Tag Archives: Climate Fiction Prize

Pixel Scroll 5/28/26 Glad To Hear That The Pixelmaker Is Keeping The Scroll Beating Properly

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(0) Again I will be spending much of the day visiting my mother in the hospital, so I have done the most I can here in the time available. Thanks for all your good wishes for her health.

(1) EISNER DROPS FINALIST AFTER AI CONTENT DISCOVERED. Publisher Weekly has the story — “Eisner Awards to Implement AI Policy Following Controversy”.

A comics anthology featuring AI-generated writing has been withdrawn from this year’s Eisner Award ballot following controversy over the work’s nomination for the one of the comic world’s highest honors.

Stardust the Super Wizard Anthology, based on cartoonist Fletcher Hanks’s eponymous superhero from the early 1940s, and now in the public domain, had been nominated in the Eisners’ Best Anthology category. Nominations were announced on May 14 by Comic-Con, which hosts the Eisners.

Stardust was edited by Van Jensen and funded through the crowdfunding platform Zoop in 2023, raising more than $39,000 from 614 backers. The use of generative AI in the anthology was confined to one of its contributions: a one-page story by writer Michael Todasco, in the guise of what he subsequently dubbed his “AI persona” Alex Irons.

The inclusion of an AI story had been noticed by several backers of the project when it was first released in 2025, and the anthology’s inclusion on the Eisner ballot sparked immediate controversy within the comics press as well as the Eisner Awards judging panel. On May 18, Comic-Con announced that Jensen had withdrawn the anthology from inclusion, and it would not be appearing on the Eisner ballot.

“In light of the recent disclosure that Artificial Intelligence was included in a work submitted for Eisner Award consideration, the judges have indicated that had they been aware of this information, they would not have voted for its inclusion,” a spokesperson for Comic-Con told PW in a statement. “The editor of the anthology in question has also rescinded this submission for inclusion. Therefore, the submission has been removed from the list of nominees and will not appear on the ballot.”

The statement continued: “It is clear that the ever evolving landscape of technology, as it relates to art, will benefit from further review and discussion. For this reason, San Diego Comic Convention will undertake that effort and will produce a policy that better reflects its long-standing efforts in the protection of artists and creators alike.”…

…Though the Eisner judges broadly agreed that the book would not have been nominated had the use of AI been clear, there was some disagreement over whether the nomination should be rescinded after the fact—both for the effect it would have on other contributors to the book, and because there is no official Eisner policy on AI….

(2) SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD. The 2025 Shirley Jackson Award nominees are out. Complete list at the link.

(3) CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE. The Climate Fiction Prize 2026 winner is Hum by Helen Phillips.

(4) MAD, I TELL YOU. CrimeReads sings “An Aria to the Mad Scientist”.

There’s a term you’ll hear in fiction writing, the “inciting event.” Loosely stated, it’s an event that kicks the protagonist out of their quotidian state, unsettles their personal world—or, perhaps, the greater sum of humanity of which they are a part—and forces them to act.

For me—for the stories I write—my most common inciting character, who keeps turning up in my work like a doomy bad penny, is the Mad Scientist.

Why do I so often gravitate to that type? Well, as I said above, if inciting events are a needful hallmark of narrative progression, a mad scientist is a veritable cornucopia of incendiary incidents. They’re forever pushing the plot forward. How? In as many ways as a novelist can dream up. They create conundrums of every type—physical, moral, psychological, philosophical—and force other characters to react to, cope with, and survive the threats they’ve set in motion.

A list of mad scientists in literature would exhaust the limits of this short essay and be rather pointless anyway, as anyone reading this can summon a handful without prompting. Perhaps, the most famous—the ne plus ultra, the template—is Victor Frankenstein. Mary Shelley’s second most famous creation embodies everything that so fascinates both writers and readers about the character type. Victor is brilliant and ambitious (to the point of being out of touch with humanity and its moral concerns), he’s blindered, headstrong and isolationist and romantically doomed… and maybe, most crucially (or to me this is so), he really wants to help.

This is the most fascinating element of the character type, what makes it so rich on an emotional level. The ideas of many a mad scientist at their most core definition are often good. Or they aspire to be so, at least. They could conceivably benefit mankind. Broken by the death of his mother, Victor Frankenstein’s goal was to banish disease, deny death, and create a new order of life. Was that all bad? On the range of human endeavor from penicillin to the atom bomb, I’d tender that it sat somewhere between those two poles. But like all mad scientists (this being the crucial facet of the type), Victor was so blinkered by his superiority complex, his singlemindedness, that he never gave any thought to the ripple effects of his ambitions: how it could all go so spectacularly and horridly awry.

Well, that was fine. Mary Shelley had it covered….

(5) I’M BAAACK! “Long lost BBC episode No Such Thing as a Vampire discovered after almost 60 years” reports MSN.com.

