Tag Archives: John Cramer

Pixel Scroll 4/22/25 Four Worldcons And A Funeral For The Eyes Of Fire

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(1) TRIMMED FROM THE HUGOS. Nicholas Whyte has done a study of Hugo disqualifications and withdrawals in “Booted from the Ballot: the almost-finalists in the Hugo Awards” at From the Heart of Europe. Charts and graphs! Voter turnout analysis! A truly deep dive.

In the brief downtime between announcing the Hugo final ballot, and getting voting under way (which will be Real Soon Now), I reflected that the two disqualifications and two withdrawals from the ballot this year seemed rather low by recent standards. So I looked into the records, and found indeed that of the seven years that I have been involved with running the Hugos, only one had fewer such cases – two were disqualified, and one declined, in 2021…

(2) SCIENCE FICTIONAL BLOSSOMS. “It’s Springtime on Polaris-9b, and the Exoflowers Are Blooming”. The New York Times article is behind a paywall. However, artist Vincent Fournier’s website has a gallery of images – “Flora Incognita”.

Imagine setting out for a springtime stroll. Not here on Earth but on some distant planet — call it Novathis-458b — orbiting a distant star. Even light-years from home, you recognize some familiar pleasures: The sun (albeit a different sun) is shining. The roses are in bloom. A breeze is blowing.

But these are no ordinary roses, and it is no everyday breeze. The wind clocks in at more than 15,000 miles per hour, and the flowers, Rosa aetherialis, have evolved to harness it. Their strong pink petals curl around a spiral interior that holds the plant’s reproductive organs. The spiral shape directs the supersonic wind through the center of the flower to flush out its pollen and carry it across the planet.

If roses had evolved in a place like Novathis-458b — an imaginary place, but one that bears certain similarities to real exoplanets — this is what they might look like, Vincent Fournier, a French artist and photographer, posits in his otherworldly project, Flora Incognita, which will be on display this week at the Association of International Photography Art Dealers show in New York….

(3) KAIJU IN THE HEARTLAND. [Item by Sean Mead.] Bloomington has declared June 27th as Godzilla Day to celebrate a screening of the 1954 film. “Mayor Thomson declares Godzilla Day for rare film screening” reports Indiana Public Media.

Godzilla is perhaps best known for destroying cities, but an Indiana city will celebrate him this summer. 

Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson proclaimed June 27 as the first ever Godzilla Day. 

In her proclamation last Tuesday, Thomson said the city wants to honor the original, uncut 1954 Toho Studios film screening at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater that evening….

… The original cut of the Godzilla film that will be shown at the Buskirk sat in storage for over 50 years before the studio re-released it in 2006. 

The version of Godzilla familiar to most Americans was recut by distributors for American audiences. They removed 20 minutes of footage and much of the soundtrack, in addition to inserting new sequences featuring an American reporter as the main character. 

“It’s a little bit more gritty, and it really talks about the realities of what had happened during the war and the atomic bombing,” Bredlau said about the original. “So much of that was sanitized for the Americans. It really took away a lot of the responsibility and heaviness of what happened in the war.”  …

(4) MORE ON WILLY LEY. Andrew Porter sent along some of the comments left on the New York Times article  “Willy Ley Was a Prophet of Space Travel. His Ashes Were Found in a Basement” linked in yesterday’s Scroll. (Link bypasses paywall.) Here are several excerpts, the first two from well-known sff writers.

Prof. John G. Cramer, Seattle, WA

When I was a teenager, Willy Ley wrote a regular science column in Astounding Science Fiction magazine. (It’s now called Analog, and now I write a regular science column in it.) I was a teenage physics experimenter, and I managed to wind a magnet solenoidal coil that had the shape of a Moebius Strip, a peculiar topological cylinder that has only one edge instead of two. I thought it should do something interesting, but it didn’t seem to do so. I took a picture of it and sent it to Willy Ley at Astounding, asking why it didn’t have one magnetic pole instead of two, since it only had only one edge. To my amazement, he replied with a long letter, exposing me for the first time to the ideas behind Maxwell’s Equations and explaining why my weird coil had to have two magnetic poles. Willy, I owe you a lot, and I miss you.

