater out of a $5.7m Beverly Hills mansion a former Raven employee had promised years before. The dispute would become so ugly that Goldwater’s lawyers later described a phone call from Raven’s chief investment officer as having the tone of an ‘organized crime figure.’”

“Now the fight is coming to a head. In late May, Raven went on a new offensive, announcing a June UCC foreclosure auction for control of Goldwater’s family office — which includes a 25% stake in Archie Comics — at the Los Angeles offices of Paul Hastings, according to a classifieds notice in the Wall Street Journal. Goldwater is aware of the auction but hasn’t yet responded, according to a person familiar with the matter and public filings. If Raven seizes the stake through this auction, it could control the future of Archie Andrews and the Riverdale universe….”

(12) KGB. Ellen Datlow has posted her photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB readings on June 10, 2026.

Nicholas Kaufmann read a fabulous story and A. C. Wise read two excerpts from her terrific new novel.

(13) CLOCK AROUND THE ROCK. SpaceDaily remembers: “A 1971 experiment flew four atomic clocks around the world on commercial airliners — first heading east, then heading west — and when the clocks were brought home and compared with stationary clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory, they were measurably out of sync, in the first direct demonstration that time itself moves at slightly different rates depending on how fast you are traveling, exactly as Einstein had predicted half a century earlier”.

…Together, Hafele and Keating obtained $8,000 in funding from the Office of Naval Research — one of the cheapest tests of general relativity ever conducted — and arranged for one of the most famous experiments in 20th-century physics.

Of the $8,000 budget, $7,600 was spent on round-the-world airline tickets. The two men needed seats for themselves and seats for their instruments: four HP 5061A cesium-beam atomic clocks, each about the size of a large suitcase. The clocks needed their own seats because they were too large and too sensitive to be stowed in cargo. The ticket booking forms accordingly listed “Mr. Clock” as the passenger in two seats on each flight. On 4 October 1971, Hafele, Keating, and four atomic clocks boarded commercial flights heading east from Washington and began an eastward circumnavigation of the Earth. The trip lasted 65.4 hours of which 41.2 hours were spent actually in flight. The clocks were returned to the Naval Observatory and compared with the stationary reference clocks. They were then flown again, this time westward, from 13 to 17 October 1971, in a journey that lasted 80.3 hours. After this second trip, they were returned to the Naval Observatory and compared a second time.

The published results in Science, in July 1972, were striking. According to the original Hafele-Keating prediction paper, special relativity and general relativity, taken together, predicted that the clocks should have lost approximately 40 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and gained approximately 275 nanoseconds during the westward trip, relative to the stationary clocks at the Naval Observatory. The actual measurements showed losses of 59 nanoseconds on the eastward leg and gains of 273 nanoseconds on the westward leg. The eastward result agreed with the prediction within experimental uncertainty; the westward result agreed almost exactly. The clocks that had travelled around the world had run at measurably different rates than the clocks that had stayed in Washington, and the differences were of the magnitude and direction that Einstein’s theory predicted.

The asymmetry between the eastward and westward results — losing 59 nanoseconds in one direction and gaining 273 in the other — is one of the more counterintuitive aspects of the experiment. Both flights covered roughly the same distance at roughly the same speed at roughly the same altitude. If only the velocity of the aircraft mattered, the two flights should have produced identical effects. But the relevant velocity for relativistic calculations is not the velocity of the plane relative to the ground; it is the velocity of the plane relative to a non-rotating reference frame centred on the Earth. The Earth itself rotates eastward at approximately 1,600 kilometres per hour at the equator. An aircraft flying east adds its velocity to the Earth’s rotational velocity, producing a larger total velocity in the non-rotating frame. An aircraft flying west subtracts, producing a smaller velocity. The eastward clocks therefore experienced larger time dilation due to special relativity than the westward clocks, and this effect was what produced the directional asymmetry in the measurements….

(14) VIDEOS OF THE DAY. “Pixar Drops 3 ‘Toy Story 5’ Clips” and Animation World Network shares them.

Disney and Pixar have released three new clips from the highly anticipated Toy Story 5. And even though the toys are back in town, there’s trouble in playtime! A “technological threat” has reared its digital face, in the form of Lilypad, a frog-shaped smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee, that goes head-to-head with Buzz, Woody, Jessie and the rest of the gang, making their jobs that much harder.

The green gadget arrives with her own disruptive ideas about what is best for their kid, Bonnie. Will playtime ever be the same?

Toy Story 5 Clip – Jessie and Lily Pad

Toy Story 5 Clip – You Don’t Deserve This

Toy Story 5 Clip – She Really Let Things Go

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

Jane Yolen (1939-2026)

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Mike Glyer

SFWA Grand Master Jane Yolen died June 11 at the age of 87. Her daughter Heidi Stemple announced on Facebook:

It is with profound sadness that I, along with my brothers Adam Stemple and Jason Stemple, share the news of our mother, Jane Yolen’s passing. As you all probably know, she had one of the most brilliant creative minds of our time. This year, her 450th book published. She has been awarded 6 honorary doctorates and too many awards to mention here. She has mentored, inspired, and nurtured so many authors and illustrators through her words both on the page and off. But, beyond that, she was our mother and grandmother. We will put out more information later when we have time to gather. But, friends and fans alike, please know that she passed gently with no pain or stress, with my brother Adam’s music filling the room and me reading Owl Moon to her one last time. My brother Jason was by my side and we feel the love of everyone who has been holding us in the light.

Yolen’s career honors include SFWA’s Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award (2017), the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award (2009), the SF&F Poetry Association’s Grand Master Poet award (2010), and the NESFA’s Skylark Award (1990).

Many of Yolen’s works fell into the fairy tale category and Newsweek dubbed her, “America’s Hans Christian Andersen.”

Yolen’s book-writing career began in 1963 at the age of 22, with women pirates (Pirates in Petticoats), followed quickly by picture books about kings and princesses and witches, plus nonfiction about kites, bells, and disappearing islands.

She won Nebula Awards for her short story “Sister Emily’s Lightship” (1998) and novelette “Lost Girls” (1999).

She received World Fantasy Awards for editing Favorite Folktales from Around the World (1987) and for her collection The Emerald Circus (2018).

Yolen won the Mythopoeic Award for her fantasy books Cards of Grief (1985), Briar Rose (1993), and the “Young Merlin” trilogy Passager, Hobby, and Merlin (1998).

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association presented her the Dwarf Stars Award for “Last Unicorn” (2007), and the Elgin Award for her book The Last Robot and Other Science Fiction Poems (2023).

She was Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention (1984) and the World Science Fiction Convention (2005), and many regional and local conventions.

The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of the American Library Association awarded the 2022 Sophie Brody Medal to Yolen for Kaddish Before the Holocaust and After: Poems, a collection in which, “Yolen takes the reader on a heartbreaking and breathtaking journey, breaking new ground in the rich, diverse genre known as Holocaust poetry. Using a variety of poetic forms to distill the reality of the Holocaust into words.” Yolen is also known in the Jewish book world for her Holocaust novels Devil’s Arithmetic, Briar Rose, Mapping the Bones, and the picture book, The Stone Angel.

She served as president of SFWA from 1986-1988. She was on the board of directors of The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for over 25 years, and briefly during the past decade funded and lent her name to its Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Award.

She co-wrote two books with her son, the writer and musician Adam Stemple, Pay the Piper and Troll Bridge, both part of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Fairy Tale series. Pay the Piper won the Locus Award for Young Adult Book in 2006. She also wrote lyrics for the song “Robin’s Complaint,” recorded on the 1994 album Antler Dance by Stemple’s band Boiled in Lead.

She married David W. Stemple in 1962. He died of cancer in 2006. They are survived by three children and six grandchildren.

Jane Yolen. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

Pixel Scroll 10/5/25 Many Are Scrolled But Few Are Pixeled

Posted on October 5, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) TEXAS SCHOOL DISTRICT REMOVES YOLEN BOOK. “Texas school district yanks Holocaust book ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’ over ‘DEI content’” reports The Times of Israel.

A school district in central Texas has removed “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” a classic young-adult novel dealing with the Holocaust, after reviewing books for material that could violate a new state law forbidding “DEI” classroom content.

The novel was one of dozens to be removed after Leander Independent School District, in a suburb of Austin, undertook its review in part by using artificial intelligence.

Leander ISD is far from the first district to remove books on Jewish subjects amid a dragnet targeting diversity- or LGBTQ-related themes. Over the last few years, districts in Texas, Florida and beyond have pulled versions of Anne Frank’s diary; “Maus”; “The Fixer”; and other Jewish books….

… According to a local news station, AI “was used in the initial part of the process” of the Leander ISD review of hundreds of books. District administrators then made manual reviews before finalizing which books to pull.

An email that district leaders sent to educators ordering the “pause” of the books, published by Strong on his blog, states that the materials “are not being permanently removed,” but “are simply on hold while we seek additional guidance.” The removals, the district leader wrote, are “necessary to ensure our curriculum remains in full compliance with the law.”

The list of around 40 books determined by Leander ISD to potentially be in violation of the law includes “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Les Misérables,” and books by Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin and S.E. Hinton.

It also includes “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” the 1988 novel by Jewish author Jane Yolen about a young Jewish American girl who travels back in time to World War II-era Poland during Passover and is sent to a death camp. The book has received wide acclaim and become a classroom mainstay for teaching middle-grade readers about the Holocaust; it was adapted into a TV movie starring Kirsten Dunst. The book has not been formally challenged by any district parent, according to Strong….

(2) THE BIG BROADCAST. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] Since The Big Broadcast, WAMU’s four-hour Sunday night “old-time radio” broadcast, has been featuring SF radio programs every week this summer, and receiving a lot of interest, they hosted a talk at the MLK library in DC in late September about science fiction with Dr. Ellen Stofan and Alec Nevala-Lee. The discussion (called “Tune In Tomorrow”) is available online here (starting at about one hour and fifty-five minutes into the program: “The Big Broadcast: September 28, 2025”.

9:00 p.m. Excerpts from “Tune In Tomorrow” Live Event
The Big Broadcast Summer of Sci-Fi culminating event, an in-person live panel at the MLK Jr. Memorial Library, September 18, 2025. Panel guests Dr. Ellen Stofan and Alec Nevala-Lee discussed the origins and future of science and science fiction. (Running time 33:12)

9:30 p.m. X Minus One
“The Green Hills Of Earth”The story of Reisling, the blind folk singer of the spaceways. (Original air date July 07, 1955. NBC network. Running time 23:52)

(3) VERBAL KNIT. “Study Uses Mathematics to Reveal When Homer Wrote the Iliad” – GreekReporter gives an overview. Their conclusion is slightly less aggressive than, oh, claiming the earth was created on October 23, 4004 BC.

