25 I Will Not Be Pixeled, Scrolled Or Filed

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAIMAN CLICKBAIT. I clicked, so you don’t have to. Despite the Variety headline – “Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Canceled at Netflix After Season 2, Allegations” – the showrunner says Season 2 was intended to be the series’ last, and it’s apparently still going to air, so what about that is a “cancellation”?

Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s “The Sandman” will end with its upcoming second season.

“The Sandman” Season 2 has been a long time coming. The first season debuted in August 2022, and it wasn’t renewed at Netflix until November of that year. At that time, Netflix was also hesitant to label it as a second season at all, choosing instead to say it was “a continuation of ‘The Sandman’ world,” and wouldn’t commit to an episode count. Variety has confirmed the second season was intended to be the last prior to filming.

“‘The Sandman’ series has always been focused exclusively on Dream’s story, and back in 2022, when we looked at the remaining Dream material from the comics, we knew we only had enough story for one more season,” “The Sandman” showrunner Allan Heinberg said in a statement to Variety Friday. “We are extremely grateful to Netflix for bringing the team all back together and giving us the time and resources to make a faithful adaptation in a way that we hope will surprise and delight the comics’ loyal readers as well as fans of our show.”…

(2) COURTHOUSE KRYPTONITE. “Warner Bros. Sued Over International Superman Rights” – The Hollywood Reporter briefs the case.

Warner Bros. Discovery has been sued over the rights to Superman in a lawsuit seeking to block the release of the studio’s tentpole film in several countries ahead of its July debut.

The estate of Joseph Shuster, the co-creator of Superman, alleges that WBD lost its international rights to the character and story years ago but continued to exploit them without its permission or compensation. In a complaint filed in New York federal court on Friday, it seeks a share of profits from all works attributable to the alleged copyright infringement — including Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Black Adam and Shazam! — in key countries such as Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

The legal action marks a potential hitch in WBD’s rollout of Superman, which arrives July 11 as the first solo movie for the character in more than a decade since Man of Steel. …

DC’s ownership of Superman dates back to 1938, when writer Jerome Siegal and Shuster, a graphic artist, sold their rights to the character and story for $130. The hero’s first appearance under DC’s banner was in Action Comics No. 1, which detailed his backstory, secret identity as newspaper reporter Clark Kent, and powers of super strength and speed (his first time flying came in 1943 in Action Comics No. 65).

Since then, it’s frequently been the target of litigation, starting in 1947 when the duo sued to invalidate DC’s ownership of the rights to Superman. The case settled, with a $94,000 payout to Shuster and Siegel to resolve the case.

Under U.S. copyright law, Shuster would typically be able to reclaim his domestic rights to Superman under a provision in intellectual property law that allows authors to claw back ownership of their works after a certain period of time. But his sister and brother reached a deal with DC in 1992 that terminated that right in exchange for $25,000 per year. A federal appeals court later upheld that determination.

This time, Shuster’s estate looks to take advantage of U.K. copyright law, which automatically terminates copyright assignments 25 years after an author’s death. By its thinking, it reclaimed the rights to Superman in 2017 since the graphic artist died in 1992.

Also at play: the possibility that Shuster’s sister didn’t have the authority to bind the estate to the agreement that purportedly surrendered its right to terminate DC’s ownership of Superman. In that case, the court stated that the issue is a “complex one” and punted on deciding it.

The lawsuit claims infringement of copyright laws in the U.K. Australia, Canada and Ireland….

(3) SCUTTLEBUTT. “Disney’s Star Wars hotel jumps from deep space to office space” – The Verge explains what that means.

Disney’s extraordinarily expensive Star Wars hotel isn’t coming back. The building that housed the Galactic Starcruiser is being converted into office space, scuppering hopes that it could be reborn or repurposed into a new interactive attraction.

The Wrap reports that the hotel will be converted into an office for Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative arm of the company responsible for its theme parks, retail, and cruise ships. The team located there will reportedly work on upcoming expansions for Florida’s Walt Disney World resort, including a Latin American section of the Animal Kingdom and a Monsters Inc. area within Hollywood Studios.

Galactic Starcruiser was an immersive hotel experience set in the Star Wars universe, where the minimum stay cost $4,800 for two people over two nights. It opened in March 2022 but ran for just a year and a half, shutting in September 2023. It returned to headlines in May 2024 when YouTuber and theme park superfan Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour video on its “spectacular failure” went viral, amassing 11 million views…

(4) IT’S PEOPLE! Inverse reviews Companion: “The Wildest Sci-Fi Thriller Of The Year Flips The Killer Robot Movie On Its Head”. BEWARE SPOILERS.

It’s a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl turns out to be a killer robot. Except Companion isn’t exactly the typical take on the classic sci-fi horror story. Instead, Drew Hancock’s cleverly constructed sci-fi horror movie is a fun takedown of the AI cautionary tale we know so well. And in the process, it may have given us the most sneakily feminist social horror movie this side of Gone Girl….

…The reason it all works, aside from Hancock’s admirably deft script, is because of Sophie Thatcher’s wonderfully malleable performance as Iris. Right off the bat, we sense that something is off with Iris — she’s a little too demure, a little too smiley, a little too doe-eyed. However, Thatcher seeds in tiny human quirks that spark some recognition for us: the way her mouth twitches uncomfortably when Josh’s friend Kat (Megan Suri) treats her with contempt, the way she glances down sadly when Josh brushes her off, and, of course, the way she would do anything to survive. By the time Companion drops its robot reveal (which again, happens very early on), we’re already primed to root for Iris, even as she starts to accumulate quite the body count….

(5) AFROFUTURIST SHORT FICTION. The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories edited by andré m. carrington will be released in bookstores on February 4, and is available immediately from Library of America.

Inspired by Afrofuturist pioneers like Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany, a new generation of Black writers is fashioning a renaissance in speculative fiction. Edited and introduced by SF expert andré m. carrington, The Black Fantastic brings together Hugo, Locus, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Tiptree/Otherwise, and World Fantasy Award winners with emerging voices to showcase this watershed moment in American literature.

Here are twenty beguiling, unsettling, and visionary stories spanning the cosmos and a dazzling array of alternate timelines. Phenderson Djèlí Clark and Alaya Dawn Johnson stare down the specters of history in their haunting fictions, set, respectively, on a Founding Father’s brutal plantation and in the vampire-built internment camps of a dystopian Hawai‘i. Violet Allen’s would-be superhero stories turn to searing metafiction when her main character is repeatedly shot and killed by the police. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Rion Amilcar Scott explore otherworldly forces at play in a small-town barbershop and in a young writer’s ambitions, while Victor LaValle tells the story of a man living on the streets of New York City, his bag of deposit bottles and cans bearing urgent messages from another dimension.

Other stories are by turns comic, provocative, and terrifying: Thaddeus Howze delivers a crowd-pleasing tall tale about a battle with aliens over the fate of Earth, by way of an epic baseball game; Maurice Broaddus spins a coming-of-age fantasy about an American girl in a utopian future Africa; Craig Laurance Gidney offers a Lovecraftian tour of the ballroom drag scene; Tara Campbell weaves a spell of ecofeminist horror; and much more.

Reimagining the past and laying claim to the future, these writers are bringing forth kaleidoscopic new visions of Black identity and creative freedom.

(6) POWER COUPLE. At One Geek’s Mind, John Grayshaw puts a spotlight on Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett with the help of a Luna Monthly interview from 1975: “Interview about Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett”. (The well-known sff writers wed in the 1940s; Ray Bradbury was Hamilton’s best man.) The interview touches on many different fandoms: classic movies, Star Wars, sff books, and comic books. As well as what it was like for female writers in the Forties.

Wesley Grubb: Edmond Hamilton is one of those bridge-authors, who began writing before the “Golden Age” and continued to write into the “New Wave” era. How well did his writing develop, and how well did his stories mature, from his early career compared to his later career in the 50s and 60s?

In a 1975 interview with Luna Monthly, Hamilton talked about how quickly he was writing stories back in the pulp era. He said:

“How do I feel about the rapid, high-production way we oldtime pulp writers employed in our work? I can’t speak for others, but for me it was the best way in the world to work. I might have been a more polished writer had I worked in more leisurely fashion, but I might too have been the centipede who didn’t know which leg to lift first.

One of the most ghastly stories I ever wrote was “Outside the Universe,” a wild tale of three galaxies at war. I wrote that in 1928, over 50,000 words of it first draft. I used a very small portable typewriter on a big, flat-top inherited desk. In writing those hectic space-battles, my hard pounding made the little typewriter creep all over the desk, and I would stand up and follow it in my burning enthusiasm.”

(7) THEY CAME FROM MILES AROUND. “Rebecca Yarros’s ‘Onyx Storm’ Is the Fastest-Selling Adult Novel in 20 Years” – the New York Times covers a personal appearance by the author, with quotes and comments by several of the fans on hand. (Link bypasses the paywall.)

….When Yarros became a fixture on the best-seller list, with the release of “Fourth Wing,” she had already published around 20 contemporary romance novels. But sales from book to book were largely stagnant, and she struggled with a chronic illness, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder.

Her illness, though debilitating at times, inspired her to write “Fourth Wing,” she said. Yarros grew up loving fantasy, but had never read a fantastical novel with a protagonist who had physical limitations like she did. She decided to write about a young woman named Violet, who enrolls in an elite military academy for dragon riders, and is determined to succeed despite a chronic illness that makes her weak and physically frail….

…Fans’ fervor was palpable at the event, which was held in a huge auditorium in St. Paul. Many in the crowd were dressed up in sweatshirts, T-shirts and hats that said “Basgiath War College,” the military academy of the series. Some were fully decked out in costume, dressed as Violet, in leather body armor, or as dragons….

…At the start of the event, Yarros was introduced by the romance writer Abby Jimenez, who noted that the Empyrean series had taken over the top three slots on the New York Times best-seller list.

Yarros uttered an expletive to express her surprise and gratitude. “Thank you,” she said to the crowd. “You guys did that.”

(8) GRUMPY BUT NOT DOPEY. The star of this event is rather less thrilled to be there than the celeb in the previous item. “Grumpy Harrison Ford, a mystery asterisk and AI gone wild: everything from Disney’s new slate presentation” in the Guardian.

There are moments in life when you expect to be confronted by greatness: hearing a live orchestra swell into the opening notes of John Williams’ Star Wars theme; standing at the edge of the Scottish Highlands; watching a dog somehow open a fridge and retrieve a beer for its owner. And then there are moments when greatness sneaks up on you in the form of an 82-year-old Hollywood legend, materialising like a grumpy mirage, one metre from your face, during what you thought was a routine Disney presentation of new movies and TV shows.

Harrison Ford is not a man one simply stumbles upon. He is a force of nature, a living relic of an era when leading men didn’t have to spend six months on a chicken-and-rice diet before taking their shirts off. And yet, here he is, looking suitably nonplussed with the entire concept of being on a stage, fielding questions alongside his Captain America: Brave New World co-stars in an impromptu Q&A with all the enthusiasm of a guy who somehow finds himself trapped in the world’s most boring hostage video….

…The assembled audience is also treated to an exclusive clip of the new film, out 14 February, in which we already know Ford will end up transforming into the Red Hulk. It’s an action-packed set piece in which Wilson (Anthony Mackie) infiltrates an enemy base, and showcases the new winged Captain America suit, which we’re told was given to Sam by those helpful Wakandans. . Marvel has always been a franchise built on increasingly wobbly physics, but even the most generous audience might struggle to believe that a bloke with no serum and no billionaire gadgets could stand toe-to-toe with a bad guy whose brain is so large it requires its own postcode….

(9) JOHN ERWIN (1936-2025). “John Erwin Dead: ‘He-Man,’ ‘Archie’ Voice Actor Was 88” – The Hollywood Reporter summarizes his career —

John Erwin, the reclusive actor who provided the voices for the heroic title character in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the vain frenemy Reggie Mantle in a series of Archie cartoons, has died. He was 88.

Erwin died of natural causes “around Dec. 20” in his home in Camarillo, California, his reps at the PR firm Celebworx announced.

For nearly a decade starting in 1969, Erwin was heard in dozens of TV commercials as the snarky Morris the Cat, the finicky orange tabby who would eat nothing but the 9Lives brand of cat food. The hugely successful campaign was created by the Leo Burnett advertising firm.

…For Filmmation, Erwin voiced the blond, muscular He-Man (and his alter ego, Prince Adam) on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe from 1983-85 and on She-Ra: Princess of Power from 1985-87. He also played the villain Beast Man and other secondary characters on the syndicated shows that were based on a line of Mattel toys….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal

Fifty-nine years at Tricon where Isaac Asimov was Toastmaster, Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal won the Hugo for Best Novel in a tie with Frank Herbert’s Dune.

It was first published as “…And Call Me Conrad” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in October and November 1965, then as This Immortal in 1966 by Ace Books, and in 1967 by UK publisher Hart-Davis in hardcover.

So it was only in the magazine that it had that title? So why the name change? Marketing having one of their not so genius ideas?

Algis Budrys in Galaxy Bookshelf was fond of this novel saying it was “an extremely interesting and undeniably important book” with “a story of adventures and perils that is utterly charming and optimistic.”

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics pictures imagination.

(12) COPYRIGHT OFFICE RELEASES ANOTHER PAPER ON AI. “New Government Report Addresses ‘Copyrightability’ of AI Works” – Publishers Weekly gives a quick rundown. (Download the full report here.)

The U.S. Copyright Office has released the second installment of what is envisioned as a three-part report on copyright and artificial intelligence. The most recent release addresses the issue of “copyrightability of outputs generated by AI systems.” Its recommendations are based on the comments the Copyright Office received after it posted a Notice of Inquiry in August 2023 seeking public input on the full range of copyright issues raised by AI.

Based on an analysis of copyright law and policy and comments from the public, the Copyright Office made the following conclusions and recommendations:

Questions of copyrightability and AI can be resolved pursuant to existing law, without the need for legislative change.
The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output
Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material
Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements
Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis
Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control
Human authors are entitled to copyright in their works of authorship that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs, as well as the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs
The case has not been made for additional copyright or sui generis protection for AI generated content

(13) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to “Munch on pepper chicken masala with Larry Hama” in Episode 246 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

I’ve known writer/editor/artist Larry Hama for at least half a century now, but his career started long before that, when he sold his first cartoon to Castle of Frankenstein magazine in 1966. He’s probably best known as a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, where he wrote the licensed comic book series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, based on the Hasbro toy line, writing nearly every issue of the book’s 13-year run.

He’s also written for the series Wolverine, Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja, and Elektra. He worked as an editor at both DC and Marvel, and at the latter edited the humor magazine Crazy, as well as Conan, The ‘Nam, and Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham. He co-created the character Bucky O’Hare, who not only appeared in comic books, but as a television cartoon. Last year, he was inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.

We discussed how cataract surgery changes the way an artist perceives the page, what really happened at a mid-’70s penthouse comic book party, Bernie Krigstein’s anger at being asked questions about comics, why Wally Wood felt it was so important for his assistants to learn how to letter, what it was like being part of the famed Crusty Bunkers inking collective, why getting to edit Crazy was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, which Marvel Comics Bullpenner was the visual inspiration for Obnoxio the Clown, why getting his freelancers to hit their deadlines was never a hassle, the editing advice Archie Goodwin gave him early on, the real reason he needed to create that famous silent issue of G. I. Joe, the differing zeitgeists of Marvel vs. DC during the ’70s, his approach to taking over the editing of legacy characters, our joint confusion over memes of previous generations, and much more.

(14) TODAY’S THING TO NOT WORRY ABOUT? “Asteroid 2024 YR4 Could Strike Earth, Researchers Say, But the Odds are Small” in the New York Times (bypasses paywall).

You may hear about a large asteroid headed toward Earth. Don’t panic.

Just after Christmas Day, astronomers spotted something zipping away from Earth: a rock somewhere between 130 feet and 330 feet long that they named 2024 YR4. Over the next few weeks, they simulated its possible future orbits. They now say, based on the most up-to-date information, that there is a 1.3 percent chance that this asteroid will strike somewhere on Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.

Should this keep you up at night?

“No, absolutely not,” said David Rankin, a comet and asteroid spotter at the University of Arizona.

