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.
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 Prizes will be awarded for best unpublished poem in three categories:
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.
Jeannine Hall Gailey
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.
James Machell
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.
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….
…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….
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….
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….
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).
Barry B. Longyear
(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 Womanas 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.
Joanna Lumley as Doctor Who
(8) COMICS SECTION.
Bizarro discovers some brand names have been around for a long time.
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….
… 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?”…
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.
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.]
The scholarships are offered to those pursuing careers as writers of horror fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. The diversity grants also extend to library workers. And there are funds offered for YA writing programs at libraries.
The scholarship, open to all horror writers (HWA membership is not required), is worth $2500, which may be spent on approved writing education over the two years following the granting of the scholarship.
This scholarship, worth $2,500, is open to horror writers who identify as women. It may be spent on approved writing education over the two years following the granting of the scholarship.
The late Rocky Wood, then HWA President, explained why the scholarship was created in 2014.
“It is very clear to the HWA that there are unseen, but real, barriers limiting the amount of horror fiction being published by women. There are many fine women writers being published in our genre but we also see potential for the percentage of horror fiction being published by women to increase. This Scholarship, named after the great female horror writer, aims to encourage more female writers to enter our genre and to aid in the development of those already working within it. At the same time the HWA exists to extend the horror genre in all its aspects, so we are also establishing Horror Writers Association Scholarship, which is open to all our members, regardless of gender.”
The Dark Poetry Scholarship, first awarded in 2015, is designed to assist in the professional development of Horror and/or Dark Fantasy Poets. It is worth $1,250, which may be spent on approved writing education over the two years following the granting of the scholarship.
The Rocky Wood Memorial Scholarship Fund for Non-fiction Writing provides grants for research and writing a specific nonfiction project relating to horror and dark fantasy literature. The amount is flexible. Membership in HWA is not a requirement.
Seattle Worldcon 2025’s use of ChatGPT as part of the screening process for program participants was publicly acknowledged by Chair Kathy Bond at the end of April. Bond initially defended the decision as saving volunteers time but rocked by the universally negative response turned around and issued an apology. Bond and program division head SunnyJim Morgan followed up with detailed information about the way ChatGPT had been used to search for background info, including any history of code of conduct issues. They did not seem to have recognized ahead of time that the community of writers they hope to attract to the program harbor immense hostility and resentment against AI and tools like ChatGPT which have been trained on vast libraries of text used without compensation to authors, and have the business goal of competing with or replacing writers in various markets.
Since then, author Mia Tsai has protested the Worldcon’s use of ChatGPT by organizing a one-day alternative program to be held in a nearby venue.
While this controversy played out, the Seattle Worldcon Hugo Administrators and WSFS Division Head quit, and the committee cancelled the first of two Town Halls meant to educate people about how the virtual business meeting will work.
Here are the most widely-read posts from May 2025 according to the eternally glitchy Jetpack.
Doctor Who‘s latest season has just come to an end—and with it, we just got hit with an absolute shocker of a cliffhanger. Let’s discuss, shall we?
The Guardian’s storygoes even farther with a spoileriffic headline that I won’t quote fully: “Doctor Who finale sees…”
(2) LOCUS APPEAL NEARS END. The “Locus Mag 2025” fundraiser at Indiegogo ends today. With seven hours still to run it had taken in $80,375. How much does that help?
…With rising inflation, tariffs, and shipping costs, it now costs over $725,000 a year to publish the magazine, run the website, and present the awards each year. Through subscriptions, advertising, and existing donations and sponsors, we can count on $400,000 in anticipated revenue next year. That means we need to raise an additional $325,000 to make it all the way through 2025….
So there are probably more fundraising efforts to come.
Star Trek: Discovery‘s Shazad Latif is going where no man has gone before… but this time, instead of outer space, he’s headed to the hidden depths of the ocean. Latif stars as Captain Nemo in Nautilus, AMC’s new reimagining of Jules Verne‘s classic science fiction novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The show’s new trailer sees him set sail in the titular super-submarine, even as he’s pursued to the ends of the Earth. The series premieres June 29 on AMC and AMC+.
In the new trailer for the 19th-century-set science fiction series, which serves as a prequel to Verne’s novel, Nemo is the prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company, a globe-spanning corporation that wields more power than any government. He and his fellow prisoners are put to work building the Nautilus, an advanced submarine that the Company hopes will further tighten its grip on the world’s seaways. However, Nemo foments a rebellion among his fellow prisoners and takes command of the ship, escaping into the depths with his fellow prisoners as his crew. The Mercantile Company is soon in hot pursuit, with a dogged mariner assigned to bring Nemo down; meanwhile, Nemo has an unwilling passenger on board. Will he have his revenge on his captors, or will the Company deep-six his ambitions?…
…Mr. David, a gregarious soul who was befriended by movie stars and celebrities in the science-fiction realm, fondly remembered in his memoir the night he was watching the original “Star Wars” movie on television and its protagonist, Mark Hamill, called. A budding comic book writer himself, Mr. Hamill wanted to know: Could Mr. David write the introduction to a collection of his work?
“Uh, hey, Mark,” Mr. David said. “I’m watching you about to blow up the Death Star.”
“I can call back,” Mr. Hamill replied.
“No, that’s OK,” Mr. David told him. “I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.”
