Monthly Archives: May 2025

Pixel Scroll 5/31/25 Scroll Tuesday Night

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(1) MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING. And don’t read the URLs of these two links, either, which also contain the spoiler.

Gizmodo asks “What the Hell Just Happened on ‘Doctor Who’?” – and then answers the question. No spoiler in the first paragraph, fortunately.

Doctor Who‘s latest season has just come to an end—and with it, we just got hit with an absolute shocker of a cliffhanger. Let’s discuss, shall we?

The Guardian’s storygoes even farther with a spoileriffic headline that I won’t quote fully: “Doctor Who finale sees…”

(2) LOCUS APPEAL NEARS END. The “Locus Mag 2025” fundraiser at Indiegogo ends today. With seven hours still to run it had taken in $80,375. How much does that help?

…With rising inflation, tariffs, and shipping costs, it now costs over $725,000 a year to publish the magazine, run the website, and present the awards each year. Through subscriptions, advertising, and existing donations and sponsors, we can count on $400,000 in anticipated revenue next year. That means we need to raise an additional $325,000 to make it all the way through 2025….

So there are probably more fundraising efforts to come.

(3) THE 20,000 LEAGUE MISSION. “Star Trek Alum Shazad Latif Captains the ‘Nautilus’ in First Trailer for Rescued Sci-Fi Series” – Collider profiles the show.

Star Trek: Discovery‘s Shazad Latif is going where no man has gone before… but this time, instead of outer space, he’s headed to the hidden depths of the ocean. Latif stars as Captain Nemo in Nautilus, AMC’s new reimagining of Jules Verne‘s classic science fiction novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The show’s new trailer sees him set sail in the titular super-submarine, even as he’s pursued to the ends of the Earth. The series premieres June 29 on AMC and AMC+.

In the new trailer for the 19th-century-set science fiction series, which serves as a prequel to Verne’s novel, Nemo is the prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company, a globe-spanning corporation that wields more power than any government. He and his fellow prisoners are put to work building the Nautilus, an advanced submarine that the Company hopes will further tighten its grip on the world’s seaways. However, Nemo foments a rebellion among his fellow prisoners and takes command of the ship, escaping into the depths with his fellow prisoners as his crew. The Mercantile Company is soon in hot pursuit, with a dogged mariner assigned to bring Nemo down; meanwhile, Nemo has an unwilling passenger on board. Will he have his revenge on his captors, or will the Company deep-six his ambitions?…

(4) NYT’S PETER DAVID TRIBUTE. The New York Times profile is terrific — “Peter David, Comic Book Writer Who Repopularized the Hulk, Dies at 68” – but paywalled. Here’s the very end of the piece:

…Mr. David, a gregarious soul who was befriended by movie stars and celebrities in the science-fiction realm, fondly remembered in his memoir the night he was watching the original “Star Wars” movie on television and its protagonist, Mark Hamill, called. A budding comic book writer himself, Mr. Hamill wanted to know: Could Mr. David write the introduction to a collection of his work?

“Uh, hey, Mark,” Mr. David said. “I’m watching you about to blow up the Death Star.”

“I can call back,” Mr. Hamill replied.

“No, that’s OK,” Mr. David told him. “I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.”

(5) QUACKING UP. Scott Edelman is back with Episode 23 of the Why Not Say What Happened? podcast: “Why Howard the Duck Was the Silver Surfer of the ’70s”. (And here’s several dozen platforms where it can be found.)

Join me and Neil Ottenstein for a rambling panel about Howard the Duck in which I share the Marvel Comics chaos which caused me to be hired there in 1974, my regrets over having written an issue of Omega the Unknown, my ethical queasiness about owning original art, what it means when I say I knew Stan Lee before he had hair, my terrifying Bullpen encounters with “Jumbo” John Verpoorten, why Howard the Duck was the Silver Surfer of the ’70s, my Times Square street theater with Steve Gerber, the time Howard the Duck had to be hatched instead of laid, how immaturity cost me Captain Marvel, the only time I ever saw Stan Lee get flustered, and more.

Among other things, Edelman recalls the time Howard the Duck couldn’t get laid – see the relevant comics panel here, and read the whole story here.

(6) HOW WUDE! [Item by Steven French.] Ben Child, in the Guardian’s “Week in Geek”, ponders a galaxy full of hangovers rather than hope: “Ryan Reynolds has pitched an ‘R-rated’ Star Wars. What would that look like?”

Take all the essential ingredients of Star Wars – samurais in space, adventure among the wookiees, aliens with backward syntax, evil cyborgs with a penchant for murder by telekinesis – then imagine George Lucas hadn’t given us all of that through a PG prism. This, it appears, is what Ryan Reynolds did when pitching to Disney. “I said, ‘Why don’t we do an R-rated Star Wars property?’” Reynolds told The Box Office podcast. “‘It doesn’t have to be overt, A+ characters. There’s a wide range of characters you could use.’ And I don’t mean R-rated to be vulgar. R-rated as a Trojan horse for emotion. I always wonder why studios don’t want to just gamble on something like that.”

Let’s imagine the scene: a gaggle of studio execs are nervously cowering before the Hollywood A-lister’s megawatt smirk as he reveals his idea for a take on George Lucas’s space opera that doesn’t hold back. This is Star Wars Tarantino-style. Perhaps Mando’s got a drug problem, or Chewie really does rip people’s arms off – and beat them to death with the wet ends. Somewhere over in Coruscant a Jedi slices a corrupt senator into symmetrical chunks without ever unsheathing his saber. Or maybe Reynolds just thinks the galaxy far, far away could use a little more Deadpool & Wolverine-style sweary irreverence.

He’s wrong. Push Star Wars too far into the realm of self-aware snark, or nudge it to start laughing at itself before the audience does, and you undercut the very thing that keeps fans tethered to its dusty, big-hearted mythos. We already have umpteen animated takedowns – Robot Chicken’s fever-dream dismemberments, Family Guy’s fart-laced remakes – and they’re fine, in their way. But if Star Wars ever starts mimicking the shows that exist solely to mock it, then the circle will be complete….

(7) THE THING OF SHAPES TO COME. Rich Horton’s reviews of the finalists continue at Strange at Ecbatan: “Hugo Ballot Review: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, by John Wiswell”.

… The story is told from the point of view of Shesheshen, who is a shapeshifting monster, or wyrm, and who has threatened the population of the Isthmus for some time. As the novel opens, Shesheshen is awakened early from her yearly hibernation by a familiar menace — monster hunters….

(8) CONCURRENT SEATTLE. ConCurrent Seattle, a one-day alternate program created in protest of the use of ChatGPT by the Seattle Worldcon, had raised almost half of its $5,000 budget as of yesterday.  

The use of ChatGPT at WorldCon has been a breach of trust in an industry of writers whose work has been stolen to train genAI. ConCurrent, a one-day event being held on Thursday, August 14, 2025, at the ACT Theatre in downtown Seattle, is an alternative for those who want a convention with no genAI involved.

ConCurrent is not a replacement for WorldCon and will be free of charge and open to all….

(9) JAYANT NARLIKAR (1938-2025). [Item by Steven French.] The science journal Nature has an obituary of Jayant Narlikar who was not only Fred Hoyle’s PhD student and collaborator (together they developed an alternative theory of gravitation which rejected any Big Bang) but also wrote science fiction himself (his novel The Comet is still on the syllabus in some Indian schools). “Jayant Narlikar, visionary astrophysicist and science populariser, dies at 86”. He died on May 20.

… Narlikar’s influence extended well beyond academic circles. He was a dedicated science communicator and one of India’s earliest and most prolific writers of science fiction. A story exploring black holes and time dilation, submitted anonymously, won him his first award and launched a writing career that brought scientific ideas to a wider audience. His accessible and engaging popular science books became fixtures in school curricula and earned him the UNESCO Kalinga Prize in 1996….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 31, 1990 — Total Recall

By Paul Weimer: “Get your ass to Mars”.

Sure, I think as social satire The Running Man is probably better science fiction as a movie. But as a vehicle for 1980’s SF for Schwarzenegger that wasn’t Terminator, I think you can’t do better than one of my favorites, Total Recall.  The excitement of a movie “based on a story by Philip K. Dick” (which I subsequently read and was confused by how little it actually had to do with it.) 

But the movie is a corker from start to finish and so much of the movie is imprinted in my brain to this day. The movie’s insistence on keeping it very ambiguous, right to the end, if Quaid was dreaming or not , charmed me. I argued with my brother over this, who thought the “sweat drop” scene with Dr. Edgemar proved it was all real. I disagreed, and pointed out things like “Bluesky on Mars” being the name of his program, and how Melina resembled the woman programmed for his vacation. And if you listen to the commentary, Paul Verhoeven directed the movie with the point of view that it was all a dream, and Schwarzenegger acted with the point of view that it was reality. It makes for an interesting tension on screen and it works. 

There are lots of little details that happen in the background.  The change in geopolitical setup to a North-South Cold War. The Tokyo Samurai are trying to go for a fifth and deciding win in the World Series (so now the American Baseball leagues have teams in Japan…and the World Series is a best of nine affair). The movie is visually rich and generous like that, showing a lived in world that you can believe is real. Two worlds to be precise, both Earth and Mars. And the brutalist architecture pattern works for this authoritarian future. 

And of course the movie is hideously violent. The body count is high. 

The movie remains ever relevant with its critiques of colonialism, and authoritarianism. We are meant to side with the Free Mars movement, and maybe not until Cox’s Cohagen decides to kill everyone by asphyxiation does he really go from a tyrannical colonial figure who is vaguely understandable, to a true and undeniable monster that is irredeemable. But that steady revelation of just how horrible he can be starts with him looking sympathetic at first, and then unfurling his true nature and the extent of what he has done, and is willing to do.  It’s a dive into authoritarian and colonialist mindsets, and in this day and age, even more relevant than ever.

And the movie follows through on the implications of its technology with the character beats. When Richter is told that Quaid/Hauser won’t remember anything, he just has to punch him hard, because of all what he’s put Richter through at this point. It’s a character beat that makes sense given the tech.  And we have Chekov’s guns all over the place, which all fire, which propel us to the final confrontation. Sure, the “Ten second terraforming method of Mars” is bonkers and would not work. The movie doesn’t explain that there are more steps to the breathable atmosphere than melting the ice to get oxygen. I don’t care. 

I read the novelization, done by Piers Anthony, because “I wanted to know more”.  And I wish I hadn’t. I had not yet discovered how terrible Anthony was as a writer, but the novel’s insistence at each and every chance to say “yes this is real” over and over, was disappointing. Even at the end, when Quaid points out to Melina that she looks like the woman from Rekall, she casually says she used to do modeling for them. The book was determined to squash any ambiguity, and it was a major turn off. It did more solidly explain the terraforming, though and how it would work.

But the movie remains solid. Don’t bother with the remake. Watch the original.  Don’t let me down, buddy, I’m counting on you.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) MURDERBOT SUITS UP. Alexander Skarsgård shows it’s a real challenge to pull on his costume in this TikTok video: “Discover the Morning Routines of Security Units in Murderbot”.

(13) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “How the iPhone Drove Men and Women Apart” is a hooky headline, but the real topic of Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times podcast (which is the source of the New York Times article) is the declining fertility rate in many countries. If the NYT article is paywalled, the podcast episode is available on YouTube under the title “Progressives Are Driving Themselves Into Extinction”.

…Douthat: What about culture apart from politics? Because, while it is the case that culture is determined to some degree by tech, the smartphone creates culture in its own way. It’s also the case that the issue of declining birthrates is not one that much of elite Western culture has taken seriously. It’s not something that’s entered into the mainstream cultural mind the way that the threat of climate change has done. So you could imagine if it became a more important part of the cultural imaginary — some kind of self-conscious attempt to treat this as an important issue.

Let’s say, right now people in Hollywood would feel bad if they were perceived to be not doing something to fight climate change or something. Hollywood used to make a lot of romantic comedies. It doesn’t really anymore. There’s still a few. But are there cultural scripts that could be written — whether in movies or TV or elsewhere — that you think could actually make a difference?

Evans: I think definitely, yes. And I think it would be wonderful if Hollywood promoted that and supported that. In fact, as a joke last year, I even wrote a comedy script about how Hollywood could support fertility and things like that.

Even though I’m totally on board with that — and I think that’s very important — there are several frictions. One, it’s very difficult to do cultural engineering today, because we have infinite options of entertainment at our fingertips — on Netflix and everything. So if you’re not that interested in a romantic comedy — you know, in China, a lot of the most popular films are about divorce. So it’s difficult to do cultural engineering. On top of that, as long as people are hooked on their smartphones, they might not have the social skills to do it.

I think another possible mechanism would be to use the tax system and to give massive tax incentives to people who have children, because that’s a positive externality….

(14) NUMBER NINE? NUMBER NINE? “Scientists Say They’ve Found a Dwarf Planet Very Far From the Sun” – this link bypasses the New York Times paywall. “The small world was found during a search for the hypothetical Planet Nine, and astronomers say the next time it will reach its closest point to the sun is in the year 26186.”

A sizable world has been found in a part of the solar system that astronomers once thought to be empty. It probably qualifies as a dwarf planet, the same classification as Pluto.