The object’s current odds of striking Earth may sound scary — and it’s fair to say that an asteroid in this size range has the potential to cause harm. Should it strike a city, the damage would not cause anything close to a mass extinction, but the damage to the city itself would be catastrophic.

But a 1.3 percent chance of a hit is also a 98.7 percent chance of a miss. “It’s not a number you want to ignore, but it’s not a number you need to lose sleep over,” Mr. Rankin said….

(15) A LONG WAY FROM THE BEACH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The roads must roll. Or the sand must flow, anyway. Meet the Dune Express, the second-longest conveyor belt in the world. At 42 miles in length, it’s built to take the place of trucks in moving sand from a quarry to an oil field where it’s used in fracking.

The Dune Express is the Texas-sized, if risky, baby of Atlas Energy Solutions. And, yes, the company is named after that book. “The World’s Second-Longest Conveyor Belt Comes to West Texas” in Texas Monthly.

I rapped my knuckles on the galvanized aluminum exterior to make sure it wasn’t some sort of desert mirage. It was solid: $400 million worth of concrete, electronics, and steel assembled to rotate a thick rubber belt along roughly 66,000 metal rollers. Something on the order of 13 million tons of sand can be carried the entire length of the machine—42 miles—each year. If all of that were used to build sandcastles, you could have a couple of dozen the size of Buckingham Palace, with more than enough left over for a Taj Mahal.

But this sand isn’t for beachside amusement. It’s for fracking. When drillers crack open subterranean rock in the Permian Basin to allow oil to flow out, sand rides alongside the injected fluid to prevent the spider’s web of new fractures from closing up again. Each grain of sand functions like a tiny support beam in a minuscule mine shaft. Fracking a single well can consume more than four hundred truckloads of sand…

(16) ELIXIR OF YOUTH. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] They say change is good, but I am totally with Sheldon Cooper in that it rarely is… And now we have under-reported news that could really shake things up for the planet…!

One of science’s greatest successes/failures is that the technology it spawns has benefited humanity so well that our global population has soared from a billion in 1804 to two billion in 1927 to 8 billion in 2024! The resulting pollution, the loss of wildlife habitat to agriculture, is disrupting the Earth system… And if that was not bad enough, now comes news that we may soon have a drug that can significantly (by a decade) extend human life spans….!

Yes, you read that correctly: ‘life extension’! Our planet’s population could soar? Inequality could increase?

The news was reported in this week’s issue of Nature. It seems that injecting old mice with an RNA molecule seems to reverse some signs of ageing – helping them to live longer, regrow hair and maintain their physical and mental abilities.

They used mice aged between 20 and 25 months, which is akin to between about 60 and 70 in human years. They went on to live for about 4.5 months longer, on average. They regrew hair that had become sparse, maintained a higher body weight, could stay balanced on a rotating rod for longer and had better grip strength for their weight

Now, don’t get too excited/worried just yet as the mouse may not be a good model for humans when it comes to RNA treatment, however this is still something of a breakthrough…

Primary research here.

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

John Hertz at Loscon 50

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By John Hertz. [Reprinted from Vanamonde 1621-1626.]

In Los Angeles our local science fiction convention is Loscon, held over Thanksgiving weekend. Loscon L (or 50, if you prefer) was November 29-December 1, 2024 at the L.A. lnt’I Airport (LAX) Hilton Hotel; Author Guest of Honor Larry Niven, Artist Guest of Honor Laura Brodian Freas Beraha & Ghost of Honor Frank Kelly Freas, Music Guest of Honor Kathy Mar, Fan Guests of Honor Genny Dazzo & Craig Miller; attendance about 700; Art Show sales about $14,000 by three dozen exhibitors; chair, Eylat Poliner.

I led three Classics of SF book discussions, on The Currents of Space (I. Asimov, 1952), Star Man’s Son (A. Norton, 1952), and Wasp (E.F. Russell, 1957)(“Classics of Science Fiction at Loscon 50” at File 770); taught English Regency ballroom dancing (“The English Regency and Me” in Mimosa 29); served as Hall Costume Judge (“Hall Costume Awards” at Loscon.org [Internet Archive link]); and — there being nowhere to put a Fanzine Lounge — helped Heath Row with a Fanzine Corner.

Sue Mason (since 2015), Suzle (Suzanne Tompkins; since 2021), and I (since 2003) judge the Rotsler Award (announced at Loscon since 1998, for long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the SF community, sponsored by the S. Cal. lnst. for Fan Interests — initials SCIFI pronounced “skiffy”); we gave this year’s to España Sheriff; tech wizard Elizabeth Klein-Lebbink using her powers to work with me producing the display in the Art Show (“España Sheriff Wins 2024 Rotsler Award” at File 770), added to the full display of all Rotsler winners to date (“Rotsler Award Display at Glasgow 2024” at File 770).

This was Loscon’s first year at the Airport Hilton. First year at a hotel is often awkward. Closing Ceremonies applauded Christian McGuire, the Hotel Liaison. To the fans next to me, who were from Australia, I muttered “If you think his having chaired a Worldcon (L.A.con IV) made it easy to be Hotel Liaison, you should think again.”

The book discussions were on three days at the same hour in the same room. Finding one, you could thus readily find the rest; but what if 2:30 p.m. wasn’t convenient for you? Also, in the Grid we get at cons now, they weren’t shown with most other programming but tucked in a lower-left corner. I pointed them out to folks who knew enough to ask me. The room was arranged well: circular tables that attenders could sit around, better for discussion than placing me behind a table at one end with everyone else before it as if they were an audience for me to do all the talking.

The propeller of my beanie was damaged: I had got a new propeller from Interstellar Propeller of Berkeley, the only Ray Faraday Nelson-approved propeller-beanie manufacturer. The nice people at the Costume Repair Station did the repair.

Friday, The Currents of Space. Its opening scene gives us a better grasp than the characters in the book have of the misfortunes befalling the man called Rik — following the classical definition of irony as a conspiracy of the author and the audience against the characters (e.g. hearers of Greek myth know, though Oedipus does not, who it is he kills and who it is he weds). The opening use of the psychic probe follows both If there’s a gun on the wall in Act I it had better be fired before the final curtain and In tragedy a wrong which the wrongdoer deems minor turns out to have major consequences –– although Currents has a happy ending. Currents does not explicitly state, only inviting us to consider, the parallel between the position of its kyrt textiles and the history of cotton up to the 20th Century; also the racial inversion compared to 1952 in the United States, blacks being powerful in Currents and whites being dominated; a heavier hand would have made much of these. Throughout, Currents gives us several more points of view than many other stories; and, we noted happily, more strong female characters than many 21st Century folk attribute to SF of that time. It’s a detective story; there are lots of detective stories in SF; they’re a way for the author to acquaint the reader with an invented world, since the detective has to go round learning things (here again is Theodore Sturgeon’s Science fiction is knowledge fiction — note that the root of science, Latin scientia, means knowledge).

For lack of a better name we’ve been calling fan tables those locations at a con where clubs, cons, bids to hold cons, and other fan activities, can place an ambassador to answer, (and invite) questions, and more or less, within the bounds of civility, make friends. At L50 these tables were in the Dealers’ Room. Act of policy by the con committee? Forced by the hotel? Done without deliberation? Did the placement of fan tables keep them from people who didn’t consider going to the Dealers’ Room?

My own preference, and what has been usual, is for these to be along a main hallway in which any who wish can pause at a table and engage in conversation. Operations’ agents in the Dealers’ Room want to sell. A member of the Loscon committee who had not made this placement pointed out to me that conventions want to sell memberships, bids want to sell pre-supporting status, and convention attenders (not “attendees”, aiee) who go into the Dealers’ Room are disposed to spend money. Does her way of looking at things commercialize fan activities? We still, in an instance of good terminology, insist we are dealing in memberships, not admission tickets, i.e. a right to participate, not a right to watch others, unlike what is apparently supposed by many who arrive nowadays. Shall we — I’ll say it — pander to that supposition? ln fairness I report I found people staffing L50 fan tables to be civil and not pressure-wielders.

Once, it seems, everyone taking any part in fandom knew, whether or not active in, other parts. Maybe you exhibited in the Art Show, or bought things there, or went to the Art Auction whether or not you bid. Maybe you didn’t, but you did last year. Anyway it didn’t occur to you Oh no, that’s only for those people over there. Likewise panel discussions. Filking (our homemade music, adopting a typo of “folk music”). Serving on the con committee. Fanzines. But we began to fragment.

Heath Row invented the Fanzine Comer for L48. For L50 he and I did it again. The existence or even the possibility of fanzines is apparently not obvious now — commentary, discussion, anecdotes. Patrick Nielsen Hayden says Fanwriting is not a junior varsity for pro writing. A Fanzine Lounge is better for hanging around and browsing fanzines, I think, but so far at Loscons we’ve not managed a place to put one. When there is one it may have the defect of being a Place to Go, thus requiring a decision to go there.

Friday night, Regency Dancing. Jane Austen (1775-1817) lived then, one of the great authors in English literature; but she’s like a Martian writing for other Martians — never mind whether there really are or were any Martians, we have them in SF stories — she doesn’t explain anything. Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) wrote novels set then; she had to do what an SF author must, take us into the world she writes of, without stopping to dump information. She wins us with characterization, event, wit. Her books sparked fannish interest in this colorful period. Among my favorites are Arabella (1949), a neat introduction; A Civil Contract (1961), mostly taking place after marriage; and Cotillion (1953), whose ugly duckling is not the protagonist and is even a man.

Aristocratic pastimes often require a lot of work-up. My task is ~~characterization, event, wit~~ opening the door of this dance to people who don’t have such resources, and might not care to. I musn’t fall into the pit of dumbing things down. Some say I succeed.

The Art Show had a history of Loscons, with names and photos. I was Fan Guest of Honor at L38. At L50 there was a half-panel montage of Jerry Pournelle photos showing him in various stages of his career – his career with us; he had several. I wish it had been captioned “The First Loscon Guest of Honor”.

Loscon is sponsored by the LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, founded 1934; pronounced as if rhyming with a Spanglish “más fuss”), which gives two annual awards, the Evans-Freehafer (after E. Everett Evans & Paul Freehafer) for service to LASFS, and the Forry (after Forrest J Ackerman) for service to SF. There was a list of the E-F winners, and next to it a list of the 4e winners. I wish each list had not just named its award but said what it was.

In recent years con Art Shows haven’t seen our top pro artists. I know some, and I’ve tried to invite them. Fanzine artists too notoriously don’t show, which is one reason I started the R Awd exhibit. At MidAmericon II Steve Stiles exhibited a comic strip about how he’d never win a Hugo (i.e. for Best Fanartist). That year he did. You might think this would have unblocked the road, but – At L50, I was ecstatic to find Rick Sternbach’s work in the Art Show. So was Greg Benford, who bought promptly. I saw Sternbach at a party and thanked him. Hoping to be helpful I described Kelly Freas’ method. He would show a painting he couldn’t afford to sell for less than, say, $2,000 in 1998 money; around it, a few studies he could sell at $500; around those, sketches he could sell at $100 (i.e. minimum bids, subject to Auction rules and like that). Everybody could get into the act. To my surprise this was news to Sternbach.

With Laura Brodian Freas Beraha, the Woman With Too Many Names (which l say affectionately, she’s a longtime friend — she keeps Laura Brodian for work in classical-music radio; Kelly had a two-part unhyphenated surname, like James Clerk Maxwell [1831-1879]; she married Kelly in 1988, he died in 2005, she married Steve Beraha in 2012; she accepts Laura Beraha and Laura Freas), being Artist GoH, and Kelly being Ghost of Honor, we had a swell exhibit of their work singly and together.

Actually the fan With Too Many Names was Jack Harness — another long-time friend — who inter alia was Scribe JH or Scribe, Hawkman or *Wheet–Wheet*, Arson — his puns made people want to set him afire — Harmless, a misnomer since he often won at LASFS Poker — of which, to people who reasonably think Poker is Five-Card Draw or Five-Card Stud with Baseball being for weirdos, I say You ain’t seen nothin’ since in those days we even had Soft Shoe, where you could shuffle off to bluff a low — and now back to our program.

On Saturday in the Art Show I saw another fine exhibit, a Memory Wall with names and photographs of people we’d lost. Tony Benoun, co-founder of the thriving Doctor Who con Gallifrey One, who earned the Evans-Freehafer and whose widow Sherri will chair L51 next year. Marty Cantor. Melissa Conway, so helpful while head of Special Collections at U.Cal. Riverside including the Eaton Collection of SF; she gave a home to Bruce Pelz’ fanzine collection and later Jay Kay Klein’s photos — and a door decorated by Selina Phanara from the 2011 LASFS Clubhouse (File 770: “John Hertz: Klein is Big, Door is Dear”). Karl Lembke. Fuzzy Pink Niven (File 770: “John Hertz on Fuzzy Pink Niven (1940-2023)”). Sean Smith. Here was the Jerry Pournelle montage. With Post-Its people could stick memories onto the photos.

Saturday at 2:30 p.m., Star Man’s Son. Announcing it I’d said “From, say, Paragraph 5, we know what is happening and what will…. Her sense of event — of character — of the telling detail — keep us eager to watch her bring about what must occur,” with which the discussion agreed. We thought the semi-telepathic relation between Fors and the panther Lura didn’t make the book fantasy, since the author presents it as possibly a mutation in her post-nuclear-war world. We liked the interplay of the tribes, and recognized the ancestral Tuskegee Airmen. We were sad to see little of women, but thought this grew organically from the story; no decision whether that point was helped for us by our being aware Norton was a woman.

The hotel had Destination Elevators, three on a side at each floor, A-C, D-F. On a keypad you entered the floor you wanted: a display told you which elevator would take you there. While on the second floor I wondered aloud whether we’d get 2B or not 2B. That joke didn’t work.

Again there was no Masquerade (our on-stage costume competition); nobody could be found to run one. Again a group called the Nerd Mafia held a cosplay event. Cosplay, in principle a good term, has come to mean what the costuming community calls re-creation costumes (faithful copies of known images, e.g. from television, motion pictures, comic books), not originals: so not the whole truth. I found the Nerd Mafia sign-in table and tried to learn who they were, whether they disregarded our decades of Masquerade know-how (and if so, why) or were merely unaware (and if so, why). That too didn’t work. Saturday night at dinner I was just thinking I might learn by going to watch what the Nerd Mafia was doing, when someone came in talking about the results — instead of starting around 8 p.m., it was all over by then. Dean Gahlon says It’s not so much re-inventing the wheel as it is re-inventing the square wheel. But what do I know?

At a party I found Aldo Spadoni putting down the design of the Enterprise from Star Trek; he said the ship was unstable, with various other wrongs. I said the effective imagination of ST deserved applause; look how ST reached people. In SF we invent things that have never existed; what can they be accurate compared to? Afterward — l’esprit d’escalier (French, “the wit of the stairs”, the thing you think of going downstairs later) – I realized I should have turned the discussion to comparing how this problem is addressed in visual and in verbal art.

It used to be that one’s choices were to attend an SF con in person, or get a Supporting Membership and hear about the con afterward. Now for some cons and some people there’s virtual attendance, e.g. by Zoom. In person you can run into people — figuratively, I mean — at a party, in the Art Show, the Dealers’ Room, the halls. Thus I ran into long-time friend Lloyd Penney at Loscon.

We’d both been at the Buffalo NASFiC: he being Editor-in Chief of Amazing had a Dealers’ Room table; but I having by what Rich Lynch with good reason called “a long and at times strange journey arrived in Buffalo late” (File 770: “NASFiC Third Day Photos”) found my hands full what with setting up the Fanzine Lounge and the Rotsler Award exhibit, and leading Classics of SF discussions; I scarcely got to the D Rm at all and our paths didn’t cross otherwise. He’s now both amazing and Amazing, engaged for this position after a substantial fannish career (Fancyclopedia; Lloyd Penney), which he continues; he and his wife Yvonne had been fan Guests of Honor at L39; he’d said he really wanted to attend this Golden Anniversary Loscon, which he did, coming 2,000 mi (3,500 km) from his home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. So our encounter was welcome, and though each bound elsewhere we managed to converse, about fanzines, prozines, cabbages and kings.