Al Sirois, NC

Willy Ley was a great but humble man, a far-sighted visionary who fled the Nazis. In NY he helped design and build the first interstate mail rocket, liquid fueled. You can see Pathe newsreel footage of the flight on YouTube. I built model kits of his spaceship designs when I was a kid. I interviewed his widow for a novel I later wrote about Willy and his work and his clash with Nazi spies (speculative, that last bit).

Michael Patlin, Thousand Oaks CA

My parents got to know Ley through their friends Fletcher Pratt and Sprague de Camp . Both Sci-Fi writers and space enthusiasts. Pratt was the founder of the “ Trap Door Spiders” , a literary group in NYC in the 40s and 50s amongst other endeavors .

Andrew Porter, Brooklyn Heights

In the second half of the 20th Century, Willy Ley was the go-to person for informed commentary on astronautics and space travel. Living in NYC, he was a frequent guest at science fiction conventions (where I was privileged to hear him speak), as well as being author of many authoritative books on the field. I have shared the link to this widely with the science fiction community, both to individuals and to various news sites. Hopefully we can quickly raise money to send the ashes into space.

(5) RESISTANCE AND COLLABORATION. Gita Jackson’s New York Times opinion piece says “Watching ‘Andor’ Is No Substitute for Actual Resistance”. (Link bypasses paywall.) Chris Barkley, whose own pre-review of Andor Season 2 posted today, sent the item with the comment, “I disagree with her view of Andor as a ‘feel good about ourselves” show…”

… The series’ ability to capture a radical ideology has been the source of much of the show’s critical praise. I found that seeing my own anticapitalist, anti-empire ideals reflected back to me in this show was affirming, as well as inspiring. But it also made me feel conflicted. After the creator of “Star Wars,” George Lucas, sold his production company to Disney in 2012, the series became part of Disney’s larger economic ecosystem. The company’s existing “intellectual property” — for it is always property, not art — becomes commerce: spinoffs, merchandise, theme park rides. Even the great revolutionary Cassian Andor is available for purchase as a part of “Star Tours — The Adventures Continue” at Disney World….

… I worry that for many people the consumption of this television show feels pacifying, as if watching it is a replacement for joining a protest, their fandom for the rebel alliance a stand-in for their politics in the real world. Disney wants to provide every product to you, even the language of your rebellion against Disney. What’s the point of feeling affirmed if the ultimate goal of Disney is to get you to spend more money on its brands?…

(6) HUNTINGTON HOSTS PANEL ABOUT OCTAVIA BUTLER. The Huntington in San Marino, CA celebrated Founders’ Day with a program about “Octavia E. Butler’s Seeds of Change”. Moderator Monique L. Thomas was joined by panelists Tamisha A. Tyler, John Williams, and Nikki High.

This year’s program, “Sowing Community: Living with Octavia E. Butler’s Parables,” featured a special guest panel of scholars and local leaders discussing themes of resilience, community, and social change in two acclaimed works by science fiction writer and Pasadena native Octavia E. Butler. The Huntington is the home of Butler’s archive, which has been the most frequently accessed collection in the Library for the past nine years. …

… For Nikki High, a former communications executive who opened the Pasadena bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf in 2023, this inclusion altered her life’s course. “Reading books by Octavia Butler really did change what I expected out of sci-fi stories,” High said. “I had never really seen myself represented in those stories. … I just wanted to know, ‘Hey, where are the Black and brown people 100 years from now? What did they do to us?’ And [Butler] just made sure that she wrote us in.” …

…There was agreement among the panelists that change as represented in the books—whether the collapse of society, ecological catastrophe, or a sudden resurgence of nationalism—was a power to be shaped more than feared, especially through collective effort. Tyler spoke persuasively about Butler’s reframing of change—a seemingly determinative force in our lives that is, on the contrary, capable of being harnessed and redirected.

