26 Pixels Bursting In The Air, Gave Proof, Our Scroll Was Still There

Posted on April 25, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) SAD CHERRYH ANNOUNCEMENT. CJ Cherryh told Facebook readers today why she will not be producing new fiction going forward.

Dear readers and friends. The unhappy fact is—the numerous bouts of anaesthetic I’ve had have made it pretty well impossible for me to write. I drop stitches. Not many. No problems with daily life or doing creative stuff or enjoying life in general. But the ability to control narrative is just not what it was, and it’s just not going to be there. I’ve accepted that, painful as it is. I thank all of you who’ve stood by me patiently. The body of work is what it is, and I am lastingly grateful to my publisher, Betsy Wollheim, who has given me every extension of time and resource. And of course to Jane, who is all things.

(2) WHERE TO FIND HUGO FINALISTS. At From the Heart of Europe Nicholas Whyte has a compilation of links showing “Where to get the 2026 Hugo finalists” to get started on your Hugo reading.

The Hugo final ballot is out, and I understand that as is usual, the Hugo team is working hard to assemble a Voter Packet which will be made available for free to all Hugo voters (WSFS members of this year’s Worldcon). This is obviously a Good Thing, but as a matter of fact you can start your Hugo reading right now; there is no need to wait until the Packet is available.

Below, I give links to works which are available for free online, and Amazon links to other works, skipping individual people and Dramatic Presentations. The Packet, when it is available, is likely to also include samples of work by individuals who are finalists, and if we’re lucky also a Dramatic Presentation or two. But you can get started right now.

(3) THE PLATENS MUST ROLL. Jason Sanford reports “Must Read Magazines switching to new printer for Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF” at Genre Grapevine. The text of the publisher’s announcement is at the link.

Must Read Magazines – the publisher of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Fantasy and Science Fiction – announced on April 22 that they are switching to a new printing company….

(4) BUM DEAL. “‘Very funny’ naked statue of Monty Python’s Terry Jones unveiled” reports BBC. (Subscription required by readers outside UK.)

A statue commemorating actor and writer Terry Jones has been unveiled in his birthplace.

Jones, best known for his part in the British comedy troupe Monty Python, died in 2020 aged 77 from a rare form of dementia.

His family backed a fundraising campaign to have him immortalised in bronze in Colwyn Bay, Conwy, as the nude organist, a recurring character played by Jones in Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Jones’ fellow Python, Sir Michael Palin, attended the unveiling and said the late star would find the tribute “very funny indeed”, adding Jones was a “brilliant man in so many ways”.

Fellow Python Terry Gilliam also attended the unveiling of the statue on Saturday, which overlooked Colwyn Bay beach in north Wales….

(5) HUGO’S MAGAZINE REMEMBERED. “Amazing Stories at 100: A pioneering publication celebrates a century of ‘scientifiction’” and NPR’s “All Things Considered” attends the party.

Amazing Stories was like nothing else when its April 1926 issue appeared on newsstands. Between its lurid painted covers was the first magazine devoted exclusively to the publication of what came to be called science fiction — though its 41-year-old publisher, Hugo Gernsback, called its mindbending contents by a different name: scientifiction.

“By ‘scientifiction,’ I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story,” Gernsback wrote in a mission statement in the first issue, under the all-caps headline A NEW SORT OF MAGAZINE. “A charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.”…

… His portmanteau never quite made it into port. But Gernsback’s innovation of collecting previously-diffuse bits of literature ruminating on scientific discovery or technological advancement in one place proved to be an idea with staying power. The evidence is all around us, on all your streaming services and movie marquees, if not your bookshelves….

(6) BALDREE COLLECTION REVIEWED. A Deep Look by Dave Hook covers “’Tales from the Territory’, a Travis Baldree collection, Fall 2026 Subterranean Press”. Here’s the short take – the longer, deeper analysis is at the link.

The Short: I just read Tales from the Territory, a Travis Baldree collection, Fall 2026 Subterranean Press. It includes five works of cozy fantasy short fiction. Information online suggests there will be an e-book, audiobook, and hardcover edition, with 224 pages for the hardcover. Three of the stories are original to this collection. My favorites are two great stories, “Goblins and Greatcoats“, a short story, 2025 Subterranean chapbook, and “Just A Thimbleful”, short fiction, original to this collection. My overall, average rating is 3.74/5, or “Very good”. Recommended.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 25, 1999 — X-Files’ “The Unnatural”

Twenty-seven years ago on this evening on FOX, the David Duchovny-written-and-directed X-Files’ “The Unnatural” episode first aired. It is not connected to the underlying mythology of series, and thus is one of their Monster of the Week stories.

We’ve aliens (as in Roswell), baseball and the KKK. Well, only the latter are the monsters here if you ask me as the aliens definitely aren’t. Aliens playing baseball definitely are not monsters.

We would have had Darren McGavin here too but he suffered a stroke after he was cast as one of the principal characters, so after the stroke, he was replaced by M. Emmet Walsh whom you’ll recognize as Bryant in Blade Runner. McGavin never filmed anything again.

It had a notable cast, so I’ll list it: Frederic Lane, M. Emmet Walsh, Jesse L. Martin, Walter T. Phelan, Jr., Brian Thompson and Paul Willson.

Reception for this episode is exceptionally good. Them Movie Reviews said of it that, “It is truly a credit to Duchovny that The Unnatural works at all, let alone that it turns out as a season highlight. There are any number of memorable and striking visuals in The Unnatural. The sequence where Dales discovers Exley’s true nature is one of the most distinctive shots in the history of The X-Files.”

While Doux Reviews stated “Think about it for a minute. This is an episode about baseball players in the 1940s. They are not only black in a time when being so could be life threatening, they are aliens. Our two heroes are, for the most part, nowhere to be seen throughout this hour. This story should never have worked. It did and it does on every subsequent re-watch. Written and directed by David Duchovny, this is an earnest hour of television. Duchovny took a premise that could have been silly and inane beyond the telling of it and chose to take the whole thing seriously. Because he does, we do as well.”

The X-Files are on Hulu.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 25, 1969 — Gina Torres, 57.

Where shall I start with Gina Torres? What was her best role? I submit it was a non-genre role as Jessica Pearson in the legal drama Suits and Pearson, the sort of sequel series where she was a disbarred attorney. It was a truly meaningful role that she got to grow into over the time the two series ran.

Genre-wise her most interesting character was Zoë Alleyne Washburne in the Firefly series which I really would have loved to see developed into more a rounded character had the series lasted. I liked her background of having served in the Unification War under Reynolds for two-and-a-half years and being one of the few to survive the Battle of Serenity Valley.

Before that she was down in New Zealand, where she appeared in Xena: Warrior Princess as Cleopatra in “The King of Assassins”, and in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, she had a recurring role as Nebula.

She was in the M.A.N.T.I.S. series as Dr. Amy. I liked that series.

She was the Big Bad in a season of Angel as Jasmine. It’s hard to explain what she did here without Major Spoilers being given away and there might be at least one least one reader here who hasn’t seen Angel yet. I actually think it’s a better series than Buffy was.

Right after the Firefly series, she had a role in the Matrix films, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions as Cas.

After that came the Cleopatra series where she was Helen “Hel” Carter (and which lasted longer than I thought at twenty-six episodes) , a great piece of pulpy SF. She was obviously having a lot of fun there.

One of my favorite roles for her strictly using her voice came in the animated Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths where she was the Crime Syndicate Siberia Woman. Stellar role done with just her voice. She also voiced Vixen / McCabe on Justice League Unlimited. She was the girlfriend of John Stewart, the Green Lantern there.

She voiced Ketsu Onyo on two of the animated Star Wars series, Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars Forces of Destiny. She’s a Mandalorian bounty hunter who helps the Rebel Alliance.

She’s on Westworld in a storyline that that is so convoluted that I’m not sure that I could explain it. Suffice it to say that she was there. Or not.

Lest I forget I should note that she had a recurring role on Alias as Anna Espinosa, an assassin who was the utterly ruthless and ceaselessly persistent nemesis of Sydney Bristow, the character that Jennifer Garner played.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit finds this word doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Six Chix celebrates libraries.
Speed Bump is not about Robin.
Wumo’s positivity offends these literateurs.

(10) THE BEATLE WHO LIVED. TVLine says “For All Mankind Changed One Alternate Timeline Easter Egg Over Lawsuit Fears”.

John Lennon survives his 1980 assassination attempt in the universe of “For All Mankind.” Every season of the series begins with a different montage of major events from the decade, including presidential elections and celebrity deaths. Season 2 nearly featured a different Easter egg involving The Beatles, but the co-creator of Apple TV’s alternate history show decided to change his plans.

During a 2021 interview with Inverse, Ronald D. Moore revealed that Season 2’s timeline originally included The Beatles getting back together following their breakup in 1970. “Well, John Lennon is alive in our 1983,” Moore said. “And at one point it wasn’t just going to be John Lennon out there doing stuff. There was going to be a whole Beatles reunion tour happening. And then I just realized once that happened, I’m going to start raising flags all over the place and I’m going to be getting calls from lawyers. So, I was like, let’s just do John Lennon.”

While “For All Mankind” Season 2 leaves the aftermath of Lennon’s failed assassination attempt up to interpretation, Season 3 confirms that The Beatles’ reconvened and took the world by storm, opening their reunion tour in Chicago in 1987. Then, Season 4’s introductory montage reveals that Lennon headlined the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show in 2002 as a solo artist.

Most recently, Season 5 briefly depicts Lennon performing alongside Jay-Z at the 2005 Grammys, where their collaboration on “The Grey Album” won album of the year. This Beatles Easter egg in “For All Mankind” is especially fascinating because “The Grey Album” — a blend of Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” and The Beatles’ “The White Album” released by producer Danger Mouse in 2004 — actually exists….

(11) TIMING ISN’T ONLY THE SECRET OF COMEDY. “Former Nintendo employees confirm that Nintendo holds onto finished games until they find the right release date” reports GoNintendo.

Earlier this week we posted about the German USK rating for Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, as we learned it popped up all the way back in May 2025. This seemed to point to Nintendo sitting on a content-complete version of the game for roughly a year before it released. Fans have long thought that Nintendo would sometimes finish games and then hold onto them until they have a spot on their release calendar that they feel best suits the title, and now we know that’s indeed the case. (h/t Genki)

Former Nintendo employees Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang have opened up on Nintendo’s practice of holding off on the release of finished games, saying exactly what fans thought. At least during the Switch era, Nintendo would wrap up some games quite quickly, and then they’d bank them until the perfect release timing would pop up.

“That totally happened though in the past where a lot of these things they just sock away in the Nintendo vault. Like a lot of these remakes, those ports, those are just like done real fast and they’ll just sock them away and then whenever there’s a gap in the calendar, they’ll just release one of those ports.

And that’s how they kept the Switch life cycle so long, is because they just didn’t really have any lulls because they were able to be so quick and kind of have a batch of stuff ready to go and they would just find the right time strategically to release it.”

