25 All My Pixels Have Filed Away, Tom Mourned Scrollfully

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) BRIAN KEENE HELPS OUT. Yesterday we linked to Jason Sanford’s report about the hit Apex Books is taking from the bankruptcy of Diamond Book Distributors because of payments they won’t be receiving. Today, Brian Keene announced he will give Apex Books a lift by foregoing some royalties Apex owes Keene: “Apex Books”.

If you’re a regular reader of my daily journal over on Patreon, then you’ve been following all the fallout from the Diamond Distribution bankruptcy. I’d mentioned in one of those entries that this wouldn’t just impact comic publishers and comic stores, but book publishers and booksellers, as well.

One of the main publishers who have been drastically hit by what is — in my personal opinion — either utter incompetence or complete malfeasance on the part of Diamond executives — is Apex Book Company, who’ve published my own ISLAND OF THE DEAD, THE LOST LEVEL, RETURN TO THE LOST LEVEL, HOLE IN THE WORLD, KING OF THE BASTARDS, THRONE OF THE BASTARDS, and CURSE OF THE BASTARDS (those latter 3 cowritten with Steven L. Shrewsbury). I have also appeared in a number of their anthologies, including the recently released THE MAP OF LOST PLACES.

You can read in detail about how Diamond’s collapse has impacted them via this note from owner (and my friend for 20 years) Jason Sizemore. The situation is dire.

One of the biggest outstanding debts Apex is currently facing is royalties for my novel ISLAND OF THE DEAD. I like Apex. i like Jason and Lesley. I like that they’ve taken chances on a wide-ranging line-up of new voices in horror, fantasy, and science-fiction. I like that they have always paid their authors on time and fairly, and that they actually spend money marketing and promoting the books.

Therefore, this afternoon, I have informed Jason that I am waiving ALL ROYALTIES due to me for ISLAND OF THE DEAD. Apex will not have to pay me for copies sold from the book’s initial release until now. While that won’t completely fix the situation, it does remove one of their bigger debts and buys them some breathing room. As I said, I’ve known Jason and Lesley a long time, and in talking to them this afternoon, I know that this will definitely help.

I would like to ask that if you haven’t yet bought one of those books I mentioned above, that you do so now, but also that you do it directly from Apex via their website, rather than Amazon or a chain bookstore or even my own indie bookstore. Buying them directly from Apex will immediately put money in Apex’s pockets, and allow them to pay all the other writers in their stable. If you already own all of my books published by them, then perhaps consider subscribing to their magazine or buying a book by someone else. You can do all of those things via the Apex website.

…While I am not wealthy, this past year has been pretty good for me. I’m currently in a place where I can afford to take the financial hit of waiving those ISLAND OF THE DEAD royalties. I know that other authors are not, and I would never ask them to do so. I also know that most people have the attention span of a gnat with ADHD, and will ignore a plea for folks to go buy books from Apex unless I give them a reason to read through this announcement. It is my hope that — having read it to see what the hell Brian Keene is up to this time — you will indeed now click the link, buy some books, and then other folks can get paid.

(2) TALKIN’ ABOUT MY REGENERATION. The Guardian finds that not everyone’s a fan… “’Like trying to float a sinking ship’: your reaction to Billie Piper’s Doctor Who return”.

…In all honesty, I’m a bit unsure how I feel. There are elements of it that makes sense, however, there is something unnerving about taking on the form of a previous love interest and wearing their skin as a suit. I hope it’s not just gimmicky – perhaps if there are links back to the Bad Wolf storyline that originated for the ninth Doctor then it may work. However, at the moment it does feel like trying to float a sinking ship. I say this as somebody who has loved Doctor Who since I was a child. Time will tell, but I hope this isn’t just another cheap trick to keep us interested. Russell T Davies don’t let us down! Gabrielle, freelance photographer and video editor, Bristol

…I’m shocked, but in a good way. Billie Piper is such an integral part of NuWho history and the credits didn’t introduce her as the Doctor, so the opportunities are endless (is she the Bad Wolf? Or the Moment?). I’m really excited to see what comes next and hope the show gets renewed. The only thing I’m upset about is how poorly parts of the fandom reacted. To bring back old characters is such a Doctor Who thing to do. I have the feeling that loads of people forgot what the show is about: it’s fun, it’s full of heart and it’s always been a little bit wacky, so why not embrace this new development with an open mind? As the Doctor himself said: “Hate is always foolish, love is always wise.” It would be great if people took that to heart. Isa, Germany

(3) TIME TO PLAY. Joe Stech has launched the Hawking Radiation Mass Energy Converter. (You may have tried his previous creation, Dyson Swarm which we linked to in January.)

“Game” is actually a strong word for what this is, the game is actually more of an experiment to try and convey some information about artificial black holes. It is possible to play through the whole game in less than two minutes, but it will probably take you longer than that to get a feel for the mechanics.

I’d love to hear what you think of it. If you want some light background reading to go along with the game, here’s the Wikipedia page on Hawking Radiation.

(4) FRAZETTA FAMILY WINS ANOTHER COURT DECISION. A U.S. District Court federal judge has reinstated summary judgment in Frazetta Properties, LLC suit against Jesse David Spurlock and Vanguard Productions, ruling that the latter misled the Court by citing a forged document to justify unauthorized use of Frank Frazetta’s copyrighted artwork.

Spurlock “claimed falsely that William Frazetta, Holly Frazetta, and Heidi Frazetta Grabin had signed this letter. This was false, as the defense now admits in light of the forensic evidence provided.”

The ruling comes in the ongoing case first filed in 2022 after Spurlock published Frazetta book cover art without a license.

A press release issued by the Frazettas adds:

The Court sanctioned Spurlock, reinstated its original summary judgment ruling in favor of Frazetta Properties, and ordered him to pay the Plaintiffs’ legal fees. The ruling affirmed that Frazetta Properties owns the valid copyright to the “Death Dealer II” and “Death Dealer V” artworks, and that Spurlock’s use of those images in his 2022 publication was unauthorized and infringed upon the Estate’s rights. The Court also rejected Spurlock’s claims of fair use and prior licensing, stating that his use of the art “supplants the object of the protected work and is therefore not transformative to any meaningful extent.”

This federal case followed a 2019 state court lawsuit in which Spurlock sued the Frazetta family alleging breach of contract after receiving a termination notice. At trial, the Frazetta family successfully demonstrated that Spurlock had failed to uphold his contractual obligations, including underreporting and underpaying royalties on Frazetta- related book sales. A jury ruled in favor of the Frazettas, and Spurlock later abandoned his appeal. He was also ordered to pay legal fees in that case.

“This ruling reinforces what we stand for: protecting the Frazetta name from fraud and defending the legacy of one of the greatest artists in American history—no matter what it takes,” said Joe Weber, representative of Frazetta Properties, LLC.

(5) GILBERT & SULLIVAN & REH. Bobby Derie chronicles a branch of Robert E. Howard fandom in “’The Ballad of Conan’ (1983) by Anne Braude” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein. There’s a screencap of Braude’s highly amusing filk lyrics at the end of the post.

The first fandom of Robert E. Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria arose in the 1930s, when the adventures of the barbarian were published in the pages of Weird Tales. Some fans, including R. H. Barlow, Emil Petaja, Charles B. Hornig, Alvin Earl Perry, and P. Schuyller Miller wrote to Howard—and the Texas pulpster wrote back, answering questions, sometimes gifting manuscripts of his stories, subscribing to fan publications like The Fantasy Fan, and providing unpublished stories and poetry for fanzines like The Phantagraph to publish as well.

This early interaction with fandom endeared Howard to his fans, and helped provide the basis for the first fan-publications…

…All of this increased fan activity, such as the Hyborian Legion and the Robert E. Howard United Press Association (founded in 1972). Conan was no longer an obscure hero from the pages of Weird Tales; the Cimmerian had become a staple of science fiction and fantasy, an archetype of barbarians, fighters, and rogues, a multi-media figure well-known and established in fandom—and the serious critical study of Robert E. Howard’s life and fiction were picking up, echoing the scholarly interest that Lovecraft had attracted a decade earlier.

Which is where things stood when fan Anne Braude wrote the jocular (but largely accurate) “Ballad of Conan” for the Conan-heavy issue of the fanzine Niekas in 1983….

(6) DEDICATED TO CORFLU. [Item by David Langford.] The Corflu 2025 fanthology Dancing to Architecture in which various fans write about music has just been added the free library at the TAFF site — with an optional donation to The Corflu Fifty suggested if you enjoy it. Many thanks to Corflu for the suggestion.

Dancing to Architecture, edited by Doug Bell, is a collection of fan writing about music, published for the fanzine convention Corflu 42 held in Newbury in April 2025. Edited by Doug Bell and designed by Pat Virzi, it includes fifteen essays, all original here, by Rich Coad, Lucy Huntzinger, Nic Farey. Geri Sullivan, Ulrika O’Brien, Mark Plummer, Ted White, Christina Lake, Bruce Gillespie, Sandra Bond, William Breiding, Claire Brialey, Doug Bell and John Harvey, with artwork from Brad W. Foster (front cover, at left), Alison Scott, Dave Hicks, Clarrie Maguire, Sue Mason, Ulrika O’Brien, Dan Steffan and Pat Virzi. 34,000 words.

(7) BOMBS AWAY. Literary Hub traces “How Literature Predicted and Portrayed the Atom Bomb” – featuring several bits of sff history, including this one I hadn’t come across before:

…Philip Wylie himself strayed into trouble in 1945 when he wrote a story called “The Paradise Crater,” about the efforts of neo-Nazis in a future 1965 to avenge Hitler’s defeat by building uranium bombs. Wylie fell afoul of Blue Book editor Donald Kennicott’s unusually dutiful decision to seek official permission in advance.

In short order, Kennicott was instructed to bury the story and Wylie was placed under house arrest in a hotel room in Connecticut. What, asked an Army Intelligence major, did Wylie know about the atomic bomb? The major said that he was prepared to take Wylie’s life, and his own, if it was necessary to prevent a security leak.

