26 You Ask For Miracles, Theo? I Give You The Pixel Scroll

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) CELEBRATE VONDA MCINTYRE’S LAST NOVEL. Clarion West will hold “The Curve of the World Virtual Launch Event” via Zoom on May 16. RSVP at the link.

It’s finally here—the release of The Curve of the World, the last novel written by CW Founder Vonda N. McIntyre! When she died in 2019, the manuscript was complete. Once Aqueduct Press acquired the book, bringing it to publication involved a careful and collaborative process between four people: Nisi Shawl, Debbie Notkin, Kath Wilham, and Timmi Duchamp.

Join us for a virtual reading and conversation with the team that brought Vonda N. McIntyre’s last book to the world! (Can’t make it to the party? You can still pre-order your copy here.)

(2) DEEPLY RECOMMENDED. A Deep Look by Dave Hook praises “’Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora’, Sheree Renée Thomas editor, 2000 Aspect/Warner Books”. Here is the Short take. Read the Long analysis is at the link.

The Short: I finally read Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, Sheree R. Thomas editor, 2000 Aspect/Warner Books. It includes 29 works of short fiction and seven essays, from 1887 to 2000. It was a World Fantasy Award winner and Locus Award nomination. Although my favorites were the classic novelette “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” by Octavia E. Butler, Omni, May 1987, and the superlative short story “Aye, and Gomorrah …” by Samuel R. Delany, from Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison editor, 1967 Doubleday, I was even more pleased to both discover new fiction by authors I did not know and to read the very educational and interesting essays. My overall, average rating was 3.64, or “Very good”. Strongly recommended.

(3) GRADUATION DAY. Nnedi Okorafor told Facebook readers all about giving the commencement address at UIC.

Yesterday, I returned to University of Illinois Chicago to deliver the commencement speech for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

As an alum who earned both her Master’s and PhD there, returning in this way felt…surreal. Ten thousand people were in that auditorium. TEN THOUSAND.

New milestone.

And *then* afterward…so many people, including the provost, said it was one of the best commencement speeches they’d heard. I’m still processing that….

…I can’t believe I DID it. I stood up there. I spoke about the need to be creative in this world inundated with AI, to lean in to what makes you you, to be ready to strategically adapt, to be curious and interested, that empathy is a strength and always has been, and more.

What an honor. What a full-circle moment. What a day….

(4) JUDGE DROPS THE GAVEL ON DOGE. “Federal Judge Orders Reinstatement of NEH Grants” reports Publishers Weekly.

The Authors Guild and other plaintiffs notched a significant victory on May 7, when a federal court in New York issued a permanent injunction against the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Government Efficiency.

Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York sided with the plaintiffs on all three of their claims, invoking protections provided by the First and Fifth Amendments and DOGE’s overreach.

The court ordered the reinstatement of more than 1,400 NEH grants, representing more than $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds, canceled en masse by DOGE between April 1–3, 2025.

The decision resolves two consolidated complaints, both filed in May 2025. The Authors Guild et al. v. NEH et al. was brought by the Authors Guild and seven individual NEH grantees, while American Council of Learned Societies et al. v. NEH et al. was brought by the ACLS, American Historical Society, and Modern Language Association. The lawsuits were so similar that the court determined they should be combined.

The court concluded that the termination of the NEH grants violated the First Amendment by engaging in viewpoint discrimination….

(5) UNDERSTAND: HOW READING MADE US. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] There is a marvelous little series currently on BBC Radio 4 on Understand: How Reading Made Us (trailer).

One of the programme’s regular’s is the SF/F writer Naomi Alderman, but that’s not the thing. I caught the second episode which among other things charted how reading has changed: apparently everyone used to read out loud and it was a noteworthy rarity – commented upon – if someone read silently. But the big thing it put forward was the argument that the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth drove much social change: they presented a reasonable case.

The episode 2 pitch is…

Reading seems an unremarkable skill. When we say something is as “easy as ABC”, we mean it is very easy indeed. In fact, learning to read has dramatic and irreversible consequences for people and for societies. Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society learns to read the consequences are dramatic: wars break out, revolutions erupt and new political systems spring into being. Reading made us who we are. With time spent reading – and even reading ability – starting to nosedive, Times writer James Marriott explores how reading changed humanity, and what might happen if we stop.

In this programme, James asks whether the spread of novel reading in the 18th century caused a moral revolution, whether a book played a role in the abolition of slavery, and whether the rise of reading, a solitary and slightly lonely activity, was one of the factors setting us on the path to our atomized and isolated modern society.

The series is available on BBC Sounds with episode 1 here and episode 2 here. A third episode will be broadcast next week. This is free in the UK, but outside the UK you may need a subscription.

(6) ROBOT MONK. [Item by Evelyn C. Leeper.] Speaking of Becky Chambers, did everyone see the Guardian’s story about how the Jogyesa temple in Seoul held an initiation ceremony for a robot to become a monk? “I, robe-ot: the android monk working to reboot the faith of South Korea’s Buddhists”.

Amid rows of colourful lanterns strung across the courtyard of Jogyesa temple in Seoul, an unusual ceremony unfolded this week: monks held a Buddhist initiation for a humanoid robot draped in saffron robe.

They placed a string of 108 prayer beads around the robot’s neck and affixed a lantern festival sticker to its mechanical arm in place of the traditional yeonbi ritual, in which burning incense is lightly pressed against the skin.

The robot was then presented with a formal certificate listing its manufacture date, 3 March 2026, where a human initiate’s birth date would normally appear.

“At first we discussed it casually,” Venerable Sungwon, the order’s cultural affairs director, says about the robot ceremony’s origins. “It began almost as a joke. But the more we thought about it, the more serious it became.

“Robots are entering our lives so quickly, and people feel familiar with them … They’re becoming part of our community.”

Venerable Sungwon’s temple is the headquarters of the Jogye order, South Korea’s largest Buddhist denomination, and the initiation of its first robot monk comes at a time of uncertainty for the group, as they grapple with falling participation and interest.

Just 16% of South Koreans now identify as Buddhist, down from about 23% in 2005. Among people in their twenties, the figure drops to 8%. Last year, the Jogye order ordained just 99 new monks, down from more than 200 a decade earlier.

Yet by another measure, Buddhism has never been more popular. Under its president, Ven Jinwoo, the Jogye order has aggressively courted younger Koreans through what observers call “hip Buddhism” using merchandise, meditation apps and viral marketing.

The ordination of Gabi – the 130cm humanoid robot – forms part of this effort to reach more Koreans….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 11, 1918 — Richard P. Feynman. (Died 1988.)

I’ll admit that I don’t begin to understand what most of the work Richard P. Feynman did as a theoretical physicist. I seriously doubt most of you do.

While at Princeton, Feynman was recruited for the theoretical division of the Manhattan Project, the very, very secret U.S. Army laboratory set up in Los Alamos, for the purpose of developing the atomic bomb. He was present at the first detonation of an atomic bomb.

In 1965, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. The three each created new mathematical tools for a theory called quantum electrodynamics, which describes how subatomic particles interact with light.

Now there is the matter his influence on the genre. Although as I said was his work in theoretical physics, Feynman was largely pioneered the field of quantum computing and was solely responsible for the concept of nanotechnology. So yes, two widely used SF concepts are from him.

By the late Fifties, he was already popularizing his love of physics through books and lectures including lectures on nanotechnology called There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, and a multi volume publication of his undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Yes, these are available from the usual suspects.

He also became known through his autobiographical works Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?. Naturally there would be books written about him. The biography by James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman is the one I’ll single out as being the best.

It’s worth noting last is that he was selected to be a member the Presidential Rogers Commission that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Lis Carey notes that during the Challenger explosion hearings, Feynman demonstrated on camera that an O-ring dropped into ice water lost all the resilience critical to its function on the shuttle solid rocket fuel tanks.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Mother Goose and Grimm witness an unexpected complaint.
Reality Check gets a wrong diagnosis.
Zen Pencils quotes Bill Watterson.

(9) EXCAVATING SOUNDTRACKS. “Lost Movie Music? On CD? La-La Land Is an Anomaly. (And a Success.)” The New York Times tells about this successful niche business. (Behind a paywall.)

In 1979, the composer Harry Manfredini descended into a New Jersey basement to put together music for an indie slasher film. He was working with a quickly approaching deadline, a small group of players and a minuscule budget. “We weren’t even in a recording studio,” Manfredini remembered in an interview. “On the raw tracks, you could hear the chairs squeaking and the pages turning.”

The resulting score, with its sinister strings and eerie whispers, would be heard by millions of moviegoers when “Friday the 13th” opened the next year. But the film’s soundtrack never earned a stand-alone release. Nor did the numerous “Friday the 13th” sequels Manfredini worked on throughout the decade.

So he was surprised when, in 2011, MV Gerhard and Matt Verboys, the founders of the label La-La Land Records, approached him with an ambitious plan: They wanted to release every piece of music they could find from the first six “Friday the 13th” movies — even snippets barely a minute long.

“I thought they were crazy,” Manfredini said. “I told them, ‘Some of that music is pretty boring — it’s playing as people run through the woods. It’s never going to sell.’”

But La-La Land was able to track down and restore music that Manfredini, 82, hadn’t heard in decades. And the label’s six-disc “Friday the 13th” compilation sold out within days of being announced. It’s one of the hundreds of expansive, exhaustive soundtrack collections La-La Land has released since forming in 2002.

The company scours movie studio archives and composers’ personal collections to locate as much music as possible from older films or TV recordings, often turning up work that’s been misplaced or forgotten….

…In La-La Land’s early days, the label released soundtracks for a handful of contemporary films — like the 2004 Ashton Kutcher drama “The Butterfly Effect” — as well as genre films (“Creepshow”) and Hollywood classics (“Zulu Dawn”)….

…At first, Gerhard and Verboys didn’t have access to big franchise films or superstar composers. But they didn’t necessarily need them. To some soundtrack fans, it doesn’t matter if a movie is a blockbuster or a bomb, so long as they connect to its music. One of the label’s more recent hits is a two-disc collection of Jerry Goldsmith’s playfully dramatic score from the schlocky 1985 action-adventure “King Solomon’s Mines.”

“There are a lot of terrible movies that have great music,” said Nathan Pickup, 42, a corporate trainer in Riverview, Fla., who has more than 600 soundtrack CDs in his collection. “What I love is the narrative elements of film scoring. If there are themes I can pick out from a score, or certain moods it creates, that’s enough for me.”

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, as Gerhard and Verboys earned the trust of studio executives and musicians, La-La Land began working with more blue-chip pop-culture properties: “Star Trek,” “Batman: The Animated Series,” the Harry Potter films….

(10) MOUNT UP! Variety reports “Fourth Wing TV Series Ordered at Amazon”.

Get ready, riders: The long-gestating “Fourth Wing” TV adaptation has been ordered to series at Amazon‘s Prime Video.

Based on the best-selling “The Empyrean” romantasy book series from author Rebecca Yarros, “Fourth Wing” is set inside the brutal world of Basgiath War College, where there is only one rule: graduate or die. Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was always expected to live a quiet life — but she’s sent on an entirely different path when her mother, a general in the military, orders her to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become dragon riders, the elite of Navarre….

…“Fourth Wing” executive producer Michael B. Jordan announced the series pickup at the end of Amazon’s upfront presentation to TV advertisers at the Beacon Theatre on Monday….

(11) WHERE COULD LIFE BE – IF IT EXISTS – ON MARS? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The concept of Martian life is an old SF trope. The tardigrade (multicelled) species is a tough little critter capable of surviving extreme drying, freezing, heat, radiation, the vacuum of space, but it would find life on the UV irradiated and chemically toxic surface of Mars virtually impossible. However, simple prokaryotic cells are another matter and there are examples on Earth that could survive on Mars, but where exactly? Where on Mars could life survive? Physicist Matt O’Dowd, over at the PBS Space-Time YouTube channel, trespasses into biological and environmental science territory to consider exactly where we should look for life on Mars…! You can see the 20-minute video here or below…

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

Pixel Scroll 12/30/25 The Sky Over Station Eleven Was The Color Of Television Tuned To Station Eleven

Posted on December 30, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) SHIRE AND SENSIBILITY. Abigail Nussbaum invites readers to “Click through to learn how J.R.R. Tolkien is (and is not) like Jane Austen”: “The Great Tolkien Reread: A Long-Expected Party” at Asking the Wrong Questions.

… Now consider that this similarity—the same sort of fussy detail, the same obsession with family, rank, and home, the same sense of being sat down by an older relative who knows everybody’s business to be told a salacious tale—actually makes a great deal of sense. Like Jane Austen, Tolkien’s interest in this chapter is in “two inches of ivory”. In a small, insular world whose inhabitants regard with suspicion even those who live across the Brandywine River, much less anyone from outside the Shire. These are people to whom the needling bequests in Bilbo’s will (“For ADELARD TOOK, for his VERY OWN, from Bilbo; on an umbrella. Adelard had carried off many unlabeled ones”) are of utmost importance; and who, when they go in search of his mysteriously-gotten treasure, can take themselves no further than the Bag End cellar. They are people whom Bilbo (and to a lesser extent Frodo) both loves and is exasperated by. And unlike Jane Austen, Tolkien, and his characters, will not stay long among them….

(2) FIRST FANAC ZOOM HISTORY SESSION FOR 2026. The first FANAC Zoom History Session for the new year looks like it will be a wide-ranging one. We will be interviewing Astrid Anderson Bear about her life as a (literally) life-long fan. We will ask her about her life, her husband, her mother and her father and her friends. To attend, contact [email protected].

(3) CHECK THIS OUT. Want to know what people borrowed most often from the library this year? NPR can tell you: “Public libraries’ top check-outs in 2025 include ‘The Women’”. In some cities these genre works were among the most in demand:

…Three of the top 10 titles for the country’s biggest public library system, in New York City, were part of a bestselling romantasy series by Rebecca Yarros: Fourth Wing, Iron Flame and Onyx Storm. Yarros’ books also showed up on most-borrowed lists from the Boston Public Library, and public libraries in Boone County, Ky. and Kern County, Calif….

(4) BSFA ASSISTS INDIA SFF CON. Dip Ghosh, in a public Facebook post, told the JOF group about an sff con held a week ago in India.

I am happy to say we had our second SFcon in Kolkata, India, last week, during 19-21st December, and it was a grand success. Special shout-out to Farah Mendlesohn and BSFA for generous sponsorship and encouragement. We hope to make this a regular event every year.

The Survivology: Climate Fiction and Speculative Futures Con 2025 website is at the link.

(5) THE ROYAL NO. BBC answers the question, “Can you turn down an honour?”. (Article is behind a paywall.) (The results of the FOIA request linked below are not paywalled.)

When somebody is approved for an honour, they are sent a letter asking if they will accept it.

A list of 277 people who turned down honours between 1951 and 1999 – and subsequently died – was made public following a BBC Freedom of Information request.

It included authors Roald Dahl, JG Ballard and Aldous Huxley, and painters Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and LS Lowry.

The late poet Benjamin Zephaniah rejected an OBE in 2003 because of the association with the British Empire and its history of slavery.

(6) SANDERSON ON WORLDBUILDING. “Even J.R.R. Tolkien left gaps: Mistborn creator Brandon Sanderson explains why total worldbuilding is a trap for new writers” at Popverse.

Brandon Sanderson knows a thing or two about worldbuilding. After all, the science fiction and fantasy author is the creator of the Cosmere literary universe. However, Sanderson believes that too many new authors get caught up with worldbuilding and says they should take a step back. After all, even J.R.R. Tolkien couldn’t worldbuild an entire world.

“A lot of authors will talk about how you want to have a giant iceberg for world-building. Meaning you have all this stuff you see, and then underneath the water, the iceberg is bigger than it is on top,” Brandon Sanderson says during a spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2022. “The idea being that you have done all this work as a foundation for it. I find that you can’t possibly do all the world-building you need. Tolkien tried, and it took him 20 years, and there’s still holes.”

“There are very few holes in Tolkien, but there’s still stuff he didn’t get to that he would have wanted to spend world-building. Because of that, I don’t think you can realistically ever worldbuild an entire world. So, I tell people to focus on what is relevant to your characters and plot.”…

(7) PRINT SALES WERE STABLE THIS YEAR. “Dragons, Sex and the Bible Drove Book Sales in 2025” reports the New York Times. Link bypasses the paywall.

This year brought more blockbuster books about sex and magic along with best sellers nobody saw coming. Yet while sales are solid and bookstores are generally flourishing, the book business still faces a dizzying set of challenges.

Rising costs ate into profits. Nonprofit presses lost federal funding. A.I. disrupted online search results and flooded Amazon with poorly written copycat books and slapdash genre fiction, making it harder for books written by humans to stand out from the slop. Major retailers ordered fewer books than they used to, and there weren’t as many companies distributing books to stores. And book bans threatened to limit collections in schools and libraries.

“The industry itself is in transformation, which is always very challenging,” said Dominique Raccah, the publisher of Sourcebooks.

Still, people are reading — or at least buying books. Print sales are mostly stable, totaling around 707 million units in 2025 through mid-December, according to the most recent figures available from industry tracker Circana BookScan. That’s only three million less than the pandemic peak in 2021, and 57 million copies more than in 2019…

(8) TRAILER PARK. “’Avengers: Doomsday’ Trailer: Marvel Drops Thor-Themed Teaser” – Deadline sets the frame.

…Chris Hemsworth will return as the God of Thunder, and the Doomsday teaser features him on bended knee in a sepia-lit forest praying to his late father, the Norse god Odin.

He is pleading for a safe return to his daughter, Love, who will be played by Hemsworth’s real-life daughter, India. The character first appeared in 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder.

The Thor-themed trailer is the second to be released, following a teaser revealing the return of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers — another character doting on their child ahead of impending doom. The Doomsday teasers are playing in cinemas attached to showings of Avatar: Fire and Ash.…

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

One Million B.C. (Raquel Welch version)

By Paul Weimer: One Million B.C., the Raquel Welch version. Or, WPIX strikes again.

I’ve mentioned WPIX, an independent station in NYC (channel 11) was responsible for me first seeing this movie¹. It was around when I was first watching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, so it was around 1980 or so.

The movie is sheer nonsense. I had cause to rewatch it a couple of years ago, randomly during the height of the pandemic (big mood) when I tried to, and failed, to work from home due to technological limitations. I wanted to have something mindless on. And of all the things I could have picked, I delved into my youth and went with One Million B.C. I wound up watching more of the movie than I intended, as my laptop and my internet connection glacially struggled and my work production was minimal. (I would soon go back to the office, and in an office of 120 people, be one of ten in the building for weeks on end.)

So while I remembered a lot about this movie (and not just Raquel Welch in the famous fur bikini), there was a lot that I didn’t remember so much and got to see on the refresher. I remembered there was a big climatic battle between the two factions, for example, but the volcano erupting in the middle of it in a deus ex volcana was not something I had actively recalled. But the Triceratops fight against the small meat-eating dinosaur? I think that made a big impression on me back in the day and is why the trike is in my top three dinosaurs.

And sure, humans and dinosaurs never co-existed together, ever. But I do wonder if Stirling’s The Sky People, which is set in a universe with a habitable Venus and Mars wasn’t inspired by this film. While his Mars is all ancient civilizations, his Venus is jungles…with dinosaurs…and, cavemen (and beautiful cave women, too as it so “coincidentally” happens).

Fun fact: Apparently there is an earlier 1940 version in black and white. No fur bikinis in that one. Not only because of the mores of the 1940’s…but bikinis themselves had not yet been invented yet! I’ve never seen it. I wonder if any Filer has?

Anyway, the remake is mindless fun, still.

