Pixel Scroll 4/17/25 The Scrolled Equations

Posted on by
17

(1) BELFAST EASTERCON FAN FUNDS AUCTION. [Item by David Langford.] The catalogue for the Eastercon Fan Funds Auction (18:30 local time on Sunday 20 April) was posted only to the Eastercon Discord server: I offered to host a copy at Ansible, and this can be found here: “2025 Reconnect Fan Funds Auction”.

From the Discord announcement: “We’re only taking bids in person this year, so if you can’t be there and want something, send a friend with clear instructions and a maximum limit.”

(2) SQUEEZED OUT. Susan Wise Bauer of Well-Trained Mind Press told Facebook readers how – despite having used only US printers — tariffs have had a damaging knock-on effect to their business.

(3) IT COULD BE VERSE. Camestros Felapton delivers a good report on a unique novel-length Best Poem finalist: “Hugo 2025: Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead”.

…One thing I love about the Hugo Awards is when you find an unexpected treat in the finalists — something you didn’t know you’d love but knocks your socks off when you read it. This year (so far) it is Calypso. Inventive, thought provoking, solidly science fictional and a sensory experience….

(4) NO TIMEY-WIMEY FOR THIS. “’Why be toxic?’: Russell T Davies hits back at claims Doctor Who too woke” in the Guardian.

The Doctor Who screenwriter Russell T Davies has said he has no time for “online warriors” who claim the show is too woke….

…“Someone always brings up matters of diversity,” Davies said on the Radio 2 programme Doctor Who: 20 Secrets from 20 Years. “And there are online warriors accusing us of diversity and wokeness and involving messages and issues.

“And I have no time for this. I don’t have a second to bear [it]. Because what you might call diversity, I just call an open door.”…

(5) FROM TOKYO BY WAY OF TENNESSEE. With what’s going on in the country, this is the right beverage in the right container: “Godzilla Whiskey Bottle Collector’s Edition”. Holds 10 ounces of kaiju hooch. Goes for $32.98. (No, I don’t know where they came up with that odd number. Maybe it’s a tariff thing.)

Marking 70 years of Godzilla’s iconic legacy, this whiskey bottle features a fierce design inspired by the legendary kaiju. With bold details and a commanding presence, it’s the perfect tribute to the monster who has terrorized and captivated generations.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 17, 1964 — The Twilight Zone‘s “The Jeopardy Room”

The cast of characters—a cat and a mouse, this is the latter. The intended victim who may or may not know that he is to die, be it by butchery or ballet. His name is Major Ivan Kuchenko. He has, if events go according to certain plans, perhaps three or four more hours of living. But an ignorance shared by both himself and his executioner, is of the fact that both of them have taken the first step into the Twilight Zone.

Opening narration of this episode. 

On this evening sixty-one years ago, The Twilight Zone‘s “The Jeopardy Room” first aired on CBS.  The plot is Major Ivan Kuchenko  as played by Martin Landau, a KGB agent who is attempting to defect, is trapped inside a hotel room in an unnamed, politically neutral country with a bomb about to go off unless he can disarm it. I’m assuming that you’ve seen, but on the grounds that you might not have, I won’t say more. It’s a splendid bit of Cold War paranoia. 

Not surprisingly, it was written by Serling though some of the episodes weren’t. It was directed by Richard Donner who later on would be known for The Omen, Scrooged and Superman but this was very early on in his career and he had just three years earlier released X-15, an aviation film that presented a fictionalized account of the X-15 research rocket aircraft program. Neat indeed. 

It is one of only a handful of The Twilight Zone episodes that has no fantastical elements at all. It’s a classic Cold War story more befitting a Mission: Impossible set-up than this series. It even involves a message delivered by way of a tape recorder, but mind you that series is two years in the future so that has to be just a coincidence. Or The Twilight Zone being The Twilight Zone…

The Twilight Zone is streaming on Paramount+. 

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) MARVEL SWIMSUIT SPECIAL RETURNS. The legendary Marvel Swimsuit Special is back this July.

 Throughout the ‘90s, fans enjoyed a lighter side of the Marvel Universe in Marvel Swimsuit Special, an annual one-shot that featured breathtaking artwork of Marvel characters in beach attire and swimwear. This unique and beloved special makes its long-demanded return this July in MARVEL SWIMSUIT SPECIAL: FRIENDS, FOES & RIVALS #1!

Primarily an artist showcase, Marvel Swimsuit Special presented pinups from the industry’s top talents in a magazine-style format, complete with tongue-in-cheek articles and descriptions.

Roxxon Comics is at it again when they release their own UNAUTHORIZED SWIMSUIT SPECIAL! Wasp is on the case and seizes the opportunity for Marvel’s heroes to do their OWN swimwear fashion shoot all over the world! But fear not, True Believers, we know what you’re REALLY here for! This super-sized special features splash page after splash page of gorgeous art, but with a story so you can pretend you’re “reading it for the articles”…

For more information, visit Marvel.com. [Click for larger images.]

(9) THE CHAMBERS WILL OPEN. The Steampunk Explorer says “’Nautilus’ Set for North American Premiere in June”.

The wait will soon be over for steampunk fans in the U.S. and Canada, as AMC Networks finally revealed the premiere date for Nautilus, the Disney-produced TV series that tells the origin story of Captain Nemo.

The 10-episode series will debut with two episodes on Sunday, June 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, on the AMC cable channel and AMC+ streaming service. It will air weekly on Sundays until the two-episode finale on Aug. 17.

The series stars Shazad Latif as Captain Nemo, described as “an Indian Prince robbed of his birthright and family, a prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company and a man bent on revenge against the forces that have taken everything from him.”…

(10) WE’VE MISUNDERSTOOD URANUS ALL THESE YEARS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Hubble Space Telescope data show that the time taken for the planet to revolve around its axis is almost half a minute longer than was thought.

Primary research here: “A new rotation period and longitude system for Uranus” in Nature Astronomy.

(11) IN MY DAY ANNIHILATION WAS SUMMUT DALEKS DID. OR WUZ THAT EXTERMINATION? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I don’t know about you but there are some authors I have never got around to reading even though they are award winning authors. For me, Jeff Vandermeer is one such. I was aware (doing SF² Concatenation) that his ‘Southern reach’ trilogy was doing well: the ‘Southern Reach’ trilogy (which I gather has recently morphed into something extra) was short-listed for a Best Series Hugo as well as a Locus Best Series and, of course, Annihilation won a Nebula. But the give-away for me was that before all these accolades, my fellow members of our team selected it as one of our annual Best SF novels we do every January (feel free to scroll down here as over the years it has shown to be somewhat predictive). So, I knew the book was special. However, Vandermeer’s Brit Cit publishers are a far broader church than a specialist SF/F imprint and as it is almost a full time job liaising with these last but not all imprints, I missed the book coming our way, but my teammates didn’t! And so given their recommendation I sought out the film… and, oh dear, I didn’t like it even though it was Alex Garland…. (Give me Strugatskis’ Roadside Picnic and the film Stalker any day… But I guess that’s my loss: not everyone can like everything.

All of this is a long-winded way of my saying that Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult has just re-released, and updated, a 19-minute video on both the book and the film, Annihilation. Now, this is more a book review than a film review, and it is more a review than a critique. So, as Moid himself explains, that if you have seen the film Annihilation but not the book then you need not worry about spoilers in his vid. Conversely, if have not seen the film or read the book then beware, spoilers ahoy…

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George annoys “The AI That Writes Every Pop Song”. When the revolution comes….

[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, David Langford, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/16/25 It’s Been A Long File Since I Pixel Scrolled

Posted on by
16

(1) WSFS BUSINESS MEETING TOWN HALLS IN MAY. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon committee today reminded members they will be hosting two Business Meeting Town Halls where members can learn how to participate in the business meeting process. They will be on Zoom, and recorded for later playback. The committee has yet to announce how to attend and RSVP. The available information is here on the convention website: “Business Meeting Town Hall”.

  • Town Hall One: May 4 at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).
  • Town Hall Two: May 25 at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).

