25 The Goldendoodle At Starbow’s End

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For this special issue, we are looking for:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stories featured in this episode:

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

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

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Small Change trilogy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics considers time travel and what writers really want.
Ink Pen names super doctors.
Reality Check wants its crisis properly labeled.
Rhymes with Orange lets a suitor down easy.
xkcd ruins poetry with science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 3/28/25 I Just Scrolled In From Pixel-Land, And Boy Are My Fans Tired

Posted on March 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) CONGRATULATIONS ON EPISODE 250! Scott Edelman invites listeners to rip into roti with writer Tim Paggi in the impressive milestone Episode 250 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

My guest for the 250th episode of Eating the Fantastic is playwright, poet, and fiction writer Tim Paggi, whom I met at December’s Charm City Spec event where he read an excerpt from his recently published novella How to Kill Friends and Eviscerate People. His poetry chapbook “Workforced” won the 2015 Plork “Play/Work” Award for Creative Writing and Publication Arts. His next book, The Other Side of the Hallway, will be released later this year. He holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore. Additionally, for the past 15 years, he’s been giving ghost tours around the neighborhoods of Fells Point and Mt. Vernon.

We discussed the story behind his X-Files-inspired juvenilia, the reason he demanded a refund from Barnes & Noble for a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, why a writing teacher (wrongfully) accused him of plagiarism, how the beginning of the pandemic was also the beginning of his fiction writing career, whether his recent Cthulhu references were intentional or unavoidable, why the Severance TV show has him feeling anxious (it’s probably not the reason you think), the C-word he avoids using in his fiction, whether facing down audiences on stage helped him deal with rejections on the page, the many reasons he loves cosmic horror, the drunkest group he ever led through Baltimore on a ghost tour, and much more.

(2) OPT-IN OR OPT-OUT OF SCRAPING? The UK’s Society of Authors received over 1,000 responses to their survey of members and authors on the Government’s proposal to change copyright law as part of its consultation on Copyright and AI, and “96% of authors surveyed believe an opt-out system would negatively impact the creative industries”. “SoA report into authors’ views on the AI and Copyright consultation”.

The survey focused on authors’ views on the key topics covered by the Government’s consultation on Copyright and AI, including: (i) a proposal to introduce a text and data mining (TDM) exception into copyright law, which would allow tech companies to use copyright-protected works without permission, unless the author had explicitly opted out; (ii) transparency, labelling and enforcement measures, and (iii) AI in education.

The government proposed that, rather than having the right to opt in to allowing your work to be exploited by machine learning (the current situation), you would be presumed to have agreed unless you actively opted out. On this question, 96% of respondents believed this would have a negative impact on the creative industries with 91% reporting that they have no experience with opting out; and 82% saying that opting out each of their individual copyright-protected works would negatively impact their business.

In the comments provided by authors:

An overwhelming majority expressed their strong opposition to an opt-out system, calling instead for the current opt-in system to be upheld. Many made the point that our industry has been relying on a permission-based system successfully for decades and it would be hugely unfair to change that for the benefit of one sector.
Many respondents helpfully elaborated on the various ways in which opting out simply does not work. For example, robot.txt can be circumvented or ignored, there is no way for authors to know when they need to opt out, and it is technically impossible to remove scraped material from a system, even if the option to opt-out is exercised.
Respondents repeatedly raised the same concerns about the damaging impact the government’s policy proposal would have on creators’ livelihoods in the long term, on industry diversity and representation, and the devaluation of the creative work.

58% of respondents were concerned that preventing their website being ‘crawled’ or ‘scraped’ for machine learning by opting out could negatively affect their discoverability online. There was particular concern here from illustrators who use their website and social media to showcase their work but now feel that the risks outweigh the benefits.

(3) ANIME GOES UNDER THE HAMMER. “Studio Ghibli and Anime Icons Power Heritage’s Record-Setting $1.49 Million Art of Anime: Vol. VI” reports Heritage Auctions.

Kiki’s Delivery Service Senior Witch and Cat Production Cel (Studio Ghibli, 1989).

Leading the charge was an electrifying lineup of Studio Ghibli masterpieces, headlined by a rare production cel of the elusive “Senior Witch” from Kiki’s Delivery Service, which cast a spell at $48,000 — one of the highest totals ever realized for the 1989 film. Another Kiki standout, a charming Key Master setup of the title character peering into a brick oven, fired up at $16,000. Beloved Ghibli titles like Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso and Grave of the Fireflies excelled over the course of the event, and not surprisingly, a significant production cel featuring the beloved Catbus from the final moments of My Neighbor Totoro trundled away for $13,000….

…Beyond Ghibli, the auction was packed with legendary titles that flexed their muscle across the bidding floor. Berserk claimed the highest price in the sale with a staggering $85,000 for a harmony cel setup created by master art director Shichiro Kobayashi. The cel, an atmospheric piece originally created for a home video release, stands as one of the most important Berserk artworks ever sold at auction — a fitting tribute to the late Kentaro Miura’s dark fantasy epic.

Akira, the cyberpunk juggernaut that helped bring anime into global consciousness, made a bold showing with two rare production backgrounds of Neo-Tokyo’s dystopian skyline, which sold for $11,000 and $8,500. Macross fans powered fierce bidding on original concept art, including Shoji Kawamori’s VF-1J Valkyrie ($18,000) and Haruhiko Mikimoto’s character concept of protagonist Hikaru Ichijyo ($11,000)….

(4) HOW THEY COMPLETED THE MISSION. The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY will host an exhibit on stunt work in “MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—Story and Spectacle” beginning April 18.

Variety has more details: “’Mission: Impossible’ Exhibition Coming to Museum of Moving Image”.

Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) will launch a major initiative celebrating the “Mission: Impossible” franchise on April 18. The exhibition will spotlight star and producer Tom Cruise’s commitment to practical stunt work (think clinging to the face of the Burj Khalifa, as well as to the sides of various planes, trains and automobiles), and explore how the series combines technical ingenuity in service of storytelling, character development and performance. It opens ahead of the Memorial Day Weekend release of the eighth film in the series, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”

Sections of the exhibition, entitled “Mission: Impossible — Story and Spectacle,” will be devoted to each film in the series, with a focus on that film’s key stunt or action sequence, along with unique behind-the-scenes content that offers insight on how the death-defying stunts were prepared for and filmed, complemented by related production artifacts. Paramount Pictures produces the films.

(5) WATERSTONE’S PRIZE. [Item by Steven French.] A book inspired by a game the author’s family played during lockdown has won this year’s Waterstones children’s book prize reports the Guardian. “The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods wins Waterstones children’s book prize”

The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please was announced as the winner of the £5,000 award, voted on by Waterstones booksellers, at a ceremony on Thursday evening.

The book tells the story of Rene, who opens a cafe beside an enchanted wood and prepares to serve the finest cuisine with the help of a waiter, Glumfoot, only to discover that the locals have a very odd palette, favouring disgusting foods.

“The story grew from a game my wife, son and I would play during lockdown”, said Please. His wife, Jess, would pretend to be a “pompous chef”, his son, Axel, would play the “downtrodden waiter”, while Please himself would act the part of a demanding customer.

“The dynamic of these three characters was so rich, the setting so loaded with potential, and the opportunity to showcase my long-practised and long-underappreciated art of rearranging food to look funny, made the story impossible to resist”, said Please.

Please is a writer, animator and illustrator whose works include the 2011 stop motion animated film The Eagleman Stag, which won a Bafta for best short animation. His debut novel, The Expanded Earth, will be published 3 April.

(6) BECOMING MEDIA SAVVY. Gideon P. Smith tells SFWA Blog readers about “Successfully Talking to the Press About Your Art: Plot It, Don’t Pants It!”

…Their questions will likely be very generic if they haven’t read your work, which results in uninteresting copy. There are two ways to combat this:

Create a playbook of answers to generic questions. These answers should be concise but add something unique about your work. You can predict generic questions by considering what anyone who hadn’t read something might ask. (e.g. “What is the book about?” “What was your inspiration?”) or by reviewing prior interviews.
However, the better way to help them create a strong story is to suggest questions. This may sound counterintuitive given they are the interviewer, but you are the expert—on yourself, your work, and your story. You know what makes your book unique, whether it’s an unusual magic system, scientific influence, or personal connection. Most journalists will appreciate your taking a proactive approach if you highlight what’s unique or provide interesting angles. It makes their job easier.

Your playbook should help readers quickly identify your book’s genre and subgenre, then draw them in with an intriguing hook. Make it personal—within your comfort zone—so readers connect with you and your work. Finally, ensure the interview ends with clear information on where to find you and your work (social media, website, book links)…

(7) MORE ON BBC RADIO 4. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] As it happened, got home and yesterday afternoon BBC Radio 4’s Feedback programme had an item on this. “Announcement of the end of an era on Radio 4.” Ex pat Brits were fairly pissed off, as were those in the Republic of Ireland who like to listen to the BBC. It looks like some final decisions have to be made.

Andrea Catherwood shares exclusive news of the end of a long-running Radio 4 programme. Frequent contributors and the programme’s commissioning editor give their thoughts on the well-known brand as it nears its final episode.

BBC Sounds is soon to become unavailable outside of the UK. Listeners from all over the world have been in touch to voice their disappointment about the changes, and we’ve heard in particular from people in the Republic of Ireland who tune into BBC Radio content from north of the border. Will the geo-blocking cause unintended political ramifications? Andrea discusses the issue with Shane Harrison, former BBC correspondent in Dublin.

(8) IT’S ALL ABOUT ME. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency teaches everyone how to be a staggering bore in “The Art of Asking a Question to a Literary Festival Panel”.

The key to asking a successful question at a literary festival panel is preparation. You’ll want to have every detail of the preface to your question prepared, such as your name, age, and entire medical history. Don’t worry about the actual question; you can make that up as you go along….

(9) TODAY’S DAY.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 28, 1912 — A. Bertram Chandler. (Died 1984.)

A. Bertram Chandler, my favorite Australian writer.

Did you ever hear of space opera? Of course you have. Well, the universe of Chandler’s character John Grimes is such. A very good place to start is the Baen Books omnibus of To The Galactic Rim which contains three novels and seven stories. If there’s a counterpart to him, it’d be I think Dominic Flandry who appeared in Anderson’s Technic History series. (My opinion, yours may differ.) Oh, and I’ve revisited both to see if the Suck Fairy had dropped by. She hadn’t. If fact she likes him a lot. Good girl.

Connected to the Grimes stories are the Rim World works of which The Deep Reaches of Space is the prime work. The main story is set in an earlier period of the same future timeline as Grimes, a period in which ships are the magnetic Gaussjammers, recalled with some nostalgia in Grimes’ time. They don’t say what happened to them.

But that’s hardly all that he wrote. I remember fondly The Alternate Martians, a novella that he did. A space expedition to Mars that find themselves in the worlds of H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline. Why he chose the latter I know not as I’d never heard of him. It’s a great story well told. And fun to boot. It was first published as an Ace Double, The Alternate Martians / Empress of Outer Space. Gateway has released it as a separate epub for a mere buck ninety nine at the usual suspects.

He wrote a reasonably large number of stand-alone-alones, so what did I like? For a bit of nicely done horror, you can’t beat The Star Beasts — yes, I know that there’s nothing terribly original there but it’s entertaining to read; Glory Planet has a watery Venus occupied by anti-machine theocracy opposed by a high-tech city-state fascinating; and finally I liked The Coils of Time in which a scientist has created a Time Machine but now needs a guinea pig, errr, a volunteer to go back through time and see what’s there — did it go as planned? Oh guess.

I see that he’s written but a handful of short stories, none of which I’ve read other than the ones in To The Galactic Rim. So who here has?

He’s won five Ditmars and The Giant Killer novel was nominated for a Retro Hugo.

All in all, I like him a lot.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem tells what else the Martian Rover has learned.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal hears from a writer.

(12) A JARRING EXHIBIT. [Item by Steven French.] Well, I like science-fiction and I really like pickles, so maybe this is the art show for me! “Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off – fantastical sci-fi visions with a side order of pickles” in the Guardian.

There’s a lot of art about birth, death and rebirth, but not a lot of it uses pickles. Preserves, however, are all over Polish artist Rafał Zajko’s biggest solo show yet. Big jars of brine filled with salty cucumbers and little figurines in the shape of cryogenic preservation chambers. That combination of the fantastically sci-fi and the mundanely everyday is Zajko’s hallmark. The young London-based artist has spent the past few years showing ceramic and concrete sculptures filled with flights of cybernetic romanticism and nods to vaping, baking and pickling.

In The Spin Off, as this show at Focal Point Gallery in Southend is called, he has gone on a deep dive into a vast mess of ideas about longevity and rebirth. The centre of the space is dominated by an ovoid floor sculpture that gets moved and reshaped throughout the week. Laid across its surface, ceramic tiles are assembled to look like a map of planetary systems or control panels for alien spaceships, covered in incomprehensible knobs, buttons and displays. Circular sections of it can be lifted out and replaced with items from the cabinets on the wall: little concrete eggs, ceramic kaiser rolls, jars of pickles…

(13) LEAVIN’ ON A JET PLANE. Nature reports “75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving”.

The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.

The trend was particularly pronounced among early-career researchers. Of the 690 postgraduate researchers who responded, 548 were considering leaving; 255 of 340 PhD students said the same.

Trump’s administration has slashed research funding and halted broad swathes of federally funded science, under a government-wide cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk. Tens of thousands of federal employees, including many scientists, have been fired and rehired following a court order, with threats of more mass firings to come. Immigration crackdowns and battles over academic freedom have left researchers reeling as uncertainty and disruption permeate all aspects of the US research enterprise.

Nature asked readers whether these changes were causing them to consider leaving the United States. Responses were solicited earlier this month on the journal’s website, on social media and in the Nature Briefing e-mail newsletter. Roughly 1,650 people completed the survey.

Many respondents were looking to move to countries where they already had collaborators, friends, family or familiarity with the language. “Anywhere that supports science,” wrote one respondent. Some who had moved to the United States for work planned to return to their country of origin…

(14) WILL SUCCESS SPOIL THEM? [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Sarah Thwaites considers what success means for indie game developers: “These games were indie smash hits – but what happened next?”

It is now more or less impossible to put a precise figure on the number of video games released each year. According to data published by the digital store Steam, almost 19,000 titles were released in 2024 – and that’s just on one platform. Hundreds more arrived on consoles and smartphones. In some ways this is the positive sign of a vibrant industry, but how on earth does a new project get noticed? When Triple A titles with multimillion dollar marketing budgets are finding it hard to gain attention (disappointing sales have been reported for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the Final Fantasy VII remakes and EA Sports FC), what chance is there for a small team to break out?

And yet it does happen. Last year’s surprise hit Balatro has shifted more than 5m copies. Complex medieval strategy title Manor Lords sold 1m copies during its launch weekend. But what awaits a small developer after they achieve success? And what does success even mean in a continuously evolving industry?

(15) ALTADENA FIRE CONSEQUENCES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Science journal cover story: “Toxic Legacy”:

The wildfire that swept through Altadena, California, in January burned houses and cars as well as vegetation, generating smoke that contained a complex mix of toxic chemicals. Weeks later, these chemicals still cling to the soil and remaining structures. Researchers are working intensively to understand the lingering hazards of such urban wildfires. See page 1343.

Also, “In The Ashes”:

Little is known about the long-term effects of wildfires that burn into urban areas, which are becoming more common. Wildfire torched more than 1000 structures near Boulder, Colorado, in 2021 and more than 2000 structures in the Hawaiian town of Lahaina in 2023, where 102 people died. In 2022, a committee formed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found gaping holes in our understanding of what’s in the smoke and ash from wildland-urban fires, and what it could mean for people’s health.

(16) OPERATION SURPRISE PACKAGE. [Item by Steven French.] A new article in Astra Astronautica asks if there is a moral imperative to ‘seed’ the universe with life and answers in the negative: “One day we might seed the universe with life. But should we?” at Phys.org.

Suppose humanity was faced with an extinction-level event. Not just high odds, but certain-sure. A nearby supernova will explode and irradiate all life, a black hole will engulf the Earth, a Mars-sized interstellar asteroid with our name on it. A cataclysm that will end all life on Earth.