“One thing that I think Butler does beautifully is she restores our agency back to us, because she says, ‘All that you touch, you change,’” Tyler said. “And she gives us tools. She says, ‘Kindness eases change.’ She says, ‘Partnership is life.’”

High stressed the importance of partnership as an act of community-building, comparing it to the development of speculative worlds that is the essence of science fiction. “What literature does, and [Butler’s] sci-fi specifically, is it allows the writer to create a world, and create alternatives in this world, so that you can actually see what [social] equity might look like,” she said. “Hopefully, as you’re metabolizing this new world … you will start to ask yourself some questions about your role in world-building and to see every single decision you make as contributing to the world that you’re living in.”

Lessons From Recent Wildfires

The discussion turned to real-world examples of change and resilience, particularly the community response to the Eaton Fire that devastated Altadena—a disaster that disproportionately affected Black residents and Black creative culture.

“When you’re watching the world … burn right before your eyes, you’re forced to change,” High said. The fires dramatically altered her daily life. “But look at this change that we created. This community … was in crisis. We all came together. Everybody who was in these little, tiny circles suddenly started to open them and embrace each other.” …

(7) AI CREEP. “Oscars OK the Use of A.I., With Caveats” reports the New York Times (behind a paywall).  

The Oscar gods embraced A.I. on Monday.

Sort of.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said in a statement that it had updated its plethora of rules for voting and campaigning. Going forward, for instance, members must now watch all nominated films in each category before they can vote in the final round. (How will that be policed? It won’t. Voters will need to confirm on ballots that they have watched each film, but they could still lie.)

But one update stood out: For the first time, the academy addressed the use of generative artificial intelligence, a technology sweeping into the film capital yet hugely divisive in the industry’s creative ranks.

A.I. and other digital tools “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination,” the Oscar rules now state. The academy added, however, that the more a human played a role in a film’s creation, the better. (“The academy and each branch will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award.”)

The academy had been considering whether to change its submission process to make it mandatory that A.I. use be disclosed. But it decided not to go that far.

Simply acknowledging A.I.’s creep into moviemaking is a big deal for the academy. Unions for writers and actors made protections against the technology a prominent part of recent contract negotiations. A.I. was hotly debated in Hollywood and among fans in the lead-up to the Oscars in February, after it became known that “The Brutalist,” an immigrant epic nominated for 10 statuettes, used the technology to enhance Hungarian accents. Some people defended the filmmakers, while others decried the use of A.I. as unethical.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 22, 1992 — Quantum Leap’s “The Curse of Ptah-Hotep”

Razul: You are a student of Egypt, but you are not one of its sons. And until you have heard what I have heard and seen what I have seen, I would not expect you to believe that such a thing as a curse could be true, but it is. 

Sam: 3500-year-old dead men don’t just get up and walk around.

Thirty-three years ago this evening, Quantum Leap’s “The Curse of Ptah-Hotep” first aired on NBC. 

In 1957, Sam leaps into the body of Dale Conway, an American archaeologist at a dig in Egypt just as he and his partner Ginny Will discover the tomb of Ptah-Hotep. A sand storm traps them deep in the tomb’s inner chambers.

You think that they made up this particular Egypt royal person but no, he was quite real. Ptahhotep, sometimes known as Ptahhotep I or Ptahhotpe, was an ancient Egyptian vizier during the late 25th century BC and early 24th century BC Fifth Dynasty of Egypt.

The curse that forms the story here was evidently a real one that affected a number of archeological digs undertaken here.  And it is worth definitely worth noting that Sam, throughout the entire series, thoroughly disbelieves in the supernatural, except for the force has him leaping around and that could be or not be science. He frequently tells Al not to be superstitious about anything. But here he certainly seems to take the resurrected mummies in this episode as a given. 

