(1) MINUS ONE GETS PLUS ONE. “Godzilla Minus One Sequel in Development From Takashi Yamazaki” reports CBR.com. So will it be titled Godzilla Minus Two or Godzilla Zero? (Wasn’t “New Math” supposed to prepare me to answer this question?)

Godzilla Minus One is getting a sequel. Toho and Takashi Yamazaki are reuniting for a new movie featuring the iconic monster.

The “EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT” was made on the official X account for Toho’s Godzilla franchise. The 10-second video confirmed that production had been greenlit on a new Godzilla movie, with Yamazaki returning to write, direct, and supervise VFX. The last detail is perhaps the most important, as Yamazaki and his VFX team won the Best Visual Effects category at the 96th Academy Awards for Godzilla Minus One. 

The 8-second “emergency announcement” is on X.com here.

(2) NO ASTRONOMICON OR HELIOSPHERE IN 2025. Ralston Stahler told Facebook readers today that Astronomicon, held annually in Rochester, NY is taking 2025 off.

Well, some bad news. Due to me being somewhat burned out from trying to organize a NASFiC for the last two years, after Heliosphere it really made me think that my fannish energy has been severely depleted.

The NASFiC did good, people liked it and we did good financially, I just don’t have the energy to run Astronomicon for 2025. I let our guests know that things have changed and at least I need a break for a bit.

Heliosphere (I’ll post their announcement later) after running World Fantasy in Niagara Falls is also taking 2025 off. So the only science fiction con left anywhere nearby will be Albacon in Albany in 2025. They will be the only SF con in New York state next year.

I urge everyone to really think about attending. One of the things I have been saying is that SF cons are becoming very fragile things. They are put on by ever decreasing numbers of science fiction fans. Which is one of the things we need to work on. Getting people to help run them.

New Jersey’s HELIOsphere made a comparable announcement two days ago.

We regret to announce that New Amsterdam Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom (NASF3) will not be presenting HELIOsphere in 2025.

HELIOsphere was to be held May 2–4, 2025 in Piscataway, New Jersey.

The chief reason is that we feel the need to take the extra time to organize, regroup, and refocus on what we want our home convention to be.

We fully expect to return in 2026, with a new, improved convention that more fully reflects the vision we had when we founded this event in 2017.

Our Guests of Honor, Catherynne Valente and Adam-Troy Castro, have, of course, already been informed of our change in plans. We regret not hosting them next year, but look forward to seeing them at other events … perhaps even at a future HELIOsphere.

We had not yet opened membership for HELIOsphere 2025, except for the memberships we took at the close of HELIOsphere 2024.

We will be issuing refunds for those memberships as soon as possible.

This is far from the end of HELIOsphere. In the coming year, we will be discussing our direction and focus, and planning a new beginning for our event.

(3) CLARION WEST ART OPPORTUNITY. “Call for Clarion West 2025 Featured Art” – complete guidelines at the link.

Clarion West is searching for an artist to create artwork for our 2025 featured artwork. Clarion West seeks to commission one custom illustration with unlimited global rights. Please share this call with the artists you know that might be a great fit, and see below for details.

What we’re looking for

Each year, we seek artwork that inspires us and our writers to create and explore with bravery and freedom. The art needs to represent the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror in some way, while also supporting our core values of diversity, inclusion, and supporting emerging writers. (You can see the work of our 2024 poster artist, Carolina Rodríguez Fuenmayor, here as just one example.)…

(4) BATTLING SCAM AI STORY SUBMISSIONS. Sue Burke reports from sff’s front lines in “AI Is Fueling a Science Fiction Scam That Hurts Publishers, Writers, and Even Some of the Scammers” at Chicago Review of Books.

…“The deluge is different now,” but it continues unabated, Clarke said at this summer’s World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, where he received a Hugo award for Best Short-Form Editor for the third time. His exasperation has grown with the “torment nexus” that he finds himself trapped in. He quietly reopened submissions in mid-March last year, and he’s created a sort of spam filter (which he won’t detail so it can’t be evaded) that he shares with Asimov’s. It moves likely AI stories to the end of the submission line, although they still get read because the filter can make mistakes. He’s banned thousands of spammers…

As to any attempt to defend AI here:

…So, it’s easy to claim—and perhaps believe—that an AI can create fiction and art, cure cancer, and eliminate your job, all in a matter of seconds, just before it destroys the Earth. Or this might be overhype. In any case, the AI programs are owned and controlled by major multinational corporations. Can we trust them with creativity?

“Experience should have taught us all by now that large corporations are the last entities that should be entrusted with our future, much less with what becomes of human creativity,” says Tonya R. Moore, poetry editor at Solarpunk Magazine, a poetry acquiring editor at FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, and an associate writer at Galactic Journey. “AI is still extremely undeveloped, and large corporations are already using the technology to manipulate and cheat people in the most underhanded ways.”… 

(5) A FAPA JUBILEE. [Item by John L. Coker III.] Robert Silverberg has just reached another major milestone: as of November 2024, he has been a continuously contributing member of FAPA for 75 years!

