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Tag Archives: Harrison Ford
Pixel Scroll 12/29/19 Who Sawed Courtney Milan's Boat?
(1) STABBY VOTING. Reddit's r/Fantasy forum hasopened voting for the Stabby Awards. They've suffered voting shenanigans in the past, too, and here's what they've done to stop them —
It's now time to vote for the /r/Fantasy Best of 2019 Stabby Awards. Due to the sub's growth over the past year (from the time that the nomination thread went live to now, we've grown by over 8,000 subscribers!) and to issues we experienced with vote gaming last year, voting will be taking place off Reddit.
We're using a Google Form (same as we've used for our demographic census for years) and in order to vote you'll need to include a link to your own user profile. Profiles will need to be at least 1 month old for their votes to count – we chose this cutoff to ensure that folks who created accounts solely to nominate and thus aren't really part of our community aren't going to affect the results.
…Voting will end January 4, 2019 at 9 p.m. PST. Results should be live by January 6, 2019 by 1 p.m. PST.
(2) SPARKS TOO MUCH JOY? In The Guardian's "It's 'Day of the Triffids' for today's Britain, but with antidepressants as the monster", critic Vanessa Thorpe analyzes the filmmaker's challenge:
…An award-winning science-fiction thriller billed by critics as a modern Day of the Triffids takes a provocative approach to Britain's growing dependence on mood-lifting chemicals and antidepressants.
Little Joe, released in UK cinemas in February, and starring Ben Whishaw, Emily Beecham and Kerry Fox, has divided reviewers with its odd, disturbing story of a newly bred plant designed to spread joy.
On set in a vast greenhouse laboratory, the acclaimed Austrian director Jessica Hausner first told her actors to forget about finding "the truth" of their characters.
"Little Joe looks at the question of how do you perceive whether someone has changed or not," Hausner told the Observer. "That was the big issue when I talked to the actors. And so even when we were shooting, we were shooting different versions of each scene."
(3) ENDANGERED BY IDEAS. Maria Popova tells "How Kepler Invented Science Fiction and Defended His Mother in a Witchcraft Trial While Revolutionizing Our Understanding of the Universe" at Brain Pickings.
…In the anxious winter of 1617, unfigurative wheels are turning beneath Johannes Kepler as he hastens to his mother's witchcraft trial. For this long journey by horse and carriage, Kepler has packed a battered copy of Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music by Vincenzo Galilei, his sometime friend Galileo's father — one of the era's most influential treatises on music, a subject that always enchanted Kepler as much as mathematics, perhaps because he never saw the two as separate. Three years later, he would draw on it in composing his own groundbreaking book The Harmony of the World, in which he would formulate his third and final law of planetary motion, known as the harmonic law — his exquisite discovery, twenty-two years in the making, of the proportional link between a planet's orbital period and the length of the axis of its orbit. It would help compute, for the first time, the distance of the planets from the sun — the measure of the heavens in an era when the Solar System was thought to be all there was.
As Kepler is galloping through the German countryside to prevent his mother's execution, the Inquisition in Rome is about to declare the claim of Earth's motion heretical — a heresy punishable by death….
(4) NOT MUSED. "And it occurs to me that this is disrespectful to the Nine" at It's Always More Complicated, (a post inspired by Anne Bilson's piece for The Guardian, "Anna Karina, Catherine Deneuve: how movies malign women by calling them muses".)
…But is this view of the Muse, who is after all a goddess, a being at whose feet the artist is supposed to lay the offering of the art created in order that she may judge it worthy, not very disrespectful? In assuming that the muse is just some empty thing to fill up with M. L'Artiste's (and it is M., is it not) geeenyus?
François Truffaut once said of Catherine Deneuve: "I wouldn't compare her to a flower or a bouquet, since there is a certain neutrality in her that leads me to compare her to the vase in which all the flowers are placed." He meant that her reserve and air of mystery enabled spectators to "fill the vase" themselves; but the history of male film directors and their female muses is also a history of vase-filling: men translating their erotic fantasies into cinematic terms while failing to get to grips with the women themselves, who are invariably depicted as quixotic and inscrutable, even dangerous.
Not that I am sure which of the Nine would be the muse of movies – or would it vary by specific genre?
(5) BLUE GENES. Cora Buhlert presents "The 2019 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents".
… Let's have a bit of background: I have been informally awarding the Darth Vader Parenthood Award since sometime in the 1980s with the earliest awards being retroactive. Over the years, the list of winners migrated from a handwritten page via various computer file formats, updated every year. Last year, I finally decided to make the winners public on the Internet, because what's an award without some publicity and a ceremony? The list of previous winners (in PDF format) up to 2017 may be found here, BTW, and the 2018 winner was announced here.
In 2017 and 2018, a clear frontrunner emerged early on. 2019 was different, because there were several likely and unlikely candidates.
Warning: Spoilers for several of things including The Rise of Skywalker behind the cut…
(6) THE MOST OF BABY YODA. You wouldn't want to miss this! (Well, some of you would, but your loss!)
BABY YODA from The Mandalorian season 1. Best of Baby Yoda taken from episodes 1 to 8 of The Mandalorian….
(7) GRAY OBIT. Scots author Alasdair Gray died December 29 at the age of 85. His publisher, Canongate, posted this retrospective:
A renowned polymath, Alasdair Gray was beloved equally for his writing and art. His debut, Lanark, which Canongate published in 1981, is widely regarded as being one of the masterpieces of twentieth century fiction. It was followed by more than thirty further books, all of which he designed and illustrated, ranging from novels, short story collections, plays, volumes of poetry, works of non-fiction and translations – most recently, his interpretation of Dante's Divine Trilogy.
The Guardian's tribute said he "blazed a trail for contemporary Scottish fiction with his experimental novels."
In 1954, Gray began writing the novel that would occupy him on and off throughout the 1960s and 70s. Lanark divides the story of a life into four books, alternating between Glasgow and a shadowy version of the city called Unthank. The novel opens with book three, in which a young man finds himself in a dark metropolis filled with strange diseases, and then jumps back to fill in the story of Duncan Thaw, who grows up in Glasgow just before the second world war. The Guardian called it "fluent, imaginative", a novel "of undeniable quality, but rare, and not for all tastes, like an oyster, or a truffle".
He made an indelible impression on both the literary and fannish worlds. Alasdair Gray and Russell Hoban were the guests of honor at the first Mexicon (1984) in the UK. As David Langford recalls, he made ink sketches of various fans there, and his "[John] Brosnan drawing is inscribed: 'The Author of Slimer, a seminal work which has influenced everything I have ever written."
(8) WOLLEN OBIT. Peter Wollen (1938-2019), author of the influential film theory book Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, who also directed films and wrote screenplays, died December 17. The New York Times appreciation notes:
Mr. Wollen didn't just talk and write about cinema; in the 1970s and '80s he was actively involved in making it. Perhaps his best-known film, which he both wrote and directed, was "Friendship's Death" (1987), an unusual science-fiction film about an extraterrestrial robot who is on a peace mission but takes a wrong turn and winds up in Amman, Jordan, in 1970, a time of conflict there.
Tilda Swinton, in one of her first film roles, played the robot. In a tribute to Mr. Wollen published by the film website IndieWire, she said "Signs and Meaning" was "the first seminal book I read about film that actually made sense while bopping you to bits with its braininess and taking the engine of cinema completely apart in front of you while making you even more excited to jump in and go racing about in it just as soon as you possibly could."
December 29, 1967 — "The Trouble with Tribbles" first aired. Written by David Gerrold and directed by Joseph Pevney, with some of the guest cast being Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones, Whit Bissell as Station Manager and Michael Pataki as Korax. Memory Alpha says "Wah Chang designed the original tribbles. Hundreds were sewn together during production, using pieces of extra-long rolls of carpet. Some of them had mechanical toys placed in them so they could walk around." It would come in second in the Hugo balloting to "The City on the Edge of Forever" written by Harlan Ellison. All five final Hugo nominees at Baycon (1968) were Trek episodes.
December 29, 2009 — Princess of Mars premiered. This film from Asylum had Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris and Antonio Sabàto Jr. as John Carter. Rather loosely based on A Princess of Mars by Burroughs, the film was released in Europe as The Martian Colony Wars. Currently this film has a 10% rating among reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
Born December 29, 1901 — William H Ritt. US cartoonist and author, whose best known strip, Brick Bradford, was SF. Two of the early Thirties strips, Brick Bradford and the City Beneath the Sea and Brick Bradford with Brocco the Mountain Buccaneer, became Big Little books. in 1947, Brick Bradford, a 15-chapter serial film starring Kane Richmond, was produced by Columbia Pictures. (Died 1972.)
Born December 29, 1912 — Ward Hawkins. Alternative universes! Lizard men as sidekicks! He wrote the Borg and Guss series (Red Flaming Burning, Sword of Fire, Blaze of Wrath and Torch of Fear) which as it features these I really would like to hear as audiobooks. Not that it's likely as I see he's not made it even to the digital book realm yet. (Died 1990.)
Born December 29, 1928 — Bernard Cribbins, 91. He has the odd distinction of first showing up on Doctor Who in the non-canon Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. film (with Peter Cushing movie as The Doctor.) He would make it into canon when he appeared as Wilfred Mott in the Tenth Doctor story, "Voyage of the Damned", and he's a Tenth Doctor companion himself in "The End of Time", the two-part 2009–10 Christmas and New Year special.
Born December 29, 1949 — Ian Livingstone, 70. Co-founder of Game Workshop whose flagship products are are Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. (Have I mentioned that Game Workshop has local shops where fans can buy their unpainted miniatures and other goodies?) He was the first Editor of White Dwarf which, yes, I read a long time ago.
Born December 29, 1963 — Dave McKean, 56. If you read nothing else involving him, do read the work done by him and Gaiman called The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch: A Romance. Brilliant, violent, horrifying. Well, and Signal to Noise by them is worth chasing down as well.
Born December 29, 1966 — Alexandra Kamp, 53. Did you know Sax Rohmer's novels were made into a film? I didn't. Well, she was the lead in Sax Rohmer's Sumuru which Michael Shanks also shows up in. She'd also be in 2001: A Space Travesty with Leslie Neilsen, and Dracula 3000 with Caspar van Dien. Neither will be mistaken for quality films.
Born December 29, 1972 — Jude Law, 47. I think his first SF role was as Jerome Eugene Morrow In Gattaca followed by playing Gigolo Joe in A.I., with my fav role for him being the title role in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. He was Lemony Snicket In Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Dr. John Watson in Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Remy In Repo Man and he voiced Pitch Black in one of my favorite animated films, Rise of the Guardians.
(11) FIRST IMPRESSIONS. ComicBook.com invites us to "Star Wars: Watch Mark Hamill's Perfect Harrison Ford Impression", rendered during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
"Harrison walks in & he's just too cool for school. Carrie was funny & witty & adorable."#TrueStory https://t.co/KGwoSgAcMM
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) December 29, 2019
(12) TEN YEARS FROM NOW. New York Magazine did a future-themed issue in November included a batch of predictions about 2029 based on the newsmaking events of 2019: "The Weirdness Is Coming A glimpse of the near future as seen through the recent past.".
Today In 2029…This odd future came into view…
We Will Never Know If a Movie Is a Hit
All of the entertainment we used to consume in more independently quantifiable ways — via TV ratings, box office, album sales — has moved to streaming, where we just have to trust Netflix or Spotify or Apple to tell us how popular it is, and they will almost certainly lie. Netflix occasionally releases random stats about how many people watched something, and they usually strain credibility. In June, it claimed 30.9 million watched a new Adam Sandler movie in its first three days, which would have made it one of the biggest openings in history if it had been released in theaters. And we never know how successful any movie is when it's released on for-pay VOD (via iTunes, Amazon, or your cable box) because nobody shares any numbers at all, which is strange because streaming is how plenty of non-superhero movies make most of their money now. Obviously, they will know — the producers and stars who benefit. But the public will be living entirely in the dark, never knowing if something is actually a hit or just totally Astroturfed. This will be really disorienting; today, at least, the popularity of an artist accounts for like half of the way we feel about them. And hard audience figures were, for a generation of barroom debaters about pop culture, the closest thing anyone actually ever got to a "fact." —Lane Brown
(13) OBAMA'S 2019 PICKS. "Barack Obama Lists His Favorite Films And Television Shows For 2019" – Deadline has the story.
Former President Barack Obama is making a list, and checking it twice. A day after he released the list of his favorite books of 2019, he's issued a film/TV faves ledger, including one of his own creations….
Next up are my favorite movies and TV shows of 2019. Of course, there's also American Factory, a film from our own production company, Higher Ground, that was recently shortlisted for an Oscar. Here's the full list: pic.twitter.com/PEcgwotcxm
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 29, 2019
(14) NOT BEWITCHED. Eneasz Brodski pans a new show in "The Witcher, Episode 1: A Festivus Airing of Greivances" at Death Is Bad.
I saw the first episode of The Witcher on Festivus, and boy did that unintentionally fit the holiday theme. tldr is that the writers are just phoning this in, and hoping the strength of the fight choreography will keep people watching.
Full Spoilers below.
(15) ROVER COME OVER. LAist reveals, "We Got A Sneak Peek At JPL's Mars 2020 Rover Before It Heads To Its Launch Site, And It's Rad". Photos at the link.
… On Friday, JPL gave a rare media tour to show off the interplanetary robotic vehicle to reporters inside a meticulous dust, hair and oil-free "clean room." It's the last time it will be viewed before it's shipped off to Florida for its July liftoff.
That meant this reporter had to don a full body "bunny" suit and take an air bath with jets to blow away any wayward dust or hair left on the suit.
It took a lot of time and trouble, but NASA's Dave Gruel said it's crucial to keep the rover from getting contaminated.
"It'll be a real bad day for us in the future if those samples come back from Mars and guess what? They've got my whisker in that sample," Gruel said. "That'll be bad."
(16) WITH GREAT POWER COMES MINOR LEAGUE HOCKEY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] ComicBook.com: "Minor League Hockey Team Suits Up in Spider-Man Uniforms on Stan Lee's Birthday".
Today, Saturday December 28, would have been the legendary Stan Lee's 97th birthday. To mark the occasion fans all around the world are taking a moment to reflect on and honor the prolific and influential comics figure who was responsible for helping to create many of the most iconic characters in comics history — The X-Men, The Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and more. It's one of those characters that a minor league hockey team is using to help honor Lee on his birthday with special Spider-Man uniforms.