Join me and Neil Ottenstein for a rambling panel about Howard the Duck in which I share the Marvel Comics chaos which caused me to be hired there in 1974, my regrets over having written an issue of Omega the Unknown, my ethical queasiness about owning original art, what it means when I say I knew Stan Lee before he had hair, my terrifying Bullpen encounters with “Jumbo” John Verpoorten, why Howard the Duck was the Silver Surfer of the ’70s, my Times Square street theater with Steve Gerber, the time Howard the Duck had to be hatched instead of laid, how immaturity cost me Captain Marvel, the only time I ever saw Stan Lee get flustered, and more.
Among other things, Edelman recalls the time Howard the Duck couldn’t get laid – see the relevant comics panel here, and read the whole story here.
Take all the essential ingredients of Star Wars – samurais in space, adventure among the wookiees, aliens with backward syntax, evil cyborgs with a penchant for murder by telekinesis – then imagine George Lucas hadn’t given us all of that through a PG prism. This, it appears, is what Ryan Reynolds did when pitching to Disney. “I said, ‘Why don’t we do an R-rated Star Wars property?’” Reynolds told The Box Office podcast. “‘It doesn’t have to be overt, A+ characters. There’s a wide range of characters you could use.’ And I don’t mean R-rated to be vulgar. R-rated as a Trojan horse for emotion. I always wonder why studios don’t want to just gamble on something like that.”
Let’s imagine the scene: a gaggle of studio execs are nervously cowering before the Hollywood A-lister’s megawatt smirk as he reveals his idea for a take on George Lucas’s space opera that doesn’t hold back. This is Star Wars Tarantino-style. Perhaps Mando’s got a drug problem, or Chewie really does rip people’s arms off – and beat them to death with the wet ends. Somewhere over in Coruscant a Jedi slices a corrupt senator into symmetrical chunks without ever unsheathing his saber. Or maybe Reynolds just thinks the galaxy far, far away could use a little more Deadpool & Wolverine-style sweary irreverence.
He’s wrong. Push Star Wars too far into the realm of self-aware snark, or nudge it to start laughing at itself before the audience does, and you undercut the very thing that keeps fans tethered to its dusty, big-hearted mythos. We already have umpteen animated takedowns – Robot Chicken’s fever-dream dismemberments, Family Guy’s fart-laced remakes – and they’re fine, in their way. But if Star Wars ever starts mimicking the shows that exist solely to mock it, then the circle will be complete….
… The story is told from the point of view of Shesheshen, who is a shapeshifting monster, or wyrm, and who has threatened the population of the Isthmus for some time. As the novel opens, Shesheshen is awakened early from her yearly hibernation by a familiar menace — monster hunters….
(8) CONCURRENT SEATTLE. ConCurrent Seattle, a one-day alternate program created in protest of the use of ChatGPT by the Seattle Worldcon, had raised almost half of its $5,000 budget as of yesterday.
The use of ChatGPT at WorldCon has been a breach of trust in an industry of writers whose work has been stolen to train genAI. ConCurrent, a one-day event being held on Thursday, August 14, 2025, at the ACT Theatre in downtown Seattle, is an alternative for those who want a convention with no genAI involved.
ConCurrent is not a replacement for WorldCon and will be free of charge and open to all….
(9) JAYANT NARLIKAR (1938-2025). [Item by Steven French.] The science journal Nature has an obituary of Jayant Narlikar who was not only Fred Hoyle’s PhD student and collaborator (together they developed an alternative theory of gravitation which rejected any Big Bang) but also wrote science fiction himself (his novel The Comet is still on the syllabus in some Indian schools). “Jayant Narlikar, visionary astrophysicist and science populariser, dies at 86”. He died on May 20.
… Narlikar’s influence extended well beyond academic circles. He was a dedicated science communicator and one of India’s earliest and most prolific writers of science fiction. A story exploring black holes and time dilation, submitted anonymously, won him his first award and launched a writing career that brought scientific ideas to a wider audience. His accessible and engaging popular science books became fixtures in school curricula and earned him the UNESCO Kalinga Prize in 1996….
(10) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
May 31, 1990 — Total Recall
By Paul Weimer: “Get your ass to Mars”.
Sure, I think as social satire The Running Man is probably better science fiction as a movie. But as a vehicle for 1980’s SF for Schwarzenegger that wasn’t Terminator, I think you can’t do better than one of my favorites, Total Recall. The excitement of a movie “based on a story by Philip K. Dick” (which I subsequently read and was confused by how little it actually had to do with it.)
But the movie is a corker from start to finish and so much of the movie is imprinted in my brain to this day. The movie’s insistence on keeping it very ambiguous, right to the end, if Quaid was dreaming or not , charmed me. I argued with my brother over this, who thought the “sweat drop” scene with Dr. Edgemar proved it was all real. I disagreed, and pointed out things like “Bluesky on Mars” being the name of his program, and how Melina resembled the woman programmed for his vacation. And if you listen to the commentary, Paul Verhoeven directed the movie with the point of view that it was all a dream, and Schwarzenegger acted with the point of view that it was reality. It makes for an interesting tension on screen and it works.
There are lots of little details that happen in the background. The change in geopolitical setup to a North-South Cold War. The Tokyo Samurai are trying to go for a fifth and deciding win in the World Series (so now the American Baseball leagues have teams in Japan…and the World Series is a best of nine affair). The movie is visually rich and generous like that, showing a lived in world that you can believe is real. Two worlds to be precise, both Earth and Mars. And the brutalist architecture pattern works for this authoritarian future.
And of course the movie is hideously violent. The body count is high.
