Tag Archives: Doctor Who

Pixel Scroll 6/4/25 All My Pixels Have Filed Away, Tom Mourned Scrollfully

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(1) BRIAN KEENE HELPS OUT. Yesterday we linked to Jason Sanford’s report about the hit Apex Books is taking from the bankruptcy of Diamond Book Distributors because of payments they won’t be receiving. Today, Brian Keene announced he will give Apex Books a lift by foregoing some royalties Apex owes Keene: “Apex Books”.

If you’re a regular reader of my daily journal over on Patreon, then you’ve been following all the fallout from the Diamond Distribution bankruptcy. I’d mentioned in one of those entries that this wouldn’t just impact comic publishers and comic stores, but book publishers and booksellers, as well.

One of the main publishers who have been drastically hit by what is — in my personal opinion — either utter incompetence or complete malfeasance on the part of Diamond executives — is Apex Book Company, who’ve published my own ISLAND OF THE DEAD, THE LOST LEVEL, RETURN TO THE LOST LEVEL, HOLE IN THE WORLD, KING OF THE BASTARDS, THRONE OF THE BASTARDS, and CURSE OF THE BASTARDS (those latter 3 cowritten with Steven L. Shrewsbury). I have also appeared in a number of their anthologies, including the recently released THE MAP OF LOST PLACES.

You can read in detail about how Diamond’s collapse has impacted them via this note from owner (and my friend for 20 years) Jason Sizemore. The situation is dire.

One of the biggest outstanding debts Apex is currently facing is royalties for my novel ISLAND OF THE DEAD. I like Apex. i like Jason and Lesley. I like that they’ve taken chances on a wide-ranging line-up of new voices in horror, fantasy, and science-fiction. I like that they have always paid their authors on time and fairly, and that they actually spend money marketing and promoting the books.

Therefore, this afternoon, I have informed Jason that I am waiving ALL ROYALTIES due to me for ISLAND OF THE DEAD. Apex will not have to pay me for copies sold from the book’s initial release until now. While that won’t completely fix the situation, it does remove one of their bigger debts and buys them some breathing room. As I said, I’ve known Jason and Lesley a long time, and in talking to them this afternoon, I know that this will definitely help.

I would like to ask that if you haven’t yet bought one of those books I mentioned above, that you do so now, but also that you do it directly from Apex via their website, rather than Amazon or a chain bookstore or even my own indie bookstore. Buying them directly from Apex will immediately put money in Apex’s pockets, and allow them to pay all the other writers in their stable. If you already own all of my books published by them, then perhaps consider subscribing to their magazine or buying a book by someone else. You can do all of those things via the Apex website.

…While I am not wealthy, this past year has been pretty good for me. I’m currently in a place where I can afford to take the financial hit of waiving those ISLAND OF THE DEAD royalties. I know that other authors are not, and I would never ask them to do so. I also know that most people have the attention span of a gnat with ADHD, and will ignore a plea for folks to go buy books from Apex unless I give them a reason to read through this announcement. It is my hope that — having read it to see what the hell Brian Keene is up to this time — you will indeed now click the link, buy some books, and then other folks can get paid.

(2) TALKIN’ ABOUT MY REGENERATION. The Guardian finds that not everyone’s a fan… “’Like trying to float a sinking ship’: your reaction to Billie Piper’s Doctor Who return”.

…In all honesty, I’m a bit unsure how I feel. There are elements of it that makes sense, however, there is something unnerving about taking on the form of a previous love interest and wearing their skin as a suit. I hope it’s not just gimmicky – perhaps if there are links back to the Bad Wolf storyline that originated for the ninth Doctor then it may work. However, at the moment it does feel like trying to float a sinking ship. I say this as somebody who has loved Doctor Who since I was a child. Time will tell, but I hope this isn’t just another cheap trick to keep us interested. Russell T Davies don’t let us down! Gabrielle, freelance photographer and video editor, Bristol

…I’m shocked, but in a good way. Billie Piper is such an integral part of NuWho history and the credits didn’t introduce her as the Doctor, so the opportunities are endless (is she the Bad Wolf? Or the Moment?). I’m really excited to see what comes next and hope the show gets renewed. The only thing I’m upset about is how poorly parts of the fandom reacted. To bring back old characters is such a Doctor Who thing to do. I have the feeling that loads of people forgot what the show is about: it’s fun, it’s full of heart and it’s always been a little bit wacky, so why not embrace this new development with an open mind? As the Doctor himself said: “Hate is always foolish, love is always wise.” It would be great if people took that to heart. Isa, Germany

(3)  TIME TO PLAY. Joe Stech has launched the Hawking Radiation Mass Energy Converter. (You may have tried his previous creation, Dyson Swarm which we linked to in January.)

“Game” is actually a strong word for what this is, the game is actually more of an experiment to try and convey some information about artificial black holes. It is possible to play through the whole game in less than two minutes, but it will probably take you longer than that to get a feel for the mechanics.

I’d love to hear what you think of it. If you want some light background reading to go along with the game, here’s the Wikipedia page on Hawking Radiation.

(4) FRAZETTA FAMILY WINS ANOTHER COURT DECISION. A U.S. District Court federal judge has reinstated summary judgment in Frazetta Properties, LLC suit against Jesse David Spurlock and Vanguard Productions, ruling that the latter misled the Court by citing a forged document to justify unauthorized use of Frank Frazetta’s copyrighted artwork.

Spurlock “claimed falsely that William Frazetta, Holly Frazetta, and Heidi Frazetta Grabin had signed this letter. This was false, as the defense now admits in light of the forensic evidence provided.”

The ruling comes in the ongoing case first filed in 2022 after Spurlock published Frazetta book cover art without a license.

A press release issued by the Frazettas adds:

The Court sanctioned Spurlock, reinstated its original summary judgment ruling in favor of Frazetta Properties, and ordered him to pay the Plaintiffs’ legal fees. The ruling affirmed that Frazetta Properties owns the valid copyright to the “Death Dealer II” and “Death Dealer V” artworks, and that Spurlock’s use of those images in his 2022 publication was unauthorized and infringed upon the Estate’s rights. The Court also rejected Spurlock’s claims of fair use and prior licensing, stating that his use of the art “supplants the object of the protected work and is therefore not transformative to any meaningful extent.”

This federal case followed a 2019 state court lawsuit in which Spurlock sued the Frazetta family alleging breach of contract after receiving a termination notice. At trial, the Frazetta family successfully demonstrated that Spurlock had failed to uphold his contractual obligations, including underreporting and underpaying royalties on Frazetta- related book sales. A jury ruled in favor of the Frazettas, and Spurlock later abandoned his appeal. He was also ordered to pay legal fees in that case.

“This ruling reinforces what we stand for: protecting the Frazetta name from fraud and defending the legacy of one of the greatest artists in American history—no matter what it takes,” said Joe Weber, representative of Frazetta Properties, LLC.

