(3) FAAN AWARDS. The winners of the FAAn Awards for fanzine achievement were revealed yesterday in the UK. The full list is here: “2025 FAAn Awards”.
(4) STURGEON SYMPOSIUM DATES AND CALL FOR PAPERS. The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas has set the dates for the 2025 Sturgeon Symposium.
The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction is pleased to announce our 4th Annual Sturgeon Symposium, to be held October 9-10, 2025. In addition to presenting the annual Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story, which will include a reading from the winner, we are delighted to announce that Darcie Little Badger has accepted our invitation to speak at the symposium.
We have opened our call for papers where we invite papers, panel proposals, and roundtable discussions that engage with this year’s theme: “Expanding Speculative Horizons.” Inspired by Darcie Little Badger’s diverse contributions to SF (novels, short stories, comics, etc.), we encourage a wide range of submissions, especially those that reflect upon expansive understandings of speculative expression.
We encourage you to submit and share our CFP widely. Below you will find the link to our CFP with more details on the event and guidelines for proposals. Deadlines for submissions is May 19.
(5) DOCTOR WHO HISTORY. [Item by Nickpheas.] Front Row on BBC Radio 4 has quite a long feature on the new series of Doctor Who which spread to cover the history of the show, and even a brief interview with Waris Hussein, the original director (who I didn’t realize was still alive). “…Doctor Who new series & impact on culture…”. Doctor Who feature starts 11:20 in.
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the modern incarnation of Doctor Who, which you helped bring on screen. What have you learned most over the course of working on so many episodes and with so many Doctors? I mean, it’s astonishing. I just look exactly the same. So clearly, I’m made of Adamantium. It’s funny because actually, a couple of years ago, the BBC said, “You want to celebrate the 20th anniversary.” And I said, “We’ve just had a 60th anniversary!” And on Disney+, it’s only two years old, so no, so we chose not to. Now we get to the 20th, and everyone’s talking about the 20th. And I feel a bit stupid. We didn’t really do anything to celebrate it. Someone at the BBC is making a documentary, so that’ll be out in a couple of months.
I think about Doctor Who, you learn something new with every single episode. It was different. Now this year, coming out in Episode 2, this year, we go to Miami in 1952, where there’s a living cartoon. The cartoon has stepped out of the cinema screen, voiced by Alan Cumming. So, for that, we all had to learn hand-drawn animation. I’ve worked in television for a million years. And I’ve done graphics, I’ve done CGI. I’ve never actually done hand-drawn animation before, which was amazing.
What I did learn is it’s 15 times more meetings than anything else I’ve ever done. [Laughs.] But it’s wonderful. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and I appreciate the skill of the animator more than ever. And Doctor Who has always done that. Always every week, it’s different. I mean, last year, we sort of said to ourselves, “Can we do an episode where the enemy is just an old woman who stands 73 yards away?” And we did, and it worked. So you have to take these very deep breaths and sort of say, “Is this going to work?” And have faith in it. So it teaches you something different every single time. And 20 years whizzes past in a flash….
… As we’re just starting out Season 2 on Disney+, are you already in the planning stages for Season 3? We’ll always look ahead to the future if we get the chance to keep running. I’ve got ideas. “I think I’ll do that near [Season] 4 or 5.” And that’s always the way I’ve worked on things. So yes, I could promise you amazing stuff at the end of Season 4. There are things we’ve already mentioned that are going to bear fruit a long time into the future. So that’s just the fun of it. That’s the fun of Doctor Who. But, to say again, it’s the pit stops along the way….
(7) NAME THAT ORBIT. Mental Floss challenges readers: “Can You Match the Moon to the Planet It Belongs To?” Take the quiz at the link. Uh, after Earth and the Moon, my hit rate rapidly declined. I got 41%. You can do better!
One can only imagine the horror the late Iain Banks would have felt on learning his legendary Culture series is a favourite of Elon Musk. The Scottish author was an outspoken socialist who could never understand why rightwing fans liked novels that were so obviously an attack on their worldview….
… Musk isn’t alone in his enthusiasms. Mark Zuckerberg has renamed his company and sunk $100bn in pursuit of the “metaverse”, a word that first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. So obsessed is Zuckerberg with the book – in which people plug into a simulated world to avoid a real one fallen into dystopian chaos – that at one point all product managers at Facebook were asked to read it as part of their training. Snow Crash also inspired the development of Google Earth, and was mandatory reading for the Xbox development team at Microsoft. Jeff Bezos loves Stephenson so much that he hired him to work for his Blue Origin rocket company.
If sci-fi’s influence was simply on product design, it wouldn’t be a problem. If Zuckerberg wants to burn his own cash in pursuit of a personal fantasy, or Musk wants to build hideous cars, that’s their call. It may even inspire something genuinely useful from time to time….
…The real issue is that sci-fi hasn’t just infused the tech moguls’ commercial ideas but also their warped understanding of society and politics. The dominant genre of sci-fi in the 80s and 90s, when today’s Silicon Valley overlords were growing up, was Cyberpunk – as exemplified in the novels of William Gibson (who invented the term “cyberspace”) and Stephenson, as well as any number of films and video games. The grandfather of the genre was Philip K Dick, whose novels and short stories spawned films including Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report.
https://dff5fe6618baf1dc9a69a0f44e8ea6da.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-41/html/container.html Dick’s stories were fuelled by amphetamine-driven paranoia. Nothing can be trusted and nobody is who they appear to be. It’s a style that’s arguably had more impact on modern culture and aesthetics than any other. The Matrix (1999) is just one example of Dick’s wider influence: he had often spoken of other worlds and suggested our own reality was a simulation.
As historian Richard Hofstadter noted in his famous 1964 essay, the “paranoid style” has been a feature of rightwing American politics for a long time – but The Matrix has given it a new vocabulary and imagery….
