26 One Ordinary Scroll, With Peanut Butter And Jellicle Credentials

Posted on June 16, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) HAO JINGFANG AI AUTHORSHIP CONTROVERSY. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Source: (Japanese)

阿井幸作 on X: “「折りたたみ北京」でヒューゴー賞を受賞した中国の有名なSF小説家・郝景芳が、自身の児童向けSF小説『銀河学院』(中国版ハリーポッターと呼ばれているらしい)シリーズの新作にAI執筆が50％含まれていると告白。

X.com machine translation’s rendition of that text:

Chinese renowned science fiction writer Hao Jingfang, who won the Hugo Award for “Folding Beijing,” has confessed that 50% of the writing in the new installment of her children’s science fiction novel series “Galactic Academy” (apparently being called the Chinese version of Harry Potter) was done by AI.

The Chinese blog/news post image from that tweet is shown below, along with a Google Translate rendition, the text of which is as follows (minor pronoun fixes by me):

Hugo Award-winning author’s new book sparks controversy! She admits that half of the writing is AI-generated – Artificial Intelligence

Daily news excerpts

June 16, 11:13

Recently, renowned science fiction writer and Hugo Award winner Hao Jingfang revealed in a media interview that in her latest children’s science fiction series, “Galaxy Academy,” published this year, the proportion of content written using artificial intelligence has reached as high as 50%. This public statement immediately caused a huge stir online and quickly spread across major social media platforms.

Ironically, Hao Jingfang also revealed that the publisher’s editors had previously praised the book’s quality, even repeatedly commending her for writing well this year. She also admitted that once the book is published and enters the market, ordinary readers simply cannot distinguish which parts were written by AI.

(2) ROLLACRIT WILL LAUNCH A KICKSTARTER FOR A NEW CON BAG OF HOLDING! [Item by Daniel Dern.] Rollacrit, which in 2024 brought out an updated, improved version of the original Thinkgeek Messenger Bag of Holding (see my File770 Scroll on this) (Rollacrit’s staff includes some ThinkGeek alums), has just announced their new Con Bag of Holding (improving on the ThinkGeek Con Survival Bag of Holding), more specifically that they will be launching a Kickstarter for it in Fall 2026. (I’m ready to order two!) Scroll with more deets (I’ve got a few questions to ask ‘em) to follow, ideally within a day or two.

(3) MEMORIES OF THE MAKERS OF LABYRINTH. “’David Bowie was a crazy workaholic’: Labyrinth at 40 – an oral history” – the Guardian put it together.

…Soon after the release of 1982’s The Dark Crystal, director, animator and puppeteer Henson was keen to follow up with a film that combined human actors with quirky puppets. Terry Jones of Monty Python fame was hired to write the script, while George Lucas served as executive producer.

Brian Froud, conceptual designer and costume design: We’d just had a showing of The Dark Crystal in San Francisco. In the back of the limousine, Jim said: “Should we do another one?” I said: “What about goblins?” Jim’s eyes lit up. Then into my head came a labyrinth and I had a vision of a baby surrounded by goblins. He said: “That’s great” – and that was it….

… [Brian Froud]: A few days before we started the film, I met David in his dressing room and gave him a little flute as a present. He took it, leapt up on to the counter in front of the mirror and played it. It was astonishing. I thought: “Oh, this is gonna really work.”

[Brian Henson]: David was a crazy workaholic, just like my dad. They were both people who were used to being creative every waking moment of their life. So for David, doing Labyrinth was like being on vacation. He was a really wonderful spark of a person.

[Karen Prell]: He was really fascinated by the process with the puppets. He would also hang around the puppet workshop and just see how things were built and performed. He was very down to earth and game for anything. He would go and have a pint in the studio pub with the crew….

(4) THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD PLACE. The Guardian’s Stephen Poole analyzes an intellectual history of imagined paradises that takes readers from Thomas More to Ursula K Le Guin. “The Uses of Utopia by Joad Raymond Wren review – can the ideal society ever exist?”

By definition, utopia cannot exist. In 1516, educated readers of Thomas More’s Utopia would have appreciated a tension between two possible derivations of this novel word: the Greek “eu-topos”, meaning good place, and “ou-topos”, meaning not a place at all. It might have been a compact warning that one should never attempt to turn utopias into reality. Those who have tried usually witnessed the model societies they founded devolving into grungily dysfunctional communes, weird sex cults, or both.

In this richly diverting intellectual history of the idea, we begin, as we must, with Plato, and the zany prescriptions of his Republic (“we should neutralise the poets’ influence on mothers”). Passing in silence over the potentially utopian aspects of Jesus’s thinking, we arrive at More’s utopia, where “nothing is private”, and so “the common affairs be earnestly looked upon”. The great Renaissance scientist Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis portrays a utopia of rational scientific experimentation – which, Wren suggests ingeniously, might have inspired Wakanda in the Marvel Black Panther films. The 17th-century duchess Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World imagines the author as a goddess elected by a world of human-animal hybrids who like science. In the 18th century, Sarah Scott’s Millenium [sic] Hall imagined an ideal society of women without men, as did Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland during the first world war.

Some patterns emerge: many utopias employ a framing device in which the narrator is accidentally or fantastically transported to a new land, and then subjected to reams of expository monologue about how it all works. Families are often abolished, with children raised in common. And in Edward Bellamy’s 1888 fantasy Looking Backward, Wren explains straightfacedly, “there are no law schools or lawyers, abolished here as in most utopias”….

(5) SHELDON COOPER WAS WRONG: WHETHER TO TRY NEW DISHES HAS A BENEFIT AND A MATHEMATICAL SOLUTION! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sheldon Copper of The Big Bang Theory has a strict rota for his weekly meals: he never tries new ones. However, in the real world we regularly do decide when going to a restaurant whether or not to strict to a tried-and-tested dish or to try something new off of the menu. Scott Edelman and his guests must come across this a lot in his Eating the Fantastic podcast. (Though visitors to Brit Cit arguably might want to make a point of firmly avoiding Nandos. Seriously.)

This ‘problem’ was made famous by Richard Feynman. In the late 1970s, the physicist Richard Feynman sat down for lunch with his friend Ralph Leighton at a Thai restaurant called Indra in Glendale, California. Leighton was trying to decide whether to order his running favourite (the ginger chicken), or try something new that had a chance of being even better. Feynman turned the dilemma into a math problem – and solved it. Unfortunately, Feynman never published the detail of how he came to his analysis but we do have his equation and how he derived that.

The optimal policy specifies decreasing thresholds for switching from exploring new dishes to exploiting the best, with thresholds varying based on the distribution of the quality of dishes.

Which brings us to today and British and US researchers have decipher the problem and solution from Feynman’s notes, and prove that Feynman’s solution is optimal. They generalised his result and find closed-form solutions for other distributions, and then turn to ask the question of how humans actually solve such decision-making problems. In a preregistered experiment with 2,520 participants, we find definitive evidence that humans use a decision threshold that decreases linearly with the proportion of trials remaining, achieving performance remarkably close to the optimal solution found by Feynman.

When in Brit Cit, stick with Sheldon and arguably avoid Nandos.

See the primary research Christian, B. et al (2026) Resolving Feynman’s restaurant problem reveals optimal solutions and human strategies. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., vol. 123 (23), e2509612123 and the comment item Castelvecchi, D. (2026) Feynman’s Solution To ‘Restaurant Dilemma’ Holds Firm. Nature, vol. 654, p309-310.

(6) THIS PHOENIX NOT EXPECTED TO RISE. “Phoenix magazine to cease publication after 43 years” reports BBC. (Subscription required by readers outside the UK.)

The Phoenix magazine, seen by some as Ireland’s version of Private Eye, is to cease operations after 43 years.

Irish broadcaster RTÉ reports the magazine’s publisher, Penfield, is believed to be entering voluntary liquidation.

The last edition of the magazine was published on 5 June.

The magazine is no longer taking new subscriptions, with a message on the phoenix.ie website saying it is “unable to offer” online or print subscriptions “at this time”.

Edited by Paddy Prendiville, the magazine had been published every two weeks.

It was founded in 1983 by the late journalist and publisher John Mulcahy and peaked in term of sales in the early 1990s.

The magazine combined humour, satire and political and business coverage.

(7) STOP THE STEAL. “Publishers Sue Pirate Site WeLib for Copyright Infringement” – Publishers Weekly has details.

Fresh off of last month’s victory against pirate web site Anna’s Archive, 13 publishers across all segments of the industry have allied to sue yet another pirate site, WeLib, for copyright infringement.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges that the operators of WeLib “ copied the source code and most of the contents of” Anna’s Archive.”

The plaintiffs include the Big Five, Cengage, Elsevier, McGraw Hill, Pearson, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley.

“Defendants boast that they have reproduced ‘an endless collection of literature, research papers, and education materials,’ none of which they own or have licensed,” the complaint alleges.

According to its website and repeated in the lawsuit, WeLib hosts over 43 million books and 98 million papers, and its stolen collection of literary works has purportedly attracted over 80,000 active monthly users. According to the website, WeLib’s users have illegally accessed over 51 million books in the last month alone, or an average of over 1.7 million books per day.

Although the owners of WeLib claim to be a library of sorts, publishers say that they have created a mechanism to cash in on the pirated content.

According to the complaint, download speeds for free users are typically very slow, but in exchange for a “donation,” users receive “fast downloads” and avoid waitlists. …

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 16, 1896 — Murray Leinster. (Died 1975.)

By Paul Weimer: Murray Leinster. Not many people get an award named after one of their stories, but Murray Leinster managed that feat.

I read his “Sidewise in Time” (for which the Sidewise Award for Alternate History is named) decades ago. I read it as part of my first full on dunking into Alternate Histories back in the 1980s, when I was trying to read every bit of AH I could get my paws on. Unlike a lot of those stories and worlds, Murray Leinster instead gives us a sort of a multiverse of worlds, The sheer variety of worlds crammed into the story, a story where temporary conjunctions of parallel worlds throws a bevy of people into alternate worlds, and things from those worlds into our own, showed the pulp sensibilities of Leinster in full. When I would later read Frederik Pohl’s “The Coming of the Quantum Cats”, I saw the homage to Leinster’s “Sidewise in Time” straightaway.

Alternate history is hardly Leinster’s only badge of honor of prediction, or as a forerunner in the science fiction field. “A Logic Named Joe”, in a time when computers were in their infancy, depicted a world with an internet. In these days with AI and the perils of information on the internet, the story and its plot seems more relevant than ever. But as off kilter as the logics go in that story, even Leinster didn’t predict an internet that, tainted by AI, would offer recipes for pizza that involve glue.

“The Runaway Skyscraper”, one of his earliest stories (and written before “Sidewise in Time” by over a decade) didn’t invent the time travel story. However, it helped give it a form in a 20th Century vein. For reasons beyond understanding, a skyscraper slips several thousand years in the past, and the building occupants must come together to figure out how to survive…and how to return to their modern day, if they can.

Leinster is a writer who started in the pulps and kept writing into the 1950’s and 1960’s, managing a transition that very few writers of his era were able to accomplish. His staying power isn’t super dense characterization, it’s his vivid imagination and ideas that he scatters like candy throughout his work. Take his story “Exploration Team” which has an amazing wild alien planet for the protagonist to cross…accompanied by his animal companions, including uplifted bears!

Oh, and the spaceship in the opening scenes of Starcrash is named the Murray Leinster.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Dog Eat Doug makes you hear the line.
Free Range does a favor for a passenger.
Loose Parts’ theme park ride delivers a true love experience.
Wondermark speed reads.

(10) DARK HORSE EMPLOYEE CUTS. “Layoffs begin at Dark Horse, but union means it’s complicated” reports ComicsBeat.

The proposed layoffs include three people in IT and six in the warehouse, with some employees notified of upcoming layoffs on June 10th, just days after Dark Horse management voluntarily recognized the Dark Horse Workers Union on June 3rd.

There is a lot of back and forth in Rabiroff’s reporting, but the shorter version is that although Dark Horse management was planning layoffs prior to the unionization, layoffs must now be part of the arbitration process between the union and the company.

Based on many conversations with past and present Dark Horse employees over the years, they all expressed the opinion that Dark Horse has a huge staff, much larger than publishers who put out a similar number of books. Some of those workers were involved with the retail end of the company, including both the shuttered TFAW.com and the soon-to-close brick and mortar Things from Another World stores.

I’ve been told many times that as Dark Horse parent Embracer Group underwent layoffs in most of their units, it was only a matter of time until the budget cuts hit Dark Horse. There were a handful of layoffs last year, but nothing sweeping.

However, with Mike Richardson no longer in the picture, everyone expected more layoffs to hit; the unionization effort, which took five years to organize, has may goals, but making sweeping staff cuts a lot harder to implement must have been one of them.

