The 12-title shortlist for the Endeavour Award was announced today. Eligible for the award are fantasy or science fiction novels or short story collections published in 2024 by authors residing in the Pacific Northwest.
The shortlist represents the top 12 scoring books read by a group of more than 50 preliminary readers. The five finalists for the award will be announced Friday, August 15, during a 9-11:30 a.m. panel at the Seattle Worldcon. The panel will also feature readings by finalists.
A panel of judges will select the winner, to be presented at OryCon 45, October 17-19, held in Portland, Oregon at the DoubleTree Hotel Portland.
There were 70 novels and short story collections entered.
The 2024 shortlisted titles are:
Better Living Through Alchemy by Evan J. Peterson, Broken Eye Books
Heavenbreaker by Sara Wolf, Red Tower Books
How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler, Orbit / Hachette Book Group
Ocean’s Godori by Elaine U. Cho, Zando/Hillman Grad Books
Relics of Ruin by Erin M. Evans, Orbit / Hachette Book Group
The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le, Roaring Book Press
The Rain Artist by Claire Rudy Foster, Moonstruck Books
The West Passage by Jared Pechaček, Tor Publishing Group
Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire, Tor Publishing Group
True Blue Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen, Curtis C. Chen
What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould, Macmillan Publishers
Winter Lost by Patricia Briggs, Ace, Penguin Random House
The 2023 Endeavour Award winner was Margaret Owen, for Painted Devils (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers).
The Endeavour Award promotes the fantasy and science fiction field and recognizes works of excellence. It is named for H.M. Bark Endeavour, the ship of Northwest explorer Capt. James Cook. A grant of $1,000 and an etched trophy accompany the award. There is no fee for entry.
Submissions will open in early January, 2026 for the Endeavour Award for books published in 2025. The administrator welcomes all science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction. The author or authors (a book may have a maximum of two authors) must have had legal or physical residence in the Pacific Northwest (Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia) when the publisher accepted the book and must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest.
To enter, contact [email protected] for submission instructions, or check their web page for a link to the submission form. Submissions must be in an electronic format. They do not accept physical copies.
Anyone interested in being a preliminary reader for the Endeavour Award, contact the administrator at: [email protected].
Endeavour Award in social media
Newsletter: To sign up for the Endeavour Award newsletter, go to their substack page.
In a new paper published in the journal Qualitative Sociology, Ran Wang, a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Department of Sociology, explores how Chinese fanfiction writers responded to a wave of increased government censorship in February 2020.
Through interviews with 31 fanfiction writers in China, Wang documents how government censorship caused once-thriving fanfiction communities to break apart and forced fanfiction writers to find new ways to share their work.
Fanfiction — amateur-written stories based on existing media like television shows, video games, and books — first made its appearance in China in the late 1990s and has since gained a solid foothold in Chinese creative culture.
Inciting Incident
In February 2020, fans of television actor and musician Xiao Zhan mass-reported the U.S-based fanfiction site Archive of Our Own (AO3) to the Chinese government after “sensitive” LGBTQ-themed fanfiction featuring the actor gained popularity in China.
Following the incident, fanfiction apps were removed from the country’s Apple and Android app stores, and Chinese fanfiction sites adopted heightened censorship policies. Stories considered “sensitive” were hidden or deleted by these sites.
“As a fanfiction writer myself, I witnessed the suffering, despair, and anger of my fellow writers facing the sweeping censorship intensification,” Wang, a member of the Center on Digital Culture and Society at Annenberg, says. “While there was little I could do, I felt the responsibility to tell the story of my community and to let the world know both the destructive state power and the resilience of the fandom community.
The community had to reckon with ever-evolving censorship policies and quickly find ways to keep their writing communities alive, she says. “[Fanfiction platform] Lofter turned articles visible only to the author without notification on an unseen scale, and authors could not appeal to make articles public for more than three months.”
… According to Wang, censorship isn’t stopping creativity; it’s changing how and where it happens. Of all the writers interviewed, only one decided to stop writing fanfiction after the incident.
Fanfiction writers are finding new ways to create and connect — in small group chats dedicated to sharing stories, through printed fanzines, by talking to writing friends directly. They are also discovering new creative outlets, including painting, digital art, interactive text games, and original writing, Wang says.
(2) ORYCON TO SUNSET IN 2025. [Item by John Lorentz.] Next year’s OryCon (OryCon 45) will the last, at least in its present form. The statement below has been posted on the con’s Facebook page.
As many of you have heard by now, the OSFCI board of directors voted on the competing bids for OryCon 45. Both bids were given time to present their ideas and goals, and both were opened for questions and commentary from everyone present. The OSFCI board voted in favor of the bid I submitted; part of this bid was an agreement that OryCon 45 will be the final OryCon-branded convention supported by OSFCI.
Our reasoning for this condition is to create space for OSFCI and the fan community to innovate: new panels, new structures, new creative outlets. We want to foster an expansion of ideas, for what kind of convention you would like to see, even possibly a one-day event. There is room at the table for you. The world has changed since the birth of OryCon. Technology, social media, and our community has grown in so many ways.
I want to celebrate OryCon’s history by inviting as many past Guests of Honor as possible to be panelists. I want to remember the good times, the laughter, the community at large. I have assembled a staff of individuals who have the desire to share their love of the fan community, the authors, the artists, and the vendors. We want to bring this dream to you.
As the cliche says, when one door closes another opens. Another desire is that we mentor and prepare a younger generation to explore these new avenues of the expressions of our fandom. My vice-chair Louisa Ark is an example. A second-generation convention runner, she’s taking advantage of this opportunity to learn first hand what it takes to run a convention: what works, what doesn’t, and how they can improve upon what’s been done in the past to make any future project they work on shine.
We want your ideas of what innovations you see in the future of an Oregon Convention, new panels, new fandoms. Until then, our vision is to make OryCon 45 be the best one that we possibly can. Stay tuned for upcoming announcements of guests of honor and what we have in store for this year.
There are several reason for this: it’s been difficult to attract new people to run the convention, the attendance has been dropping over recent year, the hotels in Portland have recently been hard to with, and OryCon in general has seemed worn-out and behind the times to the younger fans. (I’ve still enjoyed it–and have been to every one, and have co-chaired or chaired five of them–but at 72, I’m certainly not one of the younger fans.)
December 17th is a very important date in the history of The Simpsons. It was on this day in 1989 that the first episode of the show debuted on Fox, telling a Christmas story about how the first family of Springfield came to get their pet dog, Santa’s Little Helper.
The episode was equal parts hilarious and heartwarming, and to celebrate its 35th anniversary, here are 35 trivia tidbits all about it…
No gaslighting here about when The Simpsons first hit TV – the first two items on their list make a full disclosure.
35 The Beginning, Sort of
While “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” was the first half-hour episode of The Simpsons, the family debuted two-and-a-half years prior to it on April 19, 1987 as part of The Tracey Ullman Show.
34 The First Christmas
“Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” also wasn’t the family’s first Christmas story. The short “Simpson Xmas” aired a year earlier. It was a rewrite of “The Night Before Christmas” by Clement Moore, narrated by Bart.
It’s official. “Sesame Street” is looking for a new home. This comes after Warner Bros. Discovery decided to not renew a deal for new episodes of the children’s show on HBO and Max. You will still be able to watch old episodes for a while. “Sesame Street’s” library will stay on Max through 2027, but the show’s future is up in the air. So we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the show’s legacy with Marilyn Agrelo. She’s the director of the 2021 documentary “Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street.”
…Wells used her time speaking at the March Cushing event to advise future writers. She told the crowd she grew as a writer as an anthropology major at Texas A&M by learning how cultures work together. She said her degree program also helped her see how small details fit into the larger picture.
“I wanted to be an author from really early on when I was a kid, but I didn’t know how to do it,” Wells said.
She entered the working world in the technology industry by designing databases, working with software and in computer support. She said that path helped immensely with developing background knowledge for the Murderbot Diaries. After holding other non-writing positions until 2006 to support her family, Wells concentrated on her writing career — what she called a long, arduous journey. She called writing “a calling.” Her perseverance led to honors as a New York Times bestselling author, including multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards
“A lot of people think if you publish one novel, you’ll sell more, and your career is made,” Wells said. “But no. You have to work just as hard to sell the next novel every single time.”…
The first full Superman trailer will be here Thursday, but to tide us over for a bit, Warner Bros. released a short teaser which itself is now the first footage we’ve seen from the movie.
Written and directed by James Gunn, Superman stars David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olson, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, and many more. It’s coming this summer and now, here’s your first official look at footage from Superman…
Will & Harper, the Netflix documentary about comedic actor Will Ferrell and his friendship with SNL pal Harper Steele who came out as trans, earned a spot on the coveted Oscar documentary feature shortlist today.
It wasn’t the only shortlist honor for the film directed by Josh Greenbaum. The tune from the closing credits – “Will and Harper Go West,” written by SNL alum Kristen Wiig and Sean Douglas and performed by Wiig – got shortlisted for Best Original Song (Douglas is the son of actor Michael Keaton).
But another high-profile documentary in the running for the shortlist didn’t make the cut: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, about the late actor who was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident. That film, directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, recently won Best Documentary Feature at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, and last week earned a nomination for the Producers Guild of America Award….
…From the beginning he set out to write for young people, having watched as the young adult genre blossomed in the US. He finished his first complete novel in just three weeks: So Much to Tell You, which was published in 1987, won many awards and would go on to be studied by countless Australian students.
Over the next 40 years he wrote and edited 40 books, including Letters from the Inside, The Rabbits and the hugely successful Tomorrow series, beginning with Tomorrow, When the War Began. The seven books in the series, published between 1993 and 1999, imagined a group of teenagers waging a guerrilla war on enemy forces surrounding their home town of Wirrawee.
Marsden said he first had the idea when he was a teenager, “fantasising about a world without adults, because pretty much all the adults I encountered were authoritarian, were not interested in fairness or justice … they were really a bloody nuisance”.
The series, along with the three books in a sequel series, were bestsellers in both Australia and the US and were translated into five languages. In Sweden, free copies of Tomorrow, When the War Began were distributed to hundreds of thousands of teenagers after it was voted the book most likely to inspire a love of reading….
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Born December 18, 1913 — Alfred Bester. (Died 1987.)
By Paul Weimer:
Eight, sir; seven, sir; Six, sir; five, sir; Four, sir; three, sir; Two, sir; one! Tenser, said the Tensor. Tenser, said the Tensor. Tension, apprehension, And dissension have begun
That rhyming song is how I started a 2016 piece (an early “Mining the Genre Asteroid” column) I wrote on The Demolished Man, written by one Alfred Bester.
