(1) JMS MOVES TO ENGLAND. J. Michael Straczysnki told Facebook followers he is pursuing his goal to write for British TV by becoming a Resident of the UK, which he is as of today.
…So it should come as no surprise that every year, when my agent and I have our “what goals should we set for the coming year” discussion, I’ve asked one question every time: “Is there any way I can produce a series in the UK and live there for a while?”
The answer, alas, has always been no, for the obvious reason that I’m not a British citizen or resident with a visa that would allow me to work in the UK. The closest I came was when we shot a big chunk of Sense8 in London. Rather than satisfy my desire to live and work in the UK, the experience only reinforced it.
Well, I finally decided to do something about it. Because that’s what dreams are for….
…Even though the outcome was far from certain, I made the decision to sell the house that has been my home for 25 years as a way of saying I’m committing to the path. Gave away or donated a ton of clothes and other stuff. If the visa went through, I wanted a fresh start, so I used much of what was left after selling the house to pay off debt accumulated during one pandemic, two strikes, and four years of paralysis in the film/TV business.
…As of today, I am officially a Resident of the United Kingdom. I can stay on indefinitely, can apply for full citizenship in three years, and finally, at long last, I am free to work for any studio, producer or network in the UK, from ITV to Channel 4, Britbox, Acorn…BBC….
…All of that being said, I’m not just leaving the US behind. My plan is to divide my time between both countries. In addition to looking after the Ellison Estate, there’s my ongoing comics work, several US-based projects that require my attention, and the possibility of more in the future, I want to launch some US/UK film and television co-productions, create series that can be shot in both places, and perhaps join arms with UK studios and networks already working to bring homegrown characters from comics and past TV series to an international audience.
But there’s that old joke: Q: How do you make God laugh? A: Tell Him your plans….
(2) RHYSLING AWARD NEWS. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the “2025 Rhysling Award Finalists”, 50 short poems and 25 long poems.
A short poem finalist is Pat Masson’s “The Last Valkyrie” from Forgotten Ground Regained 2. Paul Deane tells the story behind that poem’s publication and Rhysling eligibility in this Bluesky thread.
(3) PULITZER PRIZES 2025. The New York Times has the “Pulitzer Prizes: 2025 Winners List”. Complete list at the link, which bypasses the paywall. There are no winners of genre interest, however, File 770 has taken an interest in James because it has in common with Julia, based on 1984, the concept of retelling a classic from another character’s point of view.
FICTION
“James,” by Percival Everett
Mr. Everett’s book won for “an accomplished reconsideration of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom,” the committee said.
Finalists “Headshot: A Novel,” by Rita Bullwinkel; “The Unicorn Woman,” by Gayl Jones; “Mice 1961,” by Stacey Levine
(4) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Daryl Gregory and Carol Gyzander on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003. (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)
Daryl Gregory
Daryl Gregory is a Seattle writer whose latest novel is When We Were Real, which Kirkus in a starred review called “a marvel.” His books and short stories have been translated into a dozen languages and have won multiple awards, including the World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Crawford awards, and have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, and other awards. His ten other books include the novels Revelator and Spoonbenders, the novellas The Album of Dr. Moreau and We Are All Completely Fine, and the collection Unpossible and Other Stories. He also teaches writing and is a regular instructor at the Viable Paradise Writing Workshop
Carol Gyzander
Carol Gyzander is a two-time Bram Stoker Award® nominee who writes and edits horror, weird fiction, and science fiction—with strong women in twisted tales that touch your heart. She has stories in Weird Tales 367, Weird House Magazine, Under Twin Suns, and numerous other publications. Carol edited and contributed to the Stoker-nominated Discontinue If Death Ensues: Tales from the Tipping Point (Flame Tree Publishing), including her poem “Bobblehead,” which is nominated for a Rhysling Award. She’s Co-Chair of HWA NY Chapter and co-host of their Galactic Terrors online reading series. Follow her on Instagram @carolgyzander.
(5) SOMEBODY STILL WANTS TO RUN A WORLDCON? The Brisbane in 28 Worldcon bid woke from its ordinary social media slumber to leave this announcement on Facebook today:
Our apologies for being so quiet, we’ve been busy trying to organise ourselves for Seattle, and then a Federal Election happened. We plan on being more visible again from this point on.
Our bid is currently for Thursday the 28th of July to Monday the 31st of July, 2028. This is on the weekend following the total eclipse that will be passing through Australia on Saturday the 22nd of July, 2028.
We do plan on having a presence in Seattle for this year’s Worldcon, but the current situation is making that challenging. However, even if we are not there in person, we have people willing to handle things on our behalf, so we will have a presence there.
(6) ON THE TUBE. Camestros Felapton continues his 2025 Hugo review series with a Dramatic Presentation: Long Form finalist: “Hugo 2025: I Saw the TV Glow”.
