26 It’s A File O’clock World When The Pixel Scrolls

Posted on May 19, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) WAS IT ALL FOR CLICKS? Earlier today Literary Hub reported Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk said she used AI while writing her recent novel. Tokarczuk (full quote here) said in part —

“…I bought myself the highest, advanced version of one language model, and I can be deeply shocked by how fantastically it expands my horizons and deepens my creative thinking….”

But Tokarczuk told LitHub they took it the wrong way and says she used AI for research but not to write her text: “Olga Tokarczuk has responded to the controversy over her reputed use of AI.”

After a recent interview with Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk made the rounds on social media implying she had used AI to write her recent novel, the novelist shared a statement with Lit Hub via her publisher, addressing the controversy:

“Like any other conversation, remarks made before a live audience at a public event can be incorrectly understood.

“I did not write my forthcoming book – to be published in fall 2026 in Polish – either using AI or with anyone else. For several decades I have written alone.

“I state briefly and firmly:

“1. I make use of artificial intelligence on the same principles as most people in the world – I treat it as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts. Whenever I use this tool I additionally verify the information. Just as I have done for several decades by reading books and by exploring libraries and archives.

“2. None of my texts, including the novel that will appear in Polish this fall, has been written with the help of artificial intelligence – except for using it as a tool for faster preliminary research.

“3. I am sometimes inspired by dreams, but before this sentence too is cornered and torn to pieces by the experts, I hasten to report that they are my own dreams.”

Olga Tokarczuk, May 19, 2026, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

(2) SLF ANNOUNCES WINNER OF 2026 BOSE GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation has named the winner of the 2026 A.C. Bose Grant: Shahriar Shaams.

Shaams’ winning piece is A Night With the Spy.

Shahriar Shaams is a writer and translator from Dhaka, Bangladesh. His works have appeared in Singapore Unbound, Small World City and in the anthology Bridges Not Borders. He is a 2024 fellow of Write Beyond Borders and was nonfiction editor of the martial-arts themed literary magazine Clinch. He enjoys writing about boxing, jinns, and overinvolved mothers. He can be reached on instagram @shahriar.shaams

In 2019, the Speculative Literature Foundation and DesiLit co-sponsored the A.C. Bose Grant in memory of Ashim Chandra Bose, a lover of books—especially science fiction and fantasy. Bose’s children, Rupa Bose and Gautam Bose, founded the grant to honor the legacy of the worlds their father opened up for them. The donors hope that this grant will help develop work that will let young people imagine different worlds and possibilities.

(3) ONE THUMB UP, ONE THUMB DOWN. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The consensus decision is in. And the decision is…there is no consensus. “’The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Splits Critics: ‘Most Boring Star Wars’ vs. ‘Best in Decades’” according to The Hollywood Reporter. (Review excerpts at the link.)

The official review embargo was lifted Tuesday morning on Disney‘s first Star Wars film in seven years.

The verdict? The first batch of reviews are decidedly split on the Jon Favreau film. Several reviewers praise the Disney+ show’s big-screen debut as a fun, stand-alone adventure that benefits from Pedro Pascal’s laconic delivery as the helmeted bounty hunter, the cuteness of Grogu, and a dynamic score by composer Ludwig Göransson. The film’s snowy opening sequence — which has been shown in advance for fans at special screenings — is cited as a particular high point.

Yet others are slamming the film as unworthy of the iconic franchise, accusing the movie of having low stakes, uninteresting supporting characters (including Jeremy Allen White’s Rotta the Hutt and Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward) and tiresome CG-addled action sequences. While the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score is still being tabulated, the film currently sits at 64 percent positive — just above the “Fresh” cutoff. The film opens May 22….

(4) WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? “Joanne Rock on Suspense and the Allure of Masked Characters” at CrimeReads.

Batman wears a mask. So do Zorro and Darth Vader. All three of those characters embraced masks for very different reasons, and most of those motives still apply when a character in a suspense novel chooses to don a disguise.

In suspense novels, masks can be a story trope or a plot device. A scare tactic or a red herring. A way to up the tension, add drama, or simply delay the final twisty reveal and keep readers flipping pages in breathless anticipation of the moment the false facade slips away.

Masks are so intrinsically tied to suspense that we reference them in book descriptions as genre shorthand. Even if a character doesn’t wear a physical disguise in a story, the book’s write-up might reference a killer’s “unmasking.” Because as a culture, we’re intrigued by the idea that darkness walks among us. We take satisfaction from peeling away the camouflaging layer to divulge what lies beneath….

At the link, Rock analyzes how six authors – including Stephen King – have used masked characters.

(5) FIYAH OPEN IN JULY. FIYAH, a quarterly speculative fiction magazine that looks for “works of speculative short fiction by authors from the African continent and diaspora that reject regressive ideas of blackness, respectability politics, and stereotype”, will open for submissions from July 1-31 on the theme of magical schools. Learn more at fiyahlitmag.com/submissions.

…Take us for a journey through your Pan-African University for Gifted Mages. Give us the trials of alchemy professors positioning themselves for tenure. The boredom of a TA stuck monitoring the dragon eggs over holiday. Or the angst of conjuring gone wrong in the group project (there’s always that ONE person) while the clock is ticking toward deadline. A sorority that sends their new line of pledges to a nether dimension for, ahem, “orientation.” A time-traveling brass section in search of the perfect instrument for their next battle of the bands.

Black HBCU? We’re in. Summer of research for a hoodoo postdoc? Gimme. A substitute teacher left in charge of kindergarten witches? Yes, please. A home school collective’s escapades to ward off nosy neighbors? Say less.

Stories that examine and challenge hierarchical relationships in school will pique our interest. Non-Western settings for instruction (or means of education that subverts that structure) are welcome….

(6) VETERANS OF THE CLONE WARS. Camestros Felapton’s epic about robots in sf takes a detour: “RF:Ph04:Ch62:An Aside About Clones”. Numerous examples discussed at the link.

…If we must apply categories to the pantheon of science fictional beings, then clones are their own thing seperate from robots. However, just as robot fiction often strays into the ancient theme of dopplegangers stealing your identity, so do clones often step into the role of a mass-manufactured under class. They are mutual understudies, which is all very well until we begin to have stories with both robots and clones.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 19, 1946 – Andre the Giant. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer: This Birthday for André René Roussimoff who performed as André the Giant came about because (a) I really, really like The Princess Bride film and have seen it way too many times, and (b) I thought that he was charming in it as Fezzik. That said, I knew nothing about him and all his other performances, or his life story, at all.

He was a French professional wrestler of impressive height, seven feet and four inches to be precise. He would wrestle his entire life right up until he died at age forty-six of congestive heart failure after an apparent heart attack in his sleep in the Paris hotel he was staying at in order to attend his father’s funeral. It was likely associated with his untreated acromegaly which had been diagnosed some twenty-five years earlier.

His first genre role was being Bigfoot on The Six Million Dollar Man on “The Secret of Bigfoot, Part 1” and “The Secret of Bigfoot Part 2”. Naturally I’m giving you a photo of him in that role.

Next up is being the Monster in “Heaven Is in Your Genes” on Greatest American Hero. Monster, just Monster? So, what did he look like there? Ahhh…. They apparently didn’t a budget for creating a monster which explains the generic name. I’m giving you a photo anyway so you can see what he looked like sans makeup.

Andre the Giant on Greatest American Hero

He got to be in a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan the Destroyer. He played Dagoth the Dreaming God, the main antagonist of Conan. For some reason, he was uncredited. Considering what he looks like in the film, it was easy for him to go uncredited.

And that brings us to his best and last genre role, that of Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride. He’s played as Goldman describes him in his novel, “Fezzik. The timid, large-hearted and obedient giant who accompanies Vizzini. Fezzik loves rhymes and his friend Inigo, and he is excellent at lifting heavy things.”

Not a long career, but an interesting one I’d say.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Free Range encounters a historical fact in a cave.
Jerry King hears an unexpected confession.
Speed Bump has a queue for departures you didn’t know about.
Strange Brew notes unlikely products.
Wondermark sees how predictions turned out.

(9) MARVEL TURNOVER. “Dan Buckley to Depart Marvel in Leadership Shake-up” reports Publishers Weekly.

Marvel announced major leadership changes in its publishing division on Monday.

Dan Buckley, Marvel’s longtime head of comics and franchise, will be departing the company after nearly 30 years. In turn, Marvel Studios executive Brad Winderbaum has been promoted to head of Marvel television, animation, comics, and franchise.

Winderbaum was already heading animation and television, but will now “oversee the creative direction of Marvel’s expansive publishing portfolio, as well as Marvel’s global brand and franchise efforts,” according to Marvel’s announcement.

David Abdo, moving over to Marvel from Disney’s music division, will be general manager of comics and franchise, reporting to Winderbaum. C.B. Cebulski will remain editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, also reporting to Winderbaum.

(10) IT’LL TIGHTEN THEIR NUTS (AND BOLTS). [Item by Steven French.] Ben Childs reflects on the proposed Westworld movie reboot in the Guardian’s newsletter “Week in Geek”: “The return of Westworld is perfect timing for the flattery-oriented age of AI”.

All the best science fiction movies eventually get overtaken by reality. Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report predicted personalised advertising and biometric identification. Spike Jonze’s Her correctly guessed that AI would probably arrive as emotionally responsive digital companions that sound like Scarlett Johansson, rather than rampaging killer machines. RoboCop imagined militarised law enforcement on the streets of America long before the Pentagon decided to get in on the action.

Could Westworld become the latest science fiction franchise to catch up to the future? Deadline reports this week that a new film based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 movie about rich thrill-seekers heading to a techno-pleasure park for violence, fantasy and consequence-free debauchery is in the works at Warner Bros, with David Koepp attached to write. It will reportedly bypass the more recent TV reboot from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, which ran for four seasons between 2016 and 2022.