Alfred Bester
The Demolished Man, the first book I read of his, came just because it was part of my brother’s collection. I was hooked in immediately by the psionics and the working out of their powers and how society views them, deals with them, and vice versa.
Since I can never pass up a reference to it, I remember when Walter Koenig’s psi cop first appeared on Babylon 5 and his name was, inevitably, Bester. I practically shouted at the screen, “You did not!” in delight. It soon became clear through subsequent episodes that Stracyzski, possibly through the mediation of Harlan Ellison, perhaps through his own reading of it, borrowed a lot of the ideas about psionics from The Demolished Man.
It won the first Hugo award for Best Novel.
While psionics are relatively out of fashion in SFF today, even today, anyone who wants to put psionics in their SFF work would do well to look at Bester’s work. (I hesitate to recommend old “classics” as essential, but The Demolished Man qualifies) . Maybe Julian May’s Metaconcert and Pliocene Exile novels come close to the magic of The Demolished Man. Maybe.
Bester is also the author of the original and still strong Count of Monte Cristo in SFF take, The Stars my Destination. Gully Foyle is left for dead, and not making sure he was in fact dead turns out to be a very high price by those he takes in a roaring rampage of revenge. It’s glorious and hits all the right notes. I knew the Dumas story by osmosis at the time, but having since read and watched adaptations of Dumas, I can see how much The Stars my Destination hits its beats.
Between the definitive psionic novel, and the definitive take on a Dumas novel, those alone would make Bester memorable and readable for science fiction fans. He wrote a number of stunning and timeless short stories, too, including “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” which is a “take that” to the idea of changing history by time travel.
(10) TODAY’S NEXT BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born December 18, 1946 — Steven Spielberg, 78.
Steven Spielberg is one of my favorite directors ever. Not as risk-taking as say Terry Gilliam but definitely one who’s done a lot of work that I find pleasing and that in my book counts for a lot.
I’m going to do a rewatch of Columbo this winter, so I was delighted to discover that he directed the first non-pilot episode of the series, “Murder by the Book”. He is credited with giving us the mannerisms of the detective and the look of the series.
He got that gig for having worked with Rod Serling on The Night Gallery where in one episode he directed Joan Crawford, that being “Eyes”. What other episodes that he directed are unclear because as a new director credit may gone to more senior directors, so it is thought that “A Matter of Semantics” that featured Cesar Romero and was credited to Jack Laird might have been his work.
His first major hit was Jaws which is not my fish and chips so I’ll pass by it here as we’re discussing what I like by him.
He made up for Jaws with Close Encounters of the Third Kind which is simply brilliant, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial which still makes me sniff, and two out of three of the Indiana Jones trilogy.
No, I vehemently did not like the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I saw it once and that was more than enough, thank you.
Now Jurassic Park is one of the best monster films ever. Why it was so excellent that it even won a Hugo at ConAdian! Who came and accepted that Hugo?
There is a lot of lot films next in his career that I didn’t care for until we come to the extraordinary undertaking that is The Adventures of Tintin from the French strip byHergé. A true treat in animation this was.
(Digression for a moment. He was an Executive Producer or Producer on way too many undertakings to list here that I liked. Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Gremlins, Animaniacs (both series), Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid! — that’s just a few I like.)
Then there’s Hook with Robin Williams as an adult Peter Pan, Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell and the Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook. Need I say more. Well there is the crocodile…
I think I’ll finish with The BFG, his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book. Fantastic film that’s true to the book, no mean feat.
Steven Spielberg
(11) COMICS SECTION.
Bizarro puts a guitar in the hands of the wrong Doctor Who.
Blistering barnacles! Thundering typhoons! Blue blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon! Who knew there was a 300-year-old tomb in Essex that can be linked to Tintin’s boozy best friend Captain Haddock?
The little-known tomb of Mary Haddock, in a churchyard in Leigh-on-Sea, has been named as one of the quirkier places given listed status in 2024 by Historic England.
It has a fascinating Tintin link and is one of 17 “remarkable and unusual historic buildings and places” given protection and which, Historic England argues, collectively shine light on the diversity of England’s heritage.’
Mary Haddock’s son became an Admiral in the navy and was the inspiration for Tin-Tin’s irascible friend….
… Built in 1688, the tomb of Mary Anna Haddock is well crafted and, heritage experts say, “notable as a single monument to a named woman in a period of gender inequality”.
It is the name that will thrill Tintin fans. Mary married into the Haddock family, known for prominent seafarers such as her son Adm Richard Haddock. It was he and the wider family who inspired Hergé’s Captain Haddock character in The Adventures of Tintin comics.
Captain Haddock, as all Tintin fans know, was the young reporter’s short-tempered, generally seething best friend and protector with a brilliantly wild turn of phrase and a weakness for whisky….
“Secret Level” has been renewed for a second season at Amazon Prime Video.
The series is an adult animated anthology made up of short stories set in the world of various video games, such as “Pac-Man” and “Dungeons & Dragons.” Season 1 of “Secret Level” debuted with eight episodes on Dec. 10 with another seven set for Tuesday. Details about Season 2, including which video game worlds will be featured, remain under wraps.
Amazon says that “Secret Level” achieved the most-watched animated series debut of all time for the streamer within its first week, though exact viewership numbers were not provided. According to measurement from Luminate, the series was watched for 155.3 million minutes in the U.S. during its first week of availability, which translates to roughly 1.4 million views when divided by its 109-minute runtime….
…The project has an otherworldly origin story, according to Jennifer Hollenbeck, an electrical engineer at APL who first came up with the idea. She is an avid sci-fi fan and had been reading The Expanseseries of novels by the collaborative duo who publish under the pen name James S. A. Corey. Notably, The Expanse features alien technology capable of morphing to achieve different functions.
“It can heal itself, it can change shapes, and that was really the inspiration for this,” Hollenbeck says. “I was in the midst of one of those books and my boss asked me if I had any ideas for some research topics—and it just hit me.”…
They are easy to install, and knock chunks off electricity bills. It may not be Romeo and Juliet, but Spain’s balcony scene is heating up as the country embraces what has hitherto been a mainly German love affair with DIY plug-in solar panels.
Panels have already been installed on about 1.5m German balconies, where they are so popular the term Balkonkraftwerk (balcony power plant) has been coined.
Manufacturers say that installing a couple of 300-watt panels will give a saving of up to 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill. With an outlay of €400-800 and with no installation cost, the panels could pay for themselves within six years.
In Spain, where two thirds of the population live in apartments and installing panels on the roof requires the consent of a majority of the building’s residents, this DIY technology has obvious advantages.
With solar balconies, no such consent is required unless the facade is listed as of historic interest or there is a specific prohibition from the residents’ association or the local authority. Furthermore, as long as the installation does not exceed 800 watts it doesn’t require certification, which can cost from €100 to €400, depending on the area.
“The beauty of the solar balconies is they are flexible, cheap and plug straight into the domestic network via a converter, so you don’t have to pay for the installation,” says Santiago Vernetta, CEO of Tornasol Energy, one of Spain’s main suppliers….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Andrew (not Werdna), John Lorentz, Lise Andreasen, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
(1) RELIC OF FIRST WORLDCON. You have one day left to bid on Frank R. Paul’s artwork for the first Worldcon program book (1939) at Heritage Auctions. It was going for $925 when I looked earlier.
Frank R. PaulWorld Science Fiction Convention –Nycon Program Book Illustration Original Art (Nycon, 1939). From the first ever World Science Fiction Convention (aka Worldcon) in 1939! And the art is by noted sci-fi artist Frank R. Paul, which makes this doubly desirable! The original art for this program banner was created in ink and signed in the lower right of the 20.5″ x 3.25″ image area. UV Glass-front framed to 29″ x 12.75″. Lightly toned, with some minor whiteout art clean-ups. In Very Good condition. From the Roger Hill Collection.
(2) WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is the only genre work among six novels that have been shortlisted for Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. The complete list of finalists is at the link. The marketing copy for Bradley’s book says:
A boy meets a girl. The past meets the future. A finger meets a trigger. The beginning meets the end. England is forever. England must fall.
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel.
Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’….
(3) HOLD ‘EM BY THE NOSE AND KICK ‘EM IN THE ASS. At Fantasy Author’s Handbook, Philip Athans has an idea: “Let’s Reject Rejections”.
Your query to an agent has been rejected. Your short story was rejected by a magazine. You are a potato and are starting to show roots so the chef rejected you.
Aside from the potato thing, this happens so often to literally every writer, how does this not make us all feel like rejects?
And no one should feel like a reject.
But then, no agent can represent all the authors. No publisher can publish all the books. That means we have to figure out how to deal with rejection. The good news is that’s super easy. All you have to do is develop a thick skin. I heard skin thickening is offered by a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps for as little as €400,000 per treatment. It requires only one treatment per rejection letter, so most trillionaire authors should be able to soak that up. The rest of us will have to remain entirely human.
And no human wants to be, likes to be, feels they should be or deserve to be, rejected.
But then there’s that reality again: No agent can represent all the authors. No publisher can publish all the books.
We have to figure out not how to render ourselves immune to normal, healthy human emotional responses, but to, for lack of a better term, roll with it….
This weekend, Grand Rapids, Minnesota will honor its best-known former resident — Judy Garland.
And at its annual Judy Garland Festival, the city will fundraise to bring back a prized prop that the actress made famous. But, it won’t be an easy stroll down the Yellow Brick Road.
Minnesota lawmakers set aside $100,000 this year to help the Judy Garland Museum purchase the coveted ruby slippers of “The Wizard of Oz” fame. Experts expect the shoes could sell for a much higher price.
“They could sell for $1 million, they could sell for $10 million. They’re priceless,” says Joe Maddalena, Heritage Auctions executive vice president.
The ruby slippers are one of four sets remaining.
This pair’s unique story
The shoes were on display at Garland’s namesake museum in Grand Rapids in the summer of 2005 when a burglar struck. John Kelsch, the museum director at the time, says a man broke in through the back door and snatched the slippers….
(5) BICYCLE THIEF. [Item by Eric Hildeman.] Carl Klinger of the Milwaukee Steampunk Society had his penny farthing stolen and smashed. Fortunately, a fundraiser to get him a new one was successful. “Starship Fonzie #40 – Transcript”.
