Tag Archives: Disney

Pixel Scroll 6/12/25 Never Knowingly Underscrolled

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(1) DISNEY TAKES ON MIDJOURNEY. “Disney and Universal sue AI company over use of copyrighted characters” reports Entertainment Weekly. I can’t remember ever before being on the same of an issue as Disney’s lawyers.

Disney and NBCUniversal have accused AI company Midjourney of copyright infringement.

The plaintiffs accuse the company of using its characters, such as Spider-Man, Star Wars‘ Darth Vader and Yoda, Disney’s Princess Elsa from Frozen, the Minions, Homer Simpson, Deadpool and Wolverine, and more via an online service that allows users to create images, according to lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California in Los Angeles.

“For more than 100 years, Disney and Universal have delighted audiences around the world by investing in and fostering American creative innovation and producing some of the greatest motion pictures and fictional characters of all time,” the lawsuit states. “Midjourney, however, seeks to reap the rewards of Plaintiffs’ creative investment by selling an artificial intelligence (“AI”) image-generating service (“Image Service”) that functions as a virtual vending machine, generating endless unauthorized copies of Disney’s and Universal’s copyrighted works.”

The suit continues, “By helping itself to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, and then distributing images mages (and soon videos) that blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters—without investing a penny in their creation—Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism. Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing.”

According to the lawsuit, the startup reportedly made $300 million in revenue last year. Its 21 million users, as of September, paid for subscriptions of $10 to $120 monthly in order to, according to the lawsuit, “view and download copies and derivatives of Plaintiffs’ valuable copyrighted characters.” They called it “textbook copyright infringement.”…

(2) SPACEBALLS 2. Is the Spaceballs 2 announcement a teaser or an encyclopedia? Whichever applies, Gizmodo says it also includes this important bit of casting news.

…Amazon announced Thursday that [Mel] Brooks, who wrote, directed, and starred in the 1987 comedy classic, will return as Yogurt in the sequel, scheduled for theatrical release in 2027….

(3) RESISTING PROPOSED “NONPROFIT KILLER” LAW. Fight For The Future is circulating a letter in which “270 artists demand Congress drop ‘Nonprofit killer’ law”. Lucy Lawless and Karen Joy Fowler are two of the signers. The letter begins —

We are artists and creators who are deeply opposed to the criminalization and destruction of nonprofit organizations. Alongside hundreds of civil society groups, we denounce recent efforts to pass a law that would give the Trump Administration, and any Administration that follows, the power to annihilate any nonprofit in the United States with no due process or appeal. 

Advocates for these “nonprofit killer” laws say they want the power to stop nonprofits from supporting terrorism, but there are already many laws that make that illegal. This law is about giving the US President a new power to destroy any organization that stands in the way of their agenda. It would hurt free speech, censor nonprofit media outlets, and punish disfavored groups across the political spectrum…. 

(4) WEINBAUM’S SHORT, BRILLIANT CAREER. A Deep Look by Dave Hook continues its look back to 1949 with “’A Martian Odyssey and Other Stories’, Stanley G. Weinbaum, 1949 Fantasy Press”. (Article is behind a paywall.)

… Stanley G. Weinbaum died way too young of cancer, with his last story published during his lifetime in December 1935, the short story “The Mad Moon” in Astounding, just 18 months after the first, the July 1934 “A Martian Odyssey”….

(5) RECALLING THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] This article in The New Yorker talks about the Three Laws and AI, “What Isaac Asimov Reveals About Living with A.I.”, ending with this paragraph:

…Ultimately, Asimov’s laws are both a gift and a warning. They helped introduce the idea that A.I., if properly constrained, could be more of a pragmatic benefit than an existential threat to humanity. But Asimov also recognized that powerful artificial intelligences, even if attempting to follow our rules, would be strange and upsetting at times. Despite our best efforts to make machines behave, we’re unlikely to shake the uncanny sense that our world feels a lot like science fiction.

Unfortunately it leaves out Campbell — and Asimov always gave Campbell with at least half the credit for the laws.

(6) BANNED VIDEO GAME BATTLES CHINA’S COMMUNIST PARTY. “Hong Kong Outlaws a Video Game, Saying It Promotes ‘Armed Revolution’” – the New York Times has the story. (Behind a paywall.)

Hong Kong’s national security police have a new target in their sights: gamers.

In a stern warning issued Tuesday, they effectively banned a Taiwanese video game they described as “advocating armed revolution,” saying anyone who downloaded or recommended it would face serious legal charges. The move comes as the authorities continue to tighten control over online content they consider a threat to the Chinese city.

“Reversed Front: Bonfire” is an online game of war strategy released by a Taiwanese group. Illustrated in a colorful manga style, players can choose the roles of “propagandists, patrons, spies or guerrillas” from Taiwan, Mongolia and the Chinese territories of Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet in plots and simulated battles against China’s ruling Communist Party. Alternatively, players can choose to represent government fighters.

The game was removed from Apple’s app store in Hong Kong on Wednesday, but remains available elsewhere.

But it had already been out of reach for many gamers. It was never available in mainland China and earlier this month Google removed “Reversed Front” from its app store, citing hateful language, according to the developers.

ESC Taiwan is a group of anonymous volunteers who are outspoken against China’s Communist Party. Their products, which include a board game released in 2020, are supported by crowdfunded donations….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

June 12, 1916 — Irwin Allen. (Died 1991.)

Ahhhh Irwin Allen. While he may be best known for that most spectacular of ocean disaster movies, The Poseidon Adventure, he’s done more than a reasonable share of genre work.

The first series that he created in the Sixties was Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea which was based off his film of the same name. It would air on ABC from the fall of 1964 to the spring of 1968 making it the decade’s longest-running American SF series with continuing characters. The one hundred ten episodes produced included the first thirty-two shot in black-and-white, and last seventy-eight filmed in color. It remains one of my most favorite series long after I’ve seen quite a few more series. 

Next up for him was Lost in Space. Saying it’s based off Johann David Wyss’ The Swiss Family Robinson is really, really stretching things, isn’t it? Be that as it may, the show ran for eighty-three episodes over three seasons on CBS. I’m going to hurmph here as it has a lower approval score on Rotten Tomatoes than the reboot series does. Really? No accounting for taste or lack thereof. 

Remember The Time Tunnel? Yeah he was responsible for it too. The show ran for one season of thirty episodes from 1966 to 1967 on ABC. I thought that the stories here were good. Not great I grant but good enough.  

His run of SF series would be concluded with Land of the Giants, a one-hour series that aired on ABC from the fall of 1968 to the spring of 1970. It was filmed in color. It’s worth noting that five novels based on the television series, including three written by Murray Leinster, would be published while the series aired. Did this ever air later? If it did, I don’t remember it doing so. 

A decade later, we have a miniseries on that took Robert Bloch and six other scriptwriters to please Irwin Allen, The Return of Captain Nemo (theatrical title; when a shortened, possibly more coherent version had a screen run ot was called The Amazing Captain Nemo).  It has been considered an attempt by him to duplicate the success of his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It didn’t. Really didn’t. 

Finally, I’ll note that he was responsible for it happening in all aspects possible, a music version of Alice in Wonderland. It aired on CBS over two nights in 1985, and it had an amazing cast of Natalie Gregory (Alice here), Red Buttons, Anthony Newley, Jayne Meadows, Carol Channing, Sammy Davis Jr., Roddy McDowall, Ann Jillian, Pat Morita and Robert Morley. It has an extraordinary rating of eighty-five percent over at Rotten Tomatoes. 

Irwin Allen.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) EARTH’S MIGHTIEST DUCK. Scrooge McDuck is starring in all-new adventures from Marvel Comics. Following last year’s acclaimed Uncle Scrooge & the Infinity Dime one-shot, the first-ever Uncle Scrooge Marvel comic, the legendary adventurer is back to take things to the level with a solo four issue limited series this August—Uncle Scrooge: Earth’s Mightiest Duck.

Announced last week at D23.com, Uncle Scrooge & the Infinity Dime scribe and superstar Marvel writer Jason Aaron returns to craft another fantastic Uncle Scrooge saga that expertly blends the wonderful world of Uncle Scrooge with epic Marvel Comics super hero storytelling. Aaron will be joined by an extravagance of all-star artists including Giuseppe Camuncoli, Mahmud Asrar, and Ciro Cangialosi. Uncle Scrooge: Earth’s Mightiest Duck kicks off in August and today, fans can behold the covers for the first two issues. The covers see how some of industry’s biggest talents—from Gabriele Dell’Otto to Mark Brooks—bring this beloved comic book icon to life Marvel style!

 In Uncle Scrooge: Earth’s Mightiest Duck, the planet has been conquered by alien invaders known as the Connoisseurs, nefarious hoarders of the rarest antiquities from throughout the cosmos. As they tear the Earth apart, pillaging its fabled treasures, only the world’s greatest adventurer can possibly stop them. But Scrooge McDuck is facing a battle unlike any he’s ever fought, trapped inside his own mind, fighting to preserve his most precious memories….

(10) MEANWHILE, IN ANOTHER PART OF DOWNTOWN LA. The Guardian covers a gaming event that just happened in LA: “Everything that happened at Summer Game Fest 2025, from marathon game sessions to military helicopters”.

As protests exploded in Los Angeles last weekend, elsewhere in the city, a coterie of games journalists and developers were gathered together to play new games at the industry’s annual summer showcase. This week’s issue is a dispatch from our correspondent Alyssa Mercante.

Summer Game Fest (SGF), the annual Los Angeles-based gaming festival/marketing marathon, was set up to compete with the once-massive E3. It’s taken a few years, but now it has replaced it. 2025’s event felt like a cogent reminder that the games industry has dramatically changed since the pandemic. Whereas E3 used to commandeer the city’s convention centre smack in the middle of downtown LA, SGF is off the beaten path, nestled among the reams of fabric in the Fashion District, adjacent to Skid Row. There are fewer game companies present, it’s not open to the public and there’s no cosplay, unless it’s for marketing purposes.

Its centrepiece is a live show held at the YouTube theatre near the airport, hosted by ever-present games industry hype-man Geoff Keighley and streamed to millions – and you can buy tickets for that. Some video game enthusiasts and smaller content creators told me that the in-person showcase wasn’t worth their money: just a very lengthy show that they could have watched online, culminating in a massive traffic jam to get out of Inglewood….

Then, the Guardian follows with a roundup:“From Resident Evil to 007: the 15 best games at 2025’s Summer Game Fest”.

(11) PRESCHOOL WHO PLANNED. Deadline reports “’Doctor Who’ Animated Series Coming To CBeebies”.

The Doctor Who Tardis is heading to BBC pre-school channel CBeebies.

The BBC has announced the next stage in the expansion of its Whoniverse, a pre-school animation version of its big-selling IP, which just wrapped second season under returned showrunner Russell T. Davies.

The show will see the Doctor traveling through time and space for the pre-school audience, solving mysteries and problems alongside their companions and other friends. And, of course, they may come up against one or two challenges on their way, the BBC said.

The BBC has set out a desire to find a “passionate production company” to produce the series, which will run independently from the main show. Disney, which co-produces the Bad Wolf and BBC Studios-produced main version, will not be involved with the animation….

(12) PEAK PEEK. If Gizmodo can begin a sentence with “Mars’s marred”, I know their copyeditors will love my headline, too. “Astronomers Find Hidden Volcano on Mars”.

Mars’s marred surface consists of craters, canyons, and mysterious formations that hint at a complex geological past. Scientists recently studied a tantalizing feature that could shed light on the planet’s elusive history.

A mountain perched on the rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater may actually be a volcano hiding in plain sight, according to a new study. This peak, called Jezero Mons, could offer new insight into the Red Planet’s geologic history and the potential for ancient Martian life, the researchers say.

The findings, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment in May, validate long-held suspicions that Jezero Mons is volcanic. Using data from three Mars orbiters and NASA’s Perseverance rover, researchers found striking similarities between this mountain and explosive volcanoes previously identified on Mars and Earth…. 

(13) IS THERE A GALACTIC NO-CALL LIST? [Item by Steven French.] Here’s yet another take on the so-called paradox: “75 years after Fermi’s paradox, are we any closer to finding alien life?” asks Phys.Org.

“If you look around on Earth, there are a lot of organisms, some would say intelligent organisms, that are not interested in developing technology, and they’re also maybe not interested in communicating,” Charbonneau said. “We humans love to communicate, and we love to connect, and maybe that’s just not a property of life: Maybe that’s really a property of humans.”

(14) FROM MEDIA DEATH CULT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The latest from Moid over at Media Death Cult.

He looks at the Clarke Award-winning 1996 novel The Sparrow, which bring the church up against extraterrestrials.

(15) SCI-FI LONDON. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Sci-Fi-London film fest will soon be with us (June 19-22). It promises to be another great celebration of recent, independent cinematic SF.  Here is a short teaser.

Sci-Fi London’s opening film is A Matter of Time. What if you could hit pause on life itself?

Charlie (Myles Erlick), a 29-year-old aspiring video game designer, sees his world change when his friend Gibbs (Sean Astin), a toy shop owner, hands him a mysterious device that can stop time. Suddenly, Charlie’s world becomes a playground where seconds freeze and possibilities multiply.

But messing with time isn’t just a trick. As Charlie dives deeper into this strange power, he’s forced to confront the ethical dilemmas and personal consequences that come with bending reality. Caught between ambition, regret, and temptation, he must decide whether controlling time means controlling his fate or losing it altogether…

SFL has posted a four-minute behind-the-scenes exclusive. See it below…

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Dann, Lise Andreasen, 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 Cliff.]

Pixel Scroll 6/1/25 Time Flies Like An Arrow, Pixel Flies Like A Scroll

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(1) STRAIGHT TALK. C.J. Cherryh delivered a “Straight Talk on the Craft” on Facebook yesterday. It begins —

I’ve occasionally encountered people with the notion that editors are so eager for submissions that they will fix any grammatical shortcomings.

Fact: they will fix an outirght mistype, or one of those situations so rare it has professional English instructors arguing pro and con in the bar.

Anything short of that will not get editorial rescue—in the ‘life’s too short’ category.

If you are preparing for life as a professional writer, it’s YOUR business to become versed in your language of choice, its rules and its punctuation, its capitalizations. You will be expected to turn in a manuscript without any extraordinary need for help with the language. It should ALREADY read like a professionally written book. The editor has a thousand other jobs to do. Rewriting your work is not one of them….

(2) A CULTURAL ICON. A few weeks ago we linked to NBC News’ profile “Meet the 1940s secretary who used office time to produce the first lesbian magazine” about Edyth Eyde aka Lisa Ben aka Tigrina. As Tigrina she served as secretary of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in the mid-Forties. Fanac.org recently posted some examples of her work – “Menace of the LASFS Retroactive Series 1945-11” – which Bruce Pelz mimeoed in the early Sixties. She made the minutes very amusing.

…Treasurer Ackerman announced in reverent tones that the cash on hand amounted to $52.13. I could not vouch for the intensity of the resultant gasp of delighted amazement as this startling news penetrated our brains, but I heard the next day that residents of Pomona complained of a violent windstorm……. Director Laney asked for this report to be repeated, for it was such beautiful music to our ears. Treasurer Ackerman graciously complied, Director Laney thereafter requesting thirty seconds of respectful silence. This in itself is unusual among fen, but then so is $52.13….

The “Menace” of the November 29, 1945 meeting are more serious in tone because they include a proposal for a convention responding to the atomic bombing of Japan just three months earlier.

…Art Joquel proposed an “Atomicon,” a non-technical conference on the subject of the Atomic Bomb and the sociological implications of the Atomic Age. The idea met with general approval, and it was decided that such a project would afford good publicity if interesting speakers could be obtained and the meeting be opened to all who might be interested. Director Laney suggested a public conference, but Art Joquel advised a conference on a smaller scale first, to determine whether it would be successful enough to warrant a conference open to the public. It was suggested that Mr. Van Vogt, or some other science fiction author, or perhaps someone from one of the universities, well acquainted with the subject of the coming Atomic Age, be prevailed upon to give a lecture, preferably non-technical, with emphasis on the sociological aspects of the Atom Bomb menace. It was further suggested that perhaps notes could be taken and printed in Shangri-L’Affaires. Various times and locations were discussed for the Atomiconvention, but nothing was decided upon definitely, since the date of the conference would largely depend upon the speakers. Director Laney delegated to Art Joquel the responsibility of the project, Fran himself to contact Mr. Van Vogt concerning his speaking at the conference….

(3) STRANGER THINGS DIVIDES TO CONQUER. ‘Stranger Things 5’ splits into 3-part release, premiering November” reports Entertainment Weekly.

Netflix isn’t just handing over all episodes of Stranger Things 5. That’d be too easy. The streamer is following their season 4 strategy by splitting the final season of their mega hit show into multiple parts….

…Stranger Things 5 will be split into three premieres. Volume 1 will arrive on Nov. 26, Volume 2 on Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve….

The fifth and final season’s premiere episode is titled “The Crawl” and will pick up in the fall of 1987, which is more than a year after the events of season 4….

(4) PANNED. Entertainment Weekly is not a fan: “’Fountain of Youth’ review: John Krasinski and Natalie Portman fail to find treasure”. The opening paragraph says —

Pee-wee Herman brought us to the basement of the Alamo; Guy Ritchie’s new globe-trotting quest brings us to the basement of the Great Pyramids. And I think after watching both movies, most people will agree to stick with Pee-wee….

(5) THE DOCTOR WON’T MAKE THIS HOUSE CALL. “The ‘War Between Land and the Sea’ Trailer Gives Earth a Battle the Doctor Can’t Stop” – Gizmodo introduces the clip.

To mark the climax of Doctor Who‘s 2025 season, today the BBC revealed the first footage from War Between Land and Sea, which will see UNIT as the front line of defense when the Sea Devils—a race of aquatic reptilians who have existed on Earth since the dawn of time, hiding their advance civilization in hibernation alongside their other distantly affiliated ancient Earth dwellers, the Silurians, for millions of years—emerge from hiding and make themselves known to the Human race.

How do things go? Well, you could tell by the title of the miniseries alone that the answer to that is seemingly “not well”—and without the Doctor to fall back on like they’ve been able to the last couple of times the Sea Devils and Silurians alike tried to emerge, it’s up to humanity to find away to counter the threat of Earth’s ancient reclaimers… and if not co-exist with them, survive their wrath….

(6) BARRY B. LONGYEAR (1942-2025). Prolific sf author Barry B. Longyear died May 6 at the age of 82.

It was love at first sight when fans encountered the science fiction of Barry B. Longyear. After his first story appeared in Asimov’s in 1978, a spate of short fiction followed in 1979 — filling his first collection, Manifest Destiny. They included “Enemy Mine”, which achieved science fiction’s Triple Crown by winning a Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award. And fans sealed their approval of his amazing output by voting Barry the John W. Campbell Award as best new writer in 1980 (now the Astounding Award).

