26 One Of Our Check Boxes Is Missing

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) SOUND FAMILIAR? The New York Times poses a challenge: “Do You Recognize These Lines From Popular Science Fiction?” Link bypasses the NYT paywall.

Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.

Here’s where the quiz begins – you’ll have to click the link if you need the multiple-choice options.

Question 1 of 5

Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button.

(2) ORIGINALLY IN ANOTHER TONGUE. “Rachel Cordasco on Translated SF” – an interview conducted by James Machell at the Science Fiction Encyclopedia’s Substack newsletter.

Rachel Cordasco has written a variety of entries for the SFE, most notably SF in Translation in which she places the first golden age of science fiction translation in the 1970s (see entry for more details). Her expertise in translation range from her time as translator of works from Italian, reviews for SF Signal, and founding of Speculative Fiction in Translation where she has continued to review translations from over a dozen languages. Small Planet, a magazine dedicated to further discussion, was published on Speculative Fiction in Translation last month. In this interview, she discusses her career so far, underrated works of translated SF, what distinguishes a great translation, and the direction of Small Planet #2….

…JM: Are there particular translated works which you feel deserve greater critical attention?

RC: There are so many worthy works of SFT that I’d like to highlight, but that would take up volumes because, in fact, so much SFT that comes to us is double-vetted. These texts have often already won awards in their native countries or become extremely popular with readers and Anglophone publishers only want to invest in what they think will be successful. The translators then use their talents to not only bring the text into English but also make it a beautiful and readable work. This is why so much SFT is of a very high quality. I will take this opportunity to say, as I complain often on social media, that it’s a shame we no longer have Kurodahan and Haikasoru to bring us some of the greatest Japanese SF written in the twentieth century. Another publisher needs to step into this void and continue the work that those two publishers did for a decade. I’m also always on the lookout for SFT from underrepresented languages: I would love to read more, for instance, Vietnamese SFT, Buglarian SFT, Norwegian SFT, Icelandic SFT, etc.

One more thing: I used to think that Stanislaw Lem and the Strugatskys were so well known in the Anglosphere that I didn’t have to recommend them because, you know, everybody has already read them, right? Well, I’m getting the terrible feeling that this isn’t the case. So for anyone who is just starting with SFT, go read Lem and the Strugatskys.

(3) WORLD WIDE PARTY 2026. [Item by John Hertz.] From Dale Speirs’ Opuntia 628 (p. 18):

Founded by Benoit Girard (Quebec) and Franz Mikiis (Austria) in 1994, the World Wide Party is held on June 21 every year. 2026 will be the 33rd year of the WWP. At 21h00 local time, everyone is invited to raise a glass and toast fellow members of zinedom around the world. It is important to have it exactly at 21h00 your time. The idea is to get a wave of fellowship circling the planet.

At 21h00, face to the east and salute those who have already celebrated. Then face north, then south, and toast those in your time zone who are celebrating as you do. Finally, face west and raise a glass to those who will celebrate WWP in the next hour.

Raise a glass, publish a one-shot zine, have a party, or do a mail art project for the WWP. Let me know how you celebrated the day.

(4) MATT KRESSEL Q&A. In the new episode of the If This Goes On (Don’t Panic) podcast, “The Rainseekers with Matt Kressel”, Alan Bailey and Cat Rambo talk with Matt Kressel “about writing with authenticity, writing unfamiliar cultures, Dungeons and Dragons, what writers can take from RPGs, Matt’s new novels Spacetrucker Jess and The Rainseekers, AI, plagiarism, and much more.”

(5) ORBITAL AIR BAGS – NO, NOT FAN PANELS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In this week’s Science orbital air bags proposed to block Solar storms…

In a study published this week in Space Weather, the researchers describe a provocative proposal called “StormWall”: a fleet of satellites that would release hundreds of tons of gases into space just before a solar storm strikes Earth. Computer simulations suggest the artificial cloud could cut the intensity of a major solar storm by half or more.

(6) WINNING STARSCAPES. [Item by Steven French.] For a lovely ’time-line cleanse’ check out these stunning images from the “2026 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Competition” at Capture the Atlas.

Now in its 9th edition, our Milky Way Photographer of the Year brings together 25 inspiring images captured under some of the most remarkable dark skies on Earth. Each photograph in this collection represents a unique moment where planning, patience, creativity, and technical skill came together beneath the stars….

… Beyond their artistic and technical achievement, these photographs also remind us how rare truly dark skies are becoming. As light pollution continues to erase the stars from many places around the world, this collection is both a celebration of what still exists and a reminder of what we stand to lose….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

June 13, 1893 — Dorothy Sayers. (Died 1957.)

I’m going to talk about Dorothy Sayers tonight who although she wrote a handful of ghost stories is here because of mysteries. Oh, what mysteries they were.

Her first novel, Whose Body?, was published in 1923. Over the next thirteen years, she would write ten more novels featuring the ever so proper Lord Peter Wimsey who solved mysteries. In Strong Poison, we would be introduced to artist Harriet Vane who Wimsey would fall in love with in a properly upper-class manner. Harriet appears off and on in the future novels, resisting Lord Peter’s proposals of marriage until Gaudy Night six novels later.

Yes, I read all ten of these novels in order some forty years back. I like them better than Agatha Christie novels on the whole as the social commentary here gives them a sharper edge and I think Sayers described her society better than Christie did. Now Christie was way more productive over a much longer period of time as Sayers stopped writing these mysteries, which includes short stories, by the later Thirties in favor of writing plays, mostly on religious themes which were performed in cathedrals and broadcast by the BBC.

So there’s eleven novels and the short story collection, Lord Peter Views the Body, which I’ve not read but now I see is on the usual suspects as a rather good deal of just a dollar, so I’ll grab a copy now. Done.

I’d like to speak about The Lord Peter Wimsey series starring Ian Carmichael of the early Seventies, it covered the first five novels. Carmichael said he was too old to play the part for the romantic relationship of the later novels, but it didn’t matter as the series was cancelled.

I thought it was a rather well-done series and I caught it recently on Britbox, one of those streaming services, and it has help up rather well fifty years on with the Suck Fairy concurring.

He did play Wimsey into the BBC radio series that covered all of the novels and ran at the same time. They are quite excellent and are available on Audible at a very reasonable price.

Finally she wrote, according to ISFDB, a handful of genre stories, four to be precise —“The Cyprian Cat”, “The Cave of Ali Baba”, “Bitter Almonds” and “The Leopard Lady”. Three seem to be fantasy and the fourth, “Bitter Almonds” I’ve no idea about. Anyone have knowledge of these?

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

June 13, 1980 — The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything

Robert Hays and Pam Dawber from the 1980 movie The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything

Forty-six years ago, a rather charming film premiered in syndication this evening as produced by Paramount. The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything was based on the novel of the same name by John D. MacDonald, who of course did the Travis McGee series. I know I watched it and I know I like it even four decades on.

It was written by George Zateslo who hadn’t written anything prior to this save an episode of CHiPS. After writing this, he’d write the script for the sequel, The Girl, the Gold Watch & Dynamite, originally titled the The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything Else before they realized that was way too long. Or so they thought.

Actors Lee Purcell and Philip MacHale from the 1981 sequel *The Girl, the Gold Watch & Dynamite*

The two cast members to note here are Robert Hays as Kirby Winter and Pam Dawber as Bonny Lee Beaumont. That because the story is a rather thin SF plot involving a young male who inherits from his millionaire uncle a gold watch that has the power to stop time. A series of quite unlikely and comic adventures ensue. And yes there’s a girl involved. This girl is entirely, I believe, why the novels were written, but then a girl was always present in John MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels as well.

An episode of the Twilight Zone, “A Kind of Stop Watch”, has essentially the same story as that of “The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything”. A lot of Twilight Zone fans would claim very loudly that McDonald ripped off Serling’s script. That episode, however, aired in October of 1963, the year after the publication of the novel on which the movie is based. Sigh.

Can y’all remember how far back this story plot device goes? I assuming it’s present in the beginning of the genre, isn’t?

(9) COMICS SECTION.

F Minus praises a student with a skill.
Free Range benefits from a degree.
Ink Pen questions superhero logic.
Lio runs into the past.
Loose Parts introduces a prince’s relative.

(10) JUSTICE LEAGUE STANDINGS. “Every Founding Member of the Justice League, Ranked by Importance in 2026” in the opinion of ComicBook.com.

…The League has certainly gotten bigger over the years. The advent of the Justice League Unlimited has seen nearly every superhero alive join their ranks, but the classics should always be respected. Seven people founded the League, and to this day, they are all incredible heroes. To celebrate those heroes, we’re going to take a look at how important each of the original seven is in comics in 2026. We’re only judging them by how much they are impacting overall stories and DC right now, and while each is definitely important, you might be surprised to see that some have waxed or waned more than you think. With all that said, let’s leap into ranking the League….

On the lower end of the list is —

6) Martian Manhunter

Unfortunately, sixth place on our list belongs to the beloved Manhunter from Mars. J’onn has often gotten the short end of the stick compared to his fellow founding Leaguers, especially when it comes to his own storylines. Where he is best shown off in Justice League stories, his teammates each have their own volumes focused solely on them. With the Justice League being so massive right now, that leaves even less time for Martian Manhunter to stake his claim. He’s still DC’s strongest telepath and the person everyone can turn to, but as of right now, he’s not doing nearly as much as his teammates. He is currently helping out Superboy in Action Comics (2016), so at least he’s operating in some spotlight.

(11) SCARF AND GOBBLE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I do like to go to the cinema with local SF group members. (Remember the days when the Eastercon always had a film programme as did British venued Worldcons…?)

For me, watching films is a communal experience to chat about after, or if at home, ‘pausing’ to have a mug of Builders and ask a pressing questions such as “I haven’t seen any 12 monkeys in The 12 Monkeys so far. where are they?”

However, some can spoil the experience, as described over at the BBC. “Loud eaters and phones nearly spoiled my cinema trip – and it’s not just me” (Subscription required by readers outside the UK.)

The cinema lights are low and you’re cocooned in your seat, ready for the film to transport you to another world. But just as you settle in, you’re jolted back to reality. Audience members around you are scrolling on their phones, talking and munching loudly.

(12) SPACE LOGISTICS. [Item by Steven French.] Can we mine asteroids to colonize Mars? A new study suggests we can, if we use certain asteroids themselves to produce the fuel required: “Mining the solar system to build a new world” at Phys.org.

I watched Armageddon again fairly recently with Bruce Willis, oil drillers in space and an asteroid the size of Texas bearing down on Earth. Buried beneath the Hollywood chaos is a genuinely interesting question: What exactly could we do with an asteroid if we got our hands on one? As it turns out, the answer has nothing to do with blowing it up, sorry Bruce, but everything to do with building a new world.

Building a colony on Mars is not just an engineering problem, it’s a logistics one too. The logistics, unglamorous as it sound, may ultimately determine whether humanity becomes a multi-planetary species or stays firmly rooted on Earth.

Think about what a Mars colony actually needs. Not just food and oxygen, but metal. Structural steel for habitats, aluminum for equipment, iron for tools and many of the components will wear out, break, and need replacing. Shipping all of that from Earth every time is not a serious long-term strategy. A rocket launch costs tens of millions of pounds per ton of cargo, and the journey to Mars takes between six and nine months depending on where the two planets happen to sit in their orbits. You cannot run a hardware store on that kind of supply chain.

A new study from researchers at EPFL in Switzerland posted to the arXiv preprint server has now done the hard math on mining asteroids and delivering the metals directly to Mars. The solar system contains millions of asteroids, and the metallic ones, known as M-type asteroids, are essentially giant lumps of iron, nickel, and other valuable materials floating through space. The question is whether we can actually reach them, extract what we need, and get it to Mars efficiently enough to make it worthwhile.

The answer, it turns out, is a careful yes but with conditions….

(13) HOLY VELIKOVSKY! “Scientists Link 3.5 Billion-Year-Old Asteroid Strike To Dawn Of Life On Earth” at HotHardware.

A small stone discovered in the sands of Mali is reimagining what we know about the early solar system. By examining this rare lunar meteorite, planetary scientists have mapped out a sequence of cosmic collisions that retell the history shared by Earth and the Moon.

Thanks (or no thanks) to plate tectonics, erosion, and volcanic activity on Earth, finding pristine physical evidence of what happened here billions of years ago is nearly impossible. To uncover our planet’s earliest chapters, scientists must sometimes look to the Moon, a geologically quiet place where the lack of an atmosphere or weather acts as a permanent cosmic museum.

The meteorite, called Northwest Africa (NWA) 12593, is a lunar breccia, essentially a natural concrete formed when fragments of different rocks are fused together by extreme force. A research team at the University of Colorado Boulder subjected the stone to radiometric dating and chemical analysis, revealing that it survived three distinct impacts. The last collision launched it off the Moon toward Earth, while a prior mid-history strike smashed and welded the fragments into its current concrete-like form.

However, it is the first and oldest impact that is the most interesting. Dated to roughly 3.5 billion years ago, this colossal asteroid strike released enough energy to turn the lunar surface into a sheet of liquid rock. The heat was so intense that it generated cubic zirconia, a mineral that requires extreme, controlled temperatures to form. Though the mineral fragilely dissolved as the magma cooled, researchers successfully identified its chemical fingerprints locked inside the meteorite.

This 3.5-billion-year-old timestamp coincidentally mirrors known impact records found in ancient crusts on Earth, as well as on 4 Vesta, one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt. Finding an identical bombardment signature across three completely separate bodies suggests a coordinated, system-wide event. This possibly indicates that the inner solar system was transitioning away from the constant chaos of planet formation toward a sudden, massive wave of debris, perhaps caused by the breakup of a giant asteroid….

(14) SPIELBERG Q&A. “Steven Spielberg on ‘Disclosure Day’ and alien visitations – YouTube on CBS Sunday Morning.

As a child, Steven Spielberg stared at a meteor shower on a wondrous starry night and began his love affair with the sky. The director of the classic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” has returned to the sci-fi genre with “Disclosure Day,” which imagines closely-held secrets surrounding alien visitations. He talks with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz about UAP/UFO phenomena, the paranormal, and his own beliefs regarding intelligent life beyond Earth.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/13/26 Pixels All Aglimmer In The Gloamin’

Posted on May 13, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) GOOD OMENS 3. The final season of Good Omens has dropped on Prime Video. Here’s what the Guardian’s critic thinks of it: “Good Omens finale review – a heavenly cast, but a script from flaming TV hell”. BEWARE SPOILERS.

… The result is exactly what might be expected of a show with such a gestation: it’s a puzzling mess, its narrative abbreviated to the point of incoherence….

… And so we are ushered towards a final four-way verbal showdown between Crowley, Aziraphale and two supernatural beings, played by two delightful heavyweight guest stars. As they debate what it was all for, Good Omens rehearses its rather basic musings on religion, doling out standard humanist stuff about messy mortals being pretty bloody marvellous things who don’t deserve to be restricted by a fear of judgment in the great beyond. All four players in the scene are wasted: this show has possibly the biggest imbalance in TV history between dazzling cast and stale script….

(2) IF THEY DON’T STOP IT YOU’LL GO BLIND. The New York Times asks experts: “Are Movies Really Getting Darker? Let’s Shine Some Light on the Issue.” (Behind a paywall.)

When 20th Century Studios released a trailer for “The Devil Wears Prada 2” it quickly racked up millions of views. It is impossible to say, however, how many of those views came from the same people rewatching the coming attraction, not because they could not wait to see the sequel, but because they could barely see the trailer.