Scholars continue to be fascinated by the question of when Homer composed the Iliad, and one recent study even applied mathematics to try to pinpoint its date. There are numerous ways of investigating this, such as examining artwork on pottery, ancient texts about Homer’s contemporaries, and clues within the poem itself. But how does this mathematical approach work?

The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Reading, and it was published in the journal BioEssays in 2013. More recently, in August 2025, the same lead researcher, Mark Pagel, published an explanation of the same process and results in Medicine in Homer.

How did this study work? The study relied on comparisons between three languages. One was Homeric Greek, the second was Modern Greek, and the third was Hittite. This last language was the language of the ancient Hittite Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia.

Since Hittite, like Greek, is an Indo-European language, it has a so-called genetic relationship to the language of Homer. That is, both Greek and Hittite descend from a common ancestor. This means that by comparing these three languages, we can use mathematics to work out when Homer wrote the Iliad.

How does this comparison actually work? According to the researchers, the study used “shared cognates among Hittite, and Homeric and Modern Greek, and rates of lexical replacement in Indo-European languages.”

The researchers took into account the rate at which the vocabulary of a language changes over time. While words constantly evolve, what is less common is a word being replaced by an unrelated word. For example, the word “hund” (now “hound”) was generally replaced by the unrelated “dog” in English several centuries ago.

The average half-life for any given word is about 2,500 years. That is, there is about a 50 percent chance that a word will be replaced by an unrelated word within two thousand to three thousand years. However, this is only the average, and the true rate varies significantly depending on the word…

… What were the results of this study? When, according to mathematics, did Homer write the Iliad? The ultimate result was that, with 95 percent confidence, Homer appears to have written the Iliad in approximately 762 BC.

In reality, the story is more complex. The study’s initial result was somewhat different: the mathematics suggested that Homer wrote the Iliad in 707 BC. The researchers then noted, however, that this first analysis relied solely on linguistic data and did not take any historical information into account.

One key piece of historical information is that Herodotus mentioned Homer. Herodotus was a Greek historian of the fifth century BC. This means that Homer and the Iliad must predate 450 BC….

… This second analysis yielded a date of 762 BC, leading the researchers to conclude that, based on the mathematics, this was the most probable time when Homer composed the Iliad.

Issues with this study

Undoubtedly, this is a fascinating study. Most scholars place the composition of the Iliad in either the eighth or seventh century BC, and even without historical evidence, the study arrived at a date fully consistent with this range.

Therefore, this study shows that mathematical models of language change can be used effectively, as they do seem to provide reasonable estimates for when ancient texts were composed….

(4) ELVIRA AUTHOR Q&A. “Cassandra Peterson’s Elvira is Martha Stewart of the Macabre” says Out.

Between 2021 and now, you’ve released three books: your memoirs, a children’s book and now this cookbook. Is it safe to say you’ve been bitten by the writer’s bug and have embraced this new author era of Cassandra Peterson?

I did my autobiography, of course, and then I got offered to do another book. So I was thrilled to be able to finally do this cookbook. And then that kids book just came out of nowhere with Running Press. They just came to me and asked me if I’d like to do it. And it was so darn simple for me.

They had the artist who I loved and they had the basic concept: making all the classic monsters palatable and friendly for children. So it’s not a spooky book in any way. It’s a board book. And all I had to do was write it in poem form. It was so quick and easy that I just said, “Sure, why not?” So I didn’t mean to gang up all my books at once, but that’s kind of what happened.

Elvira is such a risqué, sexually charged character known for her adult humor. Did you find it challenging to tone the character down and avoid using the classic Elvira schtick?

When they first pitched it to me, my very first reaction was, ‘Elvira doing a kid’s book? What?!’ But they also talked about how they had done a board book with like, I think it was David Bowie, Tina Turner. It was like word books. And then I thought, OK, well, if they can do it, we can make it palatable for children. So it kind of changed my mind about that. And I honestly think the people that are going to buy it more are going to be the parents of children or a friend buying it because they’re into the character, but I was very, very adamant about making it very, very child-friendly. No funny right turns or anything like that.

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Jubal.]

October 5, 1971 — Paul Weimer, 54.

Although he has a few short stories to his credit, Paul Weimer is far better known in science fiction reviewing and criticism circles. Having gotten his real start at places like The Functional Nerds and SF Signal, Paul has, and continues to write, for a number of venues and publications across the internet, from traditional fanzines to guest posts on blogs, and always, always telling people that pre-orders are love.

Paul had a minor but notable role in the Sad and Rabid Puppies Debarkle (h/t Camestros Felapton), showing up on podcasts and blogs, trying in vain to bridge divides and see multiple viewpoints.

In addition to writing, Paul is a member of the Hugo finalist Skiffy and Fanty podcast, and has shown up on a wide range of other SFF podcasts as a guest. He also has been playing and running TTRPGs, including Play by Email ones, for decades.

Paul is known in SFF circles, too, as an enthusiastic amateur photographer who is likely to show up at your con with his camera in tow. At the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, he was a member of the convention’s official Photography Team. As a DUFF Delegate in 2017, he traveled to the Australian and New Zealand Natcons in 2017, and his trip report “What I did on my Summer Vacation” holds the record for most photos in a published Fan Fund report.

After the unpleasantness of being one of the Chengdu Worldcon Ineligibles, Paul won two Hugos at the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, for Best Fan Writer, and as part of the team of the Best Fanzine Winner, Nerds of a Feather. He also won an Ignyte award for Best Critics as part of the Nerds of a Feather team.

But he’s really just this guy, you know?

(6) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cheats at a sport.
Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee knows the right time to ask a question.
Frank and Ernest fail as trainers.
Wallace the Brave plans the next hit show.
War and Peas is a risqué fairy tale.

(7) ICONIC MAGAZINE COVERS. New York Times Magazine panelists have picked “The 25 Most Influential Magazine Covers of All Time” – link bypasses the New York Times paywall. Cover images at the link with extensive commentary and background. None are sff, even the one that references Twin Peaks.

A magazine is nothing without its cover, of course. That’s why, for the latest installment of our T 25 series, we convened a panel of experts — Gayle King, 70, who, in addition to co-hosting CBS Mornings, is the editor at large for Oprah Daily, the current version of O, the Oprah Magazine; Patrick Li, 56, T’s creative director; Adam Moss, 68, the former editor of New York magazine and, before that, The New York Times Magazine; David Remnick, 66, the editor of The New Yorker; and Martha Rosler, 82, a New York-based conceptual artist whose work has long commented on and incorporated magazines and other forms of mass media — to choose the most influential magazine covers of all time. Before they submitted their own long lists of at least 10 nominees, I’d told them that they could select one another’s work but not their own. We also decided to limit the conversation to English-language publications, although the unranked list of 25 covers that follows, which we fought over in a Times conference room for several hours on a rainy May afternoon, includes only American publications…

(8) DON’T LEAN ON THAT WALL. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] You’ll be shocked. “Concrete ‘battery’ developed at MIT now packs 10 times the power” reports MIT News.

Concrete already builds our world, and now it’s one step closer to powering it, too. Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black (with nanoscale particles), and electrolytes, electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec³, pronounced “e-c-cubed”) creates a conductive “nanonetwork” inside concrete that could enable everyday structures like walls, sidewalks, and bridges to store and release electrical energy. In other words, the concrete around us could one day double as giant “batteries.”

As MIT researchers report in a new PNAS paper, optimized electrolytes and manufacturing processes have increased the energy storage capacity of the latest ec³ supercapacitors by an order of magnitude. In 2023, storing enough energy to meet the daily needs of the average home would have required about 45 cubic meters of ec³, roughly the amount of concrete used in a typical basement. Now, with the improved electrolyte, that same task can be achieved with about 5 cubic meters, the volume of a typical basement wall.

“A key to the sustainability of concrete is the development of ‘multifunctional concrete,’ which integrates functionalities like this energy storage, self-healing, and carbon sequestration. Concrete is already the world’s most-used construction material, so why not take advantage of that scale to create other benefits?” asks Admir Masic, lead author of the new study, MIT Electron-Conducting Carbon-Cement-Based Materials Hub (EC³ Hub) co-director, and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at MIT…..

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

Pixel Scroll 2/11/25 Even Pixels Get The Scrolls

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) YOUTUBER DANIEL GREENE ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT. A post on Reddit’s r/Fantasy community reports that YouTuber Naomi King, actor, musician, and author, has released a video – “I Received a CEASE AND DESIST from Daniel Greene” – accusing Greene, a sff news YouTuber with over half a million subscribers, of sexually assaulting her in 2023, and having lawyers threaten her with a defamation suit over a comments about SA in a video where he was not even mentioned. Warning: King’s testimony is emotionally wrenching.

Many have noted two of Greene’s most recent YouTube videos headlined Neil Gaiman’s legal and business problems.

(2) OUT OF JAIL BUT STUCK AT HOME. Publishers Weekly reports that two Jerusalem booksellers whose detention was discussed in yesterday’s Scroll have been released: “The Publishing Industry Condemns Israel’s Treatment of Jerusalem Booksellers”.

Mahmoud Muna and Ahmad Muna, the co-owners of the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem who were arrested by Israeli police during a raid of the bookstore on February 9, were released on Tuesday. They are under house arrest for five days, and have been ordered not to set foot in their bookstore for 20 days….

(3) ATWOOD ‘BOOK OF LIVES’. “Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood to publish memoir” reports the Guardian.

Margaret Atwood has written the memoir her fans have long been hoping for, it has been announced.

In Book of Lives, which is due to be published in November, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale will recount memories from her unconventional childhood in northern Canada, as well as the story of her writing career, from her early feminist works to her bestselling, award-winning fiction…

(4) THE BLURB DEVOLUTION (ALTERNATE TITLES: OH TO BE A BLURBEL!; BLURBLE-17; BLURBYLON-5; THE BLURB FOR WORLD IS FORRIE J ACKERMAN). [Item by Daniel Dern.] To follow up (topically) on Item #1 from the February 7, 2025 Scroll —

(1) THE BLURB REVOLUTION. “Book blurbs: Authors hate them. Publishers love them. They’re often made-up” says Slate’s Imogen West-Knights.

Here’s an Opinion/Guest Essay from the New York Times (Guest Link included):

“The End of the Blurb. Thank God” by Christopher Buckley.

And here’s some other hits from NYTimes search on “Blurb” (I can provide Guest Links if desired:

“Too Busy Blurbing Books to Write One” by Rebecca Makkai, Feb. 4, 2025

“For the novelist Rebecca Makkai, writing blurbs had become nearly a full-time job. She explains why blurbs matter — and why she’s taking a break.”