Almost 60 years after it was destroyed, an episode of the terrifying BBC series Late Night Horror has been unearthed and will be shown again.

Late Night Horror was a deeply unsettling six-episode anthology which first came out in 1968. Just two years later, it disappeared from screens and the BBC archives.

The show was notoriously gory with storylines chock-a-block with severed limbs, creatures of the night and ghastly tales, with the scant reaction we have from the time showing ‘complaints it was too scary’ and had BBC technicians ‘buckling at their knees’.

BFI film curator Atlas Obscura added: ‘It was quite shocking, I think it was controversial.’

Although vast amounts (anywhere upto 70%) of the BBC’s output was purged across the 60s and 70s in order to free up tapes (Doctor Who famously has over 90 missing episodes from this era), a 2007 BBC news feature speculated that the sheer horror of it drove it to the chopping block.

Four of the episodes- William and Mary, The Triumph of Death, The Bells of Hell and The Kiss of Blood – remain lost to time. In 2016, archivist Chris Perry got his hands on The Corpse Can’t Play after a 30-year hunt….

… Now, a decade later, another has resurfaced – this time, the episode titled No Such Thing As a Vampire, based on I Am Legend novelist Richard Matheson’s short story…

… The film, which has not seen the light of day in six decades, was tracked down by cinema projectionist Darren Payne in a small storage area of The Regent, a 1930s art deco cinema and theatre buried in the heart of Christchurch, Dorset.

The episode is set to be aired, in conjunction with BBC Archives, in Dorset on September 20, as part of the three-day Grindfest event….

(6) MENTORS NOT OF ARISIA. James Davis Nicoll points out “Five Mostly Helpful Mentors in SF and Fantasy” at Reactor. Here’s one of his finds:

Aahz — Robert Asprin’s Another Fine Myth

Skeeve willingly became the wizard Garkin’s apprentice, since the alternative was either starvation or hypothermia. Perhaps Skeeve would have become a great mage under Garkin’s watchful eye. Sadly, an assassin’s bolt cut both Garkin’s life and Skeeve’s apprenticeship short.

Just before dying, Garkin summoned his old friend Aahz. It’s only after Garkin’s murder that Aahz discovers that Garkin cheekily stripped Aahz of magic as a playful jape. Only Garkin can reverse that spell, which Garkin is too dead to do. Having no better option available, Aahz must tutor Skeeve to use magic in Aahz’s place… because the fate of the worlds is at stake.

Good news for people who like this comedic fantasy series: There are twenty-one volumes. Good news for people who go “meh” at this novel: the Phil Foglio4 graphic novel adaptation improves on the original material.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 28, 1984 — Max Gladstone, 42.

By Paul Weimer: I slept on Max Gladstone’s first book, Three Parts Dead, for nearly a year. It wasn’t until it had hit paperback that I finally decided to dive into the first of the Craft Sequence, and then started and have been reading them as quickly as they come out. It’s his big conceit, his big series, and necromancy, accounting, magic, old gods, and social systems lets Max play with all of the themes and ideas that he wants, and make it into a fascinating fantasy universe. He’s also written a couple of text games set in the verse, too. 

I’ve enjoyed a heck of lot of his other work, too. There’s the serial Bookburners, which he collaborated with Mur Lafferty, Andrea Phillips, Amal El-Mohtar, and others. Occult operatives dealing with magically empowered objects is not a new idea in the main, but he brings lots of invention and ideas to the table with the serial.

I am also a big fan of possibly the best road trip SF novel out there: Last Exit. It’s Gladstone’s own love letter to Zelazny and shadow walking and traveling through multiple worlds, but not realizing you are bringing yourself along into those worlds. It’s a stunning construction and deconstruction of the concept. I do really need to re-read it…but as a listen, in an audiobook, and see how it does on an actual road trip. Someday!

I should probably mention This is How You Lose the Time War, but that is such a sui generis collaboration with the aforementioned Amal El-Mohtar, that it is impossible to determine what parts are his and which ones are hers, and I bet I’d be wrong if it tried. It certainly has given life and power to science fiction poetry, and I think its existence is why poetry has risen, at least for the 2025 and 2026 Worldcons, to the level of a Hugo Award.

Happy Birthday Max!

Max Gladstone

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL. ComicBook Clique reports “Workers at Dark Horse Comics are asking for union recognition”.

Workers at Dark Horse Comics are asking interim CEO Jay Komas and company leadership to voluntarily recognize their union by June 3.

Under the name Dark Horse Workers United, employees say they want a stronger voice in workplace decisions and are calling on leadership to avoid union-busting tactics and move directly into negotiations.

The group says they’re fighting to protect the creative environment that helped make Dark Horse one of the most respected publishers in comics, home to books like Hellboy, Sin City, Black Hammer, and The Umbrella Academy.

