25 Better To Light One Pixel Than To Scroll The File

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) BOOKS THAT FETCHED BIG BUCKS. AbeBooks lists the “Most expensive sales from January to March 2025”. The complete top 10 is at the link. Here are the three fantasy/SF books that brought the highest prices.

1. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams and William Nicholson – $28,000

Paper covered boards with Nicholson’s illustrations, covered in matching original dust wrapper First published in 1922, The Velveteen Rabbit has become one of the most beloved children’s stories of all time. This rare and fragile first edition is particularly notable for its seven color illustrations, some double-page, each with its original printed caption. The endpapers feature delightful drawings of rabbits.

This exceptional copy retains its paper-covered boards with Nicholson’s illustrations and original publisher’s pictorial dustwrapper with matching design. It presents in near-fine condition, with only a short split to the foot of the upper joint and light spotting to early pages. The dustwrapper, while showing a small chip to the spine foot and minor fraying, remains remarkably well-preserved for such a delicate publication.

“The Velveteen Rabbit has struck a chord with child and adult readers alike since its original publication in 1922, with its combination of Margery Bianco Williams’s underlying message and William Nicholson’s striking double page colour illustrations, which work in harmony with the text. The first edition is both rare and inherently fragile so copies in such exemplary condition are very seldom found. In thirty years as a specialist in rare children’s books this is only the fourth such copy we have sold.”

4. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White – $18,700

Author’s presentation copy, inscribed to friend and fellow novelist, Elizabeth Taylor on the front end paper, “For Elizabeth Taylor / and I do like Irish whiskey / E B White” E.B. White and British novelist Elizabeth Taylor maintained a literary friendship despite rarely meeting in person. Their connection flourished through The New Yorker, where White’s wife Katherine served as Taylor’s first editor. This first edition of Charlotte’s Web carries their relationship in ink – White’s inscription reads “For Elizabeth Taylor / and I do like Irish whiskey,” a fitting note from an author known to store manuscripts in whiskey boxes and keep a bottle ready for guests.

The first issue (marked ‘First edition, I-B’ on verso) features Garth Williams’ original color dustwrapper and line drawings, showing only slight toning to the spine.

“Charlotte Web has long been a popular with children the world over, but what makes this book particularly special is the inscription by the books author, E.B.White to fellow novelist, Elizabeth Taylor. The notion of author to author associations strikes a particular chord with sophisticated book collectors, the book marking an intersection of the author’s creative endeavour and their life outside the text. It is evidence of this personal contact which influences the author’s work which gives books like this an animation all of their own. Taylor had the misfortune to be a contemporary of the much more famous actress of the same name, but was nevertheless a successful (and lately, increasingly read) author in her own right, described by Kingsley Amis as ‘one of the best English novelists born this century’.”

8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick – $15,500

First edition review copy with publisher’s original publicity slip 1968 marked a turning point in science fiction with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick’s tale of bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalking artificial beings through a post-apocalyptic landscape would redefine the genre’s approach to human consciousness and artificial life.

In its original grey cloth binding with gilt spine lettering, this review copy offers a rare glimpse into the novel’s publication. The inclusion of the publisher’s publicity slip and unclipped dust jacket makes this example particularly noteworthy in Dick’s bibliography.

“As one of the genre’s most influential authors, Dick’s exploration of themes like reality, identity, and authoritarianism has left a lasting impact on literature and film. His thought-provoking narratives, often blending dystopian futures with psychological intrigue, have inspired numerous adaptations, including the iconic Blade Runner.”

(2) FLASHY MEETS THE BUGS. The discussion Cat Eldridge sparked yesterday with his piece about George Macdonald Fraser’s “Flashman” made me track down my parody of the series, “Flashman at Klendathu”, and add it to File 770’s library of my fanwriting. The article originally appeared in Guy H. Lillian’s fanzine Challenger in 2008, adorned with this wonderful illo by Charlie Williams.

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to break for brunch with writer Adeena Mignogna on Episode 253 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Ever since Adeena Mignogna dared to eat a donut on the Capclave Donut Carnival episode of this podcast, I knew I’d eventually host her for a more in-depth conversation. And that time is now!

Mignogna is the author of the the Robot Galaxy series, which so far is a quartet, made up of Crazy Foolish Robots; Robots, Robots Everywhere; Silly Insane Humans; and Eleven Little Robots. As you’ll hear in our chat, there’ll be many more to follow. She’s also the author of Lunar Logic — the first novel in a series which doesn’t yet have an overarching title, though the second book will be titled Moonbase Mayhem, so who knows, perhaps there’ll be something alliterative there as well.

She’s also one of the hosts of the long running BIG Sci-Fi podcast. When not writing or podcasting, Adeena is a physicist, astronomer, and software engineer who’s worked for nearly three decades in the aerospace industry as a Mission Architect.

We discussed how Star Trek changed her life, which Trek character she used as her screen name on fan forums when she first went online as a young teen, why she never wrote fanfic, the feedback from a friend which saved her NaNoWriMo novel from being trunked, how she discovered she’s neither a plotter nor a pantser but rather something in-between, her favorite science fiction novel of all time (and the important lesson it taught her about her Robot Galaxy series), why she went the indie route and how she knew she had the chops to pull it off, the manner in which we gender robots, the reason writing each book in her quartet was more fun than the one before, why she remains hopeful about our AI future, how she finally learned she was a morning writer after years of trying to write at night, and much more.

(4) PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS. The 2025 PEN America Literary Awards were announced on May 8. None of the fiction appears to be genre.

The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award went to Jason Roberts for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life.

(5) JEOPARDY! [Item by Rich Lynch.] The current Jeopardy champion going into today’s match is Dan Moren, a sff author, editor and podcaster with an entry in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia.

(6) RETURN TO SUMMERISLE. “Are you here for the burning?” – The Observer covers a dedicated fan’s restaging of The Wicker Man.

As the sun sinks over the Irish Sea, Fergal O’Riordan stands on a headland in south-west Scotland and looks up with tears in his eyes at the 7 metre-tall wicker man, blazing against the darkening sky. Five years of work going up in smoke. He couldn’t be happier.

Dubliner O’Riordan first contacted me in February to tell me about a documentary he was making on Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult folk-horror classic The Wicker Man. The project had consumed him since 2020, costing him all his savings, and almost his marriage, his family and his sanity.

Publicity seeker, I assumed. But when I finally got to meet O’Riordan, 55, last weekend, for the premiere of his film, Return to Summerisle, in the small town of Newton Stewart, it became apparent that he had been deadly serious…

(7) ORWELL ARCHIVE GAINS DOCUMENTS. “About 160 historic George Orwell papers saved for nation after outcry” reports the Guardian.

George Orwell’s correspondence, contracts and readers’ reports relating to his earliest novels are among historic papers that have been saved for the nation after an outcry over their initial dispersal.

University College London (UCL) said it had acquired the archive of the Nineteen Eighty-Four author’s publisher as “a valuable piece of Britain’s cultural heritage”.

About 160 items, dating from 1934 to 1937, are to be added to the Orwell Archive in UCL Special Collections, the world’s most comprehensive holdings of research material relating to him….

…The collection had belonged to his publisher, Victor Gollancz, who founded one of the 20th century’s foremost publishing houses.

The company was acquired by the Orion Group, which became part of Hachette, owned by the French multinational Lagardère, whose decision to sell the archive because its warehouse was closing was condemned last year as an act of cultural vandalism….

(8) DISRUPTION OF THE DAY. “Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden Fired by White House” reports Publisher Weekly.

In the latest blow to professional research and the literary and arts community, the Trump administration fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on May 8. “Tonight, the White House informed Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden that she has been relieved of her position,” a Library of Congress spokesperson confirmed in an email to PW. No reason for Hayden’s removal was provided, and no further information has been announced regarding the library’s staffing or budget.

Hayden has led the Library of Congress since 2016, when she was appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed and sworn in by the U.S. Senate. She was the first woman and first Black person to head the nation’s library, a federal resource whose vast on-site and online collections are the research arm of the U.S. Congress and an information hub for organizations and individuals worldwide. Hayden is a past CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, and from 2003 to 2004 served as president of the American Library Association….

…Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D–N.Y.), the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, issued a statement calling the removal “unjust” and “a disgrace” that represents the president’s “ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history, and turn back the clock.” Calling the Library of Congress is “the People’s Library,” Jeffries added: “There will be accountability for this unprecedented assault on the American way of life sooner rather than later.”…

(9) TARIFF TERROR. “‘A kick in the teeth’: UK film industry’s horror at possible Trump tariffs” says the Guardian.

It is a sunny May afternoon in leafy Surrey, and Richard St Clair is carefully preparing a bomb. It is not real, but it will look like it is when shown on a Netflix TV show. Across the workshop a colleague is cheerfully sandpapering a pile of hip bones for the 28 Years Later zombie film – trailers suggest a lot of skeletons will be involved.

They are working at db Props, a small company based at Shepperton Studios that has made everything from Thor’s hammer to Alan Turing’s computer in The Imitation Game.

Yet for all its work on huge productions, the workshop has a shadow hanging over it, cast by Donald Trump. The US president this week sent shock waves through the global film industry with a surprise statement that he will bring in a 100% tariff on movies “produced in Foreign Lands”. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” he wrote on his social network Truth Social.

“I’m terrified about this new Trump thing – whatever that may be,” says Dean Brooks, the owner of db Props and a 45-year veteran of the props trade after joining at 16. “This has been a proper kick in the teeth.”

Britain’s film and video production industry employs about 99,000 people, but it punches well above the UK’s economic weight globally, and has a glamour that other industries cannot match. Hollywood relies heavily on Britain to make its films and big budget TV series such as the recent Star Wars series Andor and Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible franchise. In turn the UK relies on Hollywood for work: inward investment and co-production spend on film and high-end television in the UK reached £4.8bn in 2024, representing 86% of the total, according to the British Film Institute.

(10) STEPHEN FABIAN (1930-2025). Sff artist Stephen Fabian, whose impressive black & white covers adorned fanzines before he moved on to a successful pro career, died May 6 at the age of 95. Bob Eggleton was among those who announced his passing.

Fabian was a Hugo finalist for Best Fanartist twice (1970-1971) and Best Professional Artist seven times (1975-1981).

He won the British Fantasy Award for Artist in 1980 and 1985, and his “The End of Days” (Chacal #2) won the Artwork award in 1978. He was also a finalist three other times.

His success apparently was a pleasant surprise to him. Fancyclopedia 3 notes:

…Fabian did not start out to be an artist. He attended several schools before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1949, where he served as a teacher of radio and radar. He left the Air Force in 1953 and worked for electronic firms as an engineer until 1973, when he found himself out of work….

Fabian studied drawing and painting on his own, and began submitting artwork to fanzines in the 1960s, becoming a well-known fan artist. The day he was laid off work, he received letters asking him to submit his work to both Amazing and Galaxy. He immediately switched from electronics engineer to full-time SF artist….

In addition to prozines, Fabian produced artwork for TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons game from 1986 to 1995, particularly on the Ravenloft line.

There’s some pretty amazing artwork in the gallery on his website. See it while you can.

(11) PETER MORWOOD (1956-2025). Irish novelist and screenwriter Peter Morwood died May 9. He was best known for his Horse Lords and Tales of Old Russia series. He lived in Ireland with his wife, writer Diane Duane, with whom he co-authored several works. Duane announcement of his death on Facebook said:

…I am in utter shock and terrible pain to have to inform everyone that our friend, my dear husband and creative partner of nearly forty years, Peter Morwood, passed away suddenly early this morning after a brief illness that as late as yesterday (when his doctor saw him) had seemed to be on the mend.

I’m not in any position to say much more about this situation now, as you’ll understand my current mental state is not up to the task. (I keep expecting to wake up from a truly terrible dream, but this one shows no sign of breaking.) I will let people know more about this in coming days.

There will be a postmortem shortly to determine the exact cause of his death. I’ll share what details of this are appropriate as they become clear….

Duane and Morwood married at Boskone in February 1987.

Duane has asked for financial support:

Meanwhile in the short term I’m very much going to need assistance with the expenses that in the days that follow will inevitably surround what’s happened. For those people who want to assist, please feel free to use the Ko-Fi account here, and simply tag the associated messages, etc, “P expenses”. ETA: Please choose the Stripe payment option at Ko-Fi rather than PayPal, as PP seems to be having some kind of obscure difficulties at the moment. I have disconnected PayPal until this is resolved.

Peter Morwood and Diane Duane. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Soylent Green (1973)

Fifty-two years ago, Soylent Green was in general distribution in the States. It had premieres earlier in LA and NYC, respectively, on April 18th and April 19th.

The film was directed by Richard Fleischer who had previously directed Fantastic Voyage and Doctor Doolittle, and, yes, the latter is genre. Rather loosely based off of Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! Novel, it starred Joseph Cotten, Chuck Connors, Charlton Heston, Brock Peters, Edward G. Robinson in his final film role, and Leigh Taylor-Young.

The term soylent green is not in the novel though the term soylent steaks is. The title of the novel wasn’t used according to the studio on the grounds that it might have confused audiences into thinking it a big-screen version of Make Room for Daddy. Huh? It’s worth noting that Harrison was not involved at all in the film and indeed was was contractually denied control over the screenplay. No idea why he agreed to this but hopefully the money was good.

So how was reception at the time? Definitely mixed though Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Tribune liked it: “Richard Fleischer’s ‘Soylent Green’ is a good, solid science-fiction movie, and a little more. It tells the story of New York in the year 2022, when the population has swollen to an unbelievable 80 million, and people live in the streets and line up for their rations of water and Soylent Green.”

Other were less kind. A.H. Weiler of the New York Times summed it up this way: “We won’t reveal that ingredient but it must be noted that Richard Fleischer’s direction stresses action, not nuances of meaning or characterization. Mr. Robinson is pitiably natural as the realistic, sensitive oldster facing the futility of living in dying surroundings. But Mr. Heston is simply a rough cop chasing standard bad guys. Their 21st-century New York occasionally is frightening but it is rarely convincingly real.“

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it an excellent percent rating.

It was nominated for a Hugo at DisCon II, the year Sleeper won.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

F Minus may have side effects.
Nancy needs a new question.
Off the Mark tries another take on a movie joke.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal still needs an answer.
The Argyle Sweater brings home a pet.
The Barn makes first contact.

(14) BIG SQUEEZE. “Games Workshop Freezes Assets Amid Worldwide Seller Takedown” – Spikeybits has a long report about the litigation.

Games Workshop has initiated a worldwide Warhammer crackdown, suing 280 sellers, freezing accounts, and sales platforms.

If you’ve checked your favorite online marketplace lately and noticed a few listings mysteriously vanish, you’re not imagining things. Games Workshop just dropped the legal equivalent of an orbital bombardment—suing 280 sellers across the globe and freezing their assets in one sweeping move.

We’re talking shut-down stores, locked accounts, and some very panicked vendors. Some were clearly pushing counterfeit kits, while others got hit for less obvious reasons, like using the word Citadel in a brush holder listing. Let’s break down who got caught in the blast radius, why it matters, and what this means for the rest of us trying to hobby in peace….

(15) TRAILER PARK. Netflix is airing Old Guard 2.

Andy (Charlize Theron) and her team of immortal warriors are back, with a renewed sense of purpose in their mission to protect the world. With Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) still in exile after his betrayal, and Quynh (Veronica Ngô) out for revenge after escaping her underwater prison, Andy grapples with her newfound mortality as a mysterious threat emerges that could jeopardize everything she’s worked towards for thousands of years. Andy, Nile (KiKi Layne), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), Nicky (Luca Marinelli) and James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) enlist the help of Tuah (Henry Golding), an old friend who may provide the key to unlocking the mystery behind immortal existence. Directed by Victoria Mahoney, and also starring Uma Thurman, The Old Guard 2 is an emotional, adrenaline-pumping sequel, based on the world created by Greg Rucka and illustrator Leandro Fernandez.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Danny Sichel, Rich Lynch, Michael J. Walsh, 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 Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 5/8/25 It’s Just A Scroll To The Left

Posted on May 8, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) FUTURE TENSE. April 2025’s Future Tense Fiction story is “The 28th,” by Mark Stasenko—a story about AI, bias, and the criminal justice system.

The response essay by legal scholar Elizabeth Joh, of the University of California Davis, is “Automated Justice?”

… Yet nowhere is the use of AI as fraught as it is in the criminal justice system, where adverse decisions lead to starkly life-altering outcomes. This isn’t a hypothetical future concern: criminal justice automation of varying degrees has already arrived. Local police agencies can turn to predictive technologies to help direct patrol resources and even generate police reports. A number of jurisdictions use risk assessment tools to decide who should be detained pretrial. Others permit judges to use algorithmic tools to determine criminal sentences. Parole boards can rely on automated assessments to identify who should be eligible for parole.

