Busby, R. A. — “Ten Thousand Crawling Children” (Nightmare Magazine January 2024) (Adamant Press)
Jakubowski, Raven — “She Sheds Her Skin” (Nightmare Magazine November 2024) (Adamant Press)
Superior Achievement in Short Non-Fiction
Arnzen, Michael — “Screamin’ in the Rain: The Orchestration of Catharsis in William Castle’s The Tingler” (What Sleeps Beneath)
Liaguno, Vince — “The Horror of Donna Berzatto and Her Feast of the Seven Fishes” (You’re Not Alone in the Dark) (Cemetery Dance Publications)
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew — “Hidden Histories: The Many Ghosts of Disney’s Haunted Mansion” (Disney Gothic: Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse) (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.)
Wetmore, Kevin J., Jr. — “Jackson and Haunting of the Stage” (Journal of Shirley Jackson Studies Vol. 2 No. 1) (Shirley Jackson Society)
Wood, Lisa — “Blacks in Film and Cultivated Bias” (No More Haunted Dolls: Horror Fiction that Transcends the Tropes) (Vernon Press)
Superior Achievement in a YA Novel
Cesare, Adam — Clown in a Cornfield 3: The Church of Frendo (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
Fraistat, Ann — A Place for Vanishing (Delacorte Press)
Parker, Natalie C. — Come Out, Come Out (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Senf, Lora — The Losting Fountain (Union Square & Co.)
Wellington, Joelle — The Blonde Dies First (Simon & Schuster)
Emma Burnett is a researcher and writer. She has had stories in Nature: Futures, Mythaxis, Northern Gravy, Radon, Flash Fiction Online, Apex, Utopia, MetaStellar, Milk Candy Review, Roi Fainéant, JAKE and more. Burnett’s winning piece is Amaranth.
Shortlisted for the 2024 award were Shawnna Thomas, Nasser Yousefi and LuLu Johnson.
Since 2004, the Gulliver Travel Grant has sought to assist writers of speculative literature (in fiction, poetry, drama, or creative nonfiction) in their research. The grant awards one writer $1000 annually, to be used to cover airfare, lodging, and/or other travel expenses. Visit SLF’s grants page for more information.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literary quality in speculative fiction. They encourage promising new writers, assist established writers, facilitate the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and work to promote a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction.
The SLF is a 501(c)3 non-profit, entirely supported by community donations. If you’d like to be involved with our efforts, please consider joining as a member, starting at $2 a month.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, in partnership with the Village of Oak Park; the Illinois Arts Council; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
By Evelyn C. Leeper: Mark R. Leeper passed away on February 22, 2025. His end was very peaceful; one moment there was a breath, and the next there wasn’t.
Mark was born in Chicago in 1950, and has lived in Chicago, West Virginia, Ohio, Massachusetts, California, Michigan, and for the last 47 years, New Jersey.
He received a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Massachusetts in 1972, an M.S. in mathematics from Stanford University in 1974, and an M.E. in electrical engineering and computer science from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1982. While at Stanford, he had a paper published in aequationes mathematicae (Vol. 10, Fasc. 1, 1974) on which he had begun work as an undergraduate, “An Odd Solution to the Functional Equation P((x+1)/2)=exp P(x)”.
He was employed at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel and surrounding locations for 23 years until his retirement in 2001. After retiring he ran a free drop-in math tutoring session twice a week for a dozen years at the Old Bridge Public Library, and when he had to leave for health reasons, it was continued by some of the students he had tutored.
For many years, Mark had been the longest-running film reviewer on the Internet, regularly publishing reviews since 1984, and being a member of the Online Film Critics Society since 2014. His first science fiction convention was Boskone VI (1969) and he attended dozens of conventions, serving on panels about film, and also leading origami workshops at many of them.
In 1978, Mark and his wife founded the science fiction club at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, which existed until their retirement in 2001, and then continued to produce THE MT VOID, a weekly zine featuring Mark’s editorials and film writing. It was published continuously over 46 years, with over 2300 issues.
Mark traveled to about five dozen countries and published several lengthy travelogues on-line.
