26 Pixel’s Secret Library: Where The Dark Scrolls Are

Posted on May 17, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) HELP MICHAEL WHELAN SOLVE A MYSTERY. Mike Jackson, the webmaster at MichaelWhelan.com, hopes “the collective knowledge of fandom might recall the publishing origins of Michael Whelan’s painting The Mad Poet. He recalled it was commissioned back in 1977 to accompany a Robert E. Howard poem, likely by Armand Eisen at The Morning Star Press, but we can’t find a record of where it was printed. There’s more background in our weekly newsletter today: ‘Descent into Madness’.”

For clues and what they already know, get the full rundown at the link. And here’s the mission, if you choose to accept it:

Help solve the mystery…

Where did THE MAD POET first appear in print?

Send us clues, photos, and recollections so we can fill in the publication history of this magical, fan favorite painting.

(2) A MODIFIED NOVELLAPALOOZA. Chapter Adventure does a roundup about “The 15 Novellas Nominated for 2026 Locus, Nebula and Hugo Awards”.

…Below are the 15 novellas that have nominated across all 3 awards in 2026. You’ll find a very diverse mix including cozy robot restaurants, gothic fairy tale retellings, murder mysteries set in space, fairy tales about sisters and Faerie, witches and curses, haunted coal mines, and climate allegories told from a mountain’s point of view. The first two on the list appear on all three major award ballots this year. If you’re not sure where to start reading, these are the ones generating the most buzz….

First on the list is –

Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz

Hugo Nebula Locus

Genre: Cozy Sci-Fi | Pages: 163

In a near-future San Francisco still rebuilding from a devastating war of independence from the rest of the United States, a group of deactivated food-service robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen. With no human oversight and a debt they must pay to stay free, they make a bold decision: open their own restaurant, serving the city’s most exceptional hand-pulled noodles. When a targeted wave of one-star fake reviews threatens to tank their business, the bots must investigate the sabotage and call on their community to survive in a world that wasn’t built for them.

(3) WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION. The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2026 Shortlist dropped on April 16. The five shortlisted titles are:

The Pretender by Jo Harkin (Bloomsbury)
The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly (Bloomsbury)
Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Polygon)
Once The Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert (Virago)
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking)

(4) YOU CAN ONLY PICK TEN. Collider’s list of “10 Greatest Sci-Fi Book Masterpieces, Ranked” is probably the list you would have written off the top of your head if somebody asked to do it thirty years ago. The only choice that wasn’t obvious to me was number nine… number nine… number nine…

9. ‘The Forever War’ (1974)

“I wasn’t trying to destroy the world. I was trying to survive.” The Forever War follows a soldier drafted into an interstellar conflict where relativistic space travel causes time dilation, meaning that every mission sends him decades or centuries into the future. The plot tracks his repeated deployments, each one making him more alienated from the society he is supposedly defending. The protagonist becomes a relic, increasingly unable to relate to evolving cultural norms, even as the war itself becomes increasingly abstract and purposeless.

Written by a Vietnam War veteran, the novel reads as both sci-fi and a bitter memoir, The Hurt Locker meets The Time Machine. Indeed, The Forever War strips away the genre’s usual heroism and replaces it with bureaucratic absurdity and moral exhaustion. The brilliance of the book lies in how it uses its pulpy, hard science elements to drive the character development and emotional investigation. Here, time dilation isn’t a gimmick but a mechanism through which to explore the trauma of war.

(5) VERDICT ON TYSON’S BOOK. Alec Nevala-Lee pans Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new book in the New York Times: “Book Review: ‘Take Me to Your Leader,’ by Neil deGrasse Tyson”. (Behind a paywall.)

… Tyson notes that movies and television shows tend to feature aliens with “a head, two eyes, a mouth, shoulders, two arms, two hands and 10 fingers,” presumably because of the physical limitations of “human actors paid to don alien costumes,” and he gently chides their creators for being insufficiently imaginative.

Oddly enough, however, he almost entirely ignores an art form that isn’t constrained by practical considerations — the dazzlingly inventive world of science fiction novels and short stories. While he mentions a handful of literary works — “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “The Andromeda Strain,” “Contact” — if Tyson really wanted to explore scientific ideas through depictions of aliens, why not devote a paragraph to, say, “Mission of Gravity,” Hal Clement’s 1953 novel set on a rapidly rotating planet populated by intelligent centipedes?

This lack of engagement is a giveaway. Tyson doesn’t seem all that interested in science fiction; it’s frankly unclear if he even likes it, or feels any need to approach it on its own terms….

(6) THAT WOULD BE NO. Variety asks and answers the question “Would Oscar Inclusion Standards Disqualify Any Best Picture Winners?”.

Andy Samberg answered this one for us back in 2020.

Here’s the short version (because we’ve gone over this). Every best picture winner in the Academy’s 98-year history — from the silent-era film “Wings” in 1929 through the most recent political action epic “One Battle After Another” this past March — clears the Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards. That also includes “Oppenheimer,” the film directed by Christopher Nolan, with whom Elon Musk had no problem until this past week. And Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” whenever the Academy gets a look at it, would also clear the inclusion standards, and it’s not because Lupita Nyong’o was cast as Helen of Troy.

Musk spent the back half of the week yelling at a movie that doesn’t come out until July. The world’s richest man went on X to announce that Nolan “desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award,” then sharpened it again on Friday: “Who specifically is the asshole who added DEI lies to Academy Awards eligibility instead of it just being about making the best movie?”

He doesn’t actually want an answer. But I’ll give one, and it’s going to be boring, a huge problem for everyone amplifying him. The standards don’t do what he thinks they do, and the entire history of the category proves it.

A quick refresher, because nobody screaming about these rules has read them. The Academy announced the standards in 2020. They phased in over two information-gathering years and became a best picture requirement for the 2024 eligibility year, which is why “Anora” — Sean Baker’s $6 million indie dramedy that walked off with five Oscars at the 97th ceremony — was the first winner to compete under them, followed by Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.”

A film has to meet two of four standards. Again, two of the four. Not all four.

Standard A is on-screen: a lead or significant supporting actor from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, or a 30% ensemble drawn from two underrepresented groups, or a storyline centered on one. Standard B is the creative team: department heads, broader crew, or 30% crew composition. Standard C is the distribution or financing company’s paid apprenticeships and training. Standard D is in-house senior executives or consultants across the company’s development, marketing, publicity and distribution….

(7) PUNCH BROTHERS. NPR tells what it’s like when “Robots battle it out in Detroit’s Robowar”.

In the back of a church in an anonymous stretch of 7 Mile in Detroit dotted with industrial lots and fast food stores, performers dressed as giant robots battle it out in front of a live audience behind bullet-proof glass.

“We have these nine foot tall metal gladiators that shoot exploding projectiles at 20 rounds a second,” says Art Cartwright, the impresario who founded both the church, Global Empowerment Ministries, and the organization behind the robot show, The Interactive Combat League.

The show, running every few months, is called Robowar. Cartwright’s two enterprises have little to do with each other, he says, save for sharing space and introducing members of his community to potential employment in robotics.

“Metropolitian Detroit right now leads the nation in robotics,” Cartwright says. “We have more robots than any other place in America.”

But the gleaming, glowing-eyed stars of the Interactive Combat League are nothing like industrial robots that help assemble automobiles. They are played by humans wearing what might be considered mech suits. Robots fighting each other as entertainment is a cultural fantasy that goes back at least to 1956, when Richard Matheson’s short story “Steel” was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It was adapted into a 1963 episode on the TV show The Twilight Zone, and helped inspire the 2011 movie, Real Steel….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

By Paul Weimer: The Empire Strikes Back. The Greatest of the Star Wars films?

Possibly.

Like Star Wars, I didn’t get to see this one in the theater. I didn’t get any playsets for this one, no Cloud City playset, unfortunately. I had a sketchy idea of the events of the movie from seeing Return of the Jedi, and the Atari 2600 videogame. Oh, and the vector laser arcade game. So I knew only a sketch of the movie and its events.

It would be when it aired on TV in the mid-80’s (along with Star Wars itself, and after I had seen ROTJ) that I would finally see the movie.

Best script of the entire nine movies? Possibly. For freshness and reinvention, the original Star Wars has Empire beat, but Star Wars can be slow going in places, where Empire is much leaner, meaner and more controlled in its blaster fire. We see how Lucas clearly had changed his mind about Luke and Leia and started the turn toward Leia and Han. We meet Yoda, in his best incarnation. Force Ghost Obi-Wan. And just the casual way Vader deflects the laser fire from Han Solo was just so good. It answered the question of “Why don’t you just shoot him?” that I had wondered since his lightsaber fight in Star Wars.

And of course, “Luke, I am your Father.” One of the greatest twists in modern cinema, bar none. Was Vader lying? Why did Obi-Wan lie if he wasn’t? It brings Luke and the Rebellion to a low point not long after, Han captured, the rebellion scattered to the wind. In the Hero’s Journey, this is about as low as things can get in the trilogy. The middle of trilogies is hard, often flabby or repetitive. Empire is none of these. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Brevity emphasizes the oink in Hogwarts.
Brewster Rockit gets pranked.
Carpe Diem is fully in tune.
Crabgrass can’t fool all the people all the time.
Liō watches with the fan club
Rhymes with Orange believes it runs in the family.
Strange Brew traces late night note taking to early days.

(10) YOUR SECRET IDENTITY. MyHeroIDUSA would like to sell you “The Hero Mode Wallet”, made of “premium vegan leather”. For states where the driver’s license design lends itself, the wallet makes the ID photo look like you in a superhero mask.

(11) KOREAN MONSTER MOVIE. Variety likes this one: “Na Hong-jin’s Overlong Monster Mash is Bad CGI Inside Brilliant Action”.

For a decade, since 2016’s extraordinarily uncanny horror-hybrid “The Wailing,” fans of Korean director Na Hong-jin have been peering anxiously at the horizon awaiting his next uncategorizable genre mash-up. More recently, like a bumbling local police chief removing his mirrored aviators to squint at an unidentifiable what-the-hell-is-that wreaking havoc in the distance, we’ve tracked reports of his new project, which despite a high-profile international cast and the largest budget in Korean film history, remained until the last second shrouded in secrecy. Now that “Hope” is here — hilarious, unwieldy, overlong and featuring some of the most breathtakingly elegant action moviemaking of this or any year — one has to ask if anything could possibly have lived up to the anticipation.

It’s a question that seems mischievously on writer-director Na’s mind, as for a good portion of the outstandingly berserk first hour, it seems possible we will never actually see the creature causing the gloriously choreographed mayhem that is bedeviling the small town of Hope Harbor, South Korea. This shabby hamlet is close enough to its northern neighbor/nemesis that weathered billboards warn against landmines and urge residents to “Report Spies!” and “Guard Against Infiltrators!”

It is maybe the late ’80s — in any case, pre-cellphones — and Bum-seok (an irreplaceable Hwang Jung-min, reuniting with Na after “The Wailing”), the chief of police in this one-horse town, has been called out to a vast flat field on its outskirts to investigate the gorily mysterious mutilation of a large cow. Its carcass has been discovered by a group of hunters led by Sung-ki (Zo In-Sung), who is Bum-seok’s second cousin. Here, everybody knows or is related to everyone else, as will be proven in just a few minutes when Bum-seok will be pegging it down the devastated streets and alleyways of Hope Harbor, namechecking every second bloodied corpse he passes….

… It’s hard to overstate just how wildly entertaining this first hour is: a kind of riff on, of all things, Ron Underwood’s cult classic “Tremors,” only scaled up in expanse as well as expense, with genius cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo (“Parasite,” “Burning,” “The Wailing”) wielding his gliding camera with such insolent grace that it seems like serenely sarcastic commentary on the chaos and carnage of Lee Hwokyoung’s production design.

There are team-ups and fuck-ups and every character is, well, a character….

(12) OUTSTANDING IN ITS FIELD. “A lucky ‘metal detectorist’ found the Sheriff of Nottingham’s ring, valued at $11,000” reports Yahoo!

In a deliciously ironic turn of fate, a retired merchant navy engineer in England has found a treasure that would have made his country’s most popular folk hero proud. Graham Harrison, a 65-year-old metal detector enthusiast, discovered a gold signet ring that once belonged to the Sheriff of Nottingham.