The series won’t resolve whether science or something else is responsible for what’s happening to him.

It is, surprisingly, not streaming anywhere despite NBC being the network that broadcast and it being on Peacock rather recently. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) COMIXOLOGY, KINDLE UNLIMITED, 3-MONTH $0.99 SALES. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Via various sources I trust, e.g.

Amazon’s ComiXology and Kindle Unlimited will be on sale, 3-months @$0.99/month, as part of the Amazon Book Sale, April 23-28, 2025.

I subscribed to ComiXology for a few months, years ago (prior to, IIRC, its acquisition by Amazon), e-gulping down vast quantities of e-comics, but, based on periodic perusals, haven’t felt inclined to re-indulge at full price… DC and Marvel e-subs, combined with Hoopla and Libby library e-borrows (e.g., re-re-reading Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon), e-scratch that e-itch pretty well… but at this price, I’ll be re-indulging for three months.

(11) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Mental Floss rates “The 10 States Most Likely to Survive an Alien Invasion”.

… Researchers from the online calculator website GIGAcalculator determined the states most likely to survive the hypothetical event. They considered factors like terrain (e.g., percentage of area covered by forests and water and number of caves), population density, and essential personnel (for example, active and inactive military workers, law enforcement officers, and engineers) per 1000 people. The website then calculated a score for each state based on these data points and ranked them to see which U.S. state has the highest chance of enduring an alien invasion. You can view the full dataset here…

… Virginia has the highest likelihood of survival, with a score of 8.06 out of 10….

Nevada has the worst rating – maybe that’s why Las Vegas was targeted in Mars Attacks?

(12) I’LL BE DAMMED. “Behold! The World’s Largest Beaver Dam” – Mental Floss has pictures.

In 2007, an ecologist named Jean Thie was scanning the Alberta wilderness with Google Earth in an effort to study permafrost thaw in the Canadian wild. But then something unusual appeared on his screen: A beaver dam so huge, it was more than twice the length of the Hoover Dam.

Located in Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta, Canada, the world’s largest beaver dam is at least 2790 feet long. It likely contains thousands of trees and appears to have required the handiwork of at least two beaver families. It’s believed the beavers began the construction project up to three decades ago.

While it’s an impressive feat of animal engineering, the dam is not very scenic. “The hodgepodge of mud, branches, stones, and twigs is cloaked in a layer of grass, meaning it’s been there for a while,” Atlas Obscura reports. “The dam stretches across a remote wetland area, which provides the creatures with both plenty of fresh water and bountiful building materials.”

In fact, the dam is located in such an inhospitable area of Canadian swampland that it isn’t known to have been visited by humans until 2014, when Rob Mark, a member of the Explorers Club in New York City, made the trek. He began his journey in Fort Chipewyan, more than 120 miles away, and it took him five hours to cover the final mile (the ground was that boggy). “It was the only hard ground around for miles so I was happy to stand on it,” he said about reaching the dam….

(13) TRAILER PARK. “Rick and Morty gets a psychedelic season 8 trailer that declares it ‘the best high concept sci-fi rigamarole in the universe’” says GamesRadar+.

… In its own weird way, Rick and Morty is indeed the culmination of decades of pop culture, taking its cues from some of the most complex sci-fi stories around, combined with a uniquely cynical take on the classic trope of a boy and his old man scientist pal.

With Rick and Morty season eight now looming with a May 25 release date, fans won’t have to wait much longer to find out about all the trailer’s weird alt-reality versions of Rick and its many alien worlds, hopefully with some absurd (and salty) comedy along the way….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Sean Mead, Daniel Dern, Jo Fletcher, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 12/2 Have Rocket, Will Unravel

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(1) SECOND OPINION. The President of Turkey is not a forgiving audience for social satire. So we learn from “Turkish Court to Determine if Gollum-Erdogan Comparison is Insult” at Voice of America.

