Pixel Scroll 8/6/24 The Problem Of Scroll 13

(1) S.O.S. FOR TARAL’S COLLECTIONS.  Steven Baldassarra announced on Facebook  that the late Taral Wayne’s apartment needs to be emptied of his collections and stuff, and his sister has offered them to friends.

I am posting this message out on behalf of Christine Miller, Taral Wayne‘s sister. Please spread this message out to those who knew Taral:

“If anyone is interested in his art, toys or fanzines, please reach out to me, Christine Miller. I have to get his treasures out of the building asap.

“When I last spoke to Taral about funeral arrangements (although he was convinced he would live forever), he wasn’t interested in one. His remains are being cremated and then he will be buried with our mother in North York. At the moment, I’m just trying to get his treasures out of his apartment and don’t have the band width to think much past that.”

Taral Wayne (1951-2024) died July 31.

(2) FINALIST VANISHES FROM DRAGON AWARDS BALLOT. For one brief and shining moment Cedar Sanderson’s cover for Goblin Market was a 2024 Dragon Awards finalist in the Best Illustrative Book Cover. Then it suddenly wasn’t. Sanderson appeared on the originally released version of the ballot, but hours later she was missing. No explanation has been given, and her publisher demands to know why.

Jonna Hayden, Production Manager for Raconteur Press, sent this email to the Rac Press substack/newsletter subscribers this evening: “Concerning the Dragon Awards”:

In an effort towards transparency, we have sent the following letter to the Dragon Awards team, via Dragon Con:

“I am the Production Manager for Raconteur Press, and our Lead Designer is Cedar Sanderson. Cedar was nominated for a Dragon Award for her work on our book “Goblin Market” and achieved a place on the final ballot in the category “Best Illustrative Cover” for 2024. Or so we thought. Several hours after the final ballot was announced (and we proudly shared the information) Cedar’s name was removed.

“We were surprised by this removal–there has been no explanation, no replacement name added to the list, and no comment of any kind from the Dragon Awards as to the reason behind it. Cedar has not been contacted, and multiple emails from many, many fans have gone unanswered.

“In their frustration, her fans have been emailing, messaging, and calling us, to see if we have any communication or information as to the ‘why’ of this. We are, unfortunately, equally in the dark. We’ve been referring them to the contact form on the Awards page, but no information has been forthcoming. The lack of any comment on the Dragon Awards’ part is now beginning to lead to speculation as to the integrity of the awards as a whole. In light of the recent Hugo issues at the China Worldcon, I would think your organization would be striving to maintain the utmost transparency.

“Is there any plan whatsoever to address this? Will there be a statement of any kind as to the reasons? I would like to return to my regular job of publishing great short fiction, and not be fielding the frustrated and angry messages of fans who nominated her in good faith.

“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, and sharing it will help.

“Please let us know what the the plan for this is going forward.

“Thank you.”

If you haven’t had your fill of speculation, see the comments here.

(3) THERE IS A SEASON, TURN, TURN, TURN ON THE TV. Abigail Nussbaum says, “In its second season, the already-excellent Interview With the Vampire became one of the best and most entertaining shows on TV. My review in Strange Horizons discusses how the show both honors and subverts its source material.” “Interview With the Vampire Season 2”.

Published in 1976, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire has a fair claim to being one of the most influential novels of the late twentieth century. Wildly successful in its own right—spawning some dozen sequels, several related series of novels, and a myriad film and TV adaptations—it all but singlehandedly reshaped the popular perception of the vampire. Rice’s vampires are brooding, tormented beings, haunted both by the need to kill and the crushing loneliness of eternal life. They seek companionship—which is to say, thinly veiled homoerotic bonds—with fellow immortals, but these relationships often turn rancid due to the beloved’s similar tormentedness. It’s a portrait that slid into self-parody almost as soon as it made its appearance, and which later creators have found themselves pushing against (“People still fall for that Anne Rice routine,” a decidedly nontormented vampire quips in an early episode of Buffy). But the very fact that this pushback feels necessary speaks to the trope’s influence and reach.

AMC’s adaptation of Interview with the Vampire—which premiered in 2022, and whose second season aired earlier this summer—wears that legacy lightly, and even playfully…

(4) TIME ON THEIR HANDS. T.R. Napper arrives in Glasgow in time to exchange drolleries with George R.R. Martin.