The discovery was made on a farm in Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire, 26.9 miles from Sherwood Forest. The forest is known worldwide for being the mythological home of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. A central road that traversed the forest was notorious in Medieval times for being an easy place for bandits to rob travelers going to and from London.

Today, the forest is a designated National Nature Reserve. It contains ancient oaks that date back thousands of years, making it an important conservation area….

…Harrison sent the ring to the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme to have it authenticated.

After doing some research they found that it was once owned by Sir Matthew Jenison, who was the Sheriff of Nottingham between 1683 and 1684….

(13) WEIRD VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Bobbin’s Sacrifice” from Saturday Night Live.

A man (Will Ferrell) sacrifices himself to help save a kingdom.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/19/26 Double Space, The Final Frontier With Extra Character

Posted on January 19, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) DELANY CONSIDERS FATE OF HIS PERSONAL LIBRARY. Samuel Delany told Facebook readers today:

The majority of my personal library, from my apartment… in New York City, is currently in a CubeSmart storage unit.

Once upon a time, I lived in an 8-room apartment with books all up and down the hallway, along with my own little room and library at the very end. From there I went to my daughter’s house in Wynnewood, where there was room for the entire library (it filled their entire basement), but when Dennis and I were kicked out (with an hour to pack) we came to this three-room apartment. Most of my books went into storage, initially a 320+ cardboard cartons filled with literature, philosophy, current thought, and advance copies of my own work and some science fiction.

It’s almost as much money to store my books as it is to pay my rent, and I don’t even get to read them.

Soon, I am planning to sell my collection to a corporate book reseller. If anyone has any suggestions for a better fate, I’d love to hear it.

(2) CONSEQUENCES OF EMPATHY. Christopher Lockett has “Some Thoughts on Pluribus”. Beware spoilers. (I don’t think this excerpt gives away anything that isn’t evident from the trailer.)

…As a result of the joining, all members of the collective have access to the sum total of human knowledge and, further, can perform such sophisticated actions as flying airplanes or doing surgery. In other words, if someone somewhere knows something, everybody else knows it; similarly, the skill one person has is now held in common.

What’s more, the joining renders all its members incapable of violence or doing any sort of harm to any living thing. This detail is quite reminiscent of Joe Haldeman’s novel Forever Peace (1998), which envisions a form of future combat in which elite soldiers operate battle bots remotely by being connected mentally—they virtually inhabit the machines along with the rest of their squad, with whom they share a mind link, such that they can operate as one without the need for vocalizing orders or intention. All such soldiers are limited to two-week tours at a time, ostensibly to protect their mental health. But the main characters discover that the real reason is because anybody who has spent more than two weeks connected to other humans loses the capacity to do harm. Too much time inhabiting the minds of others, in other words, engenders a radical empathy that removes the instinct and ability for violence….

(3) VIDEOS FROM TENTH CITY TECH SCIENCE FICTION SYMPOSIUM. Videos from panels held at the Tenth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on “Image in SF” have been posted to YouTube. The event took place December 2 in New York.

This is the direct link to the YouTube video playlist.

(4) GENRE GRAPEVINE. Jason Sanford tells about his look inside a fake Discord book club in “Genre Grapevine: Book Club Scams Are a Warning of Emerging AI Super-Scams”, an unlocked post at Patreon.

…So far this scam followed what I’d read in Strauss’ Writer Beware report. However, everything took a new turn when Speier offered to let me see the Discord where their so-called community interacted with each other and discussed books.

After receiving an invite to the Supper Books readers Discord, I quickly started exploring and screenshotting everything….

…I’ve redacted the names of other authors in any screenshots I’ve shared. However, one author who said I could quote him is the environmental author David Sobel. Sobel came into the Discord before I did and interacted with the users for a while before leaving. He later told me he didn’t send the scammers any money.

When I asked Sobel what convinced him it was a scam, he said, “The organizer suggested that the readers she was convening were all enthusiastic about the book of mine we were going to talk about. When I got on the chat, it was clear that none of the ‘readers’ knew a thing about the book.”

This ties in with what I realized each time Melissa Speier and the other users talked about my book. While Speier’s initial email appears to be from someone who read We Who Hunt Alexanders, a closer look shows that the details about my book are both specific and generic along with saying a lot without saying much at all. This is a pattern seen frequently with AI-generated copy. It appears someone used a program like ChatGPT to write the remarks about my book….

(5) FREE READ: HOLLY HUNTER PROFILE. We linked to this a few days ago. We now have a gift link that bypasses the paywall: “Holly Hunter Reaches for the Stars” in the New York Times.

(6) INAUGURAL LIBRARO PRIZE. The Guardian is on hand when a “£50,000 ‘reader-led’ writing prize launched” by Libraro. (Here is the direct link: The Libraro Prize 2026.)

A new £50,000 writing prize that allows readers to select the shortlist from submitted manuscripts – and rewards them with cash prizes for their involvement – has been launched by the publishing platform Libraro, in partnership with Hachette UK.

The Libraro prize aims to “sidestep the traditional barricades of the book industry”, according to organisers. Writers upload full manuscripts to the Libraro platform, where readers champion their favourite entries to create a shortlist of six books.

It is open to adult and crossover YA fiction written in English and is designed to give readers a role in discovering new writing talent.

The overall winner will receive a £50,000 prize package from Libraro – comprising £30,000 and an additional £20,000 towards marketing the finished book – alongside a book deal with Hachette UK. Two additional reader prizes of £10,000 each will also be awarded: one to the reader who referred the winning author to the platform, and another to the reader who engages most actively with submissions….

…The competition is open to anyone aged 18 or over, worldwide, regardless of previous publishing history or professional representation. Entrants will have the chance to receive constructive feedback from readers, while shortlisted authors will be given professional support to help them package and format their manuscripts before they are assessed by the judges….

…Entries open on 19 January and close on 15 February, with reader engagement running from 19 February to 20 March. The shortlist will be announced on 21 April, and the winner revealed on 13 May.

(7) OPERA BASED ON CHABON NOVEL CAN BE SEEN VIA MET LIVE. “Belonging, art, and trauma collide in The Met’s WWII opera ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay’” at Gay City News. (Here’s a direct link to the production atMetropolitan Opera, where you can search for a cinema where it is being shown.)

Last fall the Metropolitan Opera debuted a new opera, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” composed by Michael Bates, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, who adapted Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Now, The Met Live is giving audiences a chance to see a filmed version of this production in cinemas on Jan. 24, with encore presentations on Jan. 26.

The opera, which is performed in English, is ambitious and entertaining. It incorporates themes of belonging, art, and trauma into a story that has the Jewish Joe Kavalier (baritone Andrzej Filończyk) escaping Prague in 1939 via a coffin to go live with his cousin, Sam Clay (tenor Miles Mykkanen), in Brooklyn. Joe has left his teenage sister Sarah (soprano Lauren Snouffer) behind, but he promises to send for her and their parents.

In New York, Joe and Sam create “The Escapist” comic book featuring a superhero who fights fascism. It becomes wildly successful, and a radio production of “The Escapist” features actor Tracy Bacon (baritone Edward Nelson), who falls in love with the equally smitten Sam. Meanwhile, Joe meets Rosa Saks (mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce), who runs the Transatlantic Rescue Agency, which helps Jews sail to America from war-torn Europe. As the romances develop, a tragedy occurs and, for different reasons, Joe and Tracy enlist to go fight overseas, leaving Rosa and Sam back home….

“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” is an impressive-looking production. The sets and visual design (by 59 Studios) are imaginative; some images are seen being drawn in “real time.” Various comic book panels from “The Escapist” also come to life on a big screen like giant Roy Lichtenstein canvases. There is even an actor playing the caped and masked superhero who dances and battles evildoers on stage.

In addition, there is a fabulous set piece of the radio play, complete with a foley artist, and a later sequence of another comic book character floating down from the sky that has a dreamlike quality. The opera really hits its stride with these wondrous moments, and the period-themed music heightens the energy of these scenes. While an extended sequence in Act II, set in the Western Front, is quite elaborate, and features dozens of soldiers on a giant moving stage, that episode tends to be a bit repetitive narratively and musically, which is a drawback….

(8) WILLIAM GOWEN (1957-2026). Seattle fan William “Lile” Gowen died on January 5. Karen G. Anderson made the announcement on Facebook.

…Some of us knew Lile as one of the members of the concom for the Foolscap Convention; some of us knew him as an avid film buff, art collector, and baseball enthusiast. Lile was a gracious host for many of the events benefitting the Clarion West science fiction writing workshop and the Seattle area science fiction community in general.

His death was a surprise. He’d been recovering from an illness suffered this summer….

The family obituary is here: “William Carlile Gowen Obituary (1957-2026)”.

With solemn hearts, we announce the passing of William Carlile Gowen of Seattle, Washington, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose presence will be deeply missed, having departed on January 5, 2026 at the age of 68. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 19, 1932 — Richard Lester, 94

Serious film and I don’t get along — give me a good, fun film and I’m very, very happy. Thus you’re getting American-born but eventually British-resident film director Richard Lester for the Birthday this Scroll. Pop the bubbly and dig into the chocolate cake, let’s get started.

A variety show he produced caught the attention of Peter Sellers who got Lester’s assistance in getting The Goon Show from the BBC Home Service onto ITV in the London area as The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d. It lasted but six episodes. Six insane episodes mind you.

His second film after It’s Trad, Dad which is decidedly not genre was The Mouse on the Moon, a sequel to The Mouse That Roared (which he was not involved in at all.) It was by Michael Pertwee, brother of a certain actor we know from Doctor Who. Quite silly it was.

He directed The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, a late Fifties sketch comedy short film directed by him and Peter Sellers. So why mention it? It’s because it was a favorite of John Lennon which led to Lester’s being hired to direct A Hard Day’s Night and then Help! You know which film is genre, so I needn’t say so.

Next up is The Three Musketeers (which I didn’t know was also known as The Three Musketeers (The Queen’s Diamonds) which is an interesting title). Fascinatingly George MacDonald Fraser wrote the screenplay. Lester shot The Four Musketeers right after this film.

He later reunited most of the Three Musketeers cast to film The Return of the Musketeers with the only notable cast member not present being Raquel Welch.

Lester was fond of swashbuckler films, so it was only natural that he decided to direct a Flashman film. Royal Flash was based off the second of the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser which now gives me the link to him writing the Musketeer screenplays. Cool. Very cool. And naturally Fraser wrote the screenplay here.

(A digression. I mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again. Kage Baker adored Flashman and this film as well. She told me several times in the last year before her passing on that she was planning on writing a Flashman novel but of course never did, sadly. There are some Flashman references in her Company series, she told me.)

Then there was Robin and Marian, which along with along with Richard Carpenter’s Robin of Sherwood, I hold to be the finest representations of Robin Hood ever done. The script was by James Goldman, writer of The Lion in Winter, and as you know the leads were performed by Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. Perfect. Truly perfect.

Superman II was a great success after he reshot almost all the footage Richard Donner had already shot, some three-quarters of the projected film. Ouch. (That was released as Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut.) Unlike this film, Superman III directed by him would be both a critical and box office failure.

His last film before retirement though not genre, I’ll note as it’s a great film called Get Back, the thirty-three-year old concert film about The Paul McCartney World Tour of 1989–1990. Seventeen of the twenty-three songs he performs are by the Beatles.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bound and Gagged reveals Area 51 has a neighbor.
Free Range dug some some dino tech bros.
Loose Parts knows the way deities work.
Rubes might outrun this leash.
Swan Eaters found the right ingredient.
Zen Pencils quotes Carl Sagan.
heyokyay must admit advanced civilizations are more advanced…
Nancy and Sluggo disagree about the length of time.

(11) THAT WRAPS IT UP. The Guardian profiles a book about a popular culture history niche: “A 10p masterpiece! The golden age of crisp packet design, from Chipsticks to Frazzles to Hedgehogs”.

Would you eat a smoky spider flavour Monster Munch? What about a Bovril crisp, cooked up to celebrate the release of Back to the Future? Then there’s hedgehog flavour – and even a Wallace and Gromit corn snack designed to capture the unique taste of moon cheese, which the duo rocketed off to collect in A Grand Day Out.