Am I alone in thinking this could be perfect timing? In an AI age in which humans increasingly seem to prefer artificial experiences to real ones, Westworld suddenly seems a lot more intriguing than it did in either of its previous iterations. This time out the resort might market itself as the first place in the world where your digital partner can finally receive a physical body, causing lonely people who have spent three years sexting a chatbot named Dakota-7 to flock there in their millions. The great thing about Westworld 3.0 is that the director who ends up shooting this thing – Deadline reports that a “major film-maker” is circling, with the internet already convinced that this means Steven Spielberg– might not even have to delve into the old robot uprising toolkit….

(11) LEGEND NOT CANON. Naomi Kaye tours “The World of Crime In Star Wars Legends” at CrimeReads.

In a galaxy far, far away….there’s organized gangs, smuggling, bounty hunting and a sprawling criminal underworld. As a lifelong Star Wars nerd, I only recently got into exploring the rather epic universe of Star Wars novels. This can be a bit confusing to newbies, as the books are divided into “Legends” and “canon” – the Legends were published prior to Disney’s takeover of the franchise, and the canon books thereafter, which follow the newer sequels films and disregard the original Legends books for the most part. Both categories are admittedly vast, and the books considered canon also offer up a number of plotlines and themes in the crime category.

What can make the Legends books particularly appealing, though, is their sometimes campy, goofy and reassuring nature. Despite the odds, a reader can go into one knowing that all will come right with our intrepid heroes (or, well, criminals) in the end. At times, graphic or emotionally intense crime writing can feel overwhelming, so many of these books provide a fix of thrills along with a dose of hopeful escapism. The world building is a massive bonus – from developing the atmospheres of various planets in the galaxy to the shady mainstay staples like Mos Eisley Cantina of Tatooine, this is an area where the books tend to excel.

If you’re both a Star Wars devotee as well as a lover of crime and mystery reads and have your curiosity piqued about this literary niche, here are some attention-grabbing, entertaining and action-packed choices from the Legends era of Star Wars books that dive into crime….

(12) SUNRISE, SUNRISE, SWIFTLY FLOW THE YEARS. “More Star Wars-like worlds emerge as 27 planet candidates with two suns discovered” reports Phys.org.

There’s so little we know about circumbinary planets—planets that orbit two stars instead of one—that they can feel like the stuff of fantasy. And for good reason: to date, we’ve only confirmed the existence of 18 circumbinary planets, compared to the more than 6000 planets we know about in single star systems.

Even the most widely-known circumbinary planet is, quite literally, fiction: the desert planet Tatooine from Star Wars, aka the birthplace of Anakin Skywalker.

But a study led by UNSW has now detected 27 potential circumbinary planets in one sweep, using a new planet-finding method that broadens the typical type of planets we can find.

The findings were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, just in time for May the 4th, Star Wars Day..,.

(13) FROM ZERO TO A BILLION. [Item by Steven French.] Sure, we’ve seen this before thanks to Hubble but not in so much glorious detail! “JWST maps cosmic web in record detail back to universe’s first billion years” reports Phys.org.

Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside have produced the most detailed map of the cosmic web ever made, tracing the network of galaxies all the way back to when the universe was one billion years old.

What the cosmic web reveals

The cosmic web is the universe’s vast, skeleton-like framework—a network of interwoven filaments and sheets of dark matter and gas that surround immense, nearly empty voids. It forms the underlying architecture of the cosmos, linking galaxies and clusters into a single, intricate, and far-reaching structure.

The study, which appears in The Astrophysical Journal, used the largest JWST survey conducted so far—the COSMOS-Web—to trace how galaxies form a network across 13.7 billion years of cosmic history….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George imagines “If They Made Happy Meals For Millennials”.

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

Marvel’s Stormbreakers Celebrate The 50th Anniversary Of What If…? With New Variant Covers

Posted on May 9, 2026 by Mike Glyer

This May,Marvel’s Stormbreakers shatter the multiverse in new What If…? variant covers! The latest monthly cover collection from Marvel’s elite artists celebrates 50 years of What If…? storytelling with imaginative new twists on your favorite heroes. From dramatic transformations to outrageous power swaps, these eight pieces reflect the endless creativity and spectacular talent of the current class of Marvel’s Stormbreakers.

The daring questions asked include:

What if… Captain Marvel was a Skrull?
What if… Daredevil’s accident gave him the Hulk’s powers?
What if… Iron Man’s Extremis was a symbiote?
What if… Punisher had Magik’s Eldritch Armor?
What if… Rogue became the Sorcerer Supreme?
What if… Wolverine controlled his adamantium like Colossus?
What if… the X-Men were heralds of Galactus?
What if… the Spider-Man’s greatest foes, the Sinister Six, were his greatest allies?

The current class of Marvel’s Stormbreakers include Alessandro Cappuccio (Ultimate Wolverine), Netho Diaz (X-Men), Simone Di Meo (X-Men of Apocalypse), Juan Frigeri (Ultimates), Gurihiru (Jeff the Land Shark), Jonas Scharf (Ultimate Endgame), Geoff Shaw (Wade Wilson: Deadpool), and Luciano Vecchio (Uncanny X-Men). Chosen for their remarkable art, notable achievements, and boundless imagination when bringing the Marvel mythos to the page, these creators represent the future of comic book artistry and embody the raw talent to shatter the limits of visual storytelling.

First launched in 2020, Marvel’s Stormbreakers evolved from Marvel’s Young Guns program. Over the past 15 years, Marvel selected and recognized 36 up-and-coming artists who went on to draw some of Marvel’s greatest events, iconic series, and beyond, solidifying their place as luminaries in the industry including Steve McNiven, Jim Cheung, Sara Pichelli, Ryan Stegman, and more.

Also part of the 50^th anniversary celebration are a series of all-new What If…? one-shots! Announced last month, the new one-shots shake the foundations of every corner of the Marvel mythos with startling shifts to iconic storylines, kicking off in June with What If…? Uncanny X-Men #1, where Gerry Duggan and Jan Bazaldua ask “What if… Cyclops had stayed with Madelyne Pryor?” and What If…? Thor #1, where Torunn Grønbekk and Sergio Dávila ask “What if… Thor got Spider-Man’s symbiote suit?”

Check out all eight What If…? variant covers following the jump.

Continue reading →

Rocket Raccoon Blasts Into An Oversized Special Celebrating 50 Years Of Furry Fury

Posted on April 25, 2026 by Mike Glyer

Big things come in small, furry packages… and this July, Rocket Raccoon sets out to prove it with a 50^th anniversary one-shot: Rocket Raccon: Rocket Rewind!

Buckle up and travel the stars as Rocket engages in over-the-top action and calamity across three all-new stories from a roster of titanic creators including writers J.M. DeMatteis, Christos Gage, and MacKenzie Cadenhead and artists Shawn McManus, Todd Nauck, and Enid Balám, plus a re-presentation of Rocket’s debut tale from co-creators Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen.

Originally introduced in the pages of Marvel Preview #7 by Mantlo and Giffen, Rocket has blasted and jetpacked his way into becoming an integral part of the Marvel cosmic tapestry and a key figure (as well as the heart and soul) of numerous Guardians of the Galaxy team line-ups.

Follow the heavily armed rapscallion as he blazes new trails in locations both new and familiar across the following stories:

Rocket Raccoon encounters a mysterious galactic book collector before coming face-to-face with the one-and-only Rocky Raccoon (wait, what?!) in a brain-bending tale from writer J.M. DeMatteis and artist Shawn McManus.
In “BoomShakaLaka,” MacKenzie Cadenhead and Enid Balám take Rocket to a paradise planet full of good vibes and an immensely powerful artifact that’s just begging to be stolen by a cybernetically enhanced creature with a bad attitude. Know anybody like that?
Christos Gage and Todd Nauck set out to prove that size does matter in “The Fight in the Raccoon,” featuring an odd-couple team up of Hank Pym and Rocket as they fight back a massive invasion force in Sub-Atomica!
Plus, the original debut of Rocket by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen!

Check out the covers for Rocket Raccoon: Rocket Rewind #1, including the main image by Ryan Stegman and variants by David Baldeón and Mike Mignola, and place your pre-orders at your local comic shop.

[Based on a press release.]

Cover by RYAN STEGMAN

Variant Cover by DAVID BALDEÓN

Variant Cover by MIKE MIGNOLA

Pixel Scroll 4/23/26 Let Us Scroll, Then, You And I, Where The Pixel Is Stretched Out Against The Sky Like A Godstalk Etherized Upon A Table

Posted on April 23, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) 2026 PEABODY AWARDS. Variety has the full list here: “Peabody Awards 2026 Winners: Pluribus, Heated Rivalry, Jimmy Kimmel”. Below we have the winners of genre interest.

ENTERTAINMENT

“Andor” (Disney+)
Lucasfilm Ltd.

“Common Side Effects” (Adult Swim)
Green Street Pictures, Bandera Entertainment, and Williams Street

“Pluribus” (Apple TV)
Sony Pictures Television in association with Apple

DOCUMENTARIES

“Pee-wee as Himself” (HBO Max)
HBO Documentary Films presents an Elara & First Love Films Production

CHILDREN’S / YOUTH

“Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” (Disney+)
Flying Bark Productions, Disney Television Animation, Disney Branded Television

INTERACTIVE & IMMERSIVE

“South of Midnight”
Compulsion Games

(2) TO BLAVE. James Davis Nicoll shows Reactor readers “Five Science Fictional Solutions to Finding Your One True Love”.

…Now, it turns out that many SF authors are themselves the products of romance. Surely, that implies the reverse could be true! SF authors could produce romance! Consider, for example, one of the initial challenges any romance must overcome: finding one or more entities with whom one is romantically compatible….