We could accept our fate and face our ultimate extinction together. We could gather the archives from libraries across the world and launch them into space in the hopes that another civilization will find them. Or we could build a fleet of arks containing life from Earth. Not people, but bacteria, fungi and other simple organisms. Seed the universe with our genetic heritage. Of all of these, the last option has the greatest chance of continuing our story. It’s an idea known as directed panspermia, and we will soon have the ability to undertake it. But should we?

The idea of directed panspermia has been discussed since at least the 1970s. Carl Sagan and others even entertained the possibility that life on Earth is the result of directed panspermia from another civilization. But a recent study in Acta Astronautica looks at the idea from an ethical and philosophical perspective, asking what the moral cost of such an endeavor is….

(17) MORE MARS MOLECULES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] More news coverage on the Mars rover’s detection of long chain molecules in “Mars rover detects long-chain carbon molecules” in this week’s Science journal.

Meteorites carry cargoes of fatty acids that come not from life, but from chemical reactions in the early Solar System, and they could have easily doused the surface with fatty acids early in Martian history, says Eva Scheller, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Or the acids could have evolved on Mars from the Kerogen-like particles that Curiosity detected—which might them-selves be abiotic in origin.

This is so, but here’s the deal, irrespective of whether or not these molecules have a biological origin the thing is that such putative biosignatures can survive for millions of years does suggest that the trace remains of any real life may still be detectable today….

(18) CHINA’S FUTURE SPACE MISSIONS. “As NASA faces cuts, China reveals ambitious plans for planetary exploration” – Ars Technica tells what they are.

China created a new entity called the “Deep Space Exploration Laboratory” three years ago to strengthen the country’s approach to exploring the Solar System. Located in eastern China, not far from Shanghai, the new laboratory represented a partnership between China’s national space agency and a local public college, the University of Science and Technology of China.

Not much is known outside of China about the laboratory, but it has recently revealed some very ambitious plans to explore the Solar System, including the outer planets. This week, as part of a presentation, Chinese officials shared some public dates about future missions.

Space journalist Andrew Jones, who tracks China’s space program, shared some images with a few details. Among the planned missions are:

2028: Tianwen-3 mission to collect samples of Martian soil and rocks and return them to Earth

2029: Tianwen-4 mission to explore Jupiter and its moon Callisto

2030: Development of a large, ground-based habitat to simulate long-duration human spaceflight

2033: Mission to Venus that will return samples of its atmosphere to Earth

2038: Establishment of an autonomous Mars research station to study in-situ resource utilization

2039: Mission to Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, with a subsurface explorer for its ocean…

(19) LETTING IT OUT OF THE BAG. “Black Bag Movie Review: Does This Sexy Spy Thriller Deliver?” asks Erin Underwood.

Black Bag pairs Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in a sizzling, high-stakes spy thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh. This sleek, action-packed film explores trust, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. But does it deliver on the thrills? In this review, I break down the story, analyze standout performances, and reveal what makes Black Bag different from typical spy films.

[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 Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 3/25/25 The Pixel Moon Is A Harsh Scrolless

Posted on March 25, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) CARDINAL NUMBERS. On this week’s Beyond Solitaire Podcast, Ada Palmer speaks about her papal election LARP at The University of Chicago–but also about historical research, her work as a sci-fi author, and how both history and fiction can help us talk about today’s world. “Beyond Solitaire Podcast 189: Ada Palmer on LARPing the Renaissance”.

(2) BANKRUPT COMIC DISTRIBUTOR FINDS BUYER. “Alliance wins bid to acquire Maryland-based Diamond Comic Distributors” reports The Baltimore Banner.

Alliance Entertainment Holding Corporation, a global distributor and wholesaler that specializes in media and collectibles, won a bid Tuesday to acquire the assets of Hunt Valley-based Diamond Comic Distributors.

Diamond, once the country’s top comic book distributor, filed for bankruptcy in January. The company began to lose its grip on distribution when the COVID-19 pandemic began, forcing Diamond to briefly suspend operations as other competitors popped up. More recently, the company struggled with delays in getting titles to comic stores on time.

Diamond warned in a federally mandated notice filed in January that if it didn’t find a buyer by April 1, it could face layoffs and the closure of its headquarters. Raymond James, a global financial services firm, hosted the auction in New York on Monday. There will be a court hearing Thursday to approve the sale….

…The acquired businesses support more than 5,000 retail stores, from independent game and comic shops to online stores and mass-market chains, according to the press release….

(3) POSTMASTER GENERAL DEJOY IS OUT. [Item by Andrew Porter.] I note that in late February I mailed a letter to my brother in Michigan. It took a mere 21 days to reach him… “US postmaster general resigns with immediate effect” in the Guardian. (Editor’s note: We old fanzine fans always seem more interested in this post than other government officials.)

The US postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who said earlier this month that he had asked the government efficiency team led by Elon Musk for assistance with a number of issues, is resigning effective on Monday, the agency said.

DeJoy, who has headed the agency since 2020, in February said he had asked the US Postal Service (USPS) governing board to identify his successor but had given no indication in recent days that he planned to step down abruptly.

Donald Trump said in February that he was considering merging the United States Postal Service with the commerce department, a move Democrats said would violate federal law.

“Much work remains that is necessary to sustain our positive trajectory,” DeJoy said in a statement, adding that the deputy postmaster general, Doug Tulino, would head the agency until the postal board names a permanent successor. They have hired a search firm, he added….

(4) GEOFF RYMAN WORK DISCUSSED ON BBC. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Geoff Ryman’s book is covered in this week’s A Good Read on BBC Radio 4.

(By the way, looks like BBC shutting down overseas access to BBC Sounds. As a Brit Cit citizen who pays an annual license to fund the BBC, I am allowed to say this… I think this is a retrograde step. First off it cuts off British ex-pats from Auntie and this is not good. Second, the BBC has some great, ‘free’ (well, paid for by residents like me) public broadcast content. The BBC is therefore a British soft-power play and Britannia rules the air waves… Short rant over.)

Meanwhile, back at the plot…

Towards the end of the half-hour programme (last 10 minutes) we get comedian Sarah Mills choice of read, Ryman’s 235…

Sarah has selected 253 by Geoff Ryman, the novel originally published on the Internet which tells the stories of 253 passengers on a London Underground train.

A Good Read can be accessed at BBC Sounds here (for now…)

(5) SFWA REMEMBERS POURNELLE. Michael Capobianco chronicles an early SFWA president in “Jerry Pournelle: SFWA Historian” at the SFWA Blog. The “historian” tag comes from the institutional knowledge Jerry shared on GEnie, a pre-internet phone modem bulletin board service run by General Electric that offered access to published science fiction and fantasy writers.

…Many of Jerry’s anecdotes on GEnie showed that SFWA had accomplished much, and some showed its sillier and/or more combative side. What did we learn? We learned that Somtow Sucharitkul’s cat had peed in his box of important SFWA documents when he was SFWA Secretary in the mid-80s (the loss of which still bedevils the organization today). We learned that SFWA had conducted a mass audit of Ace Books that turned up a lot of money owed to SFWA members. We learned that SFWA had intervened to help get J. R. R. Tolkien’s US rights to The Lord of the Rings back (see Part 1 and Part 2 of “A Brief History of SFWA: The Beginning”). We learned there had been a long and vicious fight over creating an official SFWA tie (don’t ask) and a Fellowship membership category.

Some SFWA wounds were still open after many years and were a touchstone for the organization in some quarters. On GEnie, one controversy that was often referenced but never fully explained was the Lem Affair. SFWA had awarded Polish SF writer Stanislaw Lem an honorary membership and then, after Lem attacked American science fiction and amid a long internal fight, had retracted it. Whether the retraction was political or simply happened because giving it to Lem was in violation of the bylaws (or, most likely, a combination of both) is still debated…

(6) GRACE PERIOD FOR EFF. The European Fan Fund has extended its nominations deadline to March 30. EFF is the European Fan Fund which transports European SF fans to Eurocons.

Apply to have your trip to Eurocon 2025 covered by the European Fan Fund or spread the word to fellow fans!

(7) DRAWN THAT WAY. “’Doctor Who’ S2 Teases Adventure in an Animated Universe” – Animation Magazine sets the frame.

Today, Disney+ unveiled a new trailer for Season 2 of iconic BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who, featuring the heroic Time Lord’s latest incarnation (portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa; Sex Education) and his new companion Belinda Chandra, a.k.a. The Nurse (Varada Sethu; Andor). New episodes launch April 12 on the streamer.

The new spot offers a glimpse of a delightful first for the long-running hit franchise: The Doctor’s travels to an animated reality! While “lost” episodes of vintage Doctor Who have been resurrected with animated visuals, this marks the first originally animated installment for the live-action show.

Disney-owned ABC News revealed that the season’s second episode will see The Doctor and Belinda encountering a strange cartoon character named Mr. Ring-a-Ding (voiced by Emmy winner Alan Cumming). As shown in the trailer, our time-traveling protagonists will get a 2D toon makeover reminiscent of vintage Saturday morning cartoon favorites like Scooby-Doo.

Mr. Ring-a-Ding is described as “a happy, funny, singalong cartoon, who lives in Sunny Town with his friend Sunshine Sally.”

“In 1952, after years of repeats in cinemas across the land, Mr. Ring-a-Ding suddenly looks beyond the screen and sees the real world outside — and the consequences are terrifying.”

Cumming previously guest starred in a 2018 episode of Doctor Who, “The Witchfinders,” as King James I.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cora Buhlert.]

March 25, 1939 — D.C. Fontana. (Died 2019.)

By Cora Buhlert: Dorothy Catherine Fontana, better known as D.C. Fontana, was born on March 25, 1939 in New Jersey. At age eleven she decided that she wanted to become a novelist. But while she would become a writer, her main body of work would be in television rather than novels.

Employment opportunities for women were limited in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so Dorothy Fontana went to work as a secretary after college. This was her entrance into the TV industry, because she found employment first at Screen Gems and then at Revue Studios, where she worked as a secretary for Samuel A. Peeples on the largely forgotten western series Overland Trail and The Tall Man. But Dorothy Fontana wanted more than just to type other people’s scripts. She wanted to write her own and in 1960, aged twenty-one, she managed to sell her first script for the episode “A Bounty for Billy” of The Tall Man. More sales followed.

In 1963, Dorothy Fontana went to work on a military themed TV show called The Lieutenant. The show only lasted for one season, but nonetheless it would change D.C. Fontana’s, as she was calling herself by now, life, because she wound up working as the secretary of Gene Roddenberry, creator of The Lieutenant. Roddenberry encouraged Fontana’s writing, leading to the publication of her first novel, a western called Brazos River.

When The Lieutenant was cancelled, Gene Roddenberry started working on a new show called Star Trek. D.C. Fontana accompanied him. Before working on Star Trek, D.C. Fontana had had no interest in science fiction, but this quickly changed as work on the new show progressed. D.C. Fontana wrote the teleplay for “Charlie X”, the second episode of Star Trek. By the end of season 1, she was the story editor of Star Trek and also wrote the scripts of such memorable episodes as “Tomorrow is Yesterday”, “Journey to Babel”, “This Side of Paradise” and “Friday’s Child”.

D.C. Fontana left as story editor before the third season of Star Trek, but continued to contribute to the series as a freelance writer. Her collaboration with Gene Roddenberry continued on The Questor Tapes and Star Trek: The Animated Series. By the 1970s, D.C. Fontana, who had never read a science fiction story before Star Trek, had become one of the go-to writers for science fiction television and worked on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Logan’s Run, The Six Million Dollar Man, Fantastic Journey and Battlestar Galactica, an experience she disliked so much that she disavowed her screenplay. She also continued to work on non-genre shows such as The Waltons, The Streets of San Francisco, Bonanza, Kung Fu and Dallas.

D.C. Fontana returned to Star Trek as story editor and associate producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation, for which she co-wrote the pilot “Encounter at Farpoint”. However, she left during the first season, following a fallout with Gene Roddenberry. Though D.C. Fontana was not completely done with Star Trek yet. She wrote Star Trek novels and contributed a script to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She also wrote several screenplays for Deep Space Nine’s great rival Babylon Five.

I don’t know what my first contact with D.C. Fontana’s work was. I know it wasn’t Star Trek, because she wrote none of the Star Trek episodes I saw as a young kid during a rerun on German TV in the late 1970s. And while I watched all of the science fiction series on which she worked, I didn’t see most of them until much later, when the floodgates of private television opened and many of these shows aired in Germany for the first time.

Indeed, it’s quite likely that my first contact with D.C. Fontana’s writing was a non-genre show, quite possibly The Waltons, which aired on Sunday afternoons and which my parents watched religiously. The Streets of San Francisco or Dallas are also possibilities, though I only got to see those shows sporadically during the holidays, since they aired in evening slots after my bedtime.

However, one story penned by D.C. Fontana that I definitely encountered early on is her sole contribution to the Filmation He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, the second season episode “Battlecat”, which tells the origin of Prince Adam’s “fearless friend” Cringer and his alter-ego Battlecat. The episode is basically one long flashback, recounting how a young Prince Adam rescues a tiger cub from a sabrecat stalking the little one. Adam takes the injured cub to the royal palace and nurses him back to health and the two are soon inseparable. However, Adam is mortified that is pet is terrified of everything, up to and including his own shadow, which also gains him the name Cringer, courtesy of Teela teasing Adam about his pet.

As for why Cringer is always so afraid, this episode never shows us what happened before Adam found Cringer, though we can guess from fact that Cringer is all alone in the jungle and being stalked by a predator that it was nothing good. In 2012 finally, a comic did tell what happened just before, namely that Cringer’s entire family and tribe were wiped out by a sabrecat attack. Baby Cringer was the only survivor and was hunted for days, until Adam drove off the predators and rescued him. So the reason Cringer is always terrified is because he is deeply traumatized.

When Adam gains the Power of Grayskull and becomes into He-Man, he makes sure never to transform in front of Cringer, until one day when Cringer follows Adam and chances to witness the transformation. Cringer is understandably terrified and when He-Man tries to reassure him that there’s no reason to be afraid and that he’s still Adam inside, he accidentally points the Sword of Power at Cringer and Battlecat is born. And not a moment too soon, because an eldritch horror has escaped from its tomb and needs to be stopped…

“Battlecat” is a highly memorable episode, especially since the Filmation He-Man cartoon rarely ever gave us origin stories for the various characters. We never even got to see how Adam first became He-Man, so it’s a treat to see how Cringer first became Battlecat and how Adam and Cringer met in the first place. The fact that Baby Cringer is one of the cutest creatures ever seen on screen doesn’t hurt either.

In many ways, this episode also illustrates D.C. Fontana’s strengths as a writer. Her episodes were inevitably memorable and often expanded the world of the story and gave backstory to characters who did not have a lot before, whether it’s introducing Spock’s parents in “Journey to Babel”, delving into the previous hosts of the Dax symbiont in “Dax” or recounting the origins of Cringer in “Battlecat”.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Brevity updates a fairy tale.
Dinosaur Comics has the perfect Batman story.
Speed Bump asks a question philosophers can’t answer.
Strange Brew closes the case.
Zen Pencils quotes Sagan.

(10) RAIDERS CAST-SIGNED LASERDISC. If you can’t live without this you better get your bid in by Thursday: “’Raiders of the Lost Ark’ Cast, Director & Creator Signed Laser Disc Cover — Signed by Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Karen Allen and Philip Kaufman — With Beckett COA” offered by Nate Sanders Auctions.

Extraordinarily rare ”Raiders of the Lost Ark” laser disc cover signed by all the principals of the iconic 1981 film. Large 12.5” square cover is signed by actors Harrison Ford and Karen Allen as well as by director Steven Spielberg and creators George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. All sign in blue felt-tip with excellent contrast against the cover. Includes actual laser disc, with bifold cover opening to show scenes from the movie. Light edgewear with dings to corners. Very good plus condition. With Beckett COA for all signatures.

(11) 13 IS AN ANSWER? [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Let’s see: 6×9=42. Ah, but it is true… in base 13. Which perfectly explains why things are so screwed up – we use base 10, or 2… but not 13. This, of course, is demonstrated by the paper… “The secret behind pedestrian crossings—and why some spiral into chaos” at Phys.org.