On Twitter on Saturday, the Indy Fuel hockey team shared a photo of their uniforms for the evening's game against the Kansas City Mavericks. The special jerseys are part of the Fuel's Marvel Super Hero Night event, which just so happens to land on Lee's birthday. The team also posted thanking the creator for "creating a pretty awesome universe." You can check out both posts below.
(17) BIZARRE TOY. Nerdbot wants us to know "Monty Python Black Knight Figure Talks & Has Removable Arms". If they also make one like this for Gandalf, imagine posing them opposite one another yelling, "None shall pass, none shall pass!"
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Michael Toman, Andrew Porter, Dann, Martin Morse Wooster, David Langford, John Hertz, and Rich Lynch for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dennis Howard – classic faanish reference explained here.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Alasdair Gray, Baby Yoda, Barack Obama, Cora Buhlert, David Gerrold, David Langford, Eneasz M. Brodski, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Mars Exploration Rovers, Monty Python, Reddit, Stabby, Stan Lee, Star Trek, tribbles	| 44 Replies
Pixel Scroll 5/3/19 Who You Gonna Scroll? Ghostpixels!
Posted on May 3, 2019 by Mike Glyer
(1) CLEANUP ON SPACE AISLE ONE. Daniel Dern gives NASA's news a sff perspective: "In Space, Nobody Picks Up Your Trash: NASA Recycling in Space Award Winners" at Earth911.
…According to NASA, "The three winners brought a variety of approaches to the table for the challenge. Zabciu's submission proposed incorporating space savings features and camera-actuated ejectors to move trash through the system, before bringing it to another mechanism to complete the feed into the reactor. McFall's submission indicated it would use a hopper for solid waste and managed air streams for liquids and gaseous waste. Hamdallah proposed using air jets to compress the trash and cycle it through the system instead of gravity."
Mary Robinette Kowal, a three-time Hugo Award winning science fiction author whose recent novels, The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky, include a lot of space mission planning and action, says, "As space missions get longer in duration — and farther from Earth — recycling and repurposing will be even more important."
I asked Kowal in her capacity as both a science fiction writer and reader if she had any observations or suggestions for the creators inventing new space tech — and the people who will be using it on-site.
"There is a difference between policy and the way people actually live," says Kowal. "For long-duration missions, you have to look at the latter. One way to get some real-world insights is by looking at communities like Iceland and other island nations where people have a fixed set of resources to draw upon."
(2) POKEMANIACS ASSEMBLE. Michael Rechstaffen gives one thumb up in his "'Pokemon Detective Pikachu': Film Review" at The Hollywood Reporter.
Those anticipating another Golden Raspberry-worthy contender like last year's The Happytime Murders, another spoof of classic pulp fiction, can park their preconceived notions at the door.
It turns out Pokemon Detective Pikachu isn't half bad.
Set in Ryme City, a neon-soaked experimental world in which humans and Pokemon co-exist in relative harmony, the truly trippy production has its fitfully entertaining charms. There were a couple of telling clues that pointed in that direction, primarily the welcome presence of Ryan Reynolds, who has brought a generous sampling of his sardonic Deadpool sensibility to the voicing of the title role.
(3) BEST SERIES. Steve J. Wright has completed his Best Series Hugo Finalist reviews:
The Centenal Cycle, by Malka Older
The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross
Machineries of Empire, by Yoon Ha Lee
The October Daye Series, by Seanan McGuire
The Universe of Xuya, by Aliette de Bodard
Wayfarers, by Becky Chambers
(4) COLBERT AND TOLKIEN TOGETHER. Forbes details Fathom Events' special showing for the forthcoming biopic: "The Late Show Meets Middle-Earth: Stephen Colbert Hosts National In-Cinemas Preview Of 'Tolkien'".
Moviegoers looking to venture to Middle-earth will be able to see the highly anticipated new film, Tolkien, in cinemas three days prior to its national release with a special screening hosted by The Late Show's Stephen Colbert. The event, which takes place on May 7, three days ahead of the national release of the film on May 10, is presented by Fathom Events and Fox Searchlight Pictures. Tolkien superfan Colbert will host an exclusive live Q&A with stars Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins and director Dome Karukoski from the Montclair Film Festival.
(5) ROANHORSE CONVERSATION. Brandon Crilly conducts a "Wordsmiths: Interview with Award-Winning Author Rebecca Roanhorse" at Black Gate.
Everything that I've read of yours — this story, "Indian Experience(TM)", Trail of Lightning — carries undertones about a variety of indigenous issues. Why discuss these topics through fantasy as opposed to contemporary literature?
I'm a nerd. I've always been a Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) reader and writer from my earliest memories of reading Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander as a kid and then Eddings and Jordan and Herbert as I got into high school, and as an adult Butler and Le Guin, among many, many others. I've always written SFF, too, from my very first stories in middle school. It's what I love. What else would I write?
I've spoken with other indigenous authors who worry about being pigeonholed into only writing about those kinds of indigenous-centric topics. Does that sort of thing ever worry you?
Not really. I am going to write what speaks to me as a creative. I'm lucky enough to have editors that support that. And I do have a couple of projects coming out over the next year or so, one of they pretty big, that are not Indigenous-centric. Although being Indigenous, my sensibility and approach will always be influenced by my heritage. That's just who I am; it's a part of my worldview and, like any other author, that will always show through.
(6) DRAMATIC WHEELS. A 308-picture gallery accompanies Motor Trend's post "Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movie Cars Are Coming to Life at the Petersen Museum".
The Petersen Automotive Museum goes Back to the Future and beyond its new "Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Science Fiction and Fantasy" exhibit opening on May 5. We've seen some truly amazing vehicles at the L.A. car museum in the past but this new show is literally out of this world. Here are just some of the more than 40 cars and motorcycles from classic movies and video games that will be on display.
(7) KUBRICK AND DESIGN. Behind the Financial Times paywall, an architecture critic reviews a show about Stanley Kubrick at the Design Museum in London.
This is not a new show. But placing it in a design museum, rather than a film-focused or art gallery, shifts the angle and allows us to see how architectural Kubrick's work was, and how obsessive he was about design, from landscapes to graphics, products to technology.
The opening is stunning, a layered series of screens like stage flats displaying some of Kubrick's best-known scenes, all using his characteristic single-point perspective. Little Danny pedaling his tricycle down the hotel corridor in THE SHINING, the Rococo/disco mish-mash of the final room (presumably created by a superior intelligence) in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the dolly ride through the French trenches in PATHS OF GLORY. It is wonderfully immersive, propelling us into an obsessional world which is unsettilngly strange yet weirdly familiar.
The website for the show, which runs through September 15, is designmuseum.org,
(8) VALE, CHEWBACCA. The Hollywood Reporter did a roundup of celebrity goodbyes to the actor played Star Wars' Chewbacca: "Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, George Lucas and More Remember Peter Mayhew".
And they focused on the reaction of the actor who worked most closely with him: "Harrison Ford Remembers 'Star Wars' Co-Star Peter Mayhew: 'I Loved Him'"
Harrison Ford, like the rest of the Star Wars fans across the globe, was devastated when he learned on Thursday that his friend and Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew had died at the age of 74.
The two men made up the iconic duo of Han Solo and Chewbacca, which they played together in four films since 1977.
Ford said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that he loved his dear friend.
"Peter Mayhew was a kind and gentle man, possessed of great dignity and noble character," said the actor. "These aspects of his own personality, plus his wit and grace, he brought to Chewbacca. We were partners in film and friends in life for over 30 years and I loved him. He invested his soul in the character and brought great pleasure to the Star Wars audience."
Anthony Breznican, in "Peter Mayhew remembered: How he said goodbye to playing Chewbacca" in Entertainment Weekly, takes the occasion of Mayhew's death to reprint a 2015 interview with Mayhew on the occasion of his last appearance as Chewbacca in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
I guess it's fair to say that that relationship between Han and Chewie is like a brotherhood, right? It's something that will never go away — no matter the years?
Peter: As Han — I mean, Harrison— was quoted: It's an old married couple. [Laughs.] Yes, Chewie is older; he is also a character that is going to last and has lasted for 40 years, almost. When you think about it, Star Wars was in '77, and we have stayed with each other in a long, great relationship. People don't have many relationships like that. It's kind of like Laurel and Hardy!
Born May 3, 1939 — Dennis O'Neil, 80. Writer and editor, mostly for Marvel Comics and DC Comics from the Sixties through the late Nineties, and the Group Editor for the Batman family of titles until his retirement. He has written Wonder Woman and Green Arrow in both cases introducing some rather controversial storytelling ideas.
Born May 3, 1951 — W. H. Pugmire. S. T. Joshi has described Pugmire as "perhaps the leading Lovecraftian author writing today." Let the debate begin. (Died 2019.)
Born May 3, 1958 — Bill Sienkiewicz, 61. Comic artist especially known for his work for Marvel Comics' Elektra, Moon Knight and New Mutants. He worked on Elektra: Assassin!, a six-issue series which written by Frank Miller and it was amazing. He both wrote and illustrated the 1988 miniseries Stray Toasters, an delightfully weird work published by Epic Comics, and collaborated with writer Andy Helfer on the first six issues of DC Comics' The Shadow series.
Born May 3, 1974 — Joseph Kosinski, 45. He made his directorial debut with Tron: Legacy, the sequel to the original Tron. His second film was Oblivion based on his unpublished graphic novel of the same name. Interestingly he got his start doing CGI adverts for the Halo 3 and Gears of War games.
Born May 3, 1975 — Christina Hendricks, 44. Not long genre credits but she voiced Lois Lane and Super Women in All-Star Superman, did more voice work work as Zarina in Tinker Bell and the Pirate Fairy and yet more voice work as Gabby in Toy Story 4. Which brings me to her live work on Firefly as she's a con artist in two episodes under various names of Bridget / Yolanda / Saffron. Oh and she was a Bar Maid on Angel once.
Born May 3, 1982 — Rebecca Hall, 37. Lots of genre work — first role was Sarah Borden in The Prestige followed by being Emily Wotton in Dorian Gray and Florence Cathcart in The Awakening which in turn led to her being Maya Hansen in Iron 3. Next up? Mary in Roald Dahl's The BFG. Is she done yet? No as next is the English dub of the voice of Mother of Mirai no Mirai. She might've wanted to have stopped there as her most recent role is Dr. Grace Hart in Holmes & Watson which won four Golden Raspberries!
(10) DUCK! SYFY Wire warns "There's an asteroid coming Deep Impact-levels of close to Earth". Or is "warns" the right word – they sound a little too cheerful.
If you look up at the sky on April 13, 2029, you'll see a streak of light that looks like cinematic special effects, except this won't be a sci-fi movie.
What that blaze in the cosmos really will be is the asteroid 99942 Apophis. You could almost legit call it a shooting star, since it's expected to shine as bright as some of the stars that twinkle in the Little Dipper and to zoom across the full moon. This thing will also be a shocking 19,000 miles above the surface. That is as close as some of the spacecraft orbiting our planet, except a 340-meter-wide space rock is going to make people nervous. It even made NASA nervous. And thrilled.
(11) END OF DAY. Is sunset on Mars just as dark as a night outside Winterfell? You decide! "Incredible photograph shows sunset on Martian horizon" on Australia's 9News.
NASA's stationary InSight lander is spending two years on Mars learning everything it can about the deep interior of the Red Planet.
But it's also providing Earth with details such as a daily Martian weather report and, now, a glimpse of what it looks like when the sun rises and sets on Mars.
The lander used the camera on its robotic arm to take photos on April 24 and 25, capturing sunrise at the equivalent of 5.30am and 6.30pm local time.
(12) ONE FOR ORWELL. Some places Big Brother really is watching… Just up on Beeb Beeb Ceeb, "Russia tightens grip on its national net".
Russia has formally adopted a law that gives its government more control over its domestic internet.
The law means the systems that exchange data between the networks forming the Russian internet must share more information with government regulators.
It also lets regulators exert direct control over what Russians can post, see and talk about online when national security is threatened.
Russian net firms have until 1 November to comply with the law.
Widespread protests were mounted in a bid to stop the law being passed.
(13) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to float away with Annalee Flower Horne in episode 94 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.
…At Annalee's suggestion, we met at Mark's Kitchen, which has been serving customers in Old Town Takoma Park since 1990. It had a comfortable family feel, and an extensive menu, one which seemed suitable for all tastes and dietary sensitivities.
We discussed the incident at their first con which was a catalyst for wanting to become a writer, the way a glare from Mary Robinette Kowal caused them to submit — and then sell — their first short story, how the intricacies of game design can teach fiction writers to write better, why writers shouldn't complain when editors reject stories too quickly, the first story they wrote while angry (and what was learned from the experience), the cuss word they wish they'd thought of in time to get into their first published story, the novel-in-progress that's a feminist take on The Demolished Man, how codes of conduct can (and should) help make fandom better, and much more.
(14) THEY'RE JUST DRAWN THAT WAY.Inverse: "Superhero Study Explains the Sexy Reason We're Drawn to Marvel Characters".
The bulging muscles of Captain America and the va-va-voom curves of Black Widow are no surprise to fans of comic books and action films. People have known since Superman's debut in 1938 that superheroes are exactly that — they're super. However, a recent study applies a new analysis the idealized bodies of heroes. They aren't just super strong and super fast — they're also "supernormal sexual stimuli."
In other words, the outrageous features of superheroes are exaggerations of what humans have long found attractive. Researchers explain in the April edition of Evolutionary Biological Sciences that hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine features — think cut jawlines and low waist-to-hip ratios — signal primal, powerful associations in the human brain. These are traits we've evolved to pay attention to and we pay extra attention to superheroes because their traits are beyond what humans are capable of.
[…] These hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine forms are exaggerated reflections of endocrine markers that we interpret as signals for youth, health, and fertility. […]
"I was surprised at how exaggerated the drawings were, but not about what parts of the bodies were being exaggerated," [co-author Dr. Rebecca] Burch says. "We expected they would be exaggerated according to testosterone and estrogen markets."
(15) BAY AREA FANS, DON'T MISS OUT. Gizmodo/io9 reports an sf art exhibit will be in San Francisco this weekend for two days only: "Sci-Fi Art Gets Quirky Cool With 'A Match Made in Space'".
Argentinian artist Max Dalton has a style that's instantly recognizable, simplistic, and quirky. Those words may not scream "science fiction," but that's exactly why his style works so well in that genre.
