(1) HARLAN’S HUGE SCRAPBOOKS. J. Michael Straczynski told the Harlan Ellison Facebook Club about his latest archival project. And when you get to the end don’t worry, people have already pointed him at Fanac.org.

With the first phase of Harlan’s publishing program done and the next one in progress; with the house almost entirely repaired now, and the paperwork formally begun to declare the place a historical/cultural landmark, we’re moving forward in other areas.

As part of that, we’re in the process of scanning the contents of Harlan’s scrapbooks. These are beasts. The eleven books are about four feet long and three feet wide, with an average of 150 pages with anywhere from 5-10 photos, letters, reviews, articles and other items covering the span of Harlan’s life and career. (So about 1,650 pages with a tick over 13,000 individual items.)

(We are having a trusted firm that does scans of legal documents, house blueprints and other items where discretion and professionalism are forefront, do the scans of each full page of each scrapbook. The files are then given to me, which I’m currently going through to crop each and every item into a separate image, label/annotate them, date them, organize them, and color-correct those that are faded or damaged.)

This process will probably take a full year to complete, and really can’t be delegated because if I hire somebody they won’t know the references or history, so I’d have to go through them anyway. When they’re all in hand, we will include them as an aspect of a website that is nearly completed, about which more soon.

The reason I’m telling you all this: it’s not a secret that Harlan was deeply involved in fandom in his early years. What I didn’t realize, until I started to get very granular about the files, is just HOW deep the rabbit hole went. Not only was he attending conventions and fan events back in the 50s, he often wrote for the convention newsletter/magazine, took tons of photos, wrote reviews of some of the cons and had this whole years-long catalog of what are essentially first-person narratives about the early days of fandom.

For historical value, it feels like something specific to fandom should be done with at least some of this information, but I’m not sufficiently au courant about that world to even know where to begin….

(2) MURDERBOT CLIPS. “Murderbot — An Inside Look”. “Killer instincts. Zero social skills”. Murderbot premieres May 16 on Apple TV+.

In a high-tech future, a rogue security robot (Alexander Skarsgård) secretly gains free will. To stay hidden, it reluctantly joins a new mission protecting scientists on a dangerous planet…even though it just wants to binge soap operas.

(3) GOOD OMENS QUOTE. “’Good Omens’ Star David Tennant Shares His Thanks for Being Able To Deliver Closure To Fans” at Movieweb.

David Tennant has finally addressed returning for a third and final outing for Good Omens, the Amazon and BBC fantasy series based on the works of the once beloved and now highly controversial author, Neil Gaiman . While Good Omens was initially slated for a third season, following a series of allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, the series will instead return for a final 90-minute episode to wrap things up.

Tennant recently took part in The Assembly, which sees members of the public being given the opportunity to ask a celebrity any question they like. During Tennant’s turn, a group of autistic, neurodivergent, and learning-disabled participants were given the chance to question the former Doctor Who star, with one asking him, “Someone you’ve worked with, a friend, has been canceled for some quite serious allegations. How has that affected you?” After requesting clarification, the interviewer replied, “He worked on Good Omens, and that’s been stopped, and how has it affected you?”

While avoiding saying his name, Tennant did address a change of “personnel,” and is ultimately grateful that they have been given the opportunity to finish the Good Omens story.

“We’re doing ‘Good Omens’ again. We’re going back to do the final. We’re doing a final. There’s been a slight rejig with the personnel. But we still get to tell that story which I think, it would have been very difficult to leave it on a cliffhanger. So, I’m glad that’s been worked out.”…

(4) AKA LISA BEN. [Item by Andrew Porter.] “Meet the 1940s secretary who used office time to produce the first lesbian magazine” at NBC News. Known in fandom as “Tigrina.”  Note: in 1947, seriously doubt the zine was reproduced “by photocopier.” Thanks to Moshe Feder for the link (posted on Facebook).

In 1947, Edythe Eyde was a secretary working at RKO Radio Pictures in Los Angeles. A speedy typist who often completed work ahead of schedule, her boss told her: “Well, I don’t care what you do if you get through with your work, but … don’t sit and read a magazine or knit. I want you to look busy.” 

The literary-minded lesbian saw an opportunity. Gay culture was largely underground, and it was difficult for “the third sex” to meet like-minded others. Using a Royal manual typewriter and carbon paper, making six copies at a time, the 25-year-old launched Vice Versa — “a magazine dedicated, in all seriousness, to those of us who will never quite be able to adapt ourselves to the iron-bound rules of Convention.”…

… Though not identifying as a SciFi writer, Edye was an enthusiastic consumer of horror stories and fantasy; a card-carrying member of the Fourth World Science Fiction Convention Society; and, to the delight of the modern admirer, can be seen in a 1945 photo in a bikini top reading the pulp magazine Weird Tales….

(5) MARTIAN CHRONICLER. “75 Years Ago, The Martian Chronicles Legitimized Science Fiction” writes Bradbury biographer Sam Weller at Literary Hub.