Temporarily named 2017 OF201, it takes more than 24,000 years to travel around the sun just once along a highly elliptical orbit, coming as close as 4.2 billion miles and moving as far out as 151 billion miles. (Neptune is just 2.8 billion miles from the sun.)

And 2017 OF201 may have implications for the hypothesis of an undiscovered planet, nicknamed Planet Nine, in the outer reaches of the solar system.

“We discovered a very large trans-Neptunian object in a very exotic orbit,” said Sihao Cheng, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J….

(15) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? [Item by Steven French.]

“My space-dog has no nose!”

“How does he smell?”

“Like a poisonous marzipan cloud!”

“From cat urine to gunpowder: Exploring the peculiar smells of outer space” at the BBC.

Scientists are analysing the smells of space – from Earth’s nearest neighbours to planets hundreds of light years away – to learn about the make-up of the Universe.

Jupiter, says Marina Barcenilla, is “a bit like a stink bomb”.

The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter has several layers of cloud, she explains, and each layer has a different chemical composition. The gas giant might tempt you in with the sweet aroma of its “poisonous marzipan clouds”, she says. Then the smell “would only get worse as you go deeper”.

“You would probably wish you were dead before you got to the point where you were crushed by the pressure,” she says.

“The top layer of cloud, we believe, is made of ammonia ice,” says Barcenilla, likening the stench to that of cat urine.” Then, as you get further down, you encounter ammonium sulphide. That’s when you have ammonia and sulphur together – a combination made in hell.” Sulphurous compounds are famously responsible for stinking of rotting eggs….

(16) RARA AVIS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Eat chicken — I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch. This is this week’s Nature cover story….

The cover shows an artist’s impression of Archaeopteryx, the oldest-known fossil bird, which lived some 150 million years ago. In this week’s issue, Jingmai O’Connor and colleagues describe the fourteenth known specimen of Archaeopteryx — colloquially known as the Chicago Archaeopteryx because it was acquired by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. This specimen is important because it is so well preserved: it is nearly complete and has not been crushed, which means it retains a remarkable level of detail. This, combined with painstaking preparation guided by micro-computed tomography, allowed the researchers to uncover fresh information about the skeleton, soft tissues and plumage of this iconic creature. Among the team’s findings are specialized inner secondary feathers called tertials on both wings, and an indication that creature’s foot pads were adapted for movement on the ground. The collection of newly identified features suggests that Archaeopteryx was adapted for some level of flight and was comfortable living both on the ground and in trees.

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

Daniel Dern Review: The Adventures of Mary Darling

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  • I Won’t Scroll Up! Book Review: Pat Murphy’s The Adventures Of Mary Darling (Recommended!)

By Daniel Dern: (A shortish review, because you shouldn’t need a lot of info or (my) opinion to decide to read this book.)

Pat Murphy’s new book, The Adventures of Mary Darling (Tachyon Publications, May 2025) opens, give or take the brief Prologue, in London in 1900 where, within fifteen short paragraphs, Mary Darling discovers that her and her husband George Darling’s three children – Wendy, Michael and John — are gone. From their third-story bedroom, the window still open and letting in the cold winter air. (Not a spoiler; it’s the premise.) When the summoned policeman declares “Kidnapped…I’ll tell headquarters,” Mary’s husband George tells her, “I’ll get your Uncle John….He’ll know what to do.”

Uncle John agrees to help…and so does (not a spoiler; the book’s cover art make this clear, ditto back-cover and interior blurb and any other one-liner about this book you’ll encounter) Uncle John’s long-time friend and associate, the deerstalker-capped (on the cover art), pipe-smoking (ditto) Sherlock Holmes. (Although, according to articles like this, Holmes wore a variety of hats, across Doyle’s Holmes stories…ditto across the many TV/movie Holmes, often reflecting the year and circumstances.) Uncle John being, of course, Dr. John Watson.)

In case you’re concerned: You don’t have to be familiar with the story/plot of Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy, much less a fan (although I feel it unlikely that anybody doesn’t know the gist); ditto with/of Sherlock Holmes and Watson (“Sherlock’s the Great Detective, Watson’s doctor and quasi-sidekick” suffices, no Holmes canon knowledge beyond that required by the reader, although Murphy is clearly familiar with same.)

Detecting, disguises, ships, sword-fights, a parrot, pirates, and more ensure – including all the characters and interactions you’d expect from a story involving Peter Pan (again, the premise, hardly a spoiler) and the young Wendy, Michael and John. Plus a lot more you weren’t expecting. (And I’m not going to spoilerize with specifics.)  (No, I won’t say, “The game is a peg-leg-a-foot!”)

Because, per the book’s title, this is Mary Darling’s story. And her adventures. Not all of which, within the book, directly involve Peter Pan and/or Neverland.

Part of what makes the story even more interesting and engaging is the well-finessed perspective overlay of time. Per the Prolog, a cover letter written in 1934 by Mary Darling’s granddaughter (via Wendy) Jane Darling, to her great-uncle John (Watson):

Dear Grand-uncle John, 

Here’s the book I’ve been working on. I hope this will set the record straight once and for all. I have always thought it shameful that James Barrie’s Peter Pan is the only version of my grandmother’s story available to the world. He got so much wrong! And he left you out altogether! This book tells the true story. 

This gives Pat Murphy an easy way to overlay the Victorian era, and the attitudes, beliefs and perspectives of its inhabitants. Per Murphy’s AFTERWORD:

Peter Pan reflects the views of the time and place in which it was written—in England at the height of the British Empire. It [Barrie’s book – DPD] reflects the views of the time and place in which it was written—in England at the height of the British Empire. It is a boys’ adventure book in the spirit of British imperialism, a literary cousin to the penny dreadfuls of the time, in which anyone who was not white was smashed into a stereotype. I had to deal with those stereotypes to create authentic characters of the time.”

As Murphy notes in her AFTERWORD, she did a lot of research – not just reading, but also, “When I could, I talked to people from the cultures I wanted to represent.” To give a sense of the scope of her research – and some creative license/interpolation (not her words), Murphy gives (in the AFTERWORD) a list of facts/details from the book pf which “all…are true—except for one. Can you identify the untrue item?” (See if you can. I didn’t.)

Murphy also points out (in the AFTERWORD) that Neverland was always grim, starting with Barrie’s own words. (And some of the comic books I’ve read or glanced at are very dark.)

But, while there are grim passages in Murphy’s The Adventures of Mary Darling, it is not a grim book per se; it’s wonderfully well-written, it’s perfectly paced, we meet a mix of familiar and new characters, and (particularly important when some of your characters can fly), it, cough, sticks the landing perfectly. Mary is having adventure – and pro-actively being the adventurer within them.

The Adventures of Mary Darling is available in trade paperback and digital formats, through the usual sources, including Hoopla library e-borrow.

And Murphy’s site (patmurphy.net) offers a free 3,700-word excerpt (Prologue, Chapters 1 and 2), which should be more than sufficient to help you decide, if this review hasn’t already done so.

LAGNIAPPE: OTHER PETERPANALIA

Like Alice In Wonderland, OZ, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom, Tarzan, etc., and other popular works, J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan has, unsurprisingly, spawned an impressive quantity and variety of (Disney and non-Disney) books, comics, plays, movies/tv, manga, anime and games – many of them very, very dark and/or adult-themed (not to mention artwork and merch).  (Along with lots of non-dark/grim, for younger audiences.)

I am not by any means a hard-core Pan fan (relative to, say, ALICE IN W, or, to a lesser extent, Oz, ERB, Star Trek or Tolkien)…but I do enjoy watching the P/P movies as they come out (or belatedly – e.g., having just noticed The Lost Girls, adding it to my watch-soon list). Pan-spawned books, I’ve read a few but not pursued – but I’m glad a friend made me aware of Murphy’s (and will now go read/re-read a few more Murphy’s).

Here’s a few Peter P. links I’ve found, including some “inspired by” and “if you love Peter Pan”, and cross-overs/mash-ups: (95+% of which I was unaware of until this research)

And a few specific ones (which I haven’t necessarily read/watched/listened to:

  • Come Away (via Wikipedia – one impressive cast!): “…a 2020 fantasy drama film directed by Brenda Chapman written by Marissa Kate Goodhill, and starring David Oyelowo, Anna Chancellor, Angelina Jolie, Clarke Peters, David Gyasi, with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Caine, and Derek Jacobi. The film is an homage to the stories of Peter Pan and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The characters of those stories are siblings who try to help their parents overcome the death of their eldest son.
  • Fiasco! (Act 1) (from Ira Glass’ THIS AMERICAN LIFE, 1997): “Writer Jack Hitt tells the story of a small town production of Peter Pan, in which the flying apparatus smacks the actors into the furniture, and Captain Hook’s hook flies off his arm and hits an old woman in the stomach. By the end of the evening, firemen have arrived and all the normal boundaries between audience and actors have completely dissolved.”
  • Peter Pan Goes Wrong: “a comedy play by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields of the Mischief Theatre company, creators of The Play That Goes Wrong (2012)” (Many casts, versions, including a 2016 BBC One television broadcast narrated by David Suchet.)
  • Hook (1991) (by Steven Spielberg, starring, another others, Robin Williams as Peter P, Julia Roberts as Tinkerbelle, and, Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook) (one of my favorites, I’m sad the sequel never happened).
  • Peter Pan (2003, live-action) (trailer via IMDB)
  • Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), the official (book) sequel to Barrie’s Peter and Wendy
  • PAN (2015, live-action), a fun prequel, notable for, among other things, Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard), and  the delightfully unexpected performance (versus background music) of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. (Here’s Nirvana’s official music video of the song.)
  • Peter and Wendy (Disney, live action, 2023) – Jude Law as Captain Hook, Alan Tudyk as Mr. Darling. Well-done IMHO. Lost Boys here include Lost Girls, FYI.
  • The Lost Girls (2022, live-action), which I don’t think I previously knew about, and am adding to my watch-list.
  • Fanfic: There’s, unsurprisingly, a panacopia (sic) (as opposed to a cornucopia or spanakopita) of Peter Pan fanfic (Panfic?); e.g., a quick browse shows that Archive of Our Own has (as of just now) 1,505 Works in Peter Pan (Peter Pan) – Works. And no doubt there’s more elsewhere.

Again, I recommend Pat Murphy’s new The Adventures of Mary Darling; enjoy!

Pixel Scroll 5/30/25 If They Could Scroll Me Now, That Old Karass Of Mine

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(1) NANOWRIMO SITE VANISHES. [Item by Dan Bloch.] Earlier this week NaNoWriMo shut down their website without any notice.  People are commiserating on Reddit.

What a freaking waste. A huge, passionate and vibrant community founded on conquering the impossible, brought down by gross mismanagement and a refusal to listen to the community that gave it life.

I’ve been sad about this for a long time, but it’s definitely hitting home today, especially seeing the posts from people freaking out about losing their site data, since NaNoWriMo NEVER officially announced the shutdown on official channels to warn them.

We meant nothing to them, even in the end. Good riddance.

The Wayback Machine’s latest Nanowrimo.org screencap was May 27.

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) announced in March that the organization was shutting down. They offered a lengthy explanation in “The State of NaNoWriMo – A Community Update – March 2025” on YouTube.

This followed in the aftermath of a controversy that erupted the previous September when they issued an equivocal statement about using AI – and it did not go unnoticed that NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, a writing app that advertises AI-powered technology, including text rewrites – leading Zriters Board members Daniel Jose Older, Cass Morris, and Rebecca Kim Wells to immediately resign. 

(2) EXTRA CREDIT READING. Two sff news periodicals posted today:

(3) IGNYTE AWARDS VOTING OPENS JUNE 9. Public voting on The Ignyte Awards will begin June 9.

The Ignyte Awards began in 2020 alongside the inaugural FIYAHCON, a virtual convention centering the contributions and experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) in Speculative Fiction. Founded by L. D. Lewis and Suzan Palumbo, the awards were an attempt to correct representative gaps in traditional spec lit awards and have grown into a coveted and cherished addition to the awards landscape. The Ignytes seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.

(4) SAVE WHEEL OF TIME. Did a show ever have so many spokes persons? “Wheel of Time fans band together to save show after cancellation – petition gets over 50,000 signatures” says Radio Times.

Following the cancellation of The Wheel of Time after its third season, a petition has quickly racked up signatures from fans hoping to save the Prime Video fantasy show.

The petition, titled Save The Wheel of Time, has already got over 53,700 signatures and counting, with fans calling for the story to be finished and arguing that it “deserves to be told in full”.

The petition points not only to the third season’s strong critical and fan reception, but also to reported viewing figures, arguing for the show’s continuation by putting it in comparison with other fantasy shows The Rings of Power, House of the Dragon and The Witcher….

(5) FUTURE TENSE FICTION. The Future Tense Fiction story for May 2025 is “The Shade Technician,” by Harrison Cook, about urban heat and its health effects, as well as the privatization of critical infrastructure.

The response essay “The Limits of Heat Resilience” is by physician and heat researcher Pope L. Moseley.

Extreme heat is pushing up against our physiological limits. We can’t adapt our way out of the problem—we need to confront it directly.

(6) JOHN SCALZI Q&A. CollectSPACE starts their interview with an anecdote about the author’s research: “John Scalzi reconned Apollo 11 moon rock before turning it to cheese in new novel”.