So AI is already present in the criminal justice system. But how far should it go?…

(2) INFLUENCE OF ‘CLOUD ATLAS’. Charlie Jane Anders explores the question “Has ‘Cloud Atlas’ Become a Genre?” at Happy Dancing. Here’s an excerpt:

…I also feel like Cloud Atlas has become a shorthand for “genre-hopping novel with literary aspirations.”

As I’ve said before, this is how genres happen: a book comes along that everybody loves so much, they want more of the same. And “more of the same” leads to the use of tropes or devices that are reminiscent of that influential work.

To find out more, I talked to four authors of recent books that seemed to bear a clear influence from Cloud Atlas. Here’s what they told me.

Conscious influence

“I conceived of Down in the Sea of Angels as Cloud Atlas meets X-Men,” says Khan Wong of his brand new novel. Down in the Sea of Angels is about Maida Sun, who can touch any object and see the stories of anyone who’s interacted with it in the past. Maida’s story in 2106 becomes intertwined with stories of a girl in a 1906 brothel and a tech worker in 2006. Wong describes it as “a time-hopping dystopian fantasy about psychic powers, liberation, and our interconnectedness through time.”

Wong says that he started out doing something more similar to Cloud Atlas’ format of six storylines spanning vast periods of time. But as he developed the novel, he “scaled it back, “both in terms of the span of time and the number of storylines and genres.”…

(3) ADULTING NEEDED. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Cli-Fi is becoming an established sub-genre of SF no least with books like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry For The Future. However most politicians simply don’t get it: some even deny it! Meanwhile scientists working in the area are suffering mentally. This is something of which I am acutely aware having worked in climate science for a number of years. So this week’s Nature has a very important editorial message on behalf of today’s youth….

“Adults should finally act like adults on climate change”:

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” This rebuke to the delegates at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City in 2019 came from a tearful Greta Thunberg, founder of the children’s climate movement Fridays For Future. Then aged 16, she urged attendees to inject more urgency into keeping global warming to within 1.5 °C of pre-industrial levels. Since then, hundreds of thousands of children around the world have made similarly impassioned appeals to adults to heed the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of climate change. But so far, a grown-up sense of responsibility is lacking….

…Quantifying what climate change will mean for those being born now is an active topic of research. This week in Nature, one group of climate researchers reports findings (L. Grant et al. Nature 641, 374–379; 2025) that must surely make adults take more notice of what younger people are saying. Building on an earlier study (W. Thiery et al. Science 374,158–160; 2021), Luke Grant, a climate researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and his colleagues report that children and young people born in the present decade face exposure to heatwaves, crop failures, floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical cyclones, in a way that their parents and grandparents never did — and that this applies pretty much anywhere in the world.

Non-PDF version of the editorial with links to this week’s relevant research here.

(4) THE BIG THREE AND FRIENDS. Big Issue offers several examples in “These are all the times sci-fi writers predicted the future”.

…In a 1964 interview for the BBC’s Horizon program, another of the ‘Big Three’, Arthur C Clarke, said: “I’m perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand.” He expanded on this in his 1975 novel Imperial Earth, in which the protagonist explains the risks of telesurgery over a network experiencing high latency: “A half-second lag would not matter in conversation; but between a surgeon’s hand and eye, it might be fatal.”

Clarke’s vision became reality in (fittingly) 2001, when a New York-based surgeon removed the gall bladder of a patient in Strasbourg, 6,200km away. A medical robot called ZEUS cut the patient’s flesh; the surgeon’s movements reached ZEUS across a network designed to minimise lag times….

…Sometimes one sees a prediction coming true in real time, and asks: will we heed the warnings SF gave us? Jack Williamson’s 1947 novelette With Folded Hands tells of a new type of robot following a Prime Directive: “to serve and obey and guard men from harm”. Since the robots work for free, soon no one has a job. It gets worse. The robots take the “guard men from harm” directive too literally.

They ensure a person can’t do anything remotely dangerous. Before long, humans can do nothing except sit… with folded hands. We should not fear this scenario. But one can easily imagine a world in which creatives – writers, painters, musicians, photographers – twiddle their thumbs while AI spews out soulless content on demand.

Writers such as Williamson saw the threat eight decades ago. Don’t complain we’ve had no time to prepare.

(5) THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING GAMING NEWS SCENE. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter laments further loss of authenticity in video games journalism: “When video games journalism eats itself, we all lose out”.

Last week was a bad one for video games journalism. Two key contributors to the veteran site Giant Bomb, Jeff Grubb and Mike Minotti, have announced their departure after a recent podcast was taken down. The 888th episode of the Giant Bombcast reportedly featured a section lampooning new brand guidelinesissued to staff and is no longer available online. Later this week, it was announced that major US site Polygon was being sold to Valnet, owner of the ScreenRant and GameRant brands, resulting in a swathe of job losses. This follows ReedPop’s sale, in 2024, of four high-profile UK-based sites – Eurogamer, GamesIndustry.biz, Rock Paper Shotgun and VG247 – to IGN Entertainment, owned by Ziff Davis, which also resulted in redundancies.

It’s sad how these long-standing sites, each with vast audiences and sturdy reputations, have been traded and chopped up like commodities. On selling Polygon, Vox CEO Jim Bankoff said in a statement: “This transaction will enable us to focus our energies and investment resources in other priority areas of growth across our portfolio.” It felt gross, to be honest, to see this decade-old bastion of progressive video games writing being reduced to an asset ripe for off-loading. Of its purchase Valnet said: “Polygon is poised to reach new editorial heights through focused investment and innovation.” Quite how it will do that with a significantly reduced staff is anyone’s guess….

(6) THIRD (SEASON) FOUNDATION. Gizmodo analyzes the Season 3 teaser: “Foundation Season 3 Shares a First Look for Lee Pace Fans (and Everyone Else)”. Returns on Apple TV+ on July 11.

…Here’s the official description for the season: “Set 152 years after the events of season two, the Foundation has become increasingly established far beyond its humble beginnings while the Cleonic Dynasty’s Empire has dwindled. As both of these galactic powers forge an uneasy alliance, a threat to the entire galaxy appears in the fearsome form of a warlord known as ‘The Mule’ whose sights are set on ruling the universe by use of physical and military force, as well as mind control. It’s anyone’s guess who will win, who will lose, who will live and who will die as Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick, the Cleons, and Demerzel play a potentially deadly game of intergalactic chess.”…

(7) NOTES FROM BEAR MCCREARY. “‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Composer Bear McCreary On ‘Limitless Palette’ Of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Work & ‘Pushing Boundaries’ For Season 3” at Deadline.

…With Season 2 and the rise of Sauron, McCreary was excited to musically explore parts of Tolkien’s world that haven’t been adapted to screen. “We go to this part of the map that no adaptation has ever done before, the lands of Rhûn, and I’ve always wanted to write for the Bulgarian women’s choir,” says McCreary. “They are singing in a language Tolkien himself devised, so they had to learn it phonetically. But they brought all the beautiful, unique things that come with that kind of music.”…

(8) TOMORROW PRIZE CEREMONY. The Omega Sci-Fi Project’s “Tomorrow Prize & The Green Feather Award: Celebrity Readings & Honors” will be held on Saturday, May 17, from 4:00-6:00 p.m. at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. Free registration at the link.

Our line-up of incredible guest stars include:

Nana Visitor from Star Trek: Deep Space, Tim Russ from Star Trek: Voyager, Isabella Gomez from One Day at a Time, Marcelo Tubert from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Amy Tolsky from Jury Duty, and Rico E. Anderson from Star Trek: Renegades.

Students winners and honorees of the Omega Sci-Fi Project’s awards are publicly recognized at the incredible May culminating event, where celebrity actors perform dramatic readings of finalists’ stories that you won’t want to miss!

“The young writers are offered a wonderful chance at recognition for their creative work through the awards process. Often, students don’t even realize that creative writing is a meaningful way for them to explore a world they struggle to understand. That is, until they get to try it!” says Bodin Adler, a participating teacher from Hollywood High School.

This event culminates a season of classroom workshops led by trained writers and literary enthusiasts and are free to any educator who wishes to participate. Within these workshops, students get to explore the development, writing, and editing processes for crafting a short science fiction story, preparing them to submit their original work to The Tomorrow Prize or The Green Feather Award, the two competitions offered under the Omega Sci-Fi Project umbrella.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC, KCB, KCIE, 1822 – 1915

I grant he’s not even genre adjacent, but I’ll give you a tale in a minute that makes it relevant to us. Harry Flashman appears in a series of twelve George MacDonald Fraser’s books collectively known as The Flashman Papers. If Flashman had a birthday, the author says it would have been earlier this week, May 5.

The first novel, Flashman, was published in 1969 and many readers here in the States thought it was a work of non-fiction. He’s certainly not the only fictional that readers have assumed was real. Or wished was so. Who would you would want to be?

The books center on the exploits of Harry Flashman. He is a cowardly British soldier, rake and just generally disreputable character who is placed in a series of real historical incidents between 1839 and 1894. It must be noted that despite his cowardice and his attempts to flee danger whenever possible, he becomes a decorated war hero and rises to the rank of brigadier-general.

There is a Chumbawamba song, “Hanging on the Old Barb Wire”, which has the lyric

If you want to find the general
I know where he is
He’s pinning another medal on his chest
I saw him, I saw him
Pinning another medal on his chest
Pinning another medal on his chest

(It’s a variant of a Great War song of the same name. As the band notes on their English Rebel Songs 1381–1914 LP, “Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire was written by soldiers in the trenches in the first world war. Designed to be sung whilst marching the song is one of many showing the dissent and disgust at the way war perpetuates the inequalities of rich and poor—those with the money give the orders, those without money face the guns.”)

Royal Flash, the 1975 British film, is based upon the second Flashman novel of the same name. It stars a thirty-two year old Malcolm McDowell as Flashman. It was not well received as The Observer noted it left them “breathless not so much with enchantment as with boredom”. However audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rating of sixty-four percent which isn’t bad at all.

Here’s the trailer with a really funny narrator. As always, the standard warming about linking to copies of the film which is up on YouTube apply. You really don’t want to be defenestrated, do you? It can be rather painful or worse.

Now for that genre connection that mentioned much earlier. No, I didn’t forget…

Kage Baker didn’t actually write a Flashman novel, though we talked several times about her doing so, but the bones of one appeared in one of her novels as her sister Kathleen told me here: “Most of her notes she used in her last novel, Not Less Than Gods, which she wrote while she was sick, and that was published as she was dying. As far as I can tell, Kage and I were the only people in the world who liked it. A lot of it was panned because the reviewers didn’t get most of the satire, or hated Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, or both. Anyway, even if you personally disliked the book, I think you can see the bones of a Flashman novel there.”

Now the Green Man reviewer also liked it though he had a lump in his throat as Kage had just died as he wrote his review.

I’m pleased to say the entire series is available in hardcover, trade paperback, epub and audiobook. As audiobooks, the narration as done by David Chase captures the character extraordinarily well.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Non Sequitur offers Stone Age art criticism.
Rhymes with Orange gives an endorsement.
The Other Coast brings in a new detector.
Tom Gauld gives fans a choice of bookshops.

(11) SFF TO STREAM NOW. “’Godzilla Minus One’ and Other Science Fiction Movies to Stream” – recommendations from the New York Times. (Link bypasses paywall.) Here’s one of their picks.

‘Alienoid: Return to the Future’

Can’t decide if you want to watch a movie involving tentacled aliens or one with a sorcerer? Wire fu or time travel? How about ominous spaceships? The Korean director Choi Dong-hoon has you covered with his two-part “Alienoid” epic, which includes all of these elements. The second installment kicks off with a serviceable recap so newcomers can jump in, but having seen its predecessor, “Alienoid” (2022), makes the overall experience more enjoyable.

The madcap action goes back and forth between the 14th century and 2022 Seoul, when an alien menace going by the Controller is threatening to kill the entire population by unleashing a lethal gas. The key to defeat the Controller is in the past and involves a weapon called the Divine Blade. Even more important are the actions of a ragtag team that includes the spunky Ean (Kim Tae-ri, from “Space Sweepers”) and her possible love interest, Muruk (Ryu Jun-yeol). Choi keeps up a steady pace, peppered with goofy humor and surreal touches, as when Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” plays during a big moment. Narrative coherence is an afterthought in the “Alienoid” universe so it’s best to go with whatever wackadoo scenes the movies throw at you: What matters here is pure fun, and this installment delivers.

(12) SHAUN THE SHEEP 3. [Item by Steven French.] Who could resist a trip to Mossy Bottom?! “Aardman announces third Shaun the Sheep movie: The Beast of Mossy Bottom” – details in the Guardian.

A Halloween-themed third Shaun the Sheep film is in the works from Aardman Animations, following hot on the heels of the success of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

“Expect smashed pumpkins, wayward science, and a wild hairy beast,” said Sarah Cox, chief creative director of Aardman, about the film, which launches international sales via studio StudioCanal at Cannes next week, but has already been acquired by Sky for UK distribution.

“Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom sees the residents of Mossy Bottom Farm looking forward to Halloween – until the clumsy farmer trashes the flock’s beloved pumpkin patch!” runs a synopsis for the film.

“When Shaun turns mad scientist to fix the problem, things rapidly spiral out of control … With the farmer missing and a wild beast roaming the woods of Mossingham, all the ingredients are in place for a monstrously fun family adventure.”

(13) LEGO AND LUNAR OUTPOST PARTNERSHIP. “Lego and Lunar Outpost to roll out ‘Moon Rover Space Vehicle’ in August” promises CollectSPACE.

The United States’ first teleoperated rover to reach the moon’s surface is rolling out as a Lego model this summer, together with two futuristic vehicles inspired by real-life robotic lunar explorers.

The new Lunar Outpost Moon Rover Space Vehicle is scheduled for release on Aug. 1, as part of Lego’s Technic line of advanced building kits. The $99.99 set is the result of a collaboration between the Danish toymaker and Lunar Outpost, a Colorado-based company specializing in lunar surface mobility, commercial space robotics and space resources.

“Inspired by real-life Lunar Outpost vehicles enabling humanity’s return to the moon, this Lego Technic Lunar Outpost Moon Rover Space Vehicle comes with a moon rover, mining rover and MAPP rover to inspire endless journeys of exploration,” reads the set’s description on Lego’s website.

The MAPP, or Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, was the key part of Lunar Outpost’s Lunar Voyage 1 mission, which on March 6 arrived on the moon, making history. It would have made even more, had the commercial lander that delivered MAPP there not have immediately tipped over, trapping the rover inside its garage. It never had the chance to actually rove anywhere….

(14) ONE LAST LANDING ON THE GLOBE THAT GAVE IT BIRTH. “53-Year-Old Soviet Spacecraft Will Plummet Back to Earth This Week” reports Gizmodo.

Kosmos 482 has been trapped in Earth’s orbit for 53 years but its wandering journey is coming to an end. The failed Venus mission is expected to reenter through the atmosphere in a dramatic fall toward its home planet, where it may remain intact or scatter its bits across a still unknown location on either side of the equator.

The Soviet-era spacecraft will plunge through Earth’s atmosphere sometime between May 8 to 12. As of now, the exact location of where Kosmos 482 will crash-land on Earth is still unknown, with a preliminary estimate that stretches across large parts of the world on either side of the equator. It’s also unclear whether the spacecraft will remain in one piece or if it will break apart during reentry, raining down bits of debris.

Kosmos 482 launched on March 31, 1972 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in what is know Kazakhstan. The mission was an attempt by the Soviet space program to reach Venus, but it failed to gain enough velocity to enter a transfer trajectory toward the scorching hot planet….

(15) DONE BY DAYLIGHT. “Lunar laser: China makes 1st daytime laser-ranging measurement from Earth to the moon” – Space has the story.

China has achieved a milestone feat, making the first-ever laser ranging measurement from Earth to the moon during the daytime.

Researchers at Yunnan Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) used an infrared lunar laser ranging system of a recently upgraded 1.2-meter (3.9 feet) telescope to ping a small laser retroreflector on the Tiandu 1 satellite orbiting the moon.

Laser ranging over lunar distances is challenging, requiring sending a high-power, precise beam over 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) to hit a small corner retroreflector, which bounces the laser pulse straight back where it came from. The return signal then needs to be picked up by a telescope using ultra-sensitive detectors. Doing this in the daytime brings the added challenge of massive background “noise” from the sun….

(16) SQUAREPANTS TREK BLOOPERS. Animation Magazine is there when “Paramount+ Voyages Behind the Scenes of Crossover Spot ‘Patrick Starship Enterprise’”.

Following the debut of its new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds X SpongeBob SquarePants promo video (which you can watch here), Paramount+ has dropped a behind-the-scenes blooper reel full of illogical, astro-nautical amusement.