All these salty, crunchy and perhaps even tasty snacks are celebrated in UK Crisp Packets 1970-2000, a 140-page compendium that delves into the colourful, often strange and occasionally wild world of crisp packet design. The book will come as a heavy hit of nostalgia for many people, featuring various childhood favourites – Chipsticks, Frazzles, Snaps – along with the lesser known and the rare.

You’ll find Dennis the Menace bacon and baked bean flavour alongside Golden Wonder roast turkey and stuffing and Sonic the Hedgehog salt and vinegar. There are long-gone regional brands from Penryn, Blackpool and Wigan, along with a whole heap of TV and film special editions, including the Spice Girls, Thunderbirds, Zig and Zag, Dr Who, The Mask and Jurassic Park.

The book is by a 43-year-old artist going by the name of Chris Packet, who has amassed quite an archive. It is nothing if not eclectic, the designs it showcases ranging from straightforward to inspired to bizarre. There’s union jack-clad cheese and onion to commemorate the 1981 royal wedding and even innuendo-laden comic strips that recall smutty seaside postcards. The Dandy’s Beryl the Peril fronts a bag of sausage and tomato….

(12) BAY AREA SENDOFF. “See You Later, Claude: San Francisco Mourns Its Beloved Alligator” – the New York Times covers the obsequies. (Behind a paywall.)

Heather Knight has covered the quirky side of San Francisco for many years, but this is her first alligator funeral.

This funeral traded hymns for a brass band, somber pallbearers for dancing drag queens, and black suits and dresses for reptile costumes. There were no platters of cheese and crackers, but there was a nearly life-size loaf of sourdough shaped like the deceased.

In San Francisco, people do things differently — including the memorial service on Sunday to mourn the passing of Claude, an albino alligator who entertained crowds at the California Academy of Sciences for years by not doing much at all.

San Francisco has long embraced those who stand out from the crowd, and Claude certainly did. He was pure white, had pink eyes that did not see well, stretched 10 feet long, weighed 300 pounds and was so quiet and still that many first-time visitors to the science museum thought he was a statue.

A few times over the years, Claude shocked his admirers with a roar — and on Sunday, the city roared its love and appreciation back at him. He died last month of liver cancer at 30, a ripe age for an albino alligator, and thousands turned out to a concourse near the museum in Golden Gate Park for his jubilant memorial service….

(13) LITTLE RED DOTS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The latest Nature cover story may solve the little red dot (LRD) mystery!

Back in 2022, in its first two weeks of operation, the James Webb space telescope detected little red dots (LRDs) and no-one knew what they were. These LRDs seemed to date from the early Universe, around 600 million years after the Big Bang.

Two theories emerged: could they be young, unexpectedly star-filled galaxies or, alternatively, anomalously massive black holes that were accreting glowing gas?

A new analysis of the light from LRDs now supports the latter scenario but indicates that the black holes are hidden behind a thick curtain of gas, which made them seem more massive in earlier analyses than they really are. The British, Swedish and Swiss based astrophysicists note that the hydrogen line emissions in the spectra of LRDs are particularly broad, which indicates that the glowing gas is moving at velocities of thousands of kilometres per second. Such speeds suggest an active galactic nucleus in which gas surrounding a supermassive black hole heats up and glows.

Now, the bigger the black hole the greater the gas speed and so the greater the hydrogen line broadening. The problem is that the broadening is so great that it suggests that the black hole is the mass of an entire galaxy and not just its nucleus. So, are LRDs galaxies or black holes?

The hydrogen line spectra are consistent with a dot being bright object surrounded by dense clouds of ionised material. Here, if the researchers’ model is correct, the brightness of a dot represents more than 250 billion Suns, but this collection of stars was less than one-tenth of a parsec across, which is a fraction of a light year and much, much smaller than a galaxy (which can be one or two hundred thousand light years across). The only possible explanation could be that an LRD is a dense, compact object that is converting the gravitational potential energy of in-falling gas into light. Such an object would be a really big, or supermassive, black hole such as the ones found at the hearts of galaxies but that this is surrounded by gas through which light generated by some of the gas in-falling itself gets altered into the way the hydrogen lines are seen.

Primary research Rusakov, V. et al. (2026) Little red dots as young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons, Nature, vol. 649, p574-9.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/17/26 A Fist Full Of Scrolls, A Pocketful Of Pixels

Posted on January 17, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) ON WITH THEIR HEADS! Camestros Felapton’s marathon history of stfnal robots and their antecedents arrives at Doctor Who’s “Cyberman”.

…The idea of cyborgs as inherently malign is intertwined with prejudices against both disability and bodily modification. These first Cybermen are presented as people encased in dehumaninisng technology. It was a challenge for the 1960’s costume design to adequately represent this kind of body horror without it looking comical and arguably would not be properly represented until the late 1980s with the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The second Doctor would encounter the Cybermen repeatedly during his tenure (1966-1969). The appearance and nature of the Cybermen would be gradually refined with each appearance, with them adopting a more metallic and integrated design. By the 1968 serial The Invasion the core look of the Cybermen has stabilised but in the process they had essentially become robots of the mechanical men variety. The underlying idea that they were cyborgs remained but was secondary to their role as remorseless machines who are emotionless and logical (well, not so logical that they don’t have weirdly complicated plans for world domination)….

(2) CRASH AND CARRY. “Pokémon card boom draws collectors and armed robbers to one Manhattan shop” – Gothamist has the story.

Armed robbers targeted a Manhattan Pokémon shop this week in a heist that was unsurprising to trading-card fanatics, who say merchandise from the franchise has exploded in value and is being tracked by criminals.

On Wednesday evening, three masked and hooded men, including one armed with a handgun, walked into the Poké Court shop in Chelsea, an NYPD spokesperson said. One of them smashed display cases with a hammer and stole what the owner of the shop said is more than $120,000 worth of merchandise.

Courtney Chin, the store owner, said the robbery was unfortunate for her business, but not entirely surprising given a recent rise in interest in the cards — including among criminals.

“It’s almost like a rite of passage as a card shop. You just get robbed,” she said.

Pokémon trading cards and other collectibles associated with the Japanese media franchise have exploded in popularity in recent years, according to Matt Quinn, the vice president of CGC cards, a company that certifies trading cards. An auction company is currently offering a Pikachu illustrator card that influencer Logan Paul has worn around his neck for nearly $6 million, Quinn noted.

(3) SALMAN RUSHDIE DOCUMENTARY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] He’s Salman Rushdie the author. He’s Salman Rushdie the survivor. He’s Salman Rushdie the symbol.

He’s also Salman the loving and beloved husband. And “Sal from Brooklyn,” the Yankees fan.

And now he’s the subject of a documentary about the knife attack that almost ended his life and his recovery from it. “Salman Rushdie Doc ‘Knife’ Reveals How He Survived Attack” in The Hollywood Reporter.

The scene is intimate, haunting: Salman Rushdie, just a few days after being brutally attacked on a stage at an upstate New York retreat, is lying in a hospital bed. He is barely able to talk, the wounds in his neck archeologically deep, an eye bulging out grotesquely like in a horror movie. He will later wonder if he’ll ever get out of the room.

The footage from Alex Gibney’s new documentary Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, shot as part of a video diary by Rushdie’s wife, the novelist and poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, opens a window painted shut. We remember the viral video of the attack scene, where a young man that August morning in 2022 came at Rushdie and the author tried to fight him off in front of a shocked audience. What we hadn’t seen is the aftermath — the closeness to death, the sheer psychic terror….

(4) THE HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. SF²Concatenation’s Spring issue includes a rundown on sff’s important anniversaries this year: “2026”.

the 40th anniversary of the publication of:
  Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead
  Bob Shaw’s The Ragged Astronauts.
and Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Realtime

the 60th anniversary of Star Trek’s first broadcast.

the 60th anniversary of the publication of:
  J. G. Ballard’s The Crystal World
  Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!
  Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
  Daniel Keyes Flowers For Algernon
and Larry Niven’s The World of Ptavvs.
  Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal (a.k.a. And Call Me Conrad)

On the cinematic and TV front 2026 sees the 50th anniversary of
(the aforementioned Star Trek)
  Fantastic Voyage
  Batman
  Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD
  One Million Years BC
and Fahrenheit 451.

(5) A REVIEW OF SFF IN TRANSLATION. Joachim Boaz and Rachel Cordasco review the 1970 short story “Slum” by Austrian SF writer Herbert W. Franke: “Short Story Review: Herbert W. Franke’s ‘Slum’ (1970, trans. by Chris Herriman 1973)” at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations.

Rachel S. Cordasco’s Review

Austrian-born author and cyberneticist Herbert W. Franke used speculative fiction to imagine distant planets and alternative societies for over half a century. Known to Anglophone readers mostly for three novels translated in the 1970s (The Orchid Cage, The Mind Net, and Zone Null) and a few short stories, Franke asked readers to think through what “exploration” really means and the responsibilities that the explorers have to those whom they find (or don’t find)….

(6) JUST THE FACTS. On Facebook, Joe Haldeman gutted two erroneous biographies, one the Wikipedia entry about him (“Joe Haldeman – Wikipedia”), and the other Macmillian’s “About The Author” paragraph (“Joe Haldeman | Authors | Macmillan”).

I just came across this interesting – untrue – “fact” on a Wikipedia entry about me —

“As a young man, Joe Haldeman joined the U.S. Army not as a career, but hoping to become a scientist after serving in the war in Vietnam. He came out of the jungle with a bullet wound, a Purple Heart and a new calling: to become a writer. Even brief military careers can be life-changing.”

I was not that young, at 24; I didn’t really “join” the army – was drafted first — I didn’t want to “become a scientist” – and in fact had to initiate the paperwork to actually get the Purple Heart after I got out of Vietnam.

(Writing wasn’t a “new calling” to me; I started writing poetry when I was 11 or 12, and was starting to write fiction as a teenager.)

At that age, though, I still thought I had a chance to become an astronaut. I was aiming for NASA’s “Scientist as Astronaut” program, and did have the minimum academic requirement, a degree in astronomy.

I was drafted out of college, which I think happened to any male student who turned 24. (At 25 you would be too old to be drafted.)

The Wikipedia writer was just making lazy assumptions, typing out a fast paragraph. Nobody uses Wiki as a primary source.

— and on the heels of that load of inaccurate typing from Wikipedia, came this manure cart load from Macmillon’s “About the Author” —

“Having won the Hugo and Nebula Award’s more times than any other author, Joe Haldeman is an ultimate household name in science fiction. A Vietnam Veteran and Purple Heart recipient, since the original publication of The Forever War, Joe has maintained a continuous string of SF best-sellers, and as a speaker and panelist, has been a constant presence on the SF convention circuit. A longtime tenured Professor of Creative Writing at MIT, beyond his own career, from Cory Doctorow to John Scalzi, Haldeman is widely acknowledged as a key mentor figure to many of this generation’s crop of rising SF stars.”

I am not a “household name” in any house of any repute; I have had at most one SF best-seller; I’m only sporadically seen on the “SF convention circuit,” wherever that may be. That last sentence was evidently written by an ill-programmed computer.

(7) PAUL GIAMATTI Q&A. [Item by Joel Zakem.] Actor Paul Giamatti on Star Trek and James White’s Sector General novels, among other things: “33 Years Later, Paul Giamatti Pays Homage To An Underrated Star Trek Villain” at Inverse.

… And yet, the story that Giamatti happens to be a Star Trek fan, and parlayed that enthusiasm into his new role, is really just the latest outcome from a life infused with science fiction. Giamatti taking on this role isn’t just stunt casting; it seems to represent an outgrowth of his artistic philosophy. It wouldn’t be right to call Giamatti a sci-fi actor outright, and yet, his career is filled with great sci-fi roles: the most affecting episode of Black Mirror Season 7 starred him; if you listen to the audiobook version of Philip K. Dick’s classic A Scanner Darkly, that’s him narrating the entire thing; and don’t forget he was in Planet of the Apes back in 2001. “Science fiction, I know, is, in fact, the way I see the world,” he says….