¹ The luxury of pre-cable TV in New York was in retrospect incredible: CBS (2), NBC (4) ABC (7). Independent stations on 5 (later, Fox) 9 (later the CW), and WPIX 11 the biggest of the independents (later WB). 13 was PBS, and then there were other PBS stations including 21, and 50 (50 showing the Doctor Who “movies” I’ve mentioned before). So the Independents really could specialize and WPIX specialized in movies. They called themselves “New York’s Movie Station” and meant it.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem knows what to fix.
Mother Goose and Grimm have a connection.
Non Sequitur wanted to simplify.
Rhymes with Orange says the restrictions started at Kitty Hawk.
Savage Chickens has previous work experience.
xkcd enjoys life at high altitude.

(11) BBC NEWS HAS AI EXPERT GUEST EDITOR. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] If anyone is not worried about artificial intelligence then they have not been paying attention… is the summary view of the head of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, who was a guest editor on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

How come the head of Microsoft AI was a guest editor on Today? Well for that you have to understand the current landscape of weekday British news broadcasts. Regarding TV, news buffs get their news from Channel 4’s 7 p.m. hour-long news programme (repeated an hour later on Channel 4+1). Channel 4 is a self-funded (through advertising) public broadcast service. For in-depth analysis of a couple of the topics of the day, news aficionados go to BBC 2’s News Night. But for the latest news it is BBC Radio 4’s, three-hour Today programme airing 6 a.m. – 9 a.m. It always has a Member of Parliament being interviewed and frequently Government Ministers on it and is listened to over breakfast and those commuting: the programme triggers the start of the UK daily news cycle. However, over the Christmas – New Year period (Betwixmas) when Parliament is in recess, they have daily guest editors who are established artists, philosophers, industrialists, scientists, sports folk. Hence on Monday we had the Head of Microsoft AI.

He asked the programme’s team to pull together interviewees and here even brought in his boss Bill Gates.

The gist of all the interviews was that we are on the cusp of big change and an unknown but possibly great future though they are, most of the interviewees stressed, risks! A surprise for me was Bill Gates advocating taxing AI and us to reconsider how we pay people.

AI is, of course, a major SF trope and many in the SF community are concerned about how it undermines creators intellectual property and livelihood.

I have often said that the machines are taking over, but perhaps now some are beginning to listen?

AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman is the fourth Today guest editor this Christmas period.

You can access the programme here though if outside Britain you may need a subscription (but I think this might be open access for a month).

(12) NASA LOSSES. Space.com analyzes “How NASA changed in 2025 — possibly forever”.

For an agency shooting for the moon and onward to Mars, NASA in 2025 has been on a roller coaster ride of proposed budget cuts, personnel layoffs, and potential elimination of science missions.

A key question: Have these various traumas changed NASA dramatically, and potentially permanently?…

…”Clearly, things have changed,” said Henry Hertzfeld, a research professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, noting that his observations are from afar, not from within the space agency.

“A lot of very experienced people with a lot of ‘corporate/agency history’ are now gone from the agency. Some may have retired soon anyway, but that is not an excuse or explanation of the changes,” Hertzfeld told Space.com.

Since the whole policy office at NASA was eliminated, said Hertzfeld, many of those people and functions are gone. Whether, for example, economics and other policy offices will be missed or not is arguable, he said.

“But I do think not having them is a significant loss of talent and input into NASA programs and decisions,” Hertzfeld said.

Like many suggest, if Congress doesn’t act with funding, the real loss is in the science area.

“There will be fewer new initiatives and many cuts in the work that now won’t be done across the board,” said Hertzfeld.

“The science part of NASA is relatively small but it is the one true research area that has produced significant learning and information over the years. And, it will be a long-term loss since the agency will likely face more difficulty in hiring and keeping highly trained and skilled scientists,” Hertzfeld said. “They will go elsewhere … and elsewhere is not the government.”…

(13) STRANGER THINGS. Preview at Variety: “’Stranger Things 5′ Finale Trailer: Eleven Prepares to Fight Venca”.

…“There is the supernatural threat, which is represented by Vecna this season. But the military has always posed a threat, from Season 1 on. Even when Brenner is gone, he gets continually replaced by someone else. In this case, in Season 5, by Kay,” said Ross Duffer. “So we needed Kali to represent maybe a more pessimistic, but perhaps realistic, version, compared to Mike’s worldview of we’re gonna have butterflies and rainbows. And Kali’s going, ‘How is this going to work? And what is the solution here, that you can live a normal life?’ That’s really a huge part of Eleven’s journey this season.”…

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended invites us to listen into a “Super Hearing Christmas”.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/15/25 No, I Am Your Pixel

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) BOOKSELLER’S ARTICLE ABOUT TOP 50 SFF BOOKS IN UK SO FAR IN 2025. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Although The Bookseller’s article “Bestsellers – Romantastic: Romantic Fantasy leads SFF to its best-ever year” calls out SF, as far as I can see, there are less than half-a-dozen non-romantasy fantasy titles in the top 50, a list dominated by Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas. And I think there’s a new Witcher book that will probably be in the top 50 by year end, but was too late for this article. The main point of interest (to me at least) is the final paragraph:

…This analysis has, so far, neglected the Science Fiction category as it is now by far SFF’s junior partner with just two titles in the 2025 Top 50. Andy Weir’s 2022 outing, Project Hail Mary, sold 34,082 copies in 2025, up 115% over last year with interest growing ahead of the 2026 film adaptation. Frank Herbert’s Dune worms its way into 48th place, no doubt still benefiting from 2024’s Dune: Part Two.

(2) FELAPTON’S FRANKENSTEIN REVIEW. Camestros Felapton delivers an interesting overview of “Frankenstein (2025, Netflix)”, then sticks the landing in rendering his judgment on the film.

….This is not a grounded film, more fantasy-horror than science-fiction horror. The plot is shifted to the 1850’s but more for the purpose of costume and aesthetics rather than historical connection. Neither geography nor historical events are intended to be clear….

(3) AU REVOIR, ON SPEC. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Canada’s national broadcaster the CBC has posted a fairly nice piece about On Spec, the venerable and important Canadian Science Fiction magazine. “Canada’s premier speculative fiction magazine calls it a day after 35 years”.

…On Spec was started in 1989 by a small group of Edmonton writers, who called themselves the Copper Pig Writers’ Society.

At the time, there were French Canadian publications devoted to fantasy and science fiction, like the long-running Solaris, based out of Longueuil, Que. English Canada, though, didn’t have a sci-fi magazine of its own.

At one of the Edmonton gatherings, the conversation turned to a topic familiar to many writers: rejection.

“People were sharing their rejection letters from American science-fiction magazines,” Walton says.

“The editor of the magazine was essentially saying, ‘Yeah, this is good, but none of our readers are going to get it. It’s too Canadian.’

“In a fit of frustration, somebody said, ‘Well, there’s got to be a Canadian magazine.…’ And then somebody else very foolishly said, ‘Well, why don’t we do it ourselves?’”…

…The publishing phrase “on spec” refers to a writer completing a story or other work with no guarantee it will be accepted for publication.

In the same way, the Edmonton writers couldn’t be sure of the magazine’s success. But the title also neatly captured their genre — speculative fiction, the umbrella term for sci-fi, fantasy and alternate history….

(4) “PADDINGTON: THE MUSICAL”. You can tune a fish, but can you tune a bear?The New York Times tells how “London’s West End Will Now Look After This Bear”. (Behind a paywall.)

The sight of Paddington Bear — with his red felt hat, blue coat, suitcase and a label around his neck — has become ubiquitous and beloved.

He’s the star of three Hollywood movies. His likeness can be found on lunchboxes, mugs, onesies and countless other items. He has been honored with multiple statues in England, and has become all but a tourist attraction in London, where you can even buy “Paddington’s Emergency Marmalade” and visit “The Paddington Bear Experience.”

And now, roughly seven decades since his creation by the British author Michael Bond, Paddington is coming to the stage in “Paddington: The Musical,” which opens next month at the Savoy Theater in London….

…From Paddington Station, it’s a short journey to the Savoy Theater on the London subway — even if, as we learned in his live-action movies, Paddington himself may be better off taking a taxi, since the tube can be a daunting experience for a small bear.

“Paddington: The Musical” will be the first major West End production that centers on Paddington’s story, and the score is by Tom Fletcher, a member of the pop rock band McFly. Friedman and Lumley, the producers, said the show had been about seven years in the making.

The musical is also a chance for Paddington fans to be in the room with him live, even if Friedman and Lumley declined to reveal how he would look onstage. (No spoilers! Paddington would not approve of spoilers.)

They said they felt a responsibility to honor one of Britain’s most beloved characters, a bear that arrived in London vulnerable and alone, with nothing but a suitcase and his aunt Lucy’s plea that someone take care of him.

“That’s what we are doing,” Friedman said. “We are looking after this bear.”

(5) SEEMS LIKE SOME REVIEWERS CAN’T HANDLE IT. Dead Girl Reads breaks down “The ARC Effect: When Free Books Cost Honesty”.

…For anyone who doesn’t live in the world of NetGalley, Edelweiss, or publisher proofs; ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) are early editions of books sent to reviewers in exchange for honest feedback.

That’s the keyword here: honest.

In theory, it’s a brilliant system. Bloggers and reviewers alike help generate buzz before release day, publishers get early visibility, and readers get valuable insight.
But somewhere along the process the lines start blurring.

I’ve noticed a pattern (not universal, but frequent enough to notice) where some reviewers seem more focused on keeping ARC access than keeping their integrity. Suddenly, every book is “the best thing I’ve read all year.” Every author is “an instant buy.” Reviews begin to sound less like opinions and more like marketing material.

Let’s be realistic and statistically speaking, not every book can be amazing. Right?…

(6) JORDAN CARROLL Q&A. [Item by Olav Rokne.] The UC Davis English department website has an interview with Dr. Jordan Carroll, who recently won the Hugo Award for best related work for his book Speculative Whiteness. The interview covers a wide range of Hugo Award-related topics. “PhD alum Jordan Carroll Receives Hugo Award”.

He says: “Science fiction isn’t automatically leftist or progressive. We have to fight against the fascist tendencies within our culture to ensure that we uphold a vision in which tomorrow belongs to everyone.”

(7) WORLDS OF IF #179. Now available — the THIRD issue of Worlds of IF, the relaunched, classic science fiction magazine, “Exploring the ever-evolving horizon of science fiction, while remaining firmly grounded in the historical spirit of the genre.”

Cover art by Bruce Pennington. Back cover art by Marianne Plumridge.

At 210 pages it’s the biggest issue of Worlds of IF ever published. Print copy: $14.99 print copy at Amazon (and everywhere else soon as it feeds out globally through the distro channels.) And $3.99 for a PDF copy here.

The issue contains art, stories, poetry, essays, and interviews by:

Louis Blue Cloud
Michael Butterworth
Dave Creek
A J Dalton
Andy Dibble
Mike Dooley
Zdravka Evtimova
Robert Frazier
Brian U. Garrison
David Gerrold
Maxwell I. Gold
Richard Grieco
Jenna Hanchey
Howard V. Hendrix
Robert Jeschonek
Ai Jiang
Neil R. Jones
Lauren McBride
Thomas Parker
Bruce Pennington
Juan Manuel Pérez
Marah Pérez
K. Pimpinella
Marianne Plumridge
Daniel Pomarède
Carmelo Rafalà
John Reinhart
Paulo Sayeg
John Shirley
Robert Silverberg
Nigel Suckling
Dave Vescio
Cynthia Ward

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

The Case of the Little Green Men (1951)

We’ve mentioned Mack Reynolds’ The Case of the Little Green Men in a Scroll, and I know it was noted there that it was set at a Con. That’s all it’ll say about it as there might be someone here who hasn’t read it yet. If you haven’t, may I suggest that would make a fine reading for some night during this dismal weather we are having?

Now I will ask the question, well two questions actually. Was it the first genre novel set at a Con? And what’s your favorite Con set novel? Or maybe three questions then. Are there a lot of novels set at Cons?

So now let’s talk about The Case of the Little Green Men. It was the first novel by him, published seventy-four years ago by the Phoenix Press with the cover illustration is by Carl W. Bertsch. ISFDB lists only one other work being published by that press, Will Garth’s Dr. Cyclops in 1940.

Is the novel fun? Oh, yes. Is it really a mystery? Well, that depends on how much you want to stretch your idea of what a mystery is. And I’m surprised it hasn’t been nominated for a Retro Hugo. Really surprised.

To my utter surprise, the publication notes for The Case of the Little Green Men at ISFDB, says it was out of print for fifty-eight years until Ramble House did a hardcover edition. Or trade paper. I’ve seen it listed as both. It is available from usual suspects. Prologue Books would later do an ebook edition obviously also available from those, errr, suspects.

And here’s how it opens…

The detective isn’t tough and he isn’t even smart and he doesn’t prove the case against the killer. And boy doesn’t get girl, either. Otherwise, this story is just about like a good many others you’ve read. At least it starts the same way.…

We can’t help it if it dissolves into men from Mars, people who believe in spaceships and flying saucers, murders without motive, and heat rays fired by little green men (or were they?).

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Ink Pen has a mythical question.
Mother Goose and Grimm finds where one author gets his ideas.
Off the Mark changes the flavor.
xkcd hired the wrong designer.

(10) DON BLUTH INTERVIEW. At Animation World Network, “Don Bluth Talks ‘Somewhere Out There’ Documentary and Future Production Dreams”.

Just a few days before the SCAD Savannah Film Festival (SAVFF) began, filmmakers Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker wrapped the final cut of their highly anticipated documentary project Don Bluth: Somewhere Out There, spotlighting the animator behind The Land Before Time, An American Tail, Anastasia, Thumbelina, All Dogs Go To Heaven, The Secret of NIMH, and many other classic, hand-drawn animated masterpieces.

The film, which paints a compelling portrait of Don Bluth, a passionate artist who spent his life battling both Disney and his own ego, had its first ever premiere at the festival, which took place last month. For attendees – film students, animators, and general fans of Bluth’s work – it was a moment to reminisce about their childhoods. For LaMattina and Walker, who met while working at Blue Sky Studios and were lifelong fans of Bluth, it was a decades-long dream realized. For Bluth, who also attended the festival, it was a true “journey to the past.”…

… The documentary is produced by Copper Pot Pictures with music from Fergal Lawler. Currently on the festival circuit with new screening updates shared on Don Bluth Studios’ social media accounts, the film kicks off with a big fork-in-the-road moment for Bluth. In 1979, he and 17 other animators at Walt Disney Studios made history by all turning in their resignations to leave house Walt built behind and start their own studio.

“We left because we knew that they were starting to eliminate things, beautiful things, in the art styles that should have been in the pictures, and they were doing it for economic reasons,” shares Bluth. “So, we said, ‘Look, we can’t have the kind of movies we grew up with, which look so beautiful, unless we leave here and try and renew it,’ because they wouldn’t let us experiment. Disney wouldn’t let us do anything that wasn’t in their command. So, the only thing we could do was leave and try to create a renaissance of what was really Walt’s original vision.”

And that’s what Bluth and his team accomplished. Don Bluth Productions, headed by Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy with nine fellow Disney animators, set to work creating some of the most stunning, hand-drawn animated films that have ever been created. But Disney wouldn’t go down without a fight, and while most young audiences remember being captivated by the sparkles, vibrant colors and emotional turmoil found in Bluth’s works of art, few knew about the emotional and financial turmoil going on behind the scenes. Bluth’s studio went bankrupt multiple times, closed, relocated, reopened, closed again; it was revived many times over by, as Bluth says, “God’s grace” and the sheer will of many self-sacrificing animators who believed so strongly in Bluth’s dream….

(11) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES EPISODE 93. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA has released the latest installment of its monthly fiction podcast, “Simultaneous Times Ep.93 – Jason P. Burnham & Eliane Boey”.

Stories featured in this episode:

“At the Arenaceous Fringes of the Phantom Nebula” by Jason P. Burnham; with music by TSG.
“Open Jaw” by Eliane Boey; with music by Phog Masheeen.

Narration by Jean-Paul L. Garnier; Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

(12) SPACE SHUTTLE PROTOTYPE MOCKUP GETS MUSEUM DISPLAY. “Downey’s Space Center breaks ground on museum expansion” reports the LA Times (behind a paywall.)

…[On Monday] Astronaut Garrett Reisman, former Rockwell International and Boeing employees and area dignitaries will take part in a groundbreaking for an about 40,000-square-foot expansion to the existing museum.

The museum’s centerpiece will be a 122-foot-long, 35-foot-tall Downey-made space shuttle mock-up named the “Inspiration,” which is not available yet for public display…

… The expansion, known as the Downey Space Shuttle Exhibit and Education Building, would include a new two-story, 29,000-square-foot space shuttle museum, event courtyard, STEM building and courtyard, children’s outdoor classroom, pavilion, lawn and other amenities.

The space shuttle mock-up is also undergoing a “process of rehab and refurbishment,” according to Dickow, but is in “generally great shape.”…

… North American Rockwell International, now part of Boeing, built the prototype in 1972 at its Downey facility. The space shuttle became the world’s first reusable winged orbiting spaceship.

In total, 12,000 workers developed and manufactured the shuttle at the program’s peak on a sprawling 120-acre campus…

More information here: “Columbia Memorial Space Center – Museum”.

(13) THINKING TELEPATHICALLY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] We seem to be getting close to the technology of being able to replicate telepathy, as reported in a news item in Nature.

A non-invasive imaging technique can translate scenes in your head into sentences. It could help to reveal how the brain interprets the world…

Reading a person’s mind using a recording of their brain activity sounds futuristic, but it’s now one step closer to reality. A technique called ‘mind captioning’ generates descriptive sentences of what a person is seeing or picturing in their mind using a read-out of their brain activity, with impressive accuracy.

The technique, described in a paper published today in Science Advances¹, also offers clues for how the brain represents the world before thoughts are put into words. And it might be able to help people with language difficulties, such as those caused by strokes, to better communicate….

Original primary research here.

(14) THE MARTIAN TRILOGY. [Item by Steve Davidson.] The first of two video conferences being held to discuss The Martian Trilogy: John P. Moore, Amazing Stories, Black Science Fiction and the Illustrated Feature Section has been released on the Amazing Stories Television channel on YouTube. “Lets talk about the Martian Trilogy Part 1”.

The first of two online get-togethers of the authors, editors and publisher of THE MARTIAN TRILOGY: John P. Moore, Amazing Stories, Black Science Fiction and the Illustrated Feature Section, a new release that resurrects the first Space Opera tale written by a black author nearly 90 years ago. Hosted by the publisher of Amazing Stories, Steve Davidson, with guests Dr. Lisa Yaszek, Minister Faust, Edward Austin Hall, Chris Barkley, Diya Patel, Max Mateer, Tanvi Bhatia and Amazing Stories Editor-in-Chief Lloyd Penney.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Olav Rokne, Justin T. O’Conor Sloane, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer with an assist from Dan’l.]

Pixel Scroll 1/31/25 I Will Not Be Pixeled, Scrolled Or Filed

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAIMAN CLICKBAIT. I clicked, so you don’t have to. Despite the Variety headline – “Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Canceled at Netflix After Season 2, Allegations” – the showrunner says Season 2 was intended to be the series’ last, and it’s apparently still going to air, so what about that is a “cancellation”?

Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s “The Sandman” will end with its upcoming second season.

“The Sandman” Season 2 has been a long time coming. The first season debuted in August 2022, and it wasn’t renewed at Netflix until November of that year. At that time, Netflix was also hesitant to label it as a second season at all, choosing instead to say it was “a continuation of ‘The Sandman’ world,” and wouldn’t commit to an episode count. Variety has confirmed the second season was intended to be the last prior to filming.