…What’s a penny farthing? It’s that old-timey sort of bicycle with the enormously huge wheel in front and a much smaller wheel in back. You know, the sort that Passpartout rode in the opening scenes of the 1956 film “Around the World in 80 Days,” starring David Niven. There’s also one on display in the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit in the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Well, who knows why it was stolen, but it was, and police were notified. Usually when a bike is stolen it’s never recovered, but this is a very unusual bicycle. Very tricky to ride, very obvious to spot. So the guy who’d stolen it noticed the news story regarding the theft, saw his own image caught on security camera, and apparently panicked. I guess he had a rap sheet as long as his arm regarding other charges the law wanted to nab him on. So he was living in hiding, the thief I mean. Why someone like that would steal an item so obvious to spot is beyond me. But when he saw the news story regarding the theft, he got afraid that his cover might be blown and, not wanting the law to come after him, he smashed the bicycle, dumped it somewhere where it would be found, and then fled out of state….
So Carl was out a very unique, very expensive steampunk-themed bicycle. And we were all bummed about this. Well, Carl put out a fundraiser to get him a new penny farthing, and the fundraiser, I’m pleased to say, was successful. He needed about $2000 for a new one, his fundraiser garnered $3,000. Karl will have a new bike, and he’ll likely ride it around at the Steampunk Picnic this year.
So, a happy ending to that particular thievery story. We love our friends at the Milwaukee Steampunk Society.
A unique bike stolen from outside a West Allis bar was recently found – badly damaged.
Video captures a guy nabbing it, crashing it and running away with it.
“It’s absolutely not rideable,” said Carl Klinger, the bike theft victim. “It’s not even fixable.”
Those words were not what Klinger expected to hear when West Allis police found his treasured bike.
“When I got there, it was just laying on the ground and it was just completely demolished,” he said.
The unique, old-time high-wheel bike was stolen more than two weeks ago as it was parked outside of a bar. Police knew who they were looking for after seeing surveillance video.
Wesley Yoakum was found more than 600 miles away, in Newton County, Missouri.
…Nearly every part of the bike was damaged. The seat was torn off, the tire bent, even the stitches were torn out of the tool case.
His friends have started a GoFundMe to help him buy a new bike so he can get back to riding again…
(6) ORYCON 44. [Item by Michael Pinnick.] Orycon 44 is being held October 18-20 this year at the DoubleTree Hotel Portland. Orycon is Oregon’s oldest literary and creative science fiction convention. Our Writer GoH is David D. Levine, our Artist GoH is Jennie Breeden, and our Media GoH is Victoria Price. Website: https://orycontemp.tezhme.net/
Writer GoH David D. Levine; Artist GoH Jennie Breeden; Media GoH Victoria Price.
(7) ELIZABETH BEAR Q&A. Long Lost Friends has a two-part interview with author Elizabeth Bear.
…This reactionary under layer of gaming’s enthusiast media, which makes its home mostly on X and YouTube, does not actually have the slightest impact on how games are made, or indeed which games are made. Look at Gamergate: what did it actually achieve? Games are more diverse than they were 10 years ago, not less; I saw more non-white male faces and characters in this year’s spate of Summer Game Fest trailers and demos than at any previous time in the almost 20 years I’ve been covering games. But they can still make people’s online lives hell for a while. I know this because I’ve been through it, several times.
I was running the UK branch of Kotaku when Gamergate kicked off, and so I had a front-row seat for their harassment tactics, which included sending the most disgusting threats imaginable through all the online channels available to them, trying to get me fired by emailing game publishers and my bosses with dossiers of my professional misdeeds and journalistic failings (read: writing about video games from a feminist perspective), searching for my and my colleagues’ real addresses and phone numbers and family members (and posting those details to their subreddits if they found them), and putting together unhinged Google Docs with links drawn between “SJW” journalists and developers. One of these mad documents appeared briefly in a recent Netflix documentary about 4chan, prompting several of my friends to text me a screenshot asking me if I knew that I was a figure in old “alt-right” conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, yes, I did.
It’s happened again a few times since, for various reasons. Unfortunately, dealing with online mobs is a part of the job for many journalists and indeed game developers these days, and despite all the shit I’ve dealt with over the years as a woman covering video games, I’m still rather glad I don’t write about politics. But I know exactly how awful it can feel when they mobilise against you, especially if it’s the first time. They’ll search for whatever they think is the least flattering image of you on Google Images, use it as a cutout for a YouTube thumbnail image, and then rant for 10 minutes over screenshots of your articles. They’ll tweet prominent people in games, trying to get them to publicly discredit you. They’ll set their followers on you. It’s hard not to meet their manufactured rage with a lot of genuine rage of your own.
It’s tempting to dunk on these people endlessly, but outrage fuels outrage – especially now, when there is literal money to be made posting inflammatory nonsense on X or YouTube. If Gamergate proved anything, it’s that nobody has to pander to rage-baiting toxic gamers, or even listen to them. That said, I still don’t think there’s been enough public pushback against this flavour of online abuse from the biggest publishers in games over the past few months, when the consultancies they work with, the journalists and critics who cover them, and even some of their own developers have been caught in an online shitstorm. Take it from me: vocal support means a lot….
(9) MEMORY LANE.
[Compiled by Paul Weimer.]
June 19, 1946 — Salman Rushdie, 78.
By Paul Weimer: It was senior year in high school that I first heard of Salman Rushdie, and yes, it was the fatwa issued against him for The Satanic Verses. As a result, he first came onto my radar, but I didn’t pick up a copy at that point. Coming from a conservative family, even with all the SF I had read to that point, a book named “The Satanic Verses” would be a bridge too far. I already had had to deal with my mother coming to terms with Dungeons and Dragons. But one day, after Chemistry class, I noticed my teacher was in fact, reading the book. I asked him about it, asked him what it was like, and if it was any good. (This was also the conversation where I learned that ennui was not pronounced en-you-eye, although my teacher thought I was just messing with him). In any event, I waited for the book to hit paperback, by which time I was commuting to Brooklyn College, and so I could read it on the subway in surety and safety.
Salman Rushdie in 2023.
The Satanic Verses, brilliant, strong and vibrant, was probably my first real contact with magic realism and was perhaps the most “literary” novel I attempted reading that wasn’t assigned in school. I am pretty sure that 19-year-old me didn’t grok the half of the book. Or maybe even that much. But it stunned me all the same.
In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed a number of other works of his, particularly in audio (a couple of them read by Rushdie himself), like Midnight’s Children, The Enchantress of Florence, The Ground Beneath her Feet, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories. In all of this and throughout all of these books, including The Satanic Verses, there is a strong and abiding interest in the nature and the use of stories. I know there is plenty to untangle in terms of immigration, East-West Relations, history, mythology, and faith. Salman Rushdie’s work is a seemingly bottomless well for exploring and investigating these themes.
Does he consider himself a SFF writer? I’m not sure, but if he isn’t, he has a house on the borderlands, ready to provoke and evoke thought in readers.
Covers for DC’s MultiVersus: Collision Detected were revealed in DC’s Sept. 2024 solicitations, ahead of the story’s release and show DC’s holy trinity paired up with a variety of MultiVersus characters from franchises that include Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Scooby-Doo and more….
…DC’s full description of MultiVersus: Collision Detected reads: “Bruce Wayne, Diana Prince, and Clark Kent each wake in a cold sweat, troubled by strange dreams they’ve had about ‘the rabbit,’ ‘the star child,’ and ‘the witch.’ Their investigation into these enigmatic visions brings them to unexpected locales and unusual characters, but none more unusual than the mysterious “rabbit” from their dreams as they find themselves face-to-face with the one and only Bugs Bunny. What the heck is going on here? And who in the name of the Multiverse are ‘the star child’ and ‘the witch’? The hit video game spills from your screen and into the DCU, and it’s bringing a whole lot of friends from some of your favorite universes with it!”
Since the genre’s inception, science-fiction writers have imagined what the future might hold for Earth and beyond. While their stories are often fantastical, many of them anticipated technologies that actually exist today, such as television and artificial intelligence. However, countless more made predictions that were absolute whiffs.
Here’s the first of their half-dozen duds.
1. Nuclear-Powered Soap Dispenser
While many sci-fi authors envisioned the possibilities of nuclear power, Philip K. Dick’s “The Land That Time Remembered” got specifically stuck on the idea of a society where humans washed their hands with “soap dispensers powered by the almighty atom,” and where “torrents of soap spurted forth by means of the forces that birthed the universe.”
This stunning jigsaw puzzle features glorious artwork from Paul Kidby, Sir Terry Pratchett’s artist of choice, depicting all the favourite Discworld characters. Paul Kidby provided the illustrations for The Last Hero, designed the covers for the Discworld novels since 2002, and is the author of the bestselling The Art of Discworld. This expanded artwork is available for the first time in jigsaw puzzle format in a deluxe gift box with an accompanying booklet identifying each of the characters along with quotes, trivia and more.
(14) MCDONALD’S KILLING AI DRIVE-THROUGH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Let’s just hope that the AI doesn’t try to kill McDonald’s back. Or worse, take it out on us.
Anyway, you’re not free and clear yet. McDonald’s makes it clear they’re going to try again later, apparently hoping the technology will improve enough to not dish out ice cream cones with bacon on top. (Wait! Where’s the problem there?) “McDonald’s kills AI drive-thru ordering after mistakes” at Axios.
Friction point: Customers had reported a slew of AI ordering blunders.
One posted video of the system incorrectly believing she’d ordered hundreds of dollars of chicken McNuggets, the Today Show reported.
In another case, a customer was given an ice cream cone topped with bacon, the New York Post reported….
Recreate the classic Doctor Who adventure “Pyramids of Mars” from 1975 featuring the Fourth Doctor! This Doctor Who Pyramids of Mars Priory Collector’s Playset features an opening and closing pyramid along with detailed set pieces like a Sarcophagus and Egyptian urns. Complete with 5-inch scale action figures of Sutekh and Marcus Scarman, you’ll be able to make your very own adventure with the Pyramids of Mars!
Days after solar storms spurred widespread sightings of auroras across Earth in early May, a new bout of eruptions on the sun brought glowing skies to another planet: Mars.
From pole to pole, Mars was hit by a barrage of gamma rays and X-rays, followed by charged particles from a coronal mass ejection. These led to auroras that would have appeared, if any viewers were on its surface, as a deep green color, reports theNew York Times’Robin George Andrews.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The latest Pitch Meeting is Superman (1978), for some reason.
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Paul Weimer, Scott Edelman, Daniel Dern, Michael Pinnick, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mark and Ellen.]
(1) OSFCI ANNOUNCEMENT. OryCon, the annual Portland, OR convention, is returning from a year away due to the pandemic. However, after this year’s event is held on November 12-14, the con will be going on another hiatus for an indefinite period. Thread starts here.
For over 40 years, OryCon has worked to bring you some of your favorite writers, artists, and creators in the science fiction and fantasy fandoms. In that time we who have run this convention have watched our community grow, develop, and change over time.