“What Are Book Blurbs, and How Much Do They Matter in Publishing?” by Elisabeth Egan Feb. 4, 2025

“An announcement from Simon & Schuster’s publisher left the literary community wondering whether blurbs, the little snippets of praise on a book jacket, are all they’re cracked up to be.”

This leaves me wondering, how many therbligs (“thurbligs”) go into making a blurb?

(5) JANA PULLMAN OBITUARY. Jana Pullman, award-winning book artist and partner of Catherine Lundoff, died February 10. Bryan Thao Worra has written a tribute on Facebook. Here is an excerpt:

Saddened to learn of the passing of Jana Pullman, whom I’d known for twenty years since first meeting her and her partner Catherine Lundoff.

A talented master of book arts, she was widely acclaimed and exhibited, transforming so many wonderful texts into true works of art, including the deluxe edition of my 2008 collection Winter Ink from the Minnsota Center for Book Arts which served as the 20th anniversary Winter Book….

…Our paths crossed so many times in the years since then, and I was always delighted and honored when I had a chance to see her latest masterpieces and her works in progress.

The Minnesota Book Awards named Jana Pullman the winner of the 2013 Minnesota Book Artist Award, a distinction that was well-deserved, recognizing over 30 years of her work at the time. I always found it interesting that she had arrived in Minneapolis in 1997, about the same time that I did. She had roots in Utah, and her attention to detail was legendary. It’s difficult for me to settle on just one favorite of her work, which always kept me inspired and driven in my own approach to the arts and let me prioritize the importance of modern books as art, and how we make a book unique for its reader. I was delighted to see her work on display as part of the Next Chapter catalogue retrospective at the Minneapolis Central Library right before the installation of my own exhibit, Laomerica 50 last year.

I am honored to call her a friend, and she will be missed deeply. I hope more people continue to discover and appreciate her extraordinary work in the years ahead.

(6) CHRIS MOORE (1947-2025). British illustrator and cover artist Chris Moore died February 7 his wife announced on Facebook. He was 77. He produced over four hundred sixty covers, eighty interiors. He modestly titled his collection, Journeyman. Here’s a cover for The Stars My Destination; one for The City and the Stars; one for Hexarchate Stories. He also did covers for many record albums. Here’s his story.

Downthetubes has a tribute: “In Memoriam: Artist Chris Moore”.

…Publisher John Jarrold, commenting on his passing, described Chris as “a great man and a wonderful artist”, while fellow artist Bob Eggleton described the news as “heartbreaking” and, separately, that “I shall always remember his guitar playing, not to mention his stunning art.”…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 11, 1939 — Jane Yolen, 86.

So now we have one of my favorite writers who is on the chocolate gifting list, Jane Yolen. And no, that is not about how I ended up getting written in at length as an ethnomusicologist in The One-Armed Queen; that’s another story involving a successful hunt for a rare volume of fairytales.

Given that she written at least three hundred and sixty works at last count (and that may well be an undercount), the following is but a personal list of works that I like.

Favorite Folktales From Around the World which garnered a well-deserved World Fantasy Award shows her editing side at its very best.

She picked the folktales, some from authors whose names are forgotten, some who we still know such as Homer, Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde, and gave them much need explanatory notes. If you like folktales, I’d consider it essential and quite delightful reading.

The Transfigured Hart poses the delicate question of if unicorns are real and neatly merges that question with a coming of age story, something she handles oh so well. Originally published forty years ago, Tachyon Press, a publisher that should be always be praised for its work, republished it a few years back.

Briar Rose is a YA novel which is a retelling, more or less of the Sleeping Beauty tale. It was published as part of Terri Windling’s Fairy Tale series. The novel won a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Like everything else in that series, it’s most excellent. Or as I’ve said before, it’s just what Windling does.

The Great Alta sequence consisting of Sister Light, Sister Dark, White Jenna and The One-Armed Queen. Matriarchal warrior societies will rise and fall and rise again in this tale told with more than a bit of myth, poetry, and song. Brilliantly told with characters that you’ll deeply care about and character you’ll hate.

She also wrote the lyrics for the song “Robin’s Complaint”, recorded on the 1994 Boiled in Lead’s Antler Dance recording on which her son Adam Stemple was the lead vocalist.

Let’s finish off with The Wild Hunt. Myth as interpreted by her and merged with the evocative drawings of Francisco Mora which complement the text perfectly. Dark and dramatic, they bring the tale to life so very well. It’s a work of pure magic which should be destined to become a classic in the world of children’s literature. Don’t buy the Scholastic paperback edition, just the HMH hardcover edition.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem makes a flap.
Dinosaur Comics discusses book covers.
Lio translates for a species.
xkcd’s “Incoming Asteroid” assesses the risks of different size asteroids hitting Earth.
Tom Gauld offers this choose-your-own celebration.

A personalized Valentine’s Card for Bibliophiles. My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-02-08T10:40:13.195Z

(9) PUNCTUATION IN THE MCU. Gizmodo thinks “An International Poster Might Have Just Explained Thunderbolts’ Whole Asterisk Deal”.

…The answer might have just been found–and as is the case with the vast majority of supposed Marvel mysteries, the answer might be much more basic (and likely) than any of the wild speculation. As IGN points out, after this weekend’s release of the latest trailer for the movie, a new Japanese international poster for Thunderbolts utilizes the asterisk as the actual reference mark it is: to clarify that that the Thunderbolts are what you get when the Avengers aren’t available….

… But still, this is only a possibility–no doubt we’ll learn the truth of the greatest mystery to have hit the Marvel Cinematic Universe since “Was the Mandarin ever really going to fight Tony Stark in a golf cart in Iron Man 3 just like that Lego set teased?” when Thunderbolts (sorry, Thunderbolts*) hits theaters May 2….

(10) FOUND IN THE DARK. “Euclid ‘dark universe’ telescope discovers stunning Einstein ring in warped space-time” – Space.com has an image at the link.

The Euclid space telescope has, by chance, discovered its first Einstein ring, and it is absolutely stunning. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, this perfectly circular Einstein ring has allowed researchers to “weigh” the dark matter at the heart of a galaxy almost 600 million light-years away.

The European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, which launched in July 2023, spotted its first strong gravitational lens as it began to build the most precise 3D map ever made of the universe ever created. The map will delve back into 10 billion years of cosmic history, helping scientists investigate the mysteries of the dark universe: dark matter and dark energy. Hence Euclid’s unofficial nickname “the dark universe detective.”…

(11) HAND CHECK. [Item by Steven French.] Surprise, surprise, most representations of dinosaurs in media and the toy industry get it wrong: “How Can You Spot an Inaccurate Dinosaur? AO Wants to Know” at Atlas Obscura.

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO make “dinosaur hands”?

Try it now: Position your hands the way a T. rex would. Did you bend your wrists forward with your palms facing down, like the front paws of a kangaroo? If you did, we have some bad news for you.

“Overwhelmingly, bipedal dinosaurs had their hands facing one another,” says Steven Bellettini, the host of the paleontology YouTube channel Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong. Early paleontologists assumed that two-legged dinosaurs, like modern mammals, had wrists that were pronated, meaning able to rotate downwards. But evidence discovered in the early 21st century shows that dinosaur wrists actually lacked this range of motion, so their palms faced inwards when their hands were at rest. And yet, inaccurate downwards-pointing hands are still prevalent in pop culture depictions of dinosaurs, leading to a widespread misconception. “It’s the thing that I wind up mentioning practically every episode,” Bellettini adds….

(12) AT THE CORE. [Item by Steven French.] It seems even the Earth’s inner core is being disrupted! “Earth’s mysterious inner core really is changing shape” in Nature.

Earth’s inner core is changing shape, scientists have found.

The discovery resolves a long-simmering controversy about what’s happening at the heart of the planet — which was long thought to be solid and unyielding. But it also opens new questions about how changes in the core could affect the length of our 24-hour day, Earth’s magnetic field and more….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Joyce Scrivner, Christian Brunschen, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day rcade, with an assist from Andrew (not Werdna).]

What’s Your Favorite Tolkien?

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By Cat Eldridge: Yes, It’s the Birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien. So I asked a lot of folks that I knew what their favorite works by him were.

Obvious quick note — my choice is The Hobbit which I must’ve read or listened to at least a dozen times over the years. The BBC has a stellar audio version which I have listened to several times as well.

So now let’s see what my respondents had to say.

Peter Beagle says:

“You mean my favorite writing by Tolkien? Probably the story of Beren and Luthien, which I’ve always loved – or maybe the one now published as The Children of Hurin. One or the other.”

Cora Buhlert is one of the Filers who gave an answer:

“The first Tolkien I actually read was The Hobbit, in an East German edition with the illustrations from the Soviet edition. I got it as a present from my Great-Aunt Metel from East Germany, who often sent me books for Christmas and my birthday. It’s still somewhere in a box on my parents’ attic.

“I liked The Hobbit a lot, but I didn’t know there were more stories set in Middle Earth, until several years later, when I spotted The Lord of the Rings at a classmate’s place and borrowed it from him. As a teenager, I had a thing for mythology and read my way through the Nibelungenlied, the Odyssey and the Iliad, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, etc… Lord of the Rings fit right into that context and I enjoyed it even more than I had enjoyed The Hobbit.

“I didn’t read the essay “On Fairy Stories” until university, when I cited it in a paper I wrote for a class. Now I had been educated in an environment which considered the traditional Grimm’s fairy tales too brutal and unsuitable for children (luckily, my parents ignored that and told/read them to me anyway) and which viewed fantasy and science fiction or any kind of genre fiction as escapist trash and potentially harmful. I got regurgitated version of this from my teachers at school and in university I was exposed to the 1970s leftwing pop culture criticism where those ideas had originated. However, I didn’t believe that fairy tales were bad and that SFF was escapist trash, so I was thrilled to read “On Fairy Stories” and find that Tolkien, who surely was considered beyond reproach, agreeing with me.”

Lis Carey was our next Filer:

“I think I have to say that The Hobbit is my favorite Tolkien. I really do identify with Bilbo’s desire to stay home, and enjoy his cozy hobbit hole and its comforts, in his comfortable, familiar neighborhood. Yet, against his better judgment, he is lured into going on an adventure (always a bad idea, adventures) with the dwarves, and finds out just how resilient he is, his unexpected bravery, his ingenuity when faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges (“…he was chased by wolves, lost in the forest, escaped in a barrel from the elf-king’s hall…”) (yes, I love The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, too.) He finds resources in himself that he never suspected–and at the end, he still goes home, to deal with his annoying relatives and enjoy his home. None of this “and now I will abandon everything I ever cared about, to be a completely different person in a different life.””