He leaves behind him his wife of 52 years Evelyn, sister Sherry, brother David, and many cousins, nieces, nephews, godchildren, and friends.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to the UMass Amherst Foundation, for the Leeper Mathematics Scholarship.
Mark and Evelyn Leeper in 2002. Photo by Mark Olson.
Alex Ross continues to bring Marvel’s greatest characters to life in a new batch of Timeless Variant Covers. Hitting shelves in May, the new covers feature even more Marvel heroes and villains in classic portraits that can only be delivered by Ross’ legendary paintbrush. This series of dynamic and stunning illustrations have proven to be must-haves for fans, and now they can add characters like Moon Knight, Luke Cage, Ms. Marvel, and more to their collection!
“I am grateful to Marvel for the freedom they’ve given me in doing these Timeless images,” Ross shared. “The characters I selected and the costumes depicted are exactly what I most wanted to do. The line of Timeless covers is a great way to do focused portraits of the individual heroes and villains that define a universe I love.”
Check out all 16 following the jump. For more information, visit Marvel.com.
Elephant House: Or, the Home of Edward Gorey (Pomegranate, 2003)
By Gary Whitehouse: Anyone who has watched the Mystery! series on the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the past 20 years or so is familiar with one small portion of the works of Edward Gorey. It was Gorey’s artwork that was used in the program’s animated introductory segment each week, and it was representative of much of his work, in which darkly whimsical characters in vaguely Victorian or Edwardian dress do and say things that range from offbeat to macabre. His artwork was almost always in black and white, with lots of crosshatch shading. When it involved words, it was often filled with puns and dark humor. His drawings appeared for decades inside and on the cover of The New Yorker.
Gorey was a prolific author and playwright as well, creating word-and-picture books like Amphigorey, parts of which went on to become plays such as the musical Amphoragorey.
Gorey was an intensely private man, and for the last two decades of his life until he died unexpectedly in 2000, he lived alone in an aged, ramshackle Cape-style house in Yarmouthport, Mass. There, he lived the life of an artist and an eccentric collector — of antiques, found objects, books, recordings, cats, stuffed animals and much, much more.
Photographer and former actor Kevin McDermott was a friend of Gorey, and after his death received permission from the estate to photograph the interior of the house before it was disturbed, boxed up, catalogued, carted up and hauled away. This book is the result.
In spare but apt prose, McDermott takes a tour of the house, from the front porch and through all the rooms, describing what he sees and then offering superbly composed photogaphs. Many of the photos are in black and white, as befits a record of Gorey’s life and art, but many too are in color — because many of Gorey’s collections centered around color, particularly the rocks and glass objects he arranged on windowsills throughout the house.
Beginning with two full-page portraits of Gorey, one of the artist’s be-ringed hands, one of his face in profile as he gazes solemnly into the near distance, followed by one of the exterior of Elephant House, McDermott displays an exterior life of the man who obviously had an immensely rich interior life.
The house got its name from an antique toilet in an upstairs bathroom which resembled an elephant’s head. The beginning of each chapter contains a short Gorey verse and one of Gorey’s off-kilter drawings of an elephantine form, nearly all of which are whimsical or darkly humorous, as if Gorey saw that although the elephant is the most dignified of creatures, it can also be the most comic as well. One two-page series starts with a photo of an elephant’s-head piece of driftwood, and is followed by a sketch obviously inspired by it.
The collections are fascinating, and lovingly photographed. They range from stones arranged in groups on the porch steps and presided over by a ceramic rabbit gazing skyward, to lines of flatirons, shelves full of frog figures, miniature cities of pewter salt-and-pepper shakers, glass balls, eggs and much more. A double-page spread in color shows the jumble of rocks and ceramic figures on the tile counter next to the kitchen sink, complete with a tiny plastic kewpie doll huddled in one corner of a windowsill.
One feels like a voyeur, peering at these photographs of the artist’s home, but emerges with, if not an understanding of his mind, at least an idea of what a wide-ranging and quirky soul he had. Complete with a Foreword by John Updike, Elephant House is a loving final chapter in the life of a popular yet enigmatic artist.
UHBCB: Does everyone have an ear for poetry? Should everyone vote in this year’s Hugo for best poem?
