26 A Thousand Naked Pixels Screaming And Throwing Little Scrolls At You

Posted on January 29, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY 2026. Four genre films were among the 25 added to National Film Registry this year. See the complete list at the link.

(2) SATURN AWARDS. The 2026 Saturn Awards Nominations dropped today.

(3) AUDIE AWARDS. The Audie Awards 2026 finalists have been announced. There are many genre works on the list.

(4) FANNISH FUMBLES. [Item by David Doering.] You may know Slashdot.org, the daily news site devoted to us techies and keen on SF, puts quotes at the bottom of each page. One would think that they would check the proper quote for The Day the Earth Stood Still. Sadly… in reality, here’s from today’s column. Sigh… [Click for larger image.]

(5) OH, WHAT A TANGLED WEB. “’Rage knitting’ against the machine: the hobbyists putting anti-ICE messages into crafts” reports the Guardian.

In the nine years that Gilah Mashaal has owned Needle & Skein, a yarn store in the suburbs of Minneapolis, she has tried to maintain a rule that “nobody talks politics” in the shop. But amid the weeks-long occupation of the Twin Cities by federal immigration paramilitaries, Mashaal and one of her employees decided to turn one of their weekly knit-alongs into a “protest stitch-along”.

They didn’t want to return to the “pussy hats” that symbolized women’s resistance to Donald Trump in 2016, so Paul, their employee, did some research and came back with a proposal: a red knit hat inspired by the topplue or nisselue (woolen caps), worn by Norwegians during the second world war to signify their resistance to the Nazi occupation.

“I said: ‘Well gee whiz, that’s extremely fitting for this moment,’” said Mashaal. “Me being a Jewish small business owner, that resonates with me on so many levels.”

Mashaal and her team quickly put together a pattern for a red knit cap with a ribbed brim, pointy top and jaunty tassel. They published the “Melt the ICE hat” pattern on Ravelry, the social network for knitters and crocheters, and made it available for download for $5, with proceeds going to the St Louis Park Emergency Program (Step), a group that is helping people affected by ICE raids to pay their rent and bills….

“We thought we’d have a group of 10 people come and knit, and it turned out to be over 100,” Mashaal said. “Then it started spreading and it’s just been crazy.” Nearly 70,000 copies of the pattern had been sold by Wednesday, less than two weeks after it was first published online. It has been adapted for crochet and other weights of yarn, and has become ubiquitous on knitting social media. Local yarn shops across the country are offering specials on red yarn and hosting knit-alongs of their own….

(6) SHE’LL BE BACK. Olivia Rutigliano points out that “The Terminator Is About the Last Moments In a Woman’s Life Before She Becomes a Mother” at CrimeReads.

A few weeks ago, I found myself with a burning desire to watch The Terminator. I love The Terminator for many reasons; it’s a perfect movie. It has easily adaptable lore but is itself very self-contained. It is smart and prescient about the pitfalls of our society’s over-reliance on technology, especially artificial intelligence. It is a beautiful story about the perseverance of humanity in a world that longs to erase it. It features a jaw-dropping series of handmade special effects, combining stop-motion animation, robotics and animatronics, and prosthetic make-up. It is a tight thriller, a moving love story, a meaningful sci-fi epic. It also features one of the greatest cinematic villains of all time. The Terminator. Tell your friends.

It’s also a story about motherhood, but from a perspective we do not often get in films: it’s the story of the last moments in a woman’s life before she becomes pregnant, becomes a mother.

We’ll see in T2 the transformation that our heroine, the normal woman Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), undergoes, after she realizes in T1 that she will give birth to the greatest hero of the 21st century. But in The Terminator we don’t get that, yet. We witness the final moments in Sarah Connor’s life that she lives alone—in her body, in the world.

A few weeks ago, I put together a small list of the coolest pregnant women in crime movies and TV. I didn’t include Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies, because, again, she’s not really pregnant during any of the major events in either T1 and T2.

Bur perhaps the fact that I’m super pregnant propelled me to watch this movie again. I last saw the movie as a teenager, so I had a very different set of takeaways this time around. In a way, The Terminator is a powerful metaphor for the reproductive lives of women, capturing the moment that a woman realizes that her body is about to become the home and host for someone else, the moment that she realizes her entire life will be about some other person she does not know yet. T2 is about how she rebuilds her own autonomy in the face of that; she’s not simply the hero John Connor’s mother, but a powerful warrior, herself. But T1 is about an ordinary woman realizing her life and body are about to grow and serve someone else…

…The film presents us with a heroine who models the bravery and the strength of pregnancy and motherhood and how they stand in opposition to the rising tide of anti-women, anti-human sentiment. I’m not a mother quite yet, but Sarah Connor is standing with me, showing me how.

(7) THIS HALO’S NOT FOR ANGELS. Animation World Network interviews the creators of “The Devilishly Clever Visual Effects of ‘Sinners’”. Beware spoilers.

…Driving the narrative are twin brothers Smoke and Stack, both portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, who decide to establish a juke joint in 1932 Mississippi. The twinning effect could not be accomplished simply through a face swap because Sinners was being shot on IMAX. “I remember attending a test screening with Autumn Durald Arkapaw [Cinematographer] at the IMAX headquarters,” recalls Ralla. “When I looked especially at the 50 perf 65mm IMAX footage projected on the screen, it immediately became clear that nothing we had until that point was going to be good enough for that level of fidelity because you saw every pore.” He continues, “The split screen technique has the highest fidelity but there had to be physical interaction between the siblings. There was also the matter of not interrupting the on-set momentum of Ryan Coogler. We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had something that Michael could strap on like a backpack and it captures him in 360 degrees from every possible angle but still allows him to move around and deliver the performance as he just did.”

Well, it turns out they did have something. The Halo rig. The Halo rig consisted of 12 cameras positioned around Jordan’s head with the firmware modified to shoot in LOG. “The Halo rig is a carbon fiber ring, so it was surprisingly light,” Ralla explains. “And the fact that it’s shoulder worn distributes the weight in a way that it didn’t make a big difference to Michael. Switching between Smoke to Stack was trickier for Michael than putting on the Halo rig.” The Halo rig was strictly used for shots with lots of physical interaction between the twins, including a long, drawn-out fight between them at the end….

(8) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 152 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Slap That Fish More” is live. (Click this link for an uncorrected transcript,)

John is summarising, Alison is eating, and it’s all Liz. We read your letters before discussing Brisbane in 2028’s neat new logo and the latest Eastercon’s financial report.

John’s head and shoulders appear behind a pinkish desk as if he is the puppeteer of Sooty and Sweep (Americans, ask your British friends). Sooty is pulling on Sweep’s ear. Text at the top reads “Octothorpe 152: John is preparing for the big dust-up”.

(9) JAMES SALLIS (1944-2026). Author James Sallis died January 27 at the age of 81. The announcement on his website said:

We are very sorry to share that James Sallis passed away on January 27, 2026, peacefully, with his wife Karyn by his side, after a long illness.

Sallis published his first sf story, “Kazoo”, in New Worlds in 1967. He sold several stories to Damon Knight for his Orbit series of anthologies. After selling a story to Michael Moorcock, Sallis was invited to go to London to help edit New Worlds just as it changed to its large format during its Michael Moorcock-directed New Wave SF phase; Sallis was co-editor from April 1968 through February 1969.

He gained fame as a writer of mystery fiction, including the Lew Griffin, John Turner, and The Driver series. For his mystery writing, he received the Bouchercon lifetime achievement award in 2007.

He reviewed books for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1999-2022.

Sallis taught writing classes at Otis College in Los Angeles and until September 2015 at Phoenix College in Arizona; he left his job rather than sign a state-mandated loyalty oath that he regards as unconstitutional.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 29, 1964 — Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Sixty-two years ago, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb premiered on this date. It had a stellar cast of Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, James Earl Jones and Slim Pickens, and was directed by directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. Peter Sellers in his multiple roles including Dr. Strangelove makes the film worth watching if for no other reason, but there’s oh so much else here.

It was not the original title as Kubrick considered Dr. Strangelove’s Secret Uses of Uranus as well as Dr. Doomsday or: How to Start World War III Without Even Trying, and the much shorter Wonderful Bomb.

The film is somewhat based on Peter George’s political thriller Red Alert novel. (Originally called Two Hours To Doom.) Curiously Dr. Strangelove did not appear in the book. This novel’s available at the usual digital suspects. And George’s novelization of the film is on all digital sources. If you purchase it, it has an expanded section on Strangelove’s early career.

It would not surprisingly win the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation at Loncon II in 1965 with The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao being the only other film on the final ballot.

The film was a box office success as it only cost one point eight million to make and it made nine point four million. Critics were universal in their belief that it was one of the best films ever done with Ebert saying it was “arguably the best political satire of the century”. At Rotten Tomatoes, it currently holds a ninety-four percent rating with over two hundred thousand audience reviewers casting a vote. The studio on the other hand thought it was an anti-war film and distanced itself as far as it could from it.

A sequel was planned by Kubrick with Terry Gilliam directing though Gilliam was never told this by Kubrick and only discovered this after Kubrick died. He said “I never knew about that until after he died but I would have loved to.”

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Doug Eat Doug reviews The Expanse.
Nancy found fans.
Non Sequitur sets things in motion.
Thatababy realizes a truth about technology.

(12) COMICS CASUALTY. “Amazon layoffs may have shut down what remains of Comixology” reports ComicsBeat.

Tech giant Amazon announced 16,000 layoffs yesterday, and we’re hearing that most of the remaining Comixology staff may have been among them.

While we have no official confirmation from Amazon, we’re told that the remaining US staff was either immediately terminated or given until April as an end date.

While it doesn’t talk about it much, Amazon still sells digital comics day and date from almost every major publisher. Converting the comics files to “Guided View” (automated transitions that make paneling clearer) and a digital format had been offshored at the company since the last round of layoffs in early 2023, which I compared to a “bloodbath.” Although the company was drastically downsized at that time, it did continue on, notably with the Comixology Originals line of creator owned comics. Comixology Originals has been putting out both graphic novels and periodical format comics regularly even since the last round of layoffs, under GM and CTO Jeff DiBartolomeo. It offers both decent page rates and total creative ownership – a rarity in the comics industry….

(13) EYE-CATCHING. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth] How can I beat that headline? “Dragons, sex and the Bible: What drove the book business in 2025” in The Virginian-Pilot.

2025 brought more blockbuster books about sex and magic along with bestsellers 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. Artificial intelligence 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. Book bans threatened to limit collections in schools and libraries….

…Young adult fiction sales have fallen sharply, especially if you exclude sales of books by Suzanne Collins, whose bestseller “Sunrise on the Reaping,” a Hunger Games prequel, sold around 2 million print copies. Setting Collins’ sales aside, YA fiction sales were down 12% in 2025 compared with 2024, according to BookScan.

One reason, industry observers suggest, is that teens who haven’t abandoned reading are moving on from YA….

…Romance sales are still rising, though the genre isn’t growing at the meteoric rate of recent years. According to BookScan, romance sales rose around 5% this past year over 2024, largely because of blockbuster sales of Yarros’ “Onyx Storm.”

Another growth area is Bible sales, which are up over the past few years — a likely sign of some Americans’ growing interest in faith and spirituality — and jumped about 12% over the prior year.

And increased interest from a new generation of comics readers helped boost sales at comic book stores by 27% through the first eight months of the year, according to a report from the comics industry publication ICv2…

(14) PAPERBACK HUNTING. Jules Burt takes us with him: “Visiting the Zardoz Books – Vintage Paperback Warehouse – Over 100,000 Vintage Paperbacks + Pulps”. (Maurice Flanagan, owner of Zardoz Books, occasionally attends the LA Vintage Paperback Show in Glendale to shop.)

In today’s video I take a much delayed trip to the Zardoz/AllYouNeedIsBooks warehouse. My wants lists were updated and I was ready for action. Accompanied by my friend Steve we visited the £1 a book retail store then onto the warehouse for some serious shopping, I was not disappointed. The Zardoz books website is here; https://www.zardozbooks.co.uk/

(15) ORYX AND CRAKE — PROOF THAT MARGARET ATWOOD WRITES SCIENCE FICTION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff over at the Media Death Cult YouTube Channel takes a bit of a dive into the Oryx and Crake and takes that as proof that Margaret Atwood writes Science Fiction… Moid took down his archive of videos a couple of years ago but has been re-posting some of them including this one from half a decade ago. This book was on his ‘to be read’ list courtesy of recommendations from some of his 55+ thousand followers. Atwood has ben arguably a little cagey (sniffy?) as to admitting whether or not she writes science fiction as opposed to more (ahem) literary offerings… You can see Moid’s 14-minute review below.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/8/25 When They Scroll Low, We Scroll Pixels

Posted on June 8, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) EDITORS TO AVOID. Cedar Sanderson tells freelance editors “How Not to Drum Up Business” at Mad Genius Club.

This was a new one on me. I have a reviewer who seems to think that if they leave a review describing how they would have done a better job at editing my book, I might hire them….

… Authors, you don’t have to take bad editing lying down. Demand better. And ask for references. Not only ‘who have you worked with?’ but look up the books this person has edited and see what kind of product they have had a hand in. If the books don’t sell well… yeah. That’s also a clue. Sometimes the editor can’t help pathetic covers and bad placement in categories and keywords, because that’s not their department. However, if you see a consistent alignment between an editor that works with those kinds of books? And social media presence that is full of untruths and negativities? Run, my young friend, because this is not a professional. You need support and help, not whatever that is. If they are willing to bully you in their approach to you, they will be abusive when they are working ‘for’ you….

(2) HELPING AUTHORS NAVIGATE ROUGH WATERS. At Writer Beware, Victoria Strauss says, “Bankruptcies of Unbound and Albert Whitman & Co Put Authors Between a Rock and a Hard Place”.

… The concerns for authors go beyond unpaid royalties: there are unanswered questions about the status of authors’ rights, how they can request reversion, whether they can obtain unsold inventory, and more. Unbound author Alex de Campi is offering a letter template writers can use to contact administrators about these matters…

(3) SFWA ADDS STAFF. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced their newest full-time staff:

Executive Director Isis Asare
Operations Director Russell Davis

(4) IMPACT OF JOANNA RUSS. Farah Mendlesohn profiles a favorite writer in “Fantastic Fiction: Joanna Russ” at the Seattle Worldcon 2025 blog.

I am partial. I truly believe that Joanna Russ is one of the greatest writers that the science fiction field has ever produced, and from 1977–1991 she was a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle….

… I wish I’d had the chance to meet and be taught by Professor Russ, although everything I’ve heard about her suggests that she could be terrifying. But as it is, I am aware that I have learned so much from her fiction and her critical work (even where I disagree with it), and I would love more people to read it and talk about it. Maybe at Worldcon?

(5) LEAP YEARS. “Best Movie Stunts of All Time, Over Nearly 100 Years of Oscars” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Any list of Hollywood’s most memorable stunt work is bound to be idiosyncratic. Do you prefer a jaw-dropping action set piece with the star visibly and unmistakably at risk (as with the silent comedians and, more recently, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise); a feat by a nameless stunt double whose fate you’re not emotionally invested in (presumably with the Wilhelm scream sounding his demise); or the choreography of battalions of humans in league with horses, trains, cars or planes (in which case Plutarch deserves a posthumous credit as stunt coordinator on Spartacus)?

Even the definition of a “stunt” is hard to pin down… Now, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has formalized a plan for its stunt design Oscar category, which will first be presented at the 100th honors in 2028.

In that spirit, here is a close read, year-by-year, from the start of the Academy Awards onward, on some of the most noteworthy stunt artistry in Hollywood cinema over the course of the last century — and which films may have claimed Oscar gold….

There are quite a few genre picks, however, they aren’t all written up in an equally interesting way. Here are two, one which cross-references a famed genre film, and another from a successful sf franchise.

1939: Stagecoach

The sequence of Yakima Canutt falling under a team of six stagecoach horses and the stagecoach remains the platonic ideal of Hollywood stunt work. In costume as an attacking Indian, he leaps at full gallop from his horse and lands between the front two horses pulling the stagecoach. Falling between the horses, he is dragged along the ground until he lets go and lies flat as the horses and the stagecoach pass over him. (Steven Spielberg could not resist repurposing the stunt in Raiders of the Lost Ark [1981], with a truck subbing for a stagecoach.) Canutt considered the exploit (“stunt” seems too trivial a description) his personal best. “A whale of a good story that has brilliant direction, writing and acting,” THR wrote in its 1939 review.

1991: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

James Cameron’s high-tech follow-up to the low-tech noir The Terminator — Arnold Schwarzenegger joked that the catering bill for the sequel would have financed the original — is remembered for introducing a slew of then-unprecedented digital morphing effects, but Cameron went back to analog for the stunning stunt involving a helicopter and the California transportation system. The clip has been circulating around social media lately, with the commentary track from Cameron. “You see this helicopter going under the freeway overpass?” he asks. “That’s a helicopter going under a freeway overpass.” The pilot was Chuck Tamburro.

(6) VOTE FOR 2027 WESTERCON SITE. [Item by Kayla Allen.] Westercon 79 (2027) Site Selection voting is now open.

Members (“badge holders” is their terminology) of BayCon 2025 and supporting members of Westercon 77 (those people who voted in the election at the 2023 Westercon or bought a supporting membership later) can vote on the site of Westercon 79 (2027) by paying a $20 voting fee. Fees can be paid by check or money order payable to Westercon 79, in cash (only in person at BayCon/Westercon) or by purchasing a Voting Token through the BayCon website. Voting fees go to the winning bid.