It’s been a long time for Ellen Datlow since she read any Tolkien, so she says:

“I haven’t read him in so long I don’t remember – I loved all three of the LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit but don’t remember exactly why.” She added in a conversation recently that “I loved his world building from what I recall, but the movies-which I saw much more recently-have overshadowed the books for me. And the movies inspired a major crush on Viggo Mortensen. :-)”

Pamela Dean says she “unreservedly loves The Lord of the Rings, the translation of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,’ and ‘On Fairy-Stories’.”

Once again, The Hobbit proves popular as Jasper Fforde says :

“It’s The Hobbit, because it’s the only one I’ve read – I liked it a great deal but was never really into spells, wizards and trolls, so never took it any further.”

Elizabeth Hand gave a lengthy reply:

“I’d probably have to say The Lord of the Rings, which I’ve read it countless times over the last forty years. It imprinted on me at such an early age — I had the good luck to read it as a kid in the 1960s, when it was still a cult novel, and you had a real sense that you were in some secret, marvelous group of insiders who had visited a place not everyone knew about. Maybe kids discovering it today still have that feeling, in spite of the success of the movies (which I love). I hope so. But I also find that, as I’ve gotten older, I’m far more drawn to reread other works, especially in The Complete History of Middle Earth and The Silmarillion (we have very long Tolkien shelves here).

I love the Beren & Luthien material, and also the various accounts of Turin, which recently were republished as The Children of Hurin. The dark tone of all of it, the tragic cast and also the recurring motifs involving elves and mortal lovers — great stuff. It doesn’t serve the function of comfort reading that LOTR does, and because I’m not so familiar with the stories I can still read them with something like my original sense of discovery.

The breadth and depth of Tolkien’s achievement really becomes apparent when one reads The Complete History — 13 volumes, including an Index. Every time I go back to them I think, I could be learning Greek, or Ancient Egyptian, something that has to do with the real world. But then, I’m continually so amazed by what this one man came up with, the intensity and single mindedness of his obsession. And I get sucked into it all over again.”

Gwyneth Jones says her favorite work is The Lord Of The Rings:

“Why — Because I read it when I was a child, in bed with bronchitis. My mother brought me the three big volumes, successively, from the library, I’d never met anything like it, and it was just wonderful entertainment for a sick child. I grew out of LOTR, but will never forget that thrill. More why: I’ve never felt the slightest temptation to open the massive prequels and spin-offs of Middle Earth fantasy, I just don’t have that gene, and I feel the Tolkien industry doesn’t need my money. And the other works are either too scholarly, or everything about them is represented in LOTR anyway. I admired ‘Tree and Leaf’ when I read it, long ago, but I’m not sure if I still would.”

Naomi Kritzer likes The Hobbit quite a bit:

“When I was thirteen, I somehow got into the habit of reading bedtime stories to my younger brother, who was seven. (I say “somehow” because my parents had previously been the ones to do this. How and why did I take over? I’m not sure. Possibly it was as simple as, “my parents went out one evening, leaving me to babysit, and that night I read my brother the first chapter of a novel, and the next night he wanted the second.”) We were living in a furnished rental house at the time (my parents were academics, and we were living in the UK that year), and one of the available books was The Hobbit. I read it to my brother. I hadn’t read it previously. I think there are a lot of people whose first exposure to Tolkien was being read to, but I’m not sure how many people my age got their first exposure by reading it to someone else. It’s a truly excellent way to be introduced to Tolkien.”

OR Melling says for her it’s The Lord of the Rings: ‘

“As a child, I loved reading fantasy – CS Lewis, E Nesbit, JM Barrie and so on – but when the librarian offered me The Hobbit and said “it’s about little men with hairy feet” I recall giving her one of those withering looks only children can give. Why on earth would I want to read a book about men with hairy feet? I did finally read The Hobbit when I was 12, after I had read The Lord of the Rings, and discovered that my initial suspicion was correct. I did not like the book at all, particularly its depiction of the elves. This was a great surprise, of course, considering that I had absolutely fallen in love with The Lord of the Rings. It is still one of my favourite books to this day. Aside from The Silmarillion – which I endured like all faithful fans – I have not read any other of Tolkien’s works.’”

James Davis Nicoll has a confession:

“I am very embarrassed to admit I’ve read only 2 JRRTs: LOTR and The Hobbit. LOTRs is far more ambitious and by any reasonable measure better but I enjoyed The Hobbit more. I remember as a teen being surprised that he didn’t end at what would have been the conventional ending, but rather continued on to show the aftermath of victory.”

Cat Rambo picked The Hobbit:

“I will always love The Hobbit, because it taught me what a pleasure reading could be. My babysitter Bernadette was reading it to me, a chapter or so every time she came, and I finally started sneaking chapters because I couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening next. There were other books I loved throughout my childhood, but The Hobbit will always hold center place in that court.”

Catherynne M. Valente picked The Silmarillion:

“I love The Lord of the Rings. I was once a hardcore Sindarin-speaking LoTR geek, in the days of my misbegotten youth. It is a vast and important book. But I have to say that I feel the book is incomplete without The Silmarillion, which provides a depth and mythology, an understanding of the forces at work, a breadth and beauty that LoTR does not have on its own. I am one of the few who loves The Silmarillion for itself, devoured it in one sitting, had no trouble with the archaic language. It should get more love than it does.”

Our final Filer is Paul Weimer who states:

“I am going to go with a sidewise choice. While LOTR and the Hobbit are some of my earliest and most beloved of all SFF that I have ever read, the piece by Tolkien that comes back to my mind again and again is the story of Beren and Luthien. We get the story in a number of ways and forms :the small fragments we see in Lord of the Rings (or the tiny bit in the movie), the longer tale told in the Silmarillion, and the alternate and evolving versions seen in the extended histories of Middle Earth and his letters, In the end this love story between man and elf, mortal and immortal, is in many ways the story of Tolkien, more than the story of a Hobbit, or of the One Ring. It is very telling that Tolkien and his wife’s gravestone name check themselves as Beren and Luthien. It moved me the first time I read the full story, and it moves me still.”

And Jane Yolen finishes the choices off by saying it’s The Hobbit for her:

“While it’s true that The Lord of the Rings is his masterwork and The Hobbit his first attempt at writing (and that, some say witheringly, for children) I have to admit I adore The Hobbit. It has adventure, wonderful characters, fine pacing and spacing, some really scary bits (my daughter ran screaming from the room when the trolls grabbed the ponies, and she refused to hear the rest of it.) And if I could ever write a chapter as good as the Riddles in the Dark chapter I would never have to write again.”

Pixel Scroll 11/25/23 The Pixelman’s Scroll is Half-Constructed

Posted on November 25, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) OVERCOMING REJECTION. Her rejection slips are a key part of the display: “Malorie Blackman’s career honoured in British Library exhibition” in the Guardian.

“To my great embarrassment, I’ve just discovered that I have been holding onto your novel, HACKER, since February 1990”, read a letter to Noughts & Crosses author Malorie Blackman from the senior commissioning editor of Simon & Schuster, dated nearly two years later. “I’m afraid we are not publishing any teenage novels in the near future”. The printed letter, addressed to “Marlorie”, with the extra “r” struck through in pen, was one of 82 rejection letters the writer received before her first book was published.

Hole-punched and stored in a ring binder, the letter is now on display at a British Library exhibition about Blackman, who has gone on to write more than 70 books for children and young adults, including the million-selling Noughts & Crosses series. The rejections folder is one of the artefacts that the author is most excited for the public to see, she says. “I hope that does encourage people.”…

…The exhibition traces Blackman’s young adulthood: the Lewisham homeless shelter she lived in aged 13 is pictured; the comics she turned to as a “shield against the real world” are displayed. In the local library, which she says “saved my life”, she would read novels, including classic fiction – the likes of Jane Eyre. Later, at 22, she came across Walker’s The Color Purple – the first novel she had read that was written by a Black author and featured Black protagonists. “It had a profound effect on me,” says Blackman. “She was a Black woman author. They existed!”…

(2) MEDICAL UPDATE. Jane Yolen suffered a fall the other day and required surgery. Her daughter Heidi has been posting updates on Facebook and says the surgery went great.

(3) REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED BY PROCESS SERVERS. “‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Contestants Threaten Lawsuit After Claiming They Suffered Hypothermia & Nerve Damage During Filming” reports Deadline.

Squid Game: The Challenge contestants are threatening legal action against Netflix and producers after claiming they were injured during the filming of the game show.

A British personal injuries law firm is representing two unnamed players who say they suffered hypothermia and nerve damage while shooting in cold conditions in the UK.

Express Solicitors said in a press statement that it had sent letters of claim to Studio Lambert, the co-producer of Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge.

The contestants’ allegations concern their experience shooting the show’s opening game ‘Red Light, Green Light,’ in which players must evade the attention of a menacing robotic doll.

The game was filmed at Cardington Studios, a former Royal Air Force base in Bedford, during a cold snap in Britain. Netflix confirmed at the time that three of 456 players required medical attention.

Express Solicitors, which specializes in no win no fee claims, said its clients risked their health by having to stay motionless for long periods during the shoot as they attempted to stay in the competition….

(4) AUTHORS’ RIGHTS IN THE AGE OF AI. [Item by Francis Hamit.] The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society is the UK outfit that manages the Public Lending Right. I’ve been a member for several years and get regular payments for my photocopying royalties, something that does not exist in the U.S.

The ALCS’ two-page white paper “Authors and AI principles” is the most sensible thing I’ve seen yet about AI and Authors’ rights.

First on the list of principles:

1. Human authors should be compensated for their work and have transparent information of uses of their work – new technologies and types of uses should respect the established precedent that there must be fair payment for use and transparency regarding how works have been used.

There should be no use without payment. While many systems of remuneration reflect the ways in which we consume media at the time, the principles of copyright remain: that authors should share in the enjoyment of their work, especially financially. Licensing continues to be an effective way to adapt to, support and remunerate a wide range of uses of original works. As authors works are often used in ways to develop AI technology, authors must also have transparent information regarding when and how their work has been used….

(5) DIY DALEK. Dr. Glyn Morgan pays tribute to fans in a post to the UK Science Museum blog — “Building for the Fans: Daleks and Doctor Who”.

…Fans are the lifeblood of any creative endeavour, but this is particularly powerful point for science fiction: were it not for the continued enthusiasm from fans then Doctor Who might have died never to be regenerated after initially leaving the air in 1989, or after the underperforming TV-movie in 1996 (starring the criminally underrated Paul McGann)….