(5) GILBERT & SULLIVAN & REH. Bobby Derie chronicles a branch of Robert E. Howard fandom in “’The Ballad of Conan’ (1983) by Anne Braude” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein. There’s a screencap of Braude’s highly amusing filk lyrics at the end of the post.

The first fandom of Robert E. Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria arose in the 1930s, when the adventures of the barbarian were published in the pages of Weird Tales. Some fans, including R. H. Barlow, Emil Petaja, Charles B. Hornig, Alvin Earl Perry, and P. Schuyller Miller wrote to Howard—and the Texas pulpster wrote back, answering questions, sometimes gifting manuscripts of his stories, subscribing to fan publications like The Fantasy Fan, and providing unpublished stories and poetry for fanzines like The Phantagraph to publish as well.

This early interaction with fandom endeared Howard to his fans, and helped provide the basis for the first fan-publications…

…All of this increased fan activity, such as the Hyborian Legion and the Robert E. Howard United Press Association (founded in 1972). Conan was no longer an obscure hero from the pages of Weird Tales; the Cimmerian had become a staple of science fiction and fantasy, an archetype of barbarians, fighters, and rogues, a multi-media figure well-known and established in fandom—and the serious critical study of Robert E. Howard’s life and fiction were picking up, echoing the scholarly interest that Lovecraft had attracted a decade earlier.

Which is where things stood when fan Anne Braude wrote the jocular (but largely accurate) “Ballad of Conan” for the Conan-heavy issue of the fanzine Niekas in 1983….

(6) DEDICATED TO CORFLU. [Item by David Langford.] The Corflu 2025 fanthology Dancing to Architecture in which various fans write about music has just been added the free library at the TAFF site — with an optional donation to The Corflu Fifty suggested if you enjoy it. Many thanks to Corflu for the suggestion.

Dancing to Architecture, edited by Doug Bell, is a collection of fan writing about music, published for the fanzine convention Corflu 42 held in Newbury in April 2025. Edited by Doug Bell and designed by Pat Virzi, it includes fifteen essays, all original here, by Rich Coad, Lucy Huntzinger, Nic Farey. Geri Sullivan, Ulrika O’Brien, Mark Plummer, Ted White, Christina Lake, Bruce Gillespie, Sandra Bond, William Breiding, Claire Brialey, Doug Bell and John Harvey, with artwork from Brad W. Foster (front cover, at left), Alison Scott, Dave Hicks, Clarrie Maguire, Sue Mason, Ulrika O’Brien, Dan Steffan and Pat Virzi. 34,000 words.

(7) BOMBS AWAY. Literary Hub traces “How Literature Predicted and Portrayed the Atom Bomb” – featuring several bits of sff history, including this one I hadn’t come across before:

…Philip Wylie himself strayed into trouble in 1945 when he wrote a story called “The Paradise Crater,” about the efforts of neo-Nazis in a future 1965 to avenge Hitler’s defeat by building uranium bombs. Wylie fell afoul of Blue Book editor Donald Kennicott’s unusually dutiful decision to seek official permission in advance.

In short order, Kennicott was instructed to bury the story and Wylie was placed under house arrest in a hotel room in Connecticut. What, asked an Army Intelligence major, did Wylie know about the atomic bomb? The major said that he was prepared to take Wylie’s life, and his own, if it was necessary to prevent a security leak.

Wylie protested that he had no inside information, nor did he need any. Thanks to his publicity work for the US Air Force, he had friends in high places and was soon released. He offered to shred the manuscript but the major said, no, he should hang on to it until the war was over.

“The Paradise Crater” did indeed appear in the October 1945 issue of Blue Book, by which time the whole world knew about the atomic bomb. “I saw the headline, brought on the bus by a stranger, and thought: Yes, of course, so it’s here!” recalled one young science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury. “I knew it would come, for I had read about it and thought about it for years.”

Not that there was any cause for the science fiction community to feel smug, because what they had also foreseen, more often than not, was world destruction. “People do not realize civilization, the civilization we have been born into, lived in, and been indoctrinated with, died on July 16 1945 [the date of the first bomb test], and that the Death Notice was published to the world on August 6, 1945,” wrote John Campbell in his first Astounding editorial after Hiroshima. He added, “There is only one appropriate name for the atomic weapon: The Doomsday Bomb.”…

(8) IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE WAS A LIBRARY. Untapped Cities tells “10 Secrets of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street”. Like, what was on that site before they built the NYPL?

2. The New York Public Library was Built on the Site of the Old Croton Reservoir

…The Croton Reservoir held 20 million gallons of water within its walls, which stood 50 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Edgar Allan Poe frequently walked atop the reservoir walls to enjoy the view they offered of the city. When it became obsolete in the 1890s, it was torn down to make way for the new library building. It took two years and some 500 workers to dismantle the reservoir. The cornerstone of the library was laid in 1902. The Old Croton Aqueduct would serve as a vital water supply for New York City for nearly a century until a new aqueduct was built, which remains in service to this day. Inside the library, you can still see pieces of the reservoir walls if you look for the rough stone between the stairs on the lower levels of the South Court, near the Celeste Auditorium….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 4, 1960 — Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 65.

By Paul Weimer: Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an author I found, and then lost and then found again. She in the meantime had been writing prolifically, in multiple genres and fields, but had fallen off of my radar for a good long while.

It all started in the 1990s when I picked up The Sacrifice, the first of her Fey novels. The high concept drew me immediately. A world-conquering empire of Elves sweeping everyone before them…and then they run into the speedbump of Blue Isle, which has a power to resist the Fey that they themselves don’t even quite suspect. Suddenly the easy conquest is not so easy and over the next several books, Rusch explored this conflict from multiple vantage points and perspectives.

And then, someone Rusch fell off of my personal radar. Too many other new authors, perhaps. Or I didn’t follow her into mysteries and other subgenres such as media-tie ins, of which she has written or coauthored a fair number of, in multiple universes, and often under other names as well, ranging from Star Trek to Roswell. 

It wasn’t until my early official reviewer days that I picked up Rusch again, as she helped vitalize the xenoarchaeology novel subgenre with the Wreck series. I was offered a review copy of Diving into the Wreck, and my fond memories of The Fey stood me in good stead as I dug into Boss’ story.

Since then I’ve been following Rusch on her blog and Patreon, where she has fearlessly and openly discussed and educated on the craft and business of writing. Anyone seriously interested in either should follow and read what Rusch has to say.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) IS SUPERMAN JEWISH? [Item by Lew Wolkoff.] I somehow got a subscription to Quora.com, and I read the entries for humor as much as anything else. Today, they got stuck with questions about Superman and other superheroes being Jewish. Here’s the response from Elliot Maggin, who wrote the Superman comics from 1971 to 1986. “Is Superman Jewish?”

Reply from Elliot S Maggin

Principal writer of the comic book series from 1971 through 1986; author of three novels in which Superman is a primary character.

The unwarranted assumption in the explanations above is that Kryptonians are not Jews. I dissent from that notion. While they are not direct descendents of the Judeans of the Middle East from whom the term “Jewish” comes, I always ascribed effectively Jewish doctrine and ritual to the Kryptonian tradition. In fact, the Kryptonian tradition is congruent with and certainly predates the Judean, so they have at least as much claim to the tradition as any of us.