(5) SEE DELANY SPEECH. Posted to YouTube yesterday: Samuel R. Delany at the Free Library of Philadelphia on June 15, 2024 in conversation with composer and library trainee Mark Inchoco: “How SF Dances to the Music of Time”.

(6) NOT TERRY’S GHOST. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Private Eye is a long running British news/satirical magazine, that sells more copies than some UK national newspapers.  In their current issue (#1629, dated 2nd-15th August, so should be available in shops throughout the duration of the Glasgow Worldcon), their books section makes some interesting claims about the authorship of last year’s Hugo Best Related Work winner.

In his 2014 collected non-fiction book, A Slip of the Keyboard, Discworld writer Terry Pratchett had some advice for anyone who saw a celebrity author at a book signing.

“Don’t pass comment if they spend a lot of time reading their book while they’re in the shop.  It may be the first time they’ve seen it.  Do not offer to help them with the longer words.”

Ironic, then, that the official Pratchett biography, A Life with Footnotes, was “co-written” by ghostwriter Giles Smith – and not, as advertised on the cover, solely by Rob Wilkins, Pratchett’s former assistant.  Wilkins went on to collect, amongst other awards, a 2023 Hugo for the book he did not write – a prestigious bauble Pratchett himself never managed to secure.

Giles Smith’s page on the UK Simon & Schuster website states that “in the last ten years, he has been the ghost-writer for eight Sunday Times bestselling autobiographies”, although there is no mention of this work on his agent’s site.

Note: credit is due to Kári Tulinius whose Bluesky post is what brought this to my attention.

The books column also includes a section on the Neil Gaiman allegations, but given that the magazine was published last week, is out-of-date with the latest developments, and also has a slightly odd take (in my opinion), such as whether this will affect the number of books that Gaiman writes blurbs for.

(7) READERS’ INTEREST AROUSED. NOR IS THAT ALL. On romantasy and other literary erotica: “My weeks of reading hornily: steamy book sales have doubled – and I soon found out why”, Zoe Williams told Guardian readers.

I spent a fortnight reading nothing but smut and I don’t need to give you a reason. But since there is one, here it is: business is booming in the publishing world of love and sex. Aficionados draw fine distinctions – between romance and erotica; “steamy” and “smutty”; fantasy and saga fiction – and endlessly subdivide the genres, but the takeaway is that the stigma around what used to be called “books that women like” has gone. And, as the UK literary agent Alice Lutyens puts it: “The steamier the sex, the better the book does.”

I started two books simultaneously, which just happened to span the gamut, from the almost completely chaste The Stars Too Fondly, by Emily Hamilton, to the most pornographic thing I’ve ever read (and I’ve read De Sade): Heat Clinic, by Alexis B Osborne. So, I could give you a take on the difference between romance and erotica, but I would rather throw it to an expert. Leah Koch started the independent romantic bookshop Ripped Bodice in Los Angeles with her sister, Bea, in 2016 (they recently opened a second shop in New York). She says readers tend to assume erotica is sexier. “The technical definition is that, in erotica, character development happens from sexual situations. We stock both.”…

… if there is one thing that has come to pass, maybe through TikTok, maybe just by the march of time, it is that readers no longer care about respectability, literary or any other kind. They don’t care if they are reading an Omegaverse novel in public; they don’t even care if someone mistakenly thinks it’s furry pornography. They don’t care if what they are reading could be mistaken for YA and they are not young. They don’t care if the patriarchy thinks they are silly. Which means, in the publishing world of – yup, I’m still calling it this – smut, pretty much anything could happen.

(8) PRO TIPS. Charlie Jane Anders shares valuable insights in “Another Way To Think About ‘Conflict’ and ‘Stakes’ In Your Fiction” at Happy Dancing.

1) Conflict

Here is a story that contains plenty of conflict: “I was hungry. I really wanted a sandwich. So I got up and went to the fridge and made a sandwich. The End.” A situation is introduced, the protagonist has a need. They need a sandwich! What are they going to do? They’re going to make a sandwich. The conflict is resolved — we can all relax now.

Here’s another story that has a lot of conflict: “My friend and I were both hungry and there was only one sandwich. So we each had half a sandwich and it tasted really good, and I was happy to be eating a sandwich with my friend.” OH MY GOD. There was only one sandwich. But we figured it out. 