Union conversations have been growing across comics, gaming, and entertainment lately, and now Dark Horse is part of that discussion too.

(10) IMAGINARY PAPERS. Today, the ASU Center for Science and the Imaginaton published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, their quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination.  

 In this issue, CY Ballard writes about the 2019 video game Mutazione and forging community after catastrophe, Jason Nabi revisits Isaac Asimov’s 1942 short story “Runaround” and the Three Laws of Robotics in the context of AI and LLMs, and Vandana Singh reports on a recent project, An Educator’s Guide to Climate Science and Colonialism. 

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

Climate Fiction Prize 2026

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The winner of the 2026 Climate Fiction Prize is Helen Phillips, for her novel, Hum, exploring the intersection of climate, technology and AI. Phillips received the award, worth £10,000, at a ceremony in London on May 27, and becomes the second winner of the prize.

In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Forced to become a guinea pig for experiments to alter her face to avoid surveillance, she finds solace, at great cost, in one of the last remaining botanical gardens.

The Prize, worth £10,000, was awarded at a ceremony at Kings Place, London.

[Based on a press release.]

Climate Fiction Prize 2026 Shortlist

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The 2026 Climate Fiction Prize shortlist was unveiled on March 18.

The six finalists for this £10,000 prize explore the climate crisis, and our response to it. From experimental literary works to folklore and reimagined myths, and from science fiction to generational family saga, these six titles, including two debuts, are a globe-spanning, genre-bending testament to the power and breadth of climate fiction.

  • Dusk by Robbie Arnott (Chatto & Windus, Vintage)
  • The Tiger’s Share by Keshava Guha (John Murray Press, Hachette) 
  • Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan (Simon & Schuster)
  • Hum by Helen Phillips (Atlantic Books)
  • Endling by Maria Reva (Virago, Little, Brown)
  • The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien (Granta Books)i

The shortlist was chosen by the five 2026 Climate Fiction Prize judges:  Arifa Akbar, Chief Theatre Critic at The Guardian and former literary editor of The Independent; award-winning, bestselling novelists Kit de Waal (The Best of Everything and My Name is Leon) and Jessie Greengrass (The High House and Sight); leading climate scientist Dr Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London and co-founder of the World Weather Attribution initiative; and Simon Savidge a bibliophile, broadcaster and presenter whose YouTube channel Savidge Reads has over 2.5 million views.

The award winner will be announced in May.

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 5/14/25 First Shalt Thou Take Out The Holy Pixel

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(1) INAUGURAL CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE. “And So I Roar wins Climate Fiction Prize 2025”. The Climate Fiction Prize is a new literary prize that celebrates the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis. The Prize, worth £10,000, was awarded at a ceremony in London, on May 14.

Abi Daré has won the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize for And so I Roar (Sceptre, Hodder). The novel follows fourteen-year-old Adunni from her life in Lagos, where she is excited to finally enroll in school, to her home village where she is summoned to face charges for events that are in fact caused by climate change.

“A book of real energy and passion which both horrifies and entertains with a cast of compelling characters, a story of how the climate crisis can provoke social crisis where often women and children are the victims. Despite the tragedy, Abi Daré holds faith in the strength of individuals and relationships and her hopefulness leaves us inspired.”

– Madeleine Bunting, Chair of Judges

(2) MARTHA WELLS Q&A. Martha Wells did a Reddit r/television Ask Me Anything today. You can read the answers here: “This is Martha Wells, a four-time Hugo, two-time Nebula, and five-time Locus Award winner for The Murderbot Diaries, a book series published by Tordotcom. Ask Me Anything”.

Here’s one exchange.

BiasCutTweed

I have two pedantic world building questions I would love to ask though, if you’re game to answer:

  • Is there any sort of nominal governance structure in the Corporation Rim? Like just enough to support a judicial and monetary system, and the regulatory stuff that occasionally gets mentioned. I know Murderbot could absolutely give zero damns and it’s our narrator but I’m weirdly curious.
  • There are alien remnants everywhere but we never see any living advanced aliens. Do they exist? Might we ever?
  • And a show-specific question – did you/they ever consider Fleabag-style 4th wall breaks for Murderbot’s inner thoughts? Or would that be way too much eye contact for it?

marthawellswriter

  1. There is basically a committee structure that handles that stuff, with different people from various dominant corporations being appointed to it, and it works about as well as you might expect.
  2. They might still exist, but I don’t think I’d take the story in that direction.
  3. I think they did early on, because I saw some auditions that used it, but I actually think the voiceover works much better and I’m glad they went with it.

(3) WIL WHEATON’S FAVES. JustWatch has teamed up with sci-fi icon Wil Wheaton to spotlight his all-time favorite science fiction movies and TV shows in a newly released editorial feature on JustWatch.com.