(2) SEATTLE WORLDCON WILL HOLD CONSULTATIVE VOTE. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon also announced they will hold a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting to the Seattle Worldcon: (1) the proposed revisions of the Hugo Award categories for best professional artist and best fan artist, and (2) the proposed amendment to abolish the Retro Hugo Awards.

As when Glasgow 2024 did this, there is no constitutional authorization for the poll, and it is not binding on the Business Meeting.

…The purpose of this exercise is simply to test whether a consultative vote of Worldcon members is feasible, and to learn lessons about how it might someday be formally adopted as a part of the WSFS decision-making process. We chose these two proposals in particular because they have clearly generated wide interest among the Worldcon community.

The consultative vote results will be used solely to inform the Seattle Business Meeting of the preferences of a larger sample of the membership than might otherwise be able to attend. Glasgow 2024’s consultative vote allowed over 1,200 WSFS members to share their opinion on a proposed amendment.

The consultative vote will run from May 1 to May 31 and may be accessed at the same site and in the same manner as the Hugo Award voting—so you can do both at the same time!

(3) A DATE THAT SHALL LIVE IN INFAMY. Convention History is shocked, shocked I tell you, by the party in Room 770.

(4) MARK EVANIER DID NOT OUTGROW COMICS. [Item by rcade.] The comic book writer Mark Evanier remembers the 1960s divide between fans of science fiction and comic books. “Fandom Freedom” at News From ME.

…One older female fan used to lecture me that Comic Book Fandom was an unfortunate outgrowth of Science-Fiction Fandom and oughta stay that way…or better still, disappear entirely. What they read was for sophisticated adults and what “we” read (drawing a firm, uncrossable line with that “we” there) was for the kiddos. Her suggestion was that there was something wrong with us for not outgrowing it.

The last such lecture I got — this would have been around ’73 — was from a guy wearing Spock ears and brandishing a plastic phaser that fired little multi-colored discs….

(5) THINKING INSIDE THE BOX. “A new chapter for publishing? Book subscription services launch their own titles” – the Guardian tells how it works.

Book subscription services are magic. A few clicks of a form and a bunch of new books , selected by talented curators, turn up at your door – often with collectible perks such as special cover designs and art. In a world saturated by choice and trends, not only is the choosing done for you, but you’ll often have a less conventional, better rounded and precious bookshelf collection to show for it.

This is presumably why there’s a strong appetite for such services: UK fantasy subscription box FairyLoot has 569,000 followers on Instagram alone, and many bookshops have started sending out their own boxes.

Now, some of these businesses have decided not just to sell books, but to publish their own: In January, FairyLoot announced a collaboration with Transworld, a division of Penguin Random House, while last week Canada-based subscription service OwlCrate launched OwlCrate Press….

(6) REASONS TO WATCH. Phil Nichols and Colin Kuskie discuss an award-winning film in SF 101’s “Go With The Flow” episode.

Flow (2024) is an extraordinary film – Latvia’s most successful of all time, and winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Film. Colin and Phil discuss whether it counts as science fiction (of course it does!), and what makes this delightful movie tick.

If you haven’t seen the film, we think we give you enough of flavour of it for the discussion to make sense, and hopefully to inspire you to watch it.

(7) FASCINATING MARQUEE. Tony Gleeson ran the photo below on Facebook with this introduction:

The venerable Vista Theatre in East Hollywood: it’s been everything from a porno palace to a repertory house. It’s been featured in scenes for numerous movies (the one that comes to mind is “Throw Mama From the Train”). It’s now owned by Quentin Tarantino and offers some pretty unusual fare.

When he gave permission for File 770 to reprint it, Gleeson added:

One thing I love is the coffee shop attached to the theatre (it used to be called the Onyx many years ago and had the best blackout chocolate cake) is now called Pam’s Coffy and features a portrait of Pam Grier. There is also a mini-Grauman’s Chinese footprint walk in front.

(8) THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK. “No Bids Filed for 2027 Westercon” reports Kevin Standlee at the Westercon website.

No bids filed to be on the ballot to select the site of Westercon 79, the 2027 West Coast Science Fantasy Conference. Although there will be no bids listed on the ballot, there will be space for write-in bids, and bids can still file the necessary papers (specified in Section 3.4 of the Westercon Bylaws) before the close of voting at 6 PM Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7) on Saturday, July 5, 2025. The election will take place during Westercon 77 / BayCon 2025 at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, California. Should no valid bids file by the close of voting, or should None of the Above win the election, the site of Westercon 79 will be determined by the Westercon Business Meeting on Sunday, July 6.

We will post the 2027 Westercon Site Selection ballot on the Westercon website by the end of April. All members of BayCon 2025 are members of Westercon 77 and all members are eligible to vote. Members can vote by postal mail (there will be no electronic voting) or in person at Westercon 77 / BayCon 2025.

To file a bid, or to ask any questions about the Westercon Site Selection process, contact Kayla Allen, the 2027 Westercon Site Selection Administrator, at siteselection2027@westercon.org.

(9) ART SPIEGELMAN AND JUDY-LYNN DEL REY PROFILED. Through May 14 PBS is making available online “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” part of the American Masters series. At the end of the program, they’re also running a short documentary about Judy-Lynn Del Rey. It starts about 1 hour 40 minutes into the 2-hour program.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 16, 1921 – Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov. (Died 2004.)

Peter Ustinov showed up in Logan’s Run as the Old Man; he had the lead role in Blackbeard’s Ghost as Captain Blackbeard based on the Robert Stevenson novel; he was Charlie Chan in Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (it’s at least genre adjacent, isn’t it?). He’s The Caliph in stellar Thief of Baghdad; a truck driver in The Great Muppet Caper and finally he has the dual roles of Grandfather and Phoenix in The Phoenix and the Carpet.

He voiced myriad characters in animated films including that of Grendel in Grendel Grendel Grendel based off John Gardner’s novel Grendel, in Robin Hood, he voiced Prince John and King Richard; and in The Mouse and His Child, he was the voice of Manny the Rat. 

Now I’m going to admit that my favorite role by Peter Ustinov was playing Poirot which he did in half a dozen films, which he first in Death on the Nile and then in Evil Under the Sun, Thirteen at Dinner, Dead Man’s Folly, Murder in Three Acts and Appointment with Death. He wasn’t my favorite Poirot as that was David Suchet but it was obvious that he liked performing that role quite a bit. 

Peter Ustinov

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) IN A BRICKYARD FAR, FAR AWAY. Gizmodo says get ready – “Lego Is Celebrating Star Wars Day With a Ton of Sets”.

The start of May is always a good time for Star Wars fans, but for Lego Star Wars ones, it’s also a time to fear the brick-maker coming down on your wallet with all the fury of a fully armed and operational battle station. This year is no exception, with Lego announcing a ton of sets ready to drop next month–including its next crowning entry in the Ultimate Collector Series line.

Today Lego announced that its annual May the 4th releases will be spearheaded by a new 2,970-piece take on Slave I as it appeared in Attack of the Clones. Renamed here as simply ‘Jango Fett’s Starship’ (aligning with prior merchandise moves away from the “Slave” naming around the ship’s return in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett), the new set includes a detailed interior cockpit which can house two new minifigures of Jango and a young Boba, an openable landing ramp and bomb hatch to place one of the ship’s legendary-sounding seismic charges in, and a display stand to have the ship posed in either landing or flight mode.

Jango’s starship will cost $300, and will release on early access for Insiders on May 1, before releasing widely on May 4….

… If you don’t want to grab Jango’s ride but still want to try and nab that Kamino set, then good news: Lego is also releasing another eight brand new Star Wars sets on May 1. Covering the whole gamut of the franchise, the releases see the first set inspired by Andor season 2, a new U-Wing, two Brickheadz releases inspired by A New Hope and the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith, Rebels icon Chopper entering the buildable droid series, two new entries in the collectible helmet line, and even a buildable version of the Star Wars logo…. 