Starring Strange New Worlds cast members Ethan Peck (Spock), Anson Mount (Christopher Pike) and Celia Rose-Gooding (Nyota Uhura), the new video pokes fun at the making of the short and features some funny moments where we see the creative stand-in solutions for the animated characters, which include SpongeBob, Sandy and Mr. Krabs…

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Steve Green, Joey Eschrich, 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 Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 5/7/25 The Compleat Pixeller In Scroll

Posted on May 7, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) NEW SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 DEVELOPMENTS. Last night Seattle Worldcon 2025 chair Kathy Bond and Program Division Head SunnyJim Morgan published their promised statement detailing how ChatGPT was used in the program panelist selection process. (See File 770’s coverage here: “Seattle Worldcon 2025 Tells How ChatGPT Was Used in Panelist Selection Process”.)

Some public announcements by departing program participants have been spotted:

Leah Ning of Apex Books has written a two-page “public record” of the reasons for withdrawing as a Seattle Worldcon 2025 program participant. Read it at Bluesky.
Philip Athans has also dropped out of the program – announcement on Bluesky.

Cora Buhlert has written a link compilation post, “Robot Hallucinations”, that also features a long exposition about what ChatGPT returned when she ran her own name through the prompt. The notorious prompt namechecks this blog, about which Cora says, “File 770 is a good resource, but it’s not the only SFF news site nor is it free of bias. So privileging File 770 as a source means that any bias it has is reproduced.” Which is true as far as it goes, however, I believe the reason Seattle included 770 was to corral news about code of conduct violations.

Frank Catalano recommends this Bluesky thread by Simon Bisson as “what appears to be a good analysis of the Seattle Worldcon AI prompt from a well-regarded and experienced tech journalist.” It begins here: “So I looked at the ‘query’ that Worldcon used, and as someone who has written at least two books on enterprise AI and many many developer columns on how to build AI apps, and, well, the slim hope that I’d had that they may have done things right has been dashed.” (Coincidentally, Bisson was once a frequent commenter here.)

(2) A LOT OF THAT GOING AROUND. Publisher’s Lunch reported today that the Mystery Writers of America apologized in a Bluesky post for using AI-generated animations of Humphrey Bogart and Edgar Allan Poe in a video shown at the Edgar awards ceremony on May 1

(3) AFUA RICHARDSON GOFUNDME. A GoFundMe – “Aid Afua’s Path to Recovery” – has been started to fund medical expenses of comics creator Afua Richardson, a featured artist at Dublin 2019.

Like most artists, she is not insured and has to come out of pocket for medical expenses after her major surgery. Please help her on her path to recovery.

Afua Richardson is known for her work on Genius and World of Wakanda. Other stories she has drawn for include X-Men, Captain Marvel, Captain America, and the Mighty Avengers for Marvel Comics; and Wonder Woman Warbringer and All-Star Batman for DC Comics; and Mad Max. She also worked with U.S. Representative and civil rights leader John Lewis to illustrate Run, a volume in his autobiographical comic series co-written with Andrew Aydin. She won the 2011 Nina Simone Award for Artistic Achievement for her trailblazing work in comics.

(4) PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION HALTS CUTS TO IMLS. “R.I. District Court Grants Preliminary Injunction in IMLS Case” reports Publishers Weekly.

In welcome news for the Institute of Museum and Library Services and two more federal agencies targeted for dismantling by a presidential executive order, the District Court of Rhode Island has granted 21 states’ attorneys general the preliminary injunction they sought in Rhode Island v. Trump. In response to the evidence and to an April 18 motion hearing, chief judge John J. McConnell Jr. granted the states’ motion, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the executive order violates the Administrative Procedures Act, separation of powers principle, and the Take Care clause of the U.S. Constitution.

From the first paragraph of his order, Judge McConnell upheld that Congress controls the agencies and appropriates funding, and he referred to “the arbitrary and capricious way” the March 14 order was implemented at the IMLS, Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). He determined that the EO “disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated.”

Notably, the order’s timing closely coincided with FY25 congressional appropriations. On March 15, the day after issuing the EO, President Donald Trump—a named defendant in the case—approved the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, mandating FY2024-level funding for IMLS and other agencies through September 25, 2025. In 2024, IMLS was appropriated $294,800,000, so the same amount was approved for FY25.

In some cases, IMLS is issuing checks, fulfilling its statutory obligation…

(5) TONY AWARD NOMINEES. File 770 lists the many “2025 Tony Award Nominees” of genre interest at the link.

(6) RACE MATHEWS (1935-2025). Charles Race Thorson Mathews, a founding member of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club in 1952, and holder of its membership number 1, died May 5. Race suffered a broken pelvis from a fall three weeks ago, and had been going downhill since. He died May 5 at the age of 90.

Fancyclopedia 3 recalls he sold off his collection to fund the courtship of his wife, and mostly gafiated in 1956 following his marriage.

He subsequently went into politics. He opened Aussiecon 1 in 1975, while he was a member of federal parliament. By 1985 he was Minister for the Police and Emergency Services for the State of Victoria and at Aussiecon 2 gave the opening address. Mathews was kind enough to let File 770 publish his speech, which was rich in fanhistorical anecdote. (It can be found at File 770 57, p. 16 (part 1) and File 770 58, p. 2 p15 (part 2).)

Mathews was the author or editor of numerous books on politics, cooperatives and economics.

He is the subject of a biography, Race Mathews: A Life in Politics by Iola Mathews, Monash University Press, 2024.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 7, 1931 — Gene Wolfe. (Died 2019)

By Paul Weimer: Were I to do this birthday properly and proud, I’d do a Gene Wolfe piece that had unreliable narration, used a prodigious and positively unwonted vocabulary, possibly footnoted, and definitely something to be re-read, re-examined and thought over for years.

Unfortunately I am not Gene Wolfe, and frankly, few other others in the SFF genresphere have ever dared to try and approach him. His is the kind of work that like few others, you can read and re-read over a lifetime, and get not just nuggets but whole veins of new and exciting ideas. His ideas have influenced my RPG scenarios and ideas for years.

Jack Vance may have invented the Dying Earth, but Gene Wolfe codified it and made it a whole subgenre of his own with the New Sun books, which is where i began his work. I did begin a bit in the deep end, but a friend (and at the time one of the players in my TTRPG) said that I just had to read Gene Wolfe. And so I did. Did I understand my first read through of Severian’s story? Not as much as I thought I did. Read number two went much better, and I keep thinking I need a read number three–I’ve made a couple of abortive attempts at it but the siren song and responsibility of new work keeps me from doing so.

After Beyond the New Sun, I went to the Long Sun (generation ships for the win!) and then moved on. I loved the Wizard Knight series with its Yggdrasil like setup of worlds (you all know how much I enjoy worldbuilding, even as I sometimes mistype Discworld for Ringworld and my editor misses it 😉 ). I think the Fifth Head of Cerberus might be his most accessible work, an entry point if you want to try Wolfe without going for some of the more elusive works. I think The Land Across is also a good entry point as well, and feels timely and relevant with its capricious rules in the government of the country our narrator visits (also makes me think of Miéville’s The City and the City).

I’ve not read all of his oeuvre, but I’ve tried most of it. I’m weakest on his short stories and need to catch up on those (I’ve read Castle of Days of course, and found out recently a friend found a copy of the Castle of the Otter for a bargain price in a used bookstore. What a rare find!)

My favorite Wolfe are probably the Latro books (Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete and Soldier of Sidon). These books are almost as if Gene Wolfe decided. “Paul Weimer needs books just for him). Latro is a Roman mercenary, circa 470s BC serving as he will in the Mediterranean as a soldier. He’s had a head injury and so cannot remember events of the previous day (50 First Dates, anyone?). However, he can see the various supernatural beings that populate the landscape that no one else can. The books are masterpieces of information holding and withholding as we, the reader can piece together things that Latro clearly misses, all in one of the best all time favorite set of settings. Sure, you’ve got to work hard to really get these books, but that’s the secret of all of Wolfe’s work. If you want to read it, be prepared to do the home work. Sure, this series and much of Wolfe’s work is not a casual read (and I’ve tried audio and audio and Wolfe do not work for me), but Wolfe was Umberto Eco in full SFF guise. If that is what you are ready for, or in the mood for, Wolfe’s works await you.

I never got to meet him in person, alas. Requiescat in pace.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss meets a jerk at an author signing.
Dinosaur Comics tries an expanded universe story.
Eek! will lose more than a job.
FurBabies has both bot and laser trouble.
Off the Mark asks, does your cat cuss?
The Barn continues its ST:TNG visit.

(9) WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE. “Hugo 2025: Flow” is another compelling review of a Hugo finalist by Camestros Felapton.

…Simple plot. The characters are a cat who is a cat. A labrador who is very much a labrador. A lemur that is a bit obsessed with stuff. A capybara that is a bit stoical. A secretary bird who possibly is a transcendental messenger of cosmic forces whose role is to usher the cat into a meeting with the divine to maybe save the world or maybe that’s a dream. So straight forward stuff.

Of course, I’m being intentionally obtuse. The film uses simple parts to tell a complex story with many thought provoking aspects, an intentionally unresolved mystery and a strong religious themes without any overt religion or religious messaging….

(10) FALLING ON HIS SWORD A SPECIALTY. Gary Farber reminds File 770 “I’m still willing to make sacrifices for fandom.” He wanted to be sure we didn’t miss his offer on Facebook —

Now I’m thinking I could volunteer to a Worldcon so they could have another body they could offer up to resign to take the blame for whatever Inevitable Embarrassing Scandal is happening in that half of that year before the con.

I wouldn’t need any actual skills. I could just have a title, and then be duly fired/resign when someone needs to be fired/resign in order to take the blame.

Future Worldcon Committees, I’M AVAILABLE!

Sandra Bond suggests his title should be, “Gary Farber, Omelas Fan.”

(11) MYERS-BRIGGS-SKYWALKER. “Woman wins £30,000 compensation for being compared to Darth Vader” – the Guardian has the story.

Comparing someone at work to the Star Wars villain Darth Vader is “insulting” and “upsetting”, an employment tribunal has ruled.

A judge concluded that being told you have the same personality type as the infamous sci-fi baddie is a workplace “detriment” – a legal term meaning harm or negative impact experienced by a person.

“Darth Vader is a legendary villain of the Star Wars series, and being aligned with his personality is insulting,” the employment judge Kathryn Ramsden said.

The tribunal’s ruling came in the case of an NHS blood donation worker Lorna Rooke, who has won almost £30,000 after her co-worker took a Star Wars-themed psychological test on her behalf and told colleagues Rooke fell into the Sith Lord’s category….

… In August 2021, members of Rooke’s team took a Star Wars themed Myers-Briggs questionnaire as a team-building exercise.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator sorts people into 16 categories based on how introverted they are, level of intuition, if they are led by thoughts or feelings and how they judge or perceive the world around them….

…Rooke did not participate as she had to take a personal phone call but when she returned a colleague, Amanda Harber, had filled it out on her behalf and announced that she had the same personality type as Vader – real name Anakin Skywalker.

The supervisor told the tribunal this outcome made her feel unpopular and was one of the reasons for her resignation the following month….

(12) FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. [Item by Cliff.] When truth is stranger than science fiction….. “AI of dead Arizona road rage victim addresses killer in court” – the Guardian tells how it was done.

Chris Pelkey was killed in a road rage shooting in Chandler, Arizona, in 2021.

Three and a half years later, Pelkey appeared in an Arizona court to address his killer. Sort of.

“To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” says a video recording of Pelkey. “In another life, we probably could have been friends.

“I believe in forgiveness, and a God who forgives. I always have, and I still do,” Pelkey continues, wearing a grey baseball cap and sporting the same thick red and brown beard he wore in life.

Pelkey was 37 years old, devoutly religious and an army combat veteran. Horcasitas shot Pelkey at a red light in 2021 after Pelkey exited his vehicle and walked back towards Horcasitas’s car.

Pelkey’s appearance from beyond the grave was made possible by artificial intelligence in what could be the first use of AI to deliver a victim impact statement. Stacey Wales, Pelkey’s sister, told local outlet ABC-15 that she had a recurring thought when gathering more than 40 impact statements from Chris’s family and friends.

“All I kept coming back to was, what would Chris say?” Wales said….

…Wales and her husband fed an AI model videos and audio of Pelkey to try to come up with a rendering that would match the sentiments and thoughts of a still-alive Pelkey, something that Wales compared with a “Frankenstein of love” to local outlet Fox 10.

Judge Todd Lang responded positively to the AI usage. Lang ultimately sentenced Horcasitas to 10 and a half years in prison on manslaughter charges…

(13) TRAILER PARK. Dropped today — The Long Walk (2025) Official Trailer.

From the highly anticipated adaptation of master storyteller Stephen King’s first-written novel, and Francis Lawrence, the visionary director of The Hunger Games franchise films (Catching Fire, Mocking Jay – Pts. 1&2 , and The Ballad of the Songbirds & Snakes), comes THE LONG WALK, an intense, chilling, and emotional thriller that challenges audiences to confront a haunting question: how far could you go?

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

Pixel Scroll 5/6/25 All I Need To Know, I Learned From Pixel Scrolls

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) MORE SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 COVERAGE. Two of the more widely-read pop culture sites have picked up the story – and heavily cite File 770, for which I thank them.

Gizmodo: “Hugo Administrators Resign in Wake of ChatGPT Controversy”
Slashdot: “Hugo Administrators Resign in Wake of ChatGPT Controversy”

Jason Sanford’s new Genre Grapevine is also devoted to the “2025 Seattle Worldcon AI Fallout”.

Yesterday Elizabeth Bear and Fran Wilde withdrew from the Worldcon program:

(2) BALTIMORE BOOK EVENT FAILS. “Broken promises, Fyre Festival vibes: A Million Lives Book Festival was a disaster” reports The Baltimore Banner.

In February, Philadelphia-area author Hannah Levin found out she’d been accepted to participate in A Million Lives Book Festival, a convention of fantasy authors, narrators and influencers to be held the first weekend of May at the Baltimore Convention Center. As a new author whose debut novel, “The Treasured One,” was published by Aethon Books in 2024, she was excited about the event. “We thought it would be a big thing for us,” she said.

It was a big thing, but not in the way anyone expected. The festival, organized by Baltimore-based author Grace Willows’ Archer Fantasy Events, was supposed to provide an opportunity for writers to network and an audience of at least 500 to 600 paid ticket holders. What participants got, they said, was a disappointing weekend of dashed expectations, unfulfilled promises, lost money and more questions than answers.

“I think ‘debacle’ is the word for it,” Levin said of the event that was quickly dubbed online as the Fyre Festival of literary festivals.

The 11 authors, vendors and influencers I interviewed by email and phone spent between $300 and $2,000 to attend A Million Lives depending on their travel arrangements and other factors. They said they were promised special badges that designated them as official participants, a creator’s lounge, cosplay events and a VIP swag bag for the top two ticketing levels.

That didn’t happen.

“There was a huge financial loss for authors, vendors and narrators attending,” wrote a book influencer known as Azthia, who spent about $300 on a plane ticket but crashed with other participants when her hotel stay was not paid for as promised. “They were told 600 tickets and in the end there were more authors than attendees.”…

(3) ACTOR/ACTRESS AWARDS? “’The Last Of Us’ Star Bella Ramsey Defends Gendered Emmy Categories” at Deadline.

Bella Ramsey has a decent shot at Emmy success this year — and won’t quibble if competing in the Lead Actress category.

The British star of HBO hit The Last of Us identifies as non-binary and prefers the they/them pronouns, but said it was fine for people to “call me how you see me.”

Speaking on Spotify’s The Louis Theroux Podcast about gendered award categories, Ramsey said it was important “recognition for women in the industry is preserved.”

“I don’t have the answer and I wish that there was something that was an easy way around it, but I think that it is really important that we have a female category and a male category,” Ramsey added.

The former Game of Thrones star said they had thought hard about how to represent non-binary individuals in award categories, but did not have a solution.

One idea was to name the category “best performance in a female character,” but Ramsey said this creates issues for those portraying non-binary characters on screen.

One thing Ramsey is certain of is that being called an “actress” feels uneasy. “I have a guttural, ‘That’s not quite right,’ instinct to it,” Ramsey said. “But I just don’t take it too seriously … it doesn’t feel like an attack on my identity.”…

(4) ROWLING ON HARRY POTTER ACTOR’S SUPPORT OF TRANS RIGHTS. “’I don’t have the power’: JK Rowling won’t sack Paapa Essiedu from Harry Potter TV show over trans rights views” reports the Guardian.

JK Rowling has said she will not fire actor Paapa Essiedu from the forthcoming Harry Potter TV series over his support for transgender rights.

Essiedu has been cast as key character Severus Snape in the HBO drama, which is designed to run for more than a decade and will be one of the most expensively produced television shows of all time.

In a post on X, Rowling wrote: “I don’t have the power to sack an actor from the series and I wouldn’t exercise it if I did. I don’t believe in taking away people’s jobs or livelihoods because they hold legally protected beliefs that differ from mine.”

Last week, Essiedu, along with more than 1,500 figures from film and TV, signed an open letter condemning the UK supreme court ruling, which judged that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex….