(11) SEEKING SETI. [Item by Steven French.] This offers an interesting take on an old chestnut by framing alien colonisation in terms of ‘artificial infection’. The conclusion is both surprising and dismaying (to some, anyway): “David Kipping has new take on the existence of advanced life in the universe and the numbers are not encouraging” says Phys.org.

“The firmest conclusion we can say is that if infections spawn more frequently than 1 in 100,000 galaxies, then 99.9% of the universe would be infected for a 0.1c infection wave speed. If we take it as a given that this is inconsistent with observation/experience, then this requires that less than 1 in 10 quadrillion star systems have ever spawned an infection. That’s a staggeringly tight observational constraint on alien behavior; it’s by far the strongest statistical statement we can make in all of SETI.”

There are possible explanations for this that don’t involve the nonexistence of intelligent life beyond Earth, as Kipping notes. For what Sagan described as “contact optimists,” a natural explanation would be that despite there being a large population of ETCs in our universe, the odds of them ever spawning an infection, i.e., sending out probes or ships, are astronomically small. However, this is difficult to consider if one rejects the idea of uniformity in behavior and motivation. As David Brin argued in his 1983 paper, “The “Great Silence’: the Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life,” it only takes one species to break the pattern for a proposed resolution to become untenable.

In contrast, the contact pessimist has a much easier job explaining the apparent lack of evidence for ETCs, either by stating that they don’t exist or employing the Great Filter argument. But as Kipping stated, this explanation is also difficult to maintain: “If the filter is behind us, then where? Life started so early that it strongly indicates abiogenesis is a rapid and easy process. Perhaps some evolutionary steps are hard and very rarely transpire, but evolutionary biologists have argued against this recently. Or perhaps it’s ahead of us, and we won’t last another century needed to develop infection technologies.

“But then it’s hard to imagine how such a future Great Filter is so potent that it can suppress the odds at the level needed here. We can imagine many ways in which humanity continues, so surely someone, somewhere, especially those civilizations with greater wisdom than our own, would sail past the challenges we face today without annihilation.”

Consider “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” the famous science fiction tale that chronicles the collapse of human civilization, its rebirth and, spoilers, its imminent collapse again toward the end. Or Foundation, where the collapse of the Galactic Empire (à la The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) is inevitable, but is not a permanent condition. In short, the data support no conclusions, something that Kipping acknowledges.

“Frankly, I don’t have a good answer for this,” he tells us. “I suspect I will be wrestling with this question for the rest of my life in frustration and wonder.” The same may apply to the rest of us, and humanity as a whole….

(12) TREK AHOY. “’Strange New Worlds’ Season 4 Trailer Teases the Journey to the Beginning of ‘Star Trek’” – Gizmodo has details.

The future of Star Trek on TV isn’t terribly optimistic, but the new season of Strange New Worlds—its fourth, ahead of a shortened fifth and final outing—looks stuffed full of excitement and wonder. Paramount just shared the latest trailer ahead of the show’s return in July, featuring a meaningful chat between future dynamic duo Spock (Ethan Peck) and Captain Kirk (Paul Wesley).

…Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season four begins July 23 on Paramount+. It runs weekly, with new episodes arriving Thursdays through September 24.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Paul Weimer, Daniel Dern, Ersatz Culture, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 6/4/26 What If Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March* Became The Fantastic Four?

Posted on June 4, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(0) * From Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, of course.

(1) THE PUBLISHING GRIND. Nick Mamatas tells how the sausage gets made in “How Publishing Actually Works” at The Republic of Letters. Here are a couple of excerpts.

…Doomscrollers and restackers, here is what you need to understand: publishing is a nineteenth-century production-driven manufacturing industry, not unlike the Big Three automakers, but the writers and compilers of books are artisanal creators. This contradiction is the cause of many of the anxieties and confusions experienced by aspiring novelists and even working professionals.

A production-driven industry is one that is less concerned with tailoring products toward a market and more about manufacturing large numbers of products (both units and product types), and then selling those products to another set of sellers. Those retailers are in the business of meeting the customer. The publishing industry—even leaving aside self-published ebooks—generates hundreds of thousands of books a year across all categories. This despite there being only five big publishers that do this sort of thing, and perhaps as many big retail outlets to sell the books to individual consumers.

Furthermore, publishers spend a lot of money up-front bringing books to print, but get their profits back in dribs and drabs. Booksellers sell the books, and return the ones that do not sell for a full refund. The books don’t even need to be in good shape when they return to the warehouse either. Most get Dumpstered or incinerated. (And no, “the poor” don’t want those books either, even for free.)…

… Nobody would patronize a best-seller–only shopping mall kiosk called We Bet We Have That Book You Want, even though best-sellers are most of what anyone buys. People want to walk into stores with lots of books which they have no interest in even looking at. Amazon uses the same strategy—it launched in 1994 with its slogan “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.” Amazon claimed to have millions of books in its warehouses, while the two big chains at the time had a couple hundred thousand. Attracted by the promise of endless possibilities, tons of readers made accounts and bought…Harry Potter titles and Who Moved My Cheese?, which they could have gotten anywhere else.

Ironically, it is thus not true that all publishers want is best-sellers. There is one major benefit in the best-seller: as print runs go up, per-unit costs go down, but that’s not enough. The Big Five want wallpaper, which they use to make you buy their best-sellers….

(2) YOU’RE FROM THE SIXTIES! Camestros Felapton’s series about robots in sff discusses The Doom Patrol and X-Men comics. “An Aside About the X-Men (and others)”. Here’s an excerpt:

…In earlier issues, it had been shown that the X-Men felt they needed to hide their identities as society wasn’t ready to understand them, from issue 14 the relationship with wider society becomes more fraught. Trask’s annoucement leads to a press campaign whipping up hatred of mutants, with lurid fears of a mutant take over. Having said that, Magneto had genuinely attempted to take over a country a few issues earlier with an illusionary Nazi-like army.

This is still a 1960s comic, so it is as goofy as hell. Professor Xavier arranges a TV debate with Trask. However, Xavier’s TV appearance does more harm than good. When he suggests that anybody might end up having mutant children, people take offence. On live TV Trask also reveals his solution to mutant problem: ROBOTS! Specifically, Sentinels, superpowered robots designed to protect humanity from mutants. However, as soon as Trask explains that the robots are under his command, the leader of the Sentinels explains that as their brains are superior THEY are in command. The story line doesn’t mess about: it is introduction to full on robot uprising in four panels.

It takes several issues for the X-Men to defeat the Sentinels, but once done the public reputation of mutants is somewhat improved and Professor Xavier’s advocacy is vindicated….

(3) THE WORST. James Davis Nicoll, having discussed good sff mentors, does a 180 to give us “Five Terrible or Useless Mentors in SF and Fantasy” at Reactor.

As recently discussed, many fictional protagonists have benefited from talented, inspirational mentors. However, there is another variety of mentor that, while perhaps not as useful, can be just as inspirational… or at least extremely memorable. This is the terrible mentor, the pontificator whose advice is invariably incorrect, when it is not actively harmful….

Here’s one of his picks:

Qifrey — Kamome Shirahama’s Witch Hat Atelier

No sooner did Coco discover that anyone with the right tools can perform magic than she accidentally killed her mother with a runaway spell. Under witch law, any non-witch who learns magic should have their memory erased. Instead, kindly Qifrey offers Coco the chance to study magic.

Qifrey does not spare Coco because he is benevolent. He spares her because he believes her memory holds clues that will allow him to successfully pursue a vendetta against those who hurt him. Erasing her memory would erase those clues.

In fact, the series establishes clearly that Qifrey is adept at presenting himself as a sincere friend and protector, when in fact he is coldly pragmatic about pursuing his goals. His close friend Olruggio could attest to this—if Qifrey weren’t in the habit of erasing Olruggio’s memory whenever Olruggio learns too much.

(4) POLITICAL SCIENCE. [Item by Steven French.] How Newtonian physics directly influenced American independence: “The American Revolution’s Overlooked Influence? Physics. How ‘Common Sense’ Spelled Out Astronomical Expectations for a New Nation” in The Smithsonian Magazine.

In politics, as in nature, tensions can take years to build, but it takes just one stone to unleash an avalanche, one spark to ignite a wildfire. For many historians of the American Revolution, that spark was a pamphlet of fewer than 100 pages written by a newly arrived English immigrant named Thomas Paine. Throughout 1775, violent clashes between British troops and colonist rebels protesting onerous taxes inspired little talk of outright revolution. Most rebels aimed to force better terms with Britain, not sever the link. Then, in January 1776, Paine changed everything with Common Sense, a manifesto so radical that at first he didn’t even dare to sign it. It was an immediate sensation, selling 120,000 copies in three months, in Paine’s estimation, in a colonial population of just two and a half million—and that was not counting handwritten copies and knockoff editions that swept not only through America but all over Europe.

In his plea for American independence from Britain, Paine made vivid appeals to nature. Strikingly, he envisioned global politics as an astronomical system, arguing that America, rather than orbiting the central sun of England, was large and mature enough to provide its own center of gravity. “In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet,” he wrote, “and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverse the common order of nature, it is evident that they belong to different systems.” He described the “gravitating” force binding Americans, urging them to work together to determine their own fate. “We have it in our power,” he wrote, “to begin the world over again.”

Paine’s astronomical vision was taken further that April in a remarkable response published in the weekly newspaper the Pennsylvania Ledger. The writer, whose identity is lost to time, imagined taking a trip with Paine into outer space. Leaving the solar system and the “dull beaten tracks of monarchy” far behind, the space travelers discovered a vast cosmos not ruled by one dominant sun but studded with innumerable suns. The universe thus revealed the blueprint for a different kind of nation: “a republic amidst the stars.”…

(5) ON STAGE. Asian Pirate Musical is “a queer time travel musical set on Southeast Asian seas, with a genre-devouring soundtrack melding traditional instruments, 21st century Asian pop, and diasporic musical influences. Drawing on the real histories of 14th century Muslim navigator Zheng He and 19th century pirate queen Sek Yeong, alongside the imagined futures of 21st century climate survivors and 23rd century space revolutionaries, Asian Pirate Musical is a new legend on the high seas.”

Being staged Upstairs At The Gatehouse in North London from July 28-August 2. Tickets available here.

(6) PLAYSTATION ADDITONS. [Item by Steven French.] Keza MacDonald reviews a selection of new games for the PlayStation – including Wolverine, Tomb Raider and God of War – in this week’s Guardian’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter: “From God of War to Until Dawn – seven reveals from last night’s PlayStation event”.

PlayStation’s future has looked a little uncertain these past few years. Although the PS5 has sold well and been very profitable, the brand is far from the runaway market leader it was in the PS2 days. Earlier this week, Game File dug into Sony’s most recent earnings reports to illustrate how PlayStation has been selling fewer and fewer of its own flagship games since a peak during the pandemic. About 54.1m copies of games either developed or published by Sony were sold in the 2018 financial year; in 2025, it sold 32.1m.

Sony has put out some great homegrown games since the PS5 was released in 2020, from Astro Bot to Ghost of Yōtei, but it has also had some expensive and very public failures and cancellations; PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who retired in 2024, placed big bets on live-service games and only a few panned out (hello, Helldivers). Sony also seems to have rolled back on releasing its single-player PS5 games on PC after a polite interval of time, suggesting it wants to preserve what advantage and exclusivity it has.

Meanwhile, its longtime console rival Xbox may have faded into the background as a sales competitor – the PS5 has outsold the Xbox Series S/X by approximately three to one – but it has become a strong publishing competitor, having bought up tens of development studios alongside Activision and Bethesda. Then there’s Nintendo, whose exclusive games for the Switch and Switch 2 consoles have performed significantly better than Sony’s over the last decade. (The top-selling Sony-developed PS4 game was Spider-Man, at 22.68m. The top-selling Nintendo-developed Switch game was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at … 71m.)

So what is Sony going to do in the next few years, as we enter a later stage of the PS5 lifecycle? Will it play safe, or diversify? Perhaps revive some older games for nostalgic millennials? Thanks to a State of Play live-stream last night, we now have some answers….

(7) GORDON EKLUND Q&A. Fanac.org has posted a YouTube video of “Gordon Eklund, interviewed by Andrew Hooper”.

Gordon Eklund found science fiction at 12, fandom at 15 and made his first professional sale less than 10 years later. In this charming interview, fan historian Andy Hooper, himself a long time Seattle fan, elicits stories of both the Nebula-award winning author and of the young man who stepped into Seattle’s legendary fan group, “The Nameless” before he could drive. This is a “bonus” interview, as Gordon was to have participated in a panel on the history of Seattle fandom (November 2025), but was prevented by technical difficulties. As a result, we are fortunate to have this dedicated interview, and hear about Gordon’s experiences as a young, and not so young fan, and as an accomplished professional. FYI: during this interview, there were some momentary network disruptions and the recording has been edited to remove them.

