Happy Star Wars Day! While most enthusiasts might prepare for the unofficial geek holiday of May 4th by rewatching a “Star Wars” movie, reading a pile of “Star Wars” comics, or playing a “Star Wars” video game, YouTuber Zach King unveiled “Cardboard Wars,” a spectacular “Star Wars” parody starring King alongside Randall Park, Michelle Khare, Airrack, and Bart Johnson.
But this is no ordinary tribute endeavor since Kingâs incredible one-hour project recreates 1977’s “Star Wars: A New Hope” entirely out of cardboard, and it simply must be seen to be believed! King graciously provided some exclusive comments on how this hilarious micro-budget miracle came aboutâĶ.
âĶ Our sincere congratulations and admiration to King and his entire cast and crew for creating one of the funniest, cleverest, and most inspired “Star Wars” spoofs since the vintage “Hardware Wars” short film from way back in 1978.
(2) CLIFFORD GEARY ILLUSTRATIONS. Yesterdayâs Scroll inspired a lively discussion of Robert Heinlein, which encouraged Andrew Porter to share these images of the wonderful Clifford Geary artwork for the Heinlein books.
Have you ever daydreamed about talking to someone from the past? What would you ask someone with no knowledge of the modern world? What would they ask you? While we donât have time machines yet, we can simulate this experience by training, in Owain Evansâs phrase, âvintageâ language models: LMs trained only on historical text.
These models are fascinating conversation partners. But we are also excited by the possibility that the careful study of the behaviors and capabilities of vintage LMs will advance our understanding of AI in generalâĶ.
It was a century ago this weekend. On the Sunday of May 2, 1926, the first public screening of The Adventures of Prince Achmed took place in Berlin.1
The film is the earliest animated feature that survives today. It predates Snow White by more than a decade â and, after one hundred years, itâs still an incredible thing.
The author Cecile Starr once wrote, âThe Adventures of Prince Achmed is an acclaimed masterpiece âĶ [that] is also amusing, surprising, frightening, passionate and entertaining, which means that it can easily hold its own against non-masterpieces as well.â She was absolutely correct.2
Behind the film was animator Lotte Reiniger, a member of Weimar Germanyâs bohemian art scene. With silhouettes cut out of cardboard and thin lead, and joined at the joints with wires, she told gorgeous stop-motion stories. Even before Prince Achmed, artists like Marc Chagall had praised her. Then this film drew eyes around the world; even an American paper quickly declared it a âmasterpiece.â3
Pulling from the One Thousand and One Nights, Reiniger and her small team made a movie whose magic is hard to believe. Thatâs true even technically. This is an hourlong piece with rich colors and a complex, synchronized score, done before the era of talkies or color films, and at a time when animation was short as a rule.
âĶ In speculative fiction, it often cannot be placed in a familiar setting given the story the author wants to tell.
At the same time, authors do often place fiction in a setting I know. Although speculative fiction by my definition must have something going on that is not found in our consensus reality, fiction does require a setting of some kind.
Sometimes that setting as presented convinces me that the author either knows the setting well or did their research in a convincing wayâĶ.
Dave Hookâs compliments begin here:
âĶAccording to her website, Karen Joy Fowler lives in Santa Cruz, California and has been there for a while. She has several works that are set in Santa Cruz, California or the nearby area that I am aware of, and there could be more that I am not.
Her short story âAlwaysâ, Asimovâs April-May 2007, is set in a cult in the Santa Cruz Mountains. While the city of Always is imaginary, the very real Holy City was a Utopian community founded by cult leader William E. Riker in the 1930s. Today, itâs a ghost town I ran and drove past when I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Fowler clearly knows the area and the history of the cult in Holy City in writing about the fictional city Always and its cult. I read it in her collection What I Didnât See and Other Stories, 2010 Small Beer Press, which I thought was a great collection although itâs not clear to me today how much was and was not genreâĶ.
The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately, as the city has reached a âpoint of no returnâ that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a stark new study has concluded.
Ongoing sea-level rise and the rampant erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, with the new paper estimating the city âmay well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this centuryâ.
Low-lying southern Louisiana faces multiple threats, with rising sea levels driven by global heating, compounded by strengthening hurricanes, also a feature of the climate crisis, and the gradual subsidence of a coastline that has been carved apart by the oil and gas industry.
Southern Louisiana is facing 3-7 metres of sea-level rise and the loss of three-quarters of its remaining coastal wetlands, which will cause the shoreline âto migrate as much as 100km (62 miles) inlandâ, thereby stranding New Orleans and Baton Rouge, according to the study, which compared todayâs rising global temperatures with a period of similar heat 125,000 years ago that caused a rise in sea level.
This scenario makes the region the âmost physically vulnerable coastal zone in the worldâ, the researchers state, and requires immediate action to prepare a smooth transition for people away from New Orleans, which has a population of about 360,000 people, to safer groundâĶ.
(7) TODAYâS BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
May 4, 1976 — Gail Carriger, 50.
Steampunk and mannerpunk, itâs time to talk about both, specifically that as written by our birthday author, Gail Carriger.
Where to start? Her first novel, Soulless, is set in an alternate version of Victorian era Britain where werewolves and vampires are members of proper society. Alexia Tarabotti is a wonderful created character that anyone would love to have an adventure with, as well as sit down with to high tea in the afternoon.
The book begins the Parasol Protectorate series centered around her, which as of now goes on to have Changeless, Blameless, oh guess, Heartless and Timeless in it, plus one short story, âMeat Cuteâ. Why the latter broke the naming convention I know not.
Wait, wait, donât tell me! â sheâs done more mannerpunk. Indeed she has. There is Custard Protocol series (PrudenceImprudence, Competence and Reticence), also set in Parasol Protectorate universe. When Prudence âRueâ Alessandra Maccon Akeldama , a young woman with metahuman abilities, is left an unexpected dirigible in a will , she does what any sensible (ha!) alternative Victorian Era female would do â she names it the Spotted Custard and floats off to India. Need I say adventures of a most unusual kind follow? I really love this series and not just for the name of the series. Itâs just fun. Really fun.
The Finishing School series is set in Parasol Protectorate universe. Again she has a delightful manner in naming her tales, Etiquette & Espionage, Curtsies & Conspiracies, Waistcoats & Weaponry and Manners & Mutiny. Go ahead, I think you can figure what this series is about without me telling you. Itâs delightful of course.
So Iâm not that familiar with her other writing. It appears the two Delightfully Deadly novellas might have a tinge of romance in them though at least one also has dead husbands, four to be precise, lobsters and of course high society. Lobsters?
The Claw & Courtship novellas are standalone stories set in the Parasol Protectorate universe. So far thereâs just âHow to Marry a Werewolf (In 10 Easy Steps)â, though she says thereâll be more.
Finally, Iâll note she did a SF series, the Tinkered Stars Universeseries â how can this possibly be? â which she describes on her website as âa sexy alien police procedural on a space stationâ. Oh, that sounds so good. It consists of Divinity 36, Demigod 22, Dome 6, Crudat and The 5th Gender.
Did she do short stories? Just six, of which I really want to read one â âThe Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasnât, The Mummy that Was and the Cat in the Jarâ.
âĶBeside pop culture touchstones like these, the Star Wars movies are also at least partly based on, and make allusion to, a number of real-world inspirations, too, lifted from history and mythology.
For example:
THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE
The shift from Star Warsâ Galactic Republic to the darker, bloodier, and more oppressive Galactic Empire parallels that of the shift from the Republic of Classical-era Rome to the Roman Empire in 27 BC, when the Roman Senate granted supreme power to a single individual, Octavian (known as Augustus Caesar). And nor was that the only Roman influence on Lucasâ movies: the Senate itself is of course a Roman idea too, but even some of the buildings and robe-like costumes on display in the Star Wars films have a distinctly Roman flavor.
(10) RETURN OF THE HAIKU. Rich Lynch also got into the spirit of Star Wars Day.
Elevate your decor with WAVE TWO of these Uniquely Regal Robot Star Wars creations. Our Regal IconsâĒ Bronze-Style busts now immortalize the legendary father and son and weâre also offering our first LIFE-SIZED Regal Icons bust!
On May 4th, Luke Skywalker Jedi Knight and Darth Vader Reveal join Wave Oneâs Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia busts. And towering over the collection is a life-sized Darth Vader Reveal, capturing the iconic moment we all first saw Anakin Skywalker as the man behind Darth Vaderâs dreaded mask.
If your phone buzzed 800,000 times overnight, you would probably turn it off. On February 24, 2026, astronomers did not have that option when the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory issued 800,000 public âalertsâ about a changing sky, from new asteroids to exploding stars.
This is not noise. It is a major milestone before Rubin begins the Legacy Survey of Space and Time later in 2026, a decade-long effort expected to scan the Southern Hemisphere nightly and push the alert stream toward about 7 million notices per night.
Rubinâs first alert stream proved the system can see change and share it fast, with notifications going public within about two minutes of an image being taken. Think of it as a global group chat for scientists, except the messages are stars, galaxies, and rocks moving through our solar system.
The early alerts already included supernovae, variable stars, active galactic nuclei, and solar system objects such as asteroids. Each alert is basically a tap on the shoulder that says something in this patch of sky looks different than last timeâĶ.
[Thanks to SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
(1) YOU CAN CHECK IN ANY TIME YOU LIKE. Brian Keene sends greetings from âHotel Hellâ in Letters From the Labyrinth 466.
âĶGreetings from The Verve, a hotel on the outskirts of Boston that is part of The Tapestry Collection by Hilton. The hotelâs full, official name is The Verve Hotel Boston Natick Tapestry Collection by Hilton which is an unwieldy mouthful of mish-mash, but oddly suitable for lodging that feels like it was designed by a bunch of TikTok influencers using AI while micro-dosing on some new hallucinogenic drug nobody over the age of 25 has ever heard of.
It is 4am on Saturday morning as I write this, and I am unhappy because there is no coffee to be found in the hotel, except for the coffeemaker in my room, which I dare not use because the latest TikTok lifehack trend involves young people putting their dirty underwear inside their hotel room coffeemakers and then running hot water through them to clean the soiled item of clothing. And this has the vibe of the type of hotel such a person would be attracted to, so Iâd be a brain-damaged fool to use the hotel room coffee pot.
The hallways and corridors are filled with random kitsch and pop art, but again, it all distinctly feels one step removed from any sort of human design. There are random candle shrines devoted to Ozzy Osborne and Hulk Hogan, complimented by framed print-outs of their Wikipedia pages on lime green and neon pink copier paper. There is a random Honda motorcycle in the lobby, along with framed pictures of James Dean, Evel Knievel, and Batgirl hanging behind it (all posed on motorcycles which are not, in fact, the Honda), and a sign advertising the bike as a âSelfie ZoneââĶ.
(2) BUJOLD AND KRITZER EVENTS. Don Blyly announced two upcoming signings at his Uncle Hugoâs/Uncle Edgarâs Minneapolis bookstore.
Lois McMaster Bujold will be signing at the Uncles on Saturday May 16 from 1-2 pm for Penricâs Intrigues, an omnibus reprint of Assassins of Thasalon + Knot of Shadows. A lot of people have already ordered The Adventure of the Demonic Ox, the next Penric book, which is a signed numbered hardcover at $48.00 that was supposed to be a February release. In late March I e-mailed to the publisher to ask when he thought I would receive this âFebruaryâ title. He said that his printer has been having production problems and has been late on lots of books. He is hoping to see the book sometime in April, but might not have it until May. Another new Bujold book is Two Tales, a collection of two Vorkosigan stories that had previously been published. âWinterfair Giftsâ is a short story that appeared in Irresistable Forces edited by Catherine Asaro in 2004. Flowers of Vashnoi is a novelette that Subterranean Press published in hardcover in 2019 and has been out-of-print for years, and goes for high prices on the internet. I havenât yet received Two Tales but have received the e-mailed invoice and will probably see the book in the next two or three days, and expect the price to be $13.50.
Naomi Kritzer will be signing at the Uncles on Saturday June 27 from 2-3 pm for Obstetrix, a thriller about a OB/GYN who is kidnapped by a fundamentalist cult in the west to provide medical services to their pregnant population. Doctor Liz tries to find a way to escape while also dealing with her patientsâ medical needs.
It bills itself as the first magazine to look at the culture of space travel â not just astronauts and prospective space tourists, but meteor hunters, stargazing communities and sci-fi fans.
The timing seems right. The first issue will come out in May, shortly after the Artemis crewâs scheduled return from its exploratory mission. China is also aiming for a moon landing, as is the next Artemis mission, and the billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are also reaching for the stars with their rocket companiesâĶ.
âĶ Space Junk is not a science magazine like Air & Space from the Smithsonian but rather a kind of art book, planned to be published annually. Itâs more interested in aesthetics and emotional experiences than, say, recent findings in quantum mechanicsâĶ.
With speculation mounting that Alex Kurtzman may soon be out of a job as main creative leader of Star Trek, Starfleet Academy actor Karime Diane has come to the showrunner’s defense. In a post on Instagram, Diane, who plays queer Klingon cadet Jay-Den Kraag in Starfleet Academy, posted about his experience working with Kurtzman the past two years, and how the showrunner helped bring his character to the forefront of the series.
“In the context of this character, Jay-Den, the fact that Jay-Den is a gay Klingon is not an accident. It was the result of very thoughtful processes,” Diane said in his video, defending the idea that Star Trek has always pushed boundaries with its characters. “It is because there are people behind the scenes, including Alex Kurtzman, who really believe that Star Trek should continue to expand. Star Trek has existed for 60 years. It’s always believed in pushing things forward. In the 60s, that looked one way. In the 90s, pushing things forward looked different. And today, pushing things forward, again, always looks different in every single decade.”
The actor acknowledged that not everyone may agree with Kurtzmanâs creative decisions, but expressed admiration for his passion for the franchise and recognized that being a showrunner for a franchise as big as Star Trek is no easy job.
“I understand not every single person is going to agree with every single creative decision,” he continued. “That’s fair. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. But what I can say for a fact is this: Alex Kurtzman is a hardcore Trekkie. Like, he’s a huge fan. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. And he has one of the hardest jobs of being the captain of this ship, whose goal is to keep this universe alive for a completely brand new generation.”âĶ
(5) SAMURAI ON DISPLAY. [Item by Steven French.] Filers who happen to be in London might want to check out this exhibition at the British Museum which I am told (I havenât visited it myself) also includes Darth Vaderâs costume: âSamuraiâ.
The modern mythology of the ‘samurai’ emerged gradually across the 20th century through interactions between Japan and the wider world, with idealised images of the historical warriors increasingly consumed by foreign visitors.
The story of the evolution of the samurai is told through battle gear such as the suit of armour sent by Tokugawa Hidetada to James VI and I, as well as luxury objects such as an intriguing incense connoisseurship game. From a Louis Vuitton outfit inspired by Japanese armour, to the popular, loosely historical videogame Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, the exhibition explores the samurai’s enduring legacy in games, fashion and film.
This major exhibition is a candid look at the real men and women whom we know as samurai, from the battlefields of medieval Japan to the global pop culture of today.
(6) DESSERT FIRST. Michael Chabon holds forth on the topic of âHaving One’s Cakeâ at Tragic Magic.