The Site Selection ballot is a PDF that you can download from here, fill out, and either paper mail or email to the addresses on the ballot. Advance ballots must arrive by July 1 to be certain they are counted. Site Selection will take place at BayCon/Westercon on the Friday and Saturday of the convention, with the results of the election announced at the Business Meeting on Sunday morning at BayCon/Westercon.

All of the details, including detailed instructions on how to buy a voting token, are in the announcement on the Westercon.org website linked above.

(7) ANTICIPATION. Fendy Satria Tulodo springs a surprise in “Indonesian Shadow Puppets. Science Fiction in the Classic Art of Puppetry” at Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium.

Science fiction is often associated with distant galaxies, futuristic technology, and interstellar battles. But what if I told you that some of the oldest sci-fi elements exist right here in Indonesia? Not in modern literature or film, but in wayang kulit, the traditional Javanese shadow puppet performances that have been around for centuries.

When I first watched a wayang kulit performance, I didn’t expect to find anything remotely “sci-fi” about it. The puppets, made of intricately carved leather, cast flickering shadows against an oil lamp as the dalang (puppeteer) brought them to life. It felt ancient, mystical, and deeply cultural. But as I paid attention to the stories, a strange realization hit me — these tales weren’t just about kings and gods. They contained something else: futuristic technology, cosmic battles, and even philosophical questions about reality.

These elements have existed for centuries in traditional wayang stories, long before modern science fiction was conceptualized. Many of these myths were passed down through generations, integrating advanced ideas that seemed futuristic even in their time….

… One of the most mind-bending examples is Gatotkaca, a legendary warrior with superhuman strength who flies through the sky using his invisible iron suit — remind you of anything? Yeah, Iron Man. Except Gatotkaca predates Tony Stark by several centuries. The concept of flying warriors with enhanced abilities exists in many wayang kulit narratives, almost like ancient versions of superheroes or cyborgs….

(8) THE EARLY UNIVERSE, UMM… [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Not what we thought. “’Galaxies Actually Existed Before The Big Bang’ James Webb Telescope Saw 15 Strange Galaxies beyond.”

(9) CHRIS HADFIELD Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield answers Guardian readers’ questions, including one on his favorite science-fiction books (further down he lists 2001 as his favorite space movie’): “Chris Hadfield: ‘Worst space chore? Fixing the toilet. It’s even worse when it’s weightless’”.

What about favourite sci-fi?

[Growing up] I read Asimov and Arthur C Clarke. I got to spend a day with Arthur C Clarke – he came to the Kennedy Space Centre, I spent a whole day showing him the space shuttle and the launch site, and it was like a dream come true because he’d been one of my science fiction idols growing up.

[In 2015] Ray Bradbury’s family asked me to write an introduction for the Folio Society rerelease of The Martian Chronicles – I’d read it once a long time ago but I’d forgotten just what an exquisitely good writer he was. The Martian Chronicles was written just after the second world war, so after the first two atomic bombs had been released and killed so many people but before the very first space flight. It was a really interesting moment in time – of both despair and disgust at human behaviour and then hope. And it’s a beautiful book.

(10) THE INVENTOR OF THE DOUBLE-CLICK. “Bill Atkinson, Who Made Computers Easier to Use, Is Dead at 74” – the New York Times pays tribute.

A designer for Apple, he created software that made it possible to display shapes, images and text on the screen and present a simulated “desktop.”…

…Before the Macintosh was introduced in January 1984, most personal computers were text-oriented; graphics were not yet an integrated function of the machines. And computer mice pointing devices were not widely available; software programs were instead controlled by typing arcane commands.

The QuickDraw library had originally been designed for Apple’s Lisa computer, which was introduced in January 1983. Intended for business users, the Lisa predated many of the Macintosh’s easy-to-use features, but priced at $10,000 (almost $33,000 in today’s money), it was a commercial failure.

A year later, however, QuickDraw paved the way for the Macintosh graphical interface. It was based on an approach to computing that had been pioneered during the 1970s at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center by a group led by the computer scientist Alan Kay. Mr. Kay was trying to create a computer system that he described as a “Dynabook,” a portable educational computer that would become a guiding light for Silicon Valley computer designers for decades.

Xerox kept the project secret, but Dynabook nevertheless ultimately informed the design of both the Lisa and the Macintosh. In an unusual agreement, Xerox gave Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, and a small group of Apple engineers, including Mr. Atkinson, a private demonstration of Mr. Kay’s project in 1979.

The group, however, was not permitted to examine the software code. As a result, the Apple engineers had to make assumptions about the Xerox technology, leading them to make fundamental technical advances and design new capabilities.

In “Insanely Great,” a book about the development of the Macintosh, Steven Levy wrote of Mr. Atkinson, “He had set out to reinvent the wheel; actually he wound up inventing it.”

Mr. Atkinson’s programming feats were renowned in Silicon Valley.

“Looking at his code was like looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,” recalled Steve Perlman, who as a young Apple hardware engineer took advantage of Mr. Atkinson’s software to design the first color Macintosh. “His code was remarkable. It is what made the Macintosh possible.”…

(11) WAIT, WHAT – WALT WAS SMOKED? [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Stuart Heritage looks at transhumanism in the movies, both science-fiction related and otherwise: “Death is not the end! From the new robot Walt Disney to Mountainhead, movies are fuelled by immortality”.

For years, the world’s most perfect urban myth was this: Walt Disney’s body was cryogenically frozen at the moment of death, waiting for technology to advance enough to bring him back to life. Started by a National Spotlite reporter who claimed to have sneaked into a hospital in 1967, only to be confronted by the sight of Disney suspended in a cryogenic cylinder, the myth prevailed because it was such a good fit.

Disney – and therefore Walt Disney himself – was the smiling face of rigidly controlled joy, radiating a message of mandatory fun that is magical when you are a child and increasingly sinister as you age. This policy (essentially “enjoy yourself or else”) suits the idea of cryogenic preservation. After all, if you have the ego to successfully enforce a blanket emotion as a company mission statement, you definitely have the ego to transcend human mortality.

However, not only has the cryogenic Disney myth been put to bed – he was cremated weeks before the National Spotlite hack claimed to find his body – but his family has issued a strongly worded rebuttal of the very idea of a post-human Walt Disney.

The catalyst is the recently announced Disneyland show Walt Disney – A Magical Life, which will feature as its star attraction an animatronic recreation of Walt Disney. This, according to Josh D’Amaro, Disney experiences chair, will give visitors a sense of “what it would have been like to be in Walt’s presence”. However, Disney’s granddaughter Joanna Miller is convinced that this is not what Disney the man would have wanted. In a Facebook post that was stinging enough to earn her an audience with the Disney CEO, Bob Iger, Miller said Disney was “dehumanising” her grandfather. “The idea of a robotic Grampa to give the public a feeling of who the living man was just makes no sense,” she wrote. “It would be an impostor, people are not replaceable. You could never get the casualness of his talking, interacting with the camera, [or] his excitement to show and tell people about what is new at the park. You cannot add life to one empty of a soul or essence of the man.”

As recently as a decade ago, this would have been the stuff of bad science fiction – a woman worried that a multinational corporation is bringing a dead relative back to life against his wishes, like a warped nonconsensual Westworld – but no more. As an entertainment concept, post-humanism feels worryingly current….

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 8, 1928 — Kate Wilheim. (Died 2018.)

By Paul Weimer: Kate Wilheim has two main legacies in my mind.

The first one may not be fair. Kate has written a fair number of stories and novels, several of which (“The Planners”, “The Girl Who Fell into the Sky” and “Forever Yours, Anna”) won the Nebula award. She’s written books of poetry. She has a more than respectable oeuvre in SFF, and that doesn’t even count her mystery novels.

But the first legacy in my mind is just one book, the fantastic Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang. It’s one of the best postapocalyptic novels out there, a story of survival, and cloning, and commonality, community, individuality, Psionic empathy and much more. Its bittersweet ending has haunted me for years. If there is still something as an SF canon, Wilheim’s book must, I say, must be part of it. It is in conversation backwards and forwards, from Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow and George R Stewart’s Earth Abides, to books like Walk to the End of the World, and on and on to today.

The reason why the novel fits so well in the genre conversation is that Wilhelm is well immersed in those waters, and the second main legacy. Wilhelm, along with her husband Damon Knight, has been instrumental in mentoring authors. Their Milford Writer’s Conference was a progenitor to the original Clarion Workshop. As a result, Wilheim’s teaching has touched hundreds of writers, and thus, as a result, most science fiction readers have read a story that has at least a glimmer of the influence of Kate Wilhelm.

Now that is definitely being a part of the genre conversation.

(13) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (1984)

Forty-one years ago Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, the sequel to the Hugo-winning Raiders of the Lost Ark, premiered. It’s actually a prequel to that film. Once again it’s directed by Steven Spielberg from a story by George Lucas. The screenplay was by the husband and wife team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, best known for American Graffiti which yes involved both George Lucas and Harrison Ford.

Harrison Ford was of course back along with Kate Capshaw, Amrish Puri, Roshan Seth, Philip Stone and Ke Huy Quan. Capshaw would marry Spielberg seven years later and yes they are still married, bless them!

I’ll admit that Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom was nearly not as fun for me as Raiders of the Lost Ark but critics loved it, with Roger Ebert in his Chicago Sun-Times review saying it was “the most cheerfully exciting, bizarre, goofy, romantic adventure movie since Raiders, and it is high praise to say that it’s not so much a sequel as an equal. It’s quite an experience.”

And Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily Post was equally exuberant: “Indie, you will be happy to learn, hasn’t changed a bit. Played with gruff determination by the appealingly rugged Harrison Ford, he continues to set quite a pace for himself in Spielberg’s rip-roaring, boldly imaginative sequel to his blockbuster hit.”

It’s worth noting that It did get banned in India which as one who spent considerable time in Sri Lanka is something I fully understand as there are truly disgusting Indian stereotypes in that film.

It was fantastically profitable as it cost just under thirty million in production and publicity costs and made ten times that at the box office in its initial run!

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes are very fond of it, giving it an eighty-six percent rating.

(14) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem shows a future treat.
Lio shows an easy method of collecting.
Non Sequitur illustrates a reading triumph.
Pearls Before Swine receives the product.
Rhymes with Orange finally has convincing evidence.
Wumo collects ‘em all at last.

(15) IT’S JUST AN UPGRADE. [Item by Steven French.] Keza MacDonald reviews the Nintendo Switch 2 in the Guardian’s gaming column, “Pushing Buttons”: “Nintendo’s Switch 2 is the upgrade of my dreams – but it’s not as ‘new’ as some might hope”.

Launch week is finally here, and though I would love to be bringing you a proper review of the Nintendo Switch 2 right now, I still don’t have one at the time of writing. In its wisdom, Nintendo has decided not to send review units out until the day before release, so as you read this I will be standing impatiently by the door like a dog anxiously awaiting its owner.

I have played the console, though, for a whole day at Nintendo’s offices, so I can give you some first impressions. Hardware-wise, it is the upgrade of my dreams: sturdier JoyCons, a beautiful screen, the graphical muscle to make games look as good as I want them to in 2025 (though still not comparable to the high-end PlayStation 5 Pro or a modern gaming PC). I like the understated pops of colour on the controllers, the refined menu with its soothing chimes and blips. Game sharing, online functionality and other basic stuff is frictionless now. I love that Nintendo Switch Online is so reasonably priced, at £18 a year, as opposed to about the same per month for comparable gaming services, and it gives me access to a treasure trove of Nintendo games from decades past.

But here’s the key word in that paragraph: it’s an upgrade. After eight years, an upgrade feels rather belated. I was hoping for something actually new, and aside from the fact that you can now use those controllers as mice by turning them sideways and moving them around on a desk or on your lap, there isn’t much new in the Switch 2. Absorbed in Mario Kart World, the main launch title, it was easy to forget I was even playing a new console. I do wonder – as I did in January – whether many less gaming-literate families who own a Switch will see a reason to upgrade, given the £400 asking price….

(16) SUPER MALE GAZE. “Superman Popcorn Machine Bucket Shows Off Man of Steel’s Heat Vision” reports Yahoo! Is this for real? I have no idea.

…The popcorn bucket machine sees Superman popping movie goers’ popcorn for them with his heat vision. Check out an image, via an X post from DiscussingFilm…

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure this one is not for real.

(17) INTERESTING CHOICE. GamingBible reports “Marvel officially casts our new Deadpool, and he’s perfect”.

…Meta has officially announced Marvel’s Deadpool VR, a joint venture between Twisted Pixel and Oculus Studios in collaboration with Marvel Games – and yes, that means we’ve got a new Deadpool.

This time around, the merc with a mouth will not be played by the familiar Ryan Reynolds, nuh uh.

It’s another famous face that’ll be stepping into the suit: Neil Patrick Harris.

That’s right. How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris is officially Deadpool….

(18) BUDGET IS SPACE EXPLORATION DEATH SENTENCE. “Dozens of active and planned NASA spacecraft killed in Trump budget request” reports Science.

…“This is a tragic mistake for the new administration,” says Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and former NASA science chief. The proposal undercuts the country’s science pipeline and wastes billions of dollars, he adds.

The request would kill off missions that are active in space right now, including two Orbiting Carbon Observatories (OCOs): OCO-2, a standalone spacecraft launched in 2014, and OCO-3, which is mounted on the International Space Station. Both missions carry a spectrometer that spies on wavelengths of light absorbed by carbon dioxide molecules, providing an ability to map atmospheric carbon abundance around the planet. The missions enabled investigations into the variations of the natural carbon cycle and also proved capable of detecting human carbon emissions.

The budget proposal would also end the Earth-facing instruments on the Deep Space Climate Observatory, which monitors space weather and records snapshots of the planet’s surface. It would kill the space station’s Sage III instrument, which makes long-term measurements of ozone, water vapor, and other gases in the atmosphere. And it would terminate the Terra, Aqua, and Aura satellites, each of which has operated for more than 2 decades, providing unprecedented insight into climate change with steady, well-calibrated instruments. And although Terra and Aqua are both near the end of their lives, Aura, which measures the stratosphere in a way no other satellite can imitate, could operate until late this decade.

The losses would not stop at Earth. The proposal would end the Juno mission orbiting Jupiter, which has revealed the gas giant’s interior structure and provided close-up views of its large moons. It would end New Horizons, which famously imaged Pluto and is now pushing into a Kuiper belt of cold, icy objects that is deeper than scientists once thought. It would terminate the OSIRIS-APEX mission, which is reusing the healthy spacecraft that returned asteroid samples to Earth to visit the asteroid Apophis right after it makes a close pass of Earth in 2029. And it would kill off several spacecraft orbiting Mars, including Mars Odyssey and Maven, while pulling the agency’s funds supporting Mars Express, another orbiter operated by the European Space Agency.

The plans would also kill off nearly every major science mission the agency has not yet begun to build. It would end development of the Atmosphere Observing System (AOS), a multibillion-dollar series of satellites meant to study the complex formation of clouds and storms and their alteration by pollution—one of the main sources of uncertainty for future climate change, seen most recently in the debate on how much ship pollution reductions influence recent record high temperatures.

It would also terminate the Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) mission, which would loft an instrument into space capable of dividing reflected light into more than 400 wavelength channels across the visible and into the infrared. While these measurements can be used to study methane and carbon dioxide emissions, such imaging spectrometers—which serve, in effect, as molecular mapping tools—can also be used to prospect for critical minerals and track forest and farm health. The proposal to end SBG is particularly disappointing, Nolin says. “It’s deeply unfortunate they don’t understand the greater value of an instrument like that,” she says.

In the planetary science division, the administration would cancel two much-delayed missions NASA has planned for Venus. One, called DAVINCI, would send an armored sphere plunging through the venusian atmosphere, measuring noble gases to sort out the planet’s origins and sniffing for sulfur and carbon near the surface for more evidence of recent volcanic activity. The other, Veritas, would use a radar to peer through the planet’s thick clouds and re-create its topography, revealing whether volcanoes or variants of tectonic plates are active on its surface…

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

Pixel Scroll 1/13/25 Why Yes, We Are (At Least In Part) Stardust

Posted on January 13, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE OF GAIMAN SEX ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS. New York Magazine‘s often explicit article “There Is No Safe Word” [Archive.is link] by Lila Shapiro, as described by Publishers Lunch, “reports on the details of the Neil Gaiman sexual assault case, expanding on allegations first reported by New Zealand podcast Tortoise Media. Last July, five women accused Gaiman of assault, and one woman said she filed a complaint with New Zealand police. Four out of five of Gaiman’s accusers spoke to New York Magazine for the piece, and the publication reviewed journal entries, texts, emails, and police correspondence. Gaiman did not comment for the article, but he has denied all allegations.” Shapiro spoke with eight women in total, three who had never gone public. The story contains content that readers may find disturbing, including graphic allegations of sexual assault.

(2) ROWLING ON GAIMAN. And in Deadline, “J.K. Rowling Compares Neil Gaiman To Harvey Weinstein Amid Claims”.

…Not long after New York magazine published its detailed cover story on multiple new and old claims against Gaiman by multiple women, the Harry Potter creator took to social media to give some opinionated context of her own.

No stranger to controversy, criticism and accusations of being transphobic for her strident views on gender identity and the transitioning of minors, Rowling pinned initial reactions to allegations against the once acclaimed Gaiman to incarcerated rapist Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo outburst against the much-accused Pulp Fiction producer.

“The literary crowd that had a hell of a lot to say about Harvey Weinstein before he was convicted has been strangely muted in its response to multiple accusations against Neil Gaiman from young women who’d never met, yet — as with Weinstein — tell remarkably similar stories,” Rowling wrote this morning on X in the second of two missives on Gaiman….

(3) WRITER’S LEGACY BURNED. The London Review of Books reports that by a tragic coincidence of timing the late Gary Indiana’s personal library and collection was destroyed by the Eaton Fire in L.A.