Gordon Eklund discovered fandom through the ads in the back of the science fiction magazines. That led to fanzines, including “Cry of the Nameless” and soon to his first club meeting of the Nameless Ones in 1960, in the room above Bill Austin’s much loved bookstore. In this recording, Gordon tells his origin story, tales of the Nameless Ones, and of Seacon 1961, his first convention and first Worldcon. Anecdotes include the pro who wanted to show everyone how he could light matches with his feet, the hospitality of Robert Heinlein and how Harlan shot craps with the bellhops to make his carfare to Hollywood. You’ll hear about Gordon’s evolution to award-winning author, and how the Nebula nomination for his first published story led to the sale of his first novel, as well as how he came to collaborate with E.E. “Doc” Smith. This entertaining interview runs the gamut from serious discussions about Gordon’s work to fannish topics such as which APAs are more boring. It’s a window on the fandom of the early 60s, as well as what came after. Finally, it’s great fun and strongly recommended.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 4, 1960 — Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 66.

By Paul Weimer: Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an author I found, and then lost and then found again. She in the meantime had been writing prolifically, in multiple genres and fields, but had fallen off of my radar for a good long while.

It all started in the 1990s when I picked up The Sacrifice, the first of her Fey novels. The high concept drew me immediately. A world-conquering empire of Elves sweeping everyone before them…and then they run into the speedbump of Blue Isle, which has a power to resist the Fey that they themselves don’t even quite suspect. Suddenly the easy conquest is not so easy and over the next several books, Rusch explored this conflict from multiple vantage points and perspectives.

And then, someone Rusch fell off of my personal radar. Too many other new authors, perhaps. Or I didn’t follow her into mysteries and other subgenres such as media-tie ins, of which she has written or coauthored a fair number of, in multiple universes, and often under other names as well, ranging from Star Trek to Roswell.

It wasn’t until my early official reviewer days that I picked up Rusch again, as she helped vitalize the xenoarchaeology novel subgenre with the Wreck series. I was offered a review copy of Diving into the Wreck, and my fond memories of The Fey stood me in good stead as I dug into Boss’ story.

Since then I’ve been following Rusch on her blog and Patreon, where she has fearlessly and openly discussed and educated on the craft and business of writing. Anyone seriously interested in either should follow and read what Rusch has to say.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Close to Home shares the bad use of a time machine.
Dinosaur Comics keeps finding time loops.
Ink Pen has a new definition of action figure.
Loose Parts found where it all starts.
Non Sequitur seeks writing inspiration.
Speed Bump envisions an author signing.
The Argyle Sweater lists heroes’ power foods.

(10) DARK HORSE UNIONIZATION SUCCEEDS. “Dark Horse Voluntarily Recognizes Staff Union” reports Publishers Weekly.

Dark Horse Comics has voluntarily recognized Dark Horse Workers United as a collective bargaining representative under standards established by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), per a statement from interim CEO Jay Komas, and has reached out to the union’s attorney to initiate the appropriate next steps in the bargaining process.

The announcement comes just over a week since employees of the comics publisher and its retail arm, Things From Another World, announced their intent to unionize with Communications Workers of America (CWA), Local 7901….

(11) INDIE COMICS PUBLISHER CLEARS OUT THE COMICS VAULT FOR 90 DAYS. Silverline Comics is running a sale.

A lot of comic book publishers were negatively impacted by the collapse of Diamond Comics, the insane legal aftermath of its bankruptcy and the disruption of the industry. To recoup some of its losses and to give fans a boost, indie publisher Silverline Comics is having a summer sale.

“This is a really good opportunity for fans to catch up on a missed issue or two, or get a whole series,” said CEO/Founder and Editor-In-Chief Roland Mann. “The comics are all printed and ready to go with each order.” This includes Mann’s own title, Cat & Mouse, which recently launched a new mini-series for its 30th anniversary.

According to Silverline’s CFO, Barb Kaalberg (creator of Divinity), “It’s not just comics. A lot of our artists have donated some fantastic original art to the sale. Others are doing commissions on our behalf.” The publisher also has graphic novels, promotional items, posters, and special editions available as well.

The Silverline Summer Spectacular Sale is on here. The sale will last through early August.

Silverline’s current comics are crowdfunded, and also distributed traditionally to retail shops by PhilBo Distribution.

(12) THE MONTH IN STREAMING. JustWatch has released the top 10 charts for movie and TV streaming in the month of May. [Click for larger images.]

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

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

Posted on May 28, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(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!

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Curses! noticed one of these things is not calming.
Reality Check plays songs.
Strange Brew has open mike.
Thatababy combines a taste.
xkcd missed the dates of some inventions.
Bizarro needs a show to mimic, like the character in a recent release
Brewster Rockit has a Star Trek reference.
Junk Drawer needs to decide.
Loose Parts picked up a prank.
The Argyle Sweater lists cartoon character rejects.

(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.]

Pixel Scroll 4/21/25 That’s My Last Loch Ness, Hanging On The Wall

Posted on April 21, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE INVISIBLE BABY? “Baby boomers: if Sue Storm is pregnant then what’s going to happen in the Fantastic Four’s first outing?” asks the Guardian.

You might have thought that the introduction of Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four, into the MCU would be enough heavy lifting for one movie. But while all eyes were on the potential ramifications of villain Galactus turning up for planetary snack time, the new trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps delivers a mind-bending revelation: Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) is pregnant.

This looks like big news. As they prepare to take on their colossal nemesis and his gleaming, emotionally unavailable emissary Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s the Thing will be doing so in the knowledge that they’re protecting more than just the future of this Apollo-era-inspired version of Earth. And if you’ve even lightly skimmed the back catalogue of Fantastic Four comics, you’ll know this is no ordinary pregnancy; and certainly no ordinary infant.

(2) FANZINE TALK INSPIRED BY LICHTMAN COLLECTION. The Friends of the Lehigh University Libraries will be hosting a talk on Zoom on Wednesday, April 23 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern titled Worlds We Build Together: Sci-Fi Fandom, Fanzines, and the Culture of Connection.

The talk will feature panelists Phoenix Alexander (Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction and Fantasy at University of California, Riverside) and Pete Balestrieri (Curator of Popular Culture, University of Iowa Libraries), who will discuss the history of science fiction fandom and the production of fanzines that span nearly 100 years. Topics will include fanzines in the classroom and community and a celebration of the Lehigh Libraries acquisition of the Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection in 2024.

The talk is free and open to the public, but registration is required. More information about this talk and a link to register is available here.

This talk program is presented in collaboration with the exhibit Galaxy of Ideas: The Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection.

(3) LICHTMAN COLLECTION EXHIBIT. “Galaxy of Ideas: The Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection” is on display at Lehigh University Libraries through June 2025.

Recently, the [Lehigh Libraries Special Collections] Libraries acquired the Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection amounting to over 15,000 items. This extensive collection spans nearly a century, dating from the late 1930s through 2022, and features commentary, fan fiction, criticism, conference proceedings, and other genres. Along with the printed works, the archive includes correspondence, original art, and several fanzine titles personally published by Lichtman.

Fanzines, or ‘zines, as they are commonly referred to, may seem like an unusual choice for an institution whose traditional rare book collection is steeped in history. However, a previous gift of fanzines from alumnus Frank Lunney already revealed significant research interest across the curriculum.

Boaz Nadav Manes, Lehigh University Librarian says: “Adding this comprehensive fanzine collection to Lehigh Libraries’ holdings establishes our libraries as a primary national destination for research related to science fiction studies and affiliated interdisciplinary fields. With the addition of Lichtman’s correspondence and artwork, the collections’ appeal goes much beyond its thematic focus and will generate enthusiasm around deepening our understanding of areas such as fandom culture, network analysis, gender studies, and more. We are truly excited about this landmark addition to our collection.”

While it will take some time before the entire Lichtman fanzine collection is fully cataloged and prepared for use, we are pleased to exhibit highlighted selections from the collection showing its breadth and depth. The on-site display opens in Linderman Library in January, with additional material relating to international Worldcons (World Science Fiction Convention) opening later in Fairchild-Martindale Library. Both displays will be on view through the end of June 2025.

(4) HELP WANTED. “Now Hiring! Operations Director of SFWA”. Full details at the link.

The Operations Director is one of the key management leaders for SFWA. The Operations Director is responsible for overseeing operations (including membership and systems management), accounting and office administration, and internal fundraising and development processes (auction, sponsorship processes, and fundraising systems). The Operations Director will report directly to the President of the Board of Directors and lead a fully remote team of employees, contractors, and volunteers.

(5) COMMUNICATION FROM NEW ASIMOV’S OWNER. Subscribers are receiving the following message from Must Read Magazines, new publishers of Asimov’s Science Fiction, that the May/June issue will arrive late.

Information about your May/June 2025 Issue

Dear Subscriber,

We are confirming the buzz: Must Read Magazines is the new publisher of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

The first issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction printed under our banner will be the May / June 2025 issue, which you should receive in the mail about May 12, 2025. Your future issues will be mailed to you every other month after that.

Asimov’s Science Fiction is an iconic publication with a storied history in the genre. We are delighted its excellent editorial team has stayed on and we will all continue the group’s traditions. We are developing many more ways to continue and build the magazine’s community and hope you will connect with us more online or in the mail during our forthcoming expansion.

Thank you for being a subscriber; we look forward to serving you with the Who’s Who of award-winning authors, stories, editorial insights and genre news for years to come.

Print subscribers who call or mail in a renewal before the end of June and mention the coupon code LIFTOFF will receive $4 off the purchase of an annual subscription to one of our other great magazines or $6 off gifting any one of our magazines to a new subscriber: Asimov’s, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and soon to come, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

(6) WILLY LEY’S ASHES DISCOVERED. “Willy Ley Was a Prophet of Space Travel. His Ashes Were Found in a Basement” reports the New York Times. Link bypasses paywall. Ley was one of the winners of the first Hugos in 1953 for “Excellence in Fact Articles”, and another in 1956 for “Feature Writer”. There are hopes of launching his ashes into space. He also won a Retro-Hugo (2004) and an International Fantasy Award (1951).

During his life, Willy Ley predicted the dawn of the Space Age with remarkable accuracy. How did his remains end up forgotten in a co-op on the Upper West Side?

The basement of the prewar co-op on the Upper West Side was so cluttered and dark in one area that the staff called it “the Dungeon,” and last year, the building’s new superintendent resolved to clear it out.

For weeks, he hauled the junk left behind by former tenants — old air-conditioners, cans of paint, ancient elevator parts and rolled-up carpets — through the winding hallway with its low ceilings to the dumpster out back.

About halfway through the job, he spied an old tin can on a shelf next to a leaf blower. He read the label:

“Remains of Willy Ley. Cremated June 26, 1969.”

This was not the sort of thing you toss in a dumpster.

The super brought his discovery to the co-op board president, Dawn Nadeau. She had plenty of co-op business to attend to — a lobby renovation, a roof replacement — but the disposition of someone’s ashes was new to her.

“We needed to handle the remains as respectfully as possible,” said Ms. Nadeau, a brand consultant. “So I set out trying to figure who this was and who it belonged to.”…

… The rise of the Nazi party disturbed Mr. Ley deeply, and in 1935, worried about the weaponization of rockets by the government, he fled Germany. Eventually, he ended up in Queens.

In New York, he made a living primarily as a science writer, churning out articles and books, including “Rockets: The Future of Travel Beyond the Stratosphere” in 1944. In it, Mr. Ley reiterated his belief in the possibility of space travel: “I wish to affirm with great seriousness that the rocket to the moon is possible,” he wrote. “Whether it has any practical value is another question and whether the experiment will be made is another story altogether.”…

…. Ms. Nadeau now has her own space mission, and it is not clear how or whether she will complete it. She found a company that said it would send the ashes into space, but the average cost listed on its website was a prohibitive $12,500.

For now, the can that holds what’s left of Mr. Ley’s earthly body is still in the co-op, tucked away in the workshop of the superintendent, Michael Hrdlovic, who first discovered it in the basement….

Willy Ley accepting 1953 Hugo in Philadelphia.

(7) CARTOON DOCTOR. Grant Watson reviews the “Lux” episode of Doctor Who at FictionMachine.

With the TARDIS unable to return to May 2025, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) instead lands in 1953 Miami. There he and Belinda (Verada Sethu) discover a mysterious closed cinema, and a missing persons case that leads them inside. There they encounter one of the strangest foes the Doctor has ever faced: a cartoon character inexplicably come to life.