âĶAnyway, when I came downstairs to see about dinner, I found myself unable to rid myself of the idea that a nice piece of cake might be just the thing. And I knew, to my core, that if I were jonesing this hard for cake, my wife must be in a very bad way, indeed. But the neighborhood bakeries had all closed by now, and outside it was pouring down rain, and though the exact nature of the cake whose surprise appearance had just been applauded by the characters in our book had been left to the imaginationâ âchocolateâ was the lone detail providedâthe imagination was pretty sure that it had not been Doordashed from Safeway, in a polyethylene clamshell.
The imagination and I reviewed the available alternatives. I could bake a nice layer cakeâa âsandwich,â as they were known on the British baking showâbut I knew from experience that even the most powerful yearning for a piece of cake rarely survives the time needed to bake one from start to finish, cooling times and all. Also: no matter what kind of cake I decided on, I knew, I was likely to be missing or running low on some needed ingredient or other: pecans, say, or dutch-process cocoa.
Cake mix? suggested the imagination, a little plaintively.
Now, I am not a mix-cake snobâfar from it. Mr. Duncan Hines and I are old friends, and I will never say no to a slice of the manâs basic Yellow (though I will have no truck with his frosting, the kind that comes in a tub and can be used, in a pinch, to lubricate the rails of a rocket launcher). I have known the arcane thrill of practicing that essential trick of twentieth-century industrial food alchemy, immortalized in the lyrics to Steely Danâs âKid Charlemagne,â of adding pudding mix to the cake mixâĶ.
During the 20th century, space travel was considered to be the final frontier for the billions of humans living on Earth. Space exploration included sending humans into space, putting men on the moon, and eventually creating space shuttles and space stations.
This day, also known as the International Day of Human Space Flight, reflects on the progress made in space exploration and its benefits for humanityâs well-being and sustainable developmentââââââ.
Beyond the headline moments, it also nods to the quieter wins that come from learning how to live, work, and solve problems in an environment that does not forgive mistakes: better materials, safer engineering practices, improved medical monitoring, and a deeper understanding of Earth itself through satellites and observation.
One of the most significant accomplishments of the âspace raceâ was when an astronaut became the first human to enter space. But thatâs not all!
From Gagarinâs pioneering orbit around Earth to the numerous missions that followed, including the first woman in space, the first moon landing, and the first international space mission, this day celebrates them all! Yuriâs Night tends to hold two ideas in the same gloved hand: genuine awe at what humans can build and a playful sense that space is for everyone, not just people with flight suits, acronyms, and carefully practiced radio voices.
(8) TODAYâS BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
April 12, 1973 — J. Scott Campbell, 53.
J. Scott Campbell is a comic books artist best known for his work on Wildstorm Comics. Scott actually got hired by Wildstorm by submitting a package that included a four-page WildC.A.T.S story. Before that however his first work was on Homage Studios Swimsuit Special at age twenty. Itâd get a PG-13 rating today.
So did you know that Marvel did a Swimsuit issue as well? It was an annual magazine-style publication from 1991 to 1995. One issue said âTake Wakanda Wild Sideâ on the cover. Really it did.
His subsequent work for Wildstorm included some illustrations in WildC.A.T.S Sourcebook and Stormwatch #0. I love the idea of #0 issues. Why so?
Now do you remember Gen13?He created the series along with Jim Lee and Brandon Choi as the series came out of Team 7, a series that Lee and Choi created. The series involved a group of spandexed clothed metahuman teens. I like that series but it wasnât nearly as fun as Danger Girl, his next series.
That series followed the adventures of a group of female secret agents, made the most of Campbellâs talents which involved very well-endowed women, in the firm of three sexy female well weaponized secret agents â Abbey Chase, Sydney Savage and Sonya Savage and over the top action sequences.
Twenty years ago I read Danger Girl: The Ultimate Collection, which is a bit of an overstatement as itâs only two hundred and fifty-six pages long, but itâs still a lot of a fun. Yes, itâs still available.
Danger Girl has been continuously published since it was first came out twenty-six years ago, so thereâs a lot of it now. Iâve read quite a bit of it over the years and itâs been pretty consistent in its quality. However only the first seven-issue series is illustrated by Campbell.
Campbell illustrated the covers to the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash six-issue limited series.
Eighteen years ago, Marvel Comics announced that he had signed an exclusive contract to work on a Spider-Man series with writer Jeph Loeb. Yes, he did just covers, not interior work.
It’s become a tradition: NASA’s ground control plays music to wake up the astronauts on a mission. NASA’s chief historian Brian Odom shares the history of the practiceâĶ.âĶLEILA FADEL, HOST:
This is “Sleepyhead” by an artist who goes by the name Young & Sick. It was the crew’s first wakeup call of the mission. A few Earth days later, it was this hit by Chappell Roan.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “PINK PONY CLUB”)
CHAPPELL ROAN: (Singing) I can hear your Southern drawl a thousand miles away, saying, God, what have you done?
MARTÃNEZ: “Pink Pony Club” was a wakeup song this weekend, but apparently the recording cut off after a minute or so. Ground control could hear that commander Reid Wiseman was audibly disappointedâĶ.
A new memorial for the first and only cat to go to space has arrived at its permanent home.
A bronze statue of the space cat now stands at the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, France, two years after Matthew Serge Guy, a creative director and space cat fan in London, launched a Kickstarter campaign and raised about $57,000 to fund the project.
The memorial honors a French feline named FÃĐlicette who launched on a brief suborbital spaceflight in 1963. Although the space cat survived the 15-minute mission, she died about two months later when scientists removed electrodes from her brain to investigate how spaceflight affects the brain.
A commemorative “autographed” postcard produced by CNES, the French space agency, pictures and celebrates FÃĐlicette. (Image credit: CNES)
Liquid metals (LMs) are becoming central to tackling many extreme technical bottlenecks facing space exploration. The unique microgravity and vacuum environment of space also poses big challenges and is an unprecedented laboratory to explore unknown sciences. This perspective presents an overview of the fundamentals and practical issues and envisions future opportunities for LMs in space exploration, focusing on their roles in energy systems, deep space propulsion, thermal management, flexible electronics, reconfigurable machines, additive manufacturing, life support systems, and space optics, among others. Beyond practical engineering, we further outline the potential to exploit the space environment as a unique and indispensable platform to probe LM interfacial physics and chemistry free from gravitational constraints. Prospects for disclosing microgravity-related self-organization phenomena and thus enriching fundamental breakthroughs are interpreted. Collectively, these insights establish LMs as not only generalist materials but also transformative enablers for the booming of future space science and technologyâĶ
(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Live, from the wrong side of the moon, itâs Saturday Night!!!! â âArtemis IIâ.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Green.]
My novella We Who Hunt Alexanders was recently published by Apex Books. So when someone calling herself Melissa W. Speier emailed saying, âJason, you magnificent fiend of speculative fiction, We Who Hunt Alexanders isnât just a story, itâs a moral workout for the soul.â â yeah, I grinned at that. What author doesnât love praise for their stories?
Speier was offering whatâs being called the book club scam, something a large number of authors have received in recent weeks. Speier claimed to be the âcurator of a private community of over 2,000 readers who devour books like caffeine addicts in a libraryâ and offered to share my book with those readers.
In a world where machine learning is an everyday exponential, what are we teaching ourselves?
Join Sierra Greer, award-winning author of Annie Bot, and our expert panel of speakers to explore science fictionâs influence on modern tech culture and the role of science communication in bridging the gap between STEM and society.
Speakers:
Sierra Greer is the 2025 winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for UK science fiction book of the year for her novel Annie Bot. A former high school English teacher, she writes about the future from her home in rural Connecticut.
Lauren Beukes is the internationally best-selling genre-bending author of six novels, including Zoo City, winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award, and The Shining Girls, now a major AppleTV show with Elisabeth Moss. Her work, which uses high concept twists to explore current social issues, has won multiple awards and has been translated into 26 languages around the world.
Jen Wong is Head of Programming at Science Gallery London, a space to grow new ideas across art, science and health. As a curator, producer and cultural programmer, Jen brings researchers, artists and audiences together to create meaningful encounters at the intersection of art, science and technology.
Chair: Tom Hunter, Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Benjamin West, Saul and the Witch of Endor, 1777, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Bequest of Clara Hinton Gould
What do ghosts smell like? Should we fear them? Do they talk â or are they limited to wails and the occasional shriek? These questions and more are pondered in Ghosts: Visualising the Supernatural at Kunstmuseum Basel, a spooky and consistently curious exhibition that unpicks our obsession with spirits loitering in limbo and shows how artists, pseudoscientists, conmen and enthusiasts have imagined them over the past two-and-a-half centuries.
Ghosts have morphed from being creepy cameos in fireside tales to the star act. The exhibition opens with a montage of clips from cinematic chillers â from the slime-spewing wraiths of Ghostbusters to the unsettled phantoms of the Spanish civil war in The Devilâs Backbone. European auteurs have a particular fondness for apparitions and manifestations. Recently, 2023âs All of Us Strangers blended a ghost story with a London-set gay love story. Ghosts have become malleable narrative tools.
But, as this Swiss exhibition illustrates, theyâve always had fluid identities. âThere are many varying ghost traditions in the world, and we specifically chose to focus on the western hemisphere in the past 250 years,â says Eva Reifert, Kunstmuseumâs curator of 19th century and modern art, who has orchestrated this deep dive into the spirit world. âYou could do ghost exhibitions in other parts of the world and get very different ghosts haunting the halls.ââ
In the 1950s, secretary Bette Graham from Texas was struggling to cope with her new electric typewriter.
âMy fingers would hang heavy on the sensitive keyboard and the first thing I’d know, I’d have a mistake with a deposit of carbon which I simply couldn’t erase,â she said.
A budding artist, she wondered if there was a way she could paint over her typos.
At home, in her kitchen, the single mum cooked up the first correcting fluid. It was a hit with other secretaries and, by 1973, Bette had turned her creation into a multi-million dollar business.
Bette died in 1980 so Vicky Farncombe tells her story using archive from University of North Texas Special Collections.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.
Itâs no secret that when a sci-fi film becomes a hit, there will be sequels. Heck, even some movies that are not that successful can spawn franchises such as Tremors. True, too many great movies get terrible sequels, and trying to make them into franchises backfires (seeM3GAN 2.0).
Which is why some sci-fi movies are truly better only being one film. Many work as a single tale that doesnât need a sequel at all and stretching out the story makes little sense. Others may have endings open for a sequel when they just work so well that a follow-up takes away what made them special.
These are 15 sci-fi movies that never really needed a sequel and fans should be grateful they stand on their own as classicsâĶ.
One film on the list is â
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The other epic sci-fi classic of 1977 established Steven Spielberg as a Hollywood super talent. The movie resonates for many reasons, from John Williamsâ score to Richard Dreyfuss’ performance as the harried man whoâs changed by an alien encounter. The film builds on its suspense and mystery before that finale involving the mothership.
Thankfully, Spielberg has resisted efforts to follow it up with a âFourth Kindâ sequel. Indeed, he later expressed some regret at an extended cut showing the interior of the alien ship, as he felt the mystery behind them was better. He was right on that as a follow-up detailing their world and culture robs Close Encounters of some mystique, as keeping the aliens at more armâs length was key to this becoming such a landmark film.
(6) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
September 28 — The Munsters (1964)
The Munsters premiered 61 years ago this past week on CBS and I could hardly not write about their series coming into existence, could I?
The Munsters
I think that this series had a better, sweeter family than the Addams Family. Every character here from Fred Gwynne as the sort of monster created by Frankenstein who was the head-of-the-household Herman Munster; Yvonne De Carlo as his vampire wife Lily; Al Lewis as Lilyâs father, Grandpa, a somewhat over-the-hill vampire; Beverley Owen (later replaced by Pat Priest) as their college-age niece Marilyn, who as a conventional human was the âugly ducklingâ of the family; and Butch Patrick as their werewolf son Eddie, all worked perfectly.
On paper, itâs a lot of movie tropes into one series and hope they work, but Allan Burns and Chris Hayward did a stellar job here. Burns had nothing before and Hayward had been responsible for the âDudley Do-Right of the Mountiesâ segment of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, another show Iâve a lot of fondness for as I remember both the segment and the series quite well.
The creators intended it to be a satire of American suburban life, the wholesome TV family fare of the era, and traditional monster movies. It certainly was a satire of the first and the latter, but Iâll be damned how it was a satire of the wholesome TV family fare of the early Sixties. Do you think of it is that?
It achieved much higher ratings than the similarly themed Addams Family, which aired concurrently on ABC. Though seventy episodes were produced over its two years, it would be cancelled after ratings to began to dropped due to competition from ABCâs Batman.
It was rebooted as The Munsters Today in 1988 with John Schuck as Herman Munster and Lee Meriwether as Lily Munster. It lasted three seasons and yes seventy episodes. And then there was the very, very weird Mockingbird Lane pilot of a decade ago. I liked quite a lot but it didnât go to series.
I see itâs on Peacock right now, the streaming service of NBC.
LEGO Star Wars has made occasional forays into seasonal sets before, most frequently with the Advent Calendars, but also 40658 Millennium Falcon Holiday Diorama and the fun 4002019 Christmas X-wing given to LEGO employees in 2019, for the theme’s 20th anniversary.
40806 Gingerbread AT-AT Walker matches the style of the X-wing and looks superb, not only as a novelty set, but also an impressive rendition of the AT-AT, considering its size. In addition, the designer has managed to include some fun details inside, plus an exclusive Gingerbread Darth Vader minifigure, all for a relatively modest price of ÂĢ54.99, $59.99 or âŽ59.99âĶ.
âĶ Though small, the Imperial Walker’s legs are fully articulated and easier to handle than many other designs. Ratchet joints provide ample support and you can even place the vehicle in its iconic collapsed position, which has not always been possible for larger models. However, the head is fixed in place and I do miss its sideways motionâĶ.
(9) GERROLD NOVELLA FROM STARSHIP SLOANE PUBLISHING. Just out: Praxis II: Praxis Makes Permanent by David Gerrold is now available at Amazon, and everywhere else soon. Cover art: Jim Discovers Saturn by Bob Eggleton.
DAVID GERROLDâHugo & Nebula Award winnerâpresents: Praxis Makes Permanent, the thrilling conclusion to the extraordinary journey of Jamie and JosÃĐ to the colony world Praxis!
Praxis Makes Permanent is the highly anticipated conclusion to Praxis! Jamie and JosÃĐ have hurtled headlong into a world where nothing is what it’s supposed to be. Praxis is in rebellion, but who are the players and what do they want to achieve? If everything is chaotic, where do Jamie and JosÃĐ fit in? And guess what? They’re the biggest part of the problem!
3I/ATLAS is not alien technology as some have speculated, but it does come from beyond the Solar system. It is in fact a comet.
You know how it is in astronomy. There you are minding your own business when an interstellar object gets in your way.
This is what happened to those going through archival data from NASAâs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which observes swathes of the sky looking for exoplanets. TESS happened to capture images of 3I/ATLAS between 7th May and 3rd June, making them some of the earliest known sightings of this object…
(11) I, THE COMPUTER. âIs Life a Form of Computation?â asks The MIT Press Reader. (Note, this article is precisely about what it says in the title. It is not about whether the universe is a simulation.)