The movie remains ever relevant with its critiques of colonialism, and authoritarianism. We are meant to side with the Free Mars movement, and maybe not until Cox’s Cohagen decides to kill everyone by asphyxiation does he really go from a tyrannical colonial figure who is vaguely understandable, to a true and undeniable monster that is irredeemable. But that steady revelation of just how horrible he can be starts with him looking sympathetic at first, and then unfurling his true nature and the extent of what he has done, and is willing to do. It’s a dive into authoritarian and colonialist mindsets, and in this day and age, even more relevant than ever.
And the movie follows through on the implications of its technology with the character beats. When Richter is told that Quaid/Hauser won’t remember anything, he just has to punch him hard, because of all what he’s put Richter through at this point. It’s a character beat that makes sense given the tech. And we have Chekov’s guns all over the place, which all fire, which propel us to the final confrontation. Sure, the “Ten second terraforming method of Mars” is bonkers and would not work. The movie doesn’t explain that there are more steps to the breathable atmosphere than melting the ice to get oxygen. I don’t care.
I read the novelization, done by Piers Anthony, because “I wanted to know more”. And I wish I hadn’t. I had not yet discovered how terrible Anthony was as a writer, but the novel’s insistence at each and every chance to say “yes this is real” over and over, was disappointing. Even at the end, when Quaid points out to Melina that she looks like the woman from Rekall, she casually says she used to do modeling for them. The book was determined to squash any ambiguity, and it was a major turn off. It did more solidly explain the terraforming, though and how it would work.
But the movie remains solid. Don’t bother with the remake. Watch the original. Don’t let me down, buddy, I’m counting on you.
(13) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “How the iPhone Drove Men and Women Apart” is a hooky headline, but the real topic of Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times podcast (which is the source of the New York Times article) is the declining fertility rate in many countries. If the NYT article is paywalled, the podcast episode is available on YouTube under the title “Progressives Are Driving Themselves Into Extinction”.
…Douthat: What about culture apart from politics? Because, while it is the case that culture is determined to some degree by tech, the smartphone creates culture in its own way. It’s also the case that the issue of declining birthrates is not one that much of elite Western culture has taken seriously. It’s not something that’s entered into the mainstream cultural mind the way that the threat of climate change has done. So you could imagine if it became a more important part of the cultural imaginary — some kind of self-conscious attempt to treat this as an important issue.
Let’s say, right now people in Hollywood would feel bad if they were perceived to be not doing something to fight climate change or something. Hollywood used to make a lot of romantic comedies. It doesn’t really anymore. There’s still a few. But are there cultural scripts that could be written — whether in movies or TV or elsewhere — that you think could actually make a difference?
Evans: I think definitely, yes. And I think it would be wonderful if Hollywood promoted that and supported that. In fact, as a joke last year, I even wrote a comedy script about how Hollywood could support fertility and things like that.
Even though I’m totally on board with that — and I think that’s very important — there are several frictions. One, it’s very difficult to do cultural engineering today, because we have infinite options of entertainment at our fingertips — on Netflix and everything. So if you’re not that interested in a romantic comedy — you know, in China, a lot of the most popular films are about divorce. So it’s difficult to do cultural engineering. On top of that, as long as people are hooked on their smartphones, they might not have the social skills to do it.
I think another possible mechanism would be to use the tax system and to give massive tax incentives to people who have children, because that’s a positive externality….
(14) NUMBER NINE? NUMBER NINE? “Scientists Say They’ve Found a Dwarf Planet Very Far From the Sun” – this link bypasses the New York Times paywall. “The small world was found during a search for the hypothetical Planet Nine, and astronomers say the next time it will reach its closest point to the sun is in the year 26186.”
Temporarily named 2017 OF201, it takes more than 24,000 years to travel around the sun just once along a highly elliptical orbit, coming as close as 4.2 billion miles and moving as far out as 151 billion miles. (Neptune is just 2.8 billion miles from the sun.)
And 2017 OF201 may have implications for the hypothesis of an undiscovered planet, nicknamed Planet Nine, in the outer reaches of the solar system.
“We discovered a very large trans-Neptunian object in a very exotic orbit,” said Sihao Cheng, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J….
Scientists are analysing the smells of space – from Earth’s nearest neighbours to planets hundreds of light years away – to learn about the make-up of the Universe.
Jupiter, says Marina Barcenilla, is “a bit like a stink bomb”.
The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter has several layers of cloud, she explains, and each layer has a different chemical composition. The gas giant might tempt you in with the sweet aroma of its “poisonous marzipan clouds”, she says. Then the smell “would only get worse as you go deeper”.
“You would probably wish you were dead before you got to the point where you were crushed by the pressure,” she says.
“The top layer of cloud, we believe, is made of ammonia ice,” says Barcenilla, likening the stench to that of cat urine.” Then, as you get further down, you encounter ammonium sulphide. That’s when you have ammonia and sulphur together – a combination made in hell.” Sulphurous compounds are famously responsible for stinking of rotting eggs….
(16) RARA AVIS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Eat chicken — I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch. This is this week’s Nature cover story….