…Along with the Doctor’s equally iconic TARDIS, the Dalek is a firm favourite construction project for fans and has been since they first appeared, inspiring people’s creativity and technical innovation at home. Indeed, building your own Dalek became such a recognised rite of passage for fans that the BBC issued official instructions on how to build your own as part of a Radio Times special issue celebrating the tenth anniversary of Doctor Who in 1973. The article suggested that the project would be particularly good ‘as an exercise for a well-equipped school, using the resources and facilities of several departments- woodwork, metalwork, art and so on.’ The practicality of the design was tested by students of London’s Highbury Grove School (now City of London Academy Highbury Grove): ‘With help from their staff, they produced [a] magnificent black-and-orange specimen in two weeks, at a cost of £12’, which is a considerable saving on the approximately £250 the 1963 originals cost: although the Radio Times models were designed to be static, not operational TV props. Either way, I suspect it would cost a little more now….

(6) HOW HAS THE LAST WHO ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL AGED? Very well decrees Gizmodo’s James Whitbrook in “10 Years Later, Doctor Who’s ‘Day of the Doctor’ Still Hits”.

For a show that is about the capability to be everywhere and anywhere, any period in time, Doctor Who is a show that is arguably burdened with context. Now 60 years old today, the thought of navigating any of its stories without an awareness of its place in that history is almost unthinkable. But every once in a while, in a very long while, Doctor Who wields that context to set itself free.

That’s the paradox—as well as the philosophy of John Rawls—that sits at the heart of “The Day of the Doctor,” Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special that climaxed a blockbuster period of celebrations for the series 10 years ago tonight. It is, of course, almost impossible to think of “Day” outside of this context—metatextually, we now know so much of what almost happened during its production and ideation that it’s almost a miracle to revisit the final product and not deem it miraculous for simply existing.

…And it is about the weight of context. The tragic heart of “Day of the Doctor” is John Hurt’s aforementioned “War” Doctor: the regeneration that took part in the Time War, an incarnation left to banished memories out of the shame of what he had to do to end the conflict between the Time Lords and the Daleks once and for all, one petrified to even call himself a Doctor for the hurt he wielded to do so. Following him on the eve of the final days of the conflict as he steals a weapon of mass destruction from his own people—the Moment, a weapon so powerful, so horrifying, it developed its own conscience to almost stop itself from being—the War Doctor’s arc is one about wrestling with the weight of his own personal history, a push and pull that haunts him, and is compacted when he comes face to face with his future: two further incarnations of himself that yes, still feel the pain of the Time War, a pain muted in some ways, but still, a future for himself that exists beyond the horrifying task he has burdened himself with…

(7) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “Robot Takes Order at Wendy’s. It Catches an ‘Attitude’” claims the Daily Dot.

Wendy’s has started rolling out its new AI chatbot system that is supposed to be handling customer orders at the drive thru. However, according to one TikTok video, what was intended to be a seamless transition turned into a comical and frustrating experience.

The video, which was posted by Macey (@maceitrain) this week, kicks off with Macey already mid-order, requesting a Coke. The Wendy’s robot promptly responds with a simple, “Anything else?”

The TikToker then proceeds to modify her order. “Can I make the junior bacon cheeseburger Biggie bag a medium, please?” she says.

After each update to the order, the robot mechanically repeats, “Anything else?”

…The video has since accumulated over 944,200 views with over 550 comments. Some commenters were not overly impressed by the speed of the new ordering system.

“I feel like that took longer than having a human take the order,” one commenter said….

(8) MARTY KROFFT (1937-2023). Marty Krofft, who partnered with his older brother Sid to build a kids’ TV empire around shows like The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, died November 25. The Hollywood Reporter profile is here.

The Kroffts followed Pufnstuf with The Bugaloos (1970-72), the Claymation series Lidsville (1971-73), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-75) and Land of the Lost (1974-76)…

Indeed, the Kroffts’ style was so popular that McDonald’s copied it to create Mayor McCheese and McDonaldland for an early ’70s advertising campaign. The Kroffts sued, winning a reported seven-figure settlement in 1977….

…Marty joined his brother full-time in 1958 after Sid’s assistant left, and they opened Les Poupees de Paris, an adults-only burlesque puppet show that played to sold-out crowds at a dinner theater in the San Fernando Valley….

Les Poupees went on the road and played world’s fairs in Seattle in 1962, New York in 1964 and San Antonio in 1968. It featured 240 puppets, mostly topless women, and Time magazine called it a “dirty puppet show.”

After that, it was so popular, “we couldn’t even get our own best friends in the theater,” Sid said. It drew an estimated 9.5 million viewers in its first decade of performances….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 25, 1926 — Poul Anderson. (Died 2001.) Need I say that he’s one of my favourite writers? I’m reasonable sure that along with Heinlein, Bradbury and Le Guin that he was the first of the writers that I read extensively. And as Algis Budrys said in his Galaxy review column of February 1965, “we will all soon realize he has for some time been science fiction’s best storyteller.”

Poul was really, really prolific which will mean that I’m not going to detail everything he did here. Indeed, ISFDB list twenty-three novels and an amazing thirty-three collections of his short stories! So where to start?

Well in my case, that is quite easy as my go to works by him when I want to be entertained at length by great storytelling is the Technic History stories with those of Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry being the ones I like the best. Not that other stories aren’t excellent in their own as they are.

Now there’s the ever so fun Hoka novels (Earthman’s Burden and Star Prince Charlie) and the Hoka! short stories, a sequel to the first novel, that were co-written with Gordon R. Dickson.

I’ve always enjoyed his Time Patrol stories as they’re some of the best such tales that were ever written. These of course, as are all of his short stories, to found in The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson that NESFA published. All seven volumes are now available as epubs!

What’s next? Orion Shall Rise remains one of my most read novels by him. It’s part of his Maurai & Kith series, a most interesting future history. The short stories, also excellent, were collected in, not surprisingly, his Maurai & Kith collection.

I was surprised to find that Operation Chaos and Operation Luna actually had a handful of short stories as well, six to be exact, one written by Eric Flint. I shall need to seek them out. Another set of novels that I’ve read several times.

Let’s not forget The Unicorn Trade that he and Karen collaborated on. Such a wonderful collection it is.

Yes, there’s lots more, but I’m going to finish off with A Midsummer Tempest which is always a delight to experience.

No, I didn’t forget he won seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. All well deserved.

And if you go here, you get to hear the delightful story of Karen and her role role in filk songs. I’m told that Poul had a fine singing voice. I wonder if there’s any recording of him and her singing.

(10) MONITORING WHO MEDIA. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] More from Beeb. Alas you have to have a BBC Sounds account to download in this case… “Doctor Who: 60 years of Friends and Foes”.

As Doctor Who celebrates its 60th anniversary, Sue Perkins explores how the programme has reflected our social history across the decades both on and off screen. From advances in technology to politics, violence, gender and sexuality.

Featuring archive footage, interviews and new conversations with showrunner Steven Moffat, script editor Andrew Cartmel, former companions including Anneke Wills, Katy Manning and Janet Fielding, and the voice of the Daleks Nicholas Briggs along with Dalek Operator Barnaby Edwards. Also, there’s analysis from several academics who have published books on the subject.

Sue examines how progressive the show has been, questioning if our favourite time traveller has kept with the times.

(11) BEWARE SPOILERS. If you have already seen the newest Doctor Who special, or don’t care about spoilers, you’re a candidate to read this Inverse profile about the latest iteration of the sonic screwdriver: “54 Years Later, The Oldest TV Sci-Fi Hero Just Got A Massive Tech Upgrade”.

(12) CULTURAL CORNER. Lavie Tidhar tweeted a fresh humorous sendup of the classic poem.

I believe it was the Roman poet, Wilelmus Carolus Wilelmus, who wrote:

I have eaten the dormouse
That was stuffed in the peacock
That was stuffed in the cameleopard

And which you were probably saving
For Caesar.
Forgive me, it was delicious
So dulcis and so small.
— Lavie Tidhar (@lavietidhar) November 24, 2023

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Tolkien explains on BBC how he started The Hobbit” is a brief clip from a 1968 interview.

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

2023 Elgin Award Winners

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Mike Glyer

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) announced the winners of the 2023 Elgin Awards on September 23.

CHAPBOOK

1st place: The Last Robot and Other Science Fiction Poems by Jane Yolen (Shoreline of Infinity, 2021)

2nd place: Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets by Bruce Boston (Mind’s Eye Publishing, 2022)

3rd place: Cajuns in Space by Denise Dumars (2022)

BOOK

1st place: Some Disassembly Required by David C. Kopaska-Merkel (Diminuendo Press, 2022)

2nd place: The Saint of Witches by Avra Margariti (Weasel Press, 2022)

3rd place (tie):

Elegies of Rotting Stars by Tiffany Morris (Nictitating Books, 2022)
Not a Princess, But (Yes) There Was a Pea & Other Tales to Foment Revolution by Rebecca Buchanan (Jackanapes Press, 2022)

Pixel Scroll 9/20/23 All That Is Scrolled Does Not Pixel

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) NEW COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT SUIT OVER AI TRAINING. “The Authors Guild, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, George R.R. Martin, and 13 Other Authors File Class-Action Suit Against OpenAI”. The Authors Guild explains the case.

The Authors Guild and 17 authors filed a class-action suit against OpenAI in the Southern District of New York for copyright infringement of their works of fiction on behalf of a class of fiction writers whose works have been used to train GPT. The named plaintiffs include David Baldacci, Mary Bly, Michael Connelly, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, Elin Hilderbrand, Christina Baker Kline, Maya Shanbhag Lang, Victor LaValle, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, Douglas Preston, Roxana Robinson, George Saunders, Scott Turow, and Rachel Vail.

“Without Plaintiffs’ and the proposed class’ copyrighted works, Defendants would have a vastly different commercial product,” stated Rachel Geman, a partner with Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel for Plaintiffs and the Proposed Class. “Defendants’ decision to copy authors’ works, done without offering any choices or providing any compensation, threatens the role and livelihood of writers as a whole.”

Scott Sholder, a partner with Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard and co-counsel for Plaintiffs and the Proposed Class, added, “Plaintiffs don’t object to the development of generative AI, but Defendants had no right to develop their AI technologies with unpermitted use of the authors’ copyrighted works. Defendants could have ‘trained’ their large language models on works in the public domain or paid a reasonable licensing fee to use copyrighted works.” …

(2) THE RULE OF THREE. Didn’t Gallagher have a routine about that rule? “Amazon restricts authors from self-publishing more than three books a day after AI concerns” – the Guardian has the story.

Amazon has created a new rule limiting the number of books that authors can self-publish on its site to three a day, after an influx of suspected AI-generated material was listed for sale in recent months.