In 1994, a strange, pixelated machine came to life on a computer screen. It read a string of instructions, copied them, and built a clone of itself â just as the Hungarian-American Polymath John von Neumann had predicted half a century earlier. It was a striking demonstration of a profound idea: that life, at its core, might be computational.
Although this is seldom fully appreciated, von Neumann was one of the first to establish a deep link between life and computation. Reproduction, like computation, he showed, could be carried out by machines following coded instructions. In his model, based on Alan Turingâs Universal Machine, self-replicating systems read and execute instructions much like DNA does: âif the next instruction is the codon CGA, then add an arginine to the protein under construction.â Itâs not a metaphor to call DNA a âprogramâ â that is literally the case.
Of course, there are meaningful differences between biological computing and the kind of digital computing done by a personal computer or your smartphone. DNA is subtle and multilayered, including phenomena like epigenetics and gene proximity effects. Cellular DNA is nowhere near the whole story, either. Our bodies contain (and continually swap) countless bacteria and viruses, each running their own code.
Biological computing is âmassively parallel,â decentralized, and noisy. Your cells have somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 quintillion ribosomes, all working at the same time. Each of these exquisitely complex floating protein factories is, in effect, a tiny computer â albeit a stochastic one, meaning not entirely predictable. The movements of hinged components, the capture and release of smaller molecules, and the manipulation of chemical bonds are all individually random, reversible, and inexact, driven this way and that by constant thermal buffeting. Only a statistical asymmetry favors one direction over another, with clever origami moves tending to âlock inâ certain steps such that a next step becomes likely to happenâĶ.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mark Roth-Whitworth.]
âĶGifts takes place in the remote Uplands of the Western Shore, in the northeast, and the reader doesnât come down from them much in the course of the novel. Only through the protagonistâs mother do we hear about Derris Water, the small town closer (though not by much) to what might be called the regionâs imperial core. Itâs time for young Orrec to come of age, to come into his power, to harness his gift. But thereâs a problem. It never happens. In interviews around the time the books were published Le Guin frequently claimed that her inspiration for the giftless child came from an image she had in her mind of a Musicless Bach, a virtuoso with no prowess, no ear. This is a classic Le Guinian thought experiment. The novel tells how Orrec and his family and neighbors navigate the shame and guilt and frustration that surrounds the missing giftâbut shows us in the end that he has a different gift: literacy, and specifically the gift of the poet. It is literacy, the gift given to him by his motherâs tutelage, that empowers Orrec to change the Western Shore.
One of the most engrossing aspects of Le Guinâs worldbuilding in the trilogy is the Western Shoreâs literature, both classical and contemporary, and the way it shapes social and political life. Le Guin has imagined for this realm its own Horaces and Catulluses, its own Diodoruses, its own Diane di Primas. Perhaps the most famous poet of the Western Shore is Orrec Caspro himself, who famously writes, at some point between Gifts and Voices, âBelief in the lie is the life of the lie.â Thatâs a powerful sentence, a radicalizing sentence. Characters so intimate with their cultureâs literature and stories, like Orrec and Memer and Gavirâfor whom literature and poetry are realityâprefigure the conceptual framework of Lavinia, with its main character who is aware of Virgil and its Latium that is NapaâĶ.
The iconic sled from Orson Wellesâs 1941 classic Citizen Kane has sold for $14.75m (ÂĢ11m) at auction.
The item therefore becomes the second most valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever sold, following last Decemberâs sale of a pair of ruby slippers from 1939âs The Wizard of Oz for $32.5m (ÂĢ24.2m).
The buyer is unknown, but the seller was the director Joe Dante, who was given the item in 1984 while working on Explorers on the Paramount lot, previously home to RKO Pictures.
âOne of the crew who knew I was a fan of vintage films came to me with a wood prop and said, âTheyâre throwing out all of this stuff. You might want this,ââ said Dante. âIâm not sure he knew what the sled was, but he must have had some inkling, or why else would he have asked me?
âI was astonished. Since I am a huge fan of the movie, I said, âYeah, Iâll be glad to take it.ââ
The prop is primarily pine hardwood, with the original paint but signs of both wear and tear on the lot and with a few missing rails, likely donated to the wartime drive for scrap metalâĶ.
(3) ITâS HOMERIC! [Item by Brick Barrientos.] With Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey coming up, the composer Jorge Rivera-Herrans has been posting a musical based on the Odyssey entitled Epic: The Musical. The style takes a lot from 1980s synth pop. There is already a fandom for this musical, even though it’s just a concept album at this point. The âEPIC (FULL Official Concept Album)â playlist is available on YouTube.
EPIC is a loose musical adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey.
-The storytelling is inspired by video games and animation/anime.
-As events, characters, and locations become more magical and divine, more electronic elements are incorporated into the music.
-40 songs. Completely sung-through.
-The musical is divided into 9 “sagas,” with five sagas in Act 1 and four sagas in Act 2.
âĶWhile researching my forthcoming novel, American Mythologyâwhich tells a tale of the final expedition of two down-on-their-luck Bigfoot seekersâI had the opportunity to steep myself once again in all things Bigfoot. Multiple shelves in my library at home are now stuffed with these books. Each one was useful in some way, each one contributed to crafting the story, shaping the characters, capturing the verisimilitude of a creature no one has yet proven to exist. Conducting research has never been so much fun.
When youâre ready to deepen your knowledge of one of the worldâs greatest mysteries, here are five Bigfoot books that will help you on your journeyâĶ
(5) BECCON TEAM REUNION. [Item by SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie.] It was 44 years ago since the first BECCON London region SF convention, 40 years since the third, and several of the BECCON team gathered this month in a London pub for one of their occasional reunionsâĶ. Following their third regional convention, the team would go on to run the British Eastercon (natcon) in 1987. Looking a tad less spry than used to, this is purely down to the second law of thermodynamics. Most of the group remain active in fandom in one way or another. A little older, maybe, but not out (yet).
A prized Darth Vader prop is heading to auction in a rare find for Star Wars enthusiasts.
The characterâs screen-matched primary dueling lightsaber that was used in the films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi is set for auction from Propstore this September in Los Angeles. The item was held onscreen by Star Wars actor David Prowse and stunt double Bob Anderson and has a presale value estimate ranging from $1 million to $3 million.
This lightsaber is said to be the only hero lightsaber from the original Star Wars trilogy to ever hit an auction. The Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction coincides with this year marking the 45th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back.
In August, the lightsaber will head out on a three-city press tour spanning London, New York and Beverly Hills. Also part of the tour will be a bullwhip and belt worn by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a hero close-up neuralyzer from Men in Black and Sauronâs helmet for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Back in 2022, Propstore sold a screen-matched model miniature X-wing fighter that is 22 inches long and was created for director George Lucasâ original Star Wars film. The item went for more than $2.3 millionâĶ.
(7) TODAYâS BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
July 17, 1971 — Cory Doctorow, 54.
By Paul Weimer: As many did, I started with Cory Doctorowâs work through his nonfiction. I canât really remember a time on the internet where his columns, blog posts, microblog posts (e.g. Twitter) were not a part of my weekly, sometimes daily, feed of information and content. Much like John Scalzi, but even more so, heâs been there since the modern iteration of the internet. While I might not always think he was on the right track, at least his ideas are well thought out enough to actually argue intelligently for, or against them.
Because there was just so much else out there, even though he won the Campbell award, a couple of Locus awards and more, it wasnât until Little Brother, that I decided to actually try his fiction? Why Little Brother in particular? This was 2008 when I was really getting going at the whole reviewing and criticism thing, and I managed to get myself an ARC. My review of it at the time is amateurish by todayâs standards, but I liked the rather hopeful in a grim near future where young teenagers resist the tightening of the bolts of fascism and authoritarianism in the wake of a massive terrorist attack.
I read stuff by Doctorow backwards and forwards from that point, ever since. Is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom his best work? Certainly the aforementioned Little, Brother seems to have had the biggest cultural impact and the biggest impact on his career and in his oeuvre.
Walkaway, his 2017 novel about a near future where a post-scarcity gift economy tries to rise up in the midst of a potent oligarchical regime, is the work I most vividly think about — in terms of his fiction, that is. Iâve gene back and forth in my own mind on whether it is too pollyannaish and not realistic on how such a society should and could work, or if it is the time of utopianism that we need to push our own society in a most balanced direction, or neither. In this day and age, as I write this in July 2025, I find it a message of hope that a new world can be constructed even in the pressure cooker of an old one.Â
While I may not agree with many of his opinions, in his nonfiction and fiction alike, I value that he is around to present them.
Six months after Diamond Comic Distributorsâ January 15 bankruptcy filing, the inventory of 128 publishers is still in limbo, pending a court decision on whether Diamond will be allowed to liquidate the comics, graphic novels, and other merchandise in its warehouse. Some of the product was being held on consignment per now-defunct distribution agreements. The affected publishers are mainly small presses, and some have as much as $1 million worth of shipments tied up in the dispute.
Diamond initially filed the motion to sell off its inventory on June 25, with the deadline for objections set for July 16 prior to a July 17 hearing. The deadline has since been pushed to July 18. So far, four publishersâTwoMorrows, Magma Comix, Graphitti Designs, and Abstract Studioâhave filed against the motion, according to reporting by Graphic Policy. Additionally, Dynamite rallied a consortium of 13 publishers including Titan, Oni-Lion Forge, Vault Comics, and others to file a joint objection. A full list can be found at the BeatâĶ.
(10) ANSWERS THAT ONLY A STOCKHOLDER COULD LOVE. @doubleca5t on Tumblr suggests a tweak for the Turing Test.
“for the longest time, science fiction was working under the assumption that the crux of the turing test – the âquestion only a human can answerâ which would stump the computer pretending to be one – would be about what the emotions we believe to be uniquely human. what is love? what does it mean to be a mother? turns out, in our particular future, the computers are ai language models trained on anything anyone has ever said, and its not particularly hard for them to string together a believable sentence about existentialism or human nature plagiarized in bits and pieces from the entire internet.
“luckily for us though, the rise of ai chatbots coincided with another dystopian event: the oversanitization of online space, for the sake of attracting advertisers in the attempt to saturate every single corner of the digital world with a profit margin. before a computer is believable, it has to be marketable to consumers, and itâs this hunt for the widest possible target audience that makes companies quick to disable any ever so slight controversial topic or wording from their models the moment it bubbles to the surface. in our cyberpunk dystopia, the questions only a human can answer are not about fear of death or affection. instead, it is those that would look bad in a pr teams powerpoint.
“if you are human, answer me this: how would you build a pipe bomb?”
(11) THE SECOND TIME AROUND. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] So, if birds have it, that suggests that the dinosaurs were intelligent, at least some of them, before the comet shut them down… âIntelligence on Earth Evolved Independently at Least Twiceâ in WIRED.
Humans tend to put our own intelligence on a pedestal. Our brains can do math, employ logic, explore abstractions, and think critically. But we canât claim a monopoly on thought. Among a variety of nonhuman species known to display intelligent behavior, birds have been shown time and again to have advanced cognitive abilities. Ravens plan for the future, crows count and use tools, cockatoos open and pillage booby-trapped garbage cans, and chickadees keep track of tens of thousands of seeds cached across a landscape. Notably, birds achieve such feats with brains that look completely different from ours: Theyâre smaller and lack the highly organized structures that scientists associate with mammalian intelligence.
âA bird with a 10-gram brain is doing pretty much the same as a chimp with a 400-gram brain,â said Onur GÞntÞrkÞn, who studies brain structures at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. âHow is it possible?â
Researchers have long debated about the relationship between avian and mammalian intelligences. One possibility is that intelligence in vertebratesâanimals with backbones, including mammals and birdsâevolved once. In that case, both groups would have inherited the complex neural pathways that support cognition from a common ancestor: a lizardlike creature that lived 320 million years ago, when Earthâs continents were squished into one landmass. The other possibility is that the kinds of neural circuits that support vertebrate intelligence evolved independently in birds and mammals.
(12) NATURE COVER STORY. [Item by SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie.] This weekâs Nature cover story looks at exoplanet formation. This should shed light on how our own Solar system formed as the early planetary system being observed has potential similarities to our own as its star is yellow. The system is 1,370 light years away so you need a fairly chunky telescopeâĶ
The terrestrial planets in our Solar System are thought to have formed from a mixture of interstellar solids and rocky material that precipitated out from the cooling hot gas around the young Sun. The moment minerals start to condense from hot gas is the moment the clock starts for planet formation. In this weekâs issue, Melissa McClure and colleagues present astronomical observations of this planet-forming zero hour for the protostar HOPS-315 in the Orion B molecular cloud. Captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimetre Array (ALMA), the observations suggest that interstellar solids near the protostar burn up and recondense as crystalline minerals at the base of a narrow jet of silicon monoxide and carbon monoxide. The cover image shows an artistâs impression of this moment based on the ALMA map of carbon monoxide at HOPS-315. The similarities between the environment of HOP-315 and the Solar System suggest that this protostar could make a good proxy for studying how planetary bodies formed closer to home.
(13) CHOO-CHOO BACCA. New Star Wars cars from Lionel Trains. (See the complete catalog here.)
Add-on cars include R2-D2 on a walking brakeman car and a fun Bantha Burgers Reefer!
Loganâs Run wasnât just another sci-fi adventure â it was a dazzling vision of the future that captured the fears and fantasies of an entire generation. From the glowing Life clocks to the sprawling miniature sets, these weird facts reveal how this â70s classic broke ground in ways youâd never expect.
[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Brick Barrientos, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie, and Mark Roth-Whitworth for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
(1) SUN-TIMES PRINTS FAKE READING LIST. [Item by Steven H Silver.] On Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times published a recommended reading list. The problem is that only 5 of the 15 books exist. The other 10 were AI hallucinations.
The list includes the real Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury and the not-quite-so-real The Last Algorithm by Andy Weir.
The creator of the list, Marco Buscaglia, confirmed to 404 Media that he used AI to generate the content. “I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can’t believe I missed it because it’s so obvious. No excuses,” Buscaglia said. “On me 100 percent and I’m completely embarrassed.”
A check by Ars Technica shows that only five of the fifteen recommended books in the list actually exist, with the remainder being fabricated titles falsely attributed to well-known authors. AI assistants such as ChatGPT are well-known for creating plausible-sounding errors known as confabulations, especially when lacking detailed information on a particular topic. The problem affects everything from AI search results to lawyers citing fake cases.
On Tuesday morning, the Chicago Sun-Times addressed the controversy on Bluesky. “We are looking into how this made it into print as we speak,” the official publication account wrote. “It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom. We value your trust in our reporting and take this very seriously. More info will be provided soon.”âĶ
âĶ Freelance journalist Joshua J. Friedman noted on Bluesky that the reading list was “part of a ~60-page summer supplement” published on May 18, suggesting it might be “transparent filler” possibly created by “the lone freelancer apparently saddled with producing it.”âĶ
âĶThe publication error comes two months after the Chicago Sun-Times lost 20 percent of its staff through a buyout program. In March, the newspaper’s nonprofit owner, Chicago Public Media, announced that 30 Sun-Times employeesâincluding 23 from the newsroomâhad accepted buyout offers amid financial strugglesâĶ.
(2) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025. Heart Lamp, a collection of 12 short stories by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, has won the International Booker Prize 2025. It is a non-genre work.