I suspect a lot of viewers will be delighted by “Lux”, an ambitious and bold stretch in storytelling that is quite unlike many things the series has done before. Indeed to find something as off-kilter as the Doctor and his companion confronting a cartoon character, being turned into cartoons themselves, and even contemplating their own fictional status, one has to go all the way back to 1968’s serial “The Mind Robber”. I positively adore that story, but I did not adore “Lux”, and I am struggling to pinpoint exactly why that is….

(8) SEE IT NOW. [Item by Steven French.] If any Filer is in London from mid-May they may want to check out this exhibition on extra-terrestrial life at the Natural History Museum: “’It blew us away’: how an asteroid may have delivered the vital ingredients for life on Earth” in the Guardian.

Several billion years ago, at the dawn of the solar system, a wet, salty world circled our sun. Then it collided, catastrophically, with another object and shattered into pieces.

One of these lumps became the asteroid Bennu whose minerals, recently returned to Earth by the US robot space probe OSIRIS-REx, have now been found to contain rich levels of complex chemicals that are critical for the existence of life.

“There were things in the Bennu samples that completely blew us away,” said Prof Sara Russell, cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London, and a lead author of a major study in Nature of the Bennu minerals. “The diversity of the molecules and minerals preserved are unlike any extraterrestrial samples studied before.”

Results from this and other missions will form a central display at a Natural History Museum’s exhibition, Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth?, which opens on 16 May. It will be a key chance for the public to learn about recent developments in the hunt for life on other worlds, said Russell.

(9) NEW GERROLD NOVELLA. Starship Sloane has just published a new novella by David Gerrold, titled Here There Be Lawyers. It’s set on the colony world Praxis. Available in print and eBook. David is the cover artist/designer for this one.

Dar is a well-connected arbiter and Turtledome is comfortable enough. But the colony on Praxis requires his expertise in crafting a constitution—and he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. Their objective is a bold one, and if they succeed, powerful interests and a highly lucrative, intergalactic economic system will be disrupted. Permanently. A world is at play, the stakes are high, and a corporate overlord will stop at nothing to protect its investment.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 21, 1976 — Wonder Woman 1976 series episode 1

The mark of a good series is not how great the pilot is but the first episode after the pilot. Forty-six years ago this evening on ABC, the second episode of Wonder Woman aired, a curiosity titled affair called “Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther”.

In it she got to take resurgent Nazis on in the form of a Nazi spy ring known as the Abwehr who are active again and who are targeting Steve Trevor for imprisoning the Baroness von Gunther, their leader.

The Baroness Paula von Gunther was created by William Moulton Marston as an adversary for his creation Wonder Woman in Sensation Comics #4, 1942, “School for Spies”. Though she disappeared during the Crisis on Infinite Earth years, Jim Byrne brought her back in 1988 and made once again the Nazi villainess she once was. No villain or villainess can ever truly cease to exist in the comics realm, can they?

This episode is based off “Wonder Woman Versus the Prison Spy Ring” in Wonder Woman #1 (July 1942). (The title comes from when it was reprinted later.) In the story, Colonel Darnell informs Trevor that an army transport ship was sunk by a German U-Boat. Believing the Nazis must have had a traitor inside the Army, Darnell orders Steve to interrogate the former head of the Gestapo system in America — The Baroness who is now serving time in a federal penitentiary thanks to Wonder Woman.

Her only other television appearance was in 2011 on the animated Batman: The Brave and the Bold series in the “Scorn of the Star Sapphire!” episode. If you’re a Batman fan, this series which is about as serious as the Sixties series was so is a lot of fun. It’s more contemporary is look and feel but the attitude is very similar.

Note that this episode made Trevor responsible for her being captured.

So how was it received? This episode ranked twelfth in the Nielsen ratings, shockingly beating out a Bob Hope special which ranked twentieth.

So here’s Wonder Woman and Baroness Von Gunther…

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal provides translation.
Eyebeam comments on writing.
Pearls Before Swine starts a competition.
The Flying McCoys has a twelve-legged syllogism.
Wumo tells the fate of a real live boy.

(12) STAR WARS MANGA COLLECTION. “Dark Horse Comics and Lucasfilm Announce The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga” and the Kickstarter intended to fund publication.

As part of Star Wars Celebration, Dark Horse Comics is announcing that they will publish The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga. Two stunning volumes will each be available wherever books are sold, and will spotlight Hisao Tamaki’s original art from his acclaimed 1997 manga adaptation of Star Wars: A New Hope and include a new English translation. Ahead of retail launch in Summer 2026, Dark Horse Comics will also be offering special editions through the publisher’s first ever Kickstarter campaign.

This beautifully drawn manga will be available through Kickstarter in two distinct editions, each offering a unique way to experience this extraordinary adaptation. The Collector’s Edition features the same two-volume hardcovers that will be available at retail but with Kickstarter exclusive covers. The Masterpiece Edition will faithfully reproduce Tamaki’s art at its original size in two volumes and include an auxiliary volume. The Masterpiece Edition format will be exclusively available through Kickstarter. Fans can now follow the prelaunch page for the Kickstarter page.

These deluxe Kickstarter-exclusive sets offer fans an opportunity to revisit the classic adventure through new eyes and in a fresh voice. A standard edition of The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga will be released in comic shops and bookstores in 2026. Join Dark Horse and Lucasfilm to explore the creative journey of a novel view of a galaxy far, far away.

(13) KIDS THESE DAYS. [Item by Kathy Sullivan.] I’m sure this isn’t the only middle school doing this, but I’m proud of my local school. “Students weave stories at D&D Club” in the Winona Post.

…The Dungeons & Dragons Club at WMS has been taking place for about three years for seventh and eighth graders and meets once a week for part of the school year. Students who are homeschooled or who attend schools other than WMS have also been part of the club.

Seventh Grade Language Arts Teacher and Dungeons & Dragons Club Supervisor Greg Peterson’s own experiences playing the game since he was his students’ age inspired him to pass it on. When he would talk in class about playing, as a way to show his students he’s human, too, many would express interest in the game, so he started the group.

Dungeons & Dragons is all about creating enjoyable characters and telling their stories collaboratively with a group of people, Peterson said.

“… The collaborative storytelling experience is extremely unique. It’s different than just reading a book or watching a movie,” Peterson said. “You’re in the story. And being able to take on that mantle as a hero is empowering and is really just fun. There are times where at tables I’ve played at as a dungeon master or as a player where people have cried, people have laughed, people have been jaw-droppingly shocked at what we’ve done. We’ve gotten so deep into character we forgot we’re playing a game in some cases.”

To help students learn how to play the game, Peterson guided them through developing characters’ backstories, such as deciding why their characters have certain powers in imagined fantasy worlds….

(14) GET OUT OF THAT BOXCAR. A horror curiosity from the Nassau Hobby Center: “O Gauge RailKing Amityville Box Car w/Glowing LEDs”.

This 40′ box car features bright, glowing LED lights on both sides of this car spaced behind the windows of the haunted Amityville House. Each LED glows at a constant intensity and is sure to catch the attention of all who see it on your own O Gauge model railroad. Completely assembled and ready-to-run. Just put it on the track and enjoy the action.

(15) NAMELESS STAR WARS SERIES IN DEVELOPMENT. [Item by Chris Barkley.] From the guy that gave us Lost and Nash Bridges: “’Star Wars’ Series in the Works with Carlton Cuse, Nick Cuse” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Prolific Lost showrunner Carlton Cuse is taking a journey into the Star Wars galaxy, with son Nick Cuse at his side. The duo is in early development on a Star Wars series for Lucasflim, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter….

The news comes on the eve of Andor season two’s debut and follows Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo, where Lucasfilm unveiled a first look at feature The Mandalorian & Grogu and revealed a title for Shawn Levy’s Ryan Gosling movie, Star Wars: Starfighter. The company also revealed new details of Ashoka season two, including the return of fan favorite Anakin Skywalker actor Hayden Christensen…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “How Captain America Brave New World Should Have Ended”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Moshe Feder, Linda Deneroff,Alex Japha, Andrew (not Werdna), Jim Meadows, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern, who assures us “No sea or lake serpents were harmed in the making of this Scroll Title. As for the wall, only time will tell.”]

Pixel Scroll 2/26/25 Do Pixels Dream Of Scrolls That Will Be?

Posted on February 26, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) THREE MAJOR PROZINES CHANGE OWNERSHIP. Jason Sanford today reported “Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF purchased by new owner” on Patreon.

…The new owner of the magazines is Steven Salpeter and a group of investors. Salpeter is the president of literary and IP development at Assemble Media and previously worked as a literary agent for Curtis Brown.….

(2) ASTOUNDING AWARD’S FUTURE? Following the report that Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF have been purchased by a new owner, John Scalzi speculated about the fate of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Although voting is administered by the Worldcon, the Astounding Award belongs to Dell Magazines, publisher of Analog prior to this sale. Will Analog’s new owners continue the sponsorship? John Scalzi volunteered a landing place if one is needed in a post at Whatever:

If the new owners of Asimov’s and Analog don’t want to take sponsorship of the Astounding Award (or the award is not otherwise folded into the responsibilities of WSFS/the individual Worldcons), we’ll take it on. The ideal plan would be for the Scalzi Family Foundation to act as a bridge sponsor while we set up an endowment that would allow the Astounding Award to be run indefinitely.

(3) EISNER HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES. Comic-Con International has announced 21 creators and industry figures who will be inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame this year.

In addition to these choices, voters in the comics industry will elect 6 persons from a group of 18 nominees proposed by the judges. Those nominees will be announced within the next week, and a ballot will be made available for online voting.

(4) BEST ECOFICTION OF THE YEAR. Violet Lichen imprint editor-in-chief, Marissa van Uden has extended the call for submissions deadline for ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction. She’s seeking reprint submissions from editors, publishers, and authors.

We’ve received more than 150 stories nominated by publishers, editors, and authors so far, and the range of stories, ideas, and perspectives has been so wonderful to read. As this is our first year of the anthology and our launch happened so quickly, we’ve decided to extend the submissions window out to Monday, March 17, to ensure that everyone publishing ecofiction gets a chance to submit….

…Ecofiction engages with some of the most urgent issues facing us today and also looks ahead to the possibilities of the future. Even when dealing with dark or tragic themes, ecofiction stories are expressions of our human connection to the most beautiful planet we know, and to all of earthlife….

(5) BOOK WITHIN A BOOK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 working weekday Women’s Hour had a second half (35 minutes in) largely devoted to two SF works. The first was a play, a re-imagining of the Greek tragedy Oedipus but set in a dystopic, near-future, climate drought-ridden future…

And then the Nigerian-American SF author Nnedi Okorafor who was discussing her latest book Death of the Author (out from Gollancz). This is a sweeping story about a writer of a science fiction novel that becomes a global phenomenon… at a price. The future of storytelling is here. A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written. This is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it… This interview begins 50 minutes in.

Nigerian American science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor’s new book is Death of the Author. It follows the story of Zelu, a novelist who is disabled, unemployed and from a very judgmental family. Nnedi and Nuala talk about the book within her book, success, and the influence on her writing of being an athlete in her earlier years.

You can access the programme here.

(6) SANS AI. “James Cameron will reportedly open Avatar 3 with a title card saying no generative AI was used to make the movie” reports GamesRadar+.

James Cameron has reportedly revealed an anti-AI title card will open up Avatar 3, officially titled Avatar: Fire and Ash. The Oscar-winning director shared the news in a Q&A session in New Zealand attended by Twitter user Josh Harding.

Sharing a picture of Cameron at the event, they wrote: “Such an *incredible* talk. Also, James Cameron revealed that Avatar: Fire and Ash will begin with a title card after the 20th Century and Lightstorm logos that ‘no generative A.I. was used in the making of this movie’.”Cameron has been vocal in the past about his feelings on artificial intelligence, speaking to CTV news in 2023 about AI-written scripts. “I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said – about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality – and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it,” he told the publication. “I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don’t know anyone that’s even thinking about having AI write a screenplay.”…

(7) IMAGINARY PAPERS. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination has published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, its quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination.

In this issue, Sarah M. Ruiz writes about climate action, allegory, and solidarity in the 2024 film Flow; Libia Brenda writes about Crononauta, the quasi-mythical, short-lived 1964 magazine founded by Alejandro Jodorowsky and René Rebetez; and Rachael Kuintzle reports on a workshop on energy futures hosted by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2024.

(8) DARK DELICACIES TO CLOSE. SFGate is there when “After 30 years, California’s prince of horror hangs up his jacket”.

