26 Will The Moebius Strip Be Unbroken?

Posted on April 11, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) PAT CADIGAN IS CANCER FREE. Cadigan made the announcement Friday on her blog: “The Damned Horse Actually Learned To Sing”.

Yesterday, my oncologist called to give me the results of my latest CT scan and it seems the thing that I didn’t think could happen, happened: there is no more cancer.

My mind is blown.

My original oncologist told me I might have two years or less. If you look up the prognosis for recurrent endometrial cancer, median survival is still given as 12 to 15 months. The five-year survival rate is 20% to 55% depending on how it recurs. I managed to hang in for eleven years, and now it’s gone.

That’s the limit of my coherence right now. There’s a wild party going on in my head. Once it settles down, I’ll attempt a blog entry with more substance.

I’ll just say this one last thing for now: I didn’t do this alone. My family and all of my wonderful friends kept me going. When I told you it was your moral support, your encouraging words that buoyed me up and gave me strength, I wasn’t just being nice, because holy guacamole, here I am!

Nyah, nyah, cancer—you better run! And keep running!

(2) BOLO FOR STOLEN COMICS ART. Over the past two weeks Mark Evanier has been blogging about the “Missing Masterpieces” stolen from his comics collection.

[They were taken by] a construction-type worker who did some work at my house…. Yes, I know who he is. No, I don’t know where he is although the Los Angeles Police Department says they’re hot on his trail.

Evanier’s post “More About the Missing Masterpieces” includes a link to a partial list of what’s gone.

As I’ve mentioned, I was recently the victim of a robbery — and what really hurts is that I know who did it and it was someone I trusted a lot and not for a short time. This person, possibly in cahoots with others, stole a lot of original comic book artwork from my collection, many of them pieces that were gifts to me from the people who drew them. And most of those people are no longer with us.

I have compiled a not-quite-complete list of the items taken and some of them have already turned up on the collectors’ market. Naturally, I want them back and I want to see the responsible party/parties brought to justice. You can download this list as a PDF — it’s four pages — by clicking here.

If you are all involved in the marketplace for such items, please download the list…share it with others…post the link online. I don’t have access to all the online forums for artwork selling or trading but if you’re on one, please make sure it gets there. Thank you and I’ll keep you posted.

Heritage Auctions has also posted a list on its website: “Original Comic Book Artwork Stolen”.

(3) FATE OF HUNT VALLEY MARRIOTT. [Item by Michael J. Walsh.] A long-time Balticon hotel is being turned into rubble. The first Balticon held there was in 16–18 April 1976.

These photos of the Hunt Valley Marriott in Maryland, originally shared by Cindy Geppi Shockey, on Facebook, were posted by Phil Giunta.

(4) VENERABLE COLLECTION. A Deep Look by Dave Hook pages through “’The Moonlight Traveler: Great Tales of Fantasy and Imagination’, Philip Van Doren Stern editor, 1943 Doubleday, Doran”. Here’s the short take; the long analysis is at the link.

The Short: I read The Moonlight Traveler: Great Tales of Fantasy and Imagination, Philip Van Doren Stern editor, 1943 Doubleday, Doran. It includes 21 stories from 1839 to 1940, and an introduction that went on way too long for me. My favorites were “Lord Mountdrago“, a novelette by W. Somerset Maugham, Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan February 1939, and “The Curfew Tolls“, a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét, The Saturday Evening Post, October 5, 1935. On the down side, there were four stories I could not finish. My overall average rating for the stories was a rather ordinary 3.08/5, or “Good”.

(5) WHO GOES THERE. Nicholas Whyte goes into depth about “The newly recovered Doctor Who episodes, and the foolish commentary of Gareth Roberts” at From the Heart of Europe.

…One of the more bizarre reactions to the recovery of the two episodes was a piece in The Spectator by Gareth Roberts. Roberts, in case you missed the memo, wrote or co-wrote six episodes of New Who, nine stories of The Sarah Jane Adventures and ten Doctor Who novels, but was basically booted out of the Whoniverse in 2019 for his offensive tweets about trans women. (He was also pretty offensive about Muslims.)

Since then he has gone full-on culture warrior for the Right, and has been a regular writer in The Spectator since 2022. This week’s piece on “The surprising conservatism of the old Doctor Who” (I won’t link, but you can evade the paywall easily enough), asserts but fails to prove that Terry Nation, the writer of the story, and Douglas Camfield, the director, were “unusually politically conservative”.

Of course, what you get from art is often what you bring to it, but most people would agree that Doctor Who leans left – see, for instance, Alex Wilcock’s classic essay “How Doctor Who Made Me A Liberal”. Malcolm Hulke, one of the classic series’ more prolific writers, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. Roberts’ evidence to the contrary is slim to the point of invisibility.

Roberts starts by pointing out (entirely correctly) that Nation’s writing “is often of the two-fisted war story kind, often featuring – as here – desperate commando missions in jungle terrain.” There’s nothing particularly right-wing about war stories in the context of mid-twentieth-century Britain. Bear in mind that the 1945 election was swung to Labour by the mailed-in votes of soldiers in the field. Roberts also points out that the (fascinating) scene set in the space command centre is implicitly critical of the complacent and affluent society of Earth in the year 4000. Again, nothing very right-wing about that.

In any case, the idea that the creator of Blake’s 7, which is about rebels against a militaristic regime led by a woman, was “unusually politically conservative” is ridiculous. Terry Nation often wrote about politics; but his strength was satire, coming as he did from comedy, and he applied his satire liberally to all….

(6) WHAT’S GOOD TO READ? Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup” for the Guardian covers Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley; Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy; Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell; and Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker.

(7) JOHN GUIDRY (1944-2026). John Guidry, chair of the 1988 Worldcon, NolaCon II, and active Burroughs fan, died April 10.

From his teen years on John Guidry collected science fiction. He was especially enamored of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He became friends with another Louisiana fan of the writer, Camille “Caz” Cazedessus, publisher of ERB-dom, who lived in Baton Rouge. Guidry visited Caz in 1963, who put him in touch with another Burroughs buff in the area, Patrick H. Adkins, Jr., of Algiers. Adkins became a noted artist. ERB-dom eventually won the Best Fanzine Hugo. Guidry founded ERB-apa in 1984. In 2018, Guidry was presented with the Burroughs Bibliophiles Outstanding Achievement Award.

Unfortunately, the collection Guidry spent a lifetime building was a casualty of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (see photos in Challenger 23).

Although there were science fiction fans in New Orleans before John Guidry came along (and even a Worldcon in 1951), it is popularly believed that he was responsible for the revival of organized fandom in the city in the Sixties. For example, the New Orleans Science Fiction Association (also known as the Greater New Orleans Science Fiction Association) was formed on June 25, 1967, and John Guidry was a charter member. He was also the first editor of its clubzine, NOLAzine.

In 1977 Guidry launched a New Orleans bid for the 1982 Worldcon, but it didn’t file to get on the ballot. His subsequent bid for 1988 was successful — and legendary. Guidry was by then a lawyer and, with the three other lawyers who led the bid, bankrolled the travel of the charismatic Michael Sinclair all over the country to host room parties where he could dispense Southern charm and hospitality, and French Quarter well drinks. He greeted everyone, “Here, have a Hurricane!” and handed them a potent cup of vodka, rum, and fruit juices, mixed with enough grenadine to turn it fire engine red. This was extremely popular.

The late Joey Grillot said when Guidry announced to New Orleans fans that they had won the 1988 bid he told them that the rules required the committee to do certain things, like present the Hugos. “What’s that?” Joey asked, wondering if he’d heard right. Said Guidry, “That’s the science fiction award we give every year.” Joey was amazed. “John, how’re you gonna get 26 of those Hungarian automobiles in the grand ballroom of the Sheraton?”

The 1988 Worldcon had no problem giving out the Hugos, but it did have a lot of other issues, which were somewhat ameliorated by the proximity of the French Quarter. I contributed my share to the issues while putting the con’s program together.

But as someone who later chaired a Worldcon, I must credit Guidry for his wisdom in saying, “The chair’s job is to thank people, and apologize.” I found there was a lot of truth to that.

Guidry won the 1983 Rebel Award. And after NolaCon II its antithesis, the 1989 Rubble Award. He chaired DeepSouthCon 9 and DeepSouthCon 11. He was a member of the Sons of the Sand.

Outside of fandom, he was engaged in New Orleans’ Mardi Gras traditions as a member of The Phunny Phorty Phellows whose street car ride that kicks off the annual Mardi Gras carnival season. When they were featured on TV in 2009, John was attired as a chef and wearing a yellow Lone Ranger mask.

One of Guidry’s last fannish honors was being named a guest of honor of CONtraflow 5/ DSC 53 in 2014.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 11, 1920 — Peter O’Donnell. (Died 2010.)

London-born Peter O’Donnell was the creator of the Modesty Blaise comic strip along with illustrator Jim Holdaway sixty-one years ago. She has no past as she doesn’t remember anything about her life before escaping from a displaced persons camp in Greece after WW II at the age of fifteen. She runs a criminal gang called The Network, and takes her last name from Merlin’s tutor. Her sidekick, of course she has one, is Willie Garvin, to give a bit of friendship in her life.

Peter O’Donnell from the rear dustjacket flap of the Archival Press edition of The Silver Mistress. Photo by Robert K. Wiener.

O’Donnell and Holdaway met when they worked together on a strip about Romeo Brown, a dashing private detective and reluctant ladies’ man, that ran in the tabloid Evening Standard for most of the Fifties. Blaise, too, would run here. It was quickly picked up globally running in the US, Australian, Indian, South African, Malaysian and other papers as she had a great appeal.

After Holdaway’s death in 1970, the art was by Spanish artist Enrique Romero. He would leave eight years later with three artists replacing him until he came back until the end of the strip with it still running in the Evening Standard thirty-eight years after it debuted.

Yes, it became a film which came just three years into the running of the strip. My did it piss O’Donnell off. Why so? Because he was hired to write the script which they then shitcanned and wrote a new one that had almost nothing to do with characters, the storyline or, well, anything else with the strip. Remember that friendship between her and Willie? Here it becomes full blown romance. And that’s just one of many, many changes.

A later film, Modesty Blaise, would be done as a pilot for a series that never happened and yet another film, My Name is Modesty Blaise, would be done for yet another series that never happened. The one had O’Donnell as a consultant and he liked it.

My Name is Modesty Blaise would be the only one with a British actress as the first had an Italian actress. Now Modesty wasn’t necessarily British as O’Donnell repeatedly said her nationality was deliberately not revealed.

I’ve not touched upon the plethora of books, short stories, graphic novels and original audiobooks that came of these characters in the part sixty years, and I’ll skip detailing them here.

So there you are. I did enjoy the strip when Titan, one of many who did, collected them in trade editions. I think there’s at least fifty trade paper editions available right now on Amazon.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem has a dilemma.
Dinosaur Comics suggests a swap.
Jerry King wins an award.
Off the Mark has a complaint.
Pearls Before Swine writes a book.
Strange Brew makes a guess.
Wumo gets excited.

(10) KEEPING TREKKERS GUESSING. 403auction.com has posted “Star Trek Auction Information” – but they don’t say when it will be, or what is being auctioned.

Celebrate 60 Years of Star Trek and Own a Piece of the Legacy!

For six decades, Star Trek has inspired generations to imagine a future defined by exploration, optimism, and unity. In honor of this milestone anniversary, we are proud to present authentic and exclusive items from across the Star Trek universe in support of DoSomething.org.

This is a rare opportunity for fans and collectors alike to own a tangible piece of the legacy. Each item tells a story, connecting you directly to the moments and characters that have shaped one of the most influential franchises in entertainment history. AND, this auction is also a chance to make a meaningful impact. A portion of the proceeds will benefit DoSomething.org, one of Star Trek’s official 60th anniversary charity partners, supporting young people driving positive change in their communities….

TrekMovie.com’s report, “Star Trek Universe Auction Announced; ‘Starfleet Academy’ AND ‘Strange New Worlds’ Sets Dismantled”, includes this speculation:

Since the new era of Star Trek TV was launched with Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, the live-action production has been in Toronto, Canada. The main exception was for Star Trek: Picard, which was shot in Southern California, primary to accommodate star Patrick Stewart. But with Paramount deciding earlier this month to not produce a third season of Starfleet Academy (and deciding to wrap up Strange New Worlds last year) the studio is now looking to let go of their Trek stuff.…

…We are still awaiting most of the details on the auction, including exactly what will be sold, and when it will be held. As the official description is “auction #1,” it appears that things will be sold off in multiple groups.

The Star Trek auction will be conducted by 403 Auctions in Toronto. And here is the main catch as this company has some strict rules on how it handles its auctions and they warn that for the Star Trek sale, they will not be doing any shipping….

(11) OLDER KINDLES FADING AWAY. “Amazon is cutting off support for older Kindles” reports Engagdet.

If you’re using an older Kindle, you may want to check what year it was released. Amazon has sent out emails to some of its users, with a warning that it’s discontinuing support for Kindle ereaders and Fire tables released in 2012 or earlier. You can still read books you’ve already downloaded on those devices, but you’ll no longer be able to purchase, borrow or download new ones, starting on May 20, 2026. In addition, if the device has an issue that can only be solved by a factory reset, doing so will brick it. Deregestering it will also render it unusable. On Kindle Fire devices, users won’t be able to purchase or download content anymore, but other services would remain functional.

The affected models include the very first Kindle, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5 and the first version of Kindle Paperwhite. We’ve asked Amazon why it decided to cut off support for those models, and the company told us: “These models have been supported for at least 14 years — some as long as 18 years — but technology has come a long way in that time…”

Well, I won’t be affected. The reason why is a sad story of its own. I used to have one of these old Kindles but in 2017 I set it on top of my car while I unlocked the door. Then I got in, started the engine, and drove off. I don’t know what became of it after that…

(12) FOLLOW THOSE LEGOS! The LA Times reports “$1 million in stolen Legos intercepted en route to Riverside County; 3 arrested”. (Behind a paywall.)

Authorities on Wednesday recovered about $1 million worth of Lego products and two stolen freight trailers heading to Riverside County, according to the Kern County Sheriff’s Office.

Three people from Chino were arrested in connection with the heist on counts of possession of a stolen vehicle, cargo theft and conspiracy, authorities said…

…The deputies conducted traffic stops after seeing two box trucks fleeing the area, according to information released by the Sheriff’s Office. In their search, they discovered a large number of Lego products.

After a further search, they also found two freight trailers, authorities said. An investigation later revealed, authorities said, that the trailers had been stolen while in transit from Fort Worth, Texas, to Moreno Valley.

(13) CREDENTIALS IN SPACE. From Bluesky —

(14) TODAY’S SCROLL TITLE. Daniel Dern credits his inspiration to the song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” recorded by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, from their album of that name. And also by Johnny Cash& Ricky Scaggs and The Carter Family.

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

Don Glut, Sheldon Mayer Receive 2025 Bill Finger Award

Posted on June 8, 2025 by Mike Glyer

Don Glut and Sheldon Mayer are the recipients of the 2025 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was announced June 8.

“As usual, the judges considered a long list of names, but these two jumped out at us,” Evanier remarked. “They’re two men who made important contributions to the comic book industry and artform and who haven’t received proper recognition and maybe not proper compensation.”

The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer’s Comic-Con International on Friday, July 25.

Don Glut in his teens distinguished himself as an amateur filmmaker before embarking on a career that would include becoming a professional filmmaker, having co-produced, directed, and written eight feature-length films. He has also written TV shows and novels and, most important to this award, comic books. Much of that work was for Gold Key Comics, where he co-created and wrote three series that formed a little “Don Glut Universe” within the company’s line: Dagar the Invincible, The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor and Tragg and the Sky Gods. They attracted a loyal following then on the newsstands and more recently in fancy reprint collections. For Warren Publishing, Don authored tales for Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, and for Marvel, his writing could be found in, among others, Captain America, The Invaders, Kull the Destroyer, Solomon Kane, Star Wars, and What If…? Don also has more than 80 books to his credit, including The Dinosaur Dictionary and the authorized novelization of the movie The Empire Strikes Back.

Sheldon Mayer (1917–1991) was a key contributor to some of the earliest comic books, with work traced back as far as the mid-1930s. After a brief stint at the Max Fleischer animation studio, he began writing and drawing for Dell Comics, producing some of the earliest original (i.e., not reprinted from newspaper strips) material featured in comic books. These included his semi-autobiographical strip Scribbly, about a boy cartoonist. In 1936 he began working with industry pioneer M. C. Gaines at the McClure Syndicate, and two years later he was the person who convinced Gaines to reconsider an oft-rejected submission. That submission — Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — wound up appearing in DC Comics and revolutionizing the field. When Gaines (and partner Jack Liebowitz) formed the All-American comic book company in 1939, Mayer was their first editor and presided over the creation of many popular properties, including The Flash, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. He also found time to write and draw humorous comics, including a revival of Scribbly. When All-American was acquired by DC Comics in 1944, Mayer came along as editor, but four years later he retired from editing to create, write, and draw new features for DC, most notably The Three Mouseketeers and his masterpiece, Sugar & Spike. Mayer later wrote for DC’s ghost comics, co-created and wrote The Black Orchid for Adventure Comics, and even adapted The Bible into a special edition DC comic. He passed away in 1991, but his granddaughter Chelle will be on hand to accept his Finger Award at the ceremony.

The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 at the instigation of the great comic book artist and cartoonist Jerry Robinson. It was his way of preserving the memory of his friend and colleague, William Finger (1914–1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the “unsung hero” of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics. Evanier explains, “When Jerry first suggested this award, it was the worst-kept secret in comics that Finger had co-created Batman and much of the mythos and supporting cast of that character. Nowhere on the comics or movies or TV shows was Bill Finger credited. That has changed, but there are still plenty of important, undercredited writers for us to put into the spotlight. Which is what this award is all about.”

In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The major sponsor for the 2025 award is DC Comics; supporting sponsors are Heritage Auctions and Maggie Thompson.

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 4/16/25 It’s Been A Long File Since I Pixel Scrolled

Posted on April 16, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) WSFS BUSINESS MEETING TOWN HALLS IN MAY. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon committee today reminded members they will be hosting two Business Meeting Town Halls where members can learn how to participate in the business meeting process. They will be on Zoom, and recorded for later playback. The committee has yet to announce how to attend and RSVP. The available information is here on the convention website: “Business Meeting Town Hall”.

Town Hall One: May 4 at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).
Town Hall Two: May 25 at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).

(2) SEATTLE WORLDCON WILL HOLD CONSULTATIVE VOTE. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon also announced they will hold a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting to the Seattle Worldcon: (1) the proposed revisions of the Hugo Award categories for best professional artist and best fan artist, and (2) the proposed amendment to abolish the Retro Hugo Awards.