Barry B. Longyear

(He was not a fan of the 1985 film adaptation and was prone to identify himself as “the author of ‘Enemy Mine’ – which there was an attempt to make into a movie.”)

His other award-winning work was the novel The War Whisperer, Book 5: The Hook which received the Prometheus Award in 2021.

And he wrote three books in the popular Circus World series.

When Barry made his never-to-be-forgotten 1989 appearance as Windycon guest of honor he advanced a simple plan for achieving greatness in the sf field. He had noticed that all successful science fiction writers have a middle initial — Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell — and to help him achieve equal success he insisted publishers and fans be sure to call him “Barry B. Longyear.”

Having enjoyed less than full success with this scheme in the past, he came prepared to drive home his point with memorable visual aids. Barry B. Longyear dramatically unrolled the hem of his sweatshirt — striped with alternating yellow-and-black bands down to his knees. He reached into the paper sack behind the lectern and removed headgear with two bobbling, fuzzy yellow balls on steel-spring antennae. Once completely costumed he rehearsed the audience in his full name, “Barry B. Longyear!” His wife, Jean, emerged from the audience costumed as a sunflower with a halo of yellow petals and green-leaf gloves. In the audience, George Alec Effinger said admiringly, “Nobody I’ve ever been married to would do that for me!”

The family obituary recalls Longyear’s many accomplishments in addition to his writing:

…Barry and Regina married and were together for 58 years. They shared love, understanding, ideals, and values – a real partnership in joy and sorrow. They made their home in Maine and found many close friends in their community. Barry’s immense talents provided enjoyment for his friends and countless fans: writing, painting, acting, carpentry, wood carving, and stonework. He was known for his intelligence, kindness, and sense of humor which could verge on the sardonic but was always witty. He was the author of Enemy Mine, a novella that won all three major science fiction awards in the year it was published. It was made into a film some years ago. Recently Disney purchased the film rights for the next three books. Barry’s Turning the Grain was released recently.

In 1981 he entered St. Mary’s in Minneapolis where he began his recovery from substance use disorder. He remained clean and sober until his death. He founded the oldest continuously meeting Narcotics Anonymous (NA) group in Maine, the Dragon Slayers in Farmington, Maine, in 1982. His passion was for the newcomer. When a new person arrived, his whole heart and soul embraced them and hoped for them. If they did not come back, he was deeply grieved, thinking, “That person is going back to the nightmare.” For other recovering addicts, he was always ready with a hug, encouragement, a gold nugget from his treasure house of ever-accumulating wisdom. He would do anything for a friend, as many can attest to….

Barry B. Longyear in 1997. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 1, 1946 — Joanna Lumley, 79.

Quick, tell me who appeared as a member of The Avengers, the real Avengers who have class, not the comic ones, was in a Bond film, and was the first female Doctor Who as well. Now that would be the woman with the full name of Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley. 

Her first genre role was a very minor one as it was essentially in the background as an English girl as she would be credited in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I certainly don’t remember her there but I confess I’ve only seen it once I think. I find it interesting that none of the original Bond films are streaming. 

She’ll have an even minor role in the horror film Tam-Lin which will get repackaged as The Ballad of Tam-Lin, The Devil’s Widow and The Devil’s Woman as well. Possibly even other titles that I’ve not found.  I doubt it bears but the faintest resemblance to the actual ballad.

Her first significant genre role was on The New Avengers as Purdey, a former Royal Ballet member who said her high kicks were from her training there (a dubious claim). (And yes, Patrick Macnee was back as Steed.) Along with Mike Gambit as played by Gareth Hunt who had appeared in the Doctor Who’s “Planet of the Spiders”, that was the team on the New Avengers. 

It lasted but two seasons and twenty-six episodes. Yes, I loved it. The chemistry between the three of them was excellent, perhaps better than it had been Steed and some of his solo partners. It seemed that Macnee was more engaged here in that role than he was previously. 

Her second genre role was in Sapphire & Steel. She played Sapphire and David McCallum was Steel. It was considered a supernatural series. I’ve not seen it though I should watch it on YouTube as it legally up there courtesy of Shout Factory which is the company that now has the distribution license for it, so you see the first episode here.

She’s appeared in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther as Marie Jouvet and Curse of the Pink Panther as Countess Chandra. I’m amazed how many of those films there have been! 

She voiced Aunt Spiker in James and the Giant Peach. Likewise, she’s Madame Everglot in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

Finally, she played Doctor Who in The Curse of Fatal Death, a Doctor Who special made for the 1999 Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was Stephen Moffat’s first Who script. She was simply The Female Doctor. As I said above she was the first female Doctor. So given we have in the form of Billie Piper our newest female Doctor, our image is of Lumley in that role. 

Joanna Lumley as Doctor Who

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro discovers some brand names have been around for a long time.  
  • Brewster Rockit knows the workaround. 
  • Eek! tells what happened after Luke was introduced to his father. 
  • Speed Bump has a dark fun side. 
  • Robbiegeez: alien comic involves someone who obviously flunked alien infiltration 101.
  • Tom Gauld threw a doubleheader this week.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-05-31T09:28:31.164Z

‘Combined Classics’ – my cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-06-01T16:38:00.347Z

(9) MANDALORIAN PROGNOSTICATION. “Disney+ Calls It Quits With Its First-Ever Star Wars Show (Report)” – The Direct explains what’s next for it.

The first live-action Star Wars show to ever be released reportedly came to an end and won’t continue on Disney+. Since its launch in 2019, Disney+ has been the home of multiple live-action Star Wars series such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka. Some shows have received multiple seasons; others were created as limited series. 

After years of its status being uncertain, The Mandalorian, which premiered in November 2019 as Disney+’s first Star Wars series on the day that the streamer launched, will reportedly end with Season 3, meaning that Season 4 will not be developed at Disney+.

According to insider Daniel Richtman (shared via his Patreon), The Mandalorian Season 4 was shelved because Disney viewed it as a theatrical franchise rather than a TV series. The Mando-centric feature film The Mandalorian and Grogu, which is set to be released on May 22, 2026, seems to have had an impact on The Mandalorian‘s future, as its success will determine what comes next for Din Djarin and Grogu….

(10) BACK TO WAKANDA. Entertainment Weekly includes art from the animated series in “’Eyes of Wakanda’ first look: Creator sets up ‘spy-espionage story’”.

… EW’s exclusive first look at the series reveals some of the warriors we’ll meet. [Showrunner Todd] Harris sets expectations of how much he’s able to reveal: “We try to mirror the actual spirit of the nation of Wakanda by keeping as many secrets as possible.” However, we do know the story involves the Hatut Zaraze, which translates as “Dogs of War” in the Wakandan language. These CIA-esque defense divisions attempt to recover Vibranium artifacts from Wakanda’s enemies.

“When an inciting incident releases some of these things into the wild, they’ve got to, in a very hush hush kind of way, make sure that these things don’t turn into a bigger problem,” Harris says. “We saw what happened when one disc got into the hands of one Super Soldier — it changed the course of the world.”…

…Harris describes Eyes of Wakanda as “anthology adjacent.” It’s a collection of short stories set at different time periods that all tell one continuous narrative. It’s the equivalent, Harris says, of visiting the British Isles during the time of King Arthur and then returning during the Industrial. “Same country, two different worlds,” he explains. “As we make our touchstones through time, we get to see that kind of evolution.”

The show will be less about the great-great-great ancestor of some Wakandan character (though there is some of that) and more about principles. “We have characters that are very important in the show, but it also examines what kind of person Wakanda makes,” Harris says. “A 10,000-year-old society. What kind of fortitude, what kind of lack of temptation to over expand? All these different things to keep things from imploding, all these different things that have been the detriment to a lot of history…how did they avoid that and what kind of person does that make? What kind of rock-solid principles keeps them on the straight and narrow that balance that’s so hard for everyone alive?”…

(11) GALACTIC BEAUTY. [Item by Steven French.] Some gorgeous shots here including one of a rare ‘double arch’: “Milky Way photographer of the year 2025 – in pictures” in the Guardian.

This year’s collection of images from Capture the Atlas features an extraordinary milestone: a historic photograph of our galaxy taken from the International Space Station by Nasa astronaut Don Pettit, who recently returned from his latest mission onboard the ISS.

(12) ON BEING REPLACED BY AI. [Item by Steven French.] People from around the world talk about their experiences of being replaced by AI (but it does end on something of a positive note): “’One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI” in the Guardian.

As a kid I was always arty – sketching, making Play-Doh sculptures. I studied game design and art at college, and went down an Adobe Photoshop rabbit hole. It was fun and I was good at it, so I decided to turn it into a career, starting at the company when I was 21. They sell a platform that creates landing pages and email layouts. I’d design the templates and do bespoke work for clients.

When generative AI came along, the company was very vocal about using it as a tool to help clients get creative. As a company that sells digital automation, developments in AI fit them well. I knew they were introducing it to do things like writing emails and generating images, but I never anticipated they’d get rid of me: I’d been there six years and was their only graphic designer. My redundancy came totally out of the blue. One day, HR told me my role was no longer required as much of my work was being replaced by AI.

I made a YouTube video about my experience. It went viral and I received hundreds of responses from graphic designers in the same boat, which made me realise I’m not the only victim – it’s happening globally, and it takes a huge mental toll. I went to college, I studied, I did six years of work. Was it all for nothing?

After I was let go, I spent months looking for a job. I didn’t find work in graphic design, but did get a job as a content creator at a PC manufacturer. I make videos of the production line, interview staff members and do some social media. I’m not worried here: my employers don’t agree with replacing human roles with AI. I may use it to edit pictures but only to enhance something a human created – say, to remove cables in the back of a product image. We would never post an image entirely generated by AI, which is what my old company is doing. My advice to every graphic designer is to learn as many skills as possible. You have to be prepared.

(13) TRAILER PARK. Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

(14) TRAILER PARK ANNEX. Netflix also has released the first six minutes of Wednesday: Season 2. Part 1 is coming on August 6. Part 2 is coming on September 3.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/21/25 “I Don’t Want To Teach This Particular World To Sing,” Said Tom Dyspeptically

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(1) STURGEON AWARD NEWS. The 2025 finalists for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction story have been selected. File 770 has the list here: “Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award 2025 Finalists”.

(2) LUCAS MUSEUM, DUE TO OPEN IN 2026, CUTS STAFF. “Lucas Museum lays off staff in Los Angeles one year before opening” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles — the $1 billion institution founded by “Star Wars” filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson — has laid off 14% of its full-time staff, a year ahead of its scheduled opening in 2026. 

Fifteen full-time employees — many from the education and public programming departments — were let go last week, along with seven part-time, on-call workers. 

The museum said the cuts were part of a “necessary shift of the institution’s focus” to ensure its timely debut in Exposition Park.

“It is a tremendously difficult decision to reorganize roles and to eliminate staff, but the restructure will allow the museum’s teams to work more efficiently to bring the museum to life for the public,” the institution confirmed in a statement to the Chronicle. “ The museum will also continue hiring new roles in strategic operational areas in anticipation of the 2026 opening.”

Among those laid off was Bernardo Rondeau, curator of film programs, who was notified while attending the Cannes Film Festival. 

The move follows the February departure of director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont, whose role was divided between Lucas, now overseeing content, and Jim Gianopulos, the former chairman of 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures, serving as interim CEO….

Artist’s rendering of Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

(3) GRRM WILL PRODUCE NEW WALDROP ADAPTATION. George R. R. Martin has signed on with Lion Forge Entertainment to adapt Howard Waldrop’s A Dozen Tough Jobs into an adult animated feature film, The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively reveal.

The renowned author will produce the project, a reimagining of the Greek classic story of the 12 labors of Hercules. A Dozen Tough Jobs transports the mythic tale to 1920s Mississippi, where Hercules is re-envisioned as a former sharecropper fighting to regain his freedom…

… Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-Tep, Hap & Leonard) is writing the screenplay. French animation studio Blue Spirit, the Emmy-winning studio behind Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai, will provide animation services for the film under Lion Forge Animation….

(4) JIM BUTCHER Q&A. “14 Million Books Later, Jim Butcher Thinks His Wizard Detective Needs a Hug” says the New York Times. (Interview is behind a paywall.)

… Depression, which he had struggled with for much of his life, was deadening his days. His marriage was fraying. The charming raconteur, telling jokes to hundreds of fans on the science fiction and fantasy convention circuit, belied a man in crisis. So, he made a decision to end things.

As the deadline for his next book loomed, Butcher took two bottles of pills that he’d been using to treat chronic migraines and braced for the worst. He recalled feeling terribly sick for 36 hours. But he survived.

“I am really lucky to be here,” Butcher said quietly, as his 7-year-old pit bull, Brutus — named for an earth spirit in one of his books — dozed next to him on the couch.

Afterward, he thought about what his death might have done to his two sons, James (a novelist himself) and Dylan. He felt he needed to “own up to the consequences of my choice, and what could have happened if I hadn’t just been very fortunate.”

The result was the next installment in the series, “Ghost Story.” The book followed Harry Dresden’s ghost as he tried to solve his own murder, observing the ripple effects of his death “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style. It was the first in the series that Butcher didn’t plan out chapter by chapter ahead of time.

Butcher hasn’t opened up publicly about his mental health difficulties until recently, and he’s still reluctant to discuss them. He has been divorced twice, separations that have taken a toll (though he is newly engaged). Sowards said that there was a period where she wasn’t sure when she was going to get another book from him.

“We were able to be patient, and we supported him,” she said.

For lunch, Butcher sears me a steak on the stovetop, not unlike the typical meal that McAnally, the taciturn bartender from his books, would serve up. As Butcher carefully glazes the meat with a heart-healthy balsamic, I suggest that talking to a reporter is probably not great for his blood pressure.

“I mean, I debated whether or not to do this interview,” Butcher said, after adding garlic powder.

Stepping outside into the brisk, pine-scented air, he tells me that talking about his mental health was motivated, in part, by an interaction he had with a fan. At a book signing, he met a young man carrying a printout of writing advice Butcher had published on his LiveJournal. He autographed it and offered the fan encouragement about his own writing.

Butcher thought little of it at the time. But afterward, he said, the fan got in touch to tell Butcher that he had been prepared to kill himself, and that the writer’s words of support helped him decide to keep going. Since then, the two have struck up a friendship.

“I’ve talked to other young men who’ve had the same issues,” Butcher said. “I say, ‘You’re feeling overwhelmed. You need to make your world a bit smaller for a while. Set out some reasonable goals for yourself, get up in the morning, get the bed made, get the kitchen cleaned up, make sure your house looks nice.’”…

(5) IMAGINARY PAPERS. Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination has published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, their quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination.

 In this issue, Anna Maria Grzybowska writes about Endling: Extinction is Forever, a 2022 video game exploring environmental crisis and nonhuman agency; Fitz Madrid explores psychedelic tendencies in speculative fiction, with particular attention to Philip K. Dick’s 1969 novel Ubik; and Ari Brin reports on an anthology of rediscovered stories by nineteenth-century science fiction pioneer Robert Duncan Milne.

 (6) TODAY’S DAY.

(7) DISCWORLD REREAD. Christopher Lockett continues his series with “Discworld Reread #2: Equal Rites”.

…In Equal Rites (1987), we meet the character who is, to my mind, Sir Terry’s greatest achievement. I suppose everybody has their favourites, and there are definitely a good number of characters crowding the top tier. But for me, Esmerelda “Granny” Weatherwax is the apex.

Much like The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites is set in a Discworld that is still under construction—the shape of it identifiable in the unformed clay, which will eventually take more precise form with each sculpting session. One such refinement we already see at work is the way in which this novel’s satire is more substantive: not just taking the piss of fantasy’s tired and formulaic conventions, but pointing to the ways in which some of those conventions are reflective of broader social considerations.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Equal Rites is very much a feminist novel. As the title’s pun might suggest … and as the opening paragraphs make clear, in case you weren’t paying attention:

“This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn’t pretend to answer all or any of these questions.

“It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author’s control. They might.

“However, it is primarily a story about a world. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive.” (11)

A novel about magic. And sex, though probably not in the rumpy-bumpy sense of the term—which means sex in the sense of gender, which further means that, should it come under the scrutiny of the current U.S. regime, it might find itself disappeared, because D.E.I….

(8) MAKING A COUNT. “WHAT THE HELL ARE PEOPLE DOING?” asks Max Comperatore, a software developer/prompt engineer based in Argentina. His site delivers “live-ish” estimates of what the human race is doing right now, from sleeping to warfare, restroom use, and intimacy. (It doesn’t deal with really small numbers, like how many are reading File 770…)

The Changelog includes – “Fixed ‘Intimacy’ count to always be an even number.”

(9) LIPSYNCH BY AI. “What if Making Cartoons Becomes 90% Cheaper?” asks the New York Times (behind a paywall).

“Fear not! For I shall lead ye to riches beyond your wildest dreams!”

Inside a tiny recording booth in downtown Los Angeles, John Peck waited for a verdict from the voice-over engineer: Did the line sound pirate-y enough?

Try again, the engineer suggested, perhaps with more throaty emphasis on “wildest.” It might make the animated character Mr. Peck was voicing — a buccaneer with a peg leg — a tiny bit funnier.

Mr. Peck, 33, cleared his throat and gave it a whirl, prompting chuckles from the production team. A couple of clicks on a laptop later, and an artificial intelligence tool synced Mr. Peck’s voice with a cartoon pirate’s mouth movements. The character was destined for an episode of “StEvEn & Parker,” a YouTube series about rapscallion brothers that attracts 30 million unique viewers weekly.

Just a few years ago, lip-syncing a minute of animation could take up to four hours. An animator would listen to an audio track and laboriously adjust character mouths frame by frame. But Mr. Peck’s one-minute scene took 15 minutes for the A.I. tool to sync, including time spent by an artist to refine a few spots by hand.

Toonstar, the start-up behind “StEvEn & Parker,” uses A.I. throughout the production process — from honing story lines to generating imagery to dubbing dialogue for overseas audiences. “By leaning into the technology, we can make full episodes 80 percent faster and 90 percent cheaper than industry norms,” said John Attanasio, a Toonstar founder.

“This is how you build the next generation of hot intellectual property,” Mr. Attanasio added excitedly…

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) TURING PAPERS TO AUCTION. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian reports“Alan Turing papers saved from shredder could fetch £150,000”. However, although the thesis is signed, the other papers are just off prints and if Filers would rather not pay £40-60,000, Turing’s foundational paper “On Computable Numbers” can be downloaded here (for free).

Widely considered the father of theoretical computer science, Alan Turing’s influence on modern life continues to be felt in the age of artificial intelligence. But despite this legacy, a cache of his most important papers was nearly shredded – only to be saved at the last minute when their significance was recognised at a family event.