I give all my characters religions, so I’ve thought this through – really. The Kents are Methodist (as is Clark), Lois is Catholic, Perry is Baptist, Jimmy is Lutheran (no surprise there) and Bruce Wayne and Batman are both Episcopalian (even less of a surprise there). And Superman (like the Siegels, the Shusters, the Weisingers, the Schwartzes, the Maggins and the Luthors) is Jewish.

This is so self-evident that it may as well be canon.

Comment by Lew Wolkoff: Clark Kent is Methodist, but Superman is Jewish? Good trick. I’m not too crazy about Luthor being Jewish, it smacks a bit too much of the “Protocol of the Elders of Zion” bullshit.

 In the book From Kracow to Krypton about the influence of Jews on comic books, the author suggested that Superman and Batman fit the classic stereotypes for the Wise Son and the Wicked Son of the Passover seder. Traditionally, the Wicked Son is portrayed as a warrior (most common) or a man of wealth.

(12) VIEW THE MILKY WAY FROM NEW YORK. “American Museum of Natural History to launch new space show ‘Encounters in the Milky Way,’ narrated by Pedro Pascal” reports amNewYork. The show opens to the public on June 9. 

A brand new space show that explores the intricacies of the Milky Way Galaxy is opening to the public at the American Museum of Natural History. 

“Encounters in the Milky Way” is a time-traveling journey that shows galactic migration and how that cosmic movement impacts our solar system. The show is narrated by award-winning actor Pedro Pascal and will play in the museum’s Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space’s Hayden Planetarium.

“This is the 25th anniversary of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and it makes this space show, which is our seventh space show since the Rose Center opened, particularly special,” said Museum President Sean M. Decatur. “Since 2000, our space shows have transported millions of visitors to the edge of the observable universe with increasingly sophisticated visualizations based on observations from groundbreaking space missions and leading-edge scientific models.”…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Foley: A Sonic Tale” from Lucasfilm.

In “Foley: A Sonic Tale,” Skywalker Sound’s Foley Artists, consisting of old pros and new talent, unite to bring the work of Star Wars alive through the matching of sound to action.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Paul Weimer, Arnie Fenner, Lew Wolkoff, David Langford, 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 Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 6/2/25 All Scrolls Bright And Beautiful, All Pixels Great And Small

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(1) PROPS TO VARLEY. Polygon’s Tasha Robinson says “Only one science fiction novel really predicted AI right”.

The current cultural fascination and frustration with artificial intelligence is nothing new. As far back as the 1921 Czech play R.U.R. — the workers-rights story that first coined the term “robot” — science fiction writers have channeled fears about artificial intelligence into stories where robots represent (or just bring out) the absolute best or worst of humanity…..

…John Varley’s 1992 novel Steel Beach lays out a wild far-future world where aliens have destroyed human life on Earth. Humanity has decamped to the Moon (the unwelcoming “steel beach” of the title) and other colonies, forming the “Eight Worlds” system in which many of Varley’s stories and novels are set. In the future of Steel Beach, humans run dinosaur ranches for meat, alter and rewrite their bodies at a whim, and grow organic brain-to-computer interfaces so they can operate devices with a thought. But the book still gets at some aspects of real-world AI better than most sci-fi books set in near-present futures. In particular, Varley doesn’t just consider the impact of AI on humanity — he digs into the impact of humanity on AI….

… The idea that most people turn this endlessly sympathetic companion into nothing more than a hands-free texting tool seems improbable. But notably, Hildy’s own relationship with the CC is a lot more complicated, emotional, and invested, which suggests Hildy isn’t necessarily aware of how other people interface with their omnipresent overlord.

The reasoning behind that relationship is what really makes Steel Beach feel so insightful about the problems with present-day AI. Steel Beach is an episodic, expansive novel that uses Hildy’s search for a meaningful, satisfying life as a frame for vignettes about the futures of journalism, body modification, relationships, capitalism, literacy, mental health, escapism, and a whole lot more. (Especially sex: The book’s provocative opening line is “In five years, the penis will be obsolete.”) But Hildy’s relationship with the Central Computer is the throughline that holds it all together….

(2) WE WANT – INFORMATION. [Item by Steven French.] “Fun, flirty and far too brief: why did Ncuti Gatwa leave Doctor Who so soon?” The Guardian doesn’t really answer the question but it’s hard to disagree with their conclusion:

Gatwa’s Doctor was fun, flirty and full of joy, but it is difficult not to conclude that we hadn’t seen enough of him in the role, and now we never will….

… The show sometimes feels stuck between a rock and a hard place in the modern era. It has to compete in a streaming environment where grownup fans also watch shows such as Andor or The Last of Us and compare it directly with those. The BBC though is also still trying to make a show whose primary purpose is to be broadcast on Saturday evening on BBC One for a communal multigenerational family audience gathered around the TV. And that is an audience that is increasingly vanishing in houses with multiple screens and multiple viewing options.

Gatwa’s era also seemed to be riding two slightly conflicting horses. Russell T Davies returned as showrunner with the nostalgia rush of having David Tennant and Catherine Tate back in the Tardis for three 60th anniversary specials, then promised a softish reboot with the aim of picking up new audiences and starting afresh as “Season one” with a new Disney+ international distribution deal. But he also opted to bring back companions from the 1960s and 1980s, and have the return of niche villains and enemies that necessitated flashbacks to episodes from the 1970s, which didn’t exactly scream “accessible”….

(3) SPEEDY OPTION. [Item by Dann.] Barely a month after initial release, James Cameron has picked up the film rights to Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils.  It’s nice to see good karma in action.“James Cameron’s Company Has Picked Up the Rights to Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils” at Reactor.

… Cameron continues, “I’m looking forward to the writing process with him, though I’m certain this adaptation will practically write itself because Joe writes very visually, almost in scenes, and with a very cinematic structure. I can’t wait to dig into this as I wind down on Avatar: Fire and Ash. It will be a joyful new challenge for me to bring these indelible characters to life.”

The Devils was published by Tor Books less than a month ago, on May 13th….

(4) THERE WAS A RACE IN HOLLYWOOD, TOO. “75 Years Ago, A Shockingly Dark Sci-Fi Adventure Tried To Predict The Space Race” – Inverse remembers.

Several years before the Space Race officially began, two suspiciously similar Hollywood movies raced to launch their lunar expeditions onto the big screen. And even though it had a year-long head start, Destination Moon ended up as the Soviet Union to Rocketship X-M’s United States.

George Pal Productions had started working on the former in 1949, proudly teasing its state-of-the-art construction, scientific accuracy, and Technicolor visuals in an extensive marketing campaign. But when various snags delayed the release date, Lippert Pictures saw an opportunity to steal its thunder, and landed Rocketship X-M in theaters 75 years ago today.