What I’m trying to say is that conflict doesn’t mean antagonism. Nobody has to be baring their teeth or vowing bloody murder. Nor does conflict have to be massive and dramatic, with bodily fluids going everywhere and people snarling angrily.  In fact, much of the time in real life, “conflict” is just people dealing with the challenges and frictions of being in the world.

And of course, stories don’t need to have any conflict in them at all. You can have a story where it’s literally just like, “My friend and I hung out and watched the sunset, and it was nice.” That’s a story with a beginning, middle and an end. That’s very satisfying.

But even if you want to have some conflict in your story, conflict does not have to mean a certain level of drama or horribleness. A conflict doesn’t have to be intransigent or insurmountable, or involve anyone chopping off anyone else’s limbs….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

August 6, 1926 Janet Asimov. (Died 2019.) 

By Lis Carey: Janet Opal Jeppson earned a medical degree from New York University Medical School, completed a residency in psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital, and in 1960 graduated from the William Alanson White Institute of Psychoanalysis, where she continued to work, practicing psychiatry and psychoanalysis until 1986. She continued to practice and publish medical papers under the name of J.O. Jeppson, even after her marriage to Isaac Asimov. 

Janet Jeppson and Isaac Asimov. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter

She started writing children’s science fiction in 1970, also published as by J.O. Jeppson. The other change in Jeppson’s life that year was that she started dating Isaac Asimov, after he separated from his first wife. They married in 1973, after the divorce became final.

Some of Jeppson’s solo science fiction included The Second Experiment and The Package in Hyperspace. Together with Isaac, she wrote the Norby Chronicles series, which ran to eleven volumes. However, Isaac is reported to have said that the work was 90% Janet’s, with him just doing a final read-thru and polish, but his name “was wanted on the book for the betterment of sales”.

She was married to Isaac until his death in 1992, from complications of HIV, due to a transfusion during bypass surgery in 1983. Based on symptoms, Janet suspected HIV, and pushed for an HIV test, but doctors resisted until he was extremely ill. They also pressured her to keep the results secret due to fear of public reaction, and so it was not revealed until ten years after his death.

Married to a strong personality, she kept her own space and her own career, while being a loyal partner, and a determined advocate for him in his final illness.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) AUREALIS AWARDS OPEN FOR ENTRIES. The 2024 Aurealis Awards, Australia’s premier awards for speculative fiction, are for works created by an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and published for the first time between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024.

The administrators encourage publishers and authors to enter all works published already this year by September 30, 2024, then subsequent publications as they are released, so their judges have time to consider each entry carefully.

Full Rules and FAQ are on the Aurealis Awards website.

(12) IT’S GONE, JIM. “GameStop Kills Game Informer Magazine And Takes Website Offline”Kotaku has the magazine’s obituary.

Game Informer, the longest-running gaming magazine in the U.S., is officially dead and GameStop killed it. It began publishing in 1991 and has been one of the last remaining physical gaming magazines in the world, with cover stories that continued to share deep dives and exclusive interviews on the biggest games coming out, from Final Fantasy: VII Rebirth to Star Wars Outlaws. No more….

(13) A DAY IN THE DEATH. Brenton Dickieson sees a connection between Tolstoy and Lewis in “The Living Lie, But Dead Men Tell the Truth: The Screwtape Letters and Ivan Ilych” at A Pilgrim in Narnia.

In Leo Tolstoy’s brilliant novella, The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886), there is a curious pun in the English translation I use (Aylmer Maude):

“The dead man lay, as dead men always lie” (96)…

…Doctors who lie, friends who lie, dying in comfort believing there is the hope of life and separated from the danger of a sense of their true mortal conditions. There it is.

Ivan Ilych’s condition is not great evil-doing, but “contented worldliness.” Ivan has lived in wealth, fulfilling his ambitions, playing whist with adoring friends of the same class and intelligence, fulfiling the role of a clerk with precision, even if his roles of father, husband, neighbour, and justice-keeper are somewhat ignored. Even in his dying days, he cannot realize death in his own frame. And when he begins to suspect that the death rattle is near, he cannot accept that his life has been meaningless. Not just meaningless, but a slow descent in inverse proportion to his imagined rise to social acceptance.

This is, of course, precisely what Screwtape would want….

(14) (NOT JUST) FOR THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “Power On The Moon? A Giant Tower Could Light The Way For NASA Astronauts” says HotHardware.