From the Lego Shop itself, the “Best Star Wars™ Gift Ideas for Adults” has photos of all the character helmets and other items mentioned above.

Fans who admire the pilots of the Star Wars™ galaxy can now showcase their passion with the LEGO® Star Wars AT-AT Driver™ Helmet (75429), inspired by the helmets worn by the pilots of the formidable AT-AT Walkers in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back™….

…For even more ways to put the heroes and villains of your favorite galaxy on display, check out the complete selection offered by the LEGO Star Wars helmet collection. From helmets inspired by Mandalorians and Clone Troopers to bounty hunters and Dark Lords of the Sith, there is something for every Star Wars fan to add to their collection.

(13) BUT ARE THOSE BRICKS PLASTIC OR GOLD? Just make sure you lock up your house after you buy those collectible Legos. The New York Times warns, “Worth Thousands on the Black Market, Lego Kits Are Now a Target of Thieves”.

It’s one Lego kit, a collection of small plastic bricks and related accessories. What could it cost? The answer, it turns out, could be thousands of dollars.

Lego kits and minifigures, figurines that are a little over 1.5 inches tall, are commanding high prices on the secondary market, with some, like the LEGO San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Spider-Man, valued as high as $16,846.

The children’s toys have even become something of an investing opportunity for those savvy enough to know what to look for.

But with the eye-popping price tags comes a dark side: Lego kits have become a hot commodity on the black market and the target of brazen thieves.

Last year, burglars hit Bricks & Minifigs outlets in California. Thieves made off with at least $100,000 worth of Lego kits and accessories.

Last month, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California recovered nearly 200 Lego sets after arresting a person in connection with a burglary at Crush Comics, a comic book store in Castro Valley, Calif.

Joshua Hunter, the owner of Crush Comics, said that members of his staff found the store’s stolen comic books for sale on eBay within hours of the theft.

The store worked with law enforcement and alerted other small business owners, including Five Little Monkeys, a toy store that recently had $7,000 worth of Lego stolen, to solve what turned out to be a spree of burglaries in the area.

Five Little Monkeys was able to recover a lot of its stolen Lego, said Meghan DeGoey, the company’s marketing director, but the theft was only the latest in what has been a growing problem.

“It’s been a problem for probably, I mean, forever, but it’s really ramped up in the last five, six years,” she said.

Five Little Monkeys has eight stores around the Bay Area, said Ms. DeGoey, and Lego stands out among its top-stolen items.

“People are really brazen when they’re going to steal,” she said, describing the way thieves will sometimes come into a store and walk right out or “do some like crazy misdirect and have a second person that tries to distract us.”…

(14) BUSINESS SHOULD NOT BE BOOMING. “Bahamas suspends SpaceX rocket landings pending post-launch probe” reports Reuters.

The Bahamas’ government said on Tuesday it is suspending all SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket landings in the country, pending a full post-launch investigation.

“No further clearances will be granted until a full environmental assessment is reviewed,” Bahamian Director of Communications Latrae Rahming said in a post on X.

The Bahamian government said in February after SpaceX’s first landing in the country that it had approved 19 more throughout 2025, subject to regulatory approval.

The Bahamas’ post-launch investigation comes after a SpaceX Starship spacecraft exploded in space last month, minutes after lifting off from Texas.

Social media videos showed fiery debris streaking through the skies near South Florida and the Bahamas after the spacecraft broke up in space shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off.

Following the incident, the Bahamas said debris from the spacecraft fell into its airspace. The country said the debris contained no toxic materials and added it was not expected to have a significant impact on marine life or water quality.

The Starship explosion was not connected to the Bahamas’ Falcon 9 landing program with SpaceX.

(15) IS THAT SPACE ROT? “Webb telescope detects a possible signature of life on a distant world”  in the Washington Post.

A distant planet’s atmosphere shows signs of molecules that on Earth are associated only with biological activity, a possible signal of life on what is suspected to be a watery world,according to a report published Wednesday that analyzed observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The peer-reviewed report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters presents more questions than answers, acknowledges numerous uncertainties and does not declare the discovery of life beyond Earth, something never conclusively detected. But the authors do claim to have found the best evidence to date of a possible “biosignature” on a planet far from our solar system.

The planet,known asK2-18b, is 124 light-years away, orbiting a red dwarf star. Earlier observations suggested that its atmosphere is consistent with the presence of a global ocean. The molecule purportedly detected is dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth it is produced by the decay of marine phytoplankton and other microbes, and it has no other known source. The astronomers want to observe the planet further to strengthen the evidence that the molecule is present….

… “This is the first time humanity has ever seen biosignature molecules — potential biosignature molecules, which are biosignatures on Earth — in the atmosphere of a habitable-zone planet,” he added.The habitable, or “Goldilocks,” zone is the distance from a star that could allow water to remain liquid at the planet’s surface.

K2-18b, which is within ourgalaxy, the Milky Way,cannot be seen by any telescope as a discrete object. But it has a fortuitous orbit that crosses its parent star as seen from Earth. Such transits dim the starlight ever so slightly, which is how many exoplanets have been discovered. The transits also change the starlight’s spectrum in a pattern that — if observed with instruments on a telescope as advanced as the Webb — can reveal the composition of the planet’s atmosphere.

In 2023, Madhusudhan and colleagues reported that two instruments on the Webb had detected carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of K2-18b, as well ashints of DMS. …

(16) SF² CONCATENATION  SUMMER 2025 EDITION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted its seasonal edition of SF and science news and reviews. Also in the mix are some articles, convention reports as well as some archive items from its well over 30 years history and a load of standalone book reviews. Something for everyone.

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Summer 2025

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v35(3) 2025.4.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, rcade, Olav Rokne, Kevin Standlee, 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 Dan’l.]

2025 Prometheus Award Finalists for Best Novel

Posted on by
1

The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced the five finalists for the Best Novel category of the 2025 Prometheus Awards.

  • Alliance Unbound, by C.J Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher (DAW); 
  • In the Belly of the Whale, by Michael Flynn (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy); 
  • Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, by Danny King (Annie Mosse Press); 
  • Beggar’s Sky, by Wil McCarthy (Baen Books); and 
  • Mania, by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins Publishers).

The Best Novel winner will receive an engraved plaque with a one-ounce gold coin. An online Prometheus awards ceremony is planned for August at a time and event to be announced.

Here are capsule descriptions of the Best Novel finalists, explaining how each fits the distinctive focus of the Prometheus Awards:

Alliance Unbound, by C.J Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher (DAW) — Set within Cherryh’s Alliance-Union future history series, Book 2 of The Hinder Stars projected trilogy and the direct sequel to Alliance Rising, the 2020 Prometheus Best Novel winner, this interstellar science fiction saga dramatizes how an evolving alliance of free traders strives to preserve its independence, freedom and survival amid machinations from an intrusive Earth. Starting out on the ship “Finity’s End,” en route to Pell Station, the ongoing drama is bolstered by shipboard challenges and relationships, military maneuvers and a mystery that unfolds as observant crew notice Earth-based goods that shouldn’t have been able to reach a distant station. Merchanters must strategize amid uncertainties in the human colonies about the game-changing possibility of new jump points opening up a faster-than-light route from Earth. Perhaps most notable with regard to Prometheus themes, Cherryh and Fancher continue to dramatize how the ethics and benefits of voluntary cooperation and free thought advance merchanter culture, even amid station tensions and competing interests. Focusing more on the personal than the political, the novel highlights both the daily challenges of freer societies and the authoritarian and dysfunctional tendencies within bureaucracies, military commands and other coercive systems.