Here’s one story he points out (with a bit of humor in the analysis):

…Lester del Rey’s 1938 “Helen O’Loy” provides two examples—well, more accurately one, but it strongly implies a second. The most obvious: the title character, a domestic robot² transformed by artful kit-bashing into the perfect woman by the story’s protagonist, Phil. It’s just too bad that she falls for his best friend, Dave. Even worse, there’s no possible way for Phil to acquire his own Helen, because where on Earth could he find another mass-produced robot to modify? It’s not as if there were stores that sell mass-produced consumer goods!

The other example in this story: a minor subplot in which wealthy dowager Mrs. van Styler demands that her son’s infatuation for a socially unsuitable servant girl be cured with counterhormones. This suggests that the chemical basis for romance is known, which further raises the possibility that it can be artificially induced. This plot thread is not pursued, which is probably for the best, as it raises the issue of consent. Does the mother have the right to chemically force her son to reject his sweetie? Is the doctor who injects the counterhormone free of blame?

Del Rey doesn’t examine the ethics of involuntarily romanto-forming people. Maybe he felt he should leave something for other authors to explore….

(3) CHANGING OF THE GUARD. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Jennifer Harlan is an editor, and the new fantasy columnist, at the New York Times Book Review. Background here: “Jennifer Harlan”. Harlan’s first column appeared April 17: “Enchanting New Fantasy Books”. (It is, of course, behind the NYT paywall.)

…I oversee service journalism for the Book Review, which essentially means that my job is to help our readers find the next book they’ll love. I edit stories across a wide range of genres — children’s books, literary fiction, romance, fantasy, audiobooks and everything in between. I also write reviews, features and recommended reading lists.

(4) BSFS AMATEUR WRITING CONTEST. The Baltimore Science Fiction Society is taking submissions for its Amateur Writing Contest through June 15, 2026.

1^st Place Prize $250
2^nd Place Prize $100
3^rd Place Prize $50

Awards include memberships to CapClave 2026 (Awards Ceremony), Memberships to Balticon 60 (2027) and very cool Balticon T-shirt!

Open to amateur writers over 18 years old who are residents of Maryland and/or students attending any Maryland 2- or 4-year college.
Any topic of science fiction, fantasy, horror, or other speculative fiction.
Unpublished short stories between 1,000 and 5,500 words.
No scripts, screenplays, or non-fiction essays for this contest.

To avoid potential copyright conflicts, we cannot accept fan fiction.

Artificial intelligence (AI) generated works are not eligible.
Full rules at http://bsfs.org/bsfsssc.htm

(5) DROPPING THE BALL. “Paramount’s New Star Trek Strategy Will Go Down as 1 of Sci-Fi’s Most Historic Fumbles” according to CBR.com.

Paramount appears to be shifting Star Trek‘s focus from television to film, which doesn’t bode well for the franchise’s future. Star Trek began as a television series in 1966, following the adventures of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew aboard the USS Enterprise. Since then, there have been numerous successful Star Trek television shows and films, but television has always been the heart of the franchise.

With Star Trek: Strange New Worlds coming to an end after its fifth season and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy ending after its second season, no new Star Trek shows are currently in production. The sets for these shows are even being torn down, marking the end of an era for Star Trek. It remains to be seen what Star Trek’s future holds, but Paramount seems more committed to the film side of the franchise.

(6) DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS. [Item by Steven French.] Jonathan Wells ponders the nature of noir, beginning, perhaps unexpectedly, with a Spider-Man spin-off: “The life of PIs: the strange case of 2026’s resurgence of hard-boiled detectives” in the Guardian.

Lace up your gumshoes! Hard-boiled detectives are back on the scene, fedoras pulled low, cigarettes sparked up. Nicolas Cage is leading the charge in Prime Video’s Spider-Noir, a shadowy spin on Spider-Man that drops in May – available to stream in black-and-white for the diehards. It promises all the hard-edged hallmarks of a good film noir: fast-paced, slangy dialogue, femme fatales, and a heavy-drinking detective at its centre – albeit one with web shooters rather than a snub-nose revolver.

He’s not the only PI in the frame this year. Apple TV is adapting Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir series into a series starring Colin Firth, while a new NBC pilot promises Jake Johnson as a “cynical and heartbroken” sleuth. And Brad Bird’s animated noir, Ray Gunn, is finally hitting Netflix after almost 30 years in development.

So what’s prompted this return to darkness? Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. When Marvel first published the original Spider-Noir comic in 2009 – itself set during the Great Depression – the world was in the throes of a recession. That, it seems, is the noir rhythm: hard-boiled fiction swells in popularity at times of social strain, growing cynicism and shaken trust. When the going gets tough, the saxes start playing….

(7) BLEEP AI. Kelly Link has revised a famous poem into a bit of protest.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 23, 1974 — Gene Roddenberry’s Planet Earth

Fifty years ago on ABC, Gene Roddenberry’s Planet Earth film first aired. It was intended to be a pilot for a new weekly television series but that was not to be.

It was written by Roddenberry and Juanita Bartlett, who at this point had no genre experience but later on would be the Executive Producer on many episodes of The Greatest American Hero and even wrote a handful of them. That series is one of my favorite SF series. Well it is SF, isn’t it?

It starred John Saxon as Dylan Hunt. Yes Dylan Hunt. If you remember, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda series will be fronted by Kevin Sorbo playing Dylan Hunt. Roddenberry was famous, or infamous for reusing almost everything. The previous pilot was Genesis II, and it featured many of the concepts and characters later redeveloped and mostly recast in this film. (I have not nor will not watch the Andromeda series given the political viewpoints now of Sorbo, nor have I rewatched Hercules.)

So how was it received? Comic Mix correctly noted I think that “As a concept, it’s not bad. The execution, from Samuel A. Peebles’ script on down, is where the pilot film gets into trouble. Peebles’ writing was stiff, and whatever rewriting Roddenberry did, didn’t help. The characters are types, never fully fleshed out, and Cord’s heroic role is blunted by his cold, aloof performance (making him better suited as Airwolf’s Archangel a few years later).”

And Moria’s Reviews says of it that “Planet Earth tends to represent Gene Roddenberry at his preachy worst. Genesis II, when it came down to it, was only a variant on the basic premise of Buck Rogers (1939) about a man from the present-day waking up in the future and showing people how things should be done with a little 20th Century knowhow and individualism. That is to say, Genesis II was a Buck Rogers with Gene Roddenberry’s social utopianism added to the mix.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a thirty percent rating.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 23, 1973 — Naomi Kritzer, 53.

Naomi Kritzer’s CatNet at this point consists of “Cat Pictures Please” which won a Hugo at MidAmeriCon II, Chaos on CatNet and Catfishing on CatNet. As one who likes this series enough that I had her personally autograph the Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories collection, I wanted to know the origin of CatNet, so I asked. Well, I also gifted her with a birthday chocolate treat, sea salt dark chocolate truffles. Here’s her answers:

Naomi Kritzer in 2020 after winning the Lodestar Award.

Naomi Kritzer: The original short story was basically the collision of two things:

1. The line, “the Internet loves cat pictures,” which made me imagine a central internet-based intelligence that wanted pictures of cats.

2. Getting myself a smartphone for the first time (I was a late adopter), and discovering some of its quirks, and coming up with anthropomorphic explanations for things like bad directions.

I mean, the Internet clearly does love cat pictures — although “the Internet” is “the billions of people who use the Internet,” not a secret sentient AI, though!

Cat Eldridge: I went on to ask her how CatNet came to be…

Naomi Kritzer: Do you mean in the story, how it got created? I was very vague about it in the short story but sort of heavily implied it was the result of something someone did at Google. In the novel CatNet was an experimental project from a company that was again, heavily implied to be Google.

Way, way cool in my opinion.

While putting this Birthday together, I noticed that she had two other series from when she was starting out as a writer, so I asked her to talk about them. Both are available on Kindle.

Cat Eldridge: Let’s talk about your first series, Eliana’s Song.

Naomi Kritzer: Eliana’s Song is my first novel, split into two pieces. I rewrote it really heavily multiple times, and each time I tried to make it shorter and it got longer. When Bantam bought it, they suggested that I split it into two books and expand each, which is what I did.

The book actually started out as a short story I wrote while in college. It garnered a number of rejections that said something like, “this isn’t bad, but it kind of reads like chapters 1 and 36 of a novel.” I eventually decided to write the novel, and struggled for a while before realizing I could not literally use the short story as Chapter 1, I had to start over writing from scratch.

Cat Eldridge: And your second series, Dead Rivers.

Naomi Kritzer: Sometime around 2010 I picked up the Scott Westerfield Uglies series and really loved it. Uglies in particular followed a plotline that I really loved, in which someone is sent to infiltrate the enemy side, only to realize once she’s there that these are her people, far more than her bosses are. But she came among them under false pretenses, and she’d have to come clean! And she almost comes clean, doesn’t, of course is discovered and cast out, and then has to spend the next book (maybe the next two) demonstrating her worthiness to be allowed to come back. I read this series and thought, “dang, I love this plot — I loved this plot as a kid, and reading it now is like re-visiting an amusement park ride you loved when you were 10 and finding out that even when you know where all the turns and drops are, it’s still super fun.” Like two days after that I suddenly remembered that I had literally written that plotline. It’s the plotline of the Dead Rivers trilogy. I really really love this plot, it turns out! So much that I’ve written it!

I’m not sure how well it’s aged. We were not doing trigger warnings on books yet when it came out, and the fact that the book has an explicit and fairly vivid rape scene took a lot of readers by surprise. It’s also a story that’s very much about whether someone can start out a bad guy and work their way to redemption.