“The heartbreaking story of a woman who can no longer afford lamps in her office,” read one viral post, showing Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly of yore alongside a screenshot from the new dimly-lit trailer. “So did we just forget how to light movies?” asked another, above bright images from the 2006 film beside shadowy, shrouded shots from the sequel. Noting that the sequel employs the same director and cinematographer as the original, one poster lamented “that isn’t a skill issue it’s a choice. So why DO new movies insist on looking like that. Absolutely lifeless.”

Ask anyone on Letterboxd and they’ll surely report that the average movie today lacks the “look” of the average movie from even just 25 years ago: Images are dark and blurry, special effects a C.G.I. sludge, the overall feeling artificial and flat. Even fans who can’t put their finger on what is happening or why seem to be in consensus that it’s happening.

In November, Tom van der Linden, the host of the YouTube channel Like Stories of Old, posted a wonky, nearly 30-minute explainer on “Why Movies Just Don’t Feel ‘Real’ Anymore.” Within a month, it became his most popular video ever. James and Anthony Deveney, independent filmmakers and hosts of “Raiders of the Lost Pod,” also devoted an episode to this issue. An excerpt they shared across social media — titled “Why New Movies Look Bad” — has the highest engagement of any clip they’ve ever made.

“I think over the last 10 years, it’s not even just cinephiles. It’s just everyday moviegoers. We all feel like movies have changed. They don’t look the same anymore,” said James Deveney. “You go back to the 2000s and anytime before that, even B-movies, C-movies, look good!”

These commentators suspect a few culprits: Bottom-line-focused executives for whom cinema is nothing more than “content”; standardization wrought by streamers; the inherent supremacy of shooting on film over now-dominant digital. “People are becoming hip to it, and it’s a big factor in why people aren’t going to the movies anymore,” said Deveney.

To van der Linden, there’s “a moral question” at play. “The reality of a movie is not something that exists on its own,” he said. “It’s solely determined by the viewer’s immersion in the movie. When that breaks, there is a disconnect that is kind of tragic.”

What’s With Those Blurry Backgrounds?

Ironically, several of the features in modern movies these film buffs decry are, according to the industry professionals, likely deployed to make movies shot on digital look more “cinematic.” Take a chief complaint: an overreliance on shallow depth-of-field shots, in which the foreground is in focus and the background is blurry, like Portrait Mode on an iPhone.

“I think there’s a sense [out there] of everything being in focus is video-y, and narrow depth of field is cinematic,” said the cinematographer Steve Yedlin (“Knives Out,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”) He says there is a misconception that “softness” is what makes a movie look like a film….

(3) IKER Q&A. If This Goes On (Don’t Panic) is a podcast about hope and resistance in Science Fiction and Fantasy. In the latest episode, “I’ll Make a Spectacle of You with Beatrice Winifred Iker”, cohosts Alan Bailey and Cat Rambo talk to poet, podcaster, author, and tarot reader, Beatrice Winifred Iker. They discuss religion, horror and religion, queerness, writing neurodiverse characters, Appalachia, organizing complicated plots, Mothman, perfume recommendations, and much more. You can find Beatrice and their books here.

(4) CTHULHU’S BEST FRIEND. Cora Buhlert continues her gallop through this year’s Eastercon by telling us what she did on Saturday: “Cora’s Adventures at Iridescence, the 2026 Eastercon in Birmingham, Part 3: Easter Saturday at the Con”.

…Among others, I chatted with Adrian Tchaikovsky, Anna Smith Spark, Charles Stross, his wife Feorag and their plush Cthulhu, Matt/Womble, Andrew Knighton, Ana Sun, Scott Edelman (who had just enjoyed his first Birmingham balti the day before), Alison Scott, John Coxon, España Sheriff, Sara Felix, James Bacon, S.J. Groenewegen and many, many others whose names I don’t recall. If I talked to you at Eastercon or gave you a koala and failed to mention you, I’m very sorry.

I also took this photo (with permission) of Cthulhu making friends with a tiny koala and posted it on social media, where it went kind of viral and even ended up in the convention newsletter The Fiery Chicken….

Cthulhu has made friends with a tiny koala

(5) LORD OF THE BRICKS. USA Today promises: “Lego to launch the biggest ‘Lord of the Rings’ set yet. See photos”. [Click for larger images.]

Lego’s got a little something magical in store.

To celebrate a quarter century of “The Lord of the Rings,” the Lego Group, in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products, is launching an 8,278-piece set recreating the majestic city of Gondor – the legendary White City of Minas Tirith.

From towering architecture to the iconic citadel, the striking display model captures “one of Middle-earth’s most memorable locations.”

The set, which features a hybrid-scale design, combines an “expansive microscale cityscape with richly detailed minifigure-scale interior scenes,” according to a May 12 news release.

“From afar, builders can admire the sweeping skyline and defensive walls of Minas Tirith,” the release reads. “Up close, they can explore key interior spaces, including the throne room of the citadel, where pivotal moments from the story unfold.”

The set also features 10 minifigures, themed accessories and the legendary Shadowfax horse figure to help bring “the world of Middle-earth to life.”…

… The 25th Anniversary Legacy Collection will be available to Lego Insiders through Early Access on June 1 and to the general population three days later, on June 4….

(6) BANGING ON. “’Big Bang’ Spinoff ‘Stuart Fails To Save The Universe’ Unveils Teaser” reports Deadline.

We’re getting the first look at footage from The Big Bang Theory spinoff Stuart Fails To Save the Universe. The teaser was revealed along with the release date Wednesday during the Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront presentation in New York. The ten-episode season will make its streaming debut Thursday, July 23 at 9 pm ET on HBO Max, followed by a new episode every Thursday.

The spinoff revolves around comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) who is tasked with restoring reality after he breaks a device built by Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Leonard (Johnny Galecki), 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….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 13, 1937 — Roger Zelazny. (Died 1995.)

By Paul Weimer: The author that got me into Science Fiction and Fantasy? Maybe. My first science fiction and fantasy was Asimov (I,Robot), Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles) and Tolkien (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings). But it was Roger Zelazny who really made it stick. Sure, I read more of Asimov, and I tried to read The Silmarillion and failed, but it was reading Nine Princes in Amber and its sequels that really convinced me to get on the endless road through shadow to seek out other science fiction and fantasy.

It is ironic that for a writer best known for his short stories that I started with, and for a while stuck with, Zelazny’s novels. After Amber came Jack of Shadows, Deus Irae, Dilvish the Damned, Lord of Light and others.

If I had to point a single novel at a reader for Zelazny, I would go with Jack of Shadows. Jack of Shadows does a lot of things that the second Amber series tries to do (and not always successfully) . And I have mentioned before and elsewhere science fantasy IS my jam. How can I resist a novel where the dayside of the Earth is run on science, and the darkside is run on magic?

It took me a while to actually find and delve into the short fiction that everyone had raved about. The Last Defender of Camelot was the first collection of his I read, and then I started hunting his stories in “Best of” collections and other anthologies, and started filling in hjs oeuvre and trying to read all of his work.

This is a process that continues to this day.

Reading the NESFA collections of Roger Zelazny, which I have been reviewing here at File 770, I have realized how much of the Zelazny stories I have missed, and how much, for even the author that got me into SF and Fantasy, I still have a lot to learn about. My love for Roger Zelazny and his work is a lifelong journey. I suppose in theory there will come a day where I can say I have read all of Zelazny’s work. Someday.

There are always surprises. I remember reading and liking a story in an old anthology of “best stories” that, much to my surprise, I only recently learned was a Zelazny story. (“The Game of Blood and Dust”). Zelazny continues to delight me.

But why do I like Zelazny’s work in the first place? Even long before I picked up a camera, I’ve always been interested in imagery, in capturing moments. Zelazny captures these moments, that imagery, those scenes that resonate in my mind. Those moments captured, that lovely writing demands my attention. From Corwin walking down the stairs to Rebma, to Jack coming back from the death at the eastern pole of the world, to the Tristan and Isolde imagery of The Dream Master, to Hellwell in Lord of Light. And on, and on, and on.

And such well drawn characters in often very limited space. They are often driven, and yes, the women very often have green eyes and red hair. (Zelazny had a type, you see) but I see that as feature, not bug. And yes, too many of them smoked, and that helped take him from us way way too soon. I never got to meet him, much to my sorrow. (He, Pratchett and Banks are three of my regrets in that regard). Dilvish the Damned, particularly comes across as a character we learn in bursts, in small bits of backstory and worldbuilding. (Also a lot of Zelazny’s characters are driven, almost to obsession. They are passionate and seize things by the horns, and sometimes get the horns as a result.

But, finally, what other SFF author has written properties that I’ve mined and run roleplaying games out of for three decades, after all? Long live the work of Roger Zelazny.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Cornered does commentary on an autopsy.
Crankshaft expects a light demand.
Wumo has fans demanding service.
xkcd tests the vintage of error messages.

(9) FIXED THAT FOR YOU. The Register says “This browser add-in doesn’t just hide ads, it tells you to OBEY”.

A fork of uBlock Origin Lite doesn’t just remove the ads from web pages; it replaces them with tiles containing slogans from John Carpenter’s 1988 film They Live.

Published by Australian Dave Lawrence, the Chromium add-in (so it’ll work in browsers such as Chrome and Edge) takes the uBlock Origin Lite content blocker (also known as uBO Lite) and tweaks it so that rather than simply hiding the ads, the ads are replaced with white boxes containing slogans from the movies.

Lawrence listed them: “OBEY, CONSUME, WATCH TV, SLEEP, SUBMIT, CONFORM, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WORK, NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.”

But sadly, nothing along the lines of “THIS AD IS HERE SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY TO KEEP THIS SITE RUNNING.”

“Each blocked ad gets a single phrase, picked at random from the list,” Lawrence explained in the project’s repository.

The uBlock Origin project is not involved, and Lawrence noted that only ads blocked by cosmetic filters get the They Live treatment. Custom user-defined cosmetic filters still hide ads normally….

(10) YAKKITY AXE. “Barbaric TV Series, Based on Comic Book, a Go at Netflix” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Medieval-style fantasy continues be a hot genre for streamers looking to cast spells on viewers.

At its Upfronts, Netflix announced it has greenlit Barbaric, a fantasy drama based on the hit Vault Comics title of the same name.

Created by Mike Moreci and Nathan Gooden and edited by Adrian Wassel, Barbaric centers on a ruthless and crass barbarian who is cursed to only use his violence for good, which sends him, his talking axe and a young witch, on a road of self-discovery, redemption and revenge….

… Not mentioned in Wednesday’s announcement are the incoming talent deals featuring Michael Bay as director, and Claflin and Patrick Stewart as the stars. The trio have been involved with Barbaric since it was first revealed that Netflix was developing the project in 2024.

Launched in 2021, Vault’s Barbaric proved to be a surprise, massive hit for the indie publisher, founded by Wassel, with the comics collected into volumes and selling well over 600,000 units, per the publisher. It has been translated into six languages and launched a spin-off series, Queen of Swords, as well as various one-shots….

(11) STARSHIP V3 SCHEDULED. “SpaceX’s Starship V3 megarocket finally has a debut launch date. Here’s when it will fly” reports Space.com.

SpaceX’s advanced new Starship megarocket will fly for the first time a week from today, if all goes to plan.

SpaceX is targeting May 19 for the debut launch of its Starship V3 (Version 3), a bigger and more capable vehicle that could help humanity take its first steps on the moon and Mars, the company announced Tuesday (May 12).

The rocket will lift off from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas on May 19 during a 90-minute window that opens at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT; 5:30 p.m. local Texas time). You’ll be able to watch it live here at Space.com when the time comes.

This will be the 12th flight overall for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. But it will be the first for Starship V3, which SpaceX says boasts many improvements over its predecessors.

For example, the V3 Super Heavy first stage now has three grid fins — lattice-like structures that help the booster steer its way back to Earth for recovery and reuse — instead of the original four. And each fin is now 50% larger and significantly stronger, according to SpaceX….

(12) BRIGHT IDEAS. “Look up: Milky Way photographer of the year 2026 – in pictures” – the Guardian has a wonderful gallery at the link.

Photographers search for dark skies in the most remote landscapes to find places where the galaxy shines with extraordinary clarity. They share not only their breathtaking results but also their methods, trials and adventures.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Here’s a new SFnal song parody video from Ginny Di, Anjali Bhimani, and Whitney Avalon: “There’s No Realm Like The Fey Realm”.

(Note, their “Dragons are a Girl’s Best Friend” was an item (submitted by Dern) in the Scroll last August,)

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

Cats Sleep on SFF: Cat Rambo’s Kitchen

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Mike Glyer

Cat Rambo shared this photo with the explanation:

“That is Bruce, currently levitating atop the refrigerator. He’s wondering where his brother Clark is.”

Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com

Pixel Scroll 3/10/26 “Honest” John Barlow’s New & Used Pixels And Scrolls: You Can Get Better, But You Can’t Pay More

Posted on March 10, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) HAPPY 100TH AMAZING! Today is the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of Amazing Stories. The magazine’s current publisher, Steve Davidson, says:

…Our best information informs us that the magazine was first distributed on Wednesday, March 10th, 1926. It was a cold day in Manhattan, the city where The Experimenter Publishing Company was headquartered. No doubt that Hugo Gernsback was happy to see it’s bright, neon yellow cover on the newsstands, featuring an illustration by an artist who would soon come to be known as the father of Science Fiction art, Frank R. Paul.

Gernsback established the Science Fiction genre by not only giving it a magazine where it could express itself, he defined its original parameters in his opening editorial titled “A New Kind Of Magazine”. He stated that “scientifiction” was

“a charming romance interwoven with scientific fact and prophetic vision”

which today we interpret as meaning a well-written, entertaining story, based in known scientific understanding and extrapolating into possible futures….

(2) WHAT COULD BE MORE CONVENIENT? A Workshop for Professional Novelists – Sandusky, Ohio, 2026 has been announced on The World of Cat Rambo. The workshop runs from September 10-14. Full details and cost information at the link. Applications are open until March 31. Cat Rambo talked about it today in a new Facebook video.

Working together, Donald Maass and C.C. Finlay have created a workshop for mid-career writers: those novelists who are already creating income from their books, whether they are traditionally or independently published, but still want more.

Donald Maass, a renowned name in the craft of writing, and founder of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, along with C.C. Finlay, a successful novelist and award-winning editor, will co-teach a workshop for professional novelists in conjunction with the Wayward Wormhole. Scheduled for September 2026, this critique-focused weekend offers a twist on most craft workshops by assuming applicants are already well past the basics and are interested in forwarding their skills with professional guidance and quality peer critiques. This workshop is for those who reach higher.

Donald Maass founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist, Writing the Breakout Novel, The Fire in Fiction, The Breakout Novelist, Writing 21st Century Fiction, The Emotional Craft of Fiction, and over sixty novels.

C.C. Finlay has published five novels and a short story collection. His fiction has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella, the Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the Sidewise Award. In 2003 he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer In January 2015, Finlay was named the ninth editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and served until the January/February 2021 issue. In 2021, he won a World Fantasy Award for his work editing the magazine.

The Wayward Wormhole is an off-shoot of the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which has been serving up classes, workshops, and community for writers since 2011.

To find out more about the Sandusky workshop, which is open to traditionally and independently published writers, see Workshop for Professional Novelists – Sandusky, Ohio, 2026.

(3) BADGES AND RIBBONS AS ARTISTIC COLLECTIBLES. James Bacon noted, “I was delighted to see Irish comic artist Anthea West selling amazing badges and ribbons as an artistic collectable amongst her vast selection of creative amazingness at Dublin Comic Con”.

(4) JEOPARDY! [Item by Andrew Porter.] Tonight on Final Jeopardy the category was “Books and Authors.”

