WWWednesday: June 10, 2020

Stormblood by Jeremy Sza

Awards:

The Peabody Award finalists, for “the most compelling and empowering” digital media and broadcasting  stories of 2019, have been announced.

Books and Writing:

Nebula-winning author Cat Rambo  was profiled in her local paper, the Seattle Times.

Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) issued a statement in support of Black Lives Matter. The organization acknowledges its responsibility for failing to address racism in the past, and is putting its money where its mouth is. There are some good resources at the end of the article.

Thanks to Kat for this CNN interview with N.K. Jemisin.

Giveaway Opportunity: Fanlit believes that reading SF is one way we learn to open our minds and hearts to those whose appearance, speech and family customs are different from ours. This genre, more than any other, teaches active use of our imagination and our empathy. In tomorrow’s Thoughtful Thursday column, Bill will be writing about this in more detail, and we are proud to be giving away 25 Kindle, audio or paper copies of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander to commenters chosen at random. Watch for tomorrow’s column.

Nerds of a Feather has an interview with Fryda Wolff and Lauren Beukes about their collaboration on the Jessica Jones series from Serial Box.

Publishers Weekly interviewed various booksellers at brick-and-mortar stores. (How nice that they completely ignored the west.) Anonymous booksellers share their experiences during the pandemic, particularly the shutdown. Please note that the group photo was taken at an event in 2019 which is why no one is wearing masks.

Over on Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Jeremy Szal shares a bit about his novel Stormblood.

Mychal Denzel Smith challenges the publishing industry to do better when it comes to Black authors.

Here is a link to the crowdfunding campaign for Uncle Hugo’s, an historic independent science fiction bookstore that was burned during the uprising. This is the official crowdfunding campaign.

Back in May, Black Girl Nerds highlighted the new DC Comic, Nubia; Real One, and had an interview with the writer.

Deep space image by Francesco Antonucci for NASA

TV and Movies:

Ars Technica has the trailer for a Russian-language movie based on a Russian comic book that’s a little bit like Batman. I hope you enjoy it.

Internet:

Just a reminder: I love crows.  I feel bad for the passersby… kinda.

Award-winning cartoonist Brian Fies entertained and informed many of us the past 12 weeks with his 60-second doodle videos. This is the last in the series, but they are all available on his blog.

Science and Tech:

In case you weren’t anxious enough these days, the Harvard Gazette published an article about the way sleep deprivation can kill you. That should keep you up nights.

I love how science is obsessed with beer.

Some deep-sea animals use bioluminescence to escape predators like elephant seals, but at least one single seal learned how to use that defensive move to her advantage.

Space:

Space.com has a nice article and a video about last Friday’s penumbral eclipse.

Here are some more astropics.

Earth:

This week’s quickclay landslide in Norway managed to make it into the news. Here is a (technical) explanation of the cause. Here is a more general article, that I think may have a couple of things wrong, or at least out-dated; apparently quickclay or Leda clay slides are not so uncommon in Norway.

Videos:

Two penguins help this diver clean the aquarium. You can see just how helpful they’re being.