Brandon O’Brien: Here’s the thing — I think everyone undeniably has an ear for poetry, and everybody knows in their heart that they do. I just think that lots of little biases get in the way of how we see poetry.
It’s the same way that I think everyone has a feel for dance even if they can’t dance well, and then we grow up and we see expert dance as too technical or too high-art to judge, and it limits our appreciation — but when we see good dance, we know it, and good dance is not just ballet, but folk dancing and breakdancing and swing and salsa, and we can feel all of those, too.
And in that same way, everyone is feeling poetry all the time: if you’re listening to music you’re listening to poetry, and depending on your favourite genre or favourite artist, whether you’re listening to Kendrick Lamar or Metallica or Fiona Apple, you’re probably listening to very challenging poetry, too. And if you’re already a fan of speculative fiction you also know enough about the genre and its trappings to make an assessment of whether its tropes are being played with in interesting or revealing or emotional ways.
So if everyone who can nominate and vote in the Hugo Awards just used those senses that they already have, they’re just as capable of deciding what should win in the Best Poem category….
The BBC has confirmed that Doctor Who will return with a new season on 12 April after a surprise announcement that appeared on the broadcaster’s iPlayer service on Friday.
Sex Education actor, Ncuti Gatwa made his debut as the Time Lord in December 2023. The new season will also star Varada Sethu as Belinda Chandra and Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday.
The manner of the announcement has raised some eyebrows among fans, especially as the rugby game in question wasn’t considered to be a high-profile encounter.
TV journalist Scott Bryan said: “Quite a random place to drop such a big announcement.”
“I find it hilarious that it was a totally unrelated rugby match that announced the release date of the next season and not, you know, the BBC itself, any of Doctor Who’s social media pages, the Doctor himself, or even the showrunner. No, a trailer in a random rugby match,” another fan wrote….
Three book events at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta were abruptly canceled late this week, raising questions about whether leadership changes at the National Archives and Records Administration were affecting programming at the 13 presidential libraries it oversees.
The events, which featured authors of books on climate change, homelessness and the civil rights movement, had been scheduled months earlier. But this week, the authors were told they would have to move to other venues and the events were removed from the library’s website.
Among the affected authors was Elaine Weiss, whose new book, “Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement,” tells the story of the Highlander Folk School. In the 1950s, it began organizing “citizenship schools” where Black southerners were trained to pass the Jim Crow-era literacy tests designed to prevent them from voting.
In an interview, Ms. Weiss said the event had been arranged in November. But on Thursday afternoon, she said, her publicist at Simon & Schuster informed her that she had been told it could not go forward because the library, which was facing staff cuts, now needs approval from Washington for all programming. (Simon & Schuster declined to comment.)
Ms. Weiss said that she did not know whether the event had been called off because of the subject of her book. But she called the sudden cancellation “chilling.”
“The idea that a program about a book about democracy has to be approved by someone in Washington was and should be for everyone very scary,” she said. “The book is about voting rights, and about using education as a liberating tool.”
The other speakers whose events were canceled include Mike Tidwell, the author of “The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street,” and Brian Goldstone, the author of “There Is No Place for Us,” about five “working homeless” families in Atlanta. By Friday evening, information about all three events had been removed from the library’s website.
In a statement, Crown, Mr. Goldstone’s publisher, said that the local bookseller helping organize the event contacted it on Feb. 19 “to let us know that the Carter Library would now need to seek approval from the National Archives for all programs, even those already scheduled.” The next day, the publisher was told it would be moved to a different location….
(4) INDEPENDENT SPIRITS. The “Independent Spirit Awards 2025 Winners” ceremony was this afternoon The Hollywood Reporter says Anora took home the top award of Best Feature.
There were two winners of genre interest.
…Maisy Stella won the Spirit for best breakthrough performance, for her role in My Old Ass. …
Science fiction is a genre that often comes with a hefty price tag because of the extensive special effects involved. Even before the rise of CGI, which is still expensive, the labor and cost involved in the creation and use of practical effects were also daunting.
Here’s number seven on their list.