Cat Eldridge: Now unto your short stories. I obviously believe everyone should read “Cat Pictures Please” and Little Free Library”, both of which I enjoyed immensely. So what of your short story writing do you think is essential for readers to start with?

Naomi Kritzer: That is a good question but one I find very hard to answer about my own work! It’s a “can’t see the forest because of all the trees” problem, I think.

“So Much Cooking” would probably be at the top, though (with the explanatory note that I always attach these days — I wrote this in 2015.) And then probably “Scrap Dragon” and “The Thing About Ghost Stories.”

To date, she has two short story collections, Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories which is only available as an epub, and of course Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories which is also available in trade paper edition.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Jerry King wants more advanced bedtime reading.
Mother Goose and Grimm take a wrong step.
Mutts knows you’ll get it.
Reality Check needs to reread.
Six Chix has a surprising alien probe.
Wumo prefers other entertainment.

(11) MARVEL MASHUP. This July, the galaxy’s greatest hunter finds new prey on a world ruled by apes in Predator VS. The Planet of the Apes, a five-issue Marvel Comics series written by Greg Pak (Planet Hulk) and drawn by Alan Robinson (X-Men Infinity Comic).

Worlds collide when a deadly Yautja crash-lands on the legendary Planet of the Apes!

After a rescue mission gone wrong, astronaut Arch finds herself embedded in a hostile ape society where humans are subservient. But the hunters soon became the hunted when the apes find themselves being stalked by Predators! A three-way war is about to erupt between humans, apes and Yautja – who will reign supreme?!

(12) BOTH HANDS AND A MAP. “5 Complicated Sci-Fi Movies That Need a Chart to Explain Them (We Have the Charts)” at ComicBook.com.

…Some sci-fi movies are so complex that no friend, critic, or even article can help to unravel them. Sometimes, visual learning is the only means of understanding; a great chart or infographic is invaluable in those cases, allowing the viewer to sit, stare, process, and come to understanding at a guided pace….

Here’s an example of their work:

4. Looper

Before he hit infamy with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, writer/director Rian Johnson was already making fans consider how aging changes heroes into jaded old men, via his 2012 film, Looper. In 2044, a guy named Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works for a crime syndicate from 2074, who dispose of their victims by sending them to the past, to be eliminated by hitmen (or “loopers”) from that time period, who are then killed if they live until 2074, to cover their crimes (a “closed loop”). Joe’s work and entire sense of identity get skewed when he’s approached by his older self (Bruce Willis), as Old Joe seeks to change his own doomed fate by stopping a new crime boss, “the Rainmaker,” from ever rising to power. The rub is that Old Joe wants to kill the Rainmaker when he’s still just a kid – a crime Young Joe cannot abide.

On the surface, Looper might seem like a straightforward time travel story, but what makes it confounding for a lot of casual viewers is the lore that Johnson built into his sci-fi world. The entire process of “looping” left a lot of people confused from the outset, so when Looper starts getting intricate with three different time lines, all interconnected by the cause and effect of the film’s events, a chart becomes necessary.

(13) AI DOOM. DON’T PANIC! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Friendly advice for all hitchhikers is don’t panic, yet sometimes it is hard not to. For example, I keep warning that the machines are taking over but no-one ever seems to listen.

However, in this week’s Nature the argument is presented that we should not go over-the-top on warnings of AI doom… Link here: “AI doom warnings are getting louder. Are they realistic?”

Gary Marcus and others warn that raising the alarm unnecessarily could be harmful by distracting the public and politicians from well-documented risks of AI — such as spreading misinformation and enabling mass surveillance. Unwarranted concern about human extinction could also steer governments away from regulation, because national leaders might seek an advantage over geopolitical rivals in an AI arms race, say some researchers.

(14) SPINOFF TRAILER. “’Star City’ Trailer: Rhys Ifans Stars In ‘For All Mankind’ Spinoff”. Deadline sets the frame.

Apple TV has dropped the official trailer for Star City, its upcoming alt-history space race drama spinoff of For All Mankind….

…Per the logline, Star City is a propulsive paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race – when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humankind forward….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, JJ, Maria Markham Thompson, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l.]

Spotlighted Cover Art From Marvel Dimensions Graphic Novel By Alex Ross

Posted on April 12, 2026 by Mike Glyer

This September, Alex Ross reimagines the Marvel Universe in Marvel Dimensions, an all-new graphic novel from Marvel and Abrams ComicArts as part of their Marvel Arts line, releasing September 1, 2026. Written and illustrated by Ross, the upcoming graphic novel follows the incomparable artist’s acclaimed work on Fantastic Four: Full Circle with an expansive, reality-shattering saga that includes beautifully painted depictions of Marvel heroes’ iconic origins and early stories. Starting in June, eighteen pieces of artwork from Marvel Dimensions will appear as stunning variant covers across select Marvel Comics titles.

Like Alex Ross’ hit Timeless variant covers, the new variant covers from Marvel Dimensions showcase Marvel heroes as the mythic legends they are! The collection includes classic group shots of the Fantastic Four, Avengers, and X-Men, as well as heroic character portraits, each realistically and dramatically captured by Ross’ singular and award-winning talent!

“I’m really excited for people to check out Marvel Dimensions,” Ross shared. “These variant covers are just a small look at the ambition I put into the entire project.”

Preorder the variant covers from Marvel Dimensions at your local comic shop today and look for Marvel Dimensions in stores this September. For more information, visit Marvel.com.

See the cover art following the jump.

Continue reading →

Marvel and DC Reprint Kurt Busiek And George Pérez’s JLA/Avengers Series

Posted on February 26, 2026 by Mike Glyer

Starting in May, pick up new facsimile editions of JLA/AVENGERS #1-4, the celebrated 2003 Marvel/DC crossover series by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez.

This summer, Marvel Comics and DC Comics join forces to bring JLA/AVENGERS, the 2003 limited series by legendary creators Kurt Busiek and George Pérez, back to comic shops. The history-making four-issue saga will be boldly re-presented in its original form as new Facsimile Editions with original trade tress and wraparound card stock covers. Marvel Comics will publish JLA/AVENGERS #1 (May) and #3 (July) while DC Comics will publish AVENGERS/JLA #2 (June) and #4 (August). The issues will also feature all-new variant covers.

It’s the grandest Marvel and DC comics crossover of them all and an icon-packed event decades in the making! After years of anticipation, JLA/AVENGERS reunited acclaimed writer Kurt Busiek (Marvels) with his AVENGERS collaborator George Pérez – an artistic legend for both companies – to assemble every single member of Earth’s Mightiest and the World’s Greatest in one blockbuster book. Universes collide as the Justice League fights the towering Terminus and the Avengers face the awesome menace of Starro! Each team must undertake an epic quest on the other’s world, with the fate of both realities in the balance!

Preorder JLA/AVENGERS #1 FACSIMILE EDITION at your local comic shop today, and ask to add all four issues to your pull list.

[Click for larger images.]

JLA/AVENGERS #1 FACSIMILE EDITION. Written by KURT BUSIEK. Penciled by GEORGE PÉREZ. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ. Variant Cover by RYAN STEGMAN. On Sale 5/27

AVENGERS/JLA #2 FACSIMILE EDITION. Written by KURT BUSIEK. Penciled by GEORGE PÉREZ. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ. On Sale 6/24

JLA/AVENGERS #3 FACSIMILE EDITION. Written by KURT BUSIEK. Penciled by GEORGE PÉREZ. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ. On Sale 7/22

AVENGERS/JLA #4 FACSIMILE EDITION. Written by KURT BUSIEK. Penciled by GEORGE PÉREZ. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ. On Sale 8/26

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 2/25/26 I Am A Houyhnhnm Of Constant Sorrow

Posted on February 25, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) KETTER INTERVIEWED ABOUT STATE OF THE UNION. Following Trump’s State of the Union address last night, MSNOW set up reporter Jacob Sorboroff and a camera in DreamHaven Bookstore to ask Greg Ketter what he thought: “Greg Ketter responds to SOTU: ‘I am still angry’”. And you can view a complete clip here on Facebook.

(2) SONG OF DOPE AND FIRE. Christopher Lockett’s high-concept discussion of “George R.R. Martin vs. Destiny” takes a side trip into an impressive mashup titled “A Song of Ice and The Wire”.

That GoT was not a departure for HBO but a doubling-down on the conventions that defined its most critically acclaimed shows was hilariously articulated by a still-extant Tumblr page called “A Song of Ice and The Wire”—which, as the title suggests, mashes up elements of GoT and The Wire. Specifically, it took stills from each series and captioned them with appropriate lines from the other….

…The subtle genius of these mashups is that they highlight at once the profound, almost antithetical differences between the series—one a scrupulously realistic sociological portrait of American urban decay, systemic racism, and broken institutions, and the other a work of high fantasy set in a premodern world of knights and dragons—while identifying the structural consonance, one they share with the other series cited above. This consonance is perhaps best articulated in a line spoken by the detective Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) in season one: “You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.” Money is power in The Wire—not so much in the sense of more money=more power, but that money is the concrete representation of power’s circulatory qualities, especially considering it respects no boundaries. This principle is even more succinctly articulated in season three by stick-up artist Omar Little (Michael K. Williams⁶), perhaps the best character on the show, who makes his living robbing drug dealers. He helpfully supplements Freamon’s wisdom with an axiom of his own. When he robs a high-stakes poker game featuring some of the Baltimore underworld’s high rollers, the future drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield says, “That’s my money.” To which Omar responds, in what could function as Cliff’s Notes Foucault, “Money ain’t got no owners, only spenders.”…

(3) ‘WOMAN IN THE MOON’. BGR celebrates that “The Oldest Movie To Realistically Depict Space Travel Is Almost 100 Years Old”.