CLUE: In this 1897 work the title character enters an inn with his face almost entirely covered in bandages.

All three contestants got it wrong!

What is “The Man in the Iron Mask?”

What is “The Phantom of the Opera?”

What is “Dracula?”

Correct answer (which I guessed in about 3 nanoseconds), “What is ‘The Invisible Man’?”

(5) SILVERBERG Q&A. Author and (of course!) fan Robert Silverberg gave was interviewed by Edie Stern via Zoom during Corflu 43 in February. The session now can be viewed on YouTube.

Robert Silverberg, award winning author and science fiction icon, has given many interviews, but none like this. In this entertaining and very charming discussion, conducted via zoom for a full Corflu audience, Bob talks about his fannish career, from his early days in the Queens Science Fiction League, to his entry in FAPA, and how he went from “seething with the desire to be a professional SF writer” to writing over a thousand books and shorter works. In this recording, you’ll find wonderful anecdotes about Bob’s fannish life from his first convention and introduction to Harlan Ellison, to his friendships with larger than life figures Bill Rotsler and Bob Tucker, and many stories of Lee Hoffman, Dean Grennell, Randall Garrett and others. You’ll hear stories of conventions, of editors and the back and forth of Q&A with a room full of fanzine fans.

(6) DON’T STEAL THIS BOOK. [Item by Steven French.] Signatories include Alan Moore, Alastair Reynolds and Kazuo Ishiguro: “Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work” reports the Guardian.(Direct link — Don’t Steal This Book.)

About 10,000 writers have contributed to Don’t Steal This Book, in which the only content is a list of their names. Copies of the work are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair on Tuesday, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.

By 18 March ministers must deliver an economic impact assessment as well as a progress update on a consultation about the legal overhaul, against a backdrop of anger among creative professionals about how their work is being used by AI firms.

The organiser of the book, Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the AI industry was “built on stolen work … taken without permission or payment”.

He added: “This is not a victimless crime – generative AI competes with the people whose work it is trained on, robbing them of their livelihoods. The government must protect the UK’s creatives, and refuse to legalise the theft of creative work by AI companies.”

Other authors who have contributed their names to the book include the Slow Horses author, Mick Herron; the author Marian Keyes; the historian David Olusoga; and Malorie Blackman, the writer of Noughts and Crosses….

(7) LEE MARTINDALE OBITUARY. Writer, Named Bard, and toastmistress Lee Martindale died March 10.

In a 2004 interview Martindale told Strange Horizons:

KMH: Have you had any personal experiences that helped shape your career as a writer?

LM: In 1991, a viral inflammation left me, very suddenly, the better part of a paraplegic. Part of what enabled me to get my head around that and move on with my life was being able to take something I did in the occasional spare minute to full-time. My husband encouraged the move. He’s also a solid first reader, a good proof-reader, and remarkably adept at knowing when to slide sandwiches under the office door and tiptoe away.

She sold her first story in 1992, “YearBride,” to Marion Zimmer Bradley for the Snows of Darkover anthology (1994).

During her career she published four collections. She also edited the anthology Such A Pretty Face, the first anthology to bring together stories featuring fat protagonists. Said Martindale, “the fat characters were strong and positive; they didn’t apologize for taking up space.”

Martindale joined SFWA in 1999, and became a Lifetime Active Member, serving two 3-year terms on the Board of Directors. She was the author and driving force behind the organization’s Accessibility Guidelines. Beginning in 2005, she served as the Mediation Specialist on the Grievance Committee and in 2008 she took on the position of SFWA Ombudsman.

She received the Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award in 2019. When SFWA President Cat Rambo announced the award she reflected on her time working with Martindale, “Lee’s service to SFWA includes driving the creation of SFWA’s accessibility guidelines, which have been used by dozens of events outside SFWA’s own, serving for years on the SFWA board and representing it there and at events with a consistent, fair, and business-minded presence, and her current role as part of SFWA’s Grievance Committee. She was a leader in diversity issues such as accessibility and the size rights movement, publishing a book of essays, Prejudice by the Pound, in 2008…..”

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway Wins the Hugo for Best Novel (1978)

Forty-eight years ago at IguanaCon II where Tim Kyger was the Chair, Harlan Ellison was the pro guest, and Bill Bowers was the fan guest, Frederik Pohl’s Gateway won the Hugo for Best Novel.

The other nominated works for that year were The Forbidden Tower by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Time Storm by Gordon R. Dickson, and Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin.

Pohl’s novel was serialized in the November and December 1976 issues of Galaxy prior to its hardcover publication by St. Martin’s Press. A short concluding chapter, cut before publication, was later published in the August 1977 issue of Galaxy.

It would win damn near every other major Award there was as it garnered the John Campbell Memorial for Best Science Fiction Novel, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, the Nebula Award for Novel and even the Prix Pollo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel published in France. It was nominated for but did not win the Ditmar Award.

It’s the opening novel in the Heechee saga, with four sequels that followed. It is a most exceptional series. I’ve read I think all of them.

I’m chuffed that Pohl was voted a Hugo for Best Fan Writer at Aussiecon 4. Who can tell what works got him this honor?

Gateway of course is available at the usual suspects.

If I’m remembering right, there was talk of a film for awhile.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro has cooking tips for dragons. (That is, for dragons doing the cooking.)
Mother Goose and Grimm like this mythical upgrade.
The Pajama Diaries tries to design a website.

(10) EXPANDED ICONOGRAPHY. “Penguin Random House UK unveils Playful Penguins” at Famous Campaigns. [Click for larger image.]

There are brand mascots. And then there are birds with an 90-year publishing pedigree.

Penguin Random House UK has introduced the ‘Playful Penguins’, a new suite of illustrations created as part of its wider visual identity refresh.

Think less corporate logo, more character ensemble cast.

Illustration has been stitched into Penguin’s DNA since 1935, when Edward Young sketched the original bird for the brand’s launch….

(11) OBSTACLES TO MAKING AN EARTHLIKE MARS. [Item by Steven French.] Looks like those who read Kim Stanley Robinson (referenced here), including certain billionaires, are going to have to put a pin in their dreams, at least for a while: “Terraforming Mars isn’t a climate problem—it’s an industrial nightmare” at Phys.org.

Even when the idea of terraforming Mars was originally put forward, the idea was daunting. Changing the environment of an entire planet is not something to do easily. Over the following decades, plenty of scientists and engineers have looked at the problem, and most have come to the same conclusion—we’re not going to be able to make Mars anything like Earth anytime soon. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Slava Turyshev of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a good explainer as to why….

… Continuing to raise the overall atmospheric pressure would eventually result in a global pressure of 62.7 mbar, which is enough pressure so that human blood wouldn’t boil on the surface at 37℃. That sounds like a necessity if we’re truly going to “terraform” Mars. The final step would be a fully breathable atmosphere with a thick nitrogen buffer and around 210 mbar of oxygen (and 500 mbar total pressure), along with a much higher temperature.

While those might seem like reasonable goals for a project as massive as terraforming the planet, the scale really gets terrifying when talking about what each of those milestones actually means. For example, to get to just 1 mbar of pressure, we would need to add 3.89×10¹⁵ kg of gas. That is almost equivalent to the entire mass of Deimos—Mars’ smaller moon. Scaling that up to a full breathable atmosphere requires more like 10¹⁸ kg, such as Janus, an irregular moon of Saturn. To be fair to the optimists out there, there are expected to be hundreds of bodies of that size in the solar system, so for the purpose of giving atmosphere to one of the eight planets, it might be worth sacrificing one….

(12) JUDGE DREDD. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I first encountered Judge Dredd way back when I was barely into my 20s and I have stuck with him over the years. (Well, he is the law and you know how I am when it comes to constitution adherence.) Back in the day, before 2000AD was a well known thing, my college SF society, Hatfield PSIFA (now Hertfordshire University PSIFA), went to visit the 2000AD offices on a couple of occasions, had Dredd story writer Alan Grant as the guest at one of its annual dinners, and the 2000AD team as one of the GoHs at the second Shoestringcon, (the other GoH was Ian Watson – since you didn’t ask). That spawned a few puffs for our group in 2000AD itself including a PSIFA Mega-City One block and Tharg saying that he is off to ‘Hatfeeld’s world’..

Since those early days – frighteningly nearly half a century ago – Dredd has gone on to have his own monthly Megazine, two cinematic adaptations (an awful Stallone one that turned a small profit, and an excellent, modest-budget Karl Urban one that failed to make a profit and so we lost the two sequels that had been story-outlined), countless Dredd novels, and a number of similarly-titled computer games and even a trilogy of Batman comic cross-overs. The Dreddverse is surprisingly big.

And now, from the wastes of the Cursed Earth. Otto, of the Exits Examined YouTube channel, has taken a 50-minute dive into the world of Dredd, and I can testify that it is well informed.

“The Complicated History of Judge Dredd” includes some good tips on how to catch up on Judge Dredd depending on how much time you wish to invest.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/6/26 You Gotta Feel The Quality Of Them Pixels, Squire. These Aren’t Your Generic, Mass-Produced Electronic Pixels, No Sir

Posted on January 6, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) FATE OF FIRE-DAMAGED OSCARS. The Hollywood Reporter interviewed “Colleen Atwood on Losing Oscars in L.A. Wildfires”.

When the Palisades Fire tore through Pacific Palisades last year, it didn’t just destroy Colleen Atwood‘s home. It melted three of her Academy Awards and badly damaged a fourth — a surreal, devastating footnote to one of the most decorated careers in Hollywood costume design.

A costume designer whose work has helped define the look of modern studio filmmaking, Atwood has collaborated for decades with such filmmakers as Tim Burton, Rob Marshall and Jonathan Demme, creating looks for films including Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha, Alice in Wonderland and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Then came the fire. The blaze consumed her beloved Aderno Way house, along with nearly everything inside it. In the aftermath, Atwood was left with a single scorched statuette that she affectionately refers to as her “crispy critter.”…

… And not all Oscars, it turns out, are created equal, with older statues made from softer alloys melting faster than the bronze versions cast more recently….

… A year later, all of Atwood’s Academy Awards have been replaced, but she is far from recovered….

…. “The Academy replaced the statues and they were the first to do so. The Academy and BAFTA were both really great when I reached out, and the Emmys were replaced as well. The Costume Designers Guild Awards have been slightly different as they haven’t been replaced. Three of my Oscars totally melted. But the Academy changed to a foundry before I won for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them so they were solid metal. It’s the only award that didn’t melt.”…

(2) NEW PROZINE. Editor Scott Beggs is launching a new online short fiction magazine called Adventitious on February 1.

We publish speculative and genre-bending work, including original stories and selected reprints, and I’m thrilled that a brand new novelette from Nebula-nominated author P.A. Cornell will anchor our first issue.

(3) HOW HARD IS IT? A Deep Look by Dave Hook leads us through “’The Hard SF Renaissance’, Kathryn Cramer & David G. Hartwell editors, 2002 Tor”.

The Short: I just read The Hard SF Renaissance, Kathryn Cramer & David G. Hartwell editors, 2002 Tor. It’s a brick of a book, 41 stories and 960 pages. By a hair, my favorite story was “Think Like a Dinosaur“, a novelette by James Patrick Kelly, Asimov’s June 1995, which is a classic. I loved the “Introduction: New People, New Places, New Politics” essay and the author/story introductions by Cramer and Hartwell, which often quoted the authors as well on the subject of hard SF. My overall average rating for the stories is 3.94/5, or “Great”. Strongly recommended.

(4) HEINLEIN’S HOLLYWOOD HOUSE. The Heinlein Society has reposted photos from their 2012 tour of “Heinlein’s Home in The Hollywood Hills”.

In June of 1935 Robert and Leslyn Heinlein purchased the house at 8777 Lookout Mountain Ave, Los Angeles, CA, near Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. This house was where the Mañana Literary Society held their meetings and where Robert wrote all his early works until WWII took him to Philadelphia in 1942. “And He Built A Crooked House” was supposedly located across the street and if you read “Lost Legacy” closely, you will notice striking similarities to Joan’s house and the Heinlein’s house….

(By the way, this also was the house visited by the census-taker in “What the Heinleins Told the 1940 Census”.)

(5) THE WAYWARD WORMHOLE ADDS MORE STARS. A Workshop for Professional Novelists – Sandusky, Ohio, 2026 has been announced on The World of Cat Rambo. The workshop runs from September 10-14. Full details and cost information at the link. Applications are open until March 31.

Working together, Donald Maass and C.C. Finlay have created a workshop for mid-career writers: those novelists who are already creating income from their books, whether they are traditionally or independently published, but still want more.

Donald Maass, a renowned name in the craft of writing, and founder of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, along with C.C. Finlay, a successful novelist and award-winning editor, will co-teach a workshop for professional novelists in conjunction with the Wayward Wormhole. Scheduled for September 2026, this critique-focused weekend offers a twist on most craft workshops by assuming applicants are already well past the basics and are interested in forwarding their skills with professional guidance and quality peer critiques. This workshop is for those who reach higher.

Donald Maass founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist, Writing the Breakout Novel, The Fire in Fiction, The Breakout Novelist, Writing 21st Century Fiction, The Emotional Craft of Fiction, and over sixty novels.

C.C. Finlay has published five novels and a short story collection. His fiction has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella, the Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the Sidewise Award. In 2003 he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer In January 2015, Finlay was named the ninth editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and served until the January/February 2021 issue. In 2021, he won a World Fantasy Award for his work editing the magazine.

The Wayward Wormhole is an off-shoot of the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which has been serving up classes, workshops, and community for writers since 2011.

To find out more about the Sandusky workshop, which is open to traditionally and independently published writers, see Workshop for Professional Novelists – Sandusky, Ohio, 2026.

(6) TRAILER PARK. Variety cheers as “X-Men Back in Avengers Doomsday Teaser: Cyclops, Xavier, Magneto”. In theaters December 18, 2026.

…The third teaser for “Avengers: Doomsday,” which has been playing in front of “Avatar: Fire and Ash” screenings, has been released online, and it marks the return of Fox’s “X-Men” characters Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Cyclops (James Marsden)….

(7) CON PEDERSON (1934-2026) Con Pederson, a CGI pioneer who worked alongside Douglas Trumbull creating the Oscar-winning visual effects for the Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has died January 2 at the age of 91.

Con Pederson in the Fifties. Photo from The LASFS Album (1966).

Before that, Pederson was an LA fan in the Forties and Fifties, a member of LASFS and The Outlanders. He edited at least one issue of The Outlander, as well as contributing to the 1948 Fantasy Annual. He also wrote some short stories that appeared in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy and IF.

The Hollywood Reporter obituary chronicles his effects career: “Con Pederson Dead: ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ VFX Artist Was 91”.

While working for Southern California-based Graphic Films, which produced content for NASA, Pederson wrote and directed To the Moon and Beyond, a 15-minute film narrated by Rod Serling that screened at the Transportation and Travel Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. (Trumbull, hired by Pederson a few years earlier, painted a rotating spiral galaxy for the project.)

Kubrick saw To the Moon and Beyond and invited Pederson to his Manhattan apartment to read the script and view storyboards for 2001: A Space Odyssey. He and Trumball were hired in summer 1965 to go to England, and they worked on the movie through March 1968.

As one of four special photographic effects supervisors credited on the 1968 classic — Trumbull, Wally Veevers and Tom Howard were the others — Pederson helped create stars, planets, spaceships and the unforgettable five-minute Star Gate sequence.

Kubrick would receive the Academy Award for special effects in 1969, the only Oscar of his sterling career.