[Kit and Krysta Podcast]

While that might have been the case for Nintendo during the bulk of the Switch era, it’s been years since Kit and Krysta were employed at Nintendo, so they can’t speak to whether or not Nintendo is still continuing this practice. Again, the discovery with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’s rating would seem to indicate that Nintendo still does bank titles, but whether it’s part of their Switch 2 plan going forward remains to be seen.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George presents: “If Your Parents’ Videos Had An Awards Show”.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/12/25 Me And The Pixels Know How To Nap

Posted on September 12, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) LIVE AND DIRECT. [Item by N.] Nintendo livestreamed an hour-long Nintendo Direct today, featuring announcements and trailers for video games and DLC coming to the new Switch 2 console, including the sequel to the Hugo-winning Hades, breaking out of Early Access September 25:

Also announced were some other titles (and a movie!) of genre interest:

The full VOD can be watched here:

(2) NEIL CLARKE Q&A. “’I Love Working With Creative People.’ A Chat with Neil Clarke, Editor of Clarkesworld” at Lit Mag News. The actual interview is a video behind a paywall.

… In this conversation we talked about the history of the magazine, which began nineteen years ago and launched online at a time when few other online magazines existed. Since its inception Neil said “the field has changed a lot.” Most notably, online magazines have become more respected and more prize-worthy than once perceived.

Clarkesworld first got on my radar in 2023 when they received international news coverage for having to shut down due to a deluge of AI submissions. Neil said in most cases the stories were clearly generated by ChatGPT. In some instances the writers left the prompts embedded within the stories.

This led to Neil’s fascinating work detecting AI submissions, measures he’s implemented and ways he has helped other journal editors do the same for their magazines. We spent time discussing how he spots AI writing, what defines “AI-generated work” and where Neil draws the line in creative material.

The good news is that Neil said he isn’t worried that AI will be replacing writers any time soon. The models are meant to predict the most likely word to follow the previous word; they will never be capable of offering surprising and genuinely compelling content. He does, however, worry about young readers who are being trained to perceive AI writing as literary quality.

As this was part of our Lit Mag Reading Club, we discussed how the July 2025 issue is different from past issues. Neil said July 2025 focuses more on “mind” and “identity.” Is this a new direction for the journal? No, he said. The main recurring themes he sees most often are climate and AI. He expects to be continuing to publish more of these works going forward….

(3) SFWA’S TAKE ON ANTHROPIC DEVELOPMENTS. SFWA President Kate Ristau updated members about the Anthropic case today.

…This week, the judge in the Anthropic case ripped apart the proposed settlement in the class action lawsuit. When his reasoning came through, I saw echoes of Jason Sanford’s Genre Grapevine. Sanford discussed how the settlement works off minimal definitions for which books to include in the class.

The class leaves some authors with an empty cup.

I am personally one of those authors, holding traditionally published books in my hands that were never copyrighted by my publisher. (If you’ve been wondering about copyright and how it works, you’ll want to check out the latest piece by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Presents, Protecting Your Intellectual Property, which covers the basics, the myths, the scams, and more.)

Sanford and Strauss are concerned about copyright and liabilities, and so are we. The judge read those same tea leaves, and he argued that the settlement is being “forced down the throat of authors.”

That is tough to swallow.

I want to assure you that, at SFWA, we hear that complaint, that frustration, and that gross tea. We are meeting with our own counsel to discuss the gaps in the class definition, while also working on informing eligible class members about their eligibility. We don’t want any authors to miss out on being compensated for the use of their work.

While all this shakes out, we’re also heading to Washington, D.C., where Isis and I will be meeting with congressional staff and lawmakers to discuss how these cases impact authors, in addition to other concerns such as book bans and the future of publishing….

(4) WRITER BEWARE. Victoria Strauss today reprinted the article Ristau mentioned above, “Protecting Intellectual Property: What Writers Need to Know About Copyright”, at Writer Beware.

Copyright is a complex subject about which there are many misconceptions.

I was reminded of that this week, thanks to an email from an author who discovered that several of their books were included in one of the databases of pirated works used by the AI company Anthropic for AI training. The author wanted to know whether they were eligible to be part of the gigantic $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic has agreed to pay to compensate writers for its misuse of their intellectual property. (You can read more about the lawsuit, and the settlement, here.)

One of the criteria for eligibility, set by the court, is that copyrights to the pirated works must have been properly registered with the US Copyright Office before Anthropic downloaded the databases. And indeed, the author’s books were all registered in a timely manner…but not with the Copyright Office. Instead, the author used a website called Copyrighted.com, which offers a kind of faux registration using timestamps and its own certificates.

I had to tell the author that no, they weren’t eligible for compensation for their pirated books. In the United States, there’s no equivalent or substitute for the US Copyright Office’s official registration process. The author couldn’t even use the materials they’d gotten from Coprighted.com as prima facie evidence of copyright ownership. Again, only official registration provides that.

In this post, I’m going to cover the basics of copyright, offer some warnings, and dispel some myths. It’s intended as an overview, not an all-inclusive resource; there’s much more to know, and there are resources at the bottom of the post to help with that. I’m also aware that much of what I write below will be familiar to a lot of readers—but as the example above shows, knowledge gaps not only exist, but can be damaging.

As always in the writing biz, knowledge is your greatest ally and your best defense. I hope even the most copyright-savvy readers will find something useful here….

(5) FILERS DOWN UNDER. Heather Rose Jones is doing a long-delayed tikitour of New Zealand following Worldcon, and she met up for dinner with Filers Soon Lee and Jo Van in Auckland.

Soon Lee, Jo Van, and Heather Rose Jones.

(6) DOT’S ALL, FOLKS! [Item by Daniel Dern.] Ian Randall Strock’s Punctilious Punctuation will be available in slightly less than a week! (I just learned about it, from his LinkedIn page).

Taking a stand against the abomination that is punctuational minimization, Ian Randal Strock takes a big look at the little marks between words that mean so much. Delving into the genesis and history of punctuation marks (both individually and collectively), he also looks at proposed—and failed—punctuation marks, and suggests new ones.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll sigh with relief. But maybe… just maybe… you’ll come away from this book realizing that saving fractions of column inches is no reason to cede the clarity, vibrancy, and artistry of proper punctuation to the legions of language-devaluing, space-saving, text-messaging philistines.

Join the fight for proper punctuation! Read Punctilious Punctuation

(7) ANOTHER HOLLYWOOD MERGER COMING? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “Paramount Skydance preparing bid for Warner Bros Discovery, source says” – Reuters has the story.

Looking strictly at market capitalization, the potential new entity would still be a fraction the size of most of their competitors. Something like 1/10 or less of a Disney in the most extreme comparison.

Paramount Skydance (PSKY.O), opens new tab is preparing a bid to buy Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O), opens new tab, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday, potentially bringing together two storied Hollywood studios and reshaping the entertainment industry.

A bid for Warner Bros Discovery would be backed by the Ellison family, which includes Skydance head David Ellison and his father, billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, citing unnamed sources.

The audacious bid, coming just weeks after Skydance bought Paramount Global for $8.4 billion, would unite some of the best-known entertainment brands under a single corporate shingle, bringing together DC Comics superheroes like Superman and Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants, science-fiction franchises like “The Matrix” and “Star Trek” and two major news networks, CBS News and CNN.

“This deal is the Hollywood equivalent of a sequel no one expected but everyone sort of saw coming,” said eMarketer analyst Jeremy Goldman.

No offer has been submitted and the plans could still fall apart, the WSJ reported…

(8) THIS MEANS WAR. Joshua Tyler, the author of this article published in August, seems to have a bug up his ass about modern Doctor Who, so the Tardis showing up as an Easter Egg in the Star Trek universe set him off big time. He also appears to have invented (or otherwise latched onto) the phrase “slop eaters“ and applies it—as if it were the ultimate insult—to anyone who has tastes different from his. “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Just Had Doctor Who’s TARDIS Show Up, And It’s A Declaration Of War” at Giant Freakin Robot.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ latest episode, “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail,” features a scene in which the TARDIS from Doctor Who is visible floating around in space behind the Enterprise. Ten years ago this would have been a fun Easter egg, now it’s an apt demonstration of everything that has gone wrong with the show….

The context for the TARDIS’s presence is that the Enterprise has been swallowed by a salvage ship that sucks in other starships and rips them apart for fuel. Apparently, the idea here is that the TARDIS was also, at some point, captured by this metal monster.

Dropping the TARDIS into your series perfectly demonstrates how tone-deaf the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds production team is. While once Doctor Who was a beloved sci-fi series with a lot of crossover between Trek fans and Doctor Who fans, those days are long gone.

Modern-day Doctor Who is a disaster. Everyone except a handful of Slop Eaters has abandoned it, and Disney is expected to cancel it because it’s so bad no one wants it anymore. Doctor Who is now a joke, a sci-fi pariah, and no one takes it seriously.

Audience scores for the past few years of Doctor Who seasons are a tire fire, and the show has no ratings. For at least five years now, the problem with Doctor Who has been the writing. The series has adopted a style of writing I’m going to call “nonsenscore,” in which the writers throw out anything that feels good, regardless of whether it makes any logical or narrative sense. It has ruined the once great Doctor Who franchise and destroyed it permanently.

That exact writing style is also what made Star Trek: Discovery so terrible, and it has lately begun creeping into Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, too….

(9) FEELINGS, NOTHING MORE THAN FEELINGS. A month later, Joshua Tyler is enraged by the series’ season-ending episode: “Strange New Worlds Turns Star Trek Into Doctor Who, Destroys Entire Franchise For Its Season 3 Finale” from Giant Freakin Robot.

When Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, his goal was to depict a bright and hopeful future in which humans had learned to use science, reason, and common sense to work together and explore the universe. In its season three finale, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds managed to undo all that and has now completed transitioning his franchise into a series of flailing emotions and empty nonsense.

The episode, titled “New Life and New Civilizations,” pulls together breadcrumbs scattered throughout season 3 into a plot involving end-of-the-universe stuff. I’d explain it, but I can’t, since the show doesn’t. It’s all about the vibe of bad things happening. Characters then respond to this vibe by asking, “What if this thing we can’t know, is true?” and then someone responds, “I bet it is!” and they proceed accordingly.

None of it makes any sense, and that’s the way Star Trek: Strange New Worlds wants it. The show seems to be avowedly against reason and common sense.

So the Strange New Worlds’s overstuffed cast of characters goes to work on the feelings they’ve all had about the developing situation. They then do whatever those feelings lead them to do, and the audience is supposed to accept this as a plot.

It culminates in an emotionally manipulative side-tangent in which we watch Captain Pike live out a life with Captain Patel, for no reason other than that it’s what Captain Patel feels she wants before becoming a statue. Why does she have to become a statue? No one knows, but she feels it….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

September 12, 1998 — Young Hercules series

I know that a lot of you have seen Hercules and Xena, but I am guessing that a lot less of you saw Young Hercules which came out on this date, twenty-seven years ago. It won’t surprise you at all that it was created by Sam Raimi who, of course, created the other two series.

The series follows Hercules (played Ryan Gosling) as he attends Cheiron’s Academy to train in the arts of the warrior under the wise headmaster Cheiron the Centaur (as performed by Nathaniel Lees under a most excellent costume). Other primary cast members are the future king of Corinth, Prince Jason (Chris Conrad), a thief who was a former member of a bandit group, Iolaus (Dean O’Gorman) who is here instead of in prison, and the academy’s first female cadet, Lilith (Jodie Rimmer). Need I say they’re all very handsome, or in her case, cute? They really are.

Not at all surprisingly Rob Tapert who had his hand in the other two series is involved in this series. Here he is one of the writers and executive producer. This series came to be just two years before he executive produced both Jack of All Trades and Cleopatra 2525.

Needless to say, it was produced in New Zealand — no not by Peter Jackson. Renaissance Pictures produced this one which makes sense as it was founded by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell to produce The Evil Dead along with the two sequels and yes, the company produced Xena and Hercules as well, and the Darkman films.

