(1) 2026 HUGO VOTING BEGINS. LAcon V announced today that online voting for the 2026 Hugo Awards has opened. Members also have the option of using a paper ballot. The deadline for voting is August 8, 2026 at noon PDT.

(2) LACON V RELEASES HUGO VOTER PACKET. File 770 answers the question, “What’s In the 2026 Hugo Voter Packet?”.

On May 6, the 2026 Hugo Awards voter packet became available for download by WSFS Members of the LAcon V Worldcon. The packet is an electronic collection which helps voters become better informed about the works and creators on the ballot. Works which are included have been made available through the generosity of finalists and their publishers.

The Hugo Voter Packet will be available for download until the voting deadline Voting will close on August 8, 2026 at noon Pacific….

(3) EUROPEAN FAN FUND WINNER. Hephaestion Christopoulos is the winner of the European Fan Fund 2026. The Greek fan will take part in Metropolcon (Eurocon 2026) in Berlin, Germany, later this year. The EFF administrator has yet to release the voting statistics.

Hephaestion was born in 1982 in Athens. He spent part of the first years of his life in Nigeria; sadly, he doesn’t really remember much from there. He holds a diploma in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, a pregraduate degree in English Language and Literature, as well as a postgraduate degree in Translation. After working for a few years as an engineer, he decided he hates the job, and now he is a full-time translator and editor. In his free time he reads, writes, listens to music, and plays bass with his band, Pray for Decadence. His third book, a short story collection, was released in December 2025 from Hestia, the oldest and one of the most venerable publishing houses when it comes to Greek literature. He also has some stray stories and books in other languages flying around. Most of his work lies somewhere in the interstices between speculative and literary fiction. He lives in Athens with his wise wife (much wiser than him), their five-year-old daughter, and two cats. He is currently the vice-chairman of the Science Fiction Club of Athens (alef.org.gr). You can contact him via his website, terrible things – Ηφαιστίων Χριστόπουλος — he does not update it as frequently as he should, but he keeps saying he will do so.

(4) WEIGHING GAMES. Camestros Felapton has interesting ideas about how to rank games when voting for awards: “Hugo 26: Citizen Sleeper versus Dispatch”.

…Part of the issue is that games, to me, have some unattached dimensions. For example, in a film, there can be a lot going on: acting, plot, direction, cinematography, effects, setting and music. This year in the BDP Long Form category, Sinners has a lot going on with all of those, but they all combine very nicely to make a coherent whole.

A game, though…a game has to be a game. It can have many things, but also none of them other than being a game. A pack of cards can be a whole bunch of games, and so can a pair of dice. However, games can have music, a plot, and even acting….

(5) SHELFIES.  Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was Shelfies #86: Dan Abnett.

Dan Abnett has written more than sixty novels, and too many comics to count (though, according to a recent survey, he is the 12th most prolific writer in the American comic industry of all time, so someone counted). He is especially celebrated for his NYT best-selling Warhammer 40,000 novels, which have been translated into dozens of languages. 

In comics, he writes for the UK’s 2000AD, where he created popular series such as Sinister Dexter, Lawless, The Out and Brink. He writes for DC Comics, Marvel, Dark Horse, Boom! Studios and many other publishers around the world, and his run on The Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel formed the inspiration for the blockbuster movies. He also writes extensively for the games industry.  

Dan lives and works in Maidstone, Kent, in the UK.

(6) FACE THEFT? “Indigenous actor sues James Cameron for ‘stealing’ her facial features for Avatar character” reports the Guardian.

James Cameron and the Walt Disney Company are facing a lawsuit that claims the director based a key character in the Avatar franchise on a teenage actor without her permission.

The suit, filed by actor Q’orianka Kilcher, alleges that Cameron “extracted her facial features” and “directed his design team” to base the key Avatar character Neytiri on her appearance after seeing her in an LA Times advert for Terrence Malick’s 2005 film The New World. In the film Kilcher, who is Native Peruvian, played Pocahontas among a cast that also included Colin Farrell and Christian Bale.

A release about the lawsuit says that “one of Hollywood’s most powerful film-makers exploited a young Indigenous girl’s biometric identity and cultural heritage to create a record-breaking film franchise – without credit or compensation to her – through a series of deliberate, non-expressive commercial acts”.