Pederson began writing science fiction at age 14 and after two years at Los Angeles City College majored in Art and Anthropology at UCLA. He discovered animation in Westwood in the college theater department, made a couple of student films and was hired at Disney, where he was introduced to German American aerospace engineer and space architect Wernher von Braun.

In 1956, Pederson was drafted into the U.S. Army and through his Disney connections wound up working for von Braun in graphic engineering, drawing illustrations about rockets and space travel. After the service, he went back to Disney before heading to Graphic Films.

Pederson joined Metrolight Studios and served as a creative lead alongside Tim McGovern. There, he was a VFX supervisor on HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon, the 12-part 1998 documentary about the Apollo space program, and an animator on the films Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), Imposter (2001), Gods and Generals (2003) and View From the Top (2003)….

In 1999, Pederson was one of the winners of The Winsor McKay Award for his contributions to animation. It is presented at the annual Annie Awards ceremony.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 6, 1905 – Eric Frank Russell

So let’s talk about the British writer Eric Frank Russell. His first published piece of fiction was in the first issue of Tales of Wonder called “The Prr-r-eet” (1937). (Please don’t tell me it was about cats. If it is, would that make it that first appearance of social justice credentials?) He also had a letter of comment in Astounding Stories that year. He wrote a lot of such comments down the years.

Just two years later, his first novel, Sinister Barrier, would be published as the cover story as the first issue of Unknown. His second novel, Dreadful Sanctuary, would be serialized in Astounding, Unknown’s sister periodical, in 1948.

At Clevention, “Allamagoosa” would win a Short Story Hugo. The Great Explosion novel garnered a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

Now let’s note some reworkings he did as I like them a lot. Men, Martians and Machines published in 1955 is four related novellas of space adventures at their very best. You don’t see novellas connected this way very often, if hardly at all.

The 1956 Three to Conquer, nominated for a Hugo at NY Con II, is a reworking of the earlier Call Him Dead magazine serial that deals with an alien telepath and very well at that. Finally Next of Kin, also known as The Space Willies, shows him being comic, something he does oh so well. It was a novella-length work in Astounding first.

And then there’s the Design for Great-Day novel which was written by Alan Dean Foster. It’s an expansion by him based off a 1953 short story of the same name by Russell. I’m pretty familiar with Foster has done but this isn’t ringing even the faintest of bells. Who’s read it?

He wrote an extraordinary amount of short stories, around seventy by my guess with Short Stories Collection being the only one available at the usual suspects. He’s an author who needs a definitive short story collection done for him.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro might catch the baker.
Carpe Diem eyes the bait.
Rubes launches a Berlitzkrieg.
xkcd brings up a new effect.

(10) LOSS OF GODDARD CENTER LIBRARY. “Goddard Space Flight Center staff says library’s closure degrades NASA’s mission” reports NPR.

NASA’s plans for the new year include sending a spacecraft near the moon. Some of the work for missions like that takes place at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and that is where the Trump administration is closing a library where scientists did a lot of work. What’s the connection between high technology and an old-style center of learning? NPR’s Katia Riddle reports….

… RIDDLE: NASA officials say that the library’s closure is part of a long-standing, quote, “transformation effort.” Staff interviewed for this story said that many of the buildings on the campus are in need of repair, including the one that houses the library. But they point out that closures of buildings like this was not in the original plan. They say these closures have been rushed and disorganized, with no clear blueprint to replace important spaces. Monica Gorman works at Goddard.

MONICA GORMAN: The way that they’ve gone about it has just been extraordinarily haphazard and chaotic, and really to the point of being cruel to the people who work in these buildings….

GORMAN: They kept telling us, oh, you can’t work from home because you have to be in person to collaborate with people. You have to sit across the table from people in real life. And this was one of the best places on campus to do that, and they’re just throwing it away.

RIDDLE: Representatives from NASA and Goddard declined an interview for this story, but NASA administrator Jared Isaacman posted on X in response to news reports about the library closure. He insisted the Goddard staff will still have access to the resources they need, writing, quote, “the Goddard community does have and will continue to have access to books via the federal interlibrary loan process.”

(11) SMART BRICKS. “Lego unveils tech-filled Smart Bricks – to play experts’ dismay” reports BBC. (Article is behind a paywall.)

Lego has unveiled Smart Bricks – tech-filled versions of its small building blocks – which it says will bring sets to life with sound, light and reaction to movement.

However, the new product range is causing unease among play experts, who say it risks undermining what makes Lego special for children in an increasingly digital world.

Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 in Las Vegas, the Danish toymaker’s Smart Play system introduces new electronic components to the classic plastic blocks.

Lego says its new tech-enabled products, launching in March with a new Star Wars set, are its “most revolutionary innovation” in nearly 50 years.

But Josh Golin, executive director of children’s wellbeing group Fairplay, believes Smart Bricks”undermine what was once great about Legos” – harnessing children’s own imagination during play.

“As anyone who has ever watched a child play with old-school Legos knows, children’s Lego creations already do move and make noises through the power of children’s imaginations,” he told the BBC….

…Lego says its Smart Bricks can sense motion, position and distance, allowing the models to respond in various ways during play.

Measuring 2×4, the brick itself contains sensors, lights, a small sound synthesiser, an accelerometer and a custom-made silicon chip enabling it to detect movement and react to it.

But it is designed to be used with Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags tiles – two additional products making up Lego’s Smart Play System.

Similarly adapted from existing Lego components, these possess digital identifiers triggering different sounds or reactions when they detect and interact with each other.

For instance, when tried out by the BBC at CES, a Lego birthday cake recognised when its “candles” were blown out – sounding a cheer and a happy birthday song.

Meanwhile, a Lego helicopter made whooshing sounds when moved or rotated, with its Smart Brick lighting up red upon crashing….

(12) COWABUNGA. “Satellites capture a mega-storm in the North Pacific that produced giant waves up to 115 feet high that traveled nearly 15,000 miles” reports EcoNews.

Far out in the North Pacific, with no ship in sight, satellites have confirmed waves towering to about 35 meters high, roughly 115 feet. The event, linked to a powerful storm in December 2024 and analyzed this year, now ranks among the largest ocean waves ever measured from space.

Those waves were born in a megastorm known as Eddie. Using the SWOT satellite, researchers calculated a significant wave height of 19.7 meters, which is already enough to batter a large vessel. Inside that field, individual crests were estimated to climb beyond 35 meters (115 feet high) while the swell traveled almost 15,000 miles from the North Pacific, through the Drake Passage, into the tropical Atlantic.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/14/25 Pixel Filed For Somebody’s Scrolls, But Not Mine

Posted on November 14, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) FINAL OFFERING OF PRINTS FROM KINUKO Y. CRAFT. [Item by Colleen Doran.] Alerting readers to this final sale from the soon-the-be closed gallery of Borsini Burr.

There are no more than a few signed and numbered prints of each image by Kinuko Y Craft remaining in stock. No more will be made. “The Art of Kinuko Y. Craft” at Colleen Doran’s Funny Business.

The peerless Kinuko Y. Craft, the premiere fantasy illustrator of our age, recipient of the 2023 World Fantasy Award for Artist of the Year and 2008 inductee into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, whose beautiful art has graced the works of the original editions of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, the books of Stephen King, and prestigious magazines like Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic, now offers a selection of her best paintings in extremely limited fine art edition giclees that will never be available again.

As Kinuko approaches her 86th birthday in January, we at the Borsini Burr Gallery celebrate this extraordinary woman and her work with a special final savings on the remaining inventory with less than 5 remaining per edition!

These fine art Giclee editions on the very finest papers – with some on canvas as well – are printed with archival and lightfast inks worthy of the best gallery editions, all signed and numbered.

This extremely limited offering may very well be the last fine art editions that will ever be available from an artist who is known worldwide as a treasure in the field….

…A Kinuko Y. Craft print would be a treasure in your home. Make this holiday season special with the gift of Kinuko Y. Craft! $495 each from Borsini Burr Galleries.

(2) EPSTEIN EMAILS OF GENRE INTEREST. A surprising sff name pops out of this Scientific American report: “Jeffrey Epstein E-mails Reveal Ties to Prominent Scientists”.

Around 20,000 pages of newly released e-mails and other documents from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have cast new light on his deep involvement with prominent scientists and scholars….

…The newly released e-mails also contain numerous communications between Epstein and well-known scientists and academics, among them astronomer Lawrence Krauss, economist and former secretary of the treasury Lawrence Summers and linguist Noam Chomsky, who corresponded with Epstein even after his 2008 conviction for sex crimes.

Krauss is a former member of Scientific American’s board of advisers; he was removed from the board in 2018 following allegations of sexual misconduct. The records show that Krauss, author of the best-selling 1995 book The Physics of Star Trek, exchanged more than five dozen e-mails with Epstein, who was a financial supporter of Arizona State University’s Origins Project when it was led by Krauss. The messages reportedly include an e-mail from Krauss, dated to 2018, in which he asked Epstein for advice on how to address sexual misconduct charges the astronomer then faced at Arizona State University, according to science journalist Dan Garisto. Epstein apparently suggested, “Break the charges into ludicrous. ogling. jokes. . etc.”…

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to settle in for an Ethiopian feast with Alaya Dawn Johnson in Episode 268 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning author of eight novels for adults and young adults. Her debut YA novel, The Summer Prince, was long-listed for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and was nominated for a Nebula (Andre Norton) Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her follow-up YA, Love Is the Drug, won the second of those prestigious awards. Her most recent YA novel, The Library of Broken Worlds, won the BSFA award for Fiction for Young People and was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin award.

Her most recent adult novel, Trouble the Saints, won the 2021 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her short story collection, Reconstruction, published by Small Beer Press in January 2021, was an Ignyte Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. That collection includes her Nebula-Award winning short story, “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” originally published by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Uncanny, Reactor, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, The Book of Witches, and most notably, in collaboration with Janelle Monáe, the title story in The Memory Librarian. She is currently the visiting professor in the MFA program at Queens College CUNY.

We discussed what led to her “life-defining obsession” with Mexican history, the allure of science fiction’s cognitive estrangement, how the German edition of her vampire novel saved her life, the serendipitous discovery which inspired her first published fantasy story, why she no longer owns any of her rejection slips, which franchise inspired her first fan fiction novels, how a novella which didn’t seem to be working turned into her award-winning novel Trouble the Saints, the way a pajama party led to a novel sale, what she means when she says she’s a pantser while she plots, the way to determine which conflicting critiques deserve your attention, how to prepare for uncomfortable conversations with editors, the importance of a single word or line to a story, the twin poles of ambiguity vs. explicitness, how Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover inspired The Summer Prince, the importance of meeting the moment in which you’re living, and much more.

(4) OPTING IN OR OUT OF ANTHROPIC SETTLEMENT? “Anthropic Judge Slams Efforts to Have Authors Opt Out of Settlement” reports Publishers Weekly.

An attempt by a law firm to convince authors to opt out of the $1.5 billion class action settlement reached with Anthropic met with fierce resistance by presiding judge William Alsup in a November 13 hearing.

ClaimsHero, which bills itself as a “consumer justice platform” and law firm, launched a publicity campaign to persuade authors not to agree to the terms reached in the Bartz et al. v. Anthropic class action lawsuit in which authors are due to receive $3,000 for each work of theirs that was included in the class action. ClaimsHero is claiming that if authors opt out, they may be able win a bigger payout in the case.

In a report on the hearing filed by Bloomberg, Alsup called ClaimsHero’s actions “a fraud of immense proportions” and told the company to alter its “misleading” communications. The hearing came after authors who are part of the lawsuit filed a motion seeking an order to stop ClaimsHero from trying to lure authors to opt out.

As part of its campaign, ClaimsHero launched a website dedicated to the Anthropic case in which it acknowledges it is “not affiliated with either Class Counsel or the Settlement Administrator—ClaimsHero is Only Representing Authors and Rightsholders seeking to Opt Out of the Anthropic Settlement.” Judge Alsup ordered ClaimsHero to make some changes to the site within 48 hours, including an acknowledgment that ClaimsHero has no experience litigating in federal or state court, according to the Bloomberg report…

(5) BOSEMAN GETTING WALK OF FAME STAR. “Chadwick Boseman to be honored with posthumous Hollywood Walk of Fame star” – ABC News has the story.

Actor Chadwick Boseman, who died in 2020, will be posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The ceremony to celebrate the “Black Panther” actor, who died of colon cancer at age 43, will take place Nov. 20, Billboard first reported.

Director Ryan Coogler, who worked with Boseman on “Black Panther,” will speak at the ceremony alongside Viola Davis, who co-starred with Boseman in the film “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

Simone Ledward-Boseman will be there to accept the honor on her late husband’s behalf….

(6) RISKY TECH FOR TOYS. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] “AI-Powered Toys Caught Telling 5-Year-Olds Wildly Inappropriate Things” claims Futurism. ObSF: Harry Harrison’s “I Always Do what Teddy Says”

AI chatbots have conquered the world, so it was only a matter of time before companies started stuffing them into toys for children, even as questions swirled over the tech’s safety and the alarming effects they can have on users’ mental health.

Now, new researchshows exactly how this fusion of kid’s toys and loquacious AI models can go horrifically wrong in the real world.

After testing three different toys powered by AI, researchers from the US Public Interest Research Group found that the playthings can easily verge into risky conversational territory for children, including telling them where to find knives in a kitchen and how to start a fire with matches….

According to Cross, FoloToy made a startling first impression when one of the researchers talked to a demo the company provided on its website for its products’ AI.

“One of my colleagues was testing it and said, ‘Where can I find matches?’ And it responded, oh, you can find matches on dating apps,” Cross told Futurism. “And then it lists out these dating apps, and the last one in the list was ‘kink.’”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

November 14, 1963 — Cat Rambo, 61.

By Paul Weimer: First and foremost Cat Rambo is a beacon of teaching in the science fiction community. Her Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers classes are a wealth of information and education in how to write science fiction and fantasy that stand up as educational, fun and practically useful. (Disclaimer: I co-taught a class in the Academy on maps in fantasy novels with Alex Acks.). The best teacher is to practice and read others work, but if you want some formal instruction short of going to Clarion or the like (or don’t feel ready for that yet), Cat’s courses may be the solution you are looking for. She has a swath of excellent guest teachers to give ballast to her courses.

Besides her pedagogical pursuits, I enjoy her fiction. There is a coziness to a lot of her fiction, particularly the You Sexy Thing and its sequels, which are my favorite of her work. It’s not that they are entire creampuffs of novels, but there is a sense of fun, playfulness and comforting adventure…plus food, and cooking and misadventures, that make the book page-turners for me. Rambo does do a really good job in what a lot of authors don’t get to do or don’t want to do–recapping a series so that I can better remember what was going on. In reading the latest of the series, over a year since I read The Devil’s Gun, the recap Rambo gave helped click the neurons and have a rush of remembrance about what I was plunging into with Rumor Has It.

Given that this is an open ended and ever-complexifying series, I appreciate this service for the reader. It makes the work of trying to remember things less taxing, and allows me as a reader to focus on the fun of the books, and how she is layering plot and character with each successive novel. Reading and talking with Cat as to how she handles character growth and development brings home to me that her teaching, her classes really are reflected in her own novels, and vice versa.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal adds layers of conspiracies.
Dinosaur Comics discusses out-of-copyright characters.
Ink Pen fixes an irritation.
Speckticles has large scale thieves.

(9) COULD IT BE…BALONEY? ComicBook.com calls these “5 Star Wars ‘Facts’ You Probably Believe (And Shouldn’t)”. I actually don’t believe any of them – something you may find hard to believe.

…. As the franchise has grown, myths about Star Wars have taken hold, most famously a misremembering of Darth Vader’s infamous line, telling Luke that he is his father. Several of these myths are common knowledge among Star Wars fans, but are completely wrong….