… I Saw the TV Glow is billed as horror and while it contains a bunch of disturbing ideas and images it is not what I would regard as a frightening film. That’s not a criticism of the film just an indication that it sits in its own place rather than comfortably within one genre category. Of course, depending on your own life experiences (and particularly teenage experiences) this film may hit very differently….
(7) NEA PULLS PLUG ON GRANTS. “NEA Begins Terminating and Withdrawing Grants” reports Publishers Lunch (behind a paywall). (And the agency itself is getting the ax says Publishers Weekly.)
The National Endowment for the Arts began terminating and withdrawing grant offers on Friday night, after President Trump proposed cutting NEA funding from the government budget. Many small publishers, magazines, and publishing-related organizations lost funding.
The Community of Magazines and Literary Presses (CLMP) tells PL that they reached out to all fiscal year ’25 Grants for the Arts round one grantees in the literary/arts publishing category. “Of the 51,” said executive director Mary Gannon, “I’ve heard from 40 so far and all 40 have had their grants ‘terminated’ or ‘withdrawn.’ Some have already received payments, but not all.”
Among the institutions impacted were Open Letter Books, which publishes literature in translation; literary magazine N+1, which lost a $12,500 grant; Hub City Press, which lost $25,000; and Deep Vellum, which lost $20,000; Milkweed Editions, which lost $50,000; Electric Literature, which lost $12,000; Nightboat Books, which lost $30,000; McSweeney’s Literary Arts, which lost $25,000, and many more. (Find a growing list here.)…
(8) NASA PROPOSED BUDGET. “White House Announces Plans to Rip Up NASA’s Moon Program” – Futurism has the stats.
The Trump administration has released its proposed budget for next year, revealing massive budget cuts that could deal NASA’s space exploration and science efforts a devastating blow.
The agency’s budget would be slashed by 24 percent year over year, a difference of $6 billion, which is the biggest single-year cut in US history, according to the Planetary Society.
While space and Earth science funding would face massive lacerations, human space exploration could see its budget increase by roughly $1 billion in “new investments for Mars-focused programs,” according to the proposal, highlighting Trump’s desire to plant a flag on the Red Planet.
Notably, the Trump administration proposes canceling NASA’s “grossly expensive and delayed” Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule after Artemis 3, the first attempt to return astronauts to the Moon’s surface in over half a century, which is tentatively scheduled for 2027….
(9) BEWARE: THIS IS A THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILER. According to The Independent: “Thunderbolts: Marvel fans react to ‘spoiler’ New Avengers title change”.
…At the end of Thunderbolts*, CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) announced the group’s rebrand as The New Avengers. A graphic on screen after the film’s post-credits scene then informs cinemagoers that “The New Avengers will return”.
Now, posters for Thunderbolts* appearing in cinemas and on billboards around the world have been updated to reveal its new title: The New Avengers.
This development also reveals the meaning of the asterisk featured at the end of the original title, which was part of a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt….
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
May 5, 1979 — Catherynne Valente, 46.
By Paul Weimer: Reading Catherynne Valente for me started with Palimpsest. The idea of a map on people’s skin, pieces transmitted by sex, was a little out of my comfort zone. But the dream/faerie reality of the titular city, accessible after nights of passion, entranced me. Valente’s work was lush, gorgeous, vivid, fey, The writing was poetic in language and form, a puzzle like the map on the visitors’ skin.
I was enchanted by her work, even if it wasn’t my usual. I skipped into and Valente’s work here and there rather than making her a solid must-buy. Sometimes for my own personal reading, a little Valente was enough. It’s as if her work was too potent for me to consume continually. But I enjoyed Six Gun Snow White, and Deathless, particularly.
And then there’s Space Opera.
Space Opera is glorious, and was glorious to me, who is not immersed into the world of Eurovision, which it borrows shamelessly from. Space Opera is part of the branch of Space Operas in the same realm that Cat Rambo and Valerie Valdes and Lavanya Lakshminarayan play in: Frothy, fun, and light, and yet with hidden depths. Character focused and oriented science fiction space opera, and yet interesting and intriguing worldbuilding. Space Opera is the leading edge of this slice of space opera, and even someone with Amusia can and does enjoy it.
Sadly, for me, the follow-up, Space Oddity, charitably didn’t live up to the first. But I expect that I will get the urge to taste the potency of Valente’s work again in the future. Like that map in Palimpsest, I will be irresistibly drawn to the faerieland of her work once more.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
- Eyebeam has a Bat app for that.
- Half Full details a cartoonist’s life.
- The Barn visits other shows.
- Zen Pencils favors being different.
- Batch Rejection shares a writing tip.
- Three Panel Soul shows a variant of a familiar game.
(12) LOTR EAGLES RETURNING TO THE ROOST. “New Zealand airport to remove Hobbit-themed eagle sculptures” – BBC has the story.