As when Glasgow 2024 did this, there is no constitutional authorization for the poll, and it is not binding on the Business Meeting.

…The purpose of this exercise is simply to test whether a consultative vote of Worldcon members is feasible, and to learn lessons about how it might someday be formally adopted as a part of the WSFS decision-making process. We chose these two proposals in particular because they have clearly generated wide interest among the Worldcon community.

The consultative vote results will be used solely to inform the Seattle Business Meeting of the preferences of a larger sample of the membership than might otherwise be able to attend. Glasgow 2024’s consultative vote allowed over 1,200 WSFS members to share their opinion on a proposed amendment.

The consultative vote will run from May 1 to May 31 and may be accessed at the same site and in the same manner as the Hugo Award voting—so you can do both at the same time!

(3) A DATE THAT SHALL LIVE IN INFAMY. Convention History is shocked, shocked I tell you, by the party in Room 770.

Join us for our room party at the final @BABSCon looking at 88 years of con room parties! Today we look at what is considered to most infamous room party in fannish history, the Room 770 Party at Nolacon (9th Worldcon) in 1951. This 2 day party gave rise to "All-Night Fandom". pic.twitter.com/uA0jAMemFh
— Convention History ???? ?????????? (@ConHistory) April 16, 2025

(4) MARK EVANIER DID NOT OUTGROW COMICS. [Item by rcade.] The comic book writer Mark Evanier remembers the 1960s divide between fans of science fiction and comic books. “Fandom Freedom” at News From ME.

…One older female fan used to lecture me that Comic Book Fandom was an unfortunate outgrowth of Science-Fiction Fandom and oughta stay that way…or better still, disappear entirely. What they read was for sophisticated adults and what “we” read (drawing a firm, uncrossable line with that “we” there) was for the kiddos. Her suggestion was that there was something wrong with us for not outgrowing it.

The last such lecture I got — this would have been around ’73 — was from a guy wearing Spock ears and brandishing a plastic phaser that fired little multi-colored discs….

(5) THINKING INSIDE THE BOX. “A new chapter for publishing? Book subscription services launch their own titles” – the Guardian tells how it works.

Book subscription services are magic. A few clicks of a form and a bunch of new books , selected by talented curators, turn up at your door – often with collectible perks such as special cover designs and art. In a world saturated by choice and trends, not only is the choosing done for you, but you’ll often have a less conventional, better rounded and precious bookshelf collection to show for it.

This is presumably why there’s a strong appetite for such services: UK fantasy subscription box FairyLoot has 569,000 followers on Instagram alone, and many bookshops have started sending out their own boxes.

Now, some of these businesses have decided not just to sell books, but to publish their own: In January, FairyLoot announced a collaboration with Transworld, a division of Penguin Random House, while last week Canada-based subscription service OwlCrate launched OwlCrate Press….

(6) REASONS TO WATCH. Phil Nichols and Colin Kuskie discuss an award-winning film in SF 101’s “Go With The Flow” episode.

Flow (2024) is an extraordinary film – Latvia’s most successful of all time, and winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Film. Colin and Phil discuss whether it counts as science fiction (of course it does!), and what makes this delightful movie tick.

If you haven’t seen the film, we think we give you enough of flavour of it for the discussion to make sense, and hopefully to inspire you to watch it.

(7) FASCINATING MARQUEE. Tony Gleeson ran the photo below on Facebook with this introduction:

The venerable Vista Theatre in East Hollywood: it’s been everything from a porno palace to a repertory house. It’s been featured in scenes for numerous movies (the one that comes to mind is “Throw Mama From the Train”). It’s now owned by Quentin Tarantino and offers some pretty unusual fare.

When he gave permission for File 770 to reprint it, Gleeson added:

One thing I love is the coffee shop attached to the theatre (it used to be called the Onyx many years ago and had the best blackout chocolate cake) is now called Pam’s Coffy and features a portrait of Pam Grier. There is also a mini-Grauman’s Chinese footprint walk in front.

(8) THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK. “No Bids Filed for 2027 Westercon” reports Kevin Standlee at the Westercon website.

No bids filed to be on the ballot to select the site of Westercon 79, the 2027 West Coast Science Fantasy Conference. Although there will be no bids listed on the ballot, there will be space for write-in bids, and bids can still file the necessary papers (specified in Section 3.4 of the Westercon Bylaws) before the close of voting at 6 PM Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7) on Saturday, July 5, 2025. The election will take place during Westercon 77 / BayCon 2025 at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, California. Should no valid bids file by the close of voting, or should None of the Above win the election, the site of Westercon 79 will be determined by the Westercon Business Meeting on Sunday, July 6.

We will post the 2027 Westercon Site Selection ballot on the Westercon website by the end of April. All members of BayCon 2025 are members of Westercon 77 and all members are eligible to vote. Members can vote by postal mail (there will be no electronic voting) or in person at Westercon 77 / BayCon 2025.

To file a bid, or to ask any questions about the Westercon Site Selection process, contact Kayla Allen, the 2027 Westercon Site Selection Administrator, at [email protected].

(9) ART SPIEGELMAN AND JUDY-LYNN DEL REY PROFILED. Through May 14 PBS is making available online “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” part of the American Masters series. At the end of the program, they’re also running a short documentary about Judy-Lynn Del Rey. It starts about 1 hour 40 minutes into the 2-hour program.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 16, 1921 – Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov. (Died 2004.)

Peter Ustinov showed up in Logan’s Run as the Old Man; he had the lead role in Blackbeard’s Ghost as Captain Blackbeard based on the Robert Stevenson novel; he was Charlie Chan in Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (it’s at least genre adjacent, isn’t it?). He’s The Caliph in stellar Thief of Baghdad; a truck driver in The Great Muppet Caper and finally he has the dual roles of Grandfather and Phoenix in The Phoenix and the Carpet.

He voiced myriad characters in animated films including that of Grendel in Grendel Grendel Grendel based off John Gardner’s novel Grendel, in Robin Hood, he voiced Prince John and King Richard; and in The Mouse and His Child, he was the voice of Manny the Rat.

Now I’m going to admit that my favorite role by Peter Ustinov was playing Poirot which he did in half a dozen films, which he first in Death on the Nile and then in Evil Under the Sun, Thirteen at Dinner, Dead Man’s Folly, Murder in Three Acts and Appointment with Death. He wasn’t my favorite Poirot as that was David Suchet but it was obvious that he liked performing that role quite a bit.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Non Sequitur knows the publishing hierarchy.
Off the Mark illustrates different personalities.
Thatababy adds too much information to a famous theme song.
WaynoVision introduces a new law enforcement animal.

(12) IN A BRICKYARD FAR, FAR AWAY. Gizmodo says get ready – “Lego Is Celebrating Star Wars Day With a Ton of Sets”.

The start of May is always a good time for Star Wars fans, but for Lego Star Wars ones, it’s also a time to fear the brick-maker coming down on your wallet with all the fury of a fully armed and operational battle station. This year is no exception, with Lego announcing a ton of sets ready to drop next month–including its next crowning entry in the Ultimate Collector Series line.

Today Lego announced that its annual May the 4th releases will be spearheaded by a new 2,970-piece take on Slave I as it appeared in Attack of the Clones. Renamed here as simply ‘Jango Fett’s Starship’ (aligning with prior merchandise moves away from the “Slave” naming around the ship’s return in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett), the new set includes a detailed interior cockpit which can house two new minifigures of Jango and a young Boba, an openable landing ramp and bomb hatch to place one of the ship’s legendary-sounding seismic charges in, and a display stand to have the ship posed in either landing or flight mode.

Jango’s starship will cost $300, and will release on early access for Insiders on May 1, before releasing widely on May 4….

… If you don’t want to grab Jango’s ride but still want to try and nab that Kamino set, then good news: Lego is also releasing another eight brand new Star Wars sets on May 1. Covering the whole gamut of the franchise, the releases see the first set inspired by Andor season 2, a new U-Wing, two Brickheadz releases inspired by A New Hope and the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith, Rebels icon Chopper entering the buildable droid series, two new entries in the collectible helmet line, and even a buildable version of the Star Wars logo….

From the Lego Shop itself, the “Best Star Wars™ Gift Ideas for Adults” has photos of all the character helmets and other items mentioned above.

Fans who admire the pilots of the Star Wars™ galaxy can now showcase their passion with the LEGO® Star Wars AT-AT Driver™ Helmet (75429), inspired by the helmets worn by the pilots of the formidable AT-AT Walkers in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back™….

…For even more ways to put the heroes and villains of your favorite galaxy on display, check out the complete selection offered by the LEGO Star Wars helmet collection. From helmets inspired by Mandalorians and Clone Troopers to bounty hunters and Dark Lords of the Sith, there is something for every Star Wars fan to add to their collection.

(13) BUT ARE THOSE BRICKS PLASTIC OR GOLD? Just make sure you lock up your house after you buy those collectible Legos. The New York Times warns, “Worth Thousands on the Black Market, Lego Kits Are Now a Target of Thieves”.

It’s one Lego kit, a collection of small plastic bricks and related accessories. What could it cost? The answer, it turns out, could be thousands of dollars.

Lego kits and minifigures, figurines that are a little over 1.5 inches tall, are commanding high prices on the secondary market, with some, like the LEGO San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Spider-Man, valued as high as $16,846.

The children’s toys have even become something of an investing opportunity for those savvy enough to know what to look for.

But with the eye-popping price tags comes a dark side: Lego kits have become a hot commodity on the black market and the target of brazen thieves.

Last year, burglars hit Bricks & Minifigs outlets in California. Thieves made off with at least $100,000 worth of Lego kits and accessories.

Last month, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California recovered nearly 200 Lego sets after arresting a person in connection with a burglary at Crush Comics, a comic book store in Castro Valley, Calif.

Joshua Hunter, the owner of Crush Comics, said that members of his staff found the store’s stolen comic books for sale on eBay within hours of the theft.

The store worked with law enforcement and alerted other small business owners, including Five Little Monkeys, a toy store that recently had $7,000 worth of Lego stolen, to solve what turned out to be a spree of burglaries in the area.

Five Little Monkeys was able to recover a lot of its stolen Lego, said Meghan DeGoey, the company’s marketing director, but the theft was only the latest in what has been a growing problem.

“It’s been a problem for probably, I mean, forever, but it’s really ramped up in the last five, six years,” she said.

Five Little Monkeys has eight stores around the Bay Area, said Ms. DeGoey, and Lego stands out among its top-stolen items.

“People are really brazen when they’re going to steal,” she said, describing the way thieves will sometimes come into a store and walk right out or “do some like crazy misdirect and have a second person that tries to distract us.”…

(14) BUSINESS SHOULD NOT BE BOOMING. “Bahamas suspends SpaceX rocket landings pending post-launch probe” reports Reuters.

The Bahamas’ government said on Tuesday it is suspending all SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket landings in the country, pending a full post-launch investigation.

“No further clearances will be granted until a full environmental assessment is reviewed,” Bahamian Director of Communications Latrae Rahming said in a post on X.

The Bahamian government said in February after SpaceX’s first landing in the country that it had approved 19 more throughout 2025, subject to regulatory approval.

The Bahamas’ post-launch investigation comes after a SpaceX Starship spacecraft exploded in space last month, minutes after lifting off from Texas.

Social media videos showed fiery debris streaking through the skies near South Florida and the Bahamas after the spacecraft broke up in space shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off.

Following the incident, the Bahamas said debris from the spacecraft fell into its airspace. The country said the debris contained no toxic materials and added it was not expected to have a significant impact on marine life or water quality.

The Starship explosion was not connected to the Bahamas’ Falcon 9 landing program with SpaceX.

(15) IS THAT SPACE ROT? “Webb telescope detects a possible signature of life on a distant world” in the Washington Post.

A distant planet’s atmosphere shows signs of molecules that on Earth are associated only with biological activity, a possible signal of life on what is suspected to be a watery world,according to a report published Wednesday that analyzed observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The peer-reviewed report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters presents more questions than answers, acknowledges numerous uncertainties and does not declare the discovery of life beyond Earth, something never conclusively detected. But the authors do claim to have found the best evidence to date of a possible “biosignature” on a planet far from our solar system.

The planet,known asK2-18b, is 124 light-years away, orbiting a red dwarf star. Earlier observations suggested that its atmosphere is consistent with the presence of a global ocean. The molecule purportedly detected is dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth it is produced by the decay of marine phytoplankton and other microbes, and it has no other known source. The astronomers want to observe the planet further to strengthen the evidence that the molecule is present….

… “This is the first time humanity has ever seen biosignature molecules — potential biosignature molecules, which are biosignatures on Earth — in the atmosphere of a habitable-zone planet,” he added.The habitable, or “Goldilocks,” zone is the distance from a star that could allow water to remain liquid at the planet’s surface.

K2-18b, which is within ourgalaxy, the Milky Way,cannot be seen by any telescope as a discrete object. But it has a fortuitous orbit that crosses its parent star as seen from Earth. Such transits dim the starlight ever so slightly, which is how many exoplanets have been discovered. The transits also change the starlight’s spectrum in a pattern that — if observed with instruments on a telescope as advanced as the Webb — can reveal the composition of the planet’s atmosphere.

In 2023, Madhusudhan and colleagues reported that two instruments on the Webb had detected carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of K2-18b, as well ashints of DMS. …

(16) SF² CONCATENATION SUMMER 2025 EDITION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted its seasonal edition of SF and science news and reviews. Also in the mix are some articles, convention reports as well as some archive items from its well over 30 years history and a load of standalone book reviews. Something for everyone.

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Summer 2025

Newscast for the Summer 2025. This includes within it many key sections. See also the master newscast link index that connects to all its SF/F genre and science news sub-sections. In the mix are its Film News; Television News; Publishing News; General Science News and Forthcoming SF Books from major British Isles SF imprints for the season, among much else.
Can Spooky Action at a Distance be explained? – Steven French
This is one for our physicist regulars
Wolf Man and Universal Monsters – Jonathan Cowie
Film review
Mickey 17 – Jonathan Cowie
Film review and box office analysis
The virtual, online 2024 SF Worldcon – Steven French< br> Another digital experience review of Britain’s biggest SF event of last year
Fantasycon 2024 – Ian Hunter
The annual convention reviewed
The 1994 Eurocon re-visited – Roberto Quaglia
The first East Europe Eurocon since the fall of the Iron Curtain
Slan by A. E. van Vogt: re-visited – Jonathan Cowie
This minor classic from 1946, by an SFWA Grand Master, is re-visited.
Gaia 2025
Annual oddities and whimsy
Ten Years Ago Exactly. One from the archives.
Loncon 3 – The London Worldcon
In 2015 we posted coverage of the 2014 SF Worldcon
Ten Years Ago Exactly. One from the archives.
SF Films of the 1950s
Lest we forget some golden age cinematic SF classics
Twenty Years Ago Exactly. One from the archives.
Science Fiction in Film Serials
Early 20th century cinema serials

(Edition’s Facebook alert.)

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

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

Pixel Scroll 2/10/25 The Filer Who Sold Another Moon-Based Title

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) HUGO HUNTING SEASON STARTS. The Seattle Worldcon today declared “2025 Hugo Nominations Open”.

I went and looked at their “Nominations Eligibility” page. All useful information. However, I was surprised to see how long the Best Series eligibility section needed to be in order to explain the restrictions on past winners (no longer eligible) and on renominating past finalists (in general, at least two additional installments in the series consisting of at least 240,000 words in aggregate must have been published between the end of that finalist’s last eligibility year and December 31, 2024).

(2) SUPERKERFUFFLE. [Item by Dann.] Superman actor Dean Cain has become the focal point of a kerfuffle on X.com.

On February 8, ScreenRant posted to X.com a photo of six actors who have portrayed Superman.

The next day DCU World – apparently an unofficial fan account — posted a modified version of the same image. The significant difference was that Dean Cain had been edited out.

Fans of Dean Cain have been pointing out the omission ever since.

And Dean Cain cast a jaundiced eye on the change.

Why would someone do this? Possibly because Dean Cain is a vocal Trump supporter. Or because in 2021 he slammed DC Comics’ decision to have Superman come out as bisexual.

…“They said it’s a bold new direction, I say they’re bandwagoning,” the 55-year-old actor told Fox & Friends First on Tuesday. “Robin just came out as bi — who’s really shocked about that one? The new Captain America is gay. My daughter in [The CW series] Supergirl, where I played the father, was gay. So I don’t think it’s bold or brave or some crazy new direction. If they had done this 20 years ago, perhaps that would be bold or brave….

This was George Takei’s reaction at the time:

(3) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman recalls “The Day I Should Have Defended Herb Trimpe” in Episode 18 of his Why Not Say What Happened? podcast.

Another look back on my early comics career has me considering the possible reason Robert De Niro’s Max Cady character cared about Captain Marvel in the 1991 movie Cape Fear, the day Jim Shooter and I parachuted out of an airplane (and why an ambulance was called), my surprise over a 1974 House of Mystery submission to editor Joe Orlando, why 2025 Scott is curious about what Crystal leaving the Fantastic Four meant to the 1970 fanboy I was, the reason Doc Savage and Scooter Pies are inextricably linked in my memory, my regret over not having defended artist Herb Trimpe from his detractors, and much more.

Here’s where all episodes across all platforms can be found — Why Not Say What Happened? [Click below for larger image.]

A F.O.O.M. article about my jump with Jim Shooter

(4) ANTON HUR Q&A. “Mandana Chaffa uses the otherworldly premise of Anton Hur’s novel Toward Eternity as a springboard to discuss Hur’s path to translation, community, and immortality” — “’Making Space for Each Other’: Anton Hur on Toward Eternity, Translation, and Immortality” at Words Without Borders.

MC: I’ve long admired your advocacy and generosity for the art and its practitioners by supporting translators’ rights, providing guidance, and, of course, being part of the Smoking Tigers. Is this a golden age of translation? I know we’ve been talking about eternity, but what do you hope to see more of in the present?

AH: I got a bizarre message recently from a Korean translators collective who said they were launching and had no wish to compete with Smoking Tigers. It was an odd thing to say to me. The whole reason we set up Smoking Tigers was to collaborate with each other, and our policy has always been to encourage the rise of a thousand translator collectives, but perhaps because we have been so spectacularly successful as individual translators, people have this notion of Smoking Tigers as being the Bene Gesserit or something. We’re just very close friends who happen to be in the same industry and occasionally workshop together. It’s not that special— anyone can make a collective! We just happen to be one of the earliest, that’s all. I’m often told that I’m an advocate for translators, which is very kind of people to say, but my advocacy is very self-serving. I mean, I am literally a literary translator myself, so if I’m advocating for literary translators, doesn’t that mean I’m essentially advocating for myself? Even when I see a great sample someone else did in a workshop and try to connect that translator to an editor I think would be interested in it, that’s because I believe that only by making an effort to publish the best translations can the ecosystem—and myself—truly thrive. There are so many great translators out there with wonderful projects, and I want to see them published, and yet publishing is so inefficient in finding these gems. If I can step into the breach, I try to, for the sake of the ecosystem and, by extension, myself. It’s all about me in the end; I don’t think much beyond that….