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A post shared by London Review of Books (@londonreviewofbooks)

(4) NEW OKORAFOR BOOK DRAWS FROM LIFE. The New York Times profiles Nnedi Okorafor in “Writing Fantasy Came Naturally. Reality Was Far More Daunting”. (Link bypasses the paywall). “After winning just about every major science fiction and fantasy award, Nnedi Okorafor explores a traumatic event in her own history in her most autobiographical novel yet.”

… Thirty years and more than 20 books later, Okorafor, now an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy writer, is exploring that traumatic experience, and the transformation that followed, in her heavily autobiographical new novel, “Death of the Author.”

A genre-defying metafictional experiment, the story centers on a Nigerian American writer from Chicago named Zelu, who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair after a childhood accident. She dreams of becoming a writer, but her lovingly overprotective parents and siblings are skeptical that she’ll ever support herself. After struggling for years to get published, Zelu writes a best-selling postapocalyptic novel set among sentient robots in a future Nigeria, and lands a seven-figure advance and a movie deal. Her sudden rise to fame is both thrilling and jarring, as Zelu sees her success disrupt her family, and her novel get whitewashed by Hollywood executives who strip it of the African elements.

With its autobiographical framework, “Death of the Author” is a departure from Okorafor’s previous work, otherworldly stories that often draw on her experiences in Nigeria, where she found that belief in the supernatural — giant spider deities, water spirits, shape-shifting leopard people — is part of daily life….

(5) BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING…WHAT YOU BUY WITH THIS. “1984 author and former M.E.N. journalist George Orwell honoured on new £2 coin” reports the Manchester Evening News, where he used to work. (King Charles is on the obverse. Make of that what you will.)

Famed author and former Manchester Evening News journalist George Orwell is celebrated on a new £2 coin.

The writer of 1984 and Animal Farm will be honoured by the Royal Mint, 75 years after his death. Coin artist Henry Gray created a design which appears to be an eye, but is a camera lens at the centre of the design….

The Royal Mint will soon be ready to sell you one.

(6) MARKET REPORT. Incensepunk Magazine is now accepting submissions of speculative fiction stories about 4,000 to 6,000 words in length.

And what is “incensepunk” you ask?

Incensepunk is, at its core, a genre of longing. It desires a world in which traditional faiths and churches play a major role in society. Incensepunk extrapolates Byzantine and Gothic architecture styles into a modern world of skyscrapers and globalization. However, it is not regressive. It doesn’t view the past as good and the present as wicked and depraved. Instead, it tries to envision what the world could look like if faith and society were more integrated.

Incensepunk is speculative fiction, but it need not be alternate history (though it is certainly acceptable to be)….

(7) COMPLIMENTARY ENCOUNTERS OF THE HOLLYWOOD KIND. Far Out Magazine says “The writer Steven Spielberg called his muse” was Ray Bradbury.

…In terms of source material, Spielberg has adapted some of the greats. Michael Crichton provided the original novel on which Jurassic Park is based and Minority Report comes from a story by Philip K. Dick. However, for the director’s biggest sci-fi inspiration, we turn to a writer he never got the chance to bring to the big screen…

…Commenting on Bradbury’s [2012] passing, Spielberg was extremely complimentary of his work. “He was my muse for the better part of my sci-fi career,” he said in a statement (via The Hollywood Reporter). “He lives on through his legion of fans. In the world of science fiction and fantasy and imagination he is immortal.”

This admiration went both ways. In an interview with the Star Ledger (via Entertainment Weekly), Bradbury gave his thoughts on a Spielberg classic. “Close Encounters is the best film of its kind ever made,” he espoused. “It takes too long, but the transfiguration at the end, with the splendid arrival of the mother ship – that makes up for everything. I was so amazed and changed when I saw it that I went over to the studio to tell Spielberg what a genius he was.” In a full circle moment, Spielberg replied to this praise by claiming that Close Encounters wouldn’t have been possible without It Came From Outer Space, a 1953 film that Bradbury contributed the story to….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 13, 1893 — Clark Ashton Smith. (Died 1961.)

By Paul Weimer: Clark Ashton Smith was part of the Weird Tales crowd with people like Lovecraft, and it is through reading Lovecraft and authors like him that I came across Smith’s work. I started with his weird horror/fantasy, stories like City of Singing Flame (although that particular story I would only read years later) and eventually trying stuff from Poseidonis (his Atlantis world) and Zothique (once I found out that it had inspired Jack Vance). Empire of the Necromancers feels like it could be set in a distant corner of the Dying Earth and I like that headcanon, for example.

I found him to be a taproot writer, ones whose ideas and style were perhaps somewhat better than his execution at times (this is also true of Lovecraft, let’s be honest). But his ideas and style were inspirational, transformational and helped inspire a sheaf of fans, authors, games and much more as a result. In a way, without reading Smith, you’ve read Smith–through how he has influenced writers since (to say nothing of his correspondence with Howard and Lovecraft at the time).

And it must be said that there is a poetic feel to all of his work. The poetry Smith wrote early in his career suffused and influenced his subsequent stories and fragments. He never lost the dream of poetry. Or, the poetic muse never left him. Smith wrote intensely and evocatively and his poetic training and use of word choice and imagery come through in all of his stories. Reading a Smith story is to be transported into another world, into another reality, be it in the far past or the far future.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 13, 2008 — Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Seventeen years ago this evening on Fox, the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles premiered. It was directed by Josh Friedman whose sole genre work previously was H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. The top cast was Lena Headey as Sarah Connor along with Thomas Dekker and Summer Glau in supporting roles

If Lena Headey sounds familiar that’s because she was on the Game of Thrones as Cersei Lannister.

In addition, the narrator was also Headey. Though it would last but two seasons comprising thirty-one episodes, as the first season was abbreviated, it was the highest-rated new scripted series of the ’07 to ‘08 television season. And yes, it started in the ‘07 television season even though its first episode was in January of ‘08. Such are the mysteries of television seasons.

Reception among critics was generally quite fine. Gina Bellafante of the New York Times said that it was “one of the more humanizing adventures in science fiction to arrive in quite a while.” And Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune exclaimed of the second season that the “season’s opener is much clearer and more sheer fun than anything that aired last spring.”

It has a stellar eighty-four percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes on the Popcornmeter as they call it.

Despite numerous ongoing fan efforts to revive the series, Josh Friedman has dismissed the possibility of crowdfunding a third season unlike say the recent Veronica Mars series due to issues involving holder rights. I suspect the Terminator issues here are hellishly complex.

(10) NEW ACTOR FOR T’CHALLA? [Item by Steven French.] I suspect fandom may be divided on this one: “Marvel is ready to recast Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa in Black Panther. Should they?” asks the Guardian.

Marvel’s multiverse has become a narrative Swiss army knife capable of slicing through the thorniest of creative dilemmas and papering over the widest of cracks. That said, few dilemmas are as sensitive as how to move forward with a superhero as iconic as Black Panther. Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of T’Challa wasn’t just a performance – it was a cultural touchstone, woven so tightly into the fabric of modern blockbuster cinema that imagining anyone else in the role feels like attempting to rewrite history. Four years after Boseman’s untimely death from colon cancer, Marvel faces the delicate task of continuing a legacy that seems impossible to replicate.

If rumblings out of Hollywood this week have foundation, however, the studio is beginning to countenance just that, a new T’Challa from an alternate reality who presumably finds his way into the mainstream Marvel universe via one of the umpteen ways we’ve seen superheroes such as Doctor Strange, various Spider-Men and Scarlet Witch crossing the boundaries between one reality and another. Jeff Sneider of the InSneider newsletter reports that the studio is finally “firmly open” to bringing back the king of Wakanda, despite previous attempts to recast the role having getting rebuffed by actors who didn’t want to jeopardise their careers by “stepping into Boseman’s gigantic shoes”.

(11) CORREIA “DEDICATION” TO GRRM. A GRRM fansite ran a photo of the dedication page.

Author Larry Correia wrote a dedication to George R.R. Martin in his new book ‘HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN,’ the final entry to his ‘SAGA OF THE FORGOTTEN WARRIOR’ series:

“To George R.R. Martin. See? It’s not that hard.” pic.twitter.com/0raQVy5eKi
— westerosies (@westerosies) January 12, 2025

“Fantasy author taunts Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin in his new book” reports MSN.com.

…Is this a playful jab or a petty insult? It’s probably closer to the latter, seeing as how Martin and Correia have locked horns before. Their last public clash involves the Hugo Awards, which are handed out every year to honor the best in science fiction and fantasy fiction. Martin has been attending the Hugos since the 1970s, while Correia got involved in the 2010s….

Correia is all over his social media crowing about the attention his jab is getting.

(12) STANDING ROOM ONLY. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket did not leave the ground today after all: “Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin calls off launch of New Glenn rocket” – AP News tells the reason.

Blue Origin will try again to launch its massive new rocket as early as Tuesday after calling off the debut launch because of ice buildup in critical plumbing.

The 320-foot (98-meter) New Glenn rocket was supposed to blast off before dawn Monday with a prototype satellite. But ice formed in a purge line for a unit powering some of the rocket’s hydraulic systems and launch controllers ran out of time to clear it, according to the company.

Founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin said Tuesday’s poor weather forecast could cause more delay. Thick clouds and stiff wind were expected at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The test flight already had been delayed by rough seas that posed a risk to the company’s plan to land the first-stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic….

(13) MOANA LITIGATION. “Disney faces copyright lawsuit over ‘Moana’ franchise” reports Entertainment Weekly.

Disney has been hit with a copyright lawsuit alleging that the wildly popular Moana franchise was nearly entirely lifted from a decades-old screenplay without the writer’s consent.

In a lawsuit reviewed by Entertainment Weekly that was filed Friday, animator Buck Woodall claims that former Mandeville Films development director Jenny Marchick violated his copyright by secretly passing to Disney materials he produced confidentially for her two decades ago. That material, Woodall alleges, became Moana and Moana 2….

…The animator claims that he delivered to Marchick “extremely large quantities of intellectual property and trade secrets” related to a project variously called “Bucky” and “Bucky the Wave Warrior” between 2003 and 2008. Those materials included a completed screenplay, character illustrations, budgets, a fully animated concept trailer, storyboards, background image references, and more.

Woodall also notes that he received copyright protection on these materials in 2004 that was updated in 2014.

“Bucky” was never developed, but Woodall claims that Marchick was able to pass his materials to Disney by exploiting legal loopholes inherent to the “tapestry of confusion” that is Disney’s elaborate corporate structure. According to Woodall, “Bucky” not only became Moana without his consent, but continued to serve as the basis for Moana 2 as well.

The suit enumerates a number of similarities between Woodall’s undeveloped script and Moana and Moana 2. Like “Bucky,” the first film follows a teenager on a voyage in an outrigger canoe across Polynesian waters to save Polynesian land. It features the Polynesian belief in spiritual ancestors who manifest as animal guides, and a number of specifics including a symbolic necklace, navigation by stars, a lava goddess, and a giant creature disguised as a mountainous island.

As for Moana 2, the suit notes that details such as the rooster and pig companions, a mission to break a curse, a whirlpool that leads to an oceanic portal, and an encounter with the Kakamora warrior tribe were all lifted without consent from “Bucky.”…

(14) PITCH MEETING. Hmm. Did any of the foregoing get mentioned during the “Moana 2 Pitch Meeting”?

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

Pixel Scroll 9/2/24 Fifth Scrollboard Outside Pixel, California

Posted on September 2, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) AMIWRIMO? National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)’s post “What is NaNoWriMo’s position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)?” is drawing a critical response. Outraged Writers Board members Daniel Jose Older, Cass Morris, and Rebecca Kim Wells have all resigned. (Coincidentally, this year’s new NaNoWriMo sponsor is ProWritingAid.com, which has now added unspecified “AI” functionality: “How to Unstick Your Camp NaNoWriMo Project” [Archive.is link].) Their position statement on AI is quoted below — including an update added after the first wave of negative responses hit social media:

NaNoWriMo does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI. NaNoWriMo’s mission is to “provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.” We fulfill our mission by supporting the humans doing the writing. Please see this related post that speaks to our overall position on nondiscrimination with respect to approaches to creativity, writer’s resources, and personal choice.

Note: we have edited this post by adding this paragraph to reflect our acknowledgment that there are bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically. We want to make clear that, though we find the categorical condemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values. We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse.

We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.

- - Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.
  - Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers “should“ be able to perform certain functions independently or is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can’t “see” the issues in their writing without help.
  - General Access Issues.All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don’t always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.

Beyond that, we see value in sharing resources and information about AI and any emerging technology, issue, or discussion that is relevant to the writing community as a whole. It’s healthy for writers to be curious about what’s new and forthcoming, and what might impact their career space or their pursuit of the craft. Our events with a connection to AI have been extremely well-attended, further-proof that this programming is serving Wrimos who want to know more….

Three Board members quit over this post:

Here is a selection from among the many other negative responses to the post.

(2) TRADITION DERAILED. [Item by Steven French.] One can only speculate why it was decided to end the ‘tradition’! “Harry Potter fans boo as King’s Cross ends ‘back to Hogwarts’ tradition” reports the Guardian.

Disappointed Harry Potter fans booed after an annual announcement at London King’s Cross railway station did not happen.

People gathered at the station hoping to hear a message on the public address system that the fictional Hogwarts Express would depart from platform 9 ¾ at 11am, as happens in JK Rowling’s books.

The back to Hogwarts tradition, which celebrates the start of each academic year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry every 1 September, has previously also involved the train service being displayed on departure boards, with hundreds of fans attending the 2023 event.

But King’s Cross did not mark the occasion on Sunday.

A video posted on X shows an expectant crowd count down to 11am, and then booing when nothing happens.

Warner Bros Discovery, which owns the Harry Potter franchise, issued a statement in July urging fans to avoid travelling to King’s Cross on Sunday and instead watch a programme on YouTube hosted by the I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! winner Sam Thompson.

(3) PICKET LINES. [Item by Chris Barkley.] Something else conrunners (especially those who pine for a Labor Day Worldcon) need to worry about: “Thousands of hotel workers launch strike after talks stall with top chains” at NPR.

Thousands of hotel workers began a multiday strike in several cities across the U.S. to press for higher wages and increased staffing after contract negotiations with major hotel chains Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott stalled.

Workers walked off the job on Sunday in 25 cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Greenwich, Conn., and Honolulu, said Unite Here, a union representing hospitality workers across North America. The strikes are planned to last between two to three days, organizers said, noting the timing of the strike happening on Labor Day. Workers in Baltimore, New Haven, Conn., Oakland, Calif., and Providence, R.I., were also prepared to join the strike…

(4) THE MAKING OF GLASGOW 2024. Polish fan Marcin Klak reports on “Glasgow 2024 – A Worldcon Which I Helped to Make” at Fandom Rover.

… Earlier I mentioned about the series of unfortunate events. You already know about the fire alarm in the middle of the night and about catching Covid. The latter may have happened after the con. On top of that I also got the achievement for being splashed with water from the puddle from the top of my head downwards. Even coming back home posed a challenge and airline had to move me to another (later flight). Should it not be enough they also managed to leave my luggage in Amsterdam thanks to which I lost another 30 minutes. Yet you know what? All those unlucky incidents didn’t spoil my experience.

Glasgow 2024 was an amazing adventure. I have not seen as much of Scotland as I wanted to but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I had a great time. Once the con finished I was sad that it was over. And it lasted for eight days for me so, I dare to say, was rather long! It was definitely different than any of my previous Worldcons but I am happy with how it went. I don’t think that I should be rating it. As a member of concom I am not objective so I will leave the rating to the other members. Yet what I can say is that my experience was something I will treasure for many years to come….

(5) IF TANK MARMOT HAD A HAMMER. Doris V. Sutherland gives a rundown about the Dragon Awards winners at Women Write About Comics: “2024 Dragon Awards: John Scalzi and Rebecca Yarros Are Winners While AI Art Loses”.

… Charlaine Harris won the Best Alternate History award with All the Dead Shall Weep, the fifth book in her series about young mercenary Gunnie Rose. This was despite one of the other category finalists, Tom Kratman, lobbying his social media following to vote for his novel Dirty Water in retaliation for it receiving a negative review in Publishers’ Weekly; Kratman expressed a desire to “hammer the award up their collective ass,” a desire that must now remain unfulfilled…

(6) DRAGON AWARDS STATISTICS. Okay, you can stop laughing at the headline now. Here’s what Camestros Felapton – with a microscope – managed to extract from a press release: “Some Dragon Award Stats”.

…Anyway, here are the numbers they did provide:

“Approximately 7,000 fans cast ballots for this year’s Dragon Award winners, selected from among 67 properties in 11 categories covering the full range of fiction, comics, television, movies, video gaming, and tabletop gaming.”

Which is what they said last year, as in that is literally the same sentence….

(7) BECAUSE OF THE WONDERFUL WIZ HE IS. Deadline thinks “Ian McKellen Could Return As Gandalf In New ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Films”. An injury is keeping him on the sidelines til the end of the year. He’s likely to be available by the time they start filming – if they get him signed on.

…And it seems that Sir Ian McKellen could be coming back to his beloved role as J.R.R. Tolkien’s wizard after revealing that he had been approached about featuring in the new Lord of the Rings films.

McKellen told The Big Issue: “Enthusiasm for The Lord of the Rings shows no sign of abating … I can’t tell you any more than that. I’ve just been told there are going to be more films and Gandalf will be involved and they hope that I’ll be playing him.”

The 85-year-old actor, who is recovering from falling off stage in Player Kings in London’s West End, added: “When? I don’t know. What the script is? It’s not written yet. So, they better be quick.”