Wylie protested that he had no inside information, nor did he need any. Thanks to his publicity work for the US Air Force, he had friends in high places and was soon released. He offered to shred the manuscript but the major said, no, he should hang on to it until the war was over.

“The Paradise Crater” did indeed appear in the October 1945 issue of Blue Book, by which time the whole world knew about the atomic bomb. “I saw the headline, brought on the bus by a stranger, and thought: Yes, of course, so it’s here!” recalled one young science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury. “I knew it would come, for I had read about it and thought about it for years.”

Not that there was any cause for the science fiction community to feel smug, because what they had also foreseen, more often than not, was world destruction. “People do not realize civilization, the civilization we have been born into, lived in, and been indoctrinated with, died on July 16 1945 [the date of the first bomb test], and that the Death Notice was published to the world on August 6, 1945,” wrote John Campbell in his first Astounding editorial after Hiroshima. He added, “There is only one appropriate name for the atomic weapon: The Doomsday Bomb.”…

(8) IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE WAS A LIBRARY. Untapped Cities tells “10 Secrets of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street”. Like, what was on that site before they built the NYPL?

2. The New York Public Library was Built on the Site of the Old Croton Reservoir

…The Croton Reservoir held 20 million gallons of water within its walls, which stood 50 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Edgar Allan Poe frequently walked atop the reservoir walls to enjoy the view they offered of the city. When it became obsolete in the 1890s, it was torn down to make way for the new library building. It took two years and some 500 workers to dismantle the reservoir. The cornerstone of the library was laid in 1902. The Old Croton Aqueduct would serve as a vital water supply for New York City for nearly a century until a new aqueduct was built, which remains in service to this day. Inside the library, you can still see pieces of the reservoir walls if you look for the rough stone between the stairs on the lower levels of the South Court, near the Celeste Auditorium….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 4, 1960 — Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 65.

By Paul Weimer: Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an author I found, and then lost and then found again. She in the meantime had been writing prolifically, in multiple genres and fields, but had fallen off of my radar for a good long while.

It all started in the 1990s when I picked up The Sacrifice, the first of her Fey novels. The high concept drew me immediately. A world-conquering empire of Elves sweeping everyone before them…and then they run into the speedbump of Blue Isle, which has a power to resist the Fey that they themselves don’t even quite suspect. Suddenly the easy conquest is not so easy and over the next several books, Rusch explored this conflict from multiple vantage points and perspectives.

And then, someone Rusch fell off of my personal radar. Too many other new authors, perhaps. Or I didn’t follow her into mysteries and other subgenres such as media-tie ins, of which she has written or coauthored a fair number of, in multiple universes, and often under other names as well, ranging from Star Trek to Roswell.

It wasn’t until my early official reviewer days that I picked up Rusch again, as she helped vitalize the xenoarchaeology novel subgenre with the Wreck series. I was offered a review copy of Diving into the Wreck, and my fond memories of The Fey stood me in good stead as I dug into Boss’ story.

Since then I’ve been following Rusch on her blog and Patreon, where she has fearlessly and openly discussed and educated on the craft and business of writing. Anyone seriously interested in either should follow and read what Rusch has to say.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics writes inspirational stories.
Off the Mark has something most book clubs don’t.
Reality Check self-rejects a time travel idea.
Rubes has a well-wrapped pun.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal misjudges AI.
Speed Bump really understands artists.

(11) IS SUPERMAN JEWISH? [Item by Lew Wolkoff.] I somehow got a subscription to Quora.com, and I read the entries for humor as much as anything else. Today, they got stuck with questions about Superman and other superheroes being Jewish. Here’s the response from Elliot Maggin, who wrote the Superman comics from 1971 to 1986. “Is Superman Jewish?”

Reply from Elliot S Maggin

Principal writer of the comic book series from 1971 through 1986; author of three novels in which Superman is a primary character.

The unwarranted assumption in the explanations above is that Kryptonians are not Jews. I dissent from that notion. While they are not direct descendents of the Judeans of the Middle East from whom the term “Jewish” comes, I always ascribed effectively Jewish doctrine and ritual to the Kryptonian tradition. In fact, the Kryptonian tradition is congruent with and certainly predates the Judean, so they have at least as much claim to the tradition as any of us.

I give all my characters religions, so I’ve thought this through – really. The Kents are Methodist (as is Clark), Lois is Catholic, Perry is Baptist, Jimmy is Lutheran (no surprise there) and Bruce Wayne and Batman are both Episcopalian (even less of a surprise there). And Superman (like the Siegels, the Shusters, the Weisingers, the Schwartzes, the Maggins and the Luthors) is Jewish.

This is so self-evident that it may as well be canon.

Comment by Lew Wolkoff: Clark Kent is Methodist, but Superman is Jewish? Good trick. I’m not too crazy about Luthor being Jewish, it smacks a bit too much of the “Protocol of the Elders of Zion” bullshit.

In the book From Kracow to Krypton about the influence of Jews on comic books, the author suggested that Superman and Batman fit the classic stereotypes for the Wise Son and the Wicked Son of the Passover seder. Traditionally, the Wicked Son is portrayed as a warrior (most common) or a man of wealth.

(12) VIEW THE MILKY WAY FROM NEW YORK. “American Museum of Natural History to launch new space show ‘Encounters in the Milky Way,’ narrated by Pedro Pascal” reports amNewYork. The show opens to the public on June 9.

A brand new space show that explores the intricacies of the Milky Way Galaxy is opening to the public at the American Museum of Natural History.

“Encounters in the Milky Way” is a time-traveling journey that shows galactic migration and how that cosmic movement impacts our solar system. The show is narrated by award-winning actor Pedro Pascal and will play in the museum’s Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space’s Hayden Planetarium.

“This is the 25th anniversary of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and it makes this space show, which is our seventh space show since the Rose Center opened, particularly special,” said Museum President Sean M. Decatur. “Since 2000, our space shows have transported millions of visitors to the edge of the observable universe with increasingly sophisticated visualizations based on observations from groundbreaking space missions and leading-edge scientific models.”…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Foley: A Sonic Tale” from Lucasfilm.

In “Foley: A Sonic Tale,” Skywalker Sound’s Foley Artists, consisting of old pros and new talent, unite to bring the work of Star Wars alive through the matching of sound to action.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Paul Weimer, Arnie Fenner, Lew Wolkoff, David Langford, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Seattle Worldcon’s Consultative Vote Draws Apathetic Response

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Mike Glyer

Seattle Worldcon 2025’s consultative vote drew just a quarter the number of participants who turned out for Glasgow 2024’s inaugural consultative vote last year. Glasgow tallied 1260 ballots, Seattle only 343.

Seattle ran votes on two of the Constitutional amendments that received first passage at the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting and are up for ratification – (1) the revisions to the Hugo Award categories for Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist, and (2) proposal to abolish the Retro Hugo Awards.

VOTING RESULTS. The results of Seattle’s poll are:

In the vote to amend the constitution so as to eliminate the Retro Hugo Awards:

Yes: 164
No: 167
Total: 331

In the vote to amend the Hugo Award categories for Best Fan and Professional Artist:

Yes: 124
No: 160
Total: 284

These consultative votes are not provided for in the WSFS Constitution, are not binding, and have no effect other than that the information will be known to those at the Business Meeting. The Seattle committee said, “The purpose of the consultative vote was to test whether this type of vote is feasible, in case the practice is someday adopted as a formal part of the WSFS decision-making process.”

Warner Holme Review: The Tribute

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Mike Glyer

The Tribute by Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette (Titan Comics, 2023)

Review by Warner Holme: Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette’s The Tribute. While the team’s previous Snowpiercer was a very terrestrial post-apocalyptic story, this one is instead a spacefaring bit of military science fiction.

Humanity is in a losing war with a fairly unknowable force it simply refers to as “others”. On pretty much every front they are losing fast. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Juan Gaviero and a team of soldiers and scientists find themselves on a backwater planet with a pair of suns, trying to understand something that might change the course of the war. But even if it is found the scientists and politicians may not be ready for it, or understand it any more than they do their enemy.

With elements taken from military sci-fi throughout, like most good examples of the genre it splits into other territory quite often. Speculative science fiction, political maneuvering, and even elements of cosmic horror slip in and out of this narrative easily. None feel exceptionally tacked on, and when read the developments largely stem from understanding outcroppings of each other. Psychic powers play a role in ways involving the terrestrial as well as stranger entities. Extraplanetary life is a major plot element, and the fact that humanity aren’t good to those they have power over is as important to it as the challenges faced by humanity. Environmentalism also a large role, dealing with devastation for not only the biosphere of one world but potentially many others. Indeed even past mistakes are touched in, like the need to monitor certain ancient power plants.

The characters in the book are slightly hit or miss. A fair number of figures are fairly stock, with human antagonists feeling particularly clear in that regard. Others are more nuanced, Gaviero and the scientist Weaver fitting this best. This is arguably because of the fact they spend the most time on page and as a result have more time for nuance, although in Gaviero’s case it is complicated by the personal changes and transformations he is going through pulling him into a place that isn’t easily comparable to the human experience.

The art is nice, somewhat reminiscent of the work in old pulps or classic sci-fi comics without spilling into feeling truly old fashioned. The colors are often harsh and vibrant, while appropriate to each of the situations where they become strongly dominated by a single hue. Others are more varied. Showing quick clean looks at futuristic environments and effective focuses on strange alien beings which are knowable. Those which are “others” meanwhile get even more bizarre, one well illustrated using little more than a splash of color.

Any fans of this creative team should definitely check the book out, but not expect anything like the cold world of the last series. As for other readers, recommendations wouldn’t be simply based on the genres they have worked in before. This is a book setting a distant future, but one that deals with individual loss of humanity and the question of morality separate thereof. Fans of old school science fiction will likely enjoy it, transhumanism and all, but this doesn’t put it outside the interest of newer readers.