Remarkably, the finished product rocketed into theaters just 25 days after shooting wrapped. And while the fast-tracked film doesn’t soar to the same heights as its costlier rival — it’s largely in black and white, for one thing, while the lack of any expert consultants soon becomes abundantly clear — it still stands as a fascinating curio….

(5) ON THE AIR. Phil Nichols’ new episode of Bradbury 100 is about “Radio Classics – Dimension X / X Minus One”, two series that adapted Ray’s work.

Here’s another new episode of Bradbury 100, and this time I return to Ray’s stories in the golden age of radio, looking at the classic science fiction drama series Dimension X and X Minus One.

I’ve mentioned these shows before on the podcast, but I figured it was time to make them the focus.

Although Ray Bradbury was himself a scriptwriter and dramatist, he didn’t do any writing specifically for these two shows. And unlike the series Suspense (which I looked it in episode 61), Dimension X and X Minus One only produced adaptations of stories which had already been published.

But what terrific adaptations they were! With scripts by future Emmy Award winners Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, these series never put a foot wrong. The scripts are pretty close to the original stories, without being simple, lazy transcriptions.

In this episode I include clips of many of the Bradbury-based episodes, the most striking of which is the run of episodes based on stories from The Martian Chronicles. But if you’ve never listened to a Dimension X or X Minus One in its entirety, I would urge you to do so. Go to a darkened room, and let your mind conjure up… well, something like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits… or wherever your imagination takes you…

(6) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter says that it paid for tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants to know their Nineteenth Century sff.

Final Jeopardy: Category: Science Fiction

Clue: Referring to what’s wrongly believed to be a meteorite, “The Falling Star” is the title of Chapter 2 of this 1898 novel.

Wrong question: What is “The Time Machine”?

Correct question: What is “War of the Worlds”?

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 2, 1915 — Lester del Rey. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer: For me, first and foremost, Lester del Rey was a publisher and an editor. Many of the books I first encountered reading science fiction, back 4 decades ago, were published by Del Rey, which he founded with his wife Judy Lynn del Rey.  And for a good while, that’s all I thought that he was (although his legacy and influence as a publisher is huge). 

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology was a gateway to a number of authors for me. Theodore Sturgeon. Murray Leinster. Fritz Leiber (for “Coming Attraction”, although I would soon discover Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser).  And Lester del Rey, for “Helen O’Loy”.  I had read enough Greek Mythology by that point to get the idea that this was a Helen of Troy story, and it was perhaps the first story I read where a robot was an object of romantic interest. Helen’s story, and the tragedy of it moved me deeply.

I soon came across other del Rey stories, here and there, randomly, sprinkled in best of collections and favorite science fiction stories and the myriad other SF anthologies that I read in the first decade of my science fiction reading.  

But it was Harlan Ellison® who turned me onto perhaps the best and my favorite of the Lester del Rey stories. In one of his own collections about the relationship between men and Gods, he mentioned a Lester del Rey story “For I am a Jealous People”.  I could see the biblical allusion in the title, and I decided to seek it out.

I recently re-read it, and it still slaps, hard.  “For I am a Jealous People” is a kicker of a story, where the Abrahamic God is real, has always been real. But now, God is angry with humanity and fed up with us, and basically has sided with aliens invading Earth and its possessions. That is a smash to the face to begin with, but it’s humanity response to this revelation in the story that really brings it home to me, the power of a del Rey story at its best.  Humanity’s response could have been any number of plausible results. Regret. Sadness. Despair. Resignation. Anger.  Del Rey goes for “Good. Bring it!” It’s a muscular answer to the question of what to do when even God is against you, and it remains powerful to this day.

Lester del Rey

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) KINGPIN FOR MAYOR. The Brooklyn Eagle is there when “’Daredevil’ gives an ominous look to Brooklyn Borough Hall”.

Downtown Brooklyn passers-by were treated to moody lighting and fog effects at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Thursday evening when the Disney+ series “Daredevil: Born Again” filmed a scene on the plaza steps. 

Banners showing a man’s stern face (“Mayor Fisk,” aka crime boss “Kingpin,” played by Brooklyn-born actor Vincent D’Onofrio) and the words “New York Born Again” hung between the pillars; an armored vehicle was parked on the plaza; and flowers were piled on the steps, giving the scene an ominous air.

Signs indicated the shoot was for a show named “Out of the Kitchen,” but crew members told the Brooklyn Eagle that is the working title for the most recent incarnation of “Daredevil.” The series features Charlie Cox as blind attorney Matt Murdock — the superhero Daredevil — reprising his role from Marvel’s Netflix television series….

‘Daredevil: Born Again,’ filmed at a transformed Brooklyn Borough Hall Thursday and Friday evening. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

(10) OF COURSE THEY DO. “Meta plans to replace humans with AI to assess risks” – NPR has the story.

For years, when Meta launched new features for Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, teams of reviewers evaluated possible risks: Could it violate users’ privacy? Could it cause harm to minors? Could it worsen the spread of misleading or toxic content?

Until recently, what are known inside Meta as privacy and integrity reviews were conducted almost entirely by human evaluators.

But now, according to internal company documents obtained by NPR, up to 90% of all risk assessments will soon be automated.

In practice, this means things like critical updates to Meta’s algorithms, new safety features and changes to how content is allowed to be shared across the company’s platforms will be mostly approved by a system powered by artificial intelligence — no longer subject to scrutiny by staffers tasked with debating how a platform change could have unforeseen repercussions or be misused….

(11) BEFORE AND AFTER DARK. [Item by Steven French.] Nora Claire Miller on screen savers, poetry and her gran’s iMac in The Paris  Review: “Recurring Screens”.

The world’s first screen saver was not like a dream at all. It was a blank screen. It was called SCRNSAVE, and when it was released in 1983 it was very exciting to a niche audience. It was like John Cage’s 4’33″ but for computers—a score for meted-out doses of silence….

…My grandmother’s iMac spent most of its time showing Flurry, a dancing rainbow spider that was the first-ever Macintosh screen saver when it debuted in 2002. My grandmother was very tech-averse and preferred to write on a yellow legal pad. Whenever she needed to use the iMac, she’d call me with questions. “Thank goodness you picked up,” she’d say. “An alternate universe has emerged in the corner of my screen. Can you help?” 

I quickly gave up on trying to convince her to use words like “window” or “application” instead of “planet” or “dimension.” Her descriptions felt closer to the real experience of using a computer—like trying to fly a spaceship. She read a lot of sci-fi. I helped her download Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven from iTunes as an audiobook. We listened together as a man altered collective reality with his dreams….

Flurry screensaver

(12) BLACK MIRROR EFFECTS. Animation World Network takes us “Inside the VFX of Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror – USS Callister: Into Infinity’ Season 7 Finale”.

Black Mirror’s 7th season finale, “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” a sequel to the fan-favorite 2017 Season 4 opening episode, “USS Callister,” picks up years later where the ship’s crew, led by Captain Nanette Cole, is stranded in an infinite virtual universe, fighting for survival against 30 million players. MacLachlan spoke with AWN about how he and the visual effects team began with a fresh visual direction and an ambitious VFX brief, modernizing the original look while employing a collaborative pipeline to produce needed shots, and why family visits to set might help inspire a new generation of digital artists….