“‘The Sandman’ series has always been focused exclusively on Dream’s story, and back in 2022, when we looked at the remaining Dream material from the comics, we knew we only had enough story for one more season,” “The Sandman” showrunner Allan Heinberg said in a statement to Variety Friday. “We are extremely grateful to Netflix for bringing the team all back together and giving us the time and resources to make a faithful adaptation in a way that we hope will surprise and delight the comics’ loyal readers as well as fans of our show.”…

(2) COURTHOUSE KRYPTONITE. “Warner Bros. Sued Over International Superman Rights” – The Hollywood Reporter briefs the case.

Warner Bros. Discovery has been sued over the rights to Superman in a lawsuit seeking to block the release of the studio’s tentpole film in several countries ahead of its July debut.

The estate of Joseph Shuster, the co-creator of Superman, alleges that WBD lost its international rights to the character and story years ago but continued to exploit them without its permission or compensation. In a complaint filed in New York federal court on Friday, it seeks a share of profits from all works attributable to the alleged copyright infringement — including Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Black Adam and Shazam! — in key countries such as Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

The legal action marks a potential hitch in WBD’s rollout of Superman, which arrives July 11 as the first solo movie for the character in more than a decade since Man of Steel. …

DC’s ownership of Superman dates back to 1938, when writer Jerome Siegal and Shuster, a graphic artist, sold their rights to the character and story for $130. The hero’s first appearance under DC’s banner was in Action Comics No. 1, which detailed his backstory, secret identity as newspaper reporter Clark Kent, and powers of super strength and speed (his first time flying came in 1943 in Action Comics No. 65).

Since then, it’s frequently been the target of litigation, starting in 1947 when the duo sued to invalidate DC’s ownership of the rights to Superman. The case settled, with a $94,000 payout to Shuster and Siegel to resolve the case.

Under U.S. copyright law, Shuster would typically be able to reclaim his domestic rights to Superman under a provision in intellectual property law that allows authors to claw back ownership of their works after a certain period of time. But his sister and brother reached a deal with DC in 1992 that terminated that right in exchange for $25,000 per year. A federal appeals court later upheld that determination.

This time, Shuster’s estate looks to take advantage of U.K. copyright law, which automatically terminates copyright assignments 25 years after an author’s death. By its thinking, it reclaimed the rights to Superman in 2017 since the graphic artist died in 1992.

Also at play: the possibility that Shuster’s sister didn’t have the authority to bind the estate to the agreement that purportedly surrendered its right to terminate DC’s ownership of Superman. In that case, the court stated that the issue is a “complex one” and punted on deciding it.

The lawsuit claims infringement of copyright laws in the U.K. Australia, Canada and Ireland….

(3) SCUTTLEBUTT. “Disney’s Star Wars hotel jumps from deep space to office space” – The Verge explains what that means.

Disney’s extraordinarily expensive Star Wars hotel isn’t coming back. The building that housed the Galactic Starcruiser is being converted into office space, scuppering hopes that it could be reborn or repurposed into a new interactive attraction.

The Wrap reports that the hotel will be converted into an office for Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative arm of the company responsible for its theme parks, retail, and cruise ships. The team located there will reportedly work on upcoming expansions for Florida’s Walt Disney World resort, including a Latin American section of the Animal Kingdom and a Monsters Inc. area within Hollywood Studios.

Galactic Starcruiser was an immersive hotel experience set in the Star Wars universe, where the minimum stay cost $4,800 for two people over two nights. It opened in March 2022 but ran for just a year and a half, shutting in September 2023. It returned to headlines in May 2024 when YouTuber and theme park superfan Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour video on its “spectacular failure” went viral, amassing 11 million views…

(4) IT’S PEOPLE! Inverse reviews Companion: “The Wildest Sci-Fi Thriller Of The Year Flips The Killer Robot Movie On Its Head”. BEWARE SPOILERS.

It’s a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl turns out to be a killer robot. Except Companion isn’t exactly the typical take on the classic sci-fi horror story. Instead, Drew Hancock’s cleverly constructed sci-fi horror movie is a fun takedown of the AI cautionary tale we know so well. And in the process, it may have given us the most sneakily feminist social horror movie this side of Gone Girl….

…The reason it all works, aside from Hancock’s admirably deft script, is because of Sophie Thatcher’s wonderfully malleable performance as Iris. Right off the bat, we sense that something is off with Iris — she’s a little too demure, a little too smiley, a little too doe-eyed. However, Thatcher seeds in tiny human quirks that spark some recognition for us: the way her mouth twitches uncomfortably when Josh’s friend Kat (Megan Suri) treats her with contempt, the way she glances down sadly when Josh brushes her off, and, of course, the way she would do anything to survive. By the time Companion drops its robot reveal (which again, happens very early on), we’re already primed to root for Iris, even as she starts to accumulate quite the body count….

(5) AFROFUTURIST SHORT FICTION. The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories edited by andré m. carrington will be released in bookstores on February 4, and is available immediately from Library of America.

Inspired by Afrofuturist pioneers like Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany, a new generation of Black writers is fashioning a renaissance in speculative fiction. Edited and introduced by SF expert andré m. carrington, The Black Fantastic brings together Hugo, Locus, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Tiptree/Otherwise, and World Fantasy Award winners with emerging voices to showcase this watershed moment in American literature.

Here are twenty beguiling, unsettling, and visionary stories spanning the cosmos and a dazzling array of alternate timelines. Phenderson Djèlí Clark and Alaya Dawn Johnson stare down the specters of history in their haunting fictions, set, respectively, on a Founding Father’s brutal plantation and in the vampire-built internment camps of a dystopian Hawai‘i. Violet Allen’s would-be superhero stories turn to searing metafiction when her main character is repeatedly shot and killed by the police. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Rion Amilcar Scott explore otherworldly forces at play in a small-town barbershop and in a young writer’s ambitions, while Victor LaValle tells the story of a man living on the streets of New York City, his bag of deposit bottles and cans bearing urgent messages from another dimension.

Other stories are by turns comic, provocative, and terrifying: Thaddeus Howze delivers a crowd-pleasing tall tale about a battle with aliens over the fate of Earth, by way of an epic baseball game; Maurice Broaddus spins a coming-of-age fantasy about an American girl in a utopian future Africa; Craig Laurance Gidney offers a Lovecraftian tour of the ballroom drag scene; Tara Campbell weaves a spell of ecofeminist horror; and much more.

Reimagining the past and laying claim to the future, these writers are bringing forth kaleidoscopic new visions of Black identity and creative freedom.

(6) POWER COUPLE. At One Geek’s Mind, John Grayshaw puts a spotlight on Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett with the help of a Luna Monthly interview from 1975: “Interview about Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett”. (The well-known sff writers wed in the 1940s; Ray Bradbury was Hamilton’s best man.) The interview touches on many different fandoms: classic movies, Star Wars, sff books, and comic books. As well as what it was like for female writers in the Forties.

Wesley Grubb: Edmond Hamilton is one of those bridge-authors, who began writing before the “Golden Age” and continued to write into the “New Wave” era. How well did his writing develop, and how well did his stories mature, from his early career compared to his later career in the 50s and 60s?

In a 1975 interview with Luna Monthly, Hamilton talked about how quickly he was writing stories back in the pulp era. He said:

“How do I feel about the rapid, high-production way we oldtime pulp writers employed in our work? I can’t speak for others, but for me it was the best way in the world to work. I might have been a more polished writer had I worked in more leisurely fashion, but I might too have been the centipede who didn’t know which leg to lift first.

One of the most ghastly stories I ever wrote was “Outside the Universe,” a wild tale of three galaxies at war. I wrote that in 1928, over 50,000 words of it first draft. I used a very small portable typewriter on a big, flat-top inherited desk. In writing those hectic space-battles, my hard pounding made the little typewriter creep all over the desk, and I would stand up and follow it in my burning enthusiasm.”

(7) THEY CAME FROM MILES AROUND. “Rebecca Yarros’s ‘Onyx Storm’ Is the Fastest-Selling Adult Novel in 20 Years” – the New York Times covers a personal appearance by the author, with quotes and comments by several of the fans on hand. (Link bypasses the paywall.)

….When Yarros became a fixture on the best-seller list, with the release of “Fourth Wing,” she had already published around 20 contemporary romance novels. But sales from book to book were largely stagnant, and she struggled with a chronic illness, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder.

Her illness, though debilitating at times, inspired her to write “Fourth Wing,” she said. Yarros grew up loving fantasy, but had never read a fantastical novel with a protagonist who had physical limitations like she did. She decided to write about a young woman named Violet, who enrolls in an elite military academy for dragon riders, and is determined to succeed despite a chronic illness that makes her weak and physically frail….

…Fans’ fervor was palpable at the event, which was held in a huge auditorium in St. Paul. Many in the crowd were dressed up in sweatshirts, T-shirts and hats that said “Basgiath War College,” the military academy of the series. Some were fully decked out in costume, dressed as Violet, in leather body armor, or as dragons….

…At the start of the event, Yarros was introduced by the romance writer Abby Jimenez, who noted that the Empyrean series had taken over the top three slots on the New York Times best-seller list.

Yarros uttered an expletive to express her surprise and gratitude. “Thank you,” she said to the crowd. “You guys did that.”

(8) GRUMPY BUT NOT DOPEY. The star of this event is rather less thrilled to be there than the celeb in the previous item. “Grumpy Harrison Ford, a mystery asterisk and AI gone wild: everything from Disney’s new slate presentation” in the Guardian.

There are moments in life when you expect to be confronted by greatness: hearing a live orchestra swell into the opening notes of John Williams’ Star Wars theme; standing at the edge of the Scottish Highlands; watching a dog somehow open a fridge and retrieve a beer for its owner. And then there are moments when greatness sneaks up on you in the form of an 82-year-old Hollywood legend, materialising like a grumpy mirage, one metre from your face, during what you thought was a routine Disney presentation of new movies and TV shows.

Harrison Ford is not a man one simply stumbles upon. He is a force of nature, a living relic of an era when leading men didn’t have to spend six months on a chicken-and-rice diet before taking their shirts off. And yet, here he is, looking suitably nonplussed with the entire concept of being on a stage, fielding questions alongside his Captain America: Brave New World co-stars in an impromptu Q&A with all the enthusiasm of a guy who somehow finds himself trapped in the world’s most boring hostage video….

…The assembled audience is also treated to an exclusive clip of the new film, out 14 February, in which we already know Ford will end up transforming into the Red Hulk. It’s an action-packed set piece in which Wilson (Anthony Mackie) infiltrates an enemy base, and showcases the new winged Captain America suit, which we’re told was given to Sam by those helpful Wakandans. . Marvel has always been a franchise built on increasingly wobbly physics, but even the most generous audience might struggle to believe that a bloke with no serum and no billionaire gadgets could stand toe-to-toe with a bad guy whose brain is so large it requires its own postcode….

(9) JOHN ERWIN (1936-2025). “John Erwin Dead: ‘He-Man,’ ‘Archie’ Voice Actor Was 88” – The Hollywood Reporter summarizes his career —

John Erwin, the reclusive actor who provided the voices for the heroic title character in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the vain frenemy Reggie Mantle in a series of Archie cartoons, has died. He was 88.

Erwin died of natural causes “around Dec. 20” in his home in Camarillo, California, his reps at the PR firm Celebworx announced.

For nearly a decade starting in 1969, Erwin was heard in dozens of TV commercials as the snarky Morris the Cat, the finicky orange tabby who would eat nothing but the 9Lives brand of cat food. The hugely successful campaign was created by the Leo Burnett advertising firm.

…For Filmmation, Erwin voiced the blond, muscular He-Man (and his alter ego, Prince Adam) on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe from 1983-85 and on She-Ra: Princess of Power from 1985-87. He also played the villain Beast Man and other secondary characters on the syndicated shows that were based on a line of Mattel toys….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal

Fifty-nine years at Tricon where Isaac Asimov was Toastmaster, Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal won the Hugo for Best Novel in a tie with Frank Herbert’s Dune.

It was first published as “…And Call Me Conrad” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in October and November 1965, then as This Immortal in 1966 by Ace Books, and in 1967 by UK publisher Hart-Davis in hardcover.

So it was only in the magazine that it had that title? So why the name change? Marketing having one of their not so genius ideas?

Algis Budrys in Galaxy Bookshelf was fond of this novel saying it was “an extremely interesting and undeniably important book” with “a story of adventures and perils that is utterly charming and optimistic.”

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics pictures imagination.

(12) COPYRIGHT OFFICE RELEASES ANOTHER PAPER ON AI. “New Government Report Addresses ‘Copyrightability’ of AI Works” – Publishers Weekly gives a quick rundown. (Download the full report here.)

The U.S. Copyright Office has released the second installment of what is envisioned as a three-part report on copyright and artificial intelligence. The most recent release addresses the issue of “copyrightability of outputs generated by AI systems.” Its recommendations are based on the comments the Copyright Office received after it posted a Notice of Inquiry in August 2023 seeking public input on the full range of copyright issues raised by AI.

Based on an analysis of copyright law and policy and comments from the public, the Copyright Office made the following conclusions and recommendations:

Questions of copyrightability and AI can be resolved pursuant to existing law, without the need for legislative change.
The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output
Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material
Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements
Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis
Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control
Human authors are entitled to copyright in their works of authorship that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs, as well as the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs
The case has not been made for additional copyright or sui generis protection for AI generated content

(13) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to “Munch on pepper chicken masala with Larry Hama” in Episode 246 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

I’ve known writer/editor/artist Larry Hama for at least half a century now, but his career started long before that, when he sold his first cartoon to Castle of Frankenstein magazine in 1966. He’s probably best known as a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, where he wrote the licensed comic book series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, based on the Hasbro toy line, writing nearly every issue of the book’s 13-year run.

He’s also written for the series Wolverine, Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja, and Elektra. He worked as an editor at both DC and Marvel, and at the latter edited the humor magazine Crazy, as well as Conan, The ‘Nam, and Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham. He co-created the character Bucky O’Hare, who not only appeared in comic books, but as a television cartoon. Last year, he was inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.

We discussed how cataract surgery changes the way an artist perceives the page, what really happened at a mid-’70s penthouse comic book party, Bernie Krigstein’s anger at being asked questions about comics, why Wally Wood felt it was so important for his assistants to learn how to letter, what it was like being part of the famed Crusty Bunkers inking collective, why getting to edit Crazy was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, which Marvel Comics Bullpenner was the visual inspiration for Obnoxio the Clown, why getting his freelancers to hit their deadlines was never a hassle, the editing advice Archie Goodwin gave him early on, the real reason he needed to create that famous silent issue of G. I. Joe, the differing zeitgeists of Marvel vs. DC during the ’70s, his approach to taking over the editing of legacy characters, our joint confusion over memes of previous generations, and much more.

(14) TODAY’S THING TO NOT WORRY ABOUT? “Asteroid 2024 YR4 Could Strike Earth, Researchers Say, But the Odds are Small” in the New York Times (bypasses paywall).

You may hear about a large asteroid headed toward Earth. Don’t panic.

Just after Christmas Day, astronomers spotted something zipping away from Earth: a rock somewhere between 130 feet and 330 feet long that they named 2024 YR4. Over the next few weeks, they simulated its possible future orbits. They now say, based on the most up-to-date information, that there is a 1.3 percent chance that this asteroid will strike somewhere on Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.

Should this keep you up at night?

“No, absolutely not,” said David Rankin, a comet and asteroid spotter at the University of Arizona.

The object’s current odds of striking Earth may sound scary — and it’s fair to say that an asteroid in this size range has the potential to cause harm. Should it strike a city, the damage would not cause anything close to a mass extinction, but the damage to the city itself would be catastrophic.

But a 1.3 percent chance of a hit is also a 98.7 percent chance of a miss. “It’s not a number you want to ignore, but it’s not a number you need to lose sleep over,” Mr. Rankin said….

(15) A LONG WAY FROM THE BEACH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The roads must roll. Or the sand must flow, anyway. Meet the Dune Express, the second-longest conveyor belt in the world. At 42 miles in length, it’s built to take the place of trucks in moving sand from a quarry to an oil field where it’s used in fracking.

The Dune Express is the Texas-sized, if risky, baby of Atlas Energy Solutions. And, yes, the company is named after that book. “The World’s Second-Longest Conveyor Belt Comes to West Texas” in Texas Monthly.

I rapped my knuckles on the galvanized aluminum exterior to make sure it wasn’t some sort of desert mirage. It was solid: $400 million worth of concrete, electronics, and steel assembled to rotate a thick rubber belt along roughly 66,000 metal rollers. Something on the order of 13 million tons of sand can be carried the entire length of the machine—42 miles—each year. If all of that were used to build sandcastles, you could have a couple of dozen the size of Buckingham Palace, with more than enough left over for a Taj Mahal.

But this sand isn’t for beachside amusement. It’s for fracking. When drillers crack open subterranean rock in the Permian Basin to allow oil to flow out, sand rides alongside the injected fluid to prevent the spider’s web of new fractures from closing up again. Each grain of sand functions like a tiny support beam in a minuscule mine shaft. Fracking a single well can consume more than four hundred truckloads of sand…

(16) ELIXIR OF YOUTH. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] They say change is good, but I am totally with Sheldon Cooper in that it rarely is… And now we have under-reported news that could really shake things up for the planet…!

One of science’s greatest successes/failures is that the technology it spawns has benefited humanity so well that our global population has soared from a billion in 1804 to two billion in 1927 to 8 billion in 2024! The resulting pollution, the loss of wildlife habitat to agriculture, is disrupting the Earth system… And if that was not bad enough, now comes news that we may soon have a drug that can significantly (by a decade) extend human life spans….!

Yes, you read that correctly: ‘life extension’! Our planet’s population could soar? Inequality could increase?

The news was reported in this week’s issue of Nature. It seems that injecting old mice with an RNA molecule seems to reverse some signs of ageing – helping them to live longer, regrow hair and maintain their physical and mental abilities.

They used mice aged between 20 and 25 months, which is akin to between about 60 and 70 in human years. They went on to live for about 4.5 months longer, on average. They regrew hair that had become sparse, maintained a higher body weight, could stay balanced on a rotating rod for longer and had better grip strength for their weight

Now, don’t get too excited/worried just yet as the mouse may not be a good model for humans when it comes to RNA treatment, however this is still something of a breakthrough…

Primary research here.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/28/25 One Moon Was A Ghostly Galleon, The Other A Spirited Schooner

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) CHINESE FANZINE ZERO GRAVITY NEWS PUBLISHES THREE ISSUES. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Three issues of the Hugo Award-winning fanzine Zero Gravity News have just been published, featuring articles about their personal experiences from a number of Chinese fans. Here is the text of RiverFlow’s two tweets about the issues (slightly edited):

Chinese fanzine Zero Gravity has published a themed special “l With Sci-Fi” across three issues. Issues 25 and 26 contain the views of middle school and college students on science fiction. The 27th issue mainly contains the articles of the memories of working-age Chinese sci-fi fans.

This comes to a total of 480,000 words across the three issues, which can be said to be another collective voice of Chinese science fiction fans.

The PDFs of the three issues can be downloaded from this Google Drive link – each is around 10MB in size.

(2) EBOOK ALTERNATIVE HELPS INDIE BOOKSTORES. Bookshop.org US now is also selling ebooks.

Every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores. Our platform gives independent bookstores tools to compete online and financial support to help them maintain their presence in local communities.

NPR has the story — “Bookshop.org launches new e-book platform that exclusively supports local bookstores”.

…MARTÍNEZ: OK, there are already a lot of online retailers for e-books. I mean, millions of them are sold every year. So why are we focusing on this one?