(5) INCITEFUL? “Israeli Police Raid Palestinian Bookshops in East Jerusalem” reports the New York Times (article is behind a paywall).

For decades, the Educational Bookshop has been a cultural cornerstone of East Jerusalem, its two outlets hosting foreign diplomats, feting prominent authors and providing readers with both sides of the story in the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

This weekend, the Israeli police raided the stores and arrested their two owners after concluding that books being sold there — including a children’s coloring book — could incite violence. The police said they seized a number of books in the raids on Sunday.

The shops were initially closed on Monday, but later opened despite a judge ordering the brothers who own the stores, Mahmood Muna and Ahmed Muna, to remain in detention until Tuesday morning amid a police investigation. They were also ordered to be held under house arrest for five days following their release and banned from returning to their bookshops for 15 days.

Murad Muna, a brother of the two owners who reopened one of the stores on Monday afternoon, denied that the books sold there promoted violence. In fact, he said, the books passed Israeli censors when they were imported from abroad.

“We believe that this is a political, not a legal detention,” the lawyer for the two arrested men, Nasser Oday, said outside the courthouse in Jerusalem after the hearing.

In a statement, the police said the shops were searched on Sunday for books suspected of containing “inciting content.” It said detectives “encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes, including a children’s coloring book titled ‘From the Jordan to the Sea.’”

The slogan “from the river to the sea” has long been a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism and is usually interpreted by Israelis as a denial of their country’s right to exist….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 10, 1953 — John Shirley, 72.

Did you know that John Shirley has written an historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp — Wyatt in Wichita? I wonder how many of our sff writers beside him and Emma Bull (whose novel Territory was decidedly not historical) have written novels on this incident and the individuals there?

I really enjoyed his third novel City Come A-Walkin which I think is a brilliant rendering of a City come to life.

I’ll admit I’m not much at all for grim dystopian SF but I did find his A Song Called Youth trilogy of Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra and Eclipse Corona fascinating if in a horrifying manner.

His best known script work is The Crow film, for which he was the initial writer, before David Schow reworked the script. I’m not sure he got actually any credit at all. He also wrote scripts for Poltergeist: The Legacy.

I see that to my surprise he wrote an episode of Deep Space Nine, “Visionary” and also wrote three episodes of the ‘12 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. He also an episode of Batman Beyond, “Sentries of the Last Outpost” which was about hard core players of a virtual reality role-playing game are recruited by the alleged creator of the game for his own purposes.

He wrote novels in the Aliens, Doom, Halo, Predators franchise, Borderlands video gaming, Resident Evil, DC metaverse and the Grimm series.

Do tell me what else you enjoyed by him.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics has a negative idea about the arts.
Eek! spent the weekend this way.
Close To Home has a modern reaction to alien abduction.
Eyebeam is about to have an inspiration.
Loose Parts denies everything.

(8) TRANSITION. Tony Isabella is now Jenny Blake, the news signal boosted by Mark Evanier in “Tony/Jenny” at News From ME.

…You see, that person is still alive. He’s just no longer Tony Isabella…and here’s where I get into what Daffy Duck would call “Pronoun Trouble.” She is now Jenny Blake, having announced today that she has transitioned to what she feels is the proper gender identification for her. I’ve known about this for a while and as far as I’m concerned, the only bad part of this is the Pronoun Trouble it creates….

(9) THE SIMS 25TH ANNIVERSARY. “The Sims Turned Players Into Gods. And Farmers. And Vampires. And Landlords.” in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

Will Wright kindly requests that admirers stop describing him as a god.

“I don’t think God would concern himself with taking out the trash and cleaning the toilet,” he quipped while chain-smoking cigarettes. Besides, he’s an atheist.

But what is better shorthand to describe the man who created The Sims? The influential video game allowed players to act like gods themselves, building virtual neighborhoods populated by virtual families who pay virtual bills and complete virtual chores.

Players could improve the lives of their Sims by constructing McMansions filled with plush couches and flat-screen televisions. Or they could become vengeful, directing Sims to light fireworks indoors and paddle to exhaustion in a swimming pool with no exit.

Twenty-five years later, players are continuing to push the boundaries. Sure, there are glitzy houses and happy families in The Sims 4. But by modifying the game’s code, players have created a health care system as byzantine as the real American one and taught Sims how to wield pistols and knives. The game’s official expansion packs offer their own weirdness. Sims can become vampires and witches. They can even play The Sims.

“I never really thought of The Sims as inherently optimistic,” Wright, 65, said. “I always thought of The Sims as slightly sarcastically nostalgic for a past that never really existed.”

The Sims was a sandbox for the American dream when it was released on Feb. 4, 2000, with Wright pulling inspiration from biology, architecture, comics and psychology to dictate the rules of his virtual dollhouse. It was an unusual proposal at a time when most games were goal-oriented and linear, and a predecessor to create-your-own-adventure games like Minecraft that give players a pick axe and carte blanche.

Although more than 500 million people have played games in the Sims franchise, which is particularly popular with women, it was originally seen as a risk. Executives at the game studio Maxis had urged Wright to focus instead on the SimCity franchise, his urban-planning simulator from 1989 that had put the company at the forefront of American game design. “Everyone in the room hated the idea of The Sims,” Wright recalled.

The outlook initially worsened after Electronic Arts acquired Maxis in 1997. Some managers wanted the game to be less realistic; others wanted to prevent it from being released at all.

But other leaders saw promise in Wright’s vision. “We wanted to make SimCity bigger,” said Luc Barthelet, who was then an Electronic Arts executive and brought in key resources for The Sims’s development team. “But we also needed to invest in designers like Will who were extremely talented and doing things that were different.”…

(10) VISIT FROM THE SUCK FAIRY? However, the Guardian’s Bex April May cries “Wait! The Sims is a lot bleaker than I remember”.

… I forgot how much time the original Sims actually spend working. They do boring, dull jobs for little pay, out of your sight – making the simple message that you get when they are promoted (or passed over) strangely impactful. Put that meagre wage packet towards the cheapest oven on offer, and it’ll probably catch fire and kill you. This is a game that punishes you for being poor. It means that the rich, like the iconic Goth family, in their still-stunning graveyard-edged stone mansion stay, rich – while the poor stay poor. Social mobility in The Sims 1, I learned, is near impossible.

And having a social life? Forget it, at least when you’re on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. There’s simply no time to make friends, something I didn’t remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhood’s messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and – – relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically ‘Play in bed,’ thanks to the Livin’ it Up expansion pack that provided the world’s most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. There’s nothing dark about that expansion’s heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life….

(11) DOES IT PAY TO BE NICE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] That Hideous Strength (1945) by C. S. Lewis has had the first of two episodes of a documentary on BBC Radio 4. (You can access the documentary here.)

This novel came out before the Narnia books that so far have sold over 100 million copies. That Hideous Strength is that last in Lewis’s so-called space trilogy. Set in a somewhat dystopic, increasingly totalitarian, post-war Britain, it sees a woman’s dreaming enabling her to travel. But shadowy government agencies are in the mix but another nation appears to have a frightening programme of their own and apparently there is something hideous, alien, evil even, in the mix…

We’re not in Narnia anymore. It’s the late 1940s and an exhausted Britain is trying to recover from the war. The establishment of NICE (National Institute for Coordinated Experiments) seems to offer a positive future. There are confident predictions of a cure for cancer and new treatments for antisocial behaviour that will made prisons redundant. A tech revolution is blooming without restraint and NICE are secretly experimenting with the creation of trans-human beings of superior intellect. C S Lewis’s ‘modern fairy tale for grown-ups’ warns of a world where technocrats are kings.

Part one of a BBC Radio audio drama version of the story can be heard here: “CS Lewis: That Hideous Strength”.

(12) BITE ME. According to NPR, “Scientists grew human-like teeth in pigs. Here’s how and why”. So you won’t have to get dentures, but you will never be able to eat bacon ever again.

But researchers may be on track to developing a way to grow new, living teeth replacements. In a paper published in late December, a team at Tufts University reported having successfully grown human-like teeth in pigs.

Pamela Yelick, a professor at the Tufts School of Dental Medicine and lead researcher of the effort, said pigs have as many as five or six sets of teeth that grow throughout their lives.

If scientists can understand how pigs regrow and replace teeth so many times, Yelick said, they might be able to regrow teeth in people.

In their research, Yelick and her team took soft living tissue from both human and pig teeth, combined them in a lab, and then transplanted it into a mini pig’s mouth. They obtained the materials from pig jawbones and human teeth extracted for orthodontic reasons.

“In a few months, you can get a pretty good sized bioengineered tooth,” Yelick said, noting that while it’s “not perfect” in shape or size, the end product does closely resemble a natural tooth….

(13) ANCIENT ANIMAL MONSTER BURROWS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “Did giant ice age beasts carve these vast caves in South America?” asks Nature. Researchers are investigating who — or what — cut ancient tunnels in sandstone in Brazil and nearby nations.

For generations, these structures have puzzled travellers and scientists, who have debated how they formed. Explorers in the early twentieth century attributed the spaces to ancient Indigenous groups. But research in the past decade has coalesced around the theory that the caves were carved by extinct megafauna.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Dann, Kevin Lighton, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day, none other than lunar real estate salesman Daniel Dern. This is at least his fifth. But stick around — someday it will be his second fifth.]

Pixel Scroll 4/18/22 You Get A File, I’ll Get A Troll, We’ll Head Down To The Pixel Scroll, Honey, Enemy Mine

Posted on April 18, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) NEXT YEAR’S EASTERCON COMMITTEE PICKED. Conversation is the 2023 Eastercon – it will be held April 7-10. Where? “We don’t have a confirmed site yet,” they say. But somewhere in England. The convention website is here: Conversation 2023. And the guests of honor will be —

Zen Cho

Niall Harrison

Jennell Jaquays

Kari Sperring

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Ursula Vernon (T Kingfisher).

(2) EUROCON REPORT. Polish fan Marcin Klak writes about “Luxcon Eurocon 2022 – Convention From Behind the Mask” – a report that includes a photo of TAFF delegate “Orange Mike” Lowrey.

It was so good to see the people. I haven’t seen some friends for two and more years. Being able to greet them differently than on Zoom was great. Meeting some new people was also awesome. And last, but not least I had the opportunity to meet in person people whom I met online but haven’t yet seen in the real world – this was so cool. I had no idea how strongly I missed all of that. Don’t understand me wrong – virtual conventions are awesome. I appreciate them and think they were a blessing for those of us who attended them. Yet getting back to in-person conventioning was magical….

(3) SEPTEMBER SONG. Allen Steele told Facebook followers his email contained “A ROTTEN EASTER EGG”, and after being turned down as a Chicon 8 program participant he had much to say about the application process. He says he was “uninvited” after answering the questionnaire — because he claims they initiated the contact thus, in his view, issued an invitation. However, Chicon 8’s head of program says it was Steele who initiated things by filling in the form on the website requesting to be contacted.

When I opened my email this morning, here was what I found, printed verbatim. It came from a staff member for this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, an annual event I’ve attended — albeit infrequently in recent years — as a fan since 1973 and as a professional SF writer since 1989. I hadn’t yet decided whether to attend this year’s worldcon, but if I had, it would’ve been the fourth time I’ve been to one in Chicago (including once as a writer with a story on that year’s Hugo ballot).
“Dear Allen Steele.
“Thank you for reaching out to us with your interest in being on Program at Chicon 8: The 80th World Science Fiction Convention. We’re sending this email to inform you that we will not be extending you an invitation to participate as a panelist for the 2022 Worldcon in Chicago.
“Deciding who to invite as panelists is an ongoing multistep process that includes reviewing your program survey answers and the input of many members of the Chicon Program Team. As we have received requests from well over 1500 people, we cannot accept everyone, and so some difficult choices have to be made.
“Best,
“[NAME DELETED}
Head of Program for Chicon 8
My Pronouns: They/Them/Theirs”
This has really floored me, in a number of ways and for a number of reasons. First: I didn’t “reach out” to them. Instead, they reached out to me, in email I received in early March asking whether I would be interested in attending this year’s worldcon. Perhaps it was not technically an invitation, but in the past when I’ve received letters of this nature from worldcon committees, I’ve always felt it safe to assume that I was being asked to attend (for those who don’t know: this kind of invitation doesn’t include a free membership or having any of my hotel or travel expenses paid; it simply asks whether you would like to participate in panels, book signings, readings, etc.). So when I received it, I gave a positive response, assuming this was another worldcon invitation, something I’ve done dozens of times for dozens of years….

Steele also “joked” about pronoun preferences such as they/them/theirs.

Artist Bob Eggleton, in comments, made a suggestion in the spirit of Jon Del Arroz:

Chicon 8’s process for becoming a program participant is explained in detail here. After someone contacts the committee, this is the first of several things that happen —

- Within a few weeks we will send you the program participant survey. This tells us who you are, and gives us an overview of what you hope to contribute to the program. Among other things, this survey will include the opportunity to (optionally): Suggest panel topics that you would like to see run at the convention. Propose workshops and presentations that you would like to conduct as solo or duo presenters.
- Potential participants will be put through a vetting process to make sure that they are aligned with the values and principles set out in the convention code of conduct and anti-racism statement….

(4) THAT’S NOT STREAMING, IT’S A FLOOD. Ask.com wants to know “When Did It Become a Job to Be a Fan?” You might wonder after reading the previous item. But conrunning is not the focus of this article.

I never watched episodes three and four of Disney+’s The Book of Boba Fett. I read recaps and just tuned in for the juicy Mando-and-Baby-Yoda-filled episodes of the Star Wars show. I didn’t bother with HBO Max’s Peacemaker; James Gunn’s brand of humor and the absurdist violence in the DC Extended Universe’s (DCEU) The Suicide Squad wasn’t exactly my thing. And even though I have a soft spot for Oscar Isaac, I don’t know if I’ll ever finish watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) Moon Knight.
There’s way too much stuff to watch to be able to stay on top of everything — just take a look at our selection of movie and TV releases for April — and yet I can’t help but feel like a failed pop culture writer and media critic for all the things I’m skipping. I should be watching — and probably enjoying — all of it. But, most of the time, these serialized shows and movies that are part of a larger universe feel like homework….

(5) CHINESE SF. The Shimmer Program has released New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction, a collaboration between Clarkesworld and Storycom, edited by Neil Clarke, Xia Jia and Regina Kanyu Wang , including eight stories from Chinese sf writers. Early bird copies of the anthology have been sent out to the Kickstarter backers and it will be made available for purchase in June.

Writers: Shuang Chimu, Liu Xiao, Yang Wanqing, Hui Hu, Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu, Liang Qingsan, Shi Heiyao, Liao Shubo

Translators: Carmen Yiling Yan, Andy Dudak, Rebecca Kuang, Judith Huang, Emily Jin

(6) LONG REMEMBERED THUNDER. “Prehistoric Planet” is a five-night documentary event coming to Apple TV+ May 23.

…This series is produced by the world-renowned team at BBC Studios Natural History Unit with support from the photorealistic visual effects of MPC (“The Lion King,” “The Jungle Book”). “Prehistoric Planet” presents little-known and surprising facts of dinosaur life set against the backdrop of the environments of Cretaceous times, including coasts, deserts, freshwater, ice worlds and forests. From revealing eye-opening parenting techniques of Tyrannosaurus rex to exploring the mysterious depths of the oceans and the deadly dangers in the sky, “Prehistoric Planet” brings Earth’s history to life like never before.

(7) HALF A CENTURY OF SIMULTANEITY. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA has released the 50th episode of the Simultaneous Times podcast.

Stories featured in this episode are:

“RealView”- by Liam Hogan (music by RedBlueBlackSilver), read by Jean-Paul Garnier & Robin Rose Graves
“Psionic Thread” by Sam Fletcher (music by Phog Masheeen), read by Jean-Paul Garnier

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1997 — [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.] On this date a quarter of a century ago on Canada’s Citytv (which is sometimes just called City), Lexx (also known as LEXX: The Dark Zone Stories and Tales from a Parallel Universe) premiered as a series of four films. The series follows a group of rather unique and sometimes dysfunctional individuals aboard the living craft Lexx as they travel through two universes and encounter various planets including an Earth that is decidedly not ours.

It was created by Paul Donovan, Lex Gigeroff and Jeffrey Hirschfield, none of which had a background in the genre in any meaningful sense before this. Hirschfield wrote for three of the four seasons Lexx ran and voiced the character of the robot head 790.

Now Lexx had a large cast including Brian Downey, Eva Habermann and Xenia Seeberg. Should you be so inclined, and I’m not saying saying that you should be, go ask Google for the uncensored versions of the City broadcast Lexx as regards Eva Habermann and Xenia Seeberg. Let’s just say that when it hit Syfy that network reduced it from a hard “R” to a very friendly “PG” rating in terms of both language and nudity. I’ve also heard that quite a bit of violence was also removed as well. Remember that I’ve mentioned previously that Syfy emasculated Fifties SF series when they ran there too.

It would run, including the original four films of ninety-three minutes in length, for five seasons with the four actual seasons ending with a total of sixty-one episodes with a conventional running time of between forty-five and forty-eight minutes. SyFy trimmed three to five minutes out of each of these episodes.

Though the series was primarily filmed in Canada and Germany befitting it being a Canadian and German co-production, additional filming done on location in the British Virgin Islands. Iceland, Namibia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. I need a guide to which scenes were filmed where. Seriously I do.

Reception was decidedly mixed. The New York Daily News reviewer said she “can only imagine that the great SciFi channel must have been captured by idiot monsters from outer space and Germany” but the Independent got it spot-on when they noted that it is “extremely gory, not a little nasty and rather fun”. Finally the TV Guide summed it up by noting it is “a siren of distinction for its black comedy, skewed take on the human condition and open sexuality.”