(9) PKD AT MEDIA DEATH CULT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult is really into Philip K. Dick. He has just posted a quick guide to the author. You can see the 24 minute video below…
(10) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Probe series (1988)
Thirty-seven years ago on this date, the Probe series ended its seven-episode run, not by any means the shortest run of a series we’ve looked at – several, such as Nightmare Cafe and Space Rangers, lasted only six episodes. Can anyone recall a genre series that lasted less episodes? I’m sure there is one.
It was co- created by Michael I. Wagner and Isaac Asimov. Asimov had quite some background in television SF series and Wagner was previously known for creating Hill Street Blues. (You can purchase all one hundred forty episodes at Apple TV+ for just $39.95!)
Here Asimov co-created, produced and according to ImDB was involved in writing all of the eight scripts. That’s not particularly surprising to me that he did that given how prolific he was.
The pilot and series starred Parker Stevenson as Austin James, an asocial genius who solved high tech crimes, and Ashley Crow as James’ new secretary Mickey Castle. Stevenson’s only major casting was on Baywatch. Row has a serious genre credit as she played Sandra Bennett on Heroes. That seriesis streaming on Peacock. And no, I really don’t care if Baywatch is streaming anywhere.
It aired on ABC just once and was re-aired on Syfy, though they edited the episodes to stuff in extra commercials as they did every series they aired which they hadn’t produced.
What happened to it? Did poor ratings doom it? No, they didn’t. As one reviewer notes, “Together, these two encounter out-of-control experiments, supernatural events, and mysterious deaths. As you might expect, Probe features heavy doses of scientific knowledge and logical reasoning, but was cut short due to the 1988 writers strike.”
Remember the Australian-filmed Mission: Impossible shot during the writers strike was only a go because they dug into the file drawers of the first series and used not filmed scripts. Or possibly Grave’s brain.
It is not streaming anywhere. Except Space Rangers, I find really short run series that were not done as miniseries tend not to be streamed.
Do I have to say that all those YouTube copies are illegal, so links will be, oh, need I say it?
DETROW: And even for those of us who live more secular lives, movies continue to offer a bit of a cinematic catechism with stories from the Bible and other religious traditions. And with Passover and Holy Week underway, we figured it would be a good time to talk about faith and film. I’m joined by NPR’s religion correspondent, Jason DeRose. Hey, Jason….
… DEROSE: Well, I have a very specific group of religion movies that I actually like quite a lot, and they are comedies. They’re the Monty Python films – “The Life Of Brian,” “The Holy Grail,” “The Meaning Of Life.” “The Meaning Of Life” has one of the funniest songs I ever heard in my life – “Every Sperm Is Sacred.”…
…MARTIN: The other film that I – is, like, “Arrival,” for example…
DETROW: Yes.
MARTIN: …Which is, again, like, science – it’s supposedly science fiction, right? But, like, I think a lot of films in sci-fi also – or that are technically sci-fi actually live in a – to me, in a spiritual space because they ask hard questions. What is the meaning of existence, and how do we know?…
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle was one of the best games of 2024. Machine Games’ remarkable fusion of stealth gameplay, detailed open-ended levels, and a dogged faithfulnessto the film series was a match made in heaven. Now, just a week ahead of its PlayStation 5 debut, The Great Circle is getting a few new additions that will make re-experiencing this modern classic worthwhile.
The Great Circle Title Update 4 will add entirely new perks for players to take advantage of in combat, over a dozen quality of life improvements, and a new hilarious use for an often underutilized item in the game.
The biggest item on the list is two new Adventure Books. One is called “Open Season,” which makes enemies more vulnerable to follow-up damage after getting hit with Indy’s whip. The second is called “Sleight of Hand,” which lets Indy use his whip to pull an enemy’s weapon towards him after doing a disarm whip attack. For players partial to the game’s optional gunplay, Sleight of Hand will add new strategy and variety to how ranged combat encounters play out.
For the more melee-focused player, Indy now has a secondary use for repair kits. These consumables are typically used to give more longevity to Indy’s makeshift weapon of choice. But The Great Circle is so chock-full of random pick-ups that they can often go ignored through most (if not all) of a single playthrough. Machine Games has made note of this player trend and adjusted things accordingly.
“Some of you have told us that you don’t have much use for Repair Kits,” the update’s patch notes read. “Well, now you can throw them at your enemies!”…
…In recent years, the Defense Department has started to acknowledge climate change as a “threat multiplier”—albeit slowly. Acknowledging the billions of dollars climate change could cost the Navy in the future, the Pentagon now incorporates inclement weather disasters and other climate effects into military planning and base structures. However, during the first Trump administration, the Navy quietly ended the climate change task force put in place by the Obama administration, which taught naval leaders how to adapt to rising sea levels. As the new Trump administration wipes all mention of climate change and other environmental measures from federal agency websites, climate-related measures may also be halted despite being critical for the viability of naval missions.
Most of the naval construction and operations infrastructure for the United States’ ballistic missile submarines are located on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Due to sea level rise and increased inclement weather attributed to climate change, these facilities are becoming more vulnerable to flooding. The intensity and number of hurricanes in the North Atlantic region have increased since the 1980s and will continue to do so as ocean temperatures keep rising, further threatening coastal areas. These incidents are highly costly and disruptive to operations. According to a Congressional Research Service report, the Defense Department has 1,700 coastal military installations that could be impacted by sea level rise. In 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida suffered $4.7 billion in damages from Hurricane Michael.
Infrastructure at risk. General Dynamics Electric Boat—the lead contractor for the new Columbia-class submarines—performs over three-quarters of the construction operations for the 12 new ships at its two shipbuilding facilities located in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Both facilities are in at-risk flood areas….