(5) CIVILIZATION ENDS: FILM AT ELEVEN. “Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?” from The Atlantic (Archive.ph link).

Last year, i visited the music historian Ted Gioia to talk about the death of civilization.

He welcomed me into his suburban-Texas home and showed me to a sunlit library. At the center of the room, arranged neatly on a countertop, stood 41 books. These, he said, were the books I needed to read.

The display included all seven volumes of Edward Gibbon’s 18th-century opus, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ; both volumes of Oswald Spengler’s World War I–era tract, The Decline of the West ; and a 2,500-year-old account of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, who “was the first historian to look at his own culture, Greece, and say, I’m going to tell you the story of how stupid we were,” Gioia explained….

…He’s not alone in fearing that we’ve entered a cultural dark age. According to a recent YouGov poll, Americans rate the 2020s as the worst decade in a century for music, movies, fashion, TV, and sports. A 2023 story in The New York Times Magazine declared that we’re in the “least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing press.” An art critic for The Guardian recently proclaimed that “the avant garde is dead.”

What’s so jarring about these declarations of malaise is that we should, logically, be in a renaissance. The internet has caused a Cambrian explosion of creative expression by allowing artists to execute and distribute their visions with unprecedented ease. …

…in 312 c.e., the Roman Senate ordered the construction of a gaudy monument called the Arch of Constantine. It incorporated pieces from older monuments, built in more glorious times for the empire, which had begun its centuries-long decline.

The Arch is one of Gioia’s favorite metaphors for modern culture. The TV and film industry is enamored of reboots, spin-offs, and formulaic genre fare. Broadway theaters subsist on stunt-cast revivals of old warhorses; book publishers rely disproportionately on backlist sales. Entertainment companies have long understood the power of giving people more of what they already like, but recommendation algorithms take that logic to a new extreme, keeping us swiping endlessly for slight variations on our favorite things. In every sector of society, Gioia told me, “we’re facing powerful forces that want to impose stagnation on us.”

The problem is particularly acute in music. In 2024, new releases accounted for a little more than a quarter of the albums consumed in the U.S.; every year, a greater and greater percentage of the albums streamed online is “catalog music,” meaning it is at least 18 months old. Hoping to remonetize the classics, record labels and private-equity firms have spent billions of dollars to acquire artists’ publishing rights. The reemergence of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, 37 years after its release, seemed to signal that this was a good bet. A brief placement in a popular TV show (Netflix’s Stranger Things, itself a pastiche of 1980s movie tropes) could, it turned out, cause an old hit to outcompete most of the newer songs in the world….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 6, 1969 — Annalee Newitz, 56.

By Paul Weimer: I first encountered Annalee Newitz’ nonfiction, first, as a columnist, as a non fiction writer, as a podcaster with their partner Charlie Jane Anders. Four Lost Cities is an amazingly researched book looking at the rise and fall of four cities and what we can learn about the challenges they faced. I learned an amazing amount I never know about, for example, Angkor Wat. I think it is their strongest work and if you asked me “what one book of theirs should I read?”, Four Lost Cities is the one I’d put into your hands.

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was a surprisingly hopeful book, given its title and content.

Although they have been writing fiction, too for a while, I finally got into their fiction with The Future of Another Timeline, with rival powers fighting for control of a timeline just catnip for me. Given the political changes lately in the United States, it feels even more relevant than it once did. And once again, I learned a lot about some historical events I hadn’t even heard of, thanks to the jumping around the timeline by the protagonists. But even with that, the changes to the timeline are not shown in some grand manner, but how they affect people. People matter to Newitz’s work.

Newitz’ work is bright, well researched, deep, and thought provoking, with a mind like an engineer and the language and diction of an English professor. I am pretty sure that as good as Future was, I prefer Newitz’ nonfiction more, but I am primed for whatever they decide to turn their prodigious powers on, next. (In the meantime, of course, there is always Our Opinions are Correct).

[Note: ISFDB and the Science Fiction Encyclopedia say Newitz’ birthday is today, Wikipedia says tomorrow. Happy birthday whichever is the case!)

(7) COMICS SECTION.

Herman is aboard that trebuchet we so often hear about.
Off the Mark is deceived.
Reality Check misses the point.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal discusses villain motivation.
Wallace the Brave finds comics writing is easy.
xkcd needs a break from dark matter research.

(8) HUGO VIEWING. In “Hugo 2025: The Wild Robot”, Camestros Felapton rates another finalist.

…As I said in the intro, the film has more bite than you might imagine. It’s not a nature documentary and their are kid-friendly fantasy elements to how the animals of the island live but aside from that the animals are presented naturalistically. There is a repeated emphasis on death as a common occurrence and the film is clear that animals kill and eat other animals. Fink the fox (the almost ubiquitous Pedro Pascal) is a key supporting character but when he first turns up he is trying to catch and eat Bright Bill, Roz’s adopted baby goose child.

The idea of juxtaposing robots with nature is not a new one but it is an under-explored one….

(9) VINTAGE PROPS. “Where Would Hollywood Find Its Guillotines or Pay Phones Without Them?” asks the New York Times. (Article is behind a paywall.)

When the Netflix series “Wednesday” needed a guillotine recently, it did not have to venture far. A North Hollywood prop house called History for Hire had one available, standing more than eight feet high with a suitably menacing blade. (The business offers pillories too, but the show wasn’t in the market for any.)

The company’s 33,000-square-foot warehouse is like the film and television industry’s treasure-filled attic, crammed with hundreds of thousands of items that help bring the past to life. It has a guitar Timothée Chalamet used in “A Complete Unknown,” luggage from “Titanic,” a black baby carriage from “The Addams Family.”

Looking for period detail? You can find different iterations of Wheaties boxes going back to the ’40s, enormous television cameras with rotating lenses from the ’50s, a hair dyer with a long hose that connects to a plastic bonnet from the ’60s, a pay phone from the ’70s and a yellow waterproof Sony Walkman from the ’80s….

… History for Hire, which Jim and Pam Elyea have owned for almost four decades, is part of the crucial but often unseen infrastructure that keeps Hollywood churning, and helps make it one of the best places in the world to make film and television.

“People just don’t realize how valuable a business like that is to help support the look of a film,” said Nancy Haigh, a set decorator who found everything from a retro can of pork and beans to a one-ton studio crane there for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which she won an Oscar for. “But it’s because people like them exist that your moviegoing experience has such life to it.”…

… “I don’t know what we would do without them,” said Pascale, who has won an Oscar for “Mank.”

No one likes entertaining that idea. But with fewer movies and television shows being shot in Los Angeles these days, and History for Hire getting less business, the Elyeas fear they may not be able to afford to renew their lease for five more years. If they close, Los Angeles will lose another piece of the vibrant ecosystem that has kept it attractive to filmmakers, even as states like Georgia and New Mexico lure productions with lucrative tax credits. Some Angelenos fear a vicious cycle: If the city continues to lose local talent and resources, even more productions will flee….

(10) SPEAKEASY. “AI-Dubbed Swedish Film ‘Watch the Skies’ Opening in Theaters” – Variety listens in.

When XYZ Films‘ “Watch the Skies” has its U.S. theatrical release on Friday, Hollywood will also get a glimpse at the state-of-the-art in AI-driven “visual dubbing” and its potential for Hollywood.

“Watch the Skies” is a sci-fi adventure filmed in Swedish (under the name “UFO Sweden”), but, uniquely, the actors will appear to be speaking English through the use of TrueSync, an AI visual dubbing tool from startup Flawless, which effectively syncs new (in this case, English language) dialogue with the actors’ mouth movements. The original actors recorded their lines in English as an ADR process, before the Flawless AI tech was applied to the movie….

(11) LEFT BEHIND. “Andor Leaves Out a Key Part of Star Wars Mythology, and I Think It’s Brilliant” says CBR.com.

While Andor enjoys effusive praise from critics and Star Wars fans, both usually fail to mention a key reason the series is so unique. The two-season Disney+ series is the first, and thus far only, story in the expansive saga aimed specifically at adult viewers. How Cassian Andor finds his way to the Rebellion meticulously examines the Star Wars political philosophy, which only works because it ignores an important aspect of the mythology: the Force. As a fan of both the political and spiritual allegory in this universe, I believe ignoring the latter makes the series absolutely brilliant….

(12) GETTING WITH THE TIMES. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki reminds readers:

(13) KEEPING THE AI IN SETI. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I spotted this article pre-print on the Nature website. “AI scientist ‘team’ joins the search for extraterrestrial life”.

The collaborative system generated more than 100 hypotheses relating to the origins of life in the Universe.

Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have created a system that can perform autonomous research in astrobiology, the study of the origins of life in the Universe.

AstroAgents comprises eight ‘AI agents’ that analyse data and generate scientific hypotheses. It joins a suite of other AI tools that aim to automate the process of science, from reading the literature to coming up with hypotheses and even writing papers….

…The result was 101 hypotheses from Gemini and 48 from Claude. One hypothesis posits that certain molecules found on Earth would make “reliable biomarkers” indicating the presence of life. Another suggests that a cluster of the organic molecules found in two meteorites might have formed through the same series of chemical reactions.

Buckner scored each hypothesis. She deemed 36 of the Gemini hypotheses to be plausible and 24 novel. By contrast, none of the Claude-generated hypotheses was original — but they were overall less error-prone and clearer than Gemini’s.

Primary research pre-print: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23170

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

Pixel Scroll 5/5/25 Piles Of Pithecanthropic Purple Pixels

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) JMS MOVES TO ENGLAND. J. Michael Straczysnki told Facebook followers he is pursuing his goal to write for British TV by becoming a Resident of the UK, which he is as of today.

…So it should come as no surprise that every year, when my agent and I have our “what goals should we set for the coming year” discussion, I’ve asked one question every time: “Is there any way I can produce a series in the UK and live there for a while?”

The answer, alas, has always been no, for the obvious reason that I’m not a British citizen or resident with a visa that would allow me to work in the UK. The closest I came was when we shot a big chunk of Sense8 in London. Rather than satisfy my desire to live and work in the UK, the experience only reinforced it.

Well, I finally decided to do something about it. Because that’s what dreams are for….

…Even though the outcome was far from certain, I made the decision to sell the house that has been my home for 25 years as a way of saying I’m committing to the path. Gave away or donated a ton of clothes and other stuff. If the visa went through, I wanted a fresh start, so I used much of what was left after selling the house to pay off debt accumulated during one pandemic, two strikes, and four years of paralysis in the film/TV business.

…As of today, I am officially a Resident of the United Kingdom. I can stay on indefinitely, can apply for full citizenship in three years, and finally, at long last, I am free to work for any studio, producer or network in the UK, from ITV to Channel 4, Britbox, Acorn…BBC….

…All of that being said, I’m not just leaving the US behind. My plan is to divide my time between both countries. In addition to looking after the Ellison Estate, there’s my ongoing comics work, several US-based projects that require my attention, and the possibility of more in the future, I want to launch some US/UK film and television co-productions, create series that can be shot in both places, and perhaps join arms with UK studios and networks already working to bring homegrown characters from comics and past TV series to an international audience.

But there’s that old joke: Q: How do you make God laugh? A: Tell Him your plans….

(2) RHYSLING AWARD NEWS. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the “2025 Rhysling Award Finalists”, 50 short poems and 25 long poems.

A short poem finalist is Pat Masson’s “The Last Valkyrie” from Forgotten Ground Regained 2. Paul Deane tells the story behind that poem’s publication and Rhysling eligibility in this Bluesky thread.

(3) PULITZER PRIZES 2025. The New York Times has the “Pulitzer Prizes: 2025 Winners List”. Complete list at the link, which bypasses the paywall. There are no winners of genre interest, however, File 770 has taken an interest in James because it has in common with Julia, based on 1984, the concept of retelling a classic from another character’s point of view.

FICTION

“James,” by Percival Everett

Mr. Everett’s book won for “an accomplished reconsideration of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom,” the committee said.

Finalists “Headshot: A Novel,” by Rita Bullwinkel; “The Unicorn Woman,” by Gayl Jones; “Mice 1961,” by Stacey Levine

(4) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Daryl Gregory and Carol Gyzander on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003. (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

Daryl Gregory

Daryl Gregory is a Seattle writer whose latest novel is When We Were Real, which Kirkus in a starred review called “a marvel.” His books and short stories have been translated into a dozen languages and have won multiple awards, including the World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Crawford awards, and have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, and other awards. His ten other books include the novels Revelator and Spoonbenders, the novellas The Album of Dr. Moreau and We Are All Completely Fine, and the collection Unpossible and Other Stories. He also teaches writing and is a regular instructor at the Viable Paradise Writing Workshop

Carol Gyzander

Carol Gyzander is a two-time Bram Stoker Award® nominee who writes and edits horror, weird fiction, and science fiction—with strong women in twisted tales that touch your heart. She has stories in Weird Tales 367, Weird House Magazine, Under Twin Suns, and numerous other publications. Carol edited and contributed to the Stoker-nominated Discontinue If Death Ensues: Tales from the Tipping Point (Flame Tree Publishing), including her poem “Bobblehead,” which is nominated for a Rhysling Award. She’s Co-Chair of HWA NY Chapter and co-host of their Galactic Terrors online reading series. Follow her on Instagram @carolgyzander.

(5) SOMEBODY STILL WANTS TO RUN A WORLDCON? The Brisbane in 28 Worldcon bid woke from its ordinary social media slumber to leave this announcement on Facebook today:

Our apologies for being so quiet, we’ve been busy trying to organise ourselves for Seattle, and then a Federal Election happened. We plan on being more visible again from this point on.

Our bid is currently for Thursday the 28th of July to Monday the 31st of July, 2028. This is on the weekend following the total eclipse that will be passing through Australia on Saturday the 22nd of July, 2028.

We do plan on having a presence in Seattle for this year’s Worldcon, but the current situation is making that challenging. However, even if we are not there in person, we have people willing to handle things on our behalf, so we will have a presence there.

(6) ON THE TUBE. Camestros Felapton continues his 2025 Hugo review series with a Dramatic Presentation: Long Form finalist: “Hugo 2025: I Saw the TV Glow”.

… I Saw the TV Glow is billed as horror and while it contains a bunch of disturbing ideas and images it is not what I would regard as a frightening film. That’s not a criticism of the film just an indication that it sits in its own place rather than comfortably within one genre category. Of course, depending on your own life experiences (and particularly teenage experiences) this film may hit very differently….

(7) NEA PULLS PLUG ON GRANTS. “NEA Begins Terminating and Withdrawing Grants” reports Publishers Lunch (behind a paywall). (And the agency itself is getting the ax says Publishers Weekly.)

The National Endowment for the Arts began terminating and withdrawing grant offers on Friday night, after President Trump proposed cutting NEA funding from the government budget. Many small publishers, magazines, and publishing-related organizations lost funding.

The Community of Magazines and Literary Presses (CLMP) tells PL that they reached out to all fiscal year ’25 Grants for the Arts round one grantees in the literary/arts publishing category. “Of the 51,” said executive director Mary Gannon, “I’ve heard from 40 so far and all 40 have had their grants ‘terminated’ or ‘withdrawn.’ Some have already received payments, but not all.”

Among the institutions impacted were Open Letter Books, which publishes literature in translation; literary magazine N+1, which lost a $12,500 grant; Hub City Press, which lost $25,000; and Deep Vellum, which lost $20,000; Milkweed Editions, which lost $50,000; Electric Literature, which lost $12,000; Nightboat Books, which lost $30,000; McSweeney’s Literary Arts, which lost $25,000, and many more. (Find a growing list here.)…

(8) NASA PROPOSED BUDGET. “White House Announces Plans to Rip Up NASA’s Moon Program” – Futurism has the stats.

The Trump administration has released its proposed budget for next year, revealing massive budget cuts that could deal NASA’s space exploration and science efforts a devastating blow.

The agency’s budget would be slashed by 24 percent year over year, a difference of $6 billion, which is the biggest single-year cut in US history, according to the Planetary Society.

While space and Earth science funding would face massive lacerations, human space exploration could see its budget increase by roughly $1 billion in “new investments for Mars-focused programs,” according to the proposal, highlighting Trump’s desire to plant a flag on the Red Planet.

Notably, the Trump administration proposes canceling NASA’s “grossly expensive and delayed” Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule after Artemis 3, the first attempt to return astronauts to the Moon’s surface in over half a century, which is tentatively scheduled for 2027….

(9) BEWARE: THIS IS A THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILER. According to The Independent: “Thunderbolts: Marvel fans react to ‘spoiler’ New Avengers title change”.

…At the end of Thunderbolts*, CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) announced the group’s rebrand as The New Avengers. A graphic on screen after the film’s post-credits scene then informs cinemagoers that “The New Avengers will return”.

Now, posters for Thunderbolts* appearing in cinemas and on billboards around the world have been updated to reveal its new title: The New Avengers.

This development also reveals the meaning of the asterisk featured at the end of the original title, which was part of a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 5, 1979 — Catherynne Valente, 46.