On April 5, a beacon for California horror fans will be snuffed out when legacy Los Angeles shop Dark Delicacies closes its doors. “We’ve been open for 30 years, and I could have happily died right here,” laughs co-owner Del Howison, “but my wife Sue wanted to have a life — whatever that is.”

Dark Delicacies is more than just a Southern California storefront selling ghoulish souvenirs. It’s been a destination for film buffs, horror genre diehards and celebrities from across the macabre spectrum for decades, and Howison himself has become a cult attraction for those with a love of Southern California’s darker corners.

The longtime horror curator plans to stay busy until the end. On a recent weekday, Howison is moving about his Burbank shop, taking pictures of vintage Spanish and Italian movie posters to sell online. He occasionally breaks to gesture at the Tiki mugs, shot glasses, board games, playing cards and action figures on the shelves. “We stopped calling them dolls, as guys didn’t like saying they were collecting dolls,” Howison says of his early days in business. “Of course, back then, there was no such thing as a horror convention.”…

(9) UK PAPERS PROTEST AI LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A first this side of the Pond. Irrespective of their political leanings, all the papers came together on Tuesday in a campaign to stop British government proposals (yes, we have daft politicians over here just as you do in the US) to allow artificial intelligence (AI) free access to intellectual property so that it can be trained. This is something that authors have been worried about. “UK newspapers launch campaign against AI copyright plans” in the Wandsworth Times.

Special wraps appeared on Tuesday’s editions of the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Mirror, the Daily Star, The Sun, and The Times – as well as a number of regional titles – criticising a Government consultation around possible exemptions being added to copyright law for training AI models.

The proposals would allow tech firms to use copyrighted material from creatives and publishers without having to pay or gain a licence, or reimbursing creatives for using their work.

In response, publishers have launched the Make It Fair campaign, which saw newspapers put covers on the outside of their front page – criticising the Government’s consultation – organised by the News Media Association (NMA), and backed by the Society of Editors (SOE).

The message said: “The Government wants to change the UK’s laws to favour big tech platforms so they can use British creative content to power their AI models without our permission or payment. Let’s protect the creative industries – it’s only fair.”…

(10) SF AUTHOR ISHIGURO IS ALSO AGAINST IT. The Bookseller reports “Kazuo Ishiguro urges government to ‘reconsider’ AI ‘opt-out’ plan: ‘No-one believes it will work’”. (Behind a paywall.)

…In a statement shared with the Times, the Klara and the Sun (Faber) author said the country had reached a “fork-in-the-road” moment. “If someone wants to take a book I’ve written and turn it into a TV series, or to print a chapter of it in an anthology, the law clearly states they must first get my permission and pay me,” he said.

“To do otherwise is theft. So why is our government now pushing forward legislation to make the richest, most dominant tech companies in the world exceptions? At the dawn of the AI age, why is it just and fair – why is it sensible — to alter our time-honoured copyright laws to advantage mammoth corporations at the expense of individual writers, musicians, film-makers and artists?”

Ishiguro continued that “no one believes the proposed ‘opt-out’ system will work”, saying this is why “those lobbying on behalf of the tech giants favour it”….

(11) MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG (1985-2025). Actress Michelle Trachtenberg, known especially to fans for playing Dawn Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died at the age of 39. According to the Guardian:

…Police sources confirmed her death to both ABC News and the New York Post. There is no cause of death yet known, with police saying on Thursday that the New York Medical Examiner is investigating but no foul play was suspected. She had recently undergone a liver transplant, according to sources….

A successful child actress, her first lead film role was in the comedy adventure Harriet the Spy (1996). Trachtenberg followed the film with a role in Inspector Gadget next to Matthew Broderick. Her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer came in 2000 and continued til the show ended three years later.

Trachtenberg continued to have an active career after that in non-genre productions.

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Award-Winning Barbara Hambly

Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite writers of horror and mysteries, has won two Lord Ruthven Awards given by the Lord Ruthven Assembly, a group of scholars specializing in vampire literature who are affiliated with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.

(This piece is about her fantasies and mysteries that I’m familiar with. I know she wrote some SF, do comment upon it if so inclined.)

Those Who Hunt in The Night, the first in her excellent John Asher series, won the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel. I think the series, eight long, might be concluded, as the last came out six years ago.

I’m also very impressed of her two novelizations done for one of my favorite TV series, Beauty and the Beast and and Beauty and the Beast: Song of Orpheus as it’s hard to write material off those series that’s worth reading. I’ve read others which very quickly got really mawkish as they overly focus on the relationship, in my opinion of course, of the relationship of Catherine and Vincent to the exclusion of what could a fleshing out of that world. Not her. Wonderful novels!

I’ve not tracked down her three Sherlock Holmes short story pastiches yet.

I listened to Bride of the Rat God, which is the only supernatural fantasy in theSilver Screen historical mystery series, and the next book which was not a fantasy, Scandal in Babylon. There are two more in the series so far. They likewise are not fantasy according to her.

And yes, there’s lots about her writing career I’ve not included here so feel free to tell me what you think I should have mentioned. If anybody has read her Abigail Adams or Benjamin January mystery series, I’d be interested in knowing what you think.

Barbara Hambly

(13) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal shows an employee enhanced by AI.
xkcd traces science’s evolving knowledge of RNA.
Bizarro has a list of new supers.
Jerry King covers the stages of credentials.
Tom Gauld relays an invitation.

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon.
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T15:48:26.139Z

(14) GOING DARK. Publishers Weekly reports that “Dark Horse Digital Has Shut Down”.

Dark Horse Media has officially shut down Dark Horse Digital as of February 24, 2025, with comics no longer available for purchase on the platform. Online access to the DHD website, however, will still be available at least through this summer, and users can continue to log in and read the comics in their bookshelves.

Effective March 31, 2025, the Dark Horse Comics and Plants vs. Zombies Comics apps for iOS will also no longer be supported.

The move follows downsizing at Dark Horse Media earlier this month, and bookends DHD’s 14-year run.

(15) LOST MARVELS FACTS FOUND. “Fantagraphics Drops Out Of Free Comic Book Day, Pulls ‘Lost Marvels’” – Bleeding Cool has corrected details. With Diamond Comic Distributors having filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, things are up in the air.

Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphics gets in touch to correct me. He says “Contrary to what you wrote, the comics were actually not printed yet. If they had been, we would have proceeded as planned. But since they weren’t, and given the uncertainty of whether Diamond will even exist come May (or be able to pay us for them), we made the difficult decision to pull the plug while we could. We may still produce the comic this year, bypassing FCBD. Things are, as you can probably understand, a bit fluid these days… The decision was made entirely based on the uncertainty of FCBD and had nothing to do with the Lost Marvels book series itself, which is otherwise proceeding as planned!”

(16) GANG AGLEY. The Guardian’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter wonders: “Netflix’s games were once its best-kept secret – where did it all go wrong?”.

When Netflix first started adding video games to its huge catalogue of streaming TV shows and films, it did so quietly. In 2021, after releasing an impressive experiment with the idea of interactive film in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in 2018 and a free Stranger Things game in 2019, Netflix began expanding more fully into interactive entertainment.

The streamer’s gaming offering, for a long time, was its best-kept secret. Whoever was running it really had an eye for quality: award-winningly brilliant and relatively little-known indie games comprised the majority of its catalogue, alongside decent licensed games based on everything from The Queen’s Gambit to the reality dating show Too Hot to Handle. Subscribers could play games such as Before Your Eyes, a brief and touching story about a life cut short; Spiritfarer, about guiding lost souls to rest and Into the Breach, a superb sci-fi strategy game with robots v aliens. The company bought or invested in several game studios known for making critically acclaimed work, including London-based Ustwo games (which was behind Monument Valley). It also established a studio in California to work on blockbuster games, staffed by veteran developers.

But it seems things are changing. That blockbuster studio has been closed, as first reported by Game File, before it could ever release a game. Its latest tie-in game, Squid Game Unleashed, absolutely sucks – it’s constructed around the celebration of slapstick violence, making it a terrible fit for a satirically violent show about capitalist exploitation. Funding a bunch of indie darlings and hiring big-name talent from the likes of Blizzard and Bungie for its game studio gave the impression that Netflix really was keen on becoming a part of the gaming industry, and doing it properly. Now that is very much in question.

The company has made layoffs across its gaming divisions, including at Night Studio – makers of weird-fiction supernatural teen horror series Oxenfree. It has cancelled plans for several forthcoming games that were due to join the service, including indie hits Thirsty Suitors and Don’t Starve Together, and promising-looking hobbit game Tales of the Shire. What’s going on?

(17) GWENDDYDD. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Did you know Merlin had a sister? I didn’t… and I know more about the Matter of Britain than all but about 30 people in the US. “Early poems about Merlin portray him as environmentalist, say scholars” in the Guardian.

He is probably most often thought of today as a wizard, a shape-shifter or a mentor to the young King Arthur.

But a detailed re-examination of Myrddin – Merlin – by Welsh scholars suggests he can also be considered an early British environmentalist deeply worried about human interaction with the natural world…

… The researchers have been combing through manuscripts in the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth, and also in the 15th-century Red Book of Hergest at Jesus College, Oxford.

They also discovered more about the importance of Merlin’s sister, Gwenddydd. Callander said: “Gwenddydd is a really important figure in Welsh Merlin poetry. She supports Merlin and also appears to be a prophet in her own right.

“We found hundreds of lines of poetry in her voice in dialogue with her brother. Merlin describes her as ‘fair Gwenddydd, summit of dignity’ and ‘refuge of songs’. One of the important aspects of the project is to throw light on this lost female voice from medieval Wales.”

Callander said it was surprising that early Merlin poems had been largely neglected. “These Welsh-language texts had not been edited or translated in full, meaning much material has been missed out.”…

(18) TIME TO VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE GIANTS. “Akiva Goldsman To Reimagine 3 Classic Irwin Allen Sci-Fi Titles For TV” – Deadline has the story.

Akiva Goldsman is developing a new Universe at Legendary Television featuring three reimagined Irwin Allen sci-fi TV series. The Oscar-winning writer, producer and director will draw inspiration for the new TV shows from Allen’s catalog and focus on revitalizing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants and The Time Tunnel.

… Legendary Television is focused on the three titles above and not Allen’s second TV series Lost in Space, which aired from 1965-68 on CBS and was reimagined by Legendary TV for a 2018-21 series on Netflix. 20th Century Fox produced all four of the original shows….

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Jason Sizemore, Joey Eschrich, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 1/25/25 ‘Twas Pixel, And The Scrolly Toves

Posted on January 25, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) DISCOVER TANITH LEE. Astra Publishing House begins its recommendation “Where to start reading the works of Tanith Lee” with a fascinating reminiscence.

DAW Publisher Betsy Wollheim–who was her editor from 1975 to 1985–shares her memories of working with Tanith Lee, saying:

“When I think of Tanith Lee, I think of nighttime. I remember the hot summer nights when we ran around Manhattan, full of the exuberance of youth. But I also remember sitting alone in the dark, empty office, mesmerized by the wonderous dreamscapes of her manuscripts until long after closing time.

“Tanith’s manuscripts were the only ones we never took home. Typed on fragile onionskin, they had to be copied page by laborious page. Tanith’s actual originals were written in longhand, in a kind of shorthand she invented. The typescript that we received was painstakingly transcribed, first by Tanith’s mother, and in later years by Tanith herself. I’ll never forget the times I saw Tanith writing—she was like a person possessed.

“And when a Tanith Lee manuscript came into the DAW offices, I was like a woman possessed. When I began reading, nothing could interrupt me. I stayed in the office, transfixed, until I was finished, often not returning home until the wee hours of the morning. Leaving our dark and eerily deserted Manhattan office near dawn and venturing out onto the silent—yet unawakened —streets of midtown, I used to feel like Tanith’s heroine from The Birthgrave, her first DAW book: a woman emerging from a volcano into a strange and alien land.”…

(2) DARK HORSE CANCELS GAIMAN. Dark Horse Comics today announced this response to the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman.

(3) INTRODUCING STUDENTS TO HORROR. Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein revisits “Ghosts and Monsters (1982) by Mark Falstein & Tony Gleeson”.

…Ghosts and Monsters was published by Educational Insights in 1982. The kind of boxed set of teaching materials that found there way easily into hundreds or thousands of classrooms across the country. The contents were pretty basic: a book of spirit masters for duplicating worksheets (crosswords, etc.) in an age before photocopying became ubiquitous; a brief teacher’s guide with suggested questions and activities; and a package of ten comic booklets which adapted a dozen tales of horror and weird fiction to comics…

… Given the limitations of space, the monochromatic printing, and the incredibly tight scripts, credit has to be given to Tony Gleeson for doing a very decent job on the art. Stuck with a very boxy framing setup, he nevertheless manages to use perspective shots and shadowed silhouettes to hint and convey something of a horror-mood. While the Teacher’s Guide suggests that the typeset text will make it easier to read, I suspect the real issue was that the budget for this project didn’t extend to hiring a letterer.