Ryan Gosling made a fine young, Hercules here. Actually, he was far more believable as a character than, ahem, a certain other character that played the older one was. Just my opinion, I think this was because both he and adventures being geared towards a young adult audience were in lighter in tone. Also being, 20 minutes long, meant there was no filler, something that is important in telling your story sometimes. Now I thought that Xena rarely suffered from having filler whereas both Hercules and the character were full of, errr, well that.

All the live filming took place in New Zealand, but the visual effects were done in LA as was the music. Weta, yes, that company that would later be involved in The Lord of the Rings, was responsible for the special visual effects here. They lost most of that team very fast because of the overlap with the filming of The Fellowship of the Ring, and this may have contributed to the series ending.

I like this series every bit as much as I do Xena and I like both of these series far, far more than I ever liked Hercules. It ran for fifty twenty-minute episodes which aired technically in one season though I saw it broken up into three seasons later on.

The image below has the main cast with Gosling on the left, Dean next to him with Chris just behind Jodie.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Baby Blues starts villainy young.
Dinosaur Comics sings about a legend.
Free Range started small.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal displays a bias towards a genre.
xkcd explains the balrog (when you mouse over).
War and Peas might be a case of imposter syndrome.

(12) GRRM’S WORLDCON REPORT. The Independent shares a take on GRRM’s blog entry about Seattle Worldcon 2025: “George RR Martin shares bittersweet post after attending Worldcon”.

…“Caught up with some old fan friends, made some new ones,” Martin, 76, wrote. “I did two panels, both of them enjoyable, and the autographing was well-run, drew about 300 [people].”

He said that the highlight of the convention was a screening of three of the four short films based on works by late author Howard Waldrop: Night of the Cooters, Mary Margaret Road-Grader, and The Ugly Chickens. The fourth film has yet to be produced.

“We had a full house for that, every seat occupied, people sitting in the aisles and standing in the back of the hall, and everyone seemed to enjoy the movies, which pleased me no end,” he said. “I just wish Howard could have been there to see them.”

“When not signing books or doing a panel or showing a film, I mostly sat around in the bar with [my wife] Parris and friends, chatting about everything and nothing,” Martin continued in his post.

“I have reached the point in life where that’s the best part of any con for me. It does bring back memories, though. Worldcons these days are filled with ghosts: Howard and Gardner, Ed Bryant and John Miller, so many more.”

Martin became friends with Waldrop while searching for a very rare DC comic, The Brave and the Bold issue 28, which he found and purchased from a fellow teenage boy – Waldrop – in Arlington, Texas.

Both went on to write science-fiction works: Waldrop was regarded more as a cult figure, while Martin achieved significant mainstream success with his A Song of Ice and Fire series….

(13) KEEP WATCHING (AND PHOTOGRAPHING) THE SKIES. “Astronomy photographer of the year 2025 – winners and finalists” – the Guardian has a gallery of photos.

Judges have announced the winning images from the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s annual competition. The photographs will be exhibited at the National Maritime Museum in London from Friday.

…The overall winner was the Andromeda Core by Weitang Liang, Qi Yang and Chuhong Yu….

(14) THE HOLE TRUTH. “After 10 years of black hole science, Stephen Hawking is proven right” – NPR leads the cheers.

…On Sept. 14, 2015, physicists attained the long-sought goal of detecting gravitational waves, the shockwaves spewed out by such cataclysmic events as the violent merger of two black holes.

This huge breakthrough quickly garnered three of the effort’s key figures the physics Nobel Prize. In the 10 years since then, scientists have detected hundreds of black holes coming together, as well as other extreme cosmic events like neutron stars colliding and black holes merging with a neutron star.

Now, in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers say their ability to analyze gravitational waves has improved so much over the past decade that they were recently able to verify a key idea about the growth of black holes — one put forth by Stephen Hawking back in 1971.

“There’s a very famous statement in physics that Stephen Hawking worked out, which is that the area, the surface area, of black holes can never decrease,” explains Maximiliano Isi, an astrophysicist with Columbia University and the Flatiron Institute.

And he says that’s just what scientists observed after analyzing gravitational waves detected earlier this year. On Jan. 14, detectors registered gravitational waves that came from two colliding black holes about 1.3 billion light-years away.

These black holes had masses 30 to 40 times that of our sun, so their collision was very similar to the one that led to the first gravitational wave detection back in 2015. Since that time, however, the pair of giant detectors run by LIGO, in Louisiana and Washington state, have been repeatedly upgraded.

“Because the detectors are so much better today, we can record the signal so much more clearly,” says Katerina Chatziioannou, a gravitational wave physicist at Caltech.

That allowed them to perform a new analysis showing that between the two of them, the initial black holes had a combined surface area of 240,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of Oregon). After they merged to form a single black hole, its area was about 400,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of California).

Hawking’s theory says that the final area of the black hole has to be bigger than the sum of the two initial areas, says Chatziioannou, “and this is what we demonstrated observationally with that signal.”…

(15) TIMES OF BLACK HOLES TO COME. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Does these means some of our college physics credits get revoked? “Imminent Black Hole Explosion Could Upend Physics & Rewrite History Of The Universe” at Hot Hardware.

Physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have made a bold prediction: there is a more than 90% probability that our telescopes could witness a black hole explode within the next 10 years. If observed, this event would not only be a truly rare visual treat but could also provide unprecedented insight into the fundamental building blocks of reality and maybe even rewrite the history of the universe in the process.

The black hole in question isn’t a massive stellar-mass black hole left behind by a dying star. Instead, researchers are focused on primordial black holes (PBHs)—a theoretical class of black holes, first proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking, believed to have formed just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang approximately 13.8 billion years ago. Essentially, PBHs are far smaller and lighter than their stellar-mass counterparts.

According to Hawking, black holes are not truly black in the strictest sense. They slowly leak energy and particles, losing mass over time. The smaller a black hole is, the faster this evaporation process occurs, culminating in a final, explosive burst of radiation. While physicists have long theorized about this process, they believed the chance of seeing a primordial black hole explode today was astronomically small, estimating it would happen only once every 100,000 years.

However, the UMass Amherst team re-examined the theory using a “dark-QED toy model.” Their research, published in Physical Review Letters this week, suggests that if these tiny black holes were born with a small electric charge, they could be temporarily stabilized. This new model drastically changes the odds, increasing the probability of a final explosion from once every 100k years to every 10 years.

Observing such an event would be transformative in three major ways. First, it would provide the first direct evidence of a primordial black hole, confirming a key theory of the early universe. Second, it would be the first-ever direct detection of Hawking radiation that has eluded scientists for decades. And finally, the explosion itself would act as a kind of space census. As the black hole evaporates, it would release a definitive catalog of all fundamental particles in existence—including known particles like electrons and Higgs bosons, as well as the elusive particles that make up dark matter, and perhaps even entirely new particles yet to be discovered….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Columbo Meets Batman” — The World’s Greatest Detective meets The World’s Greatest Detective.

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

Pixel Scroll 10/4/24 And When People Run In Pixels It’s A Very Very Mad Scroll

Posted on October 4, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SFWA SECRETARY CANDIDATE WITHDRAWS. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association will open voting on October 9 for candidates to complete the terms of the president and secretary. SFWA today notified members the initial candidate for Secretary, Matthew Reardon aka JRH Lawless, has withdrawn from the race. There is a write-in for the position, Steven D. Brewer.

The office of President was vacated by the resignation of SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy on August 1. And when Interim President Chelsea Mueller resigned on August 15, Secretary Anthony W. Eichenlaub moved up to take her place.

Those chosen in the Special Election will serve the remainder of the current terms (until June 30, 2025).

(2) JUDY-LYNN DEL REY TRIBUTE ON PBS. The Renegades episode “Judy-Lynn del Rey: The Galaxy Gal” premiered October 1 on PBS and the 12-minute video can be viewed at the link. The episode features interviews with: Shelly Shapiro, an editor and Judy-Lynn del Rey’s former assistant; Stephen Donaldson; filmmaker and dwarfism historian Aubrey Smalls; Toni Weisskopf; Lois McMaster Bujold; and Dennis Wise, Professor at the University of Arizona and a Del Rey scholar.

About the Episode

Judy-Lynn del Rey (1943-1986) was a New York sci-fi and fantasy editor and a woman with dwarfism who revolutionized the world of sci-fi editing with books from luminaries such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Philip K. Dick.

After studying literature at Hunter College, she began her career in 1965 at the digest-size magazine Galaxy Science Fiction as an Office Assistant, rising up the ranks as Associate Editor in just four years. Following her numerous science fiction bestsellers for Ballantine Books, she started her own imprint, Del Rey Books, and brought along her husband Lester del Rey to revitalize the Ballantine science fiction publishing program. Between 1977 and 1990, Del Rey Books was so dominant on the science fiction and fantasy market that they had 65 different titles reach a bestseller list. Del Rey brought us many of the classic sci-fi greats and was instrumental in obtaining the rights to publish novels based on George Lucas’s “Star Wars,” selling 4.5 million copies months before the first movie was even released. Del Rey Books continues to be a publishing leader in science fiction to this day.

Renegades: Judy-Lynn del Rey explores the life and legacy of Judy-Lynn del Rey and the overarching impact of science fiction on societal norms: its ability to shape collective imagination, foster empathy and understanding, and reconfigure cultural thinking towards disability. People with disabilities, as with most historically targeted communities, are often combating inaccurate, harmful narratives about themselves….

(3) WEIRD TAXONOMY. Clayton Purdom tells LA Review of Books readers that there is such a thing as “Weird Nonfiction”.

…I call it weird nonfiction: creative work that presents itself as journalism or nonfiction but introduces fictional elements with the intention of upsetting, disturbing, or confusing the audience. Works that are about the real world or some subject within it but also question their container or their ability to be about that thing—or which veer from the thing at hand toward the cosmic, horrifying, or absurd. Sometimes it is as if the element of unreality is chasing the author through the piece.

Early examples include the essays and essay-like fictions of Jorge Luis Borges, Orson Welles’s exasperated, exuberant F for Fake (1973), and of course Marker’s otherworldly documentaries….

There are 20 things the author “knows for sure” about “weird nonfiction”. Here’s number one.

…Let’s try something different. More breaks, more air. Here are some things I know for sure about weird nonfiction:

1. The earliest example is Orson Welles’s 1938 radio play “The War of the Worlds,” which famously inspired widespread real-world panic. When one broadcaster attempted to assure his listeners that there was no actual alien invasion, he was accused of being part of the conspiracy. Weird nonfiction is an infection….

(4) PRH PUSHING BACK AGAINST BOOK BANS. “Rosalie Stewart is the anti–book banning public policy manager at Penguin Random House” – Slate provides an introduction.

While it’s not unusual for other industries to dedicate staff to influencing or changing public policy, it’s virtually unheard of in the relatively sleepy world of book publishing. Rosalie Stewart, however, has just been hired as Penguin Random House’s senior public policy manager, a new position that will fight the recent explosion in book-banning campaigns at schools and public libraries. At present, for example, officials in Texas and Iowa have attempted to argue that the book collections held by schools and libraries constitute “government speech” and are therefore not protected by the First Amendment. This bid to redefine the nature of public libraries was rejected by the 8^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Iowa, but for Texas, the matter is being weighed by the notorious extremists on the “rogue” 5^th Circuit. I spoke with Stewart recently about the battle before her….