Dalton's latest exhibit, "A Match Made in Space," opens May 4 at Spoke Art in San Francisco, CA. The artwork fuses Dalton's playful style with science fiction properties—with pieces ranging from sleek and futuristic to gritty and lived-in, and it all looks damned adorable in his style. […]
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, SF Concatenation's Jonathan Cowie, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Daniel Dern, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit belongs the File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Annalee Flower Horne, Brandon Crilly, Chewbacca, Daniel Dern, Harrison Ford, InSight, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mary Robinette Kowal, NASA, Peter Mayhew, Pokemon, Rebecca Roanhorse, Scott Edelman, Stanley Kubrick, Star Wars, Stephen Colbert	| 19 Replies
Pixel Scroll 9/16/18 Mother, Please! I'd Rather Scroll It Myself!
Posted on September 16, 2018 by Mike Glyer
(1) VISUALIZING LE GUIN. Andrew Liptak interviews artist David Lupton, who is responsible for the art in The Folio Society's new edition of The Left Hand of Darkness – "Behind the gorgeous new illustrated edition of Ursula K Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness".
Tell me a little about adapting the scenes from the novel with your art. How did you go about capturing the characters?
My process for adapting scenes for a Folio Society edition always begins in the same way. I start by reading the book from beginning to end. Then I go back and re-read the book whilst making notes of the scenes that I'd like to illustrate. I also have to keep in mind that the illustrations need to be paced throughout the book and depending on the length it usually works out that an illustration is needed every 20 pages or so. Therefore I go through the book and note what occurs around these page numbers and begin to formulate ideas on how to interpret the imagery described.
For The Left Hand of Darkness, I initially chose approximately 20 scenes that I thought could help tell the story visually and then I worked with Sheri Gee (art director at Folio Society) and Ursula to whittle down what imagery would work and what wouldn't. I also wanted to draw a variety of compositions from extreme close-ups of faces, to wider drawings of snowy mountains, and so had to balance that imagery throughout the whole sequence. In terms of the characters, I simply read the descriptions in the text, which are quite succinct and open for interpretation, and then talked with Ursula personally to get an understanding of what she wanted.
(2) MEXICANX SAGA. Hector Gonzalez takes the opening step on "My Road to Worldcon 76. Part 1: The Mexicanx Initiative" at Medium.
…I remember pedaling like crazy to get to La Casa de los Sabores (aka home) in time to talk to John. I made it back with 18 minutes to spare, which I invested in taking a quick shower and cutting some vegetables for dinner. I dialed at 7:01 PM and I heard John [Picacio]'s voice. He wanted to know more about myself, why me, as a fan, wanted to attend Worldcon and be part of this Mexicanx Initiative. I shared how sci-fi and comics were a big part of my history while growing up. How friends and family usually gave me books for my birthday as a child and how I devoured those stories. How my favorite encyclopedia was about a humanoid robot that was part comic and part in-depth information about different topics, from astronomy to biology.
"Who is a current creator that you admire?" John asked. Alejandro Jodorowski was my answer. I shared how his movies, books, and comics had influenced me….
(3) BOUND FOR MARS. Already showing on Hulu – The First.
Sean Penn leads an ensemble cast in this near-future drama about a crew of astronauts attempting to become the first humans on Mars. Under the direction of visionary aerospace magnate Laz Ingram (Natascha McElhone), the crew contends with peril and personal sacrifice as they undertake the greatest pioneering feat in human history.
(4) HOW BEER WILL HELP COLONIZE MARS. On Food & Wine, Mike Pomranz opines that "Beer Might Be the Key to Surviving on Mars, But Not for the Reasons You Think". It seems that beer wort is being used as feedstock for bacteria that in turn create something that could be useful on Mars or other harsh environments:
"[We have] developed a super-insulating, ultra-light, and ultra-transparent aerogel film," Ivan Smalyukh, a professor in the [University of Colorado] Department of Physics, explained to Digital Trends. "Aerogels are extremely porous solid objects that are made mostly from air, and are about 100 times less dense than glass panes. Our aerogel is made from nanocellulose, which is grown by bacteria that eat waste beer wort, a waste byproduct of the beer industry."
…"Extraterrestrial habitats will face extreme temperature fluctuations which must be eliminated inside the habitat," Smalyukh continued. "We see our aerogel product as a prime way to accomplish this, additionally allowing for the harvesting and storage of solar energy inside of habitats because these aerogels are transparent to sunlight. Because our aerogel can be made from waste, space colonizers wouldn't necessarily have to bring the aerogel with them from Earth, which would be expensive. Instead, they could grow, from waste, [and] with the help of bacteria, aerogels to be used in habitats."
Needless to say, Food & Wine is thrilled that culinary science could play a role in colonizing other planets. Not that at least some of the colonists would object to having beer available with or without the aerogel byproducts.
(5) INDIANA IS FROM ILLINOIS? You can buy the house where Indiana Jones and Han Solo grew up, in a manner of speaking – Harrison Ford's boyhood home is for sale.
A Long Time Ago, in a Town Close to Chicago was a Storybook Tudor. Restore Harrison Ford's Childhood Home to its Former Glory. 1st Time on the Market Since 1970.
(6) PRINCESS OR ACTION HERO? Fan art by Artemii Myasnikov reimagines Disney royalty as action heroes. Myasnikov's Instagram feed also mixes in a lot of other genre work, but it was his Disney oeuvre that caught the eye of SYFY Wire's Josh Weiss ("This fan art by Artemii Myasnikov turns Disney royalty into Disney action heroes").
For too long, Disney's pantheon of princesses were depicted as feeble damsels in distress that required handsome, horse-riding/sword-wielding princes to get them out of sticky situations. In recent years, however, the company recognized just how archaic this was and began to create strong, independent women who don't need no men.
…They can all fend for themselves, kick butt and take names, but thanks to artist Artemii Myasnikov, they've become even more badass in art that turns them in all-out warriors. In a way, it gives a second chance to those old school princesses (Snow White, Aurora, and Cinderella) that were nothing more than foibles for the "big strong" princes.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs #art #artist #arte #artwork #art_veider #arts #art🎨 #artoftheday #artofinstagram #comics #comic #copic #character #characterdesign #drawing #draw #drawings #disney #ink #instaart #fanart #fantasy #fantasyart #sketch #sketchbook #sketching #sketches #sketchaday
A post shared by Artemii Myasnikov (@art_veider) on Aug 20, 2018 at 12:50pm PDT
(7) CLICKBAIT FOR CAVEMEN. NPR says "Researchers Discover Ancient 'Hashtag'" – the oldest-found drawing dates back ~73k years.
Scientists working in South Africa say they've found the earliest known drawing. It was dug up in a cave where early humans apparently lived for thousands of years and left behind numerous artifacts.
The drawing isn't what you'd call elaborate; it's a row of crosshatched lines along the smooth face of a rock that may have been a tool for making ocher. In fact, the red lines were made with red ocher. The pattern (with a little imagination) resembles a hashtag. What's remarkable is that it was apparently made about 73,000 years ago. That's tens of thousands of years older than similar drawings made in European caves.
The researchers, led by Christopher Henshilwood of the University of Bergen in Norway, have previously found a sort of toolkit for making ocher at the site, known as Blombos Cave, that dates back 100,000 years. That evidence shows that early Homo sapiens were clearly making ocher a long time ago, though for what purpose is unclear. And they've found a piece of ocher from about 70,000 years ago with engraved crosshatching on it….
(8) WASHINGTON WONDERS. Michon Boston, in the Washington City Paper piece "Wonder Woman's Version of 1984 D.C. Versus the Real Thing" looks at how the set designers for Wonder Woman 1984 turned the clock back in its Washington scenes, including building old-school phone booths, turning the facade of the long-closed Georgetown Theatre into a twin showing a double bill of Footloose and Ghostbuster, and resurrecting the AIDS activist slogan SILENCE=DEATH in front of the Hirshhorn Museum.
…Later, crews built a Commander Salamander façade over the former Appalachian Spring American craft storefront next door to Reddz and across the street from the original Commander Salamander, now an M&T Bank. The secret was out. The '80s and Wonder Woman had arrived.
Operating under the working title Magic Hour, Fleischer and counterpart Matthew Noonan approached D.C.'s Office of Cable, Television, Film, Music, and Entertainment (OCTFME) to set the groundwork for filming a live-action period film in D.C.
"They approached us because they heard about the incentive program," says OCTFME Associate Director Herbert Niles, describing the agency's Entertainment Rebate Fund. Since 2016, productions have been able to apply for a refund of up to 35 percent of qualified production expenditures provided they spend at least $250,000 in D.C. and hire residents to work on the crew. Warner Bros. Pictures' Wonder Woman 1984 "represents the largest and most impactful production footprint in the District of Columbia since the film office was established [in 1979]," Niles says….
September 16, 1963 – The Outer Limits premiered on television
(10) TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS
Born September 16, 1932 – Karen Anderson. Author with Poul Anderson, King of Ys series, also The Unicorn Trade likewise with him. She's also cited as doing a lot of essays, short fiction and poetry, some with him, some not. She's also cited as the author of Henry Kuttner: A Memorial Symposium. And I'd love to see the maps she's credited with having done!
Born September 16 – Lisa Tuttle, 66. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, received Nebula Award for Best Short Story for "The Bone Flute" which she refused, and a BSFA Award for Short Fiction for "In Translation". For novels, I'll single out The Mysteries, The Silver Bough and Catwitch, a YA novel she co-wrote with Una Woodruff. I highly recommend Stranger in the House: The Collected Short Supernatural Fiction, Volume One.
Born September 16 – Jan Siegel, 63. She's best known for the Fern Capel series which consists of Prospero's Children, The Dragon-Charmer and The Witch's Honour. She also did the YA Sangreal trilogy and a number of other works which may or may not be genre.
Born September 16 – Mike Mignola, 58. Illustrator and writer, best known for his long running Hellboy series. Two novels with Christopher Golden, Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire and Joe Golem and the Drowning City, another with Thomas E. Sniegoski, Grim Death and Bill, the Electrocuted Criminal. Extensive comics work as well including one of my favorite undertakings, Gotham by Gaslight.
At Farcus two guys try to get their carcass on Noah's Ark-us.
Get Fuzzy makes very, very, very bad use of CCGs.
(12) SCALZI BREAKOUT. I liked this series of groanworthy puns –
Don't make tweets with puns even if someone you love says they enjoy them; don't give in to dear pressure https://t.co/kqr12gOoSa
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 16, 2018
Also, it's okay to eat your bagels without cream cheese. Don't give in to schmear pressure. https://t.co/q6ST3Qx5sp
If you're a medieval defender of a castle, don't let anyone shame you for carrying a halberd instead of a pike. Don't give in to spear pressure. https://t.co/EDJkRHcrxj
Pro tip: When you're newly in Paris, don't challenge to a duel the first three men you meet. Don't give in to musketeer pressure. https://t.co/enS2RP7Sqg
FINE, I am done with puns for today. I have given in to "This Ends Here" pressure. https://t.co/U3Kd9gIHG7
(13) I'M MELTING. "ICESat: Space will get unprecedented view of Earth's ice" — ultraprecise measures of what we've lost.
The American space agency has launched a laser into orbit to measure the condition of Earth's ice cover.
The satellite mission, called ICESat-2, should provide more precise information on how these frozen surfaces are being affected by global warming.
Antarctica, Greenland and the ice floating on the Arctic Ocean have all lost volume in recent decades….
(14) MORE ABOUT BEER. "'World's oldest brewery' found in cave in Israel, say researchers" — pushes date from 5K to 13K years ago, and suggests beer may not have been a side-effect of making bread.
Researchers say they have found the world's oldest brewery, with residue of 13,000-year-old beer, in a prehistoric cave near Haifa in Israel.
The discovery was made while they were studying a burial site for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Brewing beer was thought to go back 5,000 years, but the latest discovery may turn beer history on its head….
(15) COLD BALLOONS. Read about "The giant hangar built for an Arctic airship":
In the photo, a huge silver airship floats over a large snowfield. On the sides of the airship are stamped in black capital letters, one word: ITALIA.
The machine itself is dwarfed by the snow-covered mountains that surround it on three sides. Their glaciers glisten in the spring sunshine. In front of it is the sea, full of floating chunks of ice.
Cables hang down from the sides of the craft like the antenna of an insect. A multitude of tiny stick-like figures await their orders below.
In front of the dirigible is a very large, strange-looking construction. It has no roof, but two sides that look like the giant wooden trestle bridges that you see in Westerns movies. It is clad in green canvas.
But what exactly is it?
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In Escape (2018) a man realizes he is living in a simulation, in a short film narrated by Stephen Fry — "Stephen Fry Voices a New Dystopian Short Film About Artificial Intelligence & Simulation Theory".
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Steven H Silver, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Robert Whitaker Sirignano.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Andrew Liptak, Artemii Myasnikov, beer, David Lupton, Disney, Harrison Ford, Hector Gonzalez, John Scalzi, Mars, MexicanX Initiative, Ursula K. Le Guin, Wonder Woman
Indiana Jones Meets Star Wars
Posted on August 8, 2017 by Mike Glyer
Indy Solo is back in a new galactic adventure, Raiders of the Lost Darth, a mashup imagined by Christophe Lambert and Fabrice Mathieu. (English with French subtitles).
Posted in Skiffy	| Tagged Christophe Lambert, Fabrice Mathieu, Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones, Star Wars
Pixel Scroll 7/23/17 Whenever We File Out, The Pixels Always Shout, 'There Scrolls John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!'
(1) TALKIN' ABOUT MY REGENERATION. The Doctor Who Christmas Special 2017 trailer is online.
(2) A PREVIOUS GENERATION. Meanwhile, at Comic-Con, Harrison Ford still doesn't know whether he was a replicant: "Blade Runner 2049: Harrison Ford responds to Deckard replicant mystery".
Moderator Chris Hardwicke couldn't help but ask Ford if Blade Runner 2049 would address the lingering questions about Deckard's identity – human or replicant?
After a long pause, the star responded: "It doesn't matter what I think."
So that clears that up then.
(3) ACTUAL COMICS NEWS FROM COMIC-CON. NPR observes "Yes, Some Comics Are For Kids — And They're Big Business".
Before I left for San Diego Comic-Con this week, I checked in with Lucy Strother, a fourth grade teacher in Philadelphia whose students just love comics. "We have like a comics and graphic novels bin in the library and it's perpetually empty because the kids are so obsessed with comics and graphic novels," she says.