Pedestrian crossings generally showcase the best in pedestrian behavior, with people naturally forming orderly lanes as they cross the road, smoothly passing those coming from the opposite direction without any bumps or scrapes. Sometimes, however, the flow gets chaotic, with individuals weaving through the crowd on their own haphazard paths to the other side.

Now, an international team of mathematicians, co-led by Professor Tim Rogers at the University of Bath in the UK and Dr. Karol Bacik at MIT in the US has made an important breakthrough in their understanding of what causes human flows to disintegrate into tangles. This discovery has the potential to help planners design road crossings and other pedestrian spaces that minimize chaos and enhance safety and efficiency.

In a paper appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team pinned down the precise point at which crowds of pedestrians crossing a road collapse from order to disorder.

The researchers found that for order to be maintained, the spread of different directions people walk in must be kept below a critical angle of 13 degrees.

When it comes to pedestrian crossings, this could be achieved by limiting the width of a crossing or considering where a crossing is placed, so pedestrians are less tempted to veer off track towards nearby destinations….

(12) RAISING ‘CANE. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Coming soon, oil from Martian dinosaurs, and the major push to get to Mars, funded by the petrochemical industry. “NASA’s Curiosity Rover Detects Largest Organic Molecules on Mars” reports NASA.

Researchers analyzing pulverized rock onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover have found the largest organic compounds on the Red Planet to date. The finding, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests prebiotic chemistry may have advanced further on Mars than previously observed.

Scientists probed an existing rock sample inside Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) mini-lab and found the molecules decane, undecane, and dodecane. These compounds, which are made up of 10, 11, and 12 carbons, respectively, are thought to be the fragments of fatty acids that were preserved in the sample. Fatty acids are among the organic molecules that on Earth are chemical building blocks of life.

Living things produce fatty acids to help form cell membranes and perform various other functions. But fatty acids also can be made without life, through chemical reactions triggered by various geological processes, including the interaction of water with minerals in hydrothermal vents.

While there’s no way to confirm the source of the molecules identified, finding them at all is exciting for Curiosity’s science team for a couple of reasons….

(13) THE SECRET PREQUEL TO BLADE RUNNER. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult takes a deep dive into the Blade Runner films. “The Secret Prequel To Blade Runner”.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/14/25 Said The Pi Man

Posted on March 14, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE. You’re invited to “Meet the authors and translators longlisted for the International Booker Prize”. Includes Solenoid author Mircea Cărtărescu (below at left).

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to mangia mussels in Baltimore’s Little Italy with David Simmons in Episode 249 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

David Simmons

It’s time for lunch in Baltimore’s Little Italy with David Simmons, author of the horror diptych Ghosts of East Baltimore and Ghosts of West Baltimore. His short fiction can be found in Brave New Weird Volume Two, Kaleidotrope, and This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories About Bugs. His novel Eradicator will be released later this year.

We discussed how he manages to give such dramatic performances during his public readings, why his answer when asked to describe his genre of writing is “Baltimore,” the way discovering the novels of Donald Goines changed his life, why his wife was responsible for his first short story being written and sold, how he hopes reading him will have you feeling as if you’re in a frenetic car chase, why for him the villains always come first, the extensive research he needed to write Baltimore right, why his rapping career is a thing of the past, the reason a story’s opening line is so important, and much more.

(3) BEWARE THE IDES OF GALLIFREY. “Comic-Con Museum in San Diego set to open ‘Doctor Who’ exhibition this weekend” reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. It opens March 15.

An exhibit of Daleks, left, and Cybermen, who are prominent villains in the BBC’s long-running TV series “Doctor Who.” They’re featured in “Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder: Where Science Meets Fiction,” an international exhibition that makes its U.S. premiere on March 15 at the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park. (Phoebe Mackenzie)

San Diego fans of the long-running BBC sci-fi series “Doctor Who” can step inside the TARDIS, get face-to-face with a Dalek and see various versions of the Sonic Screwdriver when the touring exhibition “Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder: Where Science Meets Fiction” makes its U.S. premiere Saturday at the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park.

For the uninitiated, “Doctor Who” is a long-running sci-fi TV series that debuted on England’s BBC in 1963. It aired continuously until 1989, then took a yearslong break until it was rebooted in 2005. Originally designed as a children’s show, it has been adopted by legions of fans of all ages from around the world…

…The “Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder” exhibit features an extensive array of original props and sets from the show, as well as behind-the-scenes resource materials from what is now the world’s longest-running sci-fi show. Besides exhibit displays, there are interactive digital displays and kiosks where fans can learn about the Doctor’s adventures. There are also screens where visitors can learn about the real-life science that the show’s writers incorporate into the show, including the concept of time travel, artificial intelligence, DNA manipulation and cloning….

…The exhibition was launched in 2022 in Liverpool, England, and has since visited Scotland and New Zealand. The San Diego visit will run through March 2026, so it will be open when San Diego Comic-Con returns July 24-27. The “Doctor Who” TV series usually has a panel and merchandise booth at the annual sci-fi convention….

(4) STARSHIP TROOPERS REBOOT? [Item by John A Arkansawyer.] Back to the source material, the story says, and not the first movie: “New Starship Troopers Movie in the Works from Neill Blomkamp” at The Hollywood Reporter.

Johnny Rico is coming back to kill some more bugs.

Columbia Pictures is plotting a new Starship Troopers movie, setting District 9 filmmaker Neill Blomkamp to write and direct an adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel story by Robert A. Heinlein.

Blomkamp will also produce the feature alongside Terri Tatchell, his partner and wife who co-wrote the South African filmmaker’s District 9 and 2015 outing, Chappie.

Published in 1959, Troopers ostensibly told of an interstellar war between Earth and a host of bug-like aliens, and focused on a rise of a military serviceman named Johnny Rico. But the story had other things on its minds, like exploring the strengths of life in a military society and such ideas as having to perform service in order to have voting rights.

While the book won a Hugo Award for best novel and has been quite influential in sci-fi literature, some quarters described the book as fascist. It was that tone that was satirized in the 1997 movie from Paul Verhoeven, the director of Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Showgirls. Verhoeven was over-the-top in his depiction of the military jingoism and propaganda, fetishized costumes, and highlighted Nazi influences….

… Blomkamp’s take is not a remake of the Verhoeven movie, and sources say the goal is to go back to the source material.

Blomkamp most recently directed Gran Turismo for Sony Pictures, a critical and commercial success that grossed over $122 million worldwide….

(5) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Robocop series (1994)

Thirty-one years ago the Robocop series was first broadcast this week in Canada. (It would be four days more before it was broadcast in the States.) Stripped largely of the violence and cynicism of the film that it was based on, it was intended to appeal to children and young adults. Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner who scripted the first RoboCop film were back for the pilot here. They scripted a sequel to the movie but Orion went in a different direction — elements of that sequel are largely the pilot here.

Richard Eden is Murphy / RoboCop. And given its target audience, playing a prominent role is Sarah Campbell as Gadget, an eight year-old girl. All the characters in the film were renamed into new characters, i.e. Anne Lewis becomes Lisa Madigan. Why so? The iron law of copyright meant that all of the main characters except RoboCop/Alex Murphy had to have their names changed. So The Old Man is the chairman and so on. For the same copyright reasons they could not use ED-209 or refer to it.

They had planned on reusing the gun from the film, and had permission to do so, but Canadian Customs decided it looked too much like a real weapon which meant it couldn’t come into the country. So they designed and constructed a new, lighter one which worked better according to the actor who had handled the other prop weapon.

Cinespace studios in Toronto devoted fifty thousand square feet of permanent sets to resemble old Detroit. This was not a cheap series to do, was it?

So how was critical reception for it? The Variety review at the time said that, “Series has a good chance of succeeding because, on the basis of the opener, it’s brave enough to amuse instead of intimidate. There’s a lesson there.”

The Houston Chronicle like it quite a bit saying it “works well as a mass-market show as it offers action, as opposed to violence. And it’s ironic humor, though not as hard-edged as the movies’, has a sly, subversive bent.”

Final word goes to the Boston Globe: “This is a far campier and cartoonier RoboCop than the original. Even when the wit is blunt, the writing is snappy; and the acting is just broad enough to poke a little fun at itself.”

None of these reviews helped. It lasted but twenty-two episodes of one season as it never found an audience. Cancellation was actually announced just barely into the season. Interestingly they did a one-off film, Robocop: The Future of Law Enforcement, which was decided on late in the season.

Like so many other genre series, it’s streaming on Peacock. For once, I can tell you they are legally up as well on YouTube provided you chose the ones up there by Rallie who did the series.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit has the earliest kind of audio book.
Dark Side of the Horse shares its top three tear-jerkers.
Dinosaur Comics thinks our proverbs aren’t competitive.
Mother Goose and Grimm suspect drugs.
Reality Check ruins the ending.

(7) BUY BOB CLAMPETT’S STUFF. Van Eaton Galleries is holding a Bob Clampett Collection auction on March 22-23. Meantime you can see the lots in a free public exhibition from March 4-20, Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm, at their location — 12160 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA 91504.

They also will sell you a print copy of “The Bob Clampett Collection Auction Catalog” for $50 (or you can view it gratis as a flipbook at the link).

A softcover catalog for our March 2025 “The Bob Clampett Collection” auction. The gorgeous collectible reference catalog measures 11″x8.5″ and features lovely full-color imagery for nearly 1000 amazing animation artifacts available in the auction, detailed across 350 pages.

(8) FIRE, ASH, AND TEARS. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian adopts a somewhat flippant tone in reporting James Cameron’s claim that his wife sobbed for four hours after watching the third installment in the Avatar franchise: “Having a bawl: why Avatar 3 will reduce you to a sobbing husk (just ask James Cameron’s wife)”.

Can you feel it? If you’re paying enough attention, and you have your spirit tuned to the frequencies of the planet, then you’ll be able to sense that the old Avatar machinery is starting to crank up again. The third instalment of the series, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is set for release in December. And this means that James Cameron finds himself saddled with a familiar task; in just nine months he has to try and motivate people to see a film from a franchise that they’ve already forgotten about twice before now.

The bad news is that these are incredibly expensive films to make. So expensive, in fact, that Cameron previously stated that the second film needed to be the third highest grossing movie of all time just to break even. And, just to compound things, that film was such an incomprehensible mishmash of confused mythology, nondescript motivation and vague characterisation that this one needs to be something really special to get bums on seats….

But the better news is that James Cameron has been here before. He knows exactly how to get people excited for Avatar movies now, and by God he’s going to pull out the big guns. So, how is Cameron going to make you want to watch Avatar: Fire and Ash? Simple, by promising you a sustained emotional breakdown.’

(9) PLAGUE YEAR. Inverse reminds us “30 Years Ago, Dustin Hoffman Made Disaster Movie So Ahead Of Its Time It Seemed Like Sci-Fi”. (You mean it wasn’t?)

When Outbreak was released 30 years ago, Wolfgang Petersen’s tense, often terrifying (if conventionally melodramatic) film seemed like the sci-fi movie it was. Surely a global outbreak of something as devastating as the movie’s mutant Ebola-like virus couldn’t really happen, could it? Three decades later, Outbreak seems prophetic, not just in its scenario of a rogue virus escaping from Africa and making its way into the U.S., but also in the reactions of government, business, and people alike to such a catastrophe. Outbreak is something of a mirror on society that, three decades later, is worth taking a deep look into….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John A Arkansawyer, 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 John Hertz.]

Pixel Scroll 3/6/25 Hail Pixels, We Who Are About To File Salute You

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) BRADBURY IN THE WAUKEGAN MUSEUM. The Chicago Tribune is there as “Visitors get sneak peek at newly restored Waukegan History Museum”.

Walking into the almost fully restored, more than century-old, one-time Waukegan Public Library — that is now the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie — visitors can take a step back in time….

…Lori Nerheim, the historical society’s president, said part of the intent of the $15 million restoration was to give visitors a feel for the experience a young Ray Bradbury had when he spent hours there as a boy reading and nurturing the imagination which led the famed author to the writing of his books.

“We wanted to bring it back to its original look and feel,” she said of the museum operated jointly by the historical society and the Waukegan Park District. “I feel tremendous pride. I am excited to see people’s reaction.”

… To enter the building, visitors ascend a few steps before entering the door where they see a staircase on either side leading to two floors of permanent exhibits, and before them some steps going to the top, main floor containing a permanent exhibit honoring Bradbury as well as a room for research.

Before the building closed as the library in 1965, the room containing the Bradbury exhibit was the children’s reading room. He spent hours there in the 1920s and 1930s reading and developing his thirst for books. Nerheim said she hopes the environment will inspire future authors.

“I can see children today sitting in that room where Ray Bradbury sat as a child and reading books he read,” she said. “Perhaps they will be inspired to write or tell their own stories.”

Filling the bookcases in the Bradbury room are the author’s private collection of thousands of volumes he willed to the Waukegan Public Library when he died in 2012…..

(2) FAMOUS BOOKSTORE MAY REOPEN ‘NEXT WEEK’. Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego is in the process of repairing flood damage sustained in late February. On Monday their latest newsletter gave a progress report: “Flooded! Curbside Pickup Is Available!”

First, thank you to all of the customers, authors, publishers, and other community members that have reached out to offer their support in the last week. The outpouring of support has been incredibly heartwarming and has helped us get through the uncertainty of the last week. We also want to extend a special thank you to our fellow independent bookstores who have offered support including opening their spaces for last minute event venues. This is truly a special book community and one we are so happy to be a part of.

We wanted to reach out with an update on the store and forecast of what’s to come. As this situation is continually evolving, there may be additional changes, but we promise to communicate as much as possible.

The good news:
No inventory was damaged in the flooding. THE BOOKS ARE OK! The vinyl flooring is also intact and does not need to be removed.

The bad news:
The carpet in the children’s section was flooded and is being replaced. Additionally, they found some significant water damage in the walls on the west side of the unit as well as in the wall behind the YA section separating the front area of the store from the back room. The drywall needs to be replaced. There was also damage to the fixtures.

What does this mean?:
Mysterious Galaxy is currently closed to in-store shopping and events. If you purchased a ticket to an upcoming event, please keep a lookout for an email with more information. However, the demo has already begun and we are hoping to reopen to browsing by early next week! (*knocks on wood*)
The construction is such that it is not safe to have customers browsing at this time. However, fortunately (or unfortunately) for us, we are not strangers to running a closed bookstore, and we are ready to work through the challenges that are sure to arise in the coming weeks.

(3) SUIT AGAINST N.E.A. OVER EXECUTIVE ORDER. “Theaters Sue the N.E.A. Over Trump’s ‘Gender Ideology’ Order” – the New York Times explains the litigation. (Story is behind a paywall.)

Several arts organizations sued the National Endowment for the Arts on Thursday, challenging its new requirement that grant applicants agree to comply with President Trump’s executive orders by promising not to promote “gender ideology.”

The groups that filed the suit have made or supported art about transgender and nonbinary people, and have received N.E.A. funding in the past. They say the new requirement unconstitutionally threatens their eligibility for future grants.

“Because they seek to affirm transgender and nonbinary identities and experiences in the projects for which they seek funding, plaintiffs are effectively barred by the ‘gender ideology’ certification and prohibition from receiving N.E.A. grants on artistic merit and excellence grounds,” the lawsuit says.

The groups are being represented in the litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said in the lawsuit that the N.E.A. rule “has sowed chaos in the funding of arts projects across the United States.” After Mr. Trump began his second term, the N.E.A. said it would require grant applicants to agree “that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” which Mr. Trump said in an executive order includes “the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”

The N.E.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit was filed in a federal court in Rhode Island on behalf of Rhode Island Latino Arts, which promotes art made by Latinos; the Theater Offensive, an organization in Boston that presents work “by, for and about queer and trans people of color”; and National Queer Theater, a New York company best known for its Criminal Queerness Festival, which presents the work of international artists with roots in countries where their sexuality is criminalized or censored.

(4) NERO GOLD PRIZE. The ultimate Nero accolade and £30,000 prize went to a non-genre (and nonfiction) book, Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love. “Maurice And Maralyn By Sophie Elmhirst Announced As Winner Of 2024 Nero Gold Prize Book Of The Year”.