The Rick Sternbach original that Greg Benford was so glad to get in the L50 Art Show was RS’ color illustration for GB’s Against Infinity (1983), which as it happens I’d mentioned in reporting RS’ Art Show tour while RS was Artist GoH at Denvention Ill (File 770 155 p. 28). Manuel Lopez confronts the being “Aleph” on the surface of Ganymede, looking up with mouth turned down, Space gun in hand, standing amid and shadowed by textured rocks, Jupiter with its Red Spot above. The top third of the picture is near-empty Space. RS talking of it at D3 told of having to get lightness, darkness, in the shadows: “I hate shadows.” He did them well anyhow.

Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Wasp. I’d brought the 2001 NESFA Press collection Entities, edited by Rick Katze (rhymes with straits), cover art by Bob Eggleton, cover design by Alice Lewis, with Jack Chalker’s “Wasp is [Russell’s] most famous and most read novel”. On Friday, at the end of Currents of Space, Cheri Kaylor had asked to borrow my copy of Star Man’s Son so she could re-read it overnight to be ready for Saturday, which she did; she did it again with Wasp. We all have different gifts. The discussion agreed Russell had succeeded, in addition to telling a good story, at satirizing bureaucracy, the second of which would have had little force without the first; also, he showed, an operation reflects the nature of the beings running it, comparing the Sirians with the Terrans. The wasp-strategy worked because the Sirians, being tyrannous, were bureaucratic, rigid, and fearful (which may amount to saying the same thing four ways). And Russell was funny.

Just catching the end of Questions & Answers with Larry Niven, I asked “You’ve done fine collaborations, but may we hope for more SF by you alone?” He said, “You can always hope.”

Over coffee, talk of education. I said, as I do, liberal arts are those arts which suit one to the exercise of liberty; this brought in Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), his memoir Up from Slavery (1901) and the Tuskegee Airmen, W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963; inter alia first black to get a Ph.D. degree from Harvard, 1895) and “‘I don’t agree’, said W.E.B.” (D. Randall, 1969). Hispanics and Asians are in it too. Brad Lyau kindly reminded me that DuBois’ name according to his own pronunciation rhymed with poise.

At a party I saw a man performing feats of playing-card magic for a woman. How out of practice I am; I couldn’t pass a Magic Castle audition now. Later I saw the woman had picked up a Mark Wilson (1929-2021) book, so I gave her a recommendation. Here too we suffer from terminological inexactitude. By magic I mean the theater art. The great RobertHoudin (1805-1871; name rhymes with no fair, you ran) said a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.

I met a man who said he’d learned of fallacies and syllogisms from Martin Young. I found Young and thanked him. Chaz Baden also had my thanks for another set of Bear’s Picnics (he’s sometimes called the Bear). He sat at a supply of alcoholic and non-alcoholic fluids mixing cocktails and mocktails, some old, some new. This lubricated conversation. In fandom more nearly than anywhere else we love you for your mind.

In the Dealers’ Room I saw a U.S. Marine in dress uniform. He hadn’t read Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959). I described its Mobile Infantry. He said, “Yes, those sound like Marines to me.” And Heinlein had been a Navy man.

There was a tea party for Fuzzy Pink on Sunday. So many wanted to be part of it that it needed several seatings. Kim Brown, Genny Dazzo, and friends circulated with trays of teacakes, scones, tea sandwiches, and pots of green or black (which Chinese call red) tea. I found someone to sit with who looked a little lost, and answered questions. We were all given pink lanyards with Fuzzy’s name. I won a teapot in a raffle. At Closing Ceremonies Larry thanked everyone for tributes to her all weekend.

Somewhere along the line I saw a video of Tim Griffin singing “307 Ale” (T. Smith, 1991) with Larry. In another Denvention III coincidence Kathy Mar had been its Music Guest of Honor. At L50 Closing Ceremonies she sang “Ship of Stone” (Don Simpson, 1981). The gavel was duly struck and given to Sherri Benoun. Afterward there was a feedback session, which I couldn’t stay for, but later several on the con committee told me people had said the Classics of SF discussions were a highlight for them, thoughtful, insightful, engaging. One doesn’t turn away thanks. I thought to myself I’d succeeded in getting other people to do some of the discussing. And (P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins ch. 3 (1934)) it was time to go home.

Pixel Scroll 1/30/25 Scrolling Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Pixels

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) GAIMAN WILL RECEIVE NO PROCEEDS FROM GOOD OMEN GRAPHIC NOVEL KICKSTARTER. Rhianna Pratchett today pointed to a Kickstarter update from the Pratchett estate about the Good Omens graphic novel.

“Good Omens graphic novel update – January 2025”

[We] had locked refunds of the Good Omens graphic novel in mid-November due to where we were in the production process, however will no longer maintain this freeze in light of new articles and allegations. While we cannot speak further on the subject at present, we have chosen to reopen a short refund window for those who would no longer like to support the graphic novel, until Friday 7th February 2025. Please contact us via email or Kickstarter message.

It has also been agreed that Neil Gaiman will not receive any proceeds from the graphic novel Kickstarter. Given the project management, production and all communication has always been under the jurisdiction of the Estate on behalf of Good Omens at large, this will not fundamentally change the project itself, however we can confirm the Kickstarter and PledgeManager will now fully be an entity run by, and financially connected to, the Terry Pratchett Estate only.

A number of tiers also come with author merchandise and books; we have been working on a system in the back end to remove or swap out particular rewards from tiers, should you wish to continue with the project, but not receive these specific items. In this instance, please contact us via Kickstarter or the email listed on the project FAQ and we will endeavour to alter your orders, to swap items in of an equivalent value, where we are able.

Given the point in the production process, we cannot extend refunds beyond this new deadline, but will honour requests in this window – the only exceptions will be tiers where rewards have already been actioned, such as cameos, and custom or rare items on higher level tiers. In the instance of cameos, should backers wish to have their name removed from the postcard (Archangel) or not receive their cameo print (God), we are able to alter this, but not the cameo itself.

If you do get in touch, we aim to get back within a few days; if you have not heard back within a week, please chase up your query.

Good Omens in all its forms is very special to us, and we know that for many fans the landscape has shifted. We appreciate the sensitivity of this issue, and will be working through all queries in the coming weeks.

We will continue on our journey with Crowley and Aziraphale, and all of our surrounding plans, in some form. Thank you for being part of the journey with us.

The Terry Pratchett Estate (Good Omens HQ)

David Tennant’s Facebook page also posted a truncated version of the statement, and notes that the Kickstarter has raised £2,419,973 to date. Colleen Doran is doing the artwork for this book, as File 770 has reported from time to time.

(2) DOES GAIMAN STILL HAVE REPS? Deadline has been trying to get statements from Neil Gaiman’s various agents about whether they still represent him. No statements have been provided. However, Deadline reported today his name has disappeared from the public client list of one of them: “Neil Gaiman Dropped By Agent Casarotto Ramsay After Misconduct Claims”.

Neil Gaiman has been removed from UK agent Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ client list after the Good Omens writer has faced a string of sexual misconduct allegations over the past six months.

Gaiman’s profile was quietly scrubbed from Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ website, meaning he no longer appears on pages listing its film, TV, and theatre clients.

Internet archives show Gaiman’s profile, which included trailers for his screen work, was live on the agency’s website as recently as last October, months after the initial allegations were published. The author denies wrongdoing.

Casarotto Ramsay & Associates failed to respond to repeated requests for comment about whether it continues to rep Gaiman. Gaiman has been contacted for comment. His long-time literary agent is Writers House’s Merrilee Heifetz, who has been approached for comment. Gaiman has also been repped by CAA, who have been contacted….

(3) FILK HISTORY ZOOM. The next FANAC Fan History Zoom on February 22 will be about filk fandom. Edie Stern will interview Margaret Middleton. To attend, contact fanac@fanac.org.

(4) DOES YOUR BOOK HAVE A BELLY BUTTON? “Books written by humans are getting their own certification” says The Verge. Self-certification. Because no one would ever lie about this, right?

The Authors Guild — one of the largest associations of writers in the US — has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence.

The Guild says its “Human Authored” certification aims to make it easier for writers to “distinguish their work in increasingly AI-saturated markets,” and that readers have a right to know who (or what) created the books they read. Human Authored certifications will be listed in a public database that anyone can access. The project was first announced back in October in response to a deluge of AI-generated books flooding online marketplaces like Amazon and its Kindle ebook platform.

Certification is currently restricted to Authors Guild members and books penned by a single writer, but will expand “in the future” to include books by non-Guild members and multiple authors. Books and other works must be almost entirely written by humans to qualify for a Human Authored mark, with minor exceptions to accommodate things like AI-powered grammar and spell-check applications….

(5) AI NAY NAY? Steve J. Wright discusses in fascinating detail the brain, intelligence, why the very different operations of a computer do not resemble either of the former, and his skepticism about artificial intelligence in “The Little Man Who Isn’t There”.

…So, Artificial Intelligence, if it is achievable at all with current technology (and I suspect the technology which might make it achievable is some way in the future) will necessarily operate in a way which is radically, fundamentally different from human intelligence. So different that communicating with it, or even recognizing that it’s there, will present significant technological challenges. So why are we so happy – well, why are some of us so happy – to believe that Artificial Intelligence is with us here and now, ready to correct our grammar and do our homework for us?

Wright’s article includes a rather amusing callback to Sixties chatbot ELIZA.

“Ah,” says the knowledgeable reader, “he’s going to talk about ELIZA.” Yes, I am absolutely going to talk about ELIZA, because it is such a very good example. Created by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1967, ELIZA is credited as the first chatbot; it was designed to emulate a psychotherapist, using a fairly limited set of stock responses which identified key words in its interlocutor’s messages and fitted them into templates for replies. And it had people convinced that it was a real person, that no mere machine could possibly understand them as well as ELIZA did. Now look at those dates again, and consider just how much technical progress there has been on the hardware end of things since then. ELIZA is not a sophisticated program. If you are the sort of weirdo who has a “smart” home, you probably have light bulbs with enough capacity to run ELIZA. Your fridge probably has enough computing power to run ELIZA and perform its normal fridgely duties (maintaining optimum temperatures and levels of energy usage, keeping an inventory of its contents and their expiry dates, and snitching on you to Amazon about your chocolate ice cream habit.)

So, since a rinky-dink little gizmo like ELIZA can successfully con people into believing it’s human, what chance do our poor gullible brains stand against modern technology?

(6) THESE THINGS MUST BE HANDLED DELICATELY. “Sale of Wicked Witch’s hat from the ‘The Wizard of Oz’ sparks fraud lawsuit” reports the LA Times. (Article republished on MSN, so not behind a paywall). There are three known existing Wicked Witch hats used in filming of The Wizard of Oz. Schneider acquired one in 2019 for $100,000, from Profiles in History, a movie memorabilia house that Heritage acquired two years later. He later consigned it to Heritage for a big Hollywood memorabilia auction. The owner of another Witch’s hat, Michael Shaw, also decided to sell his. And in addition, Shaw was consigning an authentic pair of the ruby slippers. Here’s the rest of the story….

…In July 2023, Schneider agreed to consign his hat to Heritage and the item was given a value of $200,000 for insurance purposes, according to his lawsuit.

However, Heritage pulled Schneider’s hat from an auction in which another Wicked Witch’s hat owned by Michael Shaw…

In August, [Heritage Auctions senior director Brian] Chanes called Schneider and offered him a quick private sale of the hat for $250,000. Instead of taking it to auction, the hat worn by actor Margaret Hamilton would be sold directly to Shaw, who had expressed interest. The price was “more than any Hat had previously sold for,” Chanes told him, according to the complaint.

A few months later, Heritage began promoting a December auction of movie memorabilia that included Shaw’s three Oz pieces….

…According to the suit, Heritage launched a promotional tour of Shaw’s items, holding events in New York, London and Tokyo.

Shaw is not a defendant in the lawsuit against Heritage.

During the auction held on Dec. 7, the ruby slippers sold for a record $32.5 million and the hat hammered down for $2.93 million, which was nearly 12 times the amount Schneider received for his hat. Like other houses, Heritage receives a commission on the items sold at auction.

“It’s very unusual to have an item plucked out of an auction and get an offer like that from the auctioneer,” Schneider said. He says the house violated its fiduciary obligations to him, having failed to disclose the level of market interest in the hat or its planned roadshow for the auction.

Schneider alleges that Heritage struck the deal with him as a “device for HERITAGE or its executives to get ownership at a deep discount while also favoring Mr. S by making his Hat the only one in the auction,” states the suit….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 30, 1924 — Lloyd Alexander. (Died 2007.)

By Paul Weimer: In the mid 1980’s, Disney came out with The Black Cauldron, an animated fantasy movie. This was the “wilderness years” of Disney before the boom that started with The Little Mermaid. (The Black Cauldron came out the same year as Return to Oz) It looked interesting, and I was now at a point where I could go and see such movies on my own. Sure, it was an animated movie probably aimed at a younger audience than who I probably was, but I was game. (The fact that it was rated PG drew my attention and convinced me to see it). I enjoyed it deeply even if apparently few others did at the time. (Again, see above, Wilderness Years)

So it goes.

Naturally, the movie led me to the Lloyd Alexander book. I didn’t realize at the time that The Black Cauldron is actually the second in the Prydain series, but having seen the movie loosely based on it, I wasn’t lost at the time and when I finally did read The Book of Three (the first in the series) sometime thereafter, I saw how sneakily the filmmakers had been inspired by that book for helping to establish Taran, as well as The Black Cauldron itself. So I could and did happily read the book and the sequels, and so being hooked on Alexander’s work thereby.

I had only the smallest amount of knowledge of Welsh mythology at the time I read the Pyrdain series, the mythology books I had read to that point were focused on the Greco-roman and the Norse. The tales of the Mabinogion that Alexander’s series was based on did later, some years on, inspire me to investigate and learn about Welsh mythology in much more detail. So I have Alexander to thank for that.

And in general, Alexander is a novelist who I am glad I did not “miss”. There is a swath of authors I managed to miss because I felt myself too old by the time I found them (Susan Cooper comes to mind, although I did read her a few years ago). Alexander is in that class, while writing for a younger audience, his strong use of theme, decently three-dimensional female characters (although still cross about Eilonwy’s losing her magical powers) and the sheer verve and quality of the writing and the language.

That quality of writing extended to all of the other work I’ve read of him, from the meditation on war that is The Kestrel, to the Vesper Holly adventure archaeology series. He’s definitely an excellent gateway to much further reading and I think that he still stands up as someone to introduce a young reader to fantasy.

My only regret is that I didn’t discover his work sooner.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Peanuts from 1958 – could this be futurism?
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal shows the origin of paying for stories.

(9) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 127 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Hello Buoys”, John Coxon is incoherent, Alison Scott is excited, and Liz Batty is romantic. An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here.

Episode 127 is here. We discuss the latest juicy gossip from the Belfast Eastercon, we hear from Claire Brialey of Croydon, and we pick things that aren’t games!

Alt text: A flowchart entitled “How to meet John, Alison and/or Liz at Eastercon”. The boxes culminate in “console yourself with Octothorpe 127”, and the various options are listed below, but the original file is linked in the show notes in case that’s more helpful to the partially sighted. How to meet John, Alison and/or Liz at Eastercon Are you going to Reconnect? Of course!/Not sure Oh go on it will be a laugh Oh all right then/No... Are they in the bar? Yes! I can't see them Are you quite sure? Check again Oh wait... there they are No sign Is there another bar? Yes! Nope Are they on programme? Yes! No Wait till the moderator asks for questions But it's Octothorpe Live! Is your joke very funny? Obviously! Excellent! Good to know. COME AND SAY HELLO until then... Are they asleep or on the loo? No, they look chill Er, yes? Oh, that's a shame Console yourself with Octothorpe 127

(10) THE NEXT TENTACLE. “’Squid Game’ Season 3 Release Date Set at Netflix”. Variety tells what it is.

“Squid Game” Season 3 will premiere June 27, following the major cliffhanger finale that Season 2 ended on.

“Squid Game” Season 2, which consisted of seven episodes, debuted Dec. 26. The installment was filmed back-to-back with Season 3, assuring there would be a much shorter wait between seasons than there was for Season 2 and Season 1 (which debuted in 2021, and was not originally written as an ongoing series).