Strother says graphic novels are an important way to get kids used to reading longer chapter books with more mature ideas. And for her students, there's one author who reigns supreme. "The queen of my classroom is Raina Telgemeier."
"My name does mean queen," Telgemeier laughs. She's here at Comic-Con to talk comics and meet young readers; her latest graphic novel, Ghosts, is a gentle, lovely story for middle grade readers, about a girl coming to terms with her little sister's serious illness.
(4) OPEN FOR CLICKS. The Westercon 72 (and aspiring 2019 NASFiC bid) website has gone live. The con will be in Layton, UT.
(5) OUT OF THE SHADOWS. Clarke Awards administrator Tom Hunter sent out the links himself:
Adrian Tchaikovsky has also been busy reviewing all six books on this year's shortlist, splitting his reviews into three equal parts.
Part one: Faith In The Future covers A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers and Central Station by Lavie Tidhar.
I want to wave a flag for Chambers' aliens?—?while there is a definite Trek-like philanthropic principle going on, the species are all well defined, and then the individuals are separately defined so that you don't get the common problem of "all of X species are like this", and furthermore "X species are basically humans with this hang up and a narrowed emotional range". Like Planet, Orbit makes a virtue of telling the stories of ordinary people in a multispecies galactic community, with plenty of digressions and diversions that only add to the verisimilitude of the world and the characters.
Part two: The Evil That Men Do discusses The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and After Atlas by Emma Newman.
Where this book crosses from the historical into Clarkes territory is the railroad of the title. Now I have a confession here, because my knowledge of this period is limited and my first introduction to the phrase 'underground railroad' was in Babylon 5, which utterly baffled me because I thought they were talking about a literal one. And in Whitehead's book, there is. Instead of the loose network of sympathisers and rescuers, white and black, there is a genuine railroad under the ground smuggling slaves from place to place, constantly in danger of being discovered by the slavers. In this way, Whitehead gives us the southern US as a series of "stations" (3) where different scenarios play out between black and white, slave and free.
Part three: Sufficiently Advanced Mathematics deals with Occupy Me?by Tricia Sullivan and Ninefox Gambit?by Yoon Ha Lee.
Tricia Sullivan is a SF author of considerable repute, with Occupy Me her fourth visit to the Clarkes shortlist (having, I believe, won it in 1999 with Dreaming in Smoke). This is a book about time, space, energy and angels, and it's going to be relatively difficult to talk about because finding out what is actually going on is one of the chief pleasures of the book. The plot effectively starts in the middle and then unfolds towards the beginning and the end simultaneously, and that is entirely appropriate for the sort of physics that is flying around in the plot. Flying, in fact, is a major theme.
(6) SURVIVING CHILDHOOD. Here are "9 dangerous toys that prove kids were just tougher before 1990". John King Tarpinian says he had these —
Clackers
Clackers had a lot of fun nicknames: knockers, click-clacks, bangers, knocker bockers or knicker knackers. But by any name, these 1970s toys were dangerous as heck, especially if you got the original acrylic glass clackers that some kids were either strong enough or intent enough to shatter. It was enough to get the attention of the Society for Prevention of Blindness, who issued their own warning, before a 1973 Consumer Product Safety Commission arrived to deliver the country to the coddling culture that condemned toys like clackers (which are available today in safer wooden, plastic or metal varities) and birthed a generation of nervous parents today.
(7) CARLSON OBIT. SF Site News reports the death of Jeff Carlson:
Author Jeff Carlson (b.1969) died on July 17. Carlson published the short story "Exit" in 1994? and his next story, "Pressure," appeared in 2001. His first novel, The Plague Year appeared in 2007 and opened a trilogy, including The Plague War and The Plague Zone….
July 23, 1999 — Disney's Tarzan became the first all-digital film
July 23, 1995 — The Outer Limits reboot aired "I, Robot" with Leonard Nimoy
(9) WHETHER TO RATIFY. This year's Hugo administrator Nicholas Whyte, writing as a private individual, gives his take on several rules changes pending at this year's business meeting: "The 2017 WSFS Business Meeting: Deterring Slates".
Three Stage Voting
I was one of a number of people last year who put our names to another proposal, Three Stage Voting, which is on the agenda as amendment C.4. This would introduce an extra voting stage. After nominations are made, and the top fifteen candidates identified, Hugo voters (members of that year's Worldcon) would vote on whether or not to accept the top fifteen as acceptable finalists. Voters would choose "Reject"; "Accept; or "Abstain". Those rejected by at least 60% of the combined total of "Accept" and "Reject" votes, if and only if the number of "Reject" votes is at least the higher of 600 or 20% of the number of eligible voters, would be barred from the final ballot, which would have the top five (or six) vote-getters from the nominations tally minus any that were rejected by the new process. This was passed by the 2016 Business Meeting and must now be ratified by the 2017 Business meeting to come into effect for next year.
I signed this last year, but I no longer support it, for the following reasons….
Whyte gives four reasons. When it comes to 3SV, Whyte and Dr. Mauser (quoted yesterday) have some common ground.
(10) PUMP UP THE VOLUME, A different kind of Apple Music — "Sing Different: Steve Jobs' Life Becomes An Opera". Chip Hitchcock says, "It's in an appropriately tech location; you can see the lights of Los Alamos from the theater site."
Even Campbell was initially skeptical of the idea, which came from 40-year-old composer Mason Bates. Bates was convinced that in Jobs' "complicated and messy" life, he'd found the right subject for his very first opera.
"He had a daughter he didn't acknowledge for many years; he had cancer — you can't control that," Bates says. "He was, while a very charismatic figure, quite a hard-driving boss. And his collisions with the fact that he wanted to make everything sleek and controllable — yet life is not controllable — is a fascinating topic for an opera."
The (R)evolution Of Steve Jobs shifts back and forth in time over the course of 18 scenes. Its fragmented, non-linear narrative was a deliberate choice by Campbell and Bates, who wanted to reflect Jobs' personality and psyche. "Steve Jobs did have a mind that just jumped from idea to idea to idea — it was very quick," Campbell says.
(11) WONDER WOMAN. Marcus Errico of Yahoo! Movies, reporting from Comic-Con, in "WONDER WOMAN II Offiicially Confirmed at Comic-Con, Script 'In The Works Right Now", writes DC "to the surprise of no one' officially green-lit Wonder Woman II, but they're still working on the script and Patty Jenkins is not yet attached to the project.
Every mention of the film, star Gal Gadot, or images of the Amazonian princess in action during Warners' Saturday presentation in Hall H was an applause line. And when the simple Wonder Woman II graphic appeared at the end of a sizzle reel, the crowd went wild.
Gadot entered the Hall arm in arm with her Justice League co-star Ben Affleck, joining cast mates Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, and Ray Fisher onstage to show off a new trailer for the Nov. 17 release.
The #justiceleague hits the stage and the crowd goes wild!!! . . . #dcsdcc #sdcc #sdcc2017
A post shared by Yahoo Entertainment (@yahooentertainment) on Jul 22, 2017 at 2:16pm PDT
(12) AND YOU THINK YOUR CON HAS TECH PROBLEMS. Pokemon Go event overloads: "Refunds as Pokemon fest beset by glitches".
As many as 20,000 attendees at a Pokemon Go festival in Chicago are being offered refunds after technical glitches meant fans were mostly unable to catch anything – let alone "them all".
Disappointed fans will also be offered $100 in the form of the app's in-game currency, Pokecoins.
The event on Saturday had been touted as a chance for fans to come together and catch some of the rarest monsters on the hugely successful app.
But fans booed and chanted "fix our game!" and "we can't play!" as executives from Niantic, the game's creator, attempted to explain the problems.
At one point a bottle was thrown at a presenter on stage – it missed.
(13) FLORIDA MAN. The Orlando Sentinel reports a hometown fan (and File 770 reader) is headed for Helsinki.
Juan Sanmiguel's affinity for intergalactic storytelling has taken him around the globe.
Next month he'll check off a new country as he's off to Finland for the annual Worldcon and Hugo Awards — which are known as the most prestigious for the science-fiction genre. The awards are scheduled for Aug. 11 in Helsinki.
For the past 25 years, he's made the annual trek to the convention in countries such as Australia, Scotland, Canada and England.
"I haven't missed one since [1992]," said Sanmiguel, who has attended the convention a total of 27 times. "It's still prestigious … the biggest one so far was the one in London three years ago."
Also president of the Orlando Area Science Fiction Society, Sanmiguel briefed members of the club Sunday on this year's nominees, which include mainstream filmed works such as "Stranger Things," "Deadpool," "Ghostbusters" and two episodes of the acclaimed "Game of Thrones" series.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Nicholas Whyte, JJ, and Tom Hunter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Barrett.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Adrian Tchaikovsky, Blade Runner 2049, Doctor Who, Harrison Ford, Jeff Carlson, Juan Sanmiguel, Nicholas Whyte, Pokemon, San Diego Comic-Con, Steve Jobs, Steven H. Silver, Tom Hunter, Wonder Woman, WSFS
Pixel Scroll 4/14/17 A Long Time Ago, When Pixels Scrolled The Earth, A Filer Was Climbing Mount Tsundoku
Posted on April 14, 2017 by Mike Glyer
(1) SF IN CHINA. At Amazing Stories, Shaoyan Hu highlights the developing science fiction scene in China —
Science fiction is a growing phenomenon in China: the various organizations are living evidence of that. It's not just Star Wars or The Three-Body Problem now, but a substantial foundation quickly coming into shape. Although speculative fiction is still a small portion of the market, the large population in China suggests a considerable potential return for whoever ventures into this new area. As it happens, quite a few principal investors already have eyes on the genre, but this is perhaps a topic for another time. For now, suffice it to say that the unceasing efforts of all the people within the SF community have given the genre a positive outlook in China and a flourishing future is yet to come.
(2) FILLING THE MISS PIGGY BANK. The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY has launched a Kickstarter appeal to fund conservation of its Muppet collection reports the Seattle Times.
A museum is asking fans of Jim Henson's Muppets to help pay for an exhibition featuring original puppets of beloved characters like Elmo, Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog.
The Museum of the Moving Image launched a Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday seeking $40,000 to help preserve the puppets for posterity.
"Jim Henson's work has meant so much to so many people, myself included," actor Neil Patrick Harris says in a video on the Kickstarter page. "His humor and inventiveness have inspired people to find their own creative voices."
The Queens museum owns hundreds of Henson puppets and other objects including costumes and props, all donated by Henson's family in 2013. Henson died in 1990.
Museum staff members are working to conserve the items along with Jim Henson's Creature Shop, which was founded by Henson in 1979 and carries on his work, and fine-arts conservators.
The Kickstarter campaign has already raised $66,416, far in excess of its goal, with 26 days remaining.
(3) JEDI CRITIC. USA Today's Jesse Yomtov took a look at The Last Jedi teaser trailer and decided it was time to speak up: "Why the Jedi were actually the worst and really should 'end'".
At the end of the first trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi (aka Episode VIII), Luke Skywalker brings up an important issue.
"I only know one truth," he says. "It's time for the Jedi to end."
That sounds ominous and bad, but Luke is 100% correct. It's not even up for debate that a group like the Jedi would be the bad guys in any other movie.
The Jedi were nearly brought to extinction at the end of Episode III, and while yeah it was the result of Palpatine's super-evil scheme, it only got to that point because of their own incompetence and self-destructiveness.
Here are some of the most off-putting things about the Jedi Order:
(contains information/spoilers from The Clone Wars animated show, which ended three years ago so that's kind of on you)…
(4) FINAL WORD ON CARRIE FISHER'S FUTURE IN STAR WARS. VIII yes, IX nay. That's the word from Kathleen Kennedy.
Carrie Fisher will not appear in Star Wars: Episode IX, Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy said on Friday.
The announcement came during an interview with ABC News and was something of a bombshell, as Todd Fisher, the late actress' brother, previously said his sister would be in the planned ninth installment of the blockbuster franchise. Kennedy said he was "confused."
"Sadly, Carrie will not be in nine," said Kennedy. "But we will see a lot of Carrie in eight."
(5) FAMILY PORTRAIT. On the first day of the Star Wars Celebration happening in Florida, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford posed with Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher's daughter.
This is so beautiful ? pic.twitter.com/5WSoIVG1Cm
— Star Wars Stuff (@starwarstuff) April 13, 2017
(6) ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. Ken Liu was finally able to reveal he is at work on a Star Wars book.
So, the news is out: I'm writing a Star Wars book as part of the Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi project. Working with the team at Lucasfilm Publishing has been such a pleasure — they're the best.
I can't tell you much about the book yet, except that it's called The Legends of Luke Skywalker, it's going to go on sale on 10/31/2017, and it's going to be awesome….
I think a writer's job is to build a strong, welcoming house. Readers then move in and fill the rooms with their individual experience and understanding of the world. And only then, after they've settled in and begun to explore, do they discover its little nooks and crannies, its hidden passages and secret staircases, and following these, they find breathtaking vistas of other planets, rogues who prize friendship more than treasure, mystical sages full of wisdom, princesses leading grand armies, and farm boys dreaming of walking among the stars …
The Star Wars universe is grand and beautiful, and it is ever expanding. To be able to build a house in this universe after my fashion, to welcome fellow fans and readers into this house, and to see them get comfortable and discover its secrets … I don't have the words for my joy.
(7) ZUCCHINIS VS. BEETS. On March 31, Margaret Atwood discussed 10 of her favorite speculative fiction novels at the website Omnivoracious: The Amazon Book Review. But as you might expect, she has a few things to say about defining the term first:
There is still some fuzziness around the terms "speculative fiction" and "science fiction." Some say that "speculative fiction" includes such things as horror and reality-based dystopias and vampire stories, with "science fiction" being a subset. Others make a distinction between "science fiction" – hard and soft, but involving other planets and universes accessed by devices we do not currently have and cannot realistically expect to have – and "speculative fiction," located on this earth and containing no devices that we cannot currently foresee. Let's just say that there is a difference in nature between stories set in a universe far, far away – some call these "science fiction fantasy" — and those set on this planet, in a future we can plausibly describe, though not infallibly predict. (No predictions are infallible.) All fictions both entertain – otherwise nobody turns the pages – and also instruct – because stories will inevitably be given a moral interpretation by readers, language and people being what they are. But the far, far away galaxy kind – let us call them "zucchinis" – will inspire less immediate fear than the other kind – let us call them "beets."
The list below is a list of "beets." There are many more, but these are some of the books I have read and enjoyed. They concern this earth and what is possible on it, given the knowledge available at the time of their writing. They are mostly dystopias – they describe a world we would rather not have. But some are utopias – they point to improvements."