For more than a decade, a pair of Hobbit-inspired eagle sculptures have cast a watchful eye over visitors at New Zealand’s Wellington Airport.
But the giant birds will be unfastened from the ceiling on Friday to make way for a new mystery exhibit, airport authorities said.
The eagles appear as messengers in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which were adapted to film by New Zealand’s Sir Peter Jackson.
The spectacular New Zealand landscapes featured in Mr Jackson’s films are a consistent draw for tourists, who are greeted at the airport by the eagle sculptures.
“It’s not unusual to see airborne departures from Wellington Airport, but in this case, it will be emotional for us,” Wellington Airport chief executive Matt Clarke said in a statement.
The giant eagles will be placed in storage and there have not been long-term plans for them.
Each eagle weighs 1.2 tonnes (1,200kg) with a wingspan of 15m (49ft). Riding on the back of one of the birds is a sculpture of the wizard, Gandalf.
Made of polystyrene and with an internal steel skeleton, each eagle has hundreds of feathers, the longest one measuring 2.4m (8ft).
While the iconic eagles will soon be gone, not all is lost for fans of the franchise: Smaug the Magnificent, the dragon in The Hobbit, will continue to be displayed at the check-in area….
(13) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] End of the world coming… well, it is, about a billion years from now. “Neither climate change nor meteorites – NASA confirms that the end of life on Earth will be due to loss of oxygen, according to Toho University study – here’s when it will happen” at El Adelanto de Segovia.
If you’re worried about the end of the world, you can scratch asteroids and climate change off the list of final threats —at least in the very long term. According to new research from Toho University in Japan, supported by NASA modeling, the slow fade of life on Earth won’t come with a bang. Instead, it’ll happen with a lack of breathable air.
That’s right: the distant future of Earth won’t end in fire or ice, but in something far more subtle: oxygen loss. And while that sounds ominous, you can relax. This isn’t something that will affect you, your children, or even your great-great-great-great-grandchildren. In fact, the end is about a billion years away, give or take a few hundred million….
(14) REVIVAL TRAILER. “SYFY Debuts First Trailer for Highly Anticipated Image Comics Adaptation” at ComicBook.com.
The first trailer for SYFY’s upcoming adaptation of the fan-favorite Image Comics title Revival has been officially released online. The trailer provides people with a basic overview of the general premise; a rural Wisconsin town has to adjust to a startling new reality when the dead mysteriously come back to life. What sets Revival apart from similar zombie-themed titles is that the “revived” appear and act as they did before they passed away. At the center of the story is Officer Dana Cypress (played by Melanie Scrofano), who has to make sense of it all as the town’s residents struggling coming to terms with the situation….
(15) CITY IN FLIGHT. “Starbase: Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch site becomes an official Texas city” reports AP News.
The South Texas home of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company is now an official city with a galactic name: Starbase.
A vote Saturday to formally organize Starbase as a city was approved by a lopsided margin among the small group of voters who live there and are mostly Musk’s employees at SpaceX. With all the votes in, the tally was 212 in favor to 6 against, according to results published online by the Cameron County Elections Department.
Musk celebrated in a post on his social platform, X, saying it is “now a real city!”
Starbase is the facility and launch site for the SpaceX rocket program that is under contract with the Department of Defense and NASA that hopes to send astronauts back to the moon and someday to Mars.
Musk first floated the idea of Starbase in 2021 and approval of the new city was all but certain. Of the 283 eligible voters in the area, most are believed to be Starbase workers….
(16) SHOCKING NEW TASTE. “Scientists unveil RoboCake with edible robots and batteries” claims New Atlas.
Researchers from Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have formed an unlikely collaboration team with pastry chefs and food scientists to create the RoboCake, currently on show at Osaka’s Expo 2025.
But this is a cake with a bit of a twist. Sitting atop the elaborate piece are edible robotic bears, which are reported to taste like pomegranate gummies, which have an internal pneumatic system that provides movement for their limbs and head. And, yes, these little dancing robots are completely edible….
… Not to be outdone, IIT researchers have made the world’s first edible rechargeable battery, using a recipe of vitamin B2, quercetin, activated carbon and chocolate.
“These batteries, safe for consumption, can be used to light the LED candles on the cake,” said Valerio Galli, a PhD student at IIT. “The first flavor you get when you eat them is dark chocolate, followed by a surprising tangy kick, due to the edible electrolyte inside, which lasts a few seconds.”…
(17) SQUID GAME 3. Courtesy of Gizmodo: “The End Is Here in the First Trailer for Squid Game 3”.
…What was up with that baby cry at the end there? And what game could possibly be coming with everyone getting their team out of a giant gumball machine?
We don’t know and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for all these questions. We love to see how 456 (Lee Jung-jae) is brought back into the game and that the story from the boat, and of the Front Man, will continue. In fact, everything has to wrap up here because the show’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, has said this is the end….
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Michael J. Walsh, Jim Janney, 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 Jack Lint.]