…He adds, “Some of the stuff we designed as we did the VFX, and some of the things Union VFX did were absolutely fantastic. You know, the teleportation, the defragging / fragging, the spaceship design, the space battles, they were all new elements this time around.”

“There are north of 600 VFX shots in the episode, which is a significant shot count,” MacLachlan shares. “The largest body of work was obviously the space battle sequences in and around the Heart of Infinity,” he says. “There’s a lot of fully CG content — space battles, explosions, laser fire, dynamic camera moves.”

Designing the action around a unique central structure was critical. “A key feature of the show was that everything is moving in and around this swirling, gyroscopic behemoth of a center of the Heart of Infinity,” MacLachlan says. “The team had to coordinate shots where the camera moves in and around a moving obstruction. I can’t think of another space battle where the object is shifting this way.”…

(13) PERSISTENT TECH. BBC Future also keeps an eye on the past: “Obsolete, but not gone: The people who won’t give up floppy disks”.

…Floppy disks or diskettes emerged around 1970 and, for a good three decades or so, they were the main way many people stored and backed up their computer data. All the software and programmes they bought came loaded onto clusters of these disks. They are a technology from a different era of computing, but for various reasons floppy disks have an enduring appeal for some which mean they are from dead.

The original 8in (20cm) and 5.25in (13cm) floppy disks were actually floppy – you could bend them slightly without harming the magnetic material inside.

But the later 3.5in (8.75cm) disks were arguably the most successful. It is these that came to be immortalised as the “Save” icon in many computer applications even today. The 3.5in disks, which Espen Kraft uses, are small and rigid, not actually floppy, but that means they are both more robust and easier to store….

…Kraft adores floppy disks because they help him creatively, he says. He doesn’t want to make music that merely apes 1980s styles – rather, he wants it to sound like it actually came from that decade.

It’s when Kraft is using antiquated equipment that he makes his best music, he says. Feeling the ruggedness of a treasured disk as it slots into a dusty old drive. In his opinion, more modern equipment with gigabytes of storage doesn’t come close. He even performs live shows with floppy disks and has used them during musical appearances on Norwegian television.

To this day, Kraft records new sounds and samples straight onto this physical format, including crickets singing in the forest near his house in the evening. If you pitch that cacophony down by 10 octaves or so, and add some reverberation as well as a little delay, then lo: “You have instant music,” says Kraft. “A very nice custom soundstage,” he says….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, N., Dann, Michael J. Walsh, 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 Cat Eldridge with an assist from OGH.]

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 5/31/25 Scroll Tuesday Night

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(1) MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING. And don’t read the URLs of these two links, either, which also contain the spoiler.

Gizmodo asks “What the Hell Just Happened on ‘Doctor Who’?” – and then answers the question. No spoiler in the first paragraph, fortunately.

Doctor Who‘s latest season has just come to an end—and with it, we just got hit with an absolute shocker of a cliffhanger. Let’s discuss, shall we?

The Guardian’s storygoes even farther with a spoileriffic headline that I won’t quote fully: “Doctor Who finale sees…”

(2) LOCUS APPEAL NEARS END. The “Locus Mag 2025” fundraiser at Indiegogo ends today. With seven hours still to run it had taken in $80,375. How much does that help?

…With rising inflation, tariffs, and shipping costs, it now costs over $725,000 a year to publish the magazine, run the website, and present the awards each year. Through subscriptions, advertising, and existing donations and sponsors, we can count on $400,000 in anticipated revenue next year. That means we need to raise an additional $325,000 to make it all the way through 2025….

So there are probably more fundraising efforts to come.

(3) THE 20,000 LEAGUE MISSION. “Star Trek Alum Shazad Latif Captains the ‘Nautilus’ in First Trailer for Rescued Sci-Fi Series” – Collider profiles the show.

Star Trek: Discovery‘s Shazad Latif is going where no man has gone before… but this time, instead of outer space, he’s headed to the hidden depths of the ocean. Latif stars as Captain Nemo in Nautilus, AMC’s new reimagining of Jules Verne‘s classic science fiction novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The show’s new trailer sees him set sail in the titular super-submarine, even as he’s pursued to the ends of the Earth. The series premieres June 29 on AMC and AMC+.

In the new trailer for the 19th-century-set science fiction series, which serves as a prequel to Verne’s novel, Nemo is the prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company, a globe-spanning corporation that wields more power than any government. He and his fellow prisoners are put to work building the Nautilus, an advanced submarine that the Company hopes will further tighten its grip on the world’s seaways. However, Nemo foments a rebellion among his fellow prisoners and takes command of the ship, escaping into the depths with his fellow prisoners as his crew. The Mercantile Company is soon in hot pursuit, with a dogged mariner assigned to bring Nemo down; meanwhile, Nemo has an unwilling passenger on board. Will he have his revenge on his captors, or will the Company deep-six his ambitions?…

(4) NYT’S PETER DAVID TRIBUTE. The New York Times profile is terrific — “Peter David, Comic Book Writer Who Repopularized the Hulk, Dies at 68” – link bypasses the paywall. Here’s the very end of the piece:

…Mr. David, a gregarious soul who was befriended by movie stars and celebrities in the science-fiction realm, fondly remembered in his memoir the night he was watching the original “Star Wars” movie on television and its protagonist, Mark Hamill, called. A budding comic book writer himself, Mr. Hamill wanted to know: Could Mr. David write the introduction to a collection of his work?

“Uh, hey, Mark,” Mr. David said. “I’m watching you about to blow up the Death Star.”

“I can call back,” Mr. Hamill replied.

“No, that’s OK,” Mr. David told him. “I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.”

(5) QUACKING UP. Scott Edelman is back with Episode 23 of the Why Not Say What Happened? podcast: “Why Howard the Duck Was the Silver Surfer of the ’70s”. (And here’s several dozen platforms where it can be found.)

Join me and Neil Ottenstein for a rambling panel about Howard the Duck in which I share the Marvel Comics chaos which caused me to be hired there in 1974, my regrets over having written an issue of Omega the Unknown, my ethical queasiness about owning original art, what it means when I say I knew Stan Lee before he had hair, my terrifying Bullpen encounters with “Jumbo” John Verpoorten, why Howard the Duck was the Silver Surfer of the ’70s, my Times Square street theater with Steve Gerber, the time Howard the Duck had to be hatched instead of laid, how immaturity cost me Captain Marvel, the only time I ever saw Stan Lee get flustered, and more.

Among other things, Edelman recalls the time Howard the Duck couldn’t get laid – see the relevant comics panel here, and read the whole story here.

(6) HOW WUDE! [Item by Steven French.] Ben Child, in the Guardian’s “Week in Geek”, ponders a galaxy full of hangovers rather than hope: “Ryan Reynolds has pitched an ‘R-rated’ Star Wars. What would that look like?”