From the middle of her list –
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
A personal favourite. Written in the Future-English of a post-apocalyptic British teenager. The apocalypse has been atomic, as they once were. Young Riddley is on a quest, as his riddle-based first name and his ambulatory last one would suggest. A puppet show featuring Mister Clevver is his day job, insofar as he has one. Beware of Mister Clevver!
(8) TWEETS OF THE DAY. The investigation begins at SFWA.
@Catrambo Cat, I'm going to ask you point blank: are you using SFWA dues to create a robot army?
— Adam Rakunas (@rakdaddy) April 13, 2017
@rakdaddy Why do you hate America, Adam?
— OneWomanRiot Rambo (@Catrambo) April 13, 2017
(9) TAKE-OUT. Episode 34 of Scott Edelman's Eating the Fantastic podcast takes place in the middle of Brian Keene's live-streamed fundraising telethon. At first, Keene couldn't find time in his schedule —
But when it came time for Brian to record the 100th episode of The Horror Show as a live 24-hour-long telethon to raise funds for the Scares That Care charity, he had a brainstorm—that I invade his event with a meal of some sort, and record my own show as part of his livestream.
So that's what I did—show up at a conference room of a Hunt Valley hotel with a ton of takeout from Andy Nelson's Barbecue, which has repeatedly been voted best BBQ by Baltimore Magazine—bringing enough to feed Brian, his co-hosts, and some of the live studio audience you'll hear in this episode, too.
Brian's published more than 40 novels, including the best-selling The Rising, and he's the winner of the 2014 World Horror Grand Master Award. He's also written comics, including the adventures of the Doom Patrol.
We discussed why the ending to The Rising isn't as bewildering as some seem to think it is, whether new horror writers should try to replicate his career path, how Marvel Comics creator Steve Gerber is responsible for him becoming a writer, the shady way Brian amassed the largest comics collection in the sixth grade, if he's a Scully who changed into a Mulder as he got older or if he's been a Mulder all along, and more…
(10) GETTING AROUND HELSINKI. Going to Worldcon 75? Then this info is for you:
The Helsinki Regional Transit Authority (Helsingin Seudun Liikenne) has announced that as of June 19, 2017, tickets will no longer be sold on Helsinki commuter trains, and therefore must be purchased in advance from one of the available outlets: ticket machines (map of ticket machine locations), the HSL mobile phone application, or HSL Travel Cards.
(11) TODAY IN HISTORY
April 14, 1912 – The Titanic strikes the iceberg.
(12) A NIGHTMARE TO REMEMBER. As a child, Steve Vertlieb was haunted by the image of the Titanic:
One hundred five years ago tonight, at 11:40 PM, RMS Titanic fulfilled its terrifying date with history as innumerable heroic souls perished beneath the icy waters of The Atlantic. This horrifying remembrance remains among the most profoundly significant of my own 71 years. As a little boy, during the early-to-mid-1950s, I was tormented night after night by nightmares of finding myself upon the deck of a huge ocean liner cruising the darkened waters of the Atlantic. After a time, I'd find myself walking along the brooding ocean floor, enveloped in crushing darkness, when I sensed a horrifying presence behind me. I'd turn slowly each night with fear and encroaching trepidation. As I gazed up into the watery sky, I'd find myself next to the enormous hull of a wrecked and decaying ship. I awoke screaming on each of these nights. I'd never heard of Titanic in my early years, but I was tormented by these crippling dreams, night after suffocating night, for years. To this day, the very sight and sound of the name "Titanic" sends me into cold sweats and an ominous sense of dread, and foreboding. I've come to believe that I may have been aboard the doomed ocean liner that awful night, and that I'd been reincarnated three decades later. I fear the ocean still. Suffice to say, it is a chilling remembrance that will forever haunt my dreams. May God rest Her immortal soul, and all those who perished that terrible night.
(13) HOPE FOR THE WORLD. It's Good Friday, but this is not about that. Rather, James Artimus Owen draws our attention to another epochal breakthrough:
I'm…feeling some very, very strong emotions that I don't know how to process. I think I knew, somehow, but didn't realize until just now – Burger King really does have Froot Loops shakes. They exist. And thus give me hope for the whole world. #apexofcivilization
We confirmed this with Fox News. (How often do you get to say that with a straight face?) Froot Loops shakes debut at participating Burger King stores nationwide on April 17, but will only be around for a limited time.
So what, exactly, is in a cereal milkshake?
According to a spokeswoman for Burger King, the drink features "velvety Vanilla-flavored Soft Serve, Froot Loops Cereal pieces and sweet sauce."
(14) TODAY'S BIRTHDAY SLAYER
Born April 14, 1977 – Sarah Michelle Gellar
(15) PUPPIES FOR PRESIDENT. Lou Antonelli ran a poll on his Facebook page asking people to vote for the sf writer they'd most like to see as President of the U.S.
In Antonelli's case, that doesn't necessarily mean he was looking for any great departure from the current tenant of the White House – and he certainly didn't end up with one.
TRUMPETS!
DRUM ROLL!
THROAT CLEARING…
President… Larry Correia!
The clear winner with 18 votes.
It was very close for second place. John Ringo had nine votes and Tom Kratman had eight.
A strong fourth place showing goes to an author who would not be considered right-of-center by any definition, David Brin – which shows there is come diversity of political opinion among my Friends.
Dr. Jerry Pournelle received five votes, and Ursula LeGuin – also certainly not a right-winger – received four.
(16) TAD WILLIAMS. Patrick St-Denis of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist interviewed Tad Williams about his return to the universe of Osten Ard in The Witchwood Crown.
Stephen R. Donaldson once said that he waited for so long to write The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant because he wasn't ready and needed to grow as an author before he felt comfortable tackling such a project. Would you say that, at least to a certain extent, this was one of the reasons why it took so long for you to finally decide to write the long-awaited sequel to Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn?
Yes, but not necessarily in the same way as Donaldson's talking about. I said for years that I wouldn't write a sequel to anything or even re-visit a world unless I had a story first, a story that cried out to be written. And for years Osten Ard was in that category, although I had thought a bit about the Chronicle project. Then, when I sat down one time to list off for Deborah (my wife and business partner) all the reasons I had no more stories about Simon and Miriamele and Binabik and the rest, I realized that I had left most of the main characters still very much in the bloom of their youth, and that after decades of life and growing responsibility — which I had undergone myself since I wrote it — they must all look at the world very differently. That set me to thinking, and within one night the first rudiments of the story for The Last King of Osten Ard (the title for the whole series) had begun to take real shape. So every moment I was aging, and moving from one country to another, and becoming a parent, and so on, I was actually creating a plot for new Osten Ard books without realizing it.
(17) YOUR SHADOW CLARKE JURY AT WORK. Racing to finish ahead of the shortlist announcement, scant weeks away —
"The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray: a review by Megan AM"
This is the first novel I've read from my shortlist that feels like it belongs on the actual Clarke shortlist. Written by a genre outsider, but built definitively upon a classic sci-fi concept, and clearly aware of decades of science fiction fandom and inside jokes, it ticks a few those well-established Clarke-preferred boxes. It's also quite enjoyable for those same reasons.
It follows the Toula/Tolliver family over four generations of delusions of grandeur beginning with Ottokar Toula: family patriarch, pickle cultivator, and mad scientist of the pre-Atomic Age. His "discovery" of the Lost Time Accidents is overshadowed by the work of "the patent clerk" in Switzerland, dooming the Toula name to forgotten history. That is, until his son, Waldemar, seizes upon Ottokar's ideas and uses Nazi-era concentration camps to carry out his secret, malevolent time experiments…
"Light My Fire – The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo: a review by Nina Allan"
We awaken in a contemporary alternate Finland, a country whose path diverged from its realworld twin's shortly after World War One. We discover that Finland is now a eusistocracy – all for the best in the best of all possible worlds – separated technologically and politically from the 'hedonistic democracies' of the rest of Europe and forging its own path to racial purity, social stability and material content. In this new Finland, a systematic program of eugenics has been implemented in order to reinstitute traditional gender roles and relieve the increasing psychological and social tension that has been the inevitable result of female emancipation:
"Central Station by Lavie Tidhar: a review by Jonathan McCalmont"
Nowadays, when people talk about science fiction being socially relevant, they often gesture towards Dave Hutchinson's on-going Fractured Europe series and how the early books seemed to pre-empt not only the break-up of the European Union but also the brutal militarisation of European borders. Though dystopias will always have a role to play in helping us to prepare for unwanted futures, there is also something to be said for books that make a positive case for what it is that we are about to lose. Hutchinson's books may be about the ugly, regressive, and nationalistic future we are going to get but Lavie Tidhar's Central Station is about the beautiful, strange, and unapologetically multicultural future we need.
"Europe in Wnter by Dave Hutchinson: a review by Paul Kincaid"
Science fiction is not and never has been about predicting the future. But it is about using satire, extrapolation, exaggeration, distortion and any other tools at its disposal to reflect and comment upon the present. Right now, Europe is in a parlous state. The enterprise of friendship and cooperation that began in the wake of the Second World War is under unprecedented threat from the emergence of just such nationalist movements that it was deliberately conceived to counter. There are currently populist movements whose avowed aims are directly counter to the European ideal active and prominent in the UK, France, Holland, Germany, Italy, Austria, Greece, Hungary, Poland and elsewhere. This is the world we live in. It is not the world we encounter in contemporary science fiction.
The Fractured Europe sequence may not be a perfect way of bringing this modern world into science fiction, but since it is the only way that anyone is currently attempting, it is de facto the best.
The last one is a roundup rather than a review:
"Dispatches from the sofa: some half-time analysis by Nina Allan"
…On which note, it seems only fair that I come clean regarding how I, personally, feel about my personal shortlist now that I've read it. Did the books I chose turn out to be as worthwhile, not to mention as Clarke-worthy, as I hoped they would be? The short answer, I suppose, would have to be partly, and no. Above a certain level, very few books are ever entirely a waste of reading time, and that certainly holds true here….
(18) BE YOUR OWN RORSCHACH. Who was that masked man? — "How what you wear can help you avoid surveillance".
Imagine you're living in a dystopian future. Surveillance cameras scan the streets to recognise and record the faces of passersby – but you're wearing a HyperFace scarf. Amid a kinetic assortment of grid-like structures printed on the fabric, black squares suggest tiny eyes, noses and mouths. The cameras' facial recognition algorithms are confused. Your identity is secure; your privacy, protected.
(19) FANTASTIC FICTION AT KGB. On April 19, Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Laura Anne Gilman & Seth Dickinson.
Laura Anne Gilman
Laura Anne Gilman is the author of the best-selling Devil's West novels (Silver on the Road and The Cold Eye) which NPR described as "a true American myth being found," the Nebula-nominated Vineart War trilogy, and the story collection Darkly Human. Her writing past encompasses a ten-book urban fantasy series, a quartet of cozy mysteries, three paranormal romances, and a middle-grade Arthurian adventure. A once and future New Yorker, she currently lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Seth Dickinson
Seth Dickinson's short stories have been published in in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and elsewhere. He also contributed writing to video games, including Destiny: The Taken King. His first novel the epic fantasy The Traitor Baru Cormorant was published in 2015 and he's working on a sequel.
Wednesday, April 19th, 2017, 7pm at KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)
(20) CONCERN TROLL ON DUTY. Superversive SF's "sciphi" (which I believe is editor Jason Rennie) is worried about the impact Monica Valentinelli's decision to quit as Odyssey Con GoH will have on other women authors. Sure he is. — "Why doesn't Monica Valentinelli want women as Guests of Honour?"
What I am wondering though is, has Monica considered the wider implications of this sort of diva behaviour? If you were organising a Con would you invite her as Guest of Honour? I wouldn't given this is her idea of professional behaviour. More than that, this will likely cause any rational Con organiser, even if only unconsciously, to be less willing to invite any women as Guest of Honour. Who wants the headache of someone flaking at the last second because they have decided their feelings of "unsafeness" trump any consideration of professional behaviour or the enormous problems it will cause other people? Monica in her betrayal of the trust shown in her has made it harder for women everywhere. What if a guest you have invited and planned for decides to "Pull a Valentinelli" at the last second? I suppose it isn't fair to generalise this to all female authors, as much as it would be more reasonable to generalise this to any sort of grievance peddling group instead.
The people I feel most sorry for are the Jagi Lamplighters, Sarah Hoyt's and other female authors of the world who are actual professionals and would never engage in this sort of childish tantrum, but whose prospects are damaged by one ridiculous drama queen and idiots who are enabling her behaviour.
(21) SUPERVERSIVE SF'S RESPECT FOR WOMEN. Immediately preceding that post on the site is a reprint of one of their "more popular Superversive articles," "The Bosom-Jiggle Factor", which is indeed about what you were assuming. With illustrations. And the name of the author? Answer: L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright.
"The Needs of Drama vs. The Needs of Culture, as illustrated by the BJF Index:"…
The Needs of Drama—the qualities that make a story dramatic, eye-catching, intriguing. Sex, sizzle, bang, POW! Seduction! Explosions! LOTS OF CAPTIALS AND EXCAMATIONS!!!!!!
The Needs of Culture—the desire to use the story to teach lessons needed to participate in the culture, like an Asops Fable or a morality play. These stories include topics like: How to behave. How to treat friends. How to treat strangers. What is and is not moral. – the message of the work.
It is not my opinion that one of these forces is better than the other. Rather, I believe that there needs to be a harmonious marriage of the two of a work to be really great.
Too much drama leads to meaningless sex and bloodshed. Too much culture leads to boring message fiction….
(22) A WORD FROM THE SPONSOR. Because you don't watch enough commercials already, click this link to watch Baby Groot and the GEICO gecko trying to sell you insurance.