The fate of a Turkish doctor is in the hands of experts who are tasked with determining whether he insulted the Turkish president by comparing him with the Gollum character from the “Lord of the Rings.”

Bilgin Ciftci could face two years in jail for sharing images on Facebook that seemed to compare President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the creepy character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels and film adaptations….

Turkish law states that anyone who insults the president can face a prison sentence of up to four years. Even stiffer sentences could befall a journalist.

Between August 2014, when Erdogan was elected, to March of this year, 236 people have been investigated for “insulting the head of state,” according to the BBC. Just over 100 were indicted.

 

Erdogan Gollum

(2) DIANA’S BOOK ON KINDLE. Now you can pre-order a Kindle edition of Bandersnatch, Diana Pavlac Glyer’s book about the Inklings. The release date is December 8.

You can also request a download of the first chapter at the Bandersnatch website.

(3) THESE THINGS COST MONEY! Destroying Death Stars is bad for galactic business. Or so claims a Midwestern academic. “Professor calculates economic impact of destroying ‘Death Stars’”.

Assistant professor of engineering at Washington University Zachary Feinstein recently published a study entitled “It’s a Trap: Emperor Palpatine’s Poison Pill” which posits that there would be a “catastrophic” economic crisis in the Star Wars universe brought on by the destruction of the Death Stars.

Feinstein’s research indicates that the two Death Stars constructed in the films cost approximately $193 quintillion and $419 quintillion respectively to complete. He calculated the cost of the planet-destroying space weapons by comparing them to the real life USS Gerald Ford.

According to Feinstein, the economic impact of both Death Stars being destroyed within a four-year period would cause an economic collapse comparable to the Great Depression.

Feinstein says the size of the Galactic economy would drop by 30 percent without a government bailout, which he doesn’t believe the Rebel Alliance would provide.

Well, there’s your problem. Rebel governments are notoriously reluctant to bail out recently overthrown tyrants.

(4) MONDYBOY TAKES STOCK. Ian Mond is “Moving Forward” at The Hysterical Hamster.

For the last three months I’ve had the nagging suspicion that I was a dead man walking when it came to writing reviews.  As much as I’ve enjoyed the process of reading novels on shortlists and then sharing my thoughts, the time it was taking to write a half decent review meant I wasn’t keeping pace with my reading.  And as the gap between reviews and books read widened that nagging suspicion became a cold hard reality.

I simply don’t have the time to produce reviews of a quality high enough that I’m happy to see them published.  Yes, I could try to write shorter pieces, limit myself to 500 words, but every time I’ve attempted this my inner editor has taken a nap and before you know it I’ve spent five days writing a 1,500 word ramble.  And, yeah, I could Patreon the shit out of this blog in the vain hope that asking for cash will compel me (more likely guilt me) into writing a review every couple of days.  But fuck that.  I’d rather enjoy the books I’m reading then feel weighed down by the responsibility of having to review them.

So I’ve made the mature decision to quit while I’m ahead….

Will it last?  Will I be back in eight months with a similar post talking about how I no longer have the time to turn on my computer let alone snark about the Hugo Awards?  Very likely.  (I mean, it’s taken me three days to write this blog post).

(5) ROOTS. SF Signal’s latest “MIND MELD: The Influential roots of Science Fiction”, curated by Shana DuBois, asks:

“What genre roots have you found to be most influential and inspiring for you and your own writing?”

Providing the answers this time are Usman T. Malik, SL Huang, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Ferrett Steinmetz, Wendy N. Wagner, Kat Howard, Daryl Gregory, Amal El-Mohtar, Lesley Conner, and Jennifer Marie Brissett

(6) AH, THE CLASSICS. Cat Rambo says yes, the “classics” are worth reading, in “Another Word: On Reading, Writing, and the Classics” at Clarkesworld.