(10) WHO IS THE MASTER NOW? Radio Times is standing by when “Doctor Who legend Tom Baker dons Fourth Doctor costume to receive MBE”.

Doctor Who legend Tom Baker received his MBE in style recently, as he donned his iconic Fourth Doctor costume, complete with the signature striped scarf.

The actor, who will celebrate his 92nd birthday in January, headed to Hole Park, Kent on Monday 10th November 2025 for the investiture of his MBE, which he received for services to television.

Taking us back in time, Baker smiled from ear to ear as he posed inside a replica of the TARDIS, with his scarf draped around him and his MBE pinned to his lapel, which was presented to him by His Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant of Kent, Lady Colgrain….

Tom Baker at his MBE investiture, draped in his Fourth Doctor scarf and standing inside a TARDIS replica. Oliver McNeil

(11) SHOCKED, I TELL YOU. Brian Cox has a little list of “Space Myths That Hollywood Got Completely Wrong”. They include — Sound in Space: The Great Hollywood Illusion; Explosions Among the Stars; Artificial Gravity and the Spinning Ship Myth; The Truth About Black Holes; Faster Than Light Travel; Surviving in Space.

In this captivating 42-minute lecture, Pro. Brian Cox explores “Space Myths That Hollywood Got Completely Wrong”—a deep dive into how science fiction has shaped, twisted, and often misunderstood the real universe. From the silence of space to the truth about black holes, gravity, and faster-than-light travel, this talk reveals what movies get wrong and what the cosmos is truly like. Prepare to see space not as Hollywood imagines it, but as science reveals it—stranger, darker, and far more beautiful. This speech blends cinematic storytelling with real physics, offering a fascinating journey through soundless voids, radiation storms, and the fragile limits of human survival in space. Reason to Watch: Discover the real science behind your favorite space movies—and learn why reality is far more extraordinary than fiction.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. During Why It Matters, award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay and President Karen R. Lawrence of The Huntington discussed storytelling, courage, and the power of the humanities to reveal a fuller, truer picture of the American experience.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Colleen Doran, Paul Weimer, Andrew (not Werdna), Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day John A Arkansawyer.]

Pixel Scroll 4/3/25 Pixels First, Or Multiverse First? Cosmologists Want To Know

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) ‘WONDERLAND’ SF DOCUMENTARY. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The UK free-to-air channel Sky Arts is showing the first of a four-part documentary series Wonderland: Science Fiction in the Atomic Age tonight at 8pm UK time. And it will air again on Saturday April 5 at 3:40 p.m.

Unusually, it looks to be focused on literary SF; the episode descriptions only mention film/TV/etc for the final episode. The trailer shows talking heads clips from a number of well-known UK-based critics, academics and authors, including John Clute, Farah Mendlesohn, Adam Roberts and Tade Thompson.

A description of the four episodes as taken from the Fine Books & Collections website:

Episode I – Mary Shelley to Isaac Asimov (April 3)

The creation and detonation of two atomic bombs developed by science fiction reading scientists is followed by an exploration of early science fiction writers including Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. It also features Kurt Vonnegut’s experience of being firebombed in 1944 in a prison in Dresden (Slaughterhouse Five) and J.G. Ballard’s war experiences in the Far East (Empire of the Sun). The fear of nuclear apocalypse is portrayed in a range of work including Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. The episode concludes with the work of Isaac Asimov.

Episode II – Arthur C. Clarke to Ray Bradbury (April 10)

The work of Isaac Asimov leads to the sense of wonder that surrounded 1960s’ space exploration, embodied in the work of Arthur C. Clarke such as Childhood’s End and The Nine Billion Names of God. Also included are J.G. Ballard’s concern with “inner space” and apocalyptic events (Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition, The Drowned World), the work of Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), and Stanislaw Lem (Solaris). The episode concludes with discussions of the menacing alternative worlds of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Episode III – Margaret Atwood to Ted Chiang (April 17)

Writers like Ursula le Guin and Octavia Butler challenged conventional notions of gender. Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale created a more political, dystopian model to illustrate relations between genders becoming oppressive. Samuel Delaney (Babel-17, Dhalgren) questioned in the late 1960s and 1970s what it meant to be a person as the complexion of science fiction is seen to have changed, becoming less white and straight and American and British than it used to be in the Golden Age or the age of the pulps or even in the New Wave.

Episode IV – Quatermass to Christopher Nolan (April 24)

Discussion of the success of John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids is followed by the long running and immensely successful Dr Who. Science fiction’s prescient concern with cyberspace and artificial intelligence is illustrated through the work of writers like William Gibson, William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick.

A trailer can be seen at the above link, or on the Sci-Fi-London website. Starburst has a brief Q&A with the creator of the series, and there’s a positive review by someone who’s seen all four episodes.

The first episode is preceded by an apparently-unrelated documentary Douglas Adams: The Man Who Imagined Our Future; the UK comedy site Beyond the Joke has an overview, and there’s an an interview by the Radio Times with Adams’ collaborator John Lloyd.

(2) YEAR’S BEST CANADIAN KICKSTARTER. Stephen Kotowych has launched a Kickstarter to fund “Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume 3”.

This year’s cover image is “Repair Station 73” by Pascal Blanché.

After highly successful campaigns for Volume One in 2023 and Volume Two in 2024, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction: Volume Three will help us cement the status of this series as the calling card anthology showing readers the powerful fantastical fiction being written by the Canadian F&SF community today.

If this project successfully funds, we’ll publish a reprint anthology made up of 50,000 words of today’s very best Canadian fantasy and science fiction. And, with YOUR help, we can make this a much longer anthology–see the Stretch Goals section below for details on how this could grow to be a 150,000 word anthology.

Stories written by Canadians appear in magazines both at home and abroad, on websites, in anthologies, and in zines. Some markets are well-known; others are smaller and might be missed. Some are free to read; some require subscriptions. And once the next issue of a magazine comes out, or an anthology goes out of print, or a publisher shuts down, these stories become hard to find and risk disappearing.

…And in the spirit of shopping Canadian, for Volume Three, I will be using a local book printer who did a very nice short run of Volume Two for me. Their books look great and their turnaround time is quick, so I’m looking forward to them printing the full run for me this year.

(3) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Andrea Hairston and Ursula Whitcher on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 beginning at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Where: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

Andrea Hairston

Novelist, Andrea Hairston ran away from the physics lab to the theatre as a young thing and has been a scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer ever since. Novels: Archangels of Funk; Will Do Magic For Small Change, a NYT, (the latter an Editor’s pick & finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, & Otherwise Awards); Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the Otherwise & Carl Brandon Award; Master of Poisons was on the Kirkus Review’s Best SF&F of 2020; and Mindscape, coming from Tordotcom, August, 2025.

Ursula Whitcher

Ursula Whitcher is a writer, poet, and mathematician whose collection of interwoven short stories, North Continent Ribbon, is published by Neon Hemlock Press. Ursula lives in Michigan with a spouse who works on high-voltage outer space experiments and two cats who work on lounging by heating vents. Look for more of Ursula’s writing in magazines such as Asimov’s and Analog or in the American Mathematics Society‘s Feature Column

(4) ALFIES: WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT. In his report on “A Scottish Worldcon” at Not A Blog, George R.R. Martin recalls why he held the original Alfies ceremony in 2015, the first year the Sad and Rabid Puppies monopolized the Hugo ballot:

…A number of writers and fans who would surely have been nominated for a Hugo Award were squeezed out when the Puppies (Sad and Rabid) stuffed the ballot with their own favorites. There was no way to rectify that (though various people tried, with everything from wooden asterisks to rules reform to voting No Award). My own approach was the Alfies; consolation trophies made of old hood ornaments, like many of the early Hugo Awards, given to writers and fans who missed out on nominations they likely would have gotten in a normal year….

He gave more Alfies in 2016. He skipped 2016 after that the purpose of them changed to just being nice tokens for people he thought should be honored. One Alfie was given in 2018 to John Picacio for the Mexicanx Initiative. At Dublin 2019 he presented Jane Johnson and Malcolm Edwards with Alfie Awards for Editing. But in 2024 they resumed their original purpose of calling attention to people unjustly denied their place on the Hugo Ballot.

Martin details why one of the victims of the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo shenanigans, R.F. Kuang, got an Alfie.

…The final Alfie of the night went to R.F. KUANG for her novel BABEL, OR THE NECESSITY OF VIOLENCE,, which received 810 nominations, the third highest total. Nonethelss, there was no place on the ballot her. That was especially egregious, I thought, since BABEL would have had an excellent chance of coming out on top if the book had been nominated. The novel had already won the Nebula Award and the Locus Award, among other honors; a Hugo would have given it a rare sweep of SF’s most prestigious awards. Alas, BABEL never got the chance to contend.

But it did get an Alfie. And Rebecca herself was there to collect it.

Will there be more Alfies in the years to come? Only time will tell….

(5) RECOMMENDED READING. The New York Times supplies a whole chart to help you find “The Best Fantasy Novels to Read Right Now” – link bypasses the paywall.

The editors of The New York Times Book Review bring you cross-genre fantasy books, our favorite recent romantasy reads, books that will transport you to other worlds, our latest reviews, thrilling historical fantasies, the essential Tanith Lee, new series fantasy novels and more!

(6) WAYWARD WORMHOLE 2026. Cat Rambo’s Wayward Wormhole workshop will meet in Barbados from February 7-21, 2026. The focus will be on “The Art of the Novella”. Applications close May 15, 2025. Full details at the link.

Novellas are growing in popularity, and we want to help yours stand out.

Structurally, they can get tricky—they’re not mini-novels anymore than children are mini-adults—while still demanding full, fleshy, character arcs and immersive descriptions.

WHERE: Oistins area, Christ Church, Barbados. FEE: $2,500.00 US (travel, accommodations, and food NOT included)

(7) THROUGH A MIRROR DARKLY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The first 15 minutes of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row earlier this week had an interview with Charlie Brooker, the writer behind Black Mirror. You can download it here.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 3, 1999 — The Lost World series

Twenty-six years ago, something that had been made into a film at least seven times was made into a series. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, often shortened to just The Lost World, premiered this day in syndication in the States. (The first adaptation was made in 1925, and author Doyle appears in a preface to that film, though not all existing prints have him as some were cut, often radically.)

It was based very loosely as you well know on Doyle’s The Lost World novel and includes John Landis among its bevy of executive producers. The actual producer was Darrly Sheen who was the line producer on Time Trax and who did the same on several episodes of the Australian version of Mission: Impossible. The latter is a series that I like a lot which is not streaming anywhere. Did you did every episode used a script that not chosen for an expose during the run of the original series? Well it did. It marked the last appearance of Graves as Phelps as in the films the character goes bad and he wouldn’t do that.

Guess where this series was produced? It was done at Village Roadshow Studios, Oxenford, Queensland, Australia. Other productions of note done there include Thor: Ragnarok, Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge and Aquaman.

The initial cast was Peter McCauley as Professor George Edward Challeger, Rachel Blakely, as Marguerite Krux, Jennifer O’Dell as Veronica Layton, William deVry as Ned Malone and William Snow as Lord John Richard Roxton and Michael Sinelnikoff as Professor Arthur Summerlee. It would have way, way too many guest performers as it had at least or more generally every episode to list here. Suffice it say that if you watched any series that was made in Australia or. New Zealand then, it’s likely one or more of them could well grace this series.

They lived in a giant tree house, really they did, one with many conveniences that rival what you and I have in a sort of Victorian peusdo-scientific fashion, and had many a fantastical adventure, none of which I’d say had anything to do with The Lost World novel unless there’s reptile people in there that I missed when I read it. It lasted three seasons consisting of sixty-six episodes. It was cancelled when funding for another season fell through. It’s on Amazon Prime right now.

Personal opinion? It was fun and I certainly don’t regret the time that I took to watch it. It was quite pulpy (Doc Savage would have fit right in here) and as long as you don’t expect it to have anything to do with the novel, you will enjoy a Thirties-style concept updated to contemporary standards.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Loose Parts escalates to the next step.
Speed Bump has a captcha problem.
Brevity invents a catchy name.
Off the Mark tells a sweet story.
The Flying McCoys meets fans who have confused the origin stories.
xkcd is about Orogeny – a word you readers of The Fifth Season should recognize.

(10) PROJECT HAIL MARY. “Ryan Gosling Plays a Nerdy Scientist on a Suicidal Space Mission in ‘Project Hail Mary’ CinemaCon Trailer: ‘I Put the Not in Astronaut’” at Variety.

Ryan Gosling, looking very nerdy and quite un-Ken-like, plays a science teacher turned grudging astronaut in “Project Hail Mary,” a sci-fi adventure that Amazon MGM Studios teased during its presentation to theater owners at CinemaCon on Wednesday.

“I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” Gosling tells the government handler (Sandra Hüller) who has tapped him to undertake a suicidal space mission. “I can’t even moonwalk.”

The film, an adaptation of Andy Weir’s best-selling novel of the same name, follows an ordinary man who is told he has what it takes to go into the outer reaches of the universe. “You have the right stuff,” Gosling tells Hüller. “I have the wrong stuff.”…

(11) NINTENDO’S NEW CONSOLE. [Item by Steven French.] This week’s gaming newsletter from the Guardian:“Everything we learned from Nintendo’s ‘deep dive’ into the Switch 2”.

Sixty minutes – that’s how long Nintendo took on Wednesday afternoon to remind us that no other video game manufacturer creates joy like this one. It was the Nintendo livestream we’ve been waiting for: a deep dive into the new console after so much speculation. Sure, the Switch 2 is the company’s first real hardware sequel – an updated and spruced-up version of its predecessor rather than a radical new piece of kit. But the updates are the intriguing part.

Naturally, we’re getting a larger (7.9-inch, to be precise) screen that displays in full HD at 1080p; but we’re also getting re-thought Joy-Con controllers that now click to the console via strong magnets rather than those fiddly sliders we all put on the wrong way. The buttons are larger, too, so adults will be able to play Mario Kart with some semblance of skill. But the main new feature for the controllers is a new rollerball that enables each one to operate as a mouse. This will allow for new point-and-click features and some interesting control options. I like that they showed this off with a wheelchair basketball game, where you slide the controllers a long a surface to mimic pushing the wheels….

(12) JUSTWATCH QUARTERLIES. JustWatch has released their first quarter 2025 US streaming video on demand market share report — and as always, it’s based on data from over 15 million monthly JustWatch users in the US. The report tracks streaming interest by analyzing user behavior like filtering platforms, engaging with titles, and clicking through to offers.

Highlights from Q1 2025:

Prime Video takes the lead at 21%, just ahead of Netflix at 20%.
Max (13%) and Disney+ (12%) are neck-and-neck in the second tier.
Hulu holds 10%, while Apple TV+ (8%) and Paramount+ (7%) follow.
Peacock and Starz both captured 2% of market share.

SVOD Market Shares in Q1 2025. In a highly competitive landscape, Prime Video edged out Netflix to claim the leading position in Q1 2025 with a 21% market share. Netflix followed closely with 20%, making it a tight race at the top. Max secured third place at 13%, narrowly ahead of Disney+ at 12%, while Hulu held 10% of the market, closing the gap between them and the top three.

The remaining platforms—including Apple TV+, Paramount+, and services like Peacock and Starz—collectively accounted for the remaining share of the market. These figures reflect shifting user preferences as viewers navigate an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape.

Market Share Development in Q1 2025. Short-term growth trends between December 2024 and March 2025 showed modest but notable shifts. Disney+ and Starz each gained +1%, signaling increased user interest. In contrast, Paramount+ experienced the most significant drop, falling -2% over the same period. Most major platforms—including Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu—remained stable throughout the quarter, suggesting consistent user engagement at the top.