Pixel Scroll 6/3/25 Old Rossum’s Scroll Of Pixled Credentials

Posted on June 3, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) DR. DEMENTO SIGNING OFF. RadioInsight reveals “Dr. Demento Show To End With 55th Anniversary” – and he’s already done his final regular show.

Barret ‘Dr. Demento‘ Hansen will retire from his program when it reaches its 55th anniversary in October.

On this week’s show, Demento announced that it was his final regular show with a series of retrospective episodes regarding the history of the show to air weekly until a final episode in October that will feature the top 40 songs in the show’s history. Hansen recently turned 84 years old.

Hansen debuted his ‘Dr. Demento’ persona on Freeform Rock 106.7 KPPC Pasadena CA (now KROQ-FM) in October 1970 quickly converting to to focusing on comedy and novelty music. His show would be heard across multiple Los Angeles stations over the subsequent decades including a long run on 94.7 KMET from 1972 until its demise in 1987. A syndicated version of the show debuted in 1974 and continued until the show moved to a subscription internet platform in 2010.

Some of us got to see Dr. Demento at the 2011 Worldcon.

(2) APEX TAKES HIT IN DIAMOND BANKRUPTCY. Jason Sanford announces “Important news for fans of both my fiction and Apex Books” at Patreon.

…As Apex’s publisher Jason Sizemore describes in a new post, the small press was heavily screwed by the bankruptcy of the parent of Diamond Book Distributors (DBD), who placed Apex’s books in retail stores. Essentially, Apex is owed a lot of money by Diamond, money they’ll likely never see….

…On the good side, it appears Apex Books will survive. However, this definitely means Apex is hurting and that their books will not be distributed in retail stores for the time being.

This news directly affects the release of my novella We Who Hunt Alexanders, which comes out July 22 and is one of the best stories I’ve ever written. This will be the first book release from Apex since they were hit with the Diamond news….

Jason hopes people will help by preordering We Who Hunt Alexanders. Or purchasing other Apex Books.

(3) FURRY WEEKEND LA IS KAPUT. So we learned thanks to Convention History.

Furry Weekend LA has been canceled. We are very confused why it even started up considering there's another furry con in the same hotel that barely is getting a sizable attendance with locals not wanting a con near LAX. https://t.co/k9FJ3oKH6Z
— Convention History ???? ?????????? (@ConHistory) June 2, 2025

(4) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Christopher Barzak and David Surface on Wednesday, June 11. Begins at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs**)

Christopher Barzak

Christopher Barzak’s most recent book is the novella, A Voice Calling. He is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award winning novel One for Sorrow which was made into the Sundance feature film Jamie Marks is Dead. His novel, Wonders of the Invisible World, received the Stonewall Honor from the American Library Association, was selected for inclusion on the Human Rights Campaign’s list of books for LGBTQ welcoming school libraries, and included in CNN’s 2024 Pride Recommend Reading list. He is also the author of Before and Afterlives, which won Best Collection in the 2013 Shirley Jackson Awards.

David Surface

David Surface is the author of the collections Terrible Things from Black Shuck Books and These Things That Walk Behind Me from Lethe Press. David and co-author Julia Rust have written the novels Angel Falls which was winner of the 2025 Whippoorwill Book Award, and Saving Thornwood from Haverhill HousePublishing’s YAP Books. David is also creator of the newsletter Strange Little Stories which explores the line between truth and fiction by offering writers the chance to discuss and write about the strange and inexplicable things that have happened to them.

(5) THE NEBULAS AND OTHERS. Michael Armstrong holds forth about “Planets and Plastic: A History of the SFWA Trophies and Awards” at the SFWA Blog.

…According to Damon Knight, the first SFWA president and one of its founders, Kate Wilhelm sketched the original concept for the Nebula Award, with Judith Blish designing the trophy. Except for the Ray Bradbury and Andre Norton awards, the Nebula Awards consist of a black lucite base and a clear lucite slab with the nebula spiral galaxy design and spherical lapis lazuli, chrysocolla, and other minerals that look like floating planets. The trophy size has varied over the years from about eight to nine inches high, four to five inches wide, and three to five inches thick. The Grand Master award has a slightly larger and tapered base but includes the same top as the Nebulas.

The first Nebula Awards had quartz crystals and even objects such as pocket watches. Alan Dean Foster and William Rotsler selected gems for the Nebula awards in the early years. When quartz crystals became expensive due to New Age theories of their healing powers, Rotsler added the spheres….

(6) EMBRACEABLE HIM. In an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air “Mark Hamill is embracing his ‘Star Wars’ past”.

Mark Hamill still remembers the first time he read the script that would define his career.

“Reading that script and knowing that I had been cast — and even without John Williams’ music or the special effects or anything — it read like a dream,” he says of George Lucas’ 1977 film, Star Wars. “It wasn’t that dry, serious, antiseptic science fiction. … It was funny as hell.”

Hamill played Luke Skywalker, one of the most iconic heroes in movie history, in the original Star Wars trilogy and also reprised the role in the latest trilogy. The movies were such a phenomenon that casting directors struggled to see him as other characters. When he got the opportunity to play against type, Hamill pushed his Star Wars identity to the side. At one point, when he was starring in a Broadway show, he deliberately downplayed his association with the franchise.

“In the Playbill, in my bio, I listed all my theater credits, and at the end said, ‘He’s also known for a series of popular space movies,'” Hamill recalls. He didn’t mention Star Wars because he wanted to focus on theater instead, but his former co-star Carrie Fisher wasn’t having it.

“She goes, ‘What’s the deal? … Get over yourself. You’re Luke Skywalker, I’m Princess Leia. Embrace it,'” Hamill says. “And I kind of saw what she meant.”…

… On his trepidations of coming back for the new Star Wars films

My initial reaction is that we shouldn’t do it. I mean, you can never go home again. And I was sure, I said, Harrison [Ford]’s not gonna do it. He’s got so much going on and he gets frustrated when those movies are brought up so often. So I said I know he’s not going to do it. But when I read in the press that he’d signed to do I thought, Oh my God, I’ve just been drafted. Because if I say no and Harrison and Carrie come back. I’ll be the most hated man in nerddom. So I thought, maybe it’s fate. Maybe I should go back. So I did….

(7) RIGHT THIS WAY. The Guardian’s article “How the far right seeks to spread its ideology through the publishing world” profiles several of these publishers, including a new sf press whose line features the “Sad Puppies” founder.

The far right US publisher Passage Press is now part of Foundation Publishing Group and it is connected via a Foundation director, Daniel Lisi, to Network Press, whose only title to date is an “effective accelerationist” manifesto by the tech-right venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

Another rightwing publisher, science fiction publisher Ark Press, appears connected to Chapter House which Lisi, a literary scenester in Los Angeles, originally co-founded as an independent publisher of poetry, sci-fi and esoterica, but which now presents itself as a homeschooling resource….

…Ark Press, meanwhile, was launched on 14 January, with the science fiction writer DJ Butler reproducing a press release in a post to his X account. Butler is a senior editor at Ark according to his personal LinkedIn, X biography and podcast appearances….

…Correia, the author Ark launched with, was prominent as the founder of the so-called “sad puppies”, an effort to influence voting in science fiction’s Hugo Awards between 2013 and 2017 that in subsequent years became a rightwing anti-diversity campaign.

Carroll told the Guardian that Correia was “a conservative libertarian gun enthusiast” who “presented his work as an antidote to what he saw as the dull, pretentious, left-leaning bias of contemporary genre fiction that was being recognized by the Hugos”.

Although they did not succeed in sweeping the awards, along with the Gamergate campaign happening at the same time, Carroll said that it “demonstrated that small but well-coordinated groups of online reactionaries can be disruptive even to real-world institutions”.

Carroll added: “Ark Press’s web presence contains many signals that it’s intended to be a throwback to a prior era,” pointing out that “there’s a long tradition of far-right speculation that casts space exploration in science fiction and the real world as an expression of white men’s settler-colonial spirit”….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: When Star Trek came to an end

June 3: On this date in 1969, the first incarnation of Star Trek came to an end. Its “five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before” would last just three years and seventy-nine episodes before ending with the “Turnabout Intruder”.

The ratings for the series were never great and NBC responded by cutting the production each season from one ninety thousand the first season to the one eighty-five thousand the second season to the one hundred seventy-five thousand the last season. Assuming that there were salary increases which there were obviously were, this left little for special effects, costumes or anything else by the third season. And yes, it showed such as the scenery falling over or so obviously being the cheapest leftover sets in the known universe. None of which was Roddenberry’s fault.

It might have been a ratings failure in its first run but it thrived in syndication and spawned a vast franchise currently of ten television series (eleven if you include Short Treks which are remarkably good) with the latest being Strange New Worlds which I like quite a lot, and thirteen films if my count is. Not to mention novels, comics, action figures, games and toys. And decades of cosplayers and fiction, both authorized and not at all. And of course there’s the forthcoming Starfleet Academy. Or more series possibly.

I’ve rewatched a lot of the series recently courtesy of Paramount + which is the home of it and most everything else Trek. Some of the episodes are quite excellent, some are not bad and some are really execrable as the final episode of TOS. Now go ahead defend that episode.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee thinks of another reverse title.
Off the Mark needs to floss.
Rhymes with Orange updates a section at the bookstore.
xkcd builds bridges.

(10) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT, AT LEAST IN LOUISIANA. “Louisiana House Passes Legislation to Fight Weather-Controlling ‘Chemtrails’” reports Gizmodo.

Tinfoil hats are back out amongst Louisiana legislators. Last week, lawmakers in the House passed a bill to ban “chemtrails” in the state. What are those, exactly? Oh, you know. The white lines left behind by aircraft that conspiracists insist are chemicals released by the government or other agencies for potentially nefarious purposes.

