(1) MURDERBOT TRAILER. Murderbot premieres May 16 on Apple TV+.
It’s rogue. It’s powerful. It would rather be watching TV. Based on the award-winning, best-selling series by Martha Wells, Murderbot follows a rogue security unit as it searches for the meaning of life.
(2) BABELING ABOUT BOOKS. Starship Alexandria is a new podcast by Emma Newman and Adrian Tchaikovsky.
The Sci-fi and Fantasy podcast from the best of futures!
In this future, humanity has solved its problems and is now sending spaceships from Earth, not in a desperate attempt to escape the apocalypse but because we can do so in a spirit of hope and exploration.
As a part of the Starship Alexandria Project, the far-future analogues of 21st century authors Emma Newman and Adrian Tchaikovsky have been tasked to make recommendations from the ship’s vast library of creative works based on the preferences of our 21st century counterparts.
Each of us will take it in turns to nominate a book, film or similar work, and the other will play judge and give the thumbs up or thumbs down to be recommended across the fleet.
Because despite the great technological advances that have made this grand journey possible, space travel can still take a while and everyone can benefit from a good recommendation.
Starship Alexandria episode 1 is “The Kraken Wakes”.
For this very first episode of Starship Alexandria, Emma puts forward John Wyndham’s classic SF novel The Kraken Wakes (1953) for Adrian to read and consider (published in the US as Out of the Deeps.)
Bonus episodes and other material are available for those who subscribe to the Starship Alexandria Patreon.
(3) MAKING A STATEMENT. Jeremy Szal forwarded the post he’s written making clear his stance on AI/LLM. Szal is also included in the Kadrey v. Meta class action lawsuit. “Statements on AI”.
Without in any way limiting the author’s and his publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, it is expressly prohibited to use any of the author’s works to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text. The author reserves all rights to license uses of his works across any platforms.
In addition, it is expressly prohibited to upload any part of any of this author’s work to any generative AI programs (including but not limited to Meta, ChatGPT, etc).
Any violation of these rights are infringing on copyright law (Copyright Act 1968, to name but a few examples) and may be subjected to prosecution, not including the ongoing class action lawsuit in Kadrey v. Meta – of which the author is already included.
The author also asks that no one “create” AI-generated fan-art, fanfiction, or any kind of material, based on or inspired by his works. Any emails containing such “art” will be deleted unread.
******
I will also decline to wittingly blurb or support any books that were written, in part or as a whole, with generative AI. The waters here can be murky, but if any text in the book was not written by a human, and instead was written by a machine/LLM, then I have no interest in reading it, or anything that the author ever writes.
Art is human expression created by human hands. That matters to me, and that will always matter to me, so I will give no quarter to machine-generated slop. That is my ongoing stance.
(4) A WRITER OVERCOMES. “Butt in the Chair: How Disability Changed My Writing Habits” by Catherine Tavares at the SFWA Blog.
It’s spring 2023. My desk is clean, my laptop on and humming along like a charm. It’s open to a brand new Scrivener file, and I have three hours free to work on my stories.
Only, I’m not in the chair writing. I’m on the floor in agonizing pain.
In the years since that day, there have been many doctors, tests, and treatments that have all led to the same disappointing diagnosis: unexplained, chronic nerve pain. On a good day, that means a hot, tingling buzz radiating from my hips on down. On a bad day, it’s like the entire lower half of my body is being scraped raw by fiery sandpaper.
That day, I could not sit, and just like that, I could not write.
A common bit of writing advice given to authors is to just “get your butt in the chair” and write. For a long time, that advice worked for me, and I built my habits around spending hours at my desk, not getting up until I met my goal. My desk was my writing haven; the mere act of sitting down triggered creativity, productivity, and joy.
But as the days of unending pain dragged into weeks and months, my haven became a horror….
… If I could hack my own brain, I figured, then I could most certainly hack my own writing process.
