(1) TALABI’S CURATED LIST OF 2025 AFRICAN SHORT SFF.  Wole Talabi looks back on “Ten(ish) of the Best African Speculative Short Fiction Stories of 2025” at Reactor.

….I love stories. Especially short fiction—these little literary tapas of concept, character and style that nourish me when I’m not quite up for the full meal of a novel. And naturally, a significant chunk of my reading is by my fellow African authors. Which is why every year since 2015, I have published a list of the African speculative short fiction¹ that I read and enjoyed most. I do this to spotlight the stories I found propulsive, fascinating, compelling, interesting and wanted to let others know about too since African speculative fiction gems can sometimes fly under the radar or appear in unexpected venues. Plus, it’s always fun making these lists (you can find all the lists for previous years here.)…

Second on his list and free to read is:

2. “Liberation” by Tade Thompson (Nigeria/UK) — Reactor

Tade Thompson’s sharp, propulsive, compelling style works brilliantly in this science fictional novelette about the first African team and spacecraft sent to orbit the planet and the very Nigerian way (another military coup anyone?) the mission goes wrong. Through shifting PoVs and flashbacks we follow Udo Johnson, selected to be part crew, and Romeo “Bash” Bashorun who heads the mission, filling us in on how and why it was built, what exactly goes wrong and the mad scramble to survive when it does. It’s a brilliant story and I struggled between picking this and Tade’s other wonderful 2025 story in Uncanny magazine, “The Flaming Embusen” (check it out too, it’s great) but in the end, this is the one I personally enjoyed more (perhaps because some of its plot elements echo my novel The Fist of Memory). Highly recommended. 

(2) DOCTOR WHO? Cracked propounds an “Insane Theory of the Day: Oscar the Grouch Is a Time Lord”. Here are two of their five supporting arguments.

5. Let’s begin with the trash can, because that’s the gateway drug.

Oscar’s can has been shown, repeatedly, to contain things that absolutely do not fit inside a metal cylinder sitting on a New York sidewalk. We’re talking swimming pools, bowling alleys, farm animals, full living quarters, and enough room for the entire cast of Sesame Street to hide in it and sneak into a movie theater. This is not cartoon exaggeration. This is consistent, repeatable spatial nonsense.

If that sounds familiar, it should. The TARDIS is famously bigger on the inside, constantly reconfiguring itself, and full of rooms that no one ever finishes exploring. At this point, the only logical explanation is that whoever designed the TARDIS also moonlighted as the interior decorator for Oscar’s can, or that this is just how Time Lords live….

3. Which Brings Us To Regeneration.

Oscar has not looked the same across the decades, and Sesame Street has provided explanations that feel… thin. He started orange. Then he was suddenly green. The official excuse involves swamp gunk. This is clearly a lie. Oscar regenerated.

Since the show began, Oscar has had around fifteen distinct looks. There have also been fifteen Doctors, including the most recent one. You can call that a coincidence if you want. I no longer have that luxury….

(3) TE PAE TAWHITI AWARDS. Judges are currently looking at entries for the inaugural Te Pae Tawhiti Awards, “Celebrating and inspiring speculative fiction writers from Aotearoa and the Pacific Islands.” Te Pae Tawhiti is a Māori term which means Distant Horizons. The deadline for entries was January 9. Entrants will hear if they’ve made the longlist/shortlist in May.

Te Pae Tawhiti Awards is a SpecFicNZ initiative to celebrate and inspire speculative fiction writers from Aotearoa and the Pacific Islands. Through these Awards we can:

• Enrich the literary landscape within New Zealand and beyond. 
• Enable multiple authors to reach a wider audience and showcase their talent. 
• Showcase the unique and diverse stories of our New Zealand and Pacific Island speculative fiction communities to an expanded readership.
• Educate and inspire the next generation of speculative fiction writers by working closely with tertiary providers. 
• Enhance the career prospects of New Zealand and Pasifika authors.
• Bring the New Zealand speculative fiction community together to celebrate and network, opening doors for future relationships and creative endeavours.