There are many reasons we have made this decision, some of which are shared above, but it has taken the board months of discussion and consideration to make this decision. We have not come to this decision lightly and want to stress that it was a hard, but necessary, decision.
(2) DISCON III PRESSER. Video of yesterday’s DisCon III media briefing with chair Mary Robinette Kowal and vice-chairs Marguerite Smith and Lauren Raye Snow has been posted to Facebook.com.
In April of 1819, a London periodical, the New Monthly Magazine, published The Vampyre: A Tale by Lord Byron. Notice of its publication quickly appeared in papers in the United States.
Byron was at the time enjoying remarkable popularity and this new tale, supposedly by the famous poet, caused a sensation as did its reprintings in Boston’s Atheneum (15 June) and Baltimore’s Robinson’s Magazine (26 June).
The Vampyre did away with the East European peasant vampire of old. It took this monster out of the forests, gave him an aristocratic lineage and placed him into the drawing rooms of Romantic-era England. It was the first sustained fictional treatment of the vampire and completely recast the folklore and mythology on which it drew.
By July, Byron’s denial of authorship was being reported and by August the true author was discovered, John Polidori.
In the meantime, an American response, The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo, by one Uriah Derick D’Arcy, appeared. D’Arcy explicitly parodies The Vampyre and even suggests that Lord Ruthven, Polidori’s British vampire aristocrat, had his origins in the Carribean. A later reprinting in 1845 attributed The Black Vampyre to a Robert C Sands; however, many believe the author was more likely a Richard Varick Dey (1801–1837), a near anagram of the named author.
What is so remarkable about this story is that it is an anti-slavery narrative from the early 1800s which also contains America’s first vampire who is Black….
(4) CORA’S NEW FANCAST Q&A. Cora Buhlert has another Fancast Spotlight up today since the replies seem to be coming in all at once. The latest is a Foundation podcast called Seldon Crisis: “Fancast Spotlight: Seldon Crisis”.
Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?
I read the full Foundation series for the first time last summer during lockdown. I had read the trilogy in my youth but had forgotten most of it and it was pure joy to re-read it. I had that common feeling after reading a great work of literature of wanting to share it with others, and decided the easiest way to share it with the world was in podcast form. I had no knowledge of the AppleTV series until after I’d written the first several scripts.
(5) ANATHEMA’S FUNDING APPEAL. Anathema: Spec From the Margins, a semiprozine featuring SFF by people from marginalized backgrounds, is looking for funding for its year six: Anathema: Spec from the Margins Year Six” at Indiegogo.
Anathema is an Ignyte Award-nominated online tri-annual magazine of speculative fiction (SF/F/H, the weird, slipstream, fabulism, and more). We exclusively publish the work of people of colour (POC)/Indigenous/Aboriginal creators on every range of the LGBTQIA spectrum….
…We’ve had the chance to be a home to stories that have a hard time getting picked up elsewhere – some for being too unusual, others too nakedly queer, others just not fitting the expected mold a primarily white publishing establishment wants from QBIPOC creators. Anathema, by intent, occupies a radical socialist queer space in the larger genre conversation. And in so doing we walk in the footsteps of giants, our own path fleeting and hope that the work we do can leave some lasting mark. But that takes funds. And we are not yet a self-sustaining entity. We earn some revenue through our website store, but most of our operating funds come from informal subscription drives and more formalized fundraising campaigns like this one….
(6) S&S KICKSTARTER. Tales from the Magician’s Skull, a magazine publishing good modern sword and sorcery, is also running a Kickstarter for its next issues. They have already passed their goal, Cora Buhlert calls them “A good magazine that deserves to be better known” — “More Tales From The Magician’s Skull by Goodman Games” at Kickstarter. No wonder they’re raking in the money – look at this special incentive if you pledge at the highest level.
In the vast world of Star Trek lore, there are plenty of iconic pieces to collect. From communicators and uniforms, phasers and tribbles, and even blaster rifles, the Star Trek fandom puts significant meaning to collectible items, some of which can be difficult to come by. Now, eager Trekkie collectors can gush over the recently announced auction of the one-of-a-kind phaser used by Captain James T. Kirk in his pilot episode. The rifle is being sold by a private collector with Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas; and it can be yours for just half a million dollars (no energy credits accepted).
The phaser rifle made its Star Trek appearance during the original series second pilot episode, Where No Man Has Gone Before….
(8) A FACE TO MEET THE FACES. For this installment of Building Beyond, “Mask On, Mask Off”, the premise is: “Over the course of every person’s life, they grow a mask.”
Sarah Gailey is joined by Greg Kasavin and Nome to develop worlds around this idea.
(9) MEMORY LANE.
1976 – Forty-five years ago, one of the better pieces of horror got released in Carrie. It was based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, and it was directed by Brian de Palma being his first hit. Lawrence D. Cohen wrote this screenplay as he would the third version thirty seven years later. It had a stellar cast of Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen. and John Travolta.
Like most horror films of the time and particularly King films, it had a truly minuscule budget of under two million dollars which is why it was a box office success when it made just thirty four million.
So what did the critics think of it? One and all they loved it madly with Roger Ebert saying that it was an “absolutely spellbinding horror movie” and Pauline Kael calling it the “best scary-funny movie since Jaws”.
Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a rather scary seventy-seven percent rating. As I noted above, there are three more films made off the novel, one in 2002 and one in 2013. Neither, not surprisingly to me, fares particularly well at Rotten Tomatoes.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 3, 1929 — Neal Barrett, Jr. He was nominated for a Hugo at Noreascon 3 for his “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus” short story. He was Toastmaster at LoneStarCon 2. He was prolific writing over two dozen novels and some fifty pieces of short fiction including a novelization of the first Dredd film. As good as much of his genre work was, I think his finest, best over the top work was the Wiley Moss series which led off with Pink Vodka Blues. He’s generously available at usual suspects. (Died 2015.)
Born November 3, 1933 — Jeremy Brett. Still my favorite Holmes of all time. He played him in four Granada TV series from 1984 to 1994 in a total of 41 episodes. One source said he was cast as Bond at one point, but turned the part down, feeling that playing 007 would harm his career. Lazenby was cast instead. (Died 1995.)
Born November 3, 1942 — Martin Cruz Smith, 79. Best remembered for Gorky Park, the Russian political thriller, but he’s also done a number of genre novels in The Indians Won (alternate history), Gypsy in Amber and Canto for a Gypsy (PI with psychic powers) and two wonderful pulpish novels, The Inca Death Squad and Code Name: Werewolf.
Born November 3, 1952 — Eileen Wilks, 69. Her principal genre series is the World of Lupi, a FBI procedural intertwined with shapeshifters, dragons and the multiverse. Highly entertaining, sometimes considered romance novels though I don’t consider them so. The audiobooks are amazing as well!
Born November 3, 1953 — Kate Capshaw, 68. Best known as Willie Scott in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which I’ll confess I’ve watched but a few times unlike the first film which I’ve watched way too much), and she was in Dreamscape as well. She retired from acting several decades ago.
Born November 3, 1960 — Kevin Murphy, 61. American actor and writer best known as the voice and puppeteer of Tom Servo on the Mystery Science Theater 3000. He also does RiffTrax which are humorous audio commentary tracks intended to be played along with various television programs and films.
Born November 3, 1963 — Brian Henson, 58. Can we all agree that The Happytime Murders should never have been done? Thought so. Wash it out of your consciousness with Muppet Treasure Island or perhaps The Muppet Christmas Carol. Or Muppets from Space. If you want something darker, he was a puppeteer on The Witches, and the chief puppeteer on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And he voices Hoggle in Labyrinth.
Born November 3, 1977 — Belén Fabra, 44. Here for her recurring role in the Spanish-language SF series El ministerio del tiempo (The Department Of Time). She also appeared as Captain Sanchez in Origin, a YouTube SF series that lasted but one season.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
In Last Kiss, John Lustig puts new words on older, existing comic panels.
The evil criminal mastermind Fu Manchu was a recurring character in Hollywood films for decades. He epitomised racist stereotypes about China and the Chinese which shaped popular thinking in the West. Vincent Dowd has been talking to writer Sir Christopher Frayling and academic Amy Matthewson about his long-lasting influence.
The Doctor arrives at the Antarctic base of International Space Command in the year 1986. The men inside (and yes, even in 1986 it seems rocket science is a bit of a boys’ club) take notice of the new arrivals, but there’s no time to worry about them. The latest launch has run into trouble, reporting the sudden appearance of a new planet in the sky. Worse still, their ship is losing power….
Hero Collector sent ComicBook.com one of these advent calendars to take a closer and share our impressions of it with our readers.
We’ve taken a few photos of the product and opened up a few of the gifts to give you an idea of what is inside. Don’t worry. We only opened the first four, so we’re not putting out spoilers for anyone’s holiday fun. You can take a look at what we found in the photos included below….
(16) NEWS TO ME. I hadn’t previously heard of Philip K. Dick’s novel Humpty Dumpty In Oakland til I saw the first edition being offered by L.W. Currey.
Set in San Francisco in the late 1950s, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a tragicomedy of misunderstandings among used car dealers and real-estate salesmen: the small-time, struggling individuals for whom Philip K. Dick always reserved his greatest sympathy.
It is one of Dick’s realistic fiction novels, and was published posthumously. Many reviewers say they find the way he tells this story has a lot in common with his science fiction.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: Metroid Dread is the latest version of a Nintendo character so ancient she has ’80s shoulder pads. But don’t call the new game Metroidmania, the narrator warns, “or I will personally come to your house and slap you!”
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John Lorentz, Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, Lise Andreasen, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Daniel Hahn and Ann Goldstein are translators, inhabiting a strange world between creation and publication, but with their own literary and linguistic creativity shaping the final form. Goldstein has been translating for decades, turning the words of Elena Ferrante, Primo Levi and Jhumpa Lahiri, amongst others, into English. She works prolifically, and in this episode Daniel, himself a prize-winning author and literary judge, spends time with her over the course of three days in 2018 as she translates an award-winning Italian book.
Daniel Hahn discusses with her how to know where to translate exactly and where to get the sense, how to translate phrases which have no translation, and shares experiences about the politics of translation. He finds out how this literary great came to translating, how she chooses the books she wishes to translate and to what extent she acts – as so many translators do – as an advocate for foreign-language books to English-language publishers. And implicit in all this is what is core to the translator’s art – intercession between cultures, sharing ideas and stories which would otherwise go unshared.
(2) WOLLSTONECRAFT STATUE. [Item by Dann.] Today they unveiled a statue in honor of Mary Wollstonecraft for her work as an early feminist. As I understand it, the statue is not of her but is instead a statue representing all women. The woman depicted in the statue is nude. Some folks don’t like that. Image in this tweet.