I did so, inspired by a mental health exercise called Internal Family Systems Therapy. I enjoyed IFST because it let me do what I do best: create characters, assign them roles, and take them on a journey together. IFST helped me through a lot of the trauma of disability, and it also made me realize just how much work I can do inside my own head—no desk or chair required.
In the wake of that breakthrough, I abandoned Team Pantser for a term I am making up just now: Team Daydreamer. When I’m in the shower, lying in bed, eating a meal, exercising, I meditate on my stories. I plan out the plots, worlds, characters, compose entire scenes word-for-word—all before I ever actually get my butt in the chair to write. And when I do finally get to my desk, with half the story work already done, I can spare the attention my body needs and have a productive session well within my pain limits.
I can finally physically and mentally write again….
(5) LAGNIAPPE. Dina shares “My Thoughts on The Hugo Award Finalists 2025” at SFF Book Reviews.
Isn’t it lovely when there’s a Hugo finalists announcement without too much fuss? I said this last year already, but after living through the Puppy Years and then witnessing the shit show that was the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo Awards, I always release a breath of relief when the finalists are… just normal….
Dina punctuates the ending of several categories with a recommendation about something she wishes had been a finalist, like this novella —
Books I wish were here:
Once again, let me tell you about the amazingly talented Moses Ose Utomi, who blew me away with The Lies of the Ajungo and then followed that novella up with one that’s just as great, The Truth of the Aleke. I nominated it, of course, and I will probably love and nominate the third in the trilogy next year. Man, do I wish this book was on the ballot, as it would be an easy number one spot. Since it isn’t, let me urge you to pick up the first book. It’s suuuuper short.
(6) WEIRDLY SUSPICIOUS. Christopher Lockett looks at his course outline with a Trumpian eye: “Curriculars: The Relative Weird, Part One—Horror as Privilege” at The Magical Humanist.
…Growing up, we were often taught that Canada and the U.S. share “the longest undefended border in the world.” That was always spoken with pride and approbation. Lately, I’m finding those words resonating in my mind with something less than the spirit of national confraternity, and something more like the spirit of paranoia.
This sense is exacerbated by the spectacle of the anti-“D.E.I.” jihad currently scouring government databases and websites, the first salvoes against universities, and most recently against museums and parks (and, bizarrely, zoos). The March 27 executive order about this last category employs language—such as that about removing “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and elsewhere—reads like the Project 2025 crowd considered Orwell’s 1984 as a useful guide rather than a cautionary tale…
… In my fourth-year course “The American Weird,” I must imagine that my first three weeks would have passed muster, as we did a selection of stories by H.P. Lovecraft. As I talk about at length in my earlier post “The Trumpian Weird,” Lovecraft’s particular brand of racist ideation, in which threats to White subjectivity are allegorized by the monstrous and eldritch, is perfectly consonant with MAGA’s White nationalism. But after that? Well, I can’t imagine any of it would remain un-purged.
Last time I talked about my American Weird class in this space, I outlined a very rough breakdown of contemporary weird fiction: the banal weird, the relative weird, and the utopian weird. As I noted in that earlier post, the banal weird doesn’t tend to make for great storytelling (unless you’re China Miéville), but it is something we constantly encounter in reality, as at the root it’s about our apparently bottomless capacity to normalize the unthinkable. We don’t get Trump 2.0 without the banality of Weird. And, ironically, it is the forces that animate and facilitate Trumpism that make what I’m terming the Relative Weird a particularly significant iteration of Lovecraftian fiction…
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 9, 1937 — Marty Krofft. (Died 2023.)
H.R.Pufnstuf.
Who’s your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuf.
Can’t do a little, ‘cause he can’t do enough
Who here didn’t grow up watching some of the shows created by the Krofft brothers? Well, this is the day that Marty Krofft was born, so I get to talk about their work. Let’s get started.
Their very first work was designing the puppets and sets for Banana Splits, a rock band composed of four animal characters for Hanna-Barbera. To get a look at them, here’s the open and closing theme from the show.