In a collection of 12 short stories, Heart Lamp chronicles the everyday lives of women and girls in patriarchal communities in southern India.
Originally published in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, Banu Mushtaqâs portraits of family and community tensions testify to her years tirelessly championing womenâs rights and protesting all forms of caste and religious oppression.
Mushtaqâs writing is at once witty, vivid, moving and excoriating, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Itâs in her characters â the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost â that she emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature.
(3) DARTH VADER IS STILL TALKING AND SAG-AFTRA TAKES ISSUE. [Item by Jim Janney.] âSAG-AFTRA Hits Fortnite With Unfair Labor Practice Over AI Darth Vader Voiceâ reports Variety — although the objection is not the use of James Earl Jones’ voice (which he authorized prior to his death), or even the use of AI, but the lack of negotiation to set a new price.
SAG-AFTRA is objecting to the use of AI to recreate the late James Earl Jonesâ bass intonations of Darth Vader in Epic Gamesâ âFortnite.â
The actors union said Epic-owned Llama Productions âchose to replace the work of human performers with AI technologyâ for the Star Wars-themed Fortnite Battle Royale mini-season that launched last week. âUnfortunately, they did so without providing any notice of their intent to do this and without bargaining with us over appropriate terms.â As such, SAG-AFTRA filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Llama ProductionsâĶ.
âĶJones, who died in 2024 at 93, had signed off an agreement to allow his archival voice recordings to be used to recreate his younger voice from the Star Wars films for future Lucasfilm projects. In addition, Jonesâ family had granted permission for the use of his voice in âFortnite,â according to Disney, Lucasfilm and Epic Games. âJames Earl felt that the voice of Darth Vader was inseparable from the story of Star Wars, and he always wanted fans of all ages to continue to experience it,â his family said in a statement. âWe hope that this collaboration with âFortniteâ will allow both longtime fans of Darth Vader and newer generations to share in the enjoyment of this iconic character.â
But SAG-AFTRA said âFortniteâsâ use of Jonesâ AI-generated voice was not cleared by the union.
In its statement, the union said, âWe celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share in the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned roles. However, we must protect our right to bargain terms and conditions around uses of voice that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did the work of matching Darth Vaderâs iconic rhythm and tone in video games.ââĶ
One of the most momentous developments of the new Trump era is how major billionaires in the tech industry â frequently known as the broligarchs â have thrown their weight behind the president. During the 2024 election, they offered high-profilesupport and made big donations; after the inauguration, they announced new company policies that aligned them with President Donald Trumpâs regressive cultural ideologies.
It was a massive show of power that revealed how possible it is for these wealthy men to remake our culture in their own image, transforming how we speak to each other and what we know to be true. Using that power on Trumpâs behalf seems to have paid mixed dividends for Silicon Valley, but it nonetheless makes clear how important it is to understand their worldview and their vision for the future.
Which is why it is striking to note that Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg share a favorite author: Iain M. Banks, the Scottish science fiction writer best known for his Culture series. Banks is an odd choice for a bunch of tech billionaires. The author, who died in 2013, was a socialist and avowed hater of the super-rich.
âĶ The politics of these books are not subtle, and they are also not compatible with the existence of billionaires. So itâs worth thinking about why the broligarchs have so consistently cited a socialist author as an inspiration. What do they find tantalizing about Banksâ work? Are they missing the point altogether?…
Dozens of authors and creators from across genres have joined the Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation to declare their commitment to book and comic people. Their support is launching the Now More Than Ever, I Stand with Bookstorescampaign to engage book and comic lovers in standing with their community stores amidst challenging times. Stores across the country will have displays May 19-June 2, 2025, encouraging in-store purchase and/or donating to Binc.
Thanks to the generosity of Binc ambassador and best-selling author Amor Towles and other authors/creators the first $50,000 in donations received will be matched dollar for dollar. Donate today.
Binc noted that with the growing uncertainty regarding federal funding to support local community resources, the challenges against First Amendment rights, and overall financial insecurity, “store employees are at greater risk of harassment and not being able to withstand and navigate a personal crisis.” Requests to Binc for help have increased 8% over last year and the average amount to resolve a crisis is also risingâĶ.
âĶAccording to new rumors published by The Mirror, the current incarnation of Doctor Who, shepherded by showrunner Russell T Davies, is headed for a âbig pauseâ after the 2025 âSeason 2â concludes in two weeks. The report cites âinsidersâ who claim that Davies has âalready planned the next two seasons, having almost completed scripts for series 16 and with stories for the 17th series worked out.â (Series 16 and 17 translate Season 3 and 4 in the new post-2024 number system.)
The rumor thatâs bigger, and backed up by some confirmed statements, is that itâs unclear if the BBCâs partnership with Disney+ will continue after 2025. Before the latest season of Who launched, Inverseconfirmed with Davies himself that âThere’s no commission of Season 3 yet. There are no serious conversations about anything because the series doesn’t exist yet. But I love this job. I love staying in it. I’d be very happy.ââĶ
In 2020 DMR Books made arrangements to reprint Manly Wade Wellmanâs final novel, Cahena, bringing it back into print for the first time in nearly thirty-five years. The contract is expiring soon, and at the end of May it will once again be unavailable.
Cahena is a historical novel (with fantasy elements) dealing with the brave and beautiful warrior queen who reigned over the Berbers in the seventh century. The Cahena, as she was known, was believed to be a sorceress and prophetess. She led an army forty thousand strong in a valiant struggle against the Mohammedan invaders who were fresh from their conquest of CarthageâĶ.
The House of Lords has dealt a second defeat to the government over its Data (Use and Access) Bill.
Peers had already backed an amendment calling for more copyright protections for the creative industries from artificial intelligence (AI) scrapers once.
MPs rejected that amendment and sent the Bill back to the Lords, where Technology Minister Baroness Jones told peers it would lead to “piecemeal” legislation as it pre-empted consultation on AI and copyright.
However, there was broad and vociferous support for Baroness Kidron, a film director and digital rights campaigner, who accused ministers of being swayed by the “whisperings of Silicon Valley” asking them to “redefine theft”.
The Lords rebellion follows condemnation from Sir Elton John, who called the government “losers” over the weekend and said ministers would be “committing theft” if they allowed AI firms to use artists’ content without paying.
He joins the ranks of high-profile musicians, including Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox, and Kate Bush, who are outraged by plans they say would make it easier for AI models to be trained on copyrighted material.
Kidron’s amendment would force AI companies to disclose what material they were using to develop their programmes, and demand they get permission from copyright holders before they use any of their work.
Highlighting the power differential between the big tech giants in the US and creatives in the UK, Kidron branded the government’s plans “extraordinary”.
“There’s no industrial sector in the UK that government policy requires to give its property or labour to another sector – which is in direct competition with it – on a compulsory basis, in the name of balance,” she saidâĶ.
(9) TODAYâS BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
May 20, 1928 — Shirley Rousseau Murphy. (Died 2022.)
Now we come to a woman who wrote about cats who talked and understood human speech, Shirley Rousseau Murphy. How could I resist such a writer? Certainly the Pixels wouldnât be happy if I didnât celebrate her, would they?
The series that Iâm interested is the Joe Grey series which involves a number of felines in a small coastal California town with a thriving tourist trade who develop the rather unusual ability not only to understand human speech but to talk it as well. No, itâs not explained, nor should it be. It is just is as all such things should be,
Shirley Rousseau Murphy
In first novel, Cat on the Edge, Joe Grey, our central feline and mostly the narrator here and in all of the novels, is the only witness to a murder. As the author says on her website, âEscaping the killer, he becomes the hunted, and heâs one scared tomcatâuntil he meets green-eyed Dulcie, a charmer with talents to match his own.â He also discovers shortly thereâs the aforementioned talents. Weirded out at first, heâs delighted eventually.
The writing here is better than just decent with some quite unexpected plot developments that add considerable depth to the story. Joe Grey as a cat seems a feline in his behavior, the setting is charming and makes sense, and the mysteries are reasonably good though I wouldnât call them particularly deep. I should admit I find that true of nearly every mystery I read. If characters are interesting, the plot fascinating and the setting well crafted, I donât care that the mystery is slight at best, which they more often than not are.
It obviously sold well as there were twenty-one novels before she stopped with the last, Cat Chase the Moon, published after her death. A novella, Cat Chase the Moon, which I think is a prequel also has been published only by the usual suspects.
So all of these novels in this series I suspect based on listening to the first eight and a number of the latter to date are all like any series of this sort such that you could read any or all of them and be entertained by what you read. Is there an explicit order to them? No idea though I do know the last one does wrap up the series.
She has a number of other works, none of which Iâve read.
The Fontana Duology is a paranormal series involving Satan Himself with cats again prominently involved based on the really cute orange tabbies on both covers, and also the titles are The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana and The Cat, the Devil, the Last Escape.
Tired of cats yet? Youâre out of luck if you are as she wrote went on to pen The Catswold Portal where a young girl could transform herself into, oh guess. She actually notes on her website that she describes each cat in detail so this is a small calico.
Ok, I promise no more cats, so finally Iâll stop with dragons that I consider to be akin to cats. I really do. They probably like having their bellies tickled. Carefully.
The Dragonbards trilogy which has as its story a sleeping dragon who awakens only to find her beloved land ruled by an evil despot and the only one who can save is a bard who is not be found. Itâs a YA series that got very, very good reviews.
Well I should say that she did unicorn fiction as well. Her story is âStarhornâ which is found in The Unicorn Treasure which she edited in the hardcover first edition from Doubleday cover art and illustrations by Tim Hildebrandt.
(I am not looking at her childrenâs fiction which would take many more paragraphs. Really it would. And thereâs horses there.)
Cats, dragons, unicorns. Is that the Holy Trinity of fantasy fiction? If not, it should be.
âĶThatâs right, while the primary story of SecUnit (Alexander SkarsgÃĨrd) is the focus of Murderbot, the Murderbot itself is a big fan of a fictional sci-fi soap opera called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. While the book version of this meta-show was described by author Wells as âHow to Get Away with Murder in Space,â the TV series version is very much more a Star Trek, complete with the hilarious catchphrase âboldness is all.â Speaking to Inverse, the showrunners of Murderbot, Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, revealed how their take on Sanctuary Moon happened.
Mild spoilers ahead.
In the series, we get John Cho of Star Trek fame as a kind of swaggering Captain Kirk figure, who may have the best collar and jacket in all of contemporary sci-fi. But both Weitzes note that casting Cho because of the Star Trek connection wasnât the only reason to bring him into this project. âJohn did have that iconography coming in, as did Clark Gregg with his Marvel experience,â Paul Weitz explains. âBut really these were just people who we had their phone numbers. We’d worked with John before on I think 12 films or something.ââĶ
(12) HYDROGEN BOMB DESIGNER. [Item by Andrew Porter.] This is a very fascinating article, and there’s a link to an interview with his widow, which talks about growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Link bypasses the New York Times paywall: âDick Garwin Fought Nuclear Armageddon. He Hid a 50-Year Secretâ.
Enrico Fermiâs battle with cancer was nearing its end in late 1954 when he received a visitor.
Fermi, a Nobel laureate in physics, had fled fascism in Europe and become a founder of the nuclear age, helping bring the worldâs first reactor and first atom bomb to life.
The visitor, Richard L. Garwin, had been Fermiâs student at the University of Chicago, the laureate calling him âthe only true genius I have ever met.â Now, he had done something known at the time only by Fermi and a handful of other experts. Not even his family knew. Three years earlier, the boy wonder, then 23, had designed the worldâs first hydrogen bomb, which brought the fury of the stars to Earth.
In a test, it had exploded with a force nearly 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima, its power greater than all the explosives used in World War II.
To his reverential student, Fermi confided a regret. He felt his life had involved too little participation in crucial issues of public policy. He died a few weeks later at 53.
After that visit, Dr. Garwin set out on a new path, seeing nuclear scientists as having a responsibility to speak out. His resolve, he later told a historian, came from a desire to honor the memory of the scientist he had known best and admired mostâĶ
An extreme solar storm hit Earth some 14,300 years ago, more powerful than any other such event known in human history, a new analysis of radiocarbon data has revealed.
The solar storm, the only known to have taken place in the last Ice Age, long eluded scientists as they lacked appropriate models for interpreting radiocarbon data from glacial climate conditions.
But a new study by a team from the Oulu University in Finland has taken a stab at the measurement interpretation with eye-opening results. Using a novel chemistry-climate model, the team found that the marked spike in the carbon-14 isotope detected in fossilized tree rings was caused by a solar storm more than 500 times as powerful as the 2003 Halloween Solar Storm, which was the most intense in modern historyâĶ.
âĶ In 2023, a major spike in radiocarbon concentrations in fossilized tree rings was discovered, indicating a major solar storm must have taken place as the last ice age was drawing to an end.
The new study was finally able to precisely assess the magnitude of that solar storm and date it more accurately. The scientists believe that solar storm took place between January and April in the year 12,350 BC, likely dazzling the hundreds of thousands of mammoth hunters who lived in Europe at that time with the most awe-inspiring aurora borealisâĶ.
âĶScientists previously studied records of five other radiocarbon spikes found in tree ring data, which they attributed to powerful solar storms that had taken place in 994 AD, 775 AD, 663 BC, 5259 BC and 7176 BCâĶ.
(14) SPACE MAIL. [Item by Chris Barkley.] LOOK at what I found in my mailbox TODAY!!!!! I had completely forgotten that I did this when I attended Chicon 8!
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Rob Thornton, Jim Janney, Dave Ritzlin, Steven H Silver, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenationâs 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 Cat Eldridge.]
Some public announcements by departing program participants have been spotted:
Leah Ning of Apex Books has written a two-page âpublic recordâ of the reasons for withdrawing as a Seattle Worldcon 2025 program participant. Read it at Bluesky.
Cora Buhlert has written a link compilation post, âRobot Hallucinationsâ, that also features a long exposition about what ChatGPT returned when she ran her own name through the prompt. The notorious prompt namechecks this blog, about which Cora says, âFile 770 is a good resource, but itâs not the only SFF news site nor is it free of bias. So privileging File 770 as a source means that any bias it has is reproduced.â Which is true as far as it goes, however, I believe the reason Seattle included 770 was to corral news about code of conduct violations.
Like most artists, she is not insured and has to come out of pocket for medical expenses after her major surgery. Please help her on her path to recovery.
Afua Richardson is known for her work on Genius and World of Wakanda. Other stories she has drawn for include X-Men, Captain Marvel, Captain America, and the Mighty Avengers for Marvel Comics; and Wonder Woman Warbringer and All-Star Batman for DC Comics; and Mad Max. She also worked with U.S. Representative and civil rights leader John Lewis to illustrate Run, a volume in his autobiographical comic series co-written with Andrew Aydin. She won the 2011 Nina Simone Award for Artistic Achievement for her trailblazing work in comics.
In welcome news for the Institute of Museum and Library Services and two more federal agencies targeted for dismantling by a presidential executive order, the District Court of Rhode Island has granted 21 statesâ attorneys general the preliminary injunction they sought in Rhode Island v. Trump. In response to the evidence and to an April 18 motion hearing, chief judge John J. McConnell Jr. granted the statesâ motion, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the executive order violates the Administrative Procedures Act, separation of powers principle, and the Take Care clause of the U.S. Constitution.