It currently has a ninety-two percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 18, 1884 — Frank R. Paul. Illustrator who graced the covers of Amazing Stories beginning with this cover for April 1926, as well as Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories from June 1929 to October 1940 and a number of others. He also illustrated the cover of Gernsback’s Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 (Stratford Company, 1925), published first as a 1911–1912 serial in Modern Electrics. He was the Guest of Honor at the very first WorldCon, Nycon, in July 1939. He was inducted into Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2009. Stephen D. Korshak and Frank R. Paul’s From the Pen of Paul: The Fantastic Images of Frank R. Paul published in 2010 is the only work I found that looks at him. (Died 1963.)
Born April 18, 1930 — Clive Revill, 92. His first genre role was as Ambrose Dudley in The Headless Ghost, a late Fifties British film. He then was in Modesty Blaise in the dual roles of McWhirter / Sheik Abu Tahir followed by The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes playing Rogozhin. A choice role follows as he’s The Voice of The Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back. As for one-offs, he shows up in The Adventures of Robin Hood, The New Avengers, Wizards and Warriors in a recurring role as Wizard Vector, Dragon’s Lair, the second version of The Twilight Zone, Batman: The Animated Series in recurring role as as Alfred Pennyworth, Babylon 5, Freakazoid in a number of roles, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Pinky and The Brain… that’s not even close to a full listing!
Born April 18, 1946 — Janet Kagan. Another one who died way too young, damn it. “The Nutcracker Coup” was nominated for both the Hugo Award for Best Novelette and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, winning the Hugo at ConFrancisco. She has but two novels, one being Uhura’s Song, a Trek novel, and quite a bit short fiction which is out in The Complete Kagan from Baen Books and is available from the usual digital suspects as everything else by her. (Died 2008.)
Born April 18, 1965 — Stephen Player, 57. Some Birthday honor folks are elusive. What I did find is awesome as he’s deep in the Pratchett’s Discworld and the fandom that sprung up around it. He illustrated the first two Discworld Maps, and quite a number of the books including the25th Anniversary Edition of The Light Fantastic and The Illustrated Wee Free Men. Oh, but that’s just a mere small taste of all he’s done, He also did the production design for the Sky One production of Hogfather and The Colour of Magic. He did box art and card illustrations for Guards! Guards! A Discworld Boardgame. Finally, he contributed to some Discworld Calendars, games books, money for the Discworld convention. I want that money.
Born April 18, 1969 — Keith R. A. DeCandido, 53. I found him working in these genre media franchises: such as Supernatural, Andromeda, Farscape, Firefly, Aliens, Star Trek in its various permutations, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Spider-Man, X-Men, Hercules, Thor, Sleepy Hollow,and Stargate SG-1. Now I will admit that his Farscape: House of Cards novel is quite fantastic, and it’s available from the usual suspects. He’s also written quite a bit of non-tie-in fiction.
Born April 18, 1971 — David Tennant, 51. The Tenth Doctor and my favorite of the modern Doctors along with Thirteen whom I’m also very fond of. There are some episodes such as the “The Unicorn and The Wasp” that I’ve watched repeatedly and even reviewed over at Green Man. He’s also done other spectacular genre work such as the downright creepy Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, and and Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He’s also in the Beeb’s remake of the The Quatermass Experiment as Dr. Gordon Briscoe.
Born April 18, 1973 — Cora Buhlert, 49. With Jessica Rydill, she edits the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a most excellent site. She has a generous handful of short fiction professionally published, and was a finalist for Best Fan Writer Hugo at CoNZealand and DisCon III, and has been nominated this year again at Chicon 8. Very impressive indeed! And of course she’s a member of our community here.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

The Flying McCoys has a tip that belongs in your monster maintenance manual.

(11) COMICS FOR UKRAINE. Kurt Busiek is among the many stellar contributors to Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds, a benefit anthology edited by multi-Eisner Award-winner Scott Dunbier. The book will be full-color, 96 pages, 8×12 inches, and available in both hardcover and softcover editions.

Mark Evanier will be in the book, too:

Among the many writers and artists contributing to this effort are Sergio Aragonés and myself. We’re doing a new Groo story that will be included. You can see the whole list of contributors here and you can get your order in for a copy of this historic volume on this page.

There have been $28,808 of pre-orders, with 30 days to go. Order here.

A benefit anthology featuring an all-star lineup of comic book creators, with all proceeds being donated to Ukrainian refugees. Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds features an incredible roster of comics talent united under the mission of providing relief to the war-torn Ukraine, which has suffered attacks from neighboring Russia since late February. With the exception of hard costs (printing, credit-card fees, marketing) all of the funds raised by Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds will benefit the relief efforts in Ukraine in partnership with Operation USA. Since time of of the essence, if the campaign is successful, right after the campaign is over and payments have been collected by Zoop, all funds will be sent to Operation USA immediately.

(12) NO BRAINER? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] It’s apparently been a burning question for almost 2 decades. Is 28 Days Later a zombie movie or not? I mean, the revening hordes are not technically undead – type zombies, but they do act pretty much like one & spread the infection by biting their victims.

So, what does screenwriter Alex Garland say? But what about director Danny Boyle? “28 Days Later writer settles long-running debate” at Digital Spy.

…The premise of 28 Days Later follows a pandemic caused by the accidental release of a contagious virus named The Rage, but the infected don’t die and then come back to life like a typical zombie.
However, they do exhibit zombie-like aggressive behaviour and spread the disease by biting victims, though, so that’s where the debate comes in….

(13) HE’S A BLOCKHEAD. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] News has broken that Jason Momoa will be trading in the ripped physiques of Aquaman and Duncan Idaho for the squared off physique of a lead character in a movie based on Minecraft. Or, at least, negotiations to that effect are nearing completion. “Jason Momoa to Star in ‘Minecraft’ Movie for Warner Bros.” says The Hollywood Reporter.

… Gaming movies have been on a hot streak in recent years, with 20th Century launching a hit franchise with Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy last year, and Paramount finding success with its Sonic sequel earlier this month.
Momoa and Warners have Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom due out in March 2023. The film is the sequel to the $1 billion-grossing 2018 film Aquaman.

(14) DROPPING THE HAMMER. Marvel Studios’ Thor: Love and Thunder opens in theaters July 8, 2022.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a journey unlike anything he’s ever faced – a quest for inner peace. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who – to Thor’s surprise – inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes discuss “Why Magical Realism is a Global Phenomenon”.

Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, magical realism in literature and other media combines fantasy elements with concrete realities to make statements about the world we live in. In this episode, we explore its roots, lay out the tenets of the genre, and discuss how it has flourished in Latin American Literature. Hosted by Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes, It’s Lit! is a show about our favorite books, genres, and why we love to read.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Rob Thornton, Bill, Will R., Nickpheas, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day John A Arkansawyer.]

Pixel Scroll 2/16/22 This Page Intentionally Left Indescribable

Posted on February 16, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) WHEN ‘THINGS TO COME’ WAS NEW. The videos featuring the musical score of Things to Come linked in the Pixel Scroll for February 13 prompted John L. Coker III to pass along this transcript of a conversation that he had with David A. Kyle about the movie over 20 years ago.

[David A. Kyle:] H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come was one of the first serious science fiction movies; it considered big problems and big situations, and had a great cast.  This is a picture that was full of idealism, with the viewpoint of the future as one world.  Fans of science fiction had hoped that mankind would all band together and we would all be Earth people.  When we went out to the planets, we would be representing the Earth as a whole, rather than as individual countries.
The picture was socialistic, as H. G. Wells was, and it was rare when a real science fiction picture came out.  It dealt with real things, and forecast what was going to happen in Europe.  It is set in 1936, when an unidentified enemy bombs England and war starts.  The sky is black with airplanes coming over, all quite visionary.
I remember when it first came out. It played in a country theater near my home in Monticello, New York, for three days. Because I was a young newspaper reporter, I could go into a theater anytime I wanted, and I wouldn’t have to pay. The movie was so prophetic, and there was also the great music written by Arthur Bliss. I had recordings of that music at one time, and it was really drummed into my head. It still haunts me.
When I went to New York with some of the science fiction fans in the late 1930s, we went to the Ivory Tower. This was a breeding ground for writers such as Dick Wilson, Donald A. Wollheim and Fred Pohl. As I came out of the subway, and approached the building, I would run through my head the march from Things to Come. Time passed, and in 1939 war broke out in Europe, and we began to see the prophecies coming true.
In 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the next year I enlisted. I became an officer and was sent to Northern Ireland. It was midnight and I was by myself in my hut, and had my radio on. Then came the unforgettable music from Things to Come. I remembered scenes such as the bombing of London and suddenly this creepy crawly feeling went up my back. There I was, in uniform, a part of the conflict that was going on around me, and I realized I had become part of the picture. It had come to life.
Six months or so later, I was in London, looking in the publication What’s On.  It listed all of the cinemas, and I noticed that Things to Come was playing.  How could I resist going to see it, being in London with a war going on?
A few days later I was in the Savoy Hotel with a Canadian officer, and I saw Edmond Chapman, who played the role of Pippin Passworthy, opposite Raymond Massey’s main character.  So there he was, in his R. A. F. uniform, and I went over to him to say hello.  I told him that I had been intrigued by the film that I saw years ago, and that I had gone again to see it the other night.  He had several kind things to say.  It was a thrill for me to be there with a character from the film in uniform, in London, during the war.  It was as if he had somehow come alive from the movie.  It was surreal but so realistic.  I was nearly overwhelmed by the experience.  I’ll never forget it.
Years later, when I was living in England and attending a Rotary meeting, a man across the table from me who had been an entertainer told me that when he was young, he had visited the studios where they were making Things to Come.  He had been an extra on the picture, and appeared in the scene where all of the troops were jumping off of the back of the big ship.  He remembered when H. G. Wells would come around and talk with members of the cast about the picture.
Science fiction and the cinema and fannish friends all sort of came together.  And, in my time, I was so close to the imaginative world that our writers created that sometimes I felt that I had become part of that world for a short period of time.

(2) IDA KEOGH Q&A. Bob the Alien occasionally takes over author Paul L. Arvidson’s blog and interviews other British SF Association authors. [Via Emily Inkpen.] “Bob the Alien Interviews… Ida Keogh”.

Bob: Well what an interesting specimen we’ve beamed up here. Who are you and why have you got a tail? Other humans don’t seem to.
Ida Keogh : Hi Bob! I’m Ida, creator of words, wrangler of precious metal and occasional mermaid. Thank you for having me. Tails are great, aren’t they? Other humans are missing out.
Bob: Is this mind probe thingy working? It tells me you’re another one of these writer types. What makes you want to do that?
I.K: I have words inside me that need to get out. I love to shape phrases, sculpt paragraphs, stack pages. Sharing my words with other humans makes me glow….

(3) A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT. [Item by Jennifer Hawthorne.] I was wandering around Reddit (being careful not to step into the pools of muck scattered around there) when I found a very cool post from a guy doing a read-through of ALL Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award winners. He’s posting them on his blog as he gets through them, and I am very impressed (and somewhat appalled) at all the work he’s doing. “The Project” at Don’t Forget to Read a Book. The format of the reviews is explained here.

“Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner” is The Project’s latest post – here’s an excerpt.

…What is there to say about a book that is just what it is? I was unfamiliar with the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, but apparently it is, well, a thing. A brief synopsis of the original: Thomas meets the Queen of Elfland, goes with her for seven years, sees many delights, and returns to the mortal world. He is given the gift of prophecy.
This novel version expands upon the story, offering an introduction to Thomas before he goes to Fairy, exploring his time there, and then chronicling his later life after returning. All of this added content is rather tepid. Song of Achilles is a great demonstration of the power of reimagining a well known tale and offering a new perspective. There is none of that here. No pushing of boundaries, no real expansion of the mythos. Kushner fills in the blanks in the same way that most others likely would as well….

(4) LEVAR BURTON ON TREVOR NOAH. “LeVar Burton Encourages Kids To Read Banned Books: ‘That’s Where the Good Stuff Is’” – Comicbook.com introduces a clip from The Daily Show, “America’s Book Bans: The Latest Culture War Front”. (Burton appears after the 8:30 mark.)

Literacy advocate, Star Trek star, and game show host LeVar Burton wants people, particularly children, to read banned books. The former Reading Rainbow host appeared during a segment about banned books on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. In the piece, Burton attempts to read some seemingly innocuous books only to get cut off because of a book banning for one contrived reason or another. Eventually, Burton runs away after hearing sirens nearby, but not before encouraging folks to read banned books “because that’s where the good stuff is.” You can watch the entire The Daily Show segment below….

(5) DANGEROUS VISIONS AND NEW WORLDS: RADICAL SCIENCE FICTION. On Saturday, February 26 and Sunday, February 27, City Lights in conjunction with PM Press will present a two-day symposium exploring the radical currents of Science Fiction and celebrating the launch of Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre.

Featuring an all-star cast of presenters including Samuel Delany, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Michael Moorcock, Cory Doctorow, Marge Piercy, Maitland McDonagh, Annalee Newitz, Jonathan Lethem, Shelley Streeby, Mike Stax, Karen Joy Fowler, Nick Mamatas, Ann VanderMeer, Matt Bell, adrienne maree brown, Daniel Shank Cruz, Lucy Sussex, Mimi Mondal, Vandana Singh, Rebecca Baumann, Meg Elison, Terry Bisson, Andrew Nette & Iain McIntyre

Free (Registration Required) There are four sessions to register for on Day One, and another four on Day Two.

(6) MCKENNA’S NEW BOOK. The Fantasy Hive conducts an “Interview with Juliet E. McKenna” about The Cleaving, “a feminist retelling of the Arthurian legends follows the tangled stories of four women: Nimue, Ygraine, Morgana, and Guinevere, as they fight to control their own destinies amid the wars and rivalries that will determine the destiny of Britain.” The book will be published by Angry Robots in May 2023.

Can you tell us a bit more about your leading characters, Nimue, Ygraine, Morgana, and Guinevere? They’re such iconic characters, how did you approach recreating them?
[Juliet McKenna] Are they so iconic? Everyone knows Morgana and Guinevere’s names, but I can think of half a dozen very different portrayals of them both. This isn’t a problem though. That variety gives me tremendous freedom to come up with my own take. Nimue? The sources can’t even agree on how to spell her name, or exactly what she does, so I’ve got even more leeway. Ygraine’s barely mentioned in so many versions that I pretty much had a blank page there.
My approach to writing all these women has been to make them fully rounded, believable people. Far too often they’re two-dimensional figures who come and go to serve the plot by doing something or having something done to them. I took a longer view. I thought about the ways their experiences would shape their personalities, and how the people they become will influence the choices they make.
I also looked at the influence they would have on each other. In so many Arthurian retellings women are defined by their relationships to the men at the centre of the story. Their actions only matter when what they do matters to a man. In reality, women have crucial relationships with each other, as mothers, daughters and most of all as friends and allies. There’s no way these women caught up in these events wouldn’t look to each other for support. That opens up these myths in a whole new way….

(7) CELEBRATE FAN ART. 2019 Rotsler Award winner Alison Scott has now got a website to show off her fan art 00 “Alison Scott” at Myportfolio.com. Faneds who would like to use any of this material, or perhaps something made just for them (eventually) should get in touch with Alison. This example was done for DisCon III but fits it perfectly here, don’t you think?

(8) MEAD OBIT. Prolific sff author Melissa Mead, who was born with cerebral palsy, died February 15. Her friend Eliza Ames paid tribute on Facebook.

I’ve struggled all day with how to write something about my friend Melissa Mead. Usually, writing my feelings is not hard, but Missy was a writer too, and a damn good one. Missy was born with Cerebral Palsy. Even that one illness is enough to destroy lives, and it wasn’t the only thing she had to fight her way through. Missy was a fierce fighter, and yet the single kindest person I’ve ever met….
Missy may have been limited by her body, but her imagination knew no bounds. She wrote sci fi and fantasy stories, and they were amazing. Every character felt real and every situation, no matter how fantastic, contained such imagery and forethought that it felt always as if that COULD exist….

Deirdre Saoirse Moen pointed out Melissa Mead’s recent article about disability representation in fiction, “I Don’t Hate Tiny Tim. Really!”, at Stupefying Stories Magazine. It’s brilliant.

Poor Tiny Tim.
I’m not saying that because he has a disability. I’m saying that because everyone, from his readers to his creator, pities him because he has a disability. He doesn’t pity himself, though! He joins in his siblings’ games whenever possible, and they cheerfully take him along with them. And while his father calls him “good as gold,” he’s not a perfect saint. When his father insists that the family drink a toast to his hard-hearted boss, Ebeneezer Scrooge, “Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it.”…

(9) MEL KEEFER (1926-2022). Comic book and animation artist Mel Keefer has died at the age of 95. Mark Evanier wrote a tribute at News From ME.

…No one is quite sure how many newspaper strips he worked on but I know of these: Perry Mason, Dragnet, Gene Autry, Mac Divot, Thorne McBride, Willis Barton M.D. and Rick O’Shay. His longest run was with Mac Divot, which ran from 1955 to 1977. A lot of comic strip fans didn’t follow it because it was about golf and newspapers often ran it in the sports section. He ghosted on at least a half-dozen others but the most notable was Bash Brannigan, the strip drawn by “Stanley Ford” (Jack Lemmon) in the movie, How to Murder Your Wife. Mel did all the comic art in the film and when you thought you were seeing a close-up of Lemmon’s hand drawing his character, that was Mel’s hand you were seeing….

(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1967 — [Item by Cat Eldridge] Fifty-five years ago, Star Trek’s “Space Seed” first aired on NBC. It was the twenty-second episode of the first season and it was directed by Marc Daniel from a teleplay from Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber. The former was both a major writer and a show-runner on the series; the latter did writing for Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Lost In Space and The Time Tunnel. The story was by Weber.

Yes, this is the episode that introduced Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh. He would of course return in The Wrath of Khan which would be nominated for a Hugo at ConStellation the year that Blade Runner won. From my viewpoint, and I know some of you may beg to differ, the only other guest performer worth noting is Madlyn Rhue as Lt. Marla McGivers.

Director Nicholas Meyer stated in interviews that he wrote McGivers out of his drafts of The Wrath of Khan in order to give Khan more motivation for being pissed off. Anyone remember if Khan made reference to her in the film? I’ve seen it at three times but not in at least twenty years now, so I don’t remember.

James Blish who was working from the yet script drafts at the time used the name Sibahl Khan Noonien in his novella long adaptation for the 1968 Bantam Books’ Star Trek 2 anthology which shows that the name change was a late decision.

Passing references to the events here appear in here will later make it to Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.

Reception at the time of its broadcast was quite positive though the reviewers for Tor.com much later on really didn’t like the relationship between Khan and McGivers saying in their of the episode that it was “really uncomfortable to watch her immediate attraction to him and her easy acceptance of his abusive and controlling behavior”.

I’m am not, repeat, not going to talk about Benedict Cumberbatch portraying Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness. Really, really not going to talk about him doing so.