FADEL: Well, this one exclusively supports local bookstores, and that’s because e-books are a difficult format for smaller booksellers to keep up with, according to Bookshop’s CEO, Andy Hunter.

ANDY HUNTER: Because the publisher requirements are so strict, it requires a huge amount of technical effort to deliver an e-book securely so it can’t be hacked and it can’t be pirated around the web. And that is too much for any individual local bookstore to deal with.

MARTÍNEZ: All right, so that makes sense. So what do indie bookstores think?

FADEL: We checked in with a few owners like Pete Mulvihill of Green Apple Books in San Francisco, and he told us his stores will take all the help they can get.

PETE MULVIHILL: We survive by kind of (laughter) scraping and clawing where we can to find efficiencies or make a little extra income. And this is another significant, if small, stream of income for us. So it’s truly helpful….

(3) ROMANTASY RINGING THE REGISTER. “Bestsellers – Critical Maas: Is this real life? Is this just fantasy?” asks The Bookseller about the UK market. Since the start of the year sff sales are up nearly a third, with fantasy titles driving the train. “Bookshops across the country may soon need to rebalance their space as readers continue to seek to escape from reality.”

You would be forgiven for thinking that bookshops were caught in a landslide of fantasy fiction in 2024 with authors such as Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros dominating the top end of the fiction charts – as seen in our Author Review of the Year in last week’s issue (The Bookseller, 17th January 2025). It was not just the spicy side of the genre represented either, with JRR Tolkien’s sales rising 21.3% year-on-year through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market and Brandon Sanderson appearing inside the top 50 authors of the year for the first time. Is this a trend that’s going to continue into 2025 – and, if it is, which series should we be keeping our eye on?

It is timely to start with Rebecca Yarros, as the third book in her Empyrean series – Onyx Storm – is published this week, while Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are sitting atop the Fantasy charts so far for 2025.

First published in hardback in 2023, the first two books in the series were released in paperback in 2024, with Fourth Wing placing 11th in the full-year chart, selling just shy of 250,000 copies. The paperback of Iron Flame was only released in November and has shifted 78,586 copies in its first nine weeks – 7.4% down on the equivalent period for its predecessor….

…While Yarros tops the fantasy chart so far for 2025, it is Sarah J Maas who dominates it, taking five of the top 10 spots. With TCM volume sales of 1.3 million units in 2024, the author of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series rooted herself into second place in our authors of the year chart with sales of £13.2m.

So far this year, Yarros’ value has already reached £483,676 – up 88.9% against the first two weeks of 2024 – and with fans eagerly awaiting the paperback release of last January’s House of Flame and Shadow, as well as the fifth ACOTAR novel, a surprise 2025 release or two could see Maas’ sales increase further still.

The bestselling fantasy hardback title at the moment could be the start of the next big thing. First published at the beginning of December, Quicksilver – the first instalment of Callie Hart’s Fae & Alchemy series – has sold 34,417 copies, with 17.9% of that coming in the past two weeks. A sequel is due later in 2025 but, so far, no date for the paperback edition has emerged. Another author to keep an eye on is Sarah A Parker, whose When the Moon Hatched is one of just three hardbacks inside the fantasy top 20, despite being first published back in June. It has just topped £1m worth of sales and consistently appears in the e-book charts provided by BookStat. The paperback is due in May, while the second book in the Moonfall series will be published in October of this year.

While 19 of the 20 listed here are romantasy – only Gregory Maguire’s Wicked bucks the trend – they are not the only sub-genre of the market on which to keep an eye. The third bestselling fantasy author of the moment is Brandon Sanderson, whose Cosmere universe has delivered £135,763, while Tolkien’s romance-free books have notched up £109,753 – though it is worth noting even when Tolkien and Sanderson’s sales are combined with second-placed Yarros, they still cannot top Maas’ total…..

(4) CHINESE NEW YEAR GALA BROADCAST. [Item by Ersatz Culture and Prograft.] The annual Chinese New Year/Spring Festival Gala was broadcast by state broadcaster CCTV/CMG on Tuesday 28th. The full (nearly 5 hour) show can be seen on YouTube, but the links below jump directly a couple of performances that may be the ones of most relevance to File 770:

A folk dance performed by robots and human dancers. Per this news article, this is “a traditional Yangko dance, a vibrant folk art form from northeast China” where “the robots showcased their ability to manipulate handkerchiefs, a signature element of Yangko dance“.

A friend sent me a link to the Taobao sales page for what seems to be the robots used in this performance. The link wouldn’t show me the full product list as I don’t have a user account there, but he also sent me a screenshot, which is below, along with a Google Translation. The prices per unit convert to approximately $69k and $90k USD.

A girls choir performed a folk song with elements relating to the Chinese space program, such as the moon, an astronaut and a space station, which were overlaid onto the broadcast. This news article has more information about the performers, although it does not really mention the space aspects.

(5) YOUNG ADULTS WRITE NOW. The Horror Writers Association blog today announced the 2024 recipients of the YAWN Endowment — Young Adults Write Now (YAWN).

This endowment is provided by the Horror Writers Association and is aimed at supporting teen writing programs in libraries as part of its ongoing dedication to furthering young adult literacy. We received a large number of excellent applications last year and are heartened by the number of libraries currently prioritizing teen writing programs.

The YAWN application period runs from August 1st to October 1st, with five recipients selected in October. Each recipient is awarded $250, to be put toward developing or supporting a teen writing program in their library. More about the endowment can be found on the Horror Writers Association’s website, via the Horror Scholarships page.

Libraries receiving funding will be able to use the monies for anything relating to their proposed or currently active writing program, including but not limited to: books (specifically young adult horror and books on writing), supplies, special events, publishing costs, guest speakers and instructors, additions to the collection, and operating expenses.

The recipients of the 2024 Young Adults Write Now Endowment are:

South Fayette Township Library (Pennsylvania)
San Benito County Free Library (California)
Wharton County Library (Texas)
Cuyahoga County Public Library, Garfield Heights Branch (Ohio)
Public Library of New London (Connecticut)

(6) KASEY AND JOE LANSDALE Q&A. The Horror Writers Association blog’s “Nuts & Bolts” series has added an “Interview With Kasey and Joe R. Lansdale”.

KASEY LANSDALE

Q: What marketing advice do you have for authors, especially in light of the changing social media landscape?

A: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Mailing list. Social platforms are too erratic. It doesn’t matter if you have a million followers if, let’s say for example, they ban your audience …

Q: Can you share any insights about publishing that many authors don’t know, but would benefit from knowing?

A: The cream does not rise to the top. The publishers in most cases pick their lead title and put most of their juice behind it, and if something else gets out, it’s by pure magic. There’s no formula or we would all be doing it. There are two kinds of publicists. The ones who shoot out to their mailing list and hope someone answers, and the ones who beat down doors and hope for answers. Unfortunately, the results are usually pretty on par with one another. But that’s not a defeat, that’s a call to action. That means that the author must tell the world about their books, and take the opportunities given to share it and themselves with the world.

(7) LAUREL AMBERDINE (1970-2025). Writer and editor Laurel Amberdine died January 21 at the age of 54. The SFWA Blog has published a tribute: “In Memoriam: Laurel Amberdine”.

Laurel Amberdine (1970–21 January 2025) was a writer, interviewer, and genre editor. She worked for Locus Magazine for ten years, and was an assistant editor for Lightspeed magazine.

Amberdine was known for her kind and thoughtful interviews, yet she also loved to write, both prose and poetry. Her short fiction story, “Airship Hope” was published by Daily Science Fiction in 2013, and in her 2018 essay “Science Fiction Saved My Life” (Uncanny Magazine), she discussed how her chronic illness and disability had affected her, how finding writing gave her purpose, and how privilege inherent in the industry limits voices that readers may need to hear. Amberdine wrote a young adult novel, Luminator, which made it far along in the publication process, as well as an adult science-fiction novel.

Amberdine was known for her kindness and warmth, rooted in her Catholic faith, and extended to all who she encountered….

(8) AL SARRANTONIO (1952-2025). Sff/h writer, editor and publisher Al Sarrantonio has died reported Chet Williamson on Facebook. Wikipedia has a detailed article about his career.

Al Sarrantonio in the Seventies. Photo by and copyright © Andrew Porter.

He began an editing career at a major New York publishing house in 1976. His first short fiction, “Ahead of the Joneses,” appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1979, and the following year he published 14 short stories. In 1982 he left publishing to become a full-time writer.

He established himself in the horror field with such much-anthologized stories as “Pumpkin Head”, “The Man With Legs”, “Father Dear,” “Wish”, and “Richard’s Head,” (all of which appear in his first short story collection, Toybox). “Richard’s Head” brought him his first Bram Stoker Award nomination.

Sarrantonio won a Bram Stoker Award in 2000 for his anthology 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense, and a Shirley Jackson Award in 2011 for the anthology Stories: All-New Tales (co-edited with Neil Gaiman; it also won an Audie). Both books also were finalists for the World Fantasy Award.

(9) JEANNOT SZWARC (1940-2025). The Guardian’s writeup about movie/TV director Jeannot Szwarc is almost harshly frank: “Jeannot Szwarc obituary”. “Director whose big screen credits include Jaws 2, Supergirl and Santa Claus: The Movie alongside a 50-year career in television.” He also directed Somewhere in Time.

…His blockbusters, though, were among the most maligned films of their age. When asked about Jaws 2, Szwarc said: “I do believe I deserve some credit for just pulling it off.”

The odds were not in his favour. He had less than a month to prepare when the picture’s original director, John Hancock, quit three weeks into production. Only 90 seconds of what Hancock had shot proved usable. At that point, Szwarc said, “It was the biggest disaster in the history of Universal. They had spent $10m, and they had nothing.”

An unfinished script, bad weather and a malfunctioning mechanical shark only added to Szwarc’s woes as an immovable release date loomed. He was under no illusions about the task at hand. “I knew it wasn’t going to be a cinematic masterpiece. All I went in with was knowing I had to make it scary, and that I had to finish it.”

The film, which features a scene in which a shark chomps on a sea rescue helicopter as it attempts to take off from water, was met with dismay by critics. Riding the wave of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 predecessor, however, it was still a hit, grossing $187m….

…His TV credits in the early 70s included Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man and more than a fifth of the episodes of the long-running macabre suspense series Night Gallery.

Among his television films was The Small Miracle (1973), which starred one of his heroes, the Italian neo-realist director Vittorio De Sica. “I told him I felt like an art student who had to instruct Michelangelo,” he said.

Szwarc made his big-screen debut in the same year with the Michael Crichton-scripted thriller Extreme Close-Up. He followed this with Bug (1975), a horror film about pyromaniac cockroaches, which became the swansong of the ingenious horror producer William Castle….

…Between 2003 and 2011, he returned to the Supergirl/DC Comics milieu by directing 14 episodes of Smallville, the television series about Superman’s younger years…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 28, 1973 — Carrie Vaughn, 52.

By Paul Weimer: Carrie Vaughn’s urban fantasy series, the Kitty Norville series, is probably very well known to you. A radio DJ turned accidental radio talk show host who is (at first secretly) a werewolf gets involved with other aspects of the slowly revealed supernatural community, bringing them out into the open and having the United States and the world come to terms with them. It’s as if the Masquerade (from White Wolf) was being slowly and steadily lifted, and for everyone all at once.

Even then and even now, that goes against the grain of a lot of Urban fantasy, which either has the supernatural always out and open, or following the Masquerade model. But a series that considers the problems werewolves, vampires and others have adapting to modern society–and modern society adapting to others? That’s a lovely sociological and anthropological twist. Those first few novels, as Kitty herself comes to terms with her secret coming out, are really strong and I think they hold up to this day.

And Norville is and was willing to expand the playground and consider–if supernatural creatures have always been around, what does that, what did that actually mean in historical terms. There’s some really lovely worldbuilding in her nuanced explorations of the idea.

But a reason why the Norville books also hold a strong place in my heart is that they are, again, some of the earliest books I was given ARCs to read for review (the first three as a matter of fact). Although urban fantasy (except for, say, Seanan McGuire) is not my power chord of reading SFF, the idea that a publisher would give me books if I would review them was a pretty heady feeling.

Still is.

I’ve read a couple of novels and work by Vaughn outside of the Kitty Norville books (After the Golden Age, written in that heady period where authors were writing original superhero novels not tied to Marvel or DC). But for me, it may be unfair, Vaughn’s work begins and ends with a DJ turned accidental social heroine.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Jerry King knows why the monsters aren’t in their old hiding place.
Reality Check has a Dickens update.
Cornered misses a friend. [Warning for amazing bad taste.]
Thatababy has DIY special effects.
The Argyle Sweater should not practice medicine. Even in Hyperborea.
Wumo witnesses – different planet, same complaint.

(12) INSIDE DOCTOR WHO. Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat tell what it’s like writing a different Doctor. Watch video at X.com.

(13) STOP THAT GARBAGE TRUCK! “Scans for the memories: why old games magazines are a vital source of cultural history – and nostalgia” explains the Guardian.

Before the internet, if you were an avid gamer then you were very likely to be an avid reader of games magazines. From the early 1980s, the likes of Crash, Mega, PC Gamer and the Official PlayStation Magazine were your connection with the industry, providing news, reviews and interviews as well as lively letters pages that fostered a sense of community. Very rarely, however, did anyone keep hold of their magazine collections. Lacking the cultural gravitas of music or movie publications, they were mostly thrown away. While working at Future Publishing as a games journalist in the 1990s, I watched many times as hundreds of old issues of SuperPlay, Edge and GamesMaster were tipped into skips for pulping. I feel queasy just thinking about it.

Because now, of course, I and thousands of other video game veterans have realised these magazines are a vital historical resource as well as a source of nostalgic joy. Surviving copies of classic mags are selling at a vast premium on eBay, and while the Internet Archive does contain patchy collections of scanned magazines, it is vulnerable to legal challenges from copyright holders.

Thankfully, there are institutions taking the preservation of games magazines seriously. Last week, the Video Game History Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation of games and their history, announced that from 30 January, it would be opening up its digital archive of out-of-print magazines to read and study online. So far 1,500 issues of mostly American games mags are available, as well as art books and other printed ephemera, but the organisation is busy scanning its entire collection. The digitised content will be fully tagged and searchable by word or phrase, so you’ll be able to easily track down the first mentions of, say, Minecraft, John Romero, or the survival horror genre….

(14) OH, THAT’S DIFFERENT. NEVER MIND. “An asteroid got deleted because it was actually Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster” says Astronomy.com.

On Jan. 2, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid, designated 2018 CN41. First identified and submitted by a citizen scientist, the object’s orbit was notable: It came less than 150,000 miles (240,000 km) from Earth, closer than the orbit of the Moon. That qualified it as a near-Earth object (NEO) — one worth monitoring for its potential to someday slam into Earth.

But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) issued an editorial notice: It was deleting 2018 CN41 from its records because, it turned out, the object was not an asteroid.

It was a car.

To be precise, it was Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster mounted to a Falcon Heavy upper stage, which boosted into orbit around the Sun on Feb. 6, 2018. The car — which had been owned and driven by Musk — was a test payload for the Falcon Heavy’s first flight….

(15) PREPARE FOR THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] See the Orchard Machinery Corporation’s imposing Hedgehog tree trimming machine hacking along to Zombie as covered by Bad Wolves. Could this be a subtle hint that we should prepare for the zombie apocalypse? If so, such a machine might come in handy.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Orchard Machinery Corporation (@omcshakermaker)

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

Pixel Scroll 1/24/25 This Starship Is Bound For Glory, Every Pixel On Her Must Be Scrolly

Posted on January 24, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE SHELVES LOOK DIFFERENT THIS WEEK. The Guardian interviews Octavia’s Bookshelf owner Nikki High about how she’s aided her community during the Eaton Fire: “It was a town’s only Black-owned bookstore. It is now a refuge for those displaced by the California fires”.

… That night, the flames ravaged her neighborhood. “There’s about maybe seven or eight homes left on our street, including ours,” she says. The following day, she drove to Octavia’s Bookshelf to see if it was damaged. Although winds blew dirt into the store, her business was otherwise in the clear. In fact, her store still had power and wifi. An idea struck her: perhaps others in the community needed to get online.

“I wrote up something real quick on Instagram,” High says. “I just said, ‘Hey, I have wifi and power. If you need to come here to get online, I’ll be here all day.’” That small act of outreach became the catalyst for something much larger.

As people trickled into the store, they began asking for basic necessities. “Do you have any water?” one person asked. High turned back to Instagram, posting a call for water donations, which she received, plus more. By the end of the day, the bookstore had transformed into a full-fledged relief center.

“We packed up all of our books off the shelves and put them in the attic,” High explains. The books were replaced by the items people gave to victims of the fire. The donations poured in from as far away as Portland, filling the store with supplies like toothpaste, diapers, cat food and water. Volunteers from the community, including loyal customers, stepped in to help organize and distribute the items.

For those who came seeking aid, the store became a place of connection and solace. High remembers one customer who came in for diapers and wipes. “She told me she had donated to our original GoFundMe when we opened. She said, ‘I never thought in a million years I’d be coming here to get supplies after losing my home.’”…

(2) WHEN BUY BY ALMOST WENT BYE-BYE. “Bloomsbury UK Reaches Last-Minute Contract Agreement With Amazon” reports Publishers Weekly.

Charging that Bloomsbury UK failed to engage in good faith to reach a new contract agreement, Amazon posted a notice on its UK website late Thursday afternoon that as of midnight January 24, Bloomsbury UK print titles would no longer be available directly from its online stores in the U.K., Europe, and Australia. That takedown was averted, however, when the two parties reached an agreement in principle on a new contract 90 minutes before the last one expired.

In the initial announcement, Amazon stressed that Bloomsbury print book availability in Amazon’s U.S. store would have been unaffected by the action, but that its Bloomsbury’s Kindle editions would not be available for sale worldwide. According to the post, Bloomsbury UK’s agreement with Amazon expired last year, and the e-tailer had extended the deal for about seven months in hopes of reaching a new agreement.

The last extension ended at midnight on Jan. 24, and if no new contract had been signed by then, Amazon would have begun to pull its “buy buttons” from impacted countries. Customers would still be able to buy Bloomsbury titles from third-party sellers who use Amazon’s services. In practical terms, the dispute meant that, for example, Sarah J. Maas titles that are published by Bloomsbury UK would not have been available in affected stores, while Maas titles released by Bloomsbury’s U.S. subsidiary will still be available in the American Amazon store….

(3) WE HAVE HEARD THE CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. “Thousands of romantasy fans make midnight dates with new Rebecca Yarros novel” and the Guardian cheers them on.

Rebecca Yarros couldn’t sell her first novel. No publisher would take it. But this week, 14 years later, legions of her devoted readers turned up to more than a thousand midnight-release parties held to celebrate the publication of her latest book.

In the UK alone, more than 180,000 copies of Onyx Storm, the third instalment of Yarros’s blockbuster Empyrean series, sold on day one of publication on Tuesday. Nearly 60 Waterstones branches held late-night parties or opened early on Tuesday morning to mark the occasion. And after some TikTok users posted videos showing that they had managed to buy the book in Asda ahead of its official release, other fans filmed themselves scouring their local branches trying to get their hands on early copies too.Along with Sarah J Maas, Yarros is at the forefront of the romantasy genre, writing stories that combine elements of fantasy and romance. The first two books of the Empyrean series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, follow 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail as she makes her way through dragon-rider training at Basgiath War College. Her enemies-to-lovers romance with Xaden Riorson is central to the story, and in the third instalment, her mission is to save him….

(4) KERFUFFLE IN BLAKE’S 7 FANDOM. Lena Barkin dives deep into “The War That Almost Broke a Classic Fandom” at Fansplaining — Blake’s 7 fandom to be precise.