People’s primary concern with chemtrails used to center around using chemicals to control people. Lately, though, conspiracists have honed in on chemtrails as part of a plot to control the weather. Louisiana’s Senate Bill 46 aims to solve that by prohibiting the intentional dispersement of chemicals for the “express purpose of modifying weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight.”…

(11) TODAY’S THING TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] *whew*, Here I was all worried that we were going to crash into Andromeda in a few (ok, few billion) years…. “The Milky Way Might Not Crash Into The Andromeda Galaxy After All” says ScienceAlert.

“As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our Galaxy seem greatly exaggerated.”

That’s the conclusion scientists have reached after revisiting the possibility of what we thought was a foregone conclusion: the eventual clash of giants, a collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies.

Led by astrophysicist Till Sawala of the University of Helsinki, a team of scientists has calculated that, in the next 10 billion years, the chance of a collision between the two galaxies is very close to 50 percent.

In other words, there is just as much of a chance of collision as there is of the galaxies sailing right past each other, like ships in the eternal cosmic night.

“We don’t find that previous calculations were wrong – quite the contrary, when we start from the same assumptions, we reproduce the earlier results,” Sawala told ScienceAlert….

(12) KEEP WATCHING THE (INDOOR) SKIES. “An accidental discovery at a planetarium opens a window into the universe’s inner workings” reports AP News.

Scientists have unlocked one of the solar system’s many secrets from an unexpected source: a planetarium show opening to the public on Monday.

At the American Museum of Natural History last fall, experts were hard at work preparing “Encounters in the Milky Way,” a deep dive into our home galaxy shaped by the movements of stars and other celestial objects.

They were fine-tuning a scene featuring what’s known as the Oort Cloud, a region far beyond Pluto filled with icy relics from the solar system’s formation. Comets can hurtle toward Earth from the cloud, but scientists have never glimpsed its true shape.

One evening while watching the Oort Cloud scene, scientists noticed something strange projected onto the planetarium’s dome.

“Why is there a spiral there?” said Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist who leads the museum’s educational programs and helped put together the planetarium show.

The inner section of the Oort Cloud, made of billions of comets, resembled a bar with two waving arms, similar to the shape of our Milky Way galaxy.

Scientists had long thought the Oort Cloud was shaped like a sphere or flattened shell, warped by the push and pull of other planets and the Milky Way itself. The planetarium show hinted that a more complex shape could lie inside….

(13) GETTING TO DEEP SPACE ONE. [Item by Steven French.] Physician Farhar Asrar considers how efforts to keep astronauts healthy may benefit folk on Earth too: “How to keep astronauts healthy in deep space” in Nature.

Humans are building a future in space. But we are not built for space. Even the most fit and healthy person can find space disabling2.

Outside Earth’s protective atmosphere, the human body is subjected to high levels of radiation. According to the European Space Agency, an astronaut travelling to Mars would receive the equivalent of one year’s exposure to radiation on Earth for each day of their months-long journey. This would be likely to increase astronauts’ risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases, for instance3.

Moreover, the combination of radiation and time spent in microgravity can cause a range of health conditions. Weight-bearing bones lose, on average, around 1% of their mineral density per month during space flight4, increasing the risk of fractures. Fluid shifts in the eyes can increase pressure and affect vision5. There’s even an increased risk of kidney-related illnesses6.

On top of the physical hurdles is the possibility that the isolation will affect astronauts’ mood and productivity, taking a toll on their mental health.

As humanity sets its eyes on the Moon and Mars, these and other challenges must be addressed using innovative technology and research2,7,8. Such innovations should also benefit people on Earth. Here are four key strands of space medicine and health research that, in my view, are both crucial for mission success and likely to improve human health more broadly….

(14) FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE. JustWatch has released their Top 10 streaming sff movies and TV for May 2025.

(15) GEN V. Season 2 of Gen V arrives September 17 on Prime Video. Inverse sets up the trailer: “Amazon’s Best Superhero Spinoff Finally Explains A Tragic Absence”.

Last we saw in Gen V, the college-set spinoff of The Boys, the Godolkin University gang was in big trouble. Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway), Jordan Li (London Thor/Derek Luh), and Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo) were all imprisoned after trying to free the superheroes locked in the school’s mysterious underground facility known as “The Woods.”

Godolkin has a new dean in Season 2, and Marie is back on the God U rosters, but there are still lingering mysteries. The school’s new regime seems focused on training its supes not to protect the greater good but to become an army for Vought itself. A teaser for this new season is available now, but all of this is overshadowed by a heartbreaking real-world tragedy.

While the teaser catches us up on most of the characters we got to know in Season 1, one is missing: Andre, played by Chance Perdomo, who perished in a March 2024 motorcycling accident. In the wake of the loss, the Gen V team announced that Perdomo’s role would not be recast. Instead, Andre’s storylines would be rewritten to “honor Chance and his legacy” in Season 2.

(16) EVER SINCE THE DINOSAURS. “Coming Out” – a stop motion short about a trans kid is from 2020. But it might be news to you!

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George finds out about the Suck Fairy: “When Your Favorite Movie Aged Terribly”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Jason Sanford, Andrew (not Werdna), Lise Andreasen, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Remembering Nelson Bond

Posted on June 3, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By Lee Weinstein: I was 13 when my aunt handed down, by way of my mother, an intriguing science fiction paperback book. The cover painting showed what looked like a metal robot, with a nude woman, tastefully clothed in shadows, running behind it, against a rather surrealistic background. The book was No Time Like the Future, a collection of stories by one Nelson Bond, a name not well known today, and it had been published a decade earlier, in 1954.

I was already a science fiction fan then, and had an omnibus collection of H.G. Wells’s novels, and had read books by Asimov, Heinlein, and others from the library, but here was something new.

The blurb on the back cover read, “A race of intelligent beings so small as to be invisible…a burial place on earth that holds a secret twenty-five centuries old, a satellite of destruction hovering in space, a super ship that flew for years through space – to nowhere…”

The cover illustrated the story, “The Cunning of the Beast;” a cleverly thought out variation on Adam and Eve. The “robot” was actually an alien in protective armor against earth’s atmosphere and the woman was, of course, Eve. As I was to learn years later, the cover was an early one by noted artist Richard Powers, whose surrealistic artwork went on to grace many a science fiction paperback over the years.

The other stories also made an impression on me at the time. “And Lo! the Bird” had the central conceit that the planets of the solar system were the eggs of a huge interstellar bird, incubated by the sun. “Vital Factor” was about a homesick alien on earth, and “Conqueror’s Isle” was about a secret race of superhumans on a remote island. Some of the plots might be considered to be clichéd now, but then they were new, at least to me.

I found Bond’s stories to be engaging and amusing and was taken with the twist endings. In a way he could be considered to be the O. Henry of science fiction. For a long time I continued to associate science fiction with surprise endings.

A little over a decade later, in the early 1970’s, I discovered fandom and science fiction conventions, through my newly discovered interest in H.P. Lovecraft and fantasy horror fiction.

It was an exciting time for me as I heard and met many of the authors and editors I had been reading. I met Gardner Dozois, Lin Carter, Sprague de Camp, Isaac Asimov, Clifford Simak, and many others. Nelson Bond wasn’t among them, though. When I thought to ask about him, I learned that he didn’t attend conventions. Nor had I heard his name mentioned either on panels or at fan social events. But I asked around from time to time, and eventually discovered that he had changed careers. He had retired from writing in 1958, after two decades of popularity starting in the late 1930’s, and had settled down to become a full time book dealer, after a brief detour in Hollywood.

He was eventually to write two more stories, at the request of editors, but that wouldn’t happen until much later.

During his heyday his stories frequently appeared in Blue Book. But he had also appeared in such magazines as Esquire and Scribners as well as genre magazines like Astounding, Amazing, Unknown, Thrilling Wonder and Weird Tales. Many of his stories, I discovered, had also been adapted for radio shows such as X Minus 1 and Tales of Tomorrow, and a few made it onto early television.

Despite the fact that he had retired from writing and the science fiction community, he was still alive and well in Virginia in the 1970’s. Fans I met told me there was a science fiction fan club in Virginia named after him, although he didn’t understand why they would want to do that.

While there was little chance of seeing him in person, I did come across more of his work in convention dealer’s rooms. I found well-read, used hardcovers of his collections, The 31st of February and Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman. The former had a photo of the author on the back flap, showing a dapper-looking gentleman in profile, with dark, slicked back hair and a trim mustache

Eventually I also found a paperback copy of one of his few novels, Exiles of Time, and a newer collection, published by Arkham House in 1968, Nightmares and Daydreams.

It was in these later books I acquired that I learned he also had written several series of stories often involving humorous and colorful protagonists, such as Lancelot Biggs, and Pat Pending. Lancelot Biggs was his only series character to have his stories collected into a book. Tall, gawky, and jug-eared, Biggs was sort of a Gomer Pyle in space, who would drive his captain crazy in his attempts to be helpful. No matter how badly he screwed things up he always managed to straighten things out by the end.

The Pat Pending series was about an eccentric inventor, who “certainaceously” mangled the English language when he explained his “inventulations” and how they worked. In the story, “The Bacular Clock,” Pending invents a clock that runs backwards. But somehow, it also causes time in its vicinity to run backwards as well, creating problems for everyone. Other series characters include Horsesense Hank, an uneducated farmer who could fix anything and Squaredeal Sam McGhee, who is best described as a con man and a teller of tall tales, and has been compared to the Joseph Jorkens tales of Lord Dunsany. There is even a crossover story, “The Masked Marvel,” in which Pending and McGhee cross paths. Pending introduces McGhee to a robot golfer he created, who apparently can’t lose, and McGhee is quick to take advantage of the situation, but it naturally doesn’t turn out well for him.

Then there is the trilogy of serious but ironic stories about Meg the Priestess, set in a far future, post-holocaust America, where women had become the dominant sex. The first Meg story, “The Priestess who Rebelled,” later revised as “Pilgrimage,” is possibly his most anthologized story and arguably his most memorable. Meg, a young woman seeking a vocation as a priestess, leaves her “hoam” and embarks on a mandatory pilgrimage from “Jinnia territory” in the south through “Braska” to “the Place of the Gods.” What she finds there is an eye-opening revelation.