… There have been two book-banning reports recently from the ALA and PEN America. The first said that book challenges are slowing down, and the second said that banning attempts have ramped up. Could you explain why there would be that difference?

My colleagues—my former colleagues, I should say—at ALA are very good at what they do, and they’re very smart. As a professional association, they just have a different focus in terms of what they’re counting. They’re focused on a very specific definition of a “book ban.” They only count book removals. But we know that this censorship is playing itself out in different ways. Not only are books being challenged, removed, and then put back on the shelf, but there is soft censorship. There’s a chilling effect in terms of the books that people are buying and teaching. I think that PEN America’s definition is a little more expansive and draws on a wider variety of sources. Censorship is not going down. Book banning is not fading away. That’s not what we’re hearing from people out there. That’s a major challenge: How do we fight back against this on such a diffuse battlefield? It’s happening at the state legislatures; it’s happening at the school boards; and it’s happening at the agency level….

(4) PERHAPS YOU MIGHT TRY THE SOUP. [Item by James Bacon.] The first issue of a new zine emanating from the “North side inner-city gentrified Dublin catlands” entitled Perhaps you might try the Soup is now available to download at the link.

Sole creator Pesto Jaguar has brought together an eclectic selection building on artistic experiences through other media and outlets. It is a very unusual zine, although an off the wall approach is not new, yet at the moment this feels different, but a mix of artists expression, satire, photographic imagery, inspired by comic culture, unorthodox yet authentic in an effort to share a set of unusual images that appeal to Pesto Jaguar and random thoughts.

Pesto Jaguar can be found on Mastodon.

Details on Pesto are thin! It’s unclear if they are just a cat prancing on a keyboard filled with catnip or a cat person who digs Pasta, Electronic Music and Comics!

(6) THIS HAPPENS WHEN SURPLUSAGE HAS NOT BEEN ESCHEWED. Muse from the Orb kicks the pith out of “Late Stage RINGS OF POWER”.

…They say God stays in heaven because He fears what He’s created, and to that I say, cool. Two seasons of The Rings of Power have convinced me God should stay out of our business, actually; the people who write Rings of Power in a windowless conference room at Amazon can take it from here. As the inevitable corporate singularity spreads toward the horizon, and our human shells are hooked up to an endless feed of shows like this, I think that we could stand to marvel more at these vast images we have been given. My roommate asked, “Are the dwarves digging down to get to sunlight?” They were.

I’ve decided that we can’t judge Rings of Power on a human scale; perhaps not even on the scale of the aforementioned God. As a piece of art, it’s far too baffling. The deeper you stare, the more it starts to feel like some non-Euclidean artifact from a Lovecraft story staring back at you. What does this dialogue mean? Why did they switch to iambic pentameter for this speech? He’s just called “The Dark Wizard”? Last season, when Galadriel’s brother Finrod turned to her in the very first episode and said

“Do you know why a ship floats and a stone cannot? Because the stone sees only downward. The darkness of the water is vast and irresistible. The ship feels the darkness as well, striving moment by moment to master her and pull her under. But the ship has a secret. For unlike the stone, her gaze is not downward but up. Fixed upon the light that guides her, whispering of grander things than darkness ever knew”

my soul left my body and floated awhile against the border of some tessellated realm as far beyond our comprehension as computer circuits are to ants’. You know how inmates trapped in solitary confinement start to lose their notions of reality the longer they’re alone? Watching Rings of Power feels a bit like that. You’re witnessing a story that’s not actually series of human interactions but a single block of inorganic text, ventriloquized by humans who seem less real with every minute that passes. After binging a few episodes, one’s sense of place and time begins to slip….

(7) UNMENTIONABLE. The movie Coraline apparently made a lot of money this summer and will make some more on Halloween: “’Coraline’ Returns to Theaters for Halloween After Summer Rerelease”. You might not be surprised that the Variety article doesn’t contain Neil Gaiman’s name. For reasons.

… The beloved, stop-motion animated film from 2009 will return on Halloween for a limited-time engagement in newly remastered 3D and 2D formats.

If you feel like you just saw “Coraline” back in theaters, it’s not deja vu — you’re right. The film just had a successful summer rerelease for its 15th anniversary, where it made $53 million globally. Henry Selick’s film now stands at a lifetime haul of $185.7 million worldwide and is the highest-grossing stop-motion film in the U.S. It’s also the highest-grossing rerelease in the U.S. in the past 10 years and the highest-grossing of Fathom’s 20-year history. Attendees on Halloween will also get a sneak peek of Laika’s upcoming film “Wildwood.”…

(8) BARELY, I TELL YOU. “‘We were only slightly influenced by the Cantina music’: the underworld sounds of Star Wars Outlaws” – so they tell the Guardian.

Have you ever thought what walking into a sweaty, dusty club on one of Star Wars’ desert planets would sound like? About what plays on the radios in the casinos on those Las Vegas-like planets? What do the merchants and miscreants of Tatooine listen to when they’re not working the moisture farms or fending off Tusken Raiders? Pondering questions like that has been Cody Matthew Johnson’s life for the past few years. The composer and artist has flirted with video game music before, with credits on Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Bayonetta, and the cult indie Kurosawa-inspired side-scroller, Trek to Yomi. But for Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, he was tasked with making music for its seedy criminal underbelly.

(9) MAKANA YAMAMOTO Q&A. In The Bookeller: “Author Interviews – Makana Yamamoto. ‘Writing about my identity is a political statement’”.

“It’s ‘Ocean’s Eight’, but everybody’s a lesbian and it’s in space,” says Makana Yamamoto over video call from their home in Boston, Massachusetts, of their début novel Hammajang Luck. “That’s the joke answer. If I had to condense it down, it would be a heist novel about family, about home, culture and coming back home.”…

…They continued: “I had a lot of fear about it. I really wanted to do right by my community.” Début author Yamamoto is māhū, a Hawaiian term for people who embody the female and male spirit. Even if the book did not begin as a “political statement” about the Hawaiian diaspora, for Yamamoto the very act of writing is charged. “My identity is politicised. Even if I don’t want to be politicised, it’s just the nature of existing in this world as someone who is non-binary, who is māhū, who is not white, who is a lesbian. Writing about my identity is a political statement even if I don’t want it to be.”…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 4, 1923 – Charlton Heston. (Died 2008.) For the late 1960s and into the 1970’s, Charlton Heston was the face of SF cinema in a way that I think in terms of ubiquity across multiple movies and subgenres is matched only by Jeff Goldblum in this modern era. If there was a SFF movie to be made, Heston was likely to be in it. Planet of the Apes, and its sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The Omega Man. The Three and Four Musketeers, as the gold standard Cardinal Richelieu. Earthquake. And of course, perhaps the most iconic of these, Soylent Green. An ending which spawned a thousand memes, his hardbitten cop in an overcrowded New York City is a strength of character and role that is overshadowed by the even better Edward G Robinson in his last performance.

And if you wanted to branch a bit out of genre, there are always his historicals – Ben Hur, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Ten Commandments, Khartoum, and Julius Caesar. I may have been violently opposed to his politics, but the man’s ability and charisma on screen remains for me, unquestioned. Even in the absolutely terrible movie Solar Crisis, which no one should watch for fear of losing SAN points, he is watchable in it, whenever he is on the screen.

Note: I picked a photo of him in Tombstone, where admittedly he only appeared in a handful of scenes as the famed rancher Henry Hooker, but oh wasn’t he magnificent!

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit displays a linguistically adaptable directory.
The Argyle Sweater may or may not have a brain on board.
Jerry King hears complaints about delivery times.
Macanudo says reading choices are important.
Book banning and Fahrenheit 451 figure in the two latest installments of Crankshaft: Crankshaft for 10/3/2024 and Crankshaft for 10/4/2024.

(12) WASCALLY WECRUIT. Heritage Auction’s October 18 – 22 The Art of Anime and Everything Cool…Volume V Signature® Auction, running October 18-22, includes such exotic treasures as Bugs Bunny’s WWII Marine Corps service record!

“Bugs Bunny RARE US Marine Corp Service-Record Book (Warner | Lot #17117” (Warner Brothers, 1942). In the ending for the 1943 cartoon Super-Rabbit, Bugs Bunny states he has some “important work to do” and marches off in a Marine uniform towards “Tokyo, Berlin, and Points East,” according to a sign he passes. With that in mind, here’s proof of his “enlistment” – an official Marine Corps Service-Record booklet numbered 000386 for “Bunny, Bugs” with the rank of Private, and below that, Sergeant. The booklet, specially prepared by the Leon Schlesinger Studio, is rubber-stamped “Sep 1 1942” and his date of birth is noted inside as April 1, 1938; the recruiting officer is Lt. Col. Newton B. Barkly from Dallas, Texas. Lt. Col. Barkely was a big cartoon fan and Bugs Bunny was his favorite; he personally contacted Schlesinger requesting art for his Marine unit, and this booklet is one of several things sent from Schlesinger’s studio. There’s a “photo” of Bugs holding a carrot on the inside front cover of this 4.125″ x 10″ tan-cover booklet. On the inside-back cover, the rabbit’s specialties are “Heckling and Wisecracking” while his favorite hobby is “heckling Elmer Fudd.” There are fingerprints but noted as “with gloves on.” Bugs really was officially inducted into the Corps as an official mascot, issued dogtags, and finally discharged at the end of World War II as a Master Sergeant. Wow! This museum-quality item has been kept with Lt. Col. Barkley’s family all this time and is fresh to the marketplace; there’s not another one in existence. Condition is Very Good with minor handling wear.

(13) NINTENDO MUSEUM. “Former Nintendo factory in Kyoto opens as nostalgia-fuelled gaming museum” and the Guardian peeks inside.

Traditionally, visitors to Kyoto in October come for momijigari, the turning of the autumn leaves in the city’s picturesque parks. This autumn, however, there is a new draw: a Nintendo museum.

The new attraction, which opens on Wednesday, is best described as a chapel of video game nostalgia. Upstairs, Nintendo’s many video game consoles, from 1983’s Famicom through 1996’s Nintendo 64 to 2017’s Switch, are displayed reverently alongside their most famous games. On the back wall, visitors can also peer at toys, playing cards and other artefacts from the Japanese company’s pre-video-game history, stretching back to its founding as a hanafuda playing card manufacturer in 1889. Downstairs, there are interactive exhibits with comically gigantic controllers and floor-projected playing cards….

… Situated on the site of the video game company’s old manufacturing plant in Uji, a 20-minute train ride south of central Kyoto, the museum is expected to welcome up to 2,000 people a day. Tickets – which are allocated via a lottery system and cost 3,300 yen (£17) for an adult – are sold out three months in advance. When it opened in 1969, Nintendo’s Uji Ogura plant manufactured the toys and playing cards that were Nintendo’s money-makers at the time. After the dawn of the video game age in the 1970s, it operated as a customer service centre for console repairs until 2016. The building is far from Kyoto’s other tourist attractions: the suburban town surrounding it has been renovating its train station, preparing for a flood of visitors in Mario hats….

… Visitors are given 10 virtual coins per visit, used to spend on the interactive exhibits. An adjacent hanafuda workshop guides guests through making their own Japanese playing cards, above a cafe that serves custom burgers. Given Nintendo’s notorious secrecy about its creative process – and corporate secrets – it is perhaps unsurprising that there is no insight into how any of the games or consoles on display were made, or who played a part in their development. Only a small display of factory prototype controllers give the briefest peek behind the curtain….