The point I want to make about my perspective on the “classics” is that I’ve read a substantial portion, both of the F&SF variety and the larger set, and made some of them the focus of study in grad school. (Again from both sets, since that focus was an uneasy combination of late 19th/early 20th American lit and cultural studies with a stress on comics/animation. You can see me here pontificating on The Virtual Sublime or here on Tank Girl. I’m not sure I could manage that depth of theory-speak again, at least without some sort of crash course to bring me back up to speed. But I digress.)

So here’s the question that brought me here: should fantasy and science fiction readers read the F&SF classics? And the answer is a resounding, unqualified yes, because they are missing out on some great reading in two ways if they don’t. How so?

  1. They miss some good books. So many many good books. At some point I want to put together an annotated reading list but that’s a project for tinkering with in one’s retirement, I think. But, for example, I’m reading The Rediscovery of Man: The Collected Stories of Cordwainer Smith right now (in tiny chunks, savoring the hell out of it) and they are such good stories, even with the occasional dated bit.
  2. They miss some of the context of contemporary reading, some of the replies those authors are making to what has come before. The Forever War, for example, is in part a reply to Bill the Galactic Hero; read together, both texts gain more complexity and interest.

(7) This Day In History

  • December 2, 1939 – Laurel & Hardy’s The Flying Deuces is released, a movie without any science fictional content of its own (unless you count Oliver Hardy’s reincarnation as a horse in the final scenes), but figures strangely into an episode of Doctor Who. During “The Impossible Astronaut” (Doctor Who, S.6 ,Ep.10),Amy Pond, the Doctor’s companion, and Rory Williams watch the movie on DVD. Per the Wikipedia: “Rory sees The Doctor (Matt Smith) appear in the film running towards the camera wearing his fez and waving, before returning to dance with Stan and Ollie. This was achieved with Matt Smith dancing in front of a green screen.”

(8) BAXTER MARS SEQUEL. Gollancz has announced plans to publish Stephen Baxter’s sequel to Wells’ War of the Worlds.

The Massacre of Mankind is set in 1920s London when the Martians from the original novel return and the war begins again. However, this time they have learnt from their mistakes, making their attempts to massacre mankind even more frightening.

Baxter, who also co-wrote the Long Earth novels with Terry Pratchett, said it was an “honour” to write the sequel. “H G Wells is the daddy of modern science fiction. He drew on deep traditions, for instance of scientific horror dating back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and fantastic voyages such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. And he had important near-contemporaries such as Jules Verne. But Wells did more than any other writer to shape the form and themes of modern science fiction, and indeed through his wider work exerted a profound influence on the history of the twentieth century.”

It’s due to be published in January, 2017. This time, we’re told, the Martians have learned the lessons of their failed invasion: they’ll no longer fall prey to microbial infection.

(9) FASTER. Gregory Benford has posted John Cramer’s contribution to The 100 Year Starship Symposium, “Exotic Paths To The Stars.”

I was Chairman of the Exotic Technologies Session held on October 1, 2011, at the 100 year Starship Symposium in Orlando Florida.  This chapter draws on the talks given in that session, but it does not represent a summary of the presentations.  Rather, I want focus on three lines of development in the area of exotic technologies that were featured at the Symposium, developments that might allow us to reach the stars on a time scale of a human lifetime: (1) propellantless space drives, (2) warp drives, and (3) wormholes.  With reference to the latter two topics, I will also discuss some cautions from the theoretical physics community about the application of general relativity to “metric engineered” devices like wormholes and warp drives that require exotic matter…

(10) HINES DECOMPRESSES. Jim C. Hines has “Post-Convention Insecurities” after his stint as Loscon 42 GoH.

I understand the phenomenon a bit better these days, but it still sucks. Partly, it’s exhaustion. You’re wiped out after the convention, and being tired magnifies all those insecurities. And the fact is, I know I stick my foot in it from time to time. We all do. It’s part of being human.