At auction next month, the papers are expected to sell for as much as £150,000 in 13 separate lots.

Among the collection is the wartime codebreaker’s personal signed copy of his 1938 PhD dissertation, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, valued at between £40,000 to £60,000.

Also featured is his paper On Computable Numbers, also known as Turing’s proof, which introduced the world to the idea of a universal computing machine in 1936. It has been described as the first programming manual of the computer age and also has a guide price of £40,000 to £60,000….

(12) DONE WITH NO PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT. “Google Decided Against Offering Publishers Options in AI Search” reports Livemint.

While using web site data to build a Google Search topped with artificial intelligence-generated answers, an Alphabet Inc. executive acknowledged in an internal document that there was an alternative way to do things: They could ask web publishers for permission, or let them directly opt out of being included.

But giving publishers a choice would make training AI models in search too complicated, the company concludes in the document, which was unearthed in the company’s search antitrust trial. It said Google had a “hard red line” and would require all publishers who wanted their content to show up in the search page to also be used to feed AI features. Instead of giving options, Google decided to “silently update,” with “no public announcement” about how they were using publishers’ data, according to the document, written by Chetna Bindra, a product management executive at Google Search. “Do what we say, say what we do, but carefully.”

Site owners that rely on traffic can’t afford to skip listing on Google, which still holds more than 90% of the search market, making it a gateway to the modern web. Many have reluctantly let Google use their content to power search AI features, like AI Overviews, which provides AI-generated responses for some queries — despite the fact that the feature often eats into their traffic. By answering questions directly, AI Overviews obviates the need for users to click on links, depriving sites of opportunities to make money by showing ads and selling products….

(13) CRITIQUE OF THE AI INDUSTRY. [Item by Steven French.] Karen Hao, author of a new book in the development of AI is sceptical about a possible AI apocalypse but nevertheless argues that it could undermine democracy and has already distorted the research landscape: “’Every person that clashed with him has left’: the rise, fall and spectacular comeback of Sam Altman” in the Guardian.

The apocalyptic visions of a superintelligent AI turning against humanity have been a distraction, she thinks. “Ultimately, what’s going to cause catastrophe is people, not rogue AI, and we need to watch what the people are doing.” However, she has met people who genuinely believe AI will destroy humanity. “I spoke to people whose voices were literally quivering in fear, that is the degree to which they believe, and if you truly believe that, that’s terrifying.” Then there are those who use the idea of how AI could become so powerful as “a rhetorical tool to continue saying: ‘That’s why we good people need to continue controlling the technology and not have it be in the hands of bad people.’” But as far as Hao can see, “we’ve not gotten more democratic technologies, but more authoritarian ones.”

Neither does Hao have much sympathy for the argument that the development of AI requires huge investment. “I don’t think it needs the level of investment these companies say it needs,” she says. “They have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on developing a technology that has yet to achieve what they said it’s going to achieve,” says Hao. “And now you expect us to spend trillions? At what point do we decide that actually they’ve just failed?

“When I was covering AI pre-ChatGPT and the wide range of research that was happening, there were such exciting ideas … ChatGPT erased people’s imaginations for what else could be possible.” Generative AI has taken over – not just OpenAI, but at other tech companies including Google’s DeepMind – and this, says Hao, “has distorted the landscape of research, because talent goes where the money goes.”

(14) SUPERMAN II AND SUPERMAN TOO. Youtuber Russkafin analyzes two directors’ input to the Superman sequel. Watch it at the link: “CUT CUT: Superman II – Lester vs Donner”.

Did you know there are two very different versions of Superman II? You’ve probably heard of “The Donner Cut” and “The Lester Cut,” but maybe you didn’t know what that meant or what the difference was. In this video we go into great detail about how and why there are two different cuts, what the differences are, and weigh in on which version ultimately holds up better.

(15) TRAILER PARK. “Disney’s ‘Zootopia 2’ Lets the Fur Fly in New Teaser” – Animation Magazine sets the frame:

…Judy and Nick find themselves on the twisting trail of a great mystery when Gary De’Snake arrives in Zootopia and turns the animal metropolis upside down. To crack the case, they must go undercover to unexpected new parts of town, where their growing partnership is tested like never before….

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

Pixel Scroll 4/25/25 Knowing I’m On The Scroll Where You Click

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(1) MURDERBOT ACTOR Q&A. The actor who plays Ratthi is interviewed in “Next Big Thing: In Conversation With British Actor Akshay Khanna” at Grazia India.

British actor Akshay Khanna stars in Murderbot, a series about a security cyborg that is horrified by, but at the same time, drawn to humans.

Headlined by Alexander Skarsgård, the much-anticipated sci-fi comedy-thriller series Murderbot is all set to debut globally on May 16 on Apple TV+. Akshay Khanna, known for his work in the films Polite Society and Red, White & Royal Blue, speaks to us about stepping into the role of a scientist for the show, how he approaches sci-fi as a genre, and all the things that inspire him. 

GRAZIA: Murderbot sounds like an exciting project. Can you tell us what drew you to it?

AKSHAY KHANNA: I am such a massive nerd. Sci-fi is my favourite genre so when the audition came through, I pulled out all the stops, binged all the books, and scoured Reddit threads to get as solid a picture of the tone and universe as I could. It’s such a funny, brilliant series and I knew it would resonate with audiences. I knew I could fit in Martha Wells’ world, so I gave myself the best shot by taking up about 10 hours of my endlessly patient friend’s time obsessively trying to get the right take. It was well worth it…. 

G: How do you approach playing a character in such a unique genre?
AK: Sci-fi has a bit of a reputation of being quite dark, foreboding and serious. This show has a lighter tone – my character Ratthi is a free love space-hippie scientist, so I was able to let loose and have fun. …

(2) BARKLEY V. MCCARTY COURT HEARING. On April 24 another hearing was held by Cook County Small Claims Court on Chris Barkley’s suit against Chengdu Worldcon Hugo administrator Dave McCarty where Chris is attempting to get his 2023 Hugo trophy or $3000. McCarty has refused arbitration, and Barkley’s oral settlement offers, so now the judge has set the case for an in-person trial on June 26.

Barkley has published an open letter to McCarty on Facebook repeating the terms of his settlement offer.

1) That you will send the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer bearing my name to my stated address on the court documents within two weeks of the date of this settlement offer.

2) You will include the designated winning Best Fan Writer envelope and the card bearing my name, to the same address, also within two weeks of this settlement offer.

3) I also request that you disperse any other 2023 Hugo Awards in your possession to the appropriate recipients within two weeks of the date of this settlement offer, with a public declaration (on either a social or a public media outlet of your choosing) that this has been accomplished….

(3) BODLEIAN’S ORACLES EXHIBIT. [Item by Susan de Guardiola.] F&SF references spotted at the Bodleian Library (Oxford) exhibit “Oracles, Omens and Answers”. It’s an interesting exhibit but unless someone is already in Oxford it’ll be hard to see, as it closes on April 27. (Full information here.)

Discover how people have sought answers to life’s big questions throughout history.

Drawing on material from across time and cultures – from oracle bones from Shang Dynasty China (ca. 1250-1050 B.C.E.) to an autobiography of Ronald Reagan’s White House astrologer – Oracles, Omens and Answers will explore the different techniques humans have used to unveil the past, understand the present and predict the future.

From palm reading and astrology to weather and public health forecasting, see how societies have turned to divination to ask questions that resonate with us today: on health, relationships, money and politics.

Step into the world of divination and uncover the ways that humanity has tried to confront the unknown and uncertain.

Note: This exhibition includes a large continuous projection of spider divination practice, including images of the spiders in action.

(4) NYTIMES EASTERPUNK. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The steampunk-themed lead photo in the New York Times’ “Bunnies, Bonnets, Brights and Blooms at New York’s Easter Parade” article is visible without needing a NYT account.

(DPD notes: The rest of the pix are mundane. Impressive, but non-Easterpunk. Here’s a “gift” link to the full article: “Bunnies, Bonnets, Brights and Blooms at New York’s Easter Parade”.)

(5) CROSSOVER THE MOUNTAIN. Animation Magazine explains what it means when “SpongeBob Joins the ‘Star Trek’ Crew in New Paramount+ Promo”.

… “Find Your Mountain on Paramount+” is the latest chapter of Paramount+’s award-winning Mountain of Entertainment™ brand campaign, and the new ad is the third in a series of star-studded live-action brand spots featuring unexpected mashups that showcase the personalized content experience on Paramount+. Previous promos have featured mash-ups of Yellowjackets x Survivor and Mean Girls x Gladiator.

(6) BJO COA. John and Bjo Trimble’s daughter Lora has announced on Facebook a new address for Bjo.

They have moved mom to Skilled Nursing.

Ok peeps mom’s new address is

Betty Trimble
Cal vet Home west LA
RCFE, Room C138L, 11500 Nimitz Ave
West Los Angeles CA 90049
United States

(7) CASTING A SPELL. Although I couldn’t get it to produce numbers, Bill came up with a way to make NASA’s “Your Name in Landsat” feature, linked in yesterday’s Scroll, display “File 770”.

(8) GEORGE BARR (1937-2025). Fantasy and science fiction artist George Barr died April 19, 2025 at the age of 88 reports Steve Fahnestalk.

Barr was a seven-time Hugo nominee, five times for Best Fan Artist (winning once in 1968), twice for Best Professional Artist.

His early illustration venues included George Scithers’ Amra, Tom Reamy’s Trumpet and Locus.

His first professional illustration was the cover of the March 1961 Fantastic. He did many interior illustrations for Asimov’s Science Fiction, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, and Weird Tales. 

He was the 1976 Worldcon Fan Guest of Honor, and the 1994 Worldcon Artist Guest of Honor. During the 1994 appearance he memorably participated in a re-enactment of Bob Eggleton’s Hugo win after the absent winner impulsively flew to Canada to pick up his rocket in person.

Annette Lotz, a friend of the artist, called Eggleton after the ceremony and told him the news. She said he hyperventilated for a bit, then talked about flying up on the spur of the moment. When Lotz called him in the morning to see what he’d decided, Eggleton’s answering machine announced, “I’ve gone to Canada. I’ll be back Tuesday.”

Bob Eggleton’s impulsive trip to collect his Hugo delighted fans. He was publicly presented with his award at the start of the Masquerade by Barry Longyear and George Barr. Reenacting what he’d done the night before, Barr opened the envelope of nominees and read the name on the card, “What a surprise! — Bob Eggleton!”

Barr was born in Tucson, AZ, grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and later moved to Northern California. He is said to have been a talented pianist.

George Barr at the 1994 Worldcon. Photo by © Andrew Porter.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 25, 1999 — X-Files’ “The Unnatural” episode

Scully: Mulder, it’s such a gorgeous day outside. Have you ever entertained the idea of trying to find life on this planet? 

Mulder: I’ve seen the life on this planet Scully, and that is exactly why I am looking elsewhere.

X-Files’ “The Unnatural”

Twenty-six years ago on this evening on FOX, the David Duchovny written and directed  episode of X-Files  titled “The Unnatural” first aired. It is not connected to the underlying mythology of series, and thus is one of their Monster of the Week stories. Well, there might be monsters here. Or not. Certainly not in the usual sense of monsters. 

There are many spoilers here. You’ve been warned. There’s coffee and cherry pie elsewhere… 

We’ve aliens (as in Roswell, really just like those ones), baseball and the KKK. Well, only the latter are the monsters here if you ask me as the aliens definitely aren’t. Aliens loving to play baseball? How can they possibly be monsters? 

We would have had Darren McGavin here too but he suffered a stroke after he was cast as one of the principal characters, but after the stroke, he was replaced by M. Emmet Walsh whom you’ll recognize as Bryant in Blade Runner. McGavin never filmed anything again though one credit is dated after his stroke. 

(He had been in two episodes here playing the same character, Agent Arthur Dales, “Travellers “and “Aqua Mula”. They had planned on him wearing the pork pie hat and the suit that Kolchak wore but the film company said, well, those words can’t be repeated here according to McGavin.) 

It had a notable cast, so I’ll list it: Frederic Lane, M. Emmet Walsh, Jesse L. Martin, Walter T. Phelan, Jr.  Brian Thompson and Paul Willson.

Reception for this episode is exceptionally good. Them Movie Reviews said of it that, “It is truly a credit to Duchovny that The Unnatural works at all, let alone that it turns out as a season highlight. There are any number of memorable and striking visuals in The Unnatural. The sequence where Dales discovers Exley’s true nature is one of the most distinctive shots in the history of The X-Files.”

While Doux Reviews stated “Think about it for a minute. This is an episode about baseball players in the 1940s. They are not only black in a time when being so could be life threatening, they are aliens. Our two heroes are, for the most part, nowhere to be seen throughout this hour. This story should never have worked. It did and it does on every subsequent re-watch. Written and directed by David Duchovny, this is an earnest hour of television. Duchovny took a premise that could have been silly and inane beyond the telling of it and chose to take the whole thing seriously. Because he does, we do as well.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give the series as a whole an outstanding eighty-six percent rating. 

X-Files is streaming on Hulu. I really need to do a watch of it as I know that I’ve not seen all of it, so that alone would justify a subscription to that service. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) WINDYCON 50 CONREPORT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just put up an advance-post ahead of its next seasonal edition of a convention report of Windycon 50 in Chicago, USA.

Only three days after a national election widened the already factious divisions in the United States, we fans of SF met in a Chicago suburb for Windycon 50, the longest-running con in the area. Some attendees felt worried and threatened by the US Presidential election results.

At the opening ceremony, the co-chairs, Daniel Gunderson and Vlad Stockman, issued a call for unity and understanding. They quoted from a speech in Babylon 5 about the need to show each other kindness and love because “we are one.” Over the weekend, although the election was not forgotten, it also didn’t impose itself on any activities….

(12) THE CLASS OF ’25. Clarion West has announced the members of the Clarion West Class of 2025. The workshop will be conducted virtually this summer. They will be working with Maurice Broaddus, Carlos Hernandez, Diana Pho, Martha Wells, and the Clarion West staff. 

  • Aishatu Ado (Cologne, Germany)
  • Rida Altaf (Karachi, Pakistan)
  • Krushna Dande (Aurangabad, India)
  • Kehkashan Khalid (Karachi, Pakistan/Jeddah, Saudi Arabia)
  • Angel Leal (Texas, USA)
  • Ricardo Morales Bonilla (Mexico City, Mexico)
  • Plangdi Neple (Nigeria)
  • K.W. Onley (Maryland, USA)
  • Anaïs Ornelas Ramirez (Mexico City, Mexico)
  • Rukman Ragas (Colombo, Sri Lanka)
  • M.R. Robinson (VA, USA)
  • Victoria N. Shi (CA, USA)
  • Sonia Sulaiman (Wawiiatanong/Windsor Ontario, Canada)
  • Miguel Torhton (Mexico City, Mexico)
  • Travis Trusty (Los Angeles, CA, USA)

(13) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to pig out on pork belly with Jarrett Melendez in Episode 252 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Jarrett Melendez

Awesome Con is always a blast, and not just because it brings back memories of the first comic book convention I attended a lifetime ago when I was only 15. But also because I get to chat with creators I’d never encounter elsewhere on my more science fictional con circuit. This time around I got to dine with and you get to eavesdrop on Jarrett Melendez, author of the graphic novel Chef’s Kiss, which was a 2023 Alex Award winner as well as both an Eisner Award and GLAAD Award nominee. The sequel, Chef’s Kiss Again, will be released in 2026.

As a cookbook author and food journalist, Melendez has written countless articles and developed hundreds of original recipes for Bon Appetit, Epicurious, Saveur, and Food52. He’s written seven cookbooks to date, including My Pokémon Baking Book, RuneScape: The Official Cookbook, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Official Cookbook, The Official Wednesday Cookbook, The Official Borderlands Cookbook, and others.

Melendez is currently working on Tales of the Fungo: The Legend of Cep, to be published by Andrews McNeel, plus Fujoshi Warriors, an action comedy comic miniseries, and a love letter to both fujoshis and magical girl anime and manga. Melendez has also contributed to award-winning and nominated anthologies, including Young Men in Love, All We Ever Wanted, and Young Men in Love 2: New Romances.

We discussed how his loves of food and writing combined into a career, the way running comic book conventions gave him the contacts he needed when it was time to create comics of his own, which franchise inspired his sole piece of fan fiction, the comics creator whose lessons proved invaluable, how he knew Chef’s Kiss needed to be a graphic novel rather than a miniseries, the way he balanced multiple plot arcs so they resolved in parallel, the magical pig whose taste is more trustworthy than any chef you’ve ever met, his early crush on Encyclopedia Brown, how he cooks up recipes connected with franchises such as Pokémon and Percy Jackson, the traumatic childhood incident which became the catalyst for his upcoming graphic novel, and much more.

(14) RASPBERRY BERET. Jim Shull asks “Can Disney Studios Paris Be Fixed?” in an installment of his Disney Journey series.

Disney Studios Paris is transforming into Disney Adventure World. This episode explores the history of the park, its present and its future. And how Universal Studios Great Britain may impact DSP as it changes.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Susan de Guardiola, Bill, Daniel Dern, 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 3/20/25 One Ordinary Scroll With Pixels

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(1) WAS YOUR WORK PIRATED TO TRAIN AI? The Atlantic today invited readers to “Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI”. Many sff writers have found some or all of their work listed.

LibGen contains millions of pirated books and research papers, built over nearly two decades. Court documents show Meta torrented a version of it to build its AI.

Here’s an example of what is being discovered.

But writers refuse to despair.

Search the LibGen database here, and peer inside a pirated library of millions of books and research papers used by Meta and others:

— The Atlantic (@theatlantic.com) 2025-03-20T12:57:52.007Z

(2) BORDER AROUND THE WORLDCON. Seattle Worldcon 2025 chair Kathy Bond today responded to concerns about Trump administration policies and the hazards they create for international visitors to the U.S. Here are some excerpts:

I am writing this statement in order to share the status of Seattle Worldcon’s current journey through living up to our theme of Building Yesterday’s Future—For Everyone. We have received a number of concerns asking how the convention will respond to orders and actions of the U.S. government, which we condemn, that create hostile conditions and travel barriers for LGBTQ+ members and international members….

… We do not have a list of all the steps we are going to take in light of the political landscape right now, as it continues to shift rapidly. We know this is not a particularly satisfying answer in light of the many concerns that we have heard from you about our members who need to enter the United States and what they might encounter trying to cross the border. We are not minimizing those concerns. The situation is frightening, and we encourage our members to make the best decisions for themselves even if that means that we will miss you at our convention. At the same time we are committed to not cancelling the in-person Worldcon as some have suggested because it is even more important than ever to gather with those who are able to do so to discuss our theme and celebrate the power of SFF to imagine different societies. 

We are investigating what concrete actions we can take and offer to our members. Our Code of Conduct, Diversity Commitment, and Anti-Racism Statement provide the guidelines we are using in making these determinations. We would also like to remind people about what we are already doing.  