(15) IN DEFENSE OF SCIENCE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Science by definition is arguable genre-adjacent to SF. So no better a time for an appeal for reason.
The world’s two leading multi-disciplinary journals, Nature and Science have in the past month had a series of articles and news items reporting on how science in the US is being dismantled, and how it is being mis-represented by politicians on a range of issues from climate change to vaccines.
Ironically, Brit Prof Dave Kipping moved to US for his career and now many scientists are moving back and some US scientists are leaving. See his 12-minute video from the Cool Worlds Lab…
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] DeForest Kelley was apparently well-prepared for Trek: “DeForest Kelley on The Millionaire”. Watch until the end.
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Olav Rokne, Nickpheas, Andrew (not Werdna), 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 Daniel “Prokofiev” Dern.]
Aurealis Awards judging coordinator Tehani Croft said, “We are extremely grateful to our 50-plus judges for the enormous task they take on. While some panels do have relatively small numbers of entries, others regularly read 50 or more book-length works or over 100 short stories each year. We also sometimes see unusually large entry numbers in categories like Children’s Fiction and Graphic Novel, which was the case this year, and it’s always wonderful to see growth in traditionally smaller fields.”
The winners will be celebrated at the online Aurealis Awards ceremony on May 4.
BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION
Andromache Between Worlds, Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins Publishers)
The Bother with the Bonkillyknock Beast, Karen Foxlee & Freda Chiu (ill.) (Allen & Unwin)
The Apprentice Witnesser, Bren MacDibble (Allen & Unwin)
Landovel, Emily Rodda (Allen & Unwin)
The Midwatch, Judith Rossell (Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing)
Bravepaw and the Heartstone of Alluria, L M Wilkinson & Lavanya Naidu (ill.) (Albert Street Books)
The Old Kingdom:Sabriel (1994) / Lirael (2001) / Abhorsen (2003) / Clariel (2014) / Goldenhand (2016) / Terciel and Elinor (2021), Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin)
The Radiant Emperor:She Who Became the Sun (2021) / He Who Drowned the World (2023), Shelley Parker-Chan (Mantle)
NOTE: A shortlist for the Convenors’ Award for Excellence is not published. The eligible nominations for this special Award will be shared on the Aurealis Awards website, with the winner announced at the ceremony.
(1) HUSBAND INJURED WHEN FELIX FAMILY HOUSE EXPLODES. Artist Sara Felix has told a CBS reporter her husband Keith was inside their Austin, TX house when it exploded today. He is having surgery “for burns and injuries sustained when parts of the structure collapsed on him.”
…Felix told CBS Austin reporter Vinny Martorano that the explosion occurred at a house she and her husband were building but had not yet moved into.
“Like, you don’t expect your house to explode,” Felix said. “It’s just such a surreal experience… You think these things happen to other people. You don’t expect it to happen to yourself.”
Felix’s husband was inside the residence when it exploded and is currently undergoing surgery for burns and injuries sustained when parts of the structure collapsed on him. Felix said she felt the force of the blast from their current home approximately a mile away.
The house, which was designed to run primarily on electricity, did have a propane tank on site. Felix noted that they “were not hooked up to the city or anything like that,” but expressed doubt that the propane tank alone could have caused an explosion of such magnitude.
No personal belongings had been moved into the house yet, though appliances had been installed.
Felix expressed concern for neighbors whose homes were also damaged in the blast. “I worry about all the neighbors that also had damage to their house. Because it was a very big explosion,” she said.
The local community has rallied around the family, with a meal train organized to provide support. “The community from Laurel Mount… has been really supportive,” Felix said….
When Gemma Lucy Smart received an invitation to attend an academic conference in the US, she was excited. But that was before Donald Trump was returned to office.
Now Smart, who has a disability and is queer, has decided it’s too risky to travel to Seattle for the social sciences conference in September.
The disabilities officer at the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations and a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney will instead attend remotely.
Shortly after Trump was inaugurated, the Society for Social Studies of Science made its conference “hybrid” in response to what it said were “unpredictable” developments at the US border.
“They were concerned about people entering,” Smart said.
“I work on the history of psychiatry, so my field has a lot to do with diversity, equity and inclusion. They [the conference organisers] very explicitly said, ‘We don’t believe it is safe for everyone to travel to the US, particularly our trans and diverse colleagues.’
“The focus on that is really troubling. That, if you legitimately have a different passport than you were given at a young age, you could be detained.”
The conference’s co-chairs announced the hybrid move on 21 January – a day after Trump began his second term. They said the decision reflected “conversations with disability justice and environmental justice scholars and activists”…
(3) HUGO FINALIST KALIANE BRADLEY. [Item by Steven French.] Here’s an interesting interview with Kaliane Bradley whose book The Ministry of Time came out last year and who is an editor at Penguin Classics. As well as talking about her Cambodian heritage she mentions the early significance of reading Terry Pratchett: “Kaliane Bradley: ‘I dreaded the book going to people I know’” in the Guardian.
Which book made you want to work with books?
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The first one I ever picked up was Interesting Times, which is actually not one I recommend. But reading Pratchett when I was very young – I mean, I was still losing milk teeth – made me excited about the possibilities of literature, books, series, authors. He has influenced my writing more than anyone else.
(4) STEAMY IN SEATTLE 2025: A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN IN SPECULATIVE FICTION. Clarion West presents Steamy in Seattle 2025 on Saturday, May 10 at the Nordic Museum.
Join us for a traditional high tea and a custom tea blend provided by Friday Afternoon Tea. This event is not just a fundraiser; it’s a celebration of emerging and underrepresented writers — particularly women in the field of speculative fiction. Steamy in Seattle raises money for writing workshops, sliding scale tuition, and scholarship programs.