7 – Cube
Production Cost: $249,420
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Producer: Cube Libre
Starring: Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller
Release Date: September 11, 1998
Cube looks like it was filmed in two rooms because that’s literally how director Vincenzo Natali filmed it. It was a way to keep the cost of the film low, and after the cast was filled with mostly unknown Canadian actors, the total bill barely came out to roughly $250,000, but the movie made $9 million and inspired sequels, remakes, and reboots. One of the most recent examples is the Japanese remake with the same title that was released in 2021.
The concept of the film was inspired by the Hitchcock movie Lifeboat — which includes the same moral dilemma about the good of the many versus the good of the one — and Natali’s need to save money by using minimalist sets. The characters eventually discover that the Cube is one part of a maze made up of many cubes that form an elaborate prison, and escape might be possible once its puzzles are solved.
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
February 22, 1937 — Joanna Russ. (Died 2011.)
By Paul Weimer: Joanna Russ. The leading light of feminist science fiction.
She once wrote “There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women.” And while that is not as true as it once was, it’s a damning indictment of science fiction up to that point, and ever since for that matter. Russ saw clearly in ways we are still coming to terms with, and authors of all genders are still coming to accept and inculcate in their own writing and action.
But her work is more than that. Sure, you can talk about the feminist themes of “When it Changed”, where the male astronauts who visit the colony of Whileaway are not greeted with the open arms that they expect. That was my first encounter with Russ, and it was in the second Dangerous Visions anthology. And sure, you can talk about the feminism of The Female Man, where four different visions of male-female relations, ranging from our baseline to an all-female society that resembles the one of “When it Changed”.
But what a lot of people miss about Russ’ work, especially The Female Man, is how mordantly and darkly funny it is. I had a discussion once about this with the aforementioned inestimable Farah Mendlesohn and we were both in accord of it, and pondering how her other virtues in writing mean that the humor of her work, however dark, gets left out of the conversation.
And then is her criticism and critical eye. “How to Suppress Women’s Writing”, written in 1983, is still timely, still useful, still relevant as a look at the issues women face in trying to get published. Her literary criticism is and was as relevant to science fiction and fantasy (and literature in general to be clear) as much as her feminist science fiction. She was fair but could be merciless and unforgiving in her criticism and reviews (she held no truck with Lord Foul’s Bane for instance, and given a certain event in that book, I can see why she would be unrelenting in her criticism of it).
And she has sparked a lot of criticism and literary analysis of her own work. Writers like Farah Mendelsohn, Gwyneth Jones and others have written monographs, essays and entire books analyzing her works, probing the themes and style and power of her work. Her work is a ferocious beast of an oeuvre, both her criticism and her fiction and coming to terms with it is something that is worthwhile for everyone.
I’d place her in a small group of authors like Le Guin and Butler as among the most literary of Science Fiction’s authors, authors that truly can and do evaporate genres and elevate American letters to a high art.
She passed away in 2011. Requiescat in pace.
Joanna Russ
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY, TOO.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
February 22, 1925 — Edward Gorey. (Died 2000.)
Edward Gorey, a distinctive light and talent of art.
You’ve seen his work, even if you never realized just who the artist was. The gothic fantastical Victorian/Edwardian look to his art, line drawings all, is unmistakable. The limited palette of the image of the line drawings, the creepiness and dark wonder of the art, are unmistakable once you’ve seen it, and then you see it everywhere. His work as an illustrator and an artist extended from book covers to surrealist art.
But as much as his own art was influential, iconic, and unmistakable, as the center of a group of artists of the macabre he has had an outstanding influence. Not just artists like Gary Larson, Charles Addams and others but authors such as Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) have interpreted, reflected, refracted and incorporated his ideas and visual vocabulary. I am not well versed in Goth culture and subculture but his influence on their fashions and designs and works from fashion to art to music cannot in fact be overstated.
I can’t even remember when I first saw my first piece of Gorey’s work or something inspired of it. It’s been in my vocabulary of visuals for as long as I’ve been reading and enjoying visual media. Probably a long-ago book cover in a library or a bookstore. The deceptive simplicity of his illustrations has always drawn my eye and appreciation.
He died in 2000. Requiescat in pace.