First, we have in place a Virtual Membership for people who determine that they are no longer safe traveling to the U.S or cannot attend for other reasons…

Second, building on the work of other Worldcons and conventions, we will be having Safer Spaces Lounges available for members of marginalized communities who attend the convention in person. These spaces will be marked on convention maps.

Third, we will be drafting a resource guide to collate many of the wonderful resources that local organizations have already put together. In the interim, the ACLU of Washington has several Know Your Rights publications available, as does Northwest Immigrants Rights Project for individuals concerned about their rights while traveling.  

Fourth, we will be fundraising for the following nonprofit organizations at the convention: Books to Prisoners, The Bureau of Fearless Ideas, and Hugo House. All of these organizations do important work to promote literacy education in the Seattle area and help build community resilience.  

Finally, the political landscape is changing daily and impacting all of us in differing, but profound ways. Our staff is not immune. Many of our staff are deeply, personally impacted by the actions of the U.S. president, as his bigoted and hateful orders target our shared humanity. Many of us are federal employees who are now navigating what is happening to the civil service, terminations from our careers, and extreme uncertainty about our livelihoods. Many of us are also still dealing with the impact of the Los Angeles fires, Hurricane Helene, tornadoes, and other recent severe weather events on our families, loved ones, and friends. As citizens in the U.S. and around the world, we have many concerns, which are probably similar to yours. We all care deeply about our community and about Worldcon and are working diligently to navigate all of the waters that surround us, but we are also human with all the fallibility, blind spots, and competing demands on our time that entails. 

This is a time to support each other. If you have questions about how we can support you in deciding about your Worldcon attendance, please reach out to chair@seattlein2025.org.  

(3) ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY. Frank Catalano, journalist, past SFWA Secretary, and File 770 contributor, amplified the expressed concerns in a Facebook post.

…The climate, and practices, at the border have changed a lot since Seattle committee won its bid.

…I think it now requires even more caution if you’re a writer or artist from outside the U.S. who considers conventions like this to be part of your work.

Asked at border crossings your purpose for entering the U.S.? In the past, saying you were attending a science-fiction convention might have gotten a weird look and a wave. Now, if you also say you work in the field, it may get you denied entry without an appropriate visa. Or even detained.

This isn’t alarmism. It’s happened to Canadian and U.K. citizens trying to enter the U.S. recently whose visa paperwork, in the eyes of those at the border, was not in order.

I’m attending Worldcon. I’d love to see all of you there, especially my international colleagues.

But take care. Prepare. Based on recent events, casual answers that led to a wave of flexibility in the past may keep you from entering, or returning home, in a timely manner.

(4) END OF AN ERA. Uncanny Magazine has announced “Lynne M. Thomas Is Stepping Down as Co-Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher; Michael Damian Thomas Will Continue Solo in Both Roles!”

After 11 years as Co-Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher of Uncanny Magazine, Lynne M. Thomas is stepping down from her editorial duties starting with Issue 64, and will also be stepping down as Co-Publisher starting with Issue 67. Going forward, Co-Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher Michael Damian Thomas will continue solo in both of these roles.

As many of you know, Lynne worked at Uncanny Magazine while also working as a rare books librarian, most recently as the Head of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. For over 15 years, Lynne has balanced rare book librarianship with an editorial and publishing career in science fiction and fantasy, but she is now shifting her focus to her day job as she works towards her rare book librarianship goals. The entire Uncanny Magazine staff warmly wishes Lynne the best of luck going forward!

Over the years, Michael gradually took over most of the editorial and publishing responsibilities at the magazine, and he is prepared for the work ahead and excited to continue sharing his vision as the sole Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Uncanny Magazine.

(5) IT’S STORYTIME WITH WIL WHEATON. However, the Thomases have still been able to lend a hand with Wil Wheaton’s latest project, as he told a Vital Thrills interviewer in “We Chat with Wil Wheaton About His New Podcast, It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton”.

Today, Wheaton announced a brand new weekly audiobook podcast called It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton, in which he narrates speculative fiction stories he loves from places like Lightspeed Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Clark’s World Magazine, and On Spec. The podcast launches on March 26, 2025, anywhere you get your podcasts.

We got a chance to chat with Wheaton about the inspiration behind it, what we’re going to experience, and getting the blessing of fellow Star Trek actor LeVar Burton.

Vital Thrills: Tell us all about “It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton”!

Wil Wheaton: …Our first season is mostly established authors. We have a couple of multiple Hugo and Nebula finalists who have written incredible works because I just wanted to have something to show people in a few months, or however long it takes, so I could say to them, look, this is what I’m doing. This is what I want to do. Do you want to pitch us?

And that’s the ultimate goal. The thing that pushed that all from an idea into a thing that I worked on and the thing that is coming out was my love of LeVar Burton’s podcast, “LeVar Burton Reads.” When he was finishing his podcast, I was at a point where I had to decide: am I going to do this, or am I just going to record a thing for my friend? 

I asked LeVar what he thought, and I said, “This is what I’m thinking about doing, and this is how I’m thinking about doing it, and I just really want to make sure that I don’t step on your toes. You absolutely inspire it.”

And it was so awesome. We were at the Burbank airport waiting to get on an airplane to go to a convention together, and LeVar just lit up and he hugged me, and he was like, “I’m so excited for you. I love it. It’s such a great idea. I give you my blessing. If there’s anything I can do to help you, please ask.”…

VT: I love that! The book market is so different now with everything online and self-publishing and all that, so a lot of stuff gets buried. This is such a cool way to get stuff out there. Did you have specific criteria in terms of what you were picking? Were there things that you’ve seen before?

Wil Wheaton: There were a couple of things that I’d seen before. I knew, for instance, that I loved Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and Clarkesworld. I’ve been reading them for years, and when I was in the beginning, I went and looked for things… I was like, I’m going to do this entirely on my own.

And I went looking for new things. I went to all the writers’ markets. I went to all the very, very, very small publications. Most of ’em are online only in the double digits only. And I’m like, I’m going to find gems here. I know there are. And it turns out that I’m not good at that. It turns out that I don’t have that editorial skill.

So I went back to, okay, I love these magazines, and I love these editors. And as it turns out, a good friend of mine has a great relationship with Lynne and Michael Thomas, who are the editors of Uncanny, and she offered to make an introduction for me. I talked to them, and I told them what I wanted to do, and they were so excited. 

They were on board before I even finished, before I got to the part of the pitch where I was like, “So, do you want to work together?” They were like, “So what do you need from us?” I was like, “Holy crap. This is amazing.” Every step of the way….

VT: The podcast launches on March 26 — where can everybody find it?

Wil Wheaton: You can get it wherever you get podcasts. I’ve asked the team to make sure that it’s in all the usual places. So Apple Podcasts is probably the biggest, most centralized place for people to find it, but it’s also on Stitcher, Pocket Casts, Pandora, iHeart, and Spotify. I have a homepage for the podcast at WilWheaton.net/Podcast. And there’s a list there with links to all the different places that it’s online at the moment….

(6) C.L. MOORE’S SHAMBLEAU. [Item by Rich Horton.] I thought this essay very interesting. There’s a paywall but you get two free per month. “The Soul Should Not Be Handled” by B.D. McClay in The Point Magazine.

… I like genre fiction for the same reason I like black-and-white film, stylized dialogue, animation, the paintings of Marc Chagall or ballet: things feel more real if they’re obviously a little fake. If somebody asked me whether I preferred literary fiction to genre fiction (or vice versa) I would say, I hope, that I prefer good fiction to bad fiction. I think that this is a good response to a silly question, but there’s another one we could ask that’s a little more interesting: Is what makes a genre story good the same thing that makes realistic fiction good? Part of what makes genre genre is its place in a certain tradition with certain conventions and stock elements. If we are reading a detective story, we have certain figures and moments we come to expect: the amateur detective, the hapless sidekick, the suspicious woman, a second crime, a red herring, a solution. Part of what makes a detective story good or bad is its use of these expectations—a use that can (and often does) include subverting them. When it comes to speculative fiction, another dimension is that the boundaries between a fan, a professional and an amateur are never very clear. The landscape is more horizontal. You could, if you wanted, start a fanzine and get important writers to contribute; you could publish your first story ever in a magazine and get a letter from one of your most famous peers. Within genre, work can be wildly experimental, but this experiment takes place in a context of shared touchstones and trust in the audience. Writers of speculative fiction want to be read, and they have a good idea of who is out there reading their work….

…So let’s go back to that old issue of Weird Tales—it’s from November 1933—and to the first entry in the table of contents: “Shambleau,” “an utterly strange story” (the table of contents says) “about an alluring female creature that was neither beast nor human, neither ghost nor vampire.”…

(7) KEEPS BANGING ON. “’The Big Bang Theory’ Spinoff Title Is Stuart-Centric” says Deadline.

The Big Bang Theory spinoff on Max is untitled no more — and it’s good news and bad news for Kevin Sussman’s Stuart Bloom character.

The series, which remains in development, will be titled Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Deadline has learned. That puts Stuart at the center of the offshoot but also hints that the beloved sidekick, who could never quite catch a break on Big Bang, might not have better luck on his own….

…On Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Sussman is joined by fellow Big Bang alums Lauren Lapkus, who plays Stuart’s girlfriend Denise, Brian Posehn (Bert Kibbler) and John Ross Bowie (Barry Kripke). Because the series is still awaiting a green light, the quartet are not formally cast in it but have talent holding deals with WBTV with the purpose of starring in the spinoff once it’s picked up.

(8) SEE SYD MEAD ARTWORKS IN NEW YORK EXHIBITION. “Legendary Futurist Syd Mead Gets First Major Art Exhibition” – Deadline has details.

For the first time, legendary visual futurist Syd Mead will have a major exhibition of his paintings. “Future Pastime” will run March 28-May 21 at the former Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery space in Chelsea.

Long before the metaverse, Mead was crafting immersive future worlds that have shaped our collective imagination and became a defining force in science fiction cinema, designing iconic worlds. From the neon-drenched streets of Blade Runner (1982) to the sleek, geometric landscapes of TRON (1982), his influence on sci-fi films is undeniable. His designs also impacted Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) 2010 (1984), Aliens (1986), and many more. They even inspired Elon Musk’s Cybertruck.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1933, Mead was a visionary artist who redefined how we imagine the future. After serving in the U.S. Army, he studied at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, blending inspiration from classical masters like Caravaggio with the Space Age musings of Chesley Bonestell to create a singular and unprecedented art style: visions of the future rendered wholly with classical technique. His philosophy of science fiction as “reality ahead of schedule” defined a career that bridged imagination and reality. He died in 2019….

(9) TRIBUTE TO GINJER BUCHANAN. [Written by Cat Eldridge.] I have come to honor one of our most excellent Editors ever, Ginjer Buchanan. She was the Editor-in-Chief at Ace Books and Roc Books, two sff imprints of Penguin Books, where she stayed for an extraordinary thirty years before retiring. Prior to that, she was consulting editor for the Star Trek tie-ins at Pocket Books and an outside reader for the Science Fiction Book Club which just ended its long run.

And yes, she was active in fandom from an early age which included being a founding member of the Western Pennsylvania Science Fiction Association (WPSFA, or “Woops-fa” as it was affectionately known as she noted in a Locus interview.)

Berkley president and publisher Leslie Gelbman upon her retirement said of her: “During her thirty years with Ace and Roc, Ginjer was essential in growing our science fiction and fantasy list and launching the careers of several bestselling authors. Her love for the genre and books in general and dedication to her authors is unparalleled, and she’s a key reason Ace/Roc is one of the preeminent science fiction-fantasy publishers.”

She won a Hugo at Loncon 3 for Best Editor, Long Form and was nominated for the same at Nippon 2007, Denvention 3, Anticipation, Aussiecon 4 and Renovation.

She won the Nebula Solstice Award in 2013, and the same year saw her garner the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (aka the Skylark). She was nominated in 2006 for a World Fantasy Award in the Special Award, Professional category for her work Ace Books but alas did not win. 

She was the Toastmaster at the World Fantasy Convention in 1989, and a Guest of Honor at ArmadilloCon in 1988, Foolscap in 2000 and at OryCon in 2008. Ginjer was also a Guest of Honor at the Dublin 2019 Worldcon, and a GOH at World Fantasy Con in New Orleans in 2022.

And yes, she’s written fiction. Her sole novel is a Highlander series tie-in, White Silence. It’s a most excellent novel, well worth reading, especially if you are a fan of that series. Yes I am. She’s got a deft feel for the characters and the milieu they’re a part of. Yes, it’s available from the usual suspects.

She’s also penned three short pieces of fiction, “The End of Summer by The Great Sea” in the Alternate Kennedys anthology, “Cathachresis” in the More Whatdunits anthology, and “If Horses Were Wishes …” in the By Any Other Fame anthology. The first two are edited by Mike Resnick alone, the last by Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg. All three are available are to be had from the usual suspects.

So being a serious Firefly fan, she has an essay, “Who Killed Firefly?” in the Jane Espenson edited Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly collection. It’s available from the usual suspects. And yes, it’s a lot of fun to read if you’re a Firefly fan. Really it is. 

And being a fan of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, she penned “The Journey of Jonathan Levenson: From Scenery to Sacrifice” which was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher’s Guide, Volume 3 edited by Paul Ruditis. This is not to be had from the usual suspects. 

Oh, and she has one published poem, “Four Views of Necon” published in Cemetery Dance’s The Big Book of Necon anthology edited by Bob Booth. No luck on this one either.

All in all, a truly amazing individual who has contributed in oh so many ways to our community, so let’s toast her now as she so richly deserves to be. 

Ginjer Buchanan

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) DC SHUFFLING AND REDEALING. “After 90 years of reboots, relaunches, and more, Batman & Superman and all of DC Comics continuity is getting a ‘realignment’ to be ‘one master timeline’” reports Popverse. I guess they’re going to get everything straightened out so they can get back to selling “Death of [fill in the suphero name]” megaissues.

If there’s one man who could reliably be considered to have the history of the DC Universe at his fingertips, it’d be Barry Allen — the former Flash who was the first hero to travel the multiverse and uncover the secrets behind DC’s reality. If there were two, then the other would be real-life comic book writer Mark Waid, long-time DC expert and writer of everything from The Flash and Kingdom Come to Action Comics and Justice League Unlimited. Starting this June, the two will be collaborating (well, kind of) to make fans’ dreams come true with the four-issue comic book series New History of the DC Universe.

Written by Waid and starring the erstwhile Mr. Allen, the series is intended to reveal the truth behind the DCU — including some secrets even longtime fans might be surprised by.

“This is my dream project,” Waid said in a statement about the series. “It’s a chance to realign all of DC’s sprawling continuity into one master timeline, and to be joined by some of comics’ greatest artists to make it shine. With new information for even longtime fans, plus Easter eggs galore, this series will be an essential read for DC fans.”

The first issue will feature art from Jerry Ordway and Todd Nauck, and will cover everything from the beginnings of the DCU through the origins of the Justice Society of America. Future issues will see an “all-star line-up of interior artists” contribute, according to DC, with an equally impressive group of cover artists working on the title throughout….

… This isn’t the first time DC has released an official version of its comic book canon: in 1986, the company published History of the DC Universe by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, the two creators who had just rebooted everything in the previous year’s Crisis on Infinite Earths series. It’s also not the first time that Mark Waid has worked on a project of this scope; in 2019, he wrote the six-issue History of the Marvel Universe, illustrated by Javier Rodriguez….

(12) DISNEY SHAREHOLDERS VOTE DOWN ANTI-WOKE PROPOSAL. “Disney Shareholders Reject Anti-LGBTQ Proposal at Annual Meeting” – Variety explains the issue.

Disney investors on Thursday voted down a proposal that the entertainment giant cease its participation in a prominent LGBTQ rights organization’s equality ratings program.

The proposal — requesting that Disney “cease” its participation in the Human Rights Campaign‘s annual Corporate Equality Index — was submitted by right-wing think tank National Center for Public Policy Research, through its Free Enterprise Project initiative. (The FEP calls itself “the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life.”)

“When corporations take extreme positions, they destroy shareholder value by alienating large portions of their customers and investors. This proposal provides Disney with an opportunity to move back to neutral,” the FEP’s proposal stated. It noted that since 2007, Disney has received a “perfect score” on the CEI, “which can only be attained by abiding by its partisan, divisive and increasingly radical criteria.”…

… Disney’s board recommended voting against the proposal to end its participation in the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index. Shareholders concurred, with only 1% of shares voted in favor the proposal, according to the preliminary tally….

(13) AI DUBBING. “‘Watch the Skies,’ First Feature Film Dubbed Entirely With AI, Sets Distribution Deal With AMC Theatres” – and this Variety writer is enthusiastic.

A foreign language sci-fi movie is headed to U.S. movie theaters this spring, but audiences won’t have to groan about subtitles. For the first time, an international feature film will look and sound as if it was made in English thanks to artificial intelligence. 

Though the supernatural Swedish adventure “Watch the Skies” was made in its native tongue, AI company Flawless has digitally altered the film’s images and sound so character mouth movements and speech will be perfectly synced for English speaking viewers. The tech uses voices of the original cast to create dubs, and is compliant with SAG-AFTRA.

AMC Theatres, the nation’s top movie chain, has committed 100 screens to the project in the top 20 markets across America. Flawless has partnered with distributor XYZ films to roll the film out to cineplexes on May 9.

(14) THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN. “Dolphins welcome SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronauts home after splashdown (video)” at Space.com.

SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronauts had some company in the water after they splashed down on Tuesday afternoon (March 18).

The Crew-9 mission returned to Earth at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 GMT) on Tuesday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida. A fleet of recovery vessels soon converged on Crew-9‘s Dragon capsule, named Freedom — and so did some curious marine mammals, who wanted to check out this strange object that fell from the sky into their domain.

Freedom carried four people — NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore and Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos — home from the International Space Station (ISS)…

…Crew-9’s splashdown was memorable and dramatic even before the dolphins showed up. It brought an end to the long space saga of Wilmore and Williams, which was a big story from the outset but became turbo-charged recently….

CNBC looks back at “NASA astronaut Suni Williams morning routine over 9 months in space”.

On April 16, 2007, Sunita “Suni” Williams ran the Boston Marathon. But she wasn’t in Boston. She wasn’t even in the United States.

Inside the International Space Station, more than 250 miles above sea level, the NASA astronaut became the first person to run a marathon in space.

Williams, now 59, found her endurance tested again in June 2024 after the Boeing capsule that brought her to the International Space Station malfunctioned. Her expected eight-day trip with fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore lasted nine months. The pair splashed down safely in Florida on Tuesday evening, and traveled to Houston that night.

