Tag Archives: Gerry Conway

Pixel Scroll 7/9/26 These Are The Pixels That Try Fen’s Scrolls

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(1) DEADLINE APPROACHING TO NOMINATE FOR DRAGON AWARDS. Nominations are being taken for the 2026 Dragon Awards until July 12.

(2) REVISITING THE CODOMINIUM. Mark Atwood says about Baen author Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium stories – “The CoDominium Was a Warning, Not a Forecast”. Atwood writes “The CoDominium is a setting that got more legible after its geopolitics expired. That’s what happens when you’re diagnosing the disease and everyone else is arguing about the symptoms.”

Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium stories land in Analog between 1971 and 1973, right as Nixon and Brezhnev are signing SALT I and the ABM treaty. The setting depicts a near-future where the United States and Soviet Union merge their militaries, carve up the world, and collude to suppress any technology that might destabilize the arrangement. Read at a glance, it looks like Pournelle bought the mid-century assumption that both superpowers were converging on the same managerial form. Galbraith’s technostructure with different flags.

He didn’t buy it. He weaponized it.

“Superpower condominium” was a live term of art in 1970s foreign policy. It’s what Peking and Gaullist Paris accused Washington and Moscow of building: a duopoly that carves up the world and colludes to keep everyone else down. Pournelle took the accusation literally and named his setting after it. That’s not agreement with convergence optimism. It’s taking the Chinese critique of détente and saying: yes, exactly, and here’s what it looks like fully ripened.

The intellectual lineage runs through James Burnham, not John Kenneth Galbraith. Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution argued the converging managerial form was coming regardless of ideology, and Burnham was a founding-generation anti-communist Cold Warrior. You could take managerial convergence seriously as a threat model while hating it. Pournelle, PhD in political science, protégé of Stefan Possony at the Hoover Institution, was squarely in that tradition. Notice what the CoDominium actually converges on: not shared values, but the shared class interest of two ruling elites who discover they fear their own populations, nationalist movements, and destabilizing technology more than they fear each other. The ideologies were always liturgical. The apparat is what’s real, and two apparats can do business.

The tell that it’s a nightmare and not a forecast is the technology suppression.

In the CoDominium future, Fleet intelligence assassinates physicists and buries research. This is the precise inversion of The Strategy of Technology, which Pournelle co-wrote with Possony and Francis X. Kane. That book argued technological momentum is the decisive weapon; freezing the competition is suicide-by-stability….

(3) HISTORY SHOWS AGAIN AND AGAIN. [Item by N.] The sequel to Minus One, Godzilla Minus Zero stomps into theaters on November 6.

(4) SIGN UP FOR PKDFEST2026. Registration for PKDFEST2026, The 4th International Philip K. Dick Festival, is open and free. August 20–23, 2026. Fullerton Marriott at California State University. Four days of panels, readings, world premieres, and the first-ever Pink Beam Awards.

(5) CREATIVE ARTS EMMY AWARDS. Animation Magazine lists “2026 Emmy Awards: All the Animation & VFX Nominees”.

…The 78th Emmy Awards, hosted by Emmy Award winner Mariska Hargitay, will air Monday, September 14 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT from the Peacock Theater at L.A. LIVE., airing live coast-to-coast on NBC and streaming on Peacock. The Creative Arts Emmy Awards, which include Outstanding Animated Program and Outstanding Special Visual Effects categories, will take place on Saturday, September 5, and Sunday, September 6….

Outstanding Animated Program

  • Bob’s Burgers – “Grand Pre Pre Pre Opening” (FOX / 20th Television Animation)
  • Rick and Morty – “There’s Something About Morty” (Adult Swim / Rick and Morty LLC, Williams Street)
  • The Simpsons – “Homer? A Cracker Bro?” (FOX / Gracie Films, 20th Television Animation)
  • Smiling Friends – “Le Voyage Incroyable de Monsieur Grenouille” (Adult Swim / Williams Street)
  • South Park – “Sermon on the Mount” (Comedy Central)
  • Star Wars: Visions – “Black” (Disney+ / Lucasfilm, David Production)

Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance

  • Pamela Adlon – Bobby Hill, King of the Hill
  • Julie Andrews – Lady Whistledown, Bridgerton
  • Hank Azaria – Gary Chalmers, The Simpsons
  • Trey Parker – Satan, South Park
  • Matt Vogel – Kermit the Frog, The Muppet Show
  • Steven Yeun – Mark Grayson/Invincible, Invincible

Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Season or a Movie

  • Alien: Earth (FX/Hulu)
  • Foundation (Apple TV+)
  • IT: Welcome to Derry (HBO Max)
  • Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Apple TV+)
  • Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age (Apple TV+)
  • Stranger Things (Netflix)

Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Single Episode

  • Gen V – “New Year, New U” (Prime Video)
  • A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – “In the Name of the Mother” (HBO Max)
  • Paradise – “Exodus” (Hulu)
  • Spider-Noir – “Nightmare on a Gurney” (MGM+/Prime Video)
  • The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – “Costa da Morte” (AMC)

(6) KGB. Ellen Datlow has shared her photos from “Fantastic Fiction at KGB July 8, 2026” on Flickr.

Sam Rebelein read an excerpt from his chapbook and Victor Manibo read from his work in progress, a novel coming out in 2028. A large and enthusiastic audience!

(7) JY MEMORIES. Here’s a Jane Yolen tribute by her daughter Heidi Stemple: “Lessons from My Mother, Jane Yolen” at the School Library Journal.

…My brothers and I have always known we shared our mom with the world, and these last two weeks really brought that home. Years ago, she told me, instead of a headstone, when she died, she wanted a bench where people could sit and read. She wanted it to say, “She wrote many good books and one great one,” because, she said, she wanted everyone to pick their own favorite.

I may have laughed at the time, but in the online memorials since her death, I can see that this is, indeed, appropriate. Everyone has pointed to their own special Jane Yolen book—not just the classics. Yes, the “How Do Dino” books and Owl Moon, but also dragon books and Merlin books, long out-of-print picture books, nonfictions, and ones even I had forgotten about. It’s like she knew (of course she knew) that each reader connects with a book in their own way. An individual book may not be right for every reader, but with so many, six decades of readers have found their way to at least one of her stories. And made it their own.

She, by the way, will be getting a headstone and the bench.

What can I say that hasn’t already been written? My mom was so smart. She had a once-in-a-lifetime imagination. Everything became a story once she got ahold of it. She was a lifelong learner. Often, at conferences, she would attend sessions other authors were teaching. I never could get her to understand how nerve wracking it must be to have Jane Yolen in the front row of your workshop taking notes….

(8) IAN MAULE (1952-2026). British fan Ian Maule died July 8. Originally a member of the Gannets from Newcastle upon Tyne, he moved to London in the mid-1970s, and later to Surrey where he became a leading member of the Surrey Limpwrists group.

Maule edited the newzine Checkpoint from issue #63 to #73. He also published By British: A Fanthology of the Seventies (with Joseph Nicholas).