… This event will be hosted online via ZOOM, with link being provided to the Orycon mailing list.
TO REGISTER AND RECEIVE THE ACCESS LINK: We will be giving access links for the Zoom rooms to the OR e-Con mailing list. To sign up for our mailing list, please email: [email protected]
While this will be a free event, we will be requesting donations both to cover the costs of the virtual event and for use elsewhere in the organization. Volunteers are also needed for this event, and you can request more information by contacting [email protected].
AUTHOR GUEST OF HONOR: A. Lee Martinez
ARTIST GUESTS OF HONOR: Phil and Kaja Foglio
The programming schedule outlined below are for the 3 main Zoom rooms that will be available, along with the Creation Station events (to be announced).
(4) CROWDFUNDING FOR TWO HUMANS. Mary Anne Mohanraj and Benjamin Rosenbaum have opened a Kickstarter — “SLF Podcast: Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans” – to raise $1500 to fund the editing costs of the first season of their forthcoming podcast.
Join two old friends as they talk about science fiction, community, the writing life, teaching, parenting, and a whole lot more. Does Ben really think you should let your kids touch the stove, and did he really burn his son’s homework? Why did he write a novel with no men or women in it? What exactly did a young Mary Anne do to appall her aunts in college, and how did it lead circuitously to her founding science fiction’s longest-running webzine? Mohanraj and Rosenbaum… Are Humans? Yes, yes they are.
They’re working on the first season of 12 weekly episodes, to launch January 2021. There’s a trailer video at the link.
(5) MEMORY OF EARLY SFWA OFFICER. The Lansing Community College Lookout tells how Joan Hunter Holly is being remembered in “Late LCC professor’s legacy lives on”.
…She was a member of Science Fiction Writers of America, serving as treasurer from 1976 to 1979, and a member of the Academy of Science Fiction and Fantasy Films.
Her career was put on pause due to a brain tumor. She had it removed in 1970 and resumed writing….
Hunter said his ultimate goal is to work with Holly’s family to release some of her unpublished works.
“I have several short stories that a fan of Joan’s has compiled into a trilogy that we’d like to publish,” Hunter said. “In general, I just want to raise awareness of her work. I may create a website devoted to her work in the future, too.”
Vincent Tomanica worked at TheLookout from 1976-1978. He took Holly’s LCC Short Story Writing class in 1977. He is a retired teacher and writer.
The pair formed a friendship and Holly confided in Tomanica about her cancer. She told Tomanica he would be a successful author and encouraged him to get published.
“I was encouraged by her confidence in me,” Tomanica said. “She was very kind … soft spoken and very thoughtful … she was very contained and self-possessed.
Holly urged Tomanica to get back in touch with her after he got published.
“I got busy … but I still found time to submit manuscripts to publishers anyway,” Tomanica said. “A couple years after taking her class I did get published in a national magazine and I eagerly contacted LCC’s Communications Department to pass my good news along to Joan. You can imagine how devastated I was to hear that she had passed away because of cancer.”
A show on leadership, discussed by geeks. On the show will be Steve Kelner, Vincent Docherty, and Imri Goldberg, and of course Karen and Gadi.
On the show, each of the participants will share their own experience with leadership, their exposure to the field, as well as game a rapid-fire exercise with various HBR-like questions on leadership scenarios and challenges.
Because of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) emergency, the planned Eurocon 2021 had to be reconsidered. In our commitment to ensure the highest level od safety for participants, we have decided to postpone Eurocon 2021, that was scheduled for March 15-18 2021. The new dates are July 15-18 2021.
There used to be parties in the apartments on the top floors of New York City’s branch libraries. On other nights, when the libraries were closed, the kids who lived there might sit reading alone among the books or roll around on the wooden library carts—if they weren’t dusting the shelves or shoveling coal. Their hopscotch courts were on the roof. A cat might sneak down the stairs to investigate the library patrons.
When these libraries were built, about a century ago, they needed people to take care of them. Andrew Carnegie had given New York $5.2 million, worth well over $100 million today, to create a city-wide system of library branches, and these buildings, the Carnegie libraries, were heated by coal. Each had a custodian, who was tasked with keeping those fires burning and who lived in the library, often with his family. “The family mantra was: Don’t let that furnace go out,” one woman who grew up in a library told the New York Times.
But since the ’70s and ’80s, when the coal furnaces started being upgraded and library custodians began retiring, those apartments have been emptying out, and the idyll of living in a library has disappeared. Many of the apartments have vanished, too, absorbed back into the buildings through renovations for more modern uses. Today there are just 13 library apartments left in the New York Public Library system.
(9) MEDIA ANIVERSARY.
November 1990 — Thirty years ago, Geoff Ryman’s The Child Garden which bears the variant title of The Child Garden or A Low Comedy would win the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best SF Novel. It would also win the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best SF Novel, and it would be nominated for both a BSFA Best SF Novel award and Locus Award for Best SF Novel as well. Unwin Hyman had published it the previous year though it was originally published in the Summer-Autumn 1987 issue of Interzone as “Love Sickness” before it would be very much expanded as this novel. Cover art is by Dave McKean.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born November 10, 1899 – Kate Seredy. Author and illustrator of children’s books, some fantastic. Wrote and illustrated The White Stag (legends of Huns settling Hungary), winning the Newbery Medal and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. Here is an interior for Andre Norton’s first novel The Prince Commands. Two Newbery Honors, Caldecott Honor. “For yesterday and for all tomorrows, we dance the best we know.” (Died 1975) [JH]
Born November 10, 1927 – Don C. Thompson. FAAn (Fan Activity Achievement) Award for Best Fanwriter. Best known fanzine, Don-O-Saur. Co-chaired Denvention Two the 39th Worldcon. Fan Guest of Honor at Westercon 31 (co-chaired by Our Gracious Host), MileHiCon 20 & 22. (Died 1990) [JH]
November 10, 1935 – Marilyn Duckworth, 85. Novelist, poet, radio & television writer. Her first novel A Gap in the Spectrum is ours, published when MD was 23; a dozen others; memoir Camping on the Faultline. New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. [JH]
Born November 10, 1950 – Dean Wesley Smith, 70. Two hundred novels, hundreds of shorter stories. With wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch, best known for Pulphouse. World Fantasy Award to both of them for it. [JH]
Born November 10, 1955 — Roland Emmerich, 65. He’s very strong campaigner for the LGBT community, and is openly gay so bravo for him! The Noah’s Ark Principle was in ‘84 by him written and directed by him as his thesis after seeing Star Wars at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München. Moon 44 followed which likely most of you haven’t seen but now we get to his Hollywood films, to wit Universal Soldier, The High Crusade (yes, the Poul Anderson novel), Stargate, Independence Day…no, I’m going to stop there. Suffice it to say he’s created a lot of genre film. And oh, he directed Stonewall, the 2015 look at that historic event which I know isn’t genre or genre adjacent but is worth noting. (CE)
Born November 10, 1955 — Clare Higgins, 65. Her genre film appearances include Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II and The Golden Compass. She was Miss Cackle on the Worst Witch series, and had a memorable role on Doctor Who as Ohila, the High Priestess of the Sisterhood of Karn, that started off with the War Doctor story, “The Night of The Doctor” which included the Eighth Doctor and continued through several appearances with the Twelfth Doctor. (CE)
Born November 10, 1960 — Neil Gaiman, 60. Summarizing him is nigh unto impossible so I won’t beyond saying that his works that I’ve immensely enjoyed include Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, the Sandman series, Stardust, American Gods and Coraline. As for film, I think the finest script he did is his “Day of The Dead” one for Babylon 5, not his Doctor Who scripts. The animated Coraline is I think the most faithful work of one of his novels, Neverwhere needs to be remade with decent CGI and the less said about Stardust the better. My first encounter with him was reading the BBC trade paper edition of Neverwhere followed by pretty much everything else he did until the last decade or so. (CE)
Born November 10, 1963 — Hugh Bonneville, 57. He’s here because he was Captain Avery in two Eleventh Doctor stories, “The Curse of the Black Spot” and “A Good Man Goes to War”. Which is not to say that he hasn’t done other genre work as he has as he’s got appearances on Da Vinci’s Demons, Bonekickers, Bugs and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. And he had a bit part in a Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies.(CE)
Born November 10, 1969 – Sarah Porter, 51. Half a dozen novels, one shorter story “Ratspeak”. “When not writing my own weird stuff…. I might be drawing, or gardening, or wandering wraithlike through the streets. I live in Brooklyn, land of mystery.” Gallery here. Note the hands and the womb. [JH]
Born November 10, 1971 — Holly Black, 49. Best known for her Spiderwick Chronicles, which were created with fellow writer & illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, and for the Modern Faerie Tales YA trilogy. Her first novel was Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale. (It’s very good.) There have been two sequels set in the same universe. The first, Valiant, won the first Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. Doll Bones which is really, really creepy was awarded a Newbery Honor and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Suffice it to say if you like horror, you’ll love her. (CE)
Born November 10, 1982 — Aliette de Bodard, 38. The latest work in her oh so excellent Xuya Universe series, the “Seven of Infinities” novella, was released today. Her Xuya Universe novella “The Tea Master and the Detective” won a Nebula Award for Best Novella and a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella, and was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novella as well. “The Shipmaker”, also set herein, won a BSFA for Best Short Fiction. Her other major series is The Dominion of the Fallen which is equally lauded. All of her fiction is available from the usual digital suspects. (CE)
Born November 10, 1984 – Yû Kamiya, 36. (Name written Japanese style, personal name last.) Wrote and illustrated light novel series No Game No Life, adapted into animé, and one of ten to receive a Yomiuri Shimbun Sugoi Japan Award. Also Clockwork Planet light novels & manga with Himana Tsubaki. [JH]
This edition of Outlook is devoted to the impact of comic books and three remarkable journeys taken by artists and publishers who fell in love with comics as children.
Indian comic enthusiast Vijayan Soundrapandian has been working to bring his favourite characters to audiences in Tamil Nadu. His company Lion-Muthu Comics translates some of the world’s most famous comics into Tamil.
In 2017 Outlook reporter Daniel Gross went to South Africa to meet cartoonist Mogorosi Motshumi. Mogorosi witnessed the worst of apartheid, and in the 1970s and 80s, was one of the only black artists using comics to document township life.
And we stay in the Outlook archive by revisiting an interview Emily did with Chinese-American comic creator Gene Luen Yang, he’s the author behind the first Chinese Superman.