While in space, astronauts must exercise two hours per day, every day, according to a NASA pamphlet, as zero-gravity conditions can cause “bone and muscle deterioration” over time. Williams worked out first thing as part of her morning routine — waking up at 5:30 a.m. GMT and “running, cycling, and weightlifting” until 7:30 a.m., according to ESPN. (NASA did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It’s request for comment on the amount of control Williams had over her schedule.)

Wilmore and Williams will now have to spend 45 days re-acclimatizing to Earth’s gravity, NPR reports. Their new routines will include a “personalized recovery program” of two hours per day that they spend exercising with personal trainers….

(15) NOW IT’S STRONGER, NOW IT’S WEAKENING. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Last I heard, the expansion of the universe is speeding up. But… dark energy is now weakening. “Dark energy: mysterious cosmic force appears to be weakening, say scientists” – the Guardian explains.

Dark energy, the mysterious force powering the expansion of the universe, appears to be weakening, according to a survey that could “overthrow” scientists’ current understanding of the fate of the cosmos.

If confirmed, the results from the dark energy spectroscopic instrument (Desi) team at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona would have profound implications for theories about the evolution of the universe, opening up the possibility that its current expansion could eventually go into reverse in a “big crunch”.

A suggestion that dark energy reached a peak billions of years ago would also herald the first substantial change in decades to the widely accepted theoretical model of the universe….

… Dark energy has been assumed to be a constant, which would imply the universe will meet its end in a desolate scenario called the “big freeze”, when everything is eventually so far apart that even light cannot bridge the gap between galaxies. The latest findings, announced on Thursday at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, challenge that prevailing view.

Desi uses its 5,000 fibreoptic “eyes” to map the cosmos with unprecedented precision. Its latest data release captures 15m galaxies, spanning 11bn years of history, which astronomers have used to create the most detailed three-dimensional map of the universe to date.

The results suggest that dark energy reached a peak in strength when the universe was about 70% of its current age and it is now about 10% weaker. This would mean the rate of expansion is still accelerating, but that dark energy is gently lifting its foot off the pedal.…

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., Frank Catalano, Matthew Kressel, Rich Horton, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 3/15/25 I Wish I Could Pixel Like My Captain Kate (Janeway)

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(1) WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT A HOBBIT HOLE HERE. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog has posted to Bluesky a spin on the “Omelas” tale in the voice of you-know-who. Stunningly on point. Fourteen posts long. The first one is here.

OK. My quick attempt at "My Omelas, Right Or Wrong."1/XLet me tell you about this incredible place, Omelas. It’s huge, folks, absolutely beautiful. Everybody’s happy. Everybody’s winning. The economy, it's fantastic, the best economy anyone’s ever seen, believe me.

— An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog (@hugobookclub.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T16:54:55.838Z

(2) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES IS SEVEN. Space Cowboy Books today launched the 7-year anniversary episode of the Simultaneous Times podcast. This episode is a collaboration with Apex Magazine.

Simultaneous Times 7 Year Anniversary Episode

Featuring stories from the pages of Apex Magazine.

  • “Then Came the Ghost of My Dead Mother, Antikleia” by Nadia Radovich. With music by Doctor Auxiliary. Read by Jenna Hanchey
  • “What Happens When a Planet Falls From the Sky?” by Danny Cherry, Jr. With music by Phog Masheeen. Read by the Jean-Paul Garnier & Jenna Hanchey

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(3) SPECIAL ACCESS TO NATURE FUTURES STORY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted the first of its four “Best of Nature Futures” short stories of the year. Because it is behind a paywall, non-Nature subscribers can’t access the original weekly stories. Fortunately SF² Concatenation has an agreement with Nature and the permission of respective writers to re-post four a year. The story “Cosmic Rentals” by Dave Kavanaugh concerns a rental store where you can literally hire “universes”… What’s not to like? …And if you scroll down below the story you will get the author’s ‘story behind the story’. You access it here.

(4) WHAT YOU WON’T SEE ON THE BALLOT. The Ursa Major Awards, the annual anthropomorphic literature and arts award, will shortly release their 2024 finalists and open public voting. But the administrators have decided to announce some rulings on the prospective nominees ahead of time.

We are about to present the list of nominees for 2024 and will open up voting soon. However, we thought it was best to first present a list of special considerations for a select few entries we have received this year.

In the Best Anthropomorphic Game category, Atlyss did receive enough nominations to place in the top 5, but because Atlyss has only been released as an “early access” title, it has been disqualified from the 2024 list.

In the Fursuit category, only one qualifying entry was given more than a single vote, therefore we felt it best to drop the category for 2024, as has been done in the past.

In the Best Anthropomorphic Music category, an album titled “Where Will the Animals Sleep” would have been in the top 5 nominations. However, as neither the content nor the author is anthropomorphic / furry, it has been disqualified.

(5) FEAR FACTOR. “Snow White Premiere: Dwarf Actor Responds to Rachel Zegler Movie Pivot” in The Hollywood Reporter.

One performer from Disney‘s new Snow White is sharing his thoughts amid the debate surrounding the launch for the live-action movie.

Martin Klebba — who has appeared in two previous versions of Snow White, including the 2012 feature Mirror Mirror that stars Julia Roberts and Lily Collins — provides the voice of Grumpy in the new movie and also serves as an advisor for the miner characters. Klebba tells The Hollywood Reporter that the recent controversy surrounding Snow White, which has led to the film’s Saturday premiere not inviting press onto the red carpet, has meant a less exciting celebration for those involved in the project that stars Rachel Zegler as the title character and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen.

“It really isn’t going to be a red carpet,” says Klebba, who emphasizes that he is very proud of the movie and cannot wait for audiences to see it. “It’s going to be at the El Capitan [Theatre], which is cool. But it’s basically going to be a pre-party, watch the movie, and that’s it. There’s not going to be this whole hoopla of, ‘Disney’s first fucking movie they ever made.’ Because of all this controversy, they’re afraid of the blowback from different people in society.”

Klebba says that the premiere changes were due to “the controversy with Rachel” but clarifies that he had not been given direct information on why the event was altered. Zegler is known as an outspoken star who suggested in 2022 that she was not a fan of the original 1937 animated classic due to outdated plot points. Additionally, after President Donald Trump was elected in November, Zegler posted comments to social media that were critical of his victory before later apologizing….

(6) FREAKIER FRIDAY. They’re afraid, too, apparently. “Freakier Friday Teaser Trailer”. Movie in theaters August 8.

(7) DO FANNISH VALUES WORK IN SCALED-UP CONVENTIONS? Patch O’Furr analyzes the issues of “How to love the freedom of leaderless fandom, and fight the flipside of organized abuse” for furry fans at Dogpatch Press.

Do you know the story where several blind people try to describe an elephant by only touching small parts of it? Nobody can say what the whole animal is.

That happens when furry subculture talks about itself, and protests outside stereotypes by falling into its own… The Geek Social Fallacies….

…That’s the natural downside of the old-school fan values, but things were more personal when groups were smaller scale. They would put up with a few jerks because it was harder to kick them out and sustain groups. Now add decades of growth, and much bigger scale of members who don’t know each other. (Dunbar’s Number names a finite limit on how many relationships your brain can handle.) Put the problem on steroids with internet platforms we don’t own. It’s not YOU, it’s MATH….

…The math of escalating abuse

Rapid and unplanned growth of furry subculture has many unforeseeable effects. Straining the limits of conventions is one covered on Soatok’s furry cybersecurity blog: Furries Are Losing the Battle Against Scale. Convention attendance is doubling every few years and “the furry community is growing at a break-neck exponential speed.”

Security suffers without top-down management at impersonal scale, especially when the more we depend on net platforms, the more problems we have by policy. Social media is built to shift liability for moderation from owners to users. It’s their business model to be unaccountable! The point is to eliminate the cost of the editor/gatekeeper/mod layer by automating the labor and letting volunteers and peers fill in.

Peer moderation may feel like personal control, but meanwhile, bad actors can game the system with off-site advantage. Moderators may respond to simple individual incidents on-site, but can’t even see complex cross-platform abuse. That’s how responses can be weak, scattered, inconsistent, and lack resources for scale, no matter how much their hearts are in it.

If you can’t see abuse, it festers. Think of church scandals where abuser priests were shifted around from church to church. We have that too, but there’s no orders from the top. It’s from being nobody’s job. A long-time creep can use a newly minted fursona to jump from group to group, when it’s easy to change accounts and delete evidence, but an uphill battle to track them or get consequences. Different process, same outcome….

(8) REMEMBERING A CLASSIC HORROR AUTHOR. “Lisa Morton Discusses Dennis Etchison” in an installment of the Horror Writers Association’s blog series “Nuts & Bolts”.

Lisa Morton describes Dennis Etchison’s work as a “brain bombshell” that changed her idea of what horror fiction could do. When she was just starting out, Etchison had a major influence on both her art and her career. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Lisa discusses Etchison’s writing technique, his influence on her own work, and what writers today can learn from the late horror legend.

Q: Can you tell us a little about Dennis Etchison and his contributions to the horror genre?

A: To me, Dennis is one of the absolute greatest craftsmen of the horror short story. His short story collection The Dark Country came out in 1982, when most of the genre was split between Stephen King’s suburban, East Coast horror on one hand and the glorious excesses of the splatterpunks on the other, and his work fit into neither camp. It was completely unique and was the first time I’d read horror set mostly in my hometown of Los Angeles; it’s not an exaggeration to say that it made me think I might be able to write horror fiction. My all-time favorite short story is his 1993 masterpiece The Dog Park, which is one of those works of fiction that’s like a magic trick — it really gets under your skin and you’re not sure how it was done. Although I also like several of his novels, especially California Gothic, his short fiction is what I think will be remembered….

Guillermo Del Toro, Peter Atkins and Dennis Etchison in back of Mystery & Imagination Bookshop in 2013.

(9) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted photos on Flickr of the “Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series March 12, 2025” gathering where Victoria Dalpe and Jedediah Berry read from their work to a very full house.

(10) LACON V HOLDING ANAHEIM MEETING. LAcon V, the 2026 Worldcon committee, told Facebook readers how to ask to attend their meeting next weekend.

LAcon V is hosting an in-person meeting on March 22nd and 23rd at the Anaheim Hilton.

This is a good opportunity to meet some of our leadership, learn more about the convention, and possibly become part of the LAcon V team!

If you are interested in participating, and plan to be in the Anaheim area, please email us at info(at)lacon.org for further details.

(11) T. JACKSON KING (1948-2025). Author and archeologist Thomas Jackson King, Jr. died December 3, 2024. SFWA’s tribute “In Memoriam: T. Jackson King” notes he was “a prolific writer of science-fiction, horror, and urban fantasy, and an award-winning journalist. He wrote articles for The SFWA Bulletin and SFWA Handbook, and served as the SFWA Election Committee Chair.” 

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

The Girl with Something Extra series (1976)

Networks in the Sixties liked young actresses. They were either sexy, or they were cute. So let’s talk about the lead of The Girl with Something Extra series that debuted forty-nine years ago. 

That lead actress was Sally Field which tells you how deep the story was intended to be. She was a wife who had ESP, and her husband played by John Davidson never quite understood her. It was intended to be cute, really, really cute with her giving it that cuteness. 

There was other cast, but really who cared? Not the studio. It was intended to be just a vehicle for these two to be a couple as this critic noted “The plot for The Girl With Something Extra TV show immediately brings to mind another show that ended in March of 1972 after a whopping eight seasons on the air! That series of course was “Bewitched” which also featured a young newlywed couple with the wife having super-human powers that caused many problems for her and her husband.” 

The audience apparently didn’t grasp its charms, and it was canceled after one season of twenty-two half hour episodes. 

So the Apple search engine says it’s not streaming anywhere. The Flying Nun is streaming on, errr, Tubi. Any of y’all ever subscribe to that service? 

Lancer Books published a tie-in novel by Paul Farman, The Girl With Something Extra. 

I see multiple signed scripts is for sale on eBay. Press photos too. Like the one below. Aren’t they cute? Well, aren’t they?

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) DWAYNE MCDUFFIE AWARD TAKING ENTRIES. Comics Beat announced that the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is accepting submissions. “Mark Waid joins 10th annual Dwayne McDuffie Award selection committee”.

…As in previous years, the event will name one winner from five honored finalists, whose work resembles a commitment to excellence and inclusion on and off the page, much like the late Mr. McDuffie’s own efforts to produce entertainment that was representative of and created by a wide scope of human experience. Moreover, prolific comic creator Mark Waid has joined joined the selection committee which includes The Beat‘s own Heidi MacDonald, and other notable comics industry figures.

The 10th annual “Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics” is now accepting submissions at https://dwaynemcduffie.com/dmad/. The deadline is May 1, 2025 for comics published during the 2024 calendar year.

New York Times best-selling author, Mark Waid, joins a selection committee of notable comic book professionals led by industry legend, Marv Wolfman. This prestigious prize has grown exponentially in esteem since it was established in 2015 in honor of Dwayne McDuffie (1962-2011), the legendary African-American comic book writer/editor and writer/producer of the animated Static Shock, Justice League, and Ben 10: Alien Force/Ultimate Alien, who famously co-founded Milestone Media, the most successful minority-owned comic book company in the history of the industry.

The slogan for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics is Mr. McDuffie’s own profound saying:

“From invisible to inevitable.”

Prolific writer/creator, Mark Waid, is “proud to be part of the DMADs”:

“As a medium and as a community—even removing from consideration the onslaught of bigotry and intolerance sweeping the U.S. as we speak—the world of comics has a responsibility to recognize, promote, and honor comics that not only employ great storytelling but are emblematic of the power of equality and inclusion. As creators, good work from anyone forces us to up our game. As readers, we’re all better off—and more entertained and educated—when we’re exposed to the widest possible variety of voices and viewpoints.”…

(15) AVENGERS ACADEMY. Anthony Oliveira, Carola Borelli and Bailie Rosenlund’s Avengers Academy Infinity Comic series on Marvel Unlimited comes to print for the first time this June.

Since launching last year, Marvel Unlimited’s hit AVENGERS ACADEMY Infinity Comic series by rising star Anthony Oliveira and visionary artists Carola Borelli and Bailie Rosenlund has become an online phenomenon, gaining a devoted fanbase who tune in each week to experience the adventures of Marvel’s most promising young heroes! This June, the acclaimed series comes to your local comic shop in AVENGERS ACADEMY: ASSEMBLE #1, a new one-shot collecting the first six issues in print for the first time!

From the X-Men to the symbiote hivemind, this eclectic group assembles fan-favorite characters from every corner of the Marvel Universe, including new sensations like Kid Juggernaut. Discover their journey to become tomorrow’s Mightiest Heroes in this masterful blend of teen drama and super hero adventure!

SCHOOL’S IN SESSION!

Welcome to Avengers Academy! Seeking to guide the next generation of super heroes, Captain Marvel recruits a misfit team of super-powered teens: CAPTAIN AMERICA OF THE RAILWAYS, BLOODLINE, ESCAPADE, MOON GIRL, RED GOBLIN, and new hero on the block, KID JUGGERNAUT! But classes are the least of their concerns as they fend off super-villain attacks, make new friends – and new foes – and learn what it really means to be Earth’s mightiest heroes. Featuring the first appearance of an all-new SINISTER SIX, this is one book you don’t want to miss!

Check out the all-new cover by Stephen Byrne and preorder Avengers Academy: Assemble #1 at your local comic shop today! For more information, visit Marvel.com.

(16) FARADAY UNCAGED. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Why do we have a lot of electricity? Faraday. I think a lot of us know who Faraday was, but this is a lovely, loving article. “Unearthed notebooks shed light on Victorian genius who inspired Einstein” in the Guardian.

…When a lab assistant at the Institution got into a brawl and was fired in February 1813, Davy remembered the 22-year-old Faraday and offered him the job – which involved taking a pay cut, but gave the young man access to the laboratory, free coal, candles and two attic rooms.

Faraday later gave an account of this job offer: “At the same time that he [Davy] gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he advised me to remain a bookbinder, telling me that Science was a harsh mistress… poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service.”

Despite Davy’s advice, Faraday accepted the job. It was a decision that would prove to be seminal for science. Over the next 55 years, while working for the Royal Institution, Faraday discovered several fundamental laws of physics and chemistry – including his law of electromagnetic induction in 1831, which illuminated the relative motion of charged particles.

It was thanks to Faraday’s trailblazing experiments at the institution that he discovered electromagnetic rotation in 1821, a breakthrough that led to the development of the electric motor and benzene, a hydrocarbon derived from benzoic acid, in 1825. He became the first scientist to liquefy gas in 1823, invented the electric generator in 1831 and discovered the laws of electrolysis in the early 1830s, helping to coin terms such as electrode, cathode and ion. In 1845, after finding the first experimental evidence that a magnetic field could influence polarised light – a phenomenon that became known as the Faraday effect – he proved light and electromagnetism are interconnected….

(17) PIXEL SCROLL TITLE EXPLANATION OF THE DAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Via “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” (1922).

Probably my favorite recording (keeping in mind I’ve only listened to a fraction of the various artists’ recordings) is from Jim Kweskin’s Relax Your Mind album (more generally one of my favorite albums): “Three Songs – A Look at the Ragtime Era (Sister Kate’s Night Out) : I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”.

Here’s the first version I’ve run into (yesterday!) that shows there’s a long intro section: “Sister Kate” – song and lyrics by Vi Wickam, Paul Anastasio, Albanie Falletta | Spotify.

Lots of (current/recent) popular covers!

Dave Van Ronk “Sister Kate”.

Here’s the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band “Sister Kate”.

And here’s an unexpected cover (from the From Liverpool To Hamburg 2CD set) — The Beatles – “i wish i could shimmy like my sister Kate” (live).

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Arnie Fenner.] This “Frazetta Fridays” episode about the creation of Vampirella includes some fun history featuring Harlan, Forry, and Trina Robbins.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/13/25 Quick Get An Exorcist! Our Scrolls Are Being Possessed! By Pixels!

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(1) GROUP DROPS 2026 SMOFCON BID FOR DC. John Pomeranz, Corresponding Secretary of the Baltimore Washington Area Worldcon Association (BWAWA), yesterday announced that in response to the “current political situation” in the U.S. the group is no longer bidding to host the 2026 SMOFcon in Washington, DC.

At its meeting on March 9, the Baltimore Washington Area Worldcon Association (BWAWA) decided to end its bid to host the 2026 SMOFcon.

Since we announced the bid at SMOFcon last year, it has become clear that the current political situation in the United States would significantly reduce the willingness of fans from outside the United States to participate, even in the fully hybrid convention that we were proposing. In light of this, it seemed the best course of action was to end our bid. Unfortunately, we expect that similar problems are likely to confront any US bid for SMOFcon for the time being.