After working for Hanna-Barbera, they went independent with the beloved H. R. Pufnstuf, their first live-action, life-sized puppet series. It ran a lot shorter than I thought lasting only from September to December of ‘69. Like everything of theirs, it ended up in heavy, endless syndication.
Next was The Bugaloos. This was a musical group, very much in keeping with the tone with Banana Splits. It was four British teenagers wearing insect outfits, constantly beset by the evil machinations of the Benita Bizarre. Here’s the opening song, “Gna Gna Gna Gna Gna” courtesy of Krofft Pictures.
Sigmund and the Sea Monsters lasted two seasons though it was aired over three years, the second delayed because a fire at the beginning of season two which destroyed everything. It’s about two brothers who discover a friendly young sea monster named Sigmund who refuses to frighten people. Poor Sigmund. This time you get a full episode as that is all Krofft Pictures had up, “Frankenstein Drops In”
There’s two more series I want to note.
The first is Land of the Lost which was created though uncredited in the series by David Gerrold. So anyone know why that was? It was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft who co-developed the series with Allan Foshko. Lots of genre tropes here. A family lost in a land with dinosaurs and reptile men? It was popular enough that it lasted three seasons. And here’s the opening and closing credits for season three.
The very last pick by me is Electra Woman and Dyna Girlwhich lasted but sixteen episodes of twelve minutes. Despite the ElectraEnemies, their foes here being way over the top, this is SF though admittedly on the pulp end of things.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Bliss knows viewers.
- Dinosaur Comics analyzes Sherlock’s skills.
- MythTickle returns with cures.
- Speed Bump continues next rock.
- Strange Brew goes for smarter.
- WayneVision introduces the young James Bond.
- The New Yorker cartoon is about a dire predicament.
(9) SPACE COWBOY BOOKS ONLINE READING. On Tuesday April 22 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific, Space Cowboy Books will host an online reading and interview with Ai Jiang. Register for free HERE. Get your copy of A Place Near the Wind HERE.
From a rising-star author, winner of the both the Bram Stoker® and Nebula Awards, a richly inventive, brutal and beautiful science-fantasy novella. A story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion that will stay with you long after the final page. For readers of Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Neon Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven and Kritika H. Rao’s The Surviving Sky.
Liu Lufeng is the eldest princess of the Feng royalty and, bound by duty and tradition, the next bride to the human king. With their bark faces, arms of braided branches and hair of needle threads, the Feng people live within nature, nurtured by the land. But they exist under the constant threat of human expansion, and the negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop— or at least delay—the destruction of their home. Come her wedding day, Lufeng plans to kill the king and finally put an end to the marriages.
Trapped in the great human palace in the run-up to the union, Lufeng begins to uncover the truth about her people’s origins and realizes they will never be safe from the humans. So she must learn to let go of duty and tradition, choose her allies carefully, and risk the unknown in order to free her family and shape her own fate.
(10) LET ROVER COME OVER. “Lunar Outpost unveils sleek new ‘Eagle’ moon rover” at Space.com.
Colorado-based Lunar Outpost just unveiled its new “Eagle” moon rover at the Space Foundation’s 40th annual Space Symposium here, and it looks straight out of science fiction. Sporting a sleek metallic finish and ice-blue LED lighting, the Eagle rover turned quite a few heads on the expo floor this year. But Eagle boasts more than just futuristic looks.
The rover is packed with features designed with the next generation of Artemis program moon explorers in mind and is based on feedback from current NASA astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, according to Lunar Outpost’s A.J Gerner….
… In the configuration shown here at the symposium, the Eagle vehicle features two seats for crew, each with its own redundant and mirrored controls, meaning either astronaut can control the rover. The steering controls on each side consist of a single handle that controls four individual motors that drive each wheel. Each wheel can turn independently of the other three, allowing the Eagle rover to turn on its center axis or “crab walk” sideways, Gerner said….
(11) TARDIGRADE MOTION. [Item by Steven French.] If we really do want to go to Mars, perhaps we need to pay less attention to a certain billionaire and look more closely at the ‘water bear’ (recently voted Invertebrate of the Year by Guardian readers): Want to know how to survive in space? Ask a tardigrade (phys.org) at Phys.org.