Science fiction has an uncanny history of foretelling scientific advancement, predicting technological breakthroughs, ranging from tablets to holograms, and even defining the public’s understanding of complex scientific phenomenon. Since its earliest iterations, a fierce debate has raged amongst cinephiles and scientists alike over the extent of the genre’s scientific influence. Most notably is sci-fi’s influence over the public’s understanding of complex scientific concepts. Perhaps nowhere is this more relevant than the realm of space travel, in which films like “Woman in the Moon” (1929) by legendary Austrian director Fritz Lang have proven incredibly prescient, serving as the first popular representation of everything from rocket countdowns and lunar orbits to the politics surrounding modern space races….

…What really makes the film standout to modern viewers, however, is its scientific prescience. To ensure accuracy, Lang became one of the first directors to employ a team of scientists, soliciting the help of rocket scientist Hermann Oberth, who’d later be instrumental in developing Nazi Germany’s V-2 rocket program, and influential science writer Willy Ley. Together, they created a story that foretold modern space flight, becoming the first film to depict zero-gravity, multi-stage rockets, figure-8 lunar landing trajectories, and g-force-laden liftoffs. It even popularized our conception of rocket launches, complete with detailed checklists and momentous countdowns. As Lang told Peter Bogdanovic in a 1965 interview published in his book “Who The Devil Made It,” the countdown was born out of “dire necessity” to build narrative suspense (via TCM). Unfortunately, the film’s realism runs out once the rocket lands upon the moon, depicting a breathable atmosphere, Earth-like gravity, and a surface rife with riches. However, the fantastical ending doesn’t diminish the fact that many of the defining images of space flight were born on a German screen….

(4) NOW ONLINE: ‘MIDWEST SIDE STORY’. Geri Sullivan announced today on Facebook that thanks to Guy Spiller, David Dyer-Bennet, and FANAC.org the video of the performance of Midwest Side Story at Minicon 12 in 1977 is up on the FANAC YouTube channel: “Minicon 12 (1977) – Midwest Side Story”. (There’s a cast list and some other details on Geri’s Facebook page.)

Description:

Midwest Side Story is a rare recording of that entertaining subgenre of fannish endeavors – the fannish musical. First performed on April 9, 1977 at Minicon in Minneapolis, the recording was preserved in the Scott Imes Video archive, and kept safe for many years by Scott Imes, Jeff Schalles and Corwin Brust.

Midwest Side Story is set in an alternate universe where the 1973 Worldcon is held in Minneapolis. It takes place in an alternate Minneapolis where fanzine fans and convention fans behave like rival gangs The musical is a love story between a fanzine femmefan and a male convention fan. If you want more, you’ll have to watch the show. It’s funny, it’s thoughtful and it has a great ending. Just remember this was written about 50 years ago, and has the expected cultural attitudes of the time. The recording is captioned for your convenience….

(5) WAPO’S BOOK WORLD MOURNED. The New York Times attends “A Wake for The Washington Post’s Book World”. Link bypasses the NYT paywall. Photo of Michael Dirda speaking leads off the article.

Hundreds gathered on Saturday evening in Washington, D.C., to mourn Book World, The Washington Post’s books section, which was shuttered this month amid widespread layoffs at the organization.

Journalists, policy wonks, speechwriters and erstwhile political aides packed the main branch of Politics and Prose, the storied bookstore, to hear former staff members and others commemorate what Marie Arana, a longtime editor of the section, called “a vanished gem.” She spoke alongside such former marquee critics and writers as Ron Charles, Michael Dirda and Carlos Lozada (now a New York Times Opinion columnist) — a “formidable cavalcade of smarts,” as she put it.

“We find ourselves battling book bans, the trivialization of truth, the bashing of serious journalism,” Arana said. “And now The Washington Post, once one of the most respected journalistic institutions in America, is enduring a mass demolition like no other.”…

… The journalist and scholar Warren Bass, a former Book World editor and one of the organizers of the tribute, read statements on behalf of what he described as “three titans of The Washington Post.” One was Martin Baron, a former chief editor of the news organization.

“It is difficult to contemplate, and hard to forgive, a decision to sever The Post’s relationship with books,” Baron wrote.

Merilyn Francis, an expert in health policy who has lived in Washington for the past 20 years, attended the event even though she said she only occasionally read Book World. “It was a really good section to see not only all these different writings, but people’s perspective on them,” she said. The writing, she added, had “a lot of relevance into what was going on in the community.”

Saturday’s event was the rare funeral with a question-and-answer session at the end…..

…The event felt as much like a referendum on the state of American journalism as a memorial. More than 300 journalists were laid off from The Post this month, and many of them were in the audience on Saturday night, greeting each other in a stupor after the event….

(6) BOOK CRITIC WITHOUT AN OUTLET. Charlie Jane Anders confesses, “I’m Still Not Over Losing My Book Review Gig” at Happy Dancing.

A few weeks ago, I found out on social media that I had lost my job as science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. I’ve been meaning to write about it for my newsletter ever since, but I needed time to collect my thoughts — and I didn’t just want to rehash what everyone else was already saying.

I really loved that gig, and I’m still feeling kinda bereft. I’ve written before about how invigorating it was to be paid to keep tabs on everything being published in science fiction and fantasy, and to read a decent selection of the new books coming out every month. I felt like a part of the SFF community in a whole different way. Plus that gig forced me to spend a lot of time reading cool stories instead of looking at upsetting news online. Being able to shout out amazing new books by lesser known authors felt like a way to give back and to help keep genre fiction healthy and exciting. …

…Part of the job of a book critic is making critical judgments — because I only had 200 words per book, or sometimes fewer if I was reviewing more books, I mostly reviewed books for the Post which I’d either loved or enjoyed with some reservations. If I’d had more space, or had been reviewing a single book at a greater length, I might have written more harsh reviews. But even in that short space with limited ability to get into the weeds, I still tried my best to offer thoughts about how the book was using narrative devices, and how well they worked. …

(7) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? “Daniel Radcliffe Was Pitched A ‘Wizard Of Oz’ Remake With ‘HP’ Trio” says Deadline.

Post-Harry Potter, star Daniel Radcliffe has taken on no shortage of singular projects, playing anyone from a flatulent corpse (Swiss Army Man) to a gun-toting computer programmer (Guns Akimbo), but there’s one pitch that stands out as “one of the worst” he’s ever heard.

While guesting on Hot Ones ahead of his Broadway return in Every Brilliant Thing and the premiere of comedy The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins, the Kill Your Darlings actor was asked about bizarre or unique pitches he’s agreed to take on. The question made him call back the memory of a particularly horrendous pitch for the Harry Potter trio.

“One of the worst ideas that I’ve ever heard: During Potter, somebody came to us and, I think, asked — like they wanted to cast all three of us — me, Emma [Watson] and Rupert [Grint] — in a remake of Wizard of Oz, where Emma was Dorothy, I can’t remember what Rupert was and I just remember I was going to be the lion, but also, he knew karate. I was like a karate-kicking Cowardly Lion,” Radcliffe said.

He added, “I was like 14 or 15, and I was like, ‘I don’t know a lot about the world, but this is a bad idea. This should not be made.’”…

(8) CARVER FUNERAL INFO. [Item by Mickey Mikkelsen.] Author and Nebula Award nominee, Jeffrey A. Carver passed away on February 6 as a result of his quest for a lung transplant. The family reached out to me this morning as his funeral is set for March 14th and there will be a zoom option. Jeffrey was an incredible staple in the science fiction community

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 25, 1971 — Sean Astin, 55.

Let’s talk about Sean Astin who played Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of The Rings films. I’ll admit that he was one of my favorite hobbits in the trilogy and Sean did a sterling job of bringing his character to life here, didn’t he? I’ll also admit that I’d completely forgotten that he wasn’t in The Hobbit as in I tend to think that the hobbits in The Hobbit were the same as those who were in the trilogy.

Before The Lord of The Rings, he showed in his first film playing Mikey Walsh in The Goonies. No, not genre (remember My Birthday Write-up, my rules what gets included here) but a really fine YA treasure hunt adventure in which everyone has fun. Well not everyone.

He has a lead role in Toy Soldiers, a film I still have an odd fond spot for, as William “Billy” Tepper. Damn I liked those toy soldiers. I even had some of the action figures a long time ago.

He was Stuart Conway in a film named after a time travel device called Slipstream that was stolen by a group of bank robbers. Might be interesting to see. Any of you seen it?

He voiced Shazam in a pair of animated DC films, Justice League: War and Justice League: Atlantis, almost proving there are might be too many DC animated films, though I have seen the second one and it’s rather well done. Look he even did a Lego one!

In the Department of Films That I Never Knew Existed Off Novels I Never Knew Were Written is Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic, which proves how prolific he was or how bad my memory is, at any rate Sean is Twoflower here.

Dorothy and the Witches of Oz is a 2012 series of a decade ago which apparently covered The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Ozma of Oz, The Road to Oz and The Magic of Oz. Somewhere in there, he was Frack Muckadoo, a servant of Princess Langwidere.

He even got to voice Raphael in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wrath of the Mutants series.

I think the last thing I’ll mention is that he showed up in a brief recurring role on The Big Bang Theory series as Dr. Greg Pemberton, one of a team of Fermi-Lab physicists who accidentally confirmed the Super-Asymmetry paper published by Sheldon and Amy. Wasn’t that an amazingly fantastic series?

Yes, there’s other kibbles and bits which I’m sure you’ll point out, but I need tea now.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

B.C. on comics in newspapers.
Dinosaur Comics discusses fonts. But not for long.
Six Chix has a writing exercise.