(14) BASS ACKWARDS? Futurism says a “Weird New Quantum Experiment Sounds Suspiciously Like Time Travel”.

…But quantum physicists, who pride themselves on staring into the abyss and gleaning its spooky secrets, have just discovered another baffling phenomenon to make your mind melt: “negative time.”

As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study covered by Scientific American, a team of researchers say they’ve observed photons exhibiting this bizarre temporal behavior as the result of what’s known as atomic excitation.

What essentially happened, as SciAm explains, is that when the photons were beamed into a cloud of atoms, they appeared to exit the medium before entering it. Trust us: we’re just as confused as you are.

“A negative time delay may seem paradoxical, but what it means is that if you built a ‘quantum’ clock to measure how much time atoms are spending in the excited state, the clock hand would, under certain circumstances, move backward rather than forward,” Josiah Sinclair from the University of Toronto, whose early experiments formed the foundation of the study, but wasn’t directly involved, told the magazine….

(15) LET’S TREAD BOLDLY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Now, way back when (shhh 1970s) when I joined fandom there was a lot of sneering in some quarters of fandom at Trekkies and Trekkers, but I must admit to having something of a soft spot for Star Trek even if these days I find the sheer number of series a tad overwhelming. To me it is a bit of fun with occasionally some episodes having great concepts, and I was particularly delighted when the opening credits would occasionally feature a script writer who was also a novelist whose books I also enjoyed. As a scientist one has to suspend one’s disbelief and that can be more easily done if there is some brief technobabble that’s not too convoluted — I can be a forgiving soul. Of course, one can be critical. Becky Smethurst is an astrophysicist at Oxford University who has a weekly vlog, Dr. Becky. This week she looks at the science of Star Trek: The Next Generation…

In this episode of Astrophysicist reacts we’re watching Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 Episode 6 “Where No One Has Gone Before” to pick out the science from the fiction in this sci-fi show. We’re chatting about faster than light speed travel, warp drives, special relativity including time dilation, and the idea of negative energy.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Not even Pitch Meeting can explain this movie,” says a commenter. Ryan George’s “Megalopolis Pitch Meeting”.

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

2023 National Recording Registry Selections Include Carl Sagan, Mario Bros.

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Mike Glyer

The National Recording Registry announced its 2023 inductees on April 12 and two items of genre interest made the list. Each year the Librarian of Congress, with advice from the National Recording Preservation Board, selects 25 titles that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and are at least 10 years old.

Among the 2023 selections are a video game music theme, and a recording of Carl Sagan’s impressions about a famous NASA photo.

Super Mario Bros. theme — Koji Kondo, composer (1985)

Perhaps the most recognizable video game theme in history, Koji Kondo’s main motif for the 1985 Nintendo classic, Super Mario Bros., helped establish the game’s legendary status and proved that the five-channel Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sound chip was capable of vast musical complexity and creativity. Inspired in part by the music of Japanese jazz fusion band, T-Square, the game’s main theme, or “Ground Theme,” is a jaunty, Latin-influenced melody that provides the perfect accompaniment to Mario and Luigi’s side scrolling hijinks. Kondo’s score laid the groundwork for an entire generation of chiptune musicians and has been performed by orchestras around the globe, befitting its status as one of the most beloved musical compositions of the last 40 years.

“Pale Blue Dot” — Carl Sagan (1994)

Few people understood astronomy, planetary science and astrophysics like Carl Sagan, and even fewer could communicate it in a way that makes us think and feel a deeper connection with the universe. In 1990, as the space probe Voyager 1 was finishing its final mission, Sagan asked NASA to take a photo of Earth in a wide shot across the great span of space. The photo and concept resulted in Sagan’s 1994 book, “Pale Blue Dot,” and reminds us of the humility of being the only known species in the solar system and beyond. Reading the words is one thing, but hearing the recording, in Sagan’s own voice, really paints the perspective on how vast the universe is and the responsibility of our existence. As Sagan so eloquently speaks, “It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Speaking generally, the class of 2023’s best-known choices include Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Mariah Carey’s perennial No. 1 Christmas hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, Queen Latifah’s “All Hail the Queen”, and Daddy Yankee’s reggaeton explosion “Gasolina”.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said, “The National Recording Registry preserves our history through recorded sound and reflects our nation’s diverse culture. The national library is proud to help ensure these recordings are preserved for generations to come, and we welcome the public’s input on what songs, speeches, podcasts or recorded sounds we should preserve next. We received more than 1,100 public nominations this year for recordings to add to the registry.”

The new additions bring the number of titles on the National Recording Registry to 625, representing a small portion of the national library’s vast recorded sound collection of nearly 4 million items.

KOJI KONDO. The LOC press release notes that few musicians have had their work become so internationally recognized for decades yet remain so relatively unknown as Koji Kondo, the man who composed the music for the Super Mario Bros. video games in the 1980s. Still today, Kondo is credited for original Nintendo music in the new “Super Mario Bros. Movie” out this month.

Kondo, born and raised in Japan, was a college senior in Osaka, interested in the piano and sound design, when he saw a recruiting flyer from Nintendo on a university bulletin board. He answered the ad, and the rest is video game history. His main, or “Ground Theme,” for the 1985 game is a jaunty, Latin-influenced melody that’s instantly recognizable around the world today.

“The amount of data that we could use for music and sound effects was extremely small, so I really had to be very innovative and make full use of the musical and programming ingenuity that we had at the time,” he said through an interpreter in a recent interview. “I used all sorts of genres that matched what was happening on screen. We had jingles to encourage players to try again after getting a ‘game over,’ fanfares to congratulate them for reaching goals, and pieces that sped up when the time remaining grew short.”

Now 61 and still working for Nintendo, he’s seen his “Mario” music used in films and played by orchestras. He’s designed the world of sound for dozens of other video games. He did, however, have an inkling that they were onto something at the beginning. “I also had a feeling that this game might be something that could turn into a series and continue for a long time,” he said.

“Having this music preserved alongside so many other classic songs is such a great honor,” he said. “It’s actually a little bit difficult to believe.”

Complete List of National Recording Registry 2023 Selections

“The Very First Mariachi Recordings” — Cuarteto Coculense (1908-1909)
“St. Louis Blues” — Handy’s Memphis Blues Band (1922)
“Sugar Foot Stomp” — Fletcher Henderson (1926)
Dorothy Thompson: Commentary and Analysis of the European Situation for NBC Radio (Aug. 23-Sept. 6, 1939)
“Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around” — The Fairfield Four (1947)
“Sherry” — The Four Seasons (1962)
“What the World Needs Now is Love” — Jackie DeShannon (1965)
“Wang Dang Doodle” — Koko Taylor (1966)
“Ode to Billie Joe” — Bobbie Gentry (1967)
“Déjà Vu” — Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (1970)
“Imagine” — John Lennon (1971)
“Stairway to Heaven” — Led Zeppelin (1971)
“Take Me Home, Country Roads” — John Denver (1971)
“Margaritaville” — Jimmy Buffett (1977)
“Flashdance…What a Feeling” — Irene Cara (1983)
“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” — Eurythmics (1983)
“Synchronicity” — The Police (1983)
“Like a Virgin” — Madonna (1984)
“Black Codes (From the Underground)” — Wynton Marsalis (1985)
Super Mario Bros. theme — Koji Kondo, composer (1985)
“All Hail the Queen” — Queen Latifah (1989)
“All I Want for Christmas is You” — Mariah Carey (1994)
“Pale Blue Dot” — Carl Sagan (1994)
“Gasolina” — Daddy Yankee (2004)
“Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra” — Northwest Chamber Orchestra, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, composer (2012)

[Thanks to N. for the story. Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 2/27/23 An Intrepid Pixel In The Twenty-Fourth-And-A-Half Century With His Faithful Companion, The Scroll

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) PRATCHETT REDISCOVERIES. None set on the Discworld, but they are genre: “Rediscovered Terry Pratchett stories to be published” – the Guardian has details.

A collection of newly rediscovered short stories by Terry Pratchett, originally written under a pseudonym, are to be published later this year.

The 20 tales in A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories were written by Pratchett in the 1970s and 1980s for a regional newspaper, mostly under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns. They have never been previously attributed to Pratchett, who died in 2015 aged 66, eight years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

The collection was bought by Pratchett’s longtime publisher Transworld for a six-figure sum, and will be published on 5 October.

The discovery of the stories is down to a group of Pratchett’s fans. One of the longer stories in the collection, The Quest for the Keys, had been framed on Pratchett fan Chris Lawrence’s wall for more than 40 years. When he alerted the Pratchett estate to its existence, the rest of the stories were unearthed by fans Pat and Jan Harkin, who went through decades’ worth of old newspapers to rediscover the lost treasures.

… None of the stories are set in Pratchett’s Discworld – the first book of which, The Colour of Magic, was released in 1983 – but according to the publisher they “hint at the world Sir Terry would go on to create”.

Readers, said the publisher, could expect to “meet characters ranging from cavemen to gnomes, wizards to ghosts, and read about time-travel tourism, the haunting of council offices and a visitor from another planet”….

(2) ADD TO MT TBR? Michael Swanwick calls it “Joanna Russ’s Mainstream Masterwork”.

The latest book I have been knocked flat and wowed by (they come less frequently with age, so read fast, young people) is On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ. She being one of the crown gems of science fiction, you’d expect it to be genre. But it’s not. It’s mainstream. It’s subtitled A Lesbian Love Story. And if you had to fit it into a subgenre, it would be Feminist Fiction.

Strike three, you’d think, for a guy who’s rapidly heading toward the category of Dead White Male. But no, Joanna managed the near-miraculous feat of writing prose that was simultaneously white-hot with anger and laugh-out-loud funny….

(3) NINTENDO DIRECTOR Q&A. “Nintendo’s Miyamoto says inspiration comes from his childhood experiences in nature” at NPR.

The person who made it possible is Nintendo’s game director, Shigeru Miyamoto. He’s the creator of some of the most influential and bestselling games in the industry. In addition to Mario Brothers, you got Donkey Kong and the Legend of Zelda. He joined Nintendo straight out of art school in 1977 and says a lot of his inspiration comes from his childhood experiences in nature. I sat down with Miyamoto to learn more about why his characters and games have had such a lasting impact.

When it comes to Mario, what do you think accounts for his ability to just be in the hearts of so many people?

SHIGERU MIYAMOTO: (Through interpreter) You know, before, when I was asked this question, I thought that it’s perhaps because the game sold well. And a lot of people have this experience of playing this game and playing it over and over, that it becomes commonplace for them. But now I feel that it’s a little bit different in that Mario is kind of like a – your avatar or the person that represents you in this world. And that experience is, you know, because it’s been around for so long, an experience that can be shared multi-generations, you know? A father and their children can share that experience….

(4) YOU KNOW HOW SUCCESSFUL PROHIBITION WAS. Richard Charkin “On the ‘Desecration of Authors’ Works’” at Publishing Perspectives.

Taking a Leaf Out of Dr. Bowdler’s Book

The idea of editing Shakespeare to eliminate doubles entrendres and naughty words to fit in with 19th-century social mores now seems preposterous, although presumably his publishers—Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown—thought it was a pretty good idea at the time.

Their 1818 The Family Shakespeare offered the assurance that “Nothing is added to the original text but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud by a family.” Thomas Bowdler’s work on this gave rise to the term bowdlerize, meaning “to remove matter considered indelicate or otherwise objectionable,” per Merriam-Webster.