In a separate interview with BBC Breakfast, McKellen said he had no plans to retire from acting. “I shall just keep at it as long as the legs and the lungs and the mind keep working,” said the actor, who is promoting new movie The Critic….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born September 2, 1964 — Keanu Reeves, 60. Keanu Reeves certainly has fascinating genre credits. So let’s get started and look at them.

First about that film. It was by no mean his first film, he’d done quite a few including some very serious films before that including Dangerous Liaisons, but his first film that we know him from is of course what is his most best loved film of a genre nature which is Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. He played Ted “Theodore” Logan.

I’ll confess that since I deeply, madly adore this film, I’m not seen either of the sequels, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey or Bill & no Ted Face the Music. Why spoil perfection?

A choice bit of stakes through the heart was up for him in Bram Stoker’s Dracula where he had the role Jonathan Harker .

Following that was Johnny Mnemonic which in its original version is considered one of the worst genre films ever made, but 12 years back, a black-and-white edition of the film which was titled Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White was released and William Gibson says is much closer, closer to his original vision. I see it’s available on Amazon, either in BluRay or DVD.

So what next? The Matrix where he played Neo, the protagonist throughout The Matrix franchise. I saw the first, found it interesting, but not enough to watch the next two. I see it was nominated for a Hugo at Chicon 2000 but didn’t win as that was the year that Galaxy Quest deservedly won.

He was Bob / Fed / Bruce in A Scanner Darkly as based off Philip K. Dick’s novel. And it too was nominated for Hugo, this being at Nippon 2007, the year Pan’s Labyrinth won.

Finally as John Wick can’t possibly be considered genre, he had potentially plum of a role as there was a remake of The Earth Stood Still and he was Klaatu! Yes, I did go to Rotten Tomatoes to see what to reaction was.

Well, the audience yours gave it a 21% rating, Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal said this, which is the overwhelming consensus: “Where the original film was unpretentious, this version, with Keanu Reeves as Klaatu, is insufferably full of itself, an X-Files episode pumped up to pseudo-cosmic proportions.”

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Thatababy has a troublesome friend.
The Argyle Sweater finds a superhero frustrated by going green. (No, not literally. That’s a different superhero.)
Crankshaft continues the censorship storyline.
Brewster Rockit will appeal to metal detector enthusiasts.

(10) STAR WARS IN OJIBWE. “A new version of the 1977 Star Wars features a dub in a Native American language” – NPR spoke with one of the voice actors.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

“Star Wars” fans in Minnesota and Wisconsin yesterday got to experience a whole new version of the 1977 movie “A New Hope.” It’s a version dubbed into the language of one of the largest Indigenous groups in the U.S. and Canada. Minnesota Public Radio’s Melissa Olson has more.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN WILLIAMS AND LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’S “MAIN TITLE”)

MELISSA OLSON, BYLINE: Fans who came out to see the film got a chance to hear a language spoken in a galaxy far, far away for the first time. This version of the 1977 classic “Star Wars: A New Hope” has been dubbed in the Ojibwe language. It’s spoken by one of the largest Indigenous nations in the U.S. and Canada. One of the lead voice actors in the film just happened to be attending a showing in a Twin Cities suburb. He’s both a fan of the movie and a student of the language.

AJUAWAK KAPASHESIT: My name is Ajuawak Kapashesit, and I play Han Solo in this edition of “Star Wars: A New Hope.”…

(11) HASTA LA VISTA, BABY. “40 Years Later, Netflix’s New Terminator Show Just Fixed a Time-Travel Plot Hole” says Inverse.

The basic set-up of Terminator, in theory, creates two paradoxes. When the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back in time to terminate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to future Resistance leader John Connor, the AI that controls him, Skynet clearly feels this is a solid plan. But, in sending the T-800 back, Skynet also causes the Resistance to send a human agent back, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who becomes John Connor’s father in the past. So Skynet messed up: Had they not sent the T-800 back in time, they wouldn’t have ever created their own, enemy, right?

In all great science fiction time travel stories, cause and effect don’t behave ordinarily, which is part of the fun. But, what the newest iteration of the Terminator franchise has just done has provided a new explanation not only for the set-up of the first film but the events of the second movie, too. Spoilers ahead….

(12) A NEW KIND OF DIG. “Aboard the ISS, Archaeologists Conduct the First ‘Space Excavation’” reports Atlas Obscura.

NEW RESULTS FROM THE FIRST archaeological fieldwork conducted in space show the International Space Station is a rich cultural landscape where crew create their own “gravity” to replace Earth’s, and adapt module spaces to suit their needs.

Archaeology is usually thought of as the study of the distant past, but it’s ideally suited for revealing how people adapt to long-duration spaceflight. In the SQuARE experiment described in our new paper in PLOS ONE, we re-imagined a standard archaeological method for use in space, and got astronauts to carry it out for us.

The International Space Station is the first permanent human settlement in space. Close to 280 people have visited it in the past 23 years. Our team has studied displays of photos, religious icons, and artworks made by crew members from different countries, observed the cargo that is returned to Earth, and used NASA’s historic photo archive to examine the relationships between crew members who serve together….

(13) ART ADMIRATION. Geoff Thew calls the fantasy manga Witch Hat Atelier “The Most Beautiful Manga I’ve Ever Read”.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George lets us step inside the Pitch Meeting that led to Alien: Romulus. You can check in any time you want, but you can never leave…

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

Pixel Scroll 8/25/24 Pixel ScrollRight Of The Mounties

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION AWARD. The idea of the Location Managers Guild Award is truly Hollywood insider stuff. It’s “meant to spotlight outstanding filming locations that sent the tone and enhance the narrative for international features, television and commercials.” There are genre winners, of course. “Location Managers Guild Awards 2024” at Deadline.

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A PERIOD TELEVISION SERIES
Fallout
Paul Kramer, Chris Arena, Mandi Dillin / LMGI, David Park / LMGI, Paul van der Ploeg

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION SERIES
Fargo Season 5
Mohammad Qazzaz / LMGI, Luke Antosz / LMGI

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A TV SERIAL PROGRAM, ANTHOLOGY, MOW OR LIMITED SERIES
Ripley
Robin Melville / LMGI, Giuseppe Nardi / LMGI, Fabio Ferrante, Shane Haden

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A PERIOD FEATURE FILM
Oppenheimer
Justin Duncan /LMGI, Dennis Muscari, Patty Carey-Perazzo, T.C. Townsen

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A CONTEMPORARY FEATURE FILM
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 1
David Campbell-Bell, Enrico Latella / LMGI, Jonas Fylling Christiansen, Niall O’Shea, Ben Firminger

OUTSTANDING FILM COMMISSION
Film in Iceland
True Detective: Night Country

OUTSTANDING LOCATIONS IN A COMMERCIAL
Toyota: Present from the Past
Mark Freid / LMGI, Paul Riordan / LMGI

(2) LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS BOOKS. Charlie Jane Anders names “10 Literary Books That Made Me a Better Science Fiction Writer” at Happy Dancing.

… As I wrote a while back, the appearance of literary merit means people will give your work more of a chance in spite of weird experiments, but it also means the reader might pay a bit more attention to the nuts and bolts of the story (at least sometimes.) In a good literary story, this relationship with the ideal reader leads to more attention to detail: the sentence-level prose, but also the small details of people’s lives and inner states….

6) Possession by A.S. Byatt

I re-read this book just a few months ago, because my upcoming novel Lessons in Magic and Disaster has a similar literary detective story at its heart. And when I think about the current vogue for Dark Academia stories, Possession feels like a foundational text to me. The story of two young scholars who stumble upon a long lost letter that hints at a secret affair between two Victorian poets, Possession fairly burns with the joy of discovery and textual analysis. That’s the thing that I really discovered when I re-read this book: the poetry of Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte is vitally important to the story and to their love affair, and the “clues” in the story are as much about the beauty of their writing and metaphors as any love letters. I’ll probably be writing more about Possession as the release date of Lessons in Magic and Disaster grows closer, so stay tuned….

(3) CAN THE PRICE BE RIGHT? “AMC to release new Batman popcorn bucket” – Batman News has details.

…AMC Theaters will have a Bat-Signal popcorn bucket available on Aug. 28 that will sell for $34.99. A new collectible cup of the Batmobile will also be available for $11.99, but a combo can be purchased for $44.99….

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(4) ARMED LIBRARIAN. “Hell hath no fury like a librarian scorned in the book banning wars” – behind a paywall at the LA Times.

A MANDA JONES is a Louisiana middle-school librarian who sleeps with a shotgun under her bed and carries a pistol when she travels the back roads.

Threats against her began two years ago after she spoke out against censorship and was drawn into the culture wars over book banning. She was condemned as a pedophile and a groomer and accused of “advocating teaching anal sex to 11-year-olds.” The Christian right targeted her, and she found herself in the news warning that conservatives in her state and across much of the country were endangering libraries and intellectual freedom.

“I never expected any of this,” said Jones, who lives in Livingston Parish. “It’s a huge weight to feel all that attention. I’m just a school librarian from a two red-light town.”

Jones’ cautionary and disquieting testament to the nation’s divisiveness is told in her new memoir, “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America,” a blunt, angry, searching and redeeming story about a woman engulfed by forces and designs she never imagined. It is a glimpse into a family and a small town that reads like a chapter out of “The Scarlet Letter” or “The Crucible,” narratives whose themes of fear, superstition, rage and religion are again permeating the nation’s political moment, including Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s recent comments that “Democrats want to put sexually explicit books in toddlers’ libraries.”…

(5) ANALYSIS OF A CONVOLUTED PUBLISHING HISTORY. Rich Horton decides it’s time for another look at a classic: “Review: Norstrilia, by Cordwainer Smith” at Strange at Ecbatan.

… I don’t really want to say more about the plot. There is at the same time a lot going on, but in an odd way not. Some of it seems a bit arbitrary, some doesn’t quite convince, and some is fascinating. But still at all pretty much works. The novel isn’t at a level with Smith’s greatest works, but parts of it are. At time it reaches the incantatory heights Smith could achieve, and it hints throughout at a really important story — the story of the Underpeople (which is also central to “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”, and which perhaps is ultimately key to the entire Instrumentality future history.)….

(6) HOWARD WALDROP REMEMBRANCE EVENT. George R.R. Martin tells readers about the video portion of a memorial for Howard Waldrop, held June 29, at Not a Blog.

…I was not able to be there in person (we were in London at the time) but there was no way I could not be a part of a remembrance for H’ard, so I taped some remarks and sent them to Robert Taylor, who was organizing the event.   I went on rather a long time, as it happens, but Howard and I had a long history and I am a wordy bastard in any case, as many of you know. My tape ended up coming in around 45 minutes long, and could easily have gone three hours if I’d just kept talking. There are so many stories to tell.

That was too long for the Austin memorial, so Robert and his team kindly cut and trimmed it for the event.   I do have the longer version and will likely post it here… probably later rather than sooner.   For now, we have this; not only my video, but all the other speeches and stories as well, from some of Howard’s pals. (Some, not all. Howard had friends all over the world.

Parts of this may bring a tear to your eye.   Other bits will make you laugh.   Laughter was one of Howard’s gifts….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 25, 1955 – Simon R. Green, 69. I’ve had email conversations with our Birthday honoree, Simon R. Green. He’s a fascinating, friendly person.

I first read the Deathstalker series which, like everything he writes, is part of the same multiverse. Owen Deathstalker, reluctant heir to the ancient Deathstalker name and a very minor historian, will come to lead a rebellion against the powerful and corrupt empire ruled by The Iron Bitch. Every SF trope is here — crashed alien starships, rogue computer hackers, clones and espers to name but a few. Yes, it’s space opera but not to be taken too seriously.

Moving sideways for a movement, he did a stellar job with his Forest Kingdom fantasy series which plays it more straight I think save SLIGHT SPOILER such touches as a butterfly collecting dragon END SLIGHT SPOILER. The connected Hawk and Fisher series of two Guardsman in Haven, a corrupt seaport, solving magical mysteries is wonderful.

Remember how I said everything was in the same multiverse? Hawk and Fisher show up in Strangefellows, just having a drink. Strangefellows being the bar in Nightside, the pocket universe beneath London where John Taylor is the only detective, as told in the Nightside series. Great setting, fascinating characters, weird stories.

The Secret History series involved the Droods, an ancient family that watches over the world and protects it from mostly supernatural and magical threats. They have a magical armor they, well, protects them from everything. Great series. This and the Nightside series were wrapped in one novel, Night Fall.

I should note that all of the must be read from the beginning. There is significant plot development as each series moved along. Characters change, situations develop.

The Ghostfinders of the Carnacki Institute, an ancient and very secretive government department , exist to deal with ghosts, and live by the motto “We don’t take any shit from the Hereafter”. The plots here are thinner than in his other series but I find the character interesting enough to like the series.

Ishmael Jones is someone who cannot afford to be noticed, someone who lives under the radar. Why so? Because it’s been sixty years since the alien starship made him human and he hasn’t aged at all. These are really fun because Ishmael Jones simultaneously believes he’s human and alien, and views everything that way. Stories are quite good.

A freestanding novel of note is Drinking Midnight Wine about a small English town (actually where he was born) where good in all sorts of magical forms pushed back against evil in yet more magical forms. There’s an Angel, but trust me when I say that you wouldn’t want to meet her.

He’s too prolific to cover everything here and I noticed I skipped the excellent Giden Sable series. Oh well.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Arlo and Janis found something escaped from a little shop.
Eek! documents a performance complaint.
Wannabe gives writing tips, but are they any good?
Pardon My Planet finds something is super hard to hide.
The Far Side solves a super problem of its own.

(9) NOW WITH EXTRA ADDED EVIL. “’Rings of Power’ Returns, With More Creatures and More Evil”. Link bypasses New York Times paywall.

… In April last year, the production for Season 2 sprawled across several sites around Windsor, England. Shuttle cars sped hundreds of crew members and craft makers between vast studios and forests. For about eight months, nearly 90 cast members spent hours in hair and makeup to be transformed into elves, dwarves, orcs and other Middle-earth dwellers.

A building housed racks of costumes and specially molded or 3-D-printed trinkets and armor. Outdoor sets the size of playgrounds plunged the actors into a court in Númenor or the trenches of an orc camp. And nearby, machinery waited in a muddy field to film a gritty battle scene inspired by films like “Saving Private Ryan.”

“I kept saying constantly on set: more blood, more dust, more mud, more everything,” Charlotte Brandstrom, who directed four of the upcoming season’s episodes, said in an interview. (Some scenes set in Rhûn were also filmed in the Canary Islands.)

This, after all, might be the most expensive series in TV history, a blockbuster prequel that reportedly cost Amazon $715 million for its first season, and premieres the first three episodes of its second season on Thursday…

(10) BITE ON. [Item by Steven French.] Do we need another zombie series? If it has Sue Johnston biting someone’s nose off, then yes please! “‘Sue Johnston’s first day on set, she was biting someone’s nose off’: Ben Wheatley on his zombie drama Generation Z” in the Guardian.

… The old eat the young. That is the back-of-a-beermat pitch for new Channel 4 drama Generation Z. And because the Z stands for zombie, the eating is meant literally. “I loved the idea of a horror story about societal breakdown, told from the perspective of different generations,” says its writer-director Ben Wheatley. “Once I started writing it, I couldn’t stop.”

The film-maker’s first original series for TV begins with an army convoy crashing outside a care home. The subsequent chemical leak turns the residents into marauding monsters who attack local youngsters. “It’s a bit of a Brexit metaphor,” admits Wheatley. “But it’s by no means binary. We discuss it from each generation’s viewpoint, exploring the notion that boomers have ruined the lives of the young. Because it’s a genre piece, that’s basically by biting their hands and eating their brains.”…

(11) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Dan Monroe investigates “Whatever Happened to The LAST STARFIGHTER?” at Movies, Music & Monsters.

(12) ZERO FAMILY VALUES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] From Netflix Anime. Very violent. Very bloody. Very NSFW. Gizmodo warns: “Terminator Zero’s New Trailer Shows the Bloody War to Come”.

…While writing Zero, Mattson keyed in on three core Terminator pillars: killer robots, “fear and dread around nuclear holocaust,” and family-centric stories. If the first two films are respectively about “a man and woman making a baby” and “a mother’s love for her son,” this series is about a fractured family coming together again. In his eyes, you don’t get Terminator without those three tenets, they’ve all led to an enduring franchise aiming to make a comeback and take some new swings.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/15/24 Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Scroll A Pixel

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) GLASGOW 2024 UPDATE. Glasgow 2024 has sent draft program schedules to almost a thousand participants.

We need people to check their email, and their spam, and respond in planorama asap.
If you've any questions, please email [email protected]
(2/2)
— Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon For Our Futures (@Glasgowin2024) July 15, 2024

(2) AUDIBLE REVEALS NEW CALCULATION FOR ROYALTIES. “Audible’s New Royalty Model: More Opportunities for Authors and Publishers”.

…We are now rolling out a new royalty model that prioritizes equity, flexibility, and insight for creators—one that evolved out of ongoing conversations with authors and publishers, and that advances our creator-centric ethos. Under this model, creators are able to monetize more types of content, and listeners will get to discover more innovative storytelling.

Titles in all Audible’s membership offerings can now earn royalties: Audible’s new royalty model means new opportunities for small publishers and independent authors to earn across all membership listening activity. Now more titles—including those currently in Audible Plus, Audible’s all-you-can-listen offering—can generate royalty payments. Depending on the audiences that publishers and creators want to reach, there are new ways to monetize and promote content, which means more flexibility to reach listeners where they are….

How is the new royalty model calculated? Audible takes a member’s plan value (Plus or Premium Plus) and adds the value of any additional credits used, then divides that value among the titles the member listened to over the course of the month. That figure, multiplied by the contractual royalty rate, comprises a creator’s royalty payment….