(2) SEATTLE 2025 ROOM BLOCK FILLED. The current political situation has not kept the Seattle Worldcon’s hotel room blocks from immediately filling. A newsletter sent to members today says —

We are glad to have so many of you coming to Worldcon. Unfortunately our hotel room blocks, which initially seemed large and were subsequently increased, have sold out. It is possible some of these blocks may reopen from time to time on our hotel page, but in the meantime please be aware there are 14 hotels inside of a five-block, half mile radius of the Seattle Convention Center Summit Building where rooms can be secured using a common booking service, such as Google, hotels.com, bookings.com, or kayak.com.

Many of these are just as close, or closer, than our room block hotels. It may also be possible to secure rooms at our room block hotels, but outside the room block. 

(3) MEET THE SF STARS OF 1933. Next month the creators of First Fandom Experience will release “The Ultimate COSMOS: How a 1933 Serial Novel Reshaped Science Fiction”.

Why should modern readers of science fiction care about a mashed-up novel from 1933 – generally deemed terrible as a work of fiction?

Why should anyone care about a stunt pulled off by a band of early science fiction fans hoping to promote their struggling amateur publication?

The creators of The Visual History of Science Fiction Fandom bring you the story of Cosmos – a remarkable serial novel from 1933, with chapters by sixteen well-known authors. Even more astonishing is the tale of how this extravagant space-opera came to be. Orchestrated by a scrappy, ambitious cadre of young fans – mostly teenagers – the creation of Cosmos is a seminal episode in the history of science fiction. The impact on the novel’s editors and authors echoed through the decades that followed.

(If you’re curious who wrote it, Fancyclopedia 3 supplies the Table of Contents here — Cosmos – The Serial Novel.)

The Ultimate COSMOS will be launched at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, April 4 – 6, 2025 in Chicago. Thereafter the book will be available for purchase on the First Fandom Experience site and via print-on-demand.

(4) ABOUT THAT LIVE-ACTION REMAKE OF SNOW WHITE. “Snow White: Disney holds small-scale European premiere amid controversy” – and the BBC explains the beef.

…The movie is being released amid a debate about how the seven dwarfs are represented on screen, while Zegler has made headlines for critical comments about the original 1937 film.

The European premiere was held on Wednesday at a castle in Northern Spain, instead of a more traditional and high-profile location such as London’s Leicester Square.

Dwarfism debate

The debate around the film began making headlines in January 2022, when Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, an actor with Dwarfism, described the decision to retell the story of “seven dwarfs living in a cave” as “backward”.

Disney has used computer-generated dwarfs in the remake and said it would “avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film”.

But this week, other actors with Dwarfism have said they would have liked the opportunity to play the roles.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, performer Choon Tan said the decision to use CGI was “absolutely absurd and discriminating in a sense”.

“There really is nothing wrong casting someone with dwarfism as a dwarf in any given opportunity,” he said.

“As long as we are treated equally and with respect, we’re usually more than happy to take on any acting roles that are suitable for us,” he added…

(5) OCTOTHORPE. John Coxon is working, Alison Scott is plugging and Liz Batty is ghosting in Episode 130 of the Octothorpe podcast, “I Am Scalison Ott”. An uncorrected transcript of the episode is available here. 

The words “Octothorpe 130: Handwriting Analysis Special” appear three times in the three hosts’ handwriting.

(6) OSCARS AFFECT ON STREAMING PREFERENCES. JustWatch, the world’s largest streaming guide, has analyzed how the Academy Awards influenced streaming preferences in the U.S. Following Hollywood’s biggest night, audiences turned to their favorite platforms to catch up on the most celebrated films, leading to significant shifts in streaming rankings.

While several top contenders remained popular, the post-Oscars data reveals noticeable changes in audience preferences. New titles surged in viewership, while others saw renewed interest based on award wins, nominations, and critical buzz.

*Note: Anora was not included in our ranking as it has no current streaming offers in the US, but it was the second most popular after “The Substance”

Key Takeaways from the Post-Oscars Streaming Shift

  • Newcomers Enter the Rankings – The Brutalist, Wicked, I’m Still Here, and A Complete Unknown emerged in the top ten after the Oscars, reflecting fresh audience interest.
  • Shifts in Viewer Attention – While Dune: Part Two, Alien: Romulus, Inside Out 2, and Gladiator II ranked highly before the awards, they were replaced by new titles post-Oscars, possibly due to shifting critical conversations and winner announcements.
  • Sustained Success for The Substance & Conclave – These two films held their positions as the most streamed, proving their long-lasting appeal to audiences.
  • Surging Interest in Indie and Arthouse Films – Flow and Nosferatu gained traction after the Oscars, suggesting a growing curiosity in artistic and unconventional storytelling.

(7) PRATCHETT RETROSPECTIVE. Christopher Lockett marks the tenth anniversary of the author’s death in “The Magical Humanism of Sir Terry Pratchett”, a discussion that ranges from Pratchett’s expressed views of the right-to-die to his literal characterization of Death.

…Sir Terry’s Death is thus something close to a benevolent figure: a guide into whatever afterlife the deceased’s beliefs and conscience create for them. And his pervasive presence throughout the Discworld series produces a thematic iteration on humanity as defined by mortality—which itself produces a thematic iteration on how this relationship defines a moral and ethical humanism. For one of the great allegorical gestures of the Discworld novels is an expansive humanism that extends to cover all sentient beings….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

March 13, 1966 — Alastair Reynolds, 59.

By Lis Carey: Alastair Reynolds is an interesting writer—really good writer, with (what I find to be) an unfortunate tendency to write very dark stories. This means I’m stuck with reading his work very, very selectively.

Which gives me a sad.

Reynolds is Welsh, studied physics and astronomy, and has a PhD in astrophysics from University of St. Andrews. He graduated in 1991, and moved to the Netherlands to take a job at the European Space Agency, where he worked until 2004.

He started writing science fiction short stories while still a grad student, with his first publication in Interzone in 1990.

Alastair Reynolds

Reynolds says he doesn’t like writing stories that he doesn’t believe are within the realm of the possible, which is, no doubt, why the Revelation Space universe is truly hard sf, including relativistic space travel. He’ll depart from that stricture if he believes the story requires it, but those stories are not in Revelation Space.

I’m especially fond of the Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies, a subseries within the Revelation Space universe, which I otherwise avoid. Tom Dreyfus is a field prefect, part of the Panoply, a sort of let’s not call them police officers, charged with ensuring that each of the 10,000 or so habitats within the Glitter Band has reliably functioning, untampered-with democracy. As long as they are properly functioning democracies, the habitats can have any set of laws they choose to have. 

A vital part of that is keeping the machines that tabulate votes working smoothly and ensuring that they’re not tampered with. But if they didn’t also have rogue AIs, charismatic preachers against Panoply, a mysterious contagion that seemingly leaps all protective measures, and bigotry against uplifted, genetically modified pig people, where would the fun be? Over the three books published (Aurora Rising, Elysium Fire, and Machine Vendetta, it’s intricate, layered, has very well-developed characters, and plots that really don’t let go.

Another Reynolds work I’ve enjoyed is Eversion, in which a sailing ship in the 1800s crashes on the coast of Norway, in the 1900s a Zeppelin runs into serious difficulty in crevasse in the Antarctic, and in the far future, a spaceship visits an alien artifact. Dr. Simon Coade is the physician on these voyages, and he knows something really weird is happening, that no one else is noticing. Yes, it’s science fiction. Again, intricate, layered, and with excellent characterization and plot.

I’ve also read Terminal World, and Century Rain. They’re dark enough that I’m not sure why I picked up the second after reading the first, or why I picked up anything else by Reynolds, because they are the dark and grim that I’m not looking for in fiction.

Possibly because he’s a very good writer, and I’m glad I did find the Prefect Dreyfus books, Eversion, and a few others. So there’s two lessons here. 1. You do not have to read fiction that is not for you. You’re not going to be taking a test on it. 2. Don’t automatically write off a write just because they don’t seem to be writing for you. If they’re good, keep an eye open for works that might be for you anyway.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) GRINCH YOU WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE. A collectible Dr. Seuss coin collection has launched with “The Grinch – Month 1”.

The titular character from Dr. Seuss’s iconic 1957 book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is widely recognized around the world. The Grinch may be green and mean, but he’s found his way into the heart of collectors as one of the most celebrated Dr. Seuss characters. Whether or not his heart grows three sizes, we love the Grinch’s strange enterprises!  

(11) WHILE WE WERE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. “Passing probe captures images of mysterious Mars moon” in the Guardian. Photo at the link.

A European spacecraft has taken photos of Mars’s smaller and more mysterious second moon during its flight past the planet en route to a pair of asteroids more than 110m miles (177m km) away.

The Hera probe activated a suite of instruments to capture images of the red planet and Deimos, a small and lumpy 8-mile-wide moon, which orbits Mars along with the 14-mile-wide Phobos.

The European Space Agency probe barrelled past Mars at more than 20,000mph and took shots of the lesser-seen far side of Deimos from a distance of 620 miles.

Michael Kueppers, Hera’s mission scientist, said: “These instruments have been tried out before, during Hera’s departure from Earth, but this is the first time that we have employed them on a small distant moon for which we still lack knowledge.”…

(12) PITCH MEETING. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] “Back to the Future Part III Pitch Meeting” — my wife notes that the description of how Doc and Clara fell in love seemed awfully familiar.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Lis Carey, Andrew (not Werdna), David Ritter, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 3/7/25 How Many Files To Pixelscroll? Three Score Files And Ten

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(1) FRANK R. PAUL AWARDS TAKING ENTRIES. Administrator Frank Wu has announced the Frank R. Paul Awards are open for submissions until April 15. Full details are available here.

There are two categories: Best Magazine Cover Art, and Best Book Cover Art. Prizes include a trophy (with a 3D-printed recreation of FRP’s tiger-robot-monster from the Sept. 1935 Wonder Stories) plus $500 in each category.

Artwork for any publication (pro, semi-pro, fanzine or online) is eligible, as long as the art was first published anywhere in 2024.

Artists are encouraged to submit (to me, Frank Wu, at FWu@FrankWu.com) on their own behalf up to 5 items they had published last year, with a note that the art was NOT generated using an AI program. 

Authors and publishers are also encouraged to submit on behalf of artists they’ve worked with, and anyone else can submit on behalf of any artwork that pleased them in the last year.

Trophy photo by Rich Lynch

(2) BOOK CURATION AS FREE SPEECH. “ABA Goes Into Damage Control After Contentious WI2025 Community Forum” reports Publishers Weekly.

A week after Winter Institute 2025 wrapped up in Denver on February 26, the American Booksellers Association dedicated Thursday’s issue of its weekly Bookselling This Week newsletter to respond to criticisms raised at a contentious WI2025 community forum. During that forum, booksellers criticized the ABA leadership and board for their refusal for more than a year to take a clear stand in support of indie booksellers who have been attacked for selling books about Palestine, as well as authors who are Palestinian and/or have spoken out against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. Other speakers raised concerns about double standards, some related to compensation, in the organization’s treatment of its members. Booksellers had raised similar concerns at the community forum at WI2024 in Cincinnati.

Perhaps John Evans, a past ABA board member who currently owns Camino Books in a San Diego suburb, summed it up best, when he said at the WI2025 community forum: “We aren’t asking you to come out with a stance on the Israeli war. We are asking you to support booksellers in a censorious environment by making this statement publicly that it is not antisemitic to provide books to people who want them. All of this falls within the framework of a bookselling organization. This is not a political statement. This is a consensual, understood, fundamental principle of what we all do, and it’s hurting us. You not supporting that. It’s offending us.”

In a letter signed by all 12 ABA board members that appeared in BTW, the board emphasized that it, “along with the staff of American Booksellers for Free Expression and ABA, condemns all attacks on bookstores, in particular the targeting of bookstores who have chosen to highlight Palestinian books and authors in their stores. Each bookstore’s curation is their own expression of their freedom of speech, and verbal attacks, demands to carry or not carry certain titles, and threats to stores are not acceptable.” The board also promised to support any booksellers “during times of persecution, harassment, curation challenges, and other attacks on booksellers and stores.”

The ABA wrote in a separate statement, which also appeared in BTW, that booksellers have been offered support, resources, education, crisis counseling, and provided with a hotline by ABA staff. “This is the work that ABA is empowered to do by our ends policies and allowed to do as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit trade association,” the ABA declared. “We cannot make a political statement on behalf of our members, but we can and do support our members in their right to express those views.” The organization added: “Book curation is a form of speech, and it must remain free. We condemn any harassment or threat to our members that aims to abridge this freedom.”…

(3) STATE DEPARTMENT’S LATEST CULTURAL DAMAGE. The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program shared some bad news with Facebook readers:

Dear Friends: We write today with a difficult update. On Wednesday, Feb. 26, the International Writing Program (IWP) learned that its grants with the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, were being terminated. This notification explained that the IWP’s awards “no longer effectuate agency priorities,” nor align “with agency priorities and national interest.” The immediate result was the cancellation of Between the Lines (the IWP’s summer youth program), and the dissolution of Lines and Spaces Exchanges, Distance Learning courses, and Emerging Voices programs. The overall Fall Residency cohort will be reduced by around half due to the loss of federally funded participants; the IWP’s other long-time funding partners, including a combination of donors, grants, foreign ministries of culture, and NGOs, will continue to support writers.

We are devastated by the abrupt end of this 58-year partnership and are working closely with University of Iowa General Counsel and Grant Accounting to review the terminations, understand their full impact, and respond in the best interest of the organization. Despite this disappointing turn of events, the IWP’s mission to promote mutual understanding through creative writing and literature remains unchanged; with the help of a limited number of other partners, we will still hold a 2025 Fall Residency even while pursuing new sources of funding. To support the IWP as we begin to rebuild, please visit this website: bit.ly/support-iwp

(4) TUTTLE ON FIVE NEW BOOKS. Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction and fantasy – review roundup” for the Guardian covers The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica; Dissolution by Nicholas Binge; The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar; When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi; and The Foot on the Crown by Christopher Fowler.

(5) BOOKLESS IN BLIGHTY. But the Guardian immediately leaves you wondering who in Britain might take advantage of Tuttle’s recommendations: “New poll finds 40% of Britons have not read a book in the past year”.

According to new a polling by YouGov 40% of Britons have not read or listened to a book in the past year.

The median British adult has read or listened to three books in the past year, the survey found.

Women seem to be bigger readers than men, with 66% of women reading at least one book in the last year, compared with 53% of men.

There was a political split: while 72% of remain voters said they’d picked up a book in the past 12 months, 54% of leave voters reported doing so. Labour voters were most likely to have read in the last year (70%) when compared with Lib Dem (64%), Conservative (63%) and Reform (51%) voters.

A class divide also emerged, with 66% of respondents in middle-class households reporting having recently read a book compared with 52% of those in working-class households.

(6) EYE ON GUY. Andrew Porter has shared the photo he took of Brother Guy Consolmagno at Boskone.

Brother Guy Consolmagno, right, and Kielan Donahue at Boskone. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(7) JEOPARDY! Then, Andrew Porter relayed the results of genre interest from tonight’s episode of Jeopardy!

Final Jeopardy: Category: Science Fiction

Answer: Name shared by a groundbreaking magazine launched in April 1926 & a TV anthology series that premiered in September 1985

Wrong questions: What is Popular Science (crossed out; no actual question).

What is Outer Limits?

What is Unsolved Mysteries?

Correct question (obviously) is Amazing Stories.

(8) GENE HACKMAN FOLLOW-UP. Authorities in Santa Fe, NM held a press conference today where they revealed — “Gene Hackman Died From Alzheimer’s & Heart Disease; Wife Died Days Before” – Deadline has the story.

A February 27 autopsy of Gene Hackman reveals the 95-year-old Oscar winner died of a combination of “advanced Alzheimer’s disease” and severe heart disease, the New Mexico Chief Medical Examiner announced today.

“It is reasonable to conclude that Mr. Hackman died on February 18,” Dr. Heather Jarrell said in a press conference with Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza and other county officials. “He was in very poor health,” Dr. Jarrell also noted of Hackman, adding that there was evidence that he hadn’t eaten for a number of days. Ms. Arakawa is assumed to have died on or around February 11, officials estimated….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Weyr Search (1967) and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series 

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series has a fascinating Hugo history.

She won a Hugo the first time she was nominated, for the novella “Weyr Search”, in 1968 at Baycon (tied with Philip José Farmer’s “Riders of the Purple Wage”.) It was published in Analog Science Fiction / Science Fact, October 1967. 

It’s in A Dragon-Lover’s Treasury of the Fantastic anthology which was edited by Margaret Weis, available from the usual suspects at a very reasonable price. 

It would be the only win for the Dragonriders of Pern series but by far is not the only nomination for the series. 

Next up would be the “Dragonrider” novella which was nominated a year later at St. Louiscon. Three years later, her Dragonquest novel would get a nod at the first L.A. Con showing that con had impeccable taste. Are you surprised they did? I’m certainly not. 

At Seacon ‘79, The White Dragon was nominated. (I really love that novel.) 

The next L.A. Con (1984) would see another novel be nominated, Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern. The final nomination, also for a novel, was at MagiCon (1992), for All the Weyrs of Pern.

The series did win a number of other awards including a Nebula for Dragonrider, a Ditmar and Gandalf for The White Dragon, a Balrog for Dragondrums and The Science Fiction Book Club’s Book of the Year Award for The Renegades of Pern. It is, after all, an expansive series. Really expansive. 

Personal note: I really wanted to enjoy this series all the way through as I came to it later. They were great, they really were, but something happened in the stories early on for me that I can say but I won’t as it’s a MAJOR SPOILER.  

I read the first trilogy of Dragonquest, Dragonflight and The White Dragon plus Harper Hall trilogy of Dragonsong, Dragonsinger and Dragondrums, and I did read on through maybe, let me check ISFDB, through All the Weyrs of Pern, That’s when that MAJOR SPOILER occurs which makes me say why McCaffrey, oh why? 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) HAPPY DEMENTED BIRTHDAY. Dr. Demento (Barry Hansen) turns 84 on April 2 and will celebrate his birthday at the LA Breakfast Club. Dr. Demento will take the audience through his 55 year career as America’s most unusual disc jockey and play some of his favorite songs. Tickets available here: “Celebrate The Doctor’s Career & 84th Birthday!”

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr. Demento has been celebrating “mad music and crazy comedy” on the airwaves playing everything from Spike Jones to Frank Zappa for over five decades. He is responsible for introducing the world to the Dr. Demento Show’s #1 most requested song of all time, “Fish Heads”, and launching the career of “Weird Al” Yankovic. Throughout the years, the world-famous Doctor’s influence on pop culture has earned him induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame, an hour long Anniversary special on Comedy Central, featured guest appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, Larry King Live, and countless others including The Simpsons.

(12) A BIGGER SLICE OF THE CHEESE, PLEASE. “Disney Animation Production Management Workers Ratify First Union Contract” reports Animation Magazine.