We’ve teamed up with the American Library Association for this spectacular, one-of-a-kind book bundle! Get ebooks and audiobooks that feature and highlight PoC authors, creators, and characters like Falling in Love With Hominids, Neveryona, and This Book is Anti-Racist. Plus, your purchase will support the American Library Association and the Freedom to Read Foundation!
(13) FASTER THAN CRUISING SPEED. Tony Quine says that Russia is going to film a movie at the International Space Station a few weeks before Tom Cruise shows up. “Russia looks for actress to steal Tom Cruise space movie thunder” in The Space Review. Tom Cruise’s flight to the ISS is arranged through Axiom Space and SpaceX for October 2021.
Russia’s not-too-subtle effort to upstage Tom Cruise’s plans to film the first ever feature film in Earth orbit have taken a major step forward, with more details announced jointly by the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Channel One TV, from Moscow.
Vague details released in September have now been fleshed out, with the headline grabbing news being the decision to base the Russian movie plot around a woman, meaning that the filmmakers will need to find an actress willing to fly on a Soyuz rocket in October next year.
The project, which is tentatively called Vyzov, or The Challenge, has the tag line, “Become a star, by flying to the stars!”
… Although it has not been explicitly stated, the woman selected will need to fly on the Soyuz MS-19 mission, replacing one of the three professional cosmonauts currently pencilled in to fly that mission. This in turn, will mean that one of the crew on the preceding mission Soyuz MS-18 will need to remain on the ISS until the spring of 2022. This is because Russia has only six seats to the ISS available in 2021 (Soyuz MS-18 and MS-19) and needs to find a way to accommodate this previously unplanned “project” within those available resources.
The only other crewed Russian flight planned for 2021 is the first wholly commercial Soyuz mission, arranged in conjunction with experienced spaceflight provider Space Adventures. This will be Soyuz MS-20 and will fly in December 2021. Space Adventures is not involved in the “movie” project, and the actress will not occupy one of their seats. While they have not made any official comment about their future clients, the latest unofficial information emanating from Roscosmos and Space Adventures indicates that Soyuz MS-20 will be flown by veteran cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, and two female spaceflight participants: Austrian aviator Johanna Maislinger and a Japanese showbiz celebrity whose name has yet to be revealed (see “Orbital space tourism set for rebirth in 2021”, The Space Review, August 10, 2020).
However, the Russian movie proposal has not met with universal approval, with some Russian spaceflight commentators taking to social media to suggest that utilizing ISS resources for a purpose not obviously connected to scientific research, or Russian national interests, may actually be illegal, and have called for transparency with regard to the underlying financial arrangements….
(14) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter was dialed into tonight’s Jeopardy! and saw this answer elude contestants:
Category: Books by Subtitle.
Answer: 1995: “The Life and Times of” a certain “Wizard of Oz” Character.
Wrong questions: “Who is Dorothy?” “Who is The Wicked Witch?”
Correct question: “What is ‘Wicked?'”
Two contestants didn’t get this one either –
Final Jeopardy: History in the Movies
Answer: Vehicles in “2001: A Space Odyssey” featured this airline’s logo, but the company went bankrupt in 1991.
Wrong Questions: “What is Eastern Airlines?” and “What is Martin?”
This scent contains the lives of countless heroes and heroines. Apply to the pulse points when seeking sensory succor or a brush with immortality.
According to KOIN, the company noticed that customers missed the smell when they were closed during the pandemic lockdown in the spring.
Powell’s Books is releasing a limited edition unisex fragrance that captures what they said is what customers missed most about Powell’s — the aroma.
Store officials said they surveyed customers about what they missed while the store was temporarily closed by the pandemic. It’s not the books. It’s the smell.
The perfume comes packaged in something that looks like a book, like a hidden bottle of hooch or a gun.
(16) SO ARE THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES. Randall Munroe contemplates “What Makes Sand Soft?” in the New York Times. Tagline: “Understanding how grains flow is vital for everything from landslide prediction to agricultural processing, and scientists aren’t very good at it.”
… Karen Daniels, a physicist at North Carolina State University who studies sand and other granular materials — a field actually called “soft matter”— told me that sand is challenging in part because the grains have so many different properties, like size, shape, roughness and more: “One reason we don’t have a general theory is that all of these properties matter.”…
(17) BOOK TRAILER OF THE DAY. Lovely artwork in this new edition of two Lewis Carroll classics.
Alice’s adventures in the dreamlike worlds of Wonderland and the Looking Glass Kingdom are some of the most original and best-loved children’s stories ever written. These joyous, thrilling and utterly nonsensical tales are filled with vivid, unforgettable images and characters. This new edition contains the texts of both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass in a beautiful, clothbound flipped book – illustrated throughout in glorious colour. Floor Rieder’s gorgeous drawings are an original and fresh imagining of Alice’s topsy-turvy world. Out now from Pushkin Children’s, this clothbound edition is a must for any Alice fans, and the perfect Christmas gift for all.
[Thanks to John Hertz, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Bill, Michael Toman, Dann, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
In the Czech Republic, the clapper has just fallen on the most financially beneficial foreign production since the introduction of production incentives. The neo-Victorian fantasy television series Carnival Row starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, a joint venture between the American companies Amazon Studios and Legendary Television, has completed two weeks of remaining production in Prague, after filming was interrupted at the beginning of March due to the spread of Covid-19.
Am I over praising it? Absolutely. But this is the movie we need now. This is it’s time. If there’s ever been a more perfect fit for a film with reality, I don’t know it. Perhaps it won’t end up as the best film of the year, but it will be THE film of the year.
In this miserable time, filled with hate and doom and surrounded by loneliness, there’s been no cinema for nearly six months. Nothing. A huge gaping void to go with the huge gaping void which has been life, and Bill and Ted come along to fill it…
(3) MARK YOUR CALENDAR. Or whack your porcupine, or whatever it is you do to remember a date. 8-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Scott Edelman will launch a book on September 22. Scott elaborates —
Since this pandemic has made an in-the-flesh book launch for my new short story collection Things That Never Happened impossible, I’m doing as so many have done and holding a virtual one. So I’ll be running it live on September 22 through YouTube.
And you can even click to set yourself a reminder. I’ll briefly interview the cover artist to discuss how she came up with the concept, then I’ll be interviewed, and take questions. And as you can see by the image, the publisher even donated gift cards good in their store for me to give away as prizes.
Attend this live event for a chance to win one of three $50 gift certificates good at the Cemetery Dance store.
(4) VIRTUAL OR-ECON PLANNED. OryCon 42 has been postponed to next year due to the pandemic. It will be held November 13 to 15, 2021.
They will have a free virtual mini-con in 2020 from November 12-14, 2020 which has been dubbed OR-eCon. See updates at the OryCon website.
For now, we’re actively recruiting volunteers interested in making this virtual event happen. Please contact [email protected] if you are interested in volunteering for OR-eCon.
While this will be a free event, we will be requesting donations both to cover the costs of the virtual event and for use elsewhere in the organization. As always, the various OSFCI charitable funds (Clayton, Petrey) are also open to donations.
… These are often genre films, such as sci-fi, which continually fail to receive the recognition they deserve. While things are getting better, the Academy has a long and storied history of ignoring these excellent and influential films. With this in mind, here are 10 fantastic science-fiction films that were snubbed by the Oscars…
08 Blade Runner
Blade Runner presented a vision of the future unlike anything seen before and its influence continues to be felt today, but it was tragically overlooked by the Oscars and only picked up a mere two nominations and failed to win either award.
Harrison Ford’s fantastic portrayal of Rickard Deckard wasn’t enough to earn him a nomination, or any other member of the cast. Blade Runner’s score was also overlooked. However, Bafta showered the film with eight nominations and awarded it three awards. The huge disparity between organizations goes to show how subjective these nominations are.
… Graphic designer Kyle Cox remembers how he struggled to keep his own pain away from his 3-year-old son Lucas when NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, Cox’s idol, was killed in a helicopter crash in January.
“Every time he sees Chadwick on TV or in a movie, he points and says ‘Challa,’ ” said Cox, 34, of Lawrence, Mass. Lucas’s bedroom is covered with Black Panther posters, bedsheets, pillowcases and action figures.
“My wife and I have not decided yet if we are going to tell him. He wants to be like T’Challa when he grows up, a Black king. I don’t know if I want to tell him his hero died. That might crush him,” he said. “He’s still trying to get used to the pandemic and not seeing his friends anymore.”
(7) NEIL KADEN HAS DIED. Fanzine publisher and conrunner Neil Kaden (1954-2020) died August 28 at the age of 66. The family memorial notice is here, where it says a full obituary is coming. He is survived by his wife, Cris. There are some fine photos of the pair here at BostonBaden.com.
In a 2010 letter of comment, Neil told File 770 readers that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease around 2005. He told about his concern that other fans who also suffer from it might lose their connection to fandom and no one would know:
Statistics should show that over 1-in-100 fans are stricken with PD, but neither of us could identify where these fans are. Without a faanish safety net, they fall out of touch. The motion related symptoms, balance problems, bradykinesia, tremors, memory problems, and uncontrollable dystonia, are frequently not very visible, especially in the early stages.
Kaden at one time participated in several amateur publishing associations (APAs), founding DAAPA, and belonging to Taps, Applesauce, Anzapa, Canadapa, Vanapa. His publications included Dopplegangers!; Nekromancy; and Confessions Of A Failed Yuppie.
He co-chaired Ditto 13, a con for fanzine fans, in 2000.
(8) NELSON OBIT. Actress Lori Nelson died August 30. The Hollywood Reporter paid tribute.
Lori Nelson, the 1950s starlet who was kidnapped by an amphibious monster in Revenge of the Creature and portrayed Barbara Stanwyck’s daughter in Douglas Sirk’s All I Desire, has died. She was 87.
Nelson had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years and died Sunday at her home in the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles, her daughter Jennifer Mann said.
…In Revenge of the Creature (1955), the first of two sequels spawned from 1954’s Creature From the Black Lagoon, Nelson played the ichthyology student named Helen who is snatched from a seaside restaurant by a smitten Gill Man (Tom Hennesy and Ricou Browning).
She initially did not want to make the movie but in the end was glad she did.
“I played opposite Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Jimmy Stewart, Dean Martin and Audie Murphy, but who’s the leading man everybody wants to ask me about? The Gill Man!” she said in an interview for Tom Weaver’s book The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy. “It’s so funny, Universal had to twist my arm a little to be in a monster movie. But if I knew then how popular they would remain, I would have twisted their arm to be in a couple more.