When we consider Lovecraft as something more than a cult figure, but as a writer who has entered the canon of world literature—this is a good example of what that looks like. Not necessarily fancy, expensive editions that can only be seen and enjoyed by a few, but stories that penetrate into common educational materials, hitting the masses when they’re young and becoming part of the foundation of reading. Ghosts and Monsters is a core sample of how Lovecraft came to the masses….

(4) RECOMMENDED SCIENCE BOOKS. [Item by Steven French.] Nature’s weekly roundup of the best science books includes A Century of Tomorrows. “Sharing is caring and other moving stories: Books in brief”.

A Century of Tomorrows

Glenn Adamson Bloomsbury (2024)

Modern weather forecasting became feasible in the 1840s, when volunteers formed a nationwide US network to report current weather conditions using the newly invented telegraph. Today, notes cultural historian Glenn Adamson in his stimulating analysis, imagining the future preoccupies social theorists, political activists, insurance executives, architects, urban planners, military war gamers, fiction writers and others. But he avoids making predictions. “I’m just a historian,” he writes, “more or less the opposite of a futurologist.”

(5) NEW PICTURE BOOKS. [Item by Steven French.] In “Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels”, the Guardian’s Imogen Russell Williams reviews the best new picture books and novels, including, among other SFF items:

The Zombie Project by Alice Nuttall, Chicken House, £7.99

Merian’s world relies on death-flies to pollinate plants and provide food; unfortunately, death-flies also turn dead humans into zombies. Most people are terrified of zombies, but Merian knows they’re simply a (dangerous) part of nature. When she and her scientist mum are caught up in an outbreak in the city, however, they uncover a terrifying conspiracy … Hugely original, lively, comic and gruesome, this 9+ debut is a post-apocalyptic story with a difference.

(6) HORRIBLE SNUBS? In the New York Times (behind a paywall), Zach Schonfeld complains, “Why Are the Oscars So Scared of Horror Films?”

For fans of scary movies, 2024 was an extraordinary year. Vital and thrilling horror films, such as “Nosferatu,” “Red Rooms,” “I Saw the TV Glow” and “Longlegs,” all earned critical respect and box office success. Yet you’d barely know this from the Oscar nominations, which were announced Thursday morning.

With the exception of “The Substance,” that rare Academy-approved gore-fest that scored five nominations including best picture, very few of last year’s notable horror films were recognized in the major categories — a continuation of a long-running snubbing by the Oscars that’s gone from curious to downright shameful.

This refusal to acknowledge an entire genre feels especially out of touch at a time when horror is not only critically ascendant but especially attuned to our feelings of ambient dread. We’re living in an age of real-life terrors — climate catastrophe, political unrest, tech-driven dehumanization — so it’s no wonder that many of the most exciting filmmakers working today are using the vocabulary of horror to reflect our moment’s anxieties back to us, and maybe help us process them.

If the 1940s was a decade defined by film noir, the ’50s by westerns and the ’70s by paranoid conspiracy thrillers, then the current era is a golden age for frightening films. The genre has long deserved to be treated as real cinema, with the Oscar recognition to match.

Not all horror movies are created equal, as the term can plausibly encompass everything from the most brazen teensploitation flicks to “The Silence of the Lambs,” the only horror film to win best picture. For my purposes, I’m including any film that’s primarily designed to frighten or unnerve its audience through dark and disturbing subject matter. Even given that relatively narrow definition, only seven horror films have been nominated for best picture since the Academy Awards began in 1929 — including, this year, “The Substance,” an unholy fusion of art-house ambition and B-movie gore from the French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat.

A partial list of essential American horror movies that were ignored entirely by the Oscars can start with “Dracula” in 1931 and continue through 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Shining” in 1980 from the director Stanley Kubrick. At the 1987 Oscars, David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” was nominated only in the makeup category, leaving its star Jeff Goldblum so disappointed that he had to discuss the snub with his psychoanalyst.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 25, 1971 — City Beneath the Sea

Fifty-four years ago, City Beneath the Sea premiered on NBC. It had a tangled history as it was originally a pilot for a series that Irwin Allen had pitched to that network several years earlier but which was never made. The film itself was an expansion of a much shorter idea reel that Allen had shown to the network.

Allen filmed the original concept for City Beneath The Sea but it was never shown publicly. It was not released to the public until the Sci-Fi’s The Worlds of Irwin Allen DVD came out twenty years ago in which it was included as a special feature.

The story was by Allen, but the screenplay was by John Meredyth Lucas who had written four Trek episodes, “Elaan of Troyius”, “The Changeling”, “Patterns of Force” and “That Which Survives” in addition to direction and production duties there.

The primary cast was Stuart Whitman, Rosemary Forsyth, Robert Colbert, Burr DeBenning, Robert Wagner, Joseph Cotten and Richard Basehart. Irwin’s suggested cast for the series was Glenn Corbett, Lloyd Bochner, Lawrence Montaigne, Francine York, Cecile Ozorio and James Brolin, but the network for reasons it never explained to him rejected his casting and told him that would be the cast, an unusual move for a network.

When the network showed no interest in a series based on the film, Allen shopped it around. There was no interest there either.

I couldn’t, for love or chocolate, find any critical reviews of the film, nor does Rotten Tomatoes have an audience rating which is highly unusual.

Here’s the trailer for City Beneath the Sea. It’s streaming on Prime.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Tom The Dancing Bug starts copyright combat. (This is effin’ brilliant!)
The Argyle Sweater adheres to the rules we must follow.
Macanudo encounters books that are not yet part of Mt. TBR.
Thatababy encounters the ruin of a classic children’s series.

(9) STORY DNA. Game Rant recalls “Harlan Ellison Wrote The Twilight Zone Episode ‘Gramma’ Based On Stephen King”.

…Harlan Ellison wrote season 1, episode 18 of The Twilight Zone called “Gramma” which aired on February 14th, 1986 and was based on Stephen King’s short story, which was published in the 1985 collection Skeleton Key. The story centers around a boy named Georgie (Barret Oliver) who is spending time with his grandmother, who isn’t well. As George pretends he is no longer afraid of his grandmother, he learns his grandmother is a witch, which is the first sign that something is wrong.

Adapting a short story can be tricky if there isn’t a clear ending or strong character work. But, of course, King is a legend for a reason and his story “Gramma” has a relatable main character, a creepy villain, and a scary conclusion.….

(10) THE LATEST EXECUTIVE ORDER.

(11) DEATH-RAY, AFTER A FASHION. “Sony to End Recordable Blu-ray Disc Production in Japan in February” says Anime News Network.

Sony announced on January 23 on its website it will end production of several recordable media discs in Japan. In the announcement the media giant stated it is ending production of recordable Blu-ray Disc media, as well as recordable mini discs, MD data discs, and mini DV cassettes in February. The company also stated no successors to the above media formats are in production.

The company had originally announced last July that it would end the production of recordable Blu-ray Discs, but this new announcement adds more media that is ending production, and gives the specific timeframe of February. Sony stated in July that development and production of Blu-ray Disc recording and playback devices will continue…

(12) TUNING IN. CNN Science reports “Mysterious fast radio bursts may have diverse origins in space”.

Mysterious fast radio bursts, or millisecond-long bright flashes of radio waves from space, have intrigued astronomers since the first detection of the phenomenon in 2007. The enigmatic signals, known as FRBs, release as much energy in less than the blink of an eye as the sun emits in one day.

Researchers are still trying to unravel what the celestial pulses are, as well as how and where they occur. Specialized telescopes have enabled astronomers to track radio bursts within the Milky Way galaxy as well as up to 8 billion light-years away.

Now, four new studies are providing answers about where the fast radio bursts originate, which could shed light on what causes them — but the locations for two recently described radio bursts are wildly different.

One of the fast radio bursts appears to have come from the chaotic, magnetically active environment near a type of dense neutron star called a magnetar. Meanwhile, the other fast radio burst, which scientists observed pulsating over the course of several months, came from the outskirts of a distant dead, star-starved galaxy.

Researchers utilized a fast radio burst-hunting machine called CHIME, or the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment radio telescope, to uncover both bursts. The instrument has enabled the detection of thousands of FRBs since 2020….

(13) I DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE MISSING. “Where in the world are Earth’s oldest dinosaurs?” asks Yahoo!

What are the oldest known dinosaurs?

Currently, the earliest known dinosaurs include Nyasasaurus, Eoraptor, Herrerasaurus, Coelophysis, and Eodromaeus. A group of fossils belonging to an unknown dinosaur in the Herrerasauridae family were described last year and date back about 231 million years. Similarly old fossils have all been unearthed in countries located south of the equator including Argentina, Brazil, and Zimbabwe, but there are likely even older specimens that have not been uncovered yet.

These early dinosaurs were also initially vastly outnumbered by their reptile cousins–a group of enormous crocodile ancestors called the pseudosuchians and pterosaurs who grew to the size of fighter jets. By comparison, Earth’s earliest dinosaurs were much smaller than their descendants. They were about the size of a dog or chicken, not 33,000 pounds like a Brontosaurus. Early dinosaurs were also bipedal and are believed to have been omnivores….

(14) INSIDE STORY. On the National Air and Space Museum blog, “Restoring the Museum’s V-1 Missile”.

A little over a year ago, I recounted the restoration of our German V-2 ballistic missile. Now the Preservation and Restoration Unit at our Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is completing its compatriot, the V-1 cruise missile. which we will display in the Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air gallery, which opens in 2026.

Of Nazi Germany’s two “vengeance weapons,” the low-flying, pulsejet-powered V-1 was launched in much greater numbers in 1944-1945—more than 22,000 as opposed to about 3,000 V-2s. Frequently referred to as the “buzz bomb” or “doodlebug,” the V-1 was also more effective. Its noisy approach was psychologically disturbing to targeted populations and it diverted Allied anti-aircraft resources into defending against it. Like the V-2 rocket, the great majority of V-1s were fired against two cities: London and Antwerp. The cruise missile caused over 10,000 deaths in its target areas, and thousands more concentration-camp prisoners died in the production program. Yet, both weapons fell far short of the hopes of the Nazi leadership: knocking Britain out of the war, or at least preventing the Allies from using the Belgian port of Antwerp to supply their armies in northwest Europe. The two missiles were strategic failures, albeit ones that greatly influenced the Cold War nuclear arms race….

… One new component he integrated is an original German airlog propeller. In a well-timed stroke of luck, a donor offered us one in 2021. Colin Donovan’s grandfather, U.S. Army 1^st Lt. James J. McFague, had brought it home as a war souvenir. Since the device was still in original factory packing, it is possible that McFague picked it up during his service in the occupation of Germany. In operation, the number of times the propeller turned approximated the distance flown to the target. When a preset number was reached, the device sent a signal to cut off the engine and initiate a terminal dive….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Jon Meltzer.]

#DisneyMustPay Update and Reprints Alert

Posted on November 10, 2021 by Mike Glyer

SFWA has distributed a new update from the #DisneyMustPay Task Force:

In April 2021, we let you know about a contract issue with Disney that affected multiple authors across different writer organizations. We’ve made some progress and a few authors have been paid. Unfortunately, we’ve also uncovered more concerning issues in the process. We still need your help to raise awareness of the #DisneyMustPay campaign, which has yet to be resolved.

Authors may still be missing royalty statements or checks across a wide range of properties in prose, comics, and graphic novels. As of today, our list is incomplete and only based on properties and/or publishers for which we have verified reports of ongoing issues. We have little doubt more creators are affected by this issue.

We have identified properties now owned by Disney where works are being reprinted by new domestic and foreign publishers without the author receiving notification, updated royalty statements, or payment. Disney acquired two media companies and all their properties. They and their properties include:

Lucasfilm (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc.)
20th Century Fox (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alien, AVP, Predator, Firefly, Angel, etc.)

Previously published works for these properties are now being reprinted by Disney-owned publishers or their licensees. This list is by no means exhaustive. Publishers include:

Boom! Comics (Licensed comics including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.)
Titan Publishing UK (Licensed novels including Alien/Predator)
Marvel WorldWide (SpiderMan, Alien/Predator)
Disney Worldwide Publishing (Buffy, Angel)

We’ve also identified two sources of previously published materials from former licensees. We can confirm previously published works are being reprinted.