(5) TOLKIEN WAS PEEVED. [Item by Steven French.] I am not sure that Tolkien’s loathing of sloppiness and love of language is quite the exclusive that the Guardian thinks it is! “’Reduced to nonsense’: JRR Tolkien’s irritation with typist revealed in archive”.

JRR Tolkien was so irritated by a careless typist’s slapdash work on one of his manuscripts that he vented his frustration in a letter that has come to light.

The Lord of the Rings author said in despair: “She reduced [my manuscript] to nonsense. I have some sympathy with the typist faced with such unfamiliar matter; though evidently she wasn’t paying much attention.”

He mocked her confusion of “poche for poetic, highballs(!) for high halls, and arias for cries”.

The letter is within a collection of largely unpublished correspondence that reflects Tolkien’s loathing of sloppiness and love of language.

It is part of an archive that includes the last major Tolkien manuscript in private hands, The Road Goes Ever On, his collaboration with the composer Donald Swann of the musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann….

(6) WELCOME TO EARTH. Gizmodo invites us to “Watch 5 Mysterious Clips From Alien: Earth’s Crashed Ship” – a series of teasers from the upcoming FX series.

…What’s about to happen is the debut of Alien: Earth, FX’s upcoming show set years before any of the Alien films. It follows a team of soldiers who investigate a ship that has crashed on Earth and are forced to deal with what it contains. We assume, of course, that it contains something that will eventually create an alien, but what exactly? …

…So here you get to see the cat get the camera put on him and walk around a bit. The key takeaway is the end where we see a computer—much like Mother in the first Alien—with a very similar “Priority One” message: “Acquisition and safe return of all organisms for analysis. All other considerations secondary.” So, this ship was sent out to find something. And find something, it did….

…We see one of the crew members in hypersleep when something goes wrong. A fire. Is this the incident that started the crash back to Earth? What caused the fire? We don’t know.

All of this is a very cool way to tease the show and it’s culminating later this week in Austin, Texas. That’s where FX has recreated the crash site of the Maginot for fans to check out at SXSW. Learn more about that here.…

(7) THE RIGHT WAY, THE WRONG WAY, AND THE JANEWAY. According to Inverse, “A Much-Demanded Star Trek Spinoff Just Got A Hopeful Update”.

…We’re talking about the possibility of Star Trek: Janeway, a series focused on the return of Kate Mulgrew as Admiral Kathryn Janeway, set sometime after the events of Prodigy and perhaps, after the events of Picard Season 3. Speaking to a crowd of fans during the official Star Trek Cruise, Mulgrew answered a question about the possibility of a Janeway-focused spinoff TV series, or, failing that, her returning to the franchise in any capacity.

“There is a conversation happening,” Mulgrew said, according to WhatCulture. “It is being pursued.”

Mulgrew has long been vocal about galvanizing fans, which partially resulted in Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 ending up on Netflix. But in terms of any new Star Trek series focusing on the post-Voyager era, nothing on the current Paramount+ slate fits that description. Strange New Worlds will run for at least two more seasons, and Starfleet Academy is expected to debut either later this year or sometime in 2026. At the same event on the Star Trek: The Cruise, Mulgrew expressed concerns that a Janeway live-action series might not live up to what fans wanted. And she also didn’t want to do a show as a “vanity project.”

(8) DUNE WHAT COMES NATURALLY. “1 of Dune’s Most Crucial Events Is Secretly Way Smarter Than Fans Realize (& It Proves Frank Herbert Was Brilliant)” asserts CBR.com.

…Frank Herbert’s masterpiece Dune emerged from various fascinating influences, beginning with an unlikely source: the Oregon coast. In 1957, after publishing his novel The Dragon in the Sea, Herbert traveled to Florence, Oregon, where he observed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s efforts to stabilize massive dunes using poverty grasses. The sight of these imposing dunes, which Herbert believed could “swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways,” sparked a deep interest in ecology and desert environments that would become central to his epic novel. The ecological themes in Dune were further shaped by Herbert’s interactions with Native American mentors, particularly Howard Hansen and “Indian Henry” Martin from the Quileute reservation. Hansen’s warning that white men were “eating the earth” and could turn the planet into a wasteland “just like North Africa” resonated deeply with Herbert, who incorporated these environmental concerns into his story….

Many science fiction novels include predictions regarding technology, but Frank Herbert deliberately stayed away from that. Instead, Herbert’s novels focus on the power of the human mind and its ability to focus on discipline to overcome fears and regain control over thoughts, feelings, and even bodily functions. Herbert summed this up in one of his most iconic quoted Dune lines:

“Fear is the mind-killer.”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

March 6, 1928 — William F. Nolan. (Died 2021.)

By Paul Weimer: Is the crystal in your palm blinking?

While he did write two sequels to it, plenty of short stories, a number of screenplays and a fair number of critical works, the name William F. Nolan means one and one thing only for me: Logan’s Run.

Well, two, if you count the movie.

The book, co-authored with George Clayton Johnson, came first. Ironically, while I read the book first, and only saw the movie some years later, the edition I read of the book first and had for years until it fell apart was one of those “movie/tv tie in” editions, that even had some stills/photos from the movie in it. So I “saw” a couple of scenes from the movie thanks to reading and re-reading this edition long before actually watching the movie.

Such a strange, wild book. 21 is the age of mandatory death., the triumph of youth. Feels very weird, today, in our sometimes gerontocratic governments. You’ll never get away from a homer, homer, homer. Casual use of drugs. Casual sex. It’s a good thing that my parents never knew what was in the book, they’d have been shocked. A breakneck plot and scenes all across the country, from domed cities to the frozen prison of hell to Crazy Horse and the Thinker, to a Civil War re-enactment with robots!

I did visit Crazy Horse in 2008, inspired by the novel, and was disappointed in how slow the construction has gone (far different than in the Logan’s Run timeline). It’s…worse than a tourist trap, somehow. Alas.

But the movie is something else. The future as a giant enclosed shopping mall. Lots of things missing from the books and a very different set of confrontations–the original book has a fight with a tiger, but the movie has…house cats? And the utter disappointment that while in the book some people are escaping and becoming free, in the movie, apparently, they all were frozen into frozen food by Box, who was turned from a chilling sadist into a figure of comedy in the movie. And yet like the book, the movie subtly is suggesting that the current world order cannot stand, and in fact must change, or else.

Yes, this birthday turned into a Logan’s Run’s remembrance rather than a Nolan remembrance. Nolan died in 2021. Requiescat in pace.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater explains how comics will solve newspaper shrinkage.
Free Range shows why you should say “No” to wearing full plate at the next medieval reenactment.
Nancy takes some convincing about the power of stories.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has the long and short versions.

(11) SIMPSONS ART AUCTION. On March 15 Heritage Auctions will hold “Cowabunga II – Celebrating the Art of The Simpsons Animation Art Showcase Auction”. Among the 300+ lots going under the hammer is this animation cel:

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror VIII “The HΩmega Man” Original Kang and Kudos Production Cel (Fox, 1997). This original production cel from The Simpsons episode “Treehouse of Horror VIII” (Season 9, Episode 4) features the iconic alien duo Kang and Kodos Johnson from Rigel 7. Taken from the first segment, “The HΩmega Man,” this rare cel captures their brief yet hilarious appearance as they witness Springfield’s demise from space. In the segment, France launches a neutron bomb at Springfield after Mayor Quimby insults the French with a “frog legs” joke. As the bomb travels through space, it flies past Kang and Kodos’ flying saucer, prompting Kang to exclaim, “What the hell was that?” This humorous moment occurs near the 2:58 timestamp, adding to the duo’s memorable cameos.

(12) AHH, ROMANCE. Booklegger tells Facebook readers how a bookstore figured into a couple’s anniversary celebration.

A few days ago I noticed a customer browsing the shelves in the science fiction/fantasy section. I asked him if there was anything I could help him find. “No, I’m doing fine, thanks,” he responded,” “but actually I do have a question I wanted to ask you.” His expression was animated and I wondered where this was heading.

He went on to tell me that he and his girlfriend were approaching their first anniversary, and that they had come to Booklegger on their first date. They were planning on re-creating that first date by visiting Dick Taylor for chocolates, and then coming to our store. He had created a little 42 page book for her as an anniversary gift, and he wondered if he could come in on the morning of their anniversary and plant the book on our shelves for her to find when they came to our shop later in the day.

I was 100% on board with this idea! What a compliment that they had their first date at our place, and what a sweet, creative surprise to mark the occasion. So this morning just as we opened Kiloe came in and showed me the book that he had created. 42 pages of things that he adores about Sarah, inside jokes between them, remembrance of fun things they’ve done together etc. And yes, it’s 42 things because they are both fans of Douglas Adams. He planted the book between Jim Butcher titles, knowing that she would browse that area….

(13) WAX ON, WAX OFF. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Goldman Sachs, in a research note Thursday (the note isn’t publicly posted) reported by Slashdot: “Goldman Sachs: Why AI Spending Is Not Boosting GDP”.

Annualized revenue for public companies exposed to the build-out of AI infrastructure increased by over $340 billion from 2022 through 2024Q4 (and is projected to increase by almost $580 billion by end-2025). In contrast, annualized real investment in AI-related categories in the US GDP accounts has only risen by $42 billion over the same period. This sharp divergence has prompted questions from investors about why US GDP is not receiving a larger boost from AI….

Or, as I think it was Cory Doctorow posted months ago, they haven’t come up with a real, usefull killer usage for the thing. I am reminded of a news story on the radio in the early oughts, after the tech bubble collapsed, som3eone saying “they were spending money like mad, making fancy websites… and hoping that they’d eventually find a way to monetize it (they didn’t).

(14) WATER IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] One of the determinants many think is the need for water for life.

(I myself am a primacy of water man, though my former colleague, and fellow SF fan, Jack Cohen, was more broadminded than I.) Anyway, news comes that water has been discovered very early in the Universe’s history. This means that the Universe has had water in it for nearly all its time. This boosts the prospects for life arising elsewhere before now… Primary research here….

Of course, if you are not a primacy of water person then this news will be of lesser import…

Scientists from the University of Portsmouth have discovered that water was already present in the Universe 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.

The discovery means habitable planets could have started forming much earlier – before the first galaxies formed and billions of years earlier than was previously thought.

The study was led by astrophysicist Dr Daniel Whalen from the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation. It is published today (3 March 2025) in Nature Astronomy.

It is the first time water has been modelled in the primordial universe.

According to the researchers’ simulations, water molecules began forming shortly after the first supernova explosions, known as Population III (Pop III) supernovae. These cosmic events, which occurred in the first generation of stars, were essential for creating the heavy elements – such as oxygen – required for water to exist.

The key finding is that primordial supernovae formed water in the Universe that predated the first galaxies.

Dr Daniel Whalen, from the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation

Dr Whalen said: “Before the first stars exploded, there was no water in the Universe because there was no oxygen. Only very simple nuclei survived the Big Bang – hydrogen, helium, lithium and trace amounts of barium and boron.

“Oxygen, forged in the hearts of these supernovae, combined with hydrogen to form water, paving the way for the creation of the essential elements needed for life.”…

(15) TILT. The company’s Sunday landing was a success, however, today’s encore was not: “Private lunar lander may have fallen over while touching down near the moon’s south pole” – AP News has the story.

A privately owned lunar lander touched down on the moon with a drill, drone and rovers for NASA and other customers Thursday, but quickly ran into trouble and may have fallen over.

Intuitive Machines said it was uncertain whether its Athena lander was upright near the moon’s south pole — standing 15 feet (4.7 meters) tall — or lying sideways like its first spacecraft from a year ago. Controllers rushed to turn off some of the lander’s equipment to conserve power while trying to determine what went wrong.

It was the second moon landing this week by a Texas company under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program. Sunday’s touchdown was a complete success….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Mark Barsotti has rolled a sixth installment of his Paul Di Filippo interview: “Sci-Fi Writer Paul Di Filippo #6 ~ Weird Names & Cyberpunk Jazz Scatting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 2/21/25 As I Was Listening To Charles Ives, I Met Ningauble Of the Seven Eyes

Posted on February 21, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) SFWA ANNOUNCES DATE OF NEBULA FINALIST ANNOUNCEMENT. SFWA President Kate Ristau recently introduced members to Nebula Conference Project Manager, Sherine Mani saying, “Sherine is an events manager who has run conferences for Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits, as well as fan cons like CrimeCon.”

Ristau also spotlighted Nebula Award producers, Rebekah Postupak and Josh Storey. Both were assistant producers last year.

The Nebula Awards Finalist Announcement will be presented live on YouTube on March 12 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

(2) WORTH MORE THAN ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD. Apparently, because the BBC thinks “Luke Skywalker’s Star Wars medal could sell for up to £476k”. It will go on the block during Propstore’s “Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction” in March.

A medal given to Luke Skywalker after he destroyed the Death Star in Star Wars could sell for up to £476,000.

Propstore, based in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, is selling the Medal of Yavin, worn by future Jedi master Luke during the first film in the franchise.

The medal is also believed to have been worn by Harrison Ford – who played Han Solo – during rehearsals for the 1977 film, later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.

Brandon Alinger from Propstore said the item held a “special place in cinematic history”.

It goes on sale in Los Angeles in March with a price estimate of $300,000 to $600,000 (£238,000 to £476,000).

The medal came from the collection of props master Gerard Bourke, who worked on the original Star Wars films shot at Elstree Studios.

Propstore claimed it was the “first and only medal to be offered for public sale” after its team researched the prop….

(3) RUSHDIE ASSAILANT CONVICTED. “Man Who Stabbed Salman Rushdie Is Found Guilty of Attempted Murder” – the New York Times has the story (behind a paywall).

A jury in western New York on Friday found a New Jersey man guilty of attempted murder in the stabbing of the author Salman Rushdie, which left him partially blind.

The conviction of the man, Hadi Matar, 27, followed harrowing testimony from Mr. Rushdie, 77, who said he had been struck by his attacker’s dark, ferocious eyes. He told the jury that at first he felt he was being punched, but then he realized he had “a very large quantity of blood pouring out” onto his clothes.

Mr. Rushdie had been scheduled to deliver a talk at the Chautauqua Institution amphitheater on Aug. 12, 2022, about how the United States has been a safe haven for writers and other artists in exile.

Shortly before the talk was set to begin, a man wearing dark clothing and a face mask rushed onstage and stabbed Mr. Rushdie repeatedly.

Mr. Matar was also found guilty of assault on Friday for injuring Ralph Henry Reese, one of the founders of a project that offers refuge for writers. Mr. Reese had been onstage to moderate the talk.

Mr. Matar, who is scheduled to be sentenced on April 23, faces up to 32 years in prison. He also faces federal terrorism-related charges.

The attack occurred in front of more than 1,000 people. Afterward, Mr. Rushdie was airlifted to a hospital with a trauma clinic in Erie, Pa. He spent 17 days there before he was transferred to N.Y.U. Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation center in New York City, where he stayed for nearly a month….

(4) SHELFIES. The latest to share about his accumulated books with Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin is “Paul Graham Raven” in Shelfies #24. (Photos at the link.)

…As is probably obvious, I keep books either because I haven’t read them yet and fully intend to, or because I have read them already, and intend eventually to read them again. This exercise has made me realise that the latter category is necessarily growing faster than the former, which means I should probably stop buying books (an extremely expensive habit in Sweden) and catch up on my re-reads.

(Like that’s gonna happen any time soon.)

(5) THE OSCAR FOR DUNE 2? [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Adrian Horton makes the case for Dune: Part 2: “Why Dune: Part Two should win the best picture Oscar”.

A common complaint I’ve heard about Dune: Part Two is that it is too similar to the first Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s audacious gamble to adapt just half of Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi tome and hope for another greenlight from Warner Bros. This is correct. Part Two, like its predecessor, is arcane, surprisingly weird, oddly structured and deeply uninterested in pandering. This is actually a compliment, because though I have seen Part Two six times and still do not totally understand the Bene Gesserit, the film, like its predecessor, is a strange creature in modern cinema: a true blockbuster – a cinematic behemoth that makes millions, generates memes and cements the ever-vanishing movie star – that harnesses the full power of the art form….