The company announced the new limitations in a post on its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) forum on Monday.” …

The rule change will “probably not” be a “gamechanger for managing the influx of AI-written content on Amazon’s platform,” said Dr Miriam Johnson, senior lecturer in publishing at Oxford Brookes University. “It will dent the numbers a bit, but for those who are making money by flooding the market with AI-generated books and publishing more than three a day, they will find a work-around.”

The three-book limit announcement comes a week after Amazon introduced the requirement for authors to inform the company when their content is AI-generated and added a new section to their guidelines featuring definitions of “AI-generated” and “AI-assisted” content….

The new sets of rules come after Amazon removed suspected AI-generated books that were falsely listed as being written by the author Jane Friedman. Earlier this month, books about mushroom foraging listed on Amazon were reported as likely to have been AI-generated and therefore containing potentially dangerous advice. AI-generated travel books have also flooded the site.

(3) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Watch these videos at the links.

Comedy promo video posted to Weibo (video, Chinese) — https://weibo.com/1523766213/Nk0zq9zNI

This was posted by a Chengdu-related account – the Google Translation of their account bio states “Chengdu People’s Government Press Office” – yesterday (Tuesday 19th), but the card at the end indicates the video was produced by some division of the Red Star media organization. (Are they maybe some sort of sponsor or partner?) No new information; it’s a vaguely comedic skit, presumably aimed at a general audience.

Public 1000-hour countdown display (video, Chinese) — https://weibo.com/5399140185/NiNY7FHuo

This is over a week old, but I only just came across it, because it’s not hashtagged with any of the more commonly used tags. A Three-Body Problem-inspired 3D effect public display counting down to the start of the Worldcon. The captions refer to it being a 1000-hour countdown, but you can see in the video it actually starts at 1200-hours.

A weird promo video from a couple of weeks ago (video, Chinese) — https://weibo.com/1523766213/Nij0n90ov

This seems to be another product of Red Star media and posted by a Chengdu local government account. It’s a fairly random collection of CG imagery of the con venue, (likely) copyright infringing clips from Hollywood films, and stock footage, but the Hugo Awards get namechecked a couple of times.

Interview with Hugo finalist Jiang Bo (Chinese) – “Interview | 2023 Hugo Award shortlisted writer Jiang Bo: Let the world witness the ‘science fiction capital’”.

From September 10th, it looks like this Yahoo-ish site is running a few Worldcon-related articles. It looks like this interview was carried out at an science-related event earlier in September, that might have some ties to the Worldcon. A brief extract from the interview (via Google Translate):

Reporter: What are your views and expectations on the World Science Fiction Convention being settled in Chengdu?

Jiang Bo: For a long time, Chengdu has been a “source” for Chinese science fiction, and the reputation of “science fiction capital” is completely deserved. The World Science Fiction Convention can be held in Chengdu, which has a very positive effect on further expanding the influence of Chengdu in science fiction, and allows the world to witness why Chengdu is a “science fiction capital”.

I know that the World Science Fiction Convention is held in Chengdu’s Pidu District very grandly, and this excellent hardware facility will attract more opportunities, which is a positive effect for Chengdu. Similarly, it can also promote the world, especially the majority of “science fiction fans” to understand Chengdu.

What I am most looking forward to is meeting science fiction authors from all over the world and communicating with them. I also look forward to their trip to have a deeper understanding of our Chinese writers, learn from each other, and jointly promote the development of science fiction culture.

Red Star News is part of the Chengdu Business Daily media organization that seems to be running the Chengdu Worldcon, so it’s hardly surprising that they’re putting out lots of stories about the event.

(4) JAPANESE FILM FAVORITES. “Notorious Film Nerd Hideo Kojima Reveals His Criterion Collection Picks” at IGN. Several are horror.

…Criterion, the organization behind the Criterion Collection, invited Hideo Kojima to do a video in its ‘Closet Picks’ series on its YouTube channel. The series is dedicated to highlighting notable voices in creative industries where a selected luminary picks their favorites from the “Criterion Closet,” which is exactly what it sounds like; a closet containing physical copies of each film in the Criterion Collection….

Here are a couple of Kojima’s picks.

Onibaba

“Again, I watched this at night as a kid and it shocked me,” he said, before he recalled discussing Kaneto Shindo’s folk-horror set in medieval Japan with Guillermo Del Toro when they met for the first time. He added, “He loves this film as well. There’s a monster called Onibaba in Pacific Rim.”

Woman in the Dunes

Kojima got discovered Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1960 art-house darling after reading Kobo Abe’s book (also called Woman in the Dunes).

If you’d like to watch the full video–and watch Kojima light up as he talks about some of his favorite Japanese movies–check it out on Criterion’s YouTube channel.

(5) DISTILLATION OF A CAREER IN SFF. Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s Being Michael Swanwick, a collection of interviews, will be released in November 2023.

In 2001, Michael Swanwick published the book-length interview Being Gardner Dozois. Now Swanwick himself becomes the subject of inquiry. During a year of conversations, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg) set about discussing with Swanwick his remarkable career, with a particular focus on his extraordinary short fiction.

The resulting collection of transcribed interviews is a tribute to the similarly-named book that inspired it, a discussion of writing craft, an anecdotal genre history, and a chronological survey of the work of a modern master.

“Michael Swanwick shows a rare, writerly combination: He’s articulate about his own work and also one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. What can I say other than I thoroughly enjoyed this book and felt privileged to have read it.” — Samuel R. Delany

(6) SPEAK, MEMORY. Cat Rambo came up with a great perk for her $10 level Patreon supporters:

Here are four audio files that can be used as ringtones or other places requiring audiofiles. They feature me saying the following things:

You should be writing.
Why aren’t you writing?
Stop fucking around and write.
Be kind to yourself.

(7) EARLIEST LE GUIN. In “Ursula K. Le Guin on Writing Fantasy as a Young Girl”, Literary Hub invites readers to watch the second in a series of videos about the author.

The Journey That Matters is a series of six short videos from Arwen Curry, the director and producer of Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, a Hugo Award-nominated 2018 feature documentary about the iconic author.

In the second of the series, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas introduces “Elves, Dragons, and Countries That Didn’t Exist,” in which Ursula reflects on how her childhood influenced her development as a writer.

Watch the video on Vimeo: “The Journey That Matters: Elves, Dragons, and Countries That Didn’t Exist”.

(8) GO RIGHT TO THE SOURCE AND ASK THE HORSE. Have the producers offered a good deal? This striker says nay.

The animatronic horse from Spielberg’s WAR HORSE picketed Warner Bros with us today. It galloped, blinked, everything. Really shows the human artistry that goes into these films and how certain CEO’s take it for granted. pic.twitter.com/RlMjJAtt3U
— Todd Spence (@Todd_Spence) September 19, 2023

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1995 — [Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Jane Yolen’s The Wild Hunt is where our Beginning is taken from.

It was released as a hardcover edition twenty-eight years ago by Harcourt Brace with copious illustrations and cover art by Francisco Mora, a pupil of Diego Rivera, who was deep into the Mexican political scene making posters for trade unions and government literacy campaigns.

If one takes into account the illustrations it’s not a novel really as there’s not that much text, so I’d say it’d be a novella if judged by length alone.

I’ve got my personally-signed copy on hand and I read every Winter. Yes, she is on the chocolate gifting list. She prefers no more than seventy percent chocolate.

It is that rare wonderful work where the text and the illustrations (see the cover illustration below of The Wild Hunt) are truly intrinsic to each other. I cannot imagine it as just text, though I can imagine it as a spoken work as Yolen’s language here is brilliant.

So let’s have just the introduction now…

A wild winter storm rages around a large house that is isolated from the rest of the world. Traditionally, the Wild Hunt appeared around the time of Epiphany— January 6 in the Church Calendar—when winter was at its most severe in Northern Europe. No country is specified, but this is, after all, a fantasy world. The house is both a comfortable dwelling with a large library in keeping with Jerold’s quiet personality, and a parallel setting that matches Gerund’s much more active one. A hundred yards from the house is a granite outcrop where the Hunt gathers: “This rock might have been a thousand miles away. Or a thousand years.”

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born September 20, 1935 — Keith Roberts. Author of Pavane, an amazing novel. I’ll admit that I’ve not read anything else by him, so do tell me about other works please. I’ve downloaded his collection of ghost stories, Winterwood and Other Hauntings, with an introduction by Robert Holdstock, from one of the usual digital suspects where he’s very well stocked. Oh and he has four BSFA Awards including ones for the artwork for the cover of his own first edition of Kaeti & Company. (Died 2000.)
Born September 20, 1940 — Jonathan Hardy. He was the voice of Dominar Rygel XVI, called simply Rygel, once the royal ruler of the Hynerian Empire, on Farscape. He was also Police Commissioner Labatouche in Mad Max, and he had a one-off in the Mission: Impossible series that was produced in his native Australia in the “Submarine” episode as Etienne Reynard. (Died 2012.)
Born September 20, 1948 — George R. R. Martin, 75. I’ll admit that I’ve only read the first two volumes of A Song of Fire and Ice as I lost interest at the point — massive volumes in general don’t appeal to me given how much great fiction there is to read. I loved The Armageddon Rag and think that he’s a wonderful short story writer. And no, I’ve not watched A Game of Thrones.
Born September 20, 1950 — James Blaylock, 73. One of my favorite writers. I’d recommend the Ghosts trilogy, the Christian trilogy and The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives which collects all of the Langdon St. Ives adventures together as his best writing, but anything by him is worth reading. He’s generously stocked at the usual suspects these days.
Born September 20, 1974 — Owen Sheers, 49. His first novel, Resistance, tells the story of the inhabitants of a valley near Abergavenny in Wales in the Forties shortly after the failure of Operation Overlord and a successful German takeover of Britain. It’s been made into a film. He also wrote the “White Ravens”, a contemporary take off the myth of Branwen Daughter of Llyr, found in the New Stories from the Mabinogion series
Born September 20, 1986 — Aldis Hodge, 37. He plays Alec Hardison on Leverage. Ok, I know it’s not SFF but if there’s a spiritual descendant of Mission: Impossible, this series is it. Both the cast and their use are technology of that series are keeping with MI spirit. He’s also had one-offs on Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, The Walking Dead, Star Trek Discovery’s and Bones (which given that it crossed over with Sleepy Hollow…

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro reveals what collectible is at the top of the heap.
Tom Gauld knows some people just can’t help being who they are.