The 2025 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which took place from March 10–14 in The Woodlands, Texas, witnessed some very interesting proposals for space exploration and science. In addition to bold mission concepts, scientists presented exciting opportunities for potential research that addresses major questions. Not the least of which was “How can humans survive in space and extraterrestrial environments”? One study in particular presented how the study of tardigrades could help address the challenges involved….
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Lis Carey, Teddy Harvia, N., Jeffrey Smith, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day johnstick.]
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(7) Loved all the Krofft shows mentioned (and also Lidsville)
I’ve never visualized a face for Murderbot. (Or a body.) I think it’s because they’re the viewpoint character.
7) DON’T CLICK ON THE BANANA SPLITS VIDEO! THE THEME SONG IS AN EARWORM! THE WORLD’S WORRRRRRRRSSSSSTTT EARWORM! SAVE YOURSELVES!
I’m old enough to have missed all the Krofft shows.
(1) It could be good. But not paying for AppleTV…
(2) Are they taking any submissions?
(3) Jeremy, if you’re reading this, you’re missing one: if they get your work from a pirated collection, their CEO is criminally liable for receiving stolen goods.
(4) I understand. Ellen has fibromyalgia, bad. Bad, as in “pain level 6 is a good day”. And has for almost half her life.
Comics, Strange Brew… I see, so someone taught the bomb phemomenology.
(10) Is that not a cool vehicle?
(11) Yes, and wait till we meet the aliens that resemble tardigraves, but more than human size… (Of course, they showed up in my first novel).
@Bruce: Too late; twas infected in the 1960s and the worm is still there
(7) I don’t recall anything else about The Banana Splits but those opening credits & song sure are familiar. And I was delighted to see Shari Lewis in the credits – I didn’t know she worked on that show.
All those Krofft shows were absolutely formative to who I am today.
7) Larry Niven wrote the scripts for a few episodes of Land of the Lost. Unsurprisingly, they were episodes about weird time paradoxes and messing with pylons.
(7) Is anybody else here old enough to remember The World of Sid and Marty Krofft? It was perhaps the world’s first indoor theme park. It existed for a short while in 1976 and was located in downtown Atlanta. It lasted only six months, a victim of poor planning and a way too optimistic vision of what it wanted to be.
One of the main claims to fame of the park was its free standing escalator, still the longest such one in the world. The building where the park was located is now the world headquarters for the CNN cable TV network.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Sid_and_Marty_Krofft
@mark That’s odd, since they’ve got tremendous shows AND they don’t charge outragous amounts. I find AppleTV to be the best streaming service available.
(7) By any objective standard, the Krofft shows are bad. Yet I, and just about anyone who grew up watching them, remember them fondly. Maybe the casting (Martha Raye, Billy Barty, Charles Nelson Reilly, Billie Hayes, Jerry Maren) elevated the performances about the scripts?
@mark – You are not the first filer here to suggest that the developers of LLM systems which have trained on pirated IP have committed a crime, that of receiving stolen goods. This has never been established as such in a court, despite large corpora of copyrighted material having been made available for academic and commercial use for decades. For example, the Corpus of Contemporary American English has the full text from runs of Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF. The organizations that run these corpora claim that what they do is “fair use”, and much of their reasoning applies to ways that LLM systems train on large pirated collections of text.
Further, “receiving stolen goods” typically refers to physical, tangible items, not intellectual property. I checked the Alabama statute and definitions, and they do not include intellectual property.
Further still, copyright violations are typically a civil tort, and not a crime.
I’m not saying that the way LLMs are developed and used is proper or moral or even legal. But the chance that the head of any company that has trained its LLM on pirated texts will go to prison for “receiving stolen goods” is pretty small.
One banana two banana three banana four…. eventually followed up by Raffi with his Banana Phone. Something about the word banana, I guess.
I agree bill, Martha Raye was terrific in whichever show she was in. She read the room and understood the assignment.