In the Belly of the Whale, by Michael Flynn (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy) — The posthumous work by two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn (In the Belly of the Whale, In the Country of the Blind,Fallen Angels) explores the complex lives, work, challenges and conflicts of 40,000 human colonists aboard a large asteroid ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti. With its intricate world-building, believable characters in conflict and profound grasp of human nature, the epic social novel freshens the SF subgenre of the multi-generational colony ship while raising deeper questions about the enormous difficulties of our species expanding beyond our solar system. Beyond the usual technological and interpersonal issues of maintenance and survival that naturally arise, the colonists suffer from a dysfunctional bureaucracy, crew class divisions, and a traditional shipboard command structure that calcifies into an authoritarian hereditary aristocracy with enforced eugenics and a loss of focus on the mission goal. Without sustaining the culture of liberty, self-reliance and voluntary cooperation that helped lift Earth civilization to unprecedented levels of knowledge and prosperity, humanity may be doomed even if such ships reach their distant destination. The enduring theme of Flynn’s ambitious, multi-focused saga of power, decay and revolution: The price of freedom (and survival) is eternal vigilance.

Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, by Danny King (Annie Mosse Press) — The gripping SF-enhanced cautionary fable is framed as a brave new utopia embracing love, inclusion and social justice, but reveals progressive politics warped into a totalitarian pseudo-religion in the name of women and minorities. Anyone can be cancelled for suspect behavior or old-fashioned attitudes in such personal areas as sex, food, manners and language. With its subtitle referencing H.G. Well’s 1933 novel foretelling a “history of the future,” King’s disturbing but satirical novel feels similarly prescient in extrapolating today’s illiberal sociopolitical trends. Cracks appear in the warped facade as hidden realities of New Britannia are revealed, with the omnipresent State echoing the oppressive attitudes of other dystopias in which “Everything not compulsory is forbidden.” King is especially good at exploring the fraught intersections of the political and the personal in his story focusing on the good intentions, growing doubts and eventual comeuppance of a true-believing woman secretly working as an auditor for a leading cancellation company. Overall, King offers an urgent warning about what might happen if government paternalism, radical egalitarianism, progressivist collectivism, identity politics and moral self-righteousness are taken to even more authoritarian extremes. (See review here: Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come.)

Beggar’s Sky, by Wil McCarthy (Baen Books) — This inventive, far-flung first-contact story revolves around a wealthy entrepreneur using private enterprise to construct a star ship and take 100 humans, including himself, to meet non-corporeal aliens far from our sun. Each human, with the help of psychedelic drugs, interprets their contact in drastically different ways, sparking further mysteries and philosophical questions. Like Rich Man’s Sky, McCarthy’s 2022 Best Novel winner, this sequel shows how cooperation through free markets can be successful in carrying out various projects, such as a floating Venus station and perhaps the most expensive and important scientific exploration/discovery in history. The story takes place within the context of an ongoing space race sparked by four Earth billionaires pushing to expand humanity and space industry to new frontiers beyond our solar system. Perhaps most relevant to Prometheus themes are McCarthy’s insightful contrasts between two types of “power” – voluntary socioeconomic cooperation in business versus coercive State authority. Despite frequent disparagement by many on Earth of the “four Horsemen,” McCarthy depicts three as quite admirable, pursuing innovations not only to realize their dreams but humanity’s future. (See review here: Beggar’s Sky.)

Mania, by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins Publishers) — The cautionary fable takes place in an alternate-history recent America taken over by the Mental Parity movement, which denies any variability in intelligence or talent and condemns any recognition of IQ differences as bigoted discrimination. The psychological and social drama centers on how the movement affects a radically individualist and recalcitrant teacher, her three children, husband and lifelong friendship with a high-status media star. As the movement’s virtue-signaling foot soldiers impose the delusionary new orthodoxy, growing pressures to conform to the increasingly authoritarian movement warp language and culture. The progressive take-over of academia, media, education, medicine, and government destroys reputations, careers, families and friendships while ruining the economy and sabotaging the smooth functioning of everyday services. Darkly satirical but also chillingly poignant, Mania holds up a cracked mirror to today’s culture wars around race, gender and identity politics, where facts and objective reality are denied. A previous two-time Best Novel finalist for The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 and Should We Stay Or Should We Go, Shriver is no stranger to pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. Here she illuminates the perennial temptations of the morally self-righteous to impose their visions on others, no matter the devastating cost. (See review here: Mania.)

Eleven 2024 novels were nominated by LFS members for this year’s award. Other Best Novel nominees, listed in alphabetical order by author: Time: A Novel, by Peter Grose (Merriam Publishing); Shadow of the Smoking Mountain, by Howard Andrew Jones (Baen Books); Machine Vendetta, by Alastair Reynolds (Orbit Books); The Glass Box, by J. Michael Straczynski (Blackstone Publishing); Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit Books); and The Last Murder At the End of the World, by Stuart Turton (Sourcebooks Landmark).

An online Prometheus awards ceremony, open to the public, is tentatively planned for mid-August. David Friedman, an SF/fantasy novelist and a leading economist and libertarian thinker, will be this year’s celebrity guest presenter. The date of the ceremony will be announced once the winners are known for both annual categories, including the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

The Prometheus Award, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), was established and first presented in 1979, making it one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently given in sf. The Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction, launched in 1983, is presented annually with the Best Novel category.

The LFS says these are the kinds of work recognized by the Prometheus Award –

The Prometheus Awards recognize outstanding works of speculative or fantastical fiction (including science fiction and fantasy) that dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, favor voluntarism and cooperation over institutionalized coercion, expose the abuses and excesses of coercive government, and/or critique or satirize authoritarian systems, ideologies and assumptions.

Above all, the Prometheus Awards strive to recognize speculative fiction that champions individual rights, based on the moral/legal principle of non-aggression, as the ethical and practical foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, mutual respect, civility and civilization itself.

All LFS members have the right to nominate eligible works for all categories of the Prometheus Awards, while publishers and authors are welcome to submit potentially eligible works for consideration using the guidelines linked from the LFS website’s main page.

A 12-person judging committee, drawn from the membership and chaired by LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg, selects the Prometheus Award finalists for Best Novel from members’ nominations. Following the selection of finalists, all LFS upper-level members (Benefactors, Sponsors and Full Members) have the right to vote on the Best Novel finalist slate to choose the annual winner.

For a full list of past Prometheus Award winners in all categories, visit www.lfs.org. For reviews and commentary on these and other works of interest to the LFS, visit the Prometheus blog via our website link.

A full list of past Prometheus Award winners in all categories is here. For reviews and commentary on these and other works of interest to the LFS, visit the Prometheus blog. 

 [Based on a press release.]

2025 Aurora Awards Ballot

Posted on by
Reply

The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) today announced the ballot for the 2025 Aurora Awards for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror composed of eligible works done by Canadians in 2024. 

The top five nominated works were selected. Additional works were included where there was a tie for fifth place. An online awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, August 10 at 5:00 Eastern, with hosts Mark Leslie Lefebvre and Elizabeth May Anderson. 

BEST NOVEL

  • Blackheart Man, Nalo Hopkinson, Saga Press
  • Pale Grey Dot, Don Miasek, Ravenstone
  • The Siege of Burning Grass, Premee Mohamed, Solaris
  • The Tapestry of Time, Kate Heartfield, Harper Voyager
  • Withered, A.G.A. Wilmot, ECW Press

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

  • The Door in Lake Mallion, S.M. Beiko, ECW Press
  • Heavenly Tyrant, Xiran Jay Zhao, Tundra Books
  • The Lost Expedition: The Dream Rider Saga, Book 3, Douglas Smith, Spiral Path Books
  • Misadventures in Ghosthunting, Melissa Yue, Harper Collins
  • Spaced!, C.L. Carey, Renaissance

BEST NOVELETTE/NOVELLA

  • The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed, Tordotcom
  • “Carter’s Refugio“, Hayden Trenholm, Analog SF&F, Sept/Oct
  • Countess, Suzan Palumbo, ECW Press
  • The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui, Neon Hemlock Press
  • “Zebra Meridian“,Geoffrey W. Cole, Zebra Meridian and Other Stories, Stelliform Press

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “A World of Milk and Promises“, R H Wesley, Clarkesworld, Issue 216
  • “And When She Shatters“, Kerry C. Byrne, Heartlines Spec, Issue 4
  • “Blood and Desert Dreams“, Y.M. Pang, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 408
  • “BUDDY RAYMOND’S NO-BULLSHIT GUIDE TO DRONE HUNTING“, Gillian Secord, Diabolical Plots, #108A
  • “Desolation Sounds“, Geoffrey W. Cole, Zebra Meridian and Other Stories, Stelliform Press