But I spend conventions trying to be “on.” Trying to be friendly and entertaining and hopefully sound like I know what the heck I’m talking about. Basically, trying to be clever. And I trust most of you are familiar with the failure state of clever?

Sometimes a joke falls flat. Sometimes I say something I thought was smart and insightful, realizing only after the words have left my mouth that it was neither. Sometimes an interaction feels off, like I’ve failed at Human Socializing 101. Or I get argumentative about something. Or I fail to confront something I should have gotten argumentative about. I could go on and on about the possibilities. That’s part of the problem.

The majority of the conversations and panels and interactions were unquestionably positive. But there’s a span when my brain insists on wallowing through the questionable ones, and I keep peeking at Twitter to double-check if anyone has posted that Jim C. Hines was the WORST guest of honor EVER, and should be fired from SF/F immediately.

Whether or not Jim had any influence on the result, I think it’s appropriate that in a year when he was GoH Loscon put together its most diverse range of program participants, probably ever – substantive speakers from all kinds of backgrounds.

(11) HOW GOOD WAS GOODREADS CHOICE? Rachel Neumeier browses the genre winners of the 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards.

If it’s a massive popularity contest you aim for, then the Goodreads Choice Awards is ideal. I dunno, I think in general I am most interested in the results of awards like the World Fantasy Award, which has a panel of judges; or the Nebula, which requires nominations to come from professional writers. In other words, not wide-open popularity contests. On the other hand, there’s a place for pure popularity too, obviously, and it was really quite interesting seeing what got nominated in all the Goodreads categories.

Of course I read mainly books that have been recommended by bloggers I follow and Goodreads reviewers I follow and so on, so these awards don’t much matter to me — no awards matter to me in that sense — but still, interesting to see what’s shuffled up to the top of the heap for 2015…

(12) SEE TWILIGHT ZONE WITH HARLAN. Cinefamily’s December events at the Silent Movie Theater in LA includes a celebration of the 30th anniversary of CBS’ 1985 version of The Twilight Zone, with Harlan Ellison, Rockne S. O Bannon, Bradford May, Michael Cassutt, Alan Brennert, Paul Lynch, William Atherton, J.D. Feigelson, Martin Pasko, Rebecca (Parr) Beck & Steven Railsback in person. December 5, starts at 5:30 p.m., tickets cost $14 (free for members).

Twilight zine new

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension-a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas-you just crossed over into the Twilight Zone…

Rod Serling opened his beloved, suspenseful, witty, and social commentary-filled drama with the same intonation every time, before presenting each delightfully formulaic science fiction fantasy, from 1959 to 1964. Those episodes will never cease to be replayed, but in 1985 CBS gave fans some new material to latch onto… an 80s revival of the series, created with the participation of writers, filmmakers, and actors for whom the original was a beloved memory. Join Cinefamily and the cast & crew of the 80s Twilight Zone at this 30th anniversary marathon and celebration, showcasing our absolute favorite 80s style sci-fi!!!

 

https://player.vimeo.com/video/146708899?title=1&byline=1&portrait=0&fullscreen=1&color=FFF685

(13) KUNKEL FOLLOW-UP. After last week’s post “Kunkel Awards Created”, I was able to ask some follow-up questions of the organizers. James Fudge, managing editor of Games Politics and Unwinnable, filled in some more background.

Most of the heavy lifting on this award needs to be credited to Michael Koretzky and the SPJ. Prior to AirPlay, Michael had talked to me about creating some kind of award to incentivize good games journalism. I thought this was a great idea. I also have a lot of respect for Bill Kunkel, and seeing how he is considered to be the very first “games journalist”  (and helped created the first publication dedicated to video games) it seemed right and fair that he should be honored by having an award named after him. I didn’t know Bill personally but we talked a lot about journalism, the industry, and wrestling on a mailing list dedicated to games journalists called “GameJournoPros.”