Greg Cox wrote a very much not canon novel titled To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh which in great detail gave us the romance of Khan and Givers. I can’t say I’ve got much interest in reading it.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 16, 1933 — Jim Harmon. During the Fifties and Sixties, he wrote more than fifty short stories and novelettes for Amazing Stories, Future Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, If, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and other magazines. Most of his fiction was collected in Harmon’s Galaxy. EoSF says he has one genre novel, The Contested Earth, whereas ISFDB lists two more, Sex Burns Like Fire and The Man Who Made Maniacs. He’s a member of First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 2010.)
Born February 16, 1940 — Angela Carter. She’s best remembered for The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories where she took fairy tales and made them very, very adult in tone. Personally I’d recommend The Curious Room instead,as it contains her original screenplays for the BSFA winning The Company of Wolves which starred Angela Lansbury and The Magic Toyshop films, both of which were based on her own original stories. Though not even genre adjacent, her Wise Children is a brilliant and quite unsettling look at the theatre world. (Died 1992.)
Born February 16, 1951 — William Katt, 71. Ralph Hinkley, the lead of The Greatest American Hero. A series I know I watched and loved at the time. In December 1975, he auditioned for the part of Luke Skywalker. But didn’t get the role obviously.
Born February 16, 1953 — Mike Glyer, 69. Happy Birthday! OGH has won the Hugo Award 11 times in two categories: File 770 won the Best Fanzine Hugo in 1984, 1985, 1989, 2000, 2001 2008, and 2016. He himself has won the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1984, 1986, 1988, and 2016. The 1982 Worldcon presented him a special award in 1982 for Keeping the Fan in Fanzine Publishing. He even wrote several pieces of genre fiction, “The Six Who Are Boring” and “The Men Who Corflued Mohammed.”
Born February 16, 1954 — Iain M. Banks. I’m certain I’ve read the entire Culture series even though I certainly didn’t read them in the order they were written. My favorites? Certainly The Hydrogen Sonata was bittersweet for being the last ever, Use of Weapons and the very first, Consider Phlebas are also my faves. And though not genre, I’m still going to make a plug for Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram. It’s about single malt whisky, good food and his love of sports cars. And yes, Green Man has reviewed it. How could we not, it being by Banks? (Died 2013.)

“It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those.”

Thoughts from the late great #IainBanks who was born #onthisday in 1954. We miss you, Iain. pic.twitter.com/GxNHIrMrS9
— National Library of Scotland (@natlibscot) February 16, 2018

Born February 16, 1957 — Ardwight Chamberlain, 65. The voice of Kosh on Babylon 5. And that quite tickles me as I don’t think they credited it during the series, did they? Most of his other voice work is English-dubbing versions of Japanese anime including Digimon: Digital Monsters and The Swiss Family Robinson: Flone of the Mysterious Island.
Born February 16, 1957 — LeVar Burton, 65. Well y’all know what series he was on and what character he played that he’s best known for so I can dispense with that. And yes, that series did win Hugos, “The Inner Light” did at ConFrancisco and “All Good Things” did at Intersection. Other genre appearances include The Supernaturals, a zombie film, as Pvt. Michael Osgood, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies voicing Black Lightning and in another zombie film Rise of the Zombies as Dr. Dan Halpern. Plus his acclaimed reading series.
Born February 16, 1964 — Christopher Eccleston, 58. The Ninth Doctor, who’s my third favorite among the new ones behind David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker. Other genre work includes 28 Days Later, The Seeker, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (a truly awful film), Thor: The Dark World, The Leftovers, The Second Coming and The Borrowers. He also played Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Barbican Theatre.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro has a genre IKEA gag.

(13) THE ACME OF FILMMAKING. Screen Crush reports “Wile E. Coyote’s Getting a Live-Action Movie Starring John Cena”.

Well, John Cena’s having a good day.
Not only did his HBO Max series Peacemaker get renewed for a second season, he’s also gotten tapped to star in the upcoming live-action Looney Tunes movie Coyote vs. Acme. The concept is vaguely Space Jam-ish, in that it takes place in a world where humans animated cartoons co-exist. (There’s no basketball this time, though.)
The movie will be directed by Dave Green, whose previous efforts include Earth to Echo and the live-action (with CGI) Teenage Mutant Ninja sequel, Out of the Shadows. The premise is actually based on a 1990 New Yorker article titled “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier. (You can read it here.) Here are the specifics of the plot, via Deadline:
The film follows Wile E. Coyote, who after ACME products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, decides to hires a billboard lawyer to sue the ACME Corporation. The case pits Wile E. and his lawyer against the latter’s intimidating former boss (Cena), but a growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win….

(14) PERSPECTIVE ON TODAY. “George Takei: ‘I maintain that without optimism, we’ve already failed’” – so he tells an interviewer from the Washington Post. The profile includes a long reminiscence of his experience being taken to a WWII Japanese internment camp.

Let me ask you about maybe your defining role, your “Star Trek” role. Having experienced discrimination against Japanese Americans during and after World War II, what did it mean to you to as an actor to be able to take a role that didn’t play to the stereotypes of what Hollywood was portraying at the moment?
I immediately recognized that this was a breakthrough opportunity for me. For one thing, it was steady work if it sold. I was just doing guest shots here and there. And secondly, it was a part of the leadership team. A breakthrough opportunity, not only for me, but for the image of Asians and Asian Americans on television. The creator of the show, Gene Roddenberry, was extraordinary. He said the Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for Starship Earth and that it was the diversity of this Earth that the strength of this starship comes from.

(15) GOOD OMENS. “In Pictures: Star-spotting in Bo’ness as Good Omens 2 films with David Tennant and Michael Sheen” — the Edinburgh News has numerous photos of the actors on location in the city the other day.

Fans snapped pictures of stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen as they prepared to film scenes around the Hippodrome Cinema
They were joined by Dame Siân Phillips, while extras wearing feather-adorned caps and 1920s flapper-style dresses walked around the set….

(16) THE (KAURI) HELMET OF BOBA FETT. [Item by Soon Lee.] New Zealand actor Temuera Morrison, who plays the title character on The Book of Boba Fett, was presented with a carved wooden Boba Fett helmet. “Temuera Morrison honoured in Rotorua with Boba Fett kauri carving” at Newshub.

The carver, Graham Hoete a.k.a. MrG carved it out of native kauri and has shared the video of the gifting.

Exclusive footage (part 1): Presenting the Boba fett Helmet to Temuera Morrison. pic.twitter.com/hBcFpXoZKm
— Graham Hoete aka MrG (@WorldofMrG) February 15, 2022

Exclusive footage (Part 2): Presenting the Boba fett Helmet to Temuera Morrison. pic.twitter.com/MNcSSNt6Yk
— Graham Hoete aka MrG (@WorldofMrG) February 16, 2022

And also some of the carving process.

HERE IT IS!????????????????The Final Video just released by @starwars of the FINISHED BOBA FETT helmet i carved for Temuera Morrison. Mauri ora! pic.twitter.com/KNVnpLmbc2
— Graham Hoete aka MrG (@WorldofMrG) February 15, 2022

(17) CHRIS AND ZACH; BACK TOGETHER AGAIN. CNET reports “Star Trek 4 Will Bring Back Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto”.

It’s been six years since the last Star Trek movie, but the wait for the next one is coming to an end. J.J. Abrams, director of 2009’s Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, announced plans on Tuesday to bring back original cast members for a fourth film.
“We are thrilled to say that we are hard at work on a new ‘Star Trek’ film that will be shooting by the end of the year that will be featuring our original cast and some new characters that I think are going to be really fun and exciting and help take ‘Star Trek’ into areas that you’ve just never seen before,” Abrams said during the Paramount Investors Day Presentation…

(18) RESCUE RANGERS RETURNING. Disney+ will air new episodes of “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” beginning May 20. The lead voice actors will be John Mulaney as Chip, and Andy Samberg as Dale, which is very intriguing casting.

Rescuing the world takes a pair. A comeback 30 years in the making, the hybrid live-action/CG animated action-comedy catches up with the former Disney Afternoon television stars in modern-day Los Angeles. “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” premieres May 20, 2022, exclusively on Disney+.

(19) CAT BURGLAR. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Because this Netflix cartoon is interactive, you can watch this cartoon animal bash-a-thon over and over!

Classic cartoon craziness meets an interactive quiz in CAT BURGLAR. In this Tex Avery inspired toon from the creators of BLACK MIRROR, the viewer helps Rowdy Cat vex Peanut the Security Pup and break into a museum with the goal of making off with a priceless prize. With an average runtime of ten minutes, and over an hour and a half of animation to choose from, the viewer could play CAT BURGLAR a hundred times and never view the same cartoon twice!

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Rob Thornton, Jennifer Hawthorne, Olav Rokne, Soon Lee, Chris Barkley, Michael J. Walsh, John L. Coker III, Steven French, Alison Scott, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day JeffWarner.]

Pixel Scroll 1/15/22 Pixelpunk Scrollcore

Posted on January 15, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) SEND ME IN, COACH. Continuing yesterday’s “squeecore” discussion — John Scalzi is happy to be in the conversation anytime, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with the point he’s being used to illustrate. “Portrait of the Author As a Component of a ‘Punk-Or-Core’ Formulation” at Whatever. (Running the tweet, too, because I love the graphic.)

Hello Twitter I have just written something long, deeply nerdy and more than a bit narcissistic, about my thoughts on when people try to jam me and/or my work into a "X-punk" or "Y-core" SF/F subgenre formulation. COME WALLOW IN ITS OVERT, GRIMY ME-NESShttps://t.co/ICLwX32r0i
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) January 15, 2022

… My canal, as it turns out, runs across a lot of thematic ground, and does a fair amount of intersecting. Some of that is by design, since I am easily bored, as a human and a writer, and like to splash around in new places. Some of that is just following the lay of the land. At the end of the day, however, it means that depending one’s inclinations and rhetorical needs, and contingent on examples, I can be grouped in with the gun-humping dudes who write military science fiction, or the woke SJW scolds who are currently ruining the Hugos, or pretty much wherever else you need me to go to make your point.
And at least superficially you won’t be wrong. I mean, I did write that story that you’re pointing to, and it does exist in that sphere, and I’m not sorry I wrote that thing, and may write a thing like it again, if I have a mind to. But I suspect on a deeper level — the level that actually makes your point something more than a facile, half-baked thesis to burble out onto a blog post or podcast because content content content — using me as an example is not hugely useful….

(2) HER MILEAGE VARIED. Cora Buhlert also shared her thoughts about Rite Gud’s “squeecore” podcast and Camestros Felapton’s post in response: “Science Fiction Is Never Evenly Distributed”.

… The podcasters are not wrong, cause all of these trends definitely exist in current SFF, though they’re not one unifying trend, but several different trends. Uplifting and upbeat SFF is certainly a trend and it already has a name that is much less derogatory than “squeecore”, namely hopepunk. Reader-insert characters and a video-game/RPG feel is a trend as well and there is a term or rather two for it, namely LitRPG and gamelit.
I agree that there is a strong influence of YA fiction and a tendency to show younger characters gaining skills rather than being already fully developed in contemporary SFF, but that’s the result of the YA SFF boom of the past twenty-five years, which served as a gateway to the genre for countless readers….
… As I explained in this post, Galactic Journey is very good at showing how different trends as well as older and newer forms of SFF coexist in the same period, because we try to cover everything and not just the cherry-picked examples that later eras choose to remember.
Also, quite often works are shoehorned into a trend, because they vaguely match some characteristics thereof and came out around the same time, even though they don’t really fit. The Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey are a good example. They are often shoehorned into the 2010s space opera revival, even though The Expanse has nothing in common with the likes of the Imperial Radch trilogy, the Paradox trilogy, the Hexarchate series or A Memory Called Empire beyond being set in space. Meanwhile, The Expanse draws heavily on mundane science fiction (a movement that never really got beyond its manifesto), Cyberpunk, golden age science fiction and the 1990s “cast of thousands/everybody and the dog gets a POV” style of SFF epics that never got a name, even though it was very much a thing and still lingers on….

(3) STILL WRESTLING WITH AMAZON. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki told Facebook followers that he heard from Amazon KDP again. And he posted more screencaps of his correspondence with them.

Some more updates on the Amazon KDP fiasco, they called me again yesterday, to explain why I can’t edit my banking details. Must have seen my tweet on it. They said it’s a security issue. And offered some more assistance in replacing it and ensuring I can get the royalties.
On another note, though related, I’m trying to use the account of a friend that was in the US because well, they don’t accept Nigerian bank accounts. I was using Payoneer, a service that mimics US bank accounts and essentially reads as if you are in the US. It’s legit btw, and accepted by Amazon. I’m pointing this out because a number of people latched on to this when I mentioned it, amongst the methods I use to get past through these restrictions. They said oh yes see, it’s your fault. One of those methods you use must have broken the rules.
This is how people enable racism even when they don’t cause it. They look for anything to justify and deny your marginalization. It either doesn’t exist, it didn’t happen, or it’s your own fault. A number of players were on every platform that carried this, saying this. You don’t even know what those methods are. But it must be one of them & this must all be my fault & deserved. The world tries to lock you out, then punishes you viciously for trying to not be locked out. Then people blame you for even trying at all to circumvent those lockouts. Every publishing-payment platform I’ve tried to use to do anything has either banned, blocked me or doesn’t work here or allow payment systems. From Draft2Digital to Smash words to Kickstarter to Paypal to Amazon KDP, to even Gofundme. But it must all be my fault. I must have violated all their rules somehow. Even GoFundMe that’s supposed to be for people in need of help. I wasn’t even qualified to beg for money. I needed an American to beg for me. If I had even tried to insert myself at any point into the arrangement, it’d have crashed….

(4) EXPANDING ON THE EXPANSE? Den of Geek contemplates what could happen to keep the series from really being over: “The Expanse: The Possibility of a Season 7 or Sequel Series”. (Beware spoilers.)

The Possibility of an Expanse Movie
While The Expanse team went into Season 6 knowing it would almost certainly be the show’s last, they chose to tell the story that included a Laconia-set subplot adapted from Expanse novella Strange Dogs. Unlike basically every other the story in Season 6, the Laconia subplot about a girl named Cara and her efforts to save brother Xan with the help some alien creatures was very forward-focused. It also properly introduced Admiral Duarte, a character who becomes incredibly important in the remaining books in the series. The decision to give so much of Season 6’s precious narrative time could have been made as a way to expand the scope of this world, and to pay homage to these future book plots, and/or it could hint that the Expanse production team have not completely ruled out the possibility of a future for this adaptation…

(5) INSIDE THE SHELL. Den of Geek points out “The Expanse Series Finale Easter Eggs: The Sci-Fi Heroes Who Helped” (Beware spoilers.)

As the coalition forces prepare to storm the ring station in The Expanse series finale, the Rocinante crew is running through its systems check, and voices are heard in the background signaling their readiness. “Thrace ready!” we hear, and our ears perk up. How unusual to share the name of one of the most badass space dogfighters ever, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace of Battlestar Galactica. When that’s followed by “Ripley ready!” all doubt is removed. Naming yet another famous spacefarer, Ellen Ripley of Alien, can’t be a coincidence.
Fortunately, fans of Easter eggs like this are provided with a quick glimpse of the roster on Naomi’s screen, and it’s filled with the great heroes of space science fiction in movies and television. It’s fitting that, as The Expanse makes its final bow, the “Great Hunt” of sci-fi culture appears to assist in the battle to end all battles. It’s easy, in fact, to spot the rest of Ripley’s team from Aliens: Hudson, Hicks, and Vasquez. So who else is among the assault team?…

(6) EXPANSIVE ACTING. Forbes’ Rob Salkowitz poses the questions: “Shohreh Aghdashloo On ‘The Expanse’ Series Finale And The Show’s Stellar Legacy”. (Beware spoilers.)

RS: Were there times when you and the cast watched the finished shows where you were surprised by how certain scenes came out, or by the work of your castmates?
SA: Absolutely. Every season, the producers would screen the first two shows for the cast all together in a theatre. There was one moment, maybe from season four or five, where Amos [Wes Chatham] was talking about his mother, and it was so powerful that I just lost it. I had to leave the theatre crying, I couldn’t help myself. The other cast members, my friends, came up to me and asked me what happened and I said I was just overcome seeing that scene. But you know, there were so many scenes and moments that felt so real like that, which made me feel like we did a good job bringing this saga to life.

(7) SPLASH-A-BOOM. An underwater volcano eruption this morning near Tonga caused a small tsunami which hit the west coast of Central, North and South America, and the east coast of Hawai’i. Hawaiian fan Dave Rowe says, “Here it was only one foot high (three feet was expected).” And he passed along a link to an impressive 2-second video compiled from real-time satellite photos of the eruption: “Shockwave By Near-Tonga Eruption Captured From Himawari Satellite” at Space Weather Gallery.

(8) THE BIG TIME. M. John Harrison is one of the 2022 Booker Prize judges.

…He sold his first story in 1965, and in 1969 joined the staff of the UK speculative fiction magazine New Worlds, where he edited the books pages until 1978.
His novels include Climbers, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1989; Nova Swing, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2007; and The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, which won the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize for innovation in fiction….

(9) I’VE SEEN THAT FACE BEFORE. Jordan D. Smith, who runs The Dark Crusade, a Karl Edward Wagner podcast, lists three examples of Karl Edward Wagner showing up as a character in other people’s fiction: “Three for the Road: Karl Edward Wagner in Fiction”.

… Below are three stories from the past ten years that have contained characters loosely based on, or inspired by, Karl Edward Wagner….

(10) TWO CATS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE. Mark Evanier eulogized voice actor “Leo DeLyon, R.I.P.” at News From ME. DeLyon died September 21 at the age of 96.

…We are especially interested in him because he occasionally did voices for cartoons. In the original Top Cat series in 1961, he did the voices of the characters Spook and Brain. That’s them above with Leo between them. He did other voices now and then for Hanna-Barbera…on The Smurfs and Paw Paws, and on a few specials when they needed voice actors who could sing. He was also the voice of Flunkey the baboon in the Disney version of The Jungle Book…

(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1995 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-seven years ago on this evening, the very short lived sequel to the Sixties Get Smart series aired on Fox. It too was called Get Smart. And it had Don Adams and Barbara Feldon still playing Maxwell Smart and Agent 99. Edward Platt who played The Chief had died some twenty years earlier.

The relative success of the reunion movie Get Smart, Again! six years earlier prompted the development of a weekly revival of Get Smart but the ratings were absolutely abysmal, so it was canned after seven episodes. Thirteen years later, the Get Smart film despite critics not particularly liking it was a great success.

The Variety review was typical of what critics thought of it: “Would you believe there is very little to laugh about in this return of Get Smart, a decidedly unfunny undertaking that could have clearly benefited from some input from Buck Henry or at the very least a phone call from Mel Brooks.”