Take all the essential ingredients of Star Wars – samurais in space, adventure among the wookiees, aliens with backward syntax, evil cyborgs with a penchant for murder by telekinesis – then imagine George Lucas hadn’t given us all of that through a PG prism. This, it appears, is what Ryan Reynolds did when pitching to Disney. “I said, ‘Why don’t we do an R-rated Star Wars property?’” Reynolds told The Box Office podcast. “‘It doesn’t have to be overt, A+ characters. There’s a wide range of characters you could use.’ And I don’t mean R-rated to be vulgar. R-rated as a Trojan horse for emotion. I always wonder why studios don’t want to just gamble on something like that.”

Let’s imagine the scene: a gaggle of studio execs are nervously cowering before the Hollywood A-lister’s megawatt smirk as he reveals his idea for a take on George Lucas’s space opera that doesn’t hold back. This is Star Wars Tarantino-style. Perhaps Mando’s got a drug problem, or Chewie really does rip people’s arms off – and beat them to death with the wet ends. Somewhere over in Coruscant a Jedi slices a corrupt senator into symmetrical chunks without ever unsheathing his saber. Or maybe Reynolds just thinks the galaxy far, far away could use a little more Deadpool & Wolverine-style sweary irreverence.

He’s wrong. Push Star Wars too far into the realm of self-aware snark, or nudge it to start laughing at itself before the audience does, and you undercut the very thing that keeps fans tethered to its dusty, big-hearted mythos. We already have umpteen animated takedowns – Robot Chicken’s fever-dream dismemberments, Family Guy’s fart-laced remakes – and they’re fine, in their way. But if Star Wars ever starts mimicking the shows that exist solely to mock it, then the circle will be complete….

(7) THE THING OF SHAPES TO COME. Rich Horton’s reviews of the finalists continue at Strange at Ecbatan: “Hugo Ballot Review: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, by John Wiswell”.

… The story is told from the point of view of Shesheshen, who is a shapeshifting monster, or wyrm, and who has threatened the population of the Isthmus for some time. As the novel opens, Shesheshen is awakened early from her yearly hibernation by a familiar menace — monster hunters….

(8) CONCURRENT SEATTLE. ConCurrent Seattle, a one-day alternate program created in protest of the use of ChatGPT by the Seattle Worldcon, had raised almost half of its $5,000 budget as of yesterday.  

The use of ChatGPT at WorldCon has been a breach of trust in an industry of writers whose work has been stolen to train genAI. ConCurrent, a one-day event being held on Thursday, August 14, 2025, at the ACT Theatre in downtown Seattle, is an alternative for those who want a convention with no genAI involved.

ConCurrent is not a replacement for WorldCon and will be free of charge and open to all….

(9) JAYANT NARLIKAR (1938-2025). [Item by Steven French.] The science journal Nature has an obituary of Jayant Narlikar who was not only Fred Hoyle’s PhD student and collaborator (together they developed an alternative theory of gravitation which rejected any Big Bang) but also wrote science fiction himself (his novel The Comet is still on the syllabus in some Indian schools). “Jayant Narlikar, visionary astrophysicist and science populariser, dies at 86”. He died on May 20.

… Narlikar’s influence extended well beyond academic circles. He was a dedicated science communicator and one of India’s earliest and most prolific writers of science fiction. A story exploring black holes and time dilation, submitted anonymously, won him his first award and launched a writing career that brought scientific ideas to a wider audience. His accessible and engaging popular science books became fixtures in school curricula and earned him the UNESCO Kalinga Prize in 1996….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 31, 1990 — Total Recall

By Paul Weimer: “Get your ass to Mars”.

Sure, I think as social satire The Running Man is probably better science fiction as a movie. But as a vehicle for 1980’s SF for Schwarzenegger that wasn’t Terminator, I think you can’t do better than one of my favorites, Total Recall.  The excitement of a movie “based on a story by Philip K. Dick” (which I subsequently read and was confused by how little it actually had to do with it.) 

But the movie is a corker from start to finish and so much of the movie is imprinted in my brain to this day. The movie’s insistence on keeping it very ambiguous, right to the end, if Quaid was dreaming or not , charmed me. I argued with my brother over this, who thought the “sweat drop” scene with Dr. Edgemar proved it was all real. I disagreed, and pointed out things like “Bluesky on Mars” being the name of his program, and how Melina resembled the woman programmed for his vacation. And if you listen to the commentary, Paul Verhoeven directed the movie with the point of view that it was all a dream, and Schwarzenegger acted with the point of view that it was reality. It makes for an interesting tension on screen and it works. 

There are lots of little details that happen in the background.  The change in geopolitical setup to a North-South Cold War. The Tokyo Samurai are trying to go for a fifth and deciding win in the World Series (so now the American Baseball leagues have teams in Japan…and the World Series is a best of nine affair). The movie is visually rich and generous like that, showing a lived in world that you can believe is real. Two worlds to be precise, both Earth and Mars. And the brutalist architecture pattern works for this authoritarian future. 

And of course the movie is hideously violent. The body count is high. 

The movie remains ever relevant with its critiques of colonialism, and authoritarianism. We are meant to side with the Free Mars movement, and maybe not until Cox’s Cohagen decides to kill everyone by asphyxiation does he really go from a tyrannical colonial figure who is vaguely understandable, to a true and undeniable monster that is irredeemable. But that steady revelation of just how horrible he can be starts with him looking sympathetic at first, and then unfurling his true nature and the extent of what he has done, and is willing to do.  It’s a dive into authoritarian and colonialist mindsets, and in this day and age, even more relevant than ever.

And the movie follows through on the implications of its technology with the character beats. When Richter is told that Quaid/Hauser won’t remember anything, he just has to punch him hard, because of all what he’s put Richter through at this point. It’s a character beat that makes sense given the tech.  And we have Chekov’s guns all over the place, which all fire, which propel us to the final confrontation. Sure, the “Ten second terraforming method of Mars” is bonkers and would not work. The movie doesn’t explain that there are more steps to the breathable atmosphere than melting the ice to get oxygen. I don’t care. 

I read the novelization, done by Piers Anthony, because “I wanted to know more”.  And I wish I hadn’t. I had not yet discovered how terrible Anthony was as a writer, but the novel’s insistence at each and every chance to say “yes this is real” over and over, was disappointing. Even at the end, when Quaid points out to Melina that she looks like the woman from Rekall, she casually says she used to do modeling for them. The book was determined to squash any ambiguity, and it was a major turn off. It did more solidly explain the terraforming, though and how it would work.

But the movie remains solid. Don’t bother with the remake. Watch the original.  Don’t let me down, buddy, I’m counting on you.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) MURDERBOT SUITS UP. Alexander Skarsgård shows it’s a real challenge to pull on his costume in this TikTok video: “Discover the Morning Routines of Security Units in Murderbot”.