…”I went to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum very specifically so I knew what the layout of the place was, so I could see the moon rock there for myself and so when I wrote about it, it would be reasonable to what is actually there,” said Scalzi in an interview with collectSPACE. “They had no idea.”

Had the docents approached him and asked why he was interested in the moon rock, they might not have believed him anyway. In “When the Moon Hits Your Eye,” released today (March 25), it is Virgil Augustine, the museum’s (fictional) executive director, who comes to realize what has happened, however impossible it might seem…

Then they follow with more conventional questions about the new book.

collectSPACE (cS): Was there a particular moment in your life that it just struck you, or how do you come up with the idea of writing a book about the moon turning into cheese?

John Scalzi: It was something that had been just rolling around my brain for a while, simply because it was just such an absurd idea that it almost felt like a challenge. You know, was this something that I could make something out of?

cS: Did you search to see if anyone else had written a book about the moon turning to cheese?

Scalzi: I didn’t, but if someone did, it wouldn’t have necessarily stopped me because there are so few super original ideas. you just accept that most of what you’re doing is not about what’s original, but what you can bring to that particular topic that nobody else has.

There are lots of children’s books about the moon being made of cheese, but they’re all picture books, so I felt that this was a pretty safe subject. Also, as soon someone mentions the topic, people are like, ‘Oh, it’s like Wallace and Gromit,’ because they go to the moon and it is cheese [in “A Grand Day Out With Wallace and Gromit” released in 1989].

This was something I was reasonably confident had been unexplored territory in the adult literature format, and certainly in the manner in which I did it, which was to structure it around a lunar cycle, rather than just one or two main characters….

(7) THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD INTERRUPT HARLAN WAS – HARLAN. Edwin L. Battistella reminisces about his introduction to parenthetical phrases in “What I learned from reading Harlan Ellison” at the OUPblog.

When I was in high school, I went through a Harlan Ellison phase….

…Stylistically, what stood out most was his use of parentheses. In the essays, Ellison used them all the time. In a random four-page section I count six parentheticals, some as long as a paragraph. Elsewhere, I found a couple that went on for more than half a page….

…Ellison used the parenthesis to amplify his outrage, to underscore his smart-alecky awareness, and even occasionally to poke fun at himself.

For a time, Elision’s style left a mark on me as a writer. I began including (what I thought were) pointed, witty asides in my essays and correspondence. I got away with it in high school, less so in college, and finally my wife convinced me to give it up. It was, she said, “too cutesy” and “distracting.”

Every now and then, I miss parentheses and trot a pair of parens out, but for the most part I’ve given them up. The style worked for Ellison, who managed to never be too cutesy and whose distractions were interesting, but I could not pull it off….

(8) BREATH MINT OR CANDY MINT? Chris Winkle argues “Why Literary Fiction Is a Genre” at Mythcreants. Here are a couple of excerpts. You’d need to read the article to see him make his case.

…In any widespread discussion of literary fiction, two contradictory ideas are bound to make an appearance. Some people advocate for one or the other, while others embrace both simultaneously. Let’s look at these two competing ideas.

  • Literary fiction as the best fiction. Under this definition, any book of any genre can be considered literary fiction if it is good enough. This means that literary fiction is simply a prestige label given to a wide variety of books we admire. Let’s call this the prestige definition.
  • Literary fiction as a distinct style of fiction. Under this definition, literary fiction has specific characteristics that distinguish it from non-literary books. These characteristics include realism, slow and detailed prose, and experimental style or form. Let’s call this the style definition.

You might think these two definitions would be at war with each other. Conceptually, they are. But while individual literary fans may take one side or the other, the community as a whole isn’t interested in resolving this contradiction. In fact, these definitions coexist by design.

That’s because both definitions are needed to send a bigger message: that literary fiction entails specific characteristics, and those characteristics are superior. Meaning, a book of any genre supposedly becomes better by adopting literary fiction conventions. That’s how it “transcends” its genre and becomes literary instead….

… This is why publishers already treat contemporary literary fiction like a genre. It’s a specific type of fiction that appeals to a specific audience of fans. Business-wise, that’s what a genre is. It’s used to match books with the readers who are inclined to purchase and enjoy them.

However, literary books don’t fit everyone’s idea of what genres are. The prestige definition is only partly responsible for this. I think a greater factor is that we love our favorite genres, so we want them to be more coherent and meaningful than they are. And when we assign meaning to them, it’s easy to make that meaning too restrictive. For instance, if we associate genres with a specific type of setting or plot, then literary books, which are distinguished by characteristics such as prose style, may seem like the odd group out….

(9) JOHN BOARDMAN (1932-2025). By Gary Farber. I was sorry to read Ansible’s report today: “John Boardman (1932-2025), US fan active since 1950 in cons, clubs and APAs, and treasurer of the 1967 Worldcon, died on 29 May aged 92.”

John was among the first fans I met in NYC fandom in the early 1970s; he and his wife Perdita lived within a long walk’s distance from my childhood home in Midwood, Brooklyn, and at the time I was first invited to the Lunarians, the NYC science fiction club that put on the annual Lunacon science fiction convention, the club met at their home, until months later when Perdita, fed up with the way fans left half-filled cups and dirty plates all over their large house, announced that she wouldn’t put up with it any more, and that the club would have to find a new meeting place.

For a time, that was Frank and Ann Dietz (Frank’s second wife) house in Oradell, New Jersey, and then we met at the Lunacon hotel in Manhattan; my memory is a bit shaky at the moment if we were using the Statler-Hilton that year or the Commodore.

John was a true character. Known to some as “the Jerry Pournelle of the left,” he was a professor of physics at Brooklyn College, a leftist, a bit deaf and thus very loud, very opinionated, and thus the parallels to Jerry. John was a founder of Diplomacy-by-mail fandom with his fanzine Graustark, a mainstay of parts of NYC fandom, a bit of a blowhard, but unforgettable.

He was always hale and hearty, speaking with a vibrant and booming voice, one you could hear as soon as you entered a party he was at, always ready for a good argument.

Among other bits of personal history, from his Wikipedia page:

“Boardman earned his BA at the University of Chicago in 1952 and his MS from Iowa State University in 1956. He then attended Florida State University to begin his doctoral studies. However, he was expelled in 1957 due to his involvement with the Inter-Civic Council and more specifically for inviting three black Florida A&M exchange students to a Christmas party.”

Also see Fancyclopedia’s entry on John Boardman.

John Boardman, right, at 1967 PhilCon. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter. “Taken with my trusty Kodak Starflash, I think”

(10) ALF CLAUSEN (1941-2025). “Alf Clausen, Emmy-winning ‘Simpsons’ Composer, Dies at 84” reports Variety. He died on May 29.

… Clausen won two Emmys and another 21 nominations for the long-running animated Fox series. He began scoring the antics of Bart, Lisa and company in 1990, during its second season, and is believed to be the most-nominated composer in Emmy history with a total of 30 nominations overall.

He also won five Annie Awards, also for “Simpsons” music. His long tenure with Matt Groening’s irreverent creation made him one of the most respected creators of animation music in TV history. His nearly 600 original scores for the series are also believed to be a record for the most written for a single TV series in America….

Clausen conducted a 35-piece orchestra every week, something producers insisted upon from the beginning. His unexpected firing in August 2017, a cost-saving move by Fox and “Simpsons” producer Gracie Films, resulted in a firestorm of protests from fans around the world….

Six of Clausen’s pre-“Simpsons” Emmy nominations were for “Moonlighting,” including two landmark episodes: the black-and-white “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” and the “Taming of the Shrew” sendup “Atomic Shakespeare.”…

… He scored nearly 100 episodes of the late 1980s puppet sitcom “Alf” (and when asked about the title, he would often quip, “no relation”)….

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 30, 1922 — Hal Clement. (Died 2003.)

By Paul Weimer: If hard science and physics could be considered “characters” in science fiction, Hal Clement is certainly the person who was able to make them so. Mission of Gravity is the premier look at this, giving an extremely weird and strange, and yet possible high gravity world. Do the characters he populates this world with work as individual characters? Not really, but what you read Clement for is the puzzles and the logic behind the hard science that makes a high gravity-distorted world like Mesklin (the planet of Mission of Gravity) possible in the first place. 

Another novel in this vein that doesn’t get much play or notice, but I ironically read before Mission of Gravity, is The Nitrogen Fix. In this book, Earth’s atmosphere has changed, radically, with the free nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere having combined into a toxic and unbreathable mix of nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and water. Did the aliens who have come to Earth change and terraform Earth for their own purposes? In the end, the transformation of Earth’s atmosphere is a puzzle that is solved, and makes sense, with a big heaping sense of irony to it all. 

Although shared worlds are not a big thing anymore, back in the 1980’s, they were all the rage. I didn’t mention it back when I wrote on Ellison (way too much to write about him) but even Harlan Ellison did a shared world, Medea. His shared planet had a bunch of writers very interested in building a realistic planet and solar system. Clement not only provided an essay on worldbuilding the astrophysics of Medea in the book, but also contributed a story. 

Once again, hard science as a character in Clement’s work. That’s what it means to me. 

Hal Clement at ConFiction (1990). Photo by Frank Olynyk. From Fanac.org site.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) MEMORIES. Steven Thompson, son of famous comics fans Don and Maggie Thompson, tells a great anecdote about the late Peter David on Facebook. It has to do with how Peter made a tribute panel to Don Thompson a terrific memory.

(14) JON DECLES PROFILE. File 770 commenter Jon DeCles – the pen name of Don Studebaker – was interviewed in 2017 by The Press Democrat about the loss of his house in a fire: “Valley fire survivor starting over with prized cuckoo clock that escaped the flames”.

It’s nearly two years since the Valley fire vaporized the Cobb Mountain home of Don Studebaker, a highly literate high-school dropout, science-fantasy writer, stage channeler of Mark Twain, devotee of ancient Greek gods, co-creator of the documentary-worthy Berkeley literary commune of Greyhaven and a decadeslong student of the nearly infinite subtleties and elements of ritual significance of the Japanese tea ceremony.

The 75-year-old Studebaker has no earthly idea when he’ll be able to call in a crane to set a new modular home roughly where the old, conventionally constructed house was. But already he contemplates special placement of the clock.

“The cuckoo is going to be the pièce de résistance,” beamed the gray-bearded, blue-eyed and kinetic Studebaker from alongside the fish-pond porch of the residence off State Route 75 that he dubbed the Rhinoceros Lodge and references fleetingly on his website home.pon.net/rhinoceroslodge. The 1950s country home was devoured along with those of 11 immediate neighbors by the historic south Lake County inferno of Sept. 12, 2015, that killed four people downhill from Cobb, charred more than 76,000 acres and destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings.

Studebaker lost almost everything he owned, but not his German cuckoo clock.

One day in June 2015, three months before the Valley fire, he’d decided for no particular reason that it was time to seek repair of the musical timepiece his wife purchased for him while on an international book tour at least two decades earlier….

… Had it not been in the shop, the clock surely would have burned in the fire that surged down Cobb Mountain toward Middletown that Saturday afternoon two years ago. …

(15) SHAKEN NOT STIRRED, DEEP UNDERGROUND. [Item by Steven French.] A complex of tunnels built after the Blitz is set to become an immersive spy museum and will also feature one of the deepest underground bars in the world: “London tunnels that inspired James Bond creator will become spy museum” reports the Guardian.

During his time in military intelligence, Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, regularly worked with Winston Churchill’s spy organisation based 30 metres below ground in a labyrinth of tunnels in central London.

The Kingsway Exchange tunnels complex, stretching out across 8,000 sq metres beneath High Holborn, near Chancery Lane underground station, hosted the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and is said to have inspired Q Branch in Fleming’s novels.

So it seems appropriate that plans to breathe new life into this long-abandoned second world war subterranean network will include a permanent exhibition about the history of military intelligence and espionage.

The Military Intelligence Museum is to collaborate with the London Tunnels company, developing the complex to showcase its original artefacts, equipment, weapons and documents in a modern hi-tech experience at the proposed new £220m London tourist attraction, which is planned to open in 2028.

(16) FEEL FREE TO STEP ON THAT BUTTERFLY. Dete Meserve’s op-ed for Space.com asks “Could time travel tourism be the next space tourism?” I admit it – I clicked.

…Up until recently, physicists believed that time travel to the past was impossible because it required unusual matter or extreme warping of spacetime. However, physicist John D. Norton has developed a new model based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity that shows time travel is mathematically possible.

His model does not rely on strange matter or intense space-time distortion, but uses a simple space-time shape that allows paths to loop back in time. This work suggests that time travel could occur under more ordinary physical conditions than previously thought.

The classic understanding of time travel centers on a fundamental problem: paradoxes. If travelers could alter even minor details of the past, the cascading consequences would either rewrite the present or eliminate the traveler’s own existence — the infamous grandfather paradox. This seemingly insurmountable obstacle led physicist Stephen Hawking to propose his Chronology Protection Conjecture, which essentially argues that the laws of physics themselves forbid backward time travel by preventing the formation of closed timelike curves.

However, groundbreaking research by Dr. Fabio Costa and Germain Tobar at the University of Queensland challenges this assumption. They’ve developed a mathematical model showing that closed timelike curves do not automatically create paradoxes. Their revolutionary model suggests that while time travelers can move and act freely in the past, the universe itself maintains consistency—events would self-adjust to prevent any logical contradictions from occurring.