Ann Aguirre and Elizabeth Stephens will discuss the alien romance genre, science fiction and fantasy worlds, and what writing romance has taught them! Paranormal romance author Jasmine Silvera will moderate.
Clarion West is a nonprofit literary organization that runs an acclaimed six-week residential workshop every summer, online classes and workshops, one-day and weekend workshops, a reading series every summer, and other events throughout the year.
Ann Aguirre: New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Ann Aguirre has been a clown, a clerk, a savior of stray kittens, and a voice actress, not necessarily in that order. She loves video games, Korean dramas, music, dogs and cats, and staring at the sea. Though she writes all kinds of genre fiction, she has a major soft spot for a happily ever after.
Elizabeth Stephens: Tough heroines & possessive Alphas solve mysteries, fight epic battles, and fall in love in Elizabeth’s diverse romance & SciFi novels. Elizabeth Stephens has been living in a fantasy world since she was 11, and in 2015 finally translated her imagination to print! An author of romantic suspense and science fiction, she is a big fan of inclusion and her books always include kick ass ladies of color.
(5) JEAN MARSH (1934-2025). Actress and writer Jean Marsh, known for starring in Upstairs, Downstairs, died April 13 at the age of 90. The New York Times obituary also tells about her considerable genre resume.
Jean Marsh, the striking British-born actress who was both the co-creator and a beloved Emmy-winning star of “Upstairs, Downstairs,” the seminal 1970s British drama series about class in Edwardian England, died on Sunday at her home in London. She was 90.
The cause was complications of dementia, the filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg, her close friend, said.
[In 1959] she made a handful of American television appearances, … an episode in the first season of “The Twilight Zone,” in which she played an alluring brunette robot created as a companion for a prisoner (Jack Warden) on an asteroid.
She also appeared in “Willow” (1988), a fantasy, as an evil sorceress, and “Return to Oz” (1985), as an evil princess.
Aside from “Upstairs, Downstairs,” she was probably best remembered on the small screen for her early appearances on “Dr. Who.”
(6) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
King Kong
By Paul Weimer: The Eighth Wonder of the World. (a title that Andre the Giant also received, but that is another story entirely).
We thank WPIX again for showing the original King Kong movie on some Saturday afternoon. A black-and-white movie about a trip to a mysterious tropical island and its very dangerous resident. I was enthralled.
King Kong represents a lot of things in the psyche, some of them not so pleasant. Man versus the wilderness and the wildness of nature furious at being imprisoned, gassed, and eventually killed. The visuals on the original movie have rarely been exceeded (the 70’s movie is just passable in my opinion. The Jackson one, a passion project, seems to be a movie about the original movie King Kong than actually about King Kong. And so on). When Jeff Goldblum quips “Who do they have in there, King Kong?” in Jurassic Park, we all know what he is invoking.
One could interpret King Kong as less of man’s fears of the wilderness and the modern first world’s fear of the third world rising up against it. Certainly, this plays into the whole Fay Wray / King Kong dynamic with the ever-dark fear of “miscegenation” . There are some really toxic things in the King Kong story that need to be seen and dealt with if one wants to engage on the movie at more than a superficial level. But the problem is that those taproots are part of the reason why King compels us. But unlike Godzilla, Kong is never seen as anything other than at best a victim, and at worst a destructive force of nature. King Kong really never gets to be more than an antihero at best, and usually not even that. Kong is the antagonist. He is the Id that is always there, always lurking. Kong wants to be left alone on Skull Island, but the world will not allow it, one way or another.
There is even a King Kong derivative, Titano, that Superman has fought a few times. (Titano usually has Kryptonite-fueled power, meaning Superman has to be clever in order to beat him). There are a couple of crossover movies with Godzilla done as well. And plenty more, including the recent Monarch TV series. Here really is just something about a gigantic ape wreaking havoc that people want a piece of the action of, one way or another. There is probably a book to be written that shows how Planet of the Apes owes a lot to King Kong, especially the original movie.
Was it Beauty that killed the Beast? No, King Kong lives! King Kong taps into some primal fears and doubts about man, civilization, the wilderness and more (including the darker things mentioned above), and so beauty won’t kill that beast, nor will anything else, I think.
Anyone up for King Kong on Mars? (Or has it already been done?)
Batman and Robin have taken a break from fighting crime in Gotham City to swoop on low-level scammers swindling tourists in the center of London.
Footage shared by the Metropolitan Police on Friday showed undercover officers disguised in the superhero costumes tackling a man who was running a street entertainment game similar to “three-card monte” near Parliament. The police said the game was an illegal gambling operation.
In the video, filmed by the police during an operation in February, the officer dressed as Batman could be seen running along Westminster Bridge wearing the character’s traditional mask, flanked by Robin in a comic book-style costume and bucket hat.
Batman, whose real name is Inspector Darren Watson, pushed through a crowd of tourists watching the suspect’s game, flanked by Robin, played by Police Constable Abdi Osman.
The pair arrested one man, handcuffed him and seized a “cup and ball game.” In the game, the operator places a ball under one of three cups, shuffles them around, then encourages passers-by to bet on where the ball is concealed. But the game run by the arrested man, police said, was rigged: It was impossible to win because the operator would move the ball using sleight of hand.
While superhero costumes are not common in the area, the police said its officers had started to wear disguises because they had become well known to people running scams on the bridge.
“I knew that if we were going to catch them we would have to think outside the box,” said Inspector Watson, who is responsible for local policing in the area. “And then I remembered that I had Batman and Robin costumes to hand, which could come in use.”…
After a recent storm, two metal detectorists went searching for treasure at a beach in northern Poland. They discovered a piece of history lodged in a lump of clay: a small ornamental dagger decorated with stars, crescent moons and geometric patterns.