… The first time I met Paul Giamatti was almost 20 years ago, while he was digging around in the corner of a used bookstore in New York City, where I worked part-time. He was looking for a series of vintage science fiction novels about outer space doctors. Back then, I soon forgot the title and author of the series, but today, when I bring up this question to Giamatti for our Starfleet Academy interview, he instantly knows what I’m talking about.

“Ah yes, the series is called Sector General, by the Irish writer James White,” he says with geeky pride. “It’s a series of short stories and novels about a hospital in outer space. They’re the closest thing to Star Trek that isn’t Star Trek that I’ve ever encountered. They’re really great. They should be better known than they are.”…

(8) SULTANA RAZA READING. SFWA recently posted to YouTube its Zoom of the “Speculative Poetry OPEN MIC – March 29, 2025 with Featured Poet Sultana Raza”.

Our featured poet is Sultana Raza. Her work has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Star*line, and Silver Blade, with a story forthcoming in Flame Tree Publishing’s Achilles Anthology. An independent scholar and accomplished poet, Sultana has presented on Keats and Tolkien at international conferences and read her work across Europe and the U.S. Her writing blends vivid imagination with deep literary insight. You can find @sultana_raza_writer_poet on Instagram.

(9) SFF FILM SAYINGS. ScreenRant savors “10 Genius Sci-Fi Movie Quotes That Stand The Test Of Time”. In all honesty, only about three of them are remarkable. What do you think of ScreenRant’s choice for Number One?

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” (“2001: A Space Odyssey”)

If you’re already nervous about A.I., there are movies you should avoid, as many of them explore the role of A.I. as villains, but none of them come close to being as terrifying as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Douglas Rain’s voice makes HAL 9000 an unforgettable villain who’ll steal your sleep if you have Alexa in your room.

The chill that goes down my spine every time I hear HAL say these words and reveal himself as a nefarious AI with plans of taking control of the ship after killing its inhabitants is why I believe the quote is a stroke of genius. The non-compliance with a sinister tone that mocks the expectation of obedience makes it terrifying.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 17, 1931 — James Earl Jones. (Died 2024.)

This Scroll you’re getting James Earl Jones, most notably known in our circles as the voice of a certain Sith Lord whose voice he did up to Star Wars Rise of Skywalker, but he’s got a much more, sometimes surprisingly, diverse career here. So let’s see what he’s done…

His film debut was as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, the B-52’s bombardier in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Great way to start off his genre, I’d say.

In 1969, Jones participated in making short films for what became Sesame Street. These were combined with animated segments, then were shown to groups of children to see if the format appealed to children. As cited by production notes included in the Sesame Street: Old School 1969–1974 DVD, the short that had the greatest impact with test audiences was one showing a bald-headed Jones counting slowly to ten. And yes, it was shown on the show when it aired.

I truly love him in Conan the Barbarian as Thulsa Doom, an antagonist for the character Kull of Atlantis. Thulsa Doom was created by Robert E. Howard in the “Delcardes’ Cat” story. Neat character for him, I’d say.

He’s in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold with the name of Umslopogaas, a fearless warrior and old friend of Allan Quatermain. I looked him up in the original novel, Allan Quatermain. Please don’t make me do that again. Really. Don’t.

Ahhh, Field of Dreams: “Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it.” Great role. To say more would involve spoilers, right?

He voices Mufusa, the lion murdered by his brother in The Lion King and its sequel, who death does not stop from being present. Really present. Extraordinary performing by him.

Did you know that he narrated Stallone’s Judge Dredd? Well he did. He was uncredited at time but as is with these things, it didn’t stay a secret permanently, did it?

He had series appearances on Faerie Tale Theatre (as, and I simply love it, Genie of the Lamp, Genie of the Ring), Highway to Heaven, Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories, Picket Fences, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, (he was the uncredited narrator of 3rd Rock from the Sun (maybe he’s the nameless narrator for all of the multiverse?), Touched by an Angel in which he’s the Angel of Angels, cool name, Stargate SG-1 , Merlin and finally as himself on The Big Bang Theory.

He hosted Long Ago and Far Away, a children’s series that lasted thirty-five episodes with each of them based on a folk or fairy tale. Stop motion animation, live actors and traditional animation were all used.

That’s it, folks.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee tries cosplay.
Loose Parts offers highly specialized threads.
Mother Goose and Grimm find another link the food chain.
Reality Check knows when to fold ‘em, knows when to hold ‘em.
Six Chix joins a Hall of Fame you didn’t know about.

(12) GAME OF THRONES ALUMNA CHECKS IN. [Item by Steven French.] As Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, Sophie Turner had to adapt to a steep learning curve but seems to have come back down to earth: “’It’s very embarrassing’: Sophie Turner on rage, romance and the horror of watching Game of Thrones” in the Guardian.

Sophie Turner has a screwball comedy vibe in real life – elegant trouser suit, arch but friendly expression, perfect hair, she looks ready for some whipsmart repartee and a sundowner. She seems very comfortable in her own skin, which is unusual anyway when you’re not quite 30, but especially incongruous given her various screen personas: first, in Game of Thrones.

Thirteen when she was cast as Sansa Stark, 14 when she started filming, she embodied anxious, aristocratic self-possession at an age when a regular human can’t even keep track of their own socks. Six seasons in, arguably at peak GoT impact, she became Jean Grey in X-Men: Apocalypse, a role she reprised in 2019 for Dark Phoenix, action-studded and ram-jammed with superpowers.

Now she’s the lead in Steal, a Prime Video drama about a corporate heist, though that makes it sound quite desk and keyboard-based when, in fact, it is white-knuckle tense and alarmingly paced…

… “I learned how to act on that [GoT] set, and now I’m thinking: that’s not how to do it. That’s not what I do these days. It’s very embarrassing. Imagine if you were learning to sing, and all your lessons had been filmed and broadcast. It’s just an uncomfortable experience. I think the imposter syndrome remains. But I don’t think there’s any actor who doesn’t have that.”…

(13) WHEN A LIBRARY CARD BECOMES A GET OUT OF JAIL CARD. The Guardian reports “Brazil’s Bolsonaro finds novel way to reduce 27-year sentence: reading books”.

Jair Bolsonaro’s lawyers appear to have been reading up on the country’s penal code and have found a way to help their client reduce the 27-year prison sentence he received last year for plotting a coup: by reading books.

There is only one problem: the former far-right Brazilian president has never been known as a bibliophile. “Sorry, I don’t have time to read,” Bolsonaro once declared. “It’s been three years since I read a book.”

Brazilian law contains a literary device through which book-reading inmates can cut their sentences by four days for each title read. On Thursday, a supreme court judge authorised the disgraced former president to take part in the scheme after a request from his legal team.

Bolsonaro, a former paratrooper famed for his hostility to democracy, minorities, the Amazon rainforest and the arts, is unlikely to appreciate the approved reading list. It includes Brazilian works on Indigenous rights, racism, the environment and the violence meted out by the country’s 1964-85 dictatorship – a regime Bolsonaro openly supported.

One title, Ana Maria Gonçalves’ 950-page Um Defeito de Cor (A Colour Defect), tells “the history of Brazil … from the point of view of a Black woman”.

Also featured is Democracy!, a children’s non-fiction picture book by the English-born author-illustrator Philip Bunting…

(14) KEEP WATCHING THE CAPE. The Guardian keeps an eye on Florida as “Nasa readies its most powerful rocket for round-the-moon flight”.

Nasa is preparing to roll out its most powerful rocket yet before a mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again for the first time in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as 6 February, taking its crew on a 685,000-mile round trip that will end about 10 days later with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The flight will mark only the second test of Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the first with a crew onboard. The four astronauts will live and work in the Orion capsule, testing life support and communications systems and practising docking manoeuvres….

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

Pixel Scroll 5/15/25 A Pixel A Day, Keeps The AI Away

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) GREGORY BENFORD CONSERVATORSHIP ANNOUNCED. Joe Haldeman today published on Facebook an announcement and statement by James Benford: “Jim Benford asked me to post this: Court Approves conservatorship of the Estate and Person of Gregory Benford”. In addition to some information about Gregory Benford’s health, it includes allegations and insinuations about people who have been close to Gregory since his stroke in 2022.

Richard Man tries to correct the characterization about one of those people in this Facebook post.

A number of well-known sff figures comment on the two posts.

(2) LACON V REVEALS FIRST SPECIAL GUEST. The 2026 Worldcon committee, LACon V, has announced Tracy Drain as the convention’s first Special Guest.

Tracy Drain is a flight systems engineer who has helped to develop, test, and operate a variety of robotic spacecraft for deep space exploration over the past 25+ years. Her passion for space grew from an early love of science fiction – she soaked up Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica, plus sci-fi and fantasy books by the armload. With her eye on a career in space, she studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky and interned at the NASA Langley Research Center. After earning a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, she landed a full-time position at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2000.

As a systems engineer, Tracy works with teams of engineers and scientists to ensure all the parts of a spacecraft (telecommunications, thermal, power, software, etc.), the science instruments, and the mission (spacecraft/instruments, ground data system, mission design and navigation, etc.) are designed to work well together to accomplish the mission goals. Her previous missions have included the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Kepler mission (an Exoplanet hunter), the Juno mission (orbiting Jupiter) and the Psyche mission (now on its way to study an asteroid). She is currently the Chief Engineer in operations for the Europa Clipper mission which successfully launched in October 2024 and is now on its 5.5-year cruise to Jupiter. After arrival in the Jovian system, Clipper will study Europa – one of the most scientifically exciting moons in our solar system!…

(3) LACON V OPENS PROGRAM PARTICIPANT INTEREST SURVEY. The Program Division for LAcon V, the 2026 Worldcon, will be co-managed by Helen Montgomery and Dr. Meg MacDonald. Montgomery chaired Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon. MacDonald was co-Division Head for Promotions for Glasgow 2024 – A Worldcon for Our Futures.

LAcon V has a Program Overview page.

Our Program Suggestion Form is for anyone who wishes to submit an idea for a program item. This can be a panel discussion you want to see, a workshop you want someone to run, a discussion group about your favorite book or movie franchise – maybe you just have a cool panel title, or perhaps a fully formed description of a panel but no title. It’s all okay to submit! No idea is too big or too small; we want to hear them all!

And then there’s our Program Participant Interest survey, which is for anyone who is interested in being a program participant, be it on site in Anaheim or online through our virtual offerings. We expect and need hundreds of program participants. Some may be professionals in their field; others may be hobbyists or fans. No matter what, we want to know more about you! Filling out the form does not guarantee that you will be accepted as a participant, but it is the first necessary step in the process, and we’re excited to hear from you.

(4) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books has released Simultaneous Times podcast episode 87 with KC Grifant & Franco Amati.

Stories featured in this episode:

“Negation” by KC Grifant; music by Phog Masheeen; read by the Jenna Hanchey
“So I Guess I’m Not an Actual Person Anymore” by Franco Amati; music by Phog Masheeen; read by Jean-Paul Garnier

Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

(5) GENRE GRAPEVINE ON SEATTLE WORLDCON. Jason Sanford presents “Genre Grapevine’s Deep Dive into the Use of ChatGPT by Seattle Worldcon”, a public post on Patreon.

….It appears Worldcon leadership only learned that ChatGPT was used in this manner after the fact, when the person on the vetting team revealed what they’d done and said that there was no other way to complete the vetting with so few volunteers on the team. While Worldcon leadership had concerns about the use of generative AI, because ChatGPT had already been used – and because of the lack of needed volunteers on the vetting team – they decided to retroactively accept its use.

What came after is now well known: Word about the use of ChatGPT quickly spread among Worldcon volunteers and the larger genre community.

I’m told the person on the vetting team who originally decided to use ChatGPT is no longer involved in the vetting process….

Unfortunately, none of the quoted sources was willing to go on the record as a source.

(6) DAVE RATTI OBITUARY. [By Becky Veal.] David Ratti, long time Orlando fan, passed away on May 15, 2025. He had been suffering prolonged illnesses, but the cause of death is initially listed as pneumonia and sepsis.

I don’t know when Dave first got into fandom, but I met him at Necronomicon in 1983. I was pushing my infant son Sean in a stroller when someone came up to me and tried to start a conversation. I remember thinking “another fat jerk“. And thus I met my best friend of 40 years.