(9) GERRY CONWAY (1952-2026). The Comics Journal profiles “Gerry Conway, 1952-2026” who died April 26.

He grew up: that’s the important thing to remember. He had swaggered into the lecture hall in Bloomington that morning with the same confidence he swaggered into Marvel Comics two years earlier: with the assurance of a pro. Gerry Conway had come to Indiana in September 1972 to deliver a guest lecture at Indiana University’s first-of-its-kind “The Comic In Society” course (instigated at the school by future Swamp Thing and Batman film producer Michael Uslan). Conway was, to be sure, a high-profile get for the course’s lecture series: four months earlier, he had taken over from Stan Lee as scripter on Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man, the first writer to be permanently assigned to Marvel’s flagship title apart from Stan himself.

Still, it must be admitted, the article in the Herald-Times might have oversold him. “Gerry Conway, a New York City writer who created Spiderman [sic], Daredevil, Thor and the Hulk for Marvel Comics assured some 50 members of an Indiana University class Wednesday night they are not looney if they like comic books,” ran the lede, underneath the headline, “Spiderman Creator Says Comic Lovers Not Looney.”

But if Conway himself made no claims to displace Steve Ditko or Stan Lee, what he had to say that morning was just as ambitious as the headline implied. “We are not hacks,” he told the Indiana students. “We are professional writers and artists who have chosen, for a variety of reasons, to work in the comics.” …

… Oddly enough, the Hollywood caste system being what it is, Conway was seldom involved with movie and TV projects based on his own comic book creations — one of whom in particular had been growing up without him. In 1974, Conway, along with artist John Romita, had created the Punisher as a vigilante antihero in the model of Don Pendleton’s Executioner novels. The Punisher appeared initially as a recurring foil for Spider-Man, and in later years Conway would maintain that the character was imagined as a one-off villain, and certainly not a hero in his own right.

To be sure, this wasn’t entirely ingenuous. The Punisher as originally conceived wasn’t a moral paragon, but he wasn’t a villain either, and when the character showed enough success to warrant a spinoff stories in Marvel’s black-and-white magazines, Conway obliged by writing him with the kind of hard-bitten grittiness that had made Dirty Harry a hit at the box office.

But during the early 2000s, the Punisher took on a second life of his own, becoming a kind of mascot for the American far right: “American Sniper” Chris Kyle boasted of putting the Punisher’s skull logo on his unit’s gear during the Iraq War, and by the time Donald Trump was in office, the image and character had become a meme on military and police-centric kitsch. By 2025, Kash Patel was putting the logo on challenge coins handed out to agents at the FBI.

Conway, whose own politics by then skewed toward the left, wanted none of it. “It’s as offensive as putting a Confederate flag on a government building,” he said. In 2020, amid the wave of protests following the murder of George Floyd, he decided, vigilante-style, to take matters into his own hands, selling a line of shirts bearing the logo with all proceeds donated to Black Lives Matter. A few decades earlier, it might have been different. Roy Thomas recalled that in the early ‘80s, Conway was something of a “definite Reaganite, not unlike myself.” In a field not always known for the capacity of its creators to grow and change with the times, Conway was a model of graceful evolution….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 9, 1944 — Glen Cook, 82 

By Paul Weimer: Grimdark before Grimdark was a thing? Maybe. My first encounter with Glen Cook was not the series he is most famous for, which I will talk about shortly. And not his other major fantasy series, which I will also talk about.  Instead, I encountered Glen Cook somewhere in the early 1990’s with a book called Tower of Fear. A city under the uneasy rule of an oppressive occupation, a wizard sealed and lost in the titular tower, and a general simmering of a city ready to go over the edge, with the right spark. Think of it as a darker, more sword and sorcery version of Ilmar (City of Last Chances) and you will be in the right ballpark. I was on an S&S kick at the time, so I thought it was just excellent.

A few years later, I came across The Black Company.  This is the series that marks Glen Cook as possibly Grimdark before Grimdark was a thing. And also Sword and Sorcery. The premise of the sprawling series, for those who haven’t tried it, is that a mercenary company winds up getting caught in power struggles within and without an evil empire. They literally do work for the Dark Queen but that winds up getting more complicated than even they expect, when they meet the prophecy fueled White Rose, who is supposedly fated to take the Empire down. And oh yeah, the Queen’s ex, locked in a tomb, is looking to break out.  It’s a relatively low level look at what happens when a company has to deal with some very high level movers and shakers. The aforementioned Dark Queen has a number of lieutenants, the Taken, who squabble and scheme among themselves (and the poor Black Company caught in the crossfire) as much as actually fight their enemies. 

It’s a dark military fantasy, well written for those who like that sort of thing (it got reissued not too long ago as one of the Tor Essentials) The world of the Black Company is not a pleasant world, the Company gets chewed up a lot, and their advancement toward their goals can be slow at best. But they keep on keeping on, even as they often do dark things in the pursuit of their goals, their employers’ goals, or both. 

The other major series of Cook that I’ve read is the Garrett, PI books, inspired and suggested to me by a friend who loved them to pieces. Garrett (named for Randall Garrett the fantasy author) is a hard-boiled noir private detective, but in a fantasy city. The novels follow the titular character as he takes cases from the mostly demihuman population of Tunfaire, and follow a lot of the conventions of Noir fiction. Women in trouble, getting into tangles with the law and organized crime, betrayals, reversals, Garrett getting chewed up quite a bit, way in over his head but determined to see the job done. It’s a living. If you like fantasy and you like Noir/detective fiction, this is the series for you, no question. 

 And all of the Garrett books have a metal of some sort in the name (the first book is Sweet Silver Blues, the apparently last one (after a dozen!) was Wicked Bronze Ambition. Come to think, The Black Company was a pretty long lasting series, too. The man can certainly come up with idea after idea in his world, and make page turners in the progress.

Cook, prolific as he has been over a long career, has other fantasy novel series, as well but I’ve not picked any of them up. I’ve not really cottoned to his science fiction, it’s proven to be not for me, alas. 

Glen Cook

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) STATELY WAYNE MANOR FOR SALE. [Item by Daniel Dern.]   “Holy Mortgage Busters, Batman!” — “Wayne Manor From ‘Batman’ Could Be Yours For Just $32M” reports Deadline.

The estate that provided the exteriors for the 1960s Batman TV series is on the block — albeit with a Bruce Wayne-sized price tag.

The 18,000-foot Pasadena mansion is listed for a cool $32M. The home has 7 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 4 half baths and 4 three-quarter baths. Bruce Wayne, it seems, likes to bathe….

(13) ZEROES AND ONES ONLY. [Item by Steven French.] Keith Stuart reports on the latest Sony games debacle in this week’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter: “PlayStation says it will stop making physical games – and that should worry us all” in the Guardian.

Sony’s decision last week to quietly announce the end of physical games production for the PlayStation in 2028 is one of the most perfect PR disasters in recent gaming history – and considering what has been happening with Xbox, that’s saying something.