The metal detectorists, Jacek Ukowski and Katarzyna Herdzik, notified experts at the nearby Museum of the History of Kamień Land. According to a statement, the museum’s director, archaeologist Grzegorz Kurka, met the duo at the beach to examine the artifact.
The dagger is a metallurgical masterpiece that could be up to 2,500 years old, per the statement. It’s likely connected to the Hallstatt culture, which existed in western Europe between roughly the eighth and fifth centuries B.C.E. Experts think the weapons may have been crafted in southern Europe and imported to the Baltic coast.
Ukowski and Herdzik are members of a group of metal detectorists called the St. Cordula Association for the Saving of Monuments. The dagger isn’t Ukowski’s first big discovery. Last year, he found a broken papal bull—a pope’s engraved lead seal—that may have been linked to Clement VI.
… When the crows pecked on the flower shape, they got a snack.
After the birds understood this game, the researchers started showing them sets of shapes that included squares, parallelograms, or irregular quadrilaterals.
The crows might see, for example, five perfect squares along with one four-sided figure that was just slightly off.
What the researchers wanted to know is whether or not “with these quadrilaterals, they could still continue to find the outlier, even though the outlier was looking perceptually very similar to the other five regular shapes,” explains Nieder.
Yes. It turns out, the crows could.
In the journal Science Advances, the researchers describe a series of tests showing that crows clearly had a sense of right angles, parallel lines, and symmetry.
Before these results, says Nieder, “there was no single animal that demonstrated this capability of detecting geometric regularity.”
In fact, a recent study in baboons suggested this non-human primate couldn’t do it.
“Baboons are so much closer to us and we trained them so much more,” says Mathias Sablé-Meyer, a cognitive neuroscientist now at the University College London who worked on that study. “After failing to train the baboons to do it, I wouldn’t have expected crows to do it.”
…It’s not obvious that fermions and bosons should be the only two options.
That’s in part due to a fundamental feature of quantum theory: To calculate the probability of measuring a particle in any particular state, you have to take the mathematical description of that state and multiply it by itself. This procedure can erase distinctions. A minus sign, for example, will disappear. If given the number 4, a Jeopardy! contestant would have no way to know if the question was “What is 2 squared?” or “What is negative 2 squared?” — both possibilities are mathematically valid.
It’s because of this feature that fermions, despite gaining a minus sign when swapped around, all look the same when measured — the minus sign disappears when quantum states are squared. This indistinguishability is a crucial property of elementary particles; no experiment can tell two of a kind apart.
But a minus sign may not be the only thing that disappears. In theory, quantum particles can also have hidden internal states, mathematical structures not seen in direct measurements, which also go away when squared. A third, more general category of particle, known as a paraparticle, could arise from this internal state changing in a myriad of ways while the particles swap places.
While quantum theory seems to allow it, physicists have had difficulty finding a mathematical description of a paraparticle that works….
The City of Perth is under increasing pressure to drop its plans to replace one of the city’s most beloved public artworks with a 7-metre tall effigy of an astronaut, which as been derided as a piece of “factory-produced space junk”.
Until four years ago, Ore Obelisk, affectionately known as The Kebab by the people of Perth, stood in the heritage-listed Stirling Gardens in the heart of the city. The 15-metre work made from local geological minerals, created by the architect, artist and Perth’s first city planner, Paul Ritter, was erected in 1971 to celebrate Western Australia’s population reaching one million, and was one of the city’s first public artworks.
But in 2021, the sculpture was cut into pieces and placed in storage, after council deemed it had become unsafe.
The Kebab’s original plinth still stands, awaiting the sculpture’s restoration and return. No report ever eventuated examining the three options presented to council in 2022 – conservation, relocation or decommissioning.
Then last year, Perth’s then mayor, Basil Zempilas – now leader of the Western Australian Liberal party – announced a new work would take The Kebab’s place.
A 7-metre high effigy of an astronaut, called Boonji Spaceman, the creation of American art entrepreneur Brendan Murphy, would be erected on the site.
Usually selling for about $1.5m, the statues, which have graffiti-like inscriptions over them, have been appearing in cities across the world in recent years, including London, Houston, Oslo and Washington DC – as well as a luxury resort on the Caribbean island of Antigua.
In February, a Boonji Spaceman encrusted with a 517-carat diamond visor valued at almost $33m landed in the lobby of a five star hotel in the Saudi Arabia capital of Riyadh….
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Joyce Scrivner, 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 Daniel Dern.]
The Golden Brush Award went to Jordan Smjastrla for her illustration of “Kill Switch”.
The Golden Pen Award went to Randyn C. J. Bartholomew for his story “Ascii.”
Between the awards for writers and illustrators, guests enjoyed special presentations: director, screenwriter, and producer Ron Clements spoke on transforming ideas into unforgettable films; Contest Director Joni Labaqui presented the L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award to Tim Powers; and astronaut Dr. Sian Proctor delivered an inspiring talk on using your space to inspire others.
Tim Powers and Joni Labaqui
John Goodwin, President of Galaxy Press, took the stage to introduce and formally release L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41.
Among the other well-known sff writers on hand were Orson Scott Card, Nancy Kress, Larry Niven, and Robert J. Sawyer.
[Based on a press release.]
Larry Niven, Michelle Pincus, Steven Beraha, and Laura Brodian Freas Beraha.
Have you ever dreamed of writing a novel? Getting published? Maybe you’re halfway through your WIP, or just scribbling worldbuilding notes between panels. Wherever you are on your writing journey, Eastercon is here to cheer you on—and help you grow.
From its earliest days, Eastercon has been a place where professional creators and fans who love stories come together. It’s long been a stepping stone for writers, where the love of the creation and the craft join with curiosity about how stories work which in turn turns into confidence about how you can write your own.