I remember thinking to myself, somewhere around 1980, that it was time for a revival of interest in Bond’s fiction. However, unbeknownst to me, the first sign of a revival had already happened. Harlan Ellison had commissioned him to write a new story for his Last Dangerous Visions. This story, “Pipeline to Paradise,” was listed in the projected table of contents for the proposed book in 1979. Unfortunately, the story wasn’t to see print until Bond had withdrawn it and sold it to Roger Zelazny for his 1995 Wheel of Fortune anthology. It was Bond’s first new story since 1958, a tale of ghostly revenge involving two Vietnam veterans, and it showed that Bond still had it.

Meanwhile, word had gotten out that this almost forgotten author was still alive, and in 1992 he was awarded the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award.

Then in 1998, he was presented with SFWA’s Author Emeritus Award for Lifetime Achievement. As a result of the SFWA award, Gardner Dozois requested a new story from him for Asimov’s Magazine. “Proof of the Pudding,” which was to be his final story, was published in that magazine in 1999. It concerns an extremely rich and equally eccentric businessman who sets out to prove we are living inside the crust of a hollow earth. His attempt to do so does succeed after a fashion, but it has unintended consequences and naturally ends badly for him. It would have fit in nicely with his earlier tales.

It was then that I decided to acquire a copy of his first story collection, Mr. Mergenthwirkers Lobblies to complete my collection of Bond’s books.

I knew that his first published story, the title story of this 1937 collection, a humorous fantasy about a man with invisible companions, had later been adapted for radio and then television. It had also generated several sequels. I was curious to read it and in 1998 I decided to find a copy.

At that time I was living with my wife in the Frankford section of Northeast Philadelphia, across the street from Frankford High School. I knew Bond had become a bookseller, and when I searched for him online I quickly found he still had a website.

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw Mr. Bond’s email username. It had his initials followed by the sly numerical in-joke, “007.” I immediately sent him an email and told him I wanted to buy a copy of Lobblies. He hesitated at first because, as he explained, he noticed the copy he had at hand was damaged. But he soon found an intact copy and I mailed him a check. He said to me in the following email, “You do know about my Philadelphia connection?” I admitted I didn’t and asked him to elaborate. He told me he had lived in Philadelphia when he was a teenager, and had attended Frankford High School. I was momentarily dumbstruck. I was, at the time, as previously noted, living directly across Harrison Street from that school. What were the chances of that? I wrote back and told him. He then explained had lived at the time on Fillmore Street. That was the next street over from mine. Wow! We would have been geographically close neighbors, if we hadn’t been separated in time by about 80 years!

He asked me to do him a favor. He had in his possession a portrait of one of the principals of the school from back in his day. Could I ask the current principal if he would be interested in the portrait?

I jotted down the information and went across the street, found the principal’s office, and told his secretary the nature of my mission. She took down the information and promised to get back to me.

She did a while later and told me that the principal had suggested the school’s alumni association might be interested. After I conveyed his response, Mr. Bond replied that if the school itself didn’t want it he would find somewhere else to donate it.

He went on, however, to make me an unrelated offer. He told me if I shipped him my “Bond books”, as he called them, he would “deface” them with his autograph. I readily complied. While I was corresponding with him, I suggested he could make an appearance at Philcon, the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society’s annual con, as a program participant. He gave the idea some consideration, but in the end he politely declined, citing his age (about 90 at the time) and the chilly November weather when Philcon is held.

During our correspondence, because his fiction had been out of print for so long, I suggested he get in touch with Wildside Press, an independent Print-on-Demand publisher I was quite familiar with. As a result, Wildside reprinted the Lancelot Biggs collection in 2000, and in 2001, his novel That Worlds May Live, which had not previously been published in book form.

Not long after, Arkham House continued the momentum and released two new collections of Bond’s uncollected short stories, The Far Side of Nowhere (2002) and Other Worlds than Ours (2005).

As a capstone to his career, in 2005, he received the Southeastern SF Achievement Award for Lifetime Achievement. Just a year later, he passed away, at the age of 97, in November of 2006.

In further recognition, albeit posthumous, Readercon 19 programmed a half hour presentation on him by Mike Allen in 2008.

And his fiction remains. While not as thought-provoking as Asimov, Clarke or Heinlein, Bond’s stories are polished, entertaining, and amusing. The Pat Pending story, “Lighter Than You Think” was reprinted as an e-book in 2009 by Project Gutenberg. His novel Under Venusian Flags was published in 2018 in hardcopy, along with an Algis Budrys novel, as part of the Armchair Sci-Fi & Horror Double Novels series. The Gutenberg Project, starting in 2020, resumed reprinting Bond’s short stories, as e-chapbooks.

And the copies of his books that he kindly “defaced,” for me, still grace my shelves.

[Lee Weinstein’s website is: [https://leestein2003.wordpress.com/]

Premio Vegetti 2025 Winners and Finalists

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

The recipients of the Premio Vegetti for 2025 were announced June 1, chosen by the members of World SF Italia.

World SF Italia, Italy’s professional association for sff writers, is a vestige of the World SF organization once led by Harry Harrison. The award is their counterpart to the Nebula.

The members of the award jury for each category are shown below.

ROMANZO DI FANTASCIENZA / SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

L’arma del Druido by Marco Di Giaimo and Giuseppe Bono (Ed. Angolazioni, 2024)

Other Finalists:

Gente dello spazio by Franco Piccinini (Ed. Scudo, 2024)
Odissea Futura by Luigi De Pascalis (Ed. Tabula Fati, 2024)

Jury: N. Catellani, B. De Filippis, B. Vitiello, president Matteo Vegetti.

SAGGIO DI FANTASCIENZA / SCIENCE FICTION ESSAY

Teorie dello Spazio: da Newton alla fantascienza by Davide Arecco (Ed. Scudo, 2023)

Other Finalists

Conversando tra le stelle – Vol. 2 by Filippo Radogna (Ed. Scudo, 2024)
Il dilemma della fantascienza by Mauro Antonio Miglieruolo (Ed. Scudo, 2023)

Jury: T. Bologna, A. M. Bonavoglia, C.F. Doziere, president Matteo Vegetti.

ANTOLOGIA DI FANTASCIENZA / SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGY

Voci negli abissi edited by Luca Ortino and Giorgio Sangiorgi (Ed. Scudo, 2024)

Other Finalists

Cronozodiaco edited by Vittorio Piccirillo (Ed. Tabula Fati, 2024)
Psicomondo edited by Massimo Acciai and Carlo Menzinger (Ed. Tabula Fati, 2024)

Jury: V. Barbera, M. Conese, M. Serra, president Matteo Vegetti.

RACCONTO DI FANTASCIENZA / SCIENCE FICTION STORY

The Day the Earth Stood Still by Pierfrancesco Prosperi (Psicomondo, Ed. Tabula Fati, 2024)

Other Finalists:

Confiteor by Mario Gazzola (Mea culpa, Torre Crawford APS, 2024)
È un normale contratto, una formalità by Franco Piccinini e Adalberto Cersosimo (World SF Italia Magazine n. 8, Ed. Scudo, 2024)
Il caso della strage sul Tamigi by Franco Piccinini (World SF Italia Magazine n. 10, Ed. Scudo, 2024)
L’inchiesta, dramma teatrale by Tea C. Blanc (Delos Science Fiction 254, Ed. Delos Books, 2024)
Linee che si intersecano by Franco Ricciardiello (World SF Italia Magazine n. 7, Ed. Scudo, 2024).

Jury: M. Donda, A. Florio, L. Pietrafesa, president Matteo Vegetti.

Pixel Scroll 6/2/25 All Scrolls Bright And Beautiful, All Pixels Great And Small

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) PROPS TO VARLEY. Polygon’s Tasha Robinson says “Only one science fiction novel really predicted AI right”.

The current cultural fascination and frustration with artificial intelligence is nothing new. As far back as the 1921 Czech play R.U.R. — the workers-rights story that first coined the term “robot” — science fiction writers have channeled fears about artificial intelligence into stories where robots represent (or just bring out) the absolute best or worst of humanity…..

…John Varley’s 1992 novel Steel Beach lays out a wild far-future world where aliens have destroyed human life on Earth. Humanity has decamped to the Moon (the unwelcoming “steel beach” of the title) and other colonies, forming the “Eight Worlds” system in which many of Varley’s stories and novels are set. In the future of Steel Beach, humans run dinosaur ranches for meat, alter and rewrite their bodies at a whim, and grow organic brain-to-computer interfaces so they can operate devices with a thought. But the book still gets at some aspects of real-world AI better than most sci-fi books set in near-present futures. In particular, Varley doesn’t just consider the impact of AI on humanity — he digs into the impact of humanity on AI….

… The idea that most people turn this endlessly sympathetic companion into nothing more than a hands-free texting tool seems improbable. But notably, Hildy’s own relationship with the CC is a lot more complicated, emotional, and invested, which suggests Hildy isn’t necessarily aware of how other people interface with their omnipresent overlord.

The reasoning behind that relationship is what really makes Steel Beach feel so insightful about the problems with present-day AI. Steel Beach is an episodic, expansive novel that uses Hildy’s search for a meaningful, satisfying life as a frame for vignettes about the futures of journalism, body modification, relationships, capitalism, literacy, mental health, escapism, and a whole lot more. (Especially sex: The book’s provocative opening line is “In five years, the penis will be obsolete.”) But Hildy’s relationship with the Central Computer is the throughline that holds it all together….

(2) WE WANT – INFORMATION. [Item by Steven French.] “Fun, flirty and far too brief: why did Ncuti Gatwa leave Doctor Who so soon?” The Guardian doesn’t really answer the question but it’s hard to disagree with their conclusion:

Gatwa’s Doctor was fun, flirty and full of joy, but it is difficult not to conclude that we hadn’t seen enough of him in the role, and now we never will….