Dave was a founding member of the Orlando Science Fiction Society and the convention Oasis. We worked together editing the bid progress reports for the 1992 Orlando Worldcon, MagiCon. We ran more convention offices and other departments than I can count.

I will write a better obituary later, as I’m sure others will. I’m too exhausted with grief to do more. Dave was unique and special and wonderful in his own way. There will be many tears shed by many fans and friends, including myself.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Liō series (2006)

Nineteen years ago on this date, one of the most unusual strips to come into existence did so in the form of Mark Tatulli’s Liō. It was very easy to market globally as it had almost no dialogue except that spoken by other people in the parodies that I’ll mention in a minute as Liō and the other characters don’t speak at all, and there were no balloons or captions at all giving it a global appeal.

Liō, who lives with his father and various monsters, i.e. Ishmael a giant squid and Fido a spider, various animals like Cybil a white cat (of course there’s a cat here, a very pushy feline indeed), aliens, lab creations, and even Liō’s hunchbacked assistant. Why there’s even Archie, Liō’s psychopathic ventriloquist’s dummy. Liō’s mother is deceased. Though why she’s deceased is never stated. Definitely not your nuclear family here.

An important aspect of the strip is that it will riff off other strips, and lots of them: Blondie, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes (my favorite strip ever), Cathy, Garfield, Opus, Peanuts, even Pearls Before Swine (definitely not one of my favorite strips I will readily admit) will become fodder for parody by this strip. That’s where the only dialogue is spoken.

Tatulli on the Mr. Media podcast back a decade or so said “It’s really a basic concept. It’s just Liō who lives with his father, and that’s basically it, and whatever I come up with. I set no parameters because I didn’t want to lock myself in. I mean, having no dialogue means that there is going to be no dialogue-driven gags, so I have to leave myself as open as possible to any kind of thing, so anything basically can happen.”

There a transcript of that podcast here as the audio quality of that interview is, as the interviewer admits, rather awful. He says that he got better after that first interview by him.

In multiple interviews, Tatulli has said the two major contemporary influences on his style are Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams.

It’s good at offending people as this strip demonstrates.

Currently, the strip runs daily globally in more than two hundred and fifty papers. Lio is also available in collections, many of them, found in paperback and digital formats. They display rather well on an iPad.

(8) MORE MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 15, 2015 — Mad Max: Fury Road

By Paul Weimer: I briefly mentioned Mad Max Fury Road in my recent retrospective of George Miller, but the movie deserves a bit of its own space as well.

It came out in 2015. Thirty years after the previous entry, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I had figured that the franchise had had its end. The creation of Fury Road was a delight, and, 30 years after seeing the last Mad Max movie in a theater, I vowed to see this one, too. And so I did, one fine afternoon in May.

I was blown away. Tom Hardy makes an excellent Mad Max, taking up Gibson’s old mantle. But the thing that struck me immediately is how little he is a part of his own movie. This is a movie about a community, and about an Imperator (Charlize Theron) and a struggle against patriarchal tyranny. Max is only a piece of his own titular film…and yet it works. What I remember about this film isn’t Max so much as Immortan Joe, and his Boys. And Furiosa. And the War Rig.

And the spectacle. Seeing this on a movie theater screen was revelatory. The scale and size of the movie, especially in the “dust storm” sequence, astonished me. My jaw hit the floor when we got to that sequence. And then we get the musician on the attacking vehicle, and a fantastic action sequence. We get moments of intimacy, and care. And utter tragedy, when Furiosa realizes her paradisiacal home is gone forever. The fiercely anti-patriarchal nature of the script. “We are not things!”

It won six academy awards, and was also up but did not win Best Picture and Best Director. Entirely deserving, Mad Max Fury Road felt (until the recent movie Furiosa) as a capstone to the world of Mad Max. In a way, I feel like it is the one essential Mad Max movie because, as noted above, Mad Max is almost a walk-on in his own titular movie. The movie is much bigger, bolder and larger for not having Max front and center, and possibly why it is so successful. It’s the one essential Mad Max movie. It takes every theme of the previous films, adds new ones and puts it all together in a stunning performance all around.

And the Black and White conversion is fantastic.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics predicts the future.
Frank and Ernest label a book trend.
Ink Pen illustrates failure at Green Lantern power.
Loose Parts corrects a name.
Reality Check doesn’t age well.
Rhymes with Orange runs into staffing issues.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comments on achievements.
Tom the Dancing Bug has a repeat that is still true.
xkcd features a historian joke.

(10) KGB. Ellen Datlow shared her photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB readings for May 14, 2025.

Carol Gyzander and Daryl Gregory read from recent work to a full house, despite the dreary weather.

(11) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 134 of the Octothorpe podcast, “In the Framework of Linear Time”, they “discuss the recent Seattle 2025 controversy, and also read out some letters of comment from various listeners, before getting into the real meat of the podcast: roguelikes.” An uncorrected transcript is here.

A photograph of a yellow square on a mantlepiece. On the yellow square is black text and a red shape with yellow text. The text reads “Corflu 42. 2025 FAAn Awards. Best Immutable Object: Octothorpe”. Text overlaid on the photograph reads ‘Octothorpe 134. “Don’t believe everything you read on ChatGPT.”’

(12) LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS. JustWatch gives reasons to watch “Love, Death + Robots – streaming tv show online”.

JustWatch’s latest Why-To-Watch feature spotlights acclaimed director and animator Tim Miller, the visionary behind Netflix’s genre-defying anthology Love, Death + Robots, which premieres its fourth season today (May 15, 2025). In an exclusive quote shared with JustWatch, Miller speaks to the show’s groundbreaking creative freedom and its potential to convert even the most hesitant viewer into an animation devotee.

The show’s Director Tim Miller says:

This show will make you an animation fan

There’s something for everyone [in “Love, Death + Robots”]. If you want to see artists performing at the top of their game across a variety of genres and styles, and you’re an animation fan, it’s a must-watch. If you’re not an animation fan, this is the show that might make you one.

(13) V’GER LIVES! [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Engineers at NASA say they have successfully revived thrusters aboard Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from our planet, in the nick of time before a planned communications blackout. “Voyager 1: Once ‘dead’ thrusters on the farthest spacecraft from Earth are in action again” at CNN.

Engineers at NASA say they have successfully revived thrusters aboard Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from our planet, in the nick of time before a planned communications blackout.

A side effect of upgrades to an Earth-based antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, the communications pause could have occurred when the probe faced a critical issue — thruster failure — leaving the space agency without a way to save the historic mission. The new fix to the vehicle’s original roll thrusters, out of action since 2004, could help keep the veteran spacecraft operating until it’s able to contact home again next year.

Voyager 1, launched in September 1977, uses more than one set of thrusters to function properly. Primary thrusters carefully orient the spacecraft so it can keep its antenna pointed at Earth. This ensures that the probe can send back data it collects from its unique perspective 15.5 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space, as well as receive commands sent by the Voyager team.

(14) THE KIDS HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT TEKWAR. [Item by N.] Majuular discusses “William Shatner’s TekWar: A Forgotten Franchise in Retrospect”.

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

Joe Haldeman to Receive National Space Society’s Inaugural Clarke Award

Posted on April 8, 2025 by Mike Glyer

The National Space Society will honor sff author Joe Haldeman with the inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award at its 43rd annual International Space Development Conference® (ISDC®) in June. The award is given for inspiring and educating the public about humanity’s journey to space.

(Note, this new award is a different honor than the literary Arthur C. Clarke Award, or those presented by the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.)

Pixel Scroll 4/4/25 Friends, The Idle Scroll Is The Pixel’s Playground

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) 2025 HUGO FINALIST ANNOUNCEMENT SUNDAY. The finalists for the 2025 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer will be revealed by the Seattle Worldcon committee through social media and their website at Noon Pacific on Sunday, April 6.

(2) HOW CHINA TARIFF AFFECTS BOARDGAME MAKERS. Steve Jackson Games’ Daily Illuminator says “Tariffs Are Driving Up Game Prices Now”.

On April 5th, a 54% tariff goes into effect on a wide range of goods imported from China. For those of us who create boardgames, this is not just a policy change. It’s a seismic shift.

At Steve Jackson Games, we are actively assessing what this means for our products, our pricing, and our future plans. We do know that we can’t absorb this kind of cost increase without raising prices. We’ve done our best over the past few years to shield players and retailers from the full brunt of rising freight costs and other increases, but this new tax changes the equation entirely.

Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That’s not a luxury upcharge; it’s survival math.

Some people ask, “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t.

We aren’t the only company facing this challenge. The entire board game industry is having very difficult conversations right now. For some, this might mean simplifying products or delaying launches. For others, it might mean walking away from titles that are no longer economically viable. And, for what I fear will be too many, it means closing down entirely.

Tariffs, when part of a long-term strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing, can be an effective tool. But that only works when there’s a plan to build up the industries needed to take over production. There is no national plan in place to support manufacturing for the types of products we make. This isn’t about steel and semiconductors. This is about paper goods, chipboard, wood tokens, plastic trays, and color-matched ink. These new tariffs are imposing huge costs without providing alternatives, and it’s going to cost American consumers more at every level of the supply chain.

We want to be transparent with our community. This is real: Prices are going up. We’re still determining how much and where.

If you’re frustrated, you’re not alone. We are too. And if you want to help, write to your elected officials. Ask them how these new policies help American creators and small businesses. Because right now, it feels like they don’t.

We’ll keep making games. But we’ll be honest when the road gets harder, because we know you care about where your games come from – and about the people who make them.

— Meredith Placko

(3) MAD PARODIES ANTHOLOGY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Fantagraphics is bringing out “The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s Mad Inspired Satirical Comics” on April 29, 2025.

I have fond memories of reading (and enjoying) Mad’s musicals parodies, I can still visualize the mournful face of a short guy singing (within his speech balloon) “The ghoul that I marry…” for example. Ditto panels from their East Side Story. Here’s an example.

Killzoneblog, with more extensive details and lyric excerpts: “Mad Magazine, RIP” from 2019.

…My big brother bought Mad religiously, and thus I got the issues second hand. I learned about politics from Mad. I knew who Castro and Khrushchev were only because of the cartoon renditions within its pages.

In those years they had literate, educated satirists who were able to skewer sacred cows with a precise wit that appealed to adults, too. And the artists! Here I must call out two of my favorites—Mort Drucker, master caricaturist; and Don Martin, whose mind-bending cartoons blew right past the safe and predictable into uncharted realms of hilarity….

… Of all the talent, though, my absolute favorite was the poet laureate of Mad, Frank Jacobs, who, at age 90, is still among us. Jacobs did the libretti for many of the Mad satires of famous movie musicals. I also have a first edition of his legendary collection, Mad For Better or Verse. The amazing thing about Jacobs is that his satirical songs always scanned perfectly along with the originals. He never hit a bad note.

Here’s an example. One of the first political pieces I remember from Mad is East Side Story, a send-up, of course, of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim musical. It was Jacobs at his best, along with the fantastic caricatures of Drucker…

That also links to a collection for Frank Jacobs’ many MAD parody lyrics along art by Paul Coker Jr. (I’m seeing bunches of used copies of this in the highly-affordable range, in case you’re tempted — Mad for Better of Verse by Jacobs at AbeBooks.)

(4) HE WON’T CROSS THE BORDER. When the Niagara Falls Comic Con happens on the Canadian side of the falls at the end of May, American comics creator Larry Hama won’t be there. An invited guest, he’s concerned he might have trouble getting back into the U.S. afterwards. Hama’s career includes stints as a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, where he wrote the licensed comic book series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. He has also written for the series Wolverine, Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja, and Elektra.

(5) HUMAN AUTHORSHIP REQUIRED FOR COPYRIGHT. “U.S. Copyright Office issues highly anticipated report on copyrightability of AI-generated works” — Reuters has the link.

…The United States Copyright Office (Office) has released Part 2 of its Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence which addresses the copyrightability of AI-generated works (here, opens new tab). It maintains that human authorship and creativity remain essential in the quest to obtain copyright protection for works involving materials created by artificial intelligence.

While Part 1 discusses the legal and policy issues related to artificial intelligence (AI) and digital replicas (here, opens new tab), the recently released “Part 2: Copyrightability” analyzes the type and degree of human contributions required to bring AI generated works within the scope of copyright protection in the United States, as well as the international landscape of how other countries are approaching questions of copyrightability in the AI space and the policy implications of providing additional legal protection to AI-generated material….