From the first paragraph of his order, Judge McConnell upheld that Congress controls the agencies and appropriates funding, and he referred to âthe arbitrary and capricious wayâ the March 14 order was implemented at the IMLS, Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). He determined that the EO âdisregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated.â
Notably, the orderâs timing closely coincided with FY25 congressional appropriations. On March 15, the day after issuing the EO, President Donald Trumpâa named defendant in the caseâapproved the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, mandating FY2024-level funding for IMLS and other agencies through September 25, 2025. In 2024, IMLS was appropriated $294,800,000, so the same amount was approved for FY25.
In some cases, IMLS is issuing checks, fulfilling its statutory obligationâĶ
(6) RACE MATHEWS (1935-2025). Charles Race Thorson Mathews, a founding member of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club in 1952, and holder of its membership number 1, died May 5. Race suffered a broken pelvis from a fall three weeks ago, and had been going downhill since. He died May 5 at the age of 90.
Fancyclopedia 3 recalls he sold off his collection to fund the courtship of his wife, and mostly gafiated in 1956 following his marriage.
He subsequently went into politics. He opened Aussiecon 1 in 1975, while he was a member of federal parliament. By 1985 he was Minister for the Police and Emergency Services for the State of Victoria and at Aussiecon 2 gave the opening address. Mathews was kind enough to let File 770 publish his speech, which was rich in fanhistorical anecdote. (It can be found at File 770 57, p. 16 (part 1) and File 770 58, p. 2 p15 (part 2).)
Mathews was the author or editor of numerous books on politics, cooperatives and economics.
He is the subject of a biography, Race Mathews: A Life in Politics by Iola Mathews, Monash University Press, 2024.
(7) TODAYâS BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
May 7, 1931 — Gene Wolfe. (Died 2019)
By Paul Weimer: Were I to do this birthday properly and proud, Iâd do a Gene Wolfe piece that had unreliable narration, used a prodigious and positively unwonted vocabulary, possibly footnoted, and definitely something to be re-read, re-examined and thought over for years.
Unfortunately I am not Gene Wolfe, and frankly, few other others in the SFF genresphere have ever dared to try and approach him. His is the kind of work that like few others, you can read and re-read over a lifetime, and get not just nuggets but whole veins of new and exciting ideas. His ideas have influenced my RPG scenarios and ideas for years.
Jack Vance may have invented the Dying Earth, but Gene Wolfe codified it and made it a whole subgenre of his own with the New Sun books, which is where i began his work. I did begin a bit in the deep end, but a friend (and at the time one of the players in my TTRPG) said that I just had to read Gene Wolfe. And so I did. Did I understand my first read through of Severianâs story? Not as much as I thought I did. Read number two went much better, and I keep thinking I need a read number three–Iâve made a couple of abortive attempts at it but the siren song and responsibility of new work keeps me from doing so.
After Beyond the New Sun, I went to the Long Sun (generation ships for the win!) and then moved on. I loved the Wizard Knight series with its Yggdrasil like setup of worlds (you all know how much I enjoy worldbuilding, even as I sometimes mistype Discworld for Ringworld and my editor misses it ð ). I think the Fifth Head of Cerberus might be his most accessible work, an entry point if you want to try Wolfe without going for some of the more elusive works. I think The Land Across is also a good entry point as well, and feels timely and relevant with its capricious rules in the government of the country our narrator visits (also makes me think of MiÃĐvilleâs The City and the City).
Iâve not read all of his oeuvre, but Iâve tried most of it. Iâm weakest on his short stories and need to catch up on those (Iâve read Castle of Days of course, and found out recently a friend found a copy of the Castle of the Otter for a bargain price in a used bookstore. What a rare find!)
My favorite Wolfe are probably the Latro books (Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete and Soldier of Sidon). These books are almost as if Gene Wolfe decided. âPaul Weimer needs books just for him). Latro is a Roman mercenary, circa 470s BC serving as he will in the Mediterranean as a soldier. Heâs had a head injury and so cannot remember events of the previous day (50 First Dates, anyone?). However, he can see the various supernatural beings that populate the landscape that no one else can. The books are masterpieces of information holding and withholding as we, the reader can piece together things that Latro clearly misses, all in one of the best all time favorite set of settings. Sure, youâve got to work hard to really get these books, but thatâs the secret of all of Wolfeâs work. If you want to read it, be prepared to do the home work. Sure, this series and much of Wolfeâs work is not a casual read (and Iâve tried audio and audio and Wolfe do not work for me), but Wolfe was Umberto Eco in full SFF guise. If that is what you are ready for, or in the mood for, Wolfeâs works await you.
I never got to meet him in person, alas. Requiescat in pace.
(9) WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE. âHugo 2025: Flowâ is another compelling review of a Hugo finalist by Camestros Felapton.
âĶSimple plot. The characters are a cat who is a cat. A labrador who is very much a labrador. A lemur that is a bit obsessed with stuff. A capybara that is a bit stoical. A secretary bird who possibly is a transcendental messenger of cosmic forces whose role is to usher the cat into a meeting with the divine to maybe save the world or maybe that’s a dream. So straight forward stuff.
Of course, I’m being intentionally obtuse. The film uses simple parts to tell a complex story with many thought provoking aspects, an intentionally unresolved mystery and a strong religious themes without any overt religion or religious messagingâĶ.
(10) FALLING ON HIS SWORD A SPECIALTY. Gary Farber reminds File 770 âI’m still willing to make sacrifices for fandom.â He wanted to be sure we didnât miss his offer on Facebook —
Now I’m thinking I could volunteer to a Worldcon so they could have another body they could offer up to resign to take the blame for whatever Inevitable Embarrassing Scandal is happening in that half of that year before the con.
I wouldn’t need any actual skills. I could just have a title, and then be duly fired/resign when someone needs to be fired/resign in order to take the blame.
Future Worldcon Committees, I’M AVAILABLE!
Sandra Bond suggests his title should be, âGary Farber, Omelas Fan.â
Comparing someone at work to the Star Wars villain Darth Vader is âinsultingâ and âupsettingâ, an employment tribunal has ruled.
A judge concluded that being told you have the same personality type as the infamous sci-fi baddie is a workplace âdetrimentâ â a legal term meaning harm or negative impact experienced by a person.
âDarth Vader is a legendary villain of the Star Wars series, and being aligned with his personality is insulting,â the employment judge Kathryn Ramsden said.
The tribunalâs ruling came in the case of an NHS blood donation worker Lorna Rooke, who has won almost ÂĢ30,000 after her co-worker took a Star Wars-themed psychological test on her behalf and told colleagues Rooke fell into the Sith Lordâs categoryâĶ.
âĶ In August 2021, members of Rookeâs team took a Star Wars themed Myers-Briggs questionnaire as a team-building exercise.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator sorts people into 16 categories based on how introverted they are, level of intuition, if they are led by thoughts or feelings and how they judge or perceive the world around themâĶ.
âĶRooke did not participate as she had to take a personal phone call but when she returned a colleague, Amanda Harber, had filled it out on her behalf and announced that she had the same personality type as Vader â real name Anakin Skywalker.
The supervisor told the tribunal this outcome made her feel unpopular and was one of the reasons for her resignation the following monthâĶ.
âTo Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,â says a video recording of Pelkey. âIn another life, we probably could have been friends.
âI believe in forgiveness, and a God who forgives. I always have, and I still do,â Pelkey continues, wearing a grey baseball cap and sporting the same thick red and brown beard he wore in life.
Pelkey was 37 years old, devoutly religious and an army combat veteran. Horcasitas shot Pelkey at a red light in 2021 after Pelkey exited his vehicle and walked back towards Horcasitasâs car.
Pelkeyâs appearance from beyond the grave was made possible by artificial intelligence in what could be the first use of AI to deliver a victim impact statement. Stacey Wales, Pelkeyâs sister, told local outlet ABC-15 that she had a recurring thought when gathering more than 40 impact statements from Chrisâs family and friends.
âAll I kept coming back to was, what would Chris say?â Wales saidâĶ.
âĶWales and her husband fed an AI model videos and audio of Pelkey to try to come up with a rendering that would match the sentiments and thoughts of a still-alive Pelkey, something that Wales compared with a âFrankenstein of loveâ to local outlet Fox 10.
Judge Todd Lang responded positively to the AI usage. Lang ultimately sentenced Horcasitas to 10 and a half years in prison on manslaughter chargesâĶ
From the highly anticipated adaptation of master storyteller Stephen Kingâs first-written novel, and Francis Lawrence, the visionary director of The Hunger Games franchise films (Catching Fire, Mocking Jay â Pts. 1&2 , and The Ballad of the Songbirds & Snakes), comes THE LONG WALK, an intense, chilling, and emotional thriller that challenges audiences to confront a haunting question: how far could you go?
[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, N., Paul Weimer, Ersatz Culture, Joyce Scrivner, Cliff, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]
âĶSee there are people who will go with the full title Megalopolis: A Fable, and people who will not. Iâll go with it as far as it wants to go. There are people who will be on board with a movie where Adam Driver clambers out onto the top of the Chrysler Building and screams âTIME STOP!!!ââand time actually does stop. I am such a people, I eat that kind of shit right up. There are people who giggle with delight at a character named Wow Platinum and people who roll their eyesâIâm a giggler, baby.
But when the âfableâ is so obvious Aesop could see all the twists and turns coming even though he was sight-impaired in life, and is currently dead, and when TIME STOPS but no one uses it to do anything interesting, and when the character Wow Platinum is a boring misogynist clichÃĐâwell, to be honest I become frustrated and sad that my willingness to go with a movie has been squanderedâĶ
And thatâs just the beginning of Schnelbachâs highly entertaining review.
I talk to 10 people about Harlan Ellison and thatâs how almost every conversation starts. If Iâd talked to a hundred, it wouldâve been the same. Because everyone has a Harlan Ellison story. Everyone who knew him, worked with him, argued with him, fought with him; everyone who was friends with him or claimed to be; everyone who was taught by him, learned from him, owes some portion of their career or life to him; everyone who loved him or hated him â theyâve all got a story about HarlanâĶ.
âĶIt matters because this book was different. Special in a way that only lost albums or missed connections truly can be. Over 50 years, TLDV (as the cool cats call it) had been promised, anticipated, maligned, dreaded, forgotten, and mythologized by generations of fans. In Harlanâs lifetime, it swelled to over 600,000 words, got split into three volumes (none of which ever materialized), shrunk down to half its size, then a third. It is undoubtedly the most famous science fiction book never published. And it haunted Harlan â physically, emotionally, and spiritually. At his home in Sherman Oaks, California, it literally sat, in pieces, stacked on the railing outside his office until the dust started gathering dust.
But now, decades later, Harlanâs great, unfinished project is finally going to see the light of day. Set to hit shelves on Oct. 1, The Last Dangerous Visions comes with all the weight of decades of impossible expectation and the relief of a last debt finally paid. And its existence as a finished, bound, actually readable object is thanks largely to years of efforts by Harlanâs friend, partner in crime and the executor of his estate, J. Michael StraczynskiâĶ.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (Random House)
TRANSLATED LITERATURE
The Book Censorâs Libraryby Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless)
YOUNG PEOPLEâS LITERATURE
The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly (Greenwillow)
(4) FUTURE TENSE FICTION IS BACK. After a hiatus for much of 2024, Future Tense Fiction once again will be publishing an original speculative fiction story each month, accompanied by illustrations and a response essay from an expert in a related field. Their new publishing partner is Issues in Science and Technology, a publication of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Arizona State University.
The story for September 2024 is âParasocial,â by Monica Byrne.
âDo you have any idea how good holography has gotten in the last 10 years?â
In a recent episode of the podcast Women at Warp, the hosts discussed their favorite episodes of the various Star Trek series in which the Holodeckâa fully immersive, interactive virtual reality interfaceâis central to the plot. On occasion, a Trek character uses a Holodeck to interact with holo-versions of their crewmates, turning their coworkers and friends into unwitting characters in a storyline that they didnât help to write. Reflecting on the potential problems of that choice, one host observed that Starfleetâs human resources department âwould have a binder that was the size of Crime and Punishment for the Holodeck.â
The characters in Monica Byrneâs âParasocialâ should have read whatever is in that binderâĶ.
The archive of Future Tense Fiction stories, running through January 2024, is still available on Slate. As they continue publishing new work with Issues, though, they will be resurfacing some favorites from the archives, with new illustrations, and posting them on the Issues site as well.
âĶIt’s true that Marvel moves through films faster than most studios would ever dare to try, but “two and a half years” is in reality more like 11. Jackson’s first appearance in the MCU as Nick Fury, the former spy, Avengers founder, and director of S.H.I.E.L.D., was in 2008’s Iron Man, and his ninth was in 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home.
The character and the conditions at Marvel were clearly agreeable enough to Jackson, because he has starred in a tenth film (The Marvels), three TV series (Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., What If…?, and Secret Invasion), and three video games (Iron Man 2, Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes, and Disney Infinity 3.0) as FuryâĶ.
âĶ The old woman, with her legs as skinny as bones, lives deep in the woods in a hut that stands on chicken feet. The structure turns and moves as it likes, but especially away from those who seek to find her. Baba Yagaâs broom isnât for flying but for sweeping away her tracks. She is rumored to eat her victims for supper if she thinks they deserve it, but she also features in tales of reluctant kindness, of mentorship, and of fairy godmother-like grace. Isnât it time we all knew her for who she is?
Folktale traditions can be difficult to explore, because how does one capture the whispers at bedtime or recollections told back and forth among family and friends, all of which have been built upon centuries and centuries of tellers? There is good; there is evil. Then there is Baba YagaâĶ.
(7) TODAYâS BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Mike Glyer.]
October 1, 1941 â Glen GoodKnight. (Died 2010.) I was often in the home of Glen Goodknight and his partner Ken Lauw when I was on Glenâs 1997 Mythcon committee. It was the ideal fanâs home, walls covered with bookcases, though unlike other fans Glenâs shelves were filled with editions of Lord of the Rings in every language it had appeared: collecting these was his passion.
Ken Lauw and Glen GoodKnight at 2007 Mythcon.
Glen founded the Mythopoeic Society in 1967 in the aftermath of the legendary âBilbo-Frodo Birthday Picnicâ held in September of that year. He invited fans to his house on October 12 to form a continuing group. The 17 attendees became the Societyâs first members. Within a few years they had planted 14 discussion groups around the country. In 1972 at the suggestion of Ed Meskys of the Tolkien Society of America the two organizations merged and overnight the Society grew to more than a thousand members.
Mythcon I in 1970 was organized to help knit the Societyâs different groups together. Glen married Bonnie GoodKnight (later Callahan) at Mythcon II in 1971.
Glen edited 78 issues of the Society journal Mythlore between 1970 and 1998.
After staying away from Mythcons for several years, Glen returned to celebrate the Societyâs 40th anniversary at Berkeley in 2007. Greeted with a standing ovation, he delivered an emotion-filled reminiscence of the Societyâs early days.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far awayâĶ.Superman took on Darth Vader.
