(1) HWA ELECTIONS. The Horror Writers Association held its annual election in September. The candidates for the Offices of Vice President and Treasurer ran unopposed. There were four contested Trustee positions.

• Vice President: Lisa Wood (unopposed)
• Treasurer: Marc Abbot (unopposed)
• Trustees: Incumbents Lisa Kröger, Brian Matthews, and Patrick Barb were re-elected; and  a new Trustee, Sèphera Girón, was elected.

(2) BROWSING THE ANTHROPIC SETTLEMENT SITE. Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey reminds authors to look for their names and titles using the “Works Lookup” tool on the Anthropic copyright settlement page. He wondered how many sff writers are on the list – the answer was: plenty!

I don’t have any books to my credit, but those of you who do might want to explore this site. Obviously, the search engine may return some false positives. But among people I know, the thieves have 134 items by Mercedes Lackey on the list, 28 items by Samuel Delany, one by Mary Anne Mohanraj, 27 by Joe Haldeman, 50 by Eric Flint, 68 by G.R.R. Martin, 16 by Robert Asprin (“Yang”), six by Juanita R Coulson, six by Gene DeWeese under his own name, 17 by andrew j offutt under his own name or as John Cleve, one by Erwin Strauss (“Filthy Pierre”), at least five by David Friedman (“Cariadoc of the Bow”), 12 by C. S. Friedman, two for Dave Langford, five by Bob Tucker, etc., etc.

(3) REALLY A PRATCHETT FAN? Rhianna Pratchett is impressed by Rachel Cunliffe’s New Statesman article “Has Kemi Badenoch actually read Terry Pratchett?” (Kemi Badenoch is a British politician who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party since November 2024.)

It’s important for politicians to have some kind of cultural hinterland. So perhaps we should be reassured by Kemi Badenoch’s revelation on the morning broadcast round that her favourite author is the literary legend Terry Pratchett. The Tory leader apparently has all but one of Pratchett’s 60-odd books, which blend sci-fi and fantasy with searing social commentary. She finds them “very funny”.

Nonetheless, one question remains: has she actually read them?

Post-structural theory dictates that readers may take whatever meaning they like from the content they consume. If Trump and his fans want to play “Born In The USA” at a Maga rally, the fact the song is a scathing critique of the Vietnam War and the arrogance of American leadership shouldn’t stop them. The artist’s own politics or intentions are irrelevant. So Badenoch is perfectly entitled to enjoy the Discworld novels, set in a magical disc-shaped land that flies through space carried by four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle. It makes a change from her previous top reads (the works of Thomas Sowell and Friedrich Hayek’s Road To Serfdom), but if she can find joy in tales of witches and werewolves and a wizarding university with an orangutan for a librarian, all the more power to her.

Yet something about the image of Badenoch settling down with a dog-eared copy of one of Pratchett’s masterpieces doesn’t quite compute. …

…How, for example, would Badenoch interpret the Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness as detailed in Men At Arms, that notes how rich people can afford to make a single purchase of high-quality products (like boots) that last forever, whereas the poor are forced into a cycle of buying cheap goods that wear out quickly and must be frequently replaced, costing them far more over time? Does she see the innate injustice of trapping people in grinding poverty, or does she just think it is good for economic growth to sell as many cheap boots as possible?

Similar points may be made about other Pratchett musings on poverty, power and class dynamics. For instance, the observation in Feet of Clay that “while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions”, seems distinctly un-Tory in its nature. …

(4) I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU PERSON AND BEEP BOOP. “Ohio Lawmaker Wants to Ban Marriage Between Humans and AI Chatbots” reports Gizmodo.

…NBC-4 in Ohio writes that Rep. Thaddeus Claggett, who chairs the state’s House Technology and Innovation Committee, has introduced legislation that would stop such unions from occurring. Indeed, not only would House Bill 469 stop the wedding bells for AI-human relationships, it would also stop AI programs from gaining the status of legal personhood. The bill states:

“No AI system shall be recognized as a spouse, domestic partner, or hold any personal legal status analogous to marriage or union with a human or another AI system. Any purported attempt to marry or create a personal union with an AI system is void and has no legal effect.”