(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
August 30, 1999 — The animated Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles first aired in syndication from the Bohbot Kids Network. Produced by Co-Executive Producer’s Verhoeven-Marshall Flat Earth Productions (Richard Raynis was the other Co-Executive Producer), it’s loosely based off both Heinlein’s novel and Verhoeven‘s film. Very loosely. Duane Capizzi who later wrote the Superman: Doomsday film was one of the actual producers. The voice cast was rather large and consisted largely of no one you’ll recognise without Googling them. The series would last one season and thirty six thirty minute episodes before being canceled by Columbia TriStar Television and Sony Pictures on a cliff hanger as the last four episodes weren’t produced. You can see the trailer here.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz]
Born August 30, 1797 – Mary Shelley.Frankenstein her first novel; I agree with Brian Aldiss it’s the first science fiction novel. Alas, it seems one of those books everybody talks about but nobody has read. It’s an irresponsibility contest between the man and the monster. Also a feminist tract; I’ve said that of Glory Road but falling on deaf ears. One more novel, a score of shorter stories, for us; five other novels, travelogues, biographies, editions of Percy Shelley’s work. (Died 1851) [JH]
Born August 30, 1887 – Ray Cummings. Two dozen novels, two hundred thirty shorter stories for us; perhaps seven hundred fifty all told. He, and not e.g. Feynman or the Flying Karamazov Brothers, wrote “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once” (a character in The Girl in the Golden Atom says it, ch. 5). (Died 1957) [JH]
Born August 30, 1896 — Raymond Massey. In 1936, he starred in Things to Come, a film adaptation by H.G. Wells of his own novel The Shape of Things to Come. Other than several appearances on Night Gallery forty years later, that’s it for genre appearances. (Died 1983.) (CE)
Born August 30, 1931 – Jack Swigert. Licensed private pilot by age 16; attained Second Class Scout, Boy Scouts of America. At Univ. Colorado, football for the Buffaloes; M.S. (aerospace engineering) from Rensselaer; M.B.A. from Univ. Hartford. U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, Korea; jet fighter pilot, Air Nat’l Guard; engineering test pilot; 7,200 hrs in flight. AIAA (Am. Inst. Aeronautics & Astronautics) Chanute Award for demonstrating Rogallo wing. NASA (Nat’l Aeronautics & Space Adm’n) Astronaut; on Apollo 13 mission said “Houston, we’ve had a problem here”; Presidential Medal of Freedom. Elected to U.S. House of Representatives, developed cancer, died before serving. Three honorary doctorates. Int’l Space Hall of Fame. (Died 1982) [JH]
Born August 30, 1940 – Ye Yonglie. (Written Chinese-style; the family name is Ye, rhymes with Heh heh.) Chemist, poet, biographer, film director; fifty volumes of various material; proclaimed the leading science popularizer by the Party (thus sometimes “the Chinese Asimov”). Xiao Lingtong Manyou Weilai (in romanization the Party prefers; “Little Know-it-all Roams the Future”) and sequels still in print, three million copies circulating, many Chinese children’s first contact with Futures Studies. Half a dozen short stories for adults, three translated into English, see e.g. Science Fiction from China, Tales from the Planet Earth. Reports on SF in China for Foundation, Locus. (Died 2020) [JH]
Born August 30, 1942 — Judith Moffett, 78. She won the first Theodore Sturgeon Award with her story “Surviving” and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at Nolacon II (1988) for her Pennterra novel. Asimov wrote an introduction for the book and published it under his Isaac Asimov Presents series. Her Holy Ground series of The Ragged World: A Novel of the Hefn on Earth, Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream: A Sequel to the Ragged World and The Bird Shaman are her other genre novels. The Bear’s Babys And Other Stories collects her genre short stories. All of her works are surprisingly available at the usual digital suspects. (CE)
Born August 30, 1956 – Lissanne Lake, 64. A hundred covers, plus interiors, for Feast of Laughter, Mythic Delirium, Strange Plasma, books, gaming cards. Here is Lafferty in “Orbit”, i.e. stories published in Orbit. Here is the Four of Chivs (blades) from her Buckland Romani Tarot Deck. Of course she has a Facebook page. [JH]
Born August 30, 1963 — Michael Chiklis, 57. He was The Thing in two first Fantastic Four films, and Jim Powell on the No Ordinary Family series which I’ve never heard of. He was on American Horror Story for its fourth season, American Horror Story: Freak Show as Dell Toledo. The following year he was cast as Nathaniel Barnes, in the second season of Gotham, in a recurring role. And he voiced Lt. Jan Agusta in Heavy Gear: The Animated Series. (CE)
Born August 30, 1965 — Laeta Kalogridis, 55. She was an executive producer of the short-lived not so great Birds of Prey series and she co-wrote the screenplays for Terminator Genisys and Alita: Battle Angel. She recently was the creator and executive producer of Altered Carbon. She also has a screenwriting credit for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, a film the fanboys hate but which I really like. (CE)
Born August 30, 1972 — Cameron Diaz, 48. She first shows as Tina Carlyle in The Mask, an amazing film. (The sequel is bloody awful.) She voices Princess Fiona in the Shrek franchise. While dating Tom Cruise, she’s cast as an uncredited Bus passenger in Minority Report. Oh, and she’s Lenore Case in the cringingly awful Green Hornet, a film I gave up on after fifteen or so minutes despite being predisposed to liking it. (CE)
Born August 30, 1973 – Echo Chernik, 47. Commercial artist including science fiction and fantasy images; in four issues of Spectrum. Here are some cards from her Patrick Rothfuss Name of the Wind Art Deck. Here is Echo Recoil. Here is a tote bag for the Uwajimaya shops. Here is her Four of Blades for the “Shadowrun” Sixth World Tarot. Here is an Elf for Shadowrun. [JH]
Born August 30, 1980 — Angel Coulby, 40. She is best remembered for her recurring role as Gwen (Guinevere) in the BBC’s Merlin. She also shows up in Doctor Who as Katherine in the “The Girl in the Fireplace”, a Tenth Doctor story. She also voices Tanusha ‘Kayo’ Kyrano in the revived animated Thunderbirds Are Go series. (CE)
(11) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.
It’s Fred MacMurray’s birthday. He was used by artist C.C. Beck as the basis for Captain Marvel back in 1939.
…Like Ursula K. Le Guin, Butler straddled the timeless and the prophetic, saturating her fiction with astute philosophical and psychological insight into human nature and the superorganism of society. Also like Le Guin, Butler soared into poetry to frame and punctuate her prose. Each chapter begins with an original verse abstracting its thematic direction. She opens the eleventh chapter of the second Earthseed book with this verse:
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
(13) POETIC LICENSE. In the latest podcast from Diamond Bay Radio, Lex Berman interviews Sebastian Doubinsky. Touching on drugs, music, and the need to protect poets as the last bastion of freedom, Seb provides a thoughtful background to his novel The Invisible (Meerkat Press, 2020): “The Invisible With Seb Doubinsky’.
Take a stroll around New Babylon with the City Commissioner, Ratner, who finesses his way through the subcultures of Synth music, political corruption, and the invisible power of shared delusions. Ratner is out to find the murderer of Jesse Valentino, the former cop and unknown poet, unknown at home, and famous everywhere else.
(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY.“It’s a Neil Gaiman Universe, We Just Live In It” on YouTube is a clip from a 2014 episode of the NPR game show Ask Me Another where a contestant was asked whether a passage was from Neil Gaiman’s work or was made up by the Ask Me Another staff.
[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Mlex, and John Hertz for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
Five novels by writers from the Pacific Northwest are finalists for the 22nd annual Endeavour Award. The Award comes with an honorarium of $1,000 and will be announced in November at OryCon. Because of Covid 19, Orycon will be held on-line.
The finalists are:
Merlin Redux by Dave Duncan, who was from Victoria, BC, Night Shade Books
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire, who is from Kenmore, WA, Tor Books
Shadow Stitcher by Misha Handman, who is from Victoria, BC, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
What The Wind Brings by Matthew Hughes, who is from Victoria, BC, Pulp Literature Press
The Witch’s Kind by Louisa Morgan, who is from Port Townsend, WA, Redhook
The Endeavour Award honors a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book, either a novel or a single-author collection, created by a writer living in the Pacific Northwest. All entries are read and scored by seven readers randomly selected from a panel of preliminary readers. The five highest scoring books then go to three final judges, who are all professional writers or editors from outside of the Pacific Northwest.
The judges for the 2020 Award are Michael Capobianco, John G. Hemry, and Rosemary Claire Smith.
Michael Capobianco is co-author, with William Barton, of the hard sf books Iris, Alpha Centauri, Fellow Traveler, and White Light. He has published one solo science fiction novel, Burster (Bantam). Purlieu, which Analog called “a delightful adventure story set in a marvelous world filled with mysteries and wonders,” is his first venture into young adult territory. Capobianco served as President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1996-1998 and again in 2007-2008, and was drafted to fill the office of SFWA Vice President in 2010. He currently serves as SFWA’s Authors Coalition Liaison and is a member of SFWA’s Contracts and Legal Affairs Committees. Capobianco lives in Southern Maryland with two cats, Ariel and Mocha.
John G. Hemry (writing as Jack Campbell) is the author of the New York Times best-selling Lost Fleet series , Genesis Fleet series, and Lost Stars series, as well as the Steampunk-meets-high-fantasy Pillars of Reality, Dragon’s Legacy, and Empress of the Endless Sea series. He’s currently writing another Lost Fleet trilogy, carrying on the story from where it left off in Leviathan. His shorter fiction includes time travel, alternate history, space opera, military SF, fantasy, and humor, and is collected in three anthologies (Ad Astra, Swords And Saddles, and Borrowed Time). John is a retired US Navy officer, who served in a wide variety of jobs including surface warfare (the ship drivers of the Navy), amphibious warfare, anti-terrorism, intelligence, and some other things that he’s not supposed to talk about. Being a sailor, he’s been known to tell stories about events which he says really happened (but cannot be verified by any independent sources). This experience has served him well in writing fiction. He lives in Maryland with his indomitable wife “S” and three great kids (two of them on the autism spectrum). Web Site: www.jack-campbell.com
Rosemary Claire Smith’s story, “Diamond Jim And The Dinosaurs,” was a finalist in Analog Science Fiction and Fact’s AnLab Readers’ Poll. Rosemary draws on her background as a field archaeologist and a lawyer to write fantasy, science fiction and horror stories that have appeared, or will soon appear, in Analog, Amazing Stories, Fantastic Stories, Hybrid Fiction, Digital SF, Stupefying Stories, and other periodicals and anthologies. Analog has published a number of her guest editorials. Both her fiction and nonfiction showcase her interests in folklore, mythology, prehistoric societies, aliens, alternate history, the exploration of distant lands, and most especially time travel to the heyday of the dinosaurs. Rosemary is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop as well as Taos Toolbox workshop. Her interactive fiction adventure game, T-Rex Time Machine, is available from Choice of Games. Rosemary is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop as well as Taos Toolbox workshop. She’s been blogging at rosemaryclairesmith.wordpress.com/blogging-the-mesozoic for the past 156 million years.