Publishers Weekly’s coverage, “Audible Rolls Out New Royalty Plan”, observes that “the announcement comes after one of Audible’s most vocal critics, bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, reported in March that Audible officials had approached him to discuss ‘a new royalty structure they intend to offer to independent writers and smaller publishers,’ a plan that Sanderson said was ‘encouraging.’”

(3) BACIGALUPI Q&A. At Colorado Public Radio:“Exhausted by climate fiction, Colorado novelist Paolo Bacigalupi turns to fantasy”.

Sure he has won the biggest prizes in science fiction– the Nebula and the Hugo awards. But Paolo Bacigalupi found himself bereft of inspiration. Penning apocalyptic climate fiction, like 2016’s The Water Knife, had taken its toll….

…The Paonia-based author knew it was time for a change. Then the invitation came.

A wine-importer friend who knew Bacigalupi’s penchant for languages (he’d studied Chinese in college) invited him to Bologna for a crash course in Italian.

The answer was yes…..

…The real-life Bolognese setting inspired Bacigalupi’s new fantasy novel, “Navola.” It takes place in a city-state reminiscent of Florence or Venice during The Renaissance.

His protagonist, Davico di Regulai, is the son of an uber-wealthy merchant and banker. The boy has big shoes to fill, but very different feet, as it were. Armed with a preserved dragon eye that possesses magical powers, Davico struggles to be the man his father and community expect him to be….

Ryan Warner: How did you know it was time for something different?

Paolo Bacigalupi: Well, when you keep trying to write things and you keep failing to actually finish them, or even when you’re starting to try to write, it’s like sticking your finger in a light socket. It is sort of painful and damaging, you think ‘maybe I should do something different.’

Warner: And that’s how it started to feel in the climate change space?

Bacigalupi: Yeah. A lot of what I was doing, the news was bad, and then the stories that you’re trying to tell are extrapolations on the present day, and those are all terrifying. Then you find you’re in this space where your creative world and your regular life are all smashed together, and they’re all really negative and they’re all full of terrors, and it’s not a sustainable space to be. If you spend all of your imaginative time in anxiety, then yeah, it takes a toll and eventually you just break down entirely.

Warner: And if the writer isn’t enjoying it, how possibly could the reader?

Bacigalupi: Yeah. I think that a healthy writer finds pleasure in their work. I think there are unhealthy ways to go about doing good work, as well. The outcome can be good, but the damage internally is bad for the writer.

(4) KGB. Ellen Datlow has posted photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading on July 10.

A.T. Sayre read and Nat Cassidy read and played his guitar for a very enjoyable evening.

(5) ERIN UNDERWOOD PRESENTS. The latest Erin Underwood videos take up Star Wars fanhistory, and test the relevance of Battlestar Galactica’s 2004 remake.

Star Wars: The Impacts of How Lucasfilm Built its Fan Base

Star Wars fandom holds a unique place as possibly the first ever nurtured fanbase built by a film studio. To understand the evolution of Star Wars fandom, I decided to explore its roots by inviting Craig Miller, former publicity executive at Lucas Film, and Garen Daly, Director of the Boston SciFi Film Festival, to discuss the early days of Star Wars fandom and its lasting impact on the film industry. Watch the video podcast discussion on YouTube and share your thoughts in the comments.

Battlestar Galactica (2004) Series Review – Does this Iconic Sci-Fi Remake Hold Up Today?

It’s been 20 years since they remade the 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica, and remakes often struggle to be relevant over time. From the story to the characters and the technology, how does BSG hold up 2 decades later? Watch my review of the full series and let me know if you think Battlestar Galactica holds up as well today … or even better!

(6) NEW FILM PLAYS ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES. “Note To Hollywood: Nobody Faked The Moon Landing” complains Inverse.

It’s getting exhausting calling out Moon landing truthers. Especially when a high-profile rom-com starring Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson makes a mockery of one of the greatest human achievements in all of history. This weekend, the new film Fly Me to the Moon hits theaters, telling the story of a 1969 advertising executive (Johansson) who is determined to film a “backup” version of the Moon landing in a studio, in case the real one fails. Tatum plays an astronaut, and the two fall for each other, in a silly movie about how the nature of love is a lot like flying to the Moon, or pretending to, or something. All harmless fun, right?

Well, no. While Fly Me to the Moon isn’t presented as a dramatic film purporting to unveil long-lost truths about the space race, it is built upon a frustratingly pervasive conspiracy theory that the Apollo 11 moon landing never took place, or in this case, that NASA would try to use taxpayer dollars to create a hoax. But, the historical and scientific evidence that we did, in fact, land on the Moon is overwhelming. And, because this movie is dredging up all those conspiracy theories again, it’s worth restating why we know the 1969 Moon landing was very real….

… But outside of heroes like Buzz Aldrin, there is plenty of objective evidence that the Moon landing occurred. In light of the bogus concept behind Fly Me to the Moon, and to get a contemporary reminder of Moon landing evidence Inverse reached out to Dr. Brett Denevi, a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, was a vice-chair of Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, is working on the Artemis program.

“There is a whole host of evidence to demonstrate the Moon landings occurred, including images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera,” Denevi told Inverse. As she points out this is a relatively contemporary camera, launched back in 2009. “The camera is used to scout new landing sites like we are doing for Artemis, so it was built to take incredibly detailed pictures.”….

(7) SONGS OF SFF. [Item by Rob Thornton.] This is six minutes of reverb-soaked electric guitar recorded in a bathroom and reminiscent of the banjo in the theme song from the BBC’s Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. All the song titles are from my fave SF/F novels (see “Terminus Est,” “Burning Bright” and “Green Rapture.”). Bonus points if you know my musical nym! “Now And Always” by R Carnassus at Bandcamp.

(8) SDCC PROGRAM DROPS. “San Diego Comic Con Schedule: Best Panels in Hall H and More”. Variety has highlights at the link. Or you can browse the complete Programming Schedule on the Comic-Con website.

San Diego Comic-Con has rolled out its schedule for the 2024 convention this week, which runs from July 25–28. For the first time since 2019, SDCC will unfold without a virtual event, pandemic protocols or labor strike cancelations, marking a return to normal of sorts for the largest annual fan gathering in North America.

Several major franchises will make an appearance at the event, including panels for Marvel Studios, “Star Trek,” “The Penguin,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” the “Walking Dead” franchise, “Transformers One,” “Alien: Romulus,” “The Boys” and “Doctor Who.” Here are the highlights, with descriptions from SDCC and/or the panel sponsors….

(9) MEDICAL AWARENESS IN CANADA. CBC News led its post about tick-spread illnesses with the story of MaryAnn Harris, wife of sff author Charles de Lint: “Tick-spread illnesses are on the rise in Canada. Are surveillance, awareness efforts keeping up?”

One morning in Sept. 2021, MaryAnn Harris felt strangely tired. She told her husband, Charles de Lint, that she needed to lie down. Then more worrisome symptoms began cropping up, from nausea to double vision.

The Ottawa couple rushed to a local emergency department.

At first, the cause of Harris’s ailment was a mystery. The ER team ran various tests, and after a few hours with no answers, they sent her husband home due to visitor restrictions put in place during the pandemic.

By the time de Lint came back the next day, his beloved partner of four decades was unresponsive and on life support in the intensive care unit.

“You don’t know what to think, what to feel,” de Lint recalled. “It was just utter panic.”

What followed was a three-year ordeal, as medical teams offered a battery of tests and treatments in hopes of bringing Harris back from the brink of death. She eventually regained consciousness, but by that point, inflammation in her brain stem had left her paralyzed. Harris never left the hospital and died in early June at the age of 71.

The cause of her devastating illness? A little-known virus that spreads through tick bites.

For years, medical experts have warned a rising number of Canadians are being exposed to ticks carrying an array of dangerous pathogens. Lyme disease is the most familiar — and by far the most common — but there’s growing concern about lesser-known threats as well, from various bacterial infections, to the rare Powassan virus that claimed Harris’s life earlier this year.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1974 – Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

Fifty years ago, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia was published. (No, not on this day. Just this year.)

Though it is often considered the fifth book of the Hainish Cycle, Le Guin in multiple interviews and her writings has stated that there is no particular cycle or order for what she called the Ekumen novels.

And yes, I can say having read it more than once and those readings being decades apart that the full title does really make sense. Later printings would just call it The Dispossessed. No idea why the change and if Le Guin said why.

It was by published by Harper & Row that year with a stunning wraparound cover by Fred Winkowski. I found only two first editions to be had online, the first $1200, the other substantially more, but that was signed.

Le Guin in the forward to Ursula K. Le Guin: The Hainish Novels & Stories, Volume One which includes The Dispossessed says “The Dispossessed started as a very bad short story, which I didn’t try to finish but couldn’t quite let go. There was a book in it, and I knew it, but the book had to wait for me to learn what I was writing about and how to write about it. I needed to understand my own passionate opposition to the war that we were, endlessly it seemed, waging in Vietnam, and endlessly protesting at home. If I had known then that my country would continue making aggressive wars for the rest of my life, I might have had less energy for protesting that one. But, knowing only that I didn’t want to study war no more, I studied peace. I started by reading a whole mess of utopias and learning something about pacifism and Gandhi and nonviolent resistance. This led me to the nonviolent anarchist writers such as Peter Kropotkin and Paul Goodman. With them I felt a great, immediate affinity. They made sense to me in the way Lao Tzu did. They enabled me to think about war, peace, politics, how we govern one another and ourselves, the value of failure, and the strength of what is weak. So, when I realized that nobody had yet written an anarchist utopia, I finally began to see what my book might be.”

So let’s now go on to note that I discovered that the novel has a story set before it, “The Day Before the Revolution” and the character in that story, revolutionary Laia Asieo Odo, is a major presence in The Dispossessed.

But that’s not really why I’m bring the story to your attention. The story is included in the Library of America’s Ursula K. Le Guin: The Hainish Novels & Stories which has a short essay on what she was feeling after writing the novel which you can read here “Story of the Week: The Day Before the Revolution”. And the story is here “The Day Before the Revolution”.

Now where was I? Ahh it’s 1974, the novel has come out. Among us, it was widely acclaimed, and the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation definitely was appreciative of this as her website lists them this way:

Winner of the 1974 Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winner of the 1975 Hugo Award for Best Novel
Winner of the 1975 Locus Award for Best Novel
Winner of the 1975 Jupiter Award for Best Novel

And yes, each link takes you to the proper Award site. Stellar webmasters whoever they are. Now interestingly, the Foundation doesn’t include the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. I wonder why. It was also nominated for a John W. Campbell Memorial Award but didn’t win.

As near as I can tell, it has never been out of print in the last fifty years with multiple hardcover, trade and paperback editions. ISFDB lists far too many editions to really make sense of its printing history, so I can’t say definitively.

What I didn’t see is it ever got the small press, lavish edition treatment, but then I’m having a hard time remembering if any of her works did. Come on Filers, help me out here.

In 2019, The Folio Society published a hardcover edition with illustrations by David Lupton and an introduction by Brian Attebery.

On November 17, Harper Perennial will publish a trade paper edition of the book with a new foreword by Karen Joy Fowler.

(11) SEND HIM BACK. “Mexico ‘cancels’ statue of Greek god Poseidon after dispute with local deity” says NBC News.

The gods must be angry — or just laughing at the hubris of humanity.

Authorities in Mexico have slapped a “closure” order on a 10-foot-tall (3-meter) aquatic statue of the Greek god of the sea Poseidon that was erected in May in the Gulf of Mexico just off the town of Progreso, Yucatan.

Mexico’s environmental protection agency said late Thursday that the statue, which appears to show an angry trident-wielding Poseidon “rising” from the sea a few meters from the beach, lacked permits. In the few months it has been up, tourists had gathered to take pictures of themselves with it as a striking background.

But it was symbolically “closed” Thursday — and could be removed altogether — after a group of activist lawyers filed a legal complaint saying the statue offended the beliefs of local Maya Indigenous groups who prefer their own local god of water, known as Chaac.

It’s always been dangerous for humans to get involved in battles between deities. But this one appears to be all about present-day humanity, combining “cancel culture,” social media storms, lawsuits and the one truly fearsome, overpowering force in today’s world: Instagram selfie-fueled tourism….

(12) RECAST BLACK PANTHER? Fandomwire says there’s a call to “’Remove Black Panther 2 from the timeline’: After Harrison Ford Replaces William Hurt as General Ross Fans Demand a New Black Panther in MCU”.

…And after witnessing Harrison Ford replace William Hurt as General Ross, the calls for recasting have amplified within the Marvel fandom, particularly in the instance of Black Panther. Portrayed by the iconic Chadwick Boseman, fans now want the MCU to remove the Oscar-winning Black Panther 2 from the official timeline to facilitate the character’s recasting….

…However, Ford’s casting has also triggered a wave of demand within the Marvel fandom: the demand for Black Panther recasting. Portrayed by the late Chadwick Boseman throughout the MCU until his tragic death, the actor’s portrayal has remained iconic and pretty much irreplaceable. Yet, many fans believe recasting him would not be a bad choice, but only add to the legacy of the character he so clearly loved and played.

The MCU has recast several characters throughout its run, with Bruce Banner and Rhodey being some notable examples. These recasting decisions have hardly received as much hate from fans, but instead have triggered the calls for a Black Panther replacement since Boseman’s untimely death in 2020….

(13) NOT SURE THESE ARE THE ROLLING ROADS WE’RE LOOKING FOR. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “FreightTech Friday: Japan’s proposed conveyor-belt highway” at FreightWaves.

In a recent meeting of Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the group unveiled plans to combat its transportation and logistics sector labor shortages with construction of an automated conveyor-belt highway running over 310 miles across central Japan.

Known as the Autoflow-Road proposal, the ministry showcased its blueprint for building both aboveground and underground conveyor-belt roads running between Tokyo and Osaka 24 hours a day. According to the ministry, it could move the same amount of freight in a day as 25,000 drivers.

“Automated logistics roads are designed to get the most out of road space by utilizing hard shoulders, median strips and tunnels beneath the roadway. …Our study is examining the impact on road traffic, including on surrounding roads, and costs,” senior official to the ministry, Shuya Muramatsu, told reporters.

The proposal comes as an answer to Japan’s ongoing transportation and logistics labor crisis, as the country begins to cap trucking overtime hours this year.

(14) HOW CAN A FRANCHISE CALLED THE TERMINATOR NEVER END? “’Terminator Zero’ Teases Judgement Day in First Apocalyptic Trailer” at Yahoo!

The Terminator promised he’d be back – and he is. Netflix is teasing a tense apocalyptic return to this world with the first trailer for “Terminator Zero,” its upcoming animated series set in the “Terminator” universe that will premiere on Judgement Day, aka August 29.

This teaser debuts Eiko, voiced by “House of the Dragon” star Sonoya Mizuno, a resistance fighter who is sent back in time to stop Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. “You can’t see it yet, but you’ve been on a collision course your entire life. There’s no going back, not really. It will never, ever stop,” Eiko ominously says in the teaser.

As she gives her warning, the trailer jumps between creepy shots of terminators repairing themselves, explosions and gunfire. “There’s only one thing standing between you and him — me,” Eiko says in the teaser’s final tense moment….

(15) ANDOR RETURNS. Disney+ has dropped a trailer for Andor Season 2 (2025).

The wait is over! Dive into the highly anticipated first look at Andor Season 2 with this electrifying teaser trailer. Following the critically acclaimed first season, Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) journey continues as he navigates the treacherous world of the Rebellion. Set five years before the events of Rogue One and A New Hope, this season promises to delve deeper into the rise of the Rebellion against the oppressive Galactic Empire.

(16) THE END AND BEYOND. “’Stranger Things’ Season 5 First Look Revealed by Netflix” at The Hollywood Reporter.

…Maya Hawke recently told Podcrushed that the eight episodes in the final season of the sci-fi hit will feel like “eight movies,” and noted the episodes are “very long.”

“Our showrunners, Matt and Ross [Duffer], take a lot of responsibility,” she added. “They have an amazing team of writers, but they’re very involved. They write a lot and they are very intense and serious about the quality of the continued writing, and so it takes a long time to write each season, and a long time to shoot them.”…

…While season five is the show’s final season, there are additional Stranger Things projects in the works, including: Stranger Things: The First Shadow live on stage in London’s West End and an as-yet-untitled animated spinoff series….

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

Pixel Scroll 7/1/24 Don’t Scroll Tonight: Call Pixel Delight!

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) WESTERCON, JUST ADD HEMLOCK. Kevin Standlee won’t be making the motion, but ”For Those Who Want to Retire Westercon” he has written the recipe. Kevin explains:

[It’s] something that might come up at the Westercon Business Meeting if at least two members present decide to use it, or if the motion arises out of a Committee of the Whole should no bid win the election. At this time, there are no bids filed, but a bid could always file a write-in up until voting closes on Friday evening, and if they do so and out-poll None of the Above, the Business Meeting would probably give a collective sigh of relief that they don’t have to deal with the decision for the third year in a row.

(2) DUST & DARK TO LAUNCH IN 2025. Dust & Dark, a new print and digital quarterly magazine specializing in short horror fiction, will launch in 2025.

Editor Owen Duffy says the magazine will offer deliciously dark tales for readers.

“Our focus is on stories that get under your skin and stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page,” he says.

“We aren’t interested in straightforward shocks or gratuitous gore. We’re all about inventive, stylish, original stories with strong characterisation, tight pacing and immersive settings.

“We also absolutely see horror as part of the speculative fiction family. We’ll feature stories which explore a range of ideas and issues, open us up to new perspectives and look at the world from slightly sideways angles.”

The magazine is set to launch following a Kickstarter campaign in November. Story submissions will open in September. To be notified when submissions go live, sign up for updates at https://dustanddark.com/.