There’s a $10 fee to enter, with one exception. The award categories are:

• Outstanding Achievement for Adult Fiction
• Outstanding Achievement for Middle Grade Fiction
• Outstanding Achievement for Young Adult Fiction
• Outstanding Achievement for a Novella (7,500-40,000 words)
• Outstanding Achievement for a Short Story (up to 7,500 words)
• Outstanding Achievement for a Collection or Anthology (fiction, poetry, essays)
• Outstanding Achievement for a Graphic Novel (award to writer and illustrator)
• Outstanding Service to Speculative Fiction (Free to enter)

(4) SAVE THE WORLD WITH BRICKS. “LEGO Project Hail Mary announced!” Brickset shares details.

Launch into the realm of cinematic science fiction with the LEGO Icons Project Hail Mary (11389) spaceship model kit for adults. Enjoy a creative journey as you craft each detail of this microscale replica, which captures the design of the iconic interstellar spacecraft.

Turn the crank to send the crew module into orbit, simulating the centrifugal gravity system from the movie. Then add the Ryland Grace minifigure and Rocky figure to complete your display. This detailed model makes a striking centrepiece for the home or office and a perfect birthday or Christmas gift for sci-fi lovers.

For those unfamiliar with Project Hail Mary, as I was until a couple of months ago, the movie is based on a science fiction novel written by Andy Weir, author of The Martian. This story follows an interstellar mission to find the solution to an apocalyptic phenomenon that could have severe consequences for Earth, journeying aboard a spacecraft named the Hail Mary and meeting an alien known as Rocky, who is represented in this set.

(5) THE RACE OF THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND SHIPS. Christopher Lockett challenges “the entirely predictable howls of protest that have arisen with the news that Christopher Nolan has cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in his upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey” in “Some Thoughts on Mythology and Historical Accuracy” at The Magical Humanist.

I posted a note two days ago apropos of the entirely predictable howls of protest that have arisen with the news that Christopher Nolan has cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in his upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey. In response to those howls, which largely come from the usual anti-woke suspects deriding the casting for flying in the face of “historical accuracy,” I snarkily said “as we all know, when a god transforms himself into a swan to rape a woman and the child that results is hatched from an egg, OBVIOUSLY that child is white. That’s just science.”

My point, which I had thought quite obvious, is that when we’re in the realm of gods whose sexual peccadilloes involve nonconsensual animorphing, perhaps the question of the offspring’s race is somewhat beside the point. “Historical accuracy” is something of a canard when our subject is mythology.

Or is it? Well, no, it’s definitely a canard, but the relationship between mythology and history, while fraught, is a fascinating one.…

…I could go on endlessly about the innumerable adaptations and interpretations of Helen; these are just the ones I can call to mind without researching more thoroughly. Suffice to say, there is no one singular Helen, any more than there is any one singular version of any mythological figure. The idea that one can divine a “historically accurate” sense of Helen (or Odysseus, or Ra, or Odin, or whomever) profoundly misunderstands the nature of mythology. Which isn’t to say myths don’t have points of origin, just that those origins don’t comprise an ur-text that is somehow more authoritative than later versions. A lot of the sturm un drang over Nolan’s casting of Nyong’o cites either “historical accuracy” or, in the marginally more thoughtful variation, “cultural accuracy.” The former, as my original note glibly attempted to point out, is absurd; the latter makes slightly more sense, though only slightly—The Odyssey is specific to ancient Greece, but like pretty much all the Greek mythology that continues to resonate, it has transcended those origins….

(6) VOWS THAT WOW. “Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion can be rented for weddings, but there is a scary price” reports the LA Times. (Behind a paywall.) (A copy of Disney’s non-paywalled press release is here.)

As guests pass through the foyer and enter Disneyland’s popular Haunted Mansion attraction, a ghoulish host delivers one last chilling message: “There’s no turning back now.”

That phrase will take on new meaning this July as Disneyland announced its famed ghostly estate will become available for weddings for the first time.

The spooky price ranges from $25,000 to $40,000 to reserve and use the mansion’s courtyard….