While still a teen-ager, Bob joined the Fantasy Amateur Publishing Association in November 1949.  This was back when Harry S. Truman was still the U.S. president.

(6) IT’LL DO. Camestros Felapton gives Agatha all Along his seal of approval. “Review: Agatha all Along (Disney)[some spoilers]”.

…Aside from anything else, WandaVision had one clever trick (playing off the cliches of suburban sitcoms from different eras) and the lead characters (Wanda Maximoff and Vision) where now dead in the MCU. Would Kathryn Hahn’s meddling witch carry a sequel?

Actually, yes. This was an enormously entertaining miniseries….

(7) NEGATORY, GOOD BUDDY. “John Williams Shot Down One Request While Filming Disney+’s Music By John Williams, But I Think His Reasoning Makes So Much Sense” – read the explanation at CinemaBlend.

Music by John Williams – a new title streaming this week – provides viewers with an intimate portrait of the prolific composer behind films like Jaws and Schindler’s List. Through his conversations with Williams, director Laurent Bouzereau sheds light on the conductor’s personal life and his creative process as well. Bouzereau had many memorable moments working on the documentary, including one he revealed to CinemaBlend – which saw Williams shoot down a request. Yet the living legend’s rationale made so much sense.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Bouzereau ahead of the release of his latest doc. During the interview, he regaled me with details on his film as well as fun anecdotes regarding his chats with its main subject. It was the latter that led the Five Came Back helmer to reveal that he asked the celebrated maestro to perform the original pieces of music he concocted for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But, as Bouzereau explained to me, the now-92-year-old conductor declined for a very specific reason:

“Well, I had wanted John to – I knew that he had, for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, created different versions of the five notes and, sometimes, there were more than five. And I had said to him, ‘ [It would] be great if you could play on the piano the different incarnation[s] of those notes.’ And he said, ‘No.’ Because it’s so iconic that you are betraying something that is in everybody’s mind. And he didn’t want to suddenly have someone say, ‘Oh, that would have been better,’ or whatever, you know, what is in the movie, [is] what is in the movie. So I was kind of disappointed, but he said, ‘I’ll get you something. You’ll see.’”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary— Doctor Who’s “The Happiness Patrol” (1988)

The first part of Doctor Who’s “The Happiness Patrol” aired thirty years ago on this date. 

Written by Graeme Curry, it was intended (by him and the other writers) to be a parody of Thatcherism, with Helen A representing Margaret Thatcher herself. As you can seeing the picture below, she may or may not have more than passing resemblance to The Iron Lady.  

This was the Seventh Doctor so Sylvester McCoy was The Doctor and Sophie Aldred was Ace, who is still one of my favorite companions, and there’s one episode they did where I’m still cursing them for the emotional cruelty they did to her. Not saying which episode that was of course. 

All of the classic Doctor Who is available in the United States on Britbox.

The guest performers were Shelia Hancock as Helen A. with David John Pope as Kandy Man. 

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, referred to this story in his 2011 Easter sermon, on the subject of happiness and joy. Really. Truly. So what is the story that he so truly liked? 

SPOILERS NOW, SO GET A CUP OF DARJEELING TEA AND A CHOCOLATE BISCUIT. 

They find themselves on a colony that is under the dictatorship of Helen A. where sadness and misery are capital crimes, and killjoys which is anyone, well, is sad, are is executed on the spot by  female assassins known only as The Happiness Patrol. 

Now this being the Whovian reality, we also have, according to the Tardis Wiki, “The Kandyman was a pathological, psychopathic android, employed as an executioner by the egocentric Helen A. It delighted in inflicting torture and destruction with confectionery. One of its favourite methods was drowning people in pipes filled with its “Fondant Surprise”, a thick solution composed of boiling liquid candy.”  

Needless to say the Seventh Doctor had to defeat Helen A., the Killjoys, the Kandyman and assorted less than sweet individuals in this episode. That they did in the usual Whovian manner, though the Seventh Doctor put his slightly darker twist on it.

About this parody of The Iron Bitch, errr, Thatcher and her years in power? The story makes it very apparent that it what is happening here. Remember the Miners Strike under her and her violent suppression of it? Well, this colony has an oppressed underclass of workers – depicted here as a literally different species. So they turn out to be miners. And they are victims of Helen A.’s regime. “Well, they may not look like it,” the Doctor tells Ace, “but they’re on the edge of starvation. No sugar in the pipes.” Sugar being their only food.

ENJOY THAT TEA AND BISCUITS? GOOD, YOU CAN COME BACK.

I can’t really discuss the critical response to it at the time as they give away way the much of the plot when they reviewed it. Suffice it to say that some like it, some thought it was utter shite because of the anti-Thatcher spin (need I note which papers they wrote for?), some never warmed to the Seventh Doctor so every episode got a blah at best review.