In Season 2, Gi-hun, aka Player 456 (played by Lee Jung-jae), returns to the sadistic competition three years after winning 45.6 billion in South Korean won as the sole survivor of the event, in order to now put an end to Squid Game and save the lives of the players around him….

(11) SUPER ADVERTISING. The commercials aired during the Super Bowl have a reputation for creativity and entertainment. If you’re likely to watch them, whether during the broadcast or later on YouTube, here’s Deadline’s scouting report of the movie promos that will be part of the lineup, most of them of genre interest: “Super Bowl Movie Trailers 2025: What to Expect”.

…This year, count on the following to air either pre, during or post-game:

Disney, the No. 1 studio of last year with more than $2.2 billion in domestic box office, has always had a presence at the Super Bowl. It won’t be a surprise if it shows off wares for upcoming pics Snow White (March 21), Lilo & Stich (May 23) and Pixar’s Elio (June 13). We understand they’ll only be showing off two out of three of their upcoming Marvel Studios movies, a batch that includes the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World (February 14), summer kickoff Thunderbolts* (May 2) and Fantastic Four: The First Steps (July 25)….

Universal, the No. 2 studio with $1.88B domestic in 2024, will be wowing with trailers for Dean DeBlois’ live-action take of his How to Train Your Dragon (June 13) and the Scarlett Johansson-Mahershala Ali-Jonathan Bailey starring Jurassic World Rebirth (July 2) from Gareth Edwards. Don’t be surprised if you catch a Blumhouse title, like a M3GAN 2.0 (June 27). You’ll remember how Uni previously stunted the first installment with dancing M3GAN dolls on talks shows and popular landmarks like the Empire State Building.

Paramount is no stranger to the Super Bowl, even when its sister CBS network and Paramount+ isn’t broadcasting it (Fox has the game this year). This year, the buzz is that Par will air spots for the Jack Quaid comedy thriller Novocaine (March 14), the Smurfs animated musical movie starring Rihanna (July 18) and Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. …

Nothing to do with genre, however, you can already watch the “Hellmanns Super Bowl Commercial 2025” which reunites the When Harry Met Sally stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in an update of their deli scene.

(12) ALL’S FAIR. The answer to the Guardian’s question is microcollectibles, apparently: “Evil toilets, terror food and billionaire Squishmallows: my eye-popping day at the UK’s giant toy fair”.

A chubby baby dinosaur waddles down a pink carpeted aisle, narrowly avoiding an army of Care Bears tramping in the other direction. Nearby, a sales rep shows off a collection of insect-breeding habitats, just as Pikachu scampers around the corner, bumping into her neat display. Across the hall, inventors show off their fiendish new board games, magicians demonstrate glowing plastic thumbs, while others grapple with instructions by a table covered with thousands of tiny plastic bricks.

Welcome to the Toy Fair, in London’s Kensington Olympia, the UK’s biggest bonanza of toys, games and hobbies, where the world’s manufacturers converge to peddle their latest wares, as retailers scour the endless stands for the hottest new trends. It’s a mind-boggling place of plushies and puzzles, remote-control cars and mud kitchens, and more plastic than you would find at a petrochemical convention. Here, the £3.4bn business of fun is taken very seriously indeed, with NDAs galore and not a child in sight. So where is the toy world heading in 2025?…

Fans of the YouTube phenomenon, Skibidi Toilet, can now buy the official toy line at Walmart, Target and Amazon. The line includes the Mystery Surprise Toilet, Collector Figures, Mystery Plush and more.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/29/25 Take The Bits And Pixels, Put Your Old Phone Down

Posted on January 29, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) SPINRAD RETIRING ASIMOV’S BOOK COLUMN. Norman Spinrad today told his mailing list that his “On Books” column, which has appeared in Asimov’s since 1983, soon will end its run.

I thought it would be best to be the one to announce that “Speculative Literature?” will be the last “On Books” that it would be the last column to be published in ASIMOV’S magazine rather than have the editor Sheila Williams do it. First because I made the decision myself after almost half a century, not her or anyone else did it.

Not fired for any economical reason or anything but literary reasons which I think anyone who reads my last two “On Books” will under[stand] why when they read them whether they agree or not.

Dona could not live to see “Speculative Literature?” published but she lived to read it, and it was the last thing she worked with me one way or another and something she told me was that most real true literature these days was seldom appreciated by the masses, it was only fully appreciated and moved by truly literary readers and that has always been so.

Maybe so, but literature was central to the creation of culture, and cultures without speculative culture sooner or later end in the tarpits.

(2) CORALINE MUSICAL PRODUCTION CANCELLED. In the UK, “Stage adaptation of Coraline cancelled after allegations against Neil Gaiman” reports the Guardian.

A stage version of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline has been cancelled after allegations of sexual misconduct against the author.

The musical was to have been staged at Leeds Playhouse from 11 April to 11 May before touring to Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, the co-production partners Leeds Playhouse, Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Birmingham Rep and Home Manchester said: “We have decided our production of Coraline – a Musical will not proceed. After careful consideration, we feel it would be impossible to continue in the context of the allegations against its original author. Ticket holders have been contacted directly via email.”…

YouTuber MickeyJo Theatre devotes a 17-minute video not only to “Why the CORALINE musical is cancelled” but to considering why stage productions by or based on the work of Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling – themselves now controversial – have gone ahead.

(3) WGA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD. “David Lynch To Posthumously Receive Writers Guild Laurel Award” – Deadline has the story.

Screenwriter and director David Lynch, who died this month, has been named the recipient of the Writers Guild of America West’s 2025 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.

The guild says he was aware of the honor and accepted several weeks before his January 15 passing. It will be presented by his Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan at the WGA Awards ceremony on February 15 .

The guild’s lifetime achievement award is presented to members who have “advanced the literature of motion pictures and made outstanding contributions to the profession of the screenwriter.”

(4) A LIKING FOR LYCANTHROPY. Doris V. Sutherland does a fine review of “Wolf Man (2025)” as part of “Werewolf Wednesday”.

… Where the 1941 film did much to codify the werewolf genre, the new film makes a point out of throwing away many of the conventions initiated by its ancestor.

This is not a story concerned with deadly silver, ghostly pentagrams or rhymes about the brightness of the Autumn moon. Having pared down the cinematic lycanthrope, does Wolf Man ‘25 bring any innovations to the table?…

(5) MAIL CALL. Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein analyzes another correspondence between two Weird Tales figures in “Her Letters to August Derleth: Everil Worrell”.

…In one, she describes a meeting of the League of American Pen Women, which concludes:

“At the end of this meeting, I found myself trying to give them a slight glimpse into the Cult of Chulthu [sic]! Although I was never much more than a “Square” observer on the C of C, I did my best—since there seemed to be a “Need to Know.” I’m more at ease with ordinary witchcraft, vampirism and demonology—perhaps. But, leave us all hang together. (And now I’m one of the Old Ones myself, chronologically speaking.)

N’Gai ? ?
—Everil Worrell to August Derleth, 12 Mar 1967”

(6) WRITING CONTESTS RESPOND TO LA FIRES. The Tomorrow Prize and Green Feather Award submission deadline has been extended to February 28. The competitions are open to LA County high school students – see full Submissions & Guidelines at the link.

(7) WALLY WEBER (1929-2025). Chair of the 1961 Worldcon Wally Weber died January 23 at the age of 95 reports Seattle Worldcon 2025. Entering fandom in 1947, he joined Seattle’s “Nameless Ones” group when it began around 1949.

Weber co-edited Cry of the Nameless, three-time Hugo nominee and winner of the 1960 Best Fanzine Hugo. (F.M. Busby, Elinor Busby, and Burnett Toskey were the other co-editors.)

He chaired the 1961 Worldcon, Seacon, held in Seattle. In 1963 he was voted the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate.

Above all he made fandom fun, sometimes at the expense of its more earnest practitioners as in this example from a 1963 issue of Cry: “The Farley File Menace, exposed by Wally Weber”.

…Bruce [Pelz] refers to the caper as, “Farley File on Fandom,” and describes it as a project in which information about fans is recorded on punched cards in such a manner that standard sorting machines (to which both Pelz and [Ron] Ellik are supposed to have access) can be used to pick out those fans included in the file who have whatever it might be the sorter is searching for. Suppose, for example, you live in New York and you want to write a letter to Bruce Pelz in Los Angeles, but after you have sealed the envelope you discover you don’t have a stamp. Before the age of the farley file you would have had to go out in the cold (assume it’s five o’clock in the morning and it’s snowing like crazy outside), find a place that is open where you can buy a stamp, and pay for one. But now, with the farley file in existence, you can avoid this. You just call Bruce on the phone (it will only be two o’clock in the morning in Los Angeles) and ask him for the names of the fans in New York who have an accumulated collection of stamps. Bruce then gets dressed, drives over to the UCLA campus, lets himself in the building where the sorter is located, goes back home to pick up the punched cards he forgot, remembers Ron Ellik had borrowed them to make duplicates to replace the set the FBI had taken from Ron, drives to wherever it is that Ron lives, breaks into Ron’s home since Ron is gone for the weekend, gets reported by the neighbors and captured by the police, and by the time he gets out of jail the weather has cleared up in New York, you’ve been able to obtain a new supply of stamps at your leisure, and the letter has been delivered to Bruce right along with his last paycheck from UCLA where he has been fired for not showing up for work for two weeks….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 29, 1964 — Dr. Strangelove (premiered on this date)

By Paul Weimer: I had heard about Dr. Strangelove for years without ever quite managing to see it, in those early days before streaming took off. My family seemed lukewarm to the idea of me renting a videotape. And so I read about it, heard about it and wondered about it.

Finally in the late 90’s I got my chance. In the halcyon days of the early internet, I won a random contest for people who responded to an early column transplanted from the newspaper to the internet about movies that were less than two hours long. My comment won me a DVD copy of Dr. Strangelove.

Happy day, I could finally see the film.

I was stunned by the interesting angles and cinematography. I also had had no real conception that the movie was in black and white–I figure all the stills I saw were taken with a B&W camera, but I didn’t realize that the movie itself was in monochrome throughout. And my conception of the plot was a little off, too.

And then there was Fail-Safe. I had managed to see Fail-Safe and so when I saw Dr. Strangelove, I saw the similarities and parallels immediately. They are both extremely interesting movies, with different takes on the same question of Mutual Assured Destruction. But Strangelove I think is superior and that’s because of the humor.

The humor! It’s probably my favorite dark comedy of the period, and I had had heard it was darkly humorous but to see it on screen. Peter Sellers in three roles. George C. Scott. Sterling Hayden and his precious bodily fluids. Slim Pickens riding a bomb to glory and destruction. Mine shaft gaps. And on, and on.

And yes, it is in black and white, and the camera choices, angles, and cinematography are revelatory, powerful and considered at all times. The movie is one of the best filmed I’ve ever seen. Not quite as revolutionary as Citizen Kane, say, but that same sort of boldness.

It was robbed at the Oscars. Can you even remember My Fair Lady, the Best Picture winner that year?

And in our day and age (I need not explain more, do I?), the movie is ever more relevant, funny and true.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal says the true message is hidden.
Bizarro introduces a new Transformer.
Dog Eat Doug has a planned trip.
Speed Bump adds a new literary category.

(10) SEE IMAGINARY BOOKS. [Item by Steven French.] We’ve been here before but if any Filefolk happen to be in New York before Feb 15 or in San Francisco after March and have a hankering to see a reproduction of Death’s memoirs from the Discworld novels, then this is the exhibition for you: “Inside a Collection of ‘Imaginary’ Books” at Atlas Obscura.

ON A SNOWY SUNDAY AFTERNOON at the Center for Book Arts in Manhattan, Reid Byers is sitting in front of a group of students who have gathered for a very particular kind of book-making class.

Surrounded by the sturdy-looking tools of bookbinding—giant sheets of paper, a pegboard of hammers, a row of heavy book presses lining the windowsill—it’s easy to feel grounded in the materiality of the medium. But on the projector screen, a slide reads, “Collecting the imaginary”.

(11) THE CLAWS THAT CATCH. “AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt” – Ars Technica really shares little about how it’s done in the article, but it does suggest where you could learn more.

Last summer, Anthropic inspired backlash when its ClaudeBot AI crawler was accused of hammering websites a million or more times a day.

And it wasn’t the only artificial intelligence company making headlines for supposedly ignoring instructions in robots.txt files to avoid scraping web content on certain sites. Around the same time, Reddit’s CEO called out all AI companies whose crawlers he said were “a pain in the ass to block,” despite the tech industry otherwise agreeing to respect “no scraping” robots.txt rules.

Watching the controversy unfold was a software developer whom Ars has granted anonymity to discuss his development of malware (we’ll call him Aaron). Shortly after he noticed Facebook’s crawler exceeding 30 million hits on his site, Aaron began plotting a new kind of attack on crawlers “clobbering” websites that he told Ars he hoped would give “teeth” to robots.txt.

Building on an anti-spam cybersecurity tactic known as tarpitting, he created Nepenthes, malicious software named after a carnivorous plant that will “eat just about anything that finds its way inside.”…

… “A link to a Nepenthes location from your site will flood out valid URLs within your site’s domain name, making it unlikely the crawler will access real content,” a Nepenthes explainer reads….

According to ZADZMO code, “It [Nepenthes] works by generating an endless sequences of pages, each of which with dozens of links, that simply go back into a the tarpit. Pages are randomly generated, but in a deterministic way, causing them to appear to be flat files that never change. Intentional delay is added to prevent crawlers from bogging down your server, in addition to wasting their time. Lastly, optional Markov-babble can be added to the pages, to give the crawlers something to scrape up and train their LLMs on, hopefully accelerating model collapse.”

Returning to Ars Technica:

…When software developer and hacker Gergely Nagy, who goes by the handle “algernon” online, saw Nepenthes, he was delighted. At that time, Nagy told Ars that nearly all of his server’s bandwidth was being “eaten” by AI crawlers.

Already blocking scraping and attempting to poison AI models through a simpler method, Nagy took his defense method further and created his own tarpit, Iocaine. He told Ars the tarpit immediately killed off about 94 percent of bot traffic to his site, which was primarily from AI crawlers. Soon, social media discussion drove users to inquire about Iocaine deployment, including not just individuals but also organizations wanting to take stronger steps to block scraping.

Iocaine takes ideas (not code) from Nepenthes, but it’s more intent on using the tarpit to poison AI models. Nagy used a reverse proxy to trap crawlers in an “infinite maze of garbage” in an attempt to slowly poison their data collection as much as possible for daring to ignore robots.txt….

Taking its name from “one of the deadliest poisons known to man” from The Princess Bride, Iocaine is jokingly depicted as the “deadliest poison known to AI.” While there’s no way of validating that claim, Nagy’s motto is that the more poisoning attacks that are out there, “the merrier.” He told Ars that his primary reasons for building Iocaine were to help rights holders wall off valuable content and stop AI crawlers from crawling with abandon.

(12) CONTEMPORARY COMBAT IMAGINED. “Robot dog battles drone in fireworks fight, sparking future warfare concerns”. (View the video on YouTube here: “Future of #war”.)

A robotic dog fighting an aerial drone is the future of warfare that one would expect in science fiction.

But a video depicting this real-life scene has gone viral on social media sites in China and brought up discussions about a future where machines engage in warfare and what it would take to become the ultimate victor.

Fighting with drones has gone from futuristic to a common theme in warfare. At the turn of this century, the US flew its first drones with wings as wide as 66 feet (20 m) and a cruising altitude of 50,000 feet (15,000 m), but it cost millions of dollars to build one.

In just over two decades, drones have become smaller, nimbler, and so inexpensive to produce that they have become dispensable.

Last month, the Ukrainian defense ministry confirmed that its armed forces used more than 1.2 million drones in 2024 during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War. On its part, Russia has produced over 1.4 million drones as both sides deploy hundreds of drones in their attacks….

(13) WHEN “SF” STANDS FOR STICKY FINGERS. Collider chronicles “How the Only Star Trek Prop To Survive Two Movies Made Its Way to the Small Screen”.

It’s not uncommon for actors to take home a prop that holds special significance for their character once filming wraps, or for eager fans to snatch up iconic items at an auction. The captain’s chair from the Enterprise bridge might seem like a less obvious — and more unwieldy — prop for someone to take home, but hauling a large piece of furniture around apparently hasn’t stopped certain people from snatching up Captain James T. Kirk‘s (William Shatner) chair over the years. Only one captain’s chair ever made it from one Star Trek movie to the next without being stolen, and that same chair lived long enough to unconventionally grace the small screen.