First, there was the timing. Sony posted the news of its decision on the PlayStation blog, less than a week after admitting that it would be deleting 550 movies from the digital libraries of PlayStation owners due to the end of a licensing deal – thereby perfectly illustrating the dangers of purchasing digital products. (Surprise! You never actually owned them!) The move is in stark contrast with the company’s stance on this very issue back in 2013. When Microsoft was attempting to push Xbox One as a digital-first console with strict controls on the sharing and reselling of its games, Sony brilliantly mocked its rival with a short video on how easy it was to lend physical games to pals on the PS4. Oh dear.

If Sony thought the response to its decision would be meek compliance, it was wrong. TikTok and YouTube are buzzing with vociferous reaction videos by disgruntled gamers, while brands such as KFC, Domino’s and, for heaven’s sake, Dolorean have posted mock announcements to social media declaring their own intentions to go download-only. Satirical news site the Onion soon got in on the joke, with a story claiming popular US snack Twinkies would become exclusively digital. The response from Sony? Four days of total radio silence, because, well, what can they possibly say?…

(14) VERNE IN TRANSLATION AND ANNOTATED. Last week, Imagination Annotated published a new book, From the Earth to the Moon: Annotated for Our Spacefaring Age. Here are the details:

The Imagination, Annotated series presents compelling works of speculative fiction for new readers and contemporary concerns. Inspired by the MIT Press edition of Frankenstein, each volume is annotated by a diverse group of scientists, scholars, and other experts to illuminate the historical context and enduring questions that animate these visions of the future. By exploring speculations from the 19th and 20th centuries, the series invites readers into a continuing conversation about the kind of world we want to live in together.

The first new volume in the series is From the Earth to the Moon: Annotated for Our Spacefaring Age. Edited by literary scholar and historian Anastasia Klimchynskaya, the book presents Jules Verne’s influential 1865 novel in an acclaimed translation by Walter James Miller, with dozens of annotations and essays by contributors including astrophysicist Erika Nesvold, literature scholar Adam Roberts, space historians Asif A. Siddiqi and Jordan Bimm, and fiction authors Samit Basu, Malka Older, and Adam Oyebanji.

Verne is lauded for anticipating many modern-day technologies, including a moonshot launching from Florida with a trio of astronauts almost exactly a century before it happened. But Verne didn’t just dream up exciting gadgetry: he combined the scientific and literary, pondering the relationship between humans, science, and technology and considering the political, social, and ethical stakes of discovery and innovation.

Bridging the sciences and humanities, this edition of From the Earth to the Moon is designed for use in classrooms and reading groups, but also for science fiction fans and students and scholars of the genre. 

20% Discount
If you order the book directly from Penguin Random House, you can receive a 20% discount using the code READMIT20. The discount works only if you are shipping to an address in the United States. More details about the discount code are here.

(15) RIGHT HERE ON EARTH. Matthew Byrd found “10 Hard Sci-Fi Movies Not Set in Space” and listed them for Reactor readers.

Hard sci-fi movies are surprisingly rare beasts. As is the case with hard sci-fi video games, it’s a subgenre that has really exploded in popularity in recent years thanks largely to the release of a few tentpole projects. In the case of movies, The Martian and Interstellar most certainly helped kick off a new era of studios slowly realizing there is a sizeable (if sometimes simply vocal) audience for genre movies that feel a bit more scientific and a little less fantastical.

Interestingly, what few hard sci-fi movies we have largely take place in outer space. That’s understandable given that we are still talking about sci-fi movies, but the fact of the matter is that some of the most important and fascinating hard sci-fi films never leave our planet. These are movies that, at the very least, remind us that we have so much to learn about ourselves and our world before we ever start looking toward the stars. And though the classification of some of these movies as hard sci-fi may ruffle a few feathers (don’t such discussions always do so?), these films all show the fantastical possibilities of theories, processes, practices, experiments, and the logical pursuit of the meaning behind advancements and wonders. Above all, these movies are, rather appropriately, quite grounded….

Here’s one of them:

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Considered to be one of the premier examples of relative scientific accuracy in a movie, Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain has lost little of its potency in the 55 years since its release. It’s an appropriate legacy for a movie that boasts this banger of a tagline:The picture runs 130 minutes…
The story covers 96 of the most critical hours in man’s history…
The suspense will last through your lifetime!

The Andromeda Strain begins in the aftermath of a catastrophic event that resulted in the death of all but two residents of a small New Mexico town. A group of scientists soon discover that the event was caused by the return of a satellite that has apparently brought back an unknown deadly substance. For a movie that mostly consists of older gentlemen examining ‘70s technology and discussing hypothetical possibilities, The Andromeda Strain is a true thriller. There is so much joy to be found in watching these incredibly capable scientists realistically breaking down a situation that is both fantastical (quite literally alien) and perhaps a little too close for comfort in modern times.

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

Pixel Scroll 4/27/26 The Long And Winding Scroll, Which Leads Me To Your File

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(1) SIR JULIUS VOGEL AWARDS. The nominees for New Zealand’s 2026 Sir Julius Vogel Awards were announced today.

(2) TOLKIEN SOCIETY AWARDS. The winners of The Tolkien Society Awards 2026 have been posted.

(3) AGATHA AWARDS. The Agatha Award 2026 winners were announced during Malice Domestic 38 on April 25.

(4) SLF GULLIVER GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation’s 2025 SLF Gulliver Travel Grant has been won by Frances Ogamba.

(5) AUSTRALASIAN SHADOWS AWARDS. The Australasian Horror Writers Association revealed the Australasian Shadows Awards 2025 finalists on March 18.

(6) CLARION WEST SIX-WEEK WORKSHOP CLASS OF 2026. Clarion West has announced the group of writers who will join the annual Six-Week Workshop: “Congratulations and Welcome Clarion West Six-Week Workshop Class of 2026!”

  • MB Carvalho, Pernambuco, Brazil
  • Yasmeen Fahmy, New Jersey, USA
  • Shawn Frazier, New York City (Harlem)
  • Adan Jimenez, California, USA (originally from)/Singapore (now residing)
  • Laura Mei-Yook Jue, CA, USA
  • Louis Li, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Sheila García Mazari, Anishinaabek/Michigan, USA
  • Nailah Moon, Pu’namoqwati’jk, Mi’kma’ki
  • Nathan Alexander Moore, Louisville, KY, USA
  • Surya Ramkumar, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • Susanne Salehi, Georgia, USA
  • Vijayalaxmi Samal, New, Delhi, India
  • Sydnee Thompson, Michigan, USA
  • Avani Vaghela, San Francisco, California
  • Verdell Walker, Georgia, USA

(7) JORDAN CARROLL Q&A. Pacifica Radio station KPFA’s “Against the Grain” program interviewed 2025 Hugo winner Jordan Carroll about “Science Fiction and the Far Right”.