A cartoon for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/PLtMtK7ccr
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) September 19, 2023

(12) SIGNPOSTS TO A GOLDEN AGE. Charlie Jane Anders, who says “We are living in a new golden age of space opera,” discusses “11 Books That Changed How I think About Space Opera” at Happy Dancing. Second on the list:

2) The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison

Okay, continuing the theme of ridiculousness… in high school, my friend John turned me on to these bonkers books, about an interstellar con man who falls in love with the super-assassin who keeps trying to kill him. And he runs for president of a planet! (Back then, the notion of a slimy con man getting elected president felt satirical.) Unlike Arthur Dent, “Slippery” Jim di Griz is hypercompetent and he definitely knows where his towel (and blaster) are. In a corrupt, rotten galaxy, an amoral con man can become kind of a good guy, using dirty tricks to clean up a planet. I often think about Harrison’s clever explanation of why an interstellar war would make no sense — essentially because given the costs of transporting goods between star systems, there’s nothing worth going to war for.

(13) THE MAJOR AND THE MISSIONARY. The Habit podcast features “Diana Glyer on Warnie Lewis’s Letters”.

Diana Glyer teaches in the honors college at Azusa Pacific University. Her writing and research focus on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the other Inklings. Her most recent book is The Major and the Missionary. Dr. Glyer edited this collection of letters between Warren Lewis, the brother of C.S. Lewis, and Dr. Blanche Biggs, a medical missionary in Papua New Guinea. Their conversation spans faith, literature, fear, doubt, tragedy, sickness, health, friendship, and life & death itself.

(14) CHRISTOPHER NOLAN WILL SPEAK. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists “Conversations Before Midnight — 2023” online event will take place November 6 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. Central. Full information and purchase tickets at the link.

For our annual gathering, Conversations Before Midnight (CBM) 2023, we will remain virtual, acknowledging that our audience is spread throughout the United States and around the world. This year we are thrilled to feature award-winning and Academy Award-nominated director Christopher Nolan as our keynote speaker. As with past gatherings, we also will continue to provide unique access to high-level conversations with world-renowned experts on a variety of topics including nuclear risk, climate change, disruptive technologies like AI, and biosecurity.

For those that have purchased Zoom room (“tables”) in the past, we have a few exciting changes to enhance your experience. This year, each attendee can select which conversation to join based on their area of interest, rather than travel through the evening together as a table. Participants will still have the opportunity to ask questions of the experts, who will be led in discussion by a seasoned moderator.  Then, following these focused discussions, your guests can return to your private Zoom room to share what they heard over the course of the evening.

You get the opportunity to interact with guests at your hosted table during the evening, but you also join other groups in your topic of interest. Here are the dynamic conversations we have planned for you:

(15) AND IF WE DON’T BLOW OURSELVES UP. The Smithsonian Magazine says “Humans Have Exceeded Six of the Nine Boundaries Keeping Earth Habitable”.

… According to the paper, Earth’s ability to sustain human society depends on nine primary “planetary boundaries,” or global systems that are key indicators of its health. Of these nine limits, humans have blown past six: climate change, biosphere integrity (which includes biodiversity), freshwater availability, land use, nutrient pollution and novel entities (meaning human-made pollution, such as microplastics and radioactive waste). Only the categories of ocean acidification, air pollution and ozone depletion remain within the constraints….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Maze Runner: The Death Cure Pitch Meeting”. “So now six months have passed.” “What was everybody doing for six months?” “Stuff.”

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

Pixel Scroll 8/2/23 One Scroll To Rule Them All

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) VICFA TAKING PROPOSALS. The Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (November 5-11) is now accepting proposal submissions.

Organized by new Virtual Conference Coordinator and Afropantheologist Oghenechovwe Ekpeki and featuring genre-defining Guests of Honor Martha Wells, Steven Barnes, and Annalee Newitz, the week-long Virtual Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts includes the investigative insights of Guest Scholars Alec Nevala-Lee, Wole Talabi, and Jennifer Rhee.

Whether you are interested in the academic track or the creative track, they welcome your contribution.

The deadline for proposal submissions is September 15th, and acceptance notifications will be sent out on September 30th. For more detailed information, please see the attached CFP or visit the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts website.

The Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (November 5th-11th) is currently accepting proposal submissions! This year, we are excited to convene about the theme: AAAA! – AI, Algorithms, Automata and Art. The International Association for Fantastic in the Arts will be hosting several phenomenal Guests of Honor, including Steven Barnes, Annalee Newitz, and Martha Wells. Additionally, our Guest Scholars are Alec Nevala-Lee, Jennifer Rhee, and Wole Talabi!

To submit your proposals, please see the links below. Please note that there are two links, one for academic track and one for creative track.

Academic Proposal Portal

Creative Proposal Portal

(2) SEND A CARD. Bjo Trimble is turning 90 on August 15! Her daughter Lora reminds anyone who wants to send a card that her address is:

Bjo Trimble
California Veterans Home
700 East Naples Court
Chula Vista CA 91911

(3) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present C.S.E. Cooney and Steve Berman on Wednesday, August 9. Starts 7:00 p.m. EDT at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003. (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)

C.S.E. COONEY

C. S. E. Cooney is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of Bone Swans: Stories. Other books include The Twice-Drowned Saint, Saint Death’s Daughter, Dark Breakers, and Desdemona and the Deep. Forthcoming from Outland Entertainment is Negocios Infernales, a TTRPG she co-designed with her husband Carlos Hernandez.

STEVE BERMAN

Steve Berman is the Lambda Literary Award-winning editor of over forty anthologies including His Seed and Burly Tales. He is also author of the Andre Norton Award finalist, Vintage, and four short story collections, the most recent being Fit for Consumption. Most of his work is queer speculative fiction and horror. He resides in Western Massachusetts.

(4) WARNER BROS. NOPOLOGY FOR BARBENHEIMER. Entertainment Weekly headlines its story “Warner Bros. apologizes for Barbenheimer posts amid backlash in Japan” but Google Translate says the release is worded, “We apologize to those who were offended by this series of inconsiderate reactions.”

Warner Bros. is apologizing after its Japanese branch criticized the company’s decision to publicly support the Barbenheimer craze on social media.

“Warner Brothers regrets its recent insensitive social media engagement,” the company said in a statement to EW. “The studio offers a sincere apology.”

Its remarks come one day after the Barbie Japan Twitter account posted a statement denouncing the online movement that links Greta Gerwig‘s fun and fashionable Barbie with Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer — which chronicles the creation of the atomic bomb that killed at least 225,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — amid growing backlash in Japan that the trend trivializes the mass destruction caused by atomic bombs. The hashtag #NoBarbenheimer has recently been trending in Japan as a result….

[Previously] the Barbie U.S. Twitter account positively interacted with several Barbenheimer-inspired posts, including a fan-created poster that featured Barbie star Margot Robbie sitting on Oppenheimer actor Cillian Murphy‘s shoulder in front of a plume of orange smoke. The Barbie account commented on the fan-made image, writing, “It’s going to be a summer to remember.”

(5) THOUGHTS ABOUT PEMMI-CON. Ralston Stahler’s Pemmi-Con report is a public Facebook post here. Following discussion of many areas of the con, noting the problems and the successes, Stahler concludes:

…All in all it wasn’t the best con, and it wasn’t the worst. I think out of all the NASFiC’s it is the second lowest attended. Maybe covid or being a pretty distant location had something to do with it.

(6) MAKE THOSE RINGS SING. If File 770 readers happen to be in Berkshire, the Guardian has a recommendation: “The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale review – the greatest show on Middle-earth”.

…First seen in the UK in 2007 at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane – a 1996-seat theatre – the show is revived at the 220-capacity Watermill. This means that Simon Kenny’s design and Anjali Mehra’s choreography are a theatrical equivalent of stunts designed to find how many people can fit in a Mini.

The creative team ought to be listed in a Guinness book of theatrical records. During the long sections inside the tiny theatre, they cram in battles, orc attacks, treks across land, over mountains or through caves and lavish production numbers involving 20 actors or musicians (several performers also play instruments)….

(7) CRISTINA JURADO DEAL. Apex Book Company has acquired first North America English rights to the novella Chlorophilia by Spanish author Cristina Jurado. The deal was brokered by agent Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates.

Kirmen is different from everyone else in the Cloister. Due to the doctor’s endless experiments on Kirmen, his skin, his eyes, even his organs are changing. Kirmen wonders if he even belongs with the other inhabitants of the dome that protects the last remnants of humanity from the forever storm raging against the glass. Kirmen’s dreams of love, of acceptance, slip away with every treatment. What will happen when the doctor’s transformations are complete? What will Kirmen be then?

Cristina Jurado is a bilingual author, editor and translator of speculative fiction. In 2019 she became the first female writer to win the Best Novel Ignotus Award (Spain’s top sff Award) for Bionautas. Since 2015 she runs the Spanish multi-awarded magazine SuperSonic. In 2020 she was recognized with the ESFS’s Best SF Promoter Award and started to work as a contributor of the bilingual quarterly Constelación magazine.

(8) CON OR BUST. Applications are being taken for Con or Bust’s Goldman Fund initiative to assist Palestinian creators and fans of speculative fiction in attending the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention.

We’ll be assisting self-identified citizens of Palestine and members of the Palestinian diaspora to pay for travel and membership expenses to five Worldcons beginning in 2024. If you qualify for the Goldman Fund and would like assistance attending 2024’s Worldcon, apply here. The preferred application window runs from 31 July through 5 November, 2023. Applications received after the window closes will be considered for any remaining funds.

(9) WHERE THE THREE RIVERS MEET. Pulpfest’s Mike Chomko appeared on local CBS affiliate’s TALK Pittsburgh show to provide “An introduction to the 50th anniversary of PulpFest”. The con starts tomorrow. Video at the link.

Mike Chomko, the marketing and programming director of PulpFest, joined the show to talk about the festival’s dedication to a special form of fiction magazines.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1995 — Our Beginning is taken from Jane Yolen’s The Wild Hunt. It was released as a hardcover edition twenty-eight years ago by Harcourt Brace with copious illustrations and cover art by Francisco Mora, a pupil of Diego Rivera, who was deep into the Mexican political scene making posters for trade unions and government literacy campaigns.

It’s not — if one takes into account the illustrations — a novel really. I’ve got my personally signed copy on hand (yes, she is on the chocolate gifting list. She prefers no more than seventy percent chocolate.) and I’d say it’d be a novella if judged by length alone.

It is that rare wonderful work where the text and the illustrations (see the cover illustration below of The Wild Hunt as a turning clock) are truly intrinsic to each other. I cannot imagine it as just text, though I can imagine it as a spoken work as Yolen’s language here is brilliant.