Doubtless, the Roald Dahl Story Company and Messrs. Bertelsmann, PRH, and Puffin also thought it was a pretty good idea to subject the works of Roald Dahl to the same sort of treatment for the same sort of reasons.

I’ve had a few brushes with attempts to change or stifle books.

The obvious case was Peter Wright’s tedious Spycatcher, for which Mrs. Thatcher, in a rare case of support for publishers’ profits, appointed herself marketing director for the book by trying to have it throttled.

She forgot that the United Kingdom was only able to ban books in its jurisdiction. At Heinemann, we happily imported books from Australia to satisfy the demand she had created. We even hired tele-sales people to call British booksellers to drum up orders. Phone calls from Australia were expensive, so we found traveling Australians living in London to make the calls.

(5) CAN WE PAY FOR THE FUTURE? Pitchfork Economics presents “Sci-Fi Economics (with Kim Stanley Robinson)” – listen to the podcast, or read the transcript.

We can’t tear down the existing economic framework and replace it with a better one without first telling a persuasive story about how the economy actually works. And few people in the world are more compelling storytellers than science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson.

In his speculative near-future novel The Ministry for the Future, Stan explains complicated economic theories better than most economists. He joins Nick and Goldy for a fascinating conversation about the role of economics in both climate change fiction and climate change reality.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed New York 2140 and The Ministry for the Future.

A brief excerpt from the transcript:

David Goldstein: Well, this raises a question. This book was recommended to me by a number of people. Ostensibly, I thought it was about climate change. But really, it’s a book about economics. I’m wondering, was that your intention when you started the book, or did the economics come out in the writing?

Kim Stanley Robinson: Oh, I knew it was going to be there from the start. As I mentioned, I wrote New York 2140 in probably 2016. It’s a description of New York after sea level rises something like 50 vertical feet, so Lower Manhattan is underwater and is a supervenience, and it’s all about the financialization essentially. It’s not quite a metaphor for our current meltdowns, but it has a lot about the present, as well as the ostensible year of 2140.

So I had been working on it then, and I’d been working on the economics of climate change this whole 21st century. My Washington DC trilogy, set in DC in the near future during climate change, had a economic strand in it, but it wasn’t strong enough. It was more of, what would the federal government do, or the National Science Foundation? But, it became more and more obvious that, although we have various technical solutions to climate change, we don’t have a good way to pay for installing those technological changes, nor do we have a good way of assessing the actual economics of what we’re doing on Earth.

In other words, the gross world product, gross domestic product, whatever you want to call it, the highest rate of return profit itself, these are all crappy, cheesy, short rate, cheating rating systems that the world was run by. So, I needed to keep hammering away at it. Ministry for the Future is just the last of a long series of projects where economics take center stage because it’s crucial.

(6) BURNY MATTINSON (1935-2023). “Burny Mattinson, Animator and Disney’s Longest-Serving Employee, Dies at 87” – The Hollywood Reporter paid tribute. See his many credits at the link.

Burny Mattinson, who worked as an animator, director, producer and story artist during a 70-year career as the longest-serving “castmember” in the history of The Walt Disney Co., has died. He was 87.

Mattinson died after a short illness on Monday at a Canoga Park assisted living facility in Los Angeles, the studio announced. He was due to receive his 70th anniversary service award — the studio’s first ever — on June 4.

Mattinson was working full time at Walt Disney Animation Studios as a story consultant and mentor at the time of his death….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1962 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Tonight’s Beginning comes to us direct from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, the title poem to the collection of the same name. Written by Tolkien as if they were poems written and enjoyed by hobbits, one of the writers being Sam Gamgee.

Two of the poems which feature Tom Bombadil, a character encountered by Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. And three of the poems appear in the Trilogy. Only one of the poems, “Bombadil Goes Boating”, was written specifically for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

Published first by George Allen & Unwin in 1962, it was illustrated by Pauline Baynes, both the cover and all of the interior art as well.

And now here’s our first poetic Beginning…

Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow;
bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow,
green were his girdle and his breeches all of leather;
he wore in his tall hat a swan-wing feather.

He lived up under Hill, where the Withywindle
ran from a grassy well down into the dingle.
Old Tom in summertime walked about the meadows
gathering the buttercups, running after shadows,
tickling the bumblebees that buzzed among the flowers,
sitting by the waterside for hours upon hours.

There his beard dangled long down into the water:
up came Goldberry, the River-woman’s daughter;
pulled Tom’s hanging hair. In he went a-wallowing
under the water-lilies, bubbling and a-swallowing.
‘Hey, Tom Bombadil! Whither are you going?’
said fair Goldberry. ‘Bubbles you are blowing,
frightening the finny fish and the brown water-rat,
startling the dabchicks, and drowning your feather-hat!’

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 27, 1851 — James Churchward. He is remembered for claiming he discovered a lost continent named Mu in the Pacific Ocean. Mu shows up in Lovecraft’s “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, and “Out of the Aeons” which he co-wrote with Hazel Heald. It also appears in Philip K. Dick’s Confessions of a Crap Artist. (Died 1936.)
Born February 27, 1902 — John Steinbeck. Yes, John Steinbeck. ISFDB lists one novel, The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication, Plus a bevy of short fiction such as “The Wedding of King”, “The Affair at 7 Rue de M—“ and “The Death of Merlin”. I’ll admit that I didn’t know these existed. So, has anyone read these? (Died 1968.)
Born February 27, 1938 — T.A. Waters. A professional magician and magic author. He appears not terribly well disguised as Sir Thomas Leseaux, an expert on theoretical magic as a character in Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy fantasy series and in Michael Kurland’s The Unicorn Girl in which he also appears as Tom Waters. He himself wrote The Probability Pad which is a sequel to The Unicorn Girl. Together with Chester Anderson’s earlier The Butterfly Kid , they make up Greenwich Village trilogy. (Died 1998.)
Born February 27, 1944 — Ken Grimwood. Another writer who died way too young, damn it. Writer of several impressive genre novels including Breakthrough and Replay which I’ve read and Into the Deep and Elise which are listed in ISFDB but which I’m not familiar with. Who’s read them? (Died 2003.)
Born February 27, 1957 — Frank Miller, 66. He’s both an artist and writer so I’m not going to untangle which is which here. What’s good by him? Oh, I love The Dark Knight Returns, both the original comic series and the animated film, though the same is not true of Sin City where I prefer the original series much more. Hmmm… What else? His runs on Daredevil and Electra of course. That should do.
Born February 27, 1950 — Michaela Roessner, 73. She won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer for Walkabout Woman. Her The Stars Dispose duology is quite excellent. Alas, none of her fiction is available digitally.
Born February 27, 1960 — Jeff Smith, 63. Creator and illustrator of Bone, the now complete series that he readily admits that “a notable influence being Walt Kelly’s Pogo”. Smith also worked for DC on a Captain Marvel series titled Mister Mind and the Monster Society of Evil. He’s won a very impressive eleven Harvey Awards and ten Eisner Awards! Kindle, though not Apple Books, has the complete Bone for a very reasonable twenty dollars.
Born February 27, 1966 — Peter Swirski, 57. He’s a academic specialist on the late SF writer and philosopher Stanislaw Lem. As such, he’s written the usual treatises on him with such titles as Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future, Lemography: Stanislaw Lem in the Eyes of the World and From Literature to Biterature: Lem, Turing, Darwin, and Explorations in Computer Literature, Philosophy of Mind, and Cultural Evolution.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bob the Angry Flower tries to join Blake’s 7.

Blakes8https://t.co/IWt5Gj3bJu #bobtheangryflower #blakes7 pic.twitter.com/ws3INKkaHL
— Bob the Angry Flower (@BobTAngryFlower) February 27, 2023

(10) THE 700 CLUB. In May, Marvel Comics will mark the 700^th issue of Fantastic Four with a giant-sized wraparound connecting cover by artist Scott Koblish that will adorn both May’s Fantastic Four #7 and June’s Fantastic Four #8. This massive piece features over 700 characters, each one having appeared in a prior issue of the comic — the Fantastic Four’s fellow super heroes, past members, loyal allies, and of course, their iconic villains. For more information, visit Marvel.com. (Click for larger image.)

(11) A LOOK AHEAD. At Media Death Cult “Alastair Reynolds Reveals…..What’s Next”.

(12) JOHN WILLIAMS Q&A. “For ‘Indiana Jones 5,’ John Williams Scored 90 Minutes of Music”, so he tells Variety.

…. The composer finished recording the score for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” on Feb. 10 and, while he suggested last summer that the final Harrison Ford adventure would be the last of his 100-plus film scores, that’s not quite the truth.

“I might have meant that at the moment,” he says with a smile, “but you never want to say no unequivocally. If Steven or another director should come along with something that is so moving that you want to drop the phone and rush to the piano and have it all come out — should that happen, with the appropriate energy needed to do it, I wouldn’t rule out a situation like that.”

Recording for the final “Indiana Jones” film – and three of the previous editions, starting with 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” were Oscar-nominated for their music – began last June 28, and has continued off and on since then.

“It’s certainly got to be an hour and a half of music, maybe more,” Williams estimates. “But I’m quite happy with it. There’s a lot of new material. The old material works very well as a touchstone of memory, but I had great fun, and I have a theme that I’ve written for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the wonderful actress.” She plays Helena Shaw, reportedly Indy’s goddaughter….

(13) I AM PUTTING MYSELF TO THE FULLEST POSSIBLE USE. Daniel Dern quips, “Hopefully, these computers haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.” “KIOXIA and HPE Team Up to Send SSDs into Space, Bound for the International Space Station”.

Just announced – KIOXIA is participating in HPE’s Spaceborne Computer-2 program, the first in-space commercial edge computing and AI-enabled system to run on the International Space Station.

Spaceborne Computer-2 is part of a mission to significantly advance computing and reduce dependency on communications as space exploration continues to expand. For example, astronauts can achieve increased autonomy by processing data directly on the ISS, eliminating the need to send raw data to Earth to be processed, analyzed and sent back to space….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George shares visuals of the meeting that explains “How Animals Got Their Names”.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/14/22 This Scroll Is Non-Fileable Token

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Mike Glyer

(1) SUPPORT THE CLARION “GHOST CLASS”. The pandemic forced the Clarion Writers’ Workshop to be postponed to 2022 – with the result that the “ghost class” accepted for 2020 has had to wait two years to attend. Clarion has been working on getting them additional scholarship support, including a generous grant from the SFWA Givers Fund. However, the Ghost Class is also launching a team fundraiser to support members of their class who have additional needs. The Indiegogo to “Help 18 sci-fi & fantasy writers go to Clarion” has raised $1,360 of its $19,000 goal with 28 days remaining.

A message from the Ghost Class:
Getting accepted to Clarion in 2020 was a dream come true for each of us. Then…2020 happened. Over the past two years, we’ve lost jobs, changed careers, had babies, cared for and lost loved ones, and moved between states, countries — even continents. We’ve also gotten to know each other online, supporting each other through all the rejections and acceptances and “unprecedented times.”

Now Clarion is finally back on, and we’re determined to make sure all of us can afford to go. Instead of running our own individual fundraisers, we decided to combine forces and try to raise an extra $1000 each toward tuition for all 18 of us. Those of us who don’t need as much will donate back to a pool for those who need a little more. And if we raise more than we need, we might even be able to help fund future Clarion attendees.