Fiction that imagines alternate futures is often associated with the left — with writers like Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin. But the tropes of science fiction are well-suited to the right and, as Jordan Carroll illustrates, far right authors and aficionados have populated the ranks of speculative fiction since its inception, like ardent science fiction fan and neo-Nazi party founder James Madole. Carroll discusses the right’s ongoing fight to claim the future.

(8) HACHETTE BOOK GROUP EMPLOYEES UNIONIZE. Publishers Lunch has reported:

Employees of Hachette Book Group announced they have unionized with Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild-CWA Local 32035, of the AFL-CIO. They have signed up a supermajority of 600 workers, making it the largest union in trade publishing history. The union says it is seeking better benefits, protections, and rights for workers, as well as increased equity, transparency, and agency in the workplace.

They write in a release, “The HWC demands a livable wage regardless of work location, better working conditions, a cap on workload hours, a clear and neutral grievance process, AI protections, follow-through on DEI policies, and more.”…

(9) GERRY CONWAY (1952-2026). “Gerry Conway Dead: Marvel, DC Comics Writer Was 73” — The Hollywood Reporter pays tribute. “He also penned the seminal ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ story ‘The Night Gwen Stacy Died’ when he was just 20.”

Gerry Conway, the influential comic book author who co-created dozens of characters for DC and Marvel, among them The Punisher, Ms. Marvel, Firestorm and Power Girl, and some of the most impactful Spider-Man stories ever published, has died. He was 73.

Conway, who served briefly as an editor-in-chief at Marvel in the mid-1970s, had been battling cancer. He made what would be his last convention appearance at CCXP in Brazil in December and did a store signing near his home in Thousand Oaks in February….

…He had already been working on the Spider-Man-centric Marvel Team-Up when Stan Lee put him in charge of Marvel’s flagship Amazing Spider-Man. He was only 19 at the time. A year into the job, he wrote the two-parter “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” which killed off Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy and the villain Green Goblin, too. It is considered by many to be one of the most important stories ever published by Marvel, one that still resonates today.

A few months later, Conway introduced Frank Castle, aka the vigilante The Punisher, as well as the villain the Jackal. He was so prolific in the 1970s that if you read a Marvel or DC comic back then, there was a very reasonable chance it was written by him….

…After his unsatisfying stint as Marvel’s editor-in-chief, Conway bounced between Marvel and DC, eventually doing more and more work at the company where he began his writing career. At DC, he wrote for its flagship title Justice League of America for eight years and co-created the heroes Firestorm and Power Girl, the latter Superman’s cousin from an alternate universe….

…Like many in the field at the time, Conway moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in TV and the movies and unlike many found enough steady work to be considered successful. He, along with fellow Marvel writer Roy Thomas, worked on Ralph Bakshi’s animated movie Fire and Ice (1983) and on the sequel Conan the Destroyer (1984). He also continued to write comics as well….

And Scott Edelman mourned Gerry Conway’s death on Facebook: “Brought to tears by the death of Gerry Conway, who I met on the page when I was 14, in the flesh when I was 16, and who was my editor at Marvel when I was 21.” Scott interviewed him for Eating the Fantastic in 2019: “Lunch in L.A. with comics legend Gerry Conway”.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 27, 1922 – Jack Klugman. (Died 2012.)

Only three individuals did four or more appearances on Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone and Jack Klugman was one of them.  So let’s discuss his appearances. He was in “A Passage for Trumpet,” “A Game of Pool”, “Death Ship” and “In Praise of Pip”. 

In “A Passage for Trumpet” he’s Joey Crown, a hopeless NYC trumpeteer with no money, no friends, and no job prospects due to being an alcoholic. He ends in Limbo talking to an Angel. 

Next he’s Jesse Cardiff in “A Game of Pool,” where we get told the story of the best pool player living and the best pool player dead. No points for guessing which he is. 

Now this episode was remade in the eighties Twilight Zone. That version featured Esai Morales as Jesse Cardiff and Maury Chaykin as Fats Brown. This version used the original alternate ending that Johnson intended for the original version. 

The next episode he’s in is definitely SF and based on a Richard Matheson short story with the same title, “Death Ship”. (It was first published in Fantastic Story Magazine, March 1953.) Matheson wrote sixteen episodes of The Twilight Zone including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. Only Serling wrote more. In this episode, a spaceship crew discovers a wrecked replica of their ship with their own dead bodies inside. Klugman plays the Captain Paul Ross.

The model used in this episode of the hovering spaceship is that of a C-57D Cruiser, a leftover prop from Forbidden Planet. It would also be used in the episodes “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and “Third from the Sun”. The crashed ship is a model created for this episode.

The final appearance by him is in “In Praise of Pip” where his role is Max Philips,  a crooked bookie, who after learning that his soldier son has suffered a mortal wound in the Vietnam War, apparently encounters a childhood version of his son.

The Twilight Zone streams on Paramount +. 

Jack Klugman, left, from The Twilight Zone’s “Death Ship” episode.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) INSTEAD OF DOOMSCROLLING. [Item by Steven French.] Comic books are good therapy! “The one change that worked: I swapped doomscrolling for reading comic books” by Joel Harley in the Guardian.

I hadn’t realised how my attention span had suffered due to a decade of switching from app to app at the blink of an eye. This soon got better – a result of taking the time and effort to read a lengthy comic series or graphic novel to the end. It also came with a sense of accomplishment, rather than the self-loathing I usually felt when I realised I’d just spent the last hour on Reddit.

As someone whose mind tends to spiral when left to its own self-sabotaging devices, comic books offered a form of escapism that allowed my mind to tackle fears of the apocalypse, dictators and an AI uprising in a safe environment. Dystopian sci-fi and extreme horror comics may not seem like cosy bedtime reading, but they felt like a healthier outlet compared with the unhelpful fearmongering of online commenters.

Rediscovering my love for comic books isn’t about burying my head in the sand by cowering in imaginary universes. It’s carving out some time for self-care in a world that’s become increasingly demanding of our headspace. Leaving behind my evenings glued to my phone has boosted my mood, my creativity and general outlook on life. I let my inner child back out and haven’t looked back since….

(13) SPINOFF ‘FAILS TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE’ THIS SUMMER. “’Big Bang’ Spinoff ‘Stuart Fails To Save The Universe’ Sets Release” – which is July, reports Deadline.

We’re getting closer to the premiere of The Big Bang Theory spinoff Stuart Fails To Save Universe. The Original comedy debuts this July, streaming on HBO Max, it was revealed Sunday during the show’s panel at CCXP Mexico City. We also learned that the original theme music for the series will be created by Emmy, Grammy winner and Oscar-nominee Danny Elfman.  Several first-look photos also were unveiled. You can see above and below.

The spinoff revolves around comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) who is sked with restoring reality after he breaks a device built by Sheldon and Leonard, accidentally bringing about a multiverse Armageddon. Stuart is aided in this quest by his girlfriend Denise, geologist friend Bert, and quantum physicist/all-around pain in the ass Barry Kripke. Along the way, they meet alternate-universe versions of characters we’ve come to know and love from The Big Bang Theory. As the title implies, things don’t go well.