(13) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “How the iPhone Drove Men and Women Apart” is a hooky headline, but the real topic of Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times podcast (which is the source of the New York Times article) is the declining fertility rate in many countries. If the NYT article is paywalled, the podcast episode is available on YouTube under the title “Progressives Are Driving Themselves Into Extinction”.

…Douthat: What about culture apart from politics? Because, while it is the case that culture is determined to some degree by tech, the smartphone creates culture in its own way. It’s also the case that the issue of declining birthrates is not one that much of elite Western culture has taken seriously. It’s not something that’s entered into the mainstream cultural mind the way that the threat of climate change has done. So you could imagine if it became a more important part of the cultural imaginary — some kind of self-conscious attempt to treat this as an important issue.

Let’s say, right now people in Hollywood would feel bad if they were perceived to be not doing something to fight climate change or something. Hollywood used to make a lot of romantic comedies. It doesn’t really anymore. There’s still a few. But are there cultural scripts that could be written — whether in movies or TV or elsewhere — that you think could actually make a difference?

Evans: I think definitely, yes. And I think it would be wonderful if Hollywood promoted that and supported that. In fact, as a joke last year, I even wrote a comedy script about how Hollywood could support fertility and things like that.

Even though I’m totally on board with that — and I think that’s very important — there are several frictions. One, it’s very difficult to do cultural engineering today, because we have infinite options of entertainment at our fingertips — on Netflix and everything. So if you’re not that interested in a romantic comedy — you know, in China, a lot of the most popular films are about divorce. So it’s difficult to do cultural engineering. On top of that, as long as people are hooked on their smartphones, they might not have the social skills to do it.

I think another possible mechanism would be to use the tax system and to give massive tax incentives to people who have children, because that’s a positive externality….

(14) NUMBER NINE? NUMBER NINE? “Scientists Say They’ve Found a Dwarf Planet Very Far From the Sun” – this link bypasses the New York Times paywall. “The small world was found during a search for the hypothetical Planet Nine, and astronomers say the next time it will reach its closest point to the sun is in the year 26186.”

A sizable world has been found in a part of the solar system that astronomers once thought to be empty. It probably qualifies as a dwarf planet, the same classification as Pluto.

Temporarily named 2017 OF201, it takes more than 24,000 years to travel around the sun just once along a highly elliptical orbit, coming as close as 4.2 billion miles and moving as far out as 151 billion miles. (Neptune is just 2.8 billion miles from the sun.)

And 2017 OF201 may have implications for the hypothesis of an undiscovered planet, nicknamed Planet Nine, in the outer reaches of the solar system.

“We discovered a very large trans-Neptunian object in a very exotic orbit,” said Sihao Cheng, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J….

(15) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? [Item by Steven French.]

“My space-dog has no nose!”

“How does he smell?”

“Like a poisonous marzipan cloud!”

“From cat urine to gunpowder: Exploring the peculiar smells of outer space” at the BBC.

Scientists are analysing the smells of space – from Earth’s nearest neighbours to planets hundreds of light years away – to learn about the make-up of the Universe.

Jupiter, says Marina Barcenilla, is “a bit like a stink bomb”.

The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter has several layers of cloud, she explains, and each layer has a different chemical composition. The gas giant might tempt you in with the sweet aroma of its “poisonous marzipan clouds”, she says. Then the smell “would only get worse as you go deeper”.

“You would probably wish you were dead before you got to the point where you were crushed by the pressure,” she says.

“The top layer of cloud, we believe, is made of ammonia ice,” says Barcenilla, likening the stench to that of cat urine.” Then, as you get further down, you encounter ammonium sulphide. That’s when you have ammonia and sulphur together – a combination made in hell.” Sulphurous compounds are famously responsible for stinking of rotting eggs….

(16) RARA AVIS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Eat chicken — I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch. This is this week’s Nature cover story….

The cover shows an artist’s impression of Archaeopteryx, the oldest-known fossil bird, which lived some 150 million years ago. In this week’s issue, Jingmai O’Connor and colleagues describe the fourteenth known specimen of Archaeopteryx — colloquially known as the Chicago Archaeopteryx because it was acquired by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. This specimen is important because it is so well preserved: it is nearly complete and has not been crushed, which means it retains a remarkable level of detail. This, combined with painstaking preparation guided by micro-computed tomography, allowed the researchers to uncover fresh information about the skeleton, soft tissues and plumage of this iconic creature. Among the team’s findings are specialized inner secondary feathers called tertials on both wings, and an indication that creature’s foot pads were adapted for movement on the ground. The collection of newly identified features suggests that Archaeopteryx was adapted for some level of flight and was comfortable living both on the ground and in trees.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/25/25 When You Get Caught Between The Scroll And Pixel City

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(1) A DISCWORLD TOUR. Olivia Waite picks “The Essential Terry Pratchett” for New York Times readers (link bypasses the NYT paywall.)

…Book by book, Discworld expands and deepens, pulling in elements from our world that Pratchett tempers in surprising ways: Shakespeare, vampires, police procedurals, musicals, Australia, high finance. Then come even bigger ideas: war, revolution, justice.

By the time we reach Book 29, “Night Watch,” Pratchett is writing comic fantasy the way Martin Luther offered theological critique to the Catholic Church: sharp and tough as nails, with a hammering moral force….

… Discworld is not about how to be good, but about how to do good, and why even the smallest acts of kindness matter. Empathy — like humor or creativity or hope — is a muscle. You don’t train for a marathon by running around the world: You start with small distances and work your way up….

Waite recommend this book as the place to start:

…If you find the flow charts daunting — and who could blame you? — “Monstrous Regiment” (2003) is your best bet for a stand-alone, as it happens far away from Ankh-Morpork or the witchy Ramtop Mountains. We meet young Polly Perks, from a small country forever at war with its neighbors, as she cuts her hair, dons trousers and joins the army in hopes of finding her missing brother. The troops are untrained, the fields are barren, and the government insists it’s treasonous to even ask which side is winning the war. The only authority is Sgt. Jack Jackrum, a jovial nightmare in a coat “the red of dying stars and dying soldiers” — as if Falstaff were reborn as a god of war.

Polly soon discovers she’s not the only soldier in disguise. Everyone has their reasons for fighting, and they’re being tracked by more enemies than they know. It’s trench humor at its blackest, and burns like a wound being cauterized…

(2) A RETRO REVIEW. A Deep Look by Dave Hook wishes he was going to be on a panel at the Seattle Worldcon to discuss “’Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense’ by Cordwainer Smith, 1949 Duell, Sloan and Pearce”.

The Short: I recently read Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense by Cordwainer Smith, 1949 Duell, Sloan and Pearce. It’s not SF, but today it would be called a techno-thriller, with an engaging story of USSR atomic bomb program spying and espionage. I enjoyed it and thought it was very good. It’s available in e-book format at a very reasonable price….

(3) SKILLS FOR MODERATING PANELS. Frank Catalano tells how to navigate the hardest easy job in public speaking in “A call for moderation (of panels)” at Franksplaining. He has 10 tips.