…The event can host up to 25 guests (not including the bride and groom) and ceremonies must happen before the park opens, which can present some challenges. On July 1, for instance, the park opens at 8 a.m.

Disneyland said it provides minimal lighting. On the other hand, the theme park is offering an officiant, transportation to and from the Disneyland Resort hotels, light decor and photography….

…One of the mansion’s signature characters is, aptly, a tortured bride. She was also updated via a projector, as she now floats before guests while holding a physical three-pronged candelabra….

(7) STRICT CONSTRUCTIONISTS. In a two-part article at Elfenomeno, Paola Castagno and Leandro Pascual try to pull readers’ focus back onto the spiritual values they argue Tolkien intended should be found in his work.

• “Between Mount Doom and the wall of ‘likes’. Part One: Christian values in the work of Tolkien”.

We live under the tyranny of the “like”: attention is measured in seconds, heroism is confused with spectacle and virtue with visibility. In the face of this superficiality, the work of J.R.R. Tolkien emerges as a beacon of spiritual resistance. The irony is that his own legacy has fallen victim to the transformation he diagnoses: its deepest values have been systematically diluted. This erosion begins with the major film adaptations and culminates in a digital culture that, in haste, consumes and reinterprets his mythology until it is stripped of its essence.

This article offers a critical analysis of that double transformation. First, we will examine how the profound Christian values that permeate Tolkien’s legendarium — humility, sacrifice, hope and compassion — have been eclipsed by a superficial reading that privileges action over contemplation, power over service, and victory over redemption. On the other hand, we will analyse how this process has accelerated and radicalised in the digital ecosystem, where Tolkien fan communities have evolved from spaces for collective knowledge building to platforms for personal promotion and narcissistic competition.

This is not merely a question of literary fidelity or cultural nostalgia. What is at stake is much deeper: the ability of a society to recognise, value and embody the virtues that make communal life possible. Tolkien, a convinced Catholic and a veteran of the First World War, did not write escapist entertainment, but a meditation on the moral foundations of civilisation. His work is, in the words of the author himself, “fundamentally religious and Catholic,” although “absorbed into the history and the symbolism” rather than being presented didactically.

This spiritual dimension, far from being accidental, constitutes the core from which all other elements of the narrative gain meaning. Without it, The Lord of the Rings becomes a mere adventure fantasy; with it, it reveals itself as a cartography of the human soul in its search for the sacred. It is precisely this sacredness that has been lost in the successive media and digital reinterpretations of the work, and its recovery is what justifies and guides our reflection.

• “Between Mount Doom and the wall of ‘likes’. Part Two: Tolkien and the values we lost”.

The loss of the spiritual dimension in Peter Jackson‘s film adaptations

The film adaptations by Peter Jackson have played a crucial role in the dilution of the Christian values present in Tolkien’s work. His trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, while achieving impressive visual fidelity and remarkable epic scale, produces a paradoxical effect: it obscures precisely that which Tolkien most strived to illuminate.

For an entire generation, these films have become the gateway to Middle-earth. However, the interpretative filter they offer is not one of humility, silent sacrifice, or hope without guarantees that characterise the original work. Rather, it is one of spectacular combat, constant tension, and muscular heroism. The audience has retained the massive battles, the epic lines, and the grand gestures, but has lost the long periods of peace, contemplation, and inner growth that Tolkien considered fundamental to his narrative.

Jackson takes the narrative framework of Tolkien but restructures its spiritual heart. The battles—necessary to the plot, but never glorified by the author—move to occupy the dramatic centre of the films. Scenes of profound ethical and spiritual weight are minimised, eliminated, or transformed into mere transitions to the next moment of action. The ethics of sacrifice thus dissolves into the aesthetics of victory.

The Battle of Helm’s Deep perfectly illustrates this distortion. In the book, it is a brief, tense confrontation marked by desperation; in the film, it becomes an epic sequence of over forty minutes, with almost comedic elements that trivialise the gravity of the moment. The epic of moral resistance is replaced by a fantasy of power and spectacle.