Edward Gorey
(8) GOREY POSTSCRIPT. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Edward Gorey’s Birthday was a one hundred years ago today. In honor of that, I give you this charming look at his animated introduction for the PBS show Mystery! done in 1980. The sequence was based on the ink drawings that he did and then were animated by British animator and filmmaker Derek Lamb.
Animation World Network would write an article about Gorey and the Mystery series style which was published just after his death. You can read it here.
(10) MORE GOREY. This weekend the New York Times is also paying “A Centenary Tribute to Edward Gorey”. (Link bypasses paywall.) The article is by Lisa Brown, author-illustrator of the graphic novel The Phantom Twin, and illustrator of the picture book Mummy Cat by Marcus Ewert. She has also collaborated on three books with Lemony Snicket, most recently Goldfish Ghost.
…. Living among Gorey’s art helped lead me down the path to my eventual career. As an illustrator of sometimes dark and funny picture books and comics, I am regularly asked whether I have a specific age group in mind when I write. (The answer: not always.) This was also a common question for Gorey. In a 1974 interview with Tobi Tobias for Dance Magazine, Gorey said that “a lot of things” he’d done he intended for children, and then added, “I don’t know many children.”
The children Gorey drew, and there are many, are either preternaturally sophisticated little adults — like the young ballet aficionados of “The Lavender Leotard,”who spout mature pronouncements such as “Don’t you feel the whole idea of sets and costumes is vulgar?” — or pale specimens with circles under their eyes, faced with desperate misfortune.
Gorey does, on occasion, channel what an actual child, whatever that is, might feel, as in “The Beastly Baby,” about an infant so disgusting the reader is relieved when it explodes to bits at the end. Children troubled by a new sibling might delight in the story, but is it really for them?…
… This is the first time in its 122-year history that Crayola has ever un-retired colors, welcoming back Dandelion (deep yellow), Blizzard Blue (frosty light blue), Magic Mint a soft light green), Mulberry (pinkish purple), Orange Red (a deep orange with red overtones), Violet Blue (a deep shade of blue with shades of violet), Lemon Yellow (bright yellow) and Raw Umber (woodsy brown) to their rotation of magnificent colors. Some of these iconic shades haven’t been available since you were a kid, and now parents can share these nostalgic hues with their own little ones…
(12) NOT CREEPY AT ALL. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] No creep factor here. Especially in the movie of the full figure dangling from a trapeze-like harness and twitching like a frog leg in Luigi Galvani’s lab. Perfectly normal, that.
On Wednesday, Clone Robotics released video footage of its Protoclone humanoid robot, a full-body machine that uses synthetic muscles to create unsettlingly human-like movements. In the video, the robot hangs suspended from the ceiling as its limbs twitch and kick, marking what the company claims is a step toward its goal of creating household-helper robots.
Atherton, California-based Clone Robotics designed the Protoclone with a polymer skeleton that replicates 206 human bones. The company built the robot with the hopes that it will one day be able to operate human tools and perform tasks like doing laundry, washing dishes, and preparing basic meals.
The Protoclone reportedly contains over 1,000 artificial muscles built with the company’s “Myofiber” technology, which builds on the McKibbin pneumatic muscle concept. These muscles work through mesh tubes containing balloons that contract when filled with hydraulic fluid, mimicking human muscle function. A 500-watt electric pump serves as the robot’s “heart,” pushing fluid at 40 standard liters per minute….
How did the universe begin? How can something come from nothing? One way to “solve” this most difficult of philosophical conundrums is to avoid it altogether. Maybe the universe didn’t begin. Maybe the Big Bang was just one in an endless cycle.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Olav Rokne, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Olav Rokne.]
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced that Day Al-Mohamed, an author, filmmaker, and disability policy executive, was appointed to the Board of Directors in February. She participated in her first board meeting this week.
The biography Al-Mohamed provided in 2021 for a Reddit r/fantasy “Ask Me Anything” said:
Day Al-Mohamed is an author, filmmaker, and disability policy strategist with over 15 years of experience. Her policy work has focused on marginalized and disenfranchised groups and has included a variety of legislative and programmatic projects including national initiatives to increase employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities; an active role in legislative passage of the Affordable Care Act and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act; and efforts at the United Nations to address reparations for victims of genocide.