By Paul Weimer: Reading Catherynne Valente for me started with Palimpsest. The idea of a map on people’s skin, pieces transmitted by sex, was a little out of my comfort zone. But the dream/faerie reality of the titular city, accessible after nights of passion, entranced me. Valente’s work was lush, gorgeous, vivid, fey, The writing was poetic in language and form, a puzzle like the map on the visitors’ skin.

I was enchanted by her work, even if it wasn’t my usual. I skipped into and Valente’s work here and there rather than making her a solid must-buy. Sometimes for my own personal reading, a little Valente was enough. It’s as if her work was too potent for me to consume continually. But I enjoyed Six Gun Snow White, and Deathless, particularly.

And then there’s Space Opera.

Space Opera is glorious, and was glorious to me, who is not immersed into the world of Eurovision, which it borrows shamelessly from. Space Opera is part of the branch of Space Operas in the same realm that Cat Rambo and Valerie Valdes and Lavanya Lakshminarayan play in: Frothy, fun, and light, and yet with hidden depths. Character focused and oriented science fiction space opera, and yet interesting and intriguing worldbuilding. Space Opera is the leading edge of this slice of space opera, and even someone with Amusia can and does enjoy it.

Sadly, for me, the follow-up, Space Oddity, charitably didn’t live up to the first. But I expect that I will get the urge to taste the potency of Valente’s work again in the future. Like that map in Palimpsest, I will be irresistibly drawn to the faerieland of her work once more.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Eyebeam has a Bat app for that.
Half Full details a cartoonist’s life.
The Barn visits other shows.
Zen Pencils favors being different.
Batch Rejection shares a writing tip.
Three Panel Soul shows a variant of a familiar game.

(12) LOTR EAGLES RETURNING TO THE ROOST. “New Zealand airport to remove Hobbit-themed eagle sculptures” – BBC has the story.

For more than a decade, a pair of Hobbit-inspired eagle sculptures have cast a watchful eye over visitors at New Zealand’s Wellington Airport.

But the giant birds will be unfastened from the ceiling on Friday to make way for a new mystery exhibit, airport authorities said.

The eagles appear as messengers in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which were adapted to film by New Zealand’s Sir Peter Jackson.

The spectacular New Zealand landscapes featured in Mr Jackson’s films are a consistent draw for tourists, who are greeted at the airport by the eagle sculptures.

“It’s not unusual to see airborne departures from Wellington Airport, but in this case, it will be emotional for us,” Wellington Airport chief executive Matt Clarke said in a statement.

The giant eagles will be placed in storage and there have not been long-term plans for them.

Each eagle weighs 1.2 tonnes (1,200kg) with a wingspan of 15m (49ft). Riding on the back of one of the birds is a sculpture of the wizard, Gandalf.

Made of polystyrene and with an internal steel skeleton, each eagle has hundreds of feathers, the longest one measuring 2.4m (8ft).

While the iconic eagles will soon be gone, not all is lost for fans of the franchise: Smaug the Magnificent, the dragon in The Hobbit, will continue to be displayed at the check-in area….

(13) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] End of the world coming… well, it is, about a billion years from now. “Neither climate change nor meteorites – NASA confirms that the end of life on Earth will be due to loss of oxygen, according to Toho University study – here’s when it will happen” at El Adelanto de Segovia.

If you’re worried about the end of the world, you can scratch asteroids and climate change off the list of final threats —at least in the very long term. According to new research from Toho University in Japan, supported by NASA modeling, the slow fade of life on Earth won’t come with a bang. Instead, it’ll happen with a lack of breathable air.

That’s right: the distant future of Earth won’t end in fire or ice, but in something far more subtle: oxygen loss. And while that sounds ominous, you can relax. This isn’t something that will affect you, your children, or even your great-great-great-great-grandchildren. In fact, the end is about a billion years away, give or take a few hundred million….

(14) REVIVAL TRAILER. “SYFY Debuts First Trailer for Highly Anticipated Image Comics Adaptation” at ComicBook.com.

The first trailer for SYFY’s upcoming adaptation of the fan-favorite Image Comics title Revival has been officially released online. The trailer provides people with a basic overview of the general premise; a rural Wisconsin town has to adjust to a startling new reality when the dead mysteriously come back to life. What sets Revival apart from similar zombie-themed titles is that the “revived” appear and act as they did before they passed away. At the center of the story is Officer Dana Cypress (played by Melanie Scrofano), who has to make sense of it all as the town’s residents struggling coming to terms with the situation….

(15) CITY IN FLIGHT. “Starbase: Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch site becomes an official Texas city” reports AP News.

The South Texas home of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company is now an official city with a galactic name: Starbase.

A vote Saturday to formally organize Starbase as a city was approved by a lopsided margin among the small group of voters who live there and are mostly Musk’s employees at SpaceX. With all the votes in, the tally was 212 in favor to 6 against, according to results published online by the Cameron County Elections Department.

Musk celebrated in a post on his social platform, X, saying it is “now a real city!”

Starbase is the facility and launch site for the SpaceX rocket program that is under contract with the Department of Defense and NASA that hopes to send astronauts back to the moon and someday to Mars.

Musk first floated the idea of Starbase in 2021 and approval of the new city was all but certain. Of the 283 eligible voters in the area, most are believed to be Starbase workers….

(16) SHOCKING NEW TASTE. “Scientists unveil RoboCake with edible robots and batteries” claims New Atlas.

Researchers from Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have formed an unlikely collaboration team with pastry chefs and food scientists to create the RoboCake, currently on show at Osaka’s Expo 2025.

But this is a cake with a bit of a twist. Sitting atop the elaborate piece are edible robotic bears, which are reported to taste like pomegranate gummies, which have an internal pneumatic system that provides movement for their limbs and head. And, yes, these little dancing robots are completely edible….

… Not to be outdone, IIT researchers have made the world’s first edible rechargeable battery, using a recipe of vitamin B2, quercetin, activated carbon and chocolate.

“These batteries, safe for consumption, can be used to light the LED candles on the cake,” said Valerio Galli, a PhD student at IIT. “The first flavor you get when you eat them is dark chocolate, followed by a surprising tangy kick, due to the edible electrolyte inside, which lasts a few seconds.”…

(17) SQUID GAME 3. Courtesy of Gizmodo: “The End Is Here in the First Trailer for Squid Game 3”.

…What was up with that baby cry at the end there? And what game could possibly be coming with everyone getting their team out of a giant gumball machine?

We don’t know and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for all these questions. We love to see how 456 (Lee Jung-jae) is brought back into the game and that the story from the boat, and of the Front Man, will continue. In fact, everything has to wrap up here because the show’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, has said this is the end….

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

Pixel Scroll 5/4/25 Scroll The Other One—It’s Got Pixels On It!

Posted on May 4, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) JUSTWATCH REVEALS THE MOST-STREAMED STAR WARS TITLES. JustWatch, the world’s leading streaming guide, released an exclusive report ahead of Star Wars Day (May the 4th), diving into the most-streamed titles across the Star Wars universe.

From the timeless legacy of George Lucas’ original trilogy to the power of Disney’s modern revival, JustWatch’s findings reveal how the Force continues to captivate American audiences.

Drawing from millions of data points collected from JustWatch users, the report uncovers the top-performing Star Wars films and series and how streaming preferences vary between generations of fans.

Key Findings

“The Mandalorian” Reigns Supreme: Disney+’s flagship series outperformed the original trilogy by over 25%, cementing its status as the most-watched Star Wars title.
Film Favorites Still Fly High: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back remains the most-streamed film from the Lucas-era classics, while The Rise of Skywalker leads among Disney’s theatrical releases.
Old vs. New: Though newer series like Ahsoka and Andor surged in popularity in 2024, the original trilogy collectively still held over 30% of the film streaming share.
Anakin Showdown: Hayden Christensen’s portrayal in the prequels has seen a resurgence, outpacing Jake Lloyd and even early Mark Hamill-led films in younger demographics.
Hidden Gems: Despite critical acclaim, Star Wars: Visions and The Book of Boba Fett landed among the least-streamed titles.

Methodology: Streaming interest is based on JustWatch user activity globally, from 2019-April 28th, 2025, including interactions such as adding titles to watchlists, click-outs to streaming platforms, and filtering by service providers. JustWatch aggregates data from over 60 million monthly users across 140 countries.

(2) EFFECTIVENESS OF STATE PRODUCTION INCENTIVES. The New York Times asks, “When Taxpayers Fund Shows Like ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘S.N.L.,’ Does It Pay Off?” (Behind a paywall.)

New Yorkers — and residents of many other states — have paid more for entertainment in recent years than just their Netflix or Hulu subscriptions.

Each New York household has also contributed about $16 in taxes, on average, toward producing the drama series “Billions” since 2017. Over that period, each household has also paid roughly $14.50 in production incentives for “Saturday Night Live” and $4.60 for “The Irishman,” among many other shows and movies.

Add it all up, and New York has spent more than $5.5 billion in incentives since 2017, the earliest year for which data is readily available. Now, as a new state budget agreement nears, Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she wants to add $100 million in credits for independent productions that would bring total film subsidies to $800 million a year, almost double the amount from 2022.

Other states also pay out tens or hundreds of millions each year in a bidding war for Hollywood productions, under the theory that these tax credits spur the economy. One question for voters and lawmakers is whether a state recoups more than its investment in these movies and shows — or gets back only pennies on the dollar….

… A recent study commissioned by Empire State Development, the agency that administers the tax credit, found that for every dollar handed out, about $1.70 was returned via local or state taxes, meaning the program was profitable for the state.

But many economists say these programs are money losers. A separate study commissioned by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance estimated a return of only 31 cents on the dollar….

…A recent survey of incentive programs by The New York Times estimated that states had paid out more than $25 billion over 20 years. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California cited the size of New York’s subsidies when he proposed increasing his state’s tax credits to $750 million from $330 million….

(3) THUNDERBOLTS* CHOICE QUESTIONED. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Ben Child frets about introducing Sentry into the Marvelverse in the latest “Week in Geek” column: “Has Marvel shot itself in the foot by bringing superfreak Sentry into Thunderbolts*?”

Is there ever a right time to introduce into your superhero universe a psychologically unstable god-being with the potential to sneeze a continent off the map? It is probably not when – 17 years in – you are being accused of having lost half your audience to superhero fatigue. But that’s exactly what Marvel is doing this weekend as Thunderbolts* brings us Sentry, quite possibly the freakiest superhero to ever grace the comic book publisher’s hallowed pages. You thought Rocket Raccoon was weird and unhinged? Reckon Moon Knight is a bit of a handful? This guy makes them look like well-adjusted professionals with decent pensions.

(4) THE HANDMAID’S TALE Q&A. Leading into the show’s final season, in “‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Wants to End With a Message of Hope” the New York Times hears from actors Yvonne Strahovski and Elizabeth Moss (who is also a producer and director on the series); Bruce Miller, the creator; Warren Littlefield, a producer; and Yahlin Chang and Eric Tuchman, the Season 6 showrunners. (Behind a paywall.)

…When you originally conceived of this show, how faithful to Margaret Atwood’s novel did you feel like you had to be?

BRUCE MILLER I first read “The Handmaid’s Tale” in college. I’m dyslexic, so I tend to read the same books over and over. Since it became one of my favorites, I didn’t want to mess it up in an adaptation. The key, for me, was not fealty to the book or Margaret as an artist — it was born out of the storytelling in the novel that had already stood up to a whole bunch of readings. There are parts in it that I have never understood.

ELISABETH MOSS Margaret’s tone is so specific to her voice and writing that it was really important for that to be part of the show. As a producer, if I’m sent something and someone says, “I don’t see how you make this into a film or a show.” I’m like, “Have you read ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’?” It’s a first-person narrative that follows one person’s perspective the entire way, has a ton of loose ends and ends abruptly with no explanation.

Like the book, the show often feels politically prophetic, but it is much more racially and culturally diverse. What were some of your priorities when it came to adapting the novel?

MILLER: I decided at the beginning that fertility would trump everything. That once the fertility rate went down by 95 percent, people’s racism, sexism and whatever-ism would slide. I was completely wrong, based on what happened in the last 10 years. That stuff is more intractable than I ever thought it was. But on a much more practical level, it didn’t make sense for me to, by following the book, keep a whole bunch of actors of color from working.

WARREN LITTLEFIELD We wanted it to be relevant. But if we’re going to resonate, then why not reflect the world we live in?

The show was developed during the Obama years and even then, we could see the radical right rising throughout the world and in the United States. Did we think that was going to settle into the White House? We didn’t. But when we were about to shoot Episode 4, we realized that No. 45 was going to be Donald J. [Trump], so we found ourselves doing this show at that time. Months later, Hulu purchased an ad spot for the show during the Super Bowl, it played twice, and then suddenly we were claimed as part of the resistance….

(5) THE FACE (BOOK) ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. Steve Verlieb celebrates his release from Facebook jail.

One or ten of you may have noticed that I’ve been “Missing in Action” (M.I.A.) from Facebook for a fairly substantial amount of time. Whether M.I.A., MS13, OR MSNBC, the fact of the matter is that I’ve been rotting away in Facebook prison without the benefit of legal defense for some time. While incarcerated, I wasn’t even Afforded a Harrison or “Cell” phone with which to notify friends and family of my precarious circumstances. My “crimes” included the audacity and utter indignity of sharing my own articles with others of like-minded affiliation and persuasion. In the depths of my despair, I wasn’t even permitted to drown my virtual sorrow in the local prison “bars.” I was surreptitiously removed from active recognition and participation on Unsocial Media by I.C.E. without the lawful declaration of my Lin-Manuel “Miranda” rights.

My eventual “sentence,” while not quite as long as a “paragraph,” was nonetheless both shameful and humiliating. Denied the privilege of legal counsel, with not an active “Mason” in the “Big House,” not even Raymond Burr (or even Aaron Burr) could help me “Escape from Alcatraz.” Despite the presence of some illustrious prison mates, like Charlie “Byrd,” man, with no strings attached, this proverbial “Jailhouse” did not “Rock.” Not even my continuing letters and messages to friends and neighbors offered any semblance of appeal or hope of freedom, and so I fled into a “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” while desperately hiding the disgrace that “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.”

With an increasingly inflationary Writ for what I Wrote upon my head, the gavel ultimately sent me to the gravel under the cruel reign of Warden Zuckerberg. It seemed that I’d become a permanent resident of “The Big House” when suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, I was delivered a perhaps tentative reprieve, and allowed access to the burning blaze of freedom once more. Free At Last, Free At Last, I was a “Stranger in a Strange Land,” having to re-learn the “dues” and don’ts, as well as the ins and outs, of safe navigation across the inflamed countryside of social media. However, I must be up Front in my declaration of joy in being Back once more, and I sincerely hope that you’ll both forgive, and pardon my pardon … with “Biberty” and James Robertson Justice for All.

(6) JACK KATZ (1927-2025) In “Jack Katz, 1927-2025”, The Comics Journal profiles the late creator’s complete 60-plus-year career.

Artist/writer Jack Katz, whose ambitious indy epic, The First Kingdom, laid the groundwork in the 1970s for long-form graphic narratives like Cerebus, died April 24 at the age of 97. If he had not published that science-fantasy saga, it’s likely that Katz would have been regarded as just a journeyman artist, who tried — with little success — to make a living in comics. As it is, he will be remembered for his attempt, during the waning days of underground comics, to put out one of the first self-published graphic novels….

… After he moved to California, Katz encountered underground comics and realized that self-publishing would give him the freedom to craft his own stories and art without anyone dictating to him the direction and scope of his story or the pace at which he had to work, which was always an issue with the slow and meticulous Katz.

He began putting out The First Kingdom in 1974, published by Comics & Comix Co., which remained his publisher until 1977 (issues #1–6). Longtime book-dealer and fanzine-publisher Bud Plant took over publishing from 1977 until 1986, re-offering #2-6 and completing Katz’ first story cycle of 24 issues. Always a deliberate and diligent worker, Katz only put out two issues a year and wrote and drew every comic, never working with assistants. No one had ever done an independent comic book quite like The First Kingdom, and Katz’s efforts were praised in the pages of both Playboy magazine and the Rocket’s Blast Comicollector fanzine. Although the series had its fervent adherents, Katz’ fan base was never very large, because his comic book never had newsstand distribution and was only available by mail order, in comics shops or in head shops alongside underground comics like Zap Comics, Slow Death and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Its commercial appeal was also limited by the infrequency with which the title appeared and by its adult content, which restricted its venues.

The First Kingdom storyline was a fantasy/science-fiction hybrid, with a growing emphasis on the science fiction component by the sixth issue. It began in a primitive, post-nuclear world populated by barbaric peoples, anthropomorphic gods and strange monsters….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 4, 1976 — Gail Carriger, 49.

Steampunk and mannerpunk, it’s time to talk about both, specifically that as written by our birthday author, Gail Carriger.