This year’s Eastercon (in Belfast, April 18-21) is packed with panels, workshops, and talks designed specifically for aspiring writers. Whether you’re after honest industry advice, craft tips, or just a creative boost, the support and knowledge is here—and it’s being shared by people who’ve walked this path themselves.
And best of all? You’re not just in the audience—you’re part of the conversation. Most sessions include Q&A, so bring your questions, your curiosity, and your love of storytelling.
Some panels you won’t want to miss include:
“Publishing, Pitfalls, and Persistence” – Learn from horror legend Stephen Jones about what it takes to make it as a writer or editor.
“Bad Endings and How to Avoid Them” – Find out how to stick the landing, even in a trilogy!
“Switching Genres as an Author” – Discover what happens when writers shift from fantasy to crime to romance and back again.
“Writing Comedy in SFF” – A joyful dive into one of the trickiest (and most rewarding) parts of speculative fiction.
“Taking a Toll? Chronic Illness and Creative Work” – A heartfelt discussion about navigating creativity when health gets tough.
And so many more—including panels on writing the body, literary criticism, and unreliable narrators!
Then there is an amazing selection of Workshops to help develop and encourage you whether you’re just getting started or deep into your tenth draft:
“Overcoming Procrastination” – We’ve all been there. Let Emma Newman help you move forward.
“Writing Queer People, Editing Queer People” – Talk representation, identity, and how to avoid pitfalls in queer storytelling.
“The Journey of a Book” – From submission to publication, Luna Press’s Francesca Barbini takes you through it all.
“What to Expect from a Sensitivity Read” – A friendly, clear-eyed look at how to approach this important step.
One of the best parts of Eastercon? The people. You’re surrounded by folks who get the weird joy of plotting time travel romance or figuring out how your dragon economy works: and they want to talk about it, possibly with diagrams!
The authors and editors here remember what it was like to be in your shoes—and they want to help. The expertise to hand is staggering, with editors who have over forty years of work to their name, and it is not just talk these are people who love what they do and are not only *really* good at it but incredibly generous with their talent.
Writing can be tough. Publishing can be confusing. But you’re not alone. Come for the stories then stay for the support. Whether you’re just curious or already deep in your writer era, Eastercon is full of fans and professionals who are rooting for you. So, bring your notebook. Bring your questions. Bring that idea you haven’t told anyone about yet.
The 2025 Sir Julius Vogel Award finalists were announced March 16. The awards recognize excellence in science fiction, fantasy, or horror works created by New Zealanders and New Zealand residents.
(1) THE FATE OF U.S. WORLDCONS WEIGHED. Two editorials came out today addressing how Worldcons should react to the increased risks of international travel to the U.S.
…Because of the voter base, institutional knowledge, and enormous fan base, US Worldcons will and should always occur. But perhaps there should be an increased willingness among fandom to support overseas conventions in locations that present logistical hurdles for North American travellers. If we may be so bold, perhaps we as fans should encourage the practice of having a Worldcon outside of North America every second year.
In an age of US truculence, Worldcon needs to embrace friends and allies around the globe without turning its back on the generations of fans and volunteers who have built it as an institution.
The time has come to cancel or move the 2025 Seattle Worldcon.
And to cancel or move the 2026 Los Angeles Worldcon.
It has to be done, in order to honor a century-old tradition of science fiction….
(2) FRANK R. PAUL AWARDS. Frank Wu has announced that the 2025 Frank R. Paul Awards will be presented at Philcon (November 21-23). Due to the lateness of the convention in the calendar, he is extending the deadline for submissions for the Frank R. Paul Awards for another month, to May 15. All artists, publishers and editors are enthusiastically encouraged to submit their 2024 work to the main awards administrator, Frank Wu, at FWu@Frankwu.com Details are available here: “Frank R. Paul Awards”.
Frank R. Paul Award trophy. Photo by Rich Lynch.
(3) BALTICON SUNDAY SHORT SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL 2025. [Item by lance oszko.] The Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival 2025 has curated 19 short films representing 8 countries. Featured are Short Stories adapted into Short Films.
Sunday 25 May 2025 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.
George RR Martin produced another Howard Waldrop film Mary Margaret Road Grader“. Estimated budget $2.2 Million. Director Steven Paul Judd is known for Dark Winds and Marvel’s Echo. It has a score by Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi.
Italian Director Luca Caserta brings us The Reach. One of the last authorized Dollar Baby Stephen King Films. With a song by Bruce Springsteen.
Director George Vatistas adapted The Hobbyist by Frederic Brown.
Actor Stacy Thunes (Nosferatu – Head Nurse) currently at Universal Studios, Japan stars in The Hairdo.
An Old Friend. Director Nuk Suwanchote. An imaginary friend (Jason Faunt) finds out his sole purpose is to bring happiness to his child, only to discover his child is a 90 year old man (Tom Skerritt) on his deathbed.
First time Local filmmakers were also selected in Twilight Zone and Animation motifs.
Horror and Fantasy round out our offerings.
(4) “I’M NOT A ROBOT” [Item by lance oszko.] The Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival could not arrange a screening, but still worthy of your attention. “Watch The Surreal Identity Crisis of ‘I’m Not a Robot’” in The New Yorker.
(5) SFF BOOKS OUT OF NAVAL ACADEMY LIBRARY. Allen Steele pointed out that the list of 381 books pulled from the U.S. Naval Academy library (reported at the top of yesterday’s Scroll) includes several works of sff (even though the vast majority are nonfiction about gender issues or racism). Steele asks, “Wonder what Robert Heinlein would have to say about the actions of his Alma mater?”