This revolutionary finding has profound implications. If Norton is right — that time travel won’t require exotic materials — and Costa and Tobar are correct — that time travel doesn’t alter the future — it opens the door for time travel technology to evolve beyond fictional ideas of secret inventions or unpredictable glitches in the universe. Instead, it could follow the trajectory of other breakthrough technologies—gradually becoming accessible, eventually commercial….

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Blasters and Blades podcast features author Sharon Lee speaking about a Liaden Universe® novel she co-wrote with Steven Miller: “Episode 578: Ribbon Dance by Sharon Lee”. The book was released in 2024.

Today we were graced with the presence of Sharon Lee, one of the nicest ladies we’ve interviewed! We had Jana S Brown (aka Jena Rey) on as a co-host, and together we produced a kick butt interview about Sharon’s love of reading and speculative fiction. And we talked about her Liaden Universe. This was a fun interview, so go check out this episode. Lend us your eyes and ears, you won’t be sorry!!

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Bill, Dan Bloch, Joey Eschrich, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel “Tin Pan Alley” Dern.]

Gary Whitehouse Review: Murderbot (2025)

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By Gary Whitehouse: The wait is over! The small screen adaptation of Martha Wells’s Hugo and Nebula winning book series The Murderbot Diaries began in mid-May (2025) on Apple TV+. Cutting to the chase: It’s good!

The Murderbot TV series opened with the first two episodes, in which we’re introduced to SecUnit and the other main characters, get a little glimpse of the universe they live in, the work they do, and the genesis of the events that will (hopefully) set in motion a long sequence of actions and revelations in our hero’s life, both externally and internally. I say “hopefully” because there are likely a million more timelines in which this show ends after one season than there are timelines in which the entire series of books gets to play out on our screens. As far as I know, nobody is even talking publicly about a second season yet.

I didn’t read my first Murderbot book (which was the first Murderbot book, All Systems Red) until 2019, but then I raced through the first four novellas that had been published to that point. I’ve read the whole series of five novellas and two novels at least twice, some of them three times now, which apparently is fairly common among its fans. They’re funny and exciting but most of all they’re life affirming and compassionate. A lot of readers, especially people who are neurodivergent or LQBTQ+, find Murderbot the character highly relatable.

In case you haven’t read them yet (in which case you should do so at once, and also check out my review of All Systems Red), Murderbot is a part-human, part-robot construct created by a corporation and contracted out as a Security Unit. It has hacked the governor module that enforces obedience (Asimov’s Three Laws under corporate fascism), and discovered that it can download tons of media from the Feed. Now it would just like to binge watch TV (its favorite show is The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon) and avoid interacting with humans and their messy fluids, odors, and emotions. Especially emotions.

Back to the show. SecUnit has been contracted to a team of terraforming scientists from the Preservation system, which is outside of Corporation Rim and dedicated to full personhood for everyone. They’re doing a survey on an apparently uninhabited (and non-lethal) planet where all is not as it seems. Let’s just say adventure ensues and emotions happen, and Murderbot and humans alike have to decide if they can trust each other with their lives.

It’s a little too soon to tell after two episodes, but so far this adaptation by Chris and Paul Weitz is getting a lot of things right. Especially the wryly snarky tone, which sometimes reminds me of that first superb season of The Mandalorian. When the casting was announced a few months back, there was some online grumbling — including from some voices I greatly respect — about the casting of a cis-het guy in the lead role. I’ll just say that lead actor Alexander Skarsgård (who also gets an executive producer credit) nails the character in a lot of ways from the sarcasm tinged voiceovers to the myriad depictions of social anxiety that cross his face.

Alexander Skarsgård as SecUnit

Other than Noma Dumezweni as Dr. Mensah and David Dastmalchian as Gurathin, it’s early to get a read on the supporting cast so far, but all have great potential. The production design, sets and costumes, adds immensely to the show’s vibe.

The episodes are short, each a little more than 20 minutes. They’re billed as dropping every Friday, but depending on your time zone you might see them in your feed sometime Thursday evening. That is if you subscribe to Apple TV+. And really, at this point, why would you not?

(Depth of Field Productions, 2025)

A fifth-generation Oregonian, Gary Whitehouse is a retired journalist and government communicator. Since the 1990s he has been covering music, books, food & drink and occasionally films, blogs and podcasts for Green Man Review. His main literary interests for GMR are science fiction, music lore, and food & cooking. A lifelong lover of music, his interests are wide ranging and include folk, folk rock, jazz, Americana, classic country, and roots based music from all over the world. He also enjoys dogs, birding, cooking, whisk(e)y, and coffee.

Pixel Scroll 5/29/25 They Came And Took Our Spindizzy Away From Us

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(1) THE BAR’S MY DESTINATION. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Another “distraction” for GRRM fans to complain about: “George R. R. Martin’s Cocktail Bar Brings Ancient Apothecary Vibes To Santa Fe’s Drink Scene” says Tasting Table.

Milk of the Poppy logo

…The legendary author, whose literary works have incited television shows, fervent fandoms, and plenty of food- and cocktail-related tributes (including “Game of Thrones”-inspired drinking games), has recently set his sights on a new form of creative expression.

Based in [George R.R.] Martin’s current home of New Mexico, Milk of the Poppy is a cocktail bar named for a medicinal liquid referred to in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” book series, on which HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is based. The bar boasts medieval-inspired decor with an apothecary theme, ideal for patrons to live out their fandom fantasies and responsibly partake in various libations and food offerings.

Though there have been “Game of Thrones” pop-up bars here and there over the years, one of the most unique things about this establishment is that it isn’t simply another fan-run one-off. Conceptualized by creative director Al LaFleur, the bar has been in the works for some time, even before LaFleur left Los Angeles for New Mexico. If anything, Martin’s investment in this craft cocktail bar indicates a sort of “seal of approval” from the author, whose writing heavily influenced the bar’s robust food and drink offerings.

The dungeon-like feel of the bar is reminiscent of popular “Game of Thrones” scenery, giving patrons enough reason to explore the space for a first-hand (or first-sip) experience of what it would truly be like to eat and drink as one of their favorite characters. Having opened its doors in March 2025, the bar is still relatively new to the Santa Fe bar scene, testing the potent waters of combining fantasy food and drink with real-world applications.

With a menu featuring specialty-themed, potion-like drinks, beer, wine, and a bevy of delicious appetizers, this pop culture bar will hopefully be much more than a flash in the pan, going on to thrive and connect with New Mexico locals and travelers seeking it out. Its namesake drink is a vibrant green cocktail called MOTP Milk Punch that features white armagnac, quebranta pisco, matcha, melon, calpico, and allspice that appears to be worth the visit in itself.

Although fans may be quick to criticize the author for taking longer to complete the long-anticipated “The Winds of Winter,” it’s worth remembering that true art cannot be rushed….

Website: “Milk Of The Poppy”. It’s located in Santa Fe adjacent to GRRM’s Jean Cocteau Cinema and Beastly Books.

(2) MOST PURGED BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE TO NAVAL CADETS AGAIN. AP News reports“Most books pulled from Naval Academy library are back on the shelves in latest DEI turn”.

All but a few of the nearly 400 books that the U.S. Naval Academy removed from its library because they dealt with anti-racism and gender issues are back on the shelves after the newest Pentagon-ordered review — the latest turn in a dizzying effort to rid the military of materials related to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Based on the new review, about 20 books from the academy’s library are being pulled aside to be checked, but that number includes some that weren’t identified or removed in last month’s initial purge of 381 books, defense officials told The Associated Press….

…The purge led to the removal of books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism, and Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

Others included “Memorializing the Holocaust,” which deals with Holocaust memorials; “Half American,” about African Americans in World War II; “A Respectable Woman,” about the public roles of African American women in 19th century New York; and “Pursuing Trayvon Martin,” about the 2012 shooting of a Black 17-year-old in Florida that raised questions about racial profiling.

The Navy on Wednesday could not confirm which books have been returned to the library or if Angelou’s book or the others will remain pulled from shelves….

Three sff works on the original list of 381 were Light From Uncommon Stars / RykaAoki; Sorrowland / Rivers Solomon; and A Psalm For The Wild-Built / Becky Chambers.

(3) AN AUGUST PRESENCE. A Deep Look by Dave Hook continues scanning the 1949 sff offerings with “’The Other Side of the Moon’, August Derleth editor, 1949 Pellegrini & Cudahy”.

The Short: The Other Side of the Moon, August Derleth editor, 1949 Pellegrini & Cudahy, includes 20 stories and an introduction by August Derleth. While I think Derleth’s definition of science fiction is somewhat different than mine, it’s mostly SF and all speculative fiction. My favorites include “Something from Above“, a novelette by Donald Wandrei, Weird Tales December 1930, and “The Earth Men“, a Martian Chronicles short story by Ray Bradbury, Thrilling Wonder Stories August 1948. My overall average rating is 3.57/5, or just below “Very good”. I recommend the twelve stories that were rated “Great” or “Very good”, but I would recommend The Other Side of the Moon itself only to those with a real enthusiasm for stories of the period….

(4) MY PRECIOUS. “PHD Students Bear the Brunt of Science’s ‘Gollum Effect’” reports Nature.

Almost half of the scientists who responded to a survey have witnessed territorial and undermining behav[1]iours by colleagues — most commonly during their PhD studies. Of those affected, nearly half said the perpetrator was a high-profile researcher, and one-third said it was their own supervisor.

Most of the respondents were ecologists, but the organizers suspect that surveys focusing on other disciplines would be similar.

The gatekeeping behaviours that the study documents “damage careers, particularly of early-career and marginalized researchers”, says lead author Jose Valdez, an ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig. “Most alarming was that nearly one in five of those affected left academia or science entirely.”

Valdez and his colleagues call the possessiveness shown by many researchers the Gollum effect, after a character in the book The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), whose one goal in life is to hoard an object of power for himself. The study was published in One Earth ( J. W. Valdez et al. One Earth 8, 101314 (2025)….

… Respondents described data hoarding, ideas theft by supervisors and defamation at conferences. “Collaborator has ‘reserved’ important research avenues,” wrote one respondent, “and is actively withholding data from our entire research group”. Another wrote, “I was told I wouldn’t be able to publish anything until the collaborator published their study, which has been in prep for over six years now.”…

(5) DISPUTING THE NARRATIVE. In the view of ComicBook.com, “Sandman Showrunner Sets Record Straight on Netflix Cancellation & Neil Gaiman Accusations”.

The Sandman showrunner Allan Heinberg said on Wednesday that the show was not actually canceled over the sexual misconduct allegations against Neil Gaiman. Netflix announced that this series would end with Season 2 back in January, and at the time, the accusations against Gaiman were just beginning to impact many of his adaptations. However, Heinberg told Entertainment Weekly that the streamer, the studio, and the creative team had decided to end the show shortly before Season 1 even premiered. He said that Season 2 was already in post-production when the reports about Gaiman began to circulate, so he doesn’t think it had any impact on the story or content of the new episodes. Still, he said that the announcement of the show’s ending came at “unfortunate timing, for sure.”

“It was a decision we made three years ago,” Heinberg said of the show’s cancellation. The reason, he explained, was actually the content of the original comic book by Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg. The book often goes off on tangents about other characters, where Dream (Tom Sturridge) is only distantly involved. “There are some volumes where he just appears in two scenes,” Heinberg pointed out….

(6) MISSION CONTROL. Kotaku brings us “Mission: Impossible’s Most Impossible Missions, Ranked”.

…This past week we’ve ranked everything from Tom Cruise’s hair in each movie to the franchise’s most irreplaceable characters. In honor of The Final Reckoning dominating the Memorial Day Weekend box offices, we decided to take a different look at the Mission: Impossible franchise by ranking the movies based on the impossibility of the mission. So, before you scream about Phillip Seymour Hoffman being a better villain than any other Mission: Impossible bad guy, or how Tom Cruise didn’t risk his life falling backwards off a helicopter for Fallout not to be the best movie ever, remember, it’s all about the mission, even if you don’t choose to accept it….

The slideshow begins with Mission:Impossible II in last place, and Kotaku’s frank comment —

Not only is it the worst Mission: Impossible, it’s also the least impossible mission.

(7) A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Yesterday’s BBC 4 Good Read saw its first 10 minutes devoted to Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. Panellist Adrian Chiles’ parents’ Croatian ancestry came in handy when it comes to the novel’s 21st century youth slang….

This week broadcaster and writer Adrian Chiles and musician and sound artist Marty Ware join Harriett Gilbert with their reading suggestions. Martyn nominates A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess which he says has influenced his career as a musician. He even named his band Heaven 17 from a reference in the book. If you can get past the brutality and violence it’s a novel that throws up many moral questions about the nature of good and evil. Both he and Adrian Chiles are fascinated by the use of Russian language throughout the book.

You can download the programme from here.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 29, 2009 — 2081 film

So we have an interesting short film. And no, I had no idea it existed until now as one of my email newsletter had a note about a Kurt Vonnegut story being turned into a film, not completely unsurprising as one of his works did almost become an opera.  So we have 2081 which is based off of his “Harrison Bergeron” story and which premiered on this date sixteen years ago at the Seattle International Film Festival. 

The story was first published in the October 1961 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and was in his Welcome to the Monkey House collection seven years later. Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition has drafts of many of stories there. 