(6) WHEN IAIN BANKS HELPED MAKE IT THE FULL MONTY. [Item by Steven French.] For my comfort read over Christmas and New Year I chose the fourth volume of Michael Palin’s diaries, covering the period 1999 to 2009, and there in the entry for September 14 2009 I discovered that Iain Banks, while a student at Stirling University, was an extra (a knight no less) in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail! [Click for larger image.]

(7) IT’S THE NANONEWTONS THAT KILL YOU. [Item by Steven French.] Who hasn’t wondered about this?! “What would happen if a tiny black hole passed through your body?” at Phys.org.

In 1974, science fiction author Larry Niven wrote a murder mystery with an interesting premise: Could you kill a man with a tiny black hole? I won’t spoil the story, though I’m willing to bet most people would argue the answer is clearly yes. Intense gravity, tidal forces, and the event horizon would surely lead to a messy end. But it turns out the scientific answer is a bit more interesting.

On the one hand, it’s clear that a large enough black hole could kill you. On the other hand, a black hole with the mass of a single hydrogen atom is clearly too small to be noticed. The real question is the critical mass. At what minimum size would a black hole become deadly? That’s the focus of a new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server….

…But if the black hole passed through your head, that would be a different story. Tidal forces could tear apart brain cells, which would be much more serious. Since brain cells are delicate, even a force differential of 10–100 nanonewtons might kill you. But that would take a black hole at the highest end of our mass range….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Anniversary: The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (2013)

Two of my favorite individuals, Charles de Lint, who would later win a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, and Charles Vess, who received a Hugo at Dublin 2019 for Best Professional Artist and a World Fantasy Award for Best Artist, collaborated on The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, a follow-up to their A Circle of Cats.

Twenty years ago, it would win the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, an award that until this moment I’d not heard of. My bad for not knowing of this award.

If you’ve not encountered this novel, it’s considered a young adult work, but I’d recommend for anyone interested in a good read grounded in Appalachia folklore with the fantastic artwork of Vess profusely illustrating it. You can read the Green Man review here. And here’s our review for A Circle of Cats as well. I’ve got one of his signed prints for A Circle of Cats in my apartment over the desk where I’m write this review.

It is available from the usual suspects, but you really should get the hardcover edition as it should be read that way as holding it and admiring the illustrations by Vess that way are extraordinary. You should be able to get a copy from the local bookstore as it is readily available.

Of course it has cats, lots of cats.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Tom the Dancing Bug shows what the Rebel Alliance press corps would be reduced to in 2025.
Dinosaur Comics works on a problem with time travel.
Arlo and Janice know the true stars.
Reality Check discovers the “real” reason for an invention.
Rhymes with Orange caters to all.
Savage Chickens takes us to a new author event.
New Yorker cartoon comments on the latest James Bond news.

(10) CAPACIOUS CAPE. “DC Comics to Relaunch Batman With New #1 Issue and New Costume” reports IGN.

2025 is definitely shaping up to be a huge year for DC’s flagship Batman comic. Current writer Chip Zdarsky just ended his run with Batman #157, paving the way for Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s Hush 2 storyline in March. And once Hush 2 is over, DC will be relaunching Batman with a new #1 issue, new writer, and new costume.

As revealed at the ComicsPro retailer event, the new volume of Batman will be written by Matt Fraction (Uncanny X-Men, The Invincible Iron Man). Current Batman artist Jorge Jimenez is remaining on board, though as mentioned, he and Fraction have designed a new costume and new Batmobile to ring in the new series. Batman is trading in the black and gray suit for a more vintage-inspired blue and gray costume. Check out the new Batsuit below:

(11) KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES. [Item by Steven French.] There are some absolutely stunning shots of aurorae here: “2024 Northern Lights Photographer of the Year” at Capture the Atlas.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tom Rae (@txmrae)

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George hilariously sends up “How Bomb Timers Work In Movies”.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Jeffrey Smith, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 2/9/25 The Universal Pixelgraph

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) SPACE UNICORNS SOUND OFF. You have until February 17 to make your voice heard in the Uncanny Magazine 2024 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll. Vote at the link. Each person gets a single entry of 3 stories (which can be edited later).

Here is the link to Uncanny Magazine’s 2024 eligible works – there’s still time to read up!

(2) SFF SHUT OUT OF DGA AWARDS. No works of genre interest won when the Directors Guild of America announced the 2025 DGA Awards at a ceremony on February 8. The complete list of 2025 DGA Awards winners and all related credits are at the link.

(3) SPECPO DEFINED. Pixie Bruner, SFPA’s 2025 Rhysling Awards chair, helps readers understand in “Speculative Poetry Defined”.

… We speculative poets know speculative poetry when we read it, but sometimes it’s not so easy to tell for some readers, and sometimes the line is fragile, even for us speculative poets, so I am going to give a few examples of situations and poems that are clearly speculative as guidelines….

… Let’s say a person wants to write a speculative poem about their broken heart. Your feelings are real and having your heart broken is a devastating experience.

However, if your heart has been pulled into cosmic taffy, boiled in acid in a dutch oven full of tears, shattered once it reaches the hard crack stage on a candy thermometer, and fed to the monsters that live under your bed after it has been ripped from your chest, pulped under foot, and destroyed- your tears became diamonds you pawned to a constantly changing man with a ragged trench coat with pockets full of wonders in an alleyway behind a coffeehouse that could only be found at 3:13pm every other Tuesday for a new heart of pure gold or some strange unbreakable alloy with strange properties that you merely insert into a fairy door in your chest- it is now a speculative poem about a broken heart….

(4) FURRIES SLURRED IN TABLOID. Dogpatch Press drew attention to a UK tabloid “hit piece” about a furry convention this weekend in Scotland — “Gathering featuring anthropomorphic erotica will be held in support of Scottish conservation group” at The Telegraph [Archive.Today link] – and says, “Furries are angry about being conflated with abusers, based on nothing but twisting the wording of a convention code of conduct about what they don’t support.” [Warning for slurs in the screencaps.]

Furries are angry about being conflated with abusers, based on nothing but twisting the wording of a convention code of conduct about what they don't support.
— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.077Z

It's complicated when surface level reaction is one thing, internal organizer level handling is another. There is the issue of limited power and liability about being able to control who interacts. And then there is the issue of cronyism/corruption which I have witnessed and experienced.
— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.078Z

I can't discuss active investigation but can help anyone who blows a whistle in public or private. There's multi layers where misinformed, hateful outsider attacks exist at the same time as significant internal issues that are not unique to a targeted community that hosts marginalized people.
— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.079Z

(5) IN CONTRAST. Alternatively, the BBC’s coverage about Scotiacon 2025 is positive: “’Being a furry is like wearing a superhero cape’”.

Fennick Firefox, a man dressed as a large furry orange fox with blue hair and a tail tipped by a flame, says that in his normal life he is very shy person.

But after he adopts his “fursona”, he is dancing in the street and sharing a long hug with his best friend Rock, who is dressed as a giant red and black German Shepherd.

“It’s like a superhero cape,” says Fennick.

“When I put my fox head on, the person is gone – he does not exist.”

Fennick says that being in costume allows him to escape his everyday struggles and “do nothing but be happy”.

That’s what has brought him to Scotland’s largest furry convention – Scotiacon….

(6) HOW FANTASTIC ARE THEY? Erin Underwood’s trailer review tells “How Marvel Finally Got Me Excited About Fantastic Four!”

Marvel’s latest ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ trailer has just dropped, and it’s turning heads! Join me as I dive into this retro-futuristic take on Marvel’s first family. Could this be the MCU’s boldest move yet or another blunder? Watch to find out and let me know what you think!

(7) REEVE REMEMBERED. “6 Former Superman Actors Pay Tribute to Late Legend Christopher Reeve at MegaCon: ‘It Was Always Gonna Be Like Chris’” from People.

Christopher Reeve just got a tribute that even the strongest kryptonite couldn’t take down.

During a panel at MegaCon Orlando in Florida on Saturday, Feb. 8, six actors who have portrayed Superman in the years since Reeve’s role as the Man of Steel in 1978’s Superman came together to discuss the DC hero’s legacy on and off the screen and to honor Reeve, who died in 2004.

Those in attendance included Tyler Hoechlin (Superman & Lois), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Dean Cain (Lois & Clark), Tim Daly (Superman: The Animated Series), George Newbern (Justice League animated series) and Tom Welling (Smallville).

During the discussion, Welling, 47, recalled working with Reeve on a season 2 episode of Smallville, an experience he said he “walked away from wanting to be a better person.” Reeve appeared in the WB series as scientist Virgil Swann, who played an important role in the storyline of Welling’s portrayal of Clark Kent.

“We got there and the plan was to shoot four hours and get his side of two scenes and then he would leave and I would do my side with someone else,” Welling recalled. “We did the first scene and they said, ‘OK, we’re gonna do the next scene.’ He goes, ‘What about Tom?’ “

As Welling recalled at MegaCon, Reeve had other plans — just as he had a quick sense of humor.

“He was like, ‘No I’m not leaving.’ And long story short, it got to the point about eight hours into the day and they turned around filming my scenes with him. And his nurse, power of attorney, was like, ‘If you don’t come with me in 15 minutes, I’m calling the police.’ He had to leave. He looked at me and goes, ‘They’re always telling me what to do.’ “

“You didn’t feel sorry for him at all,” Welling said elsewhere during his story about Reeve. “He was telling jokes the whole time. We had a riot, he was cracking up. … We just had really great banter. I had a lot of fun with him.”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 9, 1966 — Lost In Space’s “War Of The Robots”

Fifty-nine years ago this evening, the thrilling sight of Lost In Space’s “War Of The Robots” first happened. In one corner of this fight, we have Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. And in the other corner of the ring (metaphorically speaking), we have B-9 from Lost in Space.

Aired as the twentieth episode of the first season, the story is that while returning from a fishing trip, Will and B-9 find a deactivated Robotoid. Against the wishes of B-9, Will proceeds to repair and restore the Robotoid which apparently becomes a humble servant of the Robinson family. Sure.

The best part of this episode is the slow motion rock ‘em, sock ‘em battle between the robots. And yes it’s a very, very silly battle indeed as you can see from the image below. Robotic gunfighters, eh?

Lost in Space is available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

The Argyle Sweater bookstore has a new section.
Brewster Rockit provides a good sample.
Non Sequitur has heard a theory.
Pardon My Planet is slightly subtle.
Simone Lia needs a child’s help to understand.

(10) AI ART GOING UNDER THE HAMMER. But are they hitting it hard enough? Christie’s auction house thinks people should line up to bid on stuff created with AI tools, or might once they explain it to them in “What Is AI Art?”

Christie’s New York is proud to announce its inaugural AI art auction, Augmented Intelligence, the first ever artificial intelligence-dedicated sale at a major auction house. Running from 20 February to 5 March with a concurrent exhibition at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries, the online sale will include highly sought-after works by AI artists spanning the establishment and new guard, such as Refik Anadol, Claire Silver, Sasha Stiles, Pindar Van Arman, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Harold Cohen and more. The sale also showcases a selection of artists from NVIDIA’s AI Art Gallery.

‘AI technology is undoubtedly the future, and its connection to creativity will become increasingly important,’ says Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s Director of Digital Art.

So, what is AI art?

In simple terms, artificial intelligence art (AI art) is any form of art that has been created or enhanced with AI tools. Many artists use the term ‘collaboration’ when describing their process with AI….

(11) PEEK-A-BOO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I wonder what Stanislaw Lem would make of this? “Alien ocean could hide signs of life from spacecraft” – posted by University of Reading.

Searching for life in alien oceans may be more difficult than scientists previously thought, even when we can sample these extraterrestrial waters directly.

A new study focusing on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that sprays its ocean water into space through cracks in its icy surface, shows that the physics of alien oceans could prevent evidence of deep-sea life from reaching places where we can detect it.

Published today (Thursday, 6 February 2025) in Communications Earth & Environment, the study shows how Enceladus’s ocean forms distinct layers that dramatically slow the movement of material from the ocean floor to the surface.

Chemical traces, microbes, and organic material – telltale signatures of life that scientists look for – could break down or transform as they travel through the ocean’s distinct layers. These biological signatures might become unrecognisable by the time they reach the surface where spacecraft can sample them, even if life thrives in the deep ocean below.

Flynn Ames, lead author at the University of Reading, said: “Imagine trying to detect life at the depths of Earth’s oceans by only sampling water from the surface. That’s the challenge we face with Enceladus, except we’re also dealing with an ocean whose physics we do not fully understand.

“We’ve found that Enceladus’ ocean should behave like oil and water in a jar, with layers that resist vertical mixing. These natural barriers could trap particles and chemical traces of life in the depths below for hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years. Previously, it was thought that these things could make their way efficiently to the ocean top within several months.

“As the search for life continues, future space missions will need to be extra careful when sampling Enceladus’s surface waters.” …

Primary research at Nature.

(12) THUNDERBOLTS*. Deadline introduces “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Thunderbolts*’”.

In the Super Bowl trailer for Thunderbolts*, premiering May 2 in theaters, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine warns the Avengers aren’t coming as she questions “who will keep the American people safe?”

Set to Starship’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, the spot features Florence Pugh’s Yelena Bolova/Black Widow suffering from some serious imposter syndrome until her fellow Thunderbolts give her a pep talk.

“We can’t do this. No one here is a hero,” she says before David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian tells her: “Yelena, when I look at you, I don’t see your mistakes. That’s why we need each other.”…

(13) DRAGON REBOOT. Deadline also covered “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘How To Train Your Dragon’”, for the live-action version coming to theaters including Imax screens on June 13.

Return with us now to the rugged isle of Berk, where Vikings and dragons have been bitter enemies for generations, Hiccup (Mason Thames) stands apart. The inventive yet overlooked son of Chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, reprising his voice role from the animated franchise), he defies centuries of tradition when he befriends Toothless, a feared Night Fury dragon. Their unlikely bond reveals the true nature of dragons, challenging the very foundations of Viking society.

With the fierce and ambitious Astrid (Nico Parker) and the village’s quirky blacksmith Gobber (Nick Frost) by his side, Hiccup confronts a world torn by fear and misunderstanding. As an ancient threat emerges, endangering both Vikings and dragons, Hiccup’s friendship with Toothless becomes the key to forging a new future….

(14) THE FISH (OR WHATEVER THEY ARE) ARE BITING. “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’” at Deadline.

This summer’s action-packed monster movie Jurassic World: Rebirth has released its first trailer and glimpse into the latest film in the franchise, starring Jonathan Bailey, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali among others. Universal opens the film globally on July 2.

The fourth film in the Jurassic World series follows a team of scientists and others whose main objective is to acquire genetic samples from three of the largest dinosaurs in the sea, on land and in the air. Set five years after Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), the planet has become inhospitable for dinosaurs, so those that still exist have become isolated to environments in which their breeds once flourished. The three most colossal creatures in the different parts of the ecosystem could prove necessary for a life-saving drug for humans….

(15) IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. Next Deadline cues up “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’”.

…Ethan Hunt, the spy at the center of the blockbuster action flick helmed by Christopher McQuarrie, returns to chase down villains, conduct submarine reconnaissance and hang beneath propeller planes in what is billed as the epic finale to a saga that first began nearly two decades prior.

In the sequel to 2023’s Dead Reckoning Part One, slated for release May 23, Cruise’s character embarks on a final mission that will reportedly close out the sprawling franchise….

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, 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 Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 1/17/25 Now Either Put On These Glasses Or Start Scrolling That Pixel

Posted on January 17, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) OKORAFOR Q&A. On NPR’s 1A “Nnedi Okorafor’s ‘Death of the Author’ explores the relationship between art and AI”.

Nnedi Okorafor is back on 1A. And this time, the award-winning speculative fiction author is turning her eyes and her pen from the stars to a story a little closer to reality. But not by much.

“Death of the Author” is her latest novel. It’s a book within a book that follows the story of a Nigerian author who publishes a work of science fiction that ends up affecting things far beyond her lifetime. Okorafor’s book grapples with the relationship between art and artificial intelligence and the question of who controls a story….