The lawsuit describes the multibillion-dollar grossing Avatar series as a franchise that “presented itself as sympathetic to Indigenous struggles, all while silently exploiting a real Indigenous youth behind the scenes”. The character of Neytiri is played in the Avatar films by Zoe Saldaña….

(7) LEARNING TO READ. [Item by Steven French.] Something that some of us have known for many years now! “Does your child only read graphic novels? That’s OK—it’s helping them build literacy skills” at Phys.org.

Some parents worry if their children only read graphic novels—or even mostly read them. A common question goes something like: how do I get my child to read something other than comics or graphic novels? But the answer might be: you don’t have to.

Graphic novel series such as Heartstopper, The Babysitters Club and Amulet fly off school library shelves. And original graphic novels such as Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust-themed Maus and To This Day, based on Shane Koyczan’s spoken-word poem, are staples of many high-school classrooms.

Rather than hindering or holding back reading skills, reading graphic novels can actually help develop them.

Reading is many things—from breaking the code to understand what you read, to reading for enjoyment and getting “hooked” by a narrative. Debates about the best way to teach reading have been going on for over 80 years. They’ve recently gained strong focus with the ability of science to examine brain function.

Research shows reading graphic novels leads to improved reading and comprehension skills for all students. And studies demonstrate that children and teenagers who read graphic novels have improved, more positive attitudes toward reading. They are more likely than children who don’t read comics and graphic novels to think of themselves as good readers….

(8) ABOLISH THE HARDBACK. Larry Ryan tells readers of the Guardian this is – “The hill I will die on: Heavy, awkward and incredibly expensive – we don’t need hardback books”.

… The simple fact is that hardbacks are too expensive, and when you know that a cheaper version of the book will arrive in a vaguely defined nine- to 13-month period, it’s easy to just postpone purchasing it. Yet this seems like an unnecessary pause for everyone involved. Given how difficult it is for any piece of culture, let alone books, to get more than fleeting attention, it seems baffling that publishers first offer up the least accessible version. Especially in an era when the cost of producing new books increases and sales struggle. Plus, by the time the lesser-heralded paperback edition arrives, there is a good chance I’ll have just forgotten about it.

My bigger problem, though, is that hardbacks are too cumbersome. They’re hard to travel with, be it on a commute, on holiday or anywhere else; they’re bulky in a bag and they certainly won’t slip easily into a jacket pocket. They’re also awkward to read, especially anything more than 300 or so pages. Taking on a hefty hardback while standing on the tube holding on to a railing with one hand is an obvious irritant. Some years back I impulse-bought the newly released hardback edition of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against the Day: that sucker is 1,085 pages long – it felt as if I was lugging a small child around for weeks….

(9) TED TURNER (1938-2026). “Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87”. Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times profile.

Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.

Mr. Turner’s signature creation was CNN — the Cable News Network — which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. 

As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation” that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.

In 1985, he bought for $1.5 billion the MGM studio’s library of films and nine years later created the cable franchise Turner Classic Movies, or TCM. He made a similar purchase of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and, relying on them, created the Cartoon Network in 1992. 

By 1989, his fortune had doubled to $5 billion. CNN and CNN Headline News reached more than 50 million households worldwide. His MGM film library, which included “The Wizard of Oz” and “Citizen Kane,” evolved into a lucrative investment after all, drawing millions of new viewers to Turner Network Television, or TNT, and then Turner Classic Movies.

Mr. Turner added to his empire in 1991 by purchasing, for $320 million, Hanna-Barbera Productions, whose library included such characters as the Flintstones, the Jetsons and Yogi Bear. A year later, he introduced the Cartoon Network, a 24-hour all-cartoon channel that proved immensely popular. And in 1993, he acquired the film production companies New Line Cinema and Castle Rock…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 6, 1969 — Annalee Newitz, 57.

By Paul Weimer: I first encountered Annalee Newitz’ nonfiction, first, as a columnist, as a nonfiction writer, as a podcaster with their partner Charlie Jane Anders. Four Lost Cities is an amazingly researched book looking at the rise and fall of four cities and what we can learn about the challenges they faced. I learned an amazing amount I never know about, for example, Angkor Wat. I think it is their strongest work and if you asked me “what one book of theirs should I read?”, Four Lost Cities is the one I’d put into your hands.