(23) CIRQUE DU PIZZA. Hampus Eckerman is right – you shouldn't miss this.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Rob Thornton, Steve Vertlieb, Mark-kitteh, and Hampus Eckerman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Hampus Eckerman.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Arthur C. Clarke Award, Brian Keene, Carrie Fisher, David Brin, Fantastic Fiction at KGB, Hampus Eckerman, Harrison Ford, James Artimus Owen, Jason Rennie, Jerry Pournelle, John Ringo, Jonathan McCalmont, Ken Liu, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Larry Correia, Laura Anne Gilman, Lou Antonelli, Margaret Atwood, Mark Hamill, Megan AM, Monica Valentinelli, Muppets, Nina Allan, Patrick St-Denis, Paul Kincaid, Scott Edelman, Seth Dickinson, Shaoyan Hu, Star Wars, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Steve Vertlieb, Superversive SF, Tad Williams, Tom Kratman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Worldcon 75
Pixel Scroll 4/4/17 I Used To Be A Filer Like You, But Then I Took A Pixel In The Knee
Posted on April 4, 2017 by Mike Glyer
(1) CATAPOSTROPHE. New Mexico fan Jack Speer's relentless habit of correcting others' fanwriting earned him the nickname "Grammar West of the Pecos." Sounds like they've found his soul-mate in England — "'Banksy of punctuation' puts full stop to bad grammar in Bristol".
BBC tracks down self-styled 'grammar vigilante' on mission to rid city of rogue apostrophes
…He told the BBC he was a family man who worked in engineering. "I'm a grammar vigilante," he said. "I do think it's a cause worth pursuing."
The man said he began by scratching out an extraneous apostrophe on a sign but had since become more sophisticated and has built an "apostrophiser" – a long-handled piece of kit that allows him to reach up to shop signs to add in, or cover up, offending punctuation marks. "This is a device that enables you to plant an apostrophe quite high up and get over any obstacles," he said.
(2) PACK YOUR BOOKS. For years there have been stories that TOR will move out of the Flatiron Building and a new report from a real estate blog makes it sound like it could happen. Really. Maybe.
Another one of the book business's "Big 5" publishers is seeking a new chapter in Lower Manhattan. Macmillan Publishers, the sole office tenant at the landmarked Flatiron Building, is weighing a move to Silverstein Properties'Equitable Life Building at 120 Broadway, sources tell The Real Deal.
…If the deal goes through, it would be the first time the Flatiron Building, owned by Sorgente Group of America, would be completely empty since it was built more than 100 years ago. Part of the reason Macmillan is relocating is the fact that the Flatiron District, the area named for the 22-story building, has become the epicenter of the city's technology industry, driving up rents.
Sorgente could either lease the building to higher-paying tenants, or follow through on a plan it previously considered to convert it into a hotel.
(3) BOOK RECS WANTED. James Davis Nicoll will soon be writing two milestone reviews and is looking for book recommendations.
I have two notable reviews coming up for my Because My Tears Are Delicious To You reviews: the 150th one and the third anniversary one. Tears reviews are of books I read and liked as a teenager (between 1974 and 1981). I welcome suggestions for candidate books.
(4) JACK WILLIAMSON LECTURESHIP. The 41st Annual Jack Williamson Lectureship will be given by Melinda Snodgrass on April 7 at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales.
The 41st Annual Jack Williamson Lectureship, with events April 7, 2017, welcomes author and friend of the Lectureship, Melinda M. Snodgrass, with special guest author Michael Cassutt, and writers, friends and fans from across the region for this annual celebration of Jack Williamson and the genre to which he contributed so significantly.
This year's theme is Wild Cards! – the shared universe anthologies by some of the best writers in science fiction, edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass. First released in 1987, the series published its 23rd volume in 2016. Adapted to role-playing games and comics, the Wild Cards series is now slated for television by Universal Cable Production (UCP), executive producer Melinda Snodgrass, with SyFy Films' Gregory Noveck….
(5) PREHISTORIC COMIC CON. At Galactic Journey, The Traveler ingeniously makes his visit to last weekend's Wondercon look like it happened in 1962.
(6) BLACK HOLE BIRTHDAY PARTY. "Massive explosion from unknown source billions of light years away baffles astronomers" starts out as a news item, then delves deep into black holes. As so much news does these days….
This enabled a distance to the burst to be measured: about 12 billion light years. The universe has expanded to four times the size it was then, 12 billion years ago, the time it took the light to reach Earth.
GRB170202 was so far away, even its host galaxy was not visible, just darkness. Because the GRB was a transient, never to be seen again, it is like turning on a light in a dark room (the host galaxy) and trying to record the detail in the room before the light goes out.
Mystery of gamma ray burst
The flash of gamma radiation and subsequent optical transient is the telltale signature of a black hole birth from the cataclysmic collapse of a star. Such events are rare and require some special circumstances, including a very massive star up to tens of solar masses (the mass of our Sun) rotating rapidly with a strong magnetic field….
(7) ON TRACK. Yahoo!'s story "Cyborgs at work: employees getting implanted with microchips" comes from Stockholm.
The syringe slides in between the thumb and index finger. Then, with a click, a microchip is injected in the employee's hand. Another "cyborg" is created.
What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand.
The injections have become so popular that workers at Epicenter hold parties for those willing to get implanted.
(8) COMPETING NARRATIVES. David Gerrold ended his overview of the 2017 Hugo finalists with these comments:
My seat-of-the-pants analysis (I could be wrong) is that the Hugos are in the process of recovering from the 2015 assault, precisely because the Worldcon attendees and supporters see themselves as a community.
There's a thought buried in that above paragraph — that communities unite to protect themselves when they perceive they are under attack. This works well when the attack is real, such as Pearl Harbor. But it can also have negative effects when hate-mongers such as Bryan Fischer and Pat Robertson (both of whom were in fine form this week) invent a scapegoat (LGBT people) for unwarranted attacks in an attempt to unite the community around their own agendas.
So while those who have a long history of participation in Worldcons will see this unity as a good thing — those who identify themselves as the aggrieved outsiders will see it as more evidence that the establishment is shutting them out.
Myself, I see it as a collision of two narratives — one that is based on 75 years of mostly healthy traditions, and one that is based on a fascist perception of how the world works.
Most important, however, is that most of this year's ballot suggests that we are seeing a return to the previous traditions of nominations based on excellence. Most of the nominations are well-deserved, and my congratulations to the finalists.
(9) GLEE. The Book Smugglers were pleased with their Best Semiprozine nomination and that's not all —
Now, the best thing about this year's Hugos? Is that it feels GREAT to be a part of it again – it's super easy to get excited and happy about the ballot with so many great people and works on it and with what seems to be like an almost canine-free ballot. We can't wait to spend the next few months squeeing and discussing and agonising over who to vote for. Seriously, check out that Best Novel list – some of our favourites of 2016 are there!!
(10) NO WEISSKOPF. A lot of Finns are happy with the Hugo ballot. Not this one. Declan Finn covered the announcement: "Newsflash: Hugo Awards Swamped by Crap".
Six nominees for best editor. See anything missing?
I'll give you a hint: we were all told that This Person would have almost certainly have won the Hugo award for best editor, but she lost because she was a Puppy Pick.
If you said, "Who is Toni Weisskopf, Alex?" you'd be right.
But strangely enough, Toni isn't here. But she's not a Puppy Pick this year. We were all told that she would have won if she weren't a Puppy Pick.
Guess what: she wouldn't have even been NOMINATED if she weren't a Puppy Pick.
They lied. Shocking, isn't it?
He also did not approve of the Best Series finalists. Or anything else, really, except for Jeffro Johnson and the Castalia House blog.
(11) SCHADENFREUDE. Jon del Arroz is thrilled by the substantial dropoff in nominating ballots since a year ago.
Of course, in recent years, they've been telling anyone who's a conservative or Christian that they're not real fans, and not welcome at their conventions, certainly never allowed to speak. And so the Sad Puppies were born, and had a good run for a few years before once again, just like their projecting meme, the establishment behind the Hugos said "these are not real fans" and changed the rules to make it impossible for anyone but their chosen to get noticed.
The Puppies pulled out. I promised you numbers, and here's what we have.
Best Novel: 2,078 ballots in 2017 vs. 3,695 ballots in 2016, a 44% drop.
Best Novella: 1,410 ballots in 2017 vs. 2,416 ballots in 2016, a 42% drop.
Best Novelette: 1,097 ballots in 2017 vs. 1,975 ballots in 2016, a 45% drop.
Best Short Story: 1,275 ballots in 2017 vs. 2,451 ballots in 2016, a 52% drop.
I can keep going on with the numbers here, but that kind of pull out of an audience is staggering. If this were a TV show or a comic, it would be instantly cancelled. The execs would be using this as a case study as to what went wrong and why so that they could never do it again. Kinda like is beginning to happen in comics right now (but they're still in the denial stage of grief).
You're seeing about a thousand less votes across the board per category. That means a thousand less people with memberships than last year. Wow. Note to "real science fiction fandom": you told about half your audience you hate them and you want them to go away. They did. This spells big trouble for you in the future.
(12) FROM A RETIREE. The world is filled with people who are pleased to pass along any piece of news they know will annoy the recipient. Larry Correia has a friend like that, and the upshot was "Don't Forget to Nominate for the Dragon Awards".
The reason for this post was that a friend of mine sent me a PM this morning, that they had announced the Hugo nominations, and gave me a link. Being retired from trying to cure Puppy Related Sadness, I only gave the list a brief cursory glance, saw the names of many proper goodthinkers, and counted like a dozen(+) nominations for Tor, so it appears that balance has been restored to their sainted halls of Trufans enjoying themselves in the proper approved manner. I'm sure many wooden buttholes will be sacrificed upon the altar of Social Justice.
(13) EYES RIGHT. The Castalia House blog had not posted an acknowledgement of its Best Fanzine nomination when I looked. They were just doing business as usual, showing how they earned that nomination with their two latest posts, "The Most Overrated Novel of the 20th Century by Alex Stump" (about Frank Herbert's Dune) and "How Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller Ruined Comics by Jon Del Arroz".
(14) ON TOUR IN CLEVELAND. John Scalzi tweeted about the ballot several times. He may have been overlooked for awards, but there was good news about his latest novel.
This year I wasn't a finalist for the Hugo or Nebula, and I missed the NYT list last week. JESUS WHY AM I EVEN PAYING MY CABAL DUES ANYMORE
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 4, 2017
Note from one my agents telling me The Collapsing Empire is #17 on the Publishers Weekly hardcover fiction list for March 20 – 26. Wheee!
And as Jerry Pournelle often says, "Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money."
(15) STILL FLYING. Harrison Ford keeps license, escapes fine for piloting error after an FAA investigation into his taxiway landing:
After actor Harrison Ford landed his small plane on a taxiway, rather than a runway, at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., in February, the Federal Aviation Administration began looking into the incident….
The Federal Aviation Administration determined at the conclusion of its inquiry that "no administrative or enforcement action was warranted," Ford's lawyer, Stephen Hofer said in a statement. "Mr. Ford retains his pilot's certificate without restriction."
The actor, who played swashbuckling space smuggler and Millennium Falcon pilot Han Solo in the "Star Wars" film franchise, also was cited by the agency for his "long history of compliance" with FAA regulations and "his cooperative attitude during the investigation," Hofer said.
Although Ford incurred no penalty, he agreed to undergo voluntary "airman counseling" before the FAA closed the matter, his lawyer said.
(The BBC used a more colorful metaphor: No fines for Ford for being a 'schmuck')
(16) WHAT IF THEY CHEAT BETTER? Web inventor slams US, UK attacks on net privacy.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee was speaking to the BBC following the news that he has been given the Turing Award.
It is sometimes known as the Nobel Prize of computing.
Sir Tim said moves to undermine encryption would be a "bad idea" and represent a massive security breach.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said there should be no safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online. But Sir Tim said giving the authorities a key to unlock coded messages would have serious consequences.
"Now I know that if you're trying to catch terrorists it's really tempting to demand to be able to break all that encryption but if you break that encryption then guess what – so could other people and guess what – they may end up getting better at it than you are," he said.
(17) WHAT IF THEY CHEAT A LOT BETTER? It depends on how much those cheaters have prospered. These guys made a lot: "Overwatch 'cheat maker' told to pay $8.6m to Blizzard".
"The Bossland hacks destroy the integrity of the Blizzard games, thereby alienating and frustrating legitimate players and diverting revenue from Blizzard to defendants," the US games developer had argued.
The tools included the ability to see other players' positions, health scores and other information from a distance within games.
The Zwickau-based firm's managing director said it did not accept the US court had jurisdiction over it, and that the judgement did not take into account that many of the licences it had sold had been "trials" at a fraction of the normal cost.
"We are discussing with our lawyers how to continue – if an appeal to the declined motion to dismiss is worth trying," Zwetan Letschew told the BBC.
Bossland's website remains active and continues to advertise cheats for several Blizzard games, insisting "botting is not against any law".
(18) A WIZ OF A WIZ HE IS. "Ian McKellen Explains Why He Refused to Play Dumbledore in Harry Potter" at io9.
Anyway, McKellen is in good spirits about the whole thing. When host Stephen Sackur asked, "You mean you could have been Dumbledore?" McKellen responded, "Well sometimes, sometimes when I see the posters of [Harris' eventual replacement] Mike Gambon, the actor who gloriously plays Dumbledore, I think sometimes it is me."
(19) INVENTORY READY TO GO. I foolishly wasted my time writing news posts when I could have been preparing to monetize my nomination!
please enjoy new tingler POUNDED IN THE BUTT BY MY SECOND HUGO AWARD NOMINATION out now on amazon https://t.co/0RGUECOfF9 pic.twitter.com/TBujIFHXh9
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) April 4, 2017
And The Mary Sue is so excited they turned the Hugo Award announcement into a Chuck Tingle promo with three of his book covers for art. Love of money is real!
[Thanks to Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, Mark-kitteh, JJ, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Greg Hullender.]
Posted in Awards	| Tagged Book Smugglers, Chuck Tingle, cyborg, David Gerrold, Declan Finn, Galactic Journey, Harrison Ford, Ian McKellen, Jack Williamson, James Davis Nicoll, Jerry Pournelle, John Scalzi, Jon Del Arroz, Larry Correia, Melinda Snodgrass, Toni Weisskopf, Tor Books, video games
Pixel Scroll 3/25/17 Not Really Very Specific
(1) CASHING IN. Naked Security has discovered "Spock will unlock Kirk ransomware – after you beam up a bunch of Monero".
Star Trek fans might remember an episode from the original series where our heroes were transported to a mirror universe where their counterparts served an evil version of the Federation. At the end of "Mirror Mirror", it is the alternate universe's Spock who begins to set things right.
One has to wonder if the creators of the recently discovered Kirk ransomware had that episode in mind. SophosLabs threat researcher Dorka Palotay told Naked Security that this new specimen appeared a few days ago….