(3) IF YOU’RE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. The UK’s National Trust invites everyone to “Visit great writers’ and poets’ houses”. One of the places on their list is:

Hill Top, Cumbria

Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top with the royalties earned from her first book, Peter Rabbit. The garden and surrounding countryside inspired many of her works – spot the beehive nestled in the garden wall, just as it was depicted in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck.

(4) BIG RED ONE. “’Hellboy: The Crooked Man’ first trailer reveals Jack Kesy as the titular demon” – Entertainment Weekly sets the frame.

Different Hellboys come and go, but there will always be things that go bump in the night — and who better to defeat them than the lovable red superhero? Later this year, actor Jack Kesy (12 Strong) will be the third actor to play Mike Mignola’s Hellboy on the big screen, and you can see him in action in the first trailer for Hellboy: The Crooked Man…

(5) BOT SPEECH. “The Voices of A.I. Are Telling Us a Lot” says the New York Times. “Even as the technology advances, stubborn stereotypes about women are re-encoded again and again.” (Behind a paywall.)

…A.I. creators like to highlight the increasingly naturalistic capabilities of their tools, but their synthetic voices are built on layers of artifice and projection. Sky represents the cutting edge of OpenAI’s ambitions, but she is based on an old idea: of the A.I. bot as an empathetic and compliant woman. Part mommy, part secretary, part girlfriend, Samantha was an all-purpose comfort object who purred directly into her users’ ears. Even as A.I. technology advances, these stereotypes are re-encoded again and again.

Women’s voices, as Julie Wosk notes in “Artificial Women: Sex Dolls, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females,” have often fueled imagined technologies before they were built into real ones.

In the original “Star Trek” series, which debuted in 1966, the computer on the deck of the Enterprise was voiced by Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, the wife of the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry. In the 1979 film “Alien,” the crew of the USCSS Nostromo addressed its computer voice as “Mother” (her full name was MU-TH-UR 6000). Once tech companies started marketing virtual assistants — Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana — their voices were largely feminized, too.

These first-wave voice assistants, the ones that have been mediating our relationships with technology for more than a decade, have a tinny, otherworldly drawl. They sound auto-tuned, their human voices accented by a mechanical trill. They often speak in a measured, one-note cadence, suggesting a stunted emotional life.

But the fact that they sound robotic deepens their appeal. They come across as programmable, manipulatable and subservient to our demands….

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 1, 1991 — Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Terminator 2: Judgement Day was released on this day in 1991. It won a Hugo at MagiCon, so may I question why oh why wasn’t The Terminator nominated for a Hugo? Tell me oh Filers why it wasn’t. It certainly deserved one, didn’t it?

Now let’s discuss this film, that like The Terminator, I indeed did see at a theater. It had its first showing thirty three ago in the States at Century City in Los Angeles with a general release two days later. That’s seven years after The Terminator came out.

Not at all surprisingly, just about everyone involved in The Terminator is back here. Like the first film, it’s directed by James Cameron. Cameron is very much the driving force as he also wrote both scripts, the first with Gale Anne Hurd, whom he married a year after The Terminator came out, and this film with William Peter Wisher who also worked uncredited on The Terminator.

The Terminator was a considerable success, making the careers of both Cameron and Schwarzenegger, but work on what would become this film almost ended because of animosity between the pair and Hemdale Film Corporation, which partially owned the film’s rights. So they got Carolco Pictures to purchase the rights from The Terminator producer Gale Anne Hurd and Hemdale, which was almost bankrupt.

Now they owned the rights to produce a sequel. Cameron engaged his long-time friend Wisher who I noted had worked uncredited on The Terminator. He’d later be responsible for writing the Judge Dredd script. Oh well. This script was written in just seven weeks.

So we’ve got a script, now do we have a cast? Oh yes. Schwarzenegger is obviously back and so is the only other individual that counts, Linda Hamilton. Robert Patrick is here as well. That’s the primary cast. (Remember we don’t do story lines here as one of you might not have seen it. I’ve seen it. It’s excellent.)

Now let’s talk budgets. The Terminator cost a shade over eight million to make. This film? We think that it cost at least thirteen times which comes out to just over a hundred million. Fortunately, it made so much money that I think they just stopped counting after a while as they only give an estimate, but over a half billion is definitely what it made plus somewhat more.

So the public loved it, but what did critics think of it? Most liked it. Some who, in my opinion of course, had an unhealthy attachment to the first didn’t.

Derek Malcolm of the U.K. based Guardian was typical of the reviewers who liked it: “Cameron has done an honourable and undoubtedly skilful job of tailoring his new film to the tastes of the times without too much sloppy compromise. He’s made a science fiction film with verve, imagination and even a little wit.”

On the other hand, we have Ralph Novak of People Magazine who sadly said, “Shamefully sadistic, achingly dull and totally predictable, it rehashes the far superior 1984 original.”

But let’s not forget our heroine. Alan Jones of Radio Times said about her in this film : “Linda Hamilton turns in another terrific performance as the fiercely committed heroine who puts a necessary human face on Cameron’s high-decibel mayhem and pyrotechnical bravura.”

(7) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater features monster party games.
Carpe Diem says it’s no fun waiting for evolution.
Rubes remembers a different Sixties Godzilla than you and me.

(8) THAT JAZZ-LOVING LOVECRAFT FAN. [Item by Steven French.] On the recommendation of my brother, I’ve been working my way through Andrew Hickey’s podcast “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs”, which started in 2018. In episode 13, featuring “’Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean’ by Ruth Brown”, he mentions the important role played by one Willis Conover:

…Conover was a fascinating figure — he presented the jazz programme on Voice of America, the radio station that broadcast propaganda to the Eastern bloc during the Cold War, but by doing so he managed to raise the profile of many of the greatest jazz musicians of the time. He was also a major figure in early science fiction fandom — a book of his correspondence with H.P. Lovecraft is now available.

Conover was visiting the nightclub along with his friend Duke Ellington, and he was immediately impressed by Ruth Brown’s performance — impressed enough that he ran out to call Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson and tell them to sign her.

Ertegun and Abramson were the founders of Atlantic Records, a new record label which had started up only a couple of years earlier.

As a teenager Conover produced the fanzine Science Fantasy Correspondent and the book Hickey mentions was Lovecraft at Last.

Ruth Brown not only went on to have a number of hits in the 1950s and was eventually inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in the 1990s, but had a second career as an acclaimed musical actress, earning a Tony award for the musical Black and Blue.

(9) CLARKE-INSPIRED TV. “Star Trek Legend Jonathan Frakes to Direct New Sci-Fi Series” – CBR.com has the story.

…Per Variety, Frakes will produce and direct all six episodes of the new sci-fi series, Arthur C. Clarke’s Venus Prime. The new show is based on the series of novels written by Paul Preuss, a collaborator of Clarke’s, which takes inspiration from characters and places from Clarke’s short stories. Preuss will also be involved as a consultant for the show. David Cormican and Dwayne Hill are set to executive produce and will serve as showrunners for the series. Production on the show is expected to begin near the end of the year.

Frakes, who is no stranger to directing science fiction, expressed his excitement for the project and his love for the series of novels. “When the materials for Arthur C. Clarke’s Venus Prime were presented to me, I couldn’t help but devour them,” Frakes said. “When asked if I wanted to direct what I read —my answer was a resounding and immediate ‘Hell, yes!’ Working on such a tremendous piece of IP from the mind of another sci-fi legend (who is also a contemporary of the true #1 Gene Roddenberry), will be both an honor and a dream for me.”…

(10) THESE FEET ARE MADE FOR WALKIN’. NPR goes to find out how “The Bigfoot Festival draws thousands to West Virginia”.

This weekend, the tiny town of Sutton, W.V., population 840, is hosting about 20,000 people for its annual Bigfoot Festival. It’s a celebration of a mythical giant, hairy primate with – that’s right – big feet. Briana Heaney spoke to those still looking for the creature and others who just love the idea of it.

BRIANA HEANEY, BYLINE: Folklore is a pillar of Appalachian culture as much as banjos and quilts are. And in Sutton this weekend, it’s all about Bigfoot.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

HEANEY: Here in Sutton, the country store doubles as a Bigfoot museum. Laurel Petolicchio owns and runs it. Petolicchio has never seen Bigfoot, but she’s heard a lot of stories.

LAUREL PETOLICCHIO: I’ll have these big mountain men come into my counter, you know, of my little country store. And the one guy, I mean, slammed his hand down on the table, I mean, on my counter. And he’s like, you don’t believe this crap, do you? And I’m like, well, I kind of do. And he’s like, why? And I said, well, it’s the stories I hear. And it’s just – there’s so many of them. And then he leaned forward and he’s like, OK, can I tell you mine? I’m like, what? Like…

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. A new Deadpool & Wolverine trailer. Movie arrives in theaters on July 26.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/26/24 There Are Some Things Money Can’t Buy; For Everything Else, There’s Pixel Scroll

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE ROBOPOCALYPSE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Who is the best time traveler? Well, of course the Doctor is, but then Brit Cit is the epicentre of SF. Nonetheless, across the Black Atlantic, in the home of the Mega Cities and the Cursed Earth, there are other time-travelling franchises…

“He was back….” BBC Radio 4 has just aired a programme dedicated to The Terminator a modern classic SF film that is this year 40 years old: ”I’ll Be Back: 40 Years of The Terminator”.

“It was the machines, Sarah…a new order of intelligence. Decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination.” So says Kyle Reese, time travelling freedom fighter in The Terminator. Released in the perfectly fitting year of 1984, The Terminator was a low budget, relentless slice of science fiction noir, drawing on years of pulp sf to conjure a future nightmare of humanity hunted to near extinction by the machines it created. In 2029, just 5 years away now,
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unstoppable cyborg killer is sent back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, the yet to be mother of humanities saviour to come. Fate, redemption & the destructive power of A.I. all made in the analogue age but still influencing the way many imagine our new age of Artificial Intelligence.

Professor Beth Singler re-visits the making of the film with producer Gale Anne Hurd and explores its lasting influence. Forty years on, and the circular self-contained time travel plot of The Terminator has been cracked wide open letting out alternative timelines and delayed apocalypses: more films, a television show, graphic novels, comics, video games, theme park rides and even memes have spread versions of the original robopocalypse. More than that, the first Terminator has given us a vocabulary and a vision for the dangers of Artificial Intelligence.

(2) OVERVIEW OF CHINESE SFF RECOMMENDATION LISTS. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] I have finally published my write-up of Chinese recommendation lists: “Chinese SFF recommendation/best-of-the-year lists for works published in 2023”

The following summary bullet points for the Science Fiction World list are a suitable teaser – producing a Chinese recommendation list that doesn’t include any Chinese works first published in the year of eligibility — other than the fanzine — strikes me as an unconventional choice…

Science Fiction World

Links

Summary

Recommendations over 6 categories, with between 1 and 5 recommendations in each.
No Chinese fiction works first published in 2023 are included in the recommendations.
All the recommended novels are in English or Polish, and not yet announced for publication in China.
All of the novella and short story recommendations are older stories that were published in English translation in 2023 in a pair of venues.
Several of the categories that had recommendations last year – including Best Novelette – have no recommendations this year.
The editor recommendations are almost identical to last year – including the works listed.

(3) CLIPPING SERVICE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] I’m a NYTimes digital/paper subscriber, so I can do 10 “gift links”/month. I’ve been told (by somewhat reliable colleagues) that I can share to email lists, groups, etc, which I assume/believe includes F770-type thingies.

If I’m wrong, may the Pallid Ghost of the Gray Lady bite me on the nose (with mild apologies to Johnny Carson).

Note, these share links are only good for “30 days after [I’ve] shared it}…good enough for current readers, not so much for anyone dredging the past.

A) BORKED METAL. “A Rock Fell From Space Into Sweden. Who Owns It on Earth?”

Sweden’s courts have been debating claims to a meteorite that fell north of Stockholm, including whether the right to move around in nature, including on private property, extends to claiming a meteorite….

B) SNAKES IN A SCROLL! “Now Arriving at J.F.K.: Horses From Iceland and Dogs From the West Bank”.

The ARK, a 14-acre facility at Kennedy International Airport, is often the first stop for animals of all kinds arriving in the United States….

(4) GLORIFIED SPYWARE. “How The BookmarkED/OnShelf App, Created to Help Schools [Navigate Book Bans], Fuels Them Instead” at BookRiot.

In December 2023, BookmarkED—an app designed to “help” educators, librarians, and parents navigate book bans in school libraries—rebranded. Now OnShelf, the app has been making its way into schools in Texas. Freedom of Information Requests obtained new information about how the app is getting into districts in Texas and how the app alerts users to so-called “banned books” in the district. The app is a student data privacy nightmare, and it undermines the professional capabilities of trained teacher librarians in educational institutions.

What Is BookmarkED/OnShelf? A Little About The App’s History

Founded by Steve Wandler, who works in the education technology space, BookmarkED aims to “empower parents to personalize school libraries.” It aims to ensure that parents get to decide the “individual literary journey for their children, based on their personal values and interests,” while teachers and librarians can keep “confidently recommending and providing more personalized books to their students, knowing precisely the learning outcomes they will achieve.” The technology helps libraries “simply and efficiently navigate the ever-changing challenged books landscape.”

BookmarkED soft launched their product during a Texas State Senate Committee on Education meeting on March 30, 2023, two and a half months before Texas passed the READER Act. Wandler noted that the app was developed while working with a superintendent in the state. That superintendent, Jason Cochran, is one of the owners of the app, and as of writing, works as the superintendent of Krum Independent School District. Prior to Krum, Cochran was superintendent at Eastland Independent School District. …

(5) A ROMANTASY MINICON. Publishers Weekly gleans all the details in a long report about last weekend’s event: “A Romantasy Festival Comes to Chicago”.

Romantasy was added as a category in the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2023, a fact mentioned several times at the inaugural Romantasy Literary Genre Festival, held March 22–24 at the Otherworld Theater in Chicago. More than 100 people celebrating the relatively new but rapidly growing genre attended the festival, which included author signings and Q&As, live podcast recordings, a drag tournament called Drag’N Brunch, and daily showings of Twihard!, a musical parody of Twilight. Books were sold on site by local indie bookstore Women & Children First.

The festival kicked off on Friday with a cocktail hour, mixer, and the weekend’s first performance of Twihard! Saturday, the first full day of the festival, began with the recording of the Whoa!mance podcast, hosted by Isabeau Dasho and Morgan Lott, who moderated an author panel with authors Samara Breger, Tamara Jerée, Megan Mackie, and Melanie K. Moschella. During the 90-minute conversation, the authors discussed their creative processes, genre crossovers, worldbuilding, escapism, beloved tropes, queer monsters, and more….

(6) ONE CLICHÉ AVOIDED. Simon Bland interviews several people who made The Thing, including the director, and an actor who didn’t come to a predictable end: “John Carpenter on horror classic The Thing: ‘It was an enormous failure and I got fired’” in the Guardian.

Keith David, who played Childs:

“ What I didn’t think at the time, and wasn’t thinking about until later, was how, traditionally, the Black man is not the guy who lasts to the end. This was one of the first movies where the Black guy lasts to the final scene. I don’t think I’m the only brother who’s ever survived in a horror or sci-fi movie, but I’m certainly one of the few. It was great foresight on John’s part.

I hear lots of theories about the final sequence. We played it various ways; as if I was the Thing, as if it was MacReady, and as if it was neither of us. People wonder why there’s no breath coming out of my mouth in the cold after the station burns down, and say it had to be me. But I say that if I’m downstage of the fire you wouldn’t see steam coming from my mouth because there’s too much heat. That’s how I explain it, but it’s your movie, your experience. The Thing is whoever you think it is.”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 26, 1931 – Leonard Nimoy. (Died 2015.) Pointy ears, green skin — it must be Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock. And what an amazing role it was. So what was Roddenberry’s initial conception of the character? Here it is:

The First Lieutenant. The Captain’s right-hand man, the working-level commander of all the ship’s functions – ranging from manning the bridge to supervising the lowliest scrub detail. His name is Mr. Spock. And the first view of him can be almost frightening – a face so heavy-lidded and satanic you might almost expect him to have a forked tail. Probably half Martian, has a slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears. But strangely – Mr. Spock’s quiet temperament is in dramatic contrast to his satanic look. Of all the crew aboard, he is the nearest to Captain April’s equal, physically, emotionally, and as a commander of men. His primary weakness is an almost catlike curiosity over anything the slightest alien.

“The Cage” — Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike. Leonard Nimoy as Spock.

Although Memory Alpha says that Roddenberry settled on Nimoy from the beginning, other accounts say that Martin Landau was an earlier casting consideration for the character, and several sources say DeForest Kelley auditioned for the role as well. Actual history is often far messier than the official version is.

So we get to Nimoy. It’s hard now over a half century on to imagine anyone else in that role, isn’t it? Can you envision Martin Landau in the role, or DeForest Kelley? Especially the latter? I certainly can’t. For better or worse, well better, Nimoy made for me the perfect Spock.

Cool, elegant, ever so, dare I say it? almost on the edge of being sarcastic if Vulcans could indeed be that. Certainly more fascinating a character by far on the series than Kirk was by far. Yes, Kirk was cast in interesting stories such as “Shore Leave” but Spock was script in and out just more interesting to watch.

So my favorite Spock centered episodes? “Dagger of the Mind” in which marked the introduction of his mind-meld ability; “Amok Time” of course which also has the bonus of when “Live Long and Prosper” first showed up; “Journey to Babel” in we meet his parents, Sarek (Mark Leonard) and Amanda (Jane Wyatt); and “The Enterprise Incident “ for his not really amorous relationship with the unnamed Romulan Commander (yes she gets no name) and the rest of that splendid story.