AWARD ELIGIBILITY FOR 2021 AWARD. To be eligible for next year’s Endeavour Award the book — either a novel or a single-author collection of stories — must be either science fiction or fantasy. The majority of the book must have been written, and the book accepted for publication, while the author was living in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, British Columbia, or the Yukon.)
The deadline to enter books published during 2020 is January 31, 2021.
Full information on entering the Award is available on the Endeavour Web site: www.osfci.org/endeavour. Click on Entry Form in the left hand column for a fill-in PDF of the form.
The Endeavour Award is sponsored by Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (OSFCI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation
(1) GET IN ON THE ART. Many museums are offering free downloadable coloring books this week, February 6-10, as part of the #Color Our Collections event. There is quite a lot of fantastic imagery of interest to fans — indeed, one item literally is fan art.
Orycon. (October 30, 1981 – November 1, 1981). A review of Orycon ’80 – Document 1, Page 1 Fritz LeiberScience Fiction & Fantasy Convention Flyers & Programs. Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries,
From February 6-10, 2017, libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions around the world are sharing free coloring sheets and books based on materials in their collections. Users are invited to download and print the coloring sheets and share their filled-in images, using the hashtag #ColorOurCollections.
All content is sourced from the collections of participating institutions. With participants from around the globe, this campaign offers an opportunity to explore the vast and varied offerings of the library world, without geographical constraints. Last year’s campaign included over 210 institutions and featured coloring sheets based on children’s classics, natural histories, botanicals, anatomical atlases, university yearbooks, patents, and more.
Glyer’s detective work is not only intriguing; it is also often insightful. Her readers will gain useful perspectives on two things: many of the Inklings’ works that they already love, and the writing process itself, especially the role of collaboration and encouragement in it. Judged by their longevity and their output, the Inklings were surely the most successful writers’ group ever assembled. There are reasons why. Each chapter of Bandersnatch ends with a sidebar entitled “Doing What They Did.” People interested in starting their own writers’ groups, or those already involved in one who want to make it work better, will find a gold mine of practical wisdom there.
— Nicholas Briggs Loves His Cat (@BriggsNicholas) January 30, 2017
(4) CLARKE CONVERSATION. The first in a series of interviews exploring themes of science fiction and STEM, sponsored by the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is online at Medium, a conversation between Anne Charnock and Ada Lovelace Day founder Suw Charman-Anderson.
[Charman-Anderson] …The first of my cherished books was Stranded at Staffna by Helen Solomon. Mrs Solomon was my English teacher and when I was nine she gave me a signed copy of her book:
I hope you enjoy reading this story about Morag MacDonald, Susan, and that you agree with me?—?that she was a real heroine. With love, Helen Solomon. December 1980.
Mrs Solomon was right?—?I did enjoy it and I did agree with her that Morag was amazing. It’s the first book I remember crying at the end of, not least because it’s based on the true story of Mary MacNiven, who rescued a horse from a shipwreck in 1940.
I was already an enthusiastic reader, but Mrs Solomon was the person who helped me understand that books didn’t just appear out of nowhere, that someone sat down and wrote them. It was around this time, I think, that I wrote my first complete story, about a girl who lost her sight when she was hit on the head, and who entered into a parallel world when she slept. It was a complete rip-off of Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, of course, but I structured it properly and even had character development! It was then that I started to think that I would become a writer when I grew up.
(5) AUTHORITY DIES, Professor Irwin Corey, the comedian, died February 6 at the age of 102.
It’s impossible to provide a short explanation of Corey’s surreal brand of comedy, which was most potent when delivered in his seemingly nonsensical stream of non sequiturs. But the breadth of his career hints at his creative genius: Who else could have appeared in the 1976 film Car Wash, two years after accepting a National Book Award on behalf of the reclusive Thomas Pynchon?
Billed as “the World’s Foremost Authority,” Corey’s guise as an absent-minded professor offered a way to poke fun at multisyllabic jargon and those who use it. When political or scientific authorities seemed to annex a chunk of language, there was Corey to claw it back — a very human antidote to our complicated modern times.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY
February 7, 1940 — Walt Disney’s movie Pinocchio debuted
(7) FAN WRITER, FANZINE, EDITOR: Rich Horton posted the final installment of his recommendations, — “Hugo Nomination Thoughts — Other Categories” — which included some very kind comments about Filers, such as the fan writing of Camestros Felapton and Greg Hullender’s Rocket Stack Rank.
But of course there are many wonderful fan writers out there. For years I have been nominating Abigail Nussbaum, especially for her blog Asking the Wrong Questions (http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/), and I see no reason not to do so again this year. I will note in particular her review of Arrival, which captured beautifully the ways in which the movie falls short of the original story, but still acknowledges the movie’s strengths.
Another fan writer who has attracted my notice with some interesting posts is Camestros Felapton (https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/). Some of the most interesting work there regarded (alas) the Puppy Kerfuffles, and I was quite amused by this Map of the Puppy Kerfuffle: https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/the-puppy-kerfuffle-map/. But the blog is much more than Puppy commentary – indeed, it’s much more than SF commentary. In the more traditional fanwriting area, I can point to the most recent entry (as I write), a well-done review of Greg Egan’s Diaspora.
Christopher Robin Milne, the son of Winnie the Pooh creator A.A. Milne, grew up in this quaint brick manse in the English countryside. Christopher Robin inspired the young boy of the same name in Milne’s iconic children’s stories and, so too did the bucolic setting of the family home serve as the backdrop. Known as Cotchford Farm, and on the market for the first time in more than 40 years, the Grade II listed estate spans 9.5 acres of lawns, forest, and streams. The six-bedroom main house, the quintessential English country house if there ever was one, is listed for $3.22M. There’s more to the Milne house than just Pooh, as it was also later owned by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, who reportedly died on the property.
The best part of the news item might be that the author’s name is “Rob Bear.”
The eight-page story will debut this March in the Suicide Squad/Banana Splits Annual #1, before turning into a regular DC series this fall. “I envision him like a tragic Tennessee Williams figure,” writer Marc Russell told HiLoBrow.com. “Huckleberry Hound is sort of a William Faulkner guy, they’re in New York in the 1950s, Marlon Brando shows up, Dorothy Parker, these socialites of New York from that era come and go.”
The sexual orientation was never affirmed in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but Russell, who has also done an updated take on The Flintstones for DC Comics, is making Snagglepuss’ sexuality a key part of the story, in which the pink mountain lion is dragged before the Communist-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He’s accused of being a pinko, get it?
This is the first I’ve heard that Snagglepuss was pink. I watched those cartoons when I was really young — the station they were on was still broadcasting in black-and-white.
“What Happened at Blessing Creek” (Intergalactic Medicine Show)
“Cleanout” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
“Artifice” (Analog Science Fiction and Fact)
“Perfection” (not previously published)
“The Good Son” (Jim Baen’s Universe)
“Scrap Dragon” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
“Comrade Grandmother” (Strange Horizons)
“Isabella’s Garden” (Realms of Fantasy)
“Bits” (Clarkesworld)
“Honest Man” (Realms of Fantasy)
“The Wall” (Asimov’s Science Fiction)
“So Much Cooking” (Clarkesworld)
(10) BACK TO WORK. The Hugo Nominees 2018 Wikia site has gone live. Not to early to list the 2017 works you love that might deserve an award next year.
TV maker Vizio has agreed to pay out $2.2m in order to settle allegations it unlawfully collected viewing data on its customers.
The US Federal Trade Commission said the company’s smart TV technology had captured data on what was being viewed on screen and transmitted it to the firm’s servers.
The data was sold to third parties, the FTC said.
Vizio has said the data sent could not be matched up to individuals.
It wrote: ” [The firm] never paired viewing data with personally identifiable information such as name or contact information, and the Commission did not allege or contend otherwise.
“Instead, as the complaint notes, the practices challenged by the government related only to the use of viewing data in the ‘aggregate’ to create summary reports measuring viewing audiences or behaviours.”
(12) HOLY PUNCHOUT. Netflix is bringing Marvel’s Iron Fist to television in 2017.
[Thanks to John Lorentz, Bruce D. Arthurs, Chip Hitchcock, Mark-kitteh, Gregory N. Hullender, John King Tarpinian, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Lee.]
Whatever mysterious souls produced the daily newzine for OryCon 36 last weekend helped everyone have a good time by running great out-of-context quotes in every issue. (But the staff didn’t run their own names!)
See this example from The Oryconian #3, published on the last day of the con. The other editions are posted online.
Overheard in Passing
Why am I sticky?
…and my left elbow has a short.
“Did I say something funny?” “Not yet, but if you do I’ll put it in the zine.”
If I called you Ben Affleck you’d come.
Judging by the sound in your pants, I don’t want to know.
“Thank you, doughnut fairy!” “Sorry, I’m straight.”
Is this ‘money’ a kind of candy? ‘Cause I’d like some.
I really think you can manage better outrage than that.
My boobs are too big to have lanyards.
It’s not my fault, my cucumber is fabulous.
This is obviously news, it’s on paper and everything.
Aah, I just blacked myself!
Somewhere there is a context desperately looking for that quote.
He may have entered himself.
I can’t have an elf, so I’m going to drink one.
It’s okay, that was just my nose.
She’s wound tighter than a cheap watch.
“Hm, red currant wine…” “AC or DC?”
I had to take the corset off, my feet were killing me.
I cannot operate broccoli with these gloves.
I haven’t looked yet but I hope the tauntaun head gets a lot of awards.
Cards Against Humanity or just dirty minds?
I am milking my burrito!
Locating my pants. Do not judge.
I’m never anything!
I’m a shark!
You might want to get a llama. They’re very low maintenance.
Hey! What are you doing to my panda?
Braaaaains … or sleep …
I have absinthe in my hair…
“You’re looking very dapper.” “Yes, I may dap at any moment.”
The laws of physics called, they want dinner back.
On Friday I was traveling at the speed of light. Now I’m traveling at the speed of heavy.
I’m not well informed but I’ll give you information.
Did I just offend your virgin ears?
The Endeavour Award, which honors a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book, either a novel or a single-author collection, created by a writer living in the Pacific Northwest, was presented November 8 at OryCon 35 in Portland.
The winning entry was chosen by 2013 Endeavour judges Noreen Doyle, Susan Forest and John Scalzi. The award comes with a $1,000 honorarium.