The cast is James Cosmo, Julie Hagerty, Patricia Clarkson, and Armie Hammer. 

The story is one where a future polity is attempting by any means possible to ensure that everyone is absolutely equal. Ruthlessly as the rulers of the 1984 society were doing. That’s a bit of a SPOLER I know. It’s not quite in keeping of the Vonnegut story and that’s something I’ll not say why. 

So what did the critics think of it. Well I didn’t find a lot of them who said anything but I really liked what Mike Massie at the Gone with The Twins site said about this half hour film cost that just a hundred thousand to produce: “’What are you thinking about?’ ‘I don’t know.’ The basic plot, adapted by Chandler Tuttle (who also directed and edited) from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s short story, is sensational, serving as a warning and as pitch-black satire. The notion of equality taken to hyperbolic extremes is certainly worthy of cinematic translation, as are the various manifestations of crushing governmental control. True freedom requires disparity.” 

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes really liked it giving it a seventy-five percent rating.

You can watch the trailer here. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) KINGFISHER FOR THE ROCKET. Camestros Felapton’s Hugo reading / reviewing continues: “Hugo 2025 Novel: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher”.

…Not unlike reading Alien Clay, I’m reading a book by an author I’ve read so often that I see her playing on repeated themes and elements in a new setting. Hester’s interest is the breeding of geese rather than gardening but she is very much a recurring kind of Kingfisher character, a smart, often wise, older woman who would like a peaceful life but circumstances prevent it. We are also in Kingfisher re-spinning a classic fairy tale, in this case the Brothers Grimm collected story The Goose Girl (Hester provides the connection to the geese but Cordelia is the titular girl)…

(11) ROBERT BLOCH IN THE FACE OF CHANGING TIMES. Keith Roysdon traces “The Evolution of Robert Bloch” at CrimeReads.

…Bloch, whose novel was the basis of one of the most classic of classic films, told the [Castle of Frankenstein] interviewer that he felt the same insecurities and frustrations of any writer. By the end of the 1960s, he confessed he had his struggles.

“Markets have changed. I will say quite candidly that in the past year, I’ve written five short stories – three of them haven’t been placed because the markets have changed for that sort of material. I would like to write a great deal more fiction, but there is the problem of market accountability. So I write to specification.” Bloch spoke about how things had changed since he wrote for Weird Tales and other magazines in the 1930s. “I feel the times have changed. And they change for every writer. There is no writer living who will end up 30 years later with the same market conditions and the same audience and the same media.”

Bloch was critical of himself: “I’ve always suffered from a shortage of talent. I’m very limited.” He cited his “inadequate” education and the challenge of keeping up with trends. 

“Empathy is the only strength I have. The ability to put myself inside the characters and understand their motivations.”…

(12) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “Film and TV model maker warns skill may disappear” reports the BBC.

A visual effects designer who worked on award-winning films and TV shows has warned the art of model-making is at risk of vanishing in the coming decades.

Mike Tucker has worked with Discover Bucks Museum in Aylesbury on an exhibition of original models and props from British science fiction shows, such as Doctor Who.

The artist, in his 60s, said he hoped the displays could inspire a future generation of visual effects artists.

“A lot of the companies, like myself, have either stopped because they’ve not been able to compete with the CGI guys, or just retired out of the business.”

“The number of us who know how to do it is getting smaller and smaller with every passing year,” he added….

…The Beyond the Stars exhibition includes models and props the Oxfordshire resident has worked on, including 1980s’ Daleks, Marvin the Paranoid Android and a model of Starbug from Red Dwarf.

Originally from Swansea, Mr Tucker entered the industry via the BBC’s in-house visual effects department in the 1980s, which closed in 2005.

He recalled: “It had over 100 members of staff when I joined. By the time we closed down we were down to 14 people, because the numbers of shows that required our particular expertise was getting smaller and smaller.

“It’s not dead completely yet. If left unchecked there is going to be a gap in about 10, 15, 20 years’ time of just finding people who know how to do it.”…

(13) MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE AUCTION. Heritage Auctions wants the world to know about the June 5 “Masters of the Universe featuring the Artwork of Mark Taylor Action Figures & Toys Showcase Auction”.

Item predicted to fetch the highest bids — Savage/Wonder Bread He-Man Prototype First Shot 

Calling all He-Fans and She-Ravers! Whether you grew up shouting “I have the power!” or just recently fell down the rabbit hole of Eternian lore (blame that catchy theme song), now’s your chance to snag the treasures of a true toy titan.

Of the top three toy sellers in the resale market—He-Man and his colleagues in the Masters of the Universe are the toy that keeps on giving.The popularity of the brand—from a 1980s movie to the original cartoon and toy line, all the way to a new movie coming in 2026-speaks to the enduring appeal of these characters across pop culture, collectibles, and meme culture alike.

Our June 5 Masters of the Universe Showcase Auction is a love letter to the legacy of Mark Taylor—the visionary artist who gave us He-Man, Skeletor, Battle Cat, and a galaxy of unforgettable icons. This isn’t just a toy auction—it’s a trip through the nostalgia-fueled vortex of pop culture greatness.

Featured treasures include:

  • The Savage/Wonder Bread He-Man Prototype First Shot (AFA 80)—a brown-haired, rough-cut warrior straight from Mattel’s pre-launch experimental phase. With ties to a long-lost “Buy 3, Get 1 Free” mail-in offer and whispers of a doomed Conan toy line, this prototype is more than rare—it’s legendary. Graded AFA 80 NM and encased in a deluxe acrylic display with a COA from Tom Derby.

But the true magic? It’s in the art:

  • Original He-Man Concept Artwork by Mark Taylor – Before he became Eternia’s polished protector, He-Man was Torak, Hero of Prehistory—a barbarian bruiser in Viking armor. Taylor’s vision drew heavy inspiration from Frazetta’s fantasy epics, capturing He-Man’s raw, untamed beginnings.
  • Original Skeletor Concept Artwork – Inspired by a terrifying childhood encounter with what Taylor believed was a real corpse (seriously!), early Skeletor—also known as De-Man—was gaunt, ghostly, and haunting. With bare feet, shin guards, and echoes of a “King of Styx” motif, this is the villain as you’ve never seen him: straight from the sketchbook of madness.
  • Castle Grayskull Original Concept Sketch (1979) – The eerie, bone-like fortress came to life in pencil before it ever took plastic form. Signed and dated by Taylor, this haunting 24×19 inch sketch captures his dream of a fortress that wasn’t built—it grew. “I wanted it to be organic… like it’s starting to melt,” Taylor said. And you can own that vision.

Whether you’re a hardcore MOTU collector, a toy history buff, or just someone who knows a good barbarian-sorcerer rivalry when they see one, this auction is your portal to the past-and a future filled with bragging rights.

Explore the full catalog and preview all the epic lots: HA.com/49181

(14) RANKING ALL OF PHILIP K. DICK’S BOOKS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult has set himself the Herculean task of ranking all of Philip K. Dick’s books….

It is not a competition but you can see whether or not you agree with him and how he tried to make some very difficult decisions….

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

AudioFile Magazine’s SF and Fantasy Audiobook Picks for June

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AudioFile Magazine highlights their sff audiobook recommendations for June 2025.

DOWN IN THE SEA OF ANGELS

  • by Khan Wong | Read by Eunice Wong
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • [Dreamscape | 11.25 hrs.]

REVIEW

Eunice Wong does an outstanding job of narrating this combination of dystopian fantasy, historical fiction, and sci-fi. First, the listener meets Maida in 2106; she has the ability to perceive the history of objects. Second, the listener is introduced to Li Nuan, a sex-trafficked 16-year-old girl from 1906. Third, there is Nathan, a tech designer who is living the good life in 2006. All are connected through a jade teacup. Wong captures the atmosphere of each of the three timelines, and the result is an intimate, thought-provoking performance.

THE RAVEN SCHOLAR: Eternal Path Trilogy, Book 1

  • by Antonia Hodgson | Read by Daphne Kouma
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • [Hachette Audio | 24 hrs.]

REVIEW

Narrator Daphne Kouma wows in this epic fantasy/murder mystery/political thriller. In a society built around eight powerful animal spirits, a new emperor is chosen every 24 years when those vying for the throne compete in a series of trials. When the Raven palace’s contender is found dead, scholar Neema Kraa finds herself simultaneously taking her place in the trials and investigating her murder. Kouma expertly leads listeners through the lush world-building and the twisting, action-packed plot.

A DROP OF CORRUPTION: Shadow of the Leviathan, Book 2

  • by Robert Jackson Bennett | Read by Andrew Fallaize
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • [Random House Audio | 16 hrs.]

REVIEW

The talented Andrew Fallaize reprises his narration of THE TAINTED CUP, the first in this series. Fallaize aptly narrates this imaginative and suspenseful story in which older, experienced Ana and young Din investigate the unsettling murder of a treasury officer. Through Din’s perfect memory and Ana’s brilliance, they discover a plot that runs deep, threatening the empire’s future. A wonderful, satisfying listening experience for lovers of mysteries and fantasy.

SUNRISE ON THE REAPING: The Hunger Games

  • by Suzanne Collins | Read by Jefferson White
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • [Scholastic Audiobooks | 12.75 hrs.]

REVIEW

Jefferson White shows remarkable skill balancing a youthful cast with the sobering reality they must face. Twenty-four years before Katniss’s games, Haymitch, from District 12, must compete in the Hunger Games—with twice the tributes. White’s perfect pacing adds intensity to the brutality of the games and lingering melancholy as Haymitch struggles to maintain his integrity as the people around him keep dying.

THE RIVER HAS ROOTS

  • by Amal El-Mohtar | Read by Gem Carmella
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • [Macmillan Audio | 4 hrs.]

REVIEW

Gem Carmella narrates a magical novella inspired by traditional ballads. Sisters Esther and Ysabel use their musical talents to tend the enchanted willow their family has honored for generations. When an unwanted suitor appears, everything they love is suddenly at risk. Carmella’s narration perfectly blends the fantastical elements of fairy tales with the macabre elements of traditional murder ballads. A stunning performance. 

To subscribe to AudioFile’s newsletter subscription click here.

Pixel Scroll 5/28/25 Things File Apart, The Pixels Cannot Scroll

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(1) WALDROP AND WINDS NEWS. George R.R. Martin says a feature-length adaptation of Howard Waldrop’s A Dozen Tough Jobs is on the way in “Howard Meets Hercules” at Not a Blog. GRRM also has a little message for everyone who complains when he works on anything besides The Winds of Winter.

For all you Howard Waldrop fans out there… if you enjoyed our short films, the adaptations of MARY-MARGARET ROAD-GRADER, NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, and THE UGLY CHICKENS that we’ve been showing at film festivals over the past couple of years, we have big news a-coming.   A Waldrop feature is on the way.  All animated, from Lion Forge.

It’s an adaptation of Howard’s novella A DOZEN TOUGH JOBS, his  take on the Twelve Labors of Hercules.   Joe Lansdale, the Sage of Nacogdoches, father of Hap and Leonard, and creator of Bubba Ho-Tep, did the screenplay, and no one could have done it better except maybe Howard His Own Self.

(I know, I know.  Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER.   You have given up on me, or on the book.  I will never finish WINDS,  If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING.   If I do, it won’t be any good.  I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me…     I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old.   I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago.  I don’t give a shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money.   I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards.   You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, “A Song for Lya” and DYING OF THE LIGHT, “Sandkings” and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,  “This Tower of Ashes” and “The Stone City,” OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois,   You don’t care about any of those, I know.   You don’t care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER.  You’ve told me so often enough).

Thing is, I do care about them.

And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well.  The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all.  More than you can ever imagine….

(2) ONLY ONE PAGE AHEAD. Han Song’s future is not far enough away, it seems: “A Science Fiction Writer Wrestles With China’s Rise, and His Own Decline” in the New York Times (link bypasses the paywall).

Science fiction is the business of imagining the future, but reading Han Song, one of China’s leading writers of the genre, can sometimes feel like reading recent history.

In 2000, he wrote a novel depicting the collapse of the World Trade Center. In 2016, another book imagined the world transformed into a giant hospital, with doctors taking people from their homes — as would happen at times during China’s coronavirus years.

For Mr. Han, 59, this means only that he had not gone far enough in imagining how dark or strange modern life could become.

“I thought I was just writing, but that it was impossible for it to happen,” he said of his novel “Hospital,” in which everyone is reduced to being a patient. “It actually happened just a few years later,” he said, referring to the pandemic. “This is an example of reality being more science fiction than science fiction.”

How the unthinkable can become reality has been Mr. Han’s subject for the past four decades. By day, he is a journalist at China’s state news agency, recording the country’s astonishing modernization. At night, he writes fiction to grapple with how disorienting that change can be.

His stories are bleak, grotesque and graphic. Some scrutinize the gap between China and the West, as in “The Passengers and the Creator,” a short story in which Chinese people worship a mysterious god called Boeing. Others imagine that China has displaced the United States as the world’s leading superpower. Many take ordinary settings, like subway trains, as backdrops for wild scenes of cannibalism or orgies….

… Mr. Han estimates that about half of his writing has not been published in China because of censorship. That includes “My Country Doesn’t Dream,” though it has circulated widely online….

(3) NEBULAS: UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED. Michael Capobianco continues his chronicle: “A Brief History of SFWA: The First Nebula Awards” at the SFWA Blog.