“I recall Midwestern summer nights, standing on my grandparents’ hushed lawn,” Ray Bradbury told me in 2010, “and looking up at the sky at the confetti field of stars. There were millions of suns out there, and millions of planets rotating around those suns. And I knew there was life out there, in the great vastness. We are just too far apart, separated by too great a distance to reach one another.”

For the young Bradbury, who would grow up to make that great vastness feel, to many, as almost as tangible as home, there was one celestial body more captivating than any other: Mars.

Mars: The fourth planet from our sun, some 140 million miles from us on average. The only planet in our solar system, other than our own, deemed by scientists and stargazers over the centuries to be—possibly, at one time—hospitable to life.

The planet has been part of our collective imagination for centuries, from the tales of ancient mythology, to H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, to David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders of Mars. Ray Bradbury may have been yet another in a long line of artists dreaming about Mars, but he was the first science fiction writer to elevate the planetary tale beyond the marginalized gutter of “genre fiction,” with his 1950 story cycle The Martian Chronicles…

(6) TAKING THE FUTURE BACK. “To ‘Reclaim Future-Making’, Amazon Workers Published a Collection of Science Fiction Stories”. Link is to the Slashdot story (with comments), and there’s a link to the zine itself.

Its goal was to “support workers to reclaim the power of future-making“. A 2022 pilot project saw over 25 Amazon workers meeting online “to discuss how science fiction shed light on their working conditions and futures.” 13 of them then continued meeting regularly in 2023 with the “Worker as Futurist” project (funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, according to an article by the project’s leaders in the socialist magazine Jacobin). “Our team of scholars, teachers, writers, and activists has been able to pay Amazon workers (warehouse workers, drivers, copy editors, MTurk workers, and more) to participate in a series of skill-building writing workshops and information sessions….”

And when it was over, “the participants were supported to draft the stories they wanted to tell about The World After Amazon….”

Six months ago they held the big launch event for the book’s print edition, while also promising that “you can read the workers’ stories online, or download the book as a PDF or an ebook, all for free.” The Amazon-worker stories have tempting titles like “The Museum of Prime”, “The Dark Side of Convenience”, and even “The Iron Uprising.” (“In a dystopian future of corporate power, humans and robots come together in resistance and in love.”)

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

April 28, 1948 — Terry Pratchett. (Died 2015.)

By Paul Weimer: Sir Terry Pratchett. How does one talk about one of the greatest fantasy writers in the modern history of the genre? As is my wont here as I do these birthdays, I will do it from a personal perspective. 

I first came across Pratchett’s work in the early 90’s, as his works had started making their way across the Atlantic. I read The Colour of Magic and found it funny, but slight. I did follow up with The Light Fantastic and Sourcery and decided I was done with Pratchett.  And I was, for about a decade.

Enter my friend Scott. 

Scott, part of the Amber Diceless Community and inarguably my best friend for a good long period while he was alive, had a number of fandoms over which he enthused. Amber, of course. Tolkien. Michael Scott Rohan. And, as it so happens, Terry Pratchett. So one fine day, we got to discussing it and I told him of my experience and how I had stopped.  He considered this a challenge to be overcome and pushed Guards! Guards!, Pyramids (his personal all time favorite) and others from his collection into my hands.

It was then that I started to “get” Pratchett, once he was out of his relatively early phases. I highly enjoyed the adventures of the Watch, and the Librarian (L-Space for the win).  The witches are fun but not my all time favorite. But I kept up reading the Pratchett, finally caught up, and read them all the way to Unseen Alchemicals. Scott, his family and I watched a couple of the movies and at that point were able to critique and understand where they deviated from the books and why.

I became a Pratchett fan, in the end. 

He was taken from us far too soon. In Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End, in that verse, he wrote much longer and created a new civilization as counterpoint to Ankh-Morpork, popular enough to have people engage in a VR version of it in the mid 21st century.  I wish those novels could have been written, or if I could sneak a shadow or two over from ours and grab them and bring them back to our world (although his daughter might have strong opinions on that). 

Pratchett’s works, once he matured into his full powers, are full of social commentary, insightful observations, fantastic writing, and a lot of heart. Since everyone has an opinion on where to start the Discworld novels, I will offer mine. Guards! Guards!.  It is his earliest in his “full flowering” of writing. If you don’t like it, Pratchett is not for you. If it is… happy reading to you. You have a lot of fun in store. 

Requiescat in pace, Mr. Pratchett. May your work survive the great winnowing and be enjoyed by generations to come.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

• Birdbrains tries to explain. 
• Crankshaft imagines a writer’s dream. 
• Eek! prioritizes a monster’s cat. 
• Pardon My Planet predicts a pill. 
• Rubes witnesses a crime outside of Troy. 
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal defines consciousness. 
• Tom Gauld contributed a Jane Austen cartoon to the Guardian.