The character of Faramir also suffers a particularly significant distortion. In the original work, he represents the conscious renunciation of evil even when it is within reach: “I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway.” Jackson transforms him into a character full of doubts who drags Frodo to Osgiliath. The virtue of discernment, which Tolkien praises as a manifestation of divine grace, becomes a plot of unnecessary redemption that obeys the logic of dramatic conflict, not of spiritual grace.

Frodo’s compassion towards Gollum, although represented in the films, loses its profound meaning. Instead of being perceived as a radical moral choice that ultimately saves the world, it is presented as a trait of naive weakness that endangers the mission. This reading completely inverts Tolkien’s Christian message about the redemptive power of mercy….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 5, 1941 — Stephen J. Cannell. (Died 2010.)

I have come this Scroll to talk of not cabbages and kings but a man who as a mystery writer showed up regularly playing poker as himself in the Castle series with Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle — Stephen J. Cannell. James Patterson, Michael Connelly, and Dennis Lehane were the other such writers here. I’ll talk about his work as a novelist later. 

The Zorro rip-off, scripted in its one season by him, The Night Rider, described by IMDB this way, “A refined New Orleans gentleman becomes a masked crimefighter by night, both to uphold law and order and to find the men who murdered his family in order to get their silver mine” is genre the same The Shadow or Doc Savage is in that it’s pulp.

Between that series and what I’m about to note next, scripting shows, the good, the bad and the truly awful made him very wealthy. So he got to produce a series that he said was one he’d to do a very long time ago — The Greatest American Hero.  You know the story of it so I want go into deep detail here, but suffice it to say that he was very happy with its success.

Veering way out of genre, I’m going to note he created Baa Baa Black Sheep (which was renamed Black Sheep Squadron for the second season for reasons unknown by the Powers That Be), a series I really liked.

I’ll note next 21 Jump Street which he created with Patrick Hasburgh which was about the cases of an undercover police unit composed of really great looking young officers specializing in youth crime. Definitely not genre, so why mention it? Because that featured Johnny Depp who would later do so many genre performances. And yes, he’d done one before this series as Greg Lantz in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

He loved making low budget horror films such as The Demon Hunter, The Fairy and Left in Darkness. All shot on all cheap budgets (and this is after he became very wealthy), shot on locations you wouldn’t go without security in armor and shot fast enough you’d suspect use of interesting drugs to keep everyone alert, there’s more than makes sense of these in his IMDB listings. Stephen, you devil. Possibly literally.

Now about that poker game on Castle. All four of those players are there because they are mystery writers. Cannell wrote a series of novels about Shane Scully who was a detective in the LAPD force. I don’t know if they actually played poker in those scenes but I suspect they did. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is against costume changes.
• Dinosaur Comics rebels against greeting rituals. 
• Lio finds a perfect book. 
• Reality Check thinks these sound alike. 
• Strange Brew has a clever variation on a familiar joke.

(10) FANTASY FILM RECOMMENDATIONS. Collider gives us “8 Greatest Hidden-Gem Fantasy Masterpieces of the 21st Century, Ranked”.

…Consisting of everything from critically misunderstood marvels of Hollywood to hidden highlights of international cinema, from family-friendly adventures to harrowing horrors, and pictures of extraordinary dare, these fantastic hidden-gem fantasies epitomize the brilliance of the genre. They highlight its powerful, often boundary-pushing allure and its embracement of technical experimentation in filmmaking, making them all must-see movies for everyone who loves fantasy storytelling….

Here’s one of their gems. (And I apologize in advance for the title and the rank not being the same number…)

#8 — ‘9’ (2009)

Daring, divine, and delightfully dark, 9 presents what is one of the most tonally interesting and thematically-loaded animated family movies this century, if not of all time. Set in the aftermath of an apocalyptic war between humans and machines, it follows a hopeful ragdoll who teams up with eight counterparts—each one representing a different aspect of their creator’s personality. In their endeavor to understand the belligerence of the machines, they discover that they hold the key to humanity’s survival.