How can you help?
1. Donate to our fundraiser. Every small amount helps!
2. Share our fundraiser page to all your social media accounts today. (Now is the perfect time to help us build momentum!)
3. Order one of our perks. We’re offering editing services, story feedback, workshops, artwork, and more on the fundraiser page, check them out!

Those of us who’ve run successful fundraisers like this before know how important it is to get early momentum from contributors like you, so thank you, truly, from the bottom of our ghostly hearts!

– The ~~2020~~ ~~2021~~ 2022 Clarion UCSD Ghost Class

(2) RENDEZVOUS ALONG THE WAY. Janelle Monáe will be joined by several of her collaborators at the stops on her upcoming book tour for The Memory Librarian from HarperCollins. They include Sheree Renée Thomas and Alaya Dawn Johnson.

In The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer, singer-songwriter, actor, fashion icon, futurist, and worldwide superstar Janelle Monáe and an esteemed cohort of collaborating writers bring to the written page the Afrofuturistic world of her critically acclaimed album, exploring how different threads of liberation — queerness, race, gender plurality and love—become tangled with future possibilities of memory and time in such a totalitarian landscape … and what the costs might be when trying to unravel and weave them into freedoms.

(3) RUSSIA RETALIATES AGAINST SANCTIONS. The Kidscreen headline says “Russia strikes at Peppa Pig in copyright battle” but as Craig Miller explains on Facebook, “[The article] spells out a Russian counter to all of the international economic sanctions being put in place because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian government has declared that trademarks, copyrights, and patents from countries they have deemed ‘unfriendly’ can be ignored and Russian companies and people can steal and bootleg all they want.”

Peppa Pig has gotten caught up in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the development could have implications for other entertainment IPs.
eOne’s billion-dollar franchise has found itself at the heart of a Russian retaliatory strategy against economic sanctions. A Russian court has dismissed a case that eOne brought last year against a local entrepreneur who allegedly used the Peppa Pig trademark without permission. And the government has now doubled down on the ruling with its own decree allowing patented inventions and designs to be used without permission or compensation.
The decree opens the door to copyright infringement of brands from many territories that Russia has deemed to be unfriendly in recent weeks, including Australia, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, the US, Japan and Switzerland. However, it’s likely that Russian companies will use the new rule change to stock up on devices, technologies and (in the case of the entertainment industry) kids content, which could be in short supply amid all the sanctions, according to a statement from Chicago-based law firm Baker McKenzie.…

(4) RELATED WORK. Cora Buhlert’s next Non-Fiction Spotlight is on “Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre”. (Cora also says those looking for more recommendations for SFF-related non-fiction should “check out this Facebook group set up by the always excellent Farah Mendlesohn, who is a champion (and author) of SFF-related non-fiction.”)

What prompted you to write/edit this book?
The second book in our series, Sticking it to the Man, originally included material on radical science fiction but the length of the book completely blew out and our publisher insisted we shorten it. It was at this point that my co-editor, Iain McIntyre, and I realised we had the makings of a third book – on radical science and speculative fiction. We pitched the idea to our publisher, and they were very receptive. With the high/low culture, hardback/paperback, literary/pulp distinctions particularly blurred with sci-fi, and a huge range of authors and works to choose from, we certainly had no trouble finding enough material for book-length treatment of the subject. Indeed, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds could have been twice as long, and we still would not have been able to cover everything.

(5) PASHA LEE OBIT. A Ukrainian actor known for The Hobbit vocals died in action reports the BBC: “Ukrainian actor Pasha Lee killed in Russian bombardment”.

Lee, 33, had signed up for Ukraine’s territorial defence force in the first days of the war.
A resident of Irpin, he appeared in several films and his voice featured in the Ukrainian versions of The Lion King and The Hobbit….
Pavlo Li, as the actor was formally known, was born in Crimea in 1988 and had recently begun presenting a show on Dom TV, a Ukrainian channel originally aimed at audiences in the eastern areas seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014.

(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1994 — [Item by Cat Eldridge] Thirty-eight years ago the Robocop series was first broadcast on this date in the United Kingdom. (It would be four days more before it was broadcast in the States.) Stripped largely of the violence and cynicism of the film that it was based on, it was intended to appeal to children and young adults.

Here Richard Eden is Murphy / RoboCop. And given its target audience, playing a prominent role is Sarah Campbell as Gadget, an eight year-old girl. Certain characters in the film are rejiggered into new characters, i.e. Anne Lewis becomes Lisa Madigan.

It lasted but twenty-two episodes over one season. Cancellation was actually announced part way into the season.

So how was reception for it? The Variety review at the time said of it at that time that the, “Series has a good chance of succeeding because, on the basis of the opener, it’s brave enough to amuse instead of intimidate. There’s a lesson there.” And the Houston Chronicle like it quite a bit saying it “works well as a mass-market show. … It offers action, as opposed to violence. And its ironic humor, though not as hard-edged as the movies’, has a sly, subversive bent.” Finally word goes to the Boston Globe: “This is a far campier and cartoonier RoboCop than the original. Even when the wit is blunt, the writing is snappy; and the acting is just broad enough to poke a little fun at itself.”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 14, 1918 — Mildred Clingerman. Most of her stories were published in the Fifties in F&SF when Boucher was Editor. Boucher included “The Wild Wood” by her in the seventh volume of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction and dedicated the book to her, calling her the “most serendipitous of discoveries.” A Cupful of Space and The Clingerman Files, neither available as a digital publication, contain all of her stories. (Died 1997.)
Born March 14, 1941 — Wolfgang Petersen, 81. Usually Birthdays are reserved for individuals with longer genre records but he’s responsible as director for two of my favorite films, Enemy Mine and The NeverEnding Story. He also produced The Bicentennial Man. If you look carefully, you’ll see him in The NeverEnding Story as the man who drops milk in one scene.
Born March 14, 1946 — Diana G. Gallagher. She won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist along with Brad W. Foster at Noreascon 3 after being a nominee at Nolacon II the previous year. She won it under the name Diana Gallagher Wu while married to William F. Wu whose Birthday we did yesterday. She was also an author filker and author who wrote books for children and young adults based on Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and various Trek series. Her best-known filksong was “A Reconsideration of Anatomical Docking Maneuvers in a Zero Gravity Environment.” (Died 2021.)
Born March 14, 1961 — Penny Johnson Jerald, 62. She played Kasidy Yates, the love of Ben Sisko, on Deep Space Nine. She’s now playing Dr. Claire Finn on Orville, just one of many Trek cast member that you’ll find there. And she provided the voice of President Amanda Waller on the most excellent Justice League: Gods & Monsters.
Born March 14, 1964 — Julia Ecklar, 58. She’s the Astounding Award–winning author for The Kobayashi Maru which is available in English and German ebook editions. She’s also a filk musician who recorded numerous albums in the Off Centaur label in the early 1980s, including Horse-Tamer’s Daughter, Minus Ten and Counting, and Genesis. She was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 1996.
Born March 14, 1957 — Tad Williams, 65. Author of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, Otherland series, and Shadowmarch series as well as the most excellent Tailchaser’s Song and The War of the Flowers.
Born March 14, 1971 — Rebecca Roanhorse, 51. Her “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™“ which was first published in the August 2017 of Apex Magazine won a Hugo as best short story at Worldcon 76. (It won a Nebula as well.) She also won the Astounding Award for the same work for Best New Writer. She has five novels to date, including Trail of Lightning which was nominated for a Hugo at Dublin 2019, and Black Sun, being nominated for a Hugo at DisCon III.
Born March 14, 1974 — Grace Park, 48. Boomer on the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. She’s been on a fair amount of genre over the years with her first acting role being the Virtual Avatar in the “Bits of Love” episode of Outer Limits. After that, she shows up on Secret Agent Man, This Immortal, The Outer Limits again, Star Gate SG-1, Andromeda, and oddly enough Battlestar Galactica in a number roles other than her main one. I’m sure one of you can explain the latter. I confess that I’ve not watched it.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Off the Mark features a bit of Pi Day humor.
The Far Side is monstrously funny.

(9) COFFEE BREAK’S OVER. [Item by Olav Rokne.] To be honest, the headline of this spoof article is better than the content, but it’s worth sharing if only for this line: “After a very long week in theatres, there’s only one question on people’s minds, who is going to play Batman next?” “Batman has been out for a week, isn’t it time for a reboot?” at The Beaverton.

(10) DON’T LEAVE MONEY ON THE TABLE. In The New Yorker, Ward Sutton teases these “Untapped “Star Wars” Spinoff Ideas” with cartoons.

The “Boba Fett” series is rad, but what about the other bounty hunters we saw momentarily in “The Empire Strikes Back”? Like this guy, who looks like the costume budget ran out and so they just wrapped a towel around his head. Doesn’t he deserve his own streaming series or something?…

Fans deserve to hear the untold stories of the many, many side characters in the “Star Wars” franchise.https://t.co/CsJHDPQfiu
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 13, 2022

(11) COMICS RAISE FUNDS FOR UKRAINE RED CROSS. [Item by James Bacon.] This is very thoughtful, although obviously in dreadful circumstances, to see Declan Shalvey and Rory McVonville supporting the Ukraine Red Cross and artist Vlad Legostaev like this is great. (And it’s a cracking good series too – I highly recommend it.) “Time Before Time Issues #13 & #14 To Feature Connecting Covers By Vlad Legostaev To Support Ukraine Relief Efforts”.

Ukrainian artist Vlad Legostaev is teaming up with Declan Shalvey and Rory McConville for two connecting Time Before Time covers—the proceeds for which will go toward supporting Ukrainian Red Cross relief efforts.
“With Time Before Time we always ask great exciting artists to provide B covers for the series. We recently asked the hugely talented Vlad Legostaev to provide a wonderful connecting cover for an exciting 2-part story by Rory McConville and Ron Salas,” said Shalvey. “Unfortunately since then, Vlad’s home country has suffered true horrors, so, with Vlad’s permission, we decided to use his art to try to raise money for those suffering in Ukraine. So now, the proceeds from Vlad’s B cover for Time Before Time #13 and 14 will be donated to the Ukrainian Red Cross. We hope Vlad’s art can help his homeland, in some small way.”
In the Time Before Time series, to escape a world with no future, many turn to the Syndicate—a criminal organization that, for the right price, will smuggle you back in time to the promise of a better yesterday.
Time Before Time #13 and Time Before Time #14 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, June 8 and Wednesday, July 6, respectively:

Time Before Time #13 Cover B by Legostaev – Diamond Code APR220254

Time Before Time #14 Cover B by Legostaev – Diamond Code JAN229189

(12) SADDLE UP. Are you a fan of Western fiction and nonfiction? The Western Writers of America have announced the 2022 Spur Award winners. The complete list is at the link.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden is getting his fourth Spur Award in three years, and bestselling novelists Michael Punke and C.J. Box are also 2022 winners. Presentations to winners and finalists are scheduled for June 22-25 during WWA’s convention in Great Falls, Mont….

(13) THIS IS BORING. Daniel Dern says, “The only question is, does this become a science fiction, fantasy, or horror scenario. (Or a combo!)” “World’s deepest hole could be the key to limitless energy” at Unexplained Mysteries.

… While the crust of our planet is relatively cool, the interior is very warm indeed. Tapping this heat to produce electricity has the potential to provide a practically limitless amount of clean energy to the masses, that is, at least, if we can actually reach it.

Now though, energy company Quaise is hoping to achieve such a feat by combining a megawatt-power gyrotron (which forces atoms to melt together) with the latest state-of-the-art drilling tools to dig deep down into the Earth’s surface and tap this underused source of energy.