… The show sometimes feels stuck between a rock and a hard place in the modern era. It has to compete in a streaming environment where grownup fans also watch shows such as Andor or The Last of Us and compare it directly with those. The BBC though is also still trying to make a show whose primary purpose is to be broadcast on Saturday evening on BBC One for a communal multigenerational family audience gathered around the TV. And that is an audience that is increasingly vanishing in houses with multiple screens and multiple viewing options.

Gatwa’s era also seemed to be riding two slightly conflicting horses. Russell T Davies returned as showrunner with the nostalgia rush of having David Tennant and Catherine Tate back in the Tardis for three 60th anniversary specials, then promised a softish reboot with the aim of picking up new audiences and starting afresh as “Season one” with a new Disney+ international distribution deal. But he also opted to bring back companions from the 1960s and 1980s, and have the return of niche villains and enemies that necessitated flashbacks to episodes from the 1970s, which didn’t exactly scream “accessible”….

(3) SPEEDY OPTION. [Item by Dann.] Barely a month after initial release, James Cameron has picked up the film rights to Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils. It’s nice to see good karma in action.“James Cameron’s Company Has Picked Up the Rights to Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils” at Reactor.

… Cameron continues, “I’m looking forward to the writing process with him, though I’m certain this adaptation will practically write itself because Joe writes very visually, almost in scenes, and with a very cinematic structure. I can’t wait to dig into this as I wind down on Avatar: Fire and Ash. It will be a joyful new challenge for me to bring these indelible characters to life.”

The Devils was published by Tor Books less than a month ago, on May 13th….

(4) THERE WAS A RACE IN HOLLYWOOD, TOO. “75 Years Ago, A Shockingly Dark Sci-Fi Adventure Tried To Predict The Space Race” – Inverse remembers.

Several years before the Space Race officially began, two suspiciously similar Hollywood movies raced to launch their lunar expeditions onto the big screen. And even though it had a year-long head start, Destination Moon ended up as the Soviet Union to Rocketship X-M’s United States.

George Pal Productions had started working on the former in 1949, proudly teasing its state-of-the-art construction, scientific accuracy, and Technicolor visuals in an extensive marketing campaign. But when various snags delayed the release date, Lippert Pictures saw an opportunity to steal its thunder, and landed Rocketship X-M in theaters 75 years ago today.

Remarkably, the finished product rocketed into theaters just 25 days after shooting wrapped. And while the fast-tracked film doesn’t soar to the same heights as its costlier rival — it’s largely in black and white, for one thing, while the lack of any expert consultants soon becomes abundantly clear — it still stands as a fascinating curio….

(5) ON THE AIR. Phil Nichols’ new episode of Bradbury 100 is about “Radio Classics – Dimension X / X Minus One”, two series that adapted Ray’s work.

Here’s another new episode of Bradbury 100, and this time I return to Ray’s stories in the golden age of radio, looking at the classic science fiction drama series Dimension X and X Minus One.

I’ve mentioned these shows before on the podcast, but I figured it was time to make them the focus.

Although Ray Bradbury was himself a scriptwriter and dramatist, he didn’t do any writing specifically for these two shows. And unlike the series Suspense (which I looked it in episode 61), Dimension X and X Minus One only produced adaptations of stories which had already been published.

But what terrific adaptations they were! With scripts by future Emmy Award winners Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, these series never put a foot wrong. The scripts are pretty close to the original stories, without being simple, lazy transcriptions.

In this episode I include clips of many of the Bradbury-based episodes, the most striking of which is the run of episodes based on stories from The Martian Chronicles. But if you’ve never listened to a Dimension X or X Minus One in its entirety, I would urge you to do so. Go to a darkened room, and let your mind conjure up… well, something like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits… or wherever your imagination takes you…

(6) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter says that it paid for tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants to know their Nineteenth Century sff.

Final Jeopardy: Category: Science Fiction

Clue: Referring to what’s wrongly believed to be a meteorite, “The Falling Star” is the title of Chapter 2 of this 1898 novel.

Wrong question: What is “The Time Machine”?

Correct question: What is “War of the Worlds”?

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 2, 1915 — Lester del Rey. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer: For me, first and foremost, Lester del Rey was a publisher and an editor. Many of the books I first encountered reading science fiction, back 4 decades ago, were published by Del Rey, which he founded with his wife Judy Lynn del Rey. And for a good while, that’s all I thought that he was (although his legacy and influence as a publisher is huge).

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology was a gateway to a number of authors for me. Theodore Sturgeon. Murray Leinster. Fritz Leiber (for “Coming Attraction”, although I would soon discover Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser). And Lester del Rey, for “Helen O’Loy”. I had read enough Greek Mythology by that point to get the idea that this was a Helen of Troy story, and it was perhaps the first story I read where a robot was an object of romantic interest. Helen’s story, and the tragedy of it moved me deeply.

I soon came across other del Rey stories, here and there, randomly, sprinkled in best of collections and favorite science fiction stories and the myriad other SF anthologies that I read in the first decade of my science fiction reading.

But it was Harlan Ellison® who turned me onto perhaps the best and my favorite of the Lester del Rey stories. In one of his own collections about the relationship between men and Gods, he mentioned a Lester del Rey story “For I am a Jealous People”. I could see the biblical allusion in the title, and I decided to seek it out.

I recently re-read it, and it still slaps, hard. “For I am a Jealous People” is a kicker of a story, where the Abrahamic God is real, has always been real. But now, God is angry with humanity and fed up with us, and basically has sided with aliens invading Earth and its possessions. That is a smash to the face to begin with, but it’s humanity response to this revelation in the story that really brings it home to me, the power of a del Rey story at its best. Humanity’s response could have been any number of plausible results. Regret. Sadness. Despair. Resignation. Anger. Del Rey goes for “Good. Bring it!” It’s a muscular answer to the question of what to do when even God is against you, and it remains powerful to this day.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal clarifies Star Trek transporters.
Brewster Rockit detects dad jokes.
Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee delivers a ghastly pun of its own.
Close to Home sets weird boundaries.
Dinosaur Comics argues with the Eighteenth Century.
Free Range has its own variation of that argument, asking what if the revolution started and no one saw it?
Six Chix embraces a trend. Sort of.

(9) KINGPIN FOR MAYOR. The Brooklyn Eagle is there when “’Daredevil’ gives an ominous look to Brooklyn Borough Hall”.

Downtown Brooklyn passers-by were treated to moody lighting and fog effects at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Thursday evening when the Disney+ series “Daredevil: Born Again” filmed a scene on the plaza steps.

Banners showing a man’s stern face (“Mayor Fisk,” aka crime boss “Kingpin,” played by Brooklyn-born actor Vincent D’Onofrio) and the words “New York Born Again” hung between the pillars; an armored vehicle was parked on the plaza; and flowers were piled on the steps, giving the scene an ominous air.

Signs indicated the shoot was for a show named “Out of the Kitchen,” but crew members told the Brooklyn Eagle that is the working title for the most recent incarnation of “Daredevil.” The series features Charlie Cox as blind attorney Matt Murdock — the superhero Daredevil — reprising his role from Marvel’s Netflix television series….

‘Daredevil: Born Again,’ filmed at a transformed Brooklyn Borough Hall Thursday and Friday evening. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

(10) OF COURSE THEY DO. “Meta plans to replace humans with AI to assess risks” – NPR has the story.

For years, when Meta launched new features for Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, teams of reviewers evaluated possible risks: Could it violate users’ privacy? Could it cause harm to minors? Could it worsen the spread of misleading or toxic content?

Until recently, what are known inside Meta as privacy and integrity reviews were conducted almost entirely by human evaluators.

But now, according to internal company documents obtained by NPR, up to 90% of all risk assessments will soon be automated.

In practice, this means things like critical updates to Meta’s algorithms, new safety features and changes to how content is allowed to be shared across the company’s platforms will be mostly approved by a system powered by artificial intelligence — no longer subject to scrutiny by staffers tasked with debating how a platform change could have unforeseen repercussions or be misused….

(11) BEFORE AND AFTER DARK. [Item by Steven French.] Nora Claire Miller on screen savers, poetry and her gran’s iMac in The Paris Review: “Recurring Screens”.

The world’s first screen saver was not like a dream at all. It was a blank screen. It was called SCRNSAVE, and when it was released in 1983 it was very exciting to a niche audience. It was like John Cage’s 4’33″ but for computers—a score for meted-out doses of silence….

…My grandmother’s iMac spent most of its time showing Flurry, a dancing rainbow spider that was the first-ever Macintosh screen saver when it debuted in 2002. My grandmother was very tech-averse and preferred to write on a yellow legal pad. Whenever she needed to use the iMac, she’d call me with questions. “Thank goodness you picked up,” she’d say. “An alternate universe has emerged in the corner of my screen. Can you help?”

I quickly gave up on trying to convince her to use words like “window” or “application” instead of “planet” or “dimension.” Her descriptions felt closer to the real experience of using a computer—like trying to fly a spaceship. She read a lot of sci-fi. I helped her download Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven from iTunes as an audiobook. We listened together as a man altered collective reality with his dreams….

(12) BLACK MIRROR EFFECTS. Animation World Network takes us “Inside the VFX of Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror – USS Callister: Into Infinity’ Season 7 Finale”.

Black Mirror’s 7^th season finale, “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” a sequel to the fan-favorite 2017 Season 4 opening episode, “USS Callister,” picks up years later where the ship’s crew, led by Captain Nanette Cole, is stranded in an infinite virtual universe, fighting for survival against 30 million players. MacLachlan spoke with AWN about how he and the visual effects team began with a fresh visual direction and an ambitious VFX brief, modernizing the original look while employing a collaborative pipeline to produce needed shots, and why family visits to set might help inspire a new generation of digital artists….

…He adds, “Some of the stuff we designed as we did the VFX, and some of the things Union VFX did were absolutely fantastic. You know, the teleportation, the defragging / fragging, the spaceship design, the space battles, they were all new elements this time around.”