Leonard Nimoy (Spock) at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention 2011. Photo by Beth Madison.

I rewatched much of the series recently on Paramount+ as well as all of the other Trek series save the one season of the animated YA series whose name is completely escaping my name are here. (Never did figure out why they cancelled something so cheap to do when Strange New Worlds can cost them as much as ten million dollars an episode.) He’s still my favorite when I rewatched them. I so wanted a spin-off Spock centered series to have happened after Trek ended.

Usually I look at a performer’s entire genre career but I think I will look at just a single post-Trek undertaking, being Dr. William Bell in the stellar Fringe series. He decided to do the role after working with Abrams and Kurtzman on the rebooted Star Trek film and was offered with this series the chance to work with them again. He actually retired from acting before the series concluded but continued on here through its ending.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro proves that ads are creeping in everywhere.
Pearls Before Swine gets a red card, so to speak.

(9) EARTH ABIDES TO TV. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] TVLine reports that a six-episode limited series adaptation of George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides is about to go into production.

Alexander Ludwig is relocating from Starz to MGM+.

Fresh off the cancellation of Heels, Ludwig will headline the MGM+ limited series Earth Abides, based on the George R. Stewart novel of the same name.

Adapted by showrunner Todd Komarnicki (Sully) and described as “a wildly imaginative new take” on the sci-fi classic, Earth Abides centers on Ludwig’s Ish, “a brilliant but solitary young geologist living a semi-isolated life who awakens from a coma only to find that there is no one left alive but him…

Production on the six-episode series is set to begin in Vancouver on Monday, April 8. MGM+ is targeting a late 2024 release date.

There is similar coverage at Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter.

(10) THESE SUITS ARE MADE FOR WALKING. “’Walking Dead’ Creator Robert Kirkman, Others Beat AMC’s Effort To Get Profits Lawsuit Dismissed” — Deadline tells how they convinced the judge.

The first season of the latest Walking Dead spinoff The Ones Who Live is concluding this weekend, but the latest profit participation lawsuit from zombie apocalypse creator Robert Kirkman, franchise executive producer Gale Anne Hurd and others is far from over.

With heavy emphasis on the $200 million settlement AMC suddenly made in 2021 to end ex-TWD showrunner Frank Darabont and CAA’s nearly 10-year long lawsuit over profits, U.S. District Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha yesterday denied the outlet’s move to have Kirkman, Hurd, David Alpert, Charles Eglee and Glen Mazzara’s mega-millions case dismissed.

“It would be an illogical interpretation of the MFN (most favored nations) provisions and contrary to the reasonable expectations of the parties in entering into the agreements if the court were to allow Defendants, as a matter of law, to provide Darabont and CAA with increased contingent compensation and a greater share of future gross receipts for the series through a settlement agreement—at Plaintiffs’ expense—without providing Plaintiffs the same,” the California-based federal judge wrote in a 13-page ruling filed Monday (read the TWD EP case ruling here).

Having pulled the short stick in a previous suit against AMC, Kirkman, Hurd and fellow TWD EPs sued AMC for $200 million in a November 15, 2022 breach of contract action.

“Plaintiffs are entitled to the same treatment afforded to Darabont with respect to his MAGR interests, they are therefore entitled to have the same valuation applied to their MAGR interests, which, collectively, exceed Darabont’s and CAA’s,” the LA Superior Court filing declared with reference to modified adjusted gross receipts metric used to gauge profit participation payouts. “As a result, Plaintiffs are entitled to a payment well over $200 million from AMC, in an amount to be proved at trial.”…

(11) DIBS ON LUNA. “Scientists call for protection of moon sites that could advance astronomy” reports the Guardian.

Astronomers are calling for the urgent protection of sites on the moon that are rated the best spots in the solar system for advanced instruments designed to unveil the secrets of the universe.

The prime locations are free from ground vibration, shielded from Earth’s noisy broadcast signals or profoundly cold – making them uniquely well-suited for sensitive equipment that could make observations impossible from elsewhere.

But the pristine spots, known as sites of extraordinary scientific importance (Sesis), are in danger of being ruined by an imminent wave of missions such as lunar navigation and communications satellites, rovers and mining operations, with experts warning on Monday that safeguarding the precious sites was an “urgent matter”.

“This is the first time humanity has to decide how we will expand into the solar system,” said Dr Martin Elvis, an astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. “We’re in danger of losing one-of-a-kind opportunities to understand the universe.”…

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 3/2/24 Yeets of Eden

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) HUGO NOMINATIONS CLOSE IN ONE WEEK. Nicholas Whyte, Glasgow 2024 Hugo Administrator and WSFS Division Head reminds members that they have until March 9 to submit nominations for this year’s Hugo Awards. Full information at “Hugo Awards – Nomination Ballot”.

They also are offering Chinese translation for the 2024 Hugo Award nomination process as a courtesy to the Chinese-speaking 2023 Chengdu WSFS members who have nomination rights for the 2024 Hugo Awards.

(2) HWA: MARUYAMA Q&A. The Horror Writers Association continues “Women in Horror Month 2024” in “An Interview with Kate Maruyama”.

Kate Maruyama. Photo by Rachael Warecki.

Do you make a conscious effort to include female characters and themes in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?

I write all characters, but I am always trying to get inside women characters in a complex way that blows out the walls of archetypes. The old woman who is complex and funny and real (and swears! All the older women I admire swear), the ingenue aged woman who is brilliant, unpredictable, problem solving, and forward moving, the mother whose entire existence is not mothering, but is a whole person who happens to have kids, the little girl who is smart and weird and does not give a crap about boys.

What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?

We all have darkness in us, and if we can get inside it and open up our fears and where they come from, it can help people manage their very real lives.

(3) CHUCK TINGLE ON CAMP DAMASCUS CATEGORY. The Horror Writers Association moved Chuck Tingle’s novel Camp Damascus out of the YA category into the main Novel category. One of the responses earned this callout. (Whoever’s blog this is, I see there also were other comments supportive of Tingle’s book.)

(4) IWÁJÚ. Eddie Louise calls Iwájú on Disney+ — “Amazing science fiction for kids with deep cultural and societal commentary.” See trailer at the link.

“Iwájú” is an original animated series set in a futuristic Lagos, Nigeria. The exciting coming-of-age story follows Tola, a young girl from the wealthy island, and her best friend, Kole, a self-taught tech expert, as they discover the secrets and dangers hidden in their different worlds. Kugali filmmakers—including director Olufikayo Ziki Adeola, production designer Hamid Ibrahim and cultural consultant Toluwalakin Olowofoyeku—take viewers on a unique journey into the world of “Iwájú,” bursting with unique visual elements and technological advancements inspired by the spirit of Lagos. The series is produced by Disney Animation’s Christina Chen with a screenplay by Adeola and Halima Hudson. “Iwájú” features the voices of Simisola Gbadamosi, Dayo Okeniyi, Femi Branch, Siji Soetan and Weruche Opia.

(5) LIKE SAND THROUGH AN HOURGLASS. Maya St. Clair finds what time has done to the first Dune movie – not that a lot of time needed to have passed before the results were known: “Make Sci-Fi Cringe Again (Duneposting 1)”.

The other night, a friend and I went to an anniversary screening of David Lynch’s 1984 Dune. Its manmade horrors were consumed in the way God intended: on a towering screen, with a printout of the infamous Dune Terminology sheet balanced in my lap, as I inhaled a bucket of curly fries agleam with twice their weight in grease. Visually, Dune is an orgy of delights: a dense mannerist universe filled with gilt and wires and inbred animals/people. The voiceovers are camp, the editing ridiculous, the hairdos lofty and aggressive (Aquanet — like spice — must flow). Around the midpoint of the movie — when Sting steps out of a sauna in a codpiece —most people had come to the unspoken understanding that it was okay to laugh instead of sitting in respectful, cinephilic silence. The Harkonnen milking machine (i.e. a rat just duct-taped to a cat) brought down the house….

(6) DUNE PT. 2. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Front Row on B Beeb Ceeb’s Radio 4 (a.k.a. the Home Service) first third sees a review of Dune Part II.

Now, while I concur (others may disagree) that for all its spectacle Part I was a little ponderous (go in with a medium or large real coffee Americana) it was faithful to the novel and the SFX far better than the Lynch offering… This last is, of course unfair, the Lynch offering came out four decades ago… Yes, just a decade short of half a century and so you’d expect as big an improvement in cinematography as there was between 1984 and films made towards the end of the war (that’s WWII in case you were wondering how old I was).

So, how did the Front Row review go? Well, the first thing that surprised me was that one of the reviewers hates epic ‘sci-fi’. Yes, for some in the arts, SF remains a ghetto genre. (Or perhaps we at SF² Concatenation should swop our book review panel of ardent SF readers to those that loathe genre literature. Perhaps File 770 should be edited by someone outside of fandom? Perhaps Boris Johnson should become Prime Minister…)

Be thrilled. Be amazed. The truth is out there….

You can listen to the first third of the programme here: “Front Row, Dune 2”.

(7) ABOUT THOSE LENSMEN. Steve J. Wright may not be treading new ground in “How the Other Half Lives”, but fascism, John W. Campbell Jr., and the Golden Age have been thoroughly plowed under by the time he’s done.

This is spilling out of a discussion over on File 770 (item 4 on the scroll), which in turn derived partly from Charles Stross’s “We’re Sorry we Created the Torment Nexus”. It also ties in, of course, to the ongoing “was John W. Campbell a fascist?” non-debate (because people who say no are not changing their minds, ever.)

“Fascist”, of course, is one of those terms linguisticians call “snarl words”, where the negative connotations have pretty much obscured the original usage…

…But were Golden Age SF writers in general, and John W. Campbell Jr. in particular, happy with elitism? Oh, you bet they were. The Gernsbackian ideal, as exemplified in Gernsback’s own ridiculous novel Ralph 124C41+, was a homogeneous, rationally-planned society in which government, if it existed at all, was strictly subordinated to the scientific elite – in the eponymous Ralph’s case, the “plus men”, entitled to that + sign on their names, whose unfettered experimentation led to an endless round of fresh discoveries and scientific benefits for the general populace. And you can’t throw a brick in Campbell-era SF without hitting an omni-competent super-science hero with world-transforming insights and the steely determination to push aside bureaucratic meddling and Get Things Done. Campbell himself regarded Astounding as not just a science fiction magazine, but a proving ground for the ideas that would shape the world of tomorrow. And he had plenty of sympathy from SF fans, who were happy to believe that their time would come, and they would be in the vanguard of the new elite. Granted, not many fans took it as far as the rather alarming Claude Degler, but if you said “fans are slans” at any fannish gathering of the times, you would see more than one head nodding in approval….

(8) REFERENCE DIRECTOR! Meanwhile, in Russia: “Alexei Navalny Was Buried to the Terminator 2 Theme Song” — New York Magazine has the story.

…Navalny got in one last laugh at his funeral on Friday. As his coffin was lowered into the ground, the tune playing in the background wasn’t some funeral dirge, but the theme from his favorite movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It was the refrain that plays during the movie’s famous final scene, as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s soulful killer cyborg gives a thumbs-up while he is lowered into a vat of molten steel, sacrificing himself to save the future….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 2, 1966 — Ann Leckie, 58. So let’s start with Lis Carey talking about her favorite work by our writer this Scroll, Ann Leckie:

Ann Leckie wins Hugo in 2014. Photo by Henry Harel.

Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, starting with Ancillary Justice in 2013, gives us a culture where biological sex is ignored, and only female pronouns are used. Breq, our protagonist throughout the trilogy, is the only survivor of a ship destroyed by treachery, and she’s the ship’s artificial intelligence, occupying an ancillary body, i.e., a body whose own personality has been erased and replaced with one more useful to the empire, and presenting herself as an officer.

In her quest for revenge, she becomes more and more fully human, and more and more aware of what’s wrong with the empire she serves. We see glimpses of a galaxy beyond the Radch Empire, some of them fascinating.

We’re certainly not given the impression that the Radch are the good guys. In subsequent books and stories, we get looks at the Radch from the outside, and at the other human cultures trying to survive in a galaxy where the Radch are the major human power. It’s a wonderfully complex and layered universe, and it’s well worth exploring.

Ancillary Justice swept the awards field in 2014: a Hugo at Loncon 3, a British Fantasy Award, the Clarke a Kitschie, and a Nebula. The sequel, Ancillary Sword was nominated at Sasquan and won a BSFA Award; the final book in the trilogy, Ancillary Mercy, was a Hugo finalist at MidAmeriCon II. Her next book set in that universe, Provenance, novel garnered a Hugo nomination at Worldcon 76.

Translation State, though also part of the Imperial Radch, is a pretty a stand-alone story. Yes, I liked it a lot. So let’s have Lis set the scene for you again…

It’s set in that universe, on the edge of human space, in a space station where the human polities including the Radch, and several alien polities, attempt to maintain calm and peaceful relations with the Presger, whom no one has ever seen, but who could destroy everyone if they got annoyed.

This is the book where we really get acquainted with the Presger translators, who appear to have been created from humans, but really aren’t, anymore.

It is, I would say, primarily a missing person case more than a murder mystery but it is both. It is a fascinating story.

She’s also written an excellent fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, which I’ve been listening to of late. Adjoa Andoh narrates the audio version. She’s been on Doctor Who numerous times, mostly playing the mother of Martha Jones. She does a stellar performance here.

Leckie has published a baker’s dozen short stories, two set in the Imperial Radch universe. I’ve not read any of them. Who has?

I look forward to seeing what she writes next.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Reality Check shows a fan pedant in (unwelcome!) action.
Close to Home has the most grotesque Pinocchio joke I’ve ever seen.
Tom Gauld mixes higher math with lower cuisine.

My latest @newscientist cartoon pic.twitter.com/u2geXnHkFI
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) March 2, 2024

(11) GOOD OMENS VISUALS. Colleen Doran’s Funny Business is back with “Good Omens Peeks” – artwork at the link.

… I don’t know if, you know, getting cancer, going blind, smashing my face in, and generally having a really awful 2023 hasn’t been some weird sort of super-motivation, but I’m working very steady, and I actually think the art has gotten more solid as I go along.

I’m also very far behind schedule, but since the book was so far ahead to start, even though it’s going to be late, it won’t be horribly late. I set some pages aside and was unable to work on them for months, and that distance helped me work through some problems, too.

Anyhow, here’s some of my art in progress. And thanks for all the votes in the ComicScene awards for Good Omens as #1 crowdfund campaign of 2023….

(12) AFTER MIDNIGHT. Bitter Karella is back with the members of The Midnight Society, who are being a trial to Ursula K. Le Guin. Thread starts here.

Le Guin: ok fine
Le Guin: what's your solution
King: ok so omelas doesn't control the sky
King: What if the kid lived in a balloon?
Le Guin: oh christ that's the worst one yet
— The Midnight Society (@midnight_pals) March 2, 2024

(13) WAY AFTER MIDNIGHT. In “Seeing ‘Dune 2’ in 70mm Imax at 3:15 a.m. Was an Unforgettable Experience”, Variety’s Ethan Shanfeldfiles a snarky report about the ambiance.

…About 45 minutes into the movie, I thought for sure I was toast. Those gorgeous desert sand dunes reminded me of pillows, and I questioned what life choices I made that led me here, to seat H35. But then I saw a guy nod off two rows ahead of me, and I thought about how annoying it would be to have to see this movie again just to catch the parts I missed. I’m not weak like him, I thought, inhaling my Diet Coke. And, to even my own surprise, I powered through, savoring Paul Atreides’ larger-than-life odyssey all the way until the credits rolled at 6:18 a.m.

On the escalator down, I caught up with the three friends from New Jersey. “What are your plans this morning?” I asked, and they told me they were going to walk west to watch the sunrise over the Hudson. I didn’t have the heart (read: brain cells) to tell them the sun rises in the east.

(14) JUSTWATCH. Here are JustWatch’s charts of the most-viewed streaming movies and TV series of February 2024.

(15) SQUEAK IN DELIGHT. [Item by Bill Higgins.] Good news for all who love helium, Minneapolis in 73, and airships! Let us lift our high-pitched voices in song! “’A dream. It’s perfect’: Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America” on CBS Minnesota.

Scientists and researchers are celebrating what they call a “dream” discovery after an exploratory drill confirmed a high concentration of helium buried deep in Minnesota’s Iron Range.

Thomas Abraham-James, CEO of Pulsar Helium, said the confirmed presence of helium could be one of the most significant such finds in the world.

“There was a lot of screaming, a lot of hugging and high fives. It’s nice to know the efforts all worked out and we pulled it off,” Abraham-James said….

…According to Abraham-James, the helium concentration was measured at 12.4%, which is higher than forecasted and roughly 30 times the industry standard for commercial helium.

(16) 2021 FLASHBACK: STRICTER RATINGS FOR THESE SFF MOVIES. The British Board of Film Classification ratings change to Mary Poppins (see Pixel Scroll 2/26/24 item #9) was just the latest to affect sff films as shown in this 2021 BBC News article: “Rocky and Flash Gordon given tighter age rating”. In 2021 the extended edition of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring has also been moved up to a 12A for its “moderate fantasy violence and threat.”Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was moved from Universal to PG.

…Of the 93 complaints the board received last year, 27 were about 1980 space opera film Flash Gordon.

The movie’s 40th anniversary re-release was reclassified up to 12A partly due to the inclusion of “discriminatory stereotypes”.

The BBFC did not say what the stereotypes were. However Flash Gordon’s main villain, Ming the Merciless, was of East Asian appearance but played by Swedish-French actor Max von Sydow….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Back in the day at school — seems like half a century ago (hang on, it was) — there were a bunch of us whose aim in chemistry was to get the contents of one’s boiling tube to mark the ceiling… We were the back bench bucket chemists! Those were the days. Very much in that spirit, physics Matt O’Dowd asks “What Happens If We Nuke Space?” Come on, Bruce Willis has done it?