The cover shows an artist’s impression of Archaeopteryx, the oldest-known fossil bird, which lived some 150 million years ago. In this week’s issue, Jingmai O’Connor and colleagues describe the fourteenth known specimen of Archaeopteryx — colloquially known as the Chicago Archaeopteryx because it was acquired by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. This specimen is important because it is so well preserved: it is nearly complete and has not been crushed, which means it retains a remarkable level of detail. This, combined with painstaking preparation guided by micro-computed tomography, allowed the researchers to uncover fresh information about the skeleton, soft tissues and plumage of this iconic creature. Among the team’s findings are specialized inner secondary feathers called tertials on both wings, and an indication that creature’s foot pads were adapted for movement on the ground. The collection of newly identified features suggests that Archaeopteryx was adapted for some level of flight and was comfortable living both on the ground and in trees.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Scott Edelman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
I Won’t Scroll Up! Book Review: Pat Murphy’s The Adventures Of Mary Darling (Recommended!)
By Daniel Dern: (A shortish review, because you shouldn’t need a lot of info or (my) opinion to decide to read this book.)
Pat Murphy’s new book, The Adventures of Mary Darling (Tachyon Publications, May 2025) opens, give or take the brief Prologue, in London in 1900 where, within fifteen short paragraphs, Mary Darling discovers that her and her husband George Darling’s three children – Wendy, Michael and John — are gone. From their third-story bedroom, the window still open and letting in the cold winter air. (Not a spoiler; it’s the premise.) When the summoned policeman declares “Kidnapped…I’ll tell headquarters,” Mary’s husband George tells her, “I’ll get your Uncle John….He’ll know what to do.”
Uncle John agrees to help…and so does (not a spoiler; the book’s cover art make this clear, ditto back-cover and interior blurb and any other one-liner about this book you’ll encounter) Uncle John’s long-time friend and associate, the deerstalker-capped (on the cover art), pipe-smoking (ditto) Sherlock Holmes. (Although, according to articles like this, Holmes wore a variety of hats, across Doyle’s Holmes stories…ditto across the many TV/movie Holmes, often reflecting the year and circumstances.) Uncle John being, of course, Dr. John Watson.)
In case you’re concerned: You don’t have to be familiar with the story/plot of Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy, much less a fan (although I feel it unlikely that anybody doesn’t know the gist); ditto with/of Sherlock Holmes and Watson (“Sherlock’s the Great Detective, Watson’s doctor and quasi-sidekick” suffices, no Holmes canon knowledge beyond that required by the reader, although Murphy is clearly familiar with same.)
Detecting, disguises, ships, sword-fights, a parrot, pirates, and more ensure – including all the characters and interactions you’d expect from a story involving Peter Pan (again, the premise, hardly a spoiler) and the young Wendy, Michael and John. Plus a lot more you weren’t expecting. (And I’m not going to spoilerize with specifics.) (No, I won’t say, “The game is a peg-leg-a-foot!”)
Because, per the book’s title, this is Mary Darling’s story. And her adventures. Not all of which, within the book, directly involve Peter Pan and/or Neverland.
Part of what makes the story even more interesting and engaging is the well-finessed perspective overlay of time. Per the Prolog, a cover letter written in 1934 by Mary Darling’s granddaughter (via Wendy) Jane Darling, to her great-uncle John (Watson):
Dear Grand-uncle John,
Here’s the book I’ve been working on. I hope this will set the record straight once and for all. I have always thought it shameful that James Barrie’s Peter Pan is the only version of my grandmother’s story available to the world. He got so much wrong! And he left you out altogether! This book tells the true story.
This gives Pat Murphy an easy way to overlay the Victorian era, and the attitudes, beliefs and perspectives of its inhabitants. Per Murphy’s AFTERWORD:
Peter Pan reflects the views of the time and place in which it was written—in England at the height of the British Empire. It [Barrie’s book – DPD] reflects the views of the time and place in which it was written—in England at the height of the British Empire. It is a boys’ adventure book in the spirit of British imperialism, a literary cousin to the penny dreadfuls of the time, in which anyone who was not white was smashed into a stereotype. I had to deal with those stereotypes to create authentic characters of the time.”
As Murphy notes in her AFTERWORD, she did a lot of research – not just reading, but also, “When I could, I talked to people from the cultures I wanted to represent.” To give a sense of the scope of her research – and some creative license/interpolation (not her words), Murphy gives (in the AFTERWORD) a list of facts/details from the book pf which “all…are true—except for one. Can you identify the untrue item?” (See if you can. I didn’t.)
Murphy also points out (in the AFTERWORD) that Neverland was always grim, starting with Barrie’s own words. (And some of the comic books I’ve read or glanced at are very dark.)
But, while there are grim passages in Murphy’s The Adventures of Mary Darling, it is not a grim book per se; it’s wonderfully well-written, it’s perfectly paced, we meet a mix of familiar and new characters, and (particularly important when some of your characters can fly), it, cough, sticks the landing perfectly. Mary is having adventure – and pro-actively being the adventurer within them.
The Adventures of Mary Darling is available in trade paperback and digital formats, through the usual sources, including Hoopla library e-borrow.
Like Alice In Wonderland, OZ, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom, Tarzan, etc., and other popular works, J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan has, unsurprisingly, spawned an impressive quantity and variety of (Disney and non-Disney) books, comics, plays, movies/tv, manga, anime and games – many of them very, very dark and/or adult-themed (not to mention artwork and merch). (Along with lots of non-dark/grim, for younger audiences.)
I am not by any means a hard-core Pan fan (relative to, say, ALICE IN W, or, to a lesser extent, Oz, ERB, Star Trek or Tolkien)…but I do enjoy watching the P/P movies as they come out (or belatedly – e.g., having just noticed The Lost Girls, adding it to my watch-soon list). Pan-spawned books, I’ve read a few but not pursued – but I’m glad a friend made me aware of Murphy’s (and will now go read/re-read a few more Murphy’s).