Where to start? Her first novel, Soulless, is set in an alternate version of Victorian era Britain where werewolves and vampires are members of proper society. Alexia Tarabotti is a wonderful created character that anyone would love to have an adventure with, as well as sit down with to high tea in the afternoon.

The book begins the Parasol Protectorate series centered around her, which as of now goes on to have Changeless, Blameless, oh guess, Heartless and Timeless in it, plus one short story, “Meat Cute”. Why the latter broke the naming convention I know not.

Wait, wait, don’t tell me! — she’s done more mannerpunk. Indeed she has. There is Custard Protocol series (Prudence Imprudence, Competence and Reticence), also set in Parasol Protectorate universe. When Prudence “Rue” Alessandra Maccon Akeldama , a young woman with metahuman abilities, is left an unexpected dirigible in a will , she does what any sensible (ha!) alternative Victorian Era female would do — she names it the Spotted Custard and floats off to India. Need I say adventures of a most unusual kind follow? I really love this series and not just for the name of the series. It’s just fun. Really fun.

The Finishing School series is set in Parasol Protectorate universe. Again she has a delightful manner in naming her tales, Etiquette & Espionage, Curtsies & Conspiracies, Waistcoats & Weaponry and Manners & Mutiny. Go ahead, I think you can figure what this series is about without me telling you. It’s delightful of course.

So I’m not that familiar with her other writing. It appears the two Delightfully Deadly novellas might have a tinge of romance in them though at least one also has dead husbands, four to be precise, lobsters and of course high society. Lobsters?

The Claw & Courtship novellas are standalone stories set in the Parasol Protectorate universe. So far there’s just “How to Marry a Werewolf (In 10 Easy Steps)”, though she says there’ll be more.

Finally, I’ll note she did a SF series, the Tinkered Stars Universe series — how can this possibly be? — which she describes on her website as “a sexy alien police procedural on a space station”. Oh, that sounds so good. It consists of Divinity 36, Demigod 22, Dome 6, Crudat and The 5th Gender.

Did she do short stories? Just six, of which I really want to read one — “The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn’t, The Mummy that Was and the Cat in the Jar”.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Off the Mark has lightsaber trouble.
Bob the Squirrel tries the Force.
Foxtrot runs into a nonbeliever.
Rhymes with Orange meets another X-wing pilot.
Brevity markets to special customers.
Brewster Rockit introduces the challenges of a new planet.
Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee has a game that cannot be played for money.
Broom Hilda knows the difference between first novel and second.
Herman knows why there are no more Martians.
Reality Check turns apps into characters.

(9) THE SYNDICATE’S TAKIN’ OVER. Rick Marschall starts a series on newspaper syndication in “Yesterday’s Papers: An Inside Look Into The Bullpen Of Early Hearst Cartoonists”.

…The competition, particularly among their comics and cartoons, between Hearst and his rivals, had become so intense that some services had a surfeit of talent. By 1917 his comics operation filled the daily and Sunday pages of the dozen papers in the Hearst chain. A few years earlier the Hearst organization had spun off Buster Brown, Little Nemo, Polly and Her Pals, and other strips under a purportedly rival umbrella, the Newspaper Feature Service. This enabled Hearst papers to run two comic sections every weekend, perhaps one on Saturday, or to provide Hearst rivals in certain cities with their own comic sections that didn’t appear to be generated by Hearst! (In New York City, for instance, Hearst’s deadly competitor the New York Tribune was able to run a four-page NFS color comic section that appeared to readers to be the Trib‘s own.)

By 1917, Hearst’s lieutenant Moses Koenigsberg split up the syndicate operations even further. Eventually there was King Features, a sort of holding company or sales agent for all the syndicates; Central Press Association; International Feature Service, Newspaper Feature Service; and others. The material we will be sharing here and over subsequent weeks is from a rare book published for prospective clients by the International Feature Service….

(10) TRIVIAL TRIVIA. Alvin!!!

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(11) MURDERBOT SHOWRUNNERS Q&A. The Grue Rume Show interviews film makers Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz. They write and direct Season 1 of Apple TV show MurderBot. “Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz talks Murderbot!!”

(12) ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD’S SWEDISH MOMENTS. The Swedish actor’s occasional use of his native language in otherwise English-language productions is celebrated in this interview conducted by Jonatan Blomberg from Moviezine: “Murderbot, Lady Gaga & True Blood”.

I had a truly awesome time with Alexander Skarsgård, one of our best Swedish actors right now! We spoke about the times he’s been bringing our Swedish language in to American productions – which is also the case (in one brief moment) in his new show Murderbot. Here he tries to remember the “krokodil” when skinny-dipping in True Blood and sharing a bed while chatting in Swedish with LADY GAGA in the Paparazzi music video.

(13) HOW THE LEAD CHOSE THIS ROLE. And if you haven’t had enough, Winter Is Coming also scored a few minutes with the lead: “Alexander Skarsgård: Murderbot EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW!”

Winter Is Coming’s Daniel Roman sits down with Murderbot star Alexander Skarsgård to talk about becoming the SecUnit at the heart of Apple’s new comedic sci-fi series, how he embodied the character, and guilty TV pleasures.

(14) THEY DON’T LISTEN TO GURATHIN. This interview with the actor who plays Gurathin has much deeper insights into the series, plus clips: “David Dastmalchian talks ‘Murderbot’ and more: A blockbuster year for the versatile star” at Pix11 News.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/3/25 Glorious Pixelcolor, Breathtaking Cinema Scroll, And Godstalkophonic Sound

Posted on May 3, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(0) Scroll lite today because I will be attending a dinner to celebrate my daughter’s graduation with a Master’s in Social Work. Congratulations Sierra!

(1) SANFORD HONORED AT MO*CON. [Item by Chris Barkley.] On May 3, 2025 Hugo Award Finalist Jason Sanford (Best Fan Writer and Best Related Work) was the recipient of the Sara J. Larson Award at MoCon 2025 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Mr. Sanford, the editor and primary reporter of Genre Grapevine, was honored by MoCon Chair and bestselling author Maurice Broaddus for “his continuing support of the Indianapolis science fiction community.”

The Sara J. Larson Award is named for a beloved member of the Indianapolis sf fan community and a enthusiastic supporter of MoCon, who passed away in March 2012. More information about the event is on Maurice Broaddus’ blog: MO*CON. All photos by Chris M. Barkley.

(2) NNEDI OKORAFOR’S WORLD SERVICE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC’s World Service is a great early morning listen to on sleepless nights and last night was a joy with a programme on three writers, the third of whom was with the SF writer Nnedi Okorafor. Her interview revealed that during her youth she competitively played tennis facing occasional racial slurs on the court as some inferior opponents tried to put her off her game. However, her sports ambitions were curtailed during an operation to correct her scoliosis induced spinal curvature which left her (fortunately temporarily) paralysed from the waist down. It was this time that got her writing stories and then novels and then Marvel comics came calling. Her novels include Lagoon, The Book of Phoenix and recently Death of the Author.

“Becoming a writer was not the most straightforward journey for Nnedi Okorafor. Before her literary success she was a talented tennis player and dreamt of turning pro. However following a diagnosis of scoliosis, routine surgery to her spine left her temporarily paralysed. Confined to her hospital bed, Nnedi found solace in her vivid imagination and began writing for the first time. It was the start of a highly successful career as an author and led to a request from Marvel to write some of their comics. Over the years she has written characters including Spiderman, the X-Men and the Avengers. Nnedi is also the first woman to write the character of T’Challa – the Black Panther, as well as his tech-loving sister, Shuri.”

She was the last author covered so skip forward two-thirds in the programme that can be accessed here.

(3) AO3 MAKES NYT. “Did a TV Show Hurt You? ‘Fix-Its’ Offer Justice” – the New York Times explains how (story behind a paywall.)

This article includes spoilers for “Daredevil: Born Again,” “Severance,” “The Last of Us” and “The White Lotus.”

As a longtime player of the Last of Us video game series, Sam Gaitan knew the death was coming. Still, the brutal murder of Joel in a recent episode of the HBO adaptation hit her hard. It was already midnight when she went on Tumblr to read fan reactions. Then, in a fit of inspiration, she started writing.

“I was a wreck, and I needed to get those strong emotions out,” Gaitan, a tattooist and artist, said in a recent phone interview. By 5 a.m., she had written 3,761 words featuring Joel and Red, an original character Gaitan had previously created, and an alternative scenario that spares Joel from his onscreen fate.

Writing under the alias oh_persephone, she posted the story on AO3, an online repository for fan fiction and other fan-created art, and crashed until her dogs woke her up the next morning.

“It probably wasn’t the most coherent thing I’ve written,” she said, laughing. “But I figured other people could use it as much as I did.”

Gaitan’s urge to change the narrative is a familiar one among a subset of fans who write fan fiction, or fanfic, original stories that borrow characters, plots and settings from established media properties and are published mostly online, on sites like AO3, Tumblr and FanFiction.net.

Increasingly, these fans are taking matters into their own hands by writing “fix-it fics,” or simply “fix-its,” which attempt to right the perceived wrongs of a beloved work — and often provide some measure of emotional succor.

“The Last of Us,” which killed off its male lead surprisingly early in a hotly anticipated second season — a lead played, no less, by “the internet’s daddy,” Pedro Pascal — has proved to be particularly generative. Real numbers can be hard to track because of inconsistent labeling, but more than 50 “The Last of Us” stories tagged “Fix-It” were uploaded to AO3 in the week after Joel’s death, ranging from about 300 words to almost 80,000.

But if a TV writer can dream of it, a fan can feel betrayed by it: Fix-its have appeared in recent months for series like “Daredevil: Born Again,” “Severance” and “The White Lotus,” all of which contained whiplash-inducing plot twists….

(4) L J SMITH OBIT ON BBC RADIO 4. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The passing of the author L. J. Smith is one of those commemorated in BBC Radio 4’s Last Word. The author of the ‘Vampire Diaries’ series, she inspired girls to be determined and self-reliant. The Vampire Diaries were adapted into a CW Network series that lasted for eight seasons

You can access the programme here.

(5) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

Forbidden Planet film (1956)

By Lis Carey: In 1956, Forbidden Planet burst upon our movie screens. It’s considered one of the greats of early science fiction films, and rightly so.

Starring Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen, it also features the first appearance of Robby the Robot. Robby was the first movie robot that was more than just a prop, with a real personality and an important supporting role. This was also the first movie set entirely on a distant planet, with no scenes on Earth or in our solar system, and no direct contact with Earth. They were truly isolated. It’s also the first appearance of an FTL ship.

It’s also a lovely loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

The planet was Altair IV, and the ship’s mission was to find out what happened to the ship Bellerophon, and the scientists it carried, twenty years before. When they arrive, Dr. Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), one of those scientists, warns them off for “safety reasons,” but Commander John J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen), sees it as his duty to land anyway. Morbius tells them that all the members of the expedition were killed by “a mysterious planetary force, one by one, except for himself, his wife, and his daughter, Altaira (Anne Francis). Their ship, Bellerophon, was destroyed by that “planetary force” when a few remaining members of the expedition tried to use it to escape. His wife, he says, later died of natural causes.

Do I have to say that, even as a child, watching it for the first time, I found his wife’s death fishy as heck? In fact, I may have been thinking other words, words I was not allowed to say.

The newly arrived ship and its crew start to suffer attacks. When the engineer is attacked by this force while trying to repair communications equipment, we know something very bad is going on. It’s a tense, exciting story, which I’ll assume everyone has seen.

So I’ll talk about what this film means to me.

Being born a year after its release, I never saw it in a theater. I saw it at home, on our very first color TV. It was also the largest screen we’d ever had—do not be impressed. It was the 1960s, and it was, what? 27 inches? And I watched it with my dad.

My mother either stayed busy in the kitchen, or took herself off someplace, because she did not share our enthusiasm for Saturday afternoon science fiction movies, even when they weren’t featured on Creature Double Feature. (We were devotees of Creature Double Feature.) Mom occasionally pointed out that those movies were objectively bad, in a variety of ways. We said that was a lot of the fun, and made popcorn. She went out.

She did not believe us that Forbidden Planet was different, and actually very good, and that she would like the story. She banned any mention of Shakespeare in connection with a science fiction movie. (Admittedly, she had seen a couple of the Creature Double Feature offerings with us before she implemented her Never Again rule—maybe that’s why?) She refused to watch it with us—ever. We watched it every time it came on. Dad pointed out all the bits that showed this was an adaptation of The Tempest. We analyzed everything the characters would maybe have picked up on as clues if they knew they were in The Tempest.

And for the Creature Double Feature movies, we picked out every zipper in the badly made monster costumes, the places where you could see that those rocks were not rocks, re-used fake scenery from other movies. The cheesy dialog.

Either way, it was a lot of fun. A wonderful bonding experience with my dad, the only one in the extended family who didn’t think I was a little weird. Because, you know, he was, too.

Both Forbidden Planet, and Creature Double Feature’s masterpieces that would have made Ed Wood proud, are fond memories.

Rotten Tomato rating: 94%

(6) COMICS SECTION.

Brevity knows the solution.
Frank and Ernest complains about the weather.
Free Range makes a prediction.
Reality Check makes a brand.
Strange Brew predicts the rise of correction.
The Flying McCoys illustrates early dreams.
xkcd depicts the problem.

(7) EARLY DAYS GAZE. “A Hubble scientist was urged not to take a risky cosmic image. He didn’t listen” at Mashable.

In the summer of 1995, Robert Williams, then director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which manages the Hubble Space Telescope‘s research program, was paid two visits by the renowned astronomer John Bahcall, considered one of Hubble’s founding fathers.

Bahcall had, in hindsight, a strange request.

He urged Williams not to train the powerful NASA telescope into an uncharted region of space, where the school bus-sized observatory would stare for days in an attempt to observe profoundly distant, never-before-seen galaxies. It was a proposed endeavor to capture an unprecedented “deep field” view of the cosmos, allowing humanity to look back billions of years, near the dawn of time.

Though Bahcall believed Hubble would make many astronomical advances, he didn’t think it would observe any new, undiscovered galaxies — even in its lofty position above Earth‘s image-distorting atmosphere. Crucially, a failed attempt would bring more shame to a telescope that was already an orbiting object of ridicule: After launching in 1990, a flawed mirror captured blurry images in what was then the most expensive science project in history, requiring astronauts to visit Hubble and install a refrigerator-sized instrument to act as Hubble’s “correcting eyeglasses.”

So Williams knew the deep field was indeed a risk. Still, he told Bahcall he was compelled to take it.

“I told him that I’m willing to fall on my sword,” Williams told Mashable.

Soon after those meetings, Williams directed Hubble — which, in April 2025, celebrated its 35-year anniversary of launching — to peer at a seemingly empty patch of space for 10 straight days. The space telescope beamed home iconic imagery, a “cosmic zoo” of some 3,000 galaxies. It changed everything….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 5/2/25 Beneath The Scrolls Of Pixels

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 CHAIR APOLOGIZES. Kathy Bond today posted an “Apology and Response From Chair” at the Seattle Worldcon 2025 website to address the brewing controversy about the committee using ChatGPT as part of its process for screening program participants.

Bond had initially defended the practice (see “Responding to Controversy, Seattle Worldcon Defends Using ChatGPT to Vet Program Participants”. Additional coverage here – “Seattle Worldcon 2025 ChatGPT Controversy Roundup”.)

(2) 2025 LOCUS AWARDS SHORTLISTS. The 2025 Locus Awards finalists have been posted at Locus Online. See the full list at the link. The Locus Awards winners will be announced June 21 during the in-person Locus Awards Ceremony, held in Oakland, California.

(3) PUPPIES AIN’T WHAT THEY USTA BE. In “Locus Slate Shenanigan Update” Camestros Felapton scores Jon Del Arroz’ efforts to push his picks onto the Locus Awards shortlist.

Early in April I posted about an attempt by Jon Del Arroz/Fandom Pulse (and others) to game the Locus voting with a last minute slate. So how did the JDA slate perform?

OK, I have to do some complex data crunching here. Well, my provisional results come out at a whopping 0% of JDA slated works made it….

(4) 2025 EDGAR AWARDS. Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2025 Edgar Awards on May 1.

Publishers Weekly reports the ceremony was marred by the use of AI images, and this is being compared with the Worldcon’s own LLM kerfuffle.

An opening video, surveying treatments of the genre on the big and small screen, was narrated by a creepy AI version of Humphrey Bogart, complete with imperfect lip-syncing, later followed by one featuring an even creepier, black cat-holding, artificially-generated Edgar Allan Poe.

(5) ELRIC’S EARS: THE DEFINITIVE ANSWER. Cora Buhlert has written an article about Elric of Melniboné for the Seattle Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow Blog, which got responses from both Michael Whelan and Michael Moorcock, settling the question whether Elric has pointed ears or not. “Fantastic Fiction: Elric of Melniboné: Tortured Elf Emperor with a Cursed Sword”. See their comments at the link.