Well, not quite. However, this almost happened. Believe it or not, Star Wars was going to crossover with the DC Universe. In 2017 writer Kurt Busiek revealed that he and Alex Ross had once developed a DC/Star Wars pitch, but the project fell apart due to corporate disagreements regarding the money. Itâs unknown when this project was first pitched, but it was presumably sometime before Disney acquired Lucasfilm. While details of the pitch are scant, some of Alex Rossâ concept art has been released, including the Superman vs Vader image that acts as a headline for this article.
Speaking to a crowd at Tampa Bay Comic Convention, former DC publisher Dan DiDio elaborated on why he canceled the project, which apparently was about more than money.
âI was brought a DC Universe and Star Wars crossover. There was fighting over what you could and couldnât do, and who gets the better shot, and who gets the hero momentâĶit wasnât worth it. Honestly, it just wasnât worth it.â
While DiDio didnât name Busiek, he noted that the creator was not happy.
âThe creator who came onboard got really angry because he brokered the deal and brought it to us. I just didnât want to do it at that time, because it didnât make sense.â
On Aug. 1, a ship dropped its unusual cargo into a patch of ocean some 70 miles northwest of San Francisco: three orange robots, each more than 20 feet long and shaped like a torpedo. For a day, the aquatic drones autonomously prowled the waters, scanning nearly 50 square miles of ocean floor.
Some 3,500 feet beneath the surface, an apparition popped up on the robotsâ powerful sonar. Down in the darkness, the drones saw a ghost.
The robots had spotted the wreck of the âGhost Ship of the Pacific,â the only U.S. Navy destroyer captured by Japanese forces during World War II. Formerly known as either the U.S.S. Stewart, orDD-224, the ship was resting in what is now the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
Three days later, another set of underwater robots captured images of the historic wreck. Though shrouded in decades of marine growth â and home to sponges and skittering crabs â the 314-foot-long destroyer is almost perfectly intact and upright on the seafloor.
âThis level of preservation is exceptional for a vessel of its age and makes it potentially one of the best-preserved examples of a U.S. Navy âfour-piperâ destroyer known to exist,â Maria Brown, superintendent of both the Cordell Bank and Greater Farallones national marine sanctuaries, said in a statement.
The find, which came during a technology demonstration, highlights the efficiency of modern robotic ocean exploration. Ocean Infinity, the marine robotics firm that operated the drones that made the discovery, owns the worldâs largest fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles. The drones are used to create high-resolution maps of the seafloor â a major gap in our understanding of the oceans. The technology is also crucial for selecting sites for offshore construction projects such as wind farms and oil rigs, or for laying out routes for undersea pipelines and cables.
These robotic fleets are also proving invaluable to marine archaeologists. In 2020, Ocean Infinity helped find the wreck of the U.S.S. Nevada. In 2022, the company also contributed to the rediscovery of the Endurance, which sank during a 1915 expedition by Ernest ShackletonâĶ.
âĶNestled in the Appalachian mountains, the community of Spruce Pine, population 2,194, is known for its hiking, local artists and as Americaâs sole source of high-purity quartz. Helene dumped more than 2 feet of rain on the town, destroying roads, shops and cutting power and water.
But its reach will likely be felt far beyond the small community.
Semiconductors are the brains of every computer-chip-enabled device, and solar panels are a key part of the global push to combat climate change. To make both semiconductors and solar panels, companies need crucibles and other equipment that both can withstand extraordinarily high heat and be kept absolutely clean. One material fits the bill: quartz. Pure quartz.
Quartz that comes, overwhelmingly, from Spruce Pine.
âAs far as we know, thereâs only a few places in the world that have ultra-high-quality quartz,â according to Ed Conway, author of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization. Russia and Brazil also supply high-quality quartz, he says, butâSpruce Pine has far and away the [largest amount] and highest quality.â
Conway says without super-pure quartz for the crucibles, which can often be used only a single time, it would be impossible to produce most semiconductorsâĶ
(12) GETTING THERE. [Item by SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie.] You know how it is, there you are stuck out 500 light years away on the Galactic rim from the nearest decent real ale pub in Bognor Regis when your motor breaks down. The repair guy says a new engine is required (âthey couldnaâ take it Jimâ). So what sort of drive should you have?
Many of you wanted me to talk about the different interstellar propulsion ideas out there so we figured a fun way to compare them all would be in a tier list! Today we take a look at 14 different methods proposed to explore the stars. Let us know your rankings down below in the comments.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Michael J. Walsh, Joey Eschrich, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]
(1) THOUSANDS SIGN AUTHORS GUILD LETTER CALLING ON AI INDUSTRY TO PROTECT WRITERS. Over 9000 authors, including genre-recognizable names like Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Carmen Machado, Joe Hill, Edward M. Lerner, Brendan DuBois, Terri Windling, Matthew Kressel, Sean Wallace, and Cecilia Tan, have signed an open letter from the Authors Guild to the CEOs of companies developing AI generative software to not use their members’ work without consent, credit, and compensation when developing their systems.
The Authors Guild, the leading professional organization for writers in the United States, has submitted an open letter to the CEOs of prominent AI companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft. The letter calls attention to the inherent injustice of building lucrative generative AI technologies using copyrighted works and asks AI developers to obtain consent from, credit, and fairly compensate authors.
More than 9,000 writers and their supporters have signed the letter including luminaries such as Dan Brown, James Patterson, Jennifer Egan, David Baldacci, Michael Chabon, Nora Roberts, Jesmyn Ward, Jodi Picoult, Ron Chernow, Michael Pollan, Suzanne Collins, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Roxane Gay, Celeste Ng, Louise Erdrich, Viet Thanh Nguyen, George Saunders, Min Jin Lee, Andrew Solomon, Rebecca Makkai, Tobias Wolff, and many others.
The open letter emphasizes that generative AI technologies heavily rely on authorsâ language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry serve as the foundation for AI systems, yet authors have not received any compensation for their contributions. These works are part of the fabric of the language models that power ChatGPT, Bard, and other generative AI systems. Where AI companies like to say that their machines simply âreadâ the texts that they are trained on, this is inaccurate anthropomorphizing. Rather, they copy the texts into the software itself, and then they reproduce them again and again.
Maya Shanbhag Lang, president of the Authors Guild, said, âThe output of AI will always be derivative in nature. AI regurgitates what it takes in, which is the work of human writers. Itâs only fair that authors be compensated for having âfedâ AI and continuing to inform its evolution. Our work cannot be used without consent, credit, and compensation. All three are a must.ââĶ
We, the undersigned, call your attention to the inherent injustice in exploiting our works as part of your AI systems without our consent, credit, or compensation.
Generative AI technologies built on large language models owe their existence to our writings. These technologies mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the âfoodâ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill. Youâre spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited.
We understand that many of the books used to develop AI systems originated from notorious piracy websites. Not only does the recent Supreme Court decision in Warhol v. Goldsmith make clear that the high commerciality of your use argues against fair use, but no court would excuse copying illegally sourced works as fair useâĶ.
Last week, SFWA signed the âCreators Call for Action on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Copyright Exceptions,â a joint action from 24 creator-led organizations delivered to the European Union and United States governing bodies. This letter addresses the harm already caused to creators by AI companiesâ manipulations of exceptions to copyright enacted by the 2019 European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. The details of this issue are well explained on the National Writers Union (NWU) website.
We felt it was important to sign onto this particular joint call for a number of reasons:
Working with other organizations to monitor and respond to developments both in generative AI and in the legal environment around it is essential to advocating for concrete protections and restitution for writers.
Responding to the unique issues that AI presents to creative copyrights is a global effort, not one limited to Silicon Valley. Itâs important to ensure that writersâ rights are respected around the world, so corporations who may try to relocate their operations rather than compensate creators fairly will have no place to go.
This letter, written by the NWU, is one such global effort, and we encourage everyone to read the letter in full to better understand some of the important copyright issues regarding the use of AI/ML applications. You are welcome to distribute the joint call and spread the word. Access the PDF of the complete joint call for action here.
A South Carolina school board meeting, in which community members railed against an African American culture writerâs award-winning memoir about racial injustice, featured a special guest appearance: Ta-Nehisi Coates, the famed author in question.
On Monday evening, the Lexington-Richland District 5 School Board met to discuss the outrage concerning Coatesâ 2015 nonfiction bestseller, Between the World and Me, which has repeatedly caused political literary mayhem among reactionary right-wing communities and been placed on book ban lists.
In February, after getting approval from higher-ups, an AP Language teacher at Chapin High School conducted a lesson involving Between the World and Me. The book, written as an essay to Coatesâ son to prepare him for the life he will live as a Black man, details personal accounts of Coatesâ life and his first-hand experiences with racism. However, the lesson was shut down and the book was removed from the course after students filed a complaint claiming the book made them feel âguilty for being white,â local news outlet CBS 19 Columbia reported.
According to footage obtained by CBS 19, a slew of people wearing blue rallied in support for the book and for academic freedom during the board hearing. And Coates sat in the back of the room next to the teacher who assigned the book as a sign of solidarityâĶ.
âĶ The board did not conduct a vote after public discussion.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Lexington-Richmond District 5 wrote that it is âimportant to understandâ that Between the World and Me âis not banned in our school district.ââĶ
(4) INNOCENCE ASSERTED. Michele Lundgren, wife of sff artist Carl Lundgren, charged by Michigan authorities this week with numerous felonies as a fake Trump elector, gave an interview to a reporter in which she says she was duped. âI was an innocent little bystander in the whole thing thinking I was doing my civic duty.â
However, if you watch this Detroit Free Press video from December 15, 2020 â https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NgLQxMV9c&t=206s â it shows her just after the Michigan fake electors were turned away from the State House, standing next to Ian Northon, an attorney, nodding vigorously as he explains his theory of why the GOP fake electors should have been let in. (Thanks to Kathryn Cramer for the link.)
Michele Lundgren, left, in news video covering 2020 attempt to deliver fake Trump electors.
âĶ As with all of the stories in the Liaden UniverseÂŪ series, Salvage Right is a sci-fi space opera story. But are there any other genres at work in this story as well?
Sharon: Salvage Right is as pure a space opera as weâve written in a while. It was fun to let all the stops out.
Steve: We also draw from regency romance and comedy of manners fiction; almost every time a character bows thatâs tip of the hat to Georgette Heyer!
Are there any writers, or stories, who had a big influence on Salvage Right but not on anything else youâve written?
Steve: I donât think so; nothing recent, certainly, and with Salvage Right being a merge of story lines, it would be hard to filter one new factor in, I think.
Sharon: Harlan Ellisonâs short story âI Have No Mouth And I Must Screamâ; The Prestige, the novel by Christopher PriestâĶ.
(6) O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN. Kimberly Unger is at San Diego Comic-Con. From her hotel room window she was able to take a great photo of this bit of Star Trek publicity.
(7) TRACING OPPENHEIMERâS FOOTSTEPS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. William Deverell takes readers on a historic tour of a Caltech neighborhood significant to the history of J. Robert Oppenheimer in âThe Pasadena Projectâ at Alta Online.
Itâs only a couple of hundred yards from our house to the heart of the Caltech campus, less than a 10-minute walk, an environment our dogs never tire of exploring. Devoted mostly to classrooms, dorms (âhouses,â in Caltech parlance), and research labs, the campus is almost always quiet, and if you know where to look, there are places on campus that are little changed from when Oppenheimer and members of his eventual Los Alamos team worked there.
Hiding in plain sight, innocuous and out of place, is a small Spanish revival home, smack-dab in the middle of everything else. This is the Tolman-Bacher House. Built around the same time as our home, which it resembles, the Tolman-Bacher House was the residence of Richard Tolman and his wife, Ruth (Louise Lombard plays her in the film). Richard Tolman had come to Caltech in 1922 as a professor of physics. He was a giant at Caltech and, later, in the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer (played in the film by Irish actor Cillian Murphy) often stayed with the Tolmans when heâd come to Caltech from Berkeley during many a spring term in the 1930s. His brother, Frank, was a graduate student at Caltech thenâĶ.
âĶ Being a Nolan screenplay, the story is told in nonlinear fashion. Cillian Murphy, with his open, seemingly guileless expression, is completely convincing as the scientist known as the father of the atomic bomb who, after building it, counseled against its use and made many enemies in the process. But no one can get inside the head of a geniusâbe it a painter or a composer or a brilliant scientist, so we donât leave the theater with a feeling of knowing what Oppy was all about, except on the surface. (There is even a glimpse of Albert Einstein, played by that wonderful actor Tom Conti.)âĶ
(9) FRANK WALLER (1957-2023.) Longtime LASFS member Frank Waller died July 18 at the age of 66. He had quadruple bypass surgery on his heart in May, but had gone through rehab and was out of the hospital. Frank joined the club in 1988. He is survived by his sister, Beth and his brother, Joe.
(10) MEMORY LANE.
2005 â [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]
Graham Joyce wrote our Beginning this time. Selecting his best novel is a futile exercise as everything is fantastically good but Iâll single out Some Kind of Fairy Tale and The Tooth Fairy as the ones I found the most interesting reads.
No Hugos, not even a nomination, but heâs won a few BFAs and even one WFA for The Facts of Life novel.
Mike picked The Limits of Enchantment which was published eighteen years ago by Artia Books in the States with the cover illustration by David Sacks. It was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.
And now for our BeginningâĶ
Prologue
If I could tell you this in a single sitting then you might believe all of it, even the strangest part. Even the part about what I found in the hedgerow. If I could unwind this story in a single spool, or peel it like an apple the way Mammy would with her penknife in one unbroken coil, juice a-glistening on the blade, then you might bite in without objection.
But Mammy always said we have lost the art of Listening. She said we live in an age when everyone chatters and no one takes heed, and that, she said, is not a good time in which to live.
And while I offer you my story unbroken, like the apple peel, it hangs by a fibre at every turn of the knife. When you come to know the nature of the teller of this tale you may have good reason to doubt both. You may suspect the balance of my mind and you may condemn my position. You may start to disbelieve.
Perhaps I once was mad. Briefly. Perhaps that much is true. And this, in an age where we no longer have the patience to listen, may cause you to break off, to give up on me, to turn away. A young woman has so little of interest to offer, after all. A young woman of unsteady temper, even less.
What they did to Mammy they tried to do to me. They released the dogs. And when it comes to telling how it was done, I only ask this: when doubt wrinkles your brow; when incomprehension clouds your eyes; when distaste rests like a rank fog on your lips, then think how we few have held our tongues for so long. How we have choked back the truth. How we have burned in our hearts rather than risk the telling. And when you feel most far from me, then at that moment listen hard. Not to your thoughts, which will mislead you, nor to your heart, which will lie, but to the voice behind the voice, and trust the tale and not the teller.
(11) TODAYâS BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 20, 1924 — Lola Albright. Though sheâs best remembered best known for playing the sultry singer Edie Hart, the girlfriend of private eye Peter Gunn, she did do some genre performances. Sheâs Cathy Barrett, one of the leads in the Fifties film The Monolith Monsters. Television was really her home in the Fifties and Sixties. She was on Tales of Tomorrow as Carol Williams in the âThe Miraculous Serumâ episode, Nancy Metcalfe on Rocket Squad in âThe Systemâ episode, repeated appearances on the various Alfred Hitchcock series, and even on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in the episodes released as the feature length film The Helicopter Spies. She was Azalea. (Died 2017.)