Space company Honeybee has proposed a 100 meter tall tower that will potentially light the path for future NASA Artemis astronauts on the moon. The LUNARSABER (Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Beaming for Energy Redistribution) tower is a deployable structure that integrates solar power, communications, and more, all in one package.

As NASA and other space agencies look to begin building lunar bases, they will all have to overcome some obvious obstacles. Perhaps one of the greatest of those will be how to generate power where none yet exists. Honeybee, a company owned by Blue Origin, believes it has created a solution that will not only solve the lunar power problem, but also “shine light on new possibilities, increasing operating hours for human and robotic missions on the Moon.”

“LUNARSABER can turn night into day in the deepest craters on the Moon,” remarked Kris Zacny, VP of Exploration Systems at Honeybee Robotics. “It is truly a game-changing system that will pave the way for a lunar economy.”

Some may be wondering how on Earth Honeybee expects to get a 100 meter tall tower onto the Moon. Well, the simple answer is a technology called DIABLO (Deployable Interlocking Actuated Bands for Linear Operations). DIABLO utilizes a rolled piece of metal, and then bends it into a deployable cylindrical structure that can support heavy payloads, which then becomes the base for LUNARSABER.

In order to deliver power, solar panels will be deployed via one of two methods, depending on the tower’s location on the Moon….

(15) WAITING FOR GOLDBLUM. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “Netflix’s Kaos turns Jeff Goldblum into the all-powerful Zeus”BGR has the story. “Jeff Goldblum’s new Netflix series Kaos is basically The Boys but about Greek mythology”

…Right away, the title of this eight-episode drama also gives you a little hint of what it’s all about. One of the animating principles here is that the world was born from chaos — and while Kaos is set in the modern era, it’s a sort of off-kilter, slightly askew version of it (thus, the modified spelling). In other words, there are no old men in the sky here wearing togas and hurling lightning bolts at Earth. What we get, instead, is a creepy Goldblum-as-Zeus laughing deliriously at his TV while watching scenes of devastation and commenting about how much he loves fire….

DPD, having watched the video, says “I’m not sure it’s ‘The Boys Go Greek’ and we’ll be waiting for it.”

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


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27 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/6/24 The Problem Of Scroll 13

  1. (1) Concerning Taral’s fanzines, there are University libraries which would want them to add to existing collections. Garth Spencer has been compiling a listing of such libraries, so I hope he’s already looking into this.

  2. 12) Game Informer was not the oldest gaming magazine. Dragon, White Dwarf, The General and a slew of others were around in the 1980s and in a few cases, I believe the 1970s. Even looking at magazines restricted to computer gaming, you had things like Byte carrying games themselves in their pages to type into your computer in the early 1980s, the UK had Computer & Video Games in 1981, Computer Games started sometime in the 1980s, Computer Gaming World in 1988 and I expect there were many others.

  3. (22) It’s not even close to the oldest as Loren K. Wiseman created a magazine in 1979 for Traveller, the Game Designers’ Workshop RPG which was The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society. Very cool zine indeed.

  4. 12) As I understand it, the distinction is that it was the oldest prozine in the field still being published in physical real-world hard copy, as opposed to being “published” as a webzine, blog or podcast.

  5. @Cat Eldridge:JTAS was seriously one of the most useful game supplements Iever collected. Tons of background information, gear, patrons, adventures….I even used it outside of Traveller games.

    FWIW, the collected JTAS is available as a CD-ROM.

  6. (2) One of the other nominees clearly used AI too, and not nearly as well. or interestingly. Why wasn”t that one given the boot instead of Cedar’s?

    Remember when they said the Dragons were going to be more populist and ethical than the Hugos? Here they are disqualifying something the populace really liked, without notifying the publisher and artist, or giving an explanation as to why. And even Dave in all his perfidy did his arbitrary short list fuckery before the press release went out.

    Is changing their mind the next day one of the many, many rules that aren’t listed for this “sweepstakes”? And no explanation to anyone is another?

    (10) I do always like the comics section.

  7. Lurkertype: Sometimes these things come down to who gets complained about. Maybe Sanderson’s was the only one to draw a complaint, whether or not it is the only one, if AI is the reason.

  8. A great Title, Daniel!

    (2) I hope the Dragon folks provide an answer.