(11) MARVEL’S ‘WHAT IF?’ IS 50. For 50 years, Marvel Comics has dared to ask WHAT IF?, putting bold twists on major Marvel moments and opening the floodgates to the multiverse! To celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the original What If? series, Marvel will publish eight all-new WHAT IF…? one-shots this summer. Crafted by some of today’s biggest talents, the new one-shots shake the foundations of every corner of the Marvel mythos beginning with startling stories starring the X-Men and Thor and continuing with epic reimaginings of pivotal storylines like Secret Wars and Kraven’s Last Hunt.

The new one-shots kick off in June with WHAT IF…? UNCANNY X-MEN #1, where Gerry Duggan and Jan Bazaldua put a spin on one of comics’ most tragic love stories, and WHAT IF…? THOR #1,which sees Torunn Grønbekk and Sergio Dávila shift symbiote history towards a mighty new destiny!

WHAT IF…? UNCANNY X-MEN #1. Written by GERRY DUGGAN. Art by JAN BAZALDUA

WHAT IF…CYCLOPS HAD STAYED WITH MADELYNE PRYOR?

Imagine a world where Madelyne Pryor, the Goblin Queen, had survived the Inferno. What would have happened if Cyclops had saved her soul. What would have happened if he and Maddie had raised their son, Nathan Summers? What would that world look like? And why would that be the most terrible thing to happen to mutantdom and Earth itself?

WHAT IF…? THOR #1. Written by TORUNN GRØNBEKK. Art by SERGIO DÁVILA

WHAT IF…THOR GOT SPIDER-MAN’S SYMBIOTE SUIT?

Amid the chaos, there comes a costume – but not to the hero you know! Legend has it that bonding with the symbiote suit made Thor mightier still. But what shadows lurking in the Ten Realms would take interest in such a powerful pairing?

Check out the full lineup along with Lucas Werneck’s first two covers and stay tuned for more details in the months ahead.

(12) SUPPORT SOUGHT FOR HE-MAN CREATOR. [Item by Steven French.] “’He-Man’ Creator Roger Sweet Suffering From Dementia, Wife Starts GoFundMe” reports TMZ.com. The direct link to the GoFundMe is here.

Roger Sweet — the toy designer who created the He-Man character in the “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” 1980s animated kids’ show — is suffering from dementia … and according to his wife, he’s unable to afford the necessary care.

Marlene Sweet — who has been married to Roger for nearly 40 years — launched a GoFundMe to help with the $10,200-a-month bill for Roger’s memory care facility….

(13) THE EYE HAS IT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “The Evolution of Eyes Began With One” in the New York Times. Link bypasses NYT paywall. “Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the evolution of the vertebrate eye. New research suggests that it traces back to a cyclopean invertebrate with a single eye atop the head.”

…In 1994, scientists didn’t know enough about those microscopic details to develop a hypothesis for how they evolved as well. Three decades later, that’s no longer the case. “There’s lots of molecular data now that we can use that is extremely powerful,” Dr. Nilsson said.

He and other vision experts have now joined forces to develop a hypothesis for how vertebrate eyes evolved….

…“What we’ve done is, we’ve provided a plausible set of steps that got us there,” Dr. Baden said.

The scenario starts about 560 million years ago, when our invertebrate ancestors lived mostly buried in the ocean floor. They stuck out their brainless heads to filter bits of food floating by….

(14) TRAILER PARK. “’For All Mankind’ Season 5 Trailer: Mars Reaches A Boiling Point” – Deadline supplies an introduction.

It’s getting really intense between Mars and Earth, as we can see in the full Season 5 trailer for For All Mankind dropped Tuesday by Apple.

Season 5 picks up in the alt-2010s with President Bragg (Randy Oglesby) declaring “My administration will put Earth back in charge.” But Mars is having none of that.

The sci-fi series returns for its fifth season on March 27.

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

Marvel’s Comics Giveaway Day Is May 2

Posted on February 15, 2026 by Mike Glyer

Marvel has revealed the four titles fans can pick up at participating comic book shops at Comics Giveaway Day on May 2.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1000/QUEEN IN BLACK #1 CGD 2026;
ARMAGEDDON/X-MEN #1 CGD 2026;
ALIEN, PREDATOR, & PLANET OF THE APES #1 CGD 2026; and
SPIDEY & HIS AMAZING FRIENDS #1 CGD 2026.

Here’s a sneak peek at artwork from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1000/QUEEN IN BLACK #1 CGD 2026 and ARMAGEDDON/X-MEN #1 CGD 2026, which will prepare readers for the year’s most anticipated stories: ARMAGEDDON, the epic summer event from writer Chip Zdarsky; QUEEN IN BLACK, an upcoming symbiote event spinning out of Al Ewing’s work on Venom; the yet-to-be-announced next X-Men milestone; AND the historic AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1000! The issues will also include stories tied to Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein’s Infernal Hulk and reveal what’s next for Doctor Doom.

Also available, don’t miss ALIEN, PREDATOR & PLANET OF THE APES #1 CGD 2026, spotlighting Marvel’s acclaimed 20th Century Studios storytelling with new stories set in some of the world’s most iconic sci-fi franchises.And for little ones, SPIDEY & HIS AMAZING FRIENDS #1 CGD 2026 provides the best first comic book experience you can get with a Spidey & his Amazing Friends adventure guest starring Jeff the Land Shark and Symbie.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1000/QUEEN IN BLACK #1 CGD 2026. Written by JOE KELLY, AL EWING & PHILLIP KENNEDY JOHNSON. Art by JOHN ROMITA JR., IBAN COELLO & NIC KLEIN. Cover by DIKE RUAN

The road to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1000 takes a big turn here as fate bears down on Peter Parker! The Queen in Black has been coronated, and Mary Jane Watson as Venom is not ready for her! The Eldest has taken control of the Hulk, and what happens next will make every past Hulk battle look like a skirmish!

ARMAGEDDON/X-MEN #1 CGD 2026. Written by CHIP ZDARSKY, JED MACKAY & RYAN NORTH. Art by FEDERICO VICENTINI, FRANK ALPIZAR & DELIO DIAZ, & FRANCESCO MOBILI. Cover by RYAN STEGMAN

The heroes of the Marvel Universe assemble to take on the Red Hulk in a critical story by Chip Zdarsky that sets the stage for this summer’s Marvel event…ARMAGEDDON! Armageddon is here, and no one is safe from the coming end.

PLUS: Your first look at this summer’s big X-MEN event…and DOOM!

ALIEN, PREDATOR & PLANET OF THE APES #1 CGD 2026. Written by SALADIN AHMED, JORDAN MORRIS & GREG PAK. Art by ROLAND BOSCHI, EMILIO LAISO & ALAN ROBINSON. Cover by DAVIDE PARATORE.

In this issue, you’ll find stories from across 20th Century Studios – from ALIEN to PREDATOR to PLANET OF THE APES! Saladin Ahmed presents a tale set on a planet that’s already succumbed to Xenomorphs! And in Jordan Morris’ story, a Yautja warrior stalks one of Earth’s greatest fighters.

All this and a return to the Planet of the Apes!

SPIDEY & HIS AMAZING FRIENDS #1 CGD 2026. Written by DANIELLE KREGER. Art by GOODMAN YAMADA. Cover by PACO MEDINA.

SPIDEY AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS, Spin and Ghost-Spider, think they have their web-shooting hands full when JEFF THE LAND SHARK pays them a visit! But they haven’t seen anything yet – because shapeshifting alien SYMBIE is here to turn Jeff’s world upside down!

Check out the new artwork and inquire at your local comic shop regarding availability of Comics Giveaway Day™ titles.

[Based on a pess release.]

Pixel Scroll 11/27/25 As God Is My Witness I Thought Pixel Scrolls Could Fly

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) ARE YOU IDIOCYNCRATIC? Space Cowboy Books presents Electronic Brain #1 “A new kind of magazine for an idiosyncratic kind of human.”

Electronic Brain features: stories, pocket dramas, scores, graphic novels, interviews, and more. Print for the well-rounded reader dissatisfied with smarmy category and genre pigeon-holing. A place for provoking thought, provoking emotion, and breaking down the gates of the possible. Always anti-AI / pro-human. Rationally prepared to be absurd. Superposition when the time comes.

Contributors:

Phoenix Alexander
Eugen Bacon
Michael Butterworth
Tara Campbell
John Clute
Gregory Feeley
Alice W. Fuller
Rocco Harris
James Machell
Charles Platt

Publication date: December 9.

(2) JEOPARDY! [Item by Andrew Porter.] On last night’s Jeopardy!, the category was, “Out of This World Literary Titles”.

(3) FIRST HENSON COMPANY AUCTION. The New York Times profiles “Miss Piggy, Fraggles and an Auction at the Twilight of a Hollywood Era”. (Behind a paywall.)

It’s time to stop the music? It’s time to unlight the lights?

The Jim Henson Company, which became an entertainment force in the 1970s from “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show” to “The Muppet Movie,” sold its longtime Los Angeles studio last year for more than $40 million. Now, Henson is auctioning 435 items from its archive — puppets, props, posters, even some shirts that Jim Henson himself used to wear. (He died in 1990.)

The sale, billed as the company’s 70th Anniversary Auction, will take place on Tuesday at the former Henson campus. It is expected to raise $1.3 million to $2.1 million, according to Julien’s Auctions.

“In 70 years, the Jim Henson Company has never sold anything at auction,” Roy Parker-Saladino, a Julien’s pop culture specialist, said. “That means we don’t really know what the market is. I’m confident, but it’s going to be a surprise for us all.”

Henson is not going out of business. New projects include “The First Snow of Fraggle Rock,” a holiday special coming to Apple TV on Dec. 5. Apple also has a second season of the Henson-produced preschool series “Slumberkins” on the way, and more shows are in the works for various outlets….

…The auction is less Muppety than you might expect — that is, there aren’t any actual Muppets, most likely because Henson sold the franchise to Disney in 2004 for $74 million. But there are standout props, including Miss Piggy’s production-worn pumps ($7,000 to $9,000) from the 1981 comedy “The Great Muppet Caper.”