Here’s a few Peter P. links I’ve found, including some “inspired by” and “if you love Peter Pan”, and cross-overs/mash-ups: (95+% of which I was unaware of until this research)
And a few specific ones (which I haven’t necessarily read/watched/listened to:
Come Away (via Wikipedia – one impressive cast!): “…a 2020 fantasy drama film directed by Brenda Chapman written by Marissa Kate Goodhill, and starring David Oyelowo, Anna Chancellor, Angelina Jolie, Clarke Peters, David Gyasi, with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Caine, and Derek Jacobi. The film is an homage to the stories of Peter Pan and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The characters of those stories are siblings who try to help their parents overcome the death of their eldest son.
Fiasco! (Act 1) (from Ira Glass’ THIS AMERICAN LIFE, 1997): “Writer Jack Hitt tells the story of a small town production of Peter Pan, in which the flying apparatus smacks the actors into the furniture, and Captain Hook’s hook flies off his arm and hits an old woman in the stomach. By the end of the evening, firemen have arrived and all the normal boundaries between audience and actors have completely dissolved.”
Peter Pan Goes Wrong: “a comedy play by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields of the Mischief Theatre company, creators of The Play That Goes Wrong (2012)” (Many casts, versions, including a 2016 BBC One television broadcast narrated by David Suchet.)
Hook (1991) (by Steven Spielberg, starring, another others, Robin Williams as Peter P, Julia Roberts as Tinkerbelle, and, Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook) (one of my favorites, I’m sad the sequel never happened).
Peter and Wendy (Disney, live action, 2023) – Jude Law as Captain Hook, Alan Tudyk as Mr. Darling. Well-done IMHO. Lost Boys here include Lost Girls, FYI.
The Lost Girls (2022, live-action), which I don’t think I previously knew about, and am adding to my watch-list.
Fanfic: There’s, unsurprisingly, a panacopia (sic) (as opposed to a cornucopia or spanakopita) of Peter Pan fanfic (Panfic?); e.g., a quick browse shows that Archive of Our Own has (as of just now) 1,505 Works in Peter Pan (Peter Pan) – Works. And no doubt there’s more elsewhere.
Again, I recommend Pat Murphy’s new The Adventures of Mary Darling; enjoy!
(1) NANOWRIMO SITE VANISHES. [Item by Dan Bloch.] Earlier this week NaNoWriMo shut down their website without any notice. People are commiserating on Reddit.
What a freaking waste. A huge, passionate and vibrant community founded on conquering the impossible, brought down by gross mismanagement and a refusal to listen to the community that gave it life.
I’ve been sad about this for a long time, but it’s definitely hitting home today, especially seeing the posts from people freaking out about losing their site data, since NaNoWriMo NEVER officially announced the shutdown on official channels to warn them.
We meant nothing to them, even in the end. Good riddance.
This followed in the aftermath of a controversy that erupted the previous September when they issued an equivocal statement about using AI – and it did not go unnoticed that NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, a writing app that advertises AI-powered technology, including text rewrites – leading Zriters Board members Daniel Jose Older, Cass Morris, and Rebecca Kim Wells to immediately resign.
(2) EXTRA CREDIT READING. Two sff news periodicals posted today:
(3) IGNYTE AWARDS VOTING OPENS JUNE 9. Public voting on The Ignyte Awards will begin June 9.
The Ignyte Awards began in 2020 alongside the inaugural FIYAHCON, a virtual convention centering the contributions and experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) in Speculative Fiction. Founded by L. D. Lewis and Suzan Palumbo, the awards were an attempt to correct representative gaps in traditional spec lit awards and have grown into a coveted and cherished addition to the awards landscape. The Ignytes seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.
Following the cancellation of The Wheel of Time after its third season, a petition has quickly racked up signatures from fans hoping to save the Prime Video fantasy show.
The petition, titled Save The Wheel of Time, has already got over 53,700 signatures and counting, with fans calling for the story to be finished and arguing that it “deserves to be told in full”.
The petition points not only to the third season’s strong critical and fan reception, but also to reported viewing figures, arguing for the show’s continuation by putting it in comparison with other fantasy shows The Rings of Power, House of the Dragon and The Witcher….
(5) FUTURE TENSE FICTION. The Future Tense Fiction story for May 2025 is “The Shade Technician,” by Harrison Cook, about urban heat and its health effects, as well as the privatization of critical infrastructure.
…”I went to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum very specifically so I knew what the layout of the place was, so I could see the moon rock there for myself and so when I wrote about it, it would be reasonable to what is actually there,” said Scalzi in an interview with collectSPACE. “They had no idea.”
Had the docents approached him and asked why he was interested in the moon rock, they might not have believed him anyway. In “When the Moon Hits Your Eye,” released today (March 25), it is Virgil Augustine, the museum’s (fictional) executive director, who comes to realize what has happened, however impossible it might seem…
Then they follow with more conventional questions about the new book.
collectSPACE (cS): Was there a particular moment in your life that it just struck you, or how do you come up with the idea of writing a book about the moon turning into cheese?
John Scalzi: It was something that had been just rolling around my brain for a while, simply because it was just such an absurd idea that it almost felt like a challenge. You know, was this something that I could make something out of?
cS: Did you search to see if anyone else had written a book about the moon turning to cheese?
Scalzi: I didn’t, but if someone did, it wouldn’t have necessarily stopped me because there are so few super original ideas. you just accept that most of what you’re doing is not about what’s original, but what you can bring to that particular topic that nobody else has.