In this exclusive Why to Watch editorial, Wheaton shares a curated list of titles that have shaped his lifelong love of science fiction. From intergalactic epics to overlooked cult gems, the collection offers fans a rare peek into the streaming watchlist of one of pop culture’s most enduring sci-fi personalities. “Wil Wheaton’s Top 6 Sci-Fi Movies & Shows That Are Not Star Trek”.

Here is perhaps his most obscure pick.

Sugar (2024)

Wheaton also loves the cult Apple TV+ series Sugar. “It’s one of the great sci-fi series of the last five years that I never really heard people talk about,” the actor says. The show is a noir thriller that blends in fantastic sci-fi elements and follows a private investigator (Colin Farrell) who has a secret of his own. “I loved it,” Wheaton continued, “I thought it was brilliant and extremely well-done.”

(4) APPOINTMENT VIEWING. Will British cultural icon ITV be sold? “ITV Sale Speculation: Inside Deal Everyone And No One Is Talking About” at Deadline.

If you’ve watched ITV’s The Assembly, you will know that it involves stars like Danny Dyer and David Tennant subjecting themselves to no-holds-barred questions from a captivating cast of neurodivergent interrogators. It makes for illuminating viewing, producing genuine revelations from its disarmed but obliging subjects, who enter the show in a spirit of openness. 

Far from the cameras, in a colorless room in the basement of London’s 11 Cavendish Square townhouse on Tuesday, ITV chairman Andrew Cosslett was similarly squirming in the face of questioning, with less comical results. Chairing ITV’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), Cosslett was grilled, almost heckled, by an angry shareholder demanding to know when the British broadcaster’s 78p share price will rise after flatlining for more than three years.

“This is not good enough, you must have some idea, you guys are very highly paid,” said the shareholder. Cosslett struggled to answer, reaching for what by now feels like an old fail-safe. “If you can explain to me what Donald Trump will do next, then maybe I could,” he said.

Questions around ITV’s sticky share price — Cosslett and ITV boss Carolyn McCall faced three during the 45-minute AGM alone — are inextricably linked to the constant mutterings around its potential sale. On this matter, ITV has been a little less forthcoming with answers than the celeb bookings on The Assembly. The company that gave the world Downton Abbey has been finding new ways to say “no comment” to inquiries about whether it will submit to suitors, including RedBird IMI and Banijay….

(5) MISSING BUT NOT NECESSARILY LOST. “Doctor Who archive legend says missing episodes ‘certainly’ exist in private collections” – quotes in Radio Times.

With 97 of the missing Doctor Who episodes still unaccounted for, Sue Malden, the BBC’s first archive selector who has worked to find episodes across the years, has assured fans that she believes some “certainly” still exist in private collections.

Twenty-six stories from the show’s first six years are currently incomplete, because the BBC erased or reused tapes in the 1960s and 1970s to save storage space and costs. In recent years some of these episodes have now been recreated via animation, as tapes of audio recordings have survived for every episode.

Still, there remains hope amongst fans that other full episodes could still exist to this day, something Malden has suggested is a very real possibility.

Speaking at the RECOVERED festival at the Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre in Leicester, hosted by Film is Fabulous!, Malden was asked about the current situation regarding missing Doctor Who episodes.

Malden said: “As far as Doctor Who goes, we do not have a statement or anything to make at the moment. We do know fairly certainly that there are episodes missing in private collections. Some members of the Film is Fabulous! team are in a considerably significant position to help on that.”…

(6) FINAL MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] My summary: Mostly glowing reviews, especially about the action sequences. Some grumbles about the runtime and convoluted plot. “Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning First Reactions” in the Hollywood Reporter.

“Tom Cruise has done it again!” That’s the very early verdict from press screenings for the Hollywood icon’s latest film, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, with the film variously described as “astonishing,” “jaw-dropping,” “insane” and the “action movie of the summer.”

Following a series of press screenings, first reactions to Final Reckoning are hitting social media after the embargo lifted on Monday night. The social media reactions come ahead of official critics’ reviews, which drop on Wednesday.

The eighth film in the long-running Paramount Pictures spy action franchise, Final Reckoning has a lot riding on it for the studio as well as the domestic box office. In November 2024, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the project has had a long and difficult journey, with a budget approaching a hefty $400 million amid production delays — partly due to the 2023 Hollywood strikes — making it one of the most expensive films ever made….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 14, 1944 — George Lucas, 81.

By Paul Weimer: To talk about George Lucas for me is to first talk about Star Wars. 

Star Wars lurked in my imagination long before seeing any of it. I didn’t see Star Wars in the theater but my younger brother and I got a joint Christmas gift of a Death Star playset, and a few action figures. We only had the commercials for the set to go on, not Lucas’ own vision, and so our playing of the set led to very strange scenarios having nothing to do with the movie. 