(14) GIANT SQUIDS IN SPACE! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Well, giant octopi on Earth (but Earth is in space…Honest!)

In the latest edition of the journal Science comes the discovery, by Japanese researchers, of giant octopi living in the Cretaceous. These were so big that it is thought they could have taken on mosasaurs; giant vertebrates that looked vaguely shark-like but were way bigger than Spielberg could have coped with. Mosasaurs and plesiosaurs had been thought as the top predators in the oceans in the Cretaceous (the last geological period in which the dinosaurs existed before a falling stone took them out).

Cretaceous invertebrates (including octopi) have been primarily regarded as prey species that underwent protective adaptations such as evolving shells and armor plates. However, this new fossil octopus was twice the size of the present-day giant squid which probably is the biggest squid that could have taken on Nemo’s Nautilus. In addition to its size, it had developed huge jaws and so could have given mosasaurs quite a nip.

The fossils of these jaws show extensive wear suggests dynamic crushing of hard skeletons. What is more, there is more wear on one side than the other. Now, studies on present-day, much smaller, octopi have shown that where jaw wear is more asymmetric, the species is more intelligent. So the researchers feel it is reasonable to assume that these Cretaceous giant octopi were also intelligent. This intelligence, combined with their size, may well have cemented their place as top predators of the Cretaceous oceans. So you may want to think twice about going for a swim in the age of the dinosaurs. (Have I told you that I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch?)

Of interest to genre fans, the species found has been assigned to Nanaimoteuthis which was previously assigned to the order Vampyromorpha (vampire squids) by biologists. (Which explains why you have never seen Peter Cushing going swimming). Nanaimoteuthis is here now included in the suborder Cirrata (finned octopuses) of the order Octopoda, so we are squids in. (‘Squids in’. Oh, suit yourself… That piece of whimsy only works of you know that a very common English idiomatic term for a pound is a ‘quid’ and that there is an expression ‘quids in’ meaning ‘profitable’. Ahem… Meanwhile, back at the plot…)

See the diagram below for an idea as to how their size compared to other species. The species at the very bottom represents the size of a human swimmer. Time to close the beach no matter what the mayor says.

The primary research is Ikegami, S. et al (2026) Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans. Science, vol. 392, p406-410.

Science editor’s summary: The Kraken, the giant cephalopod of legend, was feared by sailors for centuries. Later interpretations suggested that it may have been based on sightings of the giant squid, which can be 10 meters long. Although they lived far too early to have been the source of the legend, Ikegami et al. describe fossil octopods from the late Cretaceous that truly would have fit the description of the monster, reaching up to 19 metres in length. Wear patterns on their jaws suggest that these octopods preyed upon the large reptiles present at the time, including plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. The authors interpret asymmetry in these wear patterns as an indication of corresponding asymmetry in behaviour, suggesting complex brain development and, potentially, high intelligence.

(15) TRAILER PARK. “House of the Dragon Season 3 Official Teaser Trailer” — the eight-episode show will launch June 21 on HBO.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/5/19 We Hold These Pixels To Be Self Scrolling, That All Filers Are Created Equal

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(1) TUNING IN. The Doctor may use her time traveling skills to visit your TV set even sooner than the beginning of Season 12. Radio Times speculates that “Doctor Who could air an extra episode before the new series”.

RadioTimes.com understands that a plan is in the works to air a standalone Doctor Who special some time before series 12 hits screens, possibly in a festive slot like this year’s New Year’s Day Special or the Christmas specials that were released every year prior (from 2005 onwards).

However, it’s also possible that the proposed episode will bypass the festive period altogether, airing in a less competitive slot to give the Tardis team their best reintroduction this winter, and avoiding the usual holiday themes favoured by previous Doctor Who specials.

(2) ORDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE. Just as French fries are merely a delivery vehicle for ketchup, File 770 exists to publicize where Scott Edelman goes to eat lunch. In Episode 99 of Eating the Fantastic, the meal is served at the Sagebrush Cantina in the company of comics legend Gerry Conway.

Gerry Conway

My first meal of the Nebula Awards weekend was with comics legend Gerry Conway, who I’ve known for at least 48 years, since 1971 — when I was a comics fan of 16, and he was 19, and yet already a comics pro with credits on Phantom Stranger, Ka-Zar, and Daredevil. Our paths back then crossed in the basement of the Times Square branch of Nathan’s (which, alas, no longer exists) where the late Phil Seuling had organized a standalone dealers room without any convention programming dubbed Nathan’s Con, which was a test run for his future Second Sunday mini-cons.

Gerry and I have a lot of history in those 48 years, including his time as Marvel’s editor-in-chief when I worked in the Bullpen — though his tenure was only six weeks long, two of those weeks my honeymoon — a tenure you’ll hear us talk about during the meal which follows. He’s the creator of The Punisher, Power Girl, and Firestorm, and wrote a lengthy and at one point controversial run on Spider-Man. But he’s also worked on such TV series as Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Law & Order, and many others.

At Gerry’s recommendation, our meal took place at the Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas, California, where I invite you to take a seat and eavesdrop on our longest conversation in 40 years.

We discussed how the comics business has always been dying and what keeps saving it, why if he were in charge he’d shut down Marvel Comics for six months, what it’s like (and how it’s different) being both the youngest and oldest writer ever to script Spider-Man, the novel mistake he made during his summer at the Clarion Writers Workshop, why he’s lived a life in comics rather than science fiction, what caused Harlan Ellison to write an offensive letter to his mother, the one bad experience he ever had being edited in comics (it had to do with the Justice League), the convoluted way Superman vs. Spider-Man resulted in him writing for TV’s Father Dowling Mysteries, how exasperation caused him to quit his role as Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief (while I was out of the Bullpen on my honeymoon), how he’d have been treated if he’d killed off Gwen Stacy in today’s social media world, and much, much more.

(3) TALKING ABOUT A GAMES HUGO. Camestros Felapton starts a thoughtful discussion of Ira Alexandre’s motion in “Looking at the Hugo Game/Interactive Experience proposal”.

…I think accessibility to the works remains one of the biggest obstacles to this category working effectively, although the proposal makes substantial efforts to address this.

My other concern is the multiple vectors against which we’d need to judge works in this category. The proposal gives numerous examples of other game awards but I’m struck by the many ways game awards split their own categories….

(4) KOTLER’S PICKS. Paul Weimer hosts “6 Books with Steve Kotler” at Nerds of a Feather. I’m in the middle of reading the author’s latest —

6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?

My latest book is Last Tango in Cyberspace. It’s a novel that follows a protagonist named Lion Zorn. He’s an empathy tracker or em-tracker, a new kind of human with a much deeper ability to feel empathy than most. His talent lets him track cultural trends into the future, a form of empathetic prognostication, and a useful skill to certain kind of company. But when Arctic Pharmaceuticals hires him to em-track rumors of a new and extremely potent psychedelic—with potential medical uses—he ends up enmeshed in a world of startup religions, environmental terrorists and overlapping global conspiracies. It’s a thriller about the ramifications of accelerating technology, the evolution of empathy, and the hidden costs of consciousness-expansion. And it’s awesome because, well, it’s just a ton of mind-blowing fun.