A quote from the transcript:

[OKORAFOR] This is this is really the novel that I wanted to write from the very beginning. I just did not feel ready to do this. And as you’ve said, it’s very autobiographical, and I just just that whole idea was hard for me. Mhmm. I think that so the way that the way that this book started was painful. It was painful. This was something that my sisters and I have 2 older sisters and then one younger brother, and we would always talk about me writing this book about our family, about the Nigerian American experience, and all of that. And, you know, we’ve talked about this for years, but I just was I just wasn’t ready. And then in 2021, my middle sister passed, and it was very sudden, and it was unexpected. And, when that happened, it was just time. It was just time. And that was when I was like, okay. It’s I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do this. And I literally, 2 days after it happened, I started writing this book, and I don’t outline. I don’t outline. I just started writing and just pouring it out, and this is what came out.

(2) ORANGE MIKE Q&A. Chattanoogan.com interviewed a Filer who’ll attend a milestone convention: “’Orange Mike’ Lowrey Hasn’t Missed A Chattacon In 50 Years, And He’s Coming This Weekend”.

…Chattacon, an annual science fiction convention, will be held at the DoubleTree Hilton in Downtown Chattanooga from Friday through Sunday (Martin Luther King Weekend.)

“Chattacon matters because it is in the old tradition of a fan run, not-for-profit, science fiction convention for people who actually read the stuff,” says Chattacon historian and panel speaker Lowrey.

“It is not a commercial operation, like the bloated gigantic Dragon-Con. It (Chattacon) is still run by fans. If there are excess funds, they (Chattacon) donate to local charities and it is a place for people in that part of the South to gather and talk about science fiction, whether they’re professional writers or 12-year-old kids or retirees.

“Anybody who cares about science fiction can get together and talk about the stuff, and nobody’s going to check your credentials at the door. And the prices are deliberately set as low as possible so that as many people as possible can attend. It is multi-age. It is multi-cultural and it’s a heck of a lot of fun.”

Chattacon is celebrating its 50^th edition, and, having been to all 49 before, Mr. Lowrey has witnessed the evolution of the convention since its inception. Founded by Chattanooga resident Irv Koch, Chattacon held its first event in January 1976 at the East Ridge Sheraton. It was a fanfare that drew just a crowd of 81 people….

Lowrey also tells us, “Prep for this interview gave me an excuse to go through old Chattacon Flickr albums; too damned many memories of dead people, from Terry Pratchett to Ken Moore to the Amoses. Here’s one from Chattacon 27 in 2002, when Kelly was 6.5 (she’s 29 now) and I didn’t have a gray hair on that head.” — Chattacon at Flickr.

(3) HAPPY ANNIVERSARY. Tachyon Publications will be celebrating their 30th anniversary throughout 2025.

In July 1995, Jacob Weisman, an avid young science fiction fan and intern at Asimov’s Science Fiction and Locus magazines, published Ganglion and Other Stories by Wayne Wightman. The success of Ganglion, as well as that of the next book—The Black Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum—inspired Weisman to continue expanding his publishing program. Initially, Weisman concentrated on bringing classic works that he loved back into print, including fiction by Robert Nathan and Mary Shelley. But Weisman quickly branched out by publishing work by contemporary authors he admired, such as Peter S. Beagle and Patricia A. McKillip.

By the early aughts, Tachyon had become widely known for its carefully curated, high-quality publications. In 2002, Weisman hired his firstemployee, managing editor Jill Roberts. He signed on for national distribution shortly thereafter. Over the years, Weisman’s staff has grown to a six-member international team, which includes editor Jaymee Goh, lead designer Elizabeth Story, publicity manager Rick Klaw, and publicist Kasey Lansdale.

In 2025, Tachyon Publications will reach its 30th year in publishing. Tachyon has already put out more than 220 books, typically between 8 and 10 titles annually, and primarily in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The company continues to champion smart genre fiction for everyone.

30th Anniversary Planned Events

San Francisco Public Library exhibition of Tachyon books, historical photos, and documents
Anniversary party, open to the public, at the SFPL on October 5, 2025
Publication of a limited edition commemorative chapbook, which will also be given to anniversary party attendees
Free monthly e-book giveaways to all Tachyon newsletter subscribers, including titles by Carrie Vaughn, Jane Yolen, Ellen Datlow, Bruce Sterling, and Naseem Jamnia
Ongoing events, panels, signings, and readings, including at the World Fantasy and World Science Fiction
Conventions
Virtual salon with Tachyon authors, artists, and editors

During its 30th anniversary in 2025, Tachyon is publishing 10 titles that encapsulate the variety and quality of the company’s publishing program:

A 30th anniversary edition of Patricia A. McKillip’s The Book of Atrix Wolfe
The Essential Patricia A. McKillip, a career retrospective collection
Two fantasy debuts, If Wishes Were Retail by Auston Habershaw and Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill
One Level Down, Mary G. Thompson’s taut science fiction thriller
Pat Murphy’s original take on Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes, The Adventures of Mary Darling
The Unkillable Frank Lightning, Josh Rountree’s reconstruction of the Frankenstein mythos in the Wild West
A new middle grade adventure from the legendary Daniel Pinkwater, Jules, Penny & the Rooster
Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!, a collection of radio interviews with science fiction luminaries in- cluding Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, and Margaret Atwood
Two new fiction collections from bestselling authors, Refreshments from Hell by Joe R. Lansdale and Letters from an Imaginary Country by Theodora Goss

(4) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to share shawarma with the award-winning Eric Choi in Episode 245 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

I plucked Eric Choi‘s short story “From a Stone” out of the slush pile to publish in the September 1996 issue of Science Fiction Age, and our paths have unfortunately rarely crossed since….

…Choi was the first recipient of the Asimov Award (now the Dell Award) for his novelette “Dedication.” He also won the Aurora Award for his short story “Crimson Sky,” and a 2023 Sidewise Award for Best Short Form Alternate History for his novelette “A Sky and a Heaven”. His short story collection Just Like Being There was published in by Springer Nature in 2022. He edited the anthologies The Dragon and the Stars with Derwin Mak in 2010 (winning a 2011 Aurora Award in the category of Best Related Work) and Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction with Ben Bova in 2014.

He’s also an alumnus of the International Space University….In 2009, he was one of the Top 40 finalists (out of 5,351 applicants) in the Canadian Space Agency’s astronaut recruitment campaign.

We discussed what William Shatner’s Captain Kirk might sound like dubbed into Cantonese, the wonders of fan-run science fiction conventions, how the Asimov competition gave him the courage to make his first submission, what it was like co-editing an anthology with the great Ben Bova, the accident that gave birth to his first short story collection, why his claim never to have experienced writer’s block comes with a footnote, his moving memories of the Columbia accident as experienced at the Kennedy Space Center, the Richard Feynman quote he shared throughout the pandemic, why the first Harry Turtledove story he read wasn’t written by Harry Turtledove, his unfortunate introduction to The Lord of the Rings, and much more.

(5) CAN CASH BRING THEM BACK FROM THE DEAD? “Colossal raises $200M to ‘de-extinct’ the woolly mammoth, thylacine and dodo” — VentureBeat heard the register ringing.

Colossal BioSciences has raised $200 million in a new round of funding to bring back extinct species like the woolly mammoth.

Dallas- and Boston-based Colossal is making strides in the scientific breakthroughs toward “de-extinction,” or bringing back extinct species like the woolly mammoth, thylacine and the dodo….

…Since launching in September 2021, Colossal has raised $435 million in total funding. This latest round of capital places the company at a $10.2 billion valuation. Colossal will leverage this latest infusion of capital to continue to advance its genetic engineering technologies while pioneering new revolutionary software, wetware and hardware solutions, which have applications beyond de-extinction including species preservation and human healthcare….

(6) WHO DAT? Variety learned, “Harrison Ford Got Cast in ‘Blade Runner’ After Playing Han Solo, but the Financiers Asked Ridley Scott: ‘Who the F— Is Harrison Ford?’”

Ridley Scott sat down with GQ magazine for a retrospective video interview and revealed that the financiers on “Blade Runner” originally questioned his decision to cast Harrison Ford in the lead role. Ford was already Han Solo in “Star Wars” at the point in his career, in addition to being picked by Steven Spielberg to headline “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Apparently the financiers were not paying attention.

“Harrison Ford was not a star. He had just finished flying the Millennium Falcon in ‘Star Wars,’” Scott said. “I remember my financiers saying, ‘Who the fuck is Harrison Ford?’ And I said, ‘You’re going to find out.’ Harry became my leading man.”…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 17, 1931 — James Earl Jones. (Died 2024.)

By Paul Weimer: What does one say about the voice of Darth Vader? Besides the fact that despite having a solid voice of his own, David Prowse had his voice dubbed memorably by Jones in Star Wars, and then in the subsequent two movies as well. The original releases of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back didn’t even think to mention this fact in the credits, it was only in Return of the Jedi and then in subsequent re-releases that Jones’ voice was given credit.

But with such a voice, it is no surprise that the most memorable of Jones’ film and television work (with the exception of things like Conan the Barbarian or Field of Dreams) has been for that voice, even given his considerable and undeniable on screen charisma. He was The Voice. He did The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. He read Bible stories. He won a Grammy award for Best Spoken Word Album.

And of course, he was Mufasa. Sure, Mufasa isn’t really on screen much in The Lion King, after all, his murder is the inciting incident that kicks off the real plot of the movie. But does he sound like the lord of the Savanna? He most certainly does.

Finally, for many years, his was the voice for the Tagline “This is CNN.”

He died in September of 2024. Rest in Peace.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 17, 2002 – Chicago (movie)

Twenty three years ago, Chicago premiered. I just rewatched it on Paramount+ which is why you are getting it as the Anniversary piece tonight. The very last line of this essay will tie it to our community.

I first saw this film at the theater when it came out. It’s based off the 1975 stage musical of the same name which had music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. That in turn was based off Chicago, a rather successful 1926 play written by Maurine Dallas Watkins.

This film was directed by Rob Marshall and produced by Martin Richards from the screenplay by Bill Condon. Fosse was contracted to direct this but died before he could do so. The film marked the directorial debut of Marshall, who also choreographed the film, with music by Kander and lyrics by Ebb, both had worked on the Fosse musical. Marshall would later direct Into the Woods and Mary Poppins Returns.

Chicago was primarily set in Cook County Criminal Court Building and Jail. And this is a musical which means we get to hear a stellar cast sing, including performers I swear I never knew could do so — Richard Gere, Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly, Lucy Liu, Taye Diggs, Colm Feore and Dominic West. No dubbing here as I checked, they sing everything here — and really, really great.

Gere in particular is very, very impressive though the women performers are stellar in part because they pass the Bechdel test in that much of the script is dialogue between women smartly done without men present. This you don’t see but rarely.

Reception for Chicago was almost unanimously positive. I think Robert Ebert summed it up best when he called it “big, brassy fun” which it definitely is. It gets a most excellent eighty-seven percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. Oh, and though costly to produce at almost fifty million, it made over three hundred million.

And yes we can tie the film into the genre as Mike pointed out to me that “Chicago is the source of a tune Maytree used to create one of the best-ever Puppy satire filks” which is here.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics tells the final Batman story.
Ink Pen complains about casting.
Pearls Before Swine features an annoying friend.
Reality Check has a science pun.
Wumo remembers when writing changed.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal predicts the future of athletic competition.

(10) CANDORVILLE CARTOONIST CHARGED. “Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Darrin Bell arrested for AI child porn, Sacramento sheriff says” – KCRA has details. Bell is the creator of Candorville and Rudy Park.

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office has arrested a Sacramento-based Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist on accusations of being in possession of child pornography.

Detectives from the Sacramento Valley Internet Crimes Against Children served a search warrant to 49-year-old Darrin Bell’s home Wednesday morning after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Detectives said they recovered images and movies depicting child sex abuse, material believed to be computer-generated content.

“The reason that’s important is prior to Jan. 1, none of those were illegal,” said Sgt. Amar Gandhi, of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.

AB 1831 went into effect Jan. 1. It explicitly made computer-generated and AI-generated child sexual abuse material illegal, putting its possession under the same penal code as child pornography…

(11) NOT JUST FOR CRUMBS. “’Harry Potter: Wizards Of Baking’ Renewed For Season 2 At Food Network” – Deadline finds when the heat was on they all stayed in the kitchen.

Prepare for more baking wizards.

Food Network has renewed Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking for a second season.

It comes after the competition series premiered in November and cooked up solid ratings for the Warner Bros. Discovery cable network.

It ranked as the number one non-news or sport cable show on Thursday nights for audiences aged 25-54. Its premiere episode scored a 0.57 rating in the 25-54 demo and a 0.74 across women in the same bracket, more than doubling the benchmark over the previous six weeks, per Nielsen live+three day data….

(12) NARNIA FILM. “Greta Gerwig’s ‘Narnia’ Gets Imax Release” – Variety tells when that will be.

Greta Gerwig has leveraged her “Barbie” star power to convince Netflix to give her the big, broad theatrical release she wanted for “Narnia,” her adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ fantasy series.

After months of negotiations, Imax announced that “Narnia” will be released exclusively on its screens worldwide for two weeks in advance of the film’s debut on Netflix. “Narnia” is currently slated to open in Imax on Thanksgiving Day 2026. It will premiere on Netflix at Christmas of the same year.

(13) POOH PAPERS SELL FOR PLENTY. “Winnie the Pooh papers fetch £95,000 at auction” says Yahoo!

A plastic bag attic find that contained original Winnie the Pooh manuscripts and drawings and other papers linked to the bear’s creator AA Milne has sold at auction for £95,000.

The rare archive was discovered in Malvern, Worcestershire, among private possessions belonging to Leslie Smith, who had a lifelong career in publishing.

A total of 34 individual lots included drafts and corrected proofs for stories Now We Are Six and The House at Pooh Corner, along with Milne autographs and correspondence from The Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien and children’s writer Enid Blyton….

(14) FAIRY FINDING GUIDE. [Item by Steven French.] Atlas Obscura offers a list of “15 Places to Find Fairies”.

Stories about fairies exist all around the world and in many different cultures. Often depicted as winged women—though occasionally men!—with magical abilities, fairies can sometimes be good-hearted, while others are characterized as mischievous tricksters. But it seems that, no matter the culture, finding fairies is a universally challenging task.

To help you on your quest, we’ve rounded up 15 places known for fairy sightings, from enchanted forests to pagan worship sites. But beware, seeking them out can be a dangerous task: You may be tripped by a sprite disguised as a ball of string, or even lured into a fairy grotto where time is not what it seems.

(14) A FREIGHT TRAIN LONG AGO AND FAR, FAR AWAY. Toot-toot! All aboard for Tattooine! The Star Wars and other media-related trains start on page 119 in the latest “Lionel Trains Catalog”.

(15) DAREDEVIL RETURNS. “Daredevil Born Again Trailer: Punisher, Kingpin Return in Marvel Show” – Variety sets the frame. Marvel’s TV series, “Daredevil: Born Again,” comes to Disney+ on March 4, 2025.

…The “Daredevil: Born Again” logline reads: “Matt Murdock (Cox), a blind lawyer with heightened abilities is fighting for justice through his bustling law firm, while former mob boss Wilson Fisk (D’Onofrio) pursues his own political endeavors in New York. When their past identities begin to emerge, both men find themselves on an inevitable collision course.”…

(16) MAKING PREHISTORY. UPI invites you to “Watch: Florida museum gathers 468 people in dinosaur costumes”. The event took place January 13.

A Florida museum gathered 468 people in dinosaur costumes to break a Guinness World Record.

The Cox Science Center and Aquarium teamed up with the City of West Palm Beach to take on the Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed as dinosaurs at West Palm Beach’s Screen on the Green….

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

Pixel Scroll 1/14/25 Leave The Pixel. Take The Scroll.

Posted on January 14, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) FIRES VICTIMIZE JPL AND CALTECH COMMUNITIES. Over 150 people of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory community have lost their homes in the fires. “NASA’s Deep Space Mission Control Is Empty for the First Time in 6 Decades as L.A. Wildfires Rage” reports Gizmodo.