EMPs aren’t science fiction. Real militaries are experimenting on real EMP generators, and as Starfish Prime showed us, space nukes can send powerful EMPs to the surface. So what exactly is an EMP, and how dangerous are they?

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Lis Carey, Eddie Louise, JJ, Bill Higgins, Steven French, 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 Peace Is My Middle Name.]

Pixel Scroll 1/21/24 They Told Me The Pixel Was Safe To Scroll!

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) WHEN YOU DISCOVER YOU’RE AN “INELIGIBLE”. Xiran Jay Zhao just got the news.

Per the Astounding Award's website I was EXPLICITLY ELIGIBLEhttps://t.co/LQSHWxqLGC pic.twitter.com/yzkFGabqtp
— ????iran Jay Zhao ???? (@XiranJayZhao) January 21, 2024

(2) ONLINE DISCUSSION OF CHENGDU WORLDCON HUGO NOMINATIONS REPORT. Hugo finalist Arthur Liu / HeavenDuke adds context to the 2023 Hugo Awards voting in an X.com thread that begins here. An excerpt:

(3) GRAPHIC EXAMPLES. Heather Rose Jones’ “A Comparison of Hugo Nomination Distribution Statistics” at Alpennia takes the 2023 Hugo Nominations report and the statistics from selected other years to create graphs that show just how anomalous the 2023 results are. A very helpful tool.

(4) RESPONSES TO STAT RELEASE BY THREE HUGO WINNERS.

Ursula Vernon said on Bluesky:

Seanan McGuire said on Bluesky:

Chris Barkley told Facebook readers this evening:

As someone who attended the Chengdu Worldcon AND was the recipient of Hugo Award in the Best Fan Writer category, I am upset, incensed and angry at the exclusion of R.F. Kuang’s Babel and my friend, colleague and peer, Paul Weimer from the 2023 Final Ballot. There were numerous other irregularities and outrages as well.

I don’t know for certain if Paul Weimer’s presence on the ballot would have may any difference in the outcome and to some extent, that has weighted heavily on my mind since Saturday’s release.

We may never know what actually happened here but I would like to thank the people who voted for me and have repeatedly reiterated their support for my fan writing and took the time to reassure me that my work was worthy of the award.

I also know that this incident, whether it was at the behest of the government of the People’s Republic or China or some other entity, will NEVER be forgotten and that doing something about preventing such a thing from happening again will be at the top of the agenda at the Glasgow Worldcon Business Meeting in August…

(5) IN TIMES TO COME. John Scalzi’s “What’s Up With Babel and the Hugos?” at Whatever includes some ideas about what should happen going forward.

4. Likewise, depending on what we learn about these disqualifications, next year’s Worldcon Business meeting would be a fine time to offer proposals for disqualification transparency (i.e., there have to be reasons detailed other than “because”) and for dealing with state censorship regarding finalists and the award process.

5. Even the speculation of state censorship should give pause to site selection voters regarding future Worldcons. For example, there is a 2028 Worldcon proposal for Kampala, Uganda, and while the proposed Worldcon itself offers a laudable and comprehensive Code of Conduct page, Uganda is a country with some of the most severe laws in the world regarding LGBTQ+ people, including laws involving censorship. If the state leaned hard on the local Worldcon regarding what was acceptable on the Hugo ballot, would it be safe for the organizers to ignore this pressure? This is now an issue we will need to consider, among the many others, in where the Worldcon lands every year.

(6) 2024 DEADLINE TO QUALIFY AS HUGO VOTER. If this weekend’s Hugo Awards discussion hasn’t convinced you there might be a better way to use your money, like throwing it in the ocean, and you want to be able to nominate for the 2024 Hugo Awards but weren’t a member of Chengdu, you need to get a membership in the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon by January 31: Memberships and Tickets. [Via Jed Hartman.]

(7) MEANWHILE, IN CHINA. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Here are some Chinese user comments regarding the Hugo nomination news. As these are (mostly) from regular fans or individuals, I’ve not included their usernames, but all are on public posts that anyone can access – I imagine stuff circulating in small private WeChat/Weixin groups (which I don’t have access to) will be much harsher than these.

All English translations via Google Translate, which doesn’t handle the slangy language used very well, so some of these are a bit opaque, but the general vibe should be pretty clear. As yet, I’ve not come across any commentary about the works that just missed out on being finalists; hopefully that might appear once the initial controversies have died down a bit.

现在对国内的任何文学奖都失去信任，都不过是一小撮人自娱自乐地玩票而已。

Nowadays, we have lost trust in any domestic literary awards. They are just a small group of people playing for their own entertainment.

哈哈哈，目测你们没有审核机制，干的啥事啊

Hahaha, I guess you don’t have an audit mechanism, what are you doing?

令人不满在于数据披露拖延、不透明、疏忽大意，有呼声很高的作者和候选莫名被判定“不具备资格”，在于评奖数据显露出的组织管理混乱，而不是你以为的“烂作得奖”，只要符合规则，谁得奖都是该的，因为机制如此。所以我请你在开地图炮宣泄情绪之前，先了解一下始末

(replying to another user’s comment) The dissatisfaction lies in the delay, opacity and negligence in data disclosure. Some highly vocal authors and candidates were inexplicably judged to be “ineligible”. The dissatisfaction lies in the organizational and management chaos revealed by the award data, rather than the “bad work winning the award” as you thought. “As long as the rules are followed, whoever wins the prize deserves it, because the mechanism is like this. So I ask you to understand the whole story before opening the map cannon to vent your emotions. [Note: I’m not sure what “opening the map cannon” is a euphemism for, but I think something like “setting off fireworks” might be a more reasonable translation,]

真丢脸，无话可说????对“环境污染”放任自流，各种花样层出不穷，无法理解这样的不作为。

It’s so shameful, I have nothing to say ???? Let’s let “environmental pollution” go unchecked, with all kinds of tricks emerging in endlessly, I can’t understand such inaction.

太丢人了

So embarrassing

丢脸

shameful

不是有stuff说了，公布一眼假的数据是为了表明他们也很无奈

Isn’t that what stuff said? The purpose of publishing fake data is to show that they are also helpless.

那到底有多无奈呢，总不会被枪指着头吧，感觉都是托词，总之不想负责

(reply to previous comment) So how helpless are you? You won’t have a gun pointed at your head. It feels like it’s all an excuse. In short, you don’t want to be responsible.

丢人丢到家了

I’m so embarrassed.

咋回事

What’s going on

一地鸡毛…控奖真是有点

It’s a piece of cake… Controlling awards is really a bit tricky

呵呵，这不明摆着么

Haha, isn’t this obvious? (note: I think this might make more sense translated as “blatant”)

国外网友表示雨果组织方所谓过去三个月仔细检查核准数据的说法难以让人信服，毕竟现在还有一个类别里同样的作品出现两次的错误（指最佳短中篇类别的《图灵大排档》）

Foreign netizens said that Hugo organizers’ claim of carefully checking the approval data in the past three months is unconvincing. After all, there is still a category where the same work has errors twice (referring to “Turing” in the best short and medium novel category). Food stalls》)

无非三个原因：商业运作，草台班子，不可说因素

There are no more than three reasons: business operation, grassroots team, and unspeakable factors

怕只怕有心人……

I’m just afraid of someone with a bad intention…

(8) CENSORS, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. “After national backlash, Florida lawmakers eye changes to book restrictions” at Politico.

Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature wanted to keep obscene books out of the hands of kids. But some are now acknowledging they created a “logistical nightmare” that lawmakers are trying to rein in.

Legislators this month introduced a new idea to curb frivolous challenges to books — one of the first admissions the law, which tightened scrutiny around books with sexual content in K-12 schools, may have gone too far. The potential solution: allowing local schools to charge some people a $100 fee if they want to object to more than five books.

“I’m happy that we are digging in and trying to remove reading material that is inappropriate for our children,” said state Rep. Dana Trabulsy, a Republican from Fort Pierce who is sponsoring the legislation. “But I think [book challengers] really need to be respectful of the amount of books that they are pouring into schools at one time.”Florida’s Legislature in 2023 expanded education transparency laws by requiring books considered pornographic, harmful to minors or that depict sexual activity to be pulled from shelves within five days and remain out of circulation for the duration of any challenge. If school officials deem a book inappropriate, it can be permanently removed from circulation or restricted to certain grade levels.

The law caused a national outcry after local schools received hundreds of challenges to a wide range of books, leading to reviews of titles like Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “And Tango Makes Three,” a kids book about a penguin family with two dads. It’s also led to multiple lawsuits against top education officials and local school boards asserting that the restrictions violate free speech. Florida, according to the free speech advocacy group PEN America, has “banned” more books than any other state — some 1,406 works total….

(9) MEMORY LANE. (A 1984 REFERENCE COULDN’T BE MORE TIMELY!)

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1984 — On this day forty years ago, Apple (then know as Apple Computer) began selling its first Macintosh. It featured an 8 MHz processor and 128k of RAM in a beige all-in-one case with a 9-inch monochrome display — all for around $2,500. That’d be $7,380 today.

Now I’ll connect it to our genre, Apple for the Mac’s arrival with its 1984 commercial that aired during a break in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. That commercial was based of course on that George Orwell novel. It starts off with the opening of “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

Ridley Scott was the director. Steve Jobs hired him to do it just after Blade Runner came out. Though the press said Scott spent a million dollars on it, he has said in several interviews since that Apple budgeted it at a quarter of that so he got creative, meaning instead of performers in Britain (where he filmed it) who had Union standing and would have cost him serious money, those are actually skinheads playing all those drones.

(This being 1984, those Union performers that there was got the Union minimum of twenty-five dollars for a day’s work.)

Anya Major is the sledge hammer throwing runner. She beat all models and runners who tested in a London park, most couldn’t lift the hammer, and several threw nearby parked windshields. And yes, that is actual glass that she smashes though of course it gets enhanced afterwards.

She has only one other video appearance as Natika in Elton’s 1985 “National” video. Well and the documentary done about this commercial. Of course there’s a documentary. When isn’t there?

Naturally the lawyers got involved. Because the ad looked an awfully lot like a scene from the 1984 film — which I’ve not seen so I don’t know how much it looks like that film — the Estate sent a cease-and-desist letter to Apple, and the commercial never aired on television again.

The commercial aired only twice on American television. It had been first screened in December 1983, right before the one am sign-off on KMVT in Twin Falls, Idoho, which made it eligible for advertising industry awards for that year. That’s why it got to win a Clio Award for Creative Excellence in Advertising and Design, a very high honor indeed.

In addition, starting on January 17, 1984, it was screened prior to previews in movie theaters for a few weeks.

It’s on YouTube, though, so you can it see here.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 21, 1933 — Judith Merril, (Died 1997). Yes, I know Judith Merril is a pen name but it’s the name on her writing, so it’s the only name that I’m interested in for this Birthday. Let us get started.

She was no doubt most excellent SF writer. Her first novel, Shadow in the Hearth, was written by herself. It was published by Doubleday in 1950 with the scary cover art by Edward Kasper. Geoff Conklin said her first novel was a “masterly example of sensitive and perceptive story-telling”. And I agree.

Gunner Cade was under her Cyril Judd pen name, written in collaboration with Cyril Kornbluth, as was Outpost Mars from Simon & Schuster just two years later, with a much more traditional SF cover. The novel itself is quite well done.

Outpost Mars was also given a paperback edition from Dell that would get a very traditional SF cover by Richard Powers. It’s a great look at a Mars-based doctor, the colony, and their dealing and the Earth company and its meddling.

Eight years after Outpost Mars, her novels come to an end with The Tomorrow People. It is also her first novel not from a major house, being printed by Pyramid Books.

(I’m going to leave it to someone here who’s more knowledgeable than me about fanzines to talk about them.)

Her short fiction is some thirty pieces deep, including a few collaborations. She co-wrote a story each with Kornbluth and Pohl. I’ve have read more than a few of her stories, there’s not a weak one, and even the ones written in the Forties still hold up very well. Which collection is a good question. That’s easy as NESFA, as always is our friend here publishing Homecalling and Other Stories: The Complete Solo Short SF of Judith Merril.

She was not nominated for any Hugos in her lifetime. She, along with Emily Pohl-Weary, granddaughter of her and Frederik Pohl, would win at Torcon 3 for Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Tom Gauld probably didn’t need to find out about this from the sff field, much as it applies.

‘The writer shares their opinion online’. My cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks / @GdnSaturday pic.twitter.com/u3AnWbw7CL
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) January 21, 2024

(12) MAESTRO’S NAME OVER THE DOOR. Deadline is on hand when “Sony Pictures & Steven Spielberg Dedicate John Williams Music Building”. (Photo at the link.)

“The first time I came to this studio was 1940 when my father brought me here to show me the stage, and I was about 9 or 10 years old, and I thought, ‘Some day this will all be mine!’ It’s finally come to be – it’s only taken me 92 years to get here!” That’s what five-time Oscar winner and 53-time nominee John Williams said as the curtain was raised on the iconic Sony Pictures Entertainment lot’s newly renamed John Williams Music Building.

Joining in the celebration — and it was a celebration — were Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group Chairman and CEO Tom Rothman, SPE Chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra (who made opening remarks), filmmaker J.J. Abrams and of course, Williams’ longtime collaborator Steven Spielberg, who instigated the idea of putting the legendary composer’s name on the building where they have worked on 20 or their 29 films, as Spielberg noted….

(13) SHE’LL BE BACK. Did no one ever tell them that when it comes to a choice between the truth and the legend, print the legend? “Reacher Showrunner Shares the Surprising Story Behind That Terminator 2 Reference” at CBR.com.

Reacher Season 2’s reference to Terminator 2: Judgment Day had nothing to do with the casting of Robert Patrick.

In the second season of the hit Prime Video series, Patrick, who played the T-1000 in Terminator 2, played the role of Shane Langston, a foe to Alan Ritchson’s Jack Reacher. The Season 2 premiere included a cheeky reference to Terminator 2 when Frances Neagley used the alias Sarah Conner, a nod to Linda Hamilton’s Terminator franchise character. When he’s asked by a henchman, “Who’s Sarah Connor?,” Patrick’s Langston replied, “I don’t give a sh*t.” It’s a stark contrast to the character he played in Terminator 2, where killing Sarah’s son was the T-1000’s sole objective.

Per TVLine, showrunner Nick Santora revealed that the Terminator 2 reference was not written in to the show because of Robert Patrick’s casting. Santora wanted to make it clear, noting how “everyone thinks we’re so smart and funny for doing it,” but that the Sarah Connor line was “in there before Robert Patrick came in. I don’t want to lie; that’s the truth.“…

(14) ABOUT UGANDA. Fans are already concerned about the prospects of a Uganda Worldcon bid. Something more to keep in mind: “Ugandan internet propaganda network exposed by the BBC”.

…They all claimed to be Ugandan citizens – often women – whose accounts appeared to have the sole purpose of posting praise for the president and pushing back against critics.

The Ugandan Media Centre, which handles public communications on behalf of the government, did not respond to our requests for comment.

A sprawling network of fake accounts

By analysing those accounts’ behaviour, BBC Verify was able to map out a network of nearly 200 fake social media accounts operating on X and on Facebook (even though the latter has been blocked in Uganda since 2021).

The vast majority of these accounts used stolen images as profile pictures – often social media photos of models, influencers, and actresses from across the world. But none of the usernames used by them appeared to be linked to real individuals in Uganda or Tanzania….

(15) CALLING OUT MAO. Inverse recounts a bit of Chinese sff history in “44 Years Ago, a Revolutionary Sci-Fi Movie Ushered in a New Golden Age For the Genre”.

Imagine a world where scientists are banned from and even persecuted for practicing their research in technological advancement. This was the reality in China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Fueled by a desire to remove all forms of capitalism from their society, Mao’s followers destroyed laboratories and burned any literature related to science — including science fiction.

Science fiction author Enzheng Tong wrote Death Ray on Coral Island in 1964 but hid it for fear of being persecuted due to the belief that the genre was created by the West to corrupt the people of China. It wasn’t until 1978, under Xiaoping Deng’s reign, that science and technology became a national priority for the country and Tong published his short story. In 1980, director Hongmei Zhang took this opportunity to adapt Tong’s story into a film — keeping the original’s sense of nationalistic pride while taking other liberties to address the scientific failure of Mao’s rule.

(16) DEBOSE Q&A. “’I.S.S.’ Star Ariana DeBose Talks Shocking Ending, Returning To Broadway” in Variety. Beware spoilers.

“I.S.S.” is a thriller set in outer space, but the creative team was filled with pioneers in their own right. “Blackfish” director Gabriela Cowperthwaite helmed the project, with Oscar winner Ariana DeBose suiting up for the lead role — both creatives playing in a new genre for the first time.

The result is a fleet, pulpy film in which three American and three Russian astronauts are living and working together on an international space station. But things turn dire quickly when their governments declare war on each other and both groups are instructed to commandeer the space station by any means necessary….

What was the most challenging part about filming zero gravity realistically, for nearly the entire film?

Cowperthwaite: I just wanted it to look as real as possible. We tried different contraptions, some of which were a bit more comfortable, but unfortunately for the actors, they didn’t look as good. Now I understand why so many films don’t do zero gravity.

DeBose: To achieve this look and feel, we shot the movie in harnesses that are very tightly secured on our hips. Then there were tethers attached to them. We had about two weeks of training, where we learned how to balance our bodies. It’s very hard, but the especially challenging thing was when we had scenes that involved all six of us. That meant we were all in harnesses, and for every one of us, there were at least two or three people operating. While you don’t see the tethers, they were very much there, so shout out to VFX….

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

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