In 2013, actor and stand-up comedian Darrin Rose starred in a car insurance commercial tied to director J. J. Abrams‘ second Star Trek reboot film, Star Trek: Into Darkness. The ad — also starring Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Blue Eye Samurai’s Maya Erskine — spoofed the frequent ship-to-ship battles for which the franchise is known. After an alien vessel bumps into a Federation starship, the crew prepares for a hostile battle. Instead, the other captain awkwardly apologizes for grazing them and offers to trade insurance information.

According to a dual post on Rose’s Facebook and Instagram, the ad used the same captain’s chair prop from Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek movie as well as its follow-up, Into Darkness. Because Abrams’ company, Bad Robot, produced the commercial, they automatically had access to the movies’ props, costumes, and makeup, and replicated a high-budget starship bridge — which makes the already clever tie-in commercial even funnier. As for how Chris Pine‘s Enterprise chair factors into the ad, Rose learned during filming that every other captain’s chair from previous Trek movies had met an unfortunate end….

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

Arisia 2025 Report’n’Pix: My First In-Person Con Since That Pandemic Started

Posted on January 29, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By Daniel Dern: Arisia 2025 — “New England’s largest and most diverse science fiction and fantasy convention” (per the con’s web page header) — was held Friday January 17 through Monday January 20, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Boston/Cambridge Hotel (aka “the Ziggurat”) in Cambridge, Mass.

According to Arisia Press Liaison Justin du Coeur, Arisia 2025 had 1,729 registrations and 1,456 attendees. (For comparison, Arisia 2024 had, according to Arisia Abbreviated History, 1,840 and 1,675 respectively.)

Based on my Saturday at Arisia 2025 (and every Arisia I’ve been to, which is most—I know I missed Arisia 2023 and Arisia 2024, probably one or two others in the previous decades), the Con was full of people of all ages busy having fun.

(Here’s Arisia’s helpful First Time Arisia Attendees Guide.)

Until Arisia 2025, I hadn’t attended any cons in person since early 2020. According to my records and my File 770 con reports, I’d attended Arisia 2020 back in January 2020 (including as a Program participant) (here’s my File 770 con report), and Boskone 57 (per my report) in February 2020. As the Pandemic led many cons to go virtual, I did virtually-attend Arisia 2021 (note to self, doing a magic show via Zoom adds some technical complexities) — and Boskone 58. Arisia returned to being in-person for Arisia 2023 and 2024; Arisia 2025 marks my return to in-person SF conventions, and I’m glad I did.

Hyatt Regency, seen from Harvard Bridge (Crossing the Charles River)

ARISIA 2025, A FEW FACTS.

Founded in 1988, and with its first convention held in 1990, Arisia is one of the Boston-area’s three major annual science fiction and fantasy conventions. (The other two are Boskone, again this year at the Westin Boston Seafront in Boston, Friday February 14 through Sunday February 16, 2025, and ReaderCon (returning, after several years at the Boston Quincy Marriott in Quincy, Mass., to the Boston Marriott Burlington in Burlington, MA, Thursday, July 17-Sunday July 20, 2025).

The Guests of Honor (GoH’s) for Arisia 2025 were (see here for short bios):

Author Guest of Honor: Moniquill Blackgoose

Author Guest of Honor: Moniquill Blackgoose/ Photo: © Angelina Rose Photography

Artist Guest of Honor: Sarah Morrison

Artist Guest of Honor: Sarah Morrison. Photo credit: Author Services, Inc.

Fan Guest of Honor: Siobhan Flanagan

Fan Guest of Honor: Siobhan Flanagan. Photo credit: Siobhan Flanagan

ARISIA 2025 COVID/MASKING POLICY: MASKS ON. A Con’s Covid/Masking policies have, for many, become an important factor in attend/don’t decisions. (For example, Arisia’s helped me decide at the near-last minute to go.)

Here’s (part of) the COVID-19 Policies for Arisia 2025:

“For Arisia 2025 we will continue to require masks without an exhalation vent over the nose and mouth in convention spaces for all attendees including those in Youth Services…there are some spaces where attendees can take breaks from having their masks on. We will once again have designated spaces which will be, a mask-optional space where snacks and drinks will be available and where people are welcome to bring in their own food.”

Other cons may, of course, decide differently. For example, the upcoming Boskone 62 (2025) policy says “Boskone 62 recommends, but does not require, that in-person members wear masks in convention spaces. We also recommend, but do not require, that in-person attendees be up to date on their seasonal vaccines (COVID-19, Influenza, etc.)…”)

AS ALWAYS, MUCH TO DO, MUCH TO CHOOSE FROM. Arisia continues to offer a wide range of Things To Do, from panels, workshops and events for the gamut of media (e.g., books, comics, anime/TV/video) through gaming (tabletop and LARP), hall costumes, the Masquerade, dances, concerts, workshops, and more.

Michael Meissner’s Highly Decorated Steampunk Image Capture Machine

“Phoneless Booths” (part of the hotel, not the Con)

According to the online schedule, there were slightly over 200 Program items/activities, including:

Dealers Room, with 20+ dealers
Art Show (including many prints-for-sale)
Masquerade
Costuming (there was even a staffed costume repair/help table in the main lobby!)
Bridgerton Themed Ball
Arisia Renaissance Ball
Gaming: Board, TTRPG (Tabletop RPG) and LARP. (Justin du Coeur notes, “There was no video gaming this year. Arisia hopes to bring it back next year.”)

The Con’s return to the Hyatt Regency Hotel also let this program item be brought back:

“Round 2 of the official Arisia stair climb! Get yourself from the first to the 16th floor! Meet in the hotel lobby on the first floor.”

And here’s a sampling of the Program items (taken from the online schedule):

Is ___ a Sandwich?
Medieval, Renaissance, & Victorian Fencing Demos
10 Books that Define Arisia – “(What ten books does an Arisian need to read in order to understand this convention and its community? This is not a *canon* panel…)”
Happy 75th Birthday, Chris Claremont!
Avoiding MacGuffins Once and For All!
Safety Systems in TTRPG spaces

Arisia Dealers: Dice Goblin Shop (“Handmade dice and table top RPG accessories”)

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION (IMPACTS). From 2011 through 2024 (except for 2019 (Boston Park Plaza) and 2021 (Online-Only) and 2022[1], Arisia was at the Westin Boston Waterfront, which is adjacent to the Boston Convention & Expo Center (aka BCEC). (Boskone has been at this hotel since Boskone 44 (2007).)

[1] Justin du Coeur notes, “Technically there was no Arisia 2022 — it was necessarily canceled at the last minute due to the Omicron wave. We instead held ACOG — the Arisia Community Online Gathering, if I’m remembering the acronym correctly — which was an informal hangout centering on Discord, but nowhere near as ambitious as Virtual Arisia 2021.”

For 2025, Arisia returned to the Hyatt Regency Boston/Cambridge Hotel (aka “the Ziggurat”), on Memorial Drive, Cambridge where it had been from 2007 through 2010.

“Compared to the Westin Boston, the Hyatt Regency is somewhat smaller….But the con is somewhat smaller than it was pre-pandemic (masking/no-masking is sort of a filter for many people), so it’s an appropriate fit,” notes du Coeur.

The Hyatt Regency’s (smaller) size led to some changes in space and time, according to du Coeur. “There was a bit of rearrangement of the schedule, mostly due to the fact that we don’t have as much program space – for example, The Renaissance Ball was Sunday afternoon this year instead of Saturday. The breaks between panels were a bit shorter this year — since the hotel isn’t spread across two wings the way the Westin is, we didn’t need as much passing time for people to get from one end to the other. And some of the convention offices are necessarily combining space, so as not to consume as many precious rooms. But there were not a lot of qualitative changes, especially not attendee-visible ones, just a bit of compression to fit back into this environment.”

GETTING THERE: THE PUBLIC-TRANSIT MISSING MILE-AND-A-HALF. One noticeable location difference versus being at the Hyatt Regency Hotel versus the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel (or the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, where Arisia was for over a dozen years) is, of course, the difference in proximity to Boston’s public transit — the MBTA (aka “The T”) subway and bus systems – which, like a location’s availability and pricing of parking, can play a factor choosing which cons to attend.

The Westin Boston Waterfront is, according to Google Maps, a third-of-a-mile walk from the T Silver Line’s “World Trade Center” (yes, that’s its name, it’s a real event-holding building) stop. Not the best of walks, particularly in wind, rain or snow, admittedly, but someone less of a schlep, say, than from NYC’s Javits Center to subway or bus.

By contrast, according to Google Maps, the Hyatt Regency is about a 1.5 mile walk from either the MBTA Red Line’s /Kendall Square stop or the Green Line’s Hynes stop.

“It’s a bit of a hike to the T, but the convention and hotel shuttles should help folks get to/from public transit and restaurants,” du Coeur acknowledges.

Arisia did provide a free 14-passenger shuttle running continuously to and from the MBTA Red Line’s Kendall Square station, and the hotel had an on-demand shuttle (for hotel guests).

According to the Shuttle Page on the Arisia 2025 site, “We were not able to secure an accessible shuttle. Anyone who needs a wheelchair accessible vehicle should please contact the Access division… to request either Uber or Lyft virtual gift cards prior to convention.”

Arisia Dealers: Adorkabows (Sarah Forde)

DERN@ARISIA 2025. It helped that Arisia is, for me, local; I took public transit rather than drive (on-site parking at the hotel, in my experience, is likely to have filled up by the time I arrive, among other reasons), and I live about four blocks from a T stop.

The weather Saturday mid-morning as I headed in was a manageably sunny-ish unwindy mid-30’s, so I got off the Green Line at the Hynes (rather than wait for the #1 bus enough that I walked on Mass(achusetts) Ave(nue) from the Green Line/Hynes stop, over the Charles River via the 364.4-smoot Harvard Bridge and then along Memorial (“Mem”) Drive to the hotel — interesting view of the ice’n’snow covered Charles River. (See picture up at top)

It’s not a bad walk — if you’re able-bodied, the weather not Cambridge-weather-inclement, and/or you’re schlepping luggage.

Heading home, though, it was beginning to drizzle, so I hopped the Arisia Shuttle to the Kendall Square T stop. All easy enough for me personally — but harder or unfeasible for many others, I have no doubt.

I was at Arisia 2025 for about six hours – which was plenty of time to browse the Dealers Room, peruse the Art Show (and buy one print for a gift), stroll the halls and chat with a dozen or two old friends, poke my head briefly into a panel or two, field-test my new smartphone by taking a few dozen pictures (for this article).

And even, while there was no Fast Track (this year) for me to do my magic show for, I had, on principle, packed and brought about a half-gallon or so’s worth of my cards, rabbits and other magic sundries. So when an adult proximate to another adult and a kid who look of Fast Track-appropriate age asked if I were going to be doing my magic show, I said, “Well, there’s no Fast Track this year, so I’m not doing that…but if you’ve got ten minutes now–” (No rabbits were harmed.) I’m glad I went; I’m now contemplating Boskone and ReaderCon.

SUNDRY OTHER INFO’N’THOUGHTS. I finally got to briefly see Rollacrit’s new (July 2024) revival/update of the ThinkGeek Messenger Bag of Holding (see my File770 review).

Rollacrit’s Messenger Bag of Holding Comes To Arisia

Tim Luz has a very nice bunch of Arisia 2025 pictures, over on his Facebook page. (Tim, great job on these!)

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2026! Arisia 2026 will be held Friday January 16-Monday January 19, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency Boston/Cambridge hotel. (The GoH’s haven’t yet been selected, FYI.)

Pixel Scroll 1/28/25 One Moon Was A Ghostly Galleon, The Other A Spirited Schooner

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) CHINESE FANZINE ZERO GRAVITY NEWS PUBLISHES THREE ISSUES. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Three issues of the Hugo Award-winning fanzine Zero Gravity News have just been published, featuring articles about their personal experiences from a number of Chinese fans. Here is the text of RiverFlow’s two tweets about the issues (slightly edited):

Chinese fanzine Zero Gravity has published a themed special “l With Sci-Fi” across three issues. Issues 25 and 26 contain the views of middle school and college students on science fiction. The 27th issue mainly contains the articles of the memories of working-age Chinese sci-fi fans.

This comes to a total of 480,000 words across the three issues, which can be said to be another collective voice of Chinese science fiction fans.

The PDFs of the three issues can be downloaded from this Google Drive link – each is around 10MB in size.

(2) EBOOK ALTERNATIVE HELPS INDIE BOOKSTORES. Bookshop.org US now is also selling ebooks.

Every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores. Our platform gives independent bookstores tools to compete online and financial support to help them maintain their presence in local communities.

NPR has the story — “Bookshop.org launches new e-book platform that exclusively supports local bookstores”.

…MARTÍNEZ: OK, there are already a lot of online retailers for e-books. I mean, millions of them are sold every year. So why are we focusing on this one?

FADEL: Well, this one exclusively supports local bookstores, and that’s because e-books are a difficult format for smaller booksellers to keep up with, according to Bookshop’s CEO, Andy Hunter.

ANDY HUNTER: Because the publisher requirements are so strict, it requires a huge amount of technical effort to deliver an e-book securely so it can’t be hacked and it can’t be pirated around the web. And that is too much for any individual local bookstore to deal with.

MARTÍNEZ: All right, so that makes sense. So what do indie bookstores think?

FADEL: We checked in with a few owners like Pete Mulvihill of Green Apple Books in San Francisco, and he told us his stores will take all the help they can get.

PETE MULVIHILL: We survive by kind of (laughter) scraping and clawing where we can to find efficiencies or make a little extra income. And this is another significant, if small, stream of income for us. So it’s truly helpful….

(3) ROMANTASY RINGING THE REGISTER. “Bestsellers – Critical Maas: Is this real life? Is this just fantasy?” asks The Bookseller about the UK market. Since the start of the year sff sales are up nearly a third, with fantasy titles driving the train. “Bookshops across the country may soon need to rebalance their space as readers continue to seek to escape from reality.”

You would be forgiven for thinking that bookshops were caught in a landslide of fantasy fiction in 2024 with authors such as Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros dominating the top end of the fiction charts – as seen in our Author Review of the Year in last week’s issue (The Bookseller, 17th January 2025). It was not just the spicy side of the genre represented either, with JRR Tolkien’s sales rising 21.3% year-on-year through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market and Brandon Sanderson appearing inside the top 50 authors of the year for the first time. Is this a trend that’s going to continue into 2025 – and, if it is, which series should we be keeping our eye on?

It is timely to start with Rebecca Yarros, as the third book in her Empyrean series – Onyx Storm – is published this week, while Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are sitting atop the Fantasy charts so far for 2025.

First published in hardback in 2023, the first two books in the series were released in paperback in 2024, with Fourth Wing placing 11th in the full-year chart, selling just shy of 250,000 copies. The paperback of Iron Flame was only released in November and has shifted 78,586 copies in its first nine weeks – 7.4% down on the equivalent period for its predecessor….

…While Yarros tops the fantasy chart so far for 2025, it is Sarah J Maas who dominates it, taking five of the top 10 spots. With TCM volume sales of 1.3 million units in 2024, the author of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series rooted herself into second place in our authors of the year chart with sales of £13.2m.

So far this year, Yarros’ value has already reached £483,676 – up 88.9% against the first two weeks of 2024 – and with fans eagerly awaiting the paperback release of last January’s House of Flame and Shadow, as well as the fifth ACOTAR novel, a surprise 2025 release or two could see Maas’ sales increase further still.

The bestselling fantasy hardback title at the moment could be the start of the next big thing. First published at the beginning of December, Quicksilver – the first instalment of Callie Hart’s Fae & Alchemy series – has sold 34,417 copies, with 17.9% of that coming in the past two weeks. A sequel is due later in 2025 but, so far, no date for the paperback edition has emerged. Another author to keep an eye on is Sarah A Parker, whose When the Moon Hatched is one of just three hardbacks inside the fantasy top 20, despite being first published back in June. It has just topped £1m worth of sales and consistently appears in the e-book charts provided by BookStat. The paperback is due in May, while the second book in the Moonfall series will be published in October of this year.