…Media cons were new and fundamentally different because of screen divide. Literary fans were used to writers being fandom participants at cons—and assumed that’s why actors went, too. One Blake’s 7 fan postulated, “Isaac Asimov and Andre Norton go to cons because they love Science Fiction… These people, and many like them, do not charge fees for attending cons… Mostly they go for many of the same reasons we all have … to get feedback on their work; to have a chance to get on a podium and panel and sound off on favorite issues; to browse in the dealers’ room and art show; to discuss elements of SF into the wee hours; to party!”

While fans could only speculate on the true motivations of the actors, the behaviors described were observed and accepted as standard. It’s also true that many successful sci-fi writers had risen up through the community, supporting this fan’s assertion that these writers “are a part of science fiction.” Science fiction literary fandom was like a really devoted writer’s group where successful writers could give back to the community that helped form them.

But the entertainment industry had long had different ideas about the roles of its stars. From the beginning of Hollywood, female fans were instructed on how to idolize actors. In her book Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity, Samantha Barras posits that, “just as fans sometimes controlled Hollywood, Hollywood also controlled fans.” By redirecting ‘movie-struck’ girls from aspiration to emulation, Hollywood told fans how they could dress like the stars and collect autographs, but weren’t allowed to be stars. The divide between actor and fan had to be strict in order to maintain control of persona and image….

I was struck by the effort here to contrast media cons with the fandom of written science fiction in the Eighties. Barkin uncritically embraces the latter’s (written sf fandom’s) view of itself despite that being a wild oversimplification. Which I know because in the late Eighties that was the myth I believed until I had the experience of setting up the program for NolaCon II (1988) and talked to a bunch of writers who did not feel connected to fandom in that way, who were only entertaining the idea of attending the con because their agent urged them to for business reasons. Asimov’s and Norton’s and some others’ connection with fans was merely part of a wide spectrum of writers’ attitudes towards fandom.

(5) CARD SHARKS. But you don’t need to reach any farther back in time than a week ago if you’re looking for a fan kerfuffle. And there’s video of this one. “Fight breaks out over Pokémon cards at a Los Angeles Costco” reports the LA Times (behind a paywall).

A fight broke out at a Costco store in Los Angeles over Pokémon cards, according to a video circulating on social media.

The fight was captured at the Atwater Village Costco on Jan. 16, according to a video posted on X by DisguisedToast.

Wild footage captured shoppers at the Atwater Village Costco in Los Angeles fighting over large quantities of the coveted Pokémon cards on Jan. 16.

Two men fought over a Pokémon box set, with one of them elbowing the other in the face.

“Get the f— off of me bro,” one of the men said.

Police weren’t called to the scene and aren’t investigating the brawl, Los Angeles Police Department officials said….

the asian man with the green jacket was just trying to buy them for his sons birthday too and the other guy snatched them ???????????? pic.twitter.com/UXqJ5AhZNu
— alison (@aloeson) January 16, 2025

(6) 31 FLAVOR. LA Times critic Robert Lloyd says it’s a matter of taste in “’Star Trek: Section 31 review: A diverting but frustrating first TV film” (behind a paywall).

… Originally conceived as a spinoff series from “Star Trek: Discovery” to star Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou, an agent of Starfleet’s secret black ops arm, the project was downgraded or promoted to a “feature,” officially the 14th in the “Star Trek” canon, and the franchise’s first “TV movie.” Even though this decision apparently preceded production, most everything about “Section 31” says “pilot episode,” as if whatever ideas informed the aborted series were still driving the starship, as characters are positioned for episodes yet to come — as if the film did not want to let go of the possibility of being a TV show…

… The backstory, which will drive the later plot, is meant to make her character tragic, but we came to know her well enough during her time on the starship Discovery, living among nice people, which had softened her considerably. She was practically lovable by the time she walked into that portal.

Perhaps you will be surprised, then, to find Georgiou sliding back into what looks like narcissism, running her version of Rick’s Cafe Américain in the borderlands outside Federation Space back in the 23rd century, using the alias Madame du Franc (and speaking a little French). Introductory narration, as at the start of a “Mission: Impossible” episode — an acknowledged inspiration — tells us that after her return from the 32nd century to 2257 she joined Section 31 for a time and then went missing. How this lines up with Georgiou having already been introduced as an agent of Section 31 in the second season of “Discovery,” which is to say, the agency she’s going back into the past to join, I’m not at all sure. Time travel will break your brain if you let it….

(7) CHILDREN OF THE SURVIVORS. Rich Horton introduces us to a new novel by a well-known fan: “Review: In Memoriam: A Novel of the Terran Diaspora, by Fred Lerner”

…It’s narrated by David Bernstein. As the novel opens, he’s finishing his final year of school before going to college. And he’s attending a performance staged by the alien race that is native to the planet on which he lives. We learn quickly that these aliens, the Wyneri, rescued the survivors of the Cataclysm, which wiped out humanity on Earth, a couple of centuries prior to this story. The couple of thousand who were rescued have been fruitful enough that the human population is about 30,000 — living in small chapters embedded among the Wyneri. The humans have been gifted one island, on which they have built a University, and to which they go once each year for the Ingathering. And this Remnant, as they style themselves, devote themselves to preserving as much knowledge of Terran history and culture as they can….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 24, 1911 — C. L. Moore. (Died 1987.)

By Paul Weimer: A giant of the 1930’s and 1940’s science fiction and fantasy, I came across C L Moore’s work thanks to Heinlein. It was the early 1980’s and I read Number of the Beast (which weirdly was one of the first Heinlein books I read, which might explain some things about me…). Anyway, early on in the book, Deity offers her collection of pulp magazines to Zeb…and mentions Moore and her characters Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith by name. Young brain went “Who are THEY?” (I did that a lot with Heinlein, it’s how I discovered artists like Maxwell Parrish and Rodin.) I found Jirel of Joiry in a collection of the protagonist’s stories. Northwest Smith came, later, in a variety of anthologies of early science fiction.

And I was off and running. Passionate, cerebral and very strongly defined characters in often amazing environments were what I associated with Moore’s work. Sure, a pulp writer, but Moore’s work was uplifted by the interior lives of her characters (consider the agony and the conflict inside of Jirel’s heart, just as one example of her writing at work).

When Moore met and started collaborating with Henry Kuttner, figuring out what pieces were hers, what was his and what were collaborations becomes a morass to untangle. I highly enjoy those stories, but they are really “all” collaborations in my mind.

My favorite Moore works are two of her collaborations with her husband, and they are much more contemporary in her science fiction. “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” I had had the good luck to have read after reading Carroll, so I got the references and allusions immediately, and understood the weird time traveling nature of the futuristic kit and what it did to the child protagonists–and what it almost did decades earlier. It was a “whoa” moment of the power of not time travel of people, but of objects that affect history and people, and literature.

The other story is “Vintage Season”, and it is one of the dagger-to-the-heart endings and the sheer indifference that time travelers can have to the problems of people they visit in the past. When ST: TNG had a protagonist who purported to be from the future act like he was one of the “Vintage Season” time travelers, something clicked and I understood both the original story and the episode much better. I also recently recounted the bit that the time travelers were off next to see Charlemagne in the year 800 to a medievalist friend of mine who is SF adjacent. He was much amused by the idea.

What a talent, in singular and in combination with Kuttner!

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Non Sequitur sees a sign.
Thatababy recommends a cookie brand we need.
Dinosaur Comics predicts the future of sf.

(10) PAYING THEIR RESPECTS. Los Angeles Magazine takes us “Inside the David Lynch Shrine at Bob’s Big Boy”.

Shortly after the family of filmmaker David Lynch announced his death last Thursday morning, fans began gathering at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank. Hundreds of them left something behind as a huge shrine to the visionary behind Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive took shape at the feet of the Big Boy statue on Riverside Drive.

As the tributes continued to pour in, the installation was being disassembled Wednesday afternoon by archivist and historian Kat Fox, who wrote her UCLA thesis on roadside shrines and spontaneous memorializations. Fox has previously studied temporary monuments to people lost from COVID, AIDS and 9/11. “Lynch doesn’t have a star on the Walk of Fame which is where these often crop up,” Fox said. “I’m very interested in the way L.A. chooses to memorialize and the way the community comes together in a place like Bob’s that has larger connections to the movie and TV industry,” she said. “It’s a cultural cornerstone and part of David Lynch lore.”

The landmark restaurant was a longtime favorite of the acclaimed director, who had a fondness for the lost world of 1950s Americana, and where he wrote and found inspiration. “I went there every day for seven years,” the director remarked after a film screening. “I would write on the napkins. It was like having a desk. You need paper and there’s a piece of paper and you write on it when you get ideas.”…

… Original drawings and paintings, poetry, and personal letters were mixed in with stuffed logs, real logs, donuts, Cheetos and keys to the hotel where special agent Dale Cooper stayed in Twin Peaks. “There’s half-drunk coffee and half-smoked cigarettes,” Fox said. “It’s like they’re sharing it with him.” An estimated 400 cigarettes, 45 cups of coffee, and dozens of donuts and pie slices were accessioned, documented and photographed before finding their way to the Dumpster….

Reflecting on what we’ve lost today.
— Schooley (@schooley.bsky.social) 2025-01-20T18:12:20.666Z

(11) DID DEFERENTIAL EPISTEMOLOGY LEAVE WITH THE ENTWIVES? [Item by Steven French.] In this Physics World essay, historian of physics and philosopher Robert P Crease argues that the best way to counter misinformation is to be even more melodramatic: “Why telling bigger stories is the only way to counter misinformation”.

If aliens came to Earth and tried to work out how we earthlings make sense of our world, they’d surely conclude that we take information and slot it into pre-existing stories – some true, some false, some bizarre. Ominously, these aliens would be correct. You don’t need to ask earthling philosophers, just look around….

…Humans gain a sense of what’s happening in several ways. Three of them, to use philosophical language, are deferential, civic and melodramatic epistemology.

In “deferential epistemology”, citizens habitually take the word of experts and institutions about things like the dangers of x picocuries and exposures of y millirems. In his 1624 book New Atlantis, the philosopher Francis Bacon famously crafted a fictional portrait of an island society where deferential epistemology rules and people instinctively trust the scientific infrastructure.

We may think this is how people ought to behave. But Bacon, who was also a politician, understood that deference to experts is not automatic and requires constantly curating the public face of the scientific infrastructure. Earthlings haven’t seen deferential epistemology in a while.

“Civic epistemology”, meanwhile, is how people acquire knowledge in the absence of that curation. Such people don’t necessarily reject experts but hear their voices alongside many others claiming to know best how to pursue our interests and values. Civic epistemology is when we negotiate daily life not by first consulting scientists but by pursuing our concerns with a mix of habit, trust, experience and friendly advice.

We sometimes don’t, in fact, take scientific advice when it collides with how we already behave; we may smoke or drink, for instance, despite warnings not to. Or we might seek guidance from non-scientists about things like the harms of radiation.

Finally, what I call “melodramatic epistemology” draws on the word “melodrama”, a genre of theatre involving extreme plots, obvious villains, emotional appeal, sensational language, and moral outrage (the 1939 film Gone with the Wind comes to mind)….

(12) VIDEO GAME BUSINESS. The Guardian asks “Can Assassin’s Creed Shadows save Ubisoft?”

It’s no secret that the video game industry is struggling. The last two years have seen more than 25,000 redundancies and more than 40 studio closures. Thanks to game development’s spiralling costs (blockbuster titles now cost hundreds of millions to make), overinvestment during the Covid-19 pandemic, and a series of failed bets to create the next money-printing “forever game”, the pressure for blockbuster games to succeed is now higher than ever.

It’s a predicament that feels especially pertinent for Ubisoft. Employing in the region of 20,000 people across 45 studios in 30 countries, its most recent big licensed games Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws underperformed commercially. It has had two expensive, failed live-service experiments in the past year, Skull and Bones and X-Defiant. With Ubisoft share prices plummeting and investment partners circling like sharks, rarely have the fortunes of a massive games company relied so heavily on a single release. It has already been delayed multiple times, to ensure its quality.

Against this gloomy backdrop, I find myself roaming the glistening halls of Ubisoft Quebec for the world’s first hands-on of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. The company’s series of historical action games is back after a two-year break, and this time it takes us to feudal Japan. This has been the most requested setting by fans, according to creative director Jonathan Dumont, but ironically some of those purported fans have turned on Ubisoft over the course of this game’s development….

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

Pixel Scroll 12/27/24 Introducing The Miskatonic Comma, For Lists Whose Items May Not Be Written

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) SENDING A MESSAGE: OF COURSE IT’S WORTH COLLECTING. The New York Times looks into “The Hottest Trend in Publishing: Books You Can Judge by Their Cover” (link bypasses Times paywall).

Last year, a romance publisher took an expensive gamble on the latest novel by the best-selling author Rebecca Yarros.

To help the novel, “Fourth Wing,” stand out in the crowded fantasy-romance genre, the publisher, Entangled, invested in a limited deluxe edition with a bold metallic cover and black sprayed edges featuring dragons.

It worked: All 115,000 copies of the deluxe edition sold out almost everywhere within a week.

“My only regret is that I printed too few,” said Liz Pelletier, Entangled’s publisher.

When the next novel in the series, “Iron Flame,” came out, Entangled was prepared, and printed a million copies of the deluxe edition. Once again, they quickly sold out.

For the third book in the series, “Onyx Storm,” which comes out in January, Entangled is printing two million copies of the deluxe edition, which has stenciled artwork and black and silver edges adorned with flying gold and black dragons, along with a smaller print run of 500,000 standard copies. More than a million “Onyx Storm” deluxe editions have already sold….

(2) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Jacob Weisman and Ben Berman Ghan on Wednesday, January 8, 2025. Starts 7:00 p.m. Eastern. KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

Jacob Weisman

Jacob Weisman is the publisher at Tachyon Publications, which he founded in 1995. He is a World Fantasy Award winner for the anthology The New Voices of Fantasy, which he co-edited with Peter S. Beagle. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Realms of Fantasy, The Louisville Courier-Journal, The Seattle Weekly, and The Cooper Point Journal. Weisman’s first novel, Egyptian Motherlode co-authored with David Sandner, was recently published by Fairwood Press. He lives in San Francisco, CA.

Ben Berman Ghan

Ben Berman Ghan is a PhD Candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Calgary. His debut collection of fiction, What We See in the Smoke, was published in 2019, his novella Visitation Seeds was published in 2020, and his novel The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits was published with Buckrider Books in 2024. His prose, poetry, and essays have been published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, Filling Station Magazine, The Blasted Tree Publishing Co., Pinhole Poetry, and The Ancillary Review of Books.

(3) MEDICAL UPDATE. Barry Longyear told Facebook readers today what he’s trying to accomplish despite debilitating cancer.

A little update is in order. It is cancer, It is gobbling up my energy before I can log it in, pain too. I haven’t done any writing since September 10th when this nightmare began, they are dangling chemo and radiation in my future, apparently I am too frail to withstand the preferred operation. So, as always, The future is a mystery. I wish I had enough energy to tell you about all of the fine and quite inspiring men and women I’ve met along the way, but suffice it to say that they are there. The ticket to their company is to reach out. My most recent hospital stay was in a rehab/nursing home packed with patients with the most heartbreaking handicaps one can imagine. And they laugh and joke and point out I am still on this side of the grass. We’ll see what I can get done on the three books I want to get done, The Moman Omniquel, Rope Tricks (the concluding Joe Torio Mystery), and I am going to try my hand at an autobiography: The Superfluous Earth Man or I was an Extra Terrestrial. If I can get all that done before Uncle Reaper comes to collect. Perhaps I can wade through your comments, friend requests, and such. In any event, Disney is moving forward with The Enemy Papers, I have talked with the fellow in charge, and I have high hopes “Enemy Mine” will come out better than the previous version. HAPPY HOLIDAYS, friends, and remember. If the planet Earth didn’t suck we’d all fall off.

(4) DECK THE HALLS OF THE TARDIS. Camestros Felapton assays the Doctor Who Christmas special: “Doctor Who: Joy to the World”.

It is Doctor Who Christmas Special time and if this time of year is about indulging to excess in sugar and sentimentality Russell T. Davies and Stephen Moffat are up for that.

Fluffy, silly, and a remix of some familiar Moffat themes (The Doctor forced to live a more mundane existance for a period, time paradoxes and uploaded minds as an after life) the plot also hits you with some emotional gut punches….

(5) ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWERS. Tom Nichols remembers “Star Trek’s Cold War” in The Atlantic (behind a paywall)

…But to appreciate the Cold War setting of Star Trek, you need only to understand that the Earth-led United Federation of Planets (a free and democratic association committed to equality among all beings) was NATO. Captain James T. Kirk—born and raised in Iowa, according to the show—commanded its finest flagship, the USS Enterprise. The bad guys, standing in for the Soviet Union, were the Klingons, whose empire was a brutal and aggressive dictatorship.

Two Cold War themes run through Star Trek: the risks of great-power confrontation, and the danger of ultimate annihilation. In “The Omega Glory,” a mediocre episode that Roddenberry pushed to have produced, the Enterprise finds an underdeveloped planet where Asian-looking “Kohms” oppress the white “Yangs.” Turns out it’s a planet that developed just like Earth in every way—there is some sci-fi hocus-pocus to explain how planets sometimes do this—including an America and a Red China (Kohms and Yangs, Communists and Yankees, get it?), and then wiped itself out with biological warfare.

Other episodes were a bit more sophisticated. In “The Return of the Archons,” Kirk encounters a society that is run like a beehive by a single leader named Landru, who demands that all citizens be “of the body.” (Spoiler: He’s a computer. Out-of-control computers were another common theme.) As Cushman notes, the crushing of the individual for the good of the collective was an intentional statement about life under communism.

Likewise, just as the U.S. and the Soviet Union competed against each other in the developing world of the 20th century, the Klingons and the Federation were often at odds with each other over developing planets in the future….

(6) QUITE MAGICAL. Séamas O’Reilly at Medium helps a writer with a pair of new books: “It’s Always A Rabbit Out Of A Hat: On magick, fantasy and creativity, with Alan Moore”. Take your pick of something Moore researched, or something he made up.

You have two books about magic out in one month, is this mere scheduling kismet or part of some great working you’ve had in plan for decades?

I never have great workings planned even days in advance. So, no this is purely just the way things have worked out. I started working on the Moon & Serpent Bumper Book of Magic fifteen years ago, around 2010 or so, back then we were expecting it to be out in a couple of years. Then the project expanded and Steve passed away, and we realised that although we’d got all the writing done for it we hadn’t got any of the art commissioned. So that’s what the last few years have been about, getting it all drawn.

As for The Great When, it wasn’t deliberate so much as a coincidence of scheduling but, yes, it’s two books about magic that even have some crossover. Well, the bumper book is about magic, whereas The Great When has got some magicians in it, but it isn’t really anything that is traditional magic — I was prepared to just make most of it up. The Bumper Book is an encyclopaedic history of magic and all sorts of other things as well, but we’ve got characters like Austin Osman Spare, Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune in both.

So, there’s a tiny bit of overlap, but the intents of both books are different. One is to explain magic as it is and as it has been, and the other is an attempt to try and create something new in fantasy, without relying upon all the magical tropes you get reiterated so often in fantasy novels.

(7) DONALD BITZER (1934-2024). The New York Times reports (in a tribute behind its paywall): “Donald Bitzer, an electrical engineer whose groundbreaking computer system PLATO, developed in the 1960s and ’70s at the University of Illinois, was a telegram from the digital future that combined instant messaging, email, chat rooms and gaming on flat-screen plasma displays, died on Dec. 10…”

…Dr. Bitzer, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois, began developing PLATO in 1960 as a tool for educators to create interactive, individualized coursework. It swiftly evolved into “a culture, both physical and online,” Mr. Dear wrote, “with its own jargon, customs and idioms.”