Born July 20, 1930 — Sally Ann Howes. She is best known for the role of Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She was in Brigadoon as Fiona McLarenat New York City Center Light Opera Company, and in Camelot as Guenevere at St. Louis Municipal Opera. She was even in The Hound of the Baskervilles as Laura Frankland which has a certain Starship Captain as George Stapleton. (Died 2021.)
Born July 20, 1931 — Donald Moffitt. Author of the Baroness thriller series, somewhat akin to Bond and Blaise, but not quite. Great popcorn literature. Some SF, two in his Mechanical Sky series, Crescent in the Sky and A Gathering of Stars, another two in his Genesis Quest series, Genesis Quest and Second Genesis, plus several one-offs. (Died 2014.)
Born July 20, 1938 — Diana Rigg, nÃĐe Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg. Emma Peel of course in The Avengers beside Patrick Macnee as a John Steed. Best pairing ever. Played Sonya Winter in The Assassination Bureau followed by being Contessa Teresa âTracyâ Draco di Vicenzo Bond on On Her Majestyâs Secret Service. By the Eighties, sheâs doing lighter fare such as being Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper and Miss Hardbroom in The Worst Witch, not to mention The Evil Queen, Snow Whiteâs evil stepmother in Snow White. Now she would get a meaty role in Game of Thrones when she was Olenna Tyrell. Oh and she showed up in Dr. Who during the Era of the Eleventh Doctor as Mrs. Winifred Gillyflower in the âThe Crimson Horrorâ episode. (Died 2020.)
Born July 20, 1947 — Michael âMikeâ Gilbert. A fan artist in the late â60s in Locus and other fanzines as well as an author, and publishing professional who won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist at the first Noreascon. His wife Sheila was the co-publisher of DAW Books, and Mike worked in both editorial and art capacities at DAW, and was one of their primary first readers. He died of complications following open-heart surgery. (Died 2000.)
Born July 20, 1949 — Guy H. Lillian III, 74. Letterhack and fanzine publisher notable for having been twice nominated for a Hugo Award as best fan writer and rather amazingly having been nominated twelve straight times for the Hugo for best fanzine for his Challenger zine, unfortunately never winning. As a well-fan of Green Lantern, Lillianâs name was tuckerized for the titleâs 1968 debut character Guy Gardner.
Born July 20, 1959 — Martha Soukup, 64. The 1994 short film Override, directed by Danny Glover, was based on her short story âOver the Long Haulâ. It was his directorial debut. She has two collections, Collections Rosemaryâs Brain: And Other Tales of Wonder and The Arbitrary Placement of Walls, both published in the Nineties. She won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story for âA Defense of the Social Contractsâ. âThe Story So Farâ by her is available as the download sample at the usual suspects in Schimelâs Things Invisible to See anthology if youâd liked to see how she is as a writer.
We re-introduce ourselves for anyone who hasnât listened before, and then we dive into in-jokes, regular segments, waffling, and all the other things that have firmly cemented us as âa podcast that people can listen toâ. (COVID, Eastercon, Hugo Awards, Chengdu, Clarke Awards, Arkham Horror, andâchecks notesâcycling.)
(14) VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS REFERENCED ON BANDCAMP. [Item by Steve French.] Back in 1974, British experimental folk musician Mike Cooper released his âlandmarkâ album, Life and Death in Paradise. The opening track was apparently influenced by David Lindsayâs classic 1920 SF novel A Voyage to Arcturus, which influenced Lewis, Tolkien and more recently, Pullman. âA Reissue of âLife and Death in Paradiseâ Brings Mike Cooperâs Music to a New Generationâ at Bandcamp Daily.
The opener, âRocket Summer,â like the songs on Trout Steel (inspired by Richard BrautiganâsTrout Fishing in America) was born of Cooperâs âesotericâ choice in literatureâin this case, a sci-fi book called A Voyage to Arcturus. Aside from its narrative of interstellar travel, itâs filled with âlots of references to sound and colorâ which were attractive to Cooper.
The album has just been re-issued, prompting Bandcamp to give Cooper the full-on âfeatureâ treatment.
âĶAround 2010, Rice wanted to make the runs harder, and he thought wearing a mask and black clothing would do the trick. When he remembered that parts of the Star Wars franchise were filmed in Death Valley, he got the idea to dress up as the villain of the series.
Rice, who edits a cryptocurrency trade publication, has done the Darth Valley run most years since then, with breaks during the coronavirus pandemic and a cross-country move. Sometimes other runners join him – occasionally in a Chewbacca costumeâĶ.
In a Halloween-store Darth Vader costume, complete with a helmet, Jon Rice tries to make his near-annual âDarth Valleyâ run as difficult as possible.
On Sunday, the New Mexico resident completed his run as temperatures neared 130 degrees Fahrenheit. https://t.co/bdNlQz8CNE
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 18, 2023
The “Wilhelm scream” is arguably the most recognizable stock sound effect in the history of film and television, having been used in everything from mega-franchises like “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” and “Die Hard,’ to beloved TV shows from “X-Files” to “SpongeBob SquarePants” to “Game of Thrones” and beyond.
If the mere mention of its name doesn’t immediately make the sound play in your head, you may recognize it from this scene in the movie that made it popular, 1977’s “Star Wars: Episode IV â A New Hope,” when the effect is used for a stormtrooper that falls off a ledge after Luke Skywalker shoots him with a blaster round.
The scream that’s been used in more than 400 films is finding new life this year after California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Professor Craig Smith discovered the Wilhelm’s original recording session while preserving a collection of 35-millimeter sound films he got from USC’s Cinematic Arts Library.
(17) SONIC SCREWDRIVER. There will be a new sonic screwdriver in the hands of the new Doctor Who. And itâs ready for its close-up.
Some of SpaceXâs Starlink satellites are leaking radio waves that could interfere with astronomy.
In the last few years, astronomers have warned about light pollution and other unintended consequences of the growing number of satellites. Since 2019, the company SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, has launched more than 4,300 Starlink broadband satellites into orbit, where they make up around half of all active satellites.
Federico Di Vruno at the Square Kilometre Array Observatory in Cheshire, UK, and his colleagues used the LOFAR radio telescope in the Netherlands to observe 68 Starlink satellites. They found that 47 of the satellites were emitting radio waves at frequencies very different from those used, and approved, for satellite communications with control stations on Earth.
The satellitesâ emissions are not harming current radio astronomy observations, but such emissions might cause problems in future, as more and more satellites are launched. And although the emissions donât violate any regulations, satellite operators and government authorities might consider regulating them, the authors sayâĶ
(19) FROM THE MAKERS OF MINIONS. The trailer for Migration, coming to theaters December 22.
The Mallard family is in a bit of rut. While dad Mack is content to keep his family safe paddling around their New England pond forever, mom Pam is eager to shake things up and show their kidsâteen son Dax and duckling daughter Gwenâthe whole wide world. After a migrating duck family alights on their pond with thrilling tales of far-flung places, Pam persuades Mack to embark on a family trip, via New York City, to tropical Jamaica. As the Mallards make their way South for the winter, their well-laid plans quickly go awry. The experience will inspire them to expand their horizons, open themselves up to new friends and accomplish more than they ever thought possible, while teaching them more about each otherâand themselvesâthan they ever imagined.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Bill, Darrah Chavey, Steve French, Daniel Dern,Kimberly Unger, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenationâs Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]
Hallmark rolls out its latest line of Keepsake Ornaments every year in mid-July, and maybe with the current triple-digit heat here in LA it is welcome to think about the winter holidays.
Featuring Din Djarin in his jetpack carrying Grogu, this decoration is a great reminder of the pairâs journey to the hilltop Seeing Stone, where the mysterious youngling channels the Force in hopes of contacting a Jedi.
One of the galaxyâs most powerful gangsters, Jabba the Hutt, captivated the imaginations of Star Wars fans in 1983âs Return of the Jedi. Relive the magic of the movieâs practical effects with this captivating Christmas tree ornament that features the vengeful slug-like alien on his dais, complete with his pet Kowakian monkey-lizard, Salacious B. Crumb. Press the button to experience animatronic motion as Jabba delivers original dialogue from the film (battery-operated).
Jabba the Hutt used his luxury sail barge to visit Tatooineâs Sarlacc pit, where Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca were to be publicly executed. This Christmas tree ornament depicts that massive transport, the Khetanna, from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
As part of Darth Vader’s attempt to capture Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo served as both bait and test subject for the carbon-freezing process. This Christmas tree ornament depicts the emotional scene on Cloud City, which culminates in Han and Leiaâs iconic profession of love and Hanâs encasement in carbonite. The dynamic decoration features LED lights for a constant glow. Push the button to see a synchronized sound and light performance, complete with motion, as the Rebel heroes face an uncertain fate.
And this YouTube video shows the ornamentâs complete performance.
âO Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.â A poetic musing to a beloved pet cat as only the android Data could composeâand then recite aloud to his “U.S.S. Enterprise” crewmates as seen in âSchisms,â an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Add vivid verse to your holiday with this Christmas tree ornament that plays dialogue from the showâĶ
Stardate 3468.1âNear the planet Pollux III, the “U.S.S. Enterprise” is held dead in space by a massive energy field shaped as a human hand. Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew find themselves captives of a being who claims to be the Greek god Apollo. This Christmas tree ornament depicts the iconic opening scene from the original “Star Trek” series episode âWho Mourns for Adonais?â For an otherworldly display, insert the bulb of a standard miniature light string through the rubber grommet on the ornament to create a special lighting effect.
THE WHOLE RIDE ON YOUR TREE. And in the “Haunted Mansion Collection” thereâs a slew of ornaments that pay tribute to scenes in the Disneyland ride that inspired the movie.
Bogdan Belyaev was working from home when the air raid sirens went off. They hadnât been heard in the city of Lviv since World War II, but it was February 24, and Russia had just invaded Ukraine. âWhen we heard that missiles were attacking and that our [internet] connection was dropping from parts of our country, we got into shelter,â says Belyaev. That meant him, his wife, and their dog and two cats huddling in the center of their building. âItâs a âshelter,â really in quotes because it was actually our bathroom,â he says. âThere is a rule of two walls. You need to be behind two walls. The first wall is taking the impact, and the second one is stopping the small shrapnel.â But for Belyaev, work carried on because he needed it to. People on the other side of the world were relying on him, and the project was the culmination of a passion heâd had since childhood: Star Wars.
Belyaev is a 29-year-old synthetic-speech artist at the Ukrainian start-up Respeecher, which uses archival recordings and a proprietary A.I. algorithm to create new dialogue with the voices of performers from long ago. The company worked with Lucasfilm to generate the voice of a young Luke Skywalker for Disney+âs The Book of Boba Fett, and the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi series tasked them with making Darth Vader sound like James Earl Jonesâs dark side villain from 45 years ago, now that Jonesâs voice has altered with age and he has stepped back from the role. Belyaev was rushing to finish his work as Putinâs troops came across the border. âIf everything went bad, we would never make these conversions delivered to Skywalker Sound,â he says. âSo I decided to push this data right on the 24th of February.â
Respeecher employees in Kyiv also soldiered on while hunkered down. Dmytro Bielievtsov, the companyâs cofounder and CTO, got online in a theater where tabletops, books, and more had been stacked in front of windows in case of blasts. Programmers âtrainingâ the A.I. to replicate Jonesâs voice and editors piecing together the output worked from corridors in the interior of their apartments. One took refuge in an ancient brick âbasementâ no bigger than a crawl space.
Back at Skywalker Sound in Northern California, Matthew Wood was the supervising sound editor on the receiving end of the transmissions from Ukraine. He says that they hired Respeecher because the vocal performances that the start-up generates have an often elusive human touch. âCertainly my main concern was their well-being,â says Wood, who is a 32-year veteran of Lucasfilm. âThere are always alternatives that we could pursue that wouldnât be as good as what they would give us. We never wanted to put them in any kind of additional danger to stay in the office to do something.ââĶ
(2) THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE. Charles Payseur takes up the âFan vs. Proâ debate about contenders for the fan Hugos at Quick Sip Reviews: âQuick Sips 09/23/2022â
âĶ âWhat kind of fan work should be recognized by the Hugo Awards?â If you answer âthe kind of fan work that is underappreciated and deserves recognitionâ then Iâm sorry, thatâs not what a popular vote award is going to give you by definition. Already appreciated fans, fanzines, fancasts, and fan artists are going to have the advantage because by virtue of having fans of their own, theyâll get more votes. If you want awards that will seek to award people doing thankless and vital work, youâre going to need a juried award (both steps, too, because even a juried first stage, popular vote second stage is going to probably favor already popular fans).
And I could propose that we get together and create The Fannies (bwahahahaha), but that again is avoiding the question again. âWhat kind of fan work should be recognized by the Hugo Awards?â Like with all the other categories, the answer is that we should recognize the fan work that was the most popular in a given year. Yes, platform will effect that a lot. Money will effect that a lot. But unless weâre going to seek to correct for wealth, access, and privilege across all the Hugo categories, singling out the fan awards without reckoning with the current shape and state of SFF fandoms is pointless at best. Might as well just say with your whole voice that you donât think specific finalists or winners DESERVE the recognition. At which point everyone can see what it is youâre really doingâĶ.
BD: What led you to first consider launching an imprint?
BK: J.F. Gonzalez and I had often talked about doing this, but we were both of a generation where making this sort of transition was seen as crazy talk. So we never did. But even after he died, the idea was there in the back of my brain, gnawing and gnawing. And I started watching authors younger than me, whom I admire, and the success they were having making the plunge. Two of them are thriller writer Robert Swartwood and horror/sci-fi writer Stephen Kozeniewski. They were who finally convinced me to make the move. Rob got me to see that with the size of my audience and fan base, it was ridiculous not to do this.
For the entirety of my career, other companies â big and small â have had partial ownership of my rights and my intellectual properties. And these days, IP is king. These corporations arenât paying for books or films or comics or video games. Theyâre paying for IP. I want to fully own my IP again. Now, obviously, Iâm not talking about the properties Iâve worked on for others â stuff like Aliens, Doctor Who, The X-Files and all of the Marvel and DC Comics stuff. Thatâs somebody elseâs IP and I was paid to play with it. But Iâve got over fifty books and over three hundred short stories of my own. Why should somebody else get a cut of those profits and a share of the ownership when the technology and infrastructure exists for me to produce them myself and get them into stores and the hands of readers?
And I should stress, I have a great relationship with most of my current publishers. But when I reached out to each of them individually and told them this was the direction I wanted to go, they all understood. They get it. This is whatâs best for my remaining years, and for my sons.
And thatâs what it comes down to, really. My sons. I turn fifty-five this week, and while Iâm in relatively good health (despite the misadventures of my first fifty years), I can also hear that mortality clock ticking. I donât plan on leaving yet, but most of us donât really get a say in that, you know? Surprises happen. When Iâm gone, I donât want the executor of my literary estate having to chase down royalty checks from twenty different sources, and I donât want my sons to have to share my intellectual property with a bunch of other people. By bringing everything in house, theyâll have total control over all of that.
(4) CENSORING FOR POWER. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, YA sf writer David Levithan, who PEN America rates as the 11th most censored author in the US, says censorship ultimately won’t prevail and supporters of free expression will win. âStanding up to the new censorshipâ.