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMIC

  • Cemetery Kids Don’t Die vol. 1 (#1-4), Zac Thompson, illustrated by Daniel Irrizari, Gegé Schall, and Brittany Peer, Oni Press
  • Into the Goblin Market, Vikki VanSickle, illustrated by Jensine Eckwall, Tundra Books
  • It Never Rains, Kari Maaren, webcomic
  • Star Trek Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way, Ryan North, art by Chris Fenoglio, IDW Publishing
  • Wheetago War: Roth, Richard Van Camp, illustrated by Christopher Shy, Renegade Arts Entertainment
  • A Witch’s Guide to Burning, Aminder Dhaliwal, Drawn and Quarterly
  • Zatanna: Bring Down the House, Mariko Tamaki, DC Comics

BEST POEM/SONG

  • “Angakkuq“, Shantell Powell, On Spec Magazine, Vol 24, Issue 130
  • “Cthulhu on the Shores of Osaka“, Y.M. Pang, Invitation: A One-shot Anthology of Speculative Fiction
  • “Her Favourite“, Beth Cato and Rhonda Parrish, Star*Line, Vol 47, Issue 4
  • “Horizon Events“, J.D. Dresner, Polar Starlight, Issue #15
  • “A Thirst for Adventure“, Lynne Sargent, Polar Borealis, Issue #28
  • “Trip Through the Robot“, Carolyn Clink and David Clink, Giant Robot Poems: On Mecha-Human Science, Culture & War

BEST RELATED WORK

  • Augur Magazine Vol 7, Issues 7.1-7.3, Kerry C. Byrne, Toria Liao, André Geleynse, Frankie Hagg, and Conyer Clayton, Augur Society
  • Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror, Sofia Ajram, Ghoulish Books
  • Northern Nights, Michael Kelly, Undertow Publications
  • On Spec Magazine, Vol 34, Issues 127-130, Diane L. Walton Managing Editor, The Copper Pig Writers’ Society
  • Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume Two, Stephen Kotowych, Ansible Press

BEST COVER ART/INTERIOR ILLUSTRATION

  • Augur Magazine, Issue 7.1,  cover art, Martine Nguyen
  • Augur Magazine Issue 7.2, cover art, Frances Philip 
  • Augur Magazine, Issue 7.3, cover art, Lorna Antoniazzi
  • Captains of Black and Brass, cover art, James Beveridge, On Spec Magazine, Vol 34, Issue 129  
  • Northern Nights, cover art, Serena Malyon, Undertow Publications

BEST FAN WRITING AND PUBLICATION

  • Clubhouse Canadian Speculative Fiction reviews, R. Graeme Cameron, Amazing Stories Magazine
  • James Nicoll Reviews, James Davis Nicoll, online
  • Polar Starlight Magazine, Issues 13-16, Rhea E. Rose, editor
  • SF&F Book Reviews, Robert Runté, Ottawa Review of Books
  • Speculating Canada, Derek Newman-Stille

BEST FAN RELATED WORK

  • murmurstations, Sonia Urlando, Augur Society, podcast
  • Scintillation 2024, co-chairs, Jo Walton and René Walling, Montreal
  • Two Old Farts Talk Sci-Fi Podcast, Troy Harkin and David Clink
  • Wizards & Spaceships Podcast, Rachel A. Rosen and David L. Clink
  • The Worldshapers Podcast, Edward Willett 

[Thanks to Danny Sichel for the story.]

The Tolkien Society Awards 2025 Shortlists

Posted on by
Reply

The Tolkien Society has announced the shortlists for the Tolkien Society Awards 2025. Members of the Society have until April 25 to vote.

The Society has updated its vetting process and eligibility rules this year.

This new process utilizes a separate panel for each award, consisting of a selection of trustees, prior winners, and category experts, based on availability, interest, and lack of conflict (e.g. cannot be nominated for this year). The nominees made by the public for each award are checked for eligibility prior to being considered for shortlisting. We have implemented a new eligibility rule this year, in that winners from the prior 3 years of an award are not eligible – i.e. for this year, the 2022, 2023 and 2024 winners were not eligible to be shortlisted for the 2025 award in the category that they previously won.

BEST ARTWORK

There were 35 nominated works from 63 submissions this year. 7 works did not qualify (works from winners from the previous 3 years, works not published in 2024, and one AI generated work).

Panelists: Daniel Helen (trustee), Niamh Riordain (trustee), Neil Anderson (trustee), Mina Lukic (art historian), Maggie Percival (artist), Donato Giancola (artist, previous winner)

Shortlist:

BEST ARTICLE

There were 25 nominated articles from 35 submissions this year. 3 articles did not qualify (articles from winners from the previous 3 years).

Panelists: Will Sherwood (trustee), Jeremy Edmonds (trustee), Cait Coker (scholar), Thomas Honneger (scholar), Sara Brown (scholar, previous winner)

Shortlist:

BEST BOOK

There were 17 nominated books from 107 submissions this year. 7 books did not qualify (not published in 2024).

Panelists: Jeremy Edmonds (trustee), Shaun Gunner (trustee), Luke Shelton (Mallorn editor), David Bratman (scholar, author, co-editor of Tolkien Studies, Guest of Honor of the Mythopoeic Conference 2022), Carl Hostetter (scholar, author, previous winner)

Shortlist:

  • Cities and Strongholds of Middle-earth: Essays on the Habitations of Tolkien’s Legendarium ed. Cami D. Agan
  • Mapping Middle-earth: Environmental and Political Narratives in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Cartographies by Anahit Behrooz
  • The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien ed. Will Sherwood and Julian Eilmann
  • Tolkien and the Kalevala by Jyrki Korpua
  • The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien ed Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond
  • J.R.R. Tolkien: A Very Short Introduction by Matthew Townend

BEST ONLINE CONTENT

There were 31 nominations in this category, from 46 submissions this year. 5 did not qualify (not published or active in 2024, winners from previous 3 years, and a TS event).

Panelists: Hannah McDonald (trustee), Niamh Riordain (trustee), Daniel Helen (trustee), Shawn Marchese (Prancing Pony Podcast, previous winner), Ben Olson (TolkienGateway.net, previous winner)

Shortlist:

Pixel Scroll 4/15/25 The Goldendoodle At Starbow’s End

Posted on by
9

(1) UNFAIR USE. Charlie Stross told Bluesky followers that Sam Freedman’s Guardian article linked here yesterday – “The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world?” – is a case of “recycling an article of mine from 2023 without attribution” – “We’re sorry we created the Torment Nexus”.

(2) MAY THE FOURTH BID WITH YOU. “Heritage Auctions Announces ‘Star Wars Day’ Auction” and Animation World Network explains it all to you.

Heritage Auctions has launched the “May 4 Star Wars Day Entertainment Signature Auction,” which will feature over 300 lots ranging from original Star Wars movie posters to screen-used props, high-end replicas, toys, comics, and artwork. The event will conclude with a live session on May 4.

Leading the fleet is the Star Wars Sears Exclusive Set of 12 Carded Figures, the only graded example in existence. Also up for grabs is the Star Wars Sears Exclusive Set of 9 Carded Figures, which includes the highly coveted Boba Fett. These sets, authenticated by industry expert Tom Derby and AFA, are expected to surpass six figures at auction.

“These sets represent a pivotal moment in cinematic history and were among the earliest opportunities fans had to bring the Star Wars universe into their home,” said Justin Caravoulias, Heritage’s Consignment Director of Action Figures and Toys. “Finding them in such incredible condition is exceptionally rare, and the opportunity to win treasures like these on May 4 makes this auction even more special.”

Additionally, the auction features 20 pieces of original artwork from the early days of Lucas Film, including signed Star Wars Droids C-3PO Original Line Art by Alice Carter. John Alvin’s original concept paintings for the unreleased Star Wars Concert Series poster, Greg Hildebrandt’s striking portrait of Darth Vader’s funeral pyre mask, and Olivia De Berardinis’ Grogu painting are also available….