There are lots of children’s books about the moon being made of cheese, but they’re all picture books, so I felt that this was a pretty safe subject. Also, as soon someone mentions the topic, people are like, ‘Oh, it’s like Wallace and Gromit,’ because they go to the moon and it is cheese [in “A Grand Day Out With Wallace and Gromit” released in 1989].
This was something I was reasonably confident had been unexplored territory in the adult literature format, and certainly in the manner in which I did it, which was to structure it around a lunar cycle, rather than just one or two main characters….
(7) THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD INTERRUPT HARLAN WAS – HARLAN. Edwin L. Battistella reminisces about his introduction to parenthetical phrases in “What I learned from reading Harlan Ellison” at the OUPblog.
When I was in high school, I went through a Harlan Ellison phase….
…Stylistically, what stood out most was his use of parentheses. In the essays, Ellison used them all the time. In a random four-page section I count six parentheticals, some as long as a paragraph. Elsewhere, I found a couple that went on for more than half a page….
…Ellison used the parenthesis to amplify his outrage, to underscore his smart-alecky awareness, and even occasionally to poke fun at himself.
For a time, Elision’s style left a mark on me as a writer. I began including (what I thought were) pointed, witty asides in my essays and correspondence. I got away with it in high school, less so in college, and finally my wife convinced me to give it up. It was, she said, “too cutesy” and “distracting.”
Every now and then, I miss parentheses and trot a pair of parens out, but for the most part I’ve given them up. The style worked for Ellison, who managed to never be too cutesy and whose distractions were interesting, but I could not pull it off….
(8) BREATH MINT OR CANDY MINT? Chris Winkle argues “Why Literary Fiction Is a Genre” at Mythcreants. Here are a couple of excerpts. You’d need to read the article to see him make his case.
…In any widespread discussion of literary fiction, two contradictory ideas are bound to make an appearance. Some people advocate for one or the other, while others embrace both simultaneously. Let’s look at these two competing ideas.
Literary fiction as the best fiction. Under this definition, any book of any genre can be considered literary fiction if it is good enough. This means that literary fiction is simply a prestige label given to a wide variety of books we admire. Let’s call this the prestige definition.
Literary fiction as a distinct style of fiction. Under this definition, literary fiction has specific characteristics that distinguish it from non-literary books. These characteristics include realism, slow and detailed prose, and experimental style or form. Let’s call this the style definition.
You might think these two definitions would be at war with each other. Conceptually, they are. But while individual literary fans may take one side or the other, the community as a whole isn’t interested in resolving this contradiction. In fact, these definitions coexist by design.
That’s because both definitions are needed to send a bigger message: that literary fiction entails specific characteristics, and those characteristics are superior. Meaning, a book of any genre supposedly becomes better by adopting literary fiction conventions. That’s how it “transcends” its genre and becomes literary instead….
… This is why publishers already treat contemporary literary fiction like a genre. It’s a specific type of fiction that appeals to a specific audience of fans. Business-wise, that’s what a genre is. It’s used to match books with the readers who are inclined to purchase and enjoy them.
However, literary books don’t fit everyone’s idea of what genres are. The prestige definition is only partly responsible for this. I think a greater factor is that we love our favorite genres, so we want them to be more coherent and meaningful than they are. And when we assign meaning to them, it’s easy to make that meaning too restrictive. For instance, if we associate genres with a specific type of setting or plot, then literary books, which are distinguished by characteristics such as prose style, may seem like the odd group out….
(9) JOHN BOARDMAN (1932-2025). By Gary Farber. I was sorry to read Ansible’s report today: “John Boardman (1932-2025), US fan active since 1950 in cons, clubs and APAs, and treasurer of the 1967 Worldcon, died on 29 May aged 92.”
John was among the first fans I met in NYC fandom in the early 1970s; he and his wife Perdita lived within a long walk’s distance from my childhood home in Midwood, Brooklyn, and at the time I was first invited to the Lunarians, the NYC science fiction club that put on the annual Lunacon science fiction convention, the club met at their home, until months later when Perdita, fed up with the way fans left half-filled cups and dirty plates all over their large house, announced that she wouldn’t put up with it any more, and that the club would have to find a new meeting place.
For a time, that was Frank and Ann Dietz (Frank’s second wife) house in Oradell, New Jersey, and then we met at the Lunacon hotel in Manhattan; my memory is a bit shaky at the moment if we were using the Statler-Hilton that year or the Commodore.
John was a true character. Known to some as “the Jerry Pournelle of the left,” he was a professor of physics at Brooklyn College, a leftist, a bit deaf and thus very loud, very opinionated, and thus the parallels to Jerry. John was a founder of Diplomacy-by-mail fandom with his fanzine Graustark, a mainstay of parts of NYC fandom, a bit of a blowhard, but unforgettable.
He was always hale and hearty, speaking with a vibrant and booming voice, one you could hear as soon as you entered a party he was at, always ready for a good argument.
Among other bits of personal history, from his Wikipedia page:
“Boardman earned his BA at the University of Chicago in 1952 and his MS from Iowa State University in 1956. He then attended Florida State University to begin his doctoral studies. However, he was expelled in 1957 due to his involvement with the Inter-Civic Council and more specifically for inviting three black Florida A&M exchange students to a Christmas party.”