Less than a year after SFWA founder and President Damon Knight created the Nebula Award, the first Nebula Awards Ceremonies were held on March 11, 1966. Why “Nebula?” The name was first introduced without explanation in the inaugural ballot mailed out to SFWA members. According to Robert Silverberg, SFWA’s second president, “Far as I know, Damon just liked the idea of calling it a Nebula. None of us saw any reason to object.” 

The ceremonies were held in two locations: one in New York City and the other in Beverly Hills, CA. The New York ceremony was held in what Knight later characterized as a “grungy” upstairs room at the Overseas Press Club on 45th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The California Nebulas were presented at a more upscale location: McHenry’s Tail O’ the Cock, a large, English–tavern style restaurant on Beverly Hills’ Restaurant Row…

…Ninety attendees were present in New York, and seventy attended the ceremony in California. On the way to the New York Nebulas, both Knight and SFWA Secretary-Treasurer Anne McCaffrey were involved in “minor” automobile accidents. In the Bulletin account, there was no indication of who was at fault, but both accidents involved trucks and both cars, Knight’s Dodge Dart and McCaffrey’s VW, were totaled….

(4) CLARION WEST BOOK SWAP IN SEATTLE. Get ready for the Clarion West Book Swap @ Octavia E. Butler Birthday Bash at the Langston Hughes Performing Art Institute in Seattle on June 22 from 12:00-3:00 p.m. Free RSVP at the link.

Bring a book, take a book: the Clarion West book swap is back. This time, we’ll join Langston’s creative arts team to celebrate science fiction luminary Octavia E. Butler. Come for the live performances, food, and refreshments. Stay for the community and celebration!

And don’t forget to bring a book to share (and a reusable tote to take away your new finds!)

Location: Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, 104 17th Ave S Washington 98144.

(5) BELLA RAMSEY PROFILE. Them verifies that “Bella Ramsey Is Alive and Well”.

It’s nearing 9 p.m. in London and the sky is turning black in the window behind Bella Ramsey, but the Last of Us star lights up as we go on a long tangent about the massively multiplayer online game Club Penguin. “Club Penguin is where I explored my gender identity,” they tell me with a proud smile.

The 21-year-old actor, who leads the hit HBO series based on the wildly popular video game series, publicly came out as nonbinary in an interview with The New York Times in 2023, but their gender evolution began long before then, with early exploration happening online. “My penguin was called Tomboy Bella and was red. I did karate on the freaking Karate Hill. I was loving life in Club Penguin world,” they tell me emphatically. “You can be whoever you want behind that avatar.”

The family-friendly Club Penguin game is perhaps the antithesis to The Last of Us, a critically acclaimed pair of survival horror video games intended for mature players. Every avatar was a penguin, uniform in shape and size, only distinguishable by the player’s color choice and username. Identifiers like gender, race, or class were deprioritized. Although children’s online games can often be poorly monitored and even muddled with Call of Duty-level slurs, otherworldly characters and anthropomorphic animals allow players to imagine an existence outside of the gender binary. In fact, video games have been sites of possibility for Ramsey more generally.

“When you get to choose a girl character or a boy character, I would pick the boy one because I could,” they tell me. “Gaming is such an amazing place to explore. I think there is often a narrative of it not being a safe space, and in some cases, yes, but in so many others, it is such a free and open space.”

Ramsey owes much of their current star power to the medium. The character of Ellie — a hard-headed, big-hearted, vengeful teenager surviving a dystopian world — catapulted the actor, who had previously starred as crowd favorite Lyanna Mormont in the final few seasons of Game of Thrones, to the top of the call sheet. It was a role to which they felt an immediate draw. “Even the description that I got in the email of the self-tape, I knew her, and I connected to her. She always felt like someone who was already inside of me.”

Though Ellie has identified as queer since season one of The Last of Us, we see her fall — or plummet, perhaps — into her first real lesbian relationship in the recently concluded second outing. The follow-up, much like the video game sequel on which it’s based, moves away from the often patriarchal and heteronormative post-apocalyptic horror genre and invites the viewer to fully step into a young masculine lesbian’s perspective. “I’d seen an article about Dina and Ellie’s kiss in the second game being the first lesbian kiss in a video game or something. Their relationship was my first introduction to the world of The Last of Us. It was really special to get to play that out with Isabela Merced,” Ramsey tells me….

(6) BREAKFAST OF C.H.U.D.S. “Bovril: A meaty staple’s strange link to cult science fiction” – BBC makes the connection.

A stout black jar of Bovril with a cheery red top lurks in many a British kitchen, next to tins of treacle and boxes of tea. The gooey substance, made of rendered-down beef, salt and other ingredients, can be spread on toast or made into a hot drink, but what many people don’t realise is that this old-fashioned comfort food has a surprising link to science fiction.

The “Bov” part of the name is easy enough to decipher – from “bovine”, meaning associated with cattle. But the “vril” bit? That’s a different story, literally.

In 1871, an anonymous novel was published about a race of super-humans living underground. The narrator of The Coming Race, who has fallen into their realm during a disastrous descent into a mine shaft, is shocked to learn that they are telepathic, thanks to the channeling of a mysterious energy called vril.

“Through vril conductors, they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animal and vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of our mystics,” the narrator realises. Vril gives them strength, as well, rendering them capable of incredible feats. The people call themselves the Vril-Ya, and their society seems in many ways superior to that of the surface dwellers….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 28, 1984 — Max Gladstone, 41.

By Paul Weimer: I slept on Max Gladstone’s first book, Three Parts Dead, for nearly a year. It wasn’t until it had hit paperback that I finally decided to dive into the first of the Craft Sequence, and then started and have been reading them as quickly as they come out. It’s his big conceit, his big series, and necromancy, accounting, magic, old gods, and social systems lets Max play with all of the themes and ideas that he wants, and make it into a fascinating fantasy universe. He’s also written a couple of text games set in the verse, too. 

I’ve enjoyed a heck of lot of his other work, too. There’s the serial Bookburners, which he collaborated with Mur Lafferty, Andrea Phillips, Amal El-Mohtar, and others. Occult operatives dealing with magically empowered objects is not a new idea in the main, but he brings lots of invention and ideas to the table with the serial.

I am also a big fan of possibly the best road trip SF novel out there: Last Exit. It’s Gladstone’s own love letter to Zelazny and shadow walking and traveling through multiple worlds, but not realizing you are bringing yourself along into those worlds. It’s a stunning construction and deconstruction of the concept. I do really need to re-read it…but as a listen, in an audiobook, and see how it does on an actual road trip. Someday!

I should probably mention This is How You Lose the Time War, but that is such a sui generis collaboration with the aforementioned Amal El-Mohtar, that it is impossible to determine what parts are his and which ones are hers, and I bet I’d be wrong if it tried. It certainly has given life and power to science fiction poetry, and I think its existence is why poetry has risen, at least for the 2025 Worldcon, to the level of a Hugo Award.

Happy Birthday Max!

Max Gladstone

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) STOP THAT TRAIN! “Superman Creator’s Estate Reportedly Files New Lawsuit To Block James Gunn’s Movie From Releasing In Certain Countries” reports ScreenRant.

James Gunn’s Superman movie is facing another lawsuit as the Man of Steel co-creator’s estate has reportedly filed a new lawsuit that could affect the DC Universe movie’s release. After a long wait to see the character back on the big screen, the Superman movie is approaching its summer release, with David Corenswet starring as the next live-action version of the DC icon. While the previous Superman movie lawsuit was dismissed in April, Warner Bros. Discovery is facing another round of litigation.

In Matthew Belloni’s latest Puck Newsletter, Eriq Gardner writes that attorney Marc Toberoff has reportedly refiled his copyright case, on behalf of the estate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, in New York state court. Toberoff is additionally seeking an injunction to block Warner Bros. from “exploiting Superman” in the U.K., Ireland, Canada, and Australia – where the estate is disputing copyright ownership due to the countries’ specific copyright laws.

According to Gardner, Warner Bros. Discovery had been ordered by the New York Supreme Court to “submit opposition papers by Friday,” before appearing in court on June 4 where they would have to explain why an injunction shouldn’t be granted​​​​​​. At the time of this story’s publication, Warner Bros. Discovery has not commented. Gardner writes that the suit is “theoretically jeopardizing the global rollout” of Gunn’s Superman movie….

(10) ALEX ROSS ART EXHIBIT. In Southern California, the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center is hosting the exhibit “Marvelocity: The Art of Alex Ross”. Location: 241 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim, CA 92805

On display May 16 through August 17, 2025. In a world where comic art traditionally exists in a realm beyond reality, allowing for fantastical narratives and impossible feats, Alex Ross boldly bridges the divide between fantasy and realism.

Ross’s revolutionary approach transcends conventional comic art. His technique—a fusion of Norman Rockwell’s authentic Americana with Jack Kirby’s dynamic imagination—achieves what many thought impossible: making the extraordinary feel real. Featuring over 50 original artworks from his landmark 2018 book Marvelocity, this exhibition invites you to experience the magic where artistic craftsmanship meets superhero mythology. 

(11) SLITHER WARNING. Starship Sloane Publishing Company released another David Gerrold novel today — The Boy Who Was Girl.

Whatever you do, don’t piss off Slither. That’s the only warning you’re going to get. Slither is an augmented, shapeshifting assassin with a hair-trigger temper. Hurled across space to a world of violence and treachery, a place where no one can be trusted, Slither can’t get home until she (or maybe he?) stops an interplanetary invasion. What happens next is a ferocious, fast-paced brawl where revenge is a dish best served NOW. Fasten your seatbelt! This is David Gerrold at his best!

The print edition with cover art by Marianne Plumridge titled Bolo Observation Platform is available from Amazon (the ebook isn’t out yet).

(12) ‘RAPID UNSCHEDULED DISASSEMBLY’. “SpaceX Starship breaks up over Indian Ocean in latest bumpy test” – the Guardian has the story.

Another SpaceX Starship prototype broke up over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, capping the latest bumpy test flight for the rocket central to billionaire Elon Musk’s dream of colonising Mars.

The biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built lifted off at 6.36pm local time from the company’s facility near a southern Texas village that earlier this month voted to become a city also named Starbase.

The first signs of trouble emerged when the first-stage Super Heavy booster blew up instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

A live feed then showed the upper-stage spaceship failing to open its doors to deploy a payload of Starlink satellite “simulators”.

Though the ship flew farther than on its two previous attempts, it sprang leaks and began spinning out of control as it coasted through space on a suborbital path before re-entering the atmosphere out of control and eventually breaking apart.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” SpaceX posted on X, using a familiar euphemism for failure, adding it would learn from the setback….

(13) AI SEARCH’S FADING USEFULNESS. In an opinion piece for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols complains, “AI model collapse is not what we paid for”.

I use AI a lot, but not to write stories. I use AI for search. When it comes to search, AI, especially Perplexity, is simply better than Google.

Ordinary search has gone to the dogs. Maybe as Google goes gaga for AI, its search engine will get better again, but I doubt it. In just the last few months, I’ve noticed that AI-enabled search, too, has been getting crappier.

In particular, I’m finding that when I search for hard data such as market-share statistics or other business numbers, the results often come from bad sources. Instead of stats from 10-Ks, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) mandated annual business financial reports for public companies, I get numbers from sites purporting to be summaries of business reports. These bear some resemblance to reality, but they’re never quite right. If I specify I want only 10-K results, it works. If I just ask for financial results, the answers get… interesting,

This isn’t just Perplexity. I’ve done the exact same searches on all the major AI search bots, and they all give me “questionable” results.

Welcome to Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO). Formally, in AI circles, this is known as AI model collapse. In an AI model collapse, AI systems, which are trained on their own outputs, gradually lose accuracy, diversity, and reliability. This occurs because errors compound across successive model generations, leading to distorted data distributions and “irreversible defects” in performance. The final result? A Nature 2024 paper stated, “The model becomes poisoned with its own projection of reality.”

Model collapse is the result of three different factors. The first is error accumulation, in which each model generation inherits and amplifies flaws from previous versions, causing outputs to drift from original data patterns. Next, there is the loss of tail data: In this, rare events are erased from training data, and eventually, entire concepts are blurred. Finally, feedback loops reinforce narrow patterns, creating repetitive text or biased recommendations.…

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

Mia Tsai Announces ConCurrent Seattle as Alternative Program to 2025 Worldcon

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Author Mia Tsai has announced ConCurrent Seattle, a one-day SFFH con intended to be an alternative program to Worldcon, will be held Thursday, August 14 at the ACT Theatre in downtown Seattle across from the Sheraton.

“ConCurrent was created as a response to Worldcon’s use of ChatGPT in the panelist vetting process,” says Tsai. “The use of ChatGPT at Worldcon has been a breach of trust in an industry of writers whose work has been stolen to train genAI.”

For more about the ChatGPT issue see “Seattle Worldcon 2025 Chair Delivers Update About Panelist Vetting”.

The ConCurrent website contends, “The event is not intended as a replacement for WorldCon, and it is the organizers’ hope that people will be able to attend both without judgment in the spirit of the connection and discovery that has helped the SFFH community thrive.”

And, “ConCurrent’s aim is to provide programming only, with a focus on what is currently happening in the SFFH genre.”

Two participants already advertised are Rebecca Roanhorse and Andrea Stewart.