While 19 of the 20 listed here are romantasy – only Gregory Maguire’s Wicked bucks the trend – they are not the only sub-genre of the market on which to keep an eye. The third bestselling fantasy author of the moment is Brandon Sanderson, whose Cosmere universe has delivered £135,763, while Tolkien’s romance-free books have notched up £109,753 – though it is worth noting even when Tolkien and Sanderson’s sales are combined with second-placed Yarros, they still cannot top Maas’ total…..

(4) CHINESE NEW YEAR GALA BROADCAST. [Item by Ersatz Culture and Prograft.] The annual Chinese New Year/Spring Festival Gala was broadcast by state broadcaster CCTV/CMG on Tuesday 28th. The full (nearly 5 hour) show can be seen on YouTube, but the links below jump directly a couple of performances that may be the ones of most relevance to File 770:

A folk dance performed by robots and human dancers. Per this news article, this is “a traditional Yangko dance, a vibrant folk art form from northeast China” where “the robots showcased their ability to manipulate handkerchiefs, a signature element of Yangko dance“.

A friend sent me a link to the Taobao sales page for what seems to be the robots used in this performance. The link wouldn’t show me the full product list as I don’t have a user account there, but he also sent me a screenshot, which is below, along with a Google Translation. The prices per unit convert to approximately $69k and $90k USD.

A girls choir performed a folk song with elements relating to the Chinese space program, such as the moon, an astronaut and a space station, which were overlaid onto the broadcast. This news article has more information about the performers, although it does not really mention the space aspects.

(5) YOUNG ADULTS WRITE NOW. The Horror Writers Association blog today announced the 2024 recipients of the YAWN Endowment — Young Adults Write Now (YAWN).

This endowment is provided by the Horror Writers Association and is aimed at supporting teen writing programs in libraries as part of its ongoing dedication to furthering young adult literacy. We received a large number of excellent applications last year and are heartened by the number of libraries currently prioritizing teen writing programs.

The YAWN application period runs from August 1st to October 1st, with five recipients selected in October. Each recipient is awarded $250, to be put toward developing or supporting a teen writing program in their library. More about the endowment can be found on the Horror Writers Association’s website, via the Horror Scholarships page.

Libraries receiving funding will be able to use the monies for anything relating to their proposed or currently active writing program, including but not limited to: books (specifically young adult horror and books on writing), supplies, special events, publishing costs, guest speakers and instructors, additions to the collection, and operating expenses.

The recipients of the 2024 Young Adults Write Now Endowment are:

South Fayette Township Library (Pennsylvania)
San Benito County Free Library (California)
Wharton County Library (Texas)
Cuyahoga County Public Library, Garfield Heights Branch (Ohio)
Public Library of New London (Connecticut)

(6) KASEY AND JOE LANSDALE Q&A. The Horror Writers Association blog’s “Nuts & Bolts” series has added an “Interview With Kasey and Joe R. Lansdale”.

KASEY LANSDALE

Q: What marketing advice do you have for authors, especially in light of the changing social media landscape?

A: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Mailing list. Social platforms are too erratic. It doesn’t matter if you have a million followers if, let’s say for example, they ban your audience …

Q: Can you share any insights about publishing that many authors don’t know, but would benefit from knowing?

A: The cream does not rise to the top. The publishers in most cases pick their lead title and put most of their juice behind it, and if something else gets out, it’s by pure magic. There’s no formula or we would all be doing it. There are two kinds of publicists. The ones who shoot out to their mailing list and hope someone answers, and the ones who beat down doors and hope for answers. Unfortunately, the results are usually pretty on par with one another. But that’s not a defeat, that’s a call to action. That means that the author must tell the world about their books, and take the opportunities given to share it and themselves with the world.

(7) LAUREL AMBERDINE (1970-2025). Writer and editor Laurel Amberdine died January 21 at the age of 54. The SFWA Blog has published a tribute: “In Memoriam: Laurel Amberdine”.

Laurel Amberdine (1970–21 January 2025) was a writer, interviewer, and genre editor. She worked for Locus Magazine for ten years, and was an assistant editor for Lightspeed magazine.

Amberdine was known for her kind and thoughtful interviews, yet she also loved to write, both prose and poetry. Her short fiction story, “Airship Hope” was published by Daily Science Fiction in 2013, and in her 2018 essay “Science Fiction Saved My Life” (Uncanny Magazine), she discussed how her chronic illness and disability had affected her, how finding writing gave her purpose, and how privilege inherent in the industry limits voices that readers may need to hear. Amberdine wrote a young adult novel, Luminator, which made it far along in the publication process, as well as an adult science-fiction novel.

Amberdine was known for her kindness and warmth, rooted in her Catholic faith, and extended to all who she encountered….

(8) AL SARRANTONIO (1952-2025). Sff/h writer, editor and publisher Al Sarrantonio has died reported Chet Williamson on Facebook. Wikipedia has a detailed article about his career.

Al Sarrantonio in the Seventies. Photo by and copyright © Andrew Porter.

He began an editing career at a major New York publishing house in 1976. His first short fiction, “Ahead of the Joneses,” appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1979, and the following year he published 14 short stories. In 1982 he left publishing to become a full-time writer.

He established himself in the horror field with such much-anthologized stories as “Pumpkin Head”, “The Man With Legs”, “Father Dear,” “Wish”, and “Richard’s Head,” (all of which appear in his first short story collection, Toybox). “Richard’s Head” brought him his first Bram Stoker Award nomination.

Sarrantonio won a Bram Stoker Award in 2000 for his anthology 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense, and a Shirley Jackson Award in 2011 for the anthology Stories: All-New Tales (co-edited with Neil Gaiman; it also won an Audie). Both books also were finalists for the World Fantasy Award.

(9) JEANNOT SZWARC (1940-2025). The Guardian’s writeup about movie/TV director Jeannot Szwarc is almost harshly frank: “Jeannot Szwarc obituary”. “Director whose big screen credits include Jaws 2, Supergirl and Santa Claus: The Movie alongside a 50-year career in television.” He also directed Somewhere in Time.

…His blockbusters, though, were among the most maligned films of their age. When asked about Jaws 2, Szwarc said: “I do believe I deserve some credit for just pulling it off.”

The odds were not in his favour. He had less than a month to prepare when the picture’s original director, John Hancock, quit three weeks into production. Only 90 seconds of what Hancock had shot proved usable. At that point, Szwarc said, “It was the biggest disaster in the history of Universal. They had spent $10m, and they had nothing.”

An unfinished script, bad weather and a malfunctioning mechanical shark only added to Szwarc’s woes as an immovable release date loomed. He was under no illusions about the task at hand. “I knew it wasn’t going to be a cinematic masterpiece. All I went in with was knowing I had to make it scary, and that I had to finish it.”

The film, which features a scene in which a shark chomps on a sea rescue helicopter as it attempts to take off from water, was met with dismay by critics. Riding the wave of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 predecessor, however, it was still a hit, grossing $187m….

…His TV credits in the early 70s included Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man and more than a fifth of the episodes of the long-running macabre suspense series Night Gallery.

Among his television films was The Small Miracle (1973), which starred one of his heroes, the Italian neo-realist director Vittorio De Sica. “I told him I felt like an art student who had to instruct Michelangelo,” he said.

Szwarc made his big-screen debut in the same year with the Michael Crichton-scripted thriller Extreme Close-Up. He followed this with Bug (1975), a horror film about pyromaniac cockroaches, which became the swansong of the ingenious horror producer William Castle….

…Between 2003 and 2011, he returned to the Supergirl/DC Comics milieu by directing 14 episodes of Smallville, the television series about Superman’s younger years…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 28, 1973 — Carrie Vaughn, 52.

By Paul Weimer: Carrie Vaughn’s urban fantasy series, the Kitty Norville series, is probably very well known to you. A radio DJ turned accidental radio talk show host who is (at first secretly) a werewolf gets involved with other aspects of the slowly revealed supernatural community, bringing them out into the open and having the United States and the world come to terms with them. It’s as if the Masquerade (from White Wolf) was being slowly and steadily lifted, and for everyone all at once.

Even then and even now, that goes against the grain of a lot of Urban fantasy, which either has the supernatural always out and open, or following the Masquerade model. But a series that considers the problems werewolves, vampires and others have adapting to modern society–and modern society adapting to others? That’s a lovely sociological and anthropological twist. Those first few novels, as Kitty herself comes to terms with her secret coming out, are really strong and I think they hold up to this day.

And Norville is and was willing to expand the playground and consider–if supernatural creatures have always been around, what does that, what did that actually mean in historical terms. There’s some really lovely worldbuilding in her nuanced explorations of the idea.

But a reason why the Norville books also hold a strong place in my heart is that they are, again, some of the earliest books I was given ARCs to read for review (the first three as a matter of fact). Although urban fantasy (except for, say, Seanan McGuire) is not my power chord of reading SFF, the idea that a publisher would give me books if I would review them was a pretty heady feeling.

Still is.

I’ve read a couple of novels and work by Vaughn outside of the Kitty Norville books (After the Golden Age, written in that heady period where authors were writing original superhero novels not tied to Marvel or DC). But for me, it may be unfair, Vaughn’s work begins and ends with a DJ turned accidental social heroine.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Jerry King knows why the monsters aren’t in their old hiding place.
Reality Check has a Dickens update.
Cornered misses a friend. [Warning for amazing bad taste.]
Thatababy has DIY special effects.
The Argyle Sweater should not practice medicine. Even in Hyperborea.
Wumo witnesses – different planet, same complaint.

(12) INSIDE DOCTOR WHO. Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat tell what it’s like writing a different Doctor. Watch video at X.com.

(13) STOP THAT GARBAGE TRUCK! “Scans for the memories: why old games magazines are a vital source of cultural history – and nostalgia” explains the Guardian.

Before the internet, if you were an avid gamer then you were very likely to be an avid reader of games magazines. From the early 1980s, the likes of Crash, Mega, PC Gamer and the Official PlayStation Magazine were your connection with the industry, providing news, reviews and interviews as well as lively letters pages that fostered a sense of community. Very rarely, however, did anyone keep hold of their magazine collections. Lacking the cultural gravitas of music or movie publications, they were mostly thrown away. While working at Future Publishing as a games journalist in the 1990s, I watched many times as hundreds of old issues of SuperPlay, Edge and GamesMaster were tipped into skips for pulping. I feel queasy just thinking about it.

Because now, of course, I and thousands of other video game veterans have realised these magazines are a vital historical resource as well as a source of nostalgic joy. Surviving copies of classic mags are selling at a vast premium on eBay, and while the Internet Archive does contain patchy collections of scanned magazines, it is vulnerable to legal challenges from copyright holders.

Thankfully, there are institutions taking the preservation of games magazines seriously. Last week, the Video Game History Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation of games and their history, announced that from 30 January, it would be opening up its digital archive of out-of-print magazines to read and study online. So far 1,500 issues of mostly American games mags are available, as well as art books and other printed ephemera, but the organisation is busy scanning its entire collection. The digitised content will be fully tagged and searchable by word or phrase, so you’ll be able to easily track down the first mentions of, say, Minecraft, John Romero, or the survival horror genre….

(14) OH, THAT’S DIFFERENT. NEVER MIND. “An asteroid got deleted because it was actually Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster” says Astronomy.com.

On Jan. 2, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid, designated 2018 CN41. First identified and submitted by a citizen scientist, the object’s orbit was notable: It came less than 150,000 miles (240,000 km) from Earth, closer than the orbit of the Moon. That qualified it as a near-Earth object (NEO) — one worth monitoring for its potential to someday slam into Earth.

But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) issued an editorial notice: It was deleting 2018 CN41 from its records because, it turned out, the object was not an asteroid.

It was a car.

To be precise, it was Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster mounted to a Falcon Heavy upper stage, which boosted into orbit around the Sun on Feb. 6, 2018. The car — which had been owned and driven by Musk — was a test payload for the Falcon Heavy’s first flight….

(15) PREPARE FOR THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] See the Orchard Machinery Corporation’s imposing Hedgehog tree trimming machine hacking along to Zombie as covered by Bad Wolves. Could this be a subtle hint that we should prepare for the zombie apocalypse? If so, such a machine might come in handy.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Orchard Machinery Corporation (@omcshakermaker)

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

ALA Announces 2025 Youth Media Award Winners

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Mike Glyer

The American Library Association today announced the 2025 Youth Media Award winners — the top books, digital media, video and audio books for children and young adults –at its LibLearnX: The Library Learning Experience held January 24-27 in Phoenix. A work of genre interest took one of the top awards, the John Newbery Medal.

John Newbery Medal

John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature:

The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly

In The First State of Being, a boy living in 1999 meets a mysterious boy from the future with a book that outlines the events of the next 20 years. This is the second Newbery for Kelly; she won the 2018 medal for Hello, Universe, as well as a Newbery Honor in 2021 for We Dream of Space.

The rest of the award winners are listed following the jump.

Continue reading →

Pixel Scroll 1/27/25 For The Scroll Was A Boojum, You See

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) ENNIE TABLETOP GAME AWARD BANS AI ENTRIES. The ENNIE Awards will no longer allow AI content in submissions, effective with the 2025-26 awards season: “Revised Policy on Generative AI Usage”. The complete discussion is at the link.

…In 2023, the ENNIE Awards introduced their initial policy on generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs). The policy recognized the growing presence of these technologies in modern society and their nuanced applications, from generating visual and written content to supporting background tasks such as PDF creation and word processing. The intent was to encourage honesty and transparency from creators while maintaining a commitment to human-driven creativity. Under this policy, creators self-reported AI involvement, and submissions with AI contributions were deemed ineligible for certain categories. For example, products featuring AI-generated art were excluded from art categories but remained eligible for writing categories if the text was entirely human-generated, and vice versa. The organizers faced challenges in crafting a policy that balanced inclusivity with the need to uphold the values of creativity and originality. Recognizing that smaller publishers and self-published creators often lack the resources of larger companies, the ENNIE Awards sought to avoid policies that might disproportionately impact those with limited budgets.

However, feedback from the TTRPG community has made it clear that this policy does not go far enough. Generative AI remains a divisive issue, with many in the community viewing it as a threat to the creativity and originality that define the TTRPG industry. The prevailing sentiment is that AI-generated content, in any form, detracts from a product rather than enhancing it.

In response to this feedback, the ENNIE Awards are amending their policy regarding generative AI. Beginning with the 2025-2026 submission cycle, the ENNIE Awards will no longer accept any products containing generative AI or created with the assistance of Large Language Models or similar technologies for visual, written, or edited content. Creators wishing to submit products must ensure that no AI-generated elements are included in their works. While it is not feasible to retroactively alter the rules for the 2024-2025 season, this revised policy reflects the ENNIE Awards commitment to celebrating the human creativity at the heart of the TTRPG community…

(2) ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALS. The 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal winners were announced by the American Library Association today. Neither is a genre work.

FICTION

James by Percival Everett (Doubelday)

NONFICTION

Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko (Scribner)

…Calling James “an astounding riposte” to Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the ALA said that Everett “takes the story in a completely different direction than the original, exemplifying the relentless courage and moral clarity of an honorable man with nothing to lose.” Fedarko’s A Walk in the Park, which “follows the author on a canyon-spanning group hike…particularly inspires in detailing the ancestral history of the land and some of the Indigenous individuals who continue to fight against overdevelopment and ever-booming tourism,” the ALA said….

(3) FOREVER CHANGED. Sakinah Hofler, winner of the 2024 Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices, tells in a new essay how science fiction, especially Octavia Butler’s, opened Hofler’s mind to new possibilities in her writing: “Defamiliarization: Against Reality to Examine Reality” at The Astounding Analog Companion.

… I remember this as a pivotal moment when science fiction changed everything I thought I knew about what I wanted to write as well as what I thought writing could do.

The first book in the Patternist series, Wild Seed, mainly takes place in West Africa and America. There are elements of slavery in it, but we are also introduced to two evolved humans—Doro, an immortal spirit who can travel from body to body, and Anwanyu, a shape-shifter and healer—characters who, over the centuries, fluctuate between being allies and enemies. During the height of the slave trade, both of them, separately, wind up starting their own colonies of superhumans. What drew me in and what made this novel feel different and refreshing was Butler’s ability to make the familiar unfamiliar, or, as dubbed by Darko Suvin, evoke a feeling of “cognitive estrangement.” She created a world familiar enough for me to recognize, yet, by injecting supernatural elements had destabilized my understanding of reality, thwarted my expectations, and offered an alternative, complicated, hopeful history and future….