(5) GROKKING JAPAN. In The Paris Review, Andrei Codrescu resurrects “The Many Lives of Lafcadio Hearn”, once among the best-known literary figures of his day.

…History is a fairy tale true to its telling. Lafcadio Hearn’s lives are a fairy tale true in various tellings, primarily his own, then those of his correspondents, and with greater uncertainty, those of his biographers. Hearn changed, as if magically, from one person into another, from a Greek islander into a British student, from a penniless London street ragamuffin into a respected American newspaper writer, from a journalist into a novelist, and, most astonishingly, from a stateless Western man into a loyal Japanese citizen. His sheer number of guises make him a creature of legend. Yet this life, as recorded both by himself and by others, grows more mysterious the more one examines it, for it is like the Japanese story of the Buddhist monk Kwashin Koji, in “Impressions of Japan,” who owned a painting so detailed it flowed with life. A samurai chieftain saw it and wanted to buy it, but the monk wouldn’t sell it, so the chieftain had him followed and murdered. But when the painting was brought to the chieftain and unrolled, there was nothing on it; it was blank. Hearn reported this story told to him by a Japanese monk to illustrate some aspect of the Buddhist doctrine of karma, but he might as well have been speaking about himself as Koji: the more “literary” the renderings of the original story, the less fresh and vivid it becomes, until it might literally disappear, like that legendary painting.

(6) VISIONARY. CNN discovers Simon Stålenhag — “Simon Stålenhag’s hauntingly beautiful retro sci-fi art”.

Simon Stålenhag’s paintings are a strange, irresistible mix of mundane scenes from the Swedish countryside and haunting scenarios involving abandoned robots, mysterious machinery and even dinosaurs.

They are the product of his childhood memories — growing up in suburban Stockholm and painting landscapes and wildlife — and his adulthood appreciation for sci-fi.

“I try to make art for my 12-year-old self,” he said in a phone interview. “I want to make stuff that would make my younger self see it and go, ‘I’m not supposed to look at this because it’s for adults, but I really want to anyway.'”

(7) UNSURPRISINGLY, THE IRS RECOGNIZES SATAN. The Burbank Leader generated some clicks with its overview: “The IRS gave nonprofit status to a satanic church. Will all hell break loose?”.

Earlier this year the Internal Revenue Service officially recognized the Satanic Temple as a church, meaning it has 501(c)(3) tax exempt status.

According to the church’s website, the Satanic Temple’s mission is “to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits guided by the individual will.”

Yet perhaps because the group describes itself as a “nontheistic religious organization” and maintains an openness about taking political stances, the IRS decision has brought some controversy.

According to an article on Rewire.News, a pro-life petition online states, “This egregious decision runs counter to everything America stands for,” and a Catholic commentator argued that without God or a literal Satan, there is no “real religion.”

A letter to the editor from a self-identified atheist began:

I’m fine with the ruling, based on the finding that the Temple’s attributes — unique tenets, regular congregations and religious services — meet the IRS guidelines for a tax-exempt religious organization, i.e., a church. Neither God, gods nor Satan are required to be a “real religion” under these guidelines, contrary to the commentator quoted in this month’s question.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 5, 1904 — Milburn Stone. Though you no doubt know him as Doc on Gunsmoke, he did have several genre roles including a German Sargent in The Invisible Agent, Captain Vickery in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, Mr. Moore in The Spider Woman Strikes Back and Capt. Roth in Invaders from Mars. (Died 1980.)
  • Born July 5, 1929 — Katherine Helmond. Among her roles was Mrs Ogre in Time Bandits and Mrs. Ida Lowry in Brazil. Now I’ll bet you can tell her scene in the latter… (Died 2019.)
  • Born July 5, 1941 — Garry Kilworth, 78. The Ragthorn, a novella co-authored with Robert Holdstock, won the World Fantasy Award. It’s an excellent read and it makes me wish I’d read other fiction by him. Anyone familiar with his work? 
  • Born July 5, 1948 — Nancy Springer, 71. May I recommend her Tales of Rowan Hood series of which her Rowan Hood: Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest is a most splendid revisionist telling of that legend? And her Enola Holmes Mysteries are a nice riffing off of the Holmsiean mythos.
  • Born July 5, 1957 — Jody Lynn Nye, 62. She’s best known for collaborating with Asprin on the MythAdventures series  Since his death, she has continued that series and she is now also writing sequels to his Griffen McCandle series as well. 
  • Born July 5, 1963 — Alma Alexander, 56. Author of three SF series including the Changer of Days which is rather good. I’m including her here for her AbductiCon novel which is is set in a Con and involves both what goes on at that Con and the aliens that are involved. 
  • Born July 5, 1964 — Ronald Moore, 55. He‘s best known for his work on various Star Trek series, on the Battlestar Galactica reboot and on the Outlander series.  
  • Born July 5, 1972 — Nia Roberts, 47. She appeared in two two Doctor Who episodes during the time of the Eleventh Doctor, “The Hungry Earth” and “Cold Blood”. But it’s an earlier role that gets her a Birthday citation just because it sounds so damn cool: Rowan Latimer in the “Curse of the Blood of the Lizard of Doom” episode of the Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible whichspoofed shows such as Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected.

(9) GET MAD. If you want to see more of Alfred E. Newman’s gap-toothed smile, Doug Gilford’s MAD Cover Site is the place for you.

Look at every regular issue cover from the comic book days of 1952 to the present day! Issue contents included!

(10) COUNTING FANS AT WORLDCONS. The latest round of Hugo statistics led to a discussion on the SMOFs list about other Worldcon stats, where Rene Walling reminded readers about his compilations, published by James Gunn’s Ad Astra earlier in this decade:

Sweeping statements and generalizations are often made about the membership of early World Science Fiction Conventions (WSFC, or Worldcon) such as “only the same people came back every year” or “the attendance was all male.” Yet rarely is more than anecdotal evidence given to support these statements. The goal of this report is to provide some hard data on the membership of early Worldcons so that such statements can be based on more than anecdotal evidence.

…The number of members listed over the entire 1961-1980 time span totals 33,279 for the WSFC sources, which represents 81.66% of the total from the Long List (40,752). The total number of individual members is 17,136.

(11) IS BEST SERIES WORKING? At Nerds of a Feather, Joe Sherry precedes his discussion of the nominees in “Reading the Hugos: Series” with some meta comments about the category.

This is worth mentioning now because 2019 is the third year of the Best Series category and the second appearance of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series because McGuire has published two additional novels (The Brightest Fell, Night and Silence) as well as some short fiction set in that universe. I wouldn’t be shocked to see McGuire’s InCryptid make a second appearance next year, and I also expect to see The Expanse to have its own second crack at the ballot, though with The Expanse I hope readers wait one more year for the ninth (and final?) volume to be published so that The Expanse can be considered as a completed work.