… In “Part 2: Copyrightability,” the Office affirms that copyright protection in the United States requires human authorship. The Office points to the foundational principles found in the Copyright Clause in the Constitution and the language of the Copyright Act as interpreted by U.S. courts which grants Congress the authority to “secur[e] for limited times to authors … the exclusive right to their … writings.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8….

(6) GOOD GRIEF. We tend not to link to the Daily Mail here. In case you’ve forgotten why, consider this piece based on the TV documentary Wonderland: Science Fiction in the Atomic Age which Ersatz Culture previewed in yesterday’s Scroll — “CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Science Fiction In The Atomic Age on Sky Arts: The sci-fi ‘psychic’ who predicts everyone will be gay in 100 years”. Here are screencapped excerpts.

(7) ROBERT MCGINNIS (1926-2025). Renowned magazine/paperback artist Robert McGinnis died March 10. He was a member of the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame.

McGinnis is known for his illustrations of more than 1,200 paperback book covers, and over 40 movie posters, including Breakfast at Tiffany’s (his first film poster assignment), Barbarella, and several James Bond and Matt Helm films.

Starting in 2016, McGinnis painted a number of retro-style covers for reissues of books by Neil Gaiman.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 4, 1914 — Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core novel

On this day, one hundred and eleven years ago, the first part of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core novel appeared in All-Star Weekly. This magazine started life as The All-Story Magazine before becoming The All-Story and All-Star Weekly. Burroughs’ serial would run from April 4 to April 25, 1914. It would be first published in book form in hardcover by A. C. McClurg in July, 1922.

It is of course freely available at the usual suspects.

Pellucidar, a hollow Earth story, is very influential with writers using the setting later on, not the least of which is the author who has Tarzan appearing there. Lin Carter’s “Zanthodon” series, beginning with his novel Journey to the Underground World, is considered a homage to this work.

And the Skartaris setting used by Mike Grell in The Warlord series is another homage to Pellucidar in the graphic medium. Justice League Unlimited’s “Chaos at the Earth’s Core” episode would show the hollow Earth in an animated medium. It’s quite wonderful even if, like the Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World series, it has very, very little to do with the source material. That animated series is streaming on Max.

Wiki claims that Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness was largely influenced by this work. Huh? Please someone explain.

The novel has been filmed once as At the Earth’s Core in 1976 as directed by Kevin Connor and starring Doug McClure as David Innes and Peter Cushing as Abner Perry.

It fared badly among critics and audience reviewers alike at Rotten Tomatoes, garnering just thirty-three and thirty-four percent respectively. My favorite critic comment? This one by Stephen Randall of the Los Angeles Free Press: “It’s the type of movie you can send your kids to, but only if you don’t much like them.” Ouch. Really ouch.

If you really must, and have nothing else at all else to watch, it is streaming on Prime. Yes, I did watch it with the Suck Fairy. Neither of us was at all happy we did. Ellen Kushner’s hot chocolate was needed.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Close to Home encounters side effects.
MythTickle has the historic video.

(10) RINGO AWARDS TAKING NOMINATIONS. Public nominations for the Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards – the Ringo Awards – opened today and will through June 19.

The Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards is an annual celebration of the creativity, skill, and fun of comics. The awards return for their ninth year on Saturday, October 18, 2025 as part of the fan- and pro-favorite convention, the Baltimore Comic-Con.

Unlike other professional industry awards, the Ringo Awards include fan participation in the nomination process along with an esteemed jury of comics professionals.

More than 20 categories will be celebrated with top honors being given at the awards ceremony in October.

Fan and pro-jury voting are tallied independently, and the combined nomination ballot is compiled by the Ringo Awards Committee. The top two fan choices become nominees, and the jury’s selections fill the remaining three slots for five total nominees per category. Ties may result in more than five nominees in a single category.

(11) WEIRD FANTASY BEGINS. “75 Years Ago, One of the Most Iconic Sci-Fi Comic Series Made Its Debut” – the anniversary is celebrated by CBR.com.

Who inspired the launch of Weird Fantasy?

As noted, Gaines was a very open-minded guy, and so Harry Harrison, who was working in an art partnership with Wallace Wood (Harrison would pencil the comics, and Wood would ink them, although sometimes the lines blurred between who was penciling and who was inking. The two had first met while both were studying with artist Burne Hogarth, but they didn’t start working together until Wood had already started working at EC on his own), approached Gaines about EC doing science fiction comics. He gave Gaines some science fiction books to read, and Gaines was quickly hooked, and so he approved the new series.

The series was edited by Al Feldstein, though, who was becoming Gaines’ top editor/creative partner at the company. Harrison had no control over the idea he inspired, so he and Wood would actually split up their partnership by the end of 1950, and Harrison would go off to become a popular science fiction author….

(12) ARTEMIS II PATCH ART. “NASA’s Artemis II astronauts reveal moon mission patch to honor ‘AII’” at CollectSPACE.

The next astronauts to fly to the moon now have a mission patch to represent their history-making journey.

NASA on Thursday (April 3) debuted the official Artemis II insignia, its first emblem for a moon-bound crew in more than 50 years. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen will wear the patch when they launch on the Artemis II mission, currently targeted for no later than April 2026.

“This patch designates the mission as ‘AII,’ signifying not only the second major flight of the Artemis campaign, but also an endeavor of discovery that seeks to explore for all and by all,” wrote the crew in their description of the mission patch.

The emblem includes design elements that symbolize the past, present and future of human space exploration.

Borrowing the same outline as NASA’s Artemis program patch (as well as the shape of the “A” in “AII” and the red trajectory line forming the crossbar of the “A” and the path between Earth and the moon), the border frames an artistic depiction of “Earthrise.” The now-iconic image of our home planet hovering above the lunar horizon was captured by the Apollo 8 crew, the first humans to fly to the moon.

The Artemis II crew will not enter lunar orbit like Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders did in December 1968, but will share in seeing some of the same sights as they did while flying beyond the moon and then looping back to return to Earth….

(13) LOCH NESS CANDID CAMERA. “Scientists Recover Underwater Camera Designed to Snap Photos of Loch Ness Monster” reports Futurism.

In 1970, a cryptid-obsessed biologist placed several cameras inside plastic trap boxes and sent them down to the depths of Scotland’s Loch Ness in hopes of finally capturing compelling evidence of its storied monster — and now, it appears that one of those cameras has been recovered by sheer accident.

As USA Today and other outlets report, one of the cameras deployed by University of Chicago biologist Roy Mackal some 55 years ago was discovered during a test dive of an unmanned research submersible in the famed lake in the Scottish Highlands.

Specifically, the camera trap’s mooring system appeared to have gotten tangled up in the propellers for the submersible, which was named, much to the chagrin of the British government, “Boaty McBoatface” by the public in a viral poll in 2016…

… When researchers developed the Instamatic’s film, they unfortunately didn’t find any photos of Nessie, though they did recover some beautiful, eerie photos of the deep, dark lake…

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

Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #90, A Column of Unsolicited Opinions

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Mike Glyer

THE 2024 HUGO AWARDS CEREMONY IN GLASGOW SCOTLAND, A PHOTO ESSAY

By Chris M. Barkley:

(1-3) Lining Up for the Hugo Awards Ceremony outside of the Armadillo, 7:00 pm local time.

(4) Artist Maurizo Manzieri (right) and Silvio Sosio (left), publisher and editor of the magazine Robot and the online magazine Fantascienza.com, outside of the Armadillo, 7:00 pm.

(5) Hugo Ceremony Auditorium Stage.

(6) Hugo Awards Ceremony poster.

(7) Gay and Joe Haldeman.

Forty-two more photos follow the jump!

Continue reading →

Gregory Benford at Nebula 2024: Photos by Richard Man

Posted on June 12, 2024 by Mike Glyer

By Richard Man: One of the pleasant surprises with Nebula 2024 was that Dr. Gregory Benford was there. Dr. Benford suffered a stroke in December 2022, but he appears to be recovering well and quite sharp.

Gay Haldeman, Naomi Fisher, Joe Haldeman, and Gregory Benford (seated)

Richard Man, Gay Haldeman, Naomi Fisher, Joe Haldeman, John Hertz, and Gregory Benford (seated)

Journey Planet 76 – The American War in Vietnam

Posted on December 7, 2023 by Mike Glyer

Journey Planet 76 – The American War in Vietnam
7th December 2023. Ho Chi Minh City.

On December 7, 1968 PFC Joe W. Haldeman wrote “Notes from the Jolly Green Jungle” about his experiences in Vietnam, which first appeared in the fanzine ODD #20.

55 years later this, plus his “Tales from the Jolly Green Jungle,” which appeared in ODD #19, are reprinted in the new issue of Journey Planet which looks at the American War in Vietnam.

Journey Planet co-editor James Bacon writes from the War Remembrance Museum in Ho Chi Minh City:

“It is important to pay respects to those who suffered so much, and so I am here in the War Remnants Museum, where so much time and effort is spent educating and sharing the horror of the American War in Vietnam. Whole sections are dedicated to war crimes and the effects of the use of Agent Orange by the U.S. These consequences are shown through exhibits and through paintings by children. It is a hard and challenging series of documentations. There is a requiem and photo exhibition for journalists and soldiers alike; there is acknowledgment of those who fought. As much as there is about Lt Calley’s role in the Mỹ Lai massacre, and Senator Bob Kerrey, who was a Navy SEAL and part of the atrocities at Thanh Phong Village, the museum also notes the Veterans Against the War, soldiers who marched for peace, and those like Lawerence Manley Colburn and Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. who fought in their own way to stop atrocities by comrades.”

“This issue of Journey Planet looks at the American War in Vietnam and its connections to fans and professionals as we consider the impact of the War. As I sit here among the artifacts of war, and contemplate it, remembering it, aware of the unbelievable losses, the sadness, the horror and the injuries and death, I am grateful to the fans who have allowed us to share their stories and memories of the War. These are personal and important stories. It is right that we confront and consider our history, and it is right that we confront and consider the experiences of the Vietnamese–those who lived through the War and those who left and those who extensively wrote about it. We started this issue five years ago, and now, at 104 pages, with dozens of people helping bring it together, we hope that you find the issue of interest.

“We look thoughtfully at Vietnamese voices, and how they shared their experience through writing and film. We discuss the works of novelists Doan Phuong Nguyen, Aliette de Boddard, Lê Minh Khuê, Dương Thu Hương, and Hoa Pham; filmmaker Eirene Tran Donohue; graphic novel writer/artists GB Tran, Clement Baloup, Marcellino Truong, Thi Bui, and Minh Lê as we carefully consider how the War is portrayed and shared.”

Along with these Vietnamese voices, they share the writings and art of Joe Haldeman and David Thayer from their time of service in Vietnam, along with excerpts of Dick Eney’s fanzine, “Curse you Red Baron!” which he published from Saigon while he was stationed there for over five years. Bacon says, “We are honored to share first-hand accounts of these vivid experiences with readers.”

Fans have taken the time to share very personal matters, writing about their family members, some of whom were lost in the War, as they contemplate carefully the personal impacts. Sara Felix, Errick Nunally, Guy Lillian, III, and co-editor Christopher J. Garcia have shared articles about their family members.

The impact of the War on comics is considered as they look at works by Vietnamese comic book creators Nguyễn Thành Phong, Khánh Dương, Huu Do Chi, Nguyễn Khánh Dương, Can Tiểu Hy, and Võ Hùng Kiệt (ViVi). They reprint State Representative Julian Bond’s anti-war comic, Vietnam, which was first published in 1967, look at Snoopy and Charles Shultz during the time of the War, chat to comic writer Garth Ennis, write about Joe Kubert’s connection to Vietnam, and look at how DC Comics and Marvel reacted through their publications to the War at the time, while also making recommendations.

This issue contains a wide selection of art by Keith Burns, Sara Felix, Nguyễn Thanh Phong, Khánh Dương, Guillermo Ortego, Teddy Harvia, Joe Haldeman, Col Art, Arnie Fenner, Juan Gimenez, Võ Hùng Kiệt, TG Lewis, Huy Oánh, Marcia Rosler, Bill Rotsler, and Rick Swan.