“There are north of 600 VFX shots in the episode, which is a significant shot count,” MacLachlan shares. “The largest body of work was obviously the space battle sequences in and around the Heart of Infinity,” he says. “There’s a lot of fully CG content — space battles, explosions, laser fire, dynamic camera moves.”

Designing the action around a unique central structure was critical. “A key feature of the show was that everything is moving in and around this swirling, gyroscopic behemoth of a center of the Heart of Infinity,” MacLachlan says. “The team had to coordinate shots where the camera moves in and around a moving obstruction. I can’t think of another space battle where the object is shifting this way.”…

(13) PERSISTENT TECH. BBC Future also keeps an eye on the past: “Obsolete, but not gone: The people who won’t give up floppy disks”.

…Floppy disks or diskettes emerged around 1970 and, for a good three decades or so, they were the main way many people stored and backed up their computer data. All the software and programmes they bought came loaded onto clusters of these disks. They are a technology from a different era of computing, but for various reasons floppy disks have an enduring appeal for some which mean they are from dead.

The original 8in (20cm) and 5.25in (13cm) floppy disks were actually floppy – you could bend them slightly without harming the magnetic material inside.

But the later 3.5in (8.75cm) disks were arguably the most successful. It is these that came to be immortalised as the “Save” icon in many computer applications even today. The 3.5in disks, which Espen Kraft uses, are small and rigid, not actually floppy, but that means they are both more robust and easier to store….

…Kraft adores floppy disks because they help him creatively, he says. He doesn’t want to make music that merely apes 1980s styles – rather, he wants it to sound like it actually came from that decade.

It’s when Kraft is using antiquated equipment that he makes his best music, he says. Feeling the ruggedness of a treasured disk as it slots into a dusty old drive. In his opinion, more modern equipment with gigabytes of storage doesn’t come close. He even performs live shows with floppy disks and has used them during musical appearances on Norwegian television.

To this day, Kraft records new sounds and samples straight onto this physical format, including crickets singing in the forest near his house in the evening. If you pitch that cacophony down by 10 octaves or so, and add some reverberation as well as a little delay, then lo: “You have instant music,” says Kraft. “A very nice custom soundstage,” he says….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, N., Dann, Michael J. Walsh, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge with an assist from OGH.]

Royal Mail Issues Chronicles of Narnia Stamps

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

Chronicles of Narnia stamp collectors sheet

Great Britain’s Royal Mail issued a stamp series on May 22 celebrating the publication of the first novel in C.S. Lewis’ fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published in 1950, 75 years ago.

One set of four stamps is based on the original book illustrations by Pauline Baynes, and a second set features eight new illustrations by artist Keith Robinson, reimagining key moments in the series from Lucy Pevensie’s first glimpse of Narnia to the epic finale of The Last Battle.

The stamp artwork and an interview with artist Robinson follows the jump.

Continue reading →

2025 SFPA Poetry Contest

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

The 2025 SFPA Speculative Poetry Contest has opened for entries and is open to all poets, including non-SFPA-members. Prizes will be awarded for best unpublished poem in three categories:

Dwarf (poems 1–10 lines [prose poems 0–100 words])
Short (11–49 lines [prose poems 101–499 words])
Long (50 lines and more [prose 500 words and up])

Line count does not include title or stanza breaks. All sub-genres of speculative poetry are allowed in any form.

The deadline to enter is August 31.

Prizes in each category (Dwarf, Short, Long) will be $150 First Prize, $75 Second Prize, $25 Third Prize. Publication on the SFPA website for first through third places. There is an entry fee of $3 per poem.

The contest judge is Jeannine Hall Gailey, a poet with MS who served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She’s the author of seven books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the SFPA’s Elgin Award and in 2023 Flare, and Corona from BOA Editions, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a non-fiction guide to help poets publicize their books. Her work has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and The Best Horror of the Year. She holds a B.S. in Biology and an M.A. in English from University of Cincinnati, and an MFA from Pacific University. Her poetry has appeared in journals like The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry; her personal essays have appeared on Salon.com and The Rumpus. Her web site is www.webbish6.com. Twitter, BlueSky and Instagram: @webbish6.

The contest chair is James Machell, a British writer, born in London and matured in Seoul. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and the outreach manager for Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, for which he gets to interview his favourite writers and artists, including P. Djèlí Clark, Ken Liu, and Samuel R. Delany. He is also a judge for the Latin Programme Poetry Prize. Find him on X @JamesRJMachell or YouTube, where his channel’s name is Fell Purpose.

Entries are read blind. Unpublished poems only. Per SFPA’s Statement on AI, the submission of AI generated poetry is prohibited. Author retains rights, except that first through third place winners will be published on the SPFA website. Full guidelines here.

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 6/1/25 Time Flies Like An Arrow, Pixel Flies Like A Scroll

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) STRAIGHT TALK. C.J. Cherryh delivered a “Straight Talk on the Craft” on Facebook yesterday. It begins —

I’ve occasionally encountered people with the notion that editors are so eager for submissions that they will fix any grammatical shortcomings.

Fact: they will fix an outirght mistype, or one of those situations so rare it has professional English instructors arguing pro and con in the bar.

Anything short of that will not get editorial rescue—in the ‘life’s too short’ category.

If you are preparing for life as a professional writer, it’s YOUR business to become versed in your language of choice, its rules and its punctuation, its capitalizations. You will be expected to turn in a manuscript without any extraordinary need for help with the language. It should ALREADY read like a professionally written book. The editor has a thousand other jobs to do. Rewriting your work is not one of them….

(2) A CULTURAL ICON. A few weeks ago we linked to NBC News’ profile “Meet the 1940s secretary who used office time to produce the first lesbian magazine” about Edyth Eyde aka Lisa Ben aka Tigrina. As Tigrina she served as secretary of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in the mid-Forties. Fanac.org recently posted some examples of her work – “Menace of the LASFS Retroactive Series 1945-11” – which Bruce Pelz mimeoed in the early Sixties. She made the minutes very amusing.

…Treasurer Ackerman announced in reverent tones that the cash on hand amounted to $52.13. I could not vouch for the intensity of the resultant gasp of delighted amazement as this startling news penetrated our brains, but I heard the next day that residents of Pomona complained of a violent windstorm……. Director Laney asked for this report to be repeated, for it was such beautiful music to our ears. Treasurer Ackerman graciously complied, Director Laney thereafter requesting thirty seconds of respectful silence. This in itself is unusual among fen, but then so is $52.13….

The “Menace” of the November 29, 1945 meeting are more serious in tone because they include a proposal for a convention responding to the atomic bombing of Japan just three months earlier.

…Art Joquel proposed an “Atomicon,” a non-technical conference on the subject of the Atomic Bomb and the sociological implications of the Atomic Age. The idea met with general approval, and it was decided that such a project would afford good publicity if interesting speakers could be obtained and the meeting be opened to all who might be interested. Director Laney suggested a public conference, but Art Joquel advised a conference on a smaller scale first, to determine whether it would be successful enough to warrant a conference open to the public. It was suggested that Mr. Van Vogt, or some other science fiction author, or perhaps someone from one of the universities, well acquainted with the subject of the coming Atomic Age, be prevailed upon to give a lecture, preferably non-technical, with emphasis on the sociological aspects of the Atom Bomb menace. It was further suggested that perhaps notes could be taken and printed in Shangri-L’Affaires. Various times and locations were discussed for the Atomiconvention, but nothing was decided upon definitely, since the date of the conference would largely depend upon the speakers. Director Laney delegated to Art Joquel the responsibility of the project, Fran himself to contact Mr. Van Vogt concerning his speaking at the conference….

(3) STRANGER THINGS DIVIDES TO CONQUER. ‘Stranger Things 5’ splits into 3-part release, premiering November” reports Entertainment Weekly.

Netflix isn’t just handing over all episodes of Stranger Things 5. That’d be too easy. The streamer is following their season 4 strategy by splitting the final season of their mega hit show into multiple parts….

…Stranger Things 5 will be split into three premieres. Volume 1 will arrive on Nov. 26, Volume 2 on Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve….

The fifth and final season’s premiere episode is titled “The Crawl” and will pick up in the fall of 1987, which is more than a year after the events of season 4….

(4) PANNED. Entertainment Weekly is not a fan: “’Fountain of Youth’ review: John Krasinski and Natalie Portman fail to find treasure”. The opening paragraph says —

Pee-wee Herman brought us to the basement of the Alamo; Guy Ritchie’s new globe-trotting quest brings us to the basement of the Great Pyramids. And I think after watching both movies, most people will agree to stick with Pee-wee….

(5) THE DOCTOR WON’T MAKE THIS HOUSE CALL. “The ‘War Between Land and the Sea’ Trailer Gives Earth a Battle the Doctor Can’t Stop” – Gizmodo introduces the clip.

To mark the climax of Doctor Who‘s 2025 season, today the BBC revealed the first footage from War Between Land and Sea, which will see UNIT as the front line of defense when the Sea Devils—a race of aquatic reptilians who have existed on Earth since the dawn of time, hiding their advance civilization in hibernation alongside their other distantly affiliated ancient Earth dwellers, the Silurians, for millions of years—emerge from hiding and make themselves known to the Human race.

How do things go? Well, you could tell by the title of the miniseries alone that the answer to that is seemingly “not well”—and without the Doctor to fall back on like they’ve been able to the last couple of times the Sea Devils and Silurians alike tried to emerge, it’s up to humanity to find away to counter the threat of Earth’s ancient reclaimers… and if not co-exist with them, survive their wrath….

(6) BARRY B. LONGYEAR (1942-2025). Prolific sf author Barry B. Longyear died May 6 at the age of 82.

It was love at first sight when fans encountered the science fiction of Barry B. Longyear. After his first story appeared in Asimov’s in 1978, a spate of short fiction followed in 1979 — filling his first collection, Manifest Destiny. They included “Enemy Mine”, which achieved science fiction’s Triple Crown by winning a Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award. And fans sealed their approval of his amazing output by voting Barry the John W. Campbell Award as best new writer in 1980 (now the Astounding Award).