In 2019, as streaming services poured money into content, Henson received one of the biggest orders in its history: Netflix spent an estimated $100 million on “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance,” a 10-episode prequel to Jim Henson’s 1982 movie. But the fantasy series, despite strong reviews, didn’t perform as Netflix had hoped. It was canceled after one season….

(4) JESSIE SYLVA Q&A. “A Rom-Com in Middle-earth: PW Talks with Jessie Sylva” at Publishers Weekly.

In the fantasist’s debut novel, How to Lose a Goblin in 10 Days, a goblin and a halfling are forced to cohabitate….

Ren, the goblin love interest, is nonbinary. What inspired you to create a queernorm world?

There’s a lot of queer cozy fantasy, which I love, but you still don’t see that many explicitly nonbinary characters, not just in fantasy but across the board. I wanted to help fill that void. And it felt right for the character: that’s just how Ren showed up. Also, I pretty much only write about queer characters. When I was growing up, I loved fantasy novels but it felt really isolating to not see heroes like myself. I decided when I became a writer that I’d create the kind of stories I wanted to see. I don’t want to have to interrogate the same kind of homophobia and bigotry that exists in the real world. Honestly, if we can accept that there are dragons, why not accept that this is a world where all sexualities and gender identities are accepted, too? That’s part of the coziness, I think.

You play with a lot of romance tropes. Do you have a favorite to write?

I love “there was only one bed,” which I use in the book. I’m also a huge sucker for childhood friends to lovers, and fake dating. There are actually very few romantic tropes I actively dislike because when they’re done well, they can be very charming.

Do you consider yourself more of a halfling or a goblin?

I love the cottagecore aesthetic that goes along with halflings, but inside I’m more of a goblin. My desk is organized chaos. I wouldn’t do very well in the orderly halfling way of life.

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Item by Cat Eldridge.]

November 27, 1907 — L. Sprague de Camp. (Died 2000.)

Let’s start with his excellent The Incorporated Knight series comprises some 1970s short stories by de Camp and two novels written in collaboration with his wife Catherine Crook de Camp, The Incorporated Knight and The Pixilated Peeress. The early short stories were reworked into first novel.

Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, and Isaac Asimov, Philadelphia Navy Yard, 1944. Heinlein and Asimov were two of The Big Three. Who was the third?

Next let me praise his Harold Shea and Gavagan’s Bar stories, both written with his friend Fletcher Pratt. There are five stories by them, another ten stories are written forty years later but not by them and I’m not at all fond of those. The original stories were first collected in The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea. Treasure them.

They say Gavagan’s Bar were patterned after Lord Dunsany’s Jorkens stories and that certainly makes sense. These are quite extraordinary tales. It appears the last printed edition is Tales from Gavagan’s Bar in 1980 on Bantam Books. Orion did a UK epub just several years ago and this year released one in the U.S.

They did a lot of Really Good Stuff, say The Incomplete Enchanter and The Land of Unreason. An amazing writing partnership it was.

So, what’s good by him alone. Surprisingly his Conan tales are damn good. Now stop throwing things at me, I’m serious. Some are stellar like “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” and “The Bloodstained God”. (Yes, I’ve a weakness for this fiction.) The three Conan novels co-written with Lin Carter (Conan the Barbarian was also written with Catherine Crook de Camp) are remarkably resistant to the Suck Fairy.

Shall I note how excellent his Viagens Interplanetarias series is? Well, I will. Adventurous and lighthearted SF with great characters and fun stories, novels (much of which was written with his wife) and stories alike are great reads. I read a few stories a while back and even the Suck Fairy still liked them. All of his fiction holds up remarkably well despite being written upwards of six decades ago.

Well, that’s my personal reading history with him. What’s yours?

(6) COMICS ENCOUNTER. Paul Cornell, Stuart Moore and Chris Ryall discuss how they discovered their love for Marvel Comics at Literary Hub: “The Magic of Marvel: How We Met the Avengers, Doctor Strange, Daredevil and Others”.

When did you first get into comics and what did they mean to you then? How has that changed?

Chris Ryall: I was maybe five years old when I started, but I had a brother four years older who already had a decent comic collection. And he had older friends (nine or ten at least!), one of whom had an old copy of Fantastic Four #130 on his floor, and it utterly grabbed me—it was a Jim Steranko image of the Fantastic Four fighting the Frightful Four, and the mix of colorful characters and strangeness on display (a guy made of rocks fighting a guy made of sand! A woman with what looked like impossibly long and living hair! A guy flying around while lit on fire, someone else stretching across the cover…it was all utterly captivating to my young eyes) took hold of me then and hasn’t let go yet.

It’s certainly harder now, after working in the business and meeting and knowing so many people who make comics from all sides, to read them today with anything close to the purity they had when I was a kid, but that’s the thing we’re all still chasing, I think. Trying to discover exciting new talents and titles when we’re reading, and trying to create exciting moments that might equal that childhood burst of passion for someone else. Much has changed about comic books as an industry but the one thing that hasn’t is my love for the medium of comics and the people who make them….

(7) STRANGER THINGS MAKERS ON BBC FRONT ROW. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC’s week-day Radio 4 arts programme Front Row interviewed the makers of Netflix’s Stranger Things. In it, the Duffer brothers explain how the show nearly got made, how they recognize the importance of endings, and how they had a problem when they realized that the cast was growing up ahead of the seasons’ scripts….

Show creators Matt and Ross Duffer talk to Samira Ahmed about the final season of Stranger Things.

The 15-minute interview commences straight after the show’s brief introduction.

You can access it here.

(8) KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES (AND DUCKING). SYFY Wire says, “Sharknado Origin Movie Confirmed: What to Know”.

You’re gonna need a bigger umbrella because the forecast calls for more tornadoes packed to the gills (pun intended) with sharp-toothed oceanic predators. In fact, forget the umbrella—nothing stops the Sharknado.

Low-budget juggernaut The Asylum is officially diving back into the wild, made-for-TV world of Sharknado with an origin story about Fin and April as teenagers that takes place before the six schlocky installments that aired on SYFY from 2013 to 2018, Variety confirmed Nov. 14.

Anthony C. Ferrante returns to direct the project—entitled Sharknado Origins—which is set to kick off production later this year ahead of a planned summer 2026 release…

…The plot is said to revolve around teenage versions of Fin and April (played in the films by Ian Ziering and Tara Reid respectively), who “cross paths during a perfect beach summer, where sparks immediately fly,” reads the synopsis provided by Variety.

“But just as Fin is about to seal the moment with a promise ring,” the description continues, “the sky darkens, a massive funnel cloud forms, and—you’ve guessed it—sharks dramatically erupt from the ocean. Thus, the very first Sharknado is born—because nothing says young love like airborne predators.'”…

(9) FRINGE FANDOM. ScreenRant claims “This 5-Season Show From 16 Years Ago Predicted Pretty Much Every Modern Sci-Fi TV Trope”.

Fringe is a five-season show from 16 years ago that predicted pretty much every modern sci-fi TV trope since. Created by Cloverfield’s J. J. Abrams, Fringe premiered on Fox in 2008 and aired 100 episodes over five seasons. While earlier Fringe episodes posed a “mystery of the week” series, the show later delved deeper into a serialized format. The sci-fi show followed a mismatched group of people (an FBI agent, an archetypal mad scientist, and his estranged son) in their daily lives as part of the Fringe Division of the FBI, which uses fringe science to investigate unexplained cases.

Fringe was arguably one of the best sci-fi TV shows of its time, with an 80% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes. Fringe was a hybrid of many different genres, including fantasy and procedural drama, which helped it to explore strange scientific theories and phenomena in interesting ways. Featuring an entirely animated episode, imaginary killer butterflies, a detective noir episode, floating corpses, and airplane monsters, Fringe is definitely one of the strangest sci-fi shows, yet, over the years, Fringe and its cast won many major awards. However, Fringe’s defining sci-fi tropes are what truly made it a pioneer of the genre….

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro missed a step.
Bound and Gagged found a lost parade balloon.
Dinosaur Comics adds a Superman chess piece.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/22/25 File My Pixels Among The Stars

Posted on November 22, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) ROCKS AROUND THE CLOCK. “The TARDIS lands at Stonehenge for Doctor Who Day” – which is November 23.

BBC Studios today announces a show-stopping finale to its global fan activation: the Doctor’s iconic TARDIS will land at UNESCO World Heritage Site Stonehenge on Doctor Who Day, Sunday 23rd November, in partnership with English Heritage.

This bold and unique brand moment marks the culmination of VWORP AROUND THE WORLD, an interactive digital treasure hunt hosted on UNIT HQ that has engaged fans worldwide through five digital missions to crack codes and find clues disseminated across Doctor Who social channels, unlocking exclusive digital rewards.

In partnership with English Heritage, the TARDIS will land at Stonehenge, offering fans the chance to see the TARDIS up close in one of the UK’s most historic and awe-inspiring settings. Doctor Who fans will recognise Stonehenge as the site of an iconic clash between Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, an army of Roman centurions and a sky full of enemy spacecraft in Series 5’s penultimate adventure, The Pandorica Opens…

(2) DON’T FALL FOR IT. John Scalzi warns “Yes, All Those Author Services and Book Club Emails Are Fake, and No, Don’t Send Them Any Money”, and just the spam he got in this morning’s email was enough to furnish Whatever readers wil a load of examples.

If you’re an author, or honestly if you just happen to be standing near an author these days, then you have probably seen a flood of emails in the past couple of months promising you that whoever is sending you the email can promote [Insert name of one of your works here, even if it is over a decade old] to Amazon/Goodreads/their book club/a nebulous agglomeration of readers/etc. Either up front, or after an email exchange, will come the ask of some amount of money, usually a couple hundred dollars but sometimes more, as “administrative fees” or some such.