It would not be until 1983, and Return of the Jedi, that I saw a George Lucas movie at all, and in the theater. I saw the magic of his world, having only the fuzziest idea of the first two movies, but I was swept along. This shows the power of Lucas harnessing the power of serial fiction to allow watchers to get in on the action quickly. This is something the Marvel cinematic universe could still learn from Lucas today. It’s not just the crawls at the beginning, its the economy of storytelling, the establishment of characters that let you hit the ground running. 

Like Star Wars, I missed the first Indiana Jones movie in theaters, but did see Temple of Doom (Lucas did not direct but his story was the basis of the film). And of course, too, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Same principle applies. Early Lucas knew the power of crafting episodic sequels and making them work. 

In keeping with those films, Lucas was also responsible for getting me hooked into the idea of the Hero’s Journey, since I read the Joseph Campbell book The Power of Myth thanks to Lucas’ forward in the book. Sure, the Hero’s Journey is a very outdated, patriarchal and restrictive story framework but it was my first real engagement with the nature and form of stories. Lucas helped introduce me to that whole new world. 

However, I would not see another Lucas directed film until the late 1990’s…but that is another story, one that deserves its own entry.

George Lucas with his wife, Mellody Hobson

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bliss has a child “helpfully” point something out.
  • Mike de Jour finds that word doesn’t mean what you think it means. 
  • Mutts – did he answer the question? 
  • Rubes can’t come up with an original excuse. 
  • Wumo might be an annoying fan. 

(9) DE-RE-BRANDING. The Hollywood Reporter says “Warners Is Changing Max’s Name Again — Back to HBO Max”. Sigh. Please just make up your mind.

… Thirty minutes into Wednesday’s Warner Bros. Discovery upfront, Bloys revealed the name change to media buyers. The news was met with laughter, light applause and exactly one whistle. Bloys did follow with a solid joke: “I know you’re all shocked, but the good news is I have a drawer full of stationery from the last time around.”…

(10) COMMUNITY RESPONDS TO BOOK BURNING. “Man burns 100 library books on social media; residents donate 1,000 more” on News 5 Cleveland.

Members of an Interfaith Group Against Hate (IGAH) gathered outside a Northeast Ohio church to stand united against hate. This comes after reports that a man checked out 100 books related to race, religion, and LGBTQ+ topics from the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Beachwood — then burned them in a video posted to social media.

View the news video here.

(11) IRONHEART. Gizmodo lets everyone know “Finally, the First Ironheart Trailer Is Here”.

… Black Panther: Wakanda Forever introduced audiences to Riri Williams (Dominque Thorne), an MIT genius who built her own Iron Man-esque armored suit and helped the Wakandans fight the Talokanil.

She may have left her suit behind in Wakanda, but she hasn’t given up trying to make new ones that truly establish her as the next big talent. While back home in Chicago, she crosses paths with Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), a misfit with a hood that lets him use dark magic and wants her to be a part of what he’s building up. Things seem good at first, but once she starts getting wise to the shadier parts of his dealings, Riri’s gotta armor up and protect Chicago and her loved ones….

(12) SUPER TRAILER PARK. “Superman’s Full Trailer Gives Us Our Best Look Yet at DC’s New Era” reports Gizmodo.

…[James] Gunn teased the trailer on social media as the “full trailer” he’d been “waiting too long to share.” And indeed, we see Superman facing off with an array of baddies, including a giant scaly monster and several supervillains—including, most intriguingly, a smirking Lex Luthor. He also stops a war and gets in trouble for it with the U.S. government, and gets grilled about it by the toughest journalist he knows: Lois Lane, who definitely knows Clark is Superman this time around…

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

Pixel Scroll 3/19/25 Weres Click Scrolls, And “D’oh!” Say Trolls, And Little Fans Stalk Pixels. A Tribble’d Eat Melange, Too — Wouldn’t Groot?

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(1) CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE SHORTLIST. The inaugural Climate Fiction Prize shortlist was posted today. Read short descriptions of the books and author information here: “Explore the shortlist – The Climate Fiction Prize”. The winner will be revealed May 14.

The Climate Fiction Prize shortlist has been announced, with the judges selecting five titles representing the depth and range of climate fiction on offer to readers. The titles, selected from the all-female longlist announced in November, encompass a range of genres, with each tackling the climate crisis differently. More information about each title can be found here.

The shortlisted books:

  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre, Hodder)
  • And So I Roar by Abi Daré (Sceptre, Hodder)
  • Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen (Bloomsbury Circus)
  • Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, PRH)
  • The Morningside by Téa Obreht (W&N, Orion)

The Guardian has more information: “Samantha Harvey and Téa Obreht shortlisted for inaugural Climate fiction prize”.

(2) FILER HEADING TO WIKIMANIA. Congratulations to Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey who has been awarded a full scholarship to attend the Wikimania 2025 conference in Nairobi, Kenya this August.