(He was not a fan of the 1985 film adaptation and was prone to identify himself as “the author of ‘Enemy Mine’ – which there was an attempt to make into a movie.”)

His other award-winning work was the novel The War Whisperer, Book 5: The Hook which received the Prometheus Award in 2021.

And he wrote three books in the popular Circus World series.

When Barry made his never-to-be-forgotten 1989 appearance as Windycon guest of honor he advanced a simple plan for achieving greatness in the sf field. He had noticed that all successful science fiction writers have a middle initial — Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell — and to help him achieve equal success he insisted publishers and fans be sure to call him “Barry B. Longyear.”

Having enjoyed less than full success with this scheme in the past, he came prepared to drive home his point with memorable visual aids. Barry B. Longyear dramatically unrolled the hem of his sweatshirt — striped with alternating yellow-and-black bands down to his knees. He reached into the paper sack behind the lectern and removed headgear with two bobbling, fuzzy yellow balls on steel-spring antennae. Once completely costumed he rehearsed the audience in his full name, “Barry B. Longyear!” His wife, Jean, emerged from the audience costumed as a sunflower with a halo of yellow petals and green-leaf gloves. In the audience, George Alec Effinger said admiringly, “Nobody I’ve ever been married to would do that for me!”

The family obituary recalls Longyear’s many accomplishments in addition to his writing:

…Barry and Regina married and were together for 58 years. They shared love, understanding, ideals, and values – a real partnership in joy and sorrow. They made their home in Maine and found many close friends in their community. Barry’s immense talents provided enjoyment for his friends and countless fans: writing, painting, acting, carpentry, wood carving, and stonework. He was known for his intelligence, kindness, and sense of humor which could verge on the sardonic but was always witty. He was the author of Enemy Mine, a novella that won all three major science fiction awards in the year it was published. It was made into a film some years ago. Recently Disney purchased the film rights for the next three books. Barry’s Turning the Grain was released recently.

In 1981 he entered St. Mary’s in Minneapolis where he began his recovery from substance use disorder. He remained clean and sober until his death. He founded the oldest continuously meeting Narcotics Anonymous (NA) group in Maine, the Dragon Slayers in Farmington, Maine, in 1982. His passion was for the newcomer. When a new person arrived, his whole heart and soul embraced them and hoped for them. If they did not come back, he was deeply grieved, thinking, “That person is going back to the nightmare.” For other recovering addicts, he was always ready with a hug, encouragement, a gold nugget from his treasure house of ever-accumulating wisdom. He would do anything for a friend, as many can attest to….

Barry B. Longyear in 1997. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 1, 1946 — Joanna Lumley, 79.

Quick, tell me who appeared as a member of The Avengers, the real Avengers who have class, not the comic ones, was in a Bond film, and was the first female Doctor Who as well. Now that would be the woman with the full name of Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley.

Her first genre role was a very minor one as it was essentially in the background as an English girl as she would be credited in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I certainly don’t remember her there but I confess I’ve only seen it once I think. I find it interesting that none of the original Bond films are streaming.

She’ll have an even minor role in the horror film Tam-Lin which will get repackaged as The Ballad of Tam-Lin, The Devil’s Widow and The Devil’s Woman as well. Possibly even other titles that I’ve not found. I doubt it bears but the faintest resemblance to the actual ballad.

Her first significant genre role was on The New Avengers as Purdey, a former Royal Ballet member who said her high kicks were from her training there (a dubious claim). (And yes, Patrick Macnee was back as Steed.) Along with Mike Gambit as played by Gareth Hunt who had appeared in the Doctor Who’s “Planet of the Spiders”, that was the team on the New Avengers.

It lasted but two seasons and twenty-six episodes. Yes, I loved it. The chemistry between the three of them was excellent, perhaps better than it had been Steed and some of his solo partners. It seemed that Macnee was more engaged here in that role than he was previously.

Her second genre role was in Sapphire & Steel. She played Sapphire and David McCallum was Steel. It was considered a supernatural series. I’ve not seen it though I should watch it on YouTube as it legally up there courtesy of Shout Factory which is the company that now has the distribution license for it, so you see the first episode here.

She’s appeared in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther as Marie Jouvet and Curse of the Pink Panther as Countess Chandra. I’m amazed how many of those films there have been!

She voiced Aunt Spiker in James and the Giant Peach. Likewise, she’s Madame Everglot in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

Finally, she played Doctor Who in The Curse of Fatal Death, a Doctor Who special made for the 1999 Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was Stephen Moffat’s first Who script. She was simply The Female Doctor. As I said above she was the first female Doctor. So given we have in the form of Billie Piper our newest female Doctor, our image is of Lumley in that role.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro discovers some brand names have been around for a long time.
Brewster Rockit knows the workaround.
Eek! tells what happened after Luke was introduced to his father.
Speed Bump has a dark fun side.
Robbiegeez: alien comic involves someone who obviously flunked alien infiltration 101.
Tom Gauld threw a doubleheader this week.

(9) MANDALORIAN PROGNOSTICATION. “Disney+ Calls It Quits With Its First-Ever Star Wars Show (Report)” – The Direct explains what’s next for it.

The first live-action Star Wars show to ever be released reportedly came to an end and won’t continue on Disney+. Since its launch in 2019, Disney+ has been the home of multiple live-action Star Wars series such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka. Some shows have received multiple seasons; others were created as limited series.

After years of its status being uncertain, The Mandalorian, which premiered in November 2019 as Disney+’s first Star Wars series on the day that the streamer launched, will reportedly end with Season 3, meaning that Season 4 will not be developed at Disney+.

According to insider Daniel Richtman (shared via his Patreon), The Mandalorian Season 4 was shelved because Disney viewed it as a theatrical franchise rather than a TV series. The Mando-centric feature film The Mandalorian and Grogu, which is set to be released on May 22, 2026, seems to have had an impact on The Mandalorian‘s future, as its success will determine what comes next for Din Djarin and Grogu….

(10) BACK TO WAKANDA. Entertainment Weekly includes art from the animated series in “’Eyes of Wakanda’ first look: Creator sets up ‘spy-espionage story’”.

… EW’s exclusive first look at the series reveals some of the warriors we’ll meet. [Showrunner Todd] Harris sets expectations of how much he’s able to reveal: “We try to mirror the actual spirit of the nation of Wakanda by keeping as many secrets as possible.” However, we do know the story involves the Hatut Zaraze, which translates as “Dogs of War” in the Wakandan language. These CIA-esque defense divisions attempt to recover Vibranium artifacts from Wakanda’s enemies.

“When an inciting incident releases some of these things into the wild, they’ve got to, in a very hush hush kind of way, make sure that these things don’t turn into a bigger problem,” Harris says. “We saw what happened when one disc got into the hands of one Super Soldier — it changed the course of the world.”…

…Harris describes Eyes of Wakanda as “anthology adjacent.” It’s a collection of short stories set at different time periods that all tell one continuous narrative. It’s the equivalent, Harris says, of visiting the British Isles during the time of King Arthur and then returning during the Industrial. “Same country, two different worlds,” he explains. “As we make our touchstones through time, we get to see that kind of evolution.”

The show will be less about the great-great-great ancestor of some Wakandan character (though there is some of that) and more about principles. “We have characters that are very important in the show, but it also examines what kind of person Wakanda makes,” Harris says. “A 10,000-year-old society. What kind of fortitude, what kind of lack of temptation to over expand? All these different things to keep things from imploding, all these different things that have been the detriment to a lot of history…how did they avoid that and what kind of person does that make? What kind of rock-solid principles keeps them on the straight and narrow that balance that’s so hard for everyone alive?”…

(11) GALACTIC BEAUTY. [Item by Steven French.] Some gorgeous shots here including one of a rare ‘double arch’: “Milky Way photographer of the year 2025 – in pictures” in the Guardian.

This year’s collection of images from Capture the Atlas features an extraordinary milestone: a historic photograph of our galaxy taken from the International Space Station by Nasa astronaut Don Pettit, who recently returned from his latest mission onboard the ISS.

(12) ON BEING REPLACED BY AI. [Item by Steven French.] People from around the world talk about their experiences of being replaced by AI (but it does end on something of a positive note): “’One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI” in the Guardian.

As a kid I was always arty – sketching, making Play-Doh sculptures. I studied game design and art at college, and went down an Adobe Photoshop rabbit hole. It was fun and I was good at it, so I decided to turn it into a career, starting at the company when I was 21. They sell a platform that creates landing pages and email layouts. I’d design the templates and do bespoke work for clients.

When generative AI came along, the company was very vocal about using it as a tool to help clients get creative. As a company that sells digital automation, developments in AI fit them well. I knew they were introducing it to do things like writing emails and generating images, but I never anticipated they’d get rid of me: I’d been there six years and was their only graphic designer. My redundancy came totally out of the blue. One day, HR told me my role was no longer required as much of my work was being replaced by AI.

I made a YouTube video about my experience. It went viral and I received hundreds of responses from graphic designers in the same boat, which made me realise I’m not the only victim – it’s happening globally, and it takes a huge mental toll. I went to college, I studied, I did six years of work. Was it all for nothing?

After I was let go, I spent months looking for a job. I didn’t find work in graphic design, but did get a job as a content creator at a PC manufacturer. I make videos of the production line, interview staff members and do some social media. I’m not worried here: my employers don’t agree with replacing human roles with AI. I may use it to edit pictures but only to enhance something a human created – say, to remove cables in the back of a product image. We would never post an image entirely generated by AI, which is what my old company is doing. My advice to every graphic designer is to learn as many skills as possible. You have to be prepared.

(13) TRAILER PARK. Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

(14) TRAILER PARK ANNEX. Netflix also has released the first six minutes of Wednesday: Season 2. Part 1 is coming on August 6. Part 2 is coming on September 3.

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