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 15, 1879 — Ernest Thesiger. He’s here because of his performance as Doctor Septimus Pretorius in James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein. He had a major role in Hitchcock’s not completed and now lost Number 13 (or Mrs. Peabody) which is even genre adjacent. He was also in The Ghoul which was an early Boris Karloff film. And he continued to show up in SFF films such as The Ghosts of Berkeley Square where he was Dr. Cruickshank of Psychical Research Society. (Died 1961.)
Born January 15, 1913 — Lloyd Bridges. Though I’m reasonably sure Secret Agent X-9, a 1945 serial, isn’t genre, I’m listing it anyways because I’m impressed that it was based on a comic strip by Dashiell Hammett, Leslie Charteris and others. He’s the Pilot Col. Floyd Graham in Rocketship X-M, Dr. Doug Standish In Around the World Under the Sea, Aramis in The Fifth Musketeer, Clifford Sterling in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and Grandfather in Peter and the Wolf. His television appearances are too many to list here. (Died 1998.)
Born January 15, 1928 — Joanne Linville. Best remembered I’d say for being the unnamed Romulan Commander Spock get involved with on “The Enterprise Incident”. (Vulcan’s Heart by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, calls her Liviana Charvanek.) She also starred in the Twilight Zone‘s “The Passersby” episode, and she starred in “I Kiss Your Shadow” which was the final episode of the Bus Stop series. The episode was based on the short story by Robert Bloch who wrote the script for it. This story is in The Early Fears Collection. (Died 2021.)
Born January 15, 1935 — Robert Silverberg, 87. I know the first thing I read by him was The Stochastic Man a very long time ago. After that I’ve read all of the Majipoor series which is quite enjoyable, and I know I’ve read a lot of his short fiction down the years. He has three Hugos with the first at NyCon II for Most Promising New Author, the other two being for his novella “Gilgamesh in the Outback” at Conspiracy ’87, and novella “Nightwings” at St. Louiscon. His “Hawksbill Station” novella was nominated at Baycon, and his Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg was nominated at Worldcon 75. He picked up a Retro Hugo at the Millennium Philcon for Best Fan Writer.
Born January 15, 1944 — Christopher Stasheff. A unique blending I’d say of fantasy and SF with a large if I find sometimes excessive dollop of humor. His best known novels are his Warlock in Spite of Himself series which I’ve read some of years ago. Who here has read his Starship Troupers series? It sounds potentially interesting. (Died 2018.)
Born January 15, 1945 — Ron Bounds, 77. A fan who was one of the founders of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society in the Sixties. He co-chaired Discon 2, was a member of both the Baltimore in ’67 and Washington in ’77 bid committees. He chaired Loscon 2. He published the Quinine, a one-shot APA. He was President of the Great Wall of China SF, Marching & Chop Suey Society which is both a cool name and a great undertaking as well.
Born January 15, 1965 — James Nesbitt, 57. Best genre role was as Tom Jackman and Hyde in Jekyll which was written by Steven Moffat. He’s also appeared in Fairy Tales, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man and Outcast. Yes, I know he played Bofur in the Hobbit films. I still consider Jekyll his better by far genre role.

(13) SIGNAL BOOST. Since Hulu’s bad at promoting their films of this type, N. sent along a tweet he saw for I’m Your Man:

I'M YOUR MAN is now streaming on Hulu. A smart and funny little sci-fi romance, with the phenomenal Dan Stevens co-starring as an android trying to be human. It's also Germany's submission to the Oscars this year, currently shortlisted for Best International Feature. pic.twitter.com/yyhgDQ5crq
— Isaac Feldberg (@isaacfeldberg) January 15, 2022

(14) MAKING LEMONADE WITHOUT LEMONS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I saw Dear Mr. Watterson, a 2013 documentary by Joel Allen Schroeder on YouTube, which you can watch for free, as long as you are willing to have your film interrupted with ads, Of course Bill Watterson refuses to be interviewed or even photographed, and has refused to license his characters. How do you make a film about him?

Well, in the first half-hour Schroeder blows it with all sorts of talking heads, many of them comic strip creators, telling how special Calvin and Hobbes was as a strip. Schroeder even goes back to his boyhood home in Appleton, Wisconsin to see his bedroom where he posted Sunday strips on the wall when he was a kid. Who cares?

Things pick up when Schroeder goes to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where Watterson grew up, and goes to the local library to see early illustrations Watterson drew for the local paper and hold an original strip about overdue books that is in the head librarian’s office. He then goes to the Billy Ireland Library at Ohio State, where Watterson’s archive is stored, and I thought that was interesting. I bet a good documentary could be made about that library.

Then in the final third we get to the real subject of the film which is whether Watterson’s decision to forego all licensing deals was a good idea. Here Berkeley Breathed, Stephen Pastis, and Jean Schultz had intelligent things to say. As Pastis notes, there is a difference between licensing a Snoopy stuffed animal a four-year old could hold and having Snoopy sell life insurance through Met Life. Seth Green also makes an appearance to note that he made bootleg Calvin t-shirts.

But one result of only having Calvin and Hobbes available in books is that these books are in school libraries and six- and seven-year-old kids love reading them. That might not have happened if their first exposure to Watterson’s characters was through animated cartoons.

Dear Mr. Watterson is worth watching but you might want to fast forward through the first half hour.

(15) TWENTY THOUSAND PENNIES UNTO THE FEE. If you’re in the market for an online course about Jules Verne, The Rosenbach would like to sign you up: “Jules Verne’s Scientific Imagination with Anastasia Klimchynskaya”. Four sessions. Tuition for this course is $200, $180 Delancey Society and Members.

Verne is often cited as one of the fathers of science fiction and a lover of both literature and technology. Verne combined the earlier genres of the extraordinary voyage, travel narrative, and adventure story with unprecedented scientific rigor, creating the scientific romance genre, or roman de la science. This course will explore Verne’s unique mix of science and imagination and how it helped solidify the genre.

(16) UNDERGROUND ECONOMY. Here’s an interesting piece by DM David about just why dungeons full of monsters and treasures are a thing in Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs: “The Movies and Stories than Inspired Dave Arneson to Invent the Dungeon Crawl”.

Around 1971 Dave Arneson and his circle of Minneapolis gamers invented games where players controlled individual characters who grew with experience and who could try anything because dice and a referee determined the outcomes. The group tried this style of play in various settings, but Dave invented one that proved irresistible: the dungeon.
Dave’s Blackmoor game—the campaign that spawned Dungeons & Dragons—began with a gaming group playing fictional versions of themselves in a fantasy world. The characters became champions in a series of miniature battles featuring armies clashing above ground. Without dungeons, the Blackmoor game might have stayed miniature wargaming rather than becoming D&D and a game nearly as well known as Monopoly. But by creating the dungeon crawl, Dave invented a new activity that transformed the campaign and ultimately made a lasting addition to popular culture…

(17) SHINY. The Daily Beast has a rundown on “The Laser SETI Projects That Might Find Intelligent Alien Civilizations”.

For 62 years, scientists have pointed instruments toward outer space in hopes of finding some sign that we’re not alone in the universe. But those instruments always scanned just a tiny swath of sky for a short span of time, limited mainly to listening for stray radio waves and leaving us largely blind to any visual evidence of extraterrestrials in the darkness of space.
Until now.
As the space age enters its seventh decade, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is getting a lot wider and more deliberate. And that could significantly boost our chances of actually finding something for the first time.
In mid-December, scientists with the SETI Institute in California finished installing a new laser instrument: an expensive lens-camera-computer combo at Haleakala Observatory, situated on a mountaintop on Maui, Hawaii, 10,000 feet above sea level.
The east-facing instrument, when combined with an identical west-facing system at the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sonoma, California, scans a 150-degree arc of the night sky more than a thousand times a second, filtering the light and looking for the telltale signature of laser light—a possible sign of intelligent life. “We’re trying to cover all the sky all the time,” Eliot Gillum, the principal investigator for the LaserSETI project, told The Daily Beast.

(18) HIBERNATING ALIENS. Why can’t we find them? Isaac Arthur says it might be because they’re taking a kip… (Just like the Norwegian blue.)

One explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that aliens may be undetected because they slumber, quietly hidden away in the galaxy. But how and why might such Extraterrestrial Empires hibernate?

(19) QUITE A STRETCH. Nature says a “Giant hydrogen filament is one of the longest features of its type in the Galaxy and it could give birth to stars” in “A cloud named Maggie”.

A long filament-like cloud of hydrogen atoms lurking on the far side of the Milky Way is among the largest such structures in the Galaxy — and offers a rare glimpse into one of the earliest stages of star formation.
Scientists first reported evidence of the filament, which they nicknamed Maggie, in 2020. Now, some of those scientists, including Jonas Syed at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, along with more astronomers, have conducted a detailed follow-up investigation. It shows that the filament stretches some 1,200 parsecs, roughly 1,000 times the distance from the Sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri.
Theory predicts that, over time, the neutral hydrogen atoms in the filament will pair up, forming dense clouds of hydrogen molecules. Such clouds ultimately give birth to stars.

(20) COMING CATTRACTIONS. Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet may be hated by astronomers, but credentials love it: Gizmodo explains: “If I Fits, I Sits: Starlink’s Self-Heating Internet Satellite Dishes Are Attracting Cats”.

SpaceX’s Starlink has been making steady gains with its fledgling satellite internet service, surpassing 100,000 terminals shipped in 2021 and showing promising improvements in performance after initial speed tests produced lackluster results. However, the company’s run into an unforeseen hiccup with its dishes: Cats love them….

Starlink works great until the cats find out that the dish gives off a little heat on cold days. pic.twitter.com/uyH3Kbqrie
— Aaron Taylor (@Tippen22) December 31, 2021

(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: The Matrix Resurrections,” the Screen Junkies say that the fourth film asks, “Do you take the blue pill and reboot this with Tom Holland as Neo or do you take the red pill and see how far up its own ass the story will go?” Also, since the film has musical theatre greats Neil Patrick Harris and Jonathan Groff (who was King George in Hamilton, and has also been in Frozen, Frozen II, and “Glee’) when is The Matrix musical coming?

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Chris Barkley, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Cora Buhlert, Dave Rowe, N., SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

Pixel Scroll 12/2/21 Of All The Pixels In The World, She Scrolls In To Mine

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) OMICRON AT ANIME NYC 2021. The New York Times reports “Hochul Urges Anime NYC Conference Attendees to Get Tested Due to Omicron”.

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said on Thursday that everyone who attended a recent anime convention in Manhattan should get tested for the coronavirus, after it was announced that an individual who tested positive for the Omicron variant in Minnesota had attended to the conference.
Ms. Hochul said the individual, a Minnesota resident who was vaccinated and experienced mild symptoms, had attended the Anime NYC 2021 convention at the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan. She urged people who attended the event, which was held from Nov. 19 to Nov. 21, to get tested and said that health officials would be in contact with attendees. The convention hosted 53,000 attendees over three days, according to a spokesman for the Javits Center….

The Mayor of New York City also put out a statement:

(2) VARLEY MEDICAL UPDATE. In “The Two Johns”, John Varley tells why he’s home from his third stay in the hospital this year. Much as he works to lighten it up, this is serious, plus some touching moments about his last roommate. The digest version about his health is in this excerpt of the last three paragraphs:

…So I’m back home now. My final diagnosis, like a slap on the butt as I went out the door, was C.O.P.D. (That’s #5.) It stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. My guess is that it has something to do (ya think?) with over fifty years of a pack-and-a-half per day smoking habit, only recently terminated. Used to be, it was easy to find me at SF conventions. Just look for the very tall guy whose head was obscured by the smoke that encircled his head like a wreath. That was in the early days. More recently I could usually be found outside the hotel, huddled against the rain, the cold, and the howling gale with a couple other hopeless addicts.
I was sent home with a couple bottles of oxygen and an oxygen concentrator, but it’s possible I won’t need them after a while. Lee and I were enrolled in classes at something called the Transitional Care Clinic, TCC, a really smart and nice service of the Clinic where you record all your vital signs and come in weekly for consultation. I hate trailing the coiled tubing for the O2 all around the house, but so be it. I am able to do most things I always did, and get around in the car. I still tire quickly, but I don’t pant like an overheated hound dog.
Thanks again to all who sent money after my heart attack at the beginning of the year. I can’t tell you how much those dollars have helped take a heavy load off both our minds….

(3) MOBY WORM. Michael Dirda, well-known Washington Post critic who started there writing sf book reviews, has written an introduction to the new Folio Society edition of Frank Herbert’s Dune. An excerpt appears at Literary Hub: “What Accounts for the Lasting Appeal of Dune?”

… Even now, half a century since it first appeared in 1965, Dune is certainly still “the one”—it continues to top readers’ polls as the greatest science-fiction novel of modern times. Many would say of all time. Before Star Wars, before A Game of Thrones, Frank Herbert brought to blazing life a feudalistic future of relentless political intrigue and insidious treachery, a grandly operatic vision—half Wagner, half spaghetti western—of a hero discovering his destiny. Characters include elite samurai-like warriors, sadistically decadent aristocrats, mystical revolutionaries, and, not least, those monster worms, which barrel along under the desert surface with the speed of a freight train, then suddenly emerge from the sand like Moby Dick rising from the depths….

(4) MISSING A FEW THINGS. A.V. Club’s M.L. Kejera’s “Comics review: The History Of Science Fiction is bad history” contends “This reprehensible graphic novel could have been so much more, but instead spends time covering up history, not unpacking it.”

… Presented with an index and a list of principal art sources, the book is clearly attempting to be of some academic or referential use, on top of its wider appeal. But the English translation of Histoire De La Science Fiction fails utterly as a proper historic work—and worse, ends up functioning as weak hagiography.
… For example, though objects and ideas from Japanese sci-fi litter the futuristic museum, no Japanese author is given anywhere near the depth as writers from the aforementioned countries. Considering that one of the primary sources for this book is able to be precise about its purview (La Science-Fiction En France Dans Les Années 50, or Science Fiction In France In The ’50s), it’s a baffling decision on the part of everyone involved here to not specify this—especially while calling itself history.
Additionally, there is an ugly tendency in the book to gloss over the more reprehensible aspects of the writers featured….

(5) CLARK DEPARTS. SFWA bid “A Farewell to SFWA Blog Editor C.L. Clark”.

As of November 30, our blog editor, C.L. Clark (Cherae) has stepped down from her role for personal reasons. Clark joined SFWA’s staff in the summer of 2020. Her editorial perspective has brought many new voices to the blog over the past year, voices with a lot of insightful and fresh perspectives on the publishing industry today and the craft of science fiction and fantasy writing in the many mediums in which our members work. She’s also provided essential assistance with the release of The Bulletin #216 and our other SFWA Publications projects….

(6) SLF WANTS ART. The Speculative Literature Foundation has put out a “Call for Artists 2022” seeking a piece of original artwork, ideally combining fantasy and science fiction themes, to be featured as its cover art (Illustration of the Year or Artwork) for 2022. Full guidelines at the link.

Artwork will be displayed on the Speculative Literature Foundation’s (SLF) website and social media accounts. Artwork will also be used as a visual element of SLF’s marketing material and swag, including but not limited to, bookmarks, pins, posters, etc., and may be cropped or otherwise minimally altered to fit these different formats. The winning artist will receive $750.00 (USD) and will be announced, along with the selected Artwork, on SLF’s website and in a press release.
This is the SLF’s first open call for Illustration of the Year, and the fifth consecutive year that it has featured an illustration. The SLF, founded in 2004 by author and creative writing professor Mary Anne Mohanraj, is a global non-profit arts foundation serving the speculative literature (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) community. It provides resources to speculative fiction writers, editors, illustrators, and publishers, and aims to develop a greater public appreciation of this art.
Submission Dates: November 20, 2021 at 12:01 a.m. through December 20, 2021 at 11:59 p.m.

(7) HOST CITY WANTED FOR 2023 WESTERCON. Kevin Standlee posted an announcement at the Westercon.org website: “Committee Formed to Select Site of 2023 Westercon”.

Because no groups filed to host Westercon 75, selection of the site of the 2023 Westercon devolved upon the 2021 Westercon Business Meeting held at Westercon 73 (in conjunction with Loscon 47) in Los Angeles on November 27, 2021. The Business Meeting voted to appoint Westercon 74 Chair Kevin Standlee and Westercon 74 Head of Hospitality Lisa Hayes as a committee to select a site and committee to run Westercon 75. Any site in North America west of 104° west longitude or in Hawaii is eligible to host Westercon 75.
To submit a bid to the “Standlee-Hayes Commission” to host Westercon 75, write to Kevin Standlee at [email protected], or send a paper application to Lisa Hayes at PO Box 242, Fernley NV 89408. Include information about the proposed site, the proposed dates, and the proposed operating committee.
The initial deadline for applications is January 31, 2022.

(8) ALWAYS BE CLOSING. Rosemary Claire Smith encourages writers to do what they want to anyway: “Reasons to Publicize Your Award-Eligible Works” at the SFWA Blog. Here’s the second of four points:

2. Award Eligibility Posts Are for All Writers, Not Only the Big Names.
Don’t believe me? Consider how many writers won a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy Award or another prestigious literary prize with the first story or novel they ever got into print. Think about the “newcomers” awards such as the Astounding Award for Best New Writer given to someone whose first professional work was published during the two previous calendar years. It’s been a springboard launching a number of careers. Also, keep in mind that your audience may nominate and/or vote on readers’ choice awards given by Analog, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and other periodicals.
By now, some of you are saying to yourselves, “Why bother when I’ll never win an award…or even be nominated. Or if I am, it’ll be as a list filler.” Others are thinking, “I only published one story. It came out in an obscure publication.” Then there’s, “My novel didn’t sell all that well,” not to mention the perennial, “The reviewers don’t know my book exists.” Are you thinking about waiting until…what? You’re better known? You sell more copies? You get published in a top market? Your sales figures improve or your social-media following grows? Your work attracts a glowing review?
To every one of your objections, the answer is the same: Your fiction merits more attention right now. Even in better times, writing is a difficult enough business without running ourselves down. As writers, we are notoriously NOT the best judge of our own work. We’re too close to it. Sometimes words flow quickly and effortlessly. Other pieces fight us for every sentence we succeed in wringing out of them. Critical and popular acclaim aren’t tethered to the ease or difficulty of creation. Besides, our assessment of particular pieces may evolve as we gain the advantages of time and distance. In short, you never know how a story will fare….

(9) A TOP SFF BOOK COMES TO TV. Station Eleven will air starting December 24 on HBO Max.

A limited series based on Emily St. John Mandel’s international bestseller, #StationEleven is a post-apocalyptic saga that follows survivors of a devastating flu as they attempt to rebuild and reimagine the world anew while holding on to the best of what’s been lost.

(10) GAIMAN ON TOUR. Neil Gaiman will be visiting many cities in the U.S. in April and May next year – see the schedule on Facebook.

(11) OSBORN OBIT. [Item by Bill.] I am saddened to pass on that Darrell Osborn has died of heart issues. He’s the husband of Stephanie Osborn. They’ve made a number of appearances at SF cons in the Southeast, with Stephanie as a writer and Darrell doing magic and balloon animals. Darrell’s day job was as a graphic designer for an aerospace contractor, and he did cover art for SF books.