Storytelling has long been her passion. She is author of two novels: Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn (with Danielle Ackley-McPhail) and The Labyrinth’s Archivist and a regular host on Idobi Radio’s Geek Girl Riot with an audience of 80,000 listeners. Her documentary, The Invalid Corps, a forgotten history about disabled Civil War soldier regiments, was licensed to Alaska Airlines and the pilot for her historical series – RENEGADES: Kitty O’Neil – was just released on American Masters PBS, July 2021.
She is a Founding Member of FWD-Doc (Documentary Filmmakers with Disabilities), active in Women in Film and Video (WIFV), and recently joined the Board of Docs in Progress, as well as a proud SFWA member. However, she is most proud of being invited to teach a workshop on storytelling at the White House in February 2016.
A 2022 news item also identified Day Al-Mohamed as the White House Domestic Policy Council’s new Director of Disability Policy at that time.
Al-Mohamed fills the vacancy created when Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki was removed from his position in October 2024.
A Whovian Feast: A Doctor Who Inspired Cookbook for Discriminating Fans by C.R. Maguire (Self-published, 2015)
Dining with The Doctor by Chris-Rachael Oseland (Self-published, 2012)
By Cat Eldridge: This review is really an acknowledgement that there’s a nearly infinite number of writings about Doctor Who done by the fans of the show over the past fifty years. Yes, there’s fanfic where they’ve created their own stories, some using existing characters in new stories, some creating new characters in new situations. And then there are, err, cookbooks. Seriously you can’t be surprised that someone did this, as I’m sure that there’s a Harry Potter cookbook or two out there. One moment… H’h — I found twenty-seven listed for sale right now on Amazon with a culinary bent.
I’m not sure if these two Doctor Who cookbooks are actually fanfic but they come damn close. With the exception of the last series, I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen every episode of Doctor Who that still exists and has been broadcast. Now I must I admit other than the Fourth Doctor, Tom Barker, and the jelly babies that he offered to damn near everyone, I don’t remember food being mentioned at all on the series, let alone enough to compile a cookbook!
Well, A Whovian Feast: A Doctor Who Inspired Cookbook for Discriminating Fans doesn’t actually bother with basing anything on the actual text of the series itself, but riffs off the idea that well, let’s show you:
TIME VORTEX TARTLETS Season 9, Story 64, “The Time Monster”
MARSH MINNOWS Season 23, Story 143b, “Trial of a Timelord: Mindwarp”
WEEPING ANGEL FRUIT SALAD Don’t blink, or it will disappear into another dimension. A paradox, for sure. Series 3, Story 186, “Blink”
No explaining at all for how the recipes have anything to do with the episode. The recipes themselves seem to be workable though a little on the mundane side, and the author favors enough sugar to cause diabetic comas in individuals who aren’t diabetic: the Weeping Angel Fruit Salad calls for both one cup (225g) white granulated sugar and a half cup (100g) powdered sugar (icing sugar)! That’s for six to eight servings.
If you’re a Whovian, there’s little in this work that recommends it to you. No, let me correct that: there’s nothing here that a Whovian will find interesting unless you need a lot of boring, mundane recipes you get anywhere.
Chris-Rachael Oseland’s Dining with The Doctor is rather different. First is she herself to the new series: “This book includes a recipe for every episode of the reboot. I did my best to keep each recipe genuinely relevant to the episode, so yes, there are spoilers in every single recipe. I’m not too worried about this since it’s safe to assume anyone who owns this cookbook loves the show as much as I do. However, if you’re a new fan, stop reading before you reach your latest episode. You’ve been warned.”
Second, even if many of her recipes really don’t come from episodes, some do and she does have a great affection for both the characters and the series in a way that Maguire, for example, might well take the same recipes and create a Harry Potter cookbook or even a Hobbit one with just a wee bit of tinkering. She’s Whovian through and through.
Her Wartime Cheese and Potato Dumplings with Fried Spam Slices riffs very nicely a Rose and Second Doctor scene in “The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances” episodes, where there’s a bountiful banquet set, which she notes couldn’t occur given wartime realities. So her recipe gives what would be on the table.