Wikimania is the annual conference celebrating all the free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation – Wikimedia Commons, MediaWiki, Meta-Wiki, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary and Wikifunctions.

(3) INTERNATIONAL COSTUMERS’ GUILD PRESS LAUNCHED. Philip Gust has written a post “Introducing the International Costumers’ Guild Press”.

After several months of work, I’m pleased to announce that the International Costumers’ Guild Press is up and running, with the first two titles just published at the end of January 2025. Visit the International Costumers’ Guild Press page for more details. These two titles are based on existing ICG assets, which enabled me to focus on the publishing process.

The first title is the 2021 Edition of the ICG Masquerade Guidelines. The Guidelines were created by the ICG to assist costume Masquerade Directors in writing and implementing rules to ensure fair compe­tition in the Masquerades they run, and provide a resource for ensuring that all aspects of a successful Masquerade are covered. The Guidelines were created by the ICG Guidelines Committee in 1992. There have been four revisions, in 1994, 2006, 2010, and 2021.

This book is available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook versions. Visit the ICG Masquerade Guidelines page for information about this title, and to locate book sellers who offer the book. The ICG Press also sells the paperback and hardcover versions directly through our publication partner, IngramSpark.

The second title is Myrtle R Douglas: Mother of Convention Costuming. In 2016, the International Costumers’ Guild recog­nized Myrtle R Douglas as “The Mother of Convention Costuming” for creating the first costumes ever worn at a sci-fi/fantasy convention, in 1939. This full-color commemorative book, based on the video I made for my presentation at MidAmeriCon II, the 74th Worldcon, pays homage to the fan who forever influenced what we wear at sci-fi/fantasy conventions.

This book is available in paperback and hardcover versions. Because of the graphic layout and color illustrations, it is not easily adaptable as an ebook. Visit the Myrtle R Douglas: Mother of Convention Costuming page for more information and to locate vendors who sell the book. The ICG Press also sells the paperback and hardcover versions directly through our publication partner, IngramSpark.

The ICG Press will release its third title, a new edition of The Masquerade Handbook, on March 15, 2025. This work was originally compiled and privately distributed by Janet Wilson Anderson in 1991, and has been out of print since then. In 2022, ICG Vice President Leslie L. Johnston, working with ICG members Jill Eastlake and Judy Mitchell, began a project to bring this long-out-of-print title back to life and put it in the hands of today’s costumers. They turned over their work to the ICG Press in late fall of 2024….

And this week the Press announced “ICG Press Titles Now Available in Digital Formats”.

(4) EUROPEAN FAN FUND TAKING NOMINATIONS. European fans have until March 22 to make nominations for the European Fan Fund 2025. The complete guidelines are at the link. [Via Ansible.]

EFF is the European Fan Fund which transports European SF fans to Eurocons.

The purpose of the EFF is to create and strengthen bonds between European fans and fandoms. Currently in almost every country there is a fandom that quite often has little or even no connection to the broader European fandom. Most fans do concentrate on the “here and now” and are not looking for friends in other countries.

Nominations in the race to send a fan to Archipelacon (Eurocon 2025 in Mariehamn, Åland islands, 26-29 June 2025) are open to any European fan living outside Finland, Bulgaria and Poland who was active in fandom prior to January 2023. For more details on the rules, visit the FAQ section.

(5) CHESLEY SEASON. The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA) is taking 2025 Chesley Award suggestions until March 31. The announcement says they accept suggestions from “anyone”. The necessary form to use is at the link.

Chesley Suggestions for 2025 are now open. Please suggest works that were shown or created in 2024. For the publications suggestions the date is based on the publication date.

You have until the end of March to suggest!

 Anyone can suggest a piece. Your own art! Sure! A cover you liked? Yep! A fantastic piece you saw online or at a convention? Totally! Up to five suggestions per category.

(6) TRAILBLAZING GNOME PRESS. Steve Carper reminds Black Gate readers that “In the History of Vintage Science Fiction & Fantasy, Nothing Compares to Gnome Press”.

…Fantasy had long been a staple of what we would now call mainstream publishing but before the 1940s American science fiction was relegated to gaudy pulp magazines, critically reviled as among the lowest forms of fiction. The superweapons that emerged from World War II, especially the atomic bomb, suddenly made the field look prescient, a look into the onrushing future.

With mainstream publishers still reluctant to mine magazine back issues, fans of the genre saw a publishing niche. More than a dozen small presses sprang into mayfly-like existence before 1950.

Gnome was founded in 1948 by two members of New York fandom, Martin Greenberg and David A. Kyle….