(12) MEMORY LANE.

1996 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-five years ago, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age wins the Hugo for Best Novel at L.A. Con III where Connie Willis was Toastmaster. The other nominated works that year were The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, Brightness Reef by David Brin, The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer and Remake by Connie Willis. The Diamond Age would be nominated for Nebula, Campbell Memorial, SF Chronicle, Clarke, Locus, Prometheus, BSFA and HOMer Awards, winning the SF Chronicle and Locus Awards.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 2, 1913 — Jerry Sohl. Scriptwriter and genre writer who did work for The Twilight Zone (ghostwriting for Charles Beaumont who was seriously ill at the time), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits and Star Trek. One of his three Trek scripts was the superb “Corbomite Maneuver” episode. He wrote a lot of SFF novels, none of which I recognize from the ISFDB listings. A lot of his genre novels are available from the usual suspects for very reasonable prices. (Died 2002.)
Born December 2, 1914 — Ray Walston. Best remembered, of course, for playing the lead in My Favorite Martian from 1963 to 1966, alongside co-star Bill Bixby. His later genre appearances would include The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, Six Million Dollar Man, Galaxy of Terror, Amazing Stories, Popeye, Friday the 13th: The Series and Addams Family Reunion. He would appear in The Incredible Hulk (in which David Banner was played by Bill Bixby) as Jasper the Magician in an episode called “My Favorite Magician”. (Died 2001.)
Born December 2, 1937 — Brian Lumley, 84. Horror writer who came to distinction in the Seventies writing in the Cthulhu Mythos and by creating his own character Titus Crow. In the Eighties, he created the Necroscope series, which first centered on Speaker to the Dead Harry Keogh. He has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association and a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Born December 2, 1946 — David Macaulay, 75. British-born American illustrator and writer who is at least genre adjacent I’d say. (Motel of the Mysteries is genre.) Creator of such cool works as Cathedral, The New Way Things Work which has he updated for the computer technology age, and I really like one of latest works, Crossing on Time: Steam Engines, Fast Ships, and a Journey to the New World.
Born December 2, 1946 — Josepha Sherman. Writer and folklorist who was a Compton Crook Award winner for The Shining Falcon which was based on the Russian fairy tale “The Feather of Finist the Falcon”. She was a prolific writer both on her own and with other writers such as Mercedes Lackey with whom she wrote A Cast of Corbies and two Buffyverse novels with Laura Anne Gilman. I knew her personally as a folklorist first and that is she was without peer writing such works as Rachel the Clever: And Other Jewish Folktales and Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood that she wrote with T K F Weisskopf. Neat lady who died far too soon. Let me leave you with an essay she wrote on Winter for Green Man some twenty years ago: “Josepha Sherman’s Winter Queen Speech”. (Died 2012.)
Born December 2, 1952 — OR Melling, 69. One of her favorite authors is Alan Garner whose The Owl Service is a frequent read of hers she tells me. She too loves dark chocolate. As for novels by her that I’d recommend, the Chronicles of Faerie series is quite excellent. For more adult fare, her People of the Great Journey is quite good.
Born December 2, 1952 — Keith Szarabajka, 69. Quite a few genre roles including Daniel Holtz in the Angel series, voicing the demon Trigon in the Teen Titans series, Gerard Stephens in The Dark Knight and a recurring role as Donatello Redfield on Supernatural. That’s just a small sample of his genre roles down the decades.
Born December 2, 1971 — Frank Cho, 50. Writer and illustrator, best remembered as creator of the most excellent Liberty Meadows series as well as work on Hulk, Mighty Avengers and Shanna the She-Devil for Marvel Comics, and Jungle Girl for Dynamite Entertainment. I recommend the Frank Cho Art Book from Delcourt as being a superb look at his work. It’s available from the usual suspects. In French only for some reason.

(14) COMICS SECTION.

Half Full’s joke really has nothing to do with Tom Baker. Honestly.

(15) BEEBO, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] A.V. Club declares, “Beebo Saves Christmas is one of the oddest holiday specials ever”.

You don’t (apparently) have to have been watching the WB/”Arrowverse” series DC’s Legends of Tomorrow; indeed, it’s not clear that will help or otherwise make any difference. Beebo is a small furry toy that’s appeared as a character in several LofT episodes, ranging from as a mild joke to a malevolent something-or-other.

… For those who aren’t invested in Arrowverse lore, Beebo Saves Christmas was spun out of a running joke on DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow, the show about loser superheroes traveling through time and trying to save the day without making anything worse. In one episode—arguably the show’s best—a talking Tickle Me Elmo-style toy called Beebo is sent back in time and ends up in the possession of Leif Erikson and a group of Vikings who worship the talking toy as their new god of war….

If you can find it. On the CW, it apparently aired last night, “with an encore presentation airing on December 21, 2021.” JustWatch.com doesn’t have this in its database. This Decider article has some other how-to-watch-it suggestions: “What time is ‘Beebo Saves Christmas’ on The CW?”

I’m thinking that an hour might be overmuch, but there’s only one way to find out…

(16) LAUREL & HARDY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I listened to this 2017 podcast Leonard Maltin did with Mark Evanier on Laurel and Hardy (Maltin on Movies: Mark Evanier.) As kids, both of them watched Laurel and Hardy two-reelers after school and when John McCabe’s Mr Laurel And Mr Hardy came out in 1961 both checked out copies from the adult section of the library. Because the Los Angeles public library didn’t have a copy, Evanier persuaded his aunt to get the Beverly Hills library’s copy.

Both men are really knowledgeable on silent film history, and if you know enough to argue about whether Snub Pollard was funnier than Charley Chase, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here. But their points are simple ones: all of Laurel and Hardy is worth watching except for the last five years of their careers, and it’s best to see them in a theatre or with friends because the laughter produced by a group adds to the joy these great comedians provided.

Fun facts: The stairs used in the 1932 short The Music Box still exist, and you can visit them in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles. Two Oscar-winning directors: Leo McCarey (as director) and George Stevens (as cinematographer) got their start on Laurel and Hardy shorts.

I thought this was a fun hour.

(17) THREE’S A CHARM. The first two were cursed. “BABYLON 5 The Geometry of Shadows commentary/reaction by Straczynski Third Version”. Why was this the third version? Straczynski spends the opening minutes explaining the problems that trashed the first two attempts:

…I’m recording the commentary for the Geometry of Shadows for the third time. The first time turned out that the new lavalier i was using wasn’t exactly hooked up right and did the entire recording sounding like Marvin the Martian — if Marvin the Martian were a raging drunk. Same applies to the Sense-8 commentary I did the same night. The second time I did it to redo the technology of the first one everything went fine. The sensitive microphone picked up all the sound in the room which was great, until I found out that it also picked up enough of the dialogue from the screen that it showed up on the recording and Youtube, when it did its search, said you cannot use this, Warner Brothers television has a claim on this, you can’t use it, you can’t post it. From 26 minutes to 42 minutes we can hear it. This is now my third run at this. I am beyond annoyed. I’m so – I wore a B5 cap from the pilot. I had a whole story about this. Screw it. I’m not telling you what it was because i don’t care anymore…

(Is this what really happened to the first four Babylons?)

(18) NOT SF. AT ALL. But if you read the Jack Reacher books you might want to see this trailer for Amazon Prime’s Reacher series. If it’s important to you that the new actor be taller than Tom Cruise, they have that covered. However, the trailer makes this Reacher look a bit of a showoff and dipshit, which isn’t his psychology in the books.

(19) LIKE A DOG WITH A BONE. Can’t let go of it. But why couldn’t his passion project turn out great? Maybe someday. “Guillermo del Toro Wants to Make a ‘Weirder, Smaller’ Version of ‘At the Mountains of Madness,’ Possibly at Netflix” at Yahoo!

Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has long held that his passion project is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” and while he still hopes the opportunity arises to make the film, he now has a different version in mind than the one he nearly got off the ground a decade ago.
Appearing on the Stephen King-centric podcast The Kingcast to discuss “It,” del Toro was asked about the multiyear deal he signed with Netflix in 2020 and whether he might finally make “At the Mountains of Madness” at the streamer. “Take a wild guess which were the first projects I presented, you know?” del Toro replied. “I went through the cupboard and found ‘Monte Cristo’ and ‘Mountains of Madness.’ Those were a couple of the ones I presented first.”

(20) NEUTRON BEAMS, FAITH AND MAGIC. In today’s Nature: “Neutron Beam Peers Into Medieval Faith And Superstition”.

A Norwegian amulet more than 700 years old has been hiding a runic inscription that holds religious and magic significance.
When archaeologists found the rectangular metal object during an excavation in Oslo’s medieval town in 2018, they saw that it was covered with runes and folded several times. Hartmut Kutzke at the city’s Museum of Cultural History and his colleagues wanted to study what was inscribed inside, but they feared that manually opening the talisman, known as the Bispegata amulet, would damage it. Because it is made out of lead — a heavy metal that blocks most X-rays — using X-ray tomography to make the hidden runes visible would not work either. Instead, the researchers used a neutron beam to peek inside the amulet and create a detailed reconstruction of it.
They found that some of the runes spell out Latin and Greek phrases, whereas others signify repetitive sequences of seemingly meaningless words. Some of the comprehensible phrases might carry religious meaning, whereas the abstruse abracadabra was probably thought to have a magic effect, the researchers say.

(21) IT’S A YOUNG MOON AFTER ALL. From “Robotic sample return reveals lunar secrets” in today’s Nature:

A mission to unexplored lunar territory has returned the youngest volcanic samples collected so far. The rocks highlight the need to make revisions to models of the thermal evolution of the Moon.
The wait is over for more news from the Moon¹. Three studies in this issue, by https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04119-5.pdf Tian et al. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04107-9.pdf Hu et al. and https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04100-2.pdf ;Li et al., together with one in Science by Che et al. report data on the lunar samples brought back by China’s robotic Chang’e-5 mission — the first to return samples since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976. These data shed light on volcanic eruptions that occurred more than one billion years more recently than those known about previously, and provide information on the cause of the volcanism that cannot be obtained from orbit. The results raise questions about the structure and thermal evolution of the lunar interior, and could help to improve methods for estimating the age of planetary surfaces throughout the inner Solar System.
In December 2020, the Chang’e-5 lander set down in the Rümker region near the northwest corner of Oceanus Procellarum on the side of the Moon closest to Earth (Fig. 1). Like the sites visited by Luna and by NASA’s Apollo missions, the Rümker region consists predominantly of a magnesium-rich volcanic rock known as basalt, but the difference from previous missions is that the Rümker basalts are potentially as young as 1.2 billion to 2.3 billion years old, which makes the Chang’e-5 samples the youngest taken from the Moon so far.

(22) NERD ART. “’Selfie with Godzilla’?! Artist Fuses Reality and Science Fiction in Multimedia Gallery Show” — some entertaining images in Houston City Book.

…Houston artist Neva Mikulicz, a self-described “nerd” with an alter ego named Commodore Mik, who once ordered Kirk to the Star Fleet Fat Farm so she could board and evaluate the condition of the Starship Enterprise, smartly and humorously blurs that line between science and science fiction in her new exhibit, Declassified, a collection of beautifully realized Prismacolor pencil on paper drawings, complemented by archival videos and LED and sound module technology. The show opens Saturday at Anya Tish Gallery.
UFOs, robots, and monsters both prehistoric and imagined are recurring subjects in Mikulicz’s artwork, which radiates with a 1950s “vintage-y” vibe, the decade when the automobile, rock’n’roll and television took hold of the country’s collective imagination.
But Declassified is no nostalgia trip. Some drawings mirror the look of our world as it is photographed and disseminated by handheld consumer gizmos, while other works are composed like panels in a graphic novel, a medium that many contemporary fine artists find inspiring. One features a T-Rex chasing an iconic orange-and-white-striped Whataburger cup; another is titled “Selfie with Godzilla.” Mikulicz also created a comic book to accompany the exhibition….

(23) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: No Time To Die,” the Screen Junkies say the film shows that Bond has gone beyond silliness (remember Roger Moore driving a gondola?) to be a movie “about a divorced dad who wonders what to feed a French kid for breakfast.” Also, why should characters care who is 007, since that’s basically “an employee ID number?”

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Rob Thornton, Bill, Michael J. Walsh, Kevin Standlee, David K.M. Klaus, Will R., SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]

Pixel Scroll 11/20/21 Down Slupps The Pixel-Ma-Phone To Your Ear

Posted on November 20, 2021 by Mike Glyer

(1) NAVIGATING LITERATURE. The Huntington Library’s “Mapping Fiction” exhibit will run January 15-May 2. The Pasadena, CA institution timed the event to coincide with the centennial of the publication of James Joyce’s groundbreaking 1922 modernist novel, Ulysses. Maps from J.R.R. Tolkien, Octavia Butler and other creators will also be displayed.

Octavia E. Butler, Map of Acorn from notes for *Parable of the Talents*, ca. 1994. (Detail)

“Mapping Fiction” is an exhibition focused on the ways authors and mapmakers have built compelling fictional worlds.
Drawn entirely from The Huntington’s collections, “Mapping Fiction” includes a first edition of Joyce’s novel and a typescript draft of one of its chapters, cartographically inspired intaglio prints of Dublin as described in the book, other mappings of the novel and the famous texts to which it alludes, and materials related to the annual celebration of Bloomsday in Dublin on June 16—the single day in 1904 during which the novel takes place.
About 70 items will be on view, focused on novels and maps from the 16th through the 20th century—largely early editions of books that include elaborate maps of imaginary worlds. Among the highlights are Lewis Carroll’s 1876 edition of The Hunting of the Snark, Robert Louis Stevenson’s maps from Treasure Island and Kidnapped, J. R. R. Tolkien’s map from the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, and science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler’s hand-drawn maps from notes for Parable of the Talents (1998) and her unpublished novel Parable of the Trickster. In addition to Butler’s archives, the show draws on The Huntington’s archival collections of Jack and Charmian London, Christopher Isherwood, and others, as well as the institution’s rich print holdings in travel narratives, English literature, and the history of science.

There will be related events, including this Butler-themed tour of Pasadena.

Revisiting Octavia E. Butler’s Pasadena
March 19 and April 23, 2022
2–3:30 p.m.
In conjunction with “Mapping Fiction,” The Huntington has produced a map of Octavia E. Butler’s Pasadena. Visitors can take a self-guided walking or driving tour of the locations around Pasadena where Butler lived, visited, and often found inspiration. Tour maps will be available online and in the “Mapping Fiction” exhibition gallery. On two Saturdays this spring, Ayana Jamieson, founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, will lead a moderated conversation about our desire to locate Butler’s Pasadena. Registration information and locations to come.

(2) TALKING TOONS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I listened to this podcast by Leonard Maltin with cartoon historians Jerry Beck and Mark Evanier — Maltin on Movies: “Talking Toons with Jerry Beck and Mark Evanier”. Jessie Maltin wasn’t on the podcast because she just gave birth to Maltin’s first grandchild. (Playing with his granddaughter, Maltin joked, was “more fun than television!”

All three men are Boomers whose love of cartoons went back to when they were kids and Channel 9 in New York City and Channel 11 in Los Angeles would show anything (remember Colonel Bleep? They do.) They have deep knowledge of animation history. Did you know that the first Peanuts cartoons were done for the Tennessee Ernie Ford show? Or that when The Bugs Bunny Show aired in prime time for two seasons on ABC in the early 1960s it had all sorts of original footage, including work by Chuck Jones and Bob McKimson, that no one has seen in 50 years?)

Jerry Beck is involved with the international animation association ACIFA, and discussed his efforts at cartoon preservation. He noted that Paramount, unlike Disney and Warner Bros., doesn’t think they can make money from old cartoons. ACIFA is working with the UCLA and Library of Congress archives to preserve significant work by Terrytoons and Max Fleischer that only exist in flammable negatives. ACIFA also helped restore a 16-minute Smell-O-Vision cartoon (with voice work by Bert Lahr) that was shown before the smelly The Scent Of Mystery.

The best find in previously lost cartoons was when Maltin’s classic Of Mice And Magic was translated into Russian, and Russian cartoon fans reported they discovered the last lost Betty Boop cartoon, featuring Boop’s nephew, Buzzy Boop. The cartoon is currently being restored.

This was a fun hour.

(3) ERASMUSCON. There’s a Dutch bid for Eurocon 2024. They propose to hold the con in Rotterdam in August 2024. They are taking presupports:

Become a supporter of the bid for €25,-
or a Friend of the bid for €100,-

(4) BIG SIX. Nerds of a Feather’s Paul Weimer gets recommendations in “6 Books with Marjorie B. Kellogg”, who’s the author of Lear’s Daughters, Harmony, and The Dragon Quartet series.

4. A book that you love and wish that you yourself had written.
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula LeGuin.
This book I have reread, more than once, and still find moving and magical. Her portrayal of an alien civilization is so deeply drawn, so compassionate, so non-comic-booky, and yet so relevant and relatable to our own Earth-bound issues and selves. It’s what Science Fiction can do like no other genre.

(5) TALKIN’ ABOUT MY REGENERATION. Jessica Holmes tries to figure out who this confused fellow is who sees Doctor Who’s face in his mirror…in 1966. That year isn’t a trick of the TARDIS — it’s today’s date at Galactic Journey! “[November 20 1966] Doctor…Who? (Doctor Who: The Power Of The Daleks [Part 1])”

It was with a mix of curiosity and trepidation that I tuned into Doctor Who this month. The character we know and love has vanished forever, and in his place is a stranger– A stranger who calls himself the Doctor. But is it really the same man? Once again, we have to ask the essential question that the programme was founded on. Doctor…who?

(6) I’M FEELING BETTER. James Davis Nicoll is in tune with “I Will Survive: Five Stories About Living to See Another Day” at Tor.com.

This year Canadian Thanksgiving was celebrated on October 11^th. American Thanksgiving will fall on November 25^th. In both cases, they are glorious feasts celebrating the end of harvest season. However, the first European Thanksgiving in the New World may have been Martin Frobisher’s on May 27^th, 1578. As you might guess from the date, Frobisher and his crew were not giving thanks for a bountiful harvest. They were grateful to have survived their latest quest for the Northwest Passage. And isn’t simple survival something for which to be grateful?
The characters in the following five works would no doubt agree that while survival has its challenges, it is far superior to the alternative….

(7) TUNE IN. “Pee-Wee Herman to Host Radio Show on KCRW” reports Variety.

The short version is that legendary star of the screen Pee-Wee Herman will launch a radio show on KCRW, the popular National Public Radio station based in Santa Monica, Calif., and will be accompanied by his pals Chairry, Magic Screen and Miss Yvonne. A rep for the station tells Variety that for now, it will be just one show on Nov. 26 at 6 p.m. PT (and available on demand for one week after airing), but who knows?