Just to be clear, so there is no doubt about these things: Every single one of these emails is absolutely a scam, none of these promoters and/or book clubs are real*, and if you send money to any of these accounts, either directly or through a third-party service, you will get nothing for your money and you will never see that money or those scammers again. Never send money to these people. Ever…

(3) AND TELL TCHAIKOVSKY THE NEWS. Subterranean Press is coming out with The Best of Adrian Tchaikovsky in March 2026. Foreword by John Scalzi. The limited hardcover is priced at $60.

…Hungry ants that want to reconstruct the world in their own image. Occult investigations into private clubs. A philosopher’s attachment to his beloved pet. A new definition of battlefield archaeology.

What the homunculi do when the wizard’s away. A trans-dimensional theatre troupe. Murder by flower-arrangement. The infectious consequences of a fairytale wedding.

A magician conjures Sherlock Holmes. What happens when the mining robots mine, but not for you. The ultimate polycule. What is the groppler and why does it gropple?

In this collection is a veritable treasure trove of short fiction from the award-winning Adrian Tchaikovsky, covering all corners of the genre from science-fiction to fantasy to the plain weird. Over thirty tales from across the breadth of his career, from the depths of space through broken futures, from the haunted shadows of the modern day to fantastical magic worlds, including the author’s commentary on the selection….

(4) CONVERGENCE LAUNCHES GRANT FUND APPEAL. Minneapolis’ CONvergence Convention asks for donations so they can bring in more people experiencing financial hardship.

The Board of Convergence Events believes that throwing our big nerd party every year is worthwhile to help replenish our community’s hearts. And, year over year, we see certain communities being left out of the room. Our Attendance Grants are meant to change that: they explicitly made it possible for 35 BIPOC folks to join our shindig who otherwise couldn’t attend last year.

We want to see that happen again, and we’ve expanded the grants this year to bring in folks experiencing financial hardship. It’s rough out there, folks. We feel it. You feel it. But Give to the Max Day, like CONvergence, provides us a respite: a way to say, “we take care of each other.” We look at the world, and we look at each other, and we choose to stand together to protect and support our vulnerable populations. And, as always, we invite you to join us.

Last year’s grant program paid for 35 BIPOC fans to come check out CONvergence. As of this writing, they’ve raised $1,190 of their $4,000 goal. This is the link to donate: “GTTM 2025: Expanding CVG Grant Opportunities”.

(5) TOM HANKS VISITS 1939. Facebook’s Europa SF page has gotten from somewhere a long review of “’This World of Tomorrow’: Chronometric Cringe, Tom Hanks’s Time-Traveling Midlife Crisis”. (Can you believe Tom went to New York in 1939 and didn’t even drop by the first Worldcon?)

…Thus begins “This World of Tomorrow”, a theatrical curiosity penned by Tom Hanks and James Glossman, now playing at the Shed (New York City), and directed with a straight face by Kenny Leon.

Let’s be clear: this is not your average sci-fi romp!

There are no laser battles, no dystopian overlords, and certainly no AI revolts (though one does get the sense that ELMA, the Wikipedia-spewing robot, is one bad reboot away from becoming sentient and unionizing).

Instead, we’re treated to a nostalgic love letter to a past that never quite existed, filtered through the sepia-toned lens of a man who once voiced Woody and now wants to write like Thornton Wilder after a root canal.

Bert, played by Tom Hanks himself with the kind of affable confusion that suggests he’s wandered into the wrong rehearsal but decided to stay, is a man out of time—literally.

Dissatisfied with his sleek, soulless future, he zips back to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where optimism was sold by the pound and everyone wore hats with conviction.

There, he meets Carmen Perry (Kelli O’Hara, radiating grace even while saddled with a Bronx accent thick enough to spread on toast) and her precocious niece Virginia (Kayli Carter, channeling a Looney Tunes character with a thesaurus).

Bert falls in love, of course.

Because what else is a billionaire to do when the Singularity disappoints?…

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

November 22, 1996 — Star Trek: First Contact

Twenty-nine years ago on this date, Star Trek: First Contact premiered. It was the eighth film of the Trek films, and the second of the Next Gen films following Star Trek Generations. The story was written by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore. It was directed by Jonathan Frakes from the screenplay by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore. Not quite a film by committee, but damn close.

It had the Next Generation cast plus Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell and Alice Krige, the latter as the Borg Queen. She reprised the role in Voyager and Picard, and recently voiced the role in Lower Decks.

A lot of titles were tossed around — Star Trek: Borg, Star Trek: Destinies, Star Trek: Future Generations and Star Trek: Generations II were all considered before Star Trek: Resurrection was chosen and then abandoned when 20th Century Fox announced the title of the fourth Alien film as Alien Resurrection, so the film was finally Star Trek: First Contact.

It did very well at the box office making one hundred fifty million against a budget of fifty million.

With very few exceptions, critics really loved it. Only The Voyage Home seems as to be highly regarded as this film by them.

First Contact received generally positive reviews upon release. The Independent said “For the first time, a Star Trek movie actually looks like something more ambitious than an extended TV show.” And the Los Angeles Times exclaimed, “First Contact does everything you’d want a Star Trek film to do, and it does it with cheerfulness and style.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a most excellent rating of eighty-nine percent.

It was nominated for a Hugo at LoneStarCon 2, the year that Babylon 5’s “Severed Dreams” won. That was a scary episode, a very scary episode.

Do I like it? Very much so. Other than The Voyage Home, it’s my favorite of all the films. And yes, the Suck Fairy loves it too. For some reason, she finds the Borg Queen fascinating. Well, she finds the Borg in general fascinating.

It is streaming on Paramount+ like almost everything Trek except inexplicably a certain animated series.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

Frank and Ernest finds that the names suit the business.
Free Range verifies a traffic sign.
Speed Bump accepts the diagnosis.

(8) UFO VS. ICE? “President could reveal aliens exist in ‘near future,’ says ‘Age of Disclosure’ director” at Entertainment Weekly. Yes, Trump will announce there are aliens – and that they are illegal.

The most significant presidential announcement in human history might be just around the corner.

Dan Farah, the director behind the explosive documentary The Age of Disclosure (out Friday), tells Entertainment Weekly he believes the release of his film could lead to the President of the United States publicly revealing the existence of non-human intelligent life.

“I think it’s only a matter of time before the release of this film is followed by a sitting president stepping to the podium and telling the world, ‘We’re not alone in the universe,'” he says. “It’s the most significant moment a leader could possibly have.”

Through shocking testimony from 34 U.S. Government, military, and intelligence community officials — including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Senator Kristen Gillibrand — the film explores what many of the interview subjects describe as an “80-year global cover-up of non-human intelligent life and a secret war among major nations to reverse-engineer advanced technology of non-human origin.”

In the film, interview subjects, including Secretary of State Rubio, also explain how senior politicians, even including the president, might be kept in the dark about such a momentous secret….

(9) CATCH UP ON YOUR MARVEL HISTORY. [Item by Steven French.] Not to shill for a major publisher but these do look both accessible and affordable: “Marvel Age of Comics” from Bloomsbury.

Marvel Age of Comics is a series of concise, affordable, beautifully designed books that explore the history of over 85 years of Marvel Comics.

Books in the series range from deep dives into a singular comic storyline, notable runs and works produced by creators who have made a special contribution to Marvel stories, the origins and evolution of a particular character, or social and progressive themes and historical moments that have been reflected in Marvel Comics.

Written by great writers who also happen to be comic book fans, Marvel Age of Comics blends personal narrative with a look back at comics history through the decades. The books are brought to life using curated artwork from the comics and reproduced materials from Marvel’s digital archives creating a series that is perfect for both dedicated and new comic book fans alike….

(10) DODGING THE ALGORITHM. BBC discusses “The words you can’t say on the internet” – or are they?

There’s a secret list of words you can’t say on social media – at least, that’s what everyone seems to think.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that people avoid certain words on social media. They’ll say “unalived” instead of “killed”. Guns are “pew pews”. Consenting adults have “seggs” with each other. Social media users are the first to admit this makes them sound ridiculous. But many think they don’t have a choice.

Algospeak, as it’s often called, is a whole coded language built around the idea that algorithms bury content that uses forbidden words or phrases, either to boost the political agendas of social media companies, or to sanitise our feeds for advertisers.

The tech industry swears this is all nonsense. A YouTube spokesperson named Boot Bullwinkle explains it plainly. “YouTube does not have a list of banned or restricted words,” he tells the BBC. “Our policies reflect our understanding that context matters and words can have different meanings and intent. The efficacy of this nuanced approach is evident from the diversity of topics, voices and perspectives seen across YouTube.” Meta and TikTok said the same thing: we never do this, it’s a myth.

The truth, however, is more complicated….

… TikTok, Meta and YouTube all say the algorithms that control your feed are complex, interconnected systems that use billions of data points to serve content you’ll find relevant and satisfying – and all three publish information to explain how these systems work. TikTok, for example, says it bases its recommendations on predicting the likelihood that each individual user will interact with a video. The companies say they do remove or suppress posts, but only when that content violates clearly stated community guidelines, which are designed to balance safety with free expression. TikTok, Meta and YouTube say they always notify users about these decisions, and they all regularly publish transparency reports with details about their moderation decisions.

In practice, though, social media platforms have repeatedly meddled with which voices are amplified or buried, contradicting their rhetoric about openness and fair play, according to investigations by the BBC, advocacy groups, researchers and other news outlets….

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

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Tag Archives: Marvel

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Pixel Scroll 11/27/25 As God Is My Witness I Thought Pixel Scrolls Could Fly

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