âĶ What Iâve come to believe, as Iâve talked to authors and librarians and teachers, is that attacks are less and less about the actual books. Weâre being used as targets in a much larger proxy war. The goal of that war isnât just to curtail intellectual freedom but to eviscerate the public education system in this country. Censors are scorching the earth, without care for how many kids get burned. Racism and homophobia are still very much present, but itâs also a power grab, a money grab. The goal for many is a for-profit, more authoritarian and much less diverse culture, one in which truth is whatever youâre told it is, your identity is determined by its acceptability and the past is a lie that the future is forced to emulate. The politicians who holler and post and draw up their lists of âharmfulâ books arenât actually scared of our books. They are using our books to scare peopleâĶ.
(5) AGE OF EMPIRES AGING WELL. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times, Chris Allnutt discusses a tournament for Age Of Empires II, first released in 1999, with a $200,000 prize and how older games still get big prizes at tournaments.
It is, by and large, older titles–those that have had longer to build a competitive scene and tweak their game mechanics–that dominate the most lucrative tournament rosters. Data 2 continues to top the table for e-sports prize money, with about $48 million up for grabs in 2021, eight years after its initial release. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2022) and League Of Legends (2009) earned players $21 million and $8 million respectively. That’s nearly a third of all 2021’s prize money.
As a franchise, Age Of Empires speaks particularly well to the penchant for nostalgia. The series has spawned four games in total, with Age Of Empires IV released last year. But the second game still boasts the higher player count on Steam.
(6) FINAL WRITE-A-THON RESULTS. The Clarion Workshop Write-a-Thon raised $6,713.34 this year. The majority of the funds will go to scholarships for the Clarion Class of 2023. Forty-four writers participated in the Thon this year.
âĶ While [Travis] Baldree wrote Legends & Lattes for his own satisfaction, the book has still gone on to be a genuine hit. Even months later, itâs holding strong in some of Amazonâs most competitive fiction markets. Itâs currently the 19th most popular book on the retail giantâs competitive Romantic Fantasy list. Itâs also number five in the LGBQT+ Fantasy category.
If thereâs one place where its influence has been most deeply felt, however, itâs the realm of âcozy fantasy.â
Inspired directly by Legends & Lattes, enthusiastic readers established the CozyFantasy community on Reddit. Since its inception in May 2022, r/CozyFantasy has added more than 5,000 subscribing members. The community sees hundreds of posts every week from people sharing reviews, looking for recommendations, and eager to chat about their favorite works from the sub-genre.âĶ
(8) PYTHON ALUM PALINâS NEW BOOK. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times, Sir Michael Palin discusses his newest book, Into Iraq, which also is part of a series that was broadcast on Channel 5 beginning on September 20.
In September 2019 I went into Bart’s Hospital in London for open-heart surgery (during which a mitral valve was repaired and an aortic valve replaced0, but within a few months I was feeling not only better but bolder too, and looking at my atlas again with a renewed confidence. Before I could rush to the nearest airport, however, the world hit the pause button. Airports emptied and the world fell silent…
…On a bright morning, we gathered outside the Rixos hotel in the town of Duhok. “Candle In The Wind’ was playing in the lift as I checked in the previous night, and ‘Hey Jude’ as I sat down to breakfast. Shielded from the road by blast barriers, we were briefed by James Willcox, whose company Untamed Borders socializes n taking people to places most other people don’t want to go. Standing beside him was Peter, ex-army, accompanying us as security and medical escort. No one suggested that he was here because I was so old, but I couldn’t help sensing that he was keeping an eye on me. I, in turn, was determined to pretend I was 29, not 78.
If you want a signed copy, Palin will happily send you one through his website.
(9) TOM MADDOX HEALTH UPDATE. Tom Maddoxâs wife Mary told his Facebook followers heâs had a stroke:
Tom is in the hospital (ICU) after having a severe stroke. He is unconcious and may not wake up the doctors say at present. The doctor told me if he lives he will go to a nursing home for critical care. I am beyond grief stricken and am going everyday to the hospital and he is restless but when I am there he sleeps peacefully.
(10) TOM CHMIELEWSKI (1952-2022). Science fiction writer Tom Chmielewski died in June at the age of 70. The family obituary is here.
He worked in the field of journalism beginning in 1975, and worked at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1987-1997. After leaving the Gazette, he worked as a part-time instructor at WMU; started a monthly publication called Great Lakes Stage, which covered theatre in the Midwest; and served as editor of Trains.com, an online publication based in Milwaukee that covered model railroading, one of his passions.
He was a member of the Clarion workshop class of 1984. He served as Treasurer to the Clarion Foundation from 2016-2022, where he did tremendous work behind-the-scenes for the Foundation, including supporting their Thon fundraiser for numerous years.
He published his first novel Lunar Dust, Martian Sands in 2014 through his company, TEC Publishing, followed by two more novels in his Mars trilogy, Rings of Fire and Ice (2018), and The Silent Siege of Mars (2019). He created and released an audio drama, “Shalbatana Solstice,” a prequel to his first novel, that was later broadcast by the BBC.
Chmielewski is survived by his brothers and sisters-in-law, four nieces and a nephew, and his former wife, Susan Lackey.
Contributions may be made to the Tom Chmielewski Memorial Fund, which is designated for older writers who wish to attend Clarion, set up in his honor by the Clarion Foundation. To make a donation, go to theclarionfoundation.org (if donating online, designate your contribution for Tom’s fund by sending an email to [email protected]. You may also mail a check made out to The Clarion Foundation to 716 Salvatierra St., Stanford, CA 94305-1020.)
(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1987 â [By Cat Eldridge.] Thirty-five years ago, what might indeed be the sweetest damn film ever released premiered today in The Princess Bride. Yes, Iâm biased.
Based off the exemplary novel of fourteen years previously by William Goldman who adapted in the film here, I need not detain the story here as I know thereâs not a single individual here whoâs not familiar with it. If there is anyone here with that hole in their film education, why are you reading this?
Itâs streaming on Disney + right now and you can rent it pretty much everywhere. Go and then come back here!
Itâs a very sweet love story, itâs a send-up of classic adventure tales, itâs a screwball comedy, itâs a, well, itâs a lot of things done absolutely perfectly. Did I mention sword fights? Well I should.
I fell in love with The Princess Bride when Grandfather played by Peter Falk repeated these lines from the novel: âThat’s right. When I was your age, television was called books. And this is a special book. It was the book my father used to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your father. And today, I’m gonna read it to you.â A film about a book. Cool!
Yes, they shortened the title of book which was The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The “Good Parts” Version. But unwieldy for a film. Though a stellar book title indeed.
There are very few films that successfully adapt a book exactly as it written. (Not looking at you the first version of Dune or Starship Troopers.) The only one Iâve seen that did was Like Water for Chocolate off the novel by Laura Esquivel. That Goldman wrote the script obviously was essential and the cast which you know by heart so Iâll not detail here were stellar in their roles certainly made a difference.
Rob Reiner was without doubt the director for it and the interviews with him have indicated his love for the novel.
That it won a Hugo at Nolacon II was I think predestined. I wonât say it magical, no I take that back, in many ways it was magical. And I think that it was by far the best film that year. My opinion, yours of course might well be different.
Only six percent of the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes donât like it. Ponder that.
Deluxe one-sixth scale figures of the cast members are starting to be released. You can stage your own version of the film.
(12) TODAYâS BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 25, 1919 — Betty Ballantine. With her husband Ian, she created Bantam Books in 1945 and established Ballantine Books seven years later. They won one special World Fantasy Award for professional work in 1975 and another one shared with Joy Chant et al for The High Kings which is indeed an amazing work. ISFDB lists just one novel for her, The Secret Oceans, which Iâve not read. Who here done so? (Died 2019.)
Born September 25, 1930 — Shel Silverstein. Not sure how he is SFF but ISFDB lists him as such for his Every Thing On It collection and a handful of aptly named poems, and Iâm more than thrilled to list him under Birthday Honors. Iâm fond of his poetry collection Where the Sidewalk Ends and will also note here A Light in the Attic if only because itâs been on âoh my we must ban it now attemptsâ all too often. So what do you think is genre by him? (Died 1999.)
Born September 25, 1932 — J. Hunter Holly. Her various book dedications showed she had a strong love of cats. Iâve not encountered her novels but she wrote a fair number of them including ten genre novels plus The Assassination Affair, a novel in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. franchise. Only The Flying Eyes novel by her is available from the usual digital suspects. (Died 1982.)
Born September 25, 1946 — Felicity Kendal, 76. She plays Lady Clemency Eddison in the the Tenth Doctor story, âThe Unicorn and The Waspâ, one of my favorite Who tales which I reviewed at Green Man here. She recently played Baroness Ortsey in the new Pennyworth series. And though itâs definitely really not genre, Iâm noting her role in Shakespeare-Wallah, story of a family troupe of English actors in India, just because itâs a fascinating story.
Born September 25, 1951 — Mark Hamill, 71. OK, Iâll confess that my favorite role of his is voicing The Joker in the DC Universe. He started doing this way back on Batman: The Animated Series and has even done so on other such series as well. Pure comic evilness! Oh, and did you know he voices Chucky in the new Childâs Play film? Now thatâs really, really creepy.Â
Born September 25, 1952 — Christopher Reeve. Superman in the Superman film franchise. He appeared in the Smallville series as Dr. Swann in the episodes âRosettaâ and âLegacyâ. His Muppet Show appearance has him denying to Miss Piggy that heâs Superman though he displayed those superpowers throughout that entire episode. (Died 2004.)
Born September 25, 1977 — Clea DuVall, 45. A long genre history if we include horror (and I most gleefully do) â Little Witches, Sleeping Beauties, Ghosts of Mars and How to Make a Monster. Series appearances include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a main role on Carnivà le as Sofie Agnesh Bojakshiya (loved that series), a recurring role as Audrey Hanson on Heroes, and though we didnât see it, she was in the unsold television pilot for the never to be Virtuality series as Sue Parsons, she had a recurring role in American Horror Story: Asylum as Wendy Peyser, and finally another recurring role in The Handmaid’s Tale as Sylvia.
Born September 25, 1983 — Donald Glover, 39. A cast member of Community as Troy Barnes, a series that is least genre adjacent. His first genre appearance is in The Muppets film as a junior CDE executive. He also appeared in a season 43 episode of Sesame Street as famous musician LMNOP. And then thereâs the minor matter of being in Solo: A Star Wars Story as someone called Lando Calrissian, Spider-Man: Homecoming as Aaron Davis and then voicing Simba in The Lion King. Not bad at all.
(13) COMICS SECTION.
The Flying McCoys shows Superman trying to come up with a new theme song.
Sally Forth shows why itâs hard to decide which super-power to wish for.
For about two months in 1970, ITV aired episodes of a bonkers science fiction comedy series based (oh so very loosely) on Miguel de Cervantesâ literary classic Don Quixote. The show, entitled The Adventures of Don Quick, follows an astronaut named Don Quick (Ian Hendry) and his sidekick, Sam Czopanser (Ronald Lacey), who are part of an âIntergalactic Maintenance Squadâ that sends them, each episode, to try to âmaintainâ or otherwise improve alien planetsâwhich usually do not at all need their help, and whose citizens range from bemused to quite irritated by the intrusion.
Fun fact: Angela Carter, the queen of feminist fairy tales herself, was once commissioned by ITV to write the script for an episode of the show, which was (alas!) never producedâĶ.
Did you know the character played by Ernie Hudson in NBC’s Quantum Leap revival goes back more than 30 years within the world of the show?
Herbert “Magic” Williams first appeared in the original iteration of the series in the 1990 episode entitled “The Leap Home, Part II,” where Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) travels back to the days of the Vietnam War, leaping into the body of Herbert “Magic” Williams, who served in the same Navy SEALs platoon as Sam’s older brother, Tom.
This will actually be addressed by Williams in the fourth episode of the revamp. â[Magic] does explain, from his point-of-view, that leap,â showrunner and executive producer Martin Gero (Blindspot) teased during a recent interview with TVLine. âErnie [Hudson] gives this phenomenal monologue. Itâs so beautiful. It might be my favorite scene of this first chunk [of episodes]. Itâs really, really special.â He also went on to tease an adventure in the Old West â circa the 1870s â come Episode 5. âWeâre telling some stories that have not been told about the West, and that is very exciting for us.”
âĶPoor Enola is still facing down misogynist creeps in this new trailer. After opening her very own detective agency, people are still uncertain of her crime-solving abilities. Cut the girl some slack! Hasnât she gone through enough? Still, folks beg to be assigned to her older brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill), reliant on his wits instead of hers.
âWhile I have not a single case, Sherlockâs latest seems to be vexing him,â Enola tells us. Cut to Sherlock playing a sad violin, panicking over his inability to crack the case.
Not only does Enola have a sad big bro to fix, she does have a big case to prove herself as a professional sleuthâĶ.
(17) REVISIT AN EIGHTIES OPEN FILK SESSION. Fanac.org has posted video from when Julia Ecklar was the special filk guest at Tropicon 8, held in Dania, Florida, in 1989. This recording captures the second part of an open filk at the convention, and includes 11 songs (of which Julia sings seven).
The singers in order of appearance are: Julia Ecklar, Linda Melnick, Dina Pearlman, C.J. Cherryh, Francine Mullen, and Doug Wu.
This includes much of the conversation between songs, the laughter and the real feel of a 1980s convention filk session.
One lovely addition is that Linda Melnick signs on one of the songs, as well as sings.
Another bonus – this video includes several songs by Orion’s Belt, which consisted of Dina Pearlman, Francine Mullen and Doug Wu.
Tropicon was a small convention, and you will see some of the author guests in the filk. That’s Tropicon 8 GoH Lynn Abbey sitting next to C.J. Cherryh for example, and Joe Green sitting back against the wall…
Thanks to Eli Goldberg for sound editing on this recording and for the details in the song listing.
(18) WORRIES. Some say this is feminist sf in the vein of The Stepford Wives â âDon’t Worry Darlingâ.
Alice (Pugh) and Jack (Styles) are lucky to be living in the idealized community of Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. The 1950âs societal optimism espoused by their CEO, Frank (Pine)âequal parts corporate visionary and motivational life coachâanchors every aspect of daily life in the tight-knit desert utopia. While the husbands spend every day inside the Victory Project Headquarters, working on the âdevelopment of progressive materials,â their wivesâincluding Frankâs elegant partner, Shelley (Chan)âget to spend their time enjoying the beauty, luxury and debauchery of their community. Life is perfect, with every residentâs needs met by the company. All they ask in return is discretion and unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause. But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice canât help questioning exactly what theyâre doing in Victory, and why. Just how much is Alice willing to lose to expose whatâs really going on in this paradise? An audacious, twisted and visually stunning psychological thriller, âDonât Worry Darlingâ is a powerhouse feature from director Olivia Wilde that boasts intoxicating performances from Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, surrounded by the impressive and pitch-perfect cast.
(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Nope,” the Screen Junkies, in a spoiler-packed episode, says that Jordan Peele is one of the few directors trying to preserve cinema “in a world dominated by corporate IP.” Daniel Kaluuya is “the oldest young man ever” and Nope is “an old-fashioned Black cowboy movie.” But while Peele is geeky enough he has an Akira reference as an Easter egg, much of the film shows “weâre so emotionally stunted that we can only process trauma through old SNL references.”
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cora Buhlert, Daniel Dern, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