(4) NEW CLARION WEST SCHOLARSHIP. Clarion West today announced a “Scholarship for Trans Writers”.

We are delighted to announce the Sea Star Scholarship, an annual full-tuition scholarship for our flagship Six-Week Workshop, offered by an anonymous donor, which will be awarded each year to one qualifying student who identifies as two-spirit, trans, nonbinary, or under the gender expansive umbrella.

Through the generosity of our donors, Clarion West provides a number of scholarships for writers every year. Approximately 60–90% of our Six-Week Workshop participants receive full and partial-tuition scholarships. Interested students must indicate financial need when applying to the summer workshop. Applications are reviewed without regard to financial aid requests. You can learn more about scholarships for the Six-Week Workshop here.

At Clarion West we are proud to be part of a supportive community for trans, two-spirit, nonbinary, and other gender expansive authors who continue to change and inform the landscape of speculative fiction for the better. We know that trans writers are and will continue to be essential in expanding the boundaries of SFFH and are equally essential in inviting new exciting voices into the field.

We know the journey for each trans writer is different, and that trans people represent all racial and ethnic backgrounds, faith traditions, and countries around the world. And we know that while there has been significant progress in the publishing world, the transgender community is still facing significant political and personal attacks through discrimination and violence, especially against Black and Brown trans women.

We remain committed to supporting trans authors and learning how to better support them in a field that can be hostile and unwelcoming. We do this through our efforts to provide an intersectional framework of support for trans authors. The organization welcomes trans faculty, seeks to create supportive spaces for trans authors in workshop groups, and makes every effort to create an inclusive community throughout our programs.

Transphobia is not welcome or tolerated in our classrooms, at our events, nor in our workspace. We support our students and community members with robust community guidelines and anti-harassment reporting policies. When we are informed of instructor or participant misconduct, Clarion West makes every effort to verify, follow up with those who may have been harmed, and to ensure that we take the steps necessary to prevent future misconduct, up to and including exclusion from Clarion West classes and events.

In the spirit of celebrating the contributions of trans and nonbinary writers to our field, we are working on a recommended reading list of trans and nonbinary writers who are either Clarion West alumni and/or Clarion West faculty! If you would like your website or stories on this list, please contact us at workshop@clarionwest.org!

(5) FEDERAL DEPARTMENT BAILS ON FIGHTING BOOK BANS. Shelf Awareness reports “Department of Education Calls Book Bans a ‘Hoax,’ Dismisses Complaints”.

In an ominous indication of the new administration’s approach to book censorship, on Friday the new leadership of the Department of Education announced that its Office for Civil Rights has “dismissed” 17 complaints and pending complaints “related to so-called ‘book bans’ ” and said the idea that “local school districts’ removal of age-inappropriate, sexually explicit, or obscene materials from their school libraries created a hostile environment for students” and constitutes a civil rights violation is “a meritless claim based upon a dubious legal theory.” The Office for Civil Rights also ended the position of “book ban coordinator” and rescinded an agreement reached with Forsyth County School District in Georgia. The Office’s statement has the headline, “U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax.”

The announcement of the changes stated in part, “On Jan. 20, 2025, incoming OCR leadership initiated a review of alleged ‘book banning’ cases pending at the department. Attorneys quickly confirmed that books are not being ‘banned,’ but that school districts, in consultation with parents and community stakeholders, have established commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials. Because this is a question of parental and community judgment, not civil rights, OCR has no role in these matters.”

The Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor added, “By dismissing these complaints and eliminating the position and authorities of a so-called ‘book ban coordinator,’ the department is beginning the process of restoring the fundamental rights of parents to direct their children’s education. The department adheres to the deeply rooted American principle that local control over public education best allows parents and teachers alike to assess the educational needs of their children and communities. Parents and school boards have broad discretion to fulfill that important responsibility. These decisions will no longer be second-guessed by the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.”

Several book world organizations responded quickly. Kasey Meehan, director, Freedom to Read, at PEN America, said in a statement: “For over three years we have countered rhetoric that book bans occurring in public schools are a ‘hoax.’ They are absolutely not. This kind of language from the U.S. Department of Education is alarming and dismissive of the students, educators, librarians, and authors who have firsthand experiences of censorship happening within school libraries and classrooms….

(6) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present: Clay McLeod Chapman & Rebecca Fraimow on Wednesday, February 12. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003, (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs). Starts at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

Clay McLeod Chapman

Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, comic books, young adult and middle grade books, as well as for film and television. His most recent novels include Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, What Kind of Mother, and Ghost Eaters.

Rebecca Fraimow

Rebecca Fraimow is the author of science fiction romantic comedy Lady Eve’s Last Con, a NY Times Best Romance Novel of 2024, as well as the science fiction novella The Iron Children. Rebecca has also published short stories in various venues, including the Hugo-longlisted “This Is New Gehesran Calling,” and cohosts the podcast Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones with Emily Tesh. Rebecca also works as an audiovisual archivist preserving the history of public television. She’s married to fellow author Elizabeth Porter Birdsall and lives in Boston with a couple of extremely lucky black cats.

(7) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? In Episode16 of his Why Not Say What Happened? podcast Scott Edelman invites listeners to find out “What Teen Me Got Wrong (Twice!) About Jim Steranko”.

Join me as I look back at the trouble I had getting out of an elevator at the first Star Trek convention, what my ballot looked like when I voted for the 1968 Alley Awards, the composers who wrote the music to match the lyrics I had Rick Jones sing in Captain Marvel #50, what teen me got wrong (twice!) about Jim Steranko, the three comics characters I almost cosplayed as at the 1972 Rutland Halloween parade, the mystery woman who would have been my Beautiful Dreamer on a Forever People float, and much more.

And it can be downloaded through a variety of platforms at this link.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 27, 1999 — Voyager episode “Bride of Chaotica”

Captain Janeway: Coffee, black.

Neelix: I’m sorry, Captain. We’ve lost another two replicators

Kathryn Janeway: Listen to me very carefully because I’m only going to say this once. Coffee – black.

Twenty-six years ago this evening on the UPN network Star Trek: Voyager‘s “Bride of Chaotica!” first aired. It was the twelfth episode of the fifth season of the series. The episode is a loving homage to the 1936 Flash Gordon film serial and 1939 Buck Rogers film serial that followed. Much of the episode was shot in black and white to emulate the look of those shows.

The episode largely takes place on the Holodeck set because of a small fire to the Bridge set that had occurred while the episode was in production, so the Bridge scenes were shot weeks later after the set was repaired and many of the scenes that were originally set for the Bridge were either entirely rewritten or set on a different part of the ship.

The story was Bryan Fuller who was the writer and executive producer on Voyager and Deep Space Nine; he is also the co-creator of Discovery. The script was by Fuller and Michael Taylor who was best known as a writer on Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

Critics really liked it. SyFy Wire said it was “campy, hilarious, hysterical, brilliant, and an absolute joy.” And CBR noted that Voyager was “having fun with its goofier side.”

The coffee dialogue had me looking up drink preferences for the Captains. We know Picard liked Earl Grey tea, and I’m reasonably sure Kirk was never shown drinking a morning brew. (Alcoholic drinks are another matter, aren’t they for all of them?) Sisko enjoyed raktajino, a potent Klingon coffee, and Archer drank sweetened iced tea. I can’t find anything that indicates what Burnham had for a morning drink.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 27, 1957 — Frank Miller, 68.

By Paul Weimer: I come to talk to you about Frank Miller strictly in his movie adaptations and work. As is my wont and practice, these writeups are my own personal engagement with a creator and their work. I could write a Wikipedia-style article cribbed from sources but that wouldn’t be me. That would be barely better than LLM.

So I’ve never sat down to read his extensive comic book oeuvre. I am not a huge comics fan to begin with, my interests are occasional, narrow and scattershot. But that’s a story for another time.

Frank Miller came to my attention through the movies, and it was through the original Sin City that he really came to my attention. I was absorbed by the visuals, the style, and the strong archetypal characters that we see in the original movie. I didn’t even know, until after I had watched it, that there was a graphic novel that had originated the story. I did later flip through it, just to see how the one had been adapted to the other.

But time and life is short and I didn’t go into Miller’s comic oeuvre. Instead, I kept an eye out on the films he wrote and directed and contributed to. The ahistorical 300, which I rationalize its utter ahistoricity in my mind as being a pack of lies being told by the one-eyed Dilios to get the Greeks pumped up and ready to fight. He’s a storyteller, he’s lying about the battle rhinos and everything else.

300 Rise of an Empire doesn’t have that frame to work, and I think it’s a stronger film, too. The Spirit? An utter and terrible mess and I can’t recommend it for any real reason. I did not need to see Samuel Jackson in a fascist uniform. I just didn’t. And the second Sin City? For me, it didn’t capture the magic of the first. Maybe because we “Saw it already before” and the surprise splash of the first had receded. We know the tricks in the bag for the film, and so the second movie just is…there, and not as good as one might like. I’ve never revisited it, although I’ve watched the original Sin City again more than once.

In any event, his visuals have been a leading light of neo-noir style and are strong on those axes, an inspiration for those interested in visuals of that type.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro eavesdrops on a beginning cartoonist.
Reality Check reveals Superman’s other allergy.

(11) KEEP BANGING ON. “’The Big Bang Theory’ Is Nielsen’s “Most-Binged” Streaming Title Of 2024” – Deadline has the story.

The Big Bang Theory finished 2024 as the year’s “most-binged title” in streaming, according to a new report from Nielsen.

The sitcom averaged 265.5 episodes per viewer on Max, the measurement firm said, or 29.1 billion minutes of total viewing. The long-running former CBS series has 281 total episodes available for streaming.

Coming in at No. 7 overall among this year’s top streaming titles, Big Bang saw 58% of its watch time accounted for by adults 18 to 49.

The “average episodes per viewer” stat refers to the amount of time (with episodes lasting at least 20 minutes each) spent viewing the show. It does not indicate the number of unique episodes seen by each viewer….

(12) TAROT. [Item by Steven French.] The answer to the question at the end of this quote may surprise some! “From secret societies to Selfridges: the eccentric geniuses responsible for the macabre world of tarot” in the Guardian.

It certainly wasn’t obvious from the beginning when someone in a Milanese court added 22 new picture cards – drawing on Roman gods or classical virtues such as temperance or love which could act as an allegory for life – to a standard deck in order to enhance the complexity and fun of the game. “It wouldn’t be until the late-18th century,” says co-curator Jonathan Allen, “that a French pastor and scholar of the occult, Antoine Court de Gébelin, came to the conclusion that what he was looking at wasn’t an ordinary set of cards, but actually a concealed Egyptian religious text called the Book of Thoth.” A Parisian print seller and former seed merchant called John-Baptiste Alliette soon appropriated the theory, founded a society dedicated to its study and established himself as interpreter of the Book of Thoth before producing a new tarot deck explicitly used for fortune-telling under the reversed pen-name Etteilla. His deck, largely used by secret aristocratic magical societies, set the visual and spiritual tone in thinking and practice for the next few centuries until the early 20th century and the British occult revival.

It was the various expulsions and fragmentations of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn – a secret society exploring magic and occult mysticism which included WB Yeats and Aleister Crowley as members – that then created the dominant decks of the 20th and 21st centuries…

(13) STANDING UP TO TECH BROS. “Elton John backs Paul McCartney in criticising proposed overhaul to UK copyright system” reports the Guardian.

Elton John has backed Paul McCartney in criticising a proposed overhaul of the UK copyright system, and has called for new rules to prevent tech companies from riding “roughshod over the traditional copyright laws that protect artists’ livelihoods”.

John has backed proposed amendments to the data (use and access) bill that would extend existing copyright protections, when it goes before a vote in the House of Lords on Tuesday.

The government is also consulting on an overhaul of copyright laws that would result in artists having to opt out of letting AI companies train their models using their work, rather than an opt-in model.

McCartney told the BBC that the proposed changes could disincentivise writers and artists and result in a “loss of creativity”. The former Beatle said: “You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off.”

“The truth is, the money’s going somewhere … Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote Yesterday?”

John told the Sunday Times that he felt “wheels are in motion to allow AI companies to ride roughshod over the traditional copyright laws that protect artists’ livelihoods. This will allow global big tech companies to gain free and easy access to artists’ work in order to train their artificial intelligence and create competing music. This will dilute and threaten young artists’ earnings even further. The musician community rejects it wholeheartedly.”

(14) ALIEN: EARTH NEWS. Deadline has a roundup — “’Alien: Earth’ Key Art Shares Terrifying New Look At Xenomorph”.

A teaser trailer of a spaceship making a crash landing on Earth dropped during the AFC Championship game [on Sunday]….

…From Noah Hawley, Alien: Earth is set two years before the events of the 1979 film Alien.

According to the show’s synopsis, “When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in the sci-fi horror series Alien: Earth.

(15) RARE AIR. Anton Petrov talks about the “Bizarre Planet With 9km/s Winds That Absolutely Makes No Sense”.

(16) COOL WORLDS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Prof David Kipping, the Brit astrophysicist at Columbia U, USA, over at Cool Worlds looks at a forthcoming paper due to be published in Nature Astronomy.

What they have done is surveyed exoplanets that are more or less Earth-sized around K and M type stars. (M-type stars are small red dwarfs that are so cold that habitable exoplanets have to be close to the star and so are tidally locked. Also, because of their low mass, M-types stars prone to flaring which is not good for any nearby putative life. However, K-type stars are just a little more like Earth’s G-type Sun and so are of exobiological interest.) what they have found is that these planet’s orbits are almost circular just like our Earth’s…

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 John Hertz.]

Warner Holme Review: Alex Pheby’s Malarkoi

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Mike Glyer

Malarkoi by Alex Pheby (Tor, 2023)

By Warner Holme: Alex Pheby’s Malarkoi is a sequel to his Mordew. As a result it is the second book in his Cities of the Weft series. Meticulously written, this volume picks up with an assortment of characters dealing with the strangeness of this new city, while all of the old problems seem to have steadily built into a new set of monstrous issues.

There is a long dry, and yet not without humor, dramatis personae as well as an explanation of the events of the first book. These would work well enough as a catch up, and while they don’t necessarily prepare a reader for the tone of the book, they certainly give a basis for understanding the situation at the beginning. The quick summary of some of the events within the pages, on the other hand, is clearly there primarily for humor.

A nice mark of the quality the pearls of text can reach comes on page 361. When it is noted that “Sirious collapsed, the realm that he was in came tearing it to pieces with the force of his loneliness” in a both metaphorical and literal, look at the harm and damage that can be done to an individual and his surroundings through difficult emotions. Context does little to add or subtract from this bit of raw and delightful emotion.

In spite of this the book works hard to be darkly comic, human-headed animals talk, talking dogs have crisis in faith, and individuals with magical powers weigh the uselessness of their options. In many cases, it’s almost creating humor by playing absurdism straight to unusual or outright bizarre results.

There is still a large amount of dark material appearing throughout, and the book continues on for many pages after the narrative proper has ended. A lot of this is due to a particularly peculiar appendix as well as detailed explanations of various other individuals, and they are stranger aspects connecting to this world.

For a fan of the style, these are delightful treatises, but for anyone who doesn’t enjoy pseudo-academic commentary and false footnotes, they will quickly cause a mental drift. Some of the snippets work quite well as shorts in their own right. Still, they do provide some tantalizing treats and amusing changes in tone which are appreciated and contribute well to the overall effect.

While fans of the first book will almost undoubtedly enjoy this book, those who have not experienced the preceding one can readily skip it. This is because while well-written and featuring a fairly large introduction explaining the characters and previous plot, it very much does not do anything to prepare the reader in a true sense for what is to come. To someone curious and on the fence, just start with the first book and see how that shakes out the mental cobwebs.

Pixel Scroll 1/26/25 Pixels To The Left, Filers To The Right, I’m Stuck In The Middle With This Scroll

Posted on January 26, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) WHAT’S ‘BEST’ THIS YEAR. Siobhan Maria Carroll reviews the 2024 editon of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy in “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and the End of Earnestness” at Los Angeles Review of Books.