Striking with its ambition, 9 delivers what is, in theory, a kid-oriented story of ragdoll heroics and makes it a sublime work of animated horror. Its thematic overtones of destruction, survival, and unity are complemented by a stunning post-apocalyptic world that blends the inventive intrigue of steampunk aesthetics with a dread-filled, ghostly eeriness. Also strengthened by its propulsive story and a terrific ensemble cast of voice actors, 9 is one of the most admirable animated movies of the century, one that also doubles as a decadent and dreary dark fantasy.

(11) REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH ISSUE. “It’s time to think about human reproduction in space, scientists urge” – Space.com has the story.

…”As human presence in space expands, reproductive health can no longer remain a policy blind spot,” study co-author Fathi Karouia, a senior research scientist at NASA, said in a statement.

“International collaboration is urgently needed to close critical knowledge gaps and establish ethical guidelines that protect both professional and private astronauts — and ultimately safeguard humanity as we move toward a sustained presence beyond Earth.”

IVF in space?

More than half a century ago, two breakthroughs reshaped ideas about what was biologically and physically possible, the study notes, in reference to the first human landing on the moon and the first successful fertilization of a human egg outside the body through in vitro fertilisation, or IVF.

“Now, more than half a century later, we argue in this report that these once-separate revolutions are colliding in a practical and underexplored reality,” Giles Palmer, a senior clinical embryologist at the International IVF Initiative who led the new study, said in the statement….

(12) CAN YOU REVERSE ENTROPY? A Substack video discusses “How workers can deshittify the world with Cory Doctorow”.

(13) CARLSBAD SURPRISE. “’They’ve probably been untouched for 49 million years’: The New Mexico cave expanding our search for alien life” reports BBC.  (Subscription required for outside UK.)

When cave biologist Hazel Barton ventured into the pitch darkness, the last thing she expected to find were organisms harnessing energy from light. This new understanding of photosynthesis in the dark, she realised, means life elsewhere in the Universe could exist in places we never thought possible.

“The wall was bright green. It was the most iridescent green you’d ever seen, and yet the microbes were living in complete darkness,” says Barton, professor of geological sciences at the University of Alabama.

Beneath the deep rocky canyons of the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico, lies a network of 119 caves. The caves, part of the Carlsbad Caverns National Park, formed four to 11 million years ago due to sulphuric acid dissolving the limestone rocks. 

The primary attraction of the park is the show cave, Carlsbad Cavern. Here, glittering stalactites cling to the roof of the Big Room, a huge underground chamber measuring almost 4,000ft (1,220m) long and 625ft (191m) wide.

“The Carlsbad cavern is very easily accessible. It’s a very large limestone cave that tourists can visit that has steps and ladders and everyone can go down,” says Lars Behrendt, a microbial biologist at Uppsala University. Parts of the cave system, he adds, are even wheelchair accessible.

Almost 350,000 people visit Carlsbad cavern each year, yet most would be completely unaware that the cave is the setting to one of the most baffling scientific discoveries of the past decade. In the seemingly pitch dark, microbes were able to harness light for energy – the same kind of light given off by red dwarf stars, the most common kind of star in our galaxy. This, says Barton, means we can search for extraterrestrial life in more places than prevously thought.

In 2018, Behrendt had just finished his PhD. He had also won an academic prize, which awarded him some money. He contacted Barton and asked her if she would accompany him on an expedition. Luckily, she agreed.

“The first thing you do in the Carlsbad cave is you kind of go down on the tourist trail, and then you turn around a corner,” says Barton. “I don’t know how many times I’ve done that trail, probably 40 times. At that point, you go around the corner, and then behind you there’s an alcove, and it’s completely black.”

For more than 20 years, Barton has been studying microscopic life found deep underground. Yet what happened next was a surprise, even to her. 

Behrendt shone a torch on the wall. Although the alcove was pitch black, the light revealed a blanket of green microbes clinging to the wall. Later tests revealed they were cyanobacteria; single celled organisms related to bacteria. Unlike most bacteria, though, cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) use light from the Sun to make food….

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