(3) SEEKING AFROSURREALISM. Gautam Bhatia has put out a submissions call for the Strange Horizons – Afrosurrealism Special Issue. Full details at the link.

…Welcome to the Afrosurrealist Special Issue, where the boundaries between the real and the unreal blur, where reality bends, time fractures, and the living and the dead exist side by side. Afrosurrealism has long given shape to our struggles, our power, and our dreams. This special issue seeks to bring those visions to life through stories that cut deep—tales that unsettle, haunt, and liberate….

For this special issue, we are looking for:

  • Worlds that slip between the mundane and the uncanny, the ghostly and the futuristic.
  • Worlds rich with history and spirit striving to manifest—whether set in the past, present, or futures unknown.
  • Tales of hauntings, doppelgängers, liminal spaces, memories, and places that don’t stay put.
  • Give us your tales of portals that lead to nowhere, of cities that rearrange themselves overnight, of people becoming someone—or something—else.
  • Narratives that challenge traditional structures and defy linear storytelling.
  • Works that experiment with or reimagine genres like sword & soul, jujuism, cyberfunk, or Black gothic horror.
  • Visions of power, freedom, and transformation shaped by the Black experience where Blackness itself is a force that bends time, space, and destiny.

Send us your myths. Your nightmares. Your dreams wrapped in ancestral magics and spirit.

The editors for the AfroSurrealism Special invite you to submit fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

We welcome writers who are new and experienced. The submissions call is open to writers of African descent ONLY, whether based in the diaspora or in Africa….

(4) FUNNY BUSINESS. Ira Nayman recommends “Taking Humor Writing Seriously” at the SFWA Blog.

…What makes you laugh? What tries to make you laugh and fails? How do they both work, and why does one succeed where the other doesn’t? As you grow as a comic writer, you’ll start to combine in new ways what you loved in previous works, shaping those devices into something uniquely your own.

Some writers are uncomfortable with this analytical approach. They should embrace it. I once took a course in the Social and Political Aspects of Humor. One of the first things the professor said on the first day of lectures was: “You may be under the impression that analyzing humor will kill it. Most of the students who have taken the course have found that to be untrue.” I couldn’t agree more. If anything, I found my appreciation for well-written humor increased the more I analyzed it. 

This analytical approach is especially helpful when it comes to comic dialogue. Record a conversation, then compare how real people speak to how characters in comedies speak. (Spoiler: They’re very different.) In fact, great comic dialogue is like music: Not only does it have a rhythm that can be timed with a metronome, but it usually contains motifs that it repeatedly comes back to. Listen to “Who’s on First?” by Abbott and Costello, “The Argument Clinic” by Monty Python, and “Why a Duck?” by the Marx Brothers. Note, as well, how pauses can be employed as both a comic element in themselves and to allow the audience room to laugh.

Craft can and must be learned. What you do with that craft, the stories you choose to tell, and the way you choose to tell them is the art you have to provide yourself….

(5) WHO HISTORY. Last night’s BBC Radio 4 arts programme Front Row has an item (one third of the show) on Doctor Who, which we linked to in yesterday’s Scroll. But we didn’t mention it also covered the launch of a new non-fiction book on Doctor Who, Exterminate, Regenerate.  

On screen, Doctor Who is a story of monsters, imagination and mind-expanding adventure. But the off-screen story is equally extraordinary – a tale of failed monks, war heroes, 1960s polyamory and self-sabotaging broadcasting executives. From the politics of fandom to the inner struggles of the BBC, thousands of people have given part of themselves – and sometimes, too much of themselves – to bring this unlikeliest of folk heroes to life.

This is a story of change, mystery and the importance of imaginary characters in our lives. Able to evolve and adapt more radically than any other fiction, Doctor Who has acted as a mirror to more than six decades of social, technological and cultural change while always remaining a central fixture of the British imagination. In Exterminate / Regenerate, John Higgs invites us into his TARDIS on a journey to discover how ideas emerge and survive despite the odds, why we are so addicted to fiction, and why this wonderful wandering time traveller means so much to so many.

(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books in Joshua Tree, CA has released Simultaneous Times episode 86 with Thomas Broderick & Jenna Hanchey. Simultaneous Times is a monthly science fiction podcast.

Stories featured in this episode:

“A Love Story” by Thomas Broderick. Music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the Jean-Paul Garnier

“A Locked Box, Bound with Chains, Buried Six Feet Deep” by Jenna Hanchey. Music by TSG. Read by the author

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(7) SHINICHIRO WATANABE Q&A. “The Creator of ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Thinks Reality Is More Dystopian Than Sci-Fi” – interview in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

Shinichiro Watanabe’s first anime, “Cowboy Bebop,” was quite an opening act. A story of space bounty hunters trying to scrape by, its genre mash-up of westerns, science fiction and noir, with a jazzy soundtrack, was a critical and commercial success in Japan and beyond. Its American debut on Adult Swim, in 2001, is now considered a milestone in the popularization of anime in the United States.

Not one to repeat himself, Watanabe followed up “Bebop” with a story about samurai and hip-hop (“Samurai Champloo,” 2004); a coming-of-age story about jazz musicians (“Kids on the Slope,” 2012); a mystery thriller about teenage terrorists (“Terror in Resonance,” 2014); an animated “Blade Runner” sequel (“Blade Runner Black Out 2022,” 2017); and a sci-fi musical show about two girls on Mars (“Carole & Tuesday,” 2019).

Now, he has returned to the kind of sci-fi action that made his name with “Lazarus,” streaming on Max and airing on Adult Swim, with new episodes arriving on Sundays. The show is set in 2055, after the disappearance of a doctor who discovered a miracle drug that has no side effects. Three years later, the doctor resurfaces with an announcement: The drug had a three-year half-life, and everyone who took it will die in 30 days unless someone finds him and the cure he developed….

Unlike your previous sci-fi projects, “Lazarus” takes place not on a distant planet or far into the future, but in our world just 30 years from now. Why was that important?

In the past, I would look at other works of fiction and get inspired by them. But this time, just watching the news and taking a look at the world, things happening right now seem more dramatic and kind of crazier than fiction. Because I was inspired by events going on in the real world, putting it too far into the future would lose that touch of reality….

The anime starts with a doomsday clock saying there are 30 days until most of humanity dies, and yet we see businesses going on like normal, talk shows interviewing artists, and more. Why did you contrast the urgency of the story with scenes like these?

That was inspired by reality and experiencing the Covid pandemic. Not everyone was acting the same way. There were people who didn’t believe in it, and there were people who didn’t wear masks. I thought the anime would be more grounded in reality if I made it so we had different reactions from the characters….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Small Change trilogy

Doing alternate history right is always hard work, but Jo Walton’s the Small Change books consisting of Farthing, Ha’penny and Half a Crown get it perfectly spot on. They’re set in a Britain that settled for an uneasy peace with Hitler’s Germany, and they are mysteries, one of my favorite genres. And these are among my all-time favorite mysteries of this niche which includes Len Deighton’s SS-GB. and C. J. Sansom’s Dominion. 

I am not going to discuss these novels in any way what so ever. Not going to do it. It’s really going to spoil it for any of you’ll who decide to read them which you really should. I can reveal that the first is a classic British manor house murder mystery complete with the proper centuries old family. Really well-crafted manor house mystery.

The audiobooks are fascinating, there being shifting narrators with Peter Carmichael whose presence is to be found in all three novels is voiced by John Keating, and Bianco Amato voicing David Kahn’s wife in Farthing, but Viola Lark being played by Heather O’Neil in Ha’penny and yet a third female narrator, Elvira, is brought to life by Terry Donnelly in Half a Crown. 

Now I’m fascinated by what awards they won (and didn’t) and what they got nominated for. It would win but one award, the Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel for Ha’Penny which is I find  a bit odd indeed given there’s nothing libertarian about that novel. 