Another recipe for British style custard has this charming note: “Most Americans have never had the kind of pourable custard The Doctor drinks. The closest thing we have is vanilla pudding. To Americans, ‘pudding’ is kind of like a less eggy, more sweet custard made so thick it’ll hold a spoon upright. The Doctor’s dessert was just as mysterious to us as real Root Beer is to you. Sure, you’ve heard of it. You’ve even seen it on television. But taste and texture are still a mystery.”
It’s a slim volume at just a hundred pages but a fun, tasty read. It’s available pretty much everywhere in both traditional hardcopy and as an ebook. I’d certainly recommend as a read if you like to cook and are a Who fan.
(1) SFWA ANNOUNCES DATE OF NEBULA FINALIST ANNOUNCEMENT. SFWA President Kate Ristau recently introduced members to Nebula Conference Project Manager, Sherine Mani saying, “Sherine is an events manager who has run conferences for Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits, as well as fan cons like CrimeCon.”
Ristau also spotlighted Nebula Award producers, Rebekah Postupak and Josh Storey. Both were assistant producers last year.
The Nebula Awards Finalist Announcement will be presented live on YouTube on March 12 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific.
A medal given to Luke Skywalker after he destroyed the Death Star in Star Wars could sell for up to £476,000.
Propstore, based in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, is selling the Medal of Yavin, worn by future Jedi master Luke during the first film in the franchise.
The medal is also believed to have been worn by Harrison Ford – who played Han Solo – during rehearsals for the 1977 film, later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.
Brandon Alinger from Propstore said the item held a “special place in cinematic history”.
It goes on sale in Los Angeles in March with a price estimate of $300,000 to $600,000 (£238,000 to £476,000).
The medal came from the collection of props master Gerard Bourke, who worked on the original Star Wars films shot at Elstree Studios.
Propstore claimed it was the “first and only medal to be offered for public sale” after its team researched the prop….
A jury in western New York on Friday found a New Jersey man guilty of attempted murder in the stabbing of the author Salman Rushdie, which left him partially blind.
The conviction of the man, Hadi Matar, 27, followed harrowing testimony from Mr. Rushdie, 77, who said he had been struck by his attacker’s dark, ferocious eyes. He told the jury that at first he felt he was being punched, but then he realized he had “a very large quantity of blood pouring out” onto his clothes.
Mr. Rushdie had been scheduled to deliver a talk at the Chautauqua Institution amphitheater on Aug. 12, 2022, about how the United States has been a safe haven for writers and other artists in exile.
Shortly before the talk was set to begin, a man wearing dark clothing and a face mask rushed onstage and stabbed Mr. Rushdie repeatedly.
Mr. Matar was also found guilty of assault on Friday for injuring Ralph Henry Reese, one of the founders of a project that offers refuge for writers. Mr. Reese had been onstage to moderate the talk.
The attack occurred in front of more than 1,000 people. Afterward, Mr. Rushdie was airlifted to a hospital with a trauma clinic in Erie, Pa. He spent 17 days there before he was transferred to N.Y.U. Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation center in New York City, where he stayed for nearly a month….
(4) SHELFIES. The latest to share about his accumulated books with Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin is “Paul Graham Raven” in Shelfies #24. (Photos at the link.)
…As is probably obvious, I keep books either because I haven’t read them yet and fully intend to, or because I have read them already, and intend eventually to read them again. This exercise has made me realise that the latter category is necessarily growing faster than the former, which means I should probably stop buying books (an extremely expensive habit in Sweden) and catch up on my re-reads.
A common complaint I’ve heard about Dune: Part Two is that it is too similar to the first Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s audacious gamble to adapt just half of Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi tome and hope for another greenlight from Warner Bros. This is correct. Part Two, like its predecessor, is arcane, surprisingly weird, oddly structured and deeply uninterested in pandering. This is actually a compliment, because though I have seen Part Two six times and still do not totally understand the Bene Gesserit, the film, like its predecessor, is a strange creature in modern cinema: a true blockbuster – a cinematic behemoth that makes millions, generates memes and cements the ever-vanishing movie star – that harnesses the full power of the art form….