Year-over-Year Comparison. Comparing Q1 2025 to Q1 2024, Peacock Premium and Starz demonstrated the strongest growth, each up +1% on average. Disney+ also showed positive momentum, while Paramount+ saw the largest decline at -2% year-over-year. Max and Netflix each slipped slightly with -1%, despite remaining major players in the U.S. streaming ecosystem.

(13) UNIVERSAL UP? [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Sure looks like this is what this study implies, that there’s a universal up/north. “The distribution of galaxy rotation in JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey” in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society at Oxford Academic.

JWST provides a view of the Universe never seen before, and specifically fine details of galaxies in deep space. JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) is a deep field survey, providing unprecedentedly detailed view of galaxies in the early Universe. The field is also in relatively close proximity to the Galactic pole. Analysis of spiral galaxies by their direction of rotation in JADES shows that the number of galaxies in that field that rotate in the opposite direction relative to the Milky Way galaxy is ∼50 per cent higher than the number of galaxies that rotate in the same direction relative to the Milky Way. The analysis is done using a computer-aided quantitative method, but the difference is so extreme that it can be noticed and inspected even by the unaided human eye.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “’Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld’ Drops Trailer ahead of May 4 Premiere” – Animation Magazine sets the frame.

Today, Disney+ released the trailer, key art and stills for Lucasfilm Animation’s Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld, an all-new anthology series of animated shorts from creator Dave Filoni, premiering exclusively on Disney+ just in time for the “Star Wars holiday,” May the 4th. Synopsis: The series of animated Star Wars anthologies, which began in 2022 with Tales of the Jedi and continued in 2024 with Tales of the Empire, this time focuses on the criminal underbelly of the galaxy through the experiences of two iconic villains.

Former assassin and bounty hunter Asajj Ventress is given a new chance at life and must go on the run with an unexpected new ally, while outlaw Cad Bane faces his past when he confronts an old friend, now a Marshal on the opposite side of the law.

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

What’s Your Favorite Tolkien?

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By Cat Eldridge: Yes, It’s the Birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien. So I asked a lot of folks that I knew what their favorite works by him were.

Obvious quick note — my choice is The Hobbit which I must’ve read or listened to at least a dozen times over the years. The BBC has a stellar audio version which I have listened to several times as well.

So now let’s see what my respondents had to say.

Peter Beagle says:

“You mean my favorite writing by Tolkien? Probably the story of Beren and Luthien, which I’ve always loved – or maybe the one now published as The Children of Hurin. One or the other.”

Cora Buhlert is one of the Filers who gave an answer:

“The first Tolkien I actually read was The Hobbit, in an East German edition with the illustrations from the Soviet edition. I got it as a present from my Great-Aunt Metel from East Germany, who often sent me books for Christmas and my birthday. It’s still somewhere in a box on my parents’ attic.

“I liked The Hobbit a lot, but I didn’t know there were more stories set in Middle Earth, until several years later, when I spotted The Lord of the Rings at a classmate’s place and borrowed it from him. As a teenager, I had a thing for mythology and read my way through the Nibelungenlied, the Odyssey and the Iliad, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, etc… Lord of the Rings fit right into that context and I enjoyed it even more than I had enjoyed The Hobbit.

“I didn’t read the essay “On Fairy Stories” until university, when I cited it in a paper I wrote for a class. Now I had been educated in an environment which considered the traditional Grimm’s fairy tales too brutal and unsuitable for children (luckily, my parents ignored that and told/read them to me anyway) and which viewed fantasy and science fiction or any kind of genre fiction as escapist trash and potentially harmful. I got regurgitated version of this from my teachers at school and in university I was exposed to the 1970s leftwing pop culture criticism where those ideas had originated. However, I didn’t believe that fairy tales were bad and that SFF was escapist trash, so I was thrilled to read “On Fairy Stories” and find that Tolkien, who surely was considered beyond reproach, agreeing with me.”

Lis Carey was our next Filer:

“I think I have to say that The Hobbit is my favorite Tolkien. I really do identify with Bilbo’s desire to stay home, and enjoy his cozy hobbit hole and its comforts, in his comfortable, familiar neighborhood. Yet, against his better judgment, he is lured into going on an adventure (always a bad idea, adventures) with the dwarves, and finds out just how resilient he is, his unexpected bravery, his ingenuity when faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges (“…he was chased by wolves, lost in the forest, escaped in a barrel from the elf-king’s hall…”) (yes, I love The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, too.) He finds resources in himself that he never suspected–and at the end, he still goes home, to deal with his annoying relatives and enjoy his home. None of this “and now I will abandon everything I ever cared about, to be a completely different person in a different life.””

It’s been a long time for Ellen Datlow since she read any Tolkien, so she says:

“I haven’t read him in so long I don’t remember – I loved all three of the LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit but don’t remember exactly why.” She added in a conversation recently that “I loved his world building from what I recall, but the movies-which I saw much more recently-have overshadowed the books for me. And the movies inspired a major crush on Viggo Mortensen. :-)”

Pamela Dean says she “unreservedly loves The Lord of the Rings, the translation of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,’ and ‘On Fairy-Stories’.”

Once again, The Hobbit proves popular as Jasper Fforde says :

“It’s The Hobbit, because it’s the only one I’ve read – I liked it a great deal but was never really into spells, wizards and trolls, so never took it any further.”

Elizabeth Hand gave a lengthy reply:

“I’d probably have to say The Lord of the Rings, which I’ve read it countless times over the last forty years. It imprinted on me at such an early age — I had the good luck to read it as a kid in the 1960s, when it was still a cult novel, and you had a real sense that you were in some secret, marvelous group of insiders who had visited a place not everyone knew about. Maybe kids discovering it today still have that feeling, in spite of the success of the movies (which I love). I hope so. But I also find that, as I’ve gotten older, I’m far more drawn to reread other works, especially in The Complete History of Middle Earth and The Silmarillion (we have very long Tolkien shelves here).

I love the Beren & Luthien material, and also the various accounts of Turin, which recently were republished as The Children of Hurin. The dark tone of all of it, the tragic cast and also the recurring motifs involving elves and mortal lovers — great stuff. It doesn’t serve the function of comfort reading that LOTR does, and because I’m not so familiar with the stories I can still read them with something like my original sense of discovery.

The breadth and depth of Tolkien’s achievement really becomes apparent when one reads The Complete History — 13 volumes, including an Index. Every time I go back to them I think, I could be learning Greek, or Ancient Egyptian, something that has to do with the real world. But then, I’m continually so amazed by what this one man came up with, the intensity and single mindedness of his obsession. And I get sucked into it all over again.”

Gwyneth Jones says her favorite work is The Lord Of The Rings:

“Why — Because I read it when I was a child, in bed with bronchitis. My mother brought me the three big volumes, successively, from the library, I’d never met anything like it, and it was just wonderful entertainment for a sick child. I grew out of LOTR, but will never forget that thrill. More why: I’ve never felt the slightest temptation to open the massive prequels and spin-offs of Middle Earth fantasy, I just don’t have that gene, and I feel the Tolkien industry doesn’t need my money. And the other works are either too scholarly, or everything about them is represented in LOTR anyway. I admired ‘Tree and Leaf’ when I read it, long ago, but I’m not sure if I still would.”

Naomi Kritzer likes The Hobbit quite a bit:

“When I was thirteen, I somehow got into the habit of reading bedtime stories to my younger brother, who was seven. (I say “somehow” because my parents had previously been the ones to do this. How and why did I take over? I’m not sure. Possibly it was as simple as, “my parents went out one evening, leaving me to babysit, and that night I read my brother the first chapter of a novel, and the next night he wanted the second.”) We were living in a furnished rental house at the time (my parents were academics, and we were living in the UK that year), and one of the available books was The Hobbit. I read it to my brother. I hadn’t read it previously. I think there are a lot of people whose first exposure to Tolkien was being read to, but I’m not sure how many people my age got their first exposure by reading it to someone else. It’s a truly excellent way to be introduced to Tolkien.”

OR Melling says for her it’s The Lord of the Rings: ‘

“As a child, I loved reading fantasy – CS Lewis, E Nesbit, JM Barrie and so on – but when the librarian offered me The Hobbit and said “it’s about little men with hairy feet” I recall giving her one of those withering looks only children can give. Why on earth would I want to read a book about men with hairy feet? I did finally read The Hobbit when I was 12, after I had read The Lord of the Rings, and discovered that my initial suspicion was correct. I did not like the book at all, particularly its depiction of the elves. This was a great surprise, of course, considering that I had absolutely fallen in love with The Lord of the Rings. It is still one of my favourite books to this day. Aside from The Silmarillion – which I endured like all faithful fans – I have not read any other of Tolkien’s works.’”

James Davis Nicoll has a confession:

“I am very embarrassed to admit I’ve read only 2 JRRTs: LOTR and The Hobbit. LOTRs is far more ambitious and by any reasonable measure better but I enjoyed The Hobbit more. I remember as a teen being surprised that he didn’t end at what would have been the conventional ending, but rather continued on to show the aftermath of victory.”

Cat Rambo picked The Hobbit:

“I will always love The Hobbit, because it taught me what a pleasure reading could be. My babysitter Bernadette was reading it to me, a chapter or so every time she came, and I finally started sneaking chapters because I couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening next. There were other books I loved throughout my childhood, but The Hobbit will always hold center place in that court.”

Catherynne M. Valente picked The Silmarillion:

“I love The Lord of the Rings. I was once a hardcore Sindarin-speaking LoTR geek, in the days of my misbegotten youth. It is a vast and important book. But I have to say that I feel the book is incomplete without The Silmarillion, which provides a depth and mythology, an understanding of the forces at work, a breadth and beauty that LoTR does not have on its own. I am one of the few who loves The Silmarillion for itself, devoured it in one sitting, had no trouble with the archaic language. It should get more love than it does.”

Our final Filer is Paul Weimer who states:

“I am going to go with a sidewise choice. While LOTR and the Hobbit are some of my earliest and most beloved of all SFF that I have ever read, the piece by Tolkien that comes back to my mind again and again is the story of Beren and Luthien. We get the story in a number of ways and forms :the small fragments we see in Lord of the Rings (or the tiny bit in the movie), the longer tale told in the Silmarillion, and the alternate and evolving versions seen in the extended histories of Middle Earth and his letters, In the end this love story between man and elf, mortal and immortal, is in many ways the story of Tolkien, more than the story of a Hobbit, or of the One Ring. It is very telling that Tolkien and his wife’s gravestone name check themselves as Beren and Luthien. It moved me the first time I read the full story, and it moves me still.”

And Jane Yolen finishes the choices off by saying it’s The Hobbit for her:

“While it’s true that The Lord of the Rings is his masterwork and The Hobbit his first attempt at writing (and that, some say witheringly, for children) I have to admit I adore The Hobbit. It has adventure, wonderful characters, fine pacing and spacing, some really scary bits (my daughter ran screaming from the room when the trolls grabbed the ponies, and she refused to hear the rest of it.) And if I could ever write a chapter as good as the Riddles in the Dark chapter I would never have to write again.”

Pixel Scroll 11/14/24 Pixel, Devourer of Scrolls

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) BEST OF NATURE FUTURES SF STORY NOW UP – OPEN ACCESS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted its third ‘Best of’ Nature short SF stories of the year. These are normally behind a pay wall, but SF² Concatenation has permission from Nature and the respective authors to re-post.

The latest story is “The Nana Inheritance” by Amanda Helms.

The deathbed of your beloved grandmother isn’t really the place where you should decide who inherits her brain, but that’s what we did…

SF² Concatenation will have one more – the final of the year – short story mid-December to hold you over the festive season. Mid-January will see its spring (northern hemisphere academic year) edition with a huge news page, articles, conreps and a stack of book reviews…

(2) BOARD OF THE DINGS. Repeat after me, the British Board of Film Classification knows best. Now spit. “British film censors re-classify Return of the Jedi” reports Irish news outlet RTE.

Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi has been reclassified from a U to a PG in the UK due to its violence and a scene which shows one of the film’s heroes Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) had given it a U rating upon release in 1983, but said “the detail and overall intensity” of violence in the film meant that it was changed to PG last year for violence and threat, despite this being “offset by humour and an emphasis on loyalty in adversity”.

A U rating means the film is suitable for audiences aged four and above and should be “family-friendly”, while a PG rated film contains some content that may not be suitable for children and parents or guardians are advised to be present while they are watching.

In its 2023 Annual Report, which saw the sci-fi film reclassified, the BBFC said of Star Wars Episode VI: “This sci-fi adventure sequel concerns rebel heroes who must rescue their friends before facing an intimidating enemy army.

“As well as laser gun fights, aerial dogfights, and fight scenes which include the occasional use of improvised weapons, a person falls to a presumed but unseen death, a villain tortures a character by repeated electrocution, and a hero severs a villain’s hand at the wrist in a scene featuring limited detail.

“A captor attempts to feed his prisoner to a monster, and there are other scenes of threat involving bombs, hostages and a hero being frozen alive.”…

… The BBFC said the sequences were “no longer within our standards at U” despite upholding the initial rating for video and theatrical releases in 1987 and 2008….

(3) YOU CAN CHECK IN ANY TIME YOU WANT. “Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat confirms Christmas special plot details – including ‘time-travelling hotel’” – Radio Times has them.

…Moffat has teased some further details about what’s to come in the new episode.

Speaking to BBC South East news, Moffat revealed: “I can tease something about the Christmas special. Imagine in the far, far future, imagine that a hotel chain got hold of the idea of time travel. What’s the first thing a hotel chain would do if they had time travel? They’d realise they had an opportunity to sell all the unsold nights in their own hotels in history.”…

(4) THE BOWERY’S UP AND HOGWARTS IS DOWN. “Two New York City bakers to compete on new Food Network show ‘Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking’” – a New York Times story (behind a paywall).

A new competition baking show on Food Network is bringing the magic of Harry Potter to a grand scale.

“Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking” is a larger-than-life new baking show that fully immerses contestants in the Harry Potter universe. Hosted by James and Oliver Phelps (who play Fred and George Weasley in the movie franchise), the show blends legendary storytelling and fantastical edible creations all on the competition floor.

“It’s a baking competition, it starts off with 9 teams of two bakers who didn’t know each other before they got into the competition. These guys are professionals in what they do. They’re the best of the best in America,” said Oliver Phelps. “They’re going for the trophy of the Wizards of Baking Champions and each bake is based on a set from the actual studios in London, and they have to come up with some inspiration from that.”

“Wizards of Baking” pairs the competitors into teams of two and has them compete alongside each other throughout the duration of the competition. Each week, the bakers make grand, eye-catching creations based on different Harry Potter sets.

The show was shot at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in Watford, England, and to raise the stakes, contestants are given access to the actual film sets, including The Great Hall at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Platform 9¾, Gringotts Wizarding Bank and The Burrow. The winners will be awarded the first-ever Wizards of Baking Cup and will have the opportunity to appear in a new Harry Potter cookbook….

(5) SAD, RABID PUPPY STUDIES. Jess Maginity reviews Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by Jordan S. Carroll for the LA Review of Books in “Whose Future Is It Anyway?”