Me, I thought it was a fun story though stretching what was a thin plot over three episodes was just not a great idea. 

It got novelized and the story expanded even more, oh god. Big Finish brings the Kandyman back in the Eighth Doctor: Ravenous story.

We’ll let Helen A. have the final words, “And don’t forget, when you smile, I want to see those teeth.”

(9) COMICS SECTION.

• Mutts visits a classic bird.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal explores customs.
• Tom Gauld has a suspect.

My cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/GYCiwWo5ic

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) November 2, 2024

(10) CANON TO THE LEFT OF THEM. “Queen Berúthiel is a Childless Cat Lady!” – Robin Anne Reid has found a Tolkien text resonates with a catchphrase from this year’s Presidential election campaign.

…Queen Berúthiel caught my attention in my very first reading (1965) and has resurfaced on a number of occasions in great part because of the lack of information about her in The Lord of the Rings. Even with just that one brief reference, she stood out: she was a Queen, and, more importantly, she had cats (plural!). She’s (possibly?) the only character in the legendarium who has cats (if you know of any others, please let me know in the comments!)

And although it turns out that she was married (but no children!), there was no mention of her husband in Tolkien’s first introduction of her…

(11) THE AVENGERS’ ELECTION PICK. “The Avengers Stars Reunite to Endorse Kamala Harris in New Video” – The Hollywood Reporter sets the frame.

As Election Day nears, Scarlett Johansson had her fellow Avengers join forces for a get-out-the-vote video.

In a video shared by Vanity Fair, Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany came together on a Zoom call to brainstorm a new catchphrase for Kamala Harris as she takes on Donald Trump. Some of their suggestions referenced moments from their respective movies, including Iron Man and Black Panther….

We're back. Let's #AssembleForDemocracy. In the #ElectionEndgame, every vote counts ????? #VoteBlue! Vote @KamalaHarris @Tim_Walz pic.twitter.com/Xp7YdUEqxa

— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) October 31, 2024

(12) YOUR INFINITY MAY VARY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Could all the chimpanzees in the world (OK, so technically not monkeys) ever type the works of Shakespeare? Not before the heat death of the universe say a pair of Australian mathematicians. “Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds” at BBC News.

Two Australian mathematicians have called into question an old adage, that if given an infinite amount of time, a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Known as the “infinite monkey theorem”, the thought-experiment has long been used to explain the principles of probability and randomness.

However, a new peer-reviewed study led by Sydney-based researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta has found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe.

Which means that while mathematically true, the theorem is “misleading”, they say.

As well as looking at the abilities of a single monkey, the study also did a series of calculations based on the current global population of chimpanzees, which is roughly 200,000.

The results indicated that even if every chimp in the world was enlisted and able to type at a pace of one key per second until the end of the universe, they wouldn’t even come close to typing out the Bard’s works.

There would be a 5% chance that a single chimp would successfully type the word “bananas” in its own lifetime. And the probability of one chimp constructing a random sentence – such as “I chimp, therefore I am” – comes in at one in 10 million billion billion, the research indicates…

(13) 24 CARROT TRIVIA. “Bugs Bunny Facts That Fans Never Figured Out (What You Always Wanted To Know About Bugs Bunny)” at Idolator. Here’s one example:

Bugs Changed The Meaning Of The Word “Nimrod”

Bugs Bunny is so influential in American culture that he is the sole reason why America uses the term “nimrod” to mean idiot. Before Bugs, nimrod referred to a mighty hunter, named after the Biblical figure, Nimrod.

Bugs would sarcastically compare Elmer Fudd to Nimrod, and America picked up the phrase. The fact that the cartoon was able to change the definition of an established word shows just how much of a lasting impact it had on the world.

(14) ALIEN ASPIRATIONS. [Item by Steven French.] In the Guardian’s ‘Week in Geek’, hopes and concerns are expressed over the prospect of a sequel to Alien: Romulus: “Alien: Romulus thrilled fans – how can its follow-up avoid the saga’s past mistakes?”

Romulus’s power lay in its ruthless singlemindedness. Like the xenomorphs themselves, it was the perfect movie organism, a simple slasher-in-space tale of a bunch of kids lost in the cosmos who find they have bitten off more than they can chew, and are about to be bitten back hard. Part two should really be more of the same but somehow bigger, and yet the distinct impression from this mercurial saga is that whenever somebody tries to widen the Alien canvass, they wind up with a sprawlingly portentous or downright weirdmural where we really just wanted a nasty little close-up.

Perhaps all we need next time out is another hyper-focused horror romp, with just the tiniest side order of Weyland-Yutani intrigue. Anything more, and once again there’s a danger that this sleek and venerable old beast starts looking like an unwieldy colony ship with a leaking fuel line and a loose facehugger in the cargo hold….

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