A Jane Austen cartoon for @theguardian.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-04-27T16:54:02.204Z

• Tom Gauld also made the English language do tricks.

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-04-28T10:09:15.299Z

(9) JACK KIRBY AT THE MUSEUM. The “Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity | Skirball Cultural Center exhibit opens May 1 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Delve into the six-decade career of legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby (1917–1994). This exhibition goes beyond the page, featuring original comic illustrations, fine art, and commercial art—many on view for the first time—and his experiences as a first-generation Jewish American whose faith remained important throughout his life.

Captain America. The Fantastic Four. The Avengers. OMAC. The X-Men. The Black Panther. Mister Miracle. The Incredible Hulk. The New Gods. These iconic superheroes are among the best-known of the many characters first brought to life by comic book artist Jack Kirby (1917–1994). Over the course of an extraordinary six-decade career, Kirby created some of the most enduring characters and storylines in the history of American comics. Along the way, he expanded the emotional and intellectual horizons of the comic book medium, championed diversity, and helped establish the visual vocabulary of modern popular culture.

Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity traces his experiences as a first-generation Jewish American born to immigrant parents in Manhattan’s storied Lower East Side, a soldier who fought in World War II, a successful commercial artist who worked in marginalized creative industries, a mentor to a generation of younger comic creators, a resident of New York and Los Angeles, and a proud family man whose Jewish faith remained important throughout his life. This exhibition features original comic illustrations alongside Kirby’s other works, many on view for the first time, considering his fine art and commercial art as equally significant and worthy of recognition.

Today, Kirby remains a pivotal figure in American popular culture, and his influence in the worlds of comics, film, animation, graphic design, and pop art is evident more than thirty years after his passing.

(10) TRAILER PARK. Inverse introduces a new Alien trailer with the hook, “46 Years Later, An Iconic Sci-Fi Franchise Just Gave Its Origin Story A Horrific Rewrite”.

…In a new trailer called “Gestation,” we get the inside view of how the xenomorph grows into a facehugger, its first stage after it emerges from its egg. No previous version of Alien has shown this process in such detail, and while the various images of cells dividing and reforming feel very much like the show’s possible opening credits, we’re also seeing how the series is visualizing its defining biological process….

“Alien: Earth Season 1 Teaser | ‘Gestation Complete’”. Coming to FX on Hulu in Summer 2025.

When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in FX’s highly anticipated TV series Alien: Earth from creator Noah Hawley.

(11) CLICK (AND SQUAWK) BAIT. “Google Is Training a New A.I. Model to Decode Dolphin Chatter—and Potentially Talk Back” reports Smithsonian Magazine.

Dolphins are clever communicators. The animals use complex clicks, squawks and whistles to call out to each other, fight and attract a mate. Now, Google says it is developing a large language model (LLM) that can make better sense of those vocalizations—and, maybe, allow humans to talk back.

Over the last 40 years, researchers at the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP) have collected audio and video of a community of Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) in the Bahamas. The new artificial intelligence model, called DolphinGemma, is trained on that database. It listens to the dolphins’ vocalizations, identifies patterns and predicts what comes next, just as LLMs do with human language.

Using A.I. “could give us the opportunity to see patterns that, from a human perspective, we may not look at,” says Thea Taylor, who manages the Sussex Dolphin Project in England and is not involved with Google’s work, to Melissa Hobson at Scientific American. Relying on the LLM can also speed up the data analysis process, which would take a human more than 100 years by hand.

Researchers with Google, the WDP and Georgia Tech are also working on a device called CHAT, or Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry. The wearable technology will allow researchers to generate dolphin-like sounds made up by A.I. to refer to specific items that dolphins enjoy, like seagrass or sargassum.

A pair of divers wearing the CHAT device will swim alongside a dolphin, “asking for” an object with the made-up sound and passing it back and forth. Then, if a dolphin mimics the sound that corresponds to seagrass, for example, a researcher will reward them by handing it over.

“By demonstrating the system between humans, researchers hope the naturally curious dolphins will learn to mimic the whistles to request these items,” notes a statement from Google. “Eventually, as more of the dolphins’ natural sounds are understood, they can also be added to the system.”

Taylor tells Scientific American that the researchers will need to make sure they aren’t unintentionally training the dolphins. Even if the animals repeat the sound, she says, “we have to think whether that’s actually an understanding of language—or whether it’s the same as teaching a dog to sit because they get a reward.”

(12) WATCH THE WATCH. Last week Neil Armstrong’s Gold Omega Speedmaster sold for US$2,125,000 with RR Auction.

This rare “Tribute to Astronauts” edition (No. 17) is one of just 26 pieces presented to NASA astronauts. It features an engraved caseback commemorating Neil Armstrong’s Gemini 8 and Apollo 11 missions. Personally owned and worn by Armstrong, the watch remains unpolished and in excellent condition and carries the added distinction of being one of the very first gold Speedmaster.

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