I’m curious what this says about the long term future and health of the category if we see some of the same series make repeat appearances. Of course, we can (and do) say the same thing about a number of “down the ballot” categories like Fanzine (we do appreciate being on the ballot for the third year in a row!), Semiprozine, and the Editor categories.

(12) IN A BAD PLACE. Steve J. Wright’s review of the finalists has reached “Hugo Category: Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)” – and there’s one he really doesn’t like.

We have two episodes of The Good Place, and I won’t complain about that either, because this is a popular vote and the show clearly has its fans…. I’m still not among them.  It seems to me that The Good Place is still trying to be several things at once, and is failing at all of them, and since the things it’s trying to be include “funny” and “though-provoking”, the result isn’t good. 

(13) HELICON AWARDS. Richard Paolinelli celebrated the Fourth of July by announcing the ten inaugural winners of the Helicon Awards on his YouTube channel. Sad Puppy Declan Finn won the Best Horror Novel category, which is probably more informative about where these awards are coming from than that Brandon Sanderson and Timothy Zahn also won.  

The 2019 Helicon Awards celebrates the best literary works of 2018 in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Military Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Alternate History, Media Tie-In, Horror and Anthology (SF/F/H).

Throughout the presentation Paolinelli keeps using the pronouns “we” and “our” without shedding very much light on who besides himself is behind these awards. The slides for the winners bear the  logo of his Science Fiction & Fantasy Creators Guild, opened last year with the ambition of rivalling SFWA. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Creators Guild closed group on Facebook is listed as having 275 members – you can’t see the content without joining, but FB displays a stat that it’s had 6 posts in the last 30 days. The SFFCGuild Twitter account hasn’t been active since February 2018.

Paolinelli’s blog claims sponsorship of the awards, but in the video he says not only won’t winners be receiving a trophy, he hasn’t even designed a certificate for them, though he might do that in a few weeks.

In addition to the 10 Helicon Awards, Paolinelli named “three individual honorees for the Mevil Dewey Innovation Award, Laura Ingalls Wilder Best New Author Award and the Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award.”

So far as the first two awards are concerned, it’s likely that what did most to persuade Paolinelli to give them those names was the decision by two organizations this past year to drop the names from existing awards – in Wilder’s case (see Pixel Scroll 6/25/18 item #5), the US Association for Library Service to Children said it was “over racist views and language,” while the American Library Association dropped Dewey (see Pixel Scroll 6/27/19 Item #13) citing “a history of racism, anti-Semitism, and sexual harassment.”

(14) A FANNISH ANIMAL. “My Wild Time Living in a House Full of Wombats” is an article at The Daily Beast, where else?

What is a full night’s sleep?! I haven’t had one of those in a long time. I run Sleepy Burrow Wombat Sanctuary in Australia, which is the largest wombat sanctuary in the world. I’m up every three hours to do round-the-clock feedings for the baby wombats that have recently come into our care. Their first nights with us are always the most critical time where their survival is the most at risk. If being up all night is what it takes to pull them through, I will do it. Don’t feel too bad for me though. I wouldn’t trade the life I have for anything in the world. I have a wonderful family I built with the most supportive husband, who is my partner both in life and rescue. I’m a mother to two perfect daughters, a dog, and a house full of the cutest wombats you can imagine. As a family unit we have rescued over 1,300 wombats.

(15) NIGERIAN SFF. Adri Joy makes the book sound pretty interesting, though rates it only 6/10: “Microreview [book]: David Mogo, Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa” at Nerds of a Feather.

That main character, it will not surprise you to hear, is David Mogo, Godhunter. David lives in a version of Lagos which has been subjected to the Falling: a war which has caused thousands of Orisha to rain down on the city and take up residence. A half-god himself, David was abandoned by his mother and raised by a foster-father who also happens to be a wizard, wielding magical talents which David’s divinity keeps him from using in the same way. Instead, when we meet David he’s trying to throw himself into a bounty hunting existence with as much amoral abandon as possible, taking on a job from far more shady wizard Ajala for “roof money” while trying to suppress the sense that he should be acting with slightly more principle.

(16) SPONGING OFF FANS. That’s the allegation, anyway: “SpongeBob SquarePants fan claims Nickelodeon copied art”.

A fan has claimed Nickelodeon used his SpongeBob SquarePants artwork without his permission.

Matt Salvador, 17, says the art was featured in an advert for the show which was aired in June.

His artwork, uploaded online in 2016, is drawn in the style of a background used in a typical episode.

Various YouTube channels have uploaded the video, which the fan says shows the same artwork, but with his signature in the bottom-right corner removed.

(17) THINKING INSIDE THE BOX. Unlike Facebook or Google — “Why the BBC does not want to store your data”.

BBC audience members could soon be using all the data from their social media and online accounts to fine tune the content they listen to and view.

The BBC is developing a personal data store that analyses information from multiple sources to filter content.

Early prototypes of the BBC Box draw on profiles people have built up on Spotify, Instagram and the BBC iPlayer.

The BBC will not store data for users. Instead, preferences will be kept in the Box so they can be reused.

The project is seen as “disruptive” because individuals will decide what they use their data for themselves.

The Box is part of a larger European project seeking to give people more control over their data.

(18) STILL NOT READY. Let’s face it: “Biased and wrong? Facial recognition tech in the dock”.

Police and security forces around the world are testing out automated facial recognition systems as a way of identifying criminals and terrorists. But how accurate is the technology and how easily could it and the artificial intelligence (AI) it is powered by – become tools of oppression?

Imagine a suspected terrorist setting off on a suicide mission in a densely populated city centre. If he sets off the bomb, hundreds could die or be critically injured.

CCTV scanning faces in the crowd picks him up and automatically compares his features to photos on a database of known terrorists or “persons of interest” to the security services.

The system raises an alarm and rapid deployment anti-terrorist forces are despatched to the scene where they “neutralise” the suspect before he can trigger the explosives. Hundreds of lives are saved. Technology saves the day.

But what if the facial recognition (FR) tech was wrong? It wasn’t a terrorist, just someone unlucky enough to look similar. An innocent life would have been summarily snuffed out because we put too much faith in a fallible system.

What if that innocent person had been you?

This is just one of the ethical dilemmas posed by FR and the artificial intelligence underpinning it.

Training machines to “see” – to recognise and differentiate between objects and faces – is notoriously difficult. Computer vision, as it is sometimes called – not so long ago was struggling to tell the difference between a muffin and a chihuahua – a litmus test of this technology.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, rcade, Michael Toman, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]

Pixel Scroll 5/30/16 You Only Five Twice

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july-1942-patriotic-pulps

(1) MEMORIAL DAY. Honoring service and sacrifice — James H. Burns’ 2015 tribute to the WWII generation:

Yet, one of the biggest influences on that generation has remained generally uncommented on. Decades later, it can almost be viewed as a secret text, or a  vast compendium, that may well have helped prepare our country’s youth for the immense challenges that awaited them.