… What’s 150,000 words and 1100 images to the internet? I already owned the URL GnomePress.com. The 113 pages there now comprise the first complete bibliography of Gnome Press (by author, title, and publication date), a separate page for each title with color scans of every variant board and cover I own along with contemporary reviews and previously unknown photos of the more obscure authors, information about a range of associational items, and histories both of Gnome and the f&sf field up to the time of its founding.

For all its literally exhausting coverage, the site remains a work in progress….

(7) IT WASN’T JUST AN EXAMPLE OF HOLLYWOOD ACCOUNTING. “Hollywood Filmmaker Charged With $11 Million Conspiracy to Defraud Netflix” – this New York Times link bypasses the paywall.

…The Justice Department on Tuesday charged Carl Erik Rinsch, whom Netflix hired to make a science-fiction series that was never completed, with an $11 million scheme to defraud the company.

According to the indictment, which was announced by prosecutors for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York Field Office, Mr. Rinsch secured funding from the streaming company from 2018 to early 2020. But he put the money in a personal brokerage account and ultimately used it to trade securities, instead of putting it toward the series, the indictment says.

Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Rinsch, who was arrested on Tuesday in West Hollywood, Calif., with engaging in wire fraud, money laundering and monetary transactions derived from unlawful activity.

The indictment does not cite Netflix by name. But the company has been involved in public disputes over the filmmaker’s planned series, which was initially called “White Horse” but was renamed “Conquest.” Last year, an arbitrator ruled that Mr. Rinsch owed the company nearly $12 million in damages and legal fees….

(8) ON THE ROADRUNNER AGAIN. Deadline reports “’Coyote vs. Acme’ Sale In Works After Warner Bros Shelved Toon Movie”.

Warner Bros‘ shelved movie Coyote vs. Acme finally might have found a new home with the studio deep in sale negotiations, we can reveal.

Gareth West’s distributor-financier Ketchup Entertainment is negotiating an all-rights acquisition in the $50 million range for the animated/live-action hybrid project. Ketchup last year rescued the same studio’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.

… Directed by David Green and written by May December scribe Samy Burch, as well as DC Studios co-boss James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, Coyote vs. Acme is based on the Looney Tunes characters and the New Yorker humor article “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier.

Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor star in the movie, which follows Wile E. Coyote, who, after Acme products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, decides to hire a billboard lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation. The case pits Wile E. and his lawyer (Forte) against the latter’s intimidating former boss (Cena), but a growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win.

Despite test-screening well, the project became a high-profile casualty of WB cost-cutting two years ago and it has been sitting on the shelf for more than a year. The studio reportedly screened the movie to a string of buyers in early 2024 with a price tag of around $70M, which is how much the film is said to have cost. Studio sources claim to us that they didn’t get any offers at the time….

(9) THESE ARE THE OTHER VOYAGES. “’The Only Thing I Wish About It…’: Star Trek: TNG Stars Reveal Their Reactions to Galaxy Quest” at CBR.com.

…During a panel at the Indiana Comic Convention, Collider’s Steve Weintraub asked some Star Trek: The Next Generation alums what they thought of 1999’s Galaxy Quest.

“It’s perfect. It perfectly captures the essence (of Star Trek) with love and humor and intelligence…it’s so well-crafted,” said Denise Crosby, who played Lieutenant Tasha Yar in the first season of TNG and the Season 3 episode, “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

Jonathan Frakes, who portrayed Commander Will Riker in TNG and later Captain Riker in Star Trek: Picard, and has gone on to success directing Star Trek films and television, joked during the panel saying, “It’s almost like they read our mail. The only thing I wish about it is that we had made it.”

Crosby, who is also known for her role as Rachel Creed in 1989’s Pet Sematary, added that she had a small part in getting Galaxy Quest made. In 1997, Crosby hosted and was a co-executive producer of a Star Trek documentary film titled Trekkies that focused on die-hard fans of the franchise.

“Supposedly, and I’ve never asked him to verify this, but apparently on the first day of shooting, the story goes that Tim Allen gave the whole cast a copy of Trekkies,” Crosby said. “I had screened Trekkies for the writers of Galaxy Quest; they had never been to a con, and I was shopping Trekkies around at that time. I knew a production girl at the studio, and she said, ‘We’ve got these writers, they’re doing a rewrite on Galaxy Quest. Can they come to a screening?’” she said….

(10) MARGARET CLARK (1955-2025). Noted editor Margaret Clark died March 16. Books she acquired and edited have won seven of the last nine Scribe Awards for Best Original Novel – Speculative, given by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. 

David Mack has written a terrific tribute here: “RIP, Margaret Clark (1955-2025)”.

…Margaret was the first editor to ever hire me to write a book, roughly 25 years ago, when she commissioned me to pen The Starfleet Survival Guide. She took a chance on me before I had any print credits, and in so doing helped launch my professional prose-writing career, altering the trajectory of my life for the better.