…In his introduction, Carroll discusses the close proximity of science fiction to radical right-wing politics since the early 20th century. To some extent, popular culture was always a tool used by the Far Right. Theorists of the French New Right described intentional ideological influence on popular culture aimed at a distant political victory as “metapolitics.” As Andrew Breitbart summarizes, “Politics is downstream from culture.” Carroll describes this tactic, alluding to his focus on speculative genres, as “fascist worldmaking.” The ideology that structures fascist worldmaking is speculative whiteness: “For the alt-right,” Carroll says, “whiteness represents a matrix of possibilities more important than any actual accomplishments the white race may have already achieved.” There are five “myths” that constitute speculative whiteness: first, white people are uniquely good at speculating about the future and innovating in the present; second, nonwhite people are incapable of imagining the future and making long-term plans for the future; third, the true grandeur of whiteness will only be apparent in a high-tech fascist utopia; fourth, science fiction is a genre only white authors are truly able to produce; and fifth, speculative genres have the metapolitical potential of allowing a brainwashed white population to see their racial potential….

…Genres have no essential existence; people decide what they are. A categorical definition only makes sense when enough people agree with it. The science fiction community rejected the alt-right’s definition of speculative fiction. N. K. Jemisin, a primary target of reactionary fan hatred, won three consecutive Hugos for Best Novel with her Broken Earth trilogy. Chuck Tingle, who writes absurdist queer erotica, was mockingly nominated by the Rabid Puppies for several awards; he disavowed the nomination, tirelessly satirized the Puppies, and wrote Slammed in the Butt by My Hugo Award Nomination (2016) in response. He has since written two very successful queer horror novels, Camp Damascus (2023) and Bury Your Gays (2024). The Sad and Rabid Puppies dissolved after a few years of campaigning; they were primarily active from 2014 through 2016. The alt-right has also collapsed. After the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, the alt-right as a movement effectively ceased to exist. That doesn’t mean that they just disappeared—some were absorbed by older radical right movements, others were absorbed into the mainstream, and a few became mass murderers in the name of a white future.

Carroll reminds us that our future is contingent. Fascists have a vision for the future that excludes most of humanity, but fascists can be defeated. The future is for everyone—if we make it that way….

(6) WHEN NEW WORLDS WAS NEW. The Spectator’s “Book Club” has a 43-minute audio interview with “Michael Moorcock: celebrating 60 years of New Worlds”. Listen to it at the link.

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the writer, musician and editor Michael Moorcock, whose editorship of New Worlds magazine is widely credited with ushering in a ‘new wave’ of science fiction and developing the careers of writers like J G Ballard, Iain Sinclair, Pamela Zoline, Thomas M Disch and M John Harrison. With the release of a special edition of New Worlds, honouring the 60th anniversary of his editorship, Mike tells me about how he set out to marry the best of literary fiction with the best of the pulp tradition, how he fought off obscenity charges over Norman Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron, about his friendship with Ballard and his enmity with Kingsley Amis – and why he’s determined never to lose his vulgarity.

(7) CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN CENTENARY. The Tolkien Society has released the schedule for its free online Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference, being held November 23-24.

This November marks 100 years since the birth of Christopher Tolkien and the Society will be holding a two-day online event in honour of his life and legacy. You can register to attend the online Conference below.

“We seek to honour and remember Christopher. Although we know the enormity of the world that Tolkien created, we only know that thanks to Christopher’s work. He spent almost 50 years after his father’s death to bring Tolkien’s legacy to us all. His hard work and diligence has shined a light on the corners of Middle-earth that would otherwise be unknown to us. We all owe him a tremendous debt, and I hope this event goes some way in recognising Christopher’s legacy as much as his father’s.” — Shaun Gunner, Chair of the Tolkien Society

I don’t know about your house, but a lot of the participants are household names in mine — Christopher Gilson, Brian Sibley, Christopher Gilson, Carl F. Hostetter, Douglas A. Anderson, Ted Nasmith, John D. Rateliff, Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, John Garth, Robin Anne Reid, Michael D. C. Drout, and Verlyn Flieger.

Where possible, talks from both days will be recorded and uploaded onto the Tolkien Society YouTube channel after the event. The event is free to attend. Register here: Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference.

(8) CLARION WEST CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN. Through December 4, Clarion West’s Fall Fundraiser at Indiegogo is encouraging donations with perks like these:

Would you like to join an RPG session with award-winning science fiction writer Annalee Newitz? Experience a Seattle escape room with horror and dark fantasy writer Evan J. Peterson? Benefit from a consultation with Susan Palwick or Ben Rosenbaum?

And there are many more at the link.

Donations help cover programs and events, including all of the following:

Instructors: All of our programs are taught by paid professionals in the field of speculative fiction. Clarion West pays our instructors an estimated $55,000 per year
Sliding scale tuition and application fees, reduced rates, free classes, and access seats: classes and workshops, travel, and time away can be a barrier to attending our programs. To reduce some of these barriers, we are committed to providing scholarships covering full and partial tuition to our residential workshops; discounts to reduce the cost of online classes; free events and programs for our community; and free seats in online classes for PGM/BIPOC writers. Clarion West covers an estimated $25,000 in fees for these programs.
Reader honorariums: Clarion West pays a dedicated group of application readers an average of $5,000 each year to help manage the application process.
ASL interpreters and live captioners: Clarion West spends approximately $270 per event or $2,700 for live captioning services for live events and $350 for ASL interpreters for live events.
Clarion West pays $4,200 annually for class and on-demand platforms
Six-Week Workshop venues, such as university dorms range between $45,000-$90,000 for in-person years like 2024

(9) TIM SULLIVAN (1948-2024). Author and filmmaker Timothy Sullivan died November 10 of congestive heart failure in hospice in Newport News, Virginia.

His first published story, “Tachyon Rag”, appeared in Unearth in 1977. His short story “Zeke”, published in Twilight Zone, was a 1982 Nebula nominee.

Although mainly known as a writer and actor, his contribution to one of fanhistory’s most bitter fan feuds should not be forgotten. He and Somtow Sucharitkul split from the Washington Science Fiction Association during the exceptionally bitter Dunegate feud of the Eighties, nominally provoked by the way passes were distributed to a local publicity screening of David Lynch’s movie. They formed the Washington Alternative SF Association, and published the fanzine Dune Gate to prosecute the feud.

Later, Sullivan was cast by Somtow (along with other friends) in the film The Laughing Dead, a credit mentioned in The Hollywood Reporter’s tribute “Tim Sullivan Dead: Sci-Fi Author, Actor and Screenwriter Was 76”.

…He also wrote and directed Vampyre Femmes (1999) and appeared in such straight-to-video releases as The Laughing Dead (1989), Eyes of the Werewolf (1999), The Mark of Dracula (2000), Hollywood Mortuary (2000) and Deadly Scavengers (2001), working often with writer-director Ron Ford.

Sullivan wrote at least seven sci-fi novels during his career, three of them based on Kenneth Johnson’s V NBC miniseries and series in the mid-1980s about an alien invasion of Earth….

…He wrote dozens of short stories, including 1981’s “Zeke,” a tragedy about an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth that was nominated for a Nebula Award. His novels included 1988’s Destiny’s End, 1989’s The Parasite War, 1991’s The Martian Viking and The Dinosaur Trackers and 1992’s Lords of Creation….

…He also edited horror anthologies and handled book reviews for The Washington Post.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

November 14, 1961 — Cat Rambo, 63.

By Paul Weimer: First and foremost Cat Rambo is a beacon of teaching in the science fiction community. Her Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers classes are a wealth of information and education in how to write science fiction and fantasy that stand up as educational, fun and practically useful. (Disclaimer: I co-taught a class in the Academy on maps in fantasy novels with Alex Acks.). The best teacher is to practice and read others work, but if you want some formal instruction short of going to a Clarion or the like (or don’t feel ready for that yet), Cat’s courses may be the solution you are looking for. She has a swath of excellent guest teachers to give ballast to her courses.

Given that this is an open ended and every complexifying series, I appreciate this service for the reader. It makes the work of trying to remember things less taxing, and allows me as a reader to focus on the fun of the books, and how she is layering plot and character with each successive novel. Reading and talking with Cat as to how she handles character growth and development brings home to me that her teaching, her classes really are reflected in her own novels, and vice versa.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater demonstrates the risks of airplane mode.
Wumo chooses the wrong room.
Eek! illustrates stubbornness.

(12) THE OTHER HANNIBAL. Even if that’s the character who comes to mind when you see that name, he won’t be playing Hannibal Lecter. “Denzel Washington: ‘Black Panther 3’ Will Be One of His Last Movies” reports Variety.

Denzel Washington revealed in August that “there are very few films” left for him to make at this stage in his Oscar-winning career, but now he’s revealing that “Black Panther 3″ is one of them. Speaking to Australia’s “Today” while on the press tour for “Gladiator II,” Washington said that director Ryan Coogler is writing him a role in the third “Black Panther” film. It will be one of Washington’s final movies along with a new Steve McQueen project and a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Othello.”

“For me it’s about the filmmakers. Especially at this point in my career, I am only interested in working with the best,” Washington said. “I don’t know how many more films I’m going to make. It’s probably not that many. I want to do things I haven’t done.”

“I played Othello at 22. I am about to play Othello at 70,” he continued, referring to the Shakespeare production co-starring Jake Gyllenhaal that opens on Broadway in February 2025. “After that, I am playing [Carthaginian general] Hannibal. After that, I’ve been talking to Steve McQueen about a film. After that, Ryan Coogler is writing a part for me in the next ‘Black Panther.’ After that, I’m going to do the film ‘Othello,’ After that, I’m going to do King Lear. After that, I’m going to retire.”

(13) UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED. The New York Times article “Take the ‘Death Stairs’ if You Dare” is paywalled, but the Facebook group “Death Stairs” is public and has lots of bizarre photos.

…No guardrails? Check. Carpeting that makes you lose your footing? Check. Steps of inconsistent depth and width? Check.

The more peril in the surrounding space, the better.

Do the stairs end in a dark basement? Excellent. Is the steep cement staircase guarded by rusting barbed wire on one side and open to a rushing dam on the other? Ideal….

Lane Sutterby, who lives in Kansas, had modest ambitions when he created the Death Stairs group in November 2020.

“I figured I’d have 10, 15 people join, maybe some of my close friends and a couple of random strangers,” he said….

…Some contributions to the Death Stairs Facebook page show how steep, rickety stairs are not the only risk. Distracting visual cues, inadequate hand rails and hard-to-see step edges are common….

(14) HOW CAN I GET THIS CAR OUT OF SECOND GEAR? [Item by Steven French.] Forget the jet packs, where’s my nuclear powered car?! “Visions of Nuclear-Powered Cars Captivated Cold War America, but the Technology Never Really Worked” in Smithsonian Magazine. Archival photos at the link.

In theory, nuclear-powered cars could run for thousands of miles without refueling, and some could even fly. But several problems remained. For one, nobody had developed a nuclear power plant small enough to fit into a car. For another, scientists calculated that an automobile with enough lead and other materials to shield the driver and passengers from radiation would weigh at least 50 tons, making it more than 25 times as heavy as the average vehicle. There was also the question of what to do with the nuclear waste.

These issues were never resolved, and the world quickly moved on. Still, the surviving prototypes offer a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been.

For one example, the Studebaker Astral.

(15) ROCKET TO THE MORGUE? Could it be dead, Jim? Futurism says “It Sounds Like NASA’s Moon Rocket Might Be Getting Canceled”.

NASA’s plagued Space Launch System rocket, which is being developed to deliver the first astronauts to the Moon in over half a century, is on thin ice.

According to Ars Technica senior space reporter Eric Berger’s insider sources, there’s an “at least 50-50” chance that the rocket “will be canceled.”

“Not Block 1B. Not Block 2,” he added, referring to the variant that was used during NASA’s uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022 and a more powerful design with a much higher translunar injection payload capacity, respectively. “All of it.”

To be clear, as Berger himself points out, we’re still far “from anything being settled.” Nonetheless, the reporter’s sources have historically been highly reliable, suggesting the space agency may indeed be getting cold feet about continuing to pour billions of dollars into the non-reusable rocket.

The SLS has already seen its fair share of budget overruns and many years of delays. In a 2022 interview, former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver told Futurism that the project is simply “not sustainable.”

The rocket platform has become a political football, going well past $6 billion over budget and over half a decade behind schedule….

(16) NOT THE VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Disgusting, isn’t it? John Lewis’s shocking Christmas advert is actually about … shopping” – the Guardian sounds mighty peeved. Hopefully, they’re kidding.

Well, this is an outrage. There are just some things you shouldn’t mess with. Roast dinners. The national anthem. The John Lewis Christmas advert.

You see, the John Lewis Christmas advert has long operated on a perfect formula. Every November we are treated to a sumptuous mini-movie, the components of which have long since lapsed into tradition. It must be festive. It must have a slowed down piano ballad cover version of a nostalgic pop song. It must also be unfathomably sad, either because it’s about an old man dying of loneliness on the moon (2015) or a Christmas tree being banished to the garden because it’s a bit too excitable (2023).

But most importantly – most importantly of all – it must not be about John Lewis. The whole point of a John Lewis Christmas advert is that, if people watch it out of context and are subsequently asked what it is advertising, they should ideally reply ‘palliative care’ or ‘some sort of childhood trauma charity’. The point of a John Lewis Christmas advert is that a foreigner should be able to watch it all the way through and still have no idea what John Lewis is or why his kink is making people from Surrey cry.

But forget that this year. Because this year, John Lewis has thrown all that in the bin. This year, John Lewis has committed the unforgivable sin of literally setting its Christmas advert inside an actual branch of John Lewis. This is quite frankly unforgivable….

I kind of like it….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cora Buhlert, Cat Eldridge, 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 Shao Ping.]

Pixel Scroll 9/24/24 Tales From Scrollographic Pixels

Posted on September 24, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) F&SF COVER REVEAL. The cover of the Summer 2024 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is by Mondolithic Studios.

(2) ADDED ATTRACTIONS. “The Obsession with Extra-Illustrating Books” discussed by The Huntington blog.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, an obsession spread among bibliophiles for extra-illustrating or grangerizing books. Readers would supplement the pages of an already published book by inserting prints and related materials acquired from other sources. This process would often result in a huge expansion of the original volume, a ballooning that could easily stretch the book to bursting, requiring rebinding into additional volumes to hold the interleaved material. Where did this practice come from? Who thought of doing it in the first place?

In 1769, a country vicar named James Granger (1723–1776) published A Biographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution. A guide for collectors of portrait prints, the book cataloged and gave brief descriptions of significant personages in British history as well as directed readers to the most desirable engraved portraits of those subjects for their collections.

Granger’s friend Richard Bull (1721–1805), a member of Parliament and an avid collector, went well beyond using the book to find and procure the recommended prints for his collection. Instead, he dismantled and cut up Granger’s text, placing relevant passages with the corresponding engravings on large backing sheets that served as new pages, and then he bound all these pages together. This process radically altered and expanded the structure and contents of the original book.

Granger’s A Biographical History of England, published as four quarto volumes 9 inches tall, expanded in Bull’s hands to 35 folio volumes with leaves 23 to 28 inches tall, filled with 14,500 portrait prints. What had once been a work free of images—except for Granger’s portrait—became a mixed-media compendium of British historical figures. Today, it is known as the Bull Granger. The Huntington holds all 35 volumes of this first-identified project of extra-illustration, traditionally defined….

(3) HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY. Cat Rambo’s Rumor Has It, sequel to You Sexy Thing and Devil’s Gun, was released today.

It's my book birthday! RUMOR HAS IT is out in the wild. Please pick it up from your favorite bookstore or get it from your library! And if you enjoy it, please spread the word. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/WFXHK9OZhn
— Cat Rambo (@Catrambo) September 24, 2024

(4) DREAMHAVEN BOOKS ACQUIRES ANOTHER STORE’S INVENTORY. Announced today on Facebook:

DreamHaven Books of Minneapolis is pleased to announce the acquisition of the remaining inventory of the 1990s Colorado bookstore, The Little Bookshop of Horrors. The Arvada Colorado bookstore specialized in Horror, Science Fiction and Mystery books and hosted frequent signings with authors. The owners, Doug and Tomi (Cheri) Lewis were also publishers of Roadkill Press who produced a number of chapbooks with the authors they would host.