The firm hopes to reach depths of over 12 miles and is aiming to produce power within four years….

(14) MARIO IS COMING. “The first Super Nintendo World in the US set to open in 2023 with more parks on the way” reports The Points Guy.

When Super Nintendo World opened at Universal Studios Japan in March 2021, plans were already well underway to build similar parks in the U.S. at Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando Resort. Unfortunately for stateside fans of Mario, Luigi and the gang, there was no concrete timeline for when those parks would open — until now.
Universal Studios Hollywood announced its Nintendo-themed land, which is already under construction, will open sometime in 2023. When it does, guests will have the chance to become part of a larger-than-life Nintendo universe.
…Though Universal did not release specific details on which attractions will be in the park, the company did share that the land will feature a “groundbreaking ride and interactive areas,” as well as themed dining and shopping that will make you feel like you’re an actual video game character.
Theme park news site WDWNT has been closely following the construction progress. So far, the only thematic elements visible in construction photos are the iconic green hills Nintendo fans will easily recognize. It’s hard to determine exactly which rides are being built, but the attractions are expected to be similar to those at Super Nintendo World in Universal Studios Japan.
This includes Mario Kart: Koopa’s Challenge, a real-life Mario Kart race that uses augmented reality (in the form of Mario-themed glasses), projection mapping and screen projections to make favorite Mario Kart courses come to life; and Yoshi’s Adventure, a slow-moving ride where guests can fulfill their childhood fantasy of hopping on Yoshi’s back and going for a spin around the Mushroom Kingdom….

[Thanks to John King “Pie Day” Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Olav Rokne, James Bacon, Alan Baumler, Daniel Dern, Craig Miller, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Nintendo Direct Trailer Park

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Mike Glyer

The Nintendo Direct February 17 edition provided fans with trailers and sneak peeks of video games, especially those that are playable on the Nintendo Switch. Highlight videos follows the jump. (We may be a little late here, and this might be a little too much like a commercial, but remember — it’s always news to somebody!)

[Thanks to N. for the story.]

Continue reading →

Pixel Scroll 7/15/16 The Scroll And The Pixelcat Went To Sea In A Seven And Seventy Blog

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Mike Glyer

(1) WRITER BEWARE. If they can’t resolve a matter privately for an author, SFWA’s Grievance Committee will sometimes turn the matter over to another SFWA arm, Writer Beware. Here’s a write-up by Victoria Strauss of a recent investigation into Sky Warrior Books’ use of termination clauses — “How Publishers Abuse Termination Fees; Sky Warrior Books”.

As it happens, Eve is an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She turned the matter over to SFWA’s Grievance Committee, which has a good record of mediating disputes between authors and publishers. Bonham, however, refused to cooperate, doubling down on her denial of wrongdoing and reiterating her her demand for money. She also accused SFWA and Writer Beware of a dastardly conspiracy:

After all, if we are harmed, you will have participated in the further erosion of independent, small presses, and I can’t believe the rumor that SFWA and Writer Beware are cooperating with the Big Five publishing houses’ efforts to destroy the independents once and for all. Although I did find it curious that Writer Beware’s publisher avoid list is populated exclusively with small presses, often based in rural areas, far from the New York in-crowd.

Damn. And we thought we were being so discreet. Seriously, though, I think Eve’s experience illustrates how publishers can use termination fee clauses to retaliate against authors who displease them. The other authors I heard from who complained about nonpayment had their rights reverted without any demand for money. It’s hard not to conclude that Eve was being punished for having the temerity to hire legal assistance. The other takeaway here is the importance of taking contract language seriously.

(2) AVOIDING SLAUGHTER. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo beings “This Is Not the Natural State of Things” by quoting someone he went to school with.

Thirty plus years ago I was lucky enough to be one of two poor kids on scholarships in my class at a school for rich kids in a small town in California. The other was the renowned science fiction writer John Scalzi. I just noticed this tweet from him as I was watching a welter of reports about what appears to be yet another terror attack in France.

Sometimes feels like a strong correlation between WWII passing from living memory, and autocracy seemingly getting more popular.

— John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 14, 2016

I don’t think John was talking about the attack but the US election and elections now across the world. But perhaps he was talking about the whole picture in toto.

Autocracy is government based on fear, domination and insecurity. It is of course billed as the opposite. But it is born of these three horsemen and in turn breeds them. One of the shaping thoughts of the generation of actors and thinkers who emerged from the Second World War was the seared perception that stability, trust, peace and virtuous cycles of all sorts are not natural phenomena or human norms. In fact, they are brittle creations and perhaps abnormal in human affairs. Of course, these beliefs and the ambitions and goals which grew out of them led to their own follies. One can jump from 1945 to 1965 and see the wisdom of this recognition leading the same luminaries to walk into a folly of an entirely different kind. The men who built much of the world we live in today also built a world that was perpetually on the brink of cataclysmic nuclear annihlation. Their creation, let us say with some understatement, had real shortcomings….

(3) SCIENCEERS. Lloyd W. Currey has for sale a truly historic document: “(Fanzine History) Glasser, Allen. MINUTES OF THE MEETINGS OF THE SCIENCEERS, 26 APRIL 1930-27 SEPTEMBER 1930”.

[New York?]: Allen Glasser, 26 November 1937. Octavo, 6 leaves plus cover sheet, typewritten copy, brad bound. A possibly unique historic record of the meetings of The Scienceers held from 26 April 1930 to 27 September 1930, documenting the birth of THE PLANET, the first true science fiction fan magazine. During the 14 June meeting the suggestion that a club paper be issued was met with unanimous approval, THE PLANET was chosen as the name of the proposed paper, and the editorial staff was elected. Under the editorship of Allen Glasser a total of six monthly issues dated from July 1930 to December 1930 were produced. The first issue, dated July 1930, was distributed to members at the meeting of 19 July, the August issue was distributed at the 2 August meeting, the September issue was distributed at the 30 August meeting, and the October issue was distributed at the 27 September meeting. The history of The Scienceers is presented concisely by former secretary Allen Glasser in his “explanatory note” dated 26 November 1937: “The Scienceers club was founded Dec. 11, 1929, and its first official meeting was held Jan. 4, 1930. From the latter date to April 26, 1930, when the following records begin, no minutes were kept, since meetings had been held at irregular intervals and the future of the club was uncertain. After the reorganization of April 26, The Scienceers held regular weekly meetings until September 27, 1930. Following that date, the club split into two separate groups, both of which disbanded by the end of the year without keeping any further records.” See Moskowitz, The Immortal Storm, p. 10. Paper stock a bit tanned, else fine. (#155718). Price: $450.00

(4) ARCHIBALD PRIZE. Nick Stathopoulos was a runner-up to Louise Hearman for the Archibald Prize for portraits. Stathopoulos is a long-time fan, 10-time winner of the Australian NatCon’s Ditmar Award, and a past Hugo and Chesley Award nominee.

As Nick told his Facebook followers.

I had to contend with a film crew this morning…filming me not getting the call from the AGNSW. Then I had to go into the AGNSW with film crew knowing I wasn’t the winner. But it was heartening to hear my name mentioned among the final contenders. (I do love Louise’s work though…so I can’t be disgruntled at her win. Well done!)

Nick Stathopoulos with portrait.

The Guardian’s Andrew Frost named Stathopoulos as one of his two preferences to have won.

Louise Hearman’s looming half-figure of Barry Humphries may have scooped the prize, but in a just alternate universe, Nick Stathopoulos’s portrait of Deng Thiak Adut or Marc Etherington’s painting of Ken Done would have been rewarded

Unjustly maligned by some critics for his photorealist style, Stathopoulos’s subject, Deng Thiak Adut – a former Sudanese child solider who came to Australia, graduated law school and now works as a refugee advocate – has the kind of back story that would normally guarantee entry into the prize.

But it is also a commanding picture that contrasts areas of detail such as the face, skin and hair that are rendered photorealistically with a neutral grey background and white shirt. Not only does the picture go against the grain of the faux-expressionist impasto painting that remains popular, but it also demonstrates that the Art Gallery of New South Wales trustees can spot a good picture when they see one.

The 51 finalists are shown here.

The gallery’s description of Stathopoulos’ painting reads:

Sudanese refugee and lawyer Deng Adut came to the attention of Nick Stathopoulos through an advertisement for Western Sydney University, where Adut was a graduate. It movingly documented how he came to Australia following life as a child soldier in Sudan and how he put himself through law school, becoming a formidable refugee advocate and community leader.

Despite his increasingly busy schedule, Adut agreed to sit for Stathopoulos. ‘You really need to have the subject there in front of you to capture that life-spark and commanding presence. Those eyes, those scars, tell a story that no ad could ever convey,’ says the artist.

The portrait took over four months to complete, more time than Stathopoulos has ever spent on any single painting. ‘I’m actually a very traditional practitioner by choice. I’ve spent my entire life developing my style and process. What I do is time-consuming, laborious and painstaking,’ he says.

Born in Paddington, Sydney in 1959, Stathopoulos is a self-taught artist, known for his hyper-realistic style, particularly his paintings of his childhood toy collection. This is his fifth time as an Archibald finalist. He has also been a finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize twice. His portrait of Robert Hoge, Ugly, won the People’s Choice Award in the 2014 Salon des Refusés and was a finalist in the 2015 BP Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London. He is a finalist in the 2016 Shirley Hannan Portrait Prize.

(5) SULMAN PRIZE. Announced around the same time is the winner of the Sulman prize for subject, genre or mural painting. Judged by artist Judy Watson, the winner was Esther Stewart’s Flatland Dreaming.

Based in part on Edwin Abbott’s 19^th century proto-science fiction novel, the work charts the zone between abstraction and figuration, deftly conflating dimensional space that the eye tries to unpack.

(6) RICK AND MORTY. The Rick and Morty Simulator is coming to Comic-Con. Dawn Incognito sent these lines —

Wanna try it first-hand? For those of you able to make it to San Diego Comic Con, we’ll be at Adult Swim On The Green with HTC Vives in tow!

July 21st-24th from 11am – 6pm Located behind the Convention Center at Convention Way & 5th Ave Pier

Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality smashes together the absolute VR chaos of the award-winning Job Simulator with the ridiculous, all-out, take-no-prisoners comedy of Rick and Morty. And now, for the worldwide, earth-shattering gameplay teaser reveal:

(7) FARINI OBIT. Corrado Farini: Italian film drrector, actor, died 11 July, aged 77. Best known for Baba Yaga (1973, aka The Devil Witch and Kiss Me, Kill Me), which he adapted from Guido Crepax’s comics and had a cameo appearance as a Nazi.

(8) NINTENDO REVIVAL. Nintendo is launching the NES classic Mini in November.

According to the site NintendoLife the mini NES Classic Edition will cost $59.99. It will be loaded with 30 classic games and it comes with a NES controller.

Here are a few of the 30 games that will be pre-loaded:

Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Jr.
Mario Bros.
PAC-MAN
Super Mario Bros.
TECMO BOWL
The Legend of Zelda

(9) HUGO REVIEWS. David Steffen is reviewing Hugo-nominated fiction at Diabolical Plots. The latest is — Hugo Novelette Review: “Obits” by Stephen King

(10) THREE MINUTES OF MAKING ROGUE ONE. SciFiNow says this “sizzle reel” was shown on the first day at Star Wars Celebration.

[Thanks to Dawn Incognito, Mark-kitteh, Steve Green, Cat Rambo, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]

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