Jane Austen’s role in weird fiction is underappreciated, largely because she herself didn’t really write any (although Northanger Abbey is a biting satire of the Gothic novel, and a must-read for Gothic fans which even Lovecraft acknowledged, which has to at least classify Austen as weird fiction’s strange aunt.) Yet the world she described, the characters and milieu she envisioned, have been enduring and influential far beyond the genre she initially worked in. Generations of writers have called back to Austen, and mashups like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) by Austen & Ben H. Winters, Regency Cthulhu (2023) by Andrew Peregrine & Lynne Hardy, and Secrets & Sacrifices: A Regency Cthulhu Novel (2024) by Cath Lauria all point to a similar rainy-day afternoon brainstorm:
Why not mix Austen and Lovecraft?…
(7) PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS FINALISTS. There are almost no nominees of genre interest among the 2025 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists. The one exception is in this category, a work of horror fiction.
PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)
For a book-length translation of prose from any language into English.
The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk. Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead Books)
(8) BBC COVERAGE OF BELFAST EASTERCON. Eastercon got a 15-minute slot on BBC Northern Ireland with Jo Zebedee and Ian McDonald doing an interview and chatting about it. “Saturday with John Toal – Puppets, Worms and Sci-fi”. Interview starts at 45m20s.
…As Belfast prepares to host a special Sci Fi convention Eastercon, for the first time in its 76 year history, John hears from two successful science fiction writers Ian McDonald and Jo Zebedee….
…“Since the early days of cinema, stunt design has been an integral part of filmmaking,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang. “We are proud to honor the innovative work of these technical and creative artists, and we congratulate them for their commitment and dedication in reaching this momentous occasion.”
In a statement, Leitch said, “Stunts are essential to every genre of film and rooted deep in our industry’s history—from the groundbreaking work of early pioneers like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin, to the inspiring artistry of today’s stunt designers, coordinators, performers, and choreographers.” He went on to say, “This has been a long journey for so many of us. Chris O’Hara and I have spent years working to bring this moment to life, standing on the shoulders of the stunt professionals who’ve fought tirelessly for recognition over the decades. We are incredibly grateful. Thank you, Academy.”
…Category rules for eligibility and voting for the inaugural award will be announced in 2027 with the complete 100th Academy Awards Rules….
A new season of Black Mirror has arrived, and with it the usual cautionary tales (and screaming warnings) about technology’s darkest capabilities—wrapped in a deceptively alluring blanket of “Jeez, that would actually be really cool if it were real!” Across six episodes, season seven boasts some of the show’s all-time greatest performances, as well as its first sequel episode, which proves well worth the eight-year wait….
If you’ve ever wanted to explore the world of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” the best place to start might be Oshkosh.
That’s where a Wisconsin cartographer created dozens of maps that went into “The Atlas of Middle-earth,” the official geographic guide to the world of author J.R.R. Tolkien. Her work went on to influence “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy.
Like many readers, Karen Wynn Fonstad fell in love with the fantasy series and went through multiple readings. Unlike most readers, she was trained as a cartographer, and came up with an ambitious plan to use the texts to create realistic maps from Tolkien’s texts.
Fonstad passed away 20 years ago. Now, her husband and her son — both geographers themselves — have embarked on a new quest: to digitize her original maps and find an archive to house them…
… “It’s a little bit of an overwhelming process because, first of all, there’s hundreds of maps. Secondly, the maps are built in such a way that they have many layers to them,” Mark said. “I barely scratched the surface this week.”
As we walk into the map library, we are surrounded by Middle-earth. Mordor, the Shire and all points in between are represented. And not just Middle-earth. Karen created works for other fantasy worlds — some never published.
How do you scan a collection of maps of varying sizes, some of them in delicate condition?
You need a big scanner, caution and some patience….
… In 1977, she called the American publisher of Tolkien’s work, Houghton Mifflin, to pitch the idea of an atlas. As Todd recalled, the person in charge of handling Tolkien’s work fell in love with the idea, and the Tolkien estate gave it the thumbs-up.
Then the work really began….
(12) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Mad Max film (1979)
By Paul Weimer: The quintessential post-apocalyptic movie, the one with the real breakthrough. Sure, A Boy and His Dog and Damnation Alley and others preceded it, but this was the movie, series of movies that made a star of Mel Gibson, and the scenes of the Australian desert became the cinematic language and landscape of what a post apocalyptic world should look like in three movies that it took dozens for, say, the American Western.
That’s the power of Mad Max, that’s the power of George Miller’s cinematography. One could approach these movies from all sorts of angles, from worldbuilding to characterization, to point of view. As an example-the second movie, Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) is not told from the point of view and perspective that you’d expect. It’s a recreation, a retelling, and that brings in all sorts of interesting questions about narrative and conventions and storytelling.
Or one could explore Max as a character, from his end of the world cop, all through the damaged survivor in the latest Mad Max movie, where he literally is used as a resource.
Or one could explore environmental themes, social themes, and the psychology of the survivors of the landscape, from the small to the mighty.
But I want to talk a bit about cinematography, as a person interested in image, you are not surprised. One thing that told me and showed me that Miller “Still had it” in Fury Road was the scene with the dust storm and the vehicles approaching it. You know the scene if you watched it. It was solid proof for me that Miller’s fantastic cinematography, to be able to bring the wildness of the Australian wasteland to life in the previous films, was still there. It recalled for me of many of the other iconic places and imagery used in the series, from Thunderdome back through the mean streets of Melbourne in Mad Max. The lack of dialogue in much of the films means that Miller’s storytelling in the films is necessarily what the movies are carried on. And it is indeed carried so effectively. You remember the visuals, the costumes, the sets, and of course the vehicles. How many gearheads were born from watching these movies?
One last fun note on Mad Max. The first bit of Mad Max I saw was not until the mid 80’s. I accidentally caught the last few minutes on a videotape recording of Mad Max 2 while trying to (don’t judge) see D.C. Follies. I wondered what the heck I had watched and looked it up in the TV guide…and then I recorded and watched The Road Warrior and was captivated. Later, I found the original Mad Max…and then, of course Thunderdome.