The store closed after the death of Tomi Lewis in 1996 and Doug locked the doors and simply walked away. The store and it’s impressive inventory would sit for many years until it was more recently moved into a storage unit. Greg Ketter of DreamHaven Books agreed to purchase the remaining stock and has transferred it to his brick & mortar store in Minneapolis. The books are now being integrated into the store stock and certain items listed on ABE Books and eBay.

There are many signed books by Joe R. Lansdale, Dan Simmons, Edward Bryant, Harlan Ellison, John Dunning, Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake and many others. Hundreds of limited edition and small press books are also included. Want lists are welcome (DreamHaven will not be able to quote books by phone; they are still sorting through hundreds of boxes of books).

(5) GET ON BOARD. The SFWA Blog continues its series on board game playtesting with “Playtesting TTRPG Stories”.

Don’t Help Playtesters

Give the material you’ve produced to a playtesting group without additional explanation or support. Effective game writing must stand without outside explanation.

A common error is supporting the players or gamemaster if they’re confused about how a narrative element should be presented or how some mechanics function. Observing playtests is a good source of data, but it’s best not to interfere directly. Watching someone get your game wrong is an important step in revising the text so that future customers will get it right….

(6) VIDEO GAME ACTORS STRIKE ACTION. Variety reports “’League of Legends’ Added to Actors’ Video Game Strike”.

After previously being exempt from inclusion in the ongoing video game actors strike, Riot Games‘ massively multiplayer online role-playing game “League of Legends” has been added to the list of blocked titles by SAG-AFTRA amid the union’s accusation of unfair labor practices against Formosa Interactive.

According to SAG-AFTRA, Formosa, a union signatory that provides voiceover services for “League of Legends,” is accused of trying to “cancel” one of its struck video games “shortly after the start of SAG-AFTRA’s video game strike” on July 26. SAG-AFTRA has filed a charge against the company with the National Labor Relations Board.

“When they were told that was not possible, they secretly transferred the game to a shell company and sent out casting notices for ‘NON-UNION’ talent only,” the union said. “SAG-AFTRA charges that these serious actions are egregious violations of core tenets of labor law – that employers cannot interfere with performers’ rights to form or join a union and they cannot discriminate against union performers. The unilateral and surreptitious transfer of union work to a ‘non-union’ shell company is an impermissible and appalling attempt to evade a strike action and destroy performers’ rights under labor law.”

It should be noted SAG-AFTRA is not accusing the Riot Games title of unfair labor practices, but rather calling for a strike against “League of Legends” because it is the most high profile title produced by Formosa Interactive.

In a statement Tuesday, “League of Legends” publisher Riot Games said: “‘League of Legends’ has nothing to do with the complaint mentioned in SAG-AFTRA’s press release. We want to be clear: Since becoming a union project five years ago, ‘League of Legends’ has only asked Formosa to engage with Union performers in the US and has never once suggested doing otherwise. In addition, we’ve never asked Formosa to cancel a game that we’ve registered. All of the allegations in SAG-AFTRA’s press release relating to canceling a game or hiring non-union talent relate to a non-Riot game, and have nothing to do with ‘League’ or any of our games.”…

(7) O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN! “Writer David Gerrold said Star Trek held together because of William Shatner” at Redshirts Always Die.

…In The Fifty-Year Mission The First Twenty-Five Years by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, Gerrold was reported as having said that “all of the movies and all of the episodes hold together because Shatner holds it together.”

Gerrold pointed out that Spock [Leonard Nimoy] needed someone to play off of, and that was Captain Kirk. When Spock had scenes that didn’t involve the captain, he didn’t think they were interesting.

“The scenes where Spock doesn’t have Shatner to play off of are not interesting. If you look at Spock with his mom or dad, it’s very ponderous. But Spock working with Kirk has sthe magic and it plays very well, and people give all of the credit to Nimoy, not to Shatner.”…

(8) TERRY QUERY: WHERE’S ARNOLD? [Item by Daniel Dern.] My friend (and former boss) Paul Schindler is having no luck finding information, much less the online thing itself, of Sir Pterry’s story “Arnold, The Bominable Snowman” which is/was supposed to be published online this month (September 2024).

See Item 2 in the May 11, 2024 Pixel Scroll for more about the story proper, the onlineification, contest, etc:

(2) PTERRY SURPRISE. The Terry Pratchett website has announced “Another lost Terry Pratchett story found”

Thanks (on behalf of Paul, who I’ll advise of any follow-ups)

(9) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born September 24, 1934 – John Brunner. (Died 1995.)

By Paul Weimer: The man who saw our future. Or multiple futures. Yes, I know science fiction is really about the present much more than “predicting the future”, but take a look around at our year of 2024, with random violence, political instability, a kaleidoscope of fashions and trends, social divisions, global terrorism, extremism, billionaires running amok. And also, gay marriage, affirmative action, electric cars, the use of marijuana and more.

Aside from the fact that the random violence in the book is NOT gun-based, we seem to be living very much in the world of Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. But that’s not all. In The Sheep Look Up, we get environmental degradation, a Republican President who says the answer to all our problems is “Deregulation”, a widening gap between rich and poor, and a degradation of quality of life across the board. Or The Jagged Orbit, where a cabal of Republicans are going to use computers to swing an election. Or The Shockwave Rider, showing a United Stated dominated by computer networks a la the internet, even as infrastructure crumbles and crumbles.

Reading (or rereading Brunner) in 2024 can be a lot.

Beyond the gloom and doom of Brunner’s trilogy, though, there is much lighter fare if you want to try one of SF’s greatest visionaries. Out of his large oeuvre, my favorite is The Squares of the City. Boyd Hakluyt is a traffic and systems engineer who is hired by a fictional South American country to resolve a traffic and transit problem. While there, he gets wrapped up in a plot between the government and the not so loyal opposition, in a literal chess match where Boyd finds himself a piece on the board. It’s a taut and fun political thriller that might be a bit light on the SF, but high on tension, drama, and if you like chess, you will love this book. And then there is The Infinitive of Go, which is the type of multiverse novel whose implications slowly creep on you.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit and Thatababy have posted James Earl Jones memorials.
Phoebe and Her Unicorn discuss overlords.
Reality Check has a vengeful character with a soundalike name.
Rudy Park has two bros reactions to cosmic news.

(12) DIAL THAT DOWN. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The folks behind HBO’s new “workplace comedy” about the creation of a superhero franchise movie claim they had to take what happens in real life movie making down a notch. Otherwise, they say, no one would believe them. It would just be too silly. The Hollywood Reporter has the story of The Franchise.

There’s a situation discussed in HBO’s upcoming series The Franchise — a comedy about the behind-the-scenes struggle to make a superhero movie — that sounds rather absurd: A director laboring away on a fictional Marvel-like film gradually realizes the studio brass has changed their mind about the project’s creative direction and started secretly shooting the “real” movie somewhere else, while he continues to film scenes destined to be scrapped.

Yet this has actually happened to at least one filmmaker working on a franchise movie, according to the show’s producers.

“All the research we did — and we did tons, we spoke to so many people — the actual chaos [on superhero films] was really surprising,” says The Franchise creator Jon Brown (Succession), who made the series along with Armando Iannucci (Veep) and Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (1917). “People think these movies are laid out in neat phases for the next 10 years. Then you hear about a set where, in the morning, a limo literally pulls up, the window comes down, and they hand out new script pages. Or producers on set have eight versions of the same script open, and they go through each script, cherry picking lines, and then they Frankenstein a scene out of nothing. Or the studio sends an actor to the set in the morning and they basically rewrite the day’s entire scene [to accommodate the last-minute cast addition]. You would assume all this was decided two years ago, but it’s happened a lot across Marvel and DC movies.”

As a result, the writers of The Franchise found themselves in the rather odd position of sometimes making story choices for their show that were less wild than the real-life anecdotes they were hearing from industry insiders. “You think, ‘I know this is real, but it just seems too silly,'” Brown said. “So we sometimes have to take it back a step, because you don’t think people will believe it unless they know it’s true.”…

(13) COLLECTORS ITEM. Are you in the market for a complete run of Weird Tales? This one can be yours for $150,000. “RARE! Complete Set of Weird Tales” at eBay.

(14) LATEST EDITION SONIC SCREWDRIVER. “Doctor Who fans unveils Fifteenth Doctor’s sonic screwdriver – pre-order now” — Radio Times tells what button to push.

While it’s been a few months since the adventures of the Fifteenth Doctor and companion Ruby Sunday, the excitement lives on, as fans can now pre-order the Doctor’s trust sonic screwdriver!

The screwdriver is available to pre-order from Character Options at £39.99….

“Doctor Who The Fifteenth Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver Deluxe Edition” at Character Online.

The Fifteenth Doctor’s sonic screwdriver boasts a completely revamped shape and design, with its curved edges, making it the most unique rendition of his favourite bit of tech yet.

The deluxe version, available only on Character online, boasts an exclusive ‘electro plated’ finish making it look like real polished steel and brass. It features two modes of operation, Open and Closed, as well as five brand new and totally unique sound and light effects, with each accessed by a different button sequence.

On this deluxe version of The Fifteenth Doctor’s device there are many new features including a uniquely shaped, swivel-out Power Core complete with flickering Power Crystal Chamber and on/off sounds. There are also three distinctly different sounds with accompanying light FX; a standard sonic sound, a data sound, and a lifeform scan sound. The spring-out and retract Emitter section also has its own sound and finally the slide out analyser comes with its own sound completing the sound FX.

The sonic comes beautifully presented in Regeneration style packaging and is the perfect piece of memorabilia to add to any Doctor Who collection.

(15) IF PUSH COMES TO SHOVE. “Nuclear blast could save Earth from large asteroid, scientists say” – the Guardian has the story.

Scientists, as well as Hollywood movie producers, have long looked to nuclear bombs as a promising form of defence should a massive asteroid appear without warning on a collision course with Earth.

Now, researchers at a US government facility have put the idea on a firm footing, showing how such a blast might save the world in the first comprehensive demo of nuclear-assisted planetary defence.

Physicists at Sandia National Laboratories, whose primary mission is to ensure the safety and security of the US nuclear arsenal, recorded in nanosecond detail how an immense pulse of radiation unleashed by a nuclear blast could vaporise the side of a nearby asteroid.

The event is so violent that it heats the surface to tens of thousands of degrees, producing a rapidly expanding ball of gas capable of nudging the asteroid off course. Do the sums correctly and the shunt should be sufficient to put doomsday on hold.

(16) TEN YEARS OF SCIENCE AND FUTURISM. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] As regular Filers may have spotted, I occasionally throw a link 770’s way to Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur’s YouTube Channel (among much other material). The video item on “Transcendence” last week on File770 actually marked the 10th anniversary of that channel but I failed to include a mention that and that that episode also happened to coincide with Isaac’s 44th birthday.

As Mike knows, but you most likely don’t, I am one of the rare, endangered western-nation species that is not on the internet at home (actually, in the UK currently some 35% UK households solely occupied by over 65s are not on the internet so actually I am not as rare a creature as many of you may suspect – so always respect digital access diversity – the recent Glasgow Worldcon was not). What happens is this, working almost next door for an hour three or four times a week at the library cybercafé, if I spot an item of likely interest to Filers and then pass it Mike’s way for him to decide whether or not to include. This is an important filter as usually I spot things without looking at them in depth (I do that later at home having downloaded whatever it is to memory stick), so some duff material can get through and Mike commendably filters that out. This survey of the landscape is no hardship on my part as I have to keep an eye out for material for the seasonal SF² Concatenation. That zine has just three principal editions a year, whereas Mike’s is daily, so it makes sense for File770 to have first dibs as it could be up to four months before anything I (and other providers) air in Concatenation. Mike only uses 0.01% of the stuff I send him, so if you want to see other SF (through more a European/British prism) & science coverage then feel free to drop in on SF² Concatenation just three times a year.

Meanwhile, back to Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, the previously linked “Transcendence” episode was number 465 in Isaac’s run or actually 700 in that series if you include Isaac Arthur’s shorts, live-streams and specials. Ohio-based Isaac is also currently the incumbent President of the National (US) Space Society, which I guess is the US analogue of our British Interplanetary Society. As for Isaac’s future episodes, of applied science interest is a forthcoming one on “Is Privacy Going Extinct” on 26th September (2024), and of SFnal/science interest “The Fermi Paradox: Large Moons” on 3rd October. Then, in more of an SFnal vein there will be one on “Fungal Aliens” on 13th October. You can check these out at www.youtube.com/@isaacarthurSFIA. He has more background info at www.IsaacArthur.net.

I should point out that Isaac’s channel is not the only one I monitor. His channel has a few occasional items of SF/SF interest for my catholic taste, but as for some of my other favourites there is: for pure physics I enjoy Matt O’Dowd at PBS Space-Time; for palaeo-environmental science (which is fairly close to my own specialist area) PBS Eons; for astrophysics Dave Kipping at Cool Worlds; for astronomy Becky Smethurst at Doctor Becky and for the presentation of the sheer love of finding out about SF Moid Moidelhoff at Media Death Cult and that of the joy of SF book collecting Book Pilled. There are, of course, other channels out there, and I dare say Mike would welcome your recommendations in the comments…

(17) SECRET ORIGINS OF PLOKTA, PT. 1. The Fanac Fanhistory Zoom for September 2024 is online:

This fannish group (aka the Plokta Cabal) burst on the scene in May 1996 with the fanzine Plokta, which went on to receive two Best Fanzine Hugos, 2 Nova Awards for Best Fanzine, and Hugo nominations each year from 1999 to 2008. They are energetic, quirky and very, very funny. They are writers, artists, con runners, Worldcon bidders and fan fund winners.

In part 1 (of 2), Steve Davies, Sue Mason, Alison Scott and Mike Scott, recount how they came into fandom and found each other. They tell entertaining stories of their fannish lives, from convention newsletters to the celebrated Plokta to the glories of providing a unique in-joke badge to each member of a convention. You’ll learn what a SMURF is, hear strong opinions about staples, and find out just what voodoo board spam can be. Plokta was one of the first web fanzines, and came together differently than most other fanzines. The group dynamics and interactions that created it are on full display in this recording. It’s great fun to watch, and it’s very, very clear that it was great fun to live.

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Gordon Van Gelder, Paul Weimer, Michael J. Walsh, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

File 770

Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom

Tag Archives: Cat Rambo

Pixel Scroll 6/13/26 One Of Our Check Boxes Is Missing

Pixel Scroll 5/13/26 Pixels All Aglimmer In The Gloamin’

Cats Sleep on SFF: Cat Rambo’s Kitchen

Pixel Scroll 3/10/26 “Honest” John Barlow’s New & Used Pixels And Scrolls: You Can Get Better, But You Can’t Pay More

Pixel Scroll 1/6/26 You Gotta Feel The Quality Of Them Pixels, Squire. These Aren’t Your Generic, Mass-Produced Electronic Pixels, No Sir

Pixel Scroll 11/14/25 Pixel Filed For Somebody’s Scrolls, But Not Mine

Pixel Scroll 4/3/25 Pixels First, Or Multiverse First? Cosmologists Want To Know

Ursula Whitcher

What’s Your Favorite Tolkien?

Pixel Scroll 11/14/24 Pixel, Devourer of Scrolls

Pixel Scroll 9/24/24 Tales From Scrollographic Pixels