PLATO, an acronym for Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, initially ran on television-like screens connected to the university’s ILLIAC I computer, a five-ton machine powered by 2,800 vacuum tubes.

To increase interactivity, in 1964 Dr. Bitzer, along with a fellow professor, H. Gene Slottow, and a graduate student, Robert Willson, invented a plasma display illuminated by gas-infused pixels — the same technology that would later power flat-screen televisions.

Thousands of PLATO terminals, radiant with bright orange text and graphics, were installed around the University of Illinois campus and eventually at other universities and high schools throughout the country.

Connected via phone lines, the touch-screen terminals were a kind of first draft of social networking that presaged the way digital devices now dominate daily life. Students learned math, Spanish and other subjects on them during the day, and at night they played games against one another, communicated in chat rooms and became pen pals.

“It was kind of crazy,” Ray Ozzie, a former student of Dr. Bitzer’s who later became Microsoft’s chief technical officer, said in an interview. “It was a little peek into what the internet would later become, and it was all fostered by Don’s vision, by him creating an environment for innovation.”

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

December 27, 2000 – Gosford Park

Twenty-four years ago this weekend, Gosford Park premiered. It was directed by Robert Altman from the script by Julian Fellowes, who went on to be the driving force behind the Downton Abbey series. It came together when Director Balaban suggested an Agatha Christie-style whodunit to Altman and introduced him to Julian Fellowes, with whom Balaban had been working on a different project.

It is a country manor house mystery in the style of Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, which I just reviewed, and in keeping with that kind of mystery had a very large ensemble cast: Eileen Atkins, Bob Balaban, Alan Bates, Charles Dance, Stephen Fry, Michael Gambon, Richard E. Grant, Derek Jacobi, Kelly Macdonald, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Northam, Clive Owen, Ryan Phillippe, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Emily Watson.

I’ll just single out Stephen Fry as Inspector Thompson as the cast is far too large to detail here. He seems to really believe he has something in common with the McCordles and their guests. However, Sylvia, one of the family, doesn’t even bother to learn his name, and makes it very clear through not so subtle airs that he’s working class and beneath all of them.

It was filmed mostly on location using three different manor houses, though sound stages were built to film the scenes of the manor’s downstairs area. Apparently it was also filmed in three different countries — the United Kingdom, the United States and Italy with production costs of nearly twenty million in total. It did very well at the box office with it bringing in nearly ninety million. It was Altman’s second most successful film after M*A*S*H.

Critics truly loved it with Roger Ebert wringing for the Chicago Sun-Times said it was “such a joyous and audacious achievement it deserves comparison with his very best movies.” And Nell Murray at the Verge summed it up perfectly noting that “For a film about homicide and class conflict, Gosford Park is surprisingly congenial.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it an excellent rating of seventy-eight percent.

I’ve watched it more than a few times and consider it to be quite excellent. That reminds me that I should write up Knives Out.

(9) NEXT DOOR AT MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Rod Serling Statue (Update)

And perhaps across his mind there will flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. — ending words of “Walking Distance”

“Not all statues, no matter how much they deserve to exist, actually exist. At least yet. Such it is with this for the creator of the Twilight Zone series, Rod Serling.” That’s what I knew when I wrote several years ago. Now has transited from the Twilight Zone to this reality.

In doing this extended look at the statues of fantastic creatures, mythic beings and sometimes their creators, I continually come across quite fascinating stories. Such it is with this story. And this one was no exception.

In the “Walking Distance” episode of The Twilight Zone, a middle-aged advertising executive travels back in time to his childhood, arriving just a few miles away from his native town. That episode was based on Binghamton, New York, the hometown of Serling as he graduated from Binghamton Central High School in 1943.

I had come upon news stories that the town in conjunction with the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation and The State of New York had decided Serling should be honored by his hometown.

The Serling Memorial Foundation said it will use the grant and additional fundraising to place the Serling statue in Recreation Park next year. Note that this is the second fundraising effort as the first, a Kickstarter for $90,000, failed.

I couldn’t find any update on the actual production of this statue, so I wouldn’t swear than it was going to happen in the time frame stated. The website for the Serling Memorial Foundation was at that point, to put delicately, a bloody mess and said nothing about that project at all. Now they have a page showing the dedication of the statue with video and quite a bit of detail about the project.

So go here for all the details on this extraordinary project.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Half Full asks the after holidays question.
Pearls Before Swine lists the steps in a professional writing career.
Reality Check shows no one is immune to the effects of holiday feasting.
Wizard of Id is not sincere about customer support.

(11) SECOND IN A SERIES. Paul Weimer is back at Nerds of a Feather with “Book Review: The Unkillable Princess by Taran Hunt”.

…This book is significantly shorter than its predecessor, and feels less of a “pressure cooker” than the first novel, showing that even by keeping the chassis of the first book, Hunt wants to and does experiment with some new things. Sean proves to be well connected, and those connections and his social skills give him some new options and ideas that were not in the first book. Now, given that Sean is dealing with his thought-to-be-dead sister, and some of the fallout from the first book, this gives the book a much more social feel to the conflicts in the narrative than the first. Sure, there are plenty of action sequences like the first novel, although our field of play is generally set in locations within a city, and there are no monsters this time other than the human ones (and yes, some of those are bad enough). So Sean really shines in this book in a way he didn’t in the first book….

(12) DIRECTOR’S BITE. [Item by Steven French.] Robert Eggers on his version of Nosferatu: “’I had to make the vampire as scary as possible’: Nosferatu’s Robert Eggers on how folklore fuelled his film”.

…By the time I was nine I already loved vampires. I had seen the Lugosi film often and had been Dracula for Halloween the year before; there’s a photo of me with a painted widow’s peak and plastic fangs too big for my mouth. I was also nine when I first saw Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). This was a truly frightening vampire makeup design. The nails, the hunch, the shape of the pointed skull. As a child, it felt as if Max Schreck commanded the screen like a real vampire. The degraded quality of the 16mm VHS transfer made the film seem as if it was disinterred from its grave, unearthed from the past, adding to its authenticity. And this adaptation stripped Stoker’s story of its over-stuffed Victoriana and distilled it to its essence: that simple enigmatic fairytale.

About 10 years ago I embarked on writing the screenplay for my own adaptation of Nosferatu. In taking on the most influential horror film, based on the most influential horror novel, I felt a responsibility to make the vampire as scary as possible. This could not be a sparkling vampire….

(13) UNSUSPECTED REMAKE. Arturo Serrano expounds “On the gentle fantasy of Linoleum” at Nerds of a Feather.

…Enter the 2022 movie Linoleum. It was never advertised as a remake, but it so cleverly deconstructs the plot of American Beauty that it might as well have openly acknowledged the extent of its debt. Similarly set in the late 1990s, it proposes a more empathetic alternative to the earlier movie’s cynicism. And from this point on I’m going to need to spoil the secrets of Linoleum….

(14) A LACK OF CREDENTIALS. “Japan’s ‘cat island’ falls victim to demographic crisis” – the Guardian explains the problem.

The reason for Aoshima’s nickname was clear before we had set foot on the island. As our tiny vessel slowed to a halt and its handful of passengers prepared to disembark, the quayside was alive with orangey-white blurs – a whiskered welcome party that forms as soon as its members hear the hum of an approaching motor.

The only human here to greet us is Naoko Kamimoto, appropriately dressed in a pinafore with feline designs, who secures the boat with a rope as half a dozen cats swirl around her feet.

A 35-minute ferry ride off the coast of Ehime prefecture in Shikoku – the smallest of Japan’s four main islands – Aoshima is the best-known of the country’s 11 “cat islands”. Despite the absence of a single shop, restaurant or guesthouse, this speck in the Seto Inland Sea has become a must-see for visitors intrigued by a remote community where cats easily outnumber humans.

But Aoshima’s days as a feline-fixated tourist destination are numbered. A decade ago there were about 200 feral cats here – the descendants of animals enlisted by fishers to destroy rodents who were gnawing through the nets they used to catch huge quantities of sardines.

Kamimoto, who moved to the island after she married Hidenori, a local man, believes the number is now closer to 80. They are all aged over seven, and a third are battling illnesses, including blindness and respiratory diseases, caused by decades of inbreeding….

… The decline in the cat population is about more than the passage of time, however. Aoshima is the victim of a demographic crisis that is afflicting thousands of rural and island communities across Japan. Almost 900 people lived here just after the second world war, but the number had dropped to 80 around a decade ago, as ageing fishers and their spouses moved to the mainland, leaving their cats behind. By 2017, there were just 13 residents. Today, four are left: Naoko and Hidenori, and another couple who prefer to keep out of the spotlight….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Joel Zakem, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 7/8/24 Listen, Billy Pixel’s Come UnScrolled In File

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) MAAS AND YARROS DOMINATE THE MARKET. “With Fantasy on Fire, Print Book Sales Are Catching Up to 2023” reports Publishers Weekly.

…Results for the first half of 2024 leave no question about what is driving sales: adult fantasy sales skyrocketed 85.2% over the first six months of 2023 thanks to a huge increase in interest in romantasy. Combined with increases of about 20% each in the science fiction and suspense/thriller areas, unit sales of adult fiction rose 6.3% in the first half of 2024. Sales of graphic novels continued to recede from record highs in 2022, falling 16.1% in this year’s first six months.

Books by Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros are leading the fantasy charge. Yarros’s Iron Flame and Fourth Wing combined to sell about 1.1 million copies, while Maas had seven books selling in big numbers, led by her latest, A Court of Thorns and Roses, which sold more than 740,000 copies. Her seven current bestsellers combined sold more than three million copies…

(2) THE EXTRA FILES. [Item by Steven French.] David Duchovny answers some readers’ questions in the Guardian: “David Duchovny: ‘I’m not just throwing on a kilt willy-nilly’”

Do you believe? TurangaLeela2

The proposition that Earth is the only planet in the universe that has managed to sustain intelligent life seems an impossibility. On the other hand, do I believe we’ve been contacted or are in contact with aliens? I don’t believe that, no. How often do I get asked if they are going to reboot The X-Files? I mean, that’s the default question people like to ask. If I was going to do it, I’d let y’all know. You wouldn’t have to ask me. I wouldn’t keep it a secret. Nowadays, I think people believe in conspiracies we never would have aired because they were just too stupid.

(3) WHAT COMES OVER THE DIGITAL TRANSOM. Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas belts out “The Ballad of the Slush Reader: What I’ve Learned (And What I Want to Know) about Reading Slush” at the SFWA Blog.

… I’m not the self-appointed slush reader representative of the short fiction genre publications, nor do I pretend to be one. I write these lines, first and foremost, from my own brief but fulfilling experience as a slush reader for Clarkesworld Magazine, as well as from what I’ve gathered in conversations with friends, who are also part of editorial teams. This essay is unapologetically, a personal generalization that hopes to start a discussion somewhere, sometime….

Communication is a two-way affair. Editors should be clear about the specific kind of commitment expected from slush readers: amount of stories read, level of detail in recommendations’ comments, etc. It is expected from them to be approachable and open to answering our questions on submission guidelines, as well as offering guidance on handling problematic stories, protecting author privacy, and giving advice on trusting our editorial instincts. First readers should write concise, unambiguous notes for the submissions we read and share any concerns we may have about them. We shouldn’t ghost our editors or make unilateral decisions based on our interpretation of the magazine’s guidelines if something is not clear in them. We’re members of a team, after all.

As the first ones to interact with a submission, we must treat the authors’ privacy with respect. A little decency goes a long way. Markets have the responsibility to delineate confidentiality specifications for the team and make sure authors know they exist. I believe that having better practices during recruitment, selection, and training can help identify and avoid the few people who might try to misuse the authors’ private information before they can even have access to it.

We’re supposed to read slush to support and advocate for other people’s work, but that doesn’t mean that we have power over them or that they owe us anything. We shouldn’t even think about rejecting a story on the basis of an author we don’t like, or recommend our friend’s work just because we know each other. We’re professionals. We do this for the stories, for the end readers. At Clarkesworld, for example, I don’t make final decisions but suggestions that have to be reviewed and approved by a senior member of staff.

(4) WILL MERGER AFFECT THE FEDERATION? “Paramount Global Officially Agrees To Skydance Merger, With Potential Big Impact On Star Trek’s Future” – and TrekMovie.com tries to foresee what that impact might be.

Today, Paramount Global announced that Shari Redstone’s National Amusements (which owns a controlling share of Paramount) will be sold to David Ellison’s Skydance Media and RedBird Capital for $2.4 billion, leading to a $4.5 billion merger of Paramount Global with Skydance. The deal will offer voting and non-voting shareholders a premium on their stock as well as inject billions into “New Paramount” coffers to help pay off debt. A new leadership team has been announced, with Skydance’s David Ellison to be Chairman and Chief Executive Officer with RedBird exec (and former NBCUniversal chief) Jeff Shell named as president….

…Since the 1960s when Desilu was purchased by Paramount, the Star Trek franchise has seen its way through multiple corporate changes. It is too early to know what this announcement means for the Star Trek franchise, but this deal was seen as one of the better potential outcomes. Unlike other potential bidders, Skydance is committed to keeping Paramount relatively intact, avoiding any potential division of the Star Trek rights that occurred during the Viacom/CBS corporate split years before they were remerged in 2019. The most positive indication for Star Trek is that Skydance previously partnered with Paramount on the production of the last two Trek feature films, and they were committed to backing the next movie currently in development. Skydance CEO David Ellison, who will run the new Paramount, was credited as an executive producer for both Into Darkness and Beyond. These movies were mentioned by Ellison in a call with investors this morning….

…During today’s call, incoming Paramount president Jeff Shell talked about seeing Paramount+ as part of an “ultimate bundle.” He also indicated they will be looking at more licensing deals and “windowing” strategies for Paramount-owned content, which could lead to Star Trek streaming originals showing up beyond Paramount+. Today’s investor presentation noted Star Trek as one of the key franchises for the new Paramount, including a plan to “reevaluate” franchises to fuel a “powerful and repeatable IP ecosystem.” Today Ellison also talked about unifying franchises across TV, film and interactive media, which could potentially lead to a more comprehensive Star Trek Universe….

(5) HE MADE IT SO. “Patrick Stewart Is Ready To Engage” at the Washington Free Beacon.

…Stewart represents a fascinating mix of working-class ethics, having grown up poor but hard-working, and upper-class aesthetics, which he refined first in amateur plays and then in acting schools. This occasionally led him to mildly awkward encounters. My favorite story in his memoir comes on the set of Dune, where Stewart (who was playing warrior-poet Gurney Halleck) was introduced to the musician Sting.

“Do you … play in a group?” Stewart asked.

“Yes, with The Police,” Sting replied.

“I broke into a broad grin,” Stewart writes. “‘You play in a police band?’ I said. ‘Wow! How marvelous!’ I have never fully recovered from the sheer embarrassment I suffered when word got out on the set about my exchange with one of the world’s biggest rock stars.”…

(6) LANTHIMOS TURNS TO SFF. According to The Mary Sue, “Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s Next Is a Sci-Fi Comedy”. Lanthimos’ 2023 picture Poor Things got a lot of awards attention this year.

… The movie, titled Bugonia, is set for a November 7, 2025, release date in the US. Jesse Plemons, who featured in Lanthimos’ recent release Kinds of Kindness, has been announced as the co-lead alongside Stone….

…A fifth collaboration between Stone and Lanthimos, the film is an adaptation of the 2003 South Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet!, directed by Jang Joon-hwan and starring Shin Ha-kyun and Yun-shik Baek. The plot follows two conspiracy-minded men who kidnap the powerful CEO of a major corporation, assured that she is an extraterrestrial being determined to end Earth’s existence. It remains to be seen whether Lanthimos’ rendition will be similar to the original or whether he tweaks the story to introduce some of his own elements….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 8, 1951 — Anjelica Huston, 73. The first role that I clearly remember Anjelica Huston from was as Mortica Addams in The Addams Family thirty-three years ago. She was every bit was ghoulishly fascinating as was Raul Julia as Gomez Addams. She inhabited that role as if she’d been born to play it. A perfect couple they were.

It’s worth noting that she always had a ghostly glow around the eyes, which became most noticeable when she was standing or lying in dim light. Bela Lugosi in 1931’s Dracula had the same effect. That meant all were her scenes were filmed with a light in her face.

So being Morticia required Huston to wear a truly tight dress on top of an already tight corset to give her the character’s distinctive, slim silhouette. (Director Barry Sonnenfeld aimed for a cartoon-like figure, so hence that metal corset which restricted her movements and caused quite severe headaches. She reported that she gleefully burned all of the dresses when shooting finished.)

In addition, she had to wear custom makeup to lighten her skin to create the look of Morticia, have her hair painfully scraped so that she could wear a wig and then on top of all this, had to wear regular makeup, fake nails and eyelash extensions to complete the look.

Despite all of this I think that, Huston’s portrayal of Morticia captured both warmth and macabre humor. She was a perfect mother to two rather unusual children, and a loving wife to Raul.

She’d reprise her role in Addams Family Values. The first film was nominated for a Hugo at MagiCon, the second at ConAdian.

Her first genre role, and yes I’ve seen it but I’ve honestly long since forgotten everything about it, was in Ice Pirates as Maida, one of the pirates. I really need to show you what she was outfitted there as it is, errrr, well, I think kind of silly.

So what else did Angelica appear in? Good question. She would appear in The Witches based off of the Roald Dahl work as the Grand High Witch. Her makeup here is a work of art so here it is.

Yes, I know the film has fallen into let us say disrepute among certain groups, but I still like it.

I’m not seeing anything else this genre but she did one interesting animated work, one of which I wish to point out which is then let me spell this correctly in English A Cat in Paris. In French it sounds oh so much better as Une vie de chat. A cat’s life. Black cat with red stripes leads a double life. During the night, he accompanies a car burglar named Nico (who calls him Mr. Cat), who performs heists to steal jewels. She voices the English version of Claudine.

She’s in John Wick, Chapter 3, Parabellum as The Director about which the John Wick wiki helpfully says “The Director is a crime lord and leader of the New York branch of the Ruska Roma. She is also the adoptive mother of John Wick and a mentor at the Tarkovsky Theater.”

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Pearls Before Swine finds a problem next door.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal anticipates the next religion.
Rubes learns what monsters want.
Heart of the City has a crossover, or at least passing-through.

(9) RINGS OF POWER WILL BIND COMIC-CON. “‘Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Season 2 To Conquer San Diego Comic-Con” says Deadline.

This year at SDCC, ahead of the series’ Season 2 premiere on August 29, the streamer will host an exclusive press and influencer reception by invitation only on Thursday, July 25, in San Diego. It will be followed by The Rings of Power panel in Hall H on Friday from 11:05 a.m.-12:15 p.m. featuring the series’ showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay as well as cast giving fans a inside look at Season 2 in Middle-earth.

Afterward, at 1:45 p.m. at Venue 808 in San Diego, a fan meet-and-greet with cast will be held in conjunction with the official Lord of the Rings fan site TORn (TheOneRing.net). On display will be a curated collection of Season 2’s costumes and props….

(10) MAD, YOU KNOW. “Americana meets meshuggeneh at a museum exhibit about MAD magazine” – Jewish Telegraphic Agency takes you there.

There’s a delightful “what if” moment at the start of “What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine,” a new exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum here.