So let’s have just the introduction to it as our Beginning…

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born August 2, 1917 — Wah Chang. Co-founder in the late 1950s, with Gene Warren and Tim Baar, of the special effects company Project Unlimited Inc. They provided the effects for numerous George Pal productions, including *The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm*, *Jack the Giant Killer*, and *The Time Machine* (for which they won an Academy Award, although Chang’s name was erroneously omitted). Wang and his fellow Projects coworkers did essentially all of the effects for the original *Outer Limits* television series. Perhaps most famously, Chang created some of the best-known effects for the original *Star Trek*, including the communicator, the tricorder, the Romulan Bird of Prey, the Tribbles, and numerous aliens, although he did not receive screen credit for any of this work. A talented artist, later in life he gained renown as a wildlife sculptor. (Died 2003.) [PhilRM]

Born August 2, 1920 — Theodore Marcuse. He was Korob in “Catspaw”, a second season Trek episode written by Robert Bloch that aired just before Halloween aptly enough. He had appearances in The Twilight Zone (“The Trade-Ins” and “To Serve Man”), Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Wild Wild West and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in the episodes “The Re-collectors Affair”, “The Minus-X Affair”, and “The Pieces of Fate Affair”. (Died 1967.)
Born August 2, 1932 — Peter O’Toole. I’m tempted to say his first genre role was playing King Henry in A Lion in Winter as it is alternate history. It really is despite some of you saying it isn’t. Actually before that he’s got an uncredited role in Casino Royale as a Scottish piper. Really he does. His first genre role without dispute is as Zaltar in Supergirl followed by being Dr. Harry Wolverine in Creator. He’s Peter Plunkett in the superb High Spirits, he’s in FairyTale: A True Story as a very credible Arthur Conan Doyle, and Stardust as King of Stormhold. Not surprisingly, he played in a version of Midsummer Night’s Dream as Lysander. (Died 2013.)
Born August 2, 1948 — Robert Holdstock. Another one who died far too young. His Ryhope Wood series is simply amazing with Lavondyss being my favorite volume. And let’s not overlook his Merlin Codex series which is one of the more original takes on that character I’ve read. The Ragthorn, co-written with Garry Kilworth, is interesting as well. (Died 2009.)
Born August 2, 1954 — Ken MacLeod, 69. Sometimes I don’t realize until I do a Birthday note just how much I’ve read of a certain author. And so it was of this author. I’ve read the entire Fall Revolution series, not quite all of the Engines of Light Trilogy, just the first two of the Corporation Wars but I’ve got it in my to-be-finished queue, and every one of his one-off novels save Descent. His Restoration Game is quite chilling. I should go find his Giant Lizards from Another Star collection as I’ve not read his short fiction. Damn it’s not available from the usual suspects! Hugo Award wise, he didn’t win any but had some nominations. The Sky Road was nominated at the Millennium Philcon, Cosmonaut Keep at ConJosé and Learning the World at L.A. Con IV.
Born August 2, 1955 — Caleb Carr, 68. Ok, I’ll admit that this is another author that ISFDB lists as genre that I don’t think of as being as genre. ISFDB list all four of his novels as being genre including The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness which are not even genre adjacent by my reading. So is there something in those novels that I missed?
Born August 2, 1970 — Kevin Smith, 53. Well-loved comics writer who’s worked for DC, Marvel and other venues. He was involved with both Daredevil and Green Arrow. He directed the pilot for the CW supernatural comedy series Reaper, produced and appeared in a reality television series, Comic Book Men, and appeared as a character in the animated Superman: Doomsday. He’s also the showrunner for Masters of the Universe: Revelation animated series and the sequel Masters of the Universe: Revolution which will stream early next year.
Born August 2, 1976 — Emma Newman, 47. Author of quite a few SF novels and a collection of short fiction. Her Planetfall series was nominated for the Best Series Hugo Award 2020. Also of interest to us is that she co-created along with her husband Peter, of the Hugo Award winning podcast Tea and Jeopardy which centers around her hosting another creator for a nice cup of tea and cake, while her scheming butler Latimer (played by Peter) attempts to send them to their deaths at the end of the episode.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal drops a PKD reference.

(13) WILL HER LOVE OF ANIME AND MANGA PROVE CONTAGIOUS? Ada Palmer launches a new column in Strange Horizons with “A Mitfreude of Anime and Manga’s Relationship with Anglophone Science Fiction (Or, This Essay WILL NOT Try to Get You into Anime and Manga!)”

… Once upon a time an atomic-powered robot boy dodged censorship to talk about racism, and fifty years later Japan issued the first legal birth certificate granting citizenship to an AI. Once upon a time in a small Japanese town flourished Earth’s glitteriest, rose-petal-y-est, most gender-bending form of theater, and ninety years later a comics shop owner in Cambridge, Massachusetts, exclaimed to me, “Girls are coming into the store now! There were none before!” And once upon a time kids gathered in the streets of Tokyo to hear a storyteller with hand-drawn illustration cards narrate a battle between a crime boss in a robot suit and a thousand-year-old superhero from Atlantis, and fifty-five years later a Japanese-built surgical robot took life-saving samples of my intestines.

Enjoying anime and manga has a high learning curve: you need to invest time learning their visual vocabulary, and many of the best works depend on knowing earlier tropes and patterns. But anyone can enjoy the history of anime and manga, how these media have shaped science, medicine, genre fiction, gender, and how—as twentieth century English was rising to dominance through music and TV around the globe—anime and manga managed to become the biggest body of modern media that gets translated into English instead of the other way around….

(14) THIS WOULD MAKE ME START WRITING LETTERS AGAIN. “Mr. Spock On A Stamp: Adam Schiff Urges U.S. Postal Service To Honor Leonard Nimoy” reports Deadline.

…In a statement, Schiff called Nimoy, who died in 2015, “an extraordinary activist, actor and friend.”

“Nimoy’s legacy includes his lengthy acting career — including his beloved and iconic role as ‘Spock’ in the Star Trek universe — and his many generous contributions to the arts and sciences, and his beautiful family.”

On Monday, Schiff sent a letter to the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, asking them to recommend Nimoy to the Postmaster General. The committee selects individuals who have made “extraordinary and enduring contributions to American society, history, culture or environment.” Living people are not currently eligible, and those who are deceased are considered at least three years after his or hear death. Stamps also are planned two- to three- years in advance….

(15) OVERVIEW OF JOHN WILLIAMS’ COMPOSITIONS FOR CINEMA. Forbes talks to Mike Matessino, one of the foremost experts in the music of John Williams, who has produced numerous Williams soundtrack albums over the years, in “Re-Listening To John Williams, The Maestro Of The Movies”.

What are your thoughts on “How to Steal a Million” — often cited as a highlight of Williams’ ‘60s work?

Mike: If one looks at the earliest feature films John Williams scored, you see some fairly prominent director names that today are mostly known only among cinephiles — Frank Tashlin, Andrew McLaglen — and then Frank Sinatra, for whom John scored the only movie the actor/singer directed, “None But the Brave.”

But then comes “How to Steal a Million” and three-time Oscar winner William Wyler. So this is the first project for a truly A-list director, and it remains, I think, the most sophisticated of the comedies that John Williams scored during that important period where he was based at 20th Century-Fox Studios.

I once asked Ian Fraser, who worked with Williams on “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” a couple years later, if had any sense on that project of just how great a composer Williams would become, and he said, “I knew it when I went to the sessions for ‘How to Steal a Million,’” as Fraser was at 20th at that time working on ‘Doctor Dolittle.’ The “Million” score is a mixture of comedic elements and some terrific half-tongue-in-cheek suspense writing that showed just how versatile John Williams could be. It’s also significant in that it is the first time he was given the opportunity to completely re-record music from the film for his own soundtrack album, so it really was a significant career milestone.

(16) HYVILMA. Gideon Marcus’ new release Hyvilma is celebrated at Queer Sci Fi. Includes an excerpt from the book.

QSFer Gideon Marcus has a new queer YA sci-fi book out (bisexual): Hyvilma.

A damaged ship, a dying shipmate–can she save both?

Under attack! The flight back to Hyvilma should have been the easy part for the crew of the Majera–until a deadly ambush by pirates sends them reeling through hyperspace. Now getting to the planet in time is the only way Captain Kitra Yilmaz can save her dying friend.

But landing at Hyvilma may be impossible: war has broken out on the Frontier.
With illustrations by Hugo Finalist Lorelei Esther.

(17) AI EFFECTIVE IN BREAST CANCER SCREENING. [Item by Steven French.] Good to have some positive news about AI! The Guardian reports “AI use in breast cancer screening as good as two radiologists, study finds”.

…But the latest study, which followed women from Sweden with an average age of 54, compared AI-supported screening directly with standard care.

Half of the scans were assessed by two radiologists, while the other half were assessed by AI-supported screening followed by interpretation by one or two radiologists.

In total, 244 women (28%) recalled from AI-supported screening were found to have cancer compared with 203 women (25%) recalled from standard screening. This resulted in 41 more cancers being detected with the support of AI, of which 19 were invasive and 22 were in situ cancers.

The use of AI did not generate more false positives, where a scan is incorrectly diagnosed as abnormal. The false-positive rate was 1.5% in both groups.

(18) WHAT WERE PEOPLE STREAMING IN JULY? JustWatch offers their monthly Top 10 streaming lists for July 2023.

(19) STORY FEEDBACK IN REALTIME. Apex Magazine presents Snap Judgment Episode 7, their “rapid-fire, live-streaming critique series.”

Every quarter, industry professionals Jason Sizemore, Lesley Conner, and a special guest offer live feedback on the first page (up to 250 words) of genre short stories or novels. These first pages are read aloud by our talented host and narrator, Aly Grauer.

We are pleased to announce that our special guest editor for this event is author and editor Nick Mamatas!

HOW IT WORKS. Our host reads the title, genre, and text of the submission aloud without identifying the author. If at any point our panelists feel they would stop reading and reject the piece from their slush pile, they raise their hand. If all three hands are raised, our narrator stops reading.

Each panelist then gives their feedback on the opening: what works for them, what doesn’t, and what could be done to improve it. Don’t expect our panelists to be a mean group, but do expect them to be honest when it comes to assessing the work.

NICK MAMATAS. Special guest editor for this event is author and editor Nick Mamatas! Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including I Am Providence and The Second Shooter. His short fiction has appeared or will soon appear in Best American Mystery Stories, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Tor.com, McSweeney’s, and many other venues. Much of it was recently collected in The People’s Republic of Everything. Nick is also an anthologist; his latest book is Wonder and Glory Forever: Awe-Inspiring Lovecraftian Fiction.

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY (OR POSSIBLY TWO MONTHS AGO). Did we run this before? Well, it’s always news to someone. Karen Gillan shares “A week in the life of playing Nebula in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3”.

Come spend a week with me filming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

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

File 770

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Tag Archives: Jane Yolen

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