Now Half a Crown wracked an impressive number of nominations: the Sidewise Award for Best Long Form Alternate History, Locus for Best SF Novel, Sunburst award for a Canadian novel, and this time deservedly so given the themes of the final novel a Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel.

Farthing had picked up nominations for a Sidewise, a Nebula, Campbell Memorial, Quill whereas Ha’Penny only picked a Sidewise and Lambda.

Not a single Hugo nomination which really, really surprised me. 

There is one short story set in this series, “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” which you can read in her Starlings collection that Tachyon published. It is in a fantastic collection of her stories, poems and cool stuff! 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) WE’LL MEET AGAIN, DON’T KNOW WHERE, DON’T KNOW WHEN. “‘Big Bang’ Universe Collides As Simon Helberg & Raegan Revord Join Melissa Rauch On NBC’s ‘Night Court’” at Deadline.

NBC‘s Night Court has set up a colliding of the “Big Bang” Universe as Simon Helberg (Big Bang Theory, Poker Face) and Raegan Revord (Young Sheldon) are set to guest star in the Season 3 finale airing May 6 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Night Court star and executive producer Melissa Rauch played Helberg’s wife on the CBS smash The Big Bang Theory, created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. Although who Helberg will play in the season finale is under wraps, his character is set for a game-changing cameo that could really shake things up for Abby (Rauch).

Revord will play Shelby, a teenage runaway inclined to marry her soulmate, in an homage to the Michael J. Fox episode from the original series.

Fox appeared in the second episode of the original series titled “Santa Goes Downtown,” which aired on January 11, 1984, in the role of Eddie Simms. Eddie and his girlfriend Mary (Olivia Barash) are runaway teens determined to get married, who end up in night court on shoplifting charges. The pair meet a mysterious man who claims he’s Santa Claus, or at least that’s who he claims to be, altering their lives forever. When Fox shot the guest appearance, he was a series regular on the NBC sitcom Family Ties, a few years before he would break out as Marty McFly in Back to the Future.

Additionally, Marsha Warfield will return in her iconic role as Roz from the original series. Other guest stars include Michael Urie and Ryan Hansen….

(11) UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Turning space from vacuum to vapidity, by one of my favorite columnists. “What’s more vacuous than an endless vacuum? It’s Lauren Sánchez and Katy Perry’s party in space” by Marina Hyde in the Guardian.

… In truth, how the women looked had been an overwhelming part of the buildup, and by their own design. In an Elle magazine joint interview with the passengers, Lauren showed off the hot space suits she’d personally commissioned, inquiring rhetorically: “Who would not get glam before the flight?” “Space is going to finally be glam,” agreed Perry. “Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.” A former Nasa rocket scientist said: “I also wanted to test out my hair and make sure that it was OK. So I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good – took it for a dry run.” Still want more? Because there was SO much of it. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule!” explained Lauren. “I think it’s so important for people to see us like that,” explained a civil rights activist. “This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.”

Ooof. I always thought space travel was futuristic, but this was the first time it came off as travelling back in time, in this case using their little capsule to take us back to the most ludicrous inanities of 2010s girlboss feminism….

(12) SPLISH-SPLASH. The New York Times meets “The Techno-Utopians Who Want to Colonize the Sea”. (Article behind a paywall.)

…His 304-square-foot habitat was inside the underwater buoyancy chamber that helps stabilize a floating home called SeaPod Alpha Deep. An armed security guard was in the above-water part of the structure, monitoring Koch and ensuring that the pod did not have “any visitors that we don’t want.” When my boat arrived, he threw down a cable and winched me up. Then I made my way down a 63-step spiral staircase to the circular lower chamber — a dizzying process, as the SeaPod rocked in the loudly sloshing sea. I was greeted by a beaming Koch, a bald 59-year-old German engineer with a whitened beard and a Buddha belly.

He gave me a tour, pointing to a school of sardines outside a porthole. The quarters came equipped with a bed, an exercise bike, Starlink internet and a dry toilet. A digital clock on the wall was counting down toward his 120-day goal. (The previous record was 100 days, set in 2023 by Joseph Dituri at Jules’ Undersea Lodge, off the coast of Key Largo, Fla.) “I’ve enjoyed the time, actually,” Koch said in his heavy German accent, his face greenish-blue from the light pouring in. “This is what people get completely wrong. They think that I feel like a prisoner, and I’m putting marks on the wall. My food is excellent, my booze is excellent.” A person came by to clean daily.

Koch arrived here, in small part, via a San Francisco-based nonprofit called the Seasteading Institute, which promotes “living on environmentally restorative floating islands with some degree of political autonomy.” The vision, as the Institute’s president, the “seavangelist” Joe Quirk, once told Guernica, is “startup societies where people could form whatever kind of community they wanted” — a libertarian-inflected world where, it is said, you could “vote with your boat,” relocating to a community in line with your views….

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Daniel Dern.]

A File 770 Special: An Evening with Meredith R. Lyons at Joseph-Beth Booksellers Cincinnati 

Posted on by
Reply
John Scalzi introduces Meredith R. Lyons

By Chris M. Barkley: Novelist Meredith R. Lyons stopped in at the spacious Joseph Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati, Ohio to promote her second novel, A Dagger of Lightning. She was hosted and interviewed by the Hugo Award winning writer John Scalzi. Soundcloud Interview Link: “Meredith R. Lyons Interview With John Scalzi”.

Cover: A Dagger of Lightning by Meredith R. Lyons

In the latest installment of Scalzi’s “The Big Idea” feature, “The Big Idea: Meredith R. Lyons” (which was published on April 3 on his Whatever blog site), Lyons explains what her motivation was for the new novel, which is the first in a new series. 

“Why was it that only those twenty-one and under got to be ripped from their mundane lives, gifted immortality, and elevated to chosen one? Why not choose someone with some life experience and an appreciation for the frailty of our mortal coil?”

“With that in mind, I set out to write a forty-five-year-old woman who leaves for a morning run and never makes it home. I was so obsessed with the idea that I had ten thousand words in less than forty-eight hours. But I made the deadly mistake of sitting down and thinking about it, and subsequently worried that no one would be interested in a scifi fantasy protagonist older than thirty. I was even scared to show it to my writing group in case the concept ‘was stupid.’”

John Scalzi interviewing Meredith R. Lyons.

Her protagonist, Imogen, is a middle aged woman out for a morning run when she is abducted by what she takes to be an alien, but turns out to be a super powered alien fae looking for an ally, her, to help him wage war on his homeworld. Needless to say, Imogen is a less-than-willing protagonist in this adventure.

During the question and answer session I asked whether she would categorize the book as fantasy, romantasy or an anti-romantasy? 

“I would describe it as a romantasy with a spaceship on top,” Lyons said with a mischievous smile.

Meredith R. Lyons currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and “two panther sized cats”. She is a former actor and current audiobook narrator for Onyx Publications and is a member of International Thriller Writers, Sisters In Crime, and the Women’s National Book Association. Lyons has a black belt in martial arts, has taught cardio kickboxing, owns several swords and has been known to knit scarves, enjoy gardening and visiting coffee shops. 

(It should also be noted that she bears more than a passing resemblance to MSNBC news anchor Stephanie Ruhle.) 

Her first novel, Ghost Tamer, was published in September 2023.

Photos by Chris Barkley and Juli Marr.

Meredith R. Lyons, left, autographing her book.

2025 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire Finalists

Posted on by
Reply

The Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2025 finalists have been announced.

The awards will be presented on May 17 during La Comédie du Livre in Montpellier, France.

The jurors are Joëlle Wintrebert (president), Olivier Legendre (vice-president), Jean-Claude Dunyach (treasurer), Sylvie Le Jemtel, Sylvie Allouche, Audrey Burki, Lloyd Chéry, Catherine Dufour, Benjamin Spohr, and Nicolas Winter.