Dark Horse Comics (Former licensee. Previously published tie-in comics, graphic novels, and novels including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alien, Predator, AVP, Star Wars, etc.)
Byron Preiss/iBooks (Former licensee. Previously published tie-in novels including Marvel characters now owned/published by Disney)

If you are an affected author who has not been paid or are missing royalty statements, you have the right to ensure your contract(s) are honored. We urge all creators to review their statements regularly and recommend that affected creators fill out this form, hosted by SFWA. We guarantee anonymity.

Please note that you do not need an agent or membership in any professional organization to seek help from the task force.

Additionally, only a handful of creators have been paid since our last update while several more have come forward.

The Disney Must Pay Joint Task Force has attempted to create a cooperative relationship with Disney, but the corporation continues to refuse a partnership.

Disney’s actions make it clear to us that they are picking and choosing which cases they want to resolve, while simultaneously attempting to isolate creators from receiving counsel from their professional organization. The Disney Must Pay Joint Task Force has observed a marked difference in treatment between agented and unagented creators, as well as high-profile and lesser-known individuals, and novelists and comics writers.

Dark Horse Comics

As of today’s date, conversations are ongoing to ensure Dark Horse Comics creators will be paid for their licensed, reprinted comics, graphic novels, and/or novels post-acquisition. Royalties are owed and Disney must pay.

Further:

Dark Horse Comics was a licensee for Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox, producing works for several properties now owned by Disney.
Case details show works originally published at Dark Horse were republished with Disney (Ballantine), Marvel (100% owned by Disney), Boom! Studios (Disney stake), and Titan Books (UK).
Dark Horse Comics creators comprise over fifty percent of our reported cases as a source of previously published media that is being reprinted.
Dark Horse Comics does send royalty statements when requested.
We are unable to confirm whether or not artists, letterers, inkers, and other types of creators working on affected titles have been paid. To date, we haven’t received a report but this does not confirm payment.
No author we’re working with has received notification of their reprinted works.

Despite Boom! Studios agreeing to work with us and sending us a list of affected creators, the status of the original cases is unchanged. To date, affected Boom! Studios creators have not been paid the royalties they are owed.

The task force has communicated with Disney in the past, but we have yet to bring these cases to a close. We continue to ask for simple, basic methods to honor contracts. Yet, our experiences have reinforced our belief their strategy is to be selective about who they assist.

Despite paying a few higher-profile authors, Disney is not willing to even put a FAQ on their website, much less work with the task force to identify authors and correct missing payments. Thus, we need your help to alert any creators who may be affected. If you know someone who may be affected, please share this email.

You can also show your support for this effort in a number of ways:

Use #DisneyMustPay on social media. We need your help to bring the task force’s simple demands to the attention of Disney’s decision-makers. Here are some sample tweets to share. Include a link to our growing task force’s website: WritersMustBePaid.org:
- - #DisneyMustPay all creators what they’re owed. It shouldn’t matter how many fans they have. They held up their end of the contract, why can’t Disney?
  - #DisneyMustPay. That’s it. That’s the Tweet.
  - #DisneyMustPay by honoring creators’ contracts for the properties they’ve purchased. Pay royalties owed, provide statements, notify when works are reprinted. A contract isn’t just a wish your heart makes.
  - #DisneyMustPay by creating an FAQ on their licensing page so all creators know how to ask for their missing royalties and/or statements. It’s not rocketeer science! It’s business basics.
  - #DisneyMustPay by establishing a point of contact for writers who have not been paid their back royalties for properties now owned by Disney. Make that contact and the process for claiming royalties transparent—these are the bare necessities.
  - #DisneyMustPay by working with creators’ organizations who can advocate for and support authors and their agents that may not feel secure enough to go it alone. It’s why we exist—let us help. You’ve got a friend in us.
  - #DisneyMustPay by notifying creators when their work is reprinted and paying them what they’re contractually owed. A new publication should be a point of pride, not of surprise.
Visit WritersMustBePaid.org, the website set up by our growing task force, and share the link.

Because Disney has declined to cooperate with the task force in identifying affected authors, the Disney Task Force needs your help to contact everyone who might be affected. Unfortunately, this now extends to reprinted works for the properties listed.

Please help us spread the message widely that #DisneyMustPay.

Thank you,

Disney Must Pay Joint Task Force

The Task Force is comprised of the following associations, unions, and nonprofits that have pledged support and resources to help all affected creators: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., (SFWA), the Authors Guild, Horror Writers Association (HWA), International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW), International Thriller Writers (ITW), Mystery Writers of America (MWA), National Writers Union (NWU), Novelists, Inc. (NINC), Romance Writers of America (RWA), Sisters in Crime (SinC), Writers Guild of America West (WGA West), and Writers Guild of America, East (WGA East).

N. K. Jemisin tweeted an immediate reaction:

This just keeps getting worse. SFWA notified members today that Disney is reprinting works (sold to other companies Disney bought) without notifying or paying them! Authors, if you've done a tie-in novel, there's a good chance Disney is stealing from you. #DisneyMustPay https://t.co/8X3A4NmcSY
— N. K. Jemisin (@nkjemisin) November 9, 2021

Pixel Scroll 4/9/20 I Had Too Much To Stream Last Night

Posted on April 9, 2020 by Mike Glyer

(1) UNDERESTIMATED CRISIS. Kristine Kathryn Rusch sounds overwhelmed in “Business Musings: A Crisis Like No Other (A Process Blog)” where she discusses her daily challenges and struggles as a writer.

Well, I was wrong. A month or so ago, I warned that what we’re going through is a black swan event, that it would have an economic impact, and we as business owners needed to be braced. Then, as things got even worse, I decided this was a double black swan—a crisis without good leadership to carry us through to the other side.
And it seems that, in both cases, I underestimated this thing. On April 3, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, called this “a crisis like no other.”
In a speech before the World Health Organization, she added, “Never in the history of the IMF have we witnessed the world economy coming to a standstill. It is way worse than the global financial crisis.”
A crisis like no other. Yeah, that was my sense as well over these past two weeks as I tried over and over again to find some kind of historic precedent to guide us forward. I couldn’t find one—not an analogous one, on that hit the global economy all at once, and forced people around the world to behave in the same way.
It’s breathtaking and shocking and hard to fathom. As you can tell from my many blog posts, I’m wrestling with this change. I know we’ll come out the other side, but for the first time—maybe in my adult life—I have no idea what kind of world we will emerge into. Usually I can predict both worst case and best case scenarios….

(2) SETTING THE TONE. Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book is where I first read John Clyn’s famous quote, written in 1349 at the height of the Black Plague:

“So that notable deeds should not perish with time, and be lost from the memory of future generations, I, seeing these many ills, and that the whole world encompassed by evil, waiting among the dead for death to come, have committed to writing what I have truly heard and examined; and so that the writing does not perish with the writer, or the work fail with the workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work, in case anyone should still be alive in the future and any son of Adam can escape this pestilence and continue the work thus begun.”

(3) APOLLO 13. At least the astronauts came out the other side of this disaster all right — “‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’: Remembering Apollo 13 at 50”.

…A half-century later, Apollo 13 is still considered Mission Control’s finest hour.
Lovell calls it “a miraculous recovery.”
Haise, like so many others, regards it as NASA’s most successful failure.
“It was a great mission,” Haise, 86, said. It showed “what can be done if people use their minds and a little ingenuity.”
As the lunar module pilot, Haise would have become the sixth man to walk on the moon, following Lovell onto the dusty gray surface. The oxygen tank explosion robbed them of the moon landing, which would have been NASA’s third, nine months after Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took humanity’s first footsteps on the moon.
Now the coronavirus pandemic has robbed them of their anniversary celebrations. Festivities are on hold, including at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the mission began on April 11, 1970, a Saturday just like this year.

(4) WHO TWO. ScreenRant offers their opinion — “Doctor Who: Every Doctor’s TRUE Companion”. For example:

Fourth Doctor: Sarah Jane Smith
Often considered the best companion of Doctor Who‘s classic run, Elizabeth Sladen made a lasting impression as Sarah Jane Smith, evolving the template set by Jo Grant previously. More so than her predecessors, Sarah Jane naturally grew into a second main character and although she debuted alongside the Third Doctor, her wits were slightly better suited to the eccentric ramblings of Tom Baker’s Time Lord. The Fourth Doctor would struggle to find an equally fitting companion, treating Leela with occasional contempt and burning through several regenerations of Romana.

(5) IMPOSSIBLE TIME. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination’s podcast Into the Impossible has posted Episode 38: “Giving the Devil His Due: a conversation with Michael Shermer & Brian Keating”.

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, and Heavens on Earth. His new book is Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist.

(6) HOW’S YOUR EYESIGHT? “Smithsonian seeks public’s help with Sally Ride’s astronaut training notes”.

Before she became the first American woman to fly into space, Sally Ride needed to learn how to be an astronaut. Now, 30 years later, the public can help expand access to Ride’s training experience by volunteering to transcribe her extensive handwritten notes.
The National Air and Space Museum has begun the process of converting the 23 cubic feet of material it obtained from Ride’s estate in 2015 to be available for research and study. Archivists have scanned and indexed the entire collection, but more can be done to make the papers fully searchable.

(7) DRUCKER OBIT. MAD Magazine artist Mort Drucker died April 8 at the age of 91. Mark Evanier paid tribute at News From Me: “Mort Drucker, R.I.P.”

He found his way to MAD magazine in 1956 at a precarious moment in that publication’s history. Founding editor Harvey Kurtzman had departed and taken most of the art crew with him. Replacement editor Al Feldstein was assembling a new team and with no idea how valuable the new applicant would be to MAD, he took a shot with Drucker.
Mort had never thought of himself as a caricaturist but when called upon to draw the comedy team of Bob & Ray for some pieces, he displayed a flair that surprised even him. Before long, Mort was the illustrator of movie and TV parodies in every issue of MAD…an association that lasted some 55 years. Big stars would say that you didn’t feel you’d made it in Hollywood until Mort Drucker had drawn you in MAD.

The New York Times obituary is here.

…“No one saw Drucker’s talent,” Mr. Hendrix wrote, until he illustrated “The Night That Perry Masonmint Lost a Case,” a takeoff on the television courtroom drama “Perry Mason,” in 1959. It was then, Mr. Hendrix maintained, that “the basic movie parody format for the next 44 years was born.”
From the early 1960s on, nearly every issue of Mad included a movie parody, and before Mr. Ducker retired he had illustrated 238, more than half of them. The last one, “The Chronic-Ills of Yawnia: Prince Thespian,” appeared in 2008.
Mr. Drucker compared his method to creating a movie storyboard: “I become the ‘camera,’” he once said, “and look for angles, lighting, close-ups, wide angles, long shots — just as a director does to tell the story in the most visually interesting way he can.”
Mr. Hendrix called Mr. Drucker “the cartoonist’s equivalent of an actor’s director” and “a master of drawing hands, faces and body language.” Mr. Friedman praised Mr. Drucker’s restraint: “He wasn’t really hung up on exaggerating. He was far more subtle and nuanced — interested in how people stood and so on.”

(8) WILLNER OBIT. Most recently known as Saturday Night Live’s sketch music producer. Hal Willner died April 7. The LA Times tribute is here. He had a long career in film, and produced several record albums, including these genre-adjacent projects –

…Most striking was Willner’s ode to the music of Walt Disney’s animated films. Called “Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films,” he enlisted artists including cosmic jazz traveler Sun Ra, experimental vocalist Yma Sumac, Los Angeles group Los Lobos and rock band the Replacements to re-imagine such songs as “Cruella De Ville,” “Whistle While You Work” and “Someday My Prince Will Come.” Tom Waits turned “Heigh Ho (The Dwarves Marching Song)” into a forced-labor dirge.
As the compiler of “The Carl Stalling Project: Music From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1936-1958,” Willner resurrected the reputation of the frantic, inventive composer Stalling and his scores for “Bugs Bunny” and “Road Runner” cartoons….

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

April 9, 1953 — Invaders From Mars premiered. It was produced by Edward L. Alperson Jr. and directed by William Cameron Menzies. It starred a large cast of Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Morris Ankrum, Leif Erickson, and Hillary Brooke. Made a shoestring budget of three hundred thousand, it got amazingly good reviews though a few critics thought it it was too frightening for younger children, did a great box office and currently has a rating of fifty six percent among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. You can see it here.