Claggett’s interest in banning AI-human unions would appear to have a lot more to do with maintaining exclusive legal rights for humans than it does with stopping people from getting so emotionally attached to their software programs that they decide to tie the knot with them. NBC-4 notes that the goal is to stop AI programs from being able to take on roles that the act of marriage confers upon them—stuff like holding power of attorney or making financial decisions.

“As the computer systems improve in their capacity to act more like humans, we want to be sure we have prohibitions in our law that prohibit those systems from ever being human in their agency,” Claggett told the news outlet. “People need to understand, we’re not talking about marching down the aisle to some tune and having a ceremony with the robot that’ll be on our streets here in a year or two,” he added. “That could happen, but that’s not really what we’re saying.”…

(5) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA presents their monthly science fiction podcast Simultaneous Times episode 92 with the stories:

• “Breathing Night” by Laura Blackwell; narration by Jean-Paul Garnier; with music by TSG 
• “Care of Your Electric Sheep” by F.J. Bergmann; narration by Jean-Paul Garnier; with music by Oneirothopter
• “Skeletal” by Elad Haber; narration by Jean-Paul Garnier;  with music by Phog Masheeen.

Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

(6) APEX MAGAZINE KICKSTARTER UPDATE. Apex Magazine’s 2026 Kickstarter appeal has raised $9,283 of its $20,000 goal in the first two weeks, and continues through October 31. Four of its eight pledge milestones have already been unlocked – for example:

At 10% of our goal, our Kickstarter backers will gain early access to a story slated to be published next year. “Piglet Delivers,” by Maria Haskins, is a delightfully dark story set in the Hundred Acre Wood. This will be exclusive to our Kickstarter backers, so back early so you don’t miss it! UNLOCKED!

(7) DON’T MISS THESE BANNED BOOKS. Dorset Eye has recommendations: “Defying the Censor: Essential Reads for Banned Books Week”.

Every year, Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read and draws attention to the dangers of censorship. It’s a stark reminder that throughout history and even today, books are challenged, restricted, or removed from shelves for their ideas. Reading these works is an act of intellectual defiance, a way to understand different perspectives, and a celebration of the very liberty that censorship seeks to suppress.

Here are some seminal works, all banned at one time or another, that deserve a place on your reading list….

Including the following title, three of the eight books listed are sff – the other two are A Clockwork Orange and Fahrenheit 451.

5. Animal Farm by George Orwell

• The Banning: Orwell’s allegorical satire of the Soviet Union was rejected by multiple publishers, including T.S. Eliot, who felt its critique of a wartime ally (Stalin’s Russia) was ill-timed. It was later banned in the USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries, as well as in places like the UAE for its themes that contradicted Islamic values. It has also been challenged in US schools for being “anti-communist.”
• Why You Should Read It: It is a timeless and devastating fable about how revolutions can be betrayed by tyranny and propaganda. Its warning about the corruption of power is universally applicable and remains as relevant today as it was in 1945.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

October 15, 1928 — The Passing of Mr. Quin

We have a rarity for you this Scroll, a silent film first shown in the UK ninety-five years ago. The Passing of Mr. Quin was the first British film to be based off a short story by Agatha Christie. Though it did not feature Hercule Poirot, as that film debut wouldn’t happen for another three years.

It is a rather odd story. To wit, Professor Appleby has abused his wife, Eleanor, for years but when he is brutally murdered and her lover, Derek, goes missing under mysterious circumstances, Eleanor suspects the worst as she indeed should. 

A mysterious stranger, known mostly as “Mr Quin” appears, and begins to seduce her, but his alcoholism causes him to die quite soon. On his death bed, he confesses that he was Derek all along, and offers her to a rival, who promises to make Eleanor a happy wife.

Not cheerful at all and with just more than a soupçon of misogyny there as well but I don’t think it had any of the anti-Jewish tendencies Christie was known for early on. Need I say that the scriptwriters had their way with Christie’s original story? Well they did. 