NOW IN ITS 10TH year, the annual Best American Science Fiction and Fantasyanthology provides an excellent overview of short genre fiction published in the United States. Each year, series editor John Joseph Adams selects 80 short stories from SF magazines and literary journals for blind review by a guest editor, who chooses their favorites from among them. This process maintains a high level of quality and consistency, while also allowing the guest editor to make a distinctive mark on each collection.

Hugh Howey, the 2024 guest editor, rose to fame after his self-published dystopian story“Wool” (2011) became an online sensation, leading to his stories’ distribution by Simon & Schuster and their adaptation into the Apple TV+ series Silo (2023– ). As might be expected for an author with a good eye for the market, Howey’s choices for the 2024 collection steer more toward the crowd-pleasing than those of my favorite series entry—the 2019 volume edited by Carmen Maria Machado. The result, however, is an impressive array of stories that will likely appeal both to casual readers and would-be writers….

… The high-water mark of the new millennium’s Age of Earnestness (the supposed successor to the 1990s Age of Irony) was directly tied to the rise of Twitter, as well as to a reading culture where attempts at nuanced expression could swiftly fall victim to dogpiles and hot takes. At least 12 of the 20 stories included in this volume (several of them from writers outspoken on social justice issues) were published in online magazines in 2023 in the wake of Twitter’s post-Musk exodus. Writing this review in the aftermath of the American election, I cannot help but perceive these stories as anticipatory responses to a changed technological and social culture. They are less overt in their depiction of “good” politics than previous entries in the Best American series, more interested in the psychology of “bad” and morally ambiguous characters, and more interested in depicting characters whose ability to change oppressive systems is limited or nonexistent….

(2) JOHN BARROWMAN NOW CLAIMS VICTIMHOOD STATUS. “’It was crap’: John Barrowman still refuses to take accountability for his actions” according to The Mary Sue.

Another day, another man fails to see how his sexually inappropriate behavior is wrong. This time around the man is John Barrowman, who up until a few years ago was one of Doctor Who’s most beloved stars. He played Captain Jack Harkness, one of the first pansexual characters on British TV, and was one-half of the show’s very first same-sex kiss. Fans adored him for his charm and charisma. That’s no longer the case.

Barrowman’s downfall was the result of another sexual misconduct allegation. In 2021, Noel Clarke, who played Mickey Smith on the show, was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Any chance of his ever returning to Doctor Who went up in smoke, as did his career. During this media storm, journalists uncovered some old footage of Clarke at a 2015 convention discussing Barrowman’s dubious behavior. He spoke about how Barrowman was allegedly constantly “taking his d*** out” on set and once even rested it on co-star Camille Coduri’s shoulder when they were in a makeup truck (she confirmed that she remembered this incident in the video but offered no further context). Seemingly, this had been tolerated for a while—but it wasn’t about to be tolerated any longer.

It turned out that Barrowman had been called out for his behavior in the past, but had seemingly learned nothing. In 2008, he admitted to exposing himself during a BBC Radio 1 show and apologized for it, saying he “went too far.” This apology was seemingly at the forefront of his mind when he made another apology in the wake of the 2021 allegations.

“With the benefit of hindsight, I understand that upset may have been caused by my exuberant behavior and I have apologized for this previously,” he said in a statement. “Since my apology in November 2008, my understanding and behavior have also changed.”

But apparently, this actually resulted in Barrowman learning nothing. Instead of changing and growing, he’s simply bitter that he lost his Doctor Who gig and a large portion of his entertainment career. He said as much to Wales Online recently. “I think I’ve been badly treated, definitely,” he complained. “I’m disgusted at the way my Doctor Who and Torchwood family turned their backs on me—99% of the things that were said about me were bulls***.”

Barrowman claimed that “no one was offended, no one was upset,” by his actions—but clearly, this isn’t true if he was delivering apologies. “It was crap,” he went on. “I ended up being good clickbait and it has lasted for three years. It’s been devastating—to the point I was blackballed. I can’t get into a room for an audition or a meeting anymore.”…

(3) DROPPING GENRE NAMES. Shelf Awareness brings us “Reading with… Carter Wilson”:

Book you’re an evangelist for:

William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. This might have been the only book I had to read in high school English that I fell in love with. The sheer creativity of Goldman is astonishing.

Book you’ve bought for the cover:

Well, it’s much more common I don’t buy a book because of the cover. But I will say I was persuaded by the gorgeousness of Anne Rice’s complete Vampire Chronicles. Gorgeous wrought-iron detailing all over the cover of that one

Book that changed your life:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Not sure any book has truly changed my life, but The Road is a book that forces you to read every single word. I can’t think of any other author whose use of language is as compelling as McCarthy’s.

Favorite line from a book:

“Don’t Panic.” –Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…

(4) WHERE CASTLE? If any Filefolk happen to be in the Paris area this summer: “Rare manuscript from middle ages that inspired Disney castle to go on display for first time in 40 years” in the Guardian. Despite the headline, the article never says what Disney castle they’re talking about. I guess you’re just supposed to know. However, the castle at the original Disneyland took its cues from Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein Castle.

… Pages from Les Très Riches Heures (The Very Rich Hours) – an elaborately decorated prayer book from the 15th century – will be exhibited at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris, after a costly restoration. It has not been seen, even by historians and academics, since the 1980s….

…He said the exhibition would also feature books from the duke of Berry’s collection on display for the first time since the 15th century. Berry, known as John the Magnificent, whose motto was “Le Temps venra” (the time will come), was one of medieval France’s greatest patrons of the arts and collected illuminated manuscripts.

Deldicque said the restoration of Les Très Riches Heures would be completed after the exhibition closes and the manuscript returns to the museum’s archive.

“It is too fragile and at risk of damage from light to be on permanent display,” he said. “That’s why this exhibition will be unique. Everyone knows about this book – but nobody has seen it.”…

(5) ON THE HORROR TRAIL. [Item by Steven French.] For the travelling horror fan, Atlas Obscura has compiled a list of fourteen must-see places to visit: “14 Haunting Places in Literature”.

There’s nothing quite like a horror story. The supernatural and macabre have haunted our imaginations for centuries—and inspired writers for centuries to create works that can terrify us.

We’ve compiled a list of our favorite places across the world that have appeared in horror literature, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to places that inspired Edgar Allan Poe before his death. Take a spine-tingling tour of these horror-inspiring locations—if you dare….

Here’s one of their bizarre destinations.

“The Raven that Inspired Dickens and Poe”

Perched on a log in the Rare Books department of the Free Library of Philadelphia stands a strange piece of history. Dead since 1841, but preserved with arsenic, and frozen inside a shadow box, this bird’s legacy is longer than most people’s. The raven’s name is Grip. Grip the Clever, Grip the Wicked, Grip the Knowing.

Once Charles Dickens’ pet raven, upon its death Dickens had it professionally taxidermied and mounted. Grip even makes an appearance in Barnaby Rudge, one of Dickens’ lesser-known stories.

The book was reviewed for Graham’s Magazine by its literary critic at the time, Edgar Allan Poe. Poe wrote that “[the raven’s] croaking might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama.” It wasn’t long after this that Poe published his breakout work “The Raven.” The coincidence didn’t escape notice, and Poe was taunted with the refrain “Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, / Three fifths of him genius, two fifths sheer fudge.”

Despite this, “The Raven” was a smashing success and Poe enjoyed performing readings at fancy salon parties. He would turn down all the lights and recite the poem with great drama. Everyone referred to him as “the Raven,” but it would only be four years after publishing “The Raven” and gaining worldwide fame that Poe would be found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, dying shortly thereafter….

(6) CHRISTOPHER BENJAMIN (1934-2025). Actor Christopher Benjamin died January 10 at the age of 90. The portion of his career of interest to sff fans is noted by the Guardian’s obituary:

With a portly but athletic physicality, a rich baritone voice, a bloodhound, drooping visage and a sarcastic sense of humour, Christopher Benjamin, who has died aged 90, was a backbone actor on television, but mostly stage, for many years.

He had a sort of internet afterlife when his role as Henry Gordon Jago in the BBC TV 1977 Doctor Who saga The Talons of Weng-Chiang was reprised in an audio supernatural mystery series from 2010 to 2021.

Benjamin was on TV and radio from 1965, appearing in Z Cars, The Avengers, The Saint, Jason King and, notably as the same character, Potter, in Danger Man and its more surreal, sci-fi spin-off, The Prisoner, both starring Patrick McGoohan. …

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 26, 1994 — Babylon 5 series premieres

Thirty-one years ago on PTEN, the Prime Time Entertainment Network, a syndicated network organized by Warner Brothers, the Babylon 5 series premiered. It was created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski. It followed Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993), the pilot film which aired a year earlier. It would run for five twenty-two episode seasons as planned plus six related films.

It generated a spin-off series, Crusade, but that only lasted thirteen episodes. Two other series were planned, The Legend of the Rangers and The Lost Tales, but neither got past the pilot.

Its cast was marked by tragedy with a number of the principal actors dying young including Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, Jeff Conaway, Jerry Doyle, Andreas Katsulas and Michael O’Hare.

It won two Hugo Awards for “The Coming of Shadows” at L.A. Con III and “Severed Dreams” at LoneStarCon II.

Babylon 5 in the revised print is streaming currently on Prime. I’m going to rewatch it this Winter as I’ve not seen it in at least a decade.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 26, 1918 — Philip José Farmer. (Died 2009.)

By Paul Weimer: Philip José Farmer first came to my attention as a name mentioned in the famous “Appendix N” of the original Advanced Dungeon Master’s Guide. Like the rest of the entries in that bibliography, it just listed his name, and a book title (“World of Tiers, et al”) and that was it.

Not long thereafter, though, I came across issue 37 of Dragon Magazine, which was an in-house organ for TSR that mostly focused on D&D and (early on) other TSR games as well. Anyway, in issue 37, Ed Greenwood wrote an article called “From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass in one small step. The theory and use of Gates.” As someone who was already clued into my love of multiverse stuff, this was a formative article for me.

In that article, Greenwood mentions The World of Tiers as “The magnum opus of gate systems”. He mentioned a number of other authors (particularly Moorcock and Cherryh) but I had remembered the mention of Farmer in the AD&D book and now really wanted to find The World of Tiers books, and now had the titles of each and every one.

And so I read them and was immediately absorbed into the story of Robert Wolff, who is not the suburban homeowner he really thinks he is, but someone far older, more powerful and more dangerous. I also saw that Kickaha, the trickster who sets off Wolff on his adventure, was in fact, an even more interesting character with a complicated story (and very possibly an author insert character).

From Tiers, I soon discovered the Riverworld novels, and got hooked on the idea of historical characters being pitted against each other after waking up on the titular planet, and much else besides. It’s one of the most interesting settings ever created in SFF. I remember back in the day, daydreaming what I would do if I woke up on the Riverworld. (The copy I had stressed and made it clear that everyone who ever lived “including you” was going to wake up on the planet.) I also weirdly associate the Billy Joel song “River of Dreams” with Riverworld as well.

I recall a shared world of novels that he created the setting for, the “Dungeon”. Farmer didn’t write any of the novels himself, but instead created the setting for a series of writers to play in. Like Tiers, it was a world involving Gates and strange planes, but as you might guess from the title, this was really a “prison plane” that the main character, Clive, is trying to penetrate to find his missing brother. What I particularly remember is that the novels with different authors took very big “Swings” back and forth, with authors in subsequent books retconning major events in previous books. I got the sense that the authors did not like the ideas of their counterparts all that much. It does make the series not satisfactory overall, and I can’t imagine ever trying to reread it, but it was memorable for its imagery and imagination.

Farmer is the second author, after Heinlein, that I read who tried to synthesize a lot of his characters and settings into as much of a single coherent whole as possible, particularly with his Wold Newton works.

My favorite Farmer besides all of the goodness of Tiers and Riverworld might be The Gate of Time, eventually renamed Two Hawks from Earth. It featured a Native American pilot flying over Romanian airfields during WWII who gets blasted into an alternate history where the migrations of the Native Americans into North America didn’t happen, and they instead rolled westward into Europe, drastically changing the development of Europe instead. I loved how our protagonist tries and figure out what he is dealing with, a culture very different than anything he remembers, and gets caught up in intrigue and adventure. And really, that is what Farmer’s works have always done for me — entertaining action adventures that keep the pages turning.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Arctic Circle tells what sound effects really mean.
Carpe Diem shows the moment before caffeine.
Foxtrot gets carried away with a theme.
Free Range provides arrivals with greeters.
Ink Pen opts for the easy disguise.
Off the Mark sleeps in comfort.
Thatababy plays a shell game. How many do you know?

(10) WET WORK. “Monster Devastated To See Film Depicting Things He Told Guillermo Del Toro In Confidence” – read all about it in The Onion.

Saying he felt humiliated by such a public betrayal of his trust, a monstrous abomination known as the Bog Freak told reporters Friday that he was devastated to have seen a movie depicting things he told filmmaker Guillermo del Toro in confidence….

(11) RESEARCHERS STICK WITH IT. Futurism reports “Scientist Testing Spider-Man-Style Web Shooters He Accidentally Made in Lab”.

Tufts University biotech researcher Marco Lo Presti made an astonishing discovery while investigating how silk and dopamine allow mussels to stick to rocky surfaces.

“While using acetone to clean the glassware of this silk and dopamine substance,” he told Wired, “I noticed it was undergoing a transition into a solid format, into a web-looking material, into something that looked like a fiber.”

Lo Presti and his colleagues immediately got to work, investigating whether the sticky fibers could be turned into a “remote adhesive.”

The result is an astonishingly “Spider Man”-like silk that can be shot not unlike the superhero’s wrist-mounted web shooters, as detailed in a paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials last year.

While it won’t allow an adult person to swing from skyscraper to skyscraper any time soon, the results speak for themselves. Footage of the team’s experiments shows strands of the material being dripped onto a number of objects from several inches above, forming a solid connection in a matter of seconds and allowing the object to be carried away.

The researcher’s collaborator, Tufts engineering professor Fiorenzo Omenetto, recalled being caught off guard by the accidental discovery….

(12) LONG NUMBERS TAKE DEEP POCKETS. In “New Prime Number, 41 Million Digits Long, Breaks Math Records”, Scientific American tells how the search operates. Oh, and that this particular search cost maybe $2 million to do.

…Last fall a new entry came from Luke Durant, a researcher in San Jose, Calif. Durant’s discovery unseated the former record holder for the largest prime, which had gone uncontested for nearly six years, an unprecedentedly long reign in the modern search for such numbers. The gap makes sense: the bigger primes are, the further apart they end up, making each new find harder than the last.

The new prime contains a mind-boggling 41,024,320 digits. To put that in perspective, the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe has around 80 digits. Each additional digit increases a number by 10 times, so the size of the new prime lives far beyond human intelligibility. Primes play a major role in pure math, where they’re main characters in a field called number theory, and in practice, where, for example, they underlie widely used encryption algorithms. A prime with 41 million digits won’t immediately join the ranks of useful numbers, but for now it adds a feather in the cap of a community that longs to apprehend the colossal….

… When asked how much money his project cost in an interview with Numberphile on YouTube, Durant said, “I believe it’s under $2 million.” That’s a hefty investment compared with the prime-search project’s prize of $3,000, which he plans to donate to the high school he attended, the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

File 770

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Monthly Archives: January 2025

Pixel Scroll 1/31/25 I Will Not Be Pixeled, Scrolled Or Filed

John Hertz at Loscon 50

Pixel Scroll 1/30/25 Scrolling Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Pixels

Pixel Scroll 1/29/25 Take The Bits And Pixels, Put Your Old Phone Down

Arisia 2025 Report’n’Pix: My First In-Person Con Since That Pandemic Started

Pixel Scroll 1/28/25 One Moon Was A Ghostly Galleon, The Other A Spirited Schooner

ALA Announces 2025 Youth Media Award Winners

Pixel Scroll 1/27/25 For The Scroll Was A Boojum, You See

Rebecca Fraimow

Warner Holme Review: Alex Pheby’s Malarkoi

Pixel Scroll 1/26/25 Pixels To The Left, Filers To The Right, I’m Stuck In The Middle With This Scroll