…Elric was born out of a conversation between John Carnell, editor of the British magazine Science Fantasy, and the young writer Michael Moorcock, wherein both proclaimed their love for the sort of fantasy adventure stories—soon to be called “sword and sorcery”—that had been published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales some thirty years earlier but were considered hopelessly passé by the early 1960s. Carnell remarked that he would be open to publishing “that Conan stuff,” so Moorcock wrote The Dreaming City, the first Elric story, which appeared in the June 1961 issue of Science Fantasy…

(6) MURDERBOT ADAPTATION Q&A. It was not a case of “needs more cowbell”, but of adding backstory for a couple characters. “Murderbot’s TV adaption will feature major changes. I talked to the creators about how those decisions were made” at The Escapist.

…“I think everything that’s in the book is in the show basically,” explained Paul Weitz. “We early on got in touch with Martha Wells kind of as fans and, so there are things that are added to the story, sort of like filling in the cracks, but anytime that we had an idea like that, we would call up Martha and say, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re thinking of, what do you think?’ And she’d either say, ‘Oh, that’s a cool idea’ or ‘Well, maybe think about this instead. That was a huge, huge relief.

“I think that part of the thing for us was never feeling like we were like we were padding stuff,” he continued as he explained why they made the changes they did….

(7) CLARKE AWARD SUBMISSIONS STATS. The administrator has posted “The complete judges’ reading list for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2025” at Medium.

…This year our judges received 112 eligible submissions from 49 UK publishing imprints and independent authors.

If you’re interested in how this compares to previous years, you can see past lists and analysis here: clarkeaward.medium.com

The TLDR though is this is pretty much a Goldilocks Zone year. Not the highest ever numbers received, but not worryingly low, and more on par with where we’ve landed in terms of recent submissions history for both books received and publishers entering.

A caveat as always about our terminology: this is a simple list of submissions of eligible books received, not a ‘long-list’ or other form of juried selection, but simply those books sent to our judges for them to consider as potential future Arthur C. Clarke science fiction book of the year winners….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Iron Man film (2008)

By Paul Weimer: “I am Iron Man”

Although the Hulk movie preceded it, Iron Man started the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and for good or ill, the modern age of superhero movies. I can’t claim to know that was going to happen at the time–but I was excited. My movie-watching friend Mike, although well versed in horror and some comics, had no idea who Iron Man was. He had never read any of his comics and didn’t know his deal. So sitting in the movie theater with him, previews rolling, I explained Iron Man’s story (as I had gotten it fifteen years earlier, first). He was fascinated, I sold him on the idea that although Iron Man was maybe C-Tier (compared to Spidey, and Hulk and other high well known Marvel Superheroes), this could be fun.

And then we settled in to watch.

Shorn of the need to set up any mythology (although it effortlessly does), future movies, or refer to previous continuity (except for the credit cookie scene with Fury), Iron Man I is still in my top tier of Marvel movies. The story is straightforward enough, and Robert Downey Jr. (who was still somewhat damaged goods, remember) redeemed his entire career playing Tony Stark. Having read the comics, when I saw Obadiah Stane show up, I realized, but didn’t tell my movie going partner, just what was in store.

“Icing problem?”

“You might want to look into it.”

Favreau’s direction, Matthew Libatique’s cinematography are excellent in use of color, lighting and imagery.

I think that the real best relationship in this movie is not between Downey and Paltrow (although her Pepper Potts is every inch what is needed for the role) but between Downey and Bettany (who does the voice of JARVIS). Bettany once again (like in Master and Commander and A Knight’s Tale) plays the second part of a double act to more well known actor with charm, humor and a lot of fun. Forget Vision and Scarlet Witch (sorry Elisabeth Olsen), the Iron Man/JARVIS is where it’s at. Their sometimes acidic and always funny relationship is what makes the beats of the movie really sing.

Just writing this piece has the Black Sabbath song running through my head.

And hey, this is the movie that launched a movie franchise…and at the same time, in the world of comics, catapulted Iron Man to A-Tier.

When, movies later, Downey says “I am Iron Man” and does his snap and defeats Thanos at the cost of his own life, that was all originally set up and grounded from the original Iron Man movie.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss found help.
Ink Pen finds something in a villain’s idea to think about.
Macanudo finds a strange advantage in the book version.
Mother Goose and Grimm know the Cat in the Hat’s secret.

(10) ARCHIPELACON 2 IS DRAWING NEAR. Finland’s national convention and this year’s Eurocon, Archipelacon 2, The Nordic SF and Fantasy Convention, announced today over 700 memberships have been sold, out of a total maximum of 1 000.

The convention will take place in Mariehamn, Åland on 26-29 June, at the Alandica Culture & Congress Centre. The second Archipelacon is a follow-up to the now legendary first edition, which was held in the same venue in 2015.

We have a stellar lineup of Guests of Honour: Ann VanderMeer, Jeff VanderMeer, Mats Strandberg, and Emmi Itäranta. For full presentations please visit our website https://archipelacon.org/guests-of-honour/

Preparations for the event are in full swing. Last minute programme proposals can be submitted via the programme form, but please hurry if you have suggestions. The form can be found here.

The final programme will be published in early June.

We are also looking for volunteers. If you are interested in making Archipelacon 2 happen, please sign up on our website at https://archipelacon.org/volunteer/

Archipelacon 2 is financed by sales of memberships and T-shirts, vendor table rentals, as well as grants. This year’s event has received grants from PAF, Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, and Svenska Kulturfonden. We thank our sponsors for their generous support!

(11) PSYCHED OUT? “NASA’s Psyche Mission Suffers Strange Glitch on Its Way to a Metallic Asteroid” reports Gizmodo.

The Psyche spacecraft launched nearly two years ago and is currently on its way to rendezvous with a unique asteroid in an effort to understand the origins of Earth. Although it’s still a few years away from orbiting the asteroid, which bears the same name, the Psyche mission has run into an issue with its propulsion system that forced it to power off its thrusters.

NASA engineers with the Psyche mission are investigating the root cause of a recent decrease in fuel pressure in the spacecraft’s propulsion system, an issue that needs to be resolved before mid-June so that it doesn’t affect the mission’s trajectory. “The mission team has chosen to defer thrusting while engineers work to understand the pressure decrease,” NASA wrote in an update.

Psyche launched in October 2023, beginning a 2.2 billion-mile journey to a metal-rich asteroid located in the main belt. The spacecraft began firing its thrusters in May 2024, using a solar electric propulsion system that relies on solar energy to generate power for four electric thrusters. On April 1, the spacecraft detected a pressure drop in the line that delivers xenon gas to the thrusters, which went from 36 pounds per square inch (psi) to about 26 psi, according to NASA. In response to the sudden decrease, the spacecraft automatically powered off its thrusters…

(12) ROCKY AT 50. “’The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ turns 50: cult classic will be back in theaters and released on Blu-ray in 4K Ultra HD” reports 6ABC of Philadelphia.

“Let’s do the time warp again!” This year marks the 50th anniversary of the musical film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” To celebrate the occasion, a newly restored and remastered version of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” will be let loose in 4K Ultra HD, along with the debut of a new anniversary logo.

Audiences were first introduced to the movie in 1975 and it quickly became a cult classic. It’s based on the musical play by Richard O’Brien, and has continued to grow with late-night screenings, fan costumes, and has created a unique moviegoing experience with dance parties. To this day, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” still makes history as the longest-running theatrical release of all time.

The Walt Disney Studios Restoration team oversaw the 10-month project to digitally scan and preserve the film.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show ‘Time Warp’” (1975).

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

Pixel Scroll 5/1/25 If You’re Looking For That Pixel, It’s Over In That Scroll, Not This One

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) FOR WHOM CTHULHU TOLLS. Quotes from Lovecraft’s correspondence touching on Hemingway feature in Bobby Derie’s “Harsh Sentences: H. P. Lovecraft v. Ernest Hemingway” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.

It is just possible that Ernest Hemingway knew the name H. P. Lovecraft. Though they moved in very different literary circles and Hemingway was not known to have ever picked up a copy of Weird Tales. Yet they both earned three-star ratings in Edward J. O’Brien’s The Best Short Stories of 1928, Hemingway for “Hills Like White Elephants,” Lovecraft for “The Color Out of Space.” They both made The Best Short Stories of 1929, too. For Hemingway, that was the likely the beginning and end of their association; there are no mentions of the master of the weird tale in Hemingway’s letters. It was easy, in the 1920s and 30s, to know nothing about Lovecraft.

For H. P. Lovecraft, missing Hemingway would have been much more difficult—nor did he….

…While vastly different in style, that both men shared an appreciation for some of the same authors and works, or at least recognized their importance, should not be surprising. They were only nine years apart in age, both white men raised in America, voracious readers who loved literature. One notable fantasy writer that they both appreciated was Lord Dunsany, who was a major influence on Lovecraft:

“Often a wonderful moon and the guy’s would have me read Lord Dunsany’s Wonder Tales out loud. He’s great.” —Ernest Hemingway to Grace Quinlan, 8 Aug 1920, LEH 1.237

(2) EFFORT TO STOP IMLS LAYOFFS. Plaintiffs move to prevent layoffs ordered for the Institute of Museum and Library Services: “In D.C.’s District Court, ALA Battles to Preserve IMLS” at Publishers Weekly.

At the first hearing in ALA v. Sonderling, held April 30 at the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, the American Library Association and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees pushed for the court to put an immediate halt to the ongoing gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services before the majority of its staff is laid off this weekend.

The ALA and AFSCME hope to block the implementation of a White House executive order that has hollowed out the IMLS, reduced staffing to a minimum, and imposed delays and outright terminations on the agency’s statutory and discretionary grants. In a brief filed April 28, the organizations argued that the defendants, including IMLS acting director Keith Sonderling, have made “arbitrary” and “unconstitutional” changes at the agency. The defendants contend they must comply with the EO to fulfill “the President’s priorities.”…

(3) AI BS. T. R. Napper cuts loose on “the oft-repeated lies and the self-serving greed of an industry that, at its core, seeks to destroy art” in “It’s the People, Stupid (Human Art in a Company World)”.

The Will to Anthropomorphise

This dishonesty of the tech industry is particularly acute in the field of generative AI models, where obscurantist tech language tries mightily to anthropomorphise the machine. Where we are told, for example, that mistakes made by Large Language Models are ‘hallucinations’, or that chatbots can serve us as mentors, coaches, cheerleaders, counsellors, and even as romantic interests.

Let’s make this clear from the outset. A large language model has the same sentience as a toaster. It thinks about language about as much as a toaster does toast: that is, not at all. These are not coaches or counsellors, they are products. They are instruments of surveillance and data extraction for some of the most venal and amoral corporations on earth. The products don’t care about you, they don’t think about you. They don’t think about you because ‘they’ don’t exist as a consciousness.

When AI-driven search engines have a 60% error rate, they are not ‘hallucinating,’ they simply aren’t working. If you had a car that didn’t work 60% of the time, you’d take it back to the dealership…

(4) MEANWHILE, BACK AT AI MONETIZATION. The Verge tells how – with the estate’s permission — “The BBC deepfaked Agatha Christie to teach a writing course”.

BBC Studios is using AI to recreate the voice and likeness of late detective story author Agatha Christie for the purpose of featuring it in digital classes that teaches prospective writers “how to craft the perfect crime novel.” A real life actor, Vivien Keene, is standing in for Christie, with her appearance augmented by AI to resemble the author.

The new class, called Agatha Christie Writing, is available today on BBC Maestro, the company’s $10-per-month online course service that usually gives you access to content from living professionals teaching things like graphic design, bread making, time management, and more.

Deepfaked Agatha Christie’s teachings are “in Agatha’s very own words,” her great-grandson James Prichard said in a press release. It uses insights from the real Christie and is scripted by academics — so the actual content appears to be human-made and not generated from a model that’s been fed all of her work. BBC collaborated with Agatha Christie Estate and used restored audio recordings, licensed images, interviews, and her own writings to make this all happen….

(5) UNSPOILED PRAISE. Camestros Felapton tells us why “Andor Season 2 is really good [no spoilers]”.

…One of the things that I really like about this show that, if anything, is even stronger this season, is the way the Imperial bad guys are treated as fully realised complex characters BUT without any suggestion that somehow they are decent people who are just on the wrong side of things. We spend a lot of time with Imperial agent Dedra Meero of the Imperial Security Bureau and the uptight but emotionally fragile Syril Karn. They really are not nice people both as people and in terms of the powers that they serve but they are very definitely people, with complex lives and difficult emotions, trying to navigate their own lives….

(6) IN FOR A POUND. ER, FIFTEEN. The Guardian reports “New book prize to award aspiring writer £75,000 for first three pages of novel”. But it’s “pay to play”.

A new competition is offering £75,000 to an aspiring writer based on just three pages of their novel.

Actor Emma Roberts, Bridgerton author Julia Quinn and Booker-winning Life of Pi author Yann Martel are among the judges for The Next Big Story competition, run by online fiction writing school The Novelry.

Roberts, who co-founded the book club Belletrist, said: “There’s nothing more euphoric than being immersed in the world of a good book and to get lost in the words of a brilliant author. This is a groundbreaking new writing prize and I’m thrilled to be included on this panel of esteemed luminaries.”

Martel said: “We all need stories to make the world new, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there.”

Along with the cash prize, The Novelry will support the winner for a year to develop their idea into a full book….

… Entrants from the UK, US, Canada and Australia are invited to submit the first three pages of their novel via The Novelry’s website by 31 July. Each entry costs £15 and there is no limit on the number of entries each writer can submit. A shortlist selected by a team at The Novelry will be put to a public vote from 28 September. Guided by the public vote, the judging panel will pick a winner, to be announced on 12 October. The prize is funded by The Novelry….

(7) CASHING IN ON SUPERHEROES. “Superman gets a U.S. Coin—Batman and more coming soon” reports AIPT Comics. (See full information at the U.S. Mint’s “Comic Art Coin and Medal Program” webpage.)

The United States Mint (Mint) has announced it’s launching a coin series featuring Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products (WBDGCP). Designed by Mint Chief Engraver Joseph Menna, these are genuine American coins.

It’s said the coins are meant to celebrate the American values and heroic ideals that these characters represent.

The first hero getting the coin treatment is Superman, first revealed during a ceremonial strike event held at the Mint in Philadelphia.

The coins come in gold and silver. Check out the Superman coins below….

(8) ICG RIP 2025. The International Costumers Guild has posted the “Costuming Community Video Memorial 2025” — see the video on YouTube. Note: The photo listed as “William Rotsler” is actually Tim Powers. They do accurately list Rotsler’s year of death as 1997; they don’t say why he’s included.

This video premiered during the virtual Single Pattern and Future Fashion shows on April 12, 2025 when Costume-Con had been cancelled. Once again, we recognize people who may not have worn (m)any costumes and/or competed in masquerades, but still made some significant impact within the greater costuming community. If you know of a costumer or someone else who has either passed away recently or years earlier, please contact us at icg-archivist @ costume.org. The people remembered in this video are: John Stopa, William Rotsler, Jim Inkpen, John Trimble, Jim Davis, Tonya Adolfson (aka Tanglwyst de Holloway), Jay Smith and “Miki” Dennis.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Star Trek pilot, “The Cage”

By Paul Weimer: The original Star Trek pilot, “The Cage”, starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike.

I saw pieces of it before I got to see the entire thing, of course, in the two-part Star Trek episode “The Menagerie” which has Spock recall the events of the episode. My opinion of “The Cage” was thus an incomplete opinion until I finally got to see the complete “The Cage” on TV on a TV special just before The Next Generation debuted.

It was a fascinating experience to see the entire pilot at last, without any Kirk or the rest of his era, and all of the missing material. I came to see how even more progressively radical for its time that the original pilot for Star Trek was. Mind you, I saw how Jeffrey Hunter ‘s Christopher Pike was really Jeffrey Sinclair before his time…a lead that was good, but not quite what audiences would want in the main. I could see the swing from Hunter to Shatner, Pike to Kirk. I could sadly see why having a female Number One in the early 1960’s was a non-starter, either.

The real poleaxe was Spock. The Spock of “The Cage” is a very different Spock than the Spock we see in every subsequent iteration. A smiling Spock, an emotional Spock, a Spock that is fundamentally less alien in many ways than the Spock we come to know and love. And of course one that is just a moderate officer on the Enterprise, not the first officer, not part of the Heroic Trio of Bones, Kirk and Spock. And no Heroic Trio as well. (Good old Jon Lormer as Dr. Theodore Haskins is no McCoy, but it’s clear that he’s the model for McCoy). And of course, once we have gotten to Strange New Worlds, the conception of what an Enterprise Bridge could be has changed.

So in the end, we will never know what might have resulted…but I strongly suspect Star Trek would not have survived as long as it did, if “The Cage” had gone forward and become the actual TV series. But again (c.f. Babylon 5 again), it was a prototype that made the real version possible, and magical.

(10) BELATED BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

April 30, 1938 — Larry Niven, 87.