With extensive articles by Brenda Noiseux among many contributors, this issue saw Allison Hartman Adams join Christopher J. Garcia and James Bacon as co-editor in this broad look at the American War in Vietnam.

Download the issue here: Journey Planet issue 76.

Table of Contents

Editors’ Note
The Jolly Green Jungle Introduction by Chris Garcia
Tales From the Jolly Green Jungle by Joe Haldeman
How Vietnam Touched My Life by Sara Felix
A Vietnam Imagined by Errick Nunnally
”The Smile of Victory”: The Women of the American War in Vietnam by Allison Hartman Adams
The Horrors of War and Other Morbid Cliches by David Thayer
No Capacity for More by Brenda Noiseux
Snoopy: A Metaphor, Mascot, or Comfort Puppy by James Bacon
Apocalypse: The Eyes of Doom by Jim O’Brien
Truyện Tranh: Piracy, Crowdfunding, and the Growth of Vietnamese Comics by Allison Hartman Adams
Hunter S. Thompson: Too Much Tension and Too Little News, by James Bacon
Lê Minh Khuê’s Postwar Fiction by Allison Hartman Adams
The Forever War and Coming Home by Chuck Serface
Little Saigon: How the Vietnam War transformed San Jose Cuisine by Chris Garcia
The Kubert Connection by James Bacon
To a Brighter Future by Brenda Noiseux
Star Wars: Is It an Allegory for the Vietnam War? by James Bacon
(Re)discovered loss by Brend Noiseux
What the War Left Behind by David Ferguson
A Not So Private Little War: Star Trek’s Muddled Vietnam War Protest Episode by Ryan Britt
‘I love the smell of burning flesh in the morning. It tastes like cooked breakfast’: Teddy Bears’ Picnic and Britain’s Vietnam War by Jim O’Brien
It’s Not a War Story: Filmmaking and rebirth in modern Vietnam by Allison Hartman Adams
Advertising for Vietnam by James Bacon
Martha Rosler – Bringing the War Home by Chris Garcia
The American War in Vietnam in Marvel Comics During the Vietnam War up to 1975 by James Bacon
Dương Thu Hương’s A Novel Without A Name by Allison Hartman Adams
Box me up and ship me home: Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam by Jim O’Brien
DC Comics and the American War in Vietnam by James Bacon
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Chris Garcia
Comics of the Vietnamese Diaspora by Allison Hartman Adams
Curse You Red Baron! by Dick Eney
Vietnam Comics Recommendations by James Bacon
Introduction to Vietnam by Julian Bond and T.G. Lewis by James Bacon
Vietnam by Julian Bond and T.G. Lewis (illustrator)
War Fiction, A True Story by David Thayer
Garth Ennis talks about Vietnam with James Bacon
Gordon, Haldeman, Band and the Robot Jox by Peppard Saltine
My Cousin Jimmy by Guy H. Lillian III
In the End by Allison Hartman Adams
A Brief Note from Chris
Enditorial by James Bacon
JP 72: Operation Motorman Letters of Comment

Pixel Scroll 12/6/23 For The Scroll Is Hollow And I’ve Touched A Pixel

Posted on December 6, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) END OF AN ERA. Kristine Kathryn Rusch signed off her influential weekly business blog on November 22. “Business Musings: All Good Things”.

…I wasn’t that desparate in 2009 and I’m certainly not that desperate now. As I noted in some recent blogs, my books are all in print. The books of my traditional friends? Not in print at all. Or if they are in print, my friends aren’t making a dime off of them.

It’s discouraging, but as I’ve seen over the past few years, people have dug in. It doesn’t matter that traditional writers now have to get a “real” job to make a living. Or that the changes in indie have made it possible for those of us who understand business to make a good living while writing what we love.

We’ve changed.

The world has changed.

And honestly, I’m not that interested in writing about the publishing industry weekly. There is no publishing industry anymore. There are different aspects of book publishing, all of which fascinate me, and none of which make me want to pontificate for a few thousand words every single week.

Then there’s my writing itself. In the spring, I made a list of the books clamoring to get out of my brain. The series that need finishing right now, the standalones I’ve been dying to write, the books I’ve intended to write since the turn of the century if not longer, as well as the short stories that rise to the top of my to-do list because I read an inspiring article or saw an amazing play.

I will have time to write all of that if I double down on my fiction writing. Or triple down. When I write fiction, I write a minimum of 1,000 new words per hour. The blog takes a minimum of 10 hours per week from idea to page, including the audio (which is maybe 20 minutes of that 10 hours). I love the audio. It’s fun.

The blog, not so much.

In fact it had become such a drag that I put it off until the last minute, and then have to give up even more fiction writing time to get it down.

And while the blog makes me more money per month than someone would earn making minimum wage (not counting all the nonfiction books I get out of it or the other perks), I could make more money if I write three novellas a year, whether I sell them to traditional markets or not.

The blog is self-sustaining financially, but it’s actively costing me money. My earnings as a fiction writer have gone up dramatically in the past fourteen years….

… Thirty dollars per hour writing a blog post that has little resale value or $1000 per hour writing stories that can sell for decades. It’s really a no brainer….

… Except…I do like noting things about the publishing industry, from time to time. Some things catch my attention and I want to discuss them. I will do that on my Patreon page, which I am not shutting down.

I’ll be doing mostly short posts pointing out an article that writers might want to pay attention to, or commenting on some major change. I’m not going to do a long essay, unless I feel inspired….

(2) BUMPER CROP. Slashfilm reveals “Syfy Spent Thousands On Leonard Nimoy And William Shatner Star Trek Ads You Probably Missed”.

…Barry Schulman had been with the Sci-Fi Channel since its start, and he remembers the glory days in detail. He was interviewed for the indispensable book “The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams,” edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, and he remembered the production of what was to be one of the more ambitious advertising tie-ins the network could have possibly received. It seems that the Sci-Fi Channel wrote and paid for a series of extended “Star Trek”-inspired interview-style infomercials to be hosted by Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner — Spock and Kirk themselves! — to run after individual episodes.

Sadly, due to poor ratings, the ads were only sparsely seen….

Of course, programming “Star Trek” presented a technical problem. In the late 1960s, when the hour-long “Star Trek” originally aired on NBC, the broadcast ad breaks only totaled about 10 minutes, leaving 50 minutes of show. By the early 1990s, ad time had grown to 16 minutes, leaving only 44 minutes of show. That would mean any new broadcast of “Star Trek” would, by advertisers’ decree, need to be shaved down by six minutes.

Shulman’s solution was to expand the “Star Trek” time slot from a 60-minute span to a 90-minute span, including all 50 minutes of “Trek” as well as whole ad breaks. He’d then pad out the remainder of the 90-minute slot with Shatner/Nimoy intro/outro segments. Brilliant….

… The good news is that you can actually watch all of these bumpers with Shatner and Nimoy on YouTube.

Here’s the video for the original Star Trek pilot, “The Cage”.

(3) FANAC.ORG ZOOM. The next Fan History Zoom session is scheduled for Saturday, December 9 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. If you would like to join, drop a note to [email protected].

APAS EVERYWHERE – Fred Lerner, Christina Lake, Amy Thomson and Tom Whitmore.

Since the first FAPA mailing in 1937, APAs have been a part of fannish life. There are topic specific apas, local apas, general interest apas, convention committee apas, letter substitutes and doubtless many more. Our panelists, all long time APA members, talk about their experiences with APA life: Why did you join the APA(s)? Did you APA live up to your expectations and why? Tell us about the APAs you’ve been part of, and tell us what makes them unique. (You can tell us about APAs you weren’t part of too!) Talk about the way the members of the APA related to each other, and the nature of that community. Compare the experience of an online community like LiveJournal or Facebook with your APA experience. The Cult was called the “13 Nastiest Bastards in Fandom”. Was it? What feels different about womens’ APAs? Are APAs now obsolete? Would you join a new APA today?

Future Zoom History sessions:

January 20, 2024 – 2PM EST, 11AM PST and 7PM London GMT – An Interview with Joe Green, fan, s-f writer, NASA spokesman and educator.
February 17, 2024 – 7PM EST, 11 AM Feb 18 Melbourne AEDT – Wrong Turns on the Wallaby Track Part 2, with Leigh Edmonds and Perry Middlemiss
March 16, 2024 – 3PM EDT, 2PM CDT, 7PM London (GMT) – The Women Fen Don’t See – Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner, and Leah Zeldes Smith

(4) THE DOG IN THE NIGHT. “Arthur Conan Doyle secretly resented his Sherlock Holmes creation, says historian” reports the Guardian.

Arthur Conan Doyle secretly hated his creation Sherlock Holmes and blamed the cerebral detective character for denying him recognition as the author of highbrow historical fiction, according to the historian Lucy Worsley.

Doyle was catapulted from “obscurity to worldwide fame” after his crime stories began appearing in a magazine in 1891, Worsley writes in the Radio Times. Eleven years later he was awarded a knighthood.

Yet “beneath the surface he was a discontented man”, according to Worsley….

(5) MAJOR SFF EVENTS IN EUROPE IN 2024. [Item by Dave Lally.] The year 2024 has a number of major SF+F events, in Europe, approaching (and all dates given herein are inclusive). And this info is primarily for those from outside the area (and I trust this data is of help).

Here is major SF+F event No 1 (and in the English Midlands of the UK):

EASTERCON 2024 — Fri 29 March – Mon 1 April we have, in the UK, Eastercon / “Levitation” (the UK’s annual National SF Con: Telford, just north of Birmingham).

[And NOTA BENE, post Eastercon on Thu 4 April, there is the very long standing “One Tun” Central London SF fen meeting (Asimov came in 1974). Upstairs (private) bar 1800-> closing. THE BISHOPS FINGER (pub), London EC1A 9JR (for internet maps). Real craft ale/hot food. Order both on Ground floor. Food delivered later up to you. Nearest Tube: Barbican. Nearest Rail : Farringdon. Nearest Elizabeth Line (esp from Heathrow) : Farringdon ( /// Barbican exit!!/// ). All welcome: whether local-to-London or non locals just passing thru!! ]

Nearest UK Rail Station to 2024 Eastercon : Telford {UK Rail Station code: TFC}. There are Express InterCity trains from London Euston (if first visiting there, pre-Eastercon) but one should then change trains at Birmingham International { Station code: BHI } NOT Birmingham New St (and see below why, esp re TfW trains).

Nearest Airport : Birmingham UK [ IATA code : BHX ], then take the free air-rail shuttle from that Airport, to the local, next door train Station : Birmingham International (as above). There, catch a north-bound train to Telford.

[If esp travelling from the States, it might be useful to fly to Shannon or to Dublin and then transfer onto a more local flight to BHX. Why? Cos on the return journey from either of those 2 Irish airports (and thanks to JFK +60 years ago), one pre-clears US formalities at those departure locations (the only two so far in Europe, which have them) and then one leaves one’s US airport as a standard, domestic passenger!]

Especially useful, re UK train travel from { BHI } above, is the long-distance train (run by Transport for Wales: TfW) which always starts from that Rail Station (usual final destination: ABERYSTWYTH, in mid-Wales). So seats to Telford are usually plentily available thereon, at that Station. Other northbound trains from { BHI } may only go to nearby Birmingham New St (in that City’s central area) or onto Wolverhampton, where one may otherwise then have to change trains anyway. And those other trains may get heavily used by Birmingham commuters, who may block seats for longer-journey-travelling passengers.

And UK rail data (times, fares etc) are available on: nationalrail(dot)co(dot)uk. The “green” way to travel..!!

[By the way, that TfW train eventually goes, on splitting much further up the line, past Portmeirion (!), tho that famous SF (Prisoner) site is much, much further away in North West Wales (oh and see LocationCon data I will provide later, re the proposed visit –on Tue 6 August– to that venue, pre- and on the way to, Glasgow Worldcon 2024).]

Eastercon 2024’s website : Levitation 2024 — The 2024 British National Science Fiction Convention.

( And, as always, non-UK fen are very welcome indeed at all SF+F events in Europe, incl the UK’s annual NatSFCon- Eastercon..)