(6) WHEN IAIN BANKS HELPED MAKE IT THE FULL MONTY. [Item by Steven French.] For my comfort read over Christmas and New Year I chose the fourth volume of Michael Palin’s diaries, covering the period 1999 to 2009, and there in the entry for September 14 2009 I discovered that Iain Banks, while a student at Stirling University, was an extra (a knight no less) in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail! [Click for larger image.]
In 1974, science fiction author Larry Niven wrote a murder mystery with an interesting premise: Could you kill a man with a tiny black hole? I won’t spoil the story, though I’m willing to bet most people would argue the answer is clearly yes. Intense gravity, tidal forces, and the event horizon would surely lead to a messy end. But it turns out the scientific answer is a bit more interesting.
On the one hand, it’s clear that a large enough black hole could kill you. On the other hand, a black hole with the mass of a single hydrogen atom is clearly too small to be noticed. The real question is the critical mass. At what minimum size would a black hole become deadly? That’s the focus of a new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server….
…But if the black hole passed through your head, that would be a different story. Tidal forces could tear apart brain cells, which would be much more serious. Since brain cells are delicate, even a force differential of 10–100 nanonewtons might kill you. But that would take a black hole at the highest end of our mass range….
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Anniversary: The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (2013)
Two of my favorite individuals, Charles de Lint, who would later win a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, and Charles Vess, who received a Hugo at Dublin 2019 for Best Professional Artist and a World Fantasy Award for Best Artist, collaborated on The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, a follow-up to their A Circle of Cats.
Twenty years ago, it would win the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, an award that until this moment I’d not heard of. My bad for not knowing of this award.
If you’ve not encountered this novel, it’s considered a young adult work, but I’d recommend for anyone interested in a good read grounded in Appalachia folklore with the fantastic artwork of Vess profusely illustrating it. You can read the Green Man review here. And here’s our review for A Circle of Cats as well. I’ve got one of his signed prints for A Circle of Cats in my apartment over the desk where I’m write this review.
It is available from the usual suspects, but you really should get the hardcover edition as it should be read that way as holding it and admiring the illustrations by Vess that way are extraordinary. You should be able to get a copy from the local bookstore as it is readily available.
Of course it has cats, lots of cats.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
Tom the Dancing Bug shows what the Rebel Alliance press corps would be reduced to in 2025.
2025 is definitely shaping up to be a huge year for DC’s flagship Batman comic. Current writer Chip Zdarsky just ended his run with Batman #157, paving the way for Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s Hush 2 storyline in March. And once Hush 2 is over, DC will be relaunching Batman with a new #1 issue, new writer, and new costume.
As revealed at the ComicsPro retailer event, the new volume of Batman will be written by Matt Fraction (Uncanny X-Men, The Invincible Iron Man). Current Batman artist Jorge Jimenez is remaining on board, though as mentioned, he and Fraction have designed a new costume and new Batmobile to ring in the new series. Batman is trading in the black and gray suit for a more vintage-inspired blue and gray costume. Check out the new Batsuit below:
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Jeffrey Smith, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The award was established in 1997 to preserve the memory of Zsoldos Péter, the most prominent Hungarian science fiction writer of the last century. It was reformed in 2020, and now it awards other speculative works also, not just science fiction. Also in 2020, a new category was introduced to acknowledge the work of translators.
A professional jury will select the winners in each category. The award will be presented on April 20.
Nemere István, Képes Gábor: Ház a kráter szélén (olvasoterem.hu)
Patonai Anikó Ágnes: Branstetter (magánkiadás)
NOVELLÁK / SHORT STORIES
Bartos Anita: “Az egyetlen” (A Legjobb; Marsbook Kiadó)
Ian Pole: “Kurszán vére” (Alternatív honfoglalás; Trivium Egyesület)
Juhász Viktor: “Orfeusz” (Kleinheincz Csilla (ed.) & Roboz Gábor (ed.): Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2024; Gabo Könyvkiadó)
László Zoltán: “Maradj ki ebből!” (Kleinheincz Csilla (ed.) & Roboz Gábor (ed.): Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2024; Gabo Könyvkiadó)
Moskát Anita: “Gyulladáspont” (Kleinheincz Csilla (ed.) & Roboz Gábor (ed.): Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2024; Gabo Könyvkiadó)