… Clausen won two Emmys and another 21 nominations for the long-running animated Fox series. He began scoring the antics of Bart, Lisa and company in 1990, during its second season, and is believed to be the most-nominated composer in Emmy history with a total of 30 nominations overall.
He also won five Annie Awards, also for “Simpsons” music. His long tenure with Matt Groening’s irreverent creation made him one of the most respected creators of animation music in TV history. His nearly 600 original scores for the series are also believed to be a record for the most written for a single TV series in America….
Clausen conducted a 35-piece orchestra every week, something producers insisted upon from the beginning. His unexpected firing in August 2017, a cost-saving move by Fox and “Simpsons” producer Gracie Films, resulted in a firestorm of protests from fans around the world….
Six of Clausen’s pre-“Simpsons” Emmy nominations were for “Moonlighting,” including two landmark episodes: the black-and-white “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” and the “Taming of the Shrew” sendup “Atomic Shakespeare.”…
… He scored nearly 100 episodes of the late 1980s puppet sitcom “Alf” (and when asked about the title, he would often quip, “no relation”)….
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
May 30, 1922 — Hal Clement. (Died 2003.)
By Paul Weimer: If hard science and physics could be considered “characters” in science fiction, Hal Clement is certainly the person who was able to make them so. Mission of Gravity is the premier look at this, giving an extremely weird and strange, and yet possible high gravity world. Do the characters he populates this world with work as individual characters? Not really, but what you read Clement for is the puzzles and the logic behind the hard science that makes a high gravity-distorted world like Mesklin (the planet of Mission of Gravity) possible in the first place.
Another novel in this vein that doesn’t get much play or notice, but I ironically read before Mission of Gravity, is The Nitrogen Fix. In this book, Earth’s atmosphere has changed, radically, with the free nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere having combined into a toxic and unbreathable mix of nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and water. Did the aliens who have come to Earth change and terraform Earth for their own purposes? In the end, the transformation of Earth’s atmosphere is a puzzle that is solved, and makes sense, with a big heaping sense of irony to it all.
Although shared worlds are not a big thing anymore, back in the 1980’s, they were all the rage. I didn’t mention it back when I wrote on Ellison (way too much to write about him) but even Harlan Ellison did a shared world, Medea. His shared planet had a bunch of writers very interested in building a realistic planet and solar system. Clement not only provided an essay on worldbuilding the astrophysics of Medea in the book, but also contributed a story.
Once again, hard science as a character in Clement’s work. That’s what it means to me.
Hal Clement at ConFiction (1990). Photo by Frank Olynyk. From Fanac.org site.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
Curses! suspects what a book club is really about.
(13) MEMORIES. Steven Thompson, son of famous comics fans Don and Maggie Thompson, tells a great anecdote about the late Peter David on Facebook. It has to do with how Peter made a tribute panel to Don Thompson a terrific memory.
It’s nearly two years since the Valley fire vaporized the Cobb Mountain home of Don Studebaker, a highly literate high-school dropout, science-fantasy writer, stage channeler of Mark Twain, devotee of ancient Greek gods, co-creator of the documentary-worthy Berkeley literary commune of Greyhaven and a decadeslong student of the nearly infinite subtleties and elements of ritual significance of the Japanese tea ceremony.
The 75-year-old Studebaker has no earthly idea when he’ll be able to call in a crane to set a new modular home roughly where the old, conventionally constructed house was. But already he contemplates special placement of the clock.
“The cuckoo is going to be the pièce de résistance,” beamed the gray-bearded, blue-eyed and kinetic Studebaker from alongside the fish-pond porch of the residence off State Route 75 that he dubbed the Rhinoceros Lodge and references fleetingly on his website home.pon.net/rhinoceroslodge. The 1950s country home was devoured along with those of 11 immediate neighbors by the historic south Lake County inferno of Sept. 12, 2015, that killed four people downhill from Cobb, charred more than 76,000 acres and destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings.
Studebaker lost almost everything he owned, but not his German cuckoo clock.
One day in June 2015, three months before the Valley fire, he’d decided for no particular reason that it was time to seek repair of the musical timepiece his wife purchased for him while on an international book tour at least two decades earlier….
… Had it not been in the shop, the clock surely would have burned in the fire that surged down Cobb Mountain toward Middletown that Saturday afternoon two years ago. …
(15) SHAKEN NOT STIRRED, DEEP UNDERGROUND. [Item by Steven French.] A complex of tunnels built after the Blitz is set to become an immersive spy museum and will also feature one of the deepest underground bars in the world: “London tunnels that inspired James Bond creator will become spy museum” reports the Guardian.
During his time in military intelligence, Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, regularly worked with Winston Churchill’s spy organisation based 30 metres below ground in a labyrinth of tunnels in central London.
The Kingsway Exchange tunnels complex, stretching out across 8,000 sq metres beneath High Holborn, near Chancery Lane underground station, hosted the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and is said to have inspired Q Branch in Fleming’s novels.
So it seems appropriate that plans to breathe new life into this long-abandoned second world war subterranean network will include a permanent exhibition about the history of military intelligence and espionage.
The Military Intelligence Museum is to collaborate with the London Tunnels company, developing the complex to showcase its original artefacts, equipment, weapons and documents in a modern hi-tech experience at the proposed new £220m London tourist attraction, which is planned to open in 2028.
…Up until recently, physicists believed that time travel to the past was impossible because it required unusual matter or extreme warping of spacetime. However, physicist John D. Norton has developed a new model based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity that shows time travel is mathematically possible.