This silent film was directed by Leslie Alibi. Three years later he directed the first ever depiction of Poirot with Austin Trevor in the lead role. That was not a silent film and Trevor once claimed he was cast as Poirot because he could speak with a French accent. The Poirot film unfortunately is now lost. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

• Brevity celebrates LOTR.  
• Reality Check witnesses a monster family get-together.
• WaynoVision remembers an important switch. 

(10) DEFORD REVIVAL. Space Cowboy Books is taking preorders for “One Way and Other Stories a book by Miriam Allen deFord and Marie Vibbert” which will be released October 21.

Miriam Allen deFord (1888-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writer’s of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way & Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazer for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paved and led the way for SF’s Silver Age. Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when SF luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight. – Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women

Harlan Ellison knew this history and secured a story by deFord for his own milestone Dangerous Visions anthology.

(11) THIS POSTER IS READY OF ITS CLOSE-UP. Gizmodo assembled a gallery of “The Most Iconic Genre Movie Posters of Drew Struzan”, Hollywood’s go-to artist who died earlier this week. Here’s an example.

…Struzan first started painting this artwork for Blade Runner‘s original theatrical release in 1982, but it was ultimately passed on, leaving the piece unfinished for nearly two decades. When Ridley Scott returned to Blade Runner to release the director’s cut of the film, he went back to Struzan to ask if the piece could finally be completed, giving it the spotlight it deserved….

(12) YODA IN INTERIOR DECORATOR COLORS. [Item by Steven French.] This will already be familiar to many but I for one did not know that Yoda was ‘partly inspired’ by Albert Einstein! So says the Guardian: “Blue, Yoda originally was, archival Star Wars sources reveal”.

“You must unlearn what you have learned,” Jedi master Yoda instructed his stubborn apprentice, Luke Skywalker. And now Star Wars fans may have to do the same after confirmation that the beloved fictional alien was very nearly blue, or even purple.

Reviews of archival sources – and new testimony from a special effects makeup artist who worked on the first Yoda puppets – suggest film-makers made a decision late in the development process to switch the character’s skin colour to green.

Had producers of The Empire Strikes Back closely followed the final screenplay, then Yoda would have been “bluish”.

In the text, Luke and his droid companion, R2-D2, are surprised after being confronted by a small creature who appears on the swamp-covered planet of Dagobah. “Mysteriously standing right in front of Luke is a strange, bluish creature, not more than two feet tall. The wizened little thing is dressed in rags,” reads the screenplay….

(13) WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] In Futurism: “Fixing Hallucinations Would Destroy ChatGPT, Expert Finds”. Or at least make it even more unprofitable per that expert. Which is pretty much the same thing.

…In simple terms, the creators of AI incentivize them to guess rather than admit they don’t know the answer — which might be a good strategy on an exam, but is outright dangerous when giving high-stakes advice about topics like medicine or law.

While OpenAI claimed in an accompanying blog post that “there is a straightforward fix” — tweaking evaluations to “penalize confident errors more than you penalize uncertainty and give partial credit for appropriate expressions of uncertainty” — one expert is warning that the strategy could pose devastating business realities.

In an essay for The Conversation, University of Sheffield lecturer and AI optimization expert Wei Xing argued that the AI industry wouldn’t be economically incentivized to make these changes, as doing so could dramatically increase costs.

Worse yet, having an AI repeatedly admit it can’t answer a prompt with a sufficient degree of confidence could deter users, who love a confidently positioned answer, even if it’s ultimately incorrect.

Even if ChatGPT admitted that it doesn’t know the answer just 30 percent of the time, users could quickly become frustrated and move on, Xing argued….

(14) GOING APE. Time for another look at “Roddy McDowall’s home movies from ‘Planet Of The Apes’ (1968)”, mainly about getting his makeup and facial prosthetics put on.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Pete Beard packs a lot of images into his 10-minute tribute to “The Fantasy Illustrations of Virgil Finlay”.

In science fiction and fantasy circles Vigil Finlay is quite rightly held in high esteem. But because most of his output appeared in pulp magazines between the 1930s and 50s his remarkable paintings and monochrome line drawings haven’t really attracted a wider legion of admirers. I hope this video will make some new converts among viewers of the channel.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]