April 9, 1955 — Science Fiction Theatre first aired in syndication. It was produced by Ivan Tors and Maurice Ziv. It ran for seventy-eight episodes over two years and was hosted by Truman Bradley who was the announcer for Red Skelton’s program. The first episode “Beyond” had the story of a test pilot travelling at much faster than the speed of sound who bails out and tells his superiors that another craft was about to collide with his. It starred William Lundigan, Ellen Drew and Bruce Bennett. You can watch it here.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 9, 1911 — George O. Smith. His early prolific writings on Astounding Science Fiction in the 1940s which ended when Campbell’s wife left him for Smith Whom she married. Later stories were on Thrilling Wonder Stories, Galaxy, Super Science Stories and Fantastic To name but four such outlets. He was given First Fandom Hall of Fame Award just before he passed on. Interestingly his novels are available from the usual digital sources but his short stories are not. (Died 1981.)
Born April 9, 1913 — George F. Lowther. He was writer, producer, director in the earliest days of radio and television. He wrote scripts for both Captain Video and His Video Rangers and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. You can see the first show “The Birth of The Galaxy” which he scripted here. (Died 1975.)
Born April 9, 1921 — Frankie Thomas. He was best remembered for his starring role in Tom Corbett, Space Cadet which ran from 1950 to 1955. Though definitely not genre or genre adjacent, he was in the Nancy Drew film franchise that ran in the late Thirties. (Died 2006.)
Born April 9, 1935 — Avery Schreiber. He’s had a long history with genre fiction starting with Get Smart! and going from there to include More Wild Wild West!, Fantasy Island, Faerie Tale Theatre: Pinocchio, Shadow Chasers, Caveman, Galaxina, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Animainiacs in which he voiced Beanie the Brain-Dead Bisonand, of course, The Muppet Show. (Died 2002.)
Born April 9, 1937 — Marty Krofft, 83. Along with with Sid, a Canadian sibling team of television creators and puppeteers. Through Sid & Marty Krofft Pictures, they have made numerous series including the superb H.R. Pufnstuf which I still remember fondly all these years later not to forget Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Land of the Lost and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.
Born April 9,1949 — Stephen Hickman, 71. Illustrator who has done over three hundred and fifty genre covers such as Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer and Nancy Springer’s Rowan Hood, Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest. His most widely known effort is his space fantasy postage stamps done for the U.S. Postal Service which won a Hugo for Best Original Artwork at ConAndian in 1994.
Born April 9, 1954 — Dennis Quaid, 66. I’m reasonably sure that he first genre role was in Dreamscape as Alex Gardner followed immediately by the superb role of Willis Davidge in Enemy Mine followed by completing a trifecta with Innerspace and the character of Lt. Tuck Pendleton. And then there’s the sweet film of Dragonheart and him as Bowen. Anyone hear of The Day After Tomorrow in which he was Jack Hall? I hadn’t a clue about it.
Born April 9, 1955 — Earl Terry Kemp, 65. Author of The Anthem Series: A Guide to the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Weird Specialty Publishers of the Golden Age and The Anthem Series Companion: A Companion to The Guide to the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Weird Specialty Publishers of the Golden Age. He also maintains several databases devoted to the same including The Golden Age of Pulps: SF Magazine Database: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (1890-2009).
Born April 9, 1972 — Neve McIntosh, 48. During time of the Eleventh Doctor, she played Alaya and Restac, two Silurian reptilian sisters who have been disturbed under the earth, one captured by humans and the other demanding vengeance. Her second appearance on Doctor Who is Madame Vastra, in “A Good Man Goes to War”. Also a Silurian, she’s a Victorian crime fighter. She’s back in the 2012 Christmas special, and in the episodes “The Crimson Horror” and “The Name of the Doctor”. She reprises her role as Madame Vastra, who along with her wife, Jenny Flint, and Strax, a former Sontaran warrior, form a private investigator team.
Born April 9, 1998 — Elle Fanning, 22. Yes she’s from that acting family. And she’s certainly been busy with roles in over forty films! Her first genre film is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button followed by Astro Boy, Super 8, Maleficent, The Boxtrolls, The Neon Demon, the upcoming Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and a recurring role on The Lost Room, a Cursed Objects miniseries that aired on Syfy.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Candorville encounters a social media slipup.
Free Range shows why even superheroes must keep in mind “the right tool for the right job.”

(12) TEMPORARILY FREE COMICS. Dark Horse Comics is releasing the first issue of more than 80 comics series for free, as well as a few volumes of graphics novels, available to read via DARK HORSE DIGITAL from now until April 30. The series include such titles as Umbrella Academy, American Gods, & Disney’s Frozen, as well as graphic novels such as Empowered Vol. 1, and Hellboy Vol. 1.

(13) CAN COMICS RESUSCITATE THE CASH REGISTER? CBR.com investigates “DC vs Marvel: Possible Storylines for a New Big Two Crossover”.

As the effects of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continue to reverberate around the world, one of the many industries severely impacted by the global health crisis is the American comic book market. With major publishers refraining from distributing new comics either digitally or in print and comic retailers shuttering normal operations to prevent the virus’ spread, the future of the industry is currently in a state of limbo. Led by acclaimed writer Gail Simone, comic creators have since suggested the possibility of an intercompany crossover between DC and Marvel Comics’ respective superhero universes as a means to revitalize the industry.

(14) PICARD SPECIAL ISSUE. Titan Comics has Star Trek: Picard – The Official Collector’s Edition on sale now.

A behind-the-scenes guide to the smash hit new Star Trek TV Show, showcasing the further adventures of fan-favorite captain of the Enterprise-D, Jean Luc Picard!
A deluxe collector’s edition offering a behind-the-scenes guide to the brand new Star Trek: Picard TV show, featuring interviews with Star Trek legends Sir Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner (Data), Jonathan Frakes (Riker), Martin Sirtis (Troi), plus the new cast members Isa Briones (Dahj/Soji), Michelle Herd (Raffi), Harry Treadaway (Narke) and many more. Plus, Showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Michael Chabon, and Director Hanelle Culpepper reveal behind-the-scenes secrets.

(15) OLAF SCENES. “Fun With Snow” | At Home With Olaf on YouTube is the first of 20 micro-sized Olaf stories coming from Disney. Find others as they post on the Walt Disney Animation Studios YouTube channel.

(16) MAD AS HELL. In “Suing Hollywood” at CrimeReads, Tess Gerritsen looks at her long series of lawsuits about whether Gravity was stolen from her 1999 space thriller Gravity.

…Most writers who work in the industry understand that suing a studio, no matter how justified their lawsuit, is a losing proposition—and it’s the writer who almost always loses. Knowing this, why would any writer risk everything to charge into battle as David against Goliath?
I’ll tell you why: because we’re angry and refuse to let them get away with it. I know, because I’ve been there and done that. I’ve seen the dark side of Hollywood.

(17) STATION BREAK. And making a smooth segue between topics, did you know NASA has available a virtual “International Space Station Tour”?

(18) NEXT SPACE STATION SHIFT ARRIVES. And for a news trifecta — “ISS crew blast off after long quarantine”.

Three new crew members have arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) after a launch carried out under tight restrictions due to the coronavirus.
The Russian Soyuz rocket carrying cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner and Nasa astronaut Chris Cassidy took off from Kazakhstan on Thursday.
Pre-launch protocols were changed to prevent the virus being taken to the ISS.
Only essential personnel were allowed at the launch site for the blast-off.
Support workers wore masks and kept their distance as the crew walked to the bus to take them to the spacecraft.
Earlier, Chris Cassidy said not having their families in Baikonur to cheer them on for the launch had affected the crew, but he added: “We understand that the whole world is also impacted by the same crisis.

(19) WAVE BYE-BYE. “BepiColombo: Mercury mission set to wave goodbye to Earth” – BBC supplies lots of details on the instruments being sent.

The joint European-Japanese mission to Mercury reaches a key milestone on Friday when it swings past the Earth.
The two-in-one BepiColombo space probe is using the gravity of its home world to bend a path towards the inner Solar System.
It will also bleed off some speed.
The mission needs to make sure it isn’t travelling too fast when it arrives at Mercury in 2025 or it won’t be able to go into orbit around the diminutive world.

(20) POTTERING ABOUT. “Harry Potter hospital rooms get JK Rowling approval”.

Doctors dealing with coronavirus said they were “uplifted” to have a message of support from JK Rowling when they named areas of their hospital after Harry Potter school houses.
Meeting rooms at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital were named Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravensclaw.
The hospital said the idea was “a bit of fun amongst all the significant issues”.
The author tweeted to say she had “rarely felt prouder”.
The hospital’s medical team decided to name meeting rooms after the Hogwarts houses when redesigning systems to be better prepared for the coronavirus outbreak.
Senior house officer Alex Maslen said: “The house names are familiar to many junior doctors who grew up with the Harry Potter stories, and the awareness has provided some reassurance during these difficult times.”

(21) YOUNG MAN MULLIGAN ATE HERE. BBC tells us “Crops were cultivated in regions of the Amazon ‘10,000 years ago'”.

Far from being a pristine wilderness, some regions of the Amazon have been profoundly altered by humans dating back 10,000 years, say researchers.
An international team found that during this period, crops were being cultivated in a remote location in what is now northern Bolivia.
The scientists believe that the humans who lived here were planting squash, cassava and maize.
The inhabitants also created thousands of artificial islands in the forest.

FYI, “Young Man Mulligan” is the filk answer to ”The Great Historical Bum” song (“Bum” lyrics here). It opens “I was born about ten thousand years from now.”

(22) BEFORE FABERGÉ. “Mysteries of decorated ostrich eggs in British Museum revealed”.

If you wanted to give an extravagant gift 5,000 years ago, you might have chosen an ostrich egg.
Now some of these beautiful Easter egg-sized objects are in London’s British Museum.
The eggs were found in Italy but their origins have long been a mystery – ostriches are not indigenous to Europe.
Now, research into the museum’s collection by an international team of archaeologists reveals new insights into their history.
People across Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa traded ostrich eggs up to 5,000 years ago, in the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Eggs were decorated in many ways – painted, adorned with ivory or precious metals, or covered in small glazed stones or other materials.
The five eggs in the British Museum’s collection are embellished with animals, flowers, geometric patterns, soldiers and chariots.

(23) DON’T STOP. Rebooted – on YouTube.

It’s not easy for a movie-star to age – especially when you’re a stop motion animated skeleton monster. Phil, once a terrifying villain of the silver-screen, struggles to find work in modern Hollywood due to being an out-of-date special effect.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Sexual Assault Reported at SDCC

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Mike Glyer

Scott Allie, until recently Editor-in-Chief of Dark Horse Comics, assaulted two people during a party at San Diego Comic-Con reports Janelle M. Asselin in “Enough is Enough: Dark Horse’s Scott Allie’s Assaulting Behavior” at Graphic Policy.

We all know at this point that there is a pervasive sexual harassment problem in comics. This isn’t just about one or two people who behave badly, but about an industry-wide problem where harassers and abusers are protected by their employers — the very institutions that are supposed to operate within human resource rules and harassment policies. Dark Horse Comics has allegedly harbored a boundary-crossing, biting problem for 20 years — a problem named Scott Allie. And at San Diego Comic-Con this year, Allie apparently managed to assault a comics creator who is not willing to remain silent.

Allie, who was the Editor-in-Chief of Dark Horse Comics until September 11th, assaulted two people at a party during the convention….

Joe Harris… has chosen to speak out about what he experienced at the hands of Scott Allie.

During the BOOM! Studios SDCC party at the Hilton on Thursday, July 9th, Allie became extremely intoxicated. A few anonymous sources reported that he licked at least one person and wept openly at someone. The worst of it came when he was face to face with Harris. Harris said:

“Upon walking in, I noticed Scott Allie at the bar and thought to go say hi. I walked up to him and I extended my hand expecting to shake his… when, instead, he reached down and grabbed my crotch. Just went for it and squeezed. I was stunned, I guess? Not what I was expecting, obviously. Not what’s ever happened to me at this or any other convention over many years. So I try to back away a little, still shocked, when he leans in and bites my right ear.”

Dark Horse Founder Mike Richardson has responded with a statement that says in part —

I agree that harassment of any kind, routine or not, is unacceptable. It always has been. We at Dark Horse will renew our efforts to make sure that our company is never again mentioned with regard to this type of occurrence. As quoted in the article, our goal has always been to provide a positive, safe, and respectful environment for its employees, creators, and fans.

Scott Allie has also issued a statement.

I’m deeply sorry about my behavior at San Diego Comic Con 2015 and I apologize to everyone I’ve hurt. I’m completely embarrassed by my actions and how my behavior reflects on Dark Horse Comics, my friends and family. My personal approach and decisions for managing stress were bad. Dark Horse and I have taken the matter very seriously and since this incident, we have taken steps to correct and to avoid any behavior like this in the future. Although apologies can’t undo what has happened, I’ve tried to apologize to everyone impacted by my behavior. To my family, friends, co-workers, and to the industry — please know that I am truly, truly sorry.

And Comics Beat writer Heidi MacDonald, taking Asselin’s article as a starting point, has penned an extensive commentary about “How a toxic history of harassment has damaged the comics industry”.

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