    (9) Janet Asimov was also a major Star Trek fan, and if I recall correctly, she got Isaac to appreciate its virtues as well.

  9. 3) Oh good. We recently watched the first season and really enjoyed it.

    7) My wife was telling me about a Facebook group she found where people shared stories of listening to erotic audio books while, unbeknownst to themselves, their devices had hooked up to the nearest bluetooth speaker. Embarrassment and hilarity ensues.

  10. Speaking of AI, The Guardian today has an interesting article describing the limitations of Large Language Models.

  11. (1) The Merril collection at the Toronto Public Library would probably be interested. Has anyone been in touch with them?

  12. @Kalin Stacey — There’s now a Merril Collection contact link on the Facebook post. Fingers crossed.

  13. Rose Embolism says JTAS was seriously one of the most useful game supplements Iever collected. Tons of background information, gear, patrons, adventures….I even used it outside of Traveller games.

    Not at all surprising that you did as it just worked as just SF in addition to being well-crafted material for use in RPGs. The writers had to be deep into the genre to do as well they in writing it.

    Now listening to the Oyster Band on Apple Music. Anybody else like them?

  14. Re Taral’s fanzines, Colin Hinz and I are dealing with them, we are of course going to look into which archive[s] are suitable, we have some ideas. [Probably not the Merrill, though we will of course check in with them, they’re very local to us, but they don’t focus on fannish material.]

  15. I’m mostly familiar with Oyster Band through the album they did with June Tabor, Freedom and Rain, which is (no great surprise) absolutely outstanding. I need to check out more of their solo work.

  16. (1) I should add that some years back Taral sold off his extensive fanzine collection so presumably what remains is his set of file copies of his own work plus whatever’s been received in the mail since the sale. Treasure hunters are likely to be disappointed unless they’re fans of diecast toy cars.

  17. As I understand it, the distinction is that it was the oldest prozine in the field still being published in physical real-world hard copy, as opposed to being “published” as a webzine, blog or podcast.

    Yep. It was just the oldest still in print, and Kotaku might’ve just meant videogame publications in its headline instead of all forms of gaming.

    I revived my old GameStop Rewards membership a few years ago and started getting mailed Game Informer. It was bland. The last videogame magazine that I remember being good was Next Generation in the 1990s.

  18. (1) There are 3 established members of the furry fandom (to which Taral Wayne contributed so much) who are making dedicated efforts as collectors and archivists:
    Bengaley aka Summercat, head of the ‘Furry Library’
    Nido Flow
    Professor Christopher Polt of Boston College
    The first 2 are active on TwitX but lack Facebook, while Professor Polt’s contact details can be Googled. I don’t doubt they’d show an interest in some of Taral’s collection.

  19. Oliver, I know a bunch of the original Rowrbrazzle crew, who of course all knew Taral and will of course talk to them about this.

  20. (12) White Dwarf was first published in 1977 and is still available on the newsagents’ shelves.

  21. Taral’s left us, and now Jim Caughran, too. I have no idea who would take Taral’s fanzines…I’m trying to off load my own collection, and so is Murray Moore.

  22. Yep. It was just the oldest still in print, and Kotaku might’ve just meant videogame publications in its headline instead of all forms of gaming.

    Since GI was a video game magazine, and Koaku is a video gaming site, I think that goes pretty much without saying.

  23. I phoned the Merril Collection the other day to ask about book donations and they have limited storage space, requesting that the donor email them directly. I tried messaging Taral’s sister on FB but have not gotten a reply.

    I’m an amateur historian of furry fandom (not as in depth as Fred Patten was, of course), and I would love to be able to have a few old furry APAs and zines to show to people as examples – Vootie, Rowrbrazzle, Huzzah, Yerf, Gallery, Centaurs Gatherum – I don’t know what Taral would have still had (someone told me a while back that Taral had been selling off his old zines?) – but I don’t know if this is something I can get in on.

    Unfortunately I don’t live in Toronto. I have family there! But they’re elderly and can’t move boxes around. And while I might be able to ask them to store two or three boxes in their basement, that would come with a certain amount of resentment because it’s already way too crowded down there. I’d need to ask their permission and then someone else would need to drop them off. And I have a friend in the area who might be willing to help, but would need a vehicle and doesn’t have storage space.

    But if anyone local involved in the rescue operation could email me and keep me in the loop, I would greatly appreciate it! This message’s username at gmail.

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