After two years of determined effort, the production management workers at Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS) have officially ratified their first union contract with the studio, The Animation Guild announced today. This landmark agreement comes after an intense organizing effort that saw a supermajority of production workers vote to unionize in February 2023, a move that was initially met with resistance from studio leadership.

The organizing effort proceeded to a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing, culminating in a decisive ruling on September 27, 2023. The ruling affirmed the eligibility of full-time production coordinators, production supervisors and production managers to unionize with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839 (TAG).

“It’s been an uphill journey, but at long last, we’ve reached the mountaintop. We are standing in our breakthrough — stronger, bolder, and united,” says production coordinator Tamara Lee….

(13) DOOM WITHOUT END, AMEN. The Guardian’s Stuart Jeffries adds to our amusement in “A Brief History of the End of the F*cking World by Tom Phillips review – apocalypse not”.

…The serious purpose of Phillips’s jolly doomscroll through the apocalyptic sex cults, pandemics, nuclear armageddons, rapture-fetishising fruitloops, numerologically obsessed nincompoops, swivel-eyed preppers waiting out zombie apocalypses in their Utah silos, not to mention the Bible’s (spoiler alert!) troubling last act, is to work out quite why, after so many failed prophesies, doom-mongery still thrives….

(14) SPACEX “STARSHIP” #GOBOOMFALLDOWN…AGAIN. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “SpaceX’s Starship explodes in space, which Musk calls a ‘minor setback’” – Reuters has details.

SpaceX’s massive Starship spacecraft exploded in space on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, prompting the FAA to halt air traffic in parts of Florida, in the second straight failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship broke up in space shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX live stream of the mission showed.

The failure of the eighth Starship test comes just over a month after the seventh also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, a setback for a program Musk had sought to speed up this year….

… The Federal Aviation Administration briefly issued ground stops at the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando airports because of “space launch debris.” It said it had opened a mishap investigation into the incident…

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George smuggles us inside “The Gorge Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/31/25 I Will Not Be Pixeled, Scrolled Or Filed

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(1) GAIMAN CLICKBAIT. I clicked, so you don’t have to. Despite the Variety headline – “Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Canceled at Netflix After Season 2, Allegations” – the showrunner says Season 2 was intended to be the series’ last, and it’s apparently still going to air, so what about that is a “cancellation”?

Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s “The Sandman” will end with its upcoming second season.

“The Sandman” Season 2 has been a long time coming. The first season debuted in August 2022, and it wasn’t renewed at Netflix until November of that year. At that time, Netflix was also hesitant to label it as a second season at all, choosing instead to say it was “a continuation of ‘The Sandman’ world,” and wouldn’t commit to an episode count. Variety has confirmed the second season was intended to be the last prior to filming.

“‘The Sandman’ series has always been focused exclusively on Dream’s story, and back in 2022, when we looked at the remaining Dream material from the comics, we knew we only had enough story for one more season,” “The Sandman” showrunner Allan Heinberg said in a statement to Variety Friday. “We are extremely grateful to Netflix for bringing the team all back together and giving us the time and resources to make a faithful adaptation in a way that we hope will surprise and delight the comics’ loyal readers as well as fans of our show.”…

(2) COURTHOUSE KRYPTONITE. “Warner Bros. Sued Over International Superman Rights” – The Hollywood Reporter briefs the case.

Warner Bros. Discovery has been sued over the rights to Superman in a lawsuit seeking to block the release of the studio’s tentpole film in several countries ahead of its July debut.

The estate of Joseph Shuster, the co-creator of Superman, alleges that WBD lost its international rights to the character and story years ago but continued to exploit them without its permission or compensation. In a complaint filed in New York federal court on Friday, it seeks a share of profits from all works attributable to the alleged copyright infringement — including Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Black Adam and Shazam! — in key countries such as Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

The legal action marks a potential hitch in WBD’s rollout of Superman, which arrives July 11 as the first solo movie for the character in more than a decade since Man of Steel. …

DC’s ownership of Superman dates back to 1938, when writer Jerome Siegal and Shuster, a graphic artist, sold their rights to the character and story for $130. The hero’s first appearance under DC’s banner was in Action Comics No. 1, which detailed his backstory, secret identity as newspaper reporter Clark Kent, and powers of super strength and speed (his first time flying came in 1943 in Action Comics No. 65).

Since then, it’s frequently been the target of litigation, starting in 1947 when the duo sued to invalidate DC’s ownership of the rights to Superman. The case settled, with a $94,000 payout to Shuster and Siegel to resolve the case.

Under U.S. copyright law, Shuster would typically be able to reclaim his domestic rights to Superman under a provision in intellectual property law that allows authors to claw back ownership of their works after a certain period of time. But his sister and brother reached a deal with DC in 1992 that terminated that right in exchange for $25,000 per year. A federal appeals court later upheld that determination.

This time, Shuster’s estate looks to take advantage of U.K. copyright law, which automatically terminates copyright assignments 25 years after an author’s death. By its thinking, it reclaimed the rights to Superman in 2017 since the graphic artist died in 1992.

Also at play: the possibility that Shuster’s sister didn’t have the authority to bind the estate to the agreement that purportedly surrendered its right to terminate DC’s ownership of Superman. In that case, the court stated that the issue is a “complex one” and punted on deciding it.

The lawsuit claims infringement of copyright laws in the U.K. Australia, Canada and Ireland….

(3) SCUTTLEBUTT. “Disney’s Star Wars hotel jumps from deep space to office space” – The Verge explains what that means.

Disney’s extraordinarily expensive Star Wars hotel isn’t coming back. The building that housed the Galactic Starcruiser is being converted into office space, scuppering hopes that it could be reborn or repurposed into a new interactive attraction.

The Wrap reports that the hotel will be converted into an office for Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative arm of the company responsible for its theme parks, retail, and cruise ships. The team located there will reportedly work on upcoming expansions for Florida’s Walt Disney World resort, including a Latin American section of the Animal Kingdom and a Monsters Inc. area within Hollywood Studios.

Galactic Starcruiser was an immersive hotel experience set in the Star Wars universe, where the minimum stay cost $4,800 for two people over two nights. It opened in March 2022 but ran for just a year and a half, shutting in September 2023. It returned to headlines in May 2024 when YouTuber and theme park superfan Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour video on its “spectacular failure” went viral, amassing 11 million views…

(4) IT’S PEOPLE! Inverse reviews Companion: “The Wildest Sci-Fi Thriller Of The Year Flips The Killer Robot Movie On Its Head”. BEWARE SPOILERS.

It’s a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl turns out to be a killer robot. Except Companion isn’t exactly the typical take on the classic sci-fi horror story. Instead, Drew Hancock’s cleverly constructed sci-fi horror movie is a fun takedown of the AI cautionary tale we know so well. And in the process, it may have given us the most sneakily feminist social horror movie this side of Gone Girl….

…The reason it all works, aside from Hancock’s admirably deft script, is because of Sophie Thatcher’s wonderfully malleable performance as Iris. Right off the bat, we sense that something is off with Iris — she’s a little too demure, a little too smiley, a little too doe-eyed. However, Thatcher seeds in tiny human quirks that spark some recognition for us: the way her mouth twitches uncomfortably when Josh’s friend Kat (Megan Suri) treats her with contempt, the way she glances down sadly when Josh brushes her off, and, of course, the way she would do anything to survive. By the time Companion drops its robot reveal (which again, happens very early on), we’re already primed to root for Iris, even as she starts to accumulate quite the body count….

(5) AFROFUTURIST SHORT FICTION. The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories edited by andré m. carrington will be released in bookstores on February 4, and is available immediately from Library of America.

Inspired by Afrofuturist pioneers like Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany, a new generation of Black writers is fashioning a renaissance in speculative fiction. Edited and introduced by SF expert andré m. carrington, The Black Fantastic brings together Hugo, Locus, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Tiptree/Otherwise, and World Fantasy Award winners with emerging voices to showcase this watershed moment in American literature.

Here are twenty beguiling, unsettling, and visionary stories spanning the cosmos and a dazzling array of alternate timelines. Phenderson Djèlí Clark and Alaya Dawn Johnson stare down the specters of history in their haunting fictions, set, respectively, on a Founding Father’s brutal plantation and in the vampire-built internment camps of a dystopian Hawai‘i. Violet Allen’s would-be superhero stories turn to searing metafiction when her main character is repeatedly shot and killed by the police. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Rion Amilcar Scott explore otherworldly forces at play in a small-town barbershop and in a young writer’s ambitions, while Victor LaValle tells the story of a man living on the streets of New York City, his bag of deposit bottles and cans bearing urgent messages from another dimension.

Other stories are by turns comic, provocative, and terrifying: Thaddeus Howze delivers a crowd-pleasing tall tale about a battle with aliens over the fate of Earth, by way of an epic baseball game; Maurice Broaddus spins a coming-of-age fantasy about an American girl in a utopian future Africa; Craig Laurance Gidney offers a Lovecraftian tour of the ballroom drag scene; Tara Campbell weaves a spell of ecofeminist horror; and much more.

Reimagining the past and laying claim to the future, these writers are bringing forth kaleidoscopic new visions of Black identity and creative freedom.

(6) POWER COUPLE. At One Geek’s Mind, John Grayshaw puts a spotlight on Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett with the help of a Luna Monthly interview from 1975: “Interview about Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett”. (The well-known sff writers wed in the 1940s; Ray Bradbury was Hamilton’s best man.) The interview touches on many different fandoms: classic movies, Star Wars, sff books, and comic books. As well as what it was like for female writers in the Forties. 

Wesley Grubb: Edmond Hamilton is one of those bridge-authors, who began writing before the “Golden Age” and continued to write into the “New Wave” era. How well did his writing develop, and how well did his stories mature, from his early career compared to his later career in the 50s and 60s? 

In a 1975 interview with Luna Monthly, Hamilton talked about how quickly he was writing stories back in the pulp era. He said:

“How do I feel about the rapid, high-production way we oldtime pulp writers employed in our work? I can’t speak for others, but for me it was the best way in the world to work. I might have been a more polished writer had I worked in more leisurely fashion, but I might too have been the centipede who didn’t know which leg to lift first.

One of the most ghastly stories I ever wrote was “Outside the Universe,” a wild tale of three galaxies at war. I wrote that in 1928, over 50,000 words of it first draft. I used a very small portable typewriter on a big, flat-top inherited desk. In writing those hectic space-battles, my hard pounding made the little typewriter creep all over the desk, and I would stand up and follow it in my burning enthusiasm.”

(7) THEY CAME FROM MILES AROUND. “Rebecca Yarros’s ‘Onyx Storm’ Is the Fastest-Selling Adult Novel in 20 Years” – the New York Times covers a personal appearance by the author, with quotes and comments by several of the fans on hand. (Link bypasses the paywall.)

….When Yarros became a fixture on the best-seller list, with the release of “Fourth Wing,” she had already published around 20 contemporary romance novels. But sales from book to book were largely stagnant, and she struggled with a chronic illness, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder.

Her illness, though debilitating at times, inspired her to write “Fourth Wing,” she said. Yarros grew up loving fantasy, but had never read a fantastical novel with a protagonist who had physical limitations like she did. She decided to write about a young woman named Violet, who enrolls in an elite military academy for dragon riders, and is determined to succeed despite a chronic illness that makes her weak and physically frail….

…Fans’ fervor was palpable at the event, which was held in a huge auditorium in St. Paul. Many in the crowd were dressed up in sweatshirts, T-shirts and hats that said “Basgiath War College,” the military academy of the series. Some were fully decked out in costume, dressed as Violet, in leather body armor, or as dragons….

…At the start of the event, Yarros was introduced by the romance writer Abby Jimenez, who noted that the Empyrean series had taken over the top three slots on the New York Times best-seller list.

Yarros uttered an expletive to express her surprise and gratitude. “Thank you,” she said to the crowd. “You guys did that.”

(8) GRUMPY BUT NOT DOPEY. The star of this event is rather less thrilled to be there than the celeb in the previous item. “Grumpy Harrison Ford, a mystery asterisk and AI gone wild: everything from Disney’s new slate presentation” in the Guardian.

There are moments in life when you expect to be confronted by greatness: hearing a live orchestra swell into the opening notes of John Williams’ Star Wars theme; standing at the edge of the Scottish Highlands; watching a dog somehow open a fridge and retrieve a beer for its owner. And then there are moments when greatness sneaks up on you in the form of an 82-year-old Hollywood legend, materialising like a grumpy mirage, one metre from your face, during what you thought was a routine Disney presentation of new movies and TV shows.

Harrison Ford is not a man one simply stumbles upon. He is a force of nature, a living relic of an era when leading men didn’t have to spend six months on a chicken-and-rice diet before taking their shirts off. And yet, here he is, looking suitably nonplussed with the entire concept of being on a stage, fielding questions alongside his Captain America: Brave New World co-stars in an impromptu Q&A with all the enthusiasm of a guy who somehow finds himself trapped in the world’s most boring hostage video….

…The assembled audience is also treated to an exclusive clip of the new film, out 14 February, in which we already know Ford will end up transforming into the Red Hulk. It’s an action-packed set piece in which Wilson (Anthony Mackie) infiltrates an enemy base, and showcases the new winged Captain America suit, which we’re told was given to Sam by those helpful Wakandans. . Marvel has always been a franchise built on increasingly wobbly physics, but even the most generous audience might struggle to believe that a bloke with no serum and no billionaire gadgets could stand toe-to-toe with a bad guy whose brain is so large it requires its own postcode….

(9) JOHN ERWIN (1936-2025). “John Erwin Dead: ‘He-Man,’ ‘Archie’ Voice Actor Was 88” – The Hollywood Reporter summarizes his career —

John Erwin, the reclusive actor who provided the voices for the heroic title character in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the vain frenemy Reggie Mantle in a series of Archie cartoons, has died. He was 88.

Erwin died of natural causes “around Dec. 20” in his home in Camarillo, California, his reps at the PR firm Celebworx announced.

For nearly a decade starting in 1969, Erwin was heard in dozens of TV commercials as the snarky Morris the Cat, the finicky orange tabby who would eat nothing but the 9Lives brand of cat food. The hugely successful campaign was created by the Leo Burnett advertising firm.

…For Filmmation, Erwin voiced the blond, muscular He-Man (and his alter ego, Prince Adam) on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe from 1983-85 and on She-Ra: Princess of Power from 1985-87. He also played the villain Beast Man and other secondary characters on the syndicated shows that were based on a line of Mattel toys….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal

Fifty-nine years at Tricon where Isaac Asimov was Toastmaster, Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal won the Hugo for Best Novel in a tie with Frank Herbert’s Dune. 

It was first published as “…And Call Me Conrad” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in October and November 1965, then as This Immortal in 1966 by Ace Books, and in 1967 by UK publisher Hart-Davis in hardcover. 

So it was only in the magazine that it had that title? So why the name change? Marketing having one of their not so genius ideas? 

Algis Budrys in Galaxy Bookshelf was fond of this novel saying it was “an extremely interesting and undeniably important book” with “a story of adventures and perils that is utterly charming and optimistic.”

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) COPYRIGHT OFFICE RELEASES ANOTHER PAPER ON AI. “New Government Report Addresses ‘Copyrightability’ of AI Works” – Publishers Weekly gives a quick rundown. (Download the full report here.) 

The U.S. Copyright Office has released the second installment of what is envisioned as a three-part report on copyright and artificial intelligence. The most recent release addresses the issue of “copyrightability of outputs generated by AI systems.” Its recommendations are based on the comments the Copyright Office received after it posted a Notice of Inquiry in August 2023 seeking public input on the full range of copyright issues raised by AI.

Based on an analysis of copyright law and policy and comments from the public, the Copyright Office made the following conclusions and recommendations:

  • Questions of copyrightability and AI can be resolved pursuant to existing law, without the need for legislative change.
  • The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output
  • Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material
  • Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements
  • Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis
  • Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control
  • Human authors are entitled to copyright in their works of authorship that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs, as well as the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs
  • The case has not been made for additional copyright or sui generis protection for AI generated content

(13) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to “Munch on pepper chicken masala with Larry Hama” in Episode 246 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

I’ve known writer/editor/artist Larry Hama for at least half a century now, but his career started long before that, when he sold his first cartoon to Castle of Frankenstein magazine in 1966. He’s probably best known as a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, where he wrote the licensed comic book series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, based on the Hasbro toy line, writing nearly every issue of the book’s 13-year run.

Larry Hama

He’s also written for the series Wolverine, Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja, and Elektra. He worked as an editor at both DC and Marvel, and at the latter edited the humor magazine Crazy, as well as Conan, The ‘Nam, and Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham. He co-created the character Bucky O’Hare, who not only appeared in comic books, but as a television cartoon. Last year, he was inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.

We discussed how cataract surgery changes the way an artist perceives the page, what really happened at a mid-’70s penthouse comic book party, Bernie Krigstein’s anger at being asked questions about comics, why Wally Wood felt it was so important for his assistants to learn how to letter, what it was like being part of the famed Crusty Bunkers inking collective, why getting to edit Crazy was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,  which Marvel Comics Bullpenner was the visual inspiration for Obnoxio the Clown, why getting his freelancers to hit their deadlines was never a hassle, the editing advice Archie Goodwin gave him early on, the real reason he needed to create that famous silent issue of G. I. Joe, the differing zeitgeists of Marvel vs. DC during the ’70s, his approach to taking over the editing of legacy characters, our joint confusion over memes of previous generations, and much more.

(14) TODAY’S THING TO NOT WORRY ABOUT? “Asteroid 2024 YR4 Could Strike Earth, Researchers Say, But the Odds are Small” in the New York Times (bypasses paywall).

You may hear about a large asteroid headed toward Earth. Don’t panic.

Just after Christmas Day, astronomers spotted something zipping away from Earth: a rock somewhere between 130 feet and 330 feet long that they named 2024 YR4. Over the next few weeks, they simulated its possible future orbits. They now say, based on the most up-to-date information, that there is a 1.3 percent chance that this asteroid will strike somewhere on Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.

Should this keep you up at night?

“No, absolutely not,” said David Rankin, a comet and asteroid spotter at the University of Arizona.

The object’s current odds of striking Earth may sound scary — and it’s fair to say that an asteroid in this size range has the potential to cause harm. Should it strike a city, the damage would not cause anything close to a mass extinction, but the damage to the city itself would be catastrophic.

But a 1.3 percent chance of a hit is also a 98.7 percent chance of a miss. “It’s not a number you want to ignore, but it’s not a number you need to lose sleep over,” Mr. Rankin said….

(15) A LONG WAY FROM THE BEACH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The roads must roll. Or the sand must flow, anyway. Meet the Dune Express, the second-longest conveyor belt in the world. At 42 miles in length, it’s built to take the place of trucks in moving sand from a quarry to an oil field where it’s used in fracking.