In 1964, MAD commissioned Rockwell himself to paint a portrait of Alfred E. Neuman, the humor magazine’s gap-toothed mascot, as he might have looked in real life. Correspondence featured in the exhibit suggests that Rockwell — grand master of gentle, folksy, even cornball Americana — was close to signing on with what MAD called its “usual gang of idiots”: goofball masters of sophomoric, anti-establishment satire.

In the end, Rockwell turned down the offer. “I think I better back out of this one,” he wrote. “After talking with you, and my wife who has a lot more sense than I have, I feel that making a more realistic definitive portrait just wouldn’t do. I hate to be a quitter, but I’m afraid we would all get in a mess.”

We didn’t lose just a marriage of comic sensibilities, but of ethnic ones: the “goyish” and the Jewish, mid-20th century style. Rockwell’s world is full of farmers and fishermen, country folk and small-town shopkeepers. MAD seemed to have been born on the Lower East Side, come of age in the Bronx, and found its voice somewhere between Brooklyn and Broadway….

(11) WORLDS WITHIN MURPHY’S LAW. Feeling mellow? Let’s fix that. The Mary Sue presents “The 10 Best Dystopian Novels, Ranked”.

…Authors have dreamed about all the countless ways the future can go wrong and will go wrong, so much so that a new genre was born from the collective unease: dystopian fiction. These novels are the worst—meaning they’re the best in their field…

This one’s new to me:

6. The Giver

The Giver [by Lois Lowry] may seem like a utopia on the surface, but it’s a dystopia like all the other cities on this list. Set in a peaceful society where people’s bad memories of the past are wiped away, only one person known as the Receiver of Memory is privy to the secrets of the human race. In order to maintain peace, the elders of this society eliminate the free will of everyone else. A good idea on paper? Not even in the pages of this book. You’ll soon find out why.

(12) SHIFTING GEARS. Ever heard that phrase, “Stop the Earth, I want to get off!”? Well, who knew — “Earth’s core has slowed so much it’s moving backward, scientists confirm. Here’s what it could mean” at WSVN.

Deep inside Earth is a solid metal ball that rotates independently of our spinning planet, like a top whirling around inside a bigger top, shrouded in mystery.

This inner core has intrigued researchers since its discovery by Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann in 1936, and how it moves — its rotation speed and direction — has been at the center of a decades-long debate. A growing body of evidence suggests the core’s spin has changed dramatically in recent years, but scientists have remained divided over what exactly is happening — and what it means.

… One promising model proposed in 2023 described an inner core that in the past had spun faster than Earth itself, but was now spinning slower. For a while, the scientists reported, the core’s rotation matched Earth’s spin. Then it slowed even more, until the core was moving backward relative to the fluid layers around it.

At the time, some experts cautioned that more data was needed to bolster this conclusion, and now another team of scientists has delivered compelling new evidence for this hypothesis about the inner core’s rotation rate. Research published June 12 in the journal Nature not only confirms the core slowdown, it supports the 2023 proposal that this core deceleration is part of a decades-long pattern of slowing down and speeding up…

(13) RASMUSSEN Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] An interview with astrophysicist Seven Rasmussen who has published in Clarkesworld under the pen name C.M. Fields: “’All things that wander in the heavens’: how I swapped my ivory tower for the world of science fiction” in Nature.

Through golden hive minds, dreaming androids and interstellar alien worlds, astrobiologist and speculative science-fiction author Seven Rasmussen explores humanity within the unfamiliar and strange. Rasmussen writes short stories that often feature space and the distant future — topics that her work as an astrobiologist at Tacoma Community College in Washington often touches on. Her debut non-fiction book, Life in Seven Numbers: The Drake Equation Revealed, is due to be published in June 2025. The book explores the seven variables of the Drake Equation, which estimates the number of intelligent, communicating civilizations in our galaxy.

Rasmussen spoke to Nature about writing science fiction as a scientist, her experience as a community-college professor and the importance of storytelling in science…

(14) WITCH WAY IS UP. “Agatha All Along Trailer: Kathryn Hahn Returns as WandaVision Witch” – The Hollywood Reporter sets the scene.

…A spinoff series from Disney+’s 2021 show WandaVision, Agatha All Along hails from creator Jac Schaeffer and premieres on the streaming service Sept. 18 with the first two episodes….

…Hahn reprises her WandaVision role as Agatha, who finds herself without her powers after a teen breaks her from a spell and urges her to attempt a dangerous gauntlet of trials known as Witches’ Road.

“I miss the glory days,” Hahn says in the trailer. “She took every bit of power I had, and I can be that witch again.”

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Alan Becker, creator of 2023’s “Animation vs Math”, which starts with simple arithmetical concepts and quickly devolves into an all-out battle with lasers and mecha, has done it again. “Animation vs Geometry” begins with the concept of the line segment and somehow becomes a thrilling chase scene with a giant monster from beyond reality.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/14/24 I Am The Go-Captain Of The Pixelfore

Posted on March 14, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) LIBBY BOOK AWARDS. Congratulations to Martha Wells and Rebecca Yarros, two of the 17 winners of the inaugural Libby Book Awards, chosen by a panel of 1700 librarians worldwide.

Fiction: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
Nonfiction: The Wager, by David Grann
Young Adult: Divine Rivals, by Rebecca Ross
Audiobook: I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai
Debut Author: The House in the Pines, by Ana Reyes
Diverse Author: Camp Zero, by Michelle Min Sterling
Comic Graphic Novel: The Talk, by Darrin Bell
Memoir & Autobiography: Pageboy, by Elliot Page
Cookbook: Start Here, by Sohla El-Waylly
Mystery: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Thriller: Bright Young Women, by Jessica Knoll
Romance: Georgie, All Along, by Kate Clayborn
Fantasy: Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros
Romantasy: Iron Flame, by Rebecca Yarros
Science Fiction: System Collapse, by Martha Wells
Historical Fiction: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward
Book Club Pick: Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang

(2) BOOK BANS SURGED IN 2023. “American Library Association reports record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023” at ALA.org.

Stack of books background. many books piles

The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA). The new numbers released today show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles* in schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022, when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship.

ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023. Four key trends emerged from the data gathered from 2023 censorship reports:

Pressure groups in 2023 focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92 percent over the previous year; school libraries saw an 11 percent increase.
Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this surge.
Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of those targeted in censorship attempts.
There were attempts to censor more than 100 titles in each of these 17 states: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

“The reports from librarians and educators in the field make it clear that the organized campaigns to ban books aren’t over, and that we must all stand together to preserve our right to choose what we read,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Each demand to ban a book is a demand to deny each person’s constitutionally protected right to choose and read books that raise important issues and lift up the voices of those who are often silenced. By joining initiatives like Unite Against Book Bans and other organizations that support libraries and schools, we can end this attack on essential community institutions and our civil liberties.”…

(3) PNH’S NEW POST AT TPG. “Patrick Nielsen Hayden to Become Editor-at-Large for TPG” reports Publishers Weekly.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has assumed the title of editor-at-large for the Tor Publishing Group. Hayden has been with TPG for 35 years and most recently served as v-p, associate publisher, and editor-in-chief.

During his tenure, he has published the debut novels of authors such as Charlie Jane Anders, Corey Doctorow, John Scalzi, and Jo Walton, and has received three Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy Award for his editorial work. In 2020, he founded our Tor Essentials imprint, which highlights a new generation of SFF classics.

As editor-at-large, he will continue to edit such authors as Scalzi, Doctorow, and Walton, and will continue to select and oversee the Tor Essentials.

In announcing Hayden’s new role, TPG president and publisher Devi Pillai added that the company “will not be replacing Patrick in his previous position—he is one of a kind.”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden in 2013. Photo by Scott Edelman.

(4) WICKED WORLD’S FAIR FOLLOWUP. “Eventbrite Refutes Mach’s Claims About WWF Payouts, Hints at Possible ‘Actions’” at The Steampunk Explorer. The linked post adds a great deal more coverage after this introductory item:

Amid the fallout from the Wicked World’s Fair (WWF), show organizer Jeff Mach has repeatedly blamed Eventbrite, the online ticketing and event management platform, for his inability to cover the event’s expenses. But in a statement provided Wednesday to The Steampunk Explorer, Eventbrite refuted key aspects of his claims.

WWF was held Feb. 23-25 at the SureStay Plus hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Mach used Eventbrite to manage ticket sales, as well as sales of vendor spaces. During the event, as a sound crew was awaiting payment and vendors were requesting refunds, he told them that Eventbrite had frozen his account, preventing use of the platform’s payout features.

In the weeks that followed, Mach continued to blame Eventbrite for payment issues at WWF. “I had repeated assurances from Eventbrite that the money would be forthcoming,” he remarked in one statement to The Steampunk Explorer. “Why Eventbrite had the account locked down, but refused to tell us, I don’t know.”

This was the company’s response on Wednesday: “Eventbrite offers, but does not guarantee, multiple ways to request funds ahead of the event date. Due to an error on the organizer’s end, we can confirm that a few of these advance payouts were delayed. This was quickly remedied, and the organizer received much of his payout ahead of the event and has now been paid out in full.”…

(5) I NEVER WANTED TO GO DOWN THE STONEY END. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Last month, Doug Muir did a piece about the impending death of Voyager 1, originally launched in 1977. “Death, Lonely Death” at Crooked Timber.

…Voyager has grown old. It was never designed for this! Its original mission was supposed to last a bit over three years. Voyager has turned out to be much tougher than anyone ever imagined, but time gets us all. Its power source is a generator full of radioactive isotopes, and those are gradually decaying into inert lead. Year by year, the energy declines, the power levels relentlessly fall. Year by year, NASA has been switching off Voyager’s instruments to conserve that dwindling flicker. They turned off its internal heater a few years ago, and they thought that might be the end. But those 1970s engineers built to last, and the circuitry and the valves kept working even as the temperature dropped down, down, colder than dry ice, colder than liquid nitrogen, falling towards absolute zero.

(Voyager stored its internal data on a digital tape recorder. Yes, a tape recorder, storing information on magnetic tape. It wasn’t designed to function at a hundred degrees below zero. It wasn’t designed to work for decades, winding and rewinding, endlessly re-writing data. But it did.)…

… We thought we knew how Voyager would end. The power would gradually, inevitably, run down. The instruments would shut off, one by one. The signal would get fainter. Eventually either the last instrument would fail for lack of power, or the signal would be lost.

We didn’t expect that it would go mad.

In December 2023, Voyager started sending back gibberish instead of data. A software glitch, though perhaps caused by an underlying hardware problem; a cosmic ray strike, or a side effect of the low temperatures, or just aging equipment randomly causing some bits to flip.

The problem was, the gibberish was coming from the flight direction software — something like an operating system. And no copy of that operating system remained in existence on Earth….

But all is not lost. Well, probably. But not necessarily. At the link you can read the rest of the story about the people trying to put the smoke back in the system from fifteen billion kilometers away.

(6) WEIMER GUESTS ON WORLDBUILDING FOR MASOCHISTS. Paul Weimer joins hosts Marshall Ryan Maresca, Cass Morris, and Natania Barron for episode 124 of the Worldbuilding for Masochists podcast, “Worldbuilding in Review”.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to work with worldbuilding as writers — but how does a reviewer approach the topic when they’re reading works of sci-fi and fantasy? Guest Paul Weimer joins us to share his insights as a prolific consumer and critiquer of speculative fiction! Paul talks about the details that he pays attention to, the things he looks for, and the things that draw his attention, as well as discussing the purpose of reviews and who they’re for (hint: it’s not the authors!).

In this episode, we spin things around to look at how we approach worldbuilding and narrative construction as readers — since we are, of course, readers as well as writers! We explore of aspects of how a writer can set and, hopefully, meet expectations through worldbuilding — and where that can sometimes become challenging as a series goes on. What makes a world exciting to enter in the first place? What grips a reader and keeps them with it? And how can you use worldbuilding to make your wizard chase sequence a more cohesive part of your world?

(7) ENTRIES SOUGHT FOR BALTICON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL. Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival has been revised and is looking for talented filmmakers. Full guidelines here: “Short Film Festival”. Entries must be submitted by April 10 2024.

In 2024, the Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival (BSSSFFF) will take place on Sunday evening at 7:00pm. We will thrill festival attendees with independently produced short films from around the region and across the globe. BSSSFFF features live action and animated films in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror from some of the best independent filmmakers this side of the Crab Nebula.

Awards will be given in both the Live Action and Animation category based upon audience preferences. Some of the history of this film festival can be found on the BSFS website.

(8) TRY SUNDAY MORNING TRANSPORT. Mary Robinette Kowal has posted a link valid for a 60-day free trial of Sunday Morning Transport.

If you're curious about The Sunday Morning Transport but haven't yet subscribed, I've graciously been given this code to share with you to try it free for 60 days. It's well worth the subscription for high-quality stories. https://t.co/3Q1NEtkFPM
— Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) March 14, 2024

(9) ONE SUPERHERO ACTOR CONS ANOTHER. “Simu Liu was scammed by a Hollywood Boulevard Spider-Man” at Entertainment Weekly.

Simu Liu is reflecting on an enemy he made during his first visit to Los Angeles: a not-so-friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

During an interview with Jesse Tyler Ferguson on Dinner’s On Me, the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings actor recalled an unfortunate encounter with a swindling web-slinger on Hollywood Boulevard. “I remember I was taking photos of the Chinese Theater and a Spider-Man came up to me and was like, ‘I’ll help you!’” the actor remembered.

Alas, Liu’s spider-sense didn’t alert him to the insidious plot that was about to unfold. “And then he took a bunch of photos of me, and then he took some selfies of himself, and then he was like, ‘That’ll be $20!’” the actor said. “And that was mortifying for me, because I didn’t have $20 to give him. Core memory, clearly.”

(10) INTELLECTUAL (?) PROPERTY. Jon Del Arroz tagged me on X.com about this. I clicked through and was fascinated to learn he has declared Sad Puppies is a movement “owned and led by JDA!”

OFFICIAL Sad Puppies merch is now live on the store! Show your allegiance to this great movement which is owned and led by JDA!

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 14, 1933 — Michael Caine, 91. On my list of favorite British performers of all time, Michael Caine is near the top of that list. Both his genre and non-genre performances are amazing. So let’s take a look at those performances.

Caine portrayed Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. He was quite stellar in this role. And he was in The Prestige, a truly great film, as John Cutter, in Inception as Stephen Miles, Professor John Brand in Interstellar and Sir Michael Crosby in Tenet.

Did you see him in as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol? If not, go see it now. He’s wonderful and The Muppet take on the Dickens story is, errr, well actually touching. Really it is.

Definitely not genre is The Man Who Would Be King, based off the Kipling story, which starred him with Sean Connery, Saeed Jaffrey and Christopher Plummer. The two primary characters were played by Sean Connery — Daniel Dravot — and Caine played the other, Peachy Carnehan. A truly fantastic film.

Michael Caine and Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King.

In the Jekyll & Hyde miniseries, he’s got the usual dual role of Dr Henry Jekyll / Mr Edward Hyde. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – in a Miniseries. He did win a Globe for Best Actor for playing Chief Insp. Frederick Abberline in the Jack Ripper miniseries airing the same time.

Nearly thirty years ago, he was Captain Nemo in a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea miniseries.

He’s in Austin Powers in Goldmember, third film in the franchise. He’s Nigel Powers, a British agent and Austin and Dr. Evil’s father. Can someone explain to me the appeal of these films?

In Children of Men, he plays Jasper Palmer, Theo’s dealer and friend, Theo being the primary character in this dystopian film.

He’s Chester King in Kingsman: The Secret Service. That’s off the Millarworld graphic novel of Kingsman: The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons.

I’m reasonably sure that’s all I need to mention about his career.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

Blondie anticipates tomorrow’s celebration of World Sleep Day.
Frazz figures out the anatomy involved in scientific advancement.
Does F Minus depict the dream of some File 770 commenters?
Non Sequitur imagines the earliest days of streaming.
Carpe Diem has a new origin story.

(13) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 105 of the Octothorpe podcast, John Coxon watches movies, Alison Scott walks on the Moon, and Liz Batty has special bonds. Listen here: “Scorching Hot Month-Old Takes”.

In this episode, we talk through your letters of comment with diversions into Zodiac podcasts, poetry collections, and Scientology. We discuss the BSFA Awards shortlist and return to the Hugo Awards for another round of head-scratching and bewilderment.

A famous photograph of Margaret Hamilton standing beside printed outputs of the code that took the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, overlaid with the words “Octothorpe 105” and “Liz has finished reading the latest Hugo Award exposés”.

(14) OUTSIDE THE BOX — AND INSIDE THE SHELVES. Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits can already be found in some bookstores, ahead of the official release date.

Can confirm. As far as I can tell at this point it's only the B&N Exclusive Edition that's popping up in their stores, the regular edition should be closer to the 26th. So the book is now out in the wild for folks interested i picking it up. https://t.co/HBpVDBitzx
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) March 15, 2024

(15) GLIMPSE OF BLACK MIRROR. “Black Mirror Season 7 Will Arrive in 2025 With a Sequel to One of Its Most Beloved Episodes” – IGN has the story.

Netflix’s long-running bleak anthology series, Black Mirror, is coming back for Season 7 next year, and it’s bringing a sequel to fan-favorite episode USS Callister with it.

The streaming platform announced the news during its Next on Netflix event in London (via The Hollywood Reporter), later bringing public confirmation with a cryptic message on X/Twitter. The post contains a video teasing the six episodes, and judging by the familiar logo that appears, it sounds like the third will be the one to give us our USS Callister sequel.

(16) THE GANG’S ALL HERE. “Doctor Who’s Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat unite to support Chris Chibnall” – Radio Times cheers the gesture.

Doctor Who writers past and present have shared a photo together after Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat attended a performance of Chris Chibnall’s new play.

Recently returned showrunner Davies posted the image to his Instagram page alongside the caption: “A marvellous night out in Salisbury to see Chris Chibnall’s wonderful new play, One Last Push.”

And he added: “Also, we plotted Zarbi vs Garms”, referencing two classic Doctor Who monsters…

(17) TRUE OR FALSE? Radio Times reviews evidence supporting story that “Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat ‘returns to write 2024 Christmas special’”.

More than six years after his final episode of Doctor Who aired, it appears that former showrunner Steven Moffat may be returning to write a new episode of the sci-fi.

While the news has not yet been confirmed, it was picked up on Tuesday 12th March that producer Alison Sterling’s CV had been updated to note she had worked on the show’s 2024 Christmas special.

Underneath this, it was noted that the director of the episode is Alex Pillai, while it was stated that the writer is one Steven Moffat. The notes regarding the writer and director of the episode have since been removed….

One factor which may throw doubt on the idea that Moffat has written the special, is that Russell T Davies previously said that he himself was writing it back in 2022.

(18) STARSHIP HITS SOME MARKS. “SpaceX celebrates major progress on the third flight of Starship” – ArsTechnica has details.

… The successful launch builds on two Starship test flights last year that achieved some, but not all, of their objectives and appears to put the privately funded rocket program on course to begin launching satellites, allowing SpaceX to ramp up the already-blistering pace of Starlink deployments.

“Starship reached orbital velocity!” wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, on his social media platform X. “Congratulations SpaceX team!!”

SpaceX scored several other milestones with Thursday’s test flight, including a test of Starship’s payload bay door, which would open and shut on future flights to release satellites into orbit. A preliminary report from SpaceX also indicated Starship transferred super-cold liquid oxygen propellant between two tanks inside the rocket, a precursor to more ambitious in-orbit refueling tests planned in the coming years. Future Starship flights into deep space, such as missions to land astronauts on the Moon for NASA, will require SpaceX to transfer hundreds of tons of cryogenic propellant between ships in orbit.