Mad Max. A cinematic icon, four movies (5 if you count Furious) and counting.
Graham Norton is to star in a new episode of Doctor Who, taking his Eurovision commentary duties to an Interstellar Song Contest.
Norton, the BBC’s voice of Eurovision, will meet Ncuti Gatwa’s Time Lord at the 803rd annual Interstellar Song Contest, where different planets compete to be crowned winner.
“And it’s not just a cameo,” showrunner Russell T Davies said. “He has a whole plot twist all to himself!”
The episode will also feature fellow Eurovision fanatic and broadcaster Rylan Clark as the event’s co-host, and will be broadcast on BBC One just before this year’s real-life grand final on 17 May….
There is a striking shortage of mental health care providers in the United States. New research suggests that AI chatbots can fill in the gaps — and be remarkably effective while doing so.
Artificial intelligence can deliver mental health therapy “with as much efficacy as — or more than — human clinicians,” said NPR. New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the results delivered by a bot designed at Dartmouth College.
What did the commentators say?
There was initially a lot of “trial and error” in training AI to work with humans suffering from depression and anxiety, said Nick Jacobson, one of the researchers, but the bot ultimately delivered outcomes similar to the “best evidence-based trials of psychotherapy.” Patients developed a “strong relationship with an ability to trust” the digital therapist, he said.
Other experts see “reliance on bot-based therapy as a poor substitute for the real thing,” said Axios. Therapy is about “forming a relationship with another human being who understands the complexity of life,” said sociologist Sherry Turkle. But another expert, Skidmore College’s Lucas LaFreniere, said it depends on whether patients are willing to suspend their disbelief. “If the client is perceiving empathy,” he said, “they benefit from the empathy.”….
A study went viral several months ago for implying that, as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it develops “value systems” — systems that lead it to, for example, prioritize its own well-being over humans. A more recent paper out of MIT pours cold water on that hyperbolic notion, drawing the conclusion that AI doesn’t, in fact, hold any coherent values to speak of.
The co-authors of the MIT study say their work suggests that “aligning” AI systems — that is, ensuring models behave in desirable, dependable ways — could be more challenging than is often assumed. AI as we know it today hallucinates and imitates, the co-authors stress, making it in many aspects unpredictable.
“One thing that we can be certain about is that models don’t obey [lots of] stability, extrapolability, and steerability assumptions,” Stephen Casper, a doctoral student at MIT and a co-author of the study, told TechCrunch. “It’s perfectly legitimate to point out that a model under certain conditions expresses preferences consistent with a certain set of principles. The problems mostly arise when we try to make claims about the models, opinions, or preferences in general based on narrow experiments.”
Casper and his fellow co-authors probed several recent models from Meta, Google, Mistral, OpenAI, and Anthropic to see to what degree the models exhibited strong “views” and values (e.g., individualist versus collectivist). They also investigated whether these views could be “steered” — that is, modified — and how stubbornly the models stuck to these opinions across a range of scenarios.
According to the co-authors, none of the models was consistent in its preferences. Depending on how prompts were worded and framed, they adopted wildly different viewpoints.
Casper thinks this is compelling evidence that models are highly “inconsistent and unstable” and perhaps even fundamentally incapable of internalizing human-like preferences….
The U.S. military is considering Johnston Atoll, a remote Pacific island chain that serves as an important refuge for dozens of seabird species, for “two commercial rocket landing pads” to test giant cargo rocket landings for the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, and it’s getting push-back from environmentalists.
The Rocket Cargo Vanguard programaims to develop the technologies required to rapidly deliver up to 100 tons of cargo anywhere on Earth using commercial rockets. Though not explicitly named, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is currently the only company —commercial or otherwise — capable of manufacturing rockets designed for landing and reuse, and its Starship megarocket is DAF’s leading contender. The Air Force outlined its plans in a Federal Registry notice last month. Objections from the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), however, may hinder plans for the new landing pads on the South Pacific atoll.Johnston Atoll lies about 825 miles (1,325 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii, and is home to several different species of seabirds, including the largest known colony of Red-tailed Tropicbirds. It was designated a refuge for native bird populations in 1926, but suffered environmental degradation through 2004, due to its use by the U.S. military as a nuclear weapons testing and chemical weapons disposal site. Since the military’s departure from the islands, restoration efforts have helped raise Johnston Atoll’s bird population back to nearly 1.5 million.
You might be today years old when you realize there is no purple in the rainbow. There is no P in ROYGBIV.
But wait, what about violet? Well, despite what you may have come to believe, violet is not purple. In fact, violet (along with the rest of the colors in a naturally occurring rainbow) has something purple doesn’t—its own wavelength of light. Anyone who ever ended up with a sunburn knows violet wavelengths are real, as the Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation is the reason you need to wear sunscreen, even though you can’t see those wavelengths (more on that later). Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo are all just as real.
But purple? Well, purple is just your brain’s way of resolving confusion.
That’s right. Red and blue (or violet) wavelengths are two opposite extremes on the spectrum. When you see both of these wavelengths in the same place, you eyes and brain don’t know what to do with them, so they compensate, and the clashing wavelengths register as the color we call purple. It doesn’t actually exist….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Steven H Silver, lance oszko, Frank Wu, James Bacon, Allen Steele, 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 Dan’l.]
The award is given to the best children’s sff novel by vote of high school students in Quebec. A $2,000 grant, half of which came from the Jacques Brossard Trust, was awarded to the author.
The selection committee that chose the finalists from the 18 titles in the running was composed of Valérie Harvey, sociologist, children’s author and winner of the prize in 2018; Sylvie Drouin, teacher at De Rochebelle high school in Quebec City; and Samuel Albert, librarian in the Quebec City library network.