In the 1930s, during the height of the Great Depression–still the toughest economic calamity that ever faced the United States–ANYONE could tune in, on the radio, to the terrific adventure series, comedies and dramas that were performed LIVE, for national broadcast.

It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, or what race or creed you encompassed. There was a wide array of delights simply waiting to be discovered….

(2) LLAMA DROP. Kameron Hurley has a book out tomorrow that she expects to be controversial. She recommends several rules of engagement to her readers, beginning with —

Hey, hey folks, my first essay collection, The Geek Feminist Revolution, drops TOMORROW, May 31!

In anticipation of its release, here are some things you should know that I know and some things you should know about how I’ll be comporting myself online during the launch:

  1. Some people (the minority, but oh, what a vocal minority!) will HATE this book, even and especially those who’ve never read it and have never heard of me and have no idea what it’s actually about. I fully anticipate several pile-ons. I expect lots of garbage in my social feeds. But fear not! All of my email is screened, I’ve muted the majority of the worst accounts and keywords on Twitter, and buttoned up other things to ensure this goes as smoothly as possible. I WILL BE FINE. CHIN UP.
  2. This leads us to THIS point, which is: NO WHITE KNIGHTING. All I ask if there’s a pile-on is for you to NOT tag me if you argue with trolls. My troll policy is mute and ignore. I’ve found that very effective. You are, of course, free to argue with whomever you want on the internet, but as a courtesy, I ask that you keep me out of it, or I’ll have to mute you too, and we don’t want that! In related news: DON’T POINT ME TO BAD REVIEWS or TELL ME TO READ TERRIBLE COMMENTS. I mean, unless you’re a troll? But I don’t think you’re a troll. Like, I mean, for real, folks? I never, ever, read the comments, and I’m not going to be reading bad reviews, even funny ones, for months yet. Thank you….

(3) LLAMA THUMBS DOWN. At Fantasy Literature, reviewer Bill Capossere’s verdict is “The Geek Feminist Revolution: Just didn’t do it for me”. I’ve heard of “damning with faint praise,” on the other hand, this review is devoted to “damning with faint damns.”They follow after a three-paragraph confession of the expectations he brings to a book of essays.

The pieces certainly aren’t badly written, but there just wasn’t enough there for me, whether in terms of style or content. Often, the thrust of the piece wasn’t all that fresh. What does it take to succeed in writing? Persistence. How does one succeed? One has to be willing to fail. Women are horribly trolled on the net. Writers have a responsibility to consider the impact of how they present their worlds and the people who inhabit them, etc.

Now, I don’t have an issue with covering territory that has been covered extensively for a long time or, in the case of more contemporaneous issues, has been covered extensively elsewhere (well, maybe I have a little issue). But if you’re going to present me content I’ve seen lots of other places or have been reading for some time, then you need to do something else for me. When I talk to my students in creative writing I call this the “so what” issue with non-fiction. You have to give the reader a reason to keep reading something they’ve seen before. Maybe it’s the beauty of the language, maybe it’s the stimulating structure. But something.

With regard to structure, the essays in The Geek Feminist Revolution are almost strictly linear and mostly singularly focused. As for language, it’s adequate for communicating the ideas, but rarely rises above that. It’s conversational, passionate, but nothing will have you linger over the phrasing or is particularly dense with meaning.

(4) CHINA SF CON. Shaoyan Hu’s article at Amazing Stories covers “A Time to Share, a Time to Enjoy – The Closing Ceremony of the 8th Shanghai Science Fiction & Fantasy Festival”.

In the main hall, the ceremony was incorporated with the final stage of a mind contest called ‘Useless Superpowers’, in which the participants were encouraged to come up with ideas of superpowers that had no practical values but could become interesting under certain circumstances. They were requested to present the ideas with any means of their choice, such as videos, pictures, stage performances, and so on.

The winner was a student from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The imaginary superpower he had fabricated was ‘Immovable’, which meant the owner of the power could prevent anything from moving by simply touching it. Now, just imagine, someday in the future, if an asteroid is going to crash into the Earth, guess who will be sent out to the space to stop it?

(5) BALTICON AUTOGRAPH MACHINE. See George R.R. Martin sign and sign and sign in Chris Edwards’ half-minute video on Facebook.

(6) WISCON WARNING. Wondering what happened.

(7) CAPTAIN AMERICA SPOILER WARNING. With the mandatory warning out of the way, here is Brad Torgersen’s warning about violating fans’ expectations for a franchise.

Of course, the whole Captain America = Hydra Nazi thing, is a stunt. It will be eventually written up such that this shocking reveal is just the top-most layer on a plot cake wherein good old Steve is still true-blue American, and so forth. But by then the writers will have gotten what they wanted out of said stunt: attention, eyeballs, chatter, and (theoretically) sales.

Or . . . not?

Sometimes, stunts like this can dramatically backfire. If the audience suspects that it …is being shown contempt (by the creators) then the audience may very well turn its back. Superheroes are treasured icons for fans across the spectrum, and if you mess with those icons too much, you truly are playing with fire.

(8) IN A CAPTAIN CRUNCH. Echoing one of Torgersen’s notions about the fans no longer accepting the authority of the creator, comics veteran Gerry Conway has been besieged by fans trying to tell him the history behind Captain America. Here are a few examples from the Twitter exchange.

However, not everyone is engaging in the Captain America controversy with the same firestorm intensity….

(9) AUDIO BANDERSNATCH. Diana Pavlac Glyer’s Kickstarter funded – in fact, later today it achieved its first stretch goal.

I’m walking on SUNSHINE!! We met our funding goal for “Bandersnatch Goes AUDIO!!” Michael Ward will be narrating this book, and I am absolutely THRILLED. We still have one more day to meet some delicious stretch goals: I’d love to give each and every backer a copy of the 20-page discussion guide, and I’m still wondering if James A. Owen can draw a bandersnatch blindfolded. But for now, here’s the important thing: this is a real dream come true. This  audiobook will really really happen, and I want to thank YOU for taking part. I’m so excited and so, so grateful. WOOT!! Bandersnatch is going AUDIO!!

10) FAMILY REUNION. Fanac.org has uploaded video of “Science Fiction’s 50th Anniversary Family Reunion” from Noreascon 3 (1989). After the Sunday brunch, many of the greats reminisced – including Isaac Asimov, Terry Pratchett, Jack Williamson, Samuel Delany, Fred Pohl, Forry Ackerman, David Kyle, Connie Willis, and others.

(11) IT WAS A NEEDLESS TRAGEDY. The Onion has learned “Leaked Documents Reveal Studio Executives Knew About ‘Gods of Egypt’ Before It Released Onto Public”. Gasp!

Suggesting that the disastrous events of three months ago could have been averted, federal investigators stated Wednesday that a trove of leaked documents confirmed high-ranking studio executives had full knowledge of Gods Of Egypt long before the film was released onto unsuspecting Americans….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Michael J. Walsh, and Leslie Turek for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]