Starship left a few other boxes unchecked Thursday. While it made it closer to splashdown than before, the Super Heavy booster plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico in an uncontrolled manner. If everything went perfectly, the booster would have softly settled into the sea after reigniting its engines for a landing burn.

A restart of one of Starship’s Raptor engines in space—one of the three new test objectives on this flight—did not happen for reasons SpaceX officials did not immediately explain.

Part rocket and part spacecraft, Starship is designed to launch up to 150 metric tons (330,000 pounds) of cargo into low-Earth orbit when SpaceX sets aside enough propellant to recover the booster and the ship. Flown in expendable mode, Starship could launch almost double that amount of payload mass to orbit, according to Musk….

Space.com has a video at the link: “SpaceX launches giant Starship rocket into space on epic 3rd test flight (video)”.

(19) FAILURE TO LAUNCH. Elsewhere, some bad news from Japan: “Space One’s Kairos rocket explodes on inaugural flight” reports Reuters.

Kairos, a small, solid-fuel rocket made by Japan’s Space One, exploded shortly after its inaugural launch on Wednesday as the firm tried to become the first Japanese company to put a satellite in orbit…

(20) TALKING TO NUMBER ONE. In Gizmodo’s opinion, “This New Robot Is So Far Ahead of Elon Musk’s Optimus That It’s Almost Embarrassing”.

As if Elon Musk needed yet another reason to hate OpenAI. Figure, a startup that partnered with OpenAI to develop a humanoid robot, released a new video on Wednesday. And it’s truly heads above anything Tesla has demonstrated to date with the Optimus robot.

The video from Figure, which is available on YouTube, shows a human interacting with a robot dubbed Figure 01 (pronounced Figure One). The human has a natural-sounding conversation with the robot, asking it to first identify what it’s looking at….

(21) MILLION DAYS TRAILER. “A Million Days” is available on Digital Platforms 18 March.

The year is 2041 and the next step in the future of humankind is imminent. After decades of training and research, the mission to create the first lunar colony is about to launch with Anderson as lead astronaut. Jay, an AI purpose built for the mission, has simulated every possible outcome for the expedition. Tensions arise when the chilling motives of Jay become apparent, sowing the seeds of distrust between Anderson, and the group that had gathered to quietly celebrate the launch. As the night descends into chaos, the group’s faith in one another and their mission begins to crack, with the knowledge that the decisions they make before sunrise, will change humanity forever.

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

Pixel Scroll 12/27/23 So Have You Looked Up And Seen How Pixels Twinkle Against The Midnight Sky?

Posted on December 27, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) UNFORSEEN INTERSECTION. Maya St. Clair draws a fascinating comparison between a current bestseller and Heinlein’s controversial classic in “Fourth Wing Review: Starship Troopers (for Girls!)”

…Criticisms of Starship Troopers’ themes, while hyperbolic, were not entirely off-base. In Heinlein’s world, the ideal military life is violent, abusive, and deindividualizing; death is and should be omnipresent at every stage of training. For example, there’s the basic training exercise in which

“… they dumped me down raw naked in a primitive area of the Canadian Rockies and I had to make my way forty miles through mountains. I made it [by killing rabbits and smearing fat and dirt on his body] … The others made it, too… all except two boys who died trying. Then we all went back into the mountains and spent thirteen days finding them…. We buried them with full honors to the strains of ‘This Land Is Ours’… They weren’t the first to die in training; they weren’t the last.”

Through the eyes of Johnnie, we experience an intensity of life that makes civilian existence seem anemic, even pathetic….

…With all that being said, it feels wrong to mention Fourth Wing in the same breath as Starship Troopers. Putting aside the fact that Fourth Wing is a poorly-written work whose prose has been critiqued to death by many people before me, the two books seem to represent opposing moments in publishing history. Heinlein, for all his faults, was writing “up” for an audience of teens, treating them as adults and including them in the sphere of “adult” science fiction, with complex worldbuilding and (relatively) sophisticated themes. Sixty years later, Fourth Wing and its team (author Rebecca Yarros and Entangled Publishing) represent a publishing world moving in the opposite direction: creating books for adults in an actively juvenile style, and cultivating an audience of adult readers who no longer demand that published books have good writing at all so long as they check necessary boxes of sensation and eroticism.

But thematically and content-wise, the two books are as close as one could possibly get. Fourth Wing, like Starship Troopers, sells a military coming-of-age story in which mass death is a part of the allure (“brutally addictive,” says the cover blurb). Someone on Reddit puts the death count of Fourth Wing at 222 cadets, plus an untold number of civilians — though it’s widely considered a “fluff” read. Its primary audience (and the primary audience of most mainstream fantasy now) is female, young, progressive, and would probably be aghast at being compared to grimdark bros, Heinlein apologists, or men in general. And yet here we all are, hooked on the same stuff….

(2) ICONIC LE GUIN COVER ART OFFERED. The estates of Carol Carr and her husband Robert Lichtman are in the news: “Original cover art for Le Guin sci-fi novel goes on sale” at Bay Area Reporter.

…First published in paperback by Ace Books, the novel sported cover art by award-winning artists and biracial couple Leo and Diane Dillon. Their painting featured profiles of the book’s protagonists in the left bottom corner looking off into the distance. Surrounding the pair is a blue and white celestial-like scene with what appears to be a brown planet and a spaceship hovering above.

(Leo Dillon, of Trinidadian descent, died in 2012. He was the first African American to win the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal for illustrators of children’s books, while the Dillons were the only consecutive winners of the award, having received the honor in 1976 and 1977.)

The Dillons’ original 17 and 1/4 by 13 inches acrylic painting is now being offered for sale for the first time at the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America global book fair taking place in San Francisco in early February. The asking price is $20,000.

“It is literally unique. This is it, the original and not a print,” said Mark Funke, a rare bookseller who lives in Mill Valley where his business is also located.

Scouting out shops in the East Bay several years ago looking for new material to sell, Funke had received a tip about the sale of various items from a home in the Oakland hills. It led him to receive an invite from the executor of the estate to come to the house.

To his amazement, Funke had stumbled onto the archives of three individuals involved in the world of science fiction writing. One was the late Terry Carr, an editor at Ace Books who published the works of Le Guin and other sci-fi authors and died in 1987. While most of Carr’s personal papers had gone to UC Riverside, Funke found several boxes still in the house and acquired them….

… Funke is now handling its sale on behalf of the Carr and Lichtman Estate. He will have it available on a first-come, first-served basis at his booth at the book fair.

“I am pricing it high for the artists but, I think, reasonable for it being Le Guin’s most famous novel. She won awards for it, and it ratcheted her up to the greats of science fiction,” said Funke. “It’s got very topical content; this idea of the planet Gethen and ambisexual individuals. I just think it is fascinating and a very active topic in today’s discussion.”

In a statement to the B.A.R. about the sale, the executor for the family estate said, “The Carr-Lichtman family has treasured this artwork for over 50 years and now it is time to find a new owner who will cherish this remarkable work of science fiction publishing history for the next 50 years.”…

(3) KORSHAK COLLECTION NEWS. The Korshak Collection announced on Facebook —

We have partnered with the University of Delaware for an academic illustrated catalog of the Korshak Collection. We don’t want to give away all of our surprises, but the catalog will include a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman and entry by Pulitzer prize winner author Michael Dirda, as well as an interview with the Hugo Award winning artist Michael Whelan. We are so grateful for this partnership and all of the outstanding contributions that have made this project possible.

(4) MCU UK. James Bacon recommends David Thorpe’s account of his time as a creator for Marvel UK: “In Review: The Secret Origin of Earth 616 By David Thorpe” at Downthetubes.net.

… This is a fascinating book, and, for Captain Britain fans, a definite buy. For comic fans interested in Marvel UK, of great interest. Yet it is also an excellent autobiography, a very readable and personal exploration of a comic fans desires, aspirations and progression to be a writer and an insight into how Marvel UK was, and offers real honesty when it comes to a comics career that took an interesting turn that saw David Thorpe’s work in the industry elsewhere. The story is brimful, and includes how another comic related moment saw him turn to a very successful career beyond comics, one that arguably has made a real difference to the world….

… David Thorpe came up with the concept of Earth 616, and he describes it as a Stan Lee styled “Hoo Boy” moment when he heard Mysterio say “This is Earth dimension 616. I’m from Earth 833.” to Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Far From Home and that is something that any comic reader can appreciate, many of whom have imagined themselves as writers….

(5) IN FELLOWSHIP THERE IS STRENGTH. “Board Game Cafe Workers Went on a Quest for a Union and Won” reports the New York Times.

A golden glow illuminated the employees huddled inside a Hex & Co. cafe on the Upper East Side, a haven created for board game enthusiasts to gather for fantastical quests.

Meticulous campaigns were second nature to these workers — how many times had they infiltrated an obsidian castle or vanquished a warlock? They had been immersed in this particular adventure for months, navigating a labyrinth governed by strict rules and made harrowing by unfamiliar tasks and tests. Now they gathered to plot their final triumph: unionization.

On that Tuesday in September, Hex & Co. workers confronted their bosses with a demand for recognition. Less than two months later, they voted to join Workers United, the same group that has been organizing workers at Starbucks stores across the United States. The workers at the three Hex & Co. locations across New York City were just the first employees of a board game cafe in the city to unionize. Workers at the Uncommons and the Brooklyn Strategist followed this month.

All the stores fall under the ownership of either Jon Freeman, Greg May or both, and they pleaded with their employees not to unionize, saying that a union would wipe out the “flexible and open-door atmosphere we have tried to foster.”

Teaching board games is a far cry from swinging a miner’s pick or working numbing hours on an assembly line. In fact, many of the cafe workers said they hung out at their workplaces in their off hours. But in the end, complaints over dollar-an-hour raises and bands of unruly children reigned: Among the 94 employees who voted, only 17 dissented….

…Only 10 percent of American wage and salary workers were union members in 2022, a historical low, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The food-service sector’s membership rate was less than 4 percent. But this fiscal year saw the most representation filings since 2015, according to the National Labor Relations Board.

Young workers “are willing to take risks, because they feel like their future is at stake,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University.

After slogging through a recession and a pandemic, many found themselves earning minimum wage while corporate profits soared, she said….

(6) AI AS SEEN BY THREE SFF AUTHORS. The River Cities’ Reader tells fans how to access the “Virtual Event: ‘Speculating Our AI Future,’” with Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells on January 11.

Designed for those fascinated by, or terrified about, the rise of artificial intelligence is invited to a January 11 virtual event hosted by the Rock Island and Silvis Public Libraries, when Illinois Libraries Present’s Speculating Our AI Future finds bestselling science-fiction writers Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells in discussion on the promise, perils, and possible impacts that AI will have on our future, as well as AI as portrayed in contemporary and future science-fiction writing.

The Speculating Our AI Future panel discussion with Corry Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells will begin on January 11 at 7 p.m., participation in the virtual event is free, and more information is available by calling (309)732-7323 and visiting RockIslandLibrary.org, and calling (309)755-3393 and visiting SilvisLibrary.org.

(7) GRAPHIC EXAMPLES. Sam Thielman hits the high notes in a review of “The Year in Graphic Novels” for the New York Times.

Good graphic novels tend to appear in bookstores seemingly out of nowhere after years of rumors, scattershot serialization, “process” zines and snippets posted to social media. As literature, long-form comics are uniquely resistant to editing. As visual art, the cartoonist is in the weird position of having no access to the final product until it’s presented to the public. So it’s frankly miraculous when we get as many good comics as we do. This year there were remarkable new books from established masters and freshman graphic novels from brilliant young artists. Better still, a gratifyingly thick stratum of our 2023 stack was devoted to making us laugh. It’s a rich conversation, and one that promises to continue into next year and long beyond.

From the moment you open it, Daniel Clowes’s MONICA (Fantagraphics, 108 pp., $30) announces its ambition. Against the weird hellscape of its front endpapers, the title spread depicts the world at its lifeless, churning, brightly colored beginning. Then all of time (so far) goes by in a whoosh on the next two pages — the dinosaurs, Jesus, Hitler, Little Richard, Sputnik — alongside the copyright boilerplate and the names of the editors and publicist. In Clowes’s smooth lines and precise hues, the rest of the book borrows styles from war, horror and romance comics to tell the story of an ordinary woman trying to give her life some meaning. Is such a thing even possible? Could the attempt destroy everything?…

(8) EVA HAUSER (1954-2023). Past fan fund winner (GUFF) Eva Hauser died December 23 at the age of 69. Here is an excerpt from Jan Vaněk Jr.’s tribute on Facebook:

I am sad to announce that the 1992 GUFF delegate died on Friday 22nd. Eva Hauser[ová] travelled from Prague, still-Czechoslovakia to Syncon ’92 in Sydney, and then to Melbourne and back.

If you were there (despite the small attendance, the trip report reads like the Who Is Who of a golden age of the Australian fandom, and a testimony to their hospitality. Even though so much, and many, have already been lost in time, like tears in rain…), you may remember; and then you will understand why Eva is so much-lamented and widely eulogised from many different communities she was a part of….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 27, 1951 — Charles Band, 72. We have come tonight to honor a true film genius in Charles Band. He entered film production in the Seventies with Charles Band Productions. Dissatisfied with distributors’ handling of his movies, he formed his own company in the early Eighties. At its height, he would release an average of two films a month, one theatrically and one on home video.

So what are you going to recognize out of his hundreds of films?

Most of his films paid the cast next to nothing, were notoriously lax on safety measures according to State officials who fined him considerable amounts over the years and he paid screenwriters, well, guess.

Trancers, also released as Future Cop, the first of a series, which I’ve seen and liked, had Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt in the lead cast. Supposedly the detective here is homage to Bogart’s various detective roles.

As producer, he did Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. Richard Moll who is in the cast and he shaved his head for his role here. The Night Court producers liked the look for Moll, so he continued shaving his head for the show.

Now he also produced a lot of more frankly sleazy SF such as Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, Galactic Gigolo, and Space Sluts in the Slammer, and the post-apocalypse zombie films, Barbie & Kendra Save the Tiger King and Barbie & Kendra Storm Area 51.

His autobiography has a title that’s every bit has as over the top as most of some of film titles are, Confessions of a Puppetmaster: A Hollywood Memoir of Ghouls, Guts, and Gonzo Filmmaking.

One final note. His entire financial house of cards collapsed in the late Eighties and was seized by various banks who in turned sold the assets off to MGM, so you’re likely to see one of his films streaming just about anywhere these days.

(10) STORIES YES AND NO. Rich Horton reaches back to 1970 to tell Black Gate readers about “No More Stories — The Capstone to Joanna Russ’s Alyx Sequence: ‘The Second Inquisition’”.

“No more stories.” So ends Joanna Russ’s great novelette “The Second Inquisition.” But in many ways the story is about stories — about how we use them to define ourselves, protect ourselves, understand ourselves. It’s also, in a curious way, about Joanna Russ’s stories, particularly those about Alyx, a woman rescued from drowning in classical times by the future Trans-Temporal Authority….

(11) CORE TELEVISION. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Now, I don’t agree with everything in this article (for one thing, Foundation is execrable.) But it is an interesting look at what Apple+ is doing in SFF and why so much of it works. “The Best Sci-Fi Shows of 2023 All of Have One Shocking Thing in Common” at Inverse.

…For All Mankind isn’t the only sci-fi show pushing the limits of the genre on Tim Cook’s dime. The Apple CEO has been quietly funding some of the best science fiction TV in recent memory, ranging from the centuries-spanning Isaac Asimov adaptation Foundation to the mind-bending near-future of Severance to the globe-trotting Godzilla spinoff series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters — to name just a few.

And while it’s hard to say what exactly defines an Apple sci-fi show, Inverse spoke to several showrunners and producers who all agree the tech giant brings a unique, futurist perspective to the genre that — when combined with endless cash — helps explain why, all of a sudden, it seems like the best science fiction television is all coming from the same company that sold you your iPhone….

… One thing you can say about pretty much any show or movie on Apple TV+ is that it probably looks gorgeous. While many Netflix productions have a certain flatness to them that can make it feel like the streamer has been cutting corners, Apple is pouring a lot of money into the look (and star power) of its original series — it helps to have a trillion-dollar cash pile, even if Amazon and Disney are still outspending the MacBook maker….

(12) MARATHON FAN. SYFY Wire understandably wants us all to know “How to Watch SYFY’s Twilight Zone New Year’s Marathon 2023-2024”.

Just as you can count on our planet making a full rotation around the sun every 365 days or so, you can also rest assured that SYFY will use the key of imagination to unlock its annual New Year’s marathon of The Twilight Zone. The honored tradition of airing Rod Serling’s groundbreaking anthology series won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, the 2023-24 edition is super-sized, with the marathon spanning a total of three whole days — starting Saturday (December 30) and ending Tuesday (January 2).

Who needs to smooch someone at midnight when you’ve got Jason Foster (Robert Keith) teaching his wicked family members a lesson they’ll never forget in “The Masks”? Fittingly enough, the classic episode — which revolves around a collection of vain and greedy individuals ordered to wear hideous masks until the stroke of midnight — will air about 40 minutes before the ball drops. If someone offers you a grotesque party favor along with that glass of Champagne, you might want to turn it down….

(13) CHINA’S MIXED SIGNALS ON VIDEO GAME PLAYING. “Will China Ease Its New Video Game Controls? Investors Think So.” The New York Times says, “After a market rout, gaming companies like Tencent and Netease rally on signals that regulators might apply proposed curbs on users less harshly than feared.”

…The events of the past several days underline the push-and-pull forces in Chinese policymaking. The country’s top leaders have acknowledged they need to stabilize the economy, which has been slow to recover from being virtually locked down during the Covid pandemic. But the government’s tight control of how companies do business continues to inject uncertainty into the markets.

China’s National Press and Publication Administration, which issues licenses to game publishers and oversees the industry, unveiled a proposal on Friday aimed at effectively reducing how much people spend playing games. The plan took the industry by surprise, and investors dumped tens of billions of dollars in company stock.

The regulator issued a statement on Saturday stressing that the draft rules aim to “promote the prosperity and healthy development of the industry,” and said it is “listening to more opinions comprehensively and improving regulations and provisions.”

Then on Monday, the agency announced that it had licensed about 100 new games, after licensing 40 others on Friday. And a semiofficial association affiliated with the agency said that the additional game approvals were “positive signals” that the agency supports the industry.

The new regulations would cap how much money users could spend within games on things like upgrading the features of characters or procuring virtual weapons or other things used by the characters. It would also ban rewards that companies use to entice players to return. The proposal did not specify a spending cap…..

… The industry is still reeling from earlier restrictions first imposed in 2019 aimed at what the government deemed was an online gaming addiction among minors, as well as a broader crackdown against tech companies. Regulators also stymied publishers by not issuing any new game licenses for an eight-month stretch that ended in April 2022….

(14) CHART YOUR COURSE. Archie’s Press offers interesting “Outer Space” prints.

Outer Space is so huge, there’s really no way to wrap your head around the entire thing. This makes it all make sense.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Dann.] A tale of old Japan. A tale as old as time. A beleaguered hero looking to avenge past wrongs. Western forces looking to control a local government. A beauty of a beast.

When the culture and government deny any usual path to survival, much less happiness, our hero seeks unusual opportunities instead. Learning the secrets of steel. Surreptitiously learning the secrets of the sword. All of them.

Eventually, our hero sets out on a path of vengeance leaving rivers of blood along the way. Companions are found, whether or not our hero desires their companionship.

Each character is well-developed with unique strengths, flaws, and motivations. Even the villains have a compelling story to tell.

Blue Eye Samurai is not to be missed. And The Critical Drinker knows why. Go watch the “The Drinker Recommends… Blue Eye Samurai”.

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

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Tag Archives: Rebecca Yarros

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