Hi @KCRW, did you get the letter I sent you? I really REALLY want to be a radio Disc Jockey. But I never heard back from you. #DJlife #DreamBig pic.twitter.com/CBXPJMPEe1
— Pee-wee Herman (@peeweeherman) November 10, 2021

(8) LEFLEUR OBIT. Actor Art LaFleur died at the age of 78 on November 17 reports Deadline. The character actor had many genre roles in his resume: Jekyll and Hyde . . . Together Again, The Invisible Woman, WarGames, Trancers and Trancers II, Zone Troopers, The Blob (1988), Field of Dreams (he’s the one who tells Moonlight Graham “Don’t wink, kid”), Forever Young, The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (as the “Tooth Fairy”), Speed Racer. On TV, LaFleur appeared in episodes of The Incredible Hulk, Wizards and Warriors, Tales from the Crypt, Space Rangers, Strange Luck, A.J.’s Time Travelers, Angel and Night Stalker (2005).

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1964 — Fifty-seven years ago, the second adaptation of H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon was released into theatres, this one complete with the superb special effects of Ray Harryhausen. The first time it was adapted was a 1919 British black-and-white silent film version, directed by Bruce Gordon and J. L. V. Leigh. (It is currently lost with film prints known to exist.) This screenplay was by Nigel Kneale and Jan Read. The primary cast was Edward Judd, Martha Hyer and Lionel Jeffries.

I have no idea what it cost as that’s not recorded but it only made one point three million. Most critics liked with Variety saying that “Ray Harryhausen and his special effects men have another high old time in this piece of science-fiction hokum”, though the New York Times called it “tedious, heavyhanded science-fiction vehicle that arrived yesterday from England”. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes are currently lukewarm on it giving it a fifty-three percent rating.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 20, 1923 — Len Moffatt. He’s a member of First Fandom. Len and his second wife June helped organize many of the early Bouchercons for which he and June received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bouchercon staff. He was a member of LASFS. He wrote far too many zines to list here. Mike has an excellent look at his memorial here. (Died 2010.)
Born November 20, 1923 — Nadine Gordimer. South African writer and political activist. Her one genre novel was July’s People which was banned in her native country under both governments. Her three stories are collected in Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized as a writer “who through her magnificent epic writing has been of very great benefit to humanity”. (Died 2014.)
Born November 20, 1926 — John Gardner. Author of more Bond novels than one would think possible. He’d write fourteen original James Bond novels, more than Fleming wrote, and the novelized versions of two Bond films, License to Kill and GoldenEye. He’d also dip into the Sherlock universe, writing three novels around the character of Professor Moriarty. Rights to film them were optioned but never developed due to a lack of funding. (Died 2007.)
Born November 20, 1929 — Jerry Hardin, 92. He’s best known for playing Deep Throat on The X-Files. He’s also been on Quantum Leap, Starman, Brimstone and Strange World, plus he was in the Doomsday Virus miniseries. And he made a rather good Samuel Clemens in the two part “Time’s Arrow” story on Next Gen.
Born November 20, 1932 — Richard Dawson. Usually one appearance in a genre film or show isn’t enough to make the Birthday list but he was Damon Killian on The Running Man, a juicy enough role to ensure his making this list, and twenty years earlier he was Joey on Munster, Go Home! He’d voice Long John Silver on an animated Treasure Island film in the Seventies. And he had a one-off on the classic Fantasy Island as well. (Died 2012.)
Born November 20, 1944 — Molly Gloss, 77. Her novel Wild Life won the 2000 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. She has two more SF novels, The Dazzle of Day and Outside the Gates. Her “Lambing season” short story was nominated for a Hugo at Torcon 3, and “The Grinnell Method” won a Sturgeon.
Born November 20, 1956 — Bo Derek, 65. She makes the Birthday list for being Jane Parker in Tarzan, the Ape Man. There’s also Ghosts Can’t Do It and Horror 101 as well as the two Sharknado films she just did. A friend of Ray Bradbury, she was the presenter when Kirk Douglas received the 2012 Ray Bradbury Creativity Award.
Born November 20, 1959 — Sean Young, 62. Rachael and her clone in the original Blade Runner and the sequel. More intriguingly she played Chani in the original Dune which I’d completely forgotten. A bit old for the role, wasn’t she? She was the lead, Helen Hyde, in Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. And she’s a Trekkie as she was in the Star Trek: Renegades video fanfic pilot as Dr. Lucien. But who isn’t?

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Shoe has a little wizardry joke.
The Flying McCoys depicts a super embarrassment.
I was today years old when I discovered Bogart Creek.

#medieval #knights #cpr #FirstAid pic.twitter.com/bZGGLCTSpI
— Bogart Creek (@BogartCreek) June 1, 2021

(12) A BOOKTUBE PODCAST. Cora Buhlert’s latest Fancast Spotlight interviews Robin Rose Graves of The Book Wormhole:“Fancast Spotlight: The Book Wormhole”.

Tell us about your podcast or channel.
The Book Wormhole is a monthly updating BookTube channel where I provide spoiler free reviews and discussions of the books I read. Science Fiction makes up the majority of what I cover on the channel, and while I lean more towards female, POC and/or LGBT authors, I read both classics as well as contemporary releases. I balance popular books with indie and underrated titles. I promise there will be at least one book you’ve never heard of before on my channel.

(13) EIGHTIES HIT POINT PARADE. Meaghan Ball recalls three D&D Choose Your Own Adventure-style fantasy romance novels from days gone by: “Roll for Romance: The Forgotten D&D Romance Novels of 1983” at Tor.com.

… Seeking a way to get more young women involved in the roleplaying game (despite the fact that girls have been playing since the beginning, but that’s another story entirely), Dungeons & Dragons also branched out and commissioned a series of Choose Your Own Adventure-style romance novels. Since you probably haven’t heard of them, you can rightly assume they didn’t set the publishing world on fire—but they are fascinating relics, especially for fans of D&D and/or ’80s romance novels….

(14) BIG WINNER. Lela E. Buis covers Amazon’s sf book of 2021 and a Dragon Award winner: “Review of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir”.

…Weir fuels a constantly rising action line with various emergencies that go wrong and have to be solved by the application of science and engineering expertise. This is brilliantly plotted; the ship and the characters are well developed, and the science is well-research and applied….

(15) A BOOK WITH CHARACTER(S). Paul Weimer tells what makes this humorous sff book work in “Microreview [book]: Obviously, Aliens by Jennie Goloboy” at Nerds of a Feather.

…The novel also has a lot of heart. It treats its characters, even the ostensible antagonists, rather gently and with love and respect. You will get to know Dana, Adam, Jay, Sophie and the rest and get to know them, road trip style. (If this book were ever turned into an audiobook, this novel would be really fun to listen to on a driving adventure). Sure, the characters go through all sorts of disasters, reversals, and “can you believe THIS?” but it is a very lighthearted tone….

(16) FORWARD PROGRESS. There’s a new form of space propulsion that could change the satellite and space probe game. From Nature’s “News & Views” overview: “Iodine powers low-cost engines for satellites”.

Satellites organized in flexible networks known as constellations are more agile and resilient than are those operating alone. Manoeuvring satellites into such constellations requires inexpensive, reliable and efficient engines. Many networked satellites have electric propulsion thrusters, which generate thrust by using electrical energy to accelerate the ions of a propellant gas. However, the choice of gas presents a problem. Ionizing xenon requires a relatively small amount of energy, but xenon gas is expensive and needs to be compressed in high-pressure tanks to fit on board a satellite. Krypton is cheaper, but still requires a complex and heavy gas-storage and -supply system. …Rafalskyi et al. report a successful demonstration of an iodine-ion thruster in space — offering a cheaper and simpler alternative to xenon or krypton…

Research paper here (Open access).

(17) HEARTWARMING AND OTHERWISE. “10 Weirdest Charlie Brown Parodies Of All Time”is a roundup of YouTube videos at Yahoo!

This special, along with the Halloween and Christmas productions featuring Charles M. Schulz’s beloved Peanuts characters, have become staples of pop culture. They also inspired a genre of parody productions that frequently reconfigure Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and the others in ways that Schultz would never have imagined, let alone condoned.
For those with a warped sense of humor and no squeamishness over occasional deep-dives into NSFW entertainment, here are the 10 weirdest Charlie Brown parodies that you’ll be able to find online.
“Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown.” One of the earliest works by Jim Reardon of “The Simpsons” fame was this 1986 cartoon made during his studies at the California Institute of Arts. Reardon spoofs Sam Peckinpah’s “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” in a comically violent tale that shows Charlie Brown being ruthlessly hunted by his many antagonists before he gets his revenge in a massive shootout….

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy,” Fandom Games says this game answers the question, “What if Cowboy Bebop was written by Joss Whedon?” and its premise is “you love these characters so much you’d pay $60 to have them talk for 15-20 hours.”

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

Six Posthumous Recipients to Receive 2021 Bill Finger Award

Posted on July 4, 2021 by Mike Glyer

Comic-Con has named six writers who have contributed greatly to the history of comics to receive the 2021 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer/historian Mark Evanier, was announced June 30.

“Since we are not yet in a position to honor a writer who is still with us in a proper ceremony, we’re going to a long list of comic book writers from the past who we feel did not receive sufficient recognition or reward for their contributions to the field. As with last year, we have selected six posthumous awards and no ‘alive’ award,” Evanier explained. “Each of these six writers left us with a body of work that the judges deem worthy of this honor.”

This year’s recipient list includes two of the most prolific writers to ever work in comics—and there are several others who have received or may soon receive this award who unquestionably count among the most prolific ever. The Finger Award committee takes no position as to which of them was the most prolific. Such a determination might require records that no longer exist (or never existed), as well as distinguishing between writing the most stories and writing the most pages. “All of these writers deserve recognition,” Evanier remarked. He added, “Everyone should remember that it’s tough to determine precise totals when you’re recognizing writers who did not receive credit for most of their work or, in some cases, didn’t receive any credit at all.”

The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 at the instigation of Finger’s friend and colleague, Jerry Robinson, who felt that Finger had received way too little credit and compensation for his work in comics, especially regarding Batman and that character’s supporting cast and mythos. As Evanier explains, “Though Bill Finger now receives a lot more recognition than he received in his lifetime, there are still so many who have not, and that’s why we keep giving out these awards.” Here are this year’s recipients, in alphabetical order.

In addition to Evanier, the Finger Award selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

This year’s recipients are, in alphabetical order:

Robert Bernstein (1919–1988)

A former high school English teacher, Robert Bernstein began writing comic books around 1945, working for, among other companies, Fox, Hillman, Harvey, and Spark, though his longest association then was with Lev Gleason. There, he joined the ranks of ghostwriters for Charles Biro on the top-selling Crime Does Not Pay and similar comics. In the 1950s, Bernstein wrote war, western, and horror scripts for Atlas (later known as Marvel) and for EC Comics, where his scripts appeared in Valor, Impact ,and M.D., among others. He is also said to have written the entirety of the short-lived EC series Psychoanalysis and to have patterned one of its recurring characters, Mark Stone, on himself and his own experiences undergoing analysis. His major account during the fifties, though, was DC Comics, where between 1952 and 1968 he wrote countless stories featuring Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Congo Bill, and Congorilla as well as scripts for all of the company’s war and romance titles. In the 1960s, he also wrote Iron Man, Thor, and The Human Torch stories for Marvel under the name “R. Berns,” and without credit he wrote The Fly, The Jaguar, The Shadow, and other books for the Archie line. Throughout most of his career, he was also functioning as an impresario, arranging and promoting concerts in Long Island, New York (his longtime residence) and around the state. In 1968, he curtailed his comic book writing to focus on the music; he died in 1988.

Audrey “Toni” Blum (1918–1973)

Audrey “Toni” Blum was very likely the first female comic book writer/creator. The daughter of artist Alex Blum, she worked under an array of pen names—or with no credits at all—so it is difficult to determine her first work. It may have been in 1936–1937 on “The Vikings,” published in New Comics (later Adventure Comics) for DC. Whatever the date of her entry into the field, it made her one of the few women creating comic book material who wasn’t lettering or coloring. She began working for the Eisner-Iger shop in 1938 and wrote stories in a wide variety of genres, usually directly with Eisner and the artists who drew her stories. Some of this writing was done in what later became known as “The Marvel Method” and some was done as complete scripts. Her best-known work was for Quality Comics, where she wrote Black Condor, The Ray, Dollman, and Uncle Sam. She also reportedly wrote scripts for the “The Spirit” and “Lady Luck” Sunday newspaper comic book inserts Eisner produced. During World War II, she married shop artist Bill Bossert, and she largely retired from comic book writing when the War ended. Thereafter, she authored children’s books, and some sources say she wrote stories drawn by her father for Gilberton’s Classics Illustrated series. She passed away in 2020.

Vic Lockman (1927–2017)

Born into a vaudeville family (his father was the aptly named escape artist Earl Lockman), Vic Lockman broke into comics in 1950 as a letterer for the Dell Comics created by Western Publishing. He worked briefly in editorial for Western but soon moved into freelancing. While he occasionally pencilled, lettered, and/or inked comics for Dell, his main output for the next 29 years was as a writer, producing more stories for the firm’s “funny animal” comics than any other freelancer. During his most prolific period (1955–1984), he claimed to have written one story per day. Some were one-pagers or puzzle pages, a few were book-length, but most were 4 to 8 pages, submitted in “sketch” format with rough drawings and all of the copy handwritten. Western’s editors did not buy every submission, and some of what they passed on was purchased by the Disney Studios for its foreign comics program that created comics not published in America. That and interviews with his editors made credible Lockman’s claim of having sold more than 7,000 scripts. His work appeared in Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Uncle Scrooge, Goofy, and all the Disney comics produced by Western, along with tales of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety & Sylvester, Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, and dozens more. He was said to have created the Disney comic book character Moby Duck and to have developed and written The Wacky Adventures of Cracky. Lockman also wrote Terrytoons comics such as Mighty Mouse for St. John Publishing and Dennis the Menace comics for Hank Ketcham, but his most passionate work was for the Christian marketplace, where he published dozens of books and tracts, most of them featuring his writing and drawing on religion and controversial topics of the day. Lockman left this world in 2017.

Robert Morales (1958–2013)

Born in New York City and of Afro-Puerto Rican descent, Morales broke into writing for magazines such as Heavy Metal and Publishers Weekly. Moving into the world of entertainment journalism, he worked as executive editor of the music and pop culture magazine Reflex and at Quincy Jones’s Vibe magazine, where he gave greater exposure to the work of cartoonists such as Chris Ware, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Jeff Smith, and Kyle Baker. Morales and Baker collaborated on several projects, including perhaps Morales’s best-known work in comics, the groundbreaking seven-issue miniseries for Marvel Truth: Red, White & Black. Published in 2003, it introduced the African American character Isaiah Bradley. Using World War II and the Tuskegee medical atrocities as their canvas, Morales and Baker crafted a stark tale that explored America’s history of racial injustice and medical experimentation on African Americans. The story revealed that Bradley was the first successful recipient of the super-soldier serum, which would later transform serviceman Steve Rogers into Captain America, and established Bradley as the first Captain America. Most recently, a version of the character appeared in the 2021 television series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, raising awareness for Morales and his work that is long overdue. Morales would go on to write a celebrated run of the monthly Captain America series for Marvel in 2004. He passed away unexpectedly on April 18, 2013, at the age of 54.

Paul S. Newman (1924–1999)

Hailed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the all-time most prolific comic book writer, Paul S. Newman is credited with more than 4,100 published stories totaling approximately 36,000 pages. His earliest credit seems to have been in 1947 for DC’s teen comic A Date With Judy. Within months, though, he was selling scripts to Avon Comics, the American Comics Group, Fawcett Comics, Timely (Marvel), Hillman, Fiction House, and many others. His longest runs were writing The Lone Ranger and Turok, Son of Stone for Western Publishing in tandem with Dell Comics. In fact, when Western and Dell severed their partnership and split into two separate lines of comics in 1962, Newman was among the few contributors to then work for both houses. A very partial list of the comics he wrote would include Doctor Solar, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Plastic Man, Prince Valiant, Smokey the Bear, The Sub-Mariner, Mighty Mouse, I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, Hopalong Cassidy, Kid Colt, Fat Albert, Gene Autry, The Twilight Zone, Jungle Jim, Leave It to Beaver, Captain Video, Yosemite Sam, Patsy Walker, Zorro, Nancy and Sluggo, and Mr. Ed, plus almost every anthology title published by Atlas/Marvel during the fifties or Western during the following three decades. All of this was in addition to dozens of young adult novels written for Western Publishing, movie scripts, and the newspaper strips of Robin Malone, Smokey the Bear, The Lone Ranger, Laugh-In, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Paul S. Newman passed away in 1999.

Robert “Bob” White (1928–2005)

Bob White was the creator, writer, and artist of Archie Comics’ Cosmo the Merry Martian humorous sci-fi series. Between 1954 and 1968, he worked prolifically as a penciller/inker and sometimes writer on many Archie-related titles, including Archie and Me, Archie as Pureheart the Powerful, Archie’s Jokebook, Archie’s Madhouse, Archie’s Mechanics, Betty and Veronica, Jughead, Reggie and Me, and of course, just plain Archie. His most acclaimed work for the company was probably his stint on Archie and Me, writing and drawing many of the action/adventure-ish full-length stories for the title’s early issues, as well as plenty of memorable covers. He also wrote stories about The Shield, Black Hood, and The Web for Archie’s 1960s superhero line, Mighty Comics. His stint with the company came to an end in 1968 because, he said, he was found to be “moonlighting” on Tippy Teen for rival Tower Comics. White was so discouraged by this that he opted to leave the comic book industry altogether and switch careers. He labored in the emerging field of computer programming for the remainder of his working days and passed away in 2005.

[Based on a press release.]

File 770

Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom

Tag Archives: Mark Evanier

Pixel Scroll 4/11/26 Will The Moebius Strip Be Unbroken?

Don Glut, Sheldon Mayer Receive 2025 Bill Finger Award

Pixel Scroll 4/16/25 It’s Been A Long File Since I Pixel Scrolled

Pixel Scroll 2/10/25 The Filer Who Sold Another Moon-Based Title

Pixel Scroll 4/18/22 You Get A File, I’ll Get A Troll, We’ll Head Down To The Pixel Scroll, Honey, Enemy Mine

Pixel Scroll 2/16/22 This Page Intentionally Left Indescribable

Pixel Scroll 1/15/22 Pixelpunk Scrollcore

Pixel Scroll 12/2/21 Of All The Pixels In The World, She Scrolls In To Mine

Pixel Scroll 11/20/21 Down Slupps The Pixel-Ma-Phone To Your Ear

Six Posthumous Recipients to Receive 2021 Bill Finger Award