Monero is the new (or old) latinum
Unlike the ransomware families SophosLabs has seen so far, this family uses Monero for ransom payment, which is a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin. Monero has already been popular among cyber-criminals. You could say it's the new latinum – the favored currency of the Ferengi. Or, you could say it's the old one. (These temporal paradoxes give us a headache.)
(2) SPOOK FANAC. Naked Security also disclosed that the CIA named one of its hacking tools after a famous science fictional gadget – "Latest Wikileaks dump shows CIA targeting Apple earlier than others".
Here's a breakdown of the tools documented and their purpose:
Sonic Screwdriver: Fans of Doctor Who know that the Sonic Screwdriver is the Doctor's trusty device for analysis and defense. In the CIA's world, it's a "mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop is booting," allowing attackers to "boot its attack software even when a firmware password is enabled". The CIA's Sonic Screwdriver infector is stored on the modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter. The documentation for this was released internally at CIA headquarters November 29 2012….
(3) IRON FIST. While my Facebook friends have leveled plenty of criticism, Comicbook.com declares "Iron Fist Is The Second Biggest Marvel Netflix Premiere".
Marvel's Iron Fist may not have gone over well with critics, but fans can't seem to get enough.
According to a report by Parrot Analytics, Marvel's Iron Fist is the second-biggest debut for a Marvel series on Netflix so far, performing better than both Marvel's Daredevil and Marvel's Jessica Jones in the first week it was available to stream. Iron Fist falls just short of Marvel's Luke Cage, which was Marvel's best debut to date.
It should be noted that Parrot Analytics is a third party industry analyst and that these metrics are not endorsed by Netflix. Netflix does not share its viewership numbers publically.
(4) DO'S AND DON'TS. Here are the first two of "Ray Bradbury's 12 Rules For Writers" at Tripwire.
Don't start out writing novels. They take too long. Begin your writing life instead by cranking out "a hell of a lot of short stories," as many as one per week. Take a year to do it; he claims that it simply isn't possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. He waited until the age of 30 to write his first novel, Fahrenheit 451. "Worth waiting for, huh?"
You may love 'em, but you can't be 'em. Bear that in mind when you inevitably attempt, consciously or unconsciously, to imitate your favorite writers, just as he imitated H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and L. Frank Baum.
(5) BY YOUR ROYAL LEAVES. Standback guested on Jonah Sutton-Morse's Cabbages and Kings podcast. (I'm not trying to blow his cover, he sent the link indicating it should be a "scroll item for Standback.")
This episode I am joined by Ziv Wities (@QuiteVague), host of the SFSqueeAndSnark short story discussion site, to discuss Jo Walton's The Just City. We covered our different reactions to the story, the elevation of Plato's Republic to a holy text, and the problems of privilege and how it is portrayed in The Just City. In addition, Brandon O'Brien returns for the second installment of Black Star Cruises, a review of Maurice Broaddus' forthcoming novella Buffalo Soldier.
There's a transcript of the podcast available at the site, too.
Z – So, this is the only book in my entire life that I have ever bought based on a book ad. There was a print ad for the Just City in Fantasy & Science Fiction and I saw it and I read it and I said that sounds really really really cool. I don't think I've ever reacted that way to a print ad before.It's just, it's just a cool high-concept idea, and one of the things that really grabbed me about it was the idea that it's not only a recreation of The Republic but specifically that it is done with the support of a goddess. With Athene, Athene?
JSM – Yes
Z – With Athene supporting and bankrolling and magicing together the entire thing.
(6) DON'T BLAME WEIR. The Wrap reveals "More Hollywood Whitewashing: CBS Pilot Casts 2 White Actors in Lead Roles Written for Minorities".
Andy Weir's sci-fi drama "Mission Control" was written with a bilingual Latina and African-American man — now played by Poppy Montgomery and David Giuntoli…
According to an individual familiar with the project, producers initially did reach out to and offer the roles to non-white actors, but they passed. The production ultimately moved on as the script evolved, leading to the casting of Montgomery and Giuntoli. Montgomery's character will no longer speak Spanish in the final version of the pilot.
The pilot, which the individual described as an "ensemble drama," does feature nonwhite actors in other roles, including "Desperate Housewives" alum Ricardo Chavira as the director of the Johnson Space Center and Nigerian-born actress Wunmi Mosaku as Rayna, the mission's public affairs officer….
(7) A NUMBER OF BUGS. Find the answer to "What Kind of Bug Eats Books" here. There are five main types, a number that suits the Scroll perfectly.
Bugs that eat books aren't injurious to humans, but they can destroy your library. Book-eating insects inhabit books in their larval stage, eating collagen glues, cotton, leather, linen and paper. These insects can be difficult to spot because of their small sizes and hiding instincts. Use a magnifying glass to inspect volumes for intruders. There are five types of bugs that commonly infest books.
(8) SOMETIMES IT CAUSES ME TO TINGLE. Future Nobel laureate for literature Dr. Chuck Tingle weighs in on Castalia House's latest antics at The Rabid Puppies.
in recent days man name of JOM SCALZI put out a big time book name of THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE. bad dogs blues said they could copy it and do better, so to keep bad dogs blues honest this is now website to show current sales rank between BAD DOGS BLUES fake book and JOM SCALZI real book. this is good way to determine wether or not being a devil is a WINNING WAY. please enjoy.
JOM RANK #235
BAD DOGS BLUES RANK #1671
(9) MAKING PROGRESS. Christine Valada gave this update about Len Wein's health:
Len is doing better but still not on social media. It's boring when he's not actually working and he's at war with the restrictions on his diet. What a surprise, right? The amputated toe is considered healed (yay), but the doctor needs to do some clean-up work on his second toe which had been delayed because of the neck surgery. He's a captive patient in rehab, so that will get done on Monday evening.
(10) SAD TRIVIA. Today's Livestream of the Debbie Reynolds/Carrie Fisher public memorial had over 63,000 views. Right now, the link is just showing a short slide-show of the pair at various ages.
Their celebration of life was in the same auditorium that Sammy Davis, Jr.'s was held.
The BBC had a few brief quotes from before and during the memorial.
Earlier Mr Fisher said the public was invited to the memorial "because that's how my mother would want it".
He added that she was "very connected to her fans and felt they were a part of her".
James Blunt was friends with Carrie Fisher and recorded part of his debut album in her bathroom. His tribute song will be accompanied by a montage of photographs of the pair.
Todd Fisher called it a "beautiful song to Carrie", adding that "it might rip your heart out".
Princess Leia from Star Wars reel shown at SDCC 2015.
(11) NO CGI FOR FISHER. Gene Maddaus of Variety, in "Bob Iger Reveals 'Star Wars' Han Solo Spinoff Details, Talks Plans After 'Episode IX'", reports on a talk that the Disney CEO gave at USC. Iger says that Carrie Fisher's performance in Episode 8 is complete and does not have to be digitally enhanced and the forthcoming moving about young Han Solo will reveal how Chewbacca got his name.
At the conference, where he also confirmed that he's "definitely" leaving in 2019, he said he has seen Episode 8, "The Last Jedi," and addressed how the company is handling the death of Carrie Fisher, who appears extensively in the film.
"We are not changing '8' to deal with her passing. Her performance remains as it was in '8,'" he said. "In 'Rogue One', we created digitally a few characters… We're not doing that with Carrie."
…Iger was otherwise tight-lipped about Episode 8, saying that he sometimes reviews dailies "in my laptop in bed under the covers" to keep the project secret from his own teenage boys.
(12) TODAY'S DAY
The Tolkien Society started Tolkien Reading Day in 2003 after a journalist from New York enquired as to whether or not there was such an event. March 25 was selected because that is the date of the Downfall of Sauron.
March 25, 1957 — United States Customs confiscated 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, printed in England, on grounds of obscenity.
(14) BY THE LITRE. "Discovery enables 'mass produced blood'" – the BBC has the story. Chip Hitchcock says, "The kicker is that it's so expensive it's only useful for types so rare that they're in very short supply — e.g. Heinlein's AB-."
(15) HOT PILOT. You can listen to the recording of Harrison Ford excusing his Han Solo moment at this link: "'I'm the schmuck that landed on the taxiway'".
A recording has emerged of Harrison Ford explaining to air traffic control why he flew directly over a waiting passenger jet and landed on a taxiway at John Wayne Airport in southern California in February.
(16) CURRENT READING. Rosemary Benton visits a newsstand 55 years ago at Galactic Journey — "[March 25,1962] A Double Hit (A.Bertram Chandler's The Rim of Space and John Brunner's Secret Agent of Terra)".
I turned to Brunner's Secret Agent of Terra. I couldn't help but feel as if I was reading a novella that pitted the characters of H. Beam Piper's Paratime series against the American agents of The Time Traders. In almost exact contrast to the universe of Chandler's piece, Brunner's protagonists are agents of the Corps Galactica – a economic and security force powerhouse for Earth's galaxy-wide territories. When a remote and technologically backward world called Planet 14 is penetrated by off-worlders looking to take advantage of the natural resources of the isolated human society, it is up to agents of the Corps to infiltrate the population without notice and take down the exploitative evil doers.
(17) FREE DELANY. You do not need to be a member of Facebook to read this unpublished novel excerpt by Samuel R. Delany:
Here's the coda to a not yet published novel, whose manuscript ran more than 700 pages in 2006: Shoat Rumblin: His Sensations and Ideas.
(18) FURTHER DELIBERATIONS. Here are the newest reviews from the Shadow Clarke jury.
"Central Station by Lavie Tidhar: a review by Victoria Hoyle"
Tidhar's novel is both subtle and quotidian, bolshie and wildly inventive. In common with some of its characters, it is a cyborg patchwork; a novel about a bold future that has its feet firmly planted in the past.
The book started life as a series of short stories, reworked and ordered here within a narrative frame to form a novel. It's complex and wily, structured around three points in time: a present, a future and a far future. The author introduces themselves quietly in a first-person Prologue, a writer sitting down in a shebeen in Tel-Aviv – perhaps in our present, perhaps not – to tell a science fiction story. They sip cheap beer while the rain falls outside and put pen to paper: 'Once the world was young,' they begin, 'The Exodus ships had only begun to leave the solar system then…' (2) Our writer in the present addresses us as if were a knowing audience in a far distant future, 'sojourners' amongst the stars who tell 'old stories across the aeons.' These stories – of 'our' past but the author's fictional future – make up the meat and substance of the book that follows. It sounds like rather a baroque set-up and it's barely gestured at but it is thematically fundamental. Central Station is a book about how the future remembers, about the future's past. It's a historical novel as much as a science fiction novel.
"Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton: a review by Megan AM"
Good Morning, Midnight is a bit of a shortlist risk, as shadow jury conversations have proved. Ranging in complaints about too much lyrical sciencing to complaints about too much overt preciousness, overall, the general jury criticism toward the book has been along the lines of "too much too much." And yet, the novel has been blurbed as a blend of Station Eleven and Kim Stanley Robinson– two supreme yet entirely different approaches to SF, flawed in their own "too much" ways (the first, a well-written, but literary carpet bagging of superficial SF tropes, the other, an over-lingering on most things, including the sublimation of ice). With comparisons like these, Good Morning, Midnight might be just the kind of "too much too much" I, and other Clarke readers, would relish. Besides, it has stars on the cover, a spaceship in the story, and is free of the usual, predictable pew-pew hijinks that tends to come with spaceship stories, so, for those reasons, it seems like something worth discussing within the context of possible Clarke contenders.
"The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen: a review by David Hebblethwaite"
If the blurring of the 'human/animal' distinction gives Geen's book its substance, the thriller plot gives it its shape—and here the novel comes a little unstuck. With two plot strands unfolding over the length of the novel, the reader is geared up to expect two conclusions: first, the revelation of whatever it was that caused Kit to flee ShenCorp; and second, the final reckoning. 'Uncanny Shift' builds the intrigue, as Kit is invited (not compelled, no, not at all) to work on the development of a new income stream: consciousness tourism. She's not sure about the ethics of this, as she tells one character:
"Trouble in Paradise: a review by Nina Allan"
When discussing Steph Swainston's fiction within the context of the Clarke Award, it is never long before the question arises: but is it even science fiction? I have heard it said that Swainston's debut, The Year of Our War, should not have been eligible for the Clarke Award by reason of it being a work of fantasy rather than SF. No doubt similar objections were voiced in respect of the volumes that followed. The old dragons versus spaceships dichotomy, in other words, complicated only by the fact that there are no dragons in Swainston's Fourlands novels, and there is a strong argument to be made that the multi-generational, FTL space craft so beloved of much heartland science fiction is as much a fantasy as any mythical leviathan and possibly more so.
(19) POWER GRAB. Prosthetic limbs with built-in power cells could be self-charging.
A synthetic skin for prosthetics limbs that can generate its own energy from solar power has been developed by engineers from Glasgow University.
Researchers had already created an 'electronic skin' for prosthetic hands made with new super-material graphene.
The new skin was much more sensitive to touch but needed a power source to operate its sensors.
Previously this required a battery but the latest breakthrough has integrated photo-voltaic cells in to the skin.
(20) IN THE END, GOODNESS PREVAILS. NPR says Power Rangers is fun in the end: "In The Agreeably Schlocky 'Power Rangers,' 'Transformers' Meets 'The Breakfast Club'".
Power Rangers cost a little over $100 million to make and looks about half as expensive, unless catering services were provided by Eric Ripert. The five Power Rangers are appealing but bland, as if skimmed from a CW casting call, and Israelite stages the action sequences in a chaotic mass of swish-pans and rapid-fire edits, perhaps to hide the daytime special effects. And yet the film grows steadily more disarming as it approaches the grand finale, in part because it believes so earnestly in the unity necessary for good to defeat evil and in part because everyone appears to be having a ball.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, David K.M. Klaus, Mark-kitteh, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, Matthew Johnson, John King Tarpinian, and Standback for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Meredith.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Andy Weir, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Carrie Fisher, Chip Hitchcock, Christine Valada, Chuck Tingle, David Hebblethwaite, Disney, Doctor Who, Galactic Journey, Han Solo, Harrison Ford, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Scalzi, Jonah Sutton-Morse, Len Wein, Marvel, Megan AM, Nina Allan, Power Rangers, Ray Bradbury, Rosemary Benton, Samuel Delany, Standback, Star Trek, Victoria Hoyle, Vox Day
Carl's Pick of YouTube Science Fiction Videos
Posted on February 5, 2017 by Mike Glyer
By Carl Slaughter: Bless YouTube's heart. YouTube suggests videos based on my previous searches. I watch a lot of Star Trek clips and a lot "best episodes/movies" reviews. I also watch a lot of science fiction trailers, as well as other genres.