By Paul Weimer: Larry Niven was one of the early SF authors I read, once I was out of my initial burst of Asimov and Clarke, in the early 1980’s. My brother had a couple of copies of various short story collections set in Known Space, as well as Ringworld. And so I was set for a while on Niven and his works. I loved some of the crafty puzzling aspects of some of his stories, the variety of aliens, and the exploration of consequences of technologies.

I kept following Niven’s work, and it was his collaboration with Pournelle (The Mote in God’s Eye) that got me into Pournelle’s work for a good long time. Similarly, his collaborations with Steven Barnes (Dream Park) got me into Barnes’ own work. Niven was a great facilitator of introducing me to authors, directly and indirectly. I first heard of Georgette Heyer through an anecdote that he relates in N-Space, for example.

Still, Niven has multiple worlds that enthralled me. Known Space. The novels of his Smoke Ring duology. The Magic Goes Away verse. Dream Park (until the last novels which retconned and changed the technology and ruined the concept for me). The Heorot verse. His contributions to Pournelle’s Future History.

The luster of Niven slowly faded, as his politics and mine diverged, perhaps on his part, and certainly in mine. It started in Fallen Angels, and his very anti-Environmental stance that, as cool as it was to have Glacier spushing out of Canada, started to turn me off. I think it was The Burning City, set in his Magic Goes Away verse, that finally had the politics overwhelm the storytelling, the writing, and the ideas, to their detriment for my own personal reading. I did try Bowl of Heaven (with Gregory Benford) a decade ago…but the magic had gone away, for me. Alas.

For all of my love of early Niven Known Space and the like, “Inconstant Moon” remains my favorite Niven story. It’s a love story at its heart, even as Niven kills most of the planet in the process.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem complains about book size.
Dinosaur Comics predicts an unexpected source of future nostalgia.
Strange Brew should have known.
xkcd theorizes about Jupiter’s core.
Pearls Before Swine delivers a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of loaning a book to a friend.

(12) NEW FRAZETTA ART BOOK. Frazetta Girls is taking pre-orders on their website for a book of Frank’s drawings: “Frank Frazetta: Fine Lines Art Book”

It includes essays about Frazetta’s illustrations for the Canaveral Press, the Lord of the Rings portfolio, the Science Fiction Book Club, and others.

(13) COSTUME DESIGN. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Really fascinating costuming and clothing article. “Costume Secrets of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” at PBS.

In Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, a character’s success is measured in silks, stitching, and the symbolism of a regal headpiece. In an interview with MASTERPIECE, costume designer Joanna Eatwell talks about dressing the Tudors from the inside out, channeling 16^th-century portraiture, and which actor most fully inhabits her meticulously crafted designs….

JOANNA EATWELL: … And in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, we were given the greatest gift ever. And that is Hans Holbein and his court paintings. …Holbein did primarily paint the court, because portraiture was incredibly expensive to have done. And he did a couple of pet portraits of Henry’s servants. And from those, we can get liveries, the King’s guards, we understand how they worked. But he paints fabrics. He’s extraordinary. And I think we’d be lost without him….

(14) WHAT’S MY LINE? At Entertainment Weekly, “Kit Harington recalls Bella Ramsey helping him with ‘Game of Thrones’ lines”.

Kit Harington and Bella Ramsey are reminiscing about working on Game of Thrones together — and recalling how one of them helped the other remember their lines.

In a recent conversation for Interview, Ramsay told Harington their earliest memories of playing Lyanna Mormont opposite his Jon Snow in season 6 of the HBO fantasy series.

“I don’t know whether you remember this, but I remember it quite vividly and have some remorse for it now, but during that scene I was mouthing your lines to you,” the Last of Us star said. “Now I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, how awful.’ But at the time it came from a very innocent place of being like, ‘Kit’s struggling with his line and I know it, so let me just mouth it to him.'”

Harington then shared his side of the story. “I do remember you helping me out and it being quite humiliating,” he recalled. “But yeah, thanks for that. I’ve probably chosen to forget it.”

Ramsey said they now regret the move. “You’re welcome. No, I think I need to forget it, because that’s so annoying,” they said. “Like, how annoying is that?”

Harington reassured his former costar: “It wasn’t at all. If anything I was like, ‘Oh god, I’ve got to up my game. I came here not really being comfortable enough with my lines, in the arrogance of however old I was, thinking I’m just opposite some child. And then that child actor is wiping me off the screen.’ Not that it’s a competition, but you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a bit too comfortable in my Jon Snow-ness.'”…

(15) RESIDENT ALIEN SEASON 4 WILL BE SIMULCAST. “’Resident Alien Gets Season 4 Premiere Date & Trailer On USA & Syfy” reports Deadline.

Almost a year after Resident Alien moved from Syfy to NBCUniversal sibling USA Network with a suspenseful Season 4 renewal, a premiere date has been set for said Season 4 and, surprisingly, it involves both the sci-fi comedy-drama’ new and old homes.

The new season of Resident Alien will debut June 6 as a simulcast on USA and Syfy….

… As Deadline reported last spring, Resident Alien, facing cancellation at Syfy, moved to USA for a fourth season with a significant budget reduction. The USA/Syfy simulcast model was previously used for Chucky during its three-season run….

(16) A LITTLE LIKE A MYSTERY THEATRE 3000 MOMENT. “Almost 30 years later, Ben Affleck says his iconic Armageddon DVD commentary might be his best work: ‘It is an achievement I’m proud of’” at GamesRadar+.

Ben Affleck has no shortage of career highlights, from starring in modern classics like Pearl Harbor and Gone Girl and playing Batman in the DCEU to his directorial work in award-winning movies like Argo. His best work, however, might be his brutally honest Armageddon’s DVD commentary, according to Affleck himself.

“In retrospect, now, I feel like maybe my best work in my career is the commentary on this disc,” he said during a Criterion’s Closet Picks video after finding Michael Bay’s thriller on the shelf.”People approach me to talk about the commentary in this disc as much as they do movies that I’ve been in,” Affleck continued. “And it’s because I didn’t know any better than to be really honest. But I won’t spoil it for those of you who are interested. It is an achievement I’m proud of and didn’t intend to be as good as I now think it is.”

In the most famous part of his commentary, Affleck argued that it’s illogical to train oil drillers to be astronauts instead of the other way around. “How hard can it be? You just aim the drill at the ground and turn it on,” he commented back then, not afraid to mock his own film….

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Arnie Fenner, Paul Weimer, Jeffrey Smith, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 4/30/25 But That Was At Another Con, And Besides, The Pixel Is Scrolled

Posted on April 30, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(0) I’m off to attend a college ceremony my daughter’s featured in, so today’s Scroll is a little light. Add in the comments anything else I should have included!

(1) PHILIP PULLMAN ON RADIO 4. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Philip Pullman was on Tuesday’s BBC Radio 4’s World At One news programme talking about his final Dust book. No spoilers, but it is about imagination.

Plus, Sir Philip Pullman gives us his only interview about the final book of the His Dark Materials series.

The 45 minute programme is here but you need to go to 5 minutes before the end as it’s the last item.

(2) TUNNEL VISION. James Davis Nicoll invites fans to dig into “Five SFF Novels Featuring Tunnels” at Reactor. Here’s one of his recommendations.

Above by Leah Bobet (2011)

Deep beneath Toronto’s streets, mutants thrive. Or at least, survive. The so-called Beasts who live in Safe each have their own special gifts. Some control electricity; some can converse with ghosts; one can even become a bee when she wills it so. Few would be welcomed if they were foolish enough to leave Safe for the surface world. So history says, and Matthew the Teller would never doubt what he has been taught.

An exile’s return brings violence and calamity to once-safe Safe. As Shadows invade, Matthew is forced to flee. Trapped on the surface, Matthew learns that the truth is more complicated than he knew.

I don’t think that the name “Toronto” ever appears in the novel’s text, but the descriptions and the street names strongly suggest a Toronto setting. So does the cover, although I suppose that could be any Canadian city with a CN Tower⁴.

(3) AS CLEAR AS IS THE SUMMER SUN. Kayla Allen and Linda Deneroff say they have “concluded that Westercon simply doesn’t have enough interest anymore, and rather than just have it fizzle out completely, we should try to organize an orderly shutdown by repealing the Bylaws and handing the convention’s ‘charter’ back to LASFS.” They are submitting this motion to the Westercon Business Meeting being held at BayCon in Santa Clara this year.

Short Title: Retire Westercon

Moved, to repeal the Westercon Bylaws.

Provided, That any Westercon selected under the current Bylaws at the conclusion of the Westercon where this motion is ratified shall be held and such Westercons shall be bound by those portions of Article 1 applicable to the convention. Such Westercons shall not conduct a Business Meeting or a Site Selection.

Proposed by: Kayla Allen, Linda Deneroff

Discussion: If the consensus is that Westercon no longer has a purpose and should retire, the most orderly way to do so would be for the members of Westercon to vote to repeal its own bylaws. This would have the effect of “handing in the charter” to the owner of the Westercon service mark, LASFS. The LASFS could then decide what it wanted to do with Westercon, which could include abandoning the service mark so that anyone who wished to do so could hold their own convention under the name “Westercon.”

Amendments to the Bylaws take effect as of the end of the Westercon where they are ratified. A motion to Repeal the Bylaws is similar to an amendment; therefore, if this motion is passed by the Westercon 77 Business Meeting in 2025 and ratified by the Westercon 78 Business Meeting in 2026, the Bylaws are repealed as of the end of Westercon 78. However, this motion provides that should sites be selected for Westercon 79 and 80, those two conventions shall still be held, but they will not conduct Site Selection or host a Business Meeting. As of the conclusion of Westercon 80, there will be no future sites selected for Westercon. LASFS, as owner of the Westercon service mark, could decide what to do with the name. They could abandon it, sell it, form a new convention, apply it to an existing convention, or otherwise dispose of it as they wish.

(4) GOOD GRIEF. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more unappealing book cover. Unfortunately, it’s All Systems Red’s new ebook cover.

(5) BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. NPR discovered a “UFO ‘watchtower’ in Colorado that started as a joke now draws thousands per year”.

Some cattle ranchers opened a UFO “watchtower” 25 years ago in a remote Colorado valley to make some extra money. Now it draws about 10,000 visitors a year and made one who started it a believer….

DAN BOYCE, BYLINE: The San Luis Valley is a vast, high desert plain ringed by sweeping mountain ranges. It’s just a little bit smaller than the state of New Jersey, but only about 50,000 people live here. And back in the late ’90s, Judy Messoline and her partner were out here barely getting by raising their 75 cows.

JUDY MESSOLINE: They don’t eat sand real well, ’bout broke us from having to buy the hay for them.

BOYCE: They weren’t sure what they were going to do.

MESSOLINE: And one of the farmers came in one day and he said, you know what? You need to put up that UFO watchtower you giggled about. You’d have fun…

… Beside the highway, a green alien made of sheet metal points the way….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

April 30, 1973 — Naomi Novik, 52.

By Paul Weimer: It begins with Dragons, of course. Unsurprising to be sure.

The high concept of Temeraire…Napoleonic Wars with Dragons, drew me to that series immediately. How could I resist a logline like that. While I eventually was a little disappointed in how little alternate historical content there was in the series (history trending toward ours, even with Dragons, always felt to me like a missed opportunity), the Dragons themselves always captivated and excited me. It’s still a high concept with legs, and the many varieties and personalities of the various dragons in the series helped to keep me reading book after book in the series. And even as recent as last year, it still spawns books set in the Napoleonic era with magic of various kinds. Magicians with the Napoleonic Wars. Vampires with the Napoleonic Wars. Magical Romance with the Napoleonic Wars. Temeraire helped birth and nurture an entire host of sub-sub-genres. The long simmering interest in the period and its genre-adjacent nature was dragged forever into the SFF orbit thereby. Dragons and Napoleonic Wars. What a concept.

But Naomi Novik is far more than Dragons, even if Uprooted has a very different Dragon, it is much more in the mold of a fairy tale. Spinning Silver, of course, showed me that Novik could go full on fairy tale and make it stick and make it real and make it gorgeous. It’s diametrically different in tone and writing than the Temeraire books, and yet, indubitably her work.

The Scholomance books, however, I truly and complete appreciate. After the awful taste in my mouth by a certain broken step of a billionaire author, I admit that I a bit hesitant to go for another magical school book, even from Novik. Could Novik actually help redeem the sub-sub-genre for me? I waited a bit on A Deadly Education, first in the series. The poisoned tree of the sub-sub-genre after all. And could the book escape the shadow of its huge predecessor? It turns out to be absolutely yes, by having older protagonists, and a literally feral feel to the titular school.

This is not a happy school of light magic, hijinks and camaraderie, but a deadly proving ground that getting out of is not as easy as you think. There are hungry things in the school, deadly competition from fellow students, and the school itself might be trying to eat you and your tasty magic. The whole idea of young magicians drawing all sorts of nasty in their broadcasting reminds me a bit of how magic works in the Stross Laundry Files verse and those books may have colored my perception a bit of the Scholomance as an institution.

And of course, by the third book, once out, our protagonist has to do something even harder and El must find a way back into the deadly school. It is a neat circular path from the first book and it completes the series very nicely.

Magical Schools are viable again (c.f. The more recent and forthcoming The Incandescent by Emily Tesh) but I maintain that it is Novik’s series that has helped pull it out of the much of the aforementioned billionaire’s grasp and given new and recent models for magical schools (not to forget older models such as Diane Duane of course).

The forthcoming Summer War sounds like another coming of age story from Novik (she is rather practiced and good at them, no?) and I look forward to it.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee needs the right jolt of power.
Eek! finds Doctor Frankenstein surprised at what else his lab can make.
Loose Parts defends poetry, but not too warmly.
Speckticles has to make do.

(8) SCALES OF JUSTICE. “Judge Rejects Lawsuit With Dragon Logo, Calling It ‘Juvenile and Impertinent’” reports the New York Times (behind a paywall).

A federal magistrate judge in Michigan called the use of this logo on every page of a lawsuit “distracting.”Dragon Lawyers

A purple dragon dressed in a business suit seemed like a natural choice for a logo when Jacob A. Perrone, a lawyer in East Lansing, Mich., recently opened a new firm and named it Dragon Lawyers.

He noted that some lawyers liked to call themselves “bulldogs” and said the dragon symbolized “aggressive representation.”

But a federal magistrate judge, Ray Kent, was not impressed. He was so disgusted by the dragon that he struck a lawsuit filed by Mr. Perrone on behalf of an inmate who had accused jail officials in Clinton County, Mich., of being “deliberately indifferent” to her when she started vomiting last year.

In a brief order issued on Monday, Judge Kent noted that “each page of plaintiff’s complaint appears on an e-filing which is dominated by a large multicolored cartoon dragon dressed in a suit, presumably because she is represented by the law firm of ‘Dragon Lawyers PC © Award Winning Lawyers.’”

“Use of this dragon cartoon logo is not only distracting, it is juvenile and impertinent,” Judge Kent wrote. “The Court is not a cartoon.”…

… The judge’s order prompted some amusement in legal circles after it was reported by The Volokh Conspiracy blog under the headline, “Exit the Dragon.” Another legal blog, Lowering the Bar, also picked up the story, and commented, “So many things people shouldn’t be doing, so little time.”…

(9) BLOWN UP, SIR. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The iPhone footage embedded in the story is kind of neat. “Thunderbolts’ Director Released Explosion-Filled Phone Footage From The Making Of The Movie, And Yes, I Am Even More Hyped Now” at CinemaBlend.

…The cast of Thunderbolts* is already strong, with Florence Hugh and Sebastian Stan leading a team of Marvel’s anti-heroes. As with any superhero movie, we can expect lots of amazing digital effects to make the impossible come to life, but what’s exciting about this film is just how much of it was shot practically. Video footage shot on an iPhone by director Jake Schreier and posted to Instagram shows that a lot of the stunts and action were done in camera….

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[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Rich Lynch, N., Lloyd Penney, 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 Patrick Morris Miller.]

File 770

Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom

Category Archives: Pixel Scroll

Pixel Scroll 5/9/25 Better To Light One Pixel Than To Scroll The File

Pixel Scroll 5/8/25 It’s Just A Scroll To The Left

Pixel Scroll 5/7/25 The Compleat Pixeller In Scroll

Pixel Scroll 5/6/25 All I Need To Know, I Learned From Pixel Scrolls

Pixel Scroll 5/5/25 Piles Of Pithecanthropic Purple Pixels

Daryl Gregory

Pixel Scroll 5/4/25 Scroll The Other One—It’s Got Pixels On It!

Key Findings

Pixel Scroll 5/3/25 Glorious Pixelcolor, Breathtaking Cinema Scroll, And Godstalkophonic Sound

Pixel Scroll 5/2/25 Beneath The Scrolls Of Pixels

Pixel Scroll 5/1/25 If You’re Looking For That Pixel, It’s Over In That Scroll, Not This One

Pixel Scroll 4/30/25 But That Was At Another Con, And Besides, The Pixel Is Scrolled