Alive. Not collapsed on the floor, which seemed possible for a while. Asthma back under control.
Cider poked my pocket to point out the inhaler.
7) As far as big budget remakes go, Land of the Lost is right up there in potential. There was so much that could still be done with that.
7) The shows aren’t good…but yet are unforgettable and they leave a mark.
When I read a SF novel where the character was transported to another planet and at one point wound up in a jungle temple described exactly like the complex in Land of the Lost, I practically fistpumped…
4) Interesting. And, as someone living with chronic pain, I can relate. Maybe there are techniques here I could use myself.
7) If you are not already afflicted, heed Bruce Arthur’s warning. Click not upon the link, lest ye be accursed! – Apart from the theme tune, I have only the vaguest memories of the Banana Splits. I don’t think we got any more of the Krofft shows after that; pity, because as a kid I would have been all over Land of the Lost.
10) “…ice-blue LED lighting”? Yes, it looks very cool. What’s it for?
7) Danger Island next
I have no conscious memory of ever seeing The Banana Splits or even hearing of its existence before today, though I was familiar with Land of the Lost and had at least seen bits of a couple of the other Krofft shows (including Electra Woman and Dyna Girl!) But the “tra-la-la” part of the theme song was instantly familiar to me, though not the rest of it. Did I hear it as a kid? Did other kids sing it on the playground? No clue…
Tra-la-la, la-la-la-la, tra-la-la, la-la-la-la…
We were married adults when we watched and enjoyed Land of the Lost. And “Over the faaaaallls!” was a catchphrase for years.
(7) I can sing bits of the Banana Spits and Bugaloos theme songs although I can’t remember watching any episodes. But I do remember watching Land of the Lost, that was a favorite when I was around seven.
I was in high school for the Sidney Croft stuff and it was just too young for me.
1) Martha Wells is careful to avoid any gendered references to Murderbot in the stories, so I’m just a little disappointed to see a clearly masculine face. On the positive side, the preview doesn’t point to a masculine portrayal. I hope the series doesn’t skip on the hyper capitalist system that produces SecBots and the contrast with the imperfect but more humanist system that the team that hires Murderbot comes from.
7) Loved the Banana Splits as a kid. There is no evidence, other than the sound, that Bob Marley lifted from their theme in composing “Buffalo Soldiers.”
Somewhere in my house I have a Banana Splits promo record that came in a box of cereal. My favorite part of the show, besides the songs, was Danger Island.
The Banana Splits was the only one I saw and I appreciated how weird it was
1) It looks like they’re playing the novel for laughs; there are some LOL funny parts of any MB book, but basically they’re about slavery. I won’t be watching, but if it gets more seasons, hopefully they’ll handle that issue sensibly.
7) I went to an elementary school whose name started with “H____ R_____;” our uniform blouses had “HR” embroidered on the collar tabs. When I went home, I had to be quick about changing clothes or I’d be mercilessly teased with people singing the HRP theme at me.
It was a hit-or-miss for me when trying to watch The Banana Splits on tv in the 80s/late-70s here in S.E.A.(I think my own country didn’t broadcast it then or later, at least that I recall-but the neighbouring country to the south did that we could pick up the signals; mostly clearer than our own national broadcaster).
It was unpredictable if Danger Island would be on or not(or if as a kid, I would be home on Saturday pm that day or the previous week{s}), so following the frustratingly few minutes of adventure to the end was seemingly forever an unattainable goal (no will to find our if it’s attainable now, tho I have a vague vestige of a memory where I might have watched the final part and it was anticlimactic-no idea if it was during first run or if it was rerun).
Early on the anticipation of watching a few minutes of Danger Island as I remember it was fun though. Not so much after weeks/months.
(4) May I recommend an alternative headline? Those of us with disabilities are too often permitted no choice but the impossible “overcoming.” More accurately, Tavares Integrates Her Disability into Her Writing Process.
As she says,
Jesse the K: “Overcome” is a word Tavares uses in the post. Did you read it?