The JPL “is untouched by fire due to the brave dedication of our first responders. But our community has been very seriously impacted with over 150 JPLers who have lost their homes and many more displaced,” Laurie Leshin, director of the JPL, wrote in an X post on Friday. A JPL Facebook administrator confirmed this grim situation in a comment on Sunday. Most of the staff was asked to work from home this week, and administrators started a relief fund for Caltech and JPL communities.

Pasadena’s Caltech community has also suffered. Their alumni relations office announced a joint Caltech and JPL Disaster Relief Fund.

The Caltech and JPL communities—our dedicated staff, faculty, and students—have been greatly impacted by this week’s devastating fires in Southern California. Thousands in our community have been displaced under mandatory evacuation orders, and hundreds including their families have lost their homes in the fires.

In response to this crisis, we have established a special Caltech and JPL Disaster Relief Fund to support our affected staff, faculty, and students. Every gift to this fund will support individuals whose lives have been interrupted by this tragedy, whether they’ve lost their homes or are experiencing some other dire situation due to this crisis.

Please consider making a contribution to this special fund that will be used by Caltech and JPL to directly support affected individuals and their families. Your generosity will make a profound difference during this time of outsized need and will help many rebuild and start to recover from this crisis.

Your gift to the Caltech and JPL Disaster Relief Fund will be exempt from all indirect costs and fees.

While the magnitude of destruction from this firestorm is widespread, we can unite and lift our Caltech and JPL community together….

(2) GAIMAN DENIES ALLEGATIONS. Today, in “Breaking the Silence” at Neil Gaiman’s Journal, the author published a lengthy denial of the sexual assault allegations made against him. Gaiman’s statement begins:

Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation. I’ve always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I’ve now reached the point where I feel that I should say something.

As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever…

(3) SANDMAN B.C. Neil Gaiman is in the news today for a second reason as well. Matthew Boroson, today on Facebook in “This is about Neil Gaiman”, charged Gaiman with uncredited borrowing from the work of Tanith Lee.

…Neil Gaiman’s THE SANDMAN is a great comic book series.

Gaiman modeled his series on Tanith Lee’s TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH.

But you wouldn’t know this, because Gaiman has never given her any credit.

Despite the fact that the main character — a byronic, pale, otherworldly, deity-like character — is the prince of night and dreams.

Despite the fact that every time people see art depicting Tanith Lee’s main character Azhrarn, they think it’s Morpheus from the Sandman. (How bad is this? When people see depictions of her character, they say SHE must have ripped HIM off.)…

Bronson details similarities between the earlier Lee series and the later Gaiman stories at the link. He concludes:

…If you loved Neil Gaiman’s stories, if you are heartbroken to learn the storyteller you loved is apparently an abuser, here is my suggestion:

track down Tanith Lee’s TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH books. Her prose is more exquisite and imaginative, her ideas more original, her empathy real.

(4) NERO BOOK AWARDS FINALIST. [Item by Steven French.] Adam S Leslie wins the Nero fiction prize for his folk-horror novel, Lost in the Garden:“Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses among winners of Nero book awards” in the Guardian.

His folk horror novel, Lost in the Garden, follows three women as they travel to the mysterious Almanby. The novel was partly inspired by Leslie’s “almost ridiculously hauntological 1980s childhood, growing up in deepest rural Lincolnshire between an Anglo Saxon burial mound and a Cold war microwave radio transmitter, two miles from where Moondial was set!”

…The awards, now in their second year, are run by Caffè Nero, and were launched after Costa Coffee abruptly ended its book awards in June 2022. The prizes are aimed at pointing readers “of all ages and interests in the direction of the most outstanding books and writers of the year”.

The four winners each receive £5,000, and are now in the running for the £30,000 Nero Gold prize for overall book of the year, selected by a judging panel chaired by Bill Bryson.

(5) SEVERANCE ENCORE PRAISED. If you want to know what the world thinks about the second season of Severance, see what these reviewers say.

New York Magazine/Vulture: ‘Severance’ Season Two Was Worth the Wait
IndieWire: ‘Severance’ Season 2 Review: Deeper, Darker, and Worth the Wait
Paste Magazine: Severance Season 2 Review: A Welcome Return To The Office

More here:

Rotten Tomatores: Severance: Season 2
Metacritic: Severance season 2 Reviews

And there’s a Q&A with the showrunner at The Ringer: “’Severance’ Is Finally Back. Its Creator Is Ready to Talk About It.”

(6) US LIBRARY AUDIOBOOKS. In “New Research on Audiobook Circulation in US Libraries” Publishing Perspectives looks at the stats.

Released today (January 14) to members of the news media, a 90-page 2024 survey of United States public libraries indicates that for a second year, digital audiobooks are dominating circulation in those libraries, both for adult and younger patrons….

Among highlighted points developed by the data produced:

Digital audiobooks accounted for 70 percent of adult audio circulation and 56 percent of youth audio circulation in libraries queried in the time frame of the survey
Circulation patterns showed significant variation according to community size: In smaller communities of fewer than 10,000 residents, physical and digital audio circulation were split evenly, 50 percent going to each. In larger communities of more than 500,000 residents, digital audiobooks made up 90 percent of circulation, with physical formats at just 10 percent
Respondents reported a 9.2-percent year-over-year increase in spending on digital audio materials for adult collections
Despite the dominance of digital formats, respondents indicated a 9.75-percent year-over-year increase in spending on physical audio materials for youth; this growth is thought by researchers to be driven by the increasing popularity of integrated print-and-audio products like Vox Books and Wonderbooks, as well as preloaded audiobook players such as Playaway
Professional reviews and patron requests remain the top drivers for audiobook selection in libraries
In addition, libraries studied tended to prioritize narrator (reader) quality when selecting audiobooks, with a strong preference for human readers over AI-generated voices

(7) A SURPRISING BAG OF POOH. “Rare collection of Winnie-the-Pooh letters to be auctioned” – the Guardian tells what’s up for grabs.

… The collection includes a series of written exchanges between AA Milne, the author behind the iconic children’s literature character, illustrator EH Shepard and their publisher, Frederick Muller.

The collection belonged to the late Leslie Smith, who founded the publishing company Cressrelles. His company had taken over another publishing company that had been run by the family of Winnie-the-Pooh publisher Frederick Muller, leaving Muller’s letters in Smith’s possession. The letters – some of which had not been seen by anyone since 1926 – were found by Smith’s children while clearing out their father’s loft after his death in November 2023….

…. There is also a stern reprimand written by Milne on behalf of the anthropomorphic bear, in response to an Observer crossword that referred to the character as a “fabulous monster”. Milne noted to Muller that “Pooh strongly objects”, adding that the bear was threatening to come to the publishing house and make his position clear….

…While the bulk of the material relates to the honey-loving bear and his assortment of friends, the letter collection also contains correspondences from other writers, including Enid Blyton and JRR Tolkien.

In one correspondence with Muller, Blyton discusses advertising space and expresses preference for her next book to be publicised on back covers.

Elsewhere, Tolkien addresses handwritten postcards to Smith about the minutiae of typefaces and making arrangements to collect an awards trophy. Smith’s son, Simon, who now runs Cressrelles, remembers his father describing the Lord of the Rings author as someone with “incredible wit and humour, but the most atrocious man at meeting deadlines.”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Fantasy Island premieres (1977)

Forty-eight years ago this evening the first version of Fantasy Island — a made-for-TV movie – aired on ABC. The series starred Ricardo Montalbán, an actor with a long film and TV career who was also known for his Chrysler Cordoba commercials with their tagline of “Rich Corinthian Leather”. Montalbán played Mr. Roarke, the Host, and Hervé Villechaize played his dwarf assistant, Tattoo (“Mister Roarke, the plane, the plane!”) It was created by Gene Levitt who had very little previous genre experience.

The critics were unanimous in their absolute utter loathing of it. Newsday was typical of the comments about: “Given the premise, the [pilot] movie could have been fun, but it’s not. It drips with Meaning, but there is none. Actually, it’s quite dumb.” What is now called the Popcornmeter at Rotten Tomatoes, aka the audience ratings, gives it an eighty percent approval rating.

It was obviously critic-proof as it had an amazing run lasting seven seasons of one hundred fifty-two episodes, plus two films called Fantasy Island and Return to Fantasy Island. It was fun, good popcorn viewing.

A one-season revival of the series with Malcolm McDowell and Mädchen Amick in the two roles aired fourteen years later, and a Fox sequel ran for two seasons beginning in 2021. A re-imagined horror film version was released in 2020. I remember the original series and remember rather liking it a lot at the time.

Chrysler Cordoba commercial (proof almost nothing vanishes on the net) here.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 14, 1949 — Lawrence Kasdan, 76.

Lawrence Kasdan did the screenplay for my favorite all-time genre film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which would win a Hugo at Chicon V. And no, the Suck Fairy had not had any impact upon my appreciation of it which if anything has strengthened down the decades. She drops by to watch it with me as she has a very soft for Harrison Ford.

Speaking of being involved in my favorite films, he was the writer along with Leigh Brackett of the oh so perfect The Empire Strike Back which yes also won a Hugo, this time at Denvention Two. It and Star Wars are my go-to Star Wars films for watching over and over. (I refuse to use the revisionist names for these films.)

He also wrote Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Solo: A Star Wars Story but I’ll confess that I stopped watching the Star Wars films after the original trilogy. There’s later material I like, say the animated series and I am planning on getting Disney+ as the new series intrigue me a lot, but the later films just don’t interest me.

Finally, Dreamcatcher is a horror SF film based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name. It’s directed by Lawrence Kasdan and co-written by him and screenwriter William Goldman of The Princess Bride fame.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss wanders into the wrong woods.
Dinosaur Comics parses the case of duplicate Sherlocks.
Rubes thinks you can guess the movie. Of course you can.

(11) DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH. “Diamond Comic Distributors Files for Bankruptcy” reports Publishers Weekly. The company filed Chapter 11, which potentially allows for a reorganization of the business.

Diamond Comic Distributors, a linchpin in the distribution of comics to comics shops since it was founded in 1982, has made a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the U. S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland.

According to the filing, Diamond has received $41 million in debtor-in-possession financing from JP Morgan Chase that will be used to fund operating expenses and to meet its working capital needs. The filing also states that Diamond has received a $39 million stalking horse bid from an affiliate of Universal Distribution to acquire Diamond’s Alliance Game Distributors division for $39 million.

In addition to an offer to buy its Alliance business, Diamond said it has received “strong interest” from Universal to acquire Diamond UK. The future of other Diamond properties, including Diamond Book Distributors, is more uncertain, with the bankruptcy announcement saying only that Diamond has received interest from potential buyers.

“We remain committed to finding additional buyers for our businesses,” said Diamond president Chuck Parker, in a statement.

As the one-time the undisputed king of comics distribution to comics shop, Diamond leveraged the increased popularity in comics to expand into new areas, including the distribution of graphic novels to bookstores and other outlets through Diamond Book Distributors. The booming interest in all things related to comics, however, brought in more competitors, leading to a number of major comic book publishers leaving the distributor for such upstart rivals as Lunar Distribution….

(12) THE SIGN OF THE DRAGON. Mary Soon Lee has announced the publication of the first print edition of The Sign of the Dragon, containing forty superb illustrations by Gary McCluskey. Mary says:

Of all the things I have written, “The Sign of the Dragon” remains the one that matters most to me. Its roots lie in my childhood, growing up with a mixed Chinese/Irish heritage and losing myself in Tolkien, Le Guin, et al. I wrote the first poem in 2013, and the first ebook edition of the book came out in 2020, so this print edition is long-awaited. It’s a hefty book, about 600 pages and a little over two pounds in weight. I note that there is now also an illustrated Kindle edition.

“The Sign of the Dragon” is an epic fantasy with Chinese, Mongolian, and Irish elements that tells the story of King Xau, chosen (spoiler warning!) by a dragon to be king. The story is approximately one hundred thousand words, and told in poetry.

(13) NUMBER NINE, NUMBER NINE. Scientific American asks “Will We Find Planet Nine with the Vera Rubin Observatory’s New Telescope?”

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Unless you’re really on the low end of our listener age bell curve, chances are you grew up learning about our solar system’s nine planets. Of course, unless you’ve been living under a rock since 2006, you also know that now we only have eight planets. Sorry, Pluto fans.

But maybe you’ve also heard rumblings about the mysterious Planet Nine. This hypothetical extra planet has been popping in and out of the news for more than a decade. Thanks to a new observatory set to come online in 2025, the truth about Planet Nine could finally be within reach.

Here to tell us more is Clara Moskowitz, senior editor for space and physics at Scientific American….

…Moskowitz: Exactly. And then this is where the story starts leading toward the idea of Planet Nine because then they found this object called Sedna.

Moskowitz: Sedna is another sort of, you know, similarly sized, really-far-out-there object. The closest it ever gets to the sun is 76 times the Earth-sun distance. And then they found other objects like this.

But the weird thing about these is that they’re on these crazy orbits. The orbits are so stretched out and so distant, and they later found out they also seem to be tilted at this weird angle compared to all of the other planets in the solar system. So they’re just odd, but there’s a bunch of them like this. And scientists can’t really explain how you get all these objects on these extreme, weird, long orbits unless there was something hidden out there guiding them—kind of shaping their paths with its own gravity. And that hidden something would have to be pretty large….

…Moskowitz: The very exciting thing about this story is that it’s a big mystery that we’re pretty much guaranteed to solve one way or the other soon because we have this giant new telescope coming online this year called the Vera Rubin Observatory.

Moskowitz: It’s got the largest camera in the world, and it’s in Chile, at the top of a mountain, and it’s turning on this year. It’s supposed to have its first light in July.

And this thing is going to change everything. The way the Rubin Observatory is going to work is that it’s going to scan the sky every couple of days and just completely map the entire southern sky over and over and over. And that’s a perfect way to find more objects out there—potentially to find Planet Nine itself, if it is there—but either way, to find a lot more of Sedna-, Eris-like objects. With current telescopes, they’re really hard to see. They’re super far away, and they’re super dim. But Rubin is much bigger than anything we’ve used before, and it’s going to create these maps that if you see something moving in them from night to night, you know, you’re going to be able to identify the orbits of these objects.

(14) READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP. “P.E.I. homeowner captures sound and video of meteorite strike on camera, and scientists believe it’s a first” reports CBC News.

Joe Velaidum can’t help but wonder what could have happened if he’d lingered outside his front door for just a couple of minutes longer before taking his dogs for a walk.

The timing of their departure that day last July proved lucky. Just seconds later, a meteorite would plummet onto the front walkway of Velaidum’s home in Marshfield, Prince Edward Island, shattering on impact with a reverberating smack.

“The shocking thing for me is that I was standing right there a couple of minutes right before this impact,” Velaidum told CBC News.

“If I’d have seen it, I probably would’ve been standing right there, so it probably would’ve ripped me in half.”

Luckier still, his home security camera caught both video and audio of the meteorite’s crash landing.

Scientists believe it could be the first time that both sound and visuals of a meteorite’s strike have ever been recorded.

“It’s not anything we’ve ever heard before. From a science perspective, it’s new,” Chris Herd, the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection curator, told CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin.

“The meteorite itself we’ve been able to investigate since then, thanks to the owners.”…

(15) BEYOND BAKER STREET. “A Speedrunner Destroyed ‘Elden Ring’ with Just a Saxophone” – Inverse explains this awesome feat.

Video games are a spectator sport, at least for a few weeks every year. The 2025 edition of Awesome Games Done Quick wrapped up on January 12, bringing seven straight days of speedrunning to a close and raising more than $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation through ticket sales and donations. AGDQ and its sister event, Summer Games Done Quick, are always a highly entertaining introduction to speedrunning, but January’s event also turned into a surprising spectacle, with multiple speedrunners incorporating live performances into their runs.

A whole week of 24-hour speedrunning streams might seem daunting to get into, but these events do a lot to make them accessible even for newcomers. The proceedings this year were at times elevated into a form of performance art, often involving live music in the process….