After the criteria for the awards was sorted out I reached out to the widow of Bill Kunkel to ask for permission, She kindly gave us her approval.

(14) THE YEAR IN AFROSFF. Wole Talabi lists “My Favorite African Science Fiction and Fantasy (AfroSFF) Short Fiction of 2015”.

2015 has been a good year for African Science Fiction and Fantasy (or AfroSFF, as seems to be the consensus abbreviation). The year saw the release of Jalada’s Afrofutures anthology, Issues 2, 3, 4 and X of the new and excellent Omenana and  Short Story Day Africa’s Terra Incognita. Still to come are AfroSFv2 (edited by Ivor Hartmann), African Monsters (edited by Margret Helgadottir and Jo Thomas) and Imagine Africa 500 (edited by Billy Kahora and Trine Andersen). So much good stuff to read and more to come….

So in the interest of fueling discussion and analysis of AfroSFF stories in general, here are my favorite AfroSFF stories of 2015 in no particular order.

(15) Filer Von Dimpleheimer has done some light housekeeping in the first two volumes of his Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos series.

I uploaded version 1.1 of Volume Two. I fixed some minor errors, but the main thing is that I put in the disclaimer page that was in Volume Three. I’ll do the same for Volume One as well.

The links should all be the same and still work. They worked for me after I had signed out of that account, but if you or any Filers have any problems, just let me know and I’ll try to sort it out.

(16) Harrison Ford was hilarious on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

First, he tried explaining how he dislocated his ankle on the Star Wars: The Force Awakens set, using a Han Solo action figure.

Then, Ford and Jimmy downed Greedo shots and debuted a colorful drink created in honor of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

(16) IT’S ONLY ROCK’N ROLL BUT I LIKE IT. Bill Roper says an ancient filk mystery has been solved.

Over 40 years ago, at the Toronto Worldcon in 1973, a young man joined the filk circle, sang a song, and vanished without a trace. The song was a lovely piece based on Arthur C. Clarke’s story, “The Sentinel”. Anne Passovoy was there and ended up reconstructing the song as best she could and adding it to her repertoire, noting that the song wasn’t hers, but presumably was something written by the anonymous young man.

And that was where things rested until last weekend at Chambanacon, when Bill Rintz and Bill Furry pulled out a song at their concert.

It was almost, but not quite the song that Anne had reconstructed. It was clearly the song that Anne had heard. All of the bones matched.

And so, as it turned out, did the feathers. Because this song was on The Byrds 1968 album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, and titled “Space Odyssey”.

You can hear the original here. The lyrics are here.

(17) CARDS AGAINST WHOMANITY. io9 will let you “Print out the Doctor Who version of Cards Against Humanity right now”

Cards Against Humanity is the hilarious party game for horrible people, and now you can mix the game’s political incorrectness with your knowledge of Doctor Who thanks to a fan-made edition called Cards Against Gallifrey.

Because Cards Against Humanity is published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, anyone can make their own cards for the game, provided they publish them under the same license and don’t sell them. The comedy group Conventional Improv performs a game show based on Cards Against Humanity at different conventions, and this fall, in honor of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, they played Cards Against Gallifrey and have made their version of the game available to the public. Naturally, it’s crude, offensive, and imagines most of the cast naked.

(18) GREEN ACRES. Kind of like living in a Chia Pet. “This kit lets you assemble your own green-roofed Hobbit home in just 3 days”  at The Open Mind.

Magic Green Homes fabricates such structures using prefabricated vaulted panels and covers them with soil, creating flexible green-roofed living spaces with a Tolkienesque charm. And the kicker? They’re so easy to construct, just about anyone can build one.

(19) ZICREE. Sci-fi writer-director-producer Marc Zicree gives you a tour of his Space Command studio while shooting Space Command 2: Forgiveness — and shows clips

[Thanks to Hampus Eckerman, von Dimpleheimer, Alan Dorey, John King Tarpinian, and Steven H Silver for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]