A crowdfunding appeal has been launched to raise $5,000 to pay for the venue and other expenses. At this writing $1,770 of donations have come in, of which over $500 was contributed by author David Levine.

Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #99, A Column of Unsolicited Opinions

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Chris Barkley Photo (circa 1975) by Diana Duncan Holmes; Chris Barkley Photo (May 2025) by Juli Marr

A Long Time Ago, At A Convention Far, Far Away…STAR WARS!

By Chris M. Barkley: If you are a hardcore cinephile like myself, I have no doubt that you remember when a film burned itself into your memory bank so hard that you vividly remember exactly when and where you were when that magical moment happened.

For instance, I saw It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in the early 1970’s in a now extinct theater that nowadays is a popular skating rink.

I had the privilege of seeing 2001; A Space Odyssey during a seven-day limited run in August 1974 at the now defunct Carousel Theater in all of its 70mm glory.

I first viewed Casablanca during exam week at the University of Cincinnati in 1975 in the Tangeman Student Center auditorium.  

I saw Citizen Kane for the first time in a very small viewing room of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Main Library one winter morning during the same period.

I somehow missed the first run of The Matrix in the spring of 1999 but by the time August rolled around it was in a second-run, two dollar movie house in Norwood, Ohio near the hotel Midwestcon was held for many years. I was so dazzled by the story, characters, music and visual effects I went back and saw it two more times before it left town for good. 

But there was one particular, unforgettable film that I remember above all others.

Forty-eight years ago, on the evening of May 27th – 28th 1977, I first encountered George Lucas’ monumental and epic movie, Star Wars (as it was simply called until 1981, when it was permanently dubbed “A New Hope”.

And while my first viewing of Star Wars during the spring of 1977 was inevitable, I can say in hindsight that my initial time was not only incredibly fortuitous but historic as well.  

In May of that year, I was eleven months into my journey in sf fandom, which, in itself was also highly coincidental; I and my best friend Michaele had the good luck to stumble upon a legendary science fiction convention called Midwestcon (the 27th gathering that year) hosted by the Cincinnati Fantasy Group, who had hosted the 7th World Science Fiction Convention, Cinvention, in 1949.

In those ancient days before the internet, any word of a noteworthy sf fan activity, books, art or films was generally spread by word of mouth, magazines, radio, print newspapers or, on rare occasions, television.

As far as I was concerned, anything about Star Wars was well off my radar. If I had attended the 34th Worldcon in Kansas City in 1976 (which I could ill afford to go to at the time) I would have seen a spectacular exhibit sponsored by Lucasfilm Limited, laden with costumes, models, props teasing what the film was all about. Also present was a then little known actor named Mark Hamill, who reportedly lamented the fact that he had starred in this fantastic movie that no one had heard of or will see until next year.

Of course, Hamill, his castmates, the production crew and George Lucas himself had no idea of what they were about to unleash upon the world.

Lucas, who had some first-hand knowledge of sf fandom himself, knew instinctively that if other fans got behind this effort and spread a viral word of mouth campaign, there was a chance this might be a successful film.

This is not to say I was totally unaware of the movie; over the winter Del Rey/Ballantine Books had issued the novelization of Star Wars, which I saw and for the most part ignored because I had no idea what it was all about and looked like dozens of other space opera novels of that period.

(It should be duly noted that those first edition paperbacks, published in December of 1976 with a cover illustrated by Star Wars concept artist Ralph McQuarrie and ghost written by Alan Dean Foster, go for A LOT of pretty pennies nowadays.)

That spring, I heard  from other members of the CFG of another well known science fiction convention in Washington D.C. called Disclave, which was that area’s premiere fan events. Several people from the Cincinnati group attended on a regular basis and I decided to go as well.

I was twenty years old at the time and I wanted, for the first time in my life, to plan my own trip and travel alone. I booked a train ticket through the national rail system, AMTRAK and a hotel room at the sprawling Sheraton Park Hotel on Connecticut Avenue.

After a splendid overnight trip, I arrived at the hotel on a beautiful Friday afternoon and the first thing I heard about from friends and fans alike was about the film playing up the street at the Uptown Theater, Star Wars. I also heard that showings were sold out that day so I was not inclined to go see it initially.

Little did I know at the time that the Uptown was one of ONLY thirty-two theaters in America that had premiered Star Wars two days earlier on May 25th. Before the end of that weekend the number would grow to forty-four.

Original Star Wars Poster: 20th Century Fox

By Saturday morning, I had heard enough so I decided to find out what all of the hullabaloo was all about myself. Setting out early that afternoon, I started walking up Connecticut Avenue. 

The Uptown Theater was approximately 3/4 miles away from the hotel. As I got closer, I began to see that there were a great number of people gathered in the distance. When I reached the site I was astonished to see that the line of people stretched from the box office ticket window, south down the sidewalk and up Newark Street N.W., and astoundingly, past the urban neighborhood houses. 

I have never seen a longer line for a film since then.

Grandparents Seeing Star Wars Meme: Unknown

There were a great deal of people milling about the theater. As I surveyed this swirl of humanity a miracle occurred; as I was standing there a man and a woman were profusely apologizing to another man, who was holding two red tickets. 

As the couple left, he turned, saw me and held up the two tickets. “They couldn’t make the midnight show. Would YOU like to buy them?”

Well, of course I said, “SURE!” 

He explained that he was one of the Uptown managers and was outside basically for customer service and to handle the crowd. 

“How much?” I asked eagerly.

“Three dollars each.”

And with that I handed over a five and a single dollar bill to witness history.

I walked back to the hotel somewhat surprised at my luck. I gave away one ticket upon my return but for the life of me I cannot remember who the lucky recipient was.

The rest of the day went by in a blur; I can’t remember a single thing I did between then and attending the film.

I returned to the theater by 11:30 p.m. to ensure I got a good seat. There were only a few dozen people ahead of me. Since the Uptown seated 850 people per showing, I was wise to turn up early.

The Uptown Theater: Washington City Paper
Uptown Theater Interior: Washington City Paper

When the doors opened, I hustled and quickly snagged a seat right towards the middle of the fifth or sixth row from the back of the theater.

When midnight came, the lights went down and there were no preview trailers. The audience spoke in low murmurs. I had no idea of what I was about to see.

I sat back as Alfred Newman’s familiar 20th Century Fox theme tolled. And after this evening, I would forever associate it with this particular film.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…the Star Wars logo burst into existence for the very first time! 

With an incredible clash of instruments, composer John Williams, doing the opposite of what he did two summers ago with his masterful and epic score for Jaws, had a stranglehold on my imagination immediately.

Next came the serial-like expositional screen crawl followed by the camera panning down to the planet of Tatooine and came the first of many splendors; Princess Leia’s cruiser under fire from Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer, which thundered over our heads with astounding effect.  With the four-track Dolby sound system, it seemingly put everyone there seemingly in the middle of the space battle!

And then, a cacophony of thrills; the deserts of Tatooine, the Jawas and their transport, the captive robots, the twin suns, the lightsaber, Mos Eisley spaceport, the Millenium Falcon going into hyperspace, the dreaded Death Star utterly obliterating Alderaan, the rebel’s escape and the climactic battle…

And two hours and one minute later it was all over.

The crowd rose in unison to applaud and scream their approval. A majority of them stayed for the credits as they rolled, something else I had NEVER seen before! For the record, I had no intention of leaving either. There was a very enthusiastic cheer for the Dolby sound system credit as well.

And so, with the last note of Williams magnificent score ringing in our ears, we exited the hall. I stood outside on the sidewalk, still quite stunned at what I just witnessed. The crowd was abuzz with many animated conversations and wildly exaggerated  hand gestures. 

And then I turned and saw one of my new fannish friends, a Baltimore area fan named Michael Walsh (who went on to become the Chair of ConStellation, the 41st Worldcon in 1983), in a similar state of mind. 

We locked eyes, spontaneously joined our hands together and began to dance like two madmen. 

(I also have the satisfaction of personally conveyed that scene to C3PO actor Anthony Daniels as he signed my copy of his book I Am C3PO, during his 2019 book tour. He gave me a generous, wide eyed smile in return.)

Star Wars newspaper review: The Washington Post

 And the rest, as they say frequently, is history. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed many of the series’ spin offs and sequels (with the possible exception of the Ewoks) and especially after the now concluded prequel series Andor, which I rank among the best of all of the iterations.

As far movie going experiences go, there are very few fantastic or transforming experiences as seeing Star Wars for the very first time on a 70mm screen in a full house of unsuspecting moviegoers.    

I haven’t forgotten that evening and I’m willing to bet that very few of those who were there haven’t either.

Reference Links:

Pixel Scroll 5/27/25 Everybody Loves Raymond Palmer (Both The Shaver’s Mystery Guy And The Size-Shrinking Superhero)

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(1) SO THIS HEINLEIN, IS HE ANY GOOD? View Sharon Lee’s acceptance speech for the 2025 Robert A. Heinlein Award in this YouTube video.

(2) FAIR PAY. Steve Davidson urges sff readers to commit to pay a fair price for short fiction in a post on Facebook. Davidson begins by telling what the market rates of the Thirties would translate to after factoring in 90 years’ worth of inflation. Then he makes this appeal —

…Authors need to LIVE in order to be able to write and, I’d venture to guess, authors who are not stressing over whether or not they’ll be living in their cars next month will write more and better than those who have no such concerns.

To put a finer point on it: magazines would have to pay a word rate of 67 cents per word if the sale of that one short story is to have the same economic power today as $150 bucks did back in 1930.

On the other hand….

I’m betting that readers actually DO value authors and their works (well, at least those readers who read anyways). And I’m betting that they are willing to step up IF they’re given the opportunity. Oh, maybe not quite yet to covering sixty-seven cents per word, but certainly more than 8 cents per word.

I think the evidence is all around us that they are. I mean – go look at what a paperback costs these days! Me, I choke whenever I see the cover price because my baseline is what it cost me to buy those first Heinlein novels from the Bookmobile back in 1968 – 45 cents to 60 cents. Those same books now go for $13 – or more!

Anyway, the point is this:

We KNOW you all are willing to pay something close to what modern science fiction is actually worth, because you’re already doing it everyday when you plunk down ten bucks for an ebook or fifteen bucks for a paperback (or forty+ bucks for a hardback).

Now all you have to do is extend that same calculus, that same perceptual handwavium when it comes to magazine issues and their close cousin companions, theme anthologies….

(3) LOCUS FUNDRAISER LOOKS TO FINISH STRONG. The “Locus Mag: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror 2025” appeal at Indiegogo has four days to go. It had raised $44,671 when I checked this afternoon. Among reasons for you to click over, the Indiegogo paid includes links to videos of Connie Willis, Daniel Abraham, and Tobi Ogundrian reading from their work.

We are incredibly grateful for every penny donated and we’ll put it all to good use, but this is a moment to be honest about the urgency of our fundraiser. We’re just 4 days from the close of this fundraiser and we haven’t raised even half of the money we need to keep Locus running. 

Being an indie non-profit press, we’ve been running on a skeleton crew for years. A larger budget means paying writers and artists a better rate, adding more short fiction and long form reviewers to cover all the amazing stories that are being written, and enough budget to cover all the amazing events out there and to stay connected with the community. Please help keep Locus alive, as the independent voice of the field and the guide to the world’s imagination!

If we don’t reach our funding goals, we will have to contract even further – you’ve seen your favorite magazines and newspapers shrink or disappear… There’s no part of what Locus does that we can imagine giving it up, reviews, interviews, cons, obits, the Locus Awards, the recommended lists – remembering people, pushing the news out, evening out the playing field. We don’t want to give any of it up. And we want to get back to a full schedule of writing workshops, reach more people on different platforms about our amazing genre, host readings… so much more. 

We’re particularly concerned about the loss of short fiction reviews. Locus is one of the only venues that reviews short stories and makes a concerted effort to cover the small and independent press. Locus wants to help level the playing field for emerging writers and everyone in general. Without those efforts it feels like the only SFF writers getting attention out there are NYT bestsellers…

(4) APPEALS COURT SAYS LIBRARY COLLECTION DECISIONS ARE GOVERNMENT SPEECH. “Full Court of Appeals Reverses Previous Rulings, Supports Texas Library’s Book Removals” at Publishers Lunch (behind a paywall).

A full en banc ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned both a lower-court decision and a Court of Appeals ruling that had found a Texas library’s removal of books was a violation of the First Amendment, in a 10-7 decision.

Last year, a regular three-person Court of Appeals panel ruled that the Llano County Library could not remove books based on their content, writing that, “Government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree.” The titles at issue included books about sexuality and racism, and “butt and fart books.” Eight of the original 17 removed titles were returned to the library.

Now, the court reversed that preliminary injunction and dismissed the free speech claims of the plaintiffs—seven library patrons.

In the decision, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan writes that the right to receive information from “tax-payer funded library books” is not protected by the First Amendment.

“That is a relief, because trying to apply it would be a nightmare,” the decision continues. “How would judges decide when removing a book is forbidden? No one in this case—not plaintiffs, nor the district court, nor the panel—can agree on a standard. May a library remove a book because it dislikes its ideas? Because it finds the book vulgar? Sexist? Inaccurate? Outdated? Poorly written? Heaven knows.”