During the past 25 years, I’ve written 32 novels for Star Trek, and roughly 40 books in total. Margaret was my editor on 24 of my Star Trek novels, and she also hired me to write a novel based on the TV series The 4400….

… I could be wrong, but I think Margaret might be the longest-serving editor of Star Trek novels in the history of the franchise. She oversaw part of the license for over a decade, and she was the sole acquiring editor for the line for most of the past decade….

(11) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

March 19, 1999 — Farscape debuted on this day

By Paul Weimer: Farscape is the punkier, overseas cousin to Stargate SG-1 (the fact that two members of Farscape wound up becoming series regulars in late SG-1 is not lost on me). A product of a vivid imagination, the genius of Jim Henson, and vagaries of trying to find one’s way in a science fiction universe that was brand new. Farscape dared to make its own way, with our Earthling Crichton being dropped in the far end of the galaxy and among a bunch of alien races, conflicts and concerns. And of course, given that he did use an impossible technology to get there, and still seeks to get back, this provided early and interesting hooks for Crichton right from the get go.

But, really, the season really gets its feet under it when it got its villains. The first season is fine, and we get to know the characters and their various sides. But it is Season 2, with the full use of Scorpius (although he did show up in Season 1), that the show really takes off. Bialar, the initial antagonist (and later less of one) really didn’t have the spark that the show needed in a recurring villain opposing the found family (because what else are the crew of Moya but that), and their plans and hopes. But Scorpius really provided the spark that the show needed, especially the “harvey” version in Crichton’s head. 

But where the series really shines, above and beyond the characters, the puppetry, the inventiveness and the uniqueness of its space opera verse, is that the series is self-aware. Crichton is genre savvy, he knows where and what is in for, and he is a protagonist and a hero for fans of the series who love and respect and enjoy science fiction. This makes the series a series for viewers who have watched Star Trek, read science fiction novels, and are and were ready to immerse themselves into a SF universe. Nowadays, some of the episodes and seasons feel padded by the strictures and requirements of network and syndication television, probably more than a few episodes could be excised and you would still get the long form character arcs, development, drama, and shared history that you get between the members of Moya’s crew. 

In some ways, while it is definitely more akin to Stargate SG-1, it, like Babylon 5, was an earnest and mostly successful attempt to create a universe that was neither Star Wars nor Star Trek, but something new, risky, and different. Farscape, even though it did delve into some serious themes, always has felt a bit lighter, more playful than B5. That’s no bad thing.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) CORPUS DELECTI. Get those bids in! “Original body model of ET expected to fetch up to $1m at Sotheby’s” reports the Guardian.

It was last seen standing at the entrance to a spaceship with a potted plant of chrysanthemums, its chest glowing bright red as it stared down at the tearful young boy on the ground below.

Now, the original body model of ET, the Extra-Terrestial, is expected to fetch up to $1m (£700,000) when it is sold at Sotheby’s auction house at in April.

The 3ft tall model was one of three used in the 1982 film, directed by Steven Spielberg, which won four Oscars. It comes directly from the collection of the film’s Oscar-winning special effects artist, the late Carlo Rambaldi, who also worked on King Kong and Alien….

E.T. is an item in Sotheby’s “’There Are Such Things:’ 20th Century Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy on Screen” auction which opens for bidding beginning on March 21 and continues through April 3.

The Hollywood Reporter story has more highlights.

…In addition to the model, other items from Rambaldi’s collection are included, like never-before-seen sketches for E.T., an animatronic study of one of E.T.’s eyes, two screen-used sand worm models from Dune (est. $15,000-20,000) and a dinosaur egg (est. $6,000-9,000) and baby dinosaur animatronic from the 1993 Japanese film Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story (est. $8,000-12,000). Items from Blade Runner, Total Recall, Dune, Labyrinth, The Wizard of Oz and Spielberg’s Jurassic Park franchise are also included in the collection….

(14) ARRIVAL. Entertainment Weekly encourages all to “Watch Stitch crash-land on Earth in first ‘Lilo & Stitch’ trailer”.

Ohana means family and — well, you know the rest.

But in case you’ve forgotten, Disney is reminding the masses by retelling the story of Lilo & Stitch via a live-action remake of the beloved 2002 film.

The first trailer for the upcoming film reintroduces Stitch, a chaotic blue alien experiment who quickly becomes the galaxy’s most-wanted extraterrestrial when he steals a spaceship and crash-lands on Earth. The kicker? His arrival just so happens to coincide with a desperate wish from a little Hawaiian girl, Lilo (Maia Kealoha).

“I wish for a friend,” Lilo says in the trailer, staring up at a shooting star. “Like, a best friend.”

And when Lilo’s attempt to adopt a dog leads her to befriend Stitch, that wish comes true. Just not in the way she expected…. 

(15) I’M SO GLAD WE HAD THIS TIME TOGETHER. The horror movie Together comes to theaters August 1.

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