The Dune Express is the Texas-sized, if risky, baby of Atlas Energy Solutions. And, yes, the company is named after that book. “The World’s Second-Longest Conveyor Belt Comes to West Texas” in Texas Monthly.

I rapped my knuckles on the galvanized aluminum exterior to make sure it wasn’t some sort of desert mirage. It was solid: $400 million worth of concrete, electronics, and steel assembled to rotate a thick rubber belt along roughly 66,000 metal rollers. Something on the order of 13 million tons of sand can be carried the entire length of the machine—42 miles—each year. If all of that were used to build sandcastles, you could have a couple of dozen the size of Buckingham Palace, with more than enough left over for a Taj Mahal.

But this sand isn’t for beachside amusement. It’s for fracking. When drillers crack open subterranean rock in the Permian Basin to allow oil to flow out, sand rides alongside the injected fluid to prevent the spider’s web of new fractures from closing up again. Each grain of sand functions like a tiny support beam in a minuscule mine shaft. Fracking a single well can consume more than four hundred truckloads of sand…

(16) ELIXIR OF YOUTH. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] They say change is good, but I am totally with Sheldon Cooper in that it rarely is… And now we have under-reported news that could really shake things up for the planet…!

One of science’s greatest successes/failures is that the technology it spawns has benefited humanity so well that our global population has soared from a billion in 1804 to two billion in 1927 to 8 billion in 2024!  The resulting pollution, the loss of wildlife habitat to agriculture, is disrupting the Earth system…  And if that was not bad enough, now comes news that we may soon have a drug that can significantly (by a decade) extend human life spans….!

Yes, you read that correctly: ‘life extension’!  Our planet’s population could soar? Inequality could increase? 

The news was reported in this week’s issue of Nature. It seems that injecting old mice with an RNA molecule seems to reverse some signs of ageing – helping them to live longer, regrow hair and maintain their physical and mental abilities.

They used mice aged between 20 and 25 months, which is akin to between about 60 and 70 in human years. They went on to live for about 4.5 months longer, on average. They regrew hair that had become sparse, maintained a higher body weight, could stay balanced on a rotating rod for longer and had better grip strength for their weight

Now, don’t get too excited/worried just yet as the mouse may not be a good model for humans when it comes to RNA treatment, however this is still something of a breakthrough…

Primary research here.   

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John Grayshaw, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 1/18/25 “All These Pixels Are Just For Us” Said Tom Clickishly

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(1) CLOCK NOT RUNNING OUT ON TIKTOK? Yesterday’s Deadline’s article “Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning TikTok In U.S.” initially reported —

…the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court ruling that the app owned by China’s ByteDance must sell itself or be banned in the U.S. on January 19 due to national security concerns….

…Read the Supreme Court’s full TikTok opinion here….

…The ban would take effect under a new bipartisan law, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Controlled Applications Act, signed by President Joe Biden last year….

However, the incoming President said he will probably delay the ban: “Trump says he will ‘most likely’ give TikTok 90-day extension to avoid ban” at NBC News.

President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in a phone interview Saturday that he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a potential ban in the U.S. after he takes office Monday….

And Deadline subsequently added this update to its article:

TikTok’s CEO has responded to a Supreme Court ruling today that paves the way for the app to be banned on Sunday, thanking the incoming president. “On behalf of everyone at TikTok and all our users across the country, I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States,” said chief executive Shou Chew in a video posted to the platform.

“We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform, one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process,” he said. “As you know, we have been fighting to protect the constitutional right of free speech for the more than 170 million Americans who use our platform every day to connect, create, discover and achieve their dreams.”

(2) WHY WE FIGHT. CrimeReads’ fascinating analysis of “Pride and Prejudice and Nazis: On Aldous Huxley’s Wild Wartime Jane Austen Adaptation” teases out its threads of pre-WWII propaganda.

…But underneath its thick, saccharine coating; the film is something else: a contrived, convoluted morsel of political propaganda. Filmed by on American soil by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, this British adaptation shot directly after the French surrender to the Nazis, released during the Battle of Britain, and co-screenwritten by depressed British idealist Aldous Huxley, managed to transform that famous English book Pride and Prejudice into a partisan plug relying on Depression-era escapism, thematic idealization of a nationalistic Anglocentric tradition, the depiction of highly distracting romantic merriment, and a reassuringly happy ending to prepare and energize Americans for the inevitable: the United States’ joining the Allied Forces overseas to fight in World War II….

…Austen, Jerome, and Huxley place the same emphasis on class, however, in that all three versions have the same classless ending—Jane and Mr. Bingley marry, and Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy marry, despite their class and financial differences.  The concept of any Pride and Prejudice adaptation is that is possible to climb up a social ladder, because everyone is equal—or rather, everyone has the ability to be equal. Most of the characters belong in many social circles, and it is possible to find love or friendship somewhere else.  Perhaps this is the dominant reason why Huxley chose the Pride and Prejudice story for his anti-war-but-if-you-have-to-fight-then-fight-with-these-guys-esque opus instead of another classical novel (after all, many of other elements of the film Pride and Prejudice that make it jingoistic lie in plot alterations, or aesthetics —changes that could applied to any other story in the adaptation process): Pride and Prejudice is, at its core, a story about good, smart everyday people who make mistakes but learn their lessons just as much as it is a story about how important it is not to form judgments. Huxley nearly abuses this tone by exaggerating it in his own, though; any shred of mystery about the moral of the story is completely detonated throughout.  For example, in the film, Mr. Darcy comforts Elizabeth after Caroline Bingley insults her.  Elizabeth is shocked, and informs him, “At this moment, it’s difficult to believe that you are so proud.”  Mr. Darcy smiles vainly and answers back, “at this moment, it’s difficult to believe that you are so prejudiced.” Huxley spells out the main paradox of the story, killing the main thematic mystery – the only thing left for the audience to wonder is how they can get shipped off to fun, idyllic England.  Austen’s tone is inclusive, it’s happy, it’s insightful, and it’s open-minded—so now it fights fascism.

Of course, the aesthetics of the film Pride and Prejudice hide these anti-Nazi sentiments under tons and tons of poofy dresses and behind maypoles. For example, in the script, Huxley and Murfin manage to turn the extravagant Netherfield Ball into a garden party, which the film then turns into a frothy visual circus—where everything appears to be made out of cotton candy and wishes….

(3) LIU CIXIN MUSEUM. “Museum dedicated to sci-fi writer opens” from Chinadaily.com in October 2024.

China launched its first literary museum dedicated to Liu Cixin, a renowned science fiction writer and Hugo Award winning novelist, in Yangquan, Shanxi province, on Sunday.

While accepting the nation’s honor and unveiling the Liu Cixin Sci-fi Museum, Liu, author of the acclaimed sci-fi novel trilogy The Three-Body Problem who grew up in Yangquan, said that he hopes the museum can help the general public gain a better understanding of the sci-fi literature and develop an interest in the genre.

Located at a cultural park, the 700-square-meter museum educates visitors about Liu’s growth, his books and awards, and cultural and creative products derived from his works. Immersive projectors also create an atmosphere mimicking interstellar voyages described in Liu’s novels….

… Yan Jingming, vice-president of the China Writers Association, said that the establishment of the museum is not only an homage to Liu and his works but also serves as a beacon for China’s sci-fi writers and fans.

He said he hopes it will bring like-minded sci-fi novelists together and spark more inspiration and works.

The launch was part of a weeklong sci-fi promotional event in Yangquan that also included a symposium on sci-fi literature and real-world productivity, where Liu shared his thoughts on potential immigration to Mars.

“I would love to go to Mars if it were a round trip,” Liu said, explaining that a one-way journey would not suit him as he had work to do and family members to be with on Earth….

(4) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? Neil Baker returns with more horrible dino movies in “Prehistrionics, Part III” at Black Gate.

We’re off on another adventure filled to the brim with disappointment. 20 films I’ve never seen before, all free to stream, all dinosaur-based.

First on his list, last in his heart:

The Jurassic Dead (2017) Tubi

Just how bad is the CG? Rubbish.

Sexy scientist? Nope.

Mumbo jumbo? Reanimation, dinosaurs, zombies, asteroids.

Just in case you thought I might try to start the year on a high note, might I present this tripe. The premise is simple: a Herbert West type (complete with glowing green reanimating fluid and dead cat) loses his job and decides to destroy the world. Somehow he has a T-Rex, which he zombifies, and then he turns into Immortan Joe and sets off an EMP just as asteroids wipe out some cities. A crack, sorry crap, team of commandos based on 80s action figures must team up with a group of hugely unlikeable civilians to survive.

Everything ends in nuclear devastation. Effects-wise, the dinosaur is a cute, Walking with Dinosaurs puppet, but everything else is shockingly awful green screen composites. Just terrible.

3/10

(5) GAIMAN: ART AND ARTIST. NPR’s popular culture commentator Glen Weldon speaks as “One longtime Neil Gaiman fan on where we go from here”.

…While we don’t know whether these disturbing allegations are true, learning of them naturally leads to a deeply personal, complicated question: How do we deal with allegations about artists whose work we admire — even revere?

I should note: It’s a complicated question for most of us. It’s not remotely complicated for those who rush to social media to declare that they never truly liked the creator’s work in the first place, or that they always suspected them, or that the only possible response for absolutely everyone is to rid themselves of the now-poisoned art that, before learning of the allegations against the creator, they loved so dearly.

Nor is it complicated for those who will insist that a creator’s personal life has no bearing on how we choose to respond to their work, and that the history of art is a grim, unremitting litany of monstrous individuals who created works of enduring, inviolate beauty.

Most of us, however, will find ourselves mired in the hand-wringing of the in-between. We’ll make individual, case-by-case choices, we’ll cherry-pick from the art, we’ll envision ourselves, in years ahead, sampling lightly from the salad bar of the artist’s collected works, and feeling a little lousy about it.

Here’s my personal approach, whenever allegations come out about an artist whose work is important to me: I see the moment I learned of them as an inflection point. From that very instant, it’s on me.The knowledge of the allegations will color their past works, when and if I choose to revisit them in the future. It won’t change how those works affected me back then, and there’s no point in pretending it will. But my newfound understanding of the claims can and will change how those works affect me today, and tomorrow.

To put that in practical perspective: If I own any physical media of their past work, I feel free to revisit it, while leaving plenty of room for the new allegations to color my impressions. But as for any future work — that’s a door I’m only too willing to shut….

(6) HINT: IT’S ZELAZNY. Grammaticus Books asks is he “The MOST DISRESPECTED Science Fiction author of ALL TIME ???” How could you not click on that?

An indepth analysis of the works of science fiction and fantasy author Roger Zelazny. With a focus on his lack of recognition as one of the greats of the SF field. Worthy of mention alongside Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Frank Herbert.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 18, 1953 — Pamela Dean, 72.

By Paul Weimer: One of the legends of Minneapolis fantasy writing, Pamela Dean’s work first came to my attention in the same season that also brought such novels as War for the Oaks to my attention. From my perch in New York, work by people like Bull and Dean and Brust (among others) enlightened me to the fact that the Twin Cities was a hotbed of fantasy and science fiction writing. 

I started reading her with her classic Tam Lin, which I picked up not long after the aforementioned Bull novel. (I was on a kick to read novels set in Minnesota at that point, you seem, especially by this community).  It’s an excellent adaptation and exploration of the Scottish-English story. You know the one. Young man taken by a Queen or noble of Faerie, and the titular Tam Lin must thus be rescued by the love of his life, Janet. You can see the appeal, it is an empowering fantasy that puts a woman in a forward, protagonist position. Since the original reels and songs, it’s been adapted many times by many authors. Dean’s version has the story take place, predictably in Minnesota, setting it at Blackrock College. 

But it is the Secret Country trilogy that I think of as her best work, or at any rate my favorite. It’s a conceit that was not new to her, as far as I am aware, it dates back to Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame series: the idea that a group of people, playing a game with and imagining a fantasy world, find themselves transported into the realm of the very game that they thought was fiction. The idea is the same, but the Secret country is on the brink of war, there’s a dragon afoot, and so there is far more urgency and threat to the realm than wandering about as in Rosenberg’s series. It is one of the classic portal fantasies into a realm you think you already known. 

I’ve gotten to meet Pamela Dean many times at local cons. She might even be able to pick me out of a line up. Happy birthday, Pamela!

Pamela Dean

(8) MEMORY LANE

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Six Million Dollar Man (1973)

Fifty-two years ago, The Six Million Dollar Man premiered on ABC. It was based on Martin Caidin’s Cyborg. Executive Producer was Harve Bennett, who you will recognize from the Star Trek films. It was produced by Kenneth Johnson who would later do The Bionic Woman spin-off and the Alien Nation film. 

Its primary cast was Lee Majors,  Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks. Majors had a successful second series shortly after this series was cancelled, The Fall Guy, about heart-of-gold bounty hunters. The Six Million Dollar Man would run for five seasons consisting of ninety-nine episodes and five films. The Fall Guy would run five seasons as well. 

Reception by media critics is generally positive. Phelim O’Neil of The Guardian says, “He was Superman, James Bond and Neil Armstrong all rolled into one, and $6M was an almost incomprehensibly large amount of money: how could anyone not watch this show?” And Rob Hunter of Film School Reviews states “The story lines run the gamut from semi-believable to outright ludicrous, but even at its most silly the show is an entertaining family friendly mix of drama, humor, action, and science fiction.”

It’s streaming on Peacock. 

(9) MEMORY LANE, TOO.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

The Demolished Man (1952)

Seventy-three years ago, Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man was first published in three parts starting in the January 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Although he had been writing short fiction since 1939, this was Bester’s first novel.

The novel is dedicated to Galaxy‘s editor, H. L. Gold, who made suggestions during its writing. 

Bester’s preferred title was Demolition! but Gold convinced him it was not a good one. Anyone know where the published title came from? Bester or Gold? 

The Demolished Man would be published in hardcover by Shasta Publishers the next year. Shasta Publishers was formed by a group of Chicago area fans in 1947.

Critics at the time really loved it. 

Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas in their Recommended Reading column for The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy said it was “a taut, surrealistic melodrama [and] a masterful compounding of science and detective fiction.” And Groff Conklin in his Galaxy 5 Star Shelf column exclaimed that it is “a magnificent novel as fascinating a study of character as I have ever read.”

As you know The Demolished Man would win the first Hugo for Best Novel at PhilCon II. It was also nominated for the International Fantasy Award. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Off the Mark has a frightening brand name.
  • Pardon My Planet knows you could explain this vampire’s problem.
  • Tom Gauld’s editor is like Cosby’s refrigerator light – “How do it know?”

My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T10:35:58.069Z

(11) YOU HAVE TO BE EITHER OH-SO-SMART, OR OH-SO-NICE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] In a twist, the words coming from the Merc with a Mouth are just fine. It’s what Nicepool said that Justin Baldoni finds offensive. And has filed a lawsuit over. “How Deadpool Entered Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively Feud With Nicepool” at The Hollywood Reporter.

Half a century ago, a defining question of the Watergate scandal was, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” Today, a surprising question has emerged in the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni legal saga: “What did Nicepool say, and when did he say it?”

On Tuesday, a letter from Baldoni attorney Bryan Freedman to Disney landed in the hands of the media. Freedman’s legal hold letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige — in which he addressed them as “Bob” and “Kevin” — asked the studio to preserve any documents regarding Baldoni and the creation of Nicepool, a minor character in Deadpool & Wolverine that internet sleuths (and Freedman himself) say star-writer-producer Ryan Reynolds used to mock Baldoni….

… Freedman suggests work on Nicepool came as Reynolds’ wife, Lively, was in the midst of a contentious shoot with her It Ends With Us director-star Baldoni. She later filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him, while on Thursday, Baldoni sued Reynolds, Lively and Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloane.

So, how (and when) did Nicepool end up in the movie?

The character was developed before the rift between Lively and Baldoni, but sources tell THR that scenes involving Nicepool were shot late in the game following the November 2023 conclusion of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“It was all added post-strike,” says one knowledgeable source of the shooting schedule, who says the scenes were filmed in the final days of principal photography, which wrapped up in January 2024. 

In other words, the scenes were shot during a high point of tension between Lively and Baldoni….

(12) WHAT WE DID IN THE SHADOWS. “U.S. Reveals Once-Secret Support for Ukraine’s Drone Industry” in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

The Biden administration declassified one last piece of information about how it has helped Ukraine: an account of its once-secret support for the country’s military drone industry.

U.S. officials said on Thursday that they had made big investments that helped Ukraine start and expand its production of drones as it battled Russia’s larger and better-equipped army.

Much of the U.S. assistance to the Ukrainian military, including billions of dollars in missiles, air defense systems, tanks, artillery and training, has been announced to the public. But other support has largely gone on in the shadows….

… Last fall, the Pentagon allocated $800 million to Ukraine’s drone production, which was used to purchase drone components and finance drone makers. When President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the White House in September, President Biden said another $1.5 billion would be directed to Ukraine’s drone industry.

American officials said on Thursday that they believe the investments have made Ukraine’s drones more effective and deadly. They noted that Ukraine’s sea drones had destroyed a quarter of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and that drones deployed on the front lines had helped slow Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine….

(13) STARSHIP TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED. “F.A.A. Temporarily Halts Launches of Musk’s Starship After Explosion” reports the New York Times. (Behind a paywall.)

The urgent radio calls by the air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration office in Puerto Rico started to go out on Thursday evening as a SpaceX test flight exploded and debris began to rain toward the Caribbean.

Flights near Puerto Rico needed to avoid passing through the area — or risk being hit by falling chunks of the Starship, the newest and biggest of Elon Musk’s rockets.

“Space vehicle mishap,” an air traffic controller said over the F.A.A. radio system, as onlookers on islands below and even in some planes flying nearby saw bright streaks of light as parts of the spacecraft tumbled toward the ocean.

Added a second air traffic controller: “We have reports of debris outside of the protected areas so we’re currently going to have to hold you in this airspace.”

The mishap — the Starship spacecraft blew up as it was still climbing into space — led the F.A.A. on Friday to suspend any additional liftoffs by SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.

The incident raises new questions about both the safety of the rapidly increasing number of commercial space launches, or at least the air traffic disruption being caused by them….

(14) BIG BOY REMEMBERS DAVID LYNCH? For some reason there’s a David Lynch memorial at the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank – Patton Oswalt posted photos. (Is there some reference involved? Maybe one of you can explain it to me.)

The marginal details of the David Lynch memorial at the Burbank Bob’s Big Boy are what make it.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T19:55:32.073Z

Just saw this one earlier.

— Sam Ebbets (@samebbets.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T21:34:55.074Z

Hold the phone – John King Tarpinian sent me the answer.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Retired Disney Imagineer Jim Shull tells how “Toy Story Land went from a one and done to a Disney- land built in four separate parks. How the toys were Imagineered is the subject in this episode of Disney Journey.” “Imagineering Toy Story Land”.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, 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 Daniel Dern.]