The decision also states that “a library’s collection decisions are government speech and therefore not subject to Free Speech challenge.” Judge Duncan asserts that libraries have always made decisions about what books to shelve, just as government-funded museums decide on which paintings to include.

“That is what it means to be a library—to make judgments about which books are worth reading and which are not, which ideas belong on the shelves and which do not.

“If you doubt that, next time you visit the library ask the librarian to direct you to the Holocaust Denial Section.”…

(5) LETTING THE DOGS IN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] In chatting with one of the (local) librarians about some catalog quirks (mentioning my not-yet-replicated search within WorldCat/OCLC showing a library/book location of “outer space”), they noted that the CountWay library in the (Harvard) medical center area had a dog in their catalog — a “library” dog, e.g., for “Read with a Dog,” “schedule cuddle time”…

I haven’t (yet) found actual catalog entries, but (as I already knew), “library dogs” are indeed a Real Thing, e.g., Therapy Pets | Countway Library (harvard.edu)

For many Filers, this, of course, immediately brings to mind the classic Eric Frank Russell story, “Allamagoosa” (here’s a Baen link to the story.)

(6) ORSON WELLES HELPS SELL A BOOK. A Deep Look by Dave Hook looks at another 1949 sf collection: “’Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories’, Orson Welles ‘editor’, 1949 Dell (SFE says ghost editor was Don Ward)”

The Short: I read Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories, Orson Welles “editor”, 1949 Dell (there is controversy about the actual editor). Including the 1938 “Invasion from Mars: A Radio Adaption” radio play adaptation, it includes ten stories and an Introduction. My favorite story is the well reprinted and superlative Ray Bradbury story “The Million Year Picnic“, a Martian Chronicles short story, Planet Stories Summer 1946. My overall average rating of the stories was 3.76/5, or “Very good”. I have mixed feelings about recommending it, see below. You can find links to the stories here.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 27, 1911 — Vincent Price. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer: Vincent Price. My first voice and face of horror. But especially, his voice. 

I’ve mentioned WPIX many times in these birthday reminiscences and in comments at File 770. And so it was on NY’s movie station that I first encountered the work of Vincent Price. It was one of the Dr. Phibes movies, gory, weird and a lot of fun. That voice was unmistakable. Imagine my surprise when the very different looking Dr. Egghead (played by Price) showed up in an episode of the 60’s Batman cartoon. Although Egghead and Phibes couldn’t be more different, the voice was what keyed me, even with my amusia, that the same actor was at work here.  That oily, horror fueled voice. He was the voice of terror, of nightmares, of the dark descent. 

And that’s kind of how I kept running into him, by accident, again and again. For a while it seemed I could not escape the Master of Horror. Oh, here he is in a movie based on the “Pit and the Pendulum”. How very droll.  Oh, and here he has shown up randomly on an episode of Columbo. Oops, here he is again in a Roger Corman horror film. All with That Voice. Although I still think the Jeff Goldblum version is better, the haunting image of his version of The Fly, where a part of him is trapped in a fly’s body, caught in a web, with a spider coming to eat him, is enough to give me the chills. 

Even with all of his other work, again and again, what Price comes down to is the voice of horror. And so I ask you, who else could have been the narrator voice for the music video Thriller?

Vincent Price

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY, TOO.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 27, 1934 — Harlan Ellison. (Died 2018.)

By Paul Weimer: Harlan Ellison. No trademark symbols, if he wants to come back from the dead and harangue me, he’s welcome to do so. 

To talk about him as a broken step will be taken as read, it turns out he did behave very badly indeed, and that mars his reputation. Not being ever to finish the Last Dangerous Visions is another stain on his record, too. He seems to have forgotten his own maxims and advice on that one. He was a writer’s writer and an editor’s editor, and while he had the juice for the first Last Dangerous Visions, he never could see through to the last. 

My older brother had plenty of collections of his stories, so his stories, both genre and only near-SF was an early part of my reading. Included in those collections were both volumes of The Glass Teat, so along with lots of Ellison stories, I also got a healthy dose of his film and television criticism, and his unyielding personality. I may have never gotten to meet him personally, but his ferocious reputation by his writing was enough. When Heinlein has him show up in the end of The Number of the Beast as simply “Harlan”, I had read enough to know what Heinlein meant with that one word. 

Three stories of his always come to my mind and you can guess them.  “’Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” which for even though the titular Harlequin is captured and his rebellion ended, is still a story of hope, because his spirit of chaos cannot and will not be permanently stilled.  “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, one of the most ultimate horror stories, with four people and a deranged computer at the end of the world.  And, “Paladin of the Lost Hour” which is the best “Rage against the dying of the light” story I’ve ever read.  When he wasn’t a raging a-hole, Harlan Ellison could and did write.

Harlan Ellison

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) DEADPOOL/BATMAN CROSSOVER. Wade Wilson has been hired for a job in Gotham City, but will the World’s Greatest Detective help him or destroy him? Entertainment Weekly today revealed Marvel’s Merc with a Mouth will meet DC’s Dark Knight this September in Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1, the first of two crossovers between Marvel and DC more than twenty years in the making. It will be followed by DC’s Batman/Deadpool #1 in November.

 Deadpool/Batman #1 will be written by prolific Spider-Man comics writer and co-writer for Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine Zeb Wells and drawn by industry superstar Greg Capullo, an artist with an incredible legacy at both legendary comic book companies, with influential work on Batman and X-Men titles.

“After writing Amazing Spider-Man for 60 issues, I told Marvel I needed a break. Marvel told me I could do that or I could write a comic starring Deadpool and Batman with the best Batman artist of our generation. I no longer needed a break,” Wells shared with EW. “In Batman we’ve found someone who has even less time for Deadpool’s antics than Wolverine, but a city-wide threat from the Joker makes strange bedfellows (literally, if Deadpool had his way). It’s been a blast letting Deadpool loose in Gotham City and watching what happens.”

“Am I dreaming? This crossover is likely to be the high point of my career…and, I’ve had a great career,” Capullo added. “Some of my earliest work (many years ago) was on X-Force, so Deadpool and I go way back. More recently, I spent 10-plus years drawing Batman at DC. The idea that I get to do a crossover event with Deadpool and Batman…If I am dreaming, please don’t wake me!”

Check out Capullo’s main cover and stay tuned for more news about Deadpool/Batman #1 in the weeks ahead.

(11) WB WHACKS SCREENING OF SCHUMACHER CUT. “Studio Blocks Screening of Controversial Batman Forever Director’s Cut” reports CBR.com.

The fabled Schumacher cut of Batman Forever has hit a major snag as Warner Bros. has decided to scrap a planned screening of the hotly anticipated film.

A screening of the Schumacher cut was supposed to take place at Cinefile Video in Santa Monica, California. But according to The AV Club, the event was canceled following a legal request from Warner Bros. “Our planned screening of Batman Forever has been canceled,” the store said in an email to its members. “This follows a legal request from Warner Bros. regarding the rights to the version of the film we intended to show. While this was a free, members-only event meant to celebrate a unique piece of film history, we respect the rights of studios and creators, and have chosen to withdraw the event accordingly.”

The news came as a major blow for Batman fans as the Schumacher cut has long been considered a Holy Grail of sorts….

(12) FIRST OF THE LAST OF US. [Item by Steven French.] “The Last of Us science adviser: COVID changed our appetite for zombies” learned Nature.

The year was 2013, and the release of a hotly anticipated zombie-apocalypse video game was on the horizon.

The game, called The Last of Us, invited players to explore what then seemed a fanciful scenario: a world devastated by a pandemic in which a pathogen kills millions of people.

Unlike in many apocalypse fictions, the pathogen responsible wasn’t a bacterium or a virus, but a fungus called Cordyceps that infects humans and takes over their brains.

The writers at game studio Naughty Dog, based in Santa Monica, California, were inspired by real fungi — particularly Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, known as the zombie-ant fungus. The fungus infects insects and releases chemicals into the animals’ brains to change their behaviour. Ahead of the game’s release, Naughty Dog turned to scientists, including behavioural ecologist David Hughes, a specialist in zombie-ant fungi (he named one after his wife), to field questions from the media about the fungal and pandemic science that inspired the story. Hughes, who is at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, has since moved to studying climate change and food security….

(13) BALTICON SUNDAY SHORT SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL 2025 WINNERS. [Report by lance oszko.] Audience scores were from 0 to 5, with sum of values divided by number of votes. 

Best Live Action

  • Stephen King’s The Reach (2024) Italy Luca Caserta 167 points in 41 votes cast = 4.0731 * 

Best Animation

  • Dad in the Echo (2023) China Jacky Heng SUN  315 points in 82 votes cast = 3.8414 *  

Scores of all entries:

  • An Old Friend 2024 USA Nuk Suwanchote  198 Points in 57 Votes cast = 3.4736.
  • Akashic Spheres 2021 USA James Scott 150 points in 69 votes cast =2.1739
  • Invasion ’53  2024 Maryland Danielle Weinberg 304 points in 77 votes cast = 3.9480
  • Zerk 2024 Maryland Theo Jack-Monroe 193 points in 69 votes cast = 2.7971
  • Dad in the Echo 2023 China  Jacky Heng SUN  315 points in 82 votes cast = 3.8414  * Best Animation
  • Eunice 2018 UK Eric Garro 240 points in 74 votes cast = 3.2432  * Science History Discovery of Greenhouse Gasses.
  • M.T. Nestor 2023 USA John Schlag  250 points in 70 votes cast = 3.5714  
  • The Hairdo 2024 UK Catherine Ruby Yeats  205 points in 73 votes cast = 2.8082
  • Fire of God 2024 Belgium Yannick Mourcia  106 points in 40 votes cast = 2.6500
  • Frederic Brown’s The Hobbyist 2016 USA George Vatistas 161 points in 46 votes cast = 3.5000
  • Battle of LA 2024 USA Patrick Pizzolorusso 137 points in 46 votes cast = 2.9782  
  • Forever 2018 France  Donia Summer 115 points in 47 votes cast = 2.4468
  • Under Siege 2025 Greece Nikos Nikitoglou 107 points in 47 votes cast = 2.2765
  • Stephen King’s The Reach 2024 Italy Luca Caserta  167 points in 41 votes cast = 4.0731  * Best Live Action
  • The Faun of Healwood The Edge 2023 France Stephane Artus 116 points in 39 votes cast = 2.9743
  • In The Walls 2023  Argentina  Ramsés Tuzzio  63 points in 32 votes cast = 1.9687   (continuing trend of low scoring Horror)

*** last 3 had technical error in missing subtitle/captioning.

  • Leïla et Les Fantômes 2023  France Chiraz Chouchane  41 points in 19 votes cast = 2.1578 
  • Alcalyne 2022 France  MICHAËL PROENÇA  41 points in 24 votes cast  = 1.7083  * Lowest Score.
  • Howard Waldrop’s Mary Margaret Road Grader 2024 USA Steven Paul Judd  110 points in 30 votes cast = 3.6666.

(14) THEY KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES. “New evidence suggests our solar system has nine planets again” – Earth.com discusses a new candidate for number nine.

…Searching the far reaches

Researchers at a university in Taiwan believe a Neptune-sized object could be wandering roughly 46.5 to 65.1 billion miles from the sun.

Their fresh findings are based on two deep infrared surveys taken more than two decades apart, with equipment sensitive enough to detect a faint planetary glow.

Infrared data from 1983 and 2006 offered a rare chance to see if something moved slightly between observations.

A possible candidate popped up, and the group thinks it might take 10,000 to 20,000 years to orbit the sun….

…Researchers estimate that if this object exists, it could weigh between seven and seventeen times as much as Earth. That puts it in the ice giant category, similar to Uranus or Neptune, rather than a rocky planet like Earth or Mars….

(15) 48 CHALLENGE 2025. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sci-Fi London Film Fest has just posted its latest 48-hour film challenge’s 10 finalists for 2025.

This challenge is where amateur film makers are given a line of script and told to include a particular prop (it could be anything from a top hat to a candle stick) and then they are given two days to complete a short SF film.

You can view the finalist shorts at the link.

Meanwhile, this year’s Fest runs June 19– 22, 2025 at the Picture House in Finsbury Park (just north of central London).

(16) ESA BLUE DANUBE BROADCAST TO SPACE, [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] To mark ESA’s 50th anniversary, ESA’s  Cebreros station will broadcast “The Blue Danube” to space on Saturday, May 31, 2025.

The Cebreros station has been used to communicate with deep space missions including: BepiColombo, Euclid, Juice, Hera, Rosetta, Mars Express and NASA’s Perseverance rover.

The Blue Danube was famously (for us SF buffs) in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Cebreros station can, in theory, communicate with current-technology deep-space probes up to 1/3 light years away. However, it could communicate further with bigger dishes than those aboard current deep space probes and so in theory anyone listening around nearby stars should pick the microwave (S-band) broadcast up.

Details here: “European Space Agency will beam the famous ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ waltz out into the cosmos” in BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

The European Space Agency is planning to beam Johann Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube’ waltz out into the cosmos to celebrate a series of key anniversaries in the history of spaceflight.

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the European Space Agency and its ‘Estrack’ satellite tracking network.

It also marks the 20th anniversary of its ‘Cebreros’ space antenna and, coincidentally, the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss II himself, composer of the Blue Danube.

And a reminder of the 2001: A Space Odyssey clip:

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