(6) LIKE SAND THROUGH AN HOURGLASS. Inverse is warming up the audience for the release of the next Dune movie on March 1, 2024. “’Dune 2’s First 10 Minutes Restores a Classic Scene From The Book — With a Twist”. Spoilers at the link.

When Dune: Part One hit in 2021, fans immediately noticed one change from both the original 1965 novel and the 1984 feature film. Instead of an opening narration from Princess Irulan, Dune: Part One began with a voiceover from Chani (Zendaya). This inversion smartly centered the story of Dune: Part One from the perspective of the Fremen, at least partially. And now, with Dune: Part Two hitting in 2024, the opening of the film will honor the opening of the original book. But this time, the content of the narration will be decidedly different.

Minor spoilers ahead for the first 10 minutes of Dune: Part Two.

At CCXP 2023 in São Paulo, Brazil, on December 3, 2023, during a Dune: Part Two panel, audiences were treated to several preview scenes, including the first 10 minutes of the movie. Back in 2021, the first 10 minutes of Part One were also teased in special screenings, so this kind of preview seems to now be a tradition ahead of the launch of a new Dune movie.

(7) MISSING A NUMBER. Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw was there: “The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks review – a gobsmackingly huge space spectacle”.

Tom Hanks is the narrator and co-writer of this colossal and immersive multimedia family entertainment event or next-level school trip, about Nasa’s historic Apollo moon landings and the planned new Artemis missions. It’s taking place at Lightroom, the innovative new digital art performance venue at London’s Kings Cross – recently the site of Bigger And Closer, an immersive show about David Hockney.

With the audience gathered in the darkened arena-type area, seated on little upholstered double-stools dotted about, Tom Hanks’s likably folksy and nerdily enthusiastic voiceover booms out telling us that this floor space is the size of Mission Control, Houston. Soon, gobsmackingly huge photo images of the moon’s surface and our own planet Earth are flashed up around the walls, also great film footage of the astronauts bouncing and floating, and all with the cathedral vastness and crystal clarity that they have probably always deserved but never before got from TV screens or even movie screens….

… But the strangest omission is the lack of any mention of Apollo 13, the near-disaster rescued with magnificent ingenuity and resourcefulness by the astronauts and ground crews, which Tom Hanks himself almost single-handedly turned into a key moment of American history with his performance as astronaut Jim Lovell in Ron Howard’s film.

Apollo 13 is, after all, why Tom Hanks is narrating this….

(8) NORMAN LEAR (1922-2023). The resume of TV’s Norman Lear even included a few items of genre interest. “Norman Lear, Whose Comedies Changed the Face of TV, Is Dead at 101” in the New York Times.

Norman Lear, the television writer and producer who introduced political and social commentary into situation comedy with “All in the Family” and other shows, proving that it was possible to be topical as well as funny while attracting millions of viewers, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 101.

In 2003, he helped write a few episodes of “South Park,” the taboo-breaking animated series that was the “All in the Family” of its day. (The show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, have said that their bile-spewing character Eric Cartman is partly based on Archie Bunker.)

Mr. Lear turned his attention back to movies in 1982, when he, Mr. Yorkin and Jerry Perenchio bought Avco Embassy Pictures. The newly renamed Embassy Communications released films, including … the acclaimed mock documentary “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984), directed by the “All in the Family” alumnus Rob Reiner.

In 1985… Mr. Lear founded Act III Communications, named to signify the third act of his life. Act III’s most notable productions were two other Rob Reiner films, “Stand by Me” (1986) and “The Princess Bride” (1987)….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1975 –Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. Anyone here who has not read Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War should now leave. Really should as I’m going to discuss it.

It was published by St. Martin’s Press forty-eight years ago with the cover illustration not being credited by ISFFB.

It would win a Hugo at MidAmeriCon, plus a Nebula and a Ditmar, and be nominated for a Prometheus Award.

Haldeman said in a Guardian review of 2011 that “It’s about Vietnam, because that was the war the author was in”.

It was sixteen years after Starship Troopers came out and I thought that Haldeman said it was written as a reaction to that novel but the Guardian quote contradicts that. The reviewer there thinks that much of the look and feel of the book comes from Heinlein’s novel but I didn’t feel that was true. Do you?

According to the Authors note to my epub Open Road edition of 2008, “This is the definitive edition of The Forever War.” It looks like a novella titled “You can never go back again” that Bova wouldn’t publish at Analog because he thought it was “too downbeat” and therefore wasn’t in the first edition is now included in the middle section of the novel.

Now for its excellent Beginning…

‘Tonight we’re going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.’ The guy who said that was a sergeant who didn’t look five years older than me. So if he’d ever killed a man in combat, silently or otherwise, he’d done it as an infant.

I already knew eighty ways to kill people, but most of them were pretty noisy. I sat up straight in my chair and assumed a look of polite attention and fell asleep with my eyes open. So did most everybody else. We’d learned that they never scheduled anything important for these after-chop classes.

The projector woke me up and I sat through a short tape showing the ‘eight silent ways.’ Some of the actors must have been brainwipes, since they were actually killed. After the tape a girl in the front row raised her hand. The sergeant nodded at her and she rose to parade rest. Not bad looking, but kind of chunky about the neck and shoulders. Everybody gets that way after carrying a heavy pack around for a couple of months.

‘Sir’—we had to call sergeants ‘sir’ until graduation—‘most of those methods, really, they looked … kind of silly.’

‘For instance?’ ‘Like killing a man with a blow to the kidneys, from an entrenching tool. I mean, when would you actually have only an entrenching tool, and no gun or knife? And why not just bash him over the head with it?’

‘He might have a helmet on,’ he said reasonably.

‘Besides, Taurans probably don’t even have kidneys!’

He shrugged. ‘Probably they don’t.’ This was 1997, and nobody had ever seen a Tauran; hadn’t even found any pieces of Taurans bigger than a scorched chromosome. ‘But their body chemistry is similar to ours, and we have to assume they’re similarly complex creatures. They must have weaknesses, vulnerable spots. You have to find out where they are.

‘That’s the important thing.’ He stabbed a finger at the screen. ‘Those eight convicts got caulked for your benefit because you’ve got to find out how to kill Taurans, and be able to do it whether you have a megawatt laser or an emery board.” She sat back down, not looking too convinced.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 6, 1911 — Ejler Jakobsson. (Died 1984.) His first publications, edited with his wife, were The Octopus and The Scorpion in 1939 which were definitely of a pulpish nature.

He has responsibility for Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories briefly before they shut down production due to paper shortages. When Super Science Stories was revived in 1949, Jakobsson was named editor until the magazine again (and finally) ceased publication in 1951. I’ve never read that magazine. Who here has?

He was an editor for Graphic Books in the 1950s. Jakobsson returned to editing in 1969, when he took over Galaxy and If, succeeding Frederik Pohl. He worked to make the magazines more up to date according to SFE with the help of Judy-Lynn del Rey and Lester del Rey. He left the magazines in 1974 and was succeeded by Jim Baen.

SFE says that “During Jakobsson’s editorship the following anthologies were published (his name did not appear on their title pages): The Best from Galaxy Vol I (anth 1972) edited by The Editors of Galaxy Magazine; The Best from If (anth 1973) edited anonymously; The Best from Galaxy Vol II (anth 1974) edited by The Editors of Galaxy Magazine; and The Best from If Vol II (anth 1974) edited by The Editors of If Magazine.” None of these are currently in-print.

He also wrote a handful of short fiction according to ISFDB, all with Edith Jakobsson. The titles, such as “Corpses on Parades”, “Coming of The Unborn Things” and “Satan’s Toy Monsters”, suggest they were horror writers. These were never gathered into a collection.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Speed Bump shows you can’t fool a robot.

(12) FAN MAIL FOR FLASH GORDON. “1980’s FLASH GORDON: Movie of the (Wonderfully) Impossible!” at 13^th Dimension.

…It’s a famous story by now—one of the great What If?s in all of pop culture—that in the early 1970s, George Lucas tried to buy the rights to Flash Gordon. His failure to do so led (indirectly) to the creation of Star Wars, and popular entertainment would never be the same. De Laurentiis had first wanted Federico Fellini(!) to direct, then moved onto Nicolas Roeg(!!), finally settling on journeyman director Mike Hodges and screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. (who, besides helping develop the Batman TV series, wrote the 1976 King Kong remake for De Laurentiis). With a budget of $27 million (around $100 million today), De Laurentiis was, as usual, going big.

He’s a miracle!

After a magnificently exciting opening credits scene (scored to Queens’ iconic, propulsive theme music, and peppered with art from the comic strip), we jump right to the action—by the 20-minute mark we’re already on Mongo.

Every sci-fi/fantasy film post-Star Wars bears its influence, visually and tonally. But De Laurentiis’ personality was still so big and forceful that Flash Gordon hits a sweet spot between what a big budget, modern sci-fi movie was supposed to feel like in 1980, and the more idiosyncratic, phantasmagorical, Pop Art feel of the 1960s. Almost everything in Flash Gordon is a practical effect—the retro-futuristic spaceships and weaponry, the Art Deco sets, and the costumes that look mighty uncomfortable for the actors to wear….

(13) SUBMISSION WINDOW. Chris Barkley wanted to make sure I didn’t miss “The Magazine of Horror” by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, published in 2020 by Apex Magazine. I’m glad he sent the link.

… PS: as an aside, I was wondering and didn’t want to add something so silly to the main body of my cover letter. It’s silly really. The worries of a newbie writer. I heard that your magazine is the greatest horror magazine and will only publish the greatest horror story at a time, and in the lifetime of the published writer, will publish no other story, until the accepted writer expires. Also, that should a story be accepted, the current story is deleted and the displaced writer dies. What is worse, I heard that all those rejected by your magazine also die. This is of course all just silly rumours. I notice that your magazine only has one story on it, despite its ridiculously high pay rate of a hundred thousand dollars per story…

(14) DAY AND NIGHT, YOU ARE THE ONE. “Chronobiologist and Nobel Laureate in Medicine Michael Rosbash: ‘Lack of sunlight during the day is worse than electric lighting at night’” in El País USA Edition.

… Q. One of the things that flies and privileged people have in common is napping and sleeping at night. What is the biological purpose of sleep and of these intermediate pauses during the day?

A. We do not know. Memories are consolidated during sleep and neuronal morphology is modified during sleep. All that happens, but I do not think that is the major purpose of sleep. We do not know what fly and human sleep, for example, have in common. My guess is that it is related to metabolism, such as recharging ATP [adenosine triphosphate, a key energy molecule in cells]. The brain is the largest consumer of ATP; perhaps there is a metabolic need for recharging….

(15) ALL GLORY IS FLEETING. The New York Times tells how “George Santos Uses Cameo Videos to Make, of All Things, an Honest Buck”. (You can view his Cameo videos here: George Santos.) (Though it’s possible Bowen Yang is an even better Santos, as proven by his imitation in Saturday Night Live’s “George Santos Expelled Cold Open” last weekend.)

…Three days after George Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives, he sat in front of a camera to address the American people.

Well, a few American people. The ones willing to pay Mr. Santos — the former congressman who stands accused on federal fraud charges of stealing money from campaign donors for personal expenses — hundreds of dollars a pop on the video app Cameo.

“Hey, Sarah,” Mr. Santos said in one video. “Sometimes work sucks. I mean, let’s talk about bad days, huh? Last Friday wasn’t so great for me, either.”

It was a rare moment of truth for Mr. Santos, who lied to voters and his colleagues about where he went to high school, going to college, being a volleyball star, working on Wall Street, having Jewish ancestry and family ties to the Holocaust and the Sept. 11 attacks, among other things.

There was a time when Mr. Santos expressed regret for some of those falsehoods. His videos on Cameo suggest that time has passed.

“Hey, Harper! I love that you are such a dedicated student at N.Y.U.,” Mr. Santos says in one, before pausing, smirking and chuckling. “You know,” he adds, cocking his eyebrows: “My … not-so-real M.B.A.”

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. I don’t think dogs are rules lawyers by nature the way Ryan George makes them out to be in “When Dogs See A Christmas Tree”, but that’s where the humor comes from in this video. Tell the internet to go fetch it for you.

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

File 770

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Tag Archives: Joe Haldeman

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