ROMAN FRANCOPHONE / NOVEL IN FRENCH

  • Les Nuits sans Kim Sauvage by Sabrina Calvo (La Volte)
  • La Maison des veilleurs by Patrick K. Dewdney (Au Diable Vauvert)
  • Vallée du carnage by Romain Lucazeau (Verso)
  • La Sonde et la taille by Laurent Mantese (Albin Michel)
  • L’Ost céleste by Olivier Paquet (L’Atalante)
  • Conque by Perrine Tripier (Gallimard)

ROMAN ÉTRANGER / FOREIGN NOVEL

  • Le Changelin by Victor LaValle [The Changeling] (ActuSF)
  • Le Grand Quand by Alan Moore [The Great When: A Long London Book] (Bragelonne)
  • La Maison des soleils by Alastair Reynolds [The House of Suns] (Le Bélial’)
  • Les Beaux et les Élus by Nghi Vo [The Chosen and the Beautiful] (L’Atalante)
  • Mirror Bay by Catriona Ward [Mirror Bay] (Sonatine)

NOUVELLE FRANCOPHONE / SHORT FICTION IN FRENCH

  • Les Essaims by Chloé Chevalier (Robert Laffont)
  • Rayée by Audrey Pleynet (Le Bélial’ in Bifrost n° 113)
  • Lanvil emmêlée by Michael Roch (La Volte)
  • Après tout by Ian Soliane (JOU Association)

NOUVELLE ÉTRANGÈRE / FOREIGN SHORT FICTION

  • Mieux vivre grâce aux algorithmes by Naomi Kritzer [“Better Living Through Algorithms”] (Galaxies in G’laxies nouvelle série n° 88)
  • Les Armées de ceux que j’aime by Ken Liu [“The Armies of Those I Love”] (Le Bélial’)
  • Le Chronologue by Ian R. MacLeod [“The Chronologist”] (Le Bélial’ in Bifrost n° 115)
  • Kid Wolf et Kraken Boy by Sam J. Miller [“Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy”] (Le Bélial’)

ROMAN JEUNESSE FRANCOPHONE / NOVELS FOR YOUTH IN FRENCH

  • Le Sans-Soleil by Chloé Chevalier (Robert Laffont)
  • Entrer dans le monde by Claire Duvivier (L’École des loisirs)
  • De délicieux enfants by Flore Vesco (L’École des loisirs)

ROMAN JEUNESSE ÉTRANGER / FOREIGN NOVELS FOR YOUTH

No award this year

TRADUCTION : PRIX JACQUES CHAMBON / JACQUES CHAMBON TRANSLATION PRIZE

  • Mikael Cabon for Les Beaux et les Élus by Nghi Vo (L’Atalante)
  • Pierre-Paul Durastanti for La Maison des soleils by Alastair Reynolds (Le Bélial’)
  • François-Michel Durazzo for Trois pas vers le sud by Miquel de Palol (Zulma)
  • Benoît Meunier for Viande by Martin Harniček (Monts Métallifères)
  • Erwann Perchoc for Les Âmes de feu by Annie Francé-Harrar (Belfond)
  • Jessica Shapiro for Imago by Octavia E. Butler (Au Diable Vauvert)

GRAPHISME : PRIX WOJTEK SIUDMAK / WOJTEK SIUDMAK GRAPHIC DESIGN PRIZE

  • Tristan Bonnemain for Roman de Ronce et d’Épine by Lucie Baratte (Éditions du Typhon)
  • Kévin Deneufchatel for Les Nefs de Pangée by Christian Chavassieux et l’identité graphique du label Mu chez Mnémos (Mu)
  • Didier Graffet for La Croisière bleue by Laurent Genefort and La Cité des marches and La Cité des lames by Robert Jackson Bennett (Albin Michel)

ESSAI / NONFICTION

  • Jean-Pierre Andrevon, Claude Ecken & Jean-Pierre Fontana for Un siècle de S.F. écrite et dessinée vue de France des années 1920 à nos jours (Encrage)
  • Fabrice Chemla for Le Laboratoire de l’imaginaire. La chimie dans la science-fiction (Le Bélial’)
  • Vincent Ferré who brought together the texts and the 60 contributors who collaborated on the Dictionnaire Tolkien (Bragelonne)
  • Roland Lehoucq for Scientifiction. La physique de l’impossible (Le Bélial’)
  • Pierre-Gilles Pélissier for Science-politique-fiction – Essai d’économie générale des contre-utopies de 1846 (Le Monde tel qu’il sera) à nos jours (Les Furtifs) (Honoré Champion)

PRIX SPÉCIAL

  • Argyll Editions for Robert Sheckley’s Two Men in the Borderlands , which follows the previous collection, The Time of Reunions, which allows us to (re)discover one of the most exceptional satirists of world science fiction, as well as for the impeccable critical apparatus associated
  • Hervé Chopin Editions for the complete publication of Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St Mary, of which the fourteenth and final volume is appearing
  • Au Diable Vauvert editions for the first translation and first publication in France of the Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia E. Butler, and more generally for their dedication to the work of this author who is essential to the literature of the imagination.
  • Les éditions Belfond pour la publication de Les Âmes de feu d’Annie Francé-Harrar, un roman marquant jusqu’alors inédit en France
  • Romain Lucazeau for his poetry collection Langage|Machine (Verso)
  • The Utopiales 2024 anthology , for the quality of the short stories collected by Jérôme Vincent (ActuSF)

Premio Italia 2025

Posted on by
Reply

The winners of the Premio Italia 2025 were announced April 12 at Fantaxia in Genova, Italy.

ARTISTA / ARTIST

  • Maurizio Manzieri

CURATORE / EDITOR

  • Emanuele Manco

TRADUTTORE / TRANSLATOR

  • Sandro Pergameno

COLLANA / COLLECTION

  • Odissea Fantascienza, Delos Digital

RIVISTA PROFESSIONALE / PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE

  • Fantascienza.com, Delos Books

RIVISTA O SITO WEB NON PROFESSIONALE / NON-PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE OR WEBSITE

SAGGIO / ESSAY

  • Giuliana Misserville, Ursula K. Le Guin e le sovversioni del genere, Asterisco Edizioni

ROMANZO DI AUTORE ITALIANO – FANTASCIENZA / SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

  • Claudio Chillemi, Katane, Delos Digital

ROMANZO DI AUTORE ITALIANO – FANTASY / FANTASY NOVEL

  • Lukha B. Kremo, Le cronache di Leg Horn, la nuova carne

ANTOLOGIA / ANTHOLOGY

  • Lino Aldani, La casa femmina e altri racconti, Mondadori

RACCONTO DI AUTORE ITALIANO SU PUBBLICAZIONE PROFESSIONALE / STORY BY AN ITALIAN AUTHOR IN A PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATION

  • Franci Conforti, Metallo e vetro, Urania, Mondadori

RACCONTO DI AUTORE ITALIANO SU PUBBLICAZIONE AMATORIALE / STORY BY AN ITALIAN AUTHOR IN AN AMATEUR PUBLICATION

  • Clelia Farris, Il paradiso degli sciocchi, Specularia

ARTICOLO SU PUBBLICAZIONE PROFESSIONALE / ARTICLE IN A PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATION

  • Carmine Treanni, Lino Aldani, le radici della fantascienza italiana, Millemondi Urania, Mondadori

ARTICOLO SU PUBBLICAZIONE AMATORIALE / ARTICLE IN AN AMATEUR PUBLICATION

  • Claudio Chillemi, The Fab Four – Il Fantastico Mondo dei Beatles, Fondazione SF 32

ROMANZO INTERNAZIONALE / INTERNATIONAL SF NOVEL

  • John Scalzi, L’eredità di Charlie, Fanucci

FUMETTO DI AUTORE ITALIANO / COMIC BY AN ITALIAN AUTHOR

  • Bruno Enna, Davide Cesarello, 500 piedi, Topolino 3597-3602

FILM FANTASTICO (PREMIO NON UFFICIALE) / FANTASTIC FILM (UNOFFICIAL PRIZE)

  • Dune Parte II

SERIE TELEVISIVA (PREMIO NON UFFICIALE) / TV SERIES (UNOFFICIAL PRIZE) 

  • Fallout