So YouTube offers me a lot of Star Trek parodies, interviews, panel discussions, reviews, and even a Star Trek movie I had never heard of and couldn't find any background information for. Whoever designed YouTube's suggestion algorithm apparently assumed there's a large Star Trek/Star Wars fan crossover. I was also offered Star Wars auditions and rare early interviews and documentaries. Throw in some Stargate, DC, Steampunk, and even Frasier and Family Guy. My favorite is probably the Batman/Avengers personality/MO conflict.
There was also a Wrath of Farrakhan skit from In Living Color with a young Jim Carrey, but it was more of a Farrakhan sendup than a Star Trek sendup, so I didn't include it.
For every video worth watching, I had to plow through 10 that were junk. For every interview/panel discussion that offers insight, there are 10 that are perfunctory. For every irresistible parody, there are 10 amateurish or not in good taste. So after you bless YouTube, you can bless my blurry eyes.
Carol Burnett Star Trek parody
Deep Stain 9 parody
Frasier / NASA Star Trek parody
With Kate Mulgrew as captain and the cast of Frasier as the crew.
Family Guy / Next Generation antics
Stewart Griffin, fake British accented baby mad genius from Family Guy, invents a teleporter that transports the cast of Next Generation to his time, then spends the day with them. Nothing goes as planned for either of them, not even a trip to McDonald's. Spoiler, Denise Crosby doesn't make it back into the transporter. And how DO you pronounce the name Wil Wheaton? The voice of Stewie, BTW, is Seth MacFarlane, creator of the series and co-creator of the American Dad series. MacFarlane, BTW, is not British.
Star Fleet Academy movie
I don't know how I missed this one all these years and I can't find any background information about it. Includes William Shatner, Walter Koenig, George Takei, and Christopher Plummer.
Star Wars auditions
Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill:
Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford:
Kurt Russell again:
Ewok skit
Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill, backstage, in Star Wars costume, try to help an Ewok actor, in costume, knocking on their dressing room doors, find the right stage on the Star Wars set. Notice the Ewok identifies the movie as Revenge of the Jedi instead of Return of the Jedi. Spoiler, they send him to the wrong stage.
Early Star Wars interviews
Rare early Alec Guinniss interview:
Rare early Harrison Ford interview:
Rare early Mark Hamill interview:
Early Star Wars documentary
Batman / Avengers personality conflict
Batman tries to get the Avengers to be serious, the Avengers try to get Batman to relax.
Stargate SG1 marionette parody
Steampunk movie reviews
Awesome steampunk movies.
Posted in Like Show Business	| Tagged Carl Slaughter, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Star Trek, Star Wars
Pixel Scroll 11/15/16 The Manhunt Extended Across More Than One Hundred Pixels And Eight Box Tick Scrolls
(1) NAMING CALLS. Katie Rask announced that the YA Award Survey has had over 1,200 entries so far.
(2) THE SHIRT OFF YOUR BACK. The gift-giving season approaches, so it's time to pay another visit to the Litographs store, where you can pick up something from The Princess Bride movie, or Daniel Jose Older's Shadowshaper, or quite a few other genre authors from Diana Gabaldon and Ellen Kushner to Kurt Vonnegut and H. P. Lovecraft.
(3) LINGUISTICS IN SF. Rowan Hooper's piece for New Scientist looks at the use of linguistics in Arrival to give a survey of how sf films have treated linguistics, with references to Contact and Interstellar — "The science behind the twisting alien linguistics of Arrival".
Science fiction thrillers usually send in gun-toting heroes like Will Smith or Tom Cruise to kick invading alien butt. Arrival is completely, wonderfully different: it sends in a linguist, played by Amy Adams.
"Language," one character says, "is the first weapon drawn in a conflict." The big question to ask the aliens: what is their purpose on Earth?
In Contact, the aliens used prime numbers as a Rosetta stone that could be used to decrypt their communication; in Close Encounters of the Third Kind they helpfully used five musical tones in a major scale, presumably because vibrating strings have the same harmonics in other parts of our galaxy.
(4) MR. SCI-FI NEEDS SPACE. Storage space, that is — anybody want to store a spaceship?
Writer-Director-Producer Marc Zicree needs your help! Part of the hero set of Space Command (half the floor) needs a free home! (The rest is in storage). He's been working to get overhead down on costs such as rent, while he's busy at work completing the two-hour pilot of Space Command and selling the show. Have some of your garage or yard free to give us some space for our spaceship floor? You can help!
(5) INTO THE WEST ONCE MORE. HBO has renewed Westworld reports the New York Times.
"Westworld," an expensive sci-fi drama, had been sidetracked by development problems and its October debut was later than expected. Before it had its premiere, HBO executives were privately saying they were unsure if it would land with its audience. But landed it has. "Westworld" has regularly been the No.-3-highest-rated scripted TV show in cable, drawing nearly three million viewers each week. HBO said on Monday that after adding up additional metrics like DVR, HBO Go and HBO Now views, the show is averaging 11.7 million viewers per episode, a figure they said is higher than "Game of Thrones" and "True Detective" at similar points in their freshman seasons. And like the first season of "True Detective," it has ignited a lot of commentary online.
(6) SERIES BASED ON ATWOOD NOVEL. Hulu is planning a 10-episode adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale.
Taking a cue from Netflix, Hulu isn't slowing down with its original programming. Today, the streaming service announced that it's ordered a full series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's seminal sci-fi novel. It centers on a totalitarian society where the birth rate is falling, and fertile women are placed in sexual slavery as "handmaids" to help humanity repopulate. Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men, Top of the Lake) will star as Offred, a handmaid working in the home of a government official named The Commander. Her main goal? To find her daughter, all the while trying to deal with her low place in society.
(7) OUTRÉ LIMITS. Sheila Williams explains why the current issue of Asimov's consists of all fantasy stories.
Welcome to our annual slightly spooky issue. The fall double issue is always long in the making. Throughout the year, we see stories that land a little outside Asimov's, admittedly rather soft, parameters. While we do publish one or two stories in each issue that could be called fantasy, surreal fiction, or slipstream, our focus is primarily on science fiction. Of course I get a lot of traditional science fiction story submissions, but I see a lot of uncanny submissions, too. The average issue of Asimov's rarely features ghosts, witches, or werewolves, so during the year I tend to set aside many of my favorite outré tales while I wait to lay out the October/November issue.
(8) I KNOW. The actress kept this news on ice for 40 years — "Carrie Fisher Reveals She Had an Affair With Harrison Ford on 'Star Wars': 'It Was So Intense'".
Carrie Fisher is finally going public with a secret she has guarded closely for 40 years: When she was 19, she and Harrison Ford, then a 33-year-old married father of two, had a whirlwind three-month affair while filming the original Star Wars in 1976.
"It was so intense," the actress-author, 60, tells PEOPLE exclusively of the real-life romance die-hard fans of the franchise have wished for since Han Solo and Princess Leia captured hearts on-screen.
(9) POP CULTURE QUEST. The actor who convinced California to pass a law about authenticating collectibles now has turned his interest into a TV show — "Mark Hamill on Turning Professional Toy and Collectibles Explorer".
Hamill has launched a new series, Mark Hamill's Pop Culture Quest, on the recently-launched Comic-Con HQ subscription service – you can watch the first episode right now via DC Comics' YouTube channel.
On the series, Hamill — an avid toy and memorabilia collector himself — travels to see different notable collections, from classic Godzilla and other Japanese-created toys kept in a fan's home to the iconic Batman comics and items on display at DC Comics' headquarters. I spoke to Hamill about how the series came to be, what it's like for him to interview the subjects, and more, including his own personal history as a collector….
IGN: As we're doing an interview right now, I'm curious, doing this show, do you enjoy getting to be the interviewer, having been on the other side of it so many times?
Hamill: Oh yes, absolutely. That's part of the fun. I thought, "Boy, I could really get used to this." You're right. It's role reversal. One thing that I discovered… Because you look at the schedule and it's like, "We're going to do a show about a guy who collects shoes!?" That doesn't really grab me, but then you meet the person and it's really the shared trait that all collectors have that you relate to and then you hear the personal stories of how they got started on whatever collection they have and that's the connective tissue. So that's part of the fun. I don't personally collect some of these things, but I love seeing other people who do.
(10) NAME CHANGE. Seattle's EMP is now Museum of Pop Culture—MoPOP.
As of Saturday, November 19, EMP will officially be named Museum of Pop Culture—MoPOP. As you know, our museum encompasses so much more than music, and as we look toward the future, MoPOP reflects the entirety of the museum and where we are headed.
Spanning science fiction, fantasy, horror, fashion, sports, and video games, MoPOP reflects our vision for curating, exploring, and supporting the creative works that shape and inspire our lives. While the name of the museum is evolving, our mission remains the same: to bring genuine human experience and perspective to pop culture through our exhibits, programs, and events that invite exploration and inspire creativity.
We are so excited to showcase the breadth of the museum and celebrate pop culture in all its diversity with our Pop Culture Party, an all-day fest that is free to the public this Saturday. Admission includes entry to all MoPOP galleries—including Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds—and will feature live music, architectural tours, pop culture games, and more fun for guests of all ages.
(11) SUBSTANDARD DANCE. Cemetery Dance has been delisted by SFWA.
Please note that, as of November 1, 2016, Cemetery Dance is no longer a SFWA-qualifying market. In 2014, SFWA increased the standard of payment from 5¢/word to 6¢/word, and this publication has not increased its pay rate to keep pace. In addition, payment for stories is capped at $250, regardless of length. Cemetery Dance was alerted in September about the issue and their upcoming de-listing and has declined to raise its rates or change the story cap. Should the magazine change its policy to meet SFWA standards, it will be reinstated to our qualifying list.
(12) THE EXPLANATION. Charles Stross thinks there are no coincidences and all the disparate parts should fit together, rather like a Tim Powers novel played out in real life.
What happened last week is not just about America. It was one move—a very significant one, bishop-takes-queen maybe—in a long-drawn-out geopolitical chess game. It's being fought around the world: Brexit was one move, the election and massacres of Dutarte in the Philippines were another, the post-coup crackdown in Turkey is a third. The possible election of Marine Le Pen (a no-shit out-of-the-closet fascist) as President of France next year is more of this stuff. The eldritch knot of connections between Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Da'esh in the wreckage of Syria is icing on top. It's happening all over and I no longer think this is a coincidence.
Part of it is about the geopolitics of climate change (and mass migration and water wars). Part of it is about the jarring transition from an oil-based economy (opposed by the factions who sell oil and sponsor denial climate change, from Exxon-Mobil to the Kremlin) to a carbon-neutral one.
Part of it is the hellbrew of racism and resentment stirred up by loss of relative advantage, by the stagnation of wages in the west and the perception that other people somewhere else are stealing all the money—Chinese factories, Wall Street bankers, the faceless Other. (17M people in the UK have less than £100 in savings; by a weird coincidence, the number of people who voted for Brexit was around 17M. People who are impoverished become desperate and angry and have little investment in the status quo—a fancy way of saying they've got nothing to lose.)
But another big part of the picture I'm trying to draw is Russia's long-drawn out revenge for the wild ride of misrule the neoconservatives inflicted on the former USSR in the 1990s.
(13) GRIM FAIRY TALE. Easier to understand is M.A.M.O.N. (Monitor Against Mexicans Over Nationwide), "a satirical fantasy sci-fi shortfilm that explores with black humor and lots of VFX the outrageous consequences of Donald Trump´s plan of banning immigration and building an enormous wall on the Mexico – US border."
(14) FIRST ROBOTS. Jim Meadows writes:
A college radio station in my town is airing a student production adapted from the play "R.U.R." by Karel Capek, credited for coining the word 'robot'.
The play, "Airing Robots" is being broadcast today and tomorrow (Tuesday & Wednesday) on WPCD, 88.7 FM in Champaign, Illinois. The station streams at its website, http://wpcd.parkland.edu/index.html
The play aired today at 10 AM Central Time, and will repeat today at 6 PM and Wednesday at 12 PM and 8 PM.
The production is the culmination of two different Communications classes at Parkland College, a public community college in Champaign.
Here's a link to an article in Parkland's student newspaper, the Prospectus, which actually does a fair job of summarizing key elements of the play —
One aspect of "Airing Robots" and its source material Geiken finds interesting is the type of robots featured: androids as opposed to cog-and-gear machines.
"[T]he robots of R.U.R are not your typical mechanical robots that you might imagine for this sort of early sci-fi story, but more akin to cyborgs or androids made from organic matter. The robots of R.U.R. are more like the 'Cylons' of the 2004 version of 'Battlestar Galactica,' or the cyborgs of the 'Terminator' movie series," he said.
?apek, who was a highly-political writer, wrote "R.U.R." in 1920, when Europe was feeling the effects of the Russian civil war and the end of World War I. According to Czech writer and biographer Ivan Kilma, ?apek wrote the play in response to many of the societal and technocratic utopian ideas that were spreading around Central Europe at that time.
R.U.R. was first performed in 1921, Kilma states.
(15) ROSEWATER. Rosewater by Tade Thompson is a new release from Apex Publications. Thompson lives and works in the south of England. His first novel Making Wolf won the 2016 Kitschies Golden Tentacle award for best debut novel.
Between meeting a boy who bursts into flames, alien floaters that want to devour him, and a butterfly woman who he has sex with when he enters the xenosphere, Kaaro's life is far from the simple one he wants. But he left simple behind a long time ago when he was caught stealing and nearly killed by an angry mob. Now he works for a government agency called Section 45, and they want him to find a women known as Bicycle Girl. And that's just the beginning.
An alien entity lives beneath the ground, forming a biodome around which the city of Rosewater thrives. The cities of Rosewater are enamored by the dome, hoping for a chance to meet the beings within or possibly be invited to come in themselves. But Kaaro isn't so enamored. He was in the biodome at one point and decided to leave it behind. When something begins killing off other sensitives like himself, Kaaro defies Section 45 to search for an answer, facing his past and comes to a realization about a horrifying future.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
Posted in Pixel Scroll	| Tagged Apex Publications, Carrie Fisher, Cemetery Dance, Charles Stross, Daniel Jose Older, Harrison Ford, Jim Meadows, Karel Capek, Katie Rask, Lodestar Award, Marc Scott Zicree, Margaret Atwood, Mark Hamill, SFWA, Sheila Williams, Tade Thompson, The Princess Bride, Westworld, YA