His model does not rely on strange matter or intense space-time distortion, but uses a simple space-time shape that allows paths to loop back in time. This work suggests that time travel could occur under more ordinary physical conditions than previously thought.
The classic understanding of time travel centers on a fundamental problem: paradoxes. If travelers could alter even minor details of the past, the cascading consequences would either rewrite the present or eliminate the traveler’s own existence — the infamous grandfather paradox. This seemingly insurmountable obstacle led physicist Stephen Hawking to propose his Chronology Protection Conjecture,which essentially argues that the laws of physics themselves forbid backward time travel by preventing the formation of closed timelike curves.
However, groundbreaking research by Dr. Fabio Costa and Germain Tobar at the University of Queensland challenges this assumption. They’ve developed a mathematical model showing that closed timelike curves do not automatically create paradoxes. Their revolutionary model suggests that while time travelers can move and act freely in the past, the universe itself maintains consistency—events would self-adjust to prevent any logical contradictions from occurring.
This revolutionary finding has profound implications. If Norton is right — that time travel won’t require exotic materials — and Costa and Tobar are correct — that time travel doesn’t alter the future — it opens the door for time travel technology to evolve beyond fictional ideas of secret inventions or unpredictable glitches in the universe. Instead, it could follow the trajectory of other breakthrough technologies—gradually becoming accessible, eventually commercial….
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Blasters and Blades podcast features author Sharon Lee speaking about a Liaden Universe® novel she co-wrote with Steven Miller: “Episode 578: Ribbon Dance by Sharon Lee”. The book was released in 2024.
Today we were graced with the presence of Sharon Lee, one of the nicest ladies we’ve interviewed! We had Jana S Brown (aka Jena Rey) on as a co-host, and together we produced a kick butt interview about Sharon’s love of reading and speculative fiction. And we talked about her Liaden Universe. This was a fun interview, so go check out this episode. Lend us your eyes and ears, you won’t be sorry!!
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Bill, Dan Bloch, Joey Eschrich, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “Tin Pan Alley” Dern.]
By Gary Whitehouse: The wait is over! The small screen adaptation of Martha Wells’s Hugo and Nebula winning book series The Murderbot Diaries began in mid-May (2025) on Apple TV+. Cutting to the chase: It’s good!
The Murderbot TV series opened with the first two episodes, in which we’re introduced to SecUnit and the other main characters, get a little glimpse of the universe they live in, the work they do, and the genesis of the events that will (hopefully) set in motion a long sequence of actions and revelations in our hero’s life, both externally and internally. I say “hopefully” because there are likely a million more timelines in which this show ends after one season than there are timelines in which the entire series of books gets to play out on our screens. As far as I know, nobody is even talking publicly about a second season yet.
I didn’t read my first Murderbot book (which was the first Murderbot book, All Systems Red) until 2019, but then I raced through the first four novellas that had been published to that point. I’ve read the whole series of five novellas and two novels at least twice, some of them three times now, which apparently is fairly common among its fans. They’re funny and exciting but most of all they’re life affirming and compassionate. A lot of readers, especially people who are neurodivergent or LQBTQ+, find Murderbot the character highly relatable.
In case you haven’t read them yet (in which case you should do so at once, and also check out my review of All Systems Red), Murderbot is a part-human, part-robot construct created by a corporation and contracted out as a Security Unit. It has hacked the governor module that enforces obedience (Asimov’s Three Laws under corporate fascism), and discovered that it can download tons of media from the Feed. Now it would just like to binge watch TV (its favorite show is The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon) and avoid interacting with humans and their messy fluids, odors, and emotions. Especially emotions.
Back to the show. SecUnit has been contracted to a team of terraforming scientists from the Preservation system, which is outside of Corporation Rim and dedicated to full personhood for everyone. They’re doing a survey on an apparently uninhabited (and non-lethal) planet where all is not as it seems. Let’s just say adventure ensues and emotions happen, and Murderbot and humans alike have to decide if they can trust each other with their lives.
It’s a little too soon to tell after two episodes, but so far this adaptation by Chris and Paul Weitz is getting a lot of things right. Especially the wryly snarky tone, which sometimes reminds me of that first superb season of The Mandalorian. When the casting was announced a few months back, there was some online grumbling — including from some voices I greatly respect — about the casting of a cis-het guy in the lead role. I’ll just say that lead actor Alexander Skarsgård (who also gets an executive producer credit) nails the character in a lot of ways from the sarcasm tinged voiceovers to the myriad depictions of social anxiety that cross his face.
Alexander Skarsgård as SecUnit
Other than Noma Dumezweni as Dr. Mensah and David Dastmalchian as Gurathin, it’s early to get a read on the supporting cast so far, but all have great potential. The production design, sets and costumes, adds immensely to the show’s vibe.
The episodes are short, each a little more than 20 minutes. They’re billed as dropping every Friday, but depending on your time zone you might see them in your feed sometime Thursday evening. That is if you subscribe to Apple TV+. And really, at this point, why would you not?
(Depth of Field Productions, 2025)
A fifth-generation Oregonian, Gary Whitehouse is a retired journalist and government communicator. Since the 1990s he has been covering music, books, food & drink and occasionally films, blogs and podcasts for Green Man Review. His main literary interests for GMR are science fiction, music lore, and food & cooking. A lifelong lover of music, his interests are wide ranging and include folk, folk rock, jazz, Americana, classic country, and roots based music from all over the world. He also enjoys dogs, birding, cooking, whisk(e)y, and coffee.