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was a surprisingly hopeful book, given its title and content. 

Although they have been writing fiction, too for a while, I finally got into their fiction with The Future of Another Timeline, with rival powers fighting for control of a timeline just catnip for me. Given the political changes lately in the United States, it feels even more relevant than it once did. And once again, I learned a lot about some historical events I hadn’t even heard of, thanks to the jumping around the timeline by the protagonists. But even with that, the changes to the timeline are not shown in some grand manner, but how they affect people. People matter to Newitz’s work. 

Newitz’ work is bright, well researched, deep, and thought provoking, with a mind like an engineer and the language and diction of an English professor. I am pretty sure that as good as Future was, I prefer Newitz’ nonfiction more, but I am primed for whatever they decide to turn their prodigious powers on, next. (In the meantime, of course, there is always Our Opinions are Correct). 

[Note: ISFDB and the Science Fiction Encyclopedia say Newitz’ birthday is today, Wikipedia says tomorrow. Happy birthday whichever is the case!)

(11) COMICS SECTION.

• Bliss finds a different kind of rescue pet.
• Bound and Gagged asks the parents’ permission.
• Brewster Rockit identifies a robot.
• Close to Home says the fae are the problem.
• Dinosaur Comics wants the credit.
• Loose Parts gives a new rating.
• xkcd tells how the voyage began.

(12) BLADE RUNNER COMIC TRAILER. From Titan Comics: Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus: To Lose is To Win #1 Official Trailer.

Discovering that Mead and Stix are still alive, their old commanding officer, Uldren sets out to kill them before they can reveal his treachery. The data he stole from Tyrell has enabled the Cheshire Corporation to create bootleg Replicants with the same kill signature as Stix. Meanwhile, still dealing with the fallout from the Yakuza civil war Stix and Mead find themselves fighting for survival against Rumika, A Blade Runner sent by Tyrell to destroy Cheshire and all those connected with it.

(13) BEEN THERE, BUT HAVEN’T DONE THAT! Would you expect House Beautiful to be recommending “The 22 Most Haunted Hotels in the U.S. to Visit This October—If You Dare”?

By nature, hotels are transitory spaces—places where people check in, stay a few nights, and move on. But legend has it that certain hotels are inhabited by ghostly guests who never leave. Some spirits are said to be trapped due to tragic events that claimed their lives on-site; others linger from the property’s past lives as military hospitals or graveyards. And a few simply can’t bear to part with a place they once loved. Given how much life—and occasionally death—unfolds within hotel walls, and the sheer number of people passing through, it’s no surprise that hotels rank among the most haunted buildings in the country….

Number six is the place where I attended Forry Ackerman’s 70th birthday party.

6. Millennium Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles

Nestled in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles, the Millenium Biltmore Hotel is one of the most iconic Hollywood haunts. Until the mid-20th century, the Biltmore was considered L.A.’s most elegant hotel and was a popular destination for young Hollywood hopefuls, including murder victim Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia.

The Bilmore was potentially the last place Short was seen alive on January 9, 1947. The employees confirmed that they observed her alone and saw her get up and leave as if she were signaled by someone outside around 10:00 PM. Her mutilated remains were discovered miles south of the hotel in an abandoned lot on January 15, 1947, and the gruesome case remains unsolved. In the decades since, Elizabeth’s ghost has frequently been spotted in the Biltmore. Guests report a pale woman with dark hair wearing a sheer black or gray, 1940s-style dress. She’s usually seen entering or leaving rooms on the 10th or 11th floors or wandering the halls.

Several Trip Advisor commenters have also reported cases of paranormal activity, from one guest waking up with a figure hovering over her in the middle of the night, to a couple claiming to hear voices with 1940s Transatlantic accents in the room over, which was empty at the time. But here’s the thing, they were not speaking modern-day English, and countless bartenders have reported things like apparitions passing behind them on a daily basis. Whether it’s Elizabeth’s ghosts or someone else’s spirit haunting the Biltmore, we will never know for sure.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Pawn Star Wars – Boba Fett Tries to Pawn Han Solo in Carbonite”.

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