… Along with racing for the fastest times, speedrunners are also known for imposing ridiculous challenge for their runs (like playing the piano while beating a Mario game, for instance). A run of Elden Ring at this year’s show combined that idea with the musical theme. This year saw a speedrunner who goes by Dr. Doot playing Elden Ring using an electronic saxophone modified to act as a game controller. The runner attempted to beat Elden Ring’s bosses in succession without being hit, and while he didn’t managed to finish unscathed, the fact that he controlled the game using mostly his own breath is nothing short of astonishing. Add to that the fact that each input on the saxophone controller was accompanied by a note from the instrument, and the grueling Elden Ring run became one of the funniest events of the week….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Mary Soon Lee, N., Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Patrick Morris Miller.]

Pixel Scroll 12/12/24 Somewhere Over The Ringworld

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) AWARD UPDATE. Emily Hockaday, Analog/Asimov’s Senior Managing Editor, says the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices usually presented at the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium has been put “on hiatus over 2025 due to personal commitments, but we hope to offer it again the following year.”

(2) CHRISTIE’S SFF ART AUCTION SCORECARD. Christie’s has posted the results of its December 12 “Science Fiction and Fantasy” auction. Sandra Miesel speculates, “The price for the Ender’s Game art must be some kind of record!” The John Harris cover art fetched ten times its estimated value.

(3) A BIT OF ALL RIGHT. Who says the internet has no sense of humor? (Oh, I did… Never mind.) Camestros Felapton lightens our day with “Dahrk Snarl the Blood-Axe Wielder: A Cosy Vignette”.

[Simon Goquickly] Dear Mr Snarl, how wonderful to meet you in person.
[Snarl] I need a job.
[Simon Goquickly] Of course, of course and this is quite a resume you have here!
[Snarl] I got the wizard to write it.
[Simon Goquickly] Ah, I see – that would be Karl the Angstomancer, the cursed conjurer of Battlehaven. How is he these days?
[Snarl] Dead. Eaten by a beetle.
[Simon Goquickly] Oh dear. Eaten by beetles! What a ghastly fate.
[Snarl] A bettle. Just the one. Karl was in very small pieces at the time….

(4) ART VS. ARTIST. Nathan Deuel, a teacher at UCLA, discusses literary writers in terms that will be familiar to sff fans: “Writers I Have Met; Or, On Learning That Cormac McCarthy Was a Creep” at Literary Hub.

…The clock is ticking and I need to teach Bradbury and I’m speed-reading a Vanity Fair piece with growing alarm. Had I wanted to know more than what I already knew about Cormac? What do we know about Thomas Pynchon, for instance? How much was life enhanced by reading those New York Times profiles of Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, or Lore Segal?…

…I need to get to class. I’m walking and trying to puzzle out how I feel and why I think I am so mad. What do we search for in stories? It’s one thing to teach Bradbury’s ideas about state control and personal freedom. It’s another thing to walk to class and try to privately mourn… what? That Cormac was a bad dude? That one of my favorite writers was a monster? Here’s the deal: I do not know what to think and I can’t say exactly why….

..How much did it matter whether or not I had met the author? What role did imaginary or real people play in whether a book had the juice to keep us thinking about it years later? Why do stories stay with us and demand reading and re-reading? What was I learning as I struggled to reckon with what I knew and had not known about Cormac?…

…Just what am I getting at, with my paltry memories of famous writers? In my most cherished little stories, I seem to care whether or not writers were nice to me and people like me. The imbalance is inescapable. The world is cruel. Why do we write and why do we read? What power do we grant others over us? Especially when they’re so good at telling us stories we want to hear?…

(5) AI IS CONTROVERSIAL POINT IN ANIMATION INDUSTRY DEAL. “Animation Guild Leaders Say They’re Voting ‘No’ on Tentative Deal” – The Hollywood Reporter tells why.

Tensions over The Animation Guild‘s controversial new tentative contract spilled into public view on Tuesday as the ratification vote for the deal began.

Three members of the union’s sprawling negotiating committee posted on social media that they personally will be voting “no” on the tentative contract that they helped to bargain, primarily due to concerns about provisions covering generative AI. But that same day, the union’s chief negotiator said the agreement improved on recent deals “by a good margin” and warned that not ratifying the agreement could be “dangerous,” risking losing more work in Los Angeles.

The Animation Guild’s 56-person negotiating committee consisted of a “table team” of 29 members that met across the table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and a support team of 27 members. Both teams weighed in on proposals and changes to proposals, but only the table team voted on the tentative agreement — and largely voted favor of the deal. Two of the negotiating committee members that posted on Tuesday were part of the support team, while one served on the table team.

“I believe the AI and outsourcing protections in this contract are not strong enough — and in my opinion — could lead to the loss of lots of jobs,” Mitchell vs. The Machines writer-director Mike Rianda posted on Instagram on Tuesday. Adding that there were gains in the contract, like pay increases and health benefits improvements, Rianda argued that the pact’s A.I. protections give “sole power to the employer to make us use A.I. however they see fit.”…

(6) OVERSHADOWED. “Westeros Conquered Middle-earth” in Matt Goldberg’s opinion at Commentary Track.

It’s been over twenty years since The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and I’m not sure we’ll ever get that magic back. Director Peter Jackson couldn’t do it with the lackluster and tonally confused Hobbit trilogy. The Rings of Power on Amazon feels like a prime example of Mid TV where a lot of money was spent to make something that’s not bad, but also not all that interesting, and certainly not as good as the thing it’s meant to evoke. The best Lord of the Rings thing of the past twenty years is probably the video game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and even the story pales next to its gameplay mechanics.

While Lord of the Rings kicked off a string of fantasy film imitators throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, the future of fantasy storytelling on screen went to Game of Thrones. It pulled the genre in a more “realistic” direction meant to echo the violence and politicking of 15th century England, and others have assumed that fantasy will only appeal to modern audiences if it’s people using violence to jockey for position. This is a far cry from the Lord of the Rings, the world fell in love with where power is a corruptive force and inflicting violence, while necessary in war, is not necessarily what makes a hero.

Sadly, the new animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim feels more in line with the hit HBO series of the 2010s than the hit Peter Jackson movies of the 2000s. Even though the animated movie, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, wears the clothing of Jackson’s movies with musical cues borrowed from Howard Shore’s unforgettable scores and Eowyn (Miranda Otto) providing the narration, these trappings only serve to highlight the distance between Rohirrim and the Oscar-winning trilogy….

(7) TOLKIEN’S HERSTORY. Meanwhile GameRant+ is still betting on our willingness to click on LOTR-related links like “The Strongest Female Characters In Middle-Earth”. I know I am….

…Plenty of the movers and shakers in Middle-earth are women, starting in the realm’s earliest history and carrying right through to the later times when the last of the Elves finally sailed into the West. The protectors of Doriath, the foe of Morgoth, and the slayer of the Nazgul were exploits carried out by the strongest women in Middle-earth.

Number one on the list is still waiting for her close-up:

Melian

Wife Of King Thingol And Mother Of Luthien

Out of all the notable characters in Middle-earth, Melian is one of the few who has yet to appear in any on-screen adaptations. A Maiar on the same level as the Wizards who would follow in her footsteps, Melian chose a different life when she arrived in Middle-earth. The Vala she served was Yavanna, and when she met Prince Elwe, who would eventually become King Thingol, she took on a mortal form to be his queen.

Melian not only protected her husband’s kingdom using her power, but she also mentored a young Galadriel, who would use the same magic to protect her realm of Lothlorien. Melain and Thingo had one child, a girl named Luthien, who would challenge her mother when it came to heroic exploits.

(8) SLF WANTS ART. The Speculative Literature Foundation has put out an open call for its “Illustration of the Year 2025”, a piece of original artwork combining fantasy and science fiction themes to be featured on the SLF website, monthly e-newsletter and social media accounts and used as a visual element of SLF’s marketing material and swag throughout the year. Submissions are being taken through January 15, 2025. The winner will be announced in February 2025. Full guidelines at the link.

The winning artist will receive $750.00 and will be announced, along with the selected artwork, on the SLF’s website and social media and in a press release.

(9) A MUSEUM FOR BOGUS BOOKS. “’These are magic books’: bringing imaginary works of literature to life” – the Guardian tells how it’s being done.

At a small, unassuming exhibit in midtown Manhattan, you can see the lost translation of Homer’s single comic epic, judge the art design on Sylvia Plath’s unpublished manuscript Double Exposure – squabbled over by her mother and husband Ted Hughes, it supposedly disappeared in 1970 – or examine the one remaining copy of Aristotle’s Poetics II: On Comedy, the influential treatise on theater thought to have burned at a Benedictine Abbey in 1327 (at least, according to Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel The Name of the Rose). The extremely rare collection of books, on display at the Grolier Club until 15 February, spans texts from ancient Greece to 20,000 years in the future, when the Book of the Bene Gesserit populated the libraries of Dune. The one commonality? None of them exist….

…“It takes a certain suspension of disbelief to even consider having an exhibition of the imaginary,” said [Reid] Byers, a multi-hyphenate bibliophile who has also worked as a Presbyterian minister, a welder and a C language programmer, on a recent tour of the exhibition….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born December 12, 1976 — Tim Pratt, 48.

By Paul Weimer: In both his straight up name and his pen names, Pratt has written a slew of novels, having “graduated” to novels after a run of shorter fiction that culminated with his Hugo award winning story “Impossible Dreams”. That short story’s parallel universe heart is something that I see and encounter again and again in his fiction. Parallel universes, adjacent dimensions, demiplanes, and the like populate many of his novels, one way or another.

It was in his Pathfinder tie-in work that I first started reading his novels, proceeding through the kindle serial Heirs of Grace and into his even more ambitious work. I want to highlight these two.

The Axiom novels are a fun trio of space opera novels, revolving around a freight and salvage ship, the White Raven, accidentally finding the secret to a dread Alien race, the titular Axiom, whose awakening would spell doom for humanity. The crew of the White Raven, in a breezy trio of reads that belie their doorstopper status catapult themselves from frying pans to fires as they are literally on the front line of trying to protect humanity from an existential threat.

But it is the Doors of Sleep books that I think Pratt really hits all cylinders. The premise is deceptively simple, our protagonist Zaxony has, for reasons slowly revealed in the unfolding of the story, been granted a blessing and a curse. Every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new parallel world. As far as he can tell, he can’t ever “go back”, either. And so with a tone often reminiscent of Doctor Who and Sliders, Zaxony finds himself traveling from world to world.

The novel is clever in that it starts us in media res, Zaxony has been through this for nearly three years of personal time when the novel begins, so we get to see how he’s adapted and tried to deal with his gift. In fashion reminiscent of both Doctor Who and Sliders, it emerges that Zaxony isn’t the only person who can travel the worlds…but Zaxony’s gift makes him a target. The pair of novels go down easy and are a fun read and are my current Tim Pratt favorites.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro suggests a way to improve.
Dinosaur Comics loves writing SF, except for the writing part.

(12) THE 442ND. Airing now at the BBC World Service or available from BBC Sounds for another year, “Purple Heart Warriors”.

Time-travelling drama about the Japanese American legends of US military history – inspired by real events. The story of the 442nd Regiment fighting the Nazi German army in World War Two. An original six-part drama, released from 9th December 2024. Written by Oscar nominee Iris Yamashita and narrated by Will Sharpe.

(13) A TOUR OF DEVELOPMENT HELL. Sifting Variety’s annual list of unproduced scripts, Gizmodo has culled “The 10 Most Intriguing Sci-Fi and Horror Scripts on This Year’s Black List”.

…Here are the 10 we would be most excited to see from the 2024 list (via Variety; you can check out the full list here), all hailing from the sci-fi, horror, and fantasy realms….

For one example:

The 13th Hour by Anna Klassen

“When a group of teenagers repair an old clock with a mysterious 13th numeral, they are granted an extra hour where their actions have no consequence.”

Something tells us there will be consequences, eventually, for the tinkering kids—their magical control of time notwithstanding.

(14) SMASH THE STATE (BUT NOT THE POTTERY). Nature has a report based on a study titled “There and back again: local institutions, an Uruk expansion and the rejection of centralisation in the Sirwan/Upper Diyala region” from Cambridge Core.

Excavations in northeastern Iraq have unveiled neatly stacked bowls dating to more than 5,300 years ago that bear evidence of organized societies and whose abandonment points to eventual rejection of the state.

Mesopotamia was home to the world’s most ancient cities and state institutions, such as the Copper Age Uruk civilization. Claudia Glatz at the University of Glasgow, UK, and her collaborators excavated a Copper Age site that, in its final phase, shared close cultural ties with Uruk. They found mass-produced bowls with bevelled rims (pictured) that indicate the existence of institutions that fed large numbers of people, perhaps labourers, often with meat stews, traces of lipids on the pottery and nearby animal bones suggest.

The team found evidence of multiple consecutive periods of occupation at the site, but no signs that it was ultimately abandoned because of violent attacks or a natural disaster. Urbanism did not make another appearance in the region for some 1,500 years. The evidence suggests that the region’s population deliberately dispersed — and that the formation of state-level institutions is not an inevitable trend, the authors write.

(15) EFFECT MASKING COVID. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] From Nature:

What would have happened if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn high-grade masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? A modelling study¹ has estimated just how sharply transmission might have dropped.

Determining the effect of masks on viral transmission is difficult, and most studies so far have been affected by limitations such as small sample sizes. To overcome this issue, Richard Sear at the University of Surrey, UK, developed a model of transmission using data from the UK National Health Service COVID-19 app. The app, which ran on mobile phones between 2020 and 2023, logged information about infections and the length of time users came into contact with each other.

Sear built on a previously published analysis² of 240,000 positive COVID-19 tests and 7 million contacts — instances in which app users were notified that they had been exposed to the virus. He estimated that if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn N95 or FFP2 masks — both highly effective at filtering particles — the rate of COVID-19 transmission would have dropped by a factor of 9.

Research here: https://journals.aps.org/pre/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevE.110.064302

(16) COZYING UP TO SPACE JUNK. “Spacecraft makes daring approach of metal object in Earth’s orbit” – Mashable has details.

A Japanese spacecraft has made a daring approach to a discarded rocket in Earth’s orbit.

The mission — undertaken by the satellite technology company Astroscale — intends to eventually remove the 36-foot-long spent rocket stage, but has first tested its ability to rendezvous with the problematic object (one of 27,000 space junk objects larger than 10 centimeters in orbit).

The pioneering space endeavor is called Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan, or ADRAS-J.

“Ending 2024 with a historic approach!” Astroscale posted online. “Our ADRAS-J mission has achieved the closest ever approach by a commercial company to space debris, reaching just 15 meters [almost 50 feet] from a rocket upper stage.”

This rocket stage, weighing three tons, is the upper part of the Japanese Space Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) H2A rocket, which launched the Earth observation GOSAT satellite in 2009. The greater space debris removal mission is part of JAXA’s “Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration” project, which seeks a proven way to remove problematic space junk from orbit…

(17) SMALL BUT TOUGH. CNN learns that “’Conan the Bacterium’ is extremely radiation-resistant for a surprising reason”.

A type of bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” for its ability to survive the harshest of extremes, can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than those that would kill a human being — and the secret to its success is rooted in an antioxidant.

Now, scientists have uncovered how the antioxidant works, unlocking the possibility that it could be used to protect the health of humans, both on Earth and those exploring beyond it in the future.

The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids.

Together, this powerful trilogy is more effective in protecting against radiation than manganese combined with just one of the other components, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences….

…“We’ve long known that manganese ions and phosphate together make a strong antioxidant, but discovering and understanding the ‘magic’ potency provided by the addition of the third component is a breakthrough….,” said study coauthor Brian Hoffman, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, in a statement.

Previous research has shown that Deinococcus, known as the most radiant-resistant life-form in the Guinness World Records, can survive outside of the International Space Station for three years. The hardy bacteria can also withstand acid, cold and dehydration.

…For [a] previous study, the team measured the amount of manganese antioxidants in the cells of the bacteria. The researchers found that the amount of radiation that a microorganism could survive was directly related to its amount of manganese antioxidants. So the more manganese antioxidants present, the more resistance to radiation….

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Pixar – Outtakes/Bloopers Collection” compiled in years gone by.

Watch and enjoy a wonderful compilation of hilarious bloopers from three hit Pixar films; A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monsters, Inc. (2001).

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

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