… I’ve moderated, conservatively, more than two hundred panels (I started as a teen at science-fiction conventions). Since those early nerdy gatherings, I’ve hosted professional panel discussions at events ranging from technology trade shows and summits to book and education industry conferences over several decades.

But being a good moderator requires a different skill set than being a good public speaker. Overlap? Yes. With a major difference: the audience’s attention should be focused on the entirety of the panel, not only the moderator….

… So, for the sake of a perky panel and a rapt audience, here are 10 things I’ve learned about being a good moderator (if you’re ever called to serve, for reasons personal or professional):

1) You’re the glue. Your mission as moderator is to create a coherent whole out of disparate, and sometimes feuding, parts. As a result, you should be the panel’s audience surrogate — even asking for definitions of terms and clarification of statements which a panelist may state as though everyone already knows. Many times, people attend panels to learn, so they may not….

(4) TEN YEARS LATER. The Daily Dot takes us back to “The 11 most important fandoms of 2015”. You were probably a fan of more than one of these. The list includes Star Wars, Max Max: Fury Road, and Back To The Future. Yet the most irresistible is the number one entry –

1) Hamilton

If you’d told us while we were writing last year’s top 10 list that another fandom—much less one for a Broadway musical—would unseat Star Wars in 2015, we’d have probably sent for the doctor to see if you were feeling OK. But if last year in fandom was the year of diversity powered by feminism and social justice activism, then it only makes sense that this year, the fandom that took everyone by shock and storm was one that took all those conversations to the next level—and several levels beyond.

Put simply, Hamilton is the story of a single founding father, retold through a modern lens with a cast mainly composed of black actors. Nothing about Hamilton is simple, though—starting with the music, a stunning, stirring hip-hop language that crams three times more text into its run time than the average Broadway musical. In addition to being inherently modern, Hamilton is also an inherently fannish text—a kind of AU (Alternate Universe) fanfic that also serves to critique its canon, which in this case is the historical narrative we’re all taught. That narrative all too frequently leaves out marginalized voices, and evades the messy politics of a revolution carried out by white men, many of whom distrusted urban industry and had no intention of freeing their slaves. Composer Lin-Manuel Miranda inserts his own viewpoint as a hip-hop fan born to Washington Height’s immigrant Latino community into that of Alexander Hamilton, who immigrated to New York in poverty from St. Croix. Hamilton typified the revolutionary spirit Miranda reclaims on behalf of #BlackLivesMatter and other current political movements.

Rarely has theatre seemed to loom as large over the cultural landscape as Hamilton does, but rarely has theatre managed to intersect so neatly with both the immediacy of current political issues and the constant cries for representation from fans who expect more from the media they consume. Hamilton began a season-long siege on social media upon the release of the long-awaited cast recording, taking over Tumblr and Twitter and ultimately winning a stint as the bestselling rap album in the country. 

Fans responded in legion forces, annotating hundreds of thousands of words on the show’s category on the lyrics website Genius, and churning out fanworks and critical analysis in droves. Renewed interest in Alexander Hamilton was so intense that the Treasury is now delaying his removal from the $10 bill. Additionally, Miranda’s social media savvy, his genius #Ham4Ham pre-shows, and his appearances all over pop culture from Colbert to Star Wars, have all made him an instant celebrity. And the fandom just keeps growing. History is still happening in Manhattan—all you have to do is look around, look around at the Hamilton movement to see it.

(5) SHARON LEE’S AWARD. Baen Books posted a photo of Sharon Lee accepting the 2025 Robert A. Heinlein Award Friday night at Balticon.

(6) TECHBROS DON’T GET FANTASY EITHER. The New York Times ponders “Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits” (link bypasses the paywall.)

…How did a trilogy of novels about wizards and elves and furry-footed hobbits become a touchstone for right-wing power brokers? How did books that evince nostalgia for a pastoral, preindustrial past win an ardent following among the people who are shaping our digital future? Why do so many of today’s high-profile fans of “The Lord of the Rings” and other fantasy and sci-fi classics insist on turning these cautionary tales into aspirational road maps for mastering the universe?…

… A similar taste for kingly power has taken hold in Silicon Valley. In a guest essay in The Times last year, the former Apple and Google executive Kim Scott pointed to “a creeping attraction to one-man rule in some corners of tech.” This management style known as “founder mode,” she explained, “embraces the notion that a company’s founder must make decisions unilaterally rather than partner with direct reports or frontline employees.”

The new mood of autocratic certainty in Silicon Valley is summed up in a 2023 manifesto written by the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who describes himself and his fellow travelers as “Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons and bringing home the spoils for our community.”

Andreessen, along with Musk and Thiel, helped muster support for Trump in Silicon Valley, and he depicts the tech entrepreneur as a conqueror who achieves “virtuous things” through brazen aggression, and villainizes anything that might slow growth and innovation — like government regulation and demoralizing concepts like “tech ethics” and “risk management.”

“We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature,” Andreesen writes. “We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.”…

(7) PETER DAVID (1956-2025). Acclaimed comics writer Peter David died May 24 after a long illness.  

AIPT Comics pays tribute: “Comic book legend Peter David dies at 68”.

Peter David is best known in the comics world for his legendary 12-year run on Incredible Hulk in the 1980s that fundamentally transformed the character. He is also synonymous with Spider-Man, and has penned other major heroes for both Marvel and DC, including Captain Marvel and Aquaman. Most recently, David wrote Symbiote Spider-Man.…

… David is survived by his wife, Kathleen O’Shea David, and his daughters Ariel, Shana, Gwen, and Caroline.

Thaddeus Howze has a long remembrance on Facebook.

… A prolific and versatile writer, David’s career began not in comics, but in prose and journalism. His keen wit and sharp storytelling earned him a position in Marvel’s sales department during the 1980s, a foot in the door that led to his first published comic story in The Spectacular Spider-Man #103 (1985). From there, his voice became unmistakable: funny, humane, and layered with deep characterization….

…His 12-year tenure on The Incredible Hulk is legendary, turning what could have been a simple monster book into a psychological epic exploring identity, trauma, and redemption. That run, frequently cited as one of the best in Hulk’s history, cemented PAD’s status as a master craftsman of serialized storytelling.

But his legacy didn’t stop with the Hulk. PAD’s fingerprints are on some of the most enduring titles and characters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries…

…David also ventured beyond comics, contributing to television, video games, and an extensive bibliography of novels—both original works and media tie-ins, including memorable Star Trek stories that made him a fan favorite across fandoms….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 25, 1983 — Return of the Jedi

By Paul Weimer: As I have said before, Return of the Jedi is the first Star Wars movie I ever saw in a theater, and the second movie I ever saw in a theater, period. I don’t quite remember if it was opening weekend or a couple of weeks later that my brothers and I went to go see my first Star Wars film. I had only seen commercials, had some shared Star Wars Toys (I *still* have a stormtrooper bobblehead, I’m looking at it right now, the thing must be over 40 years old). But Return of the Jedi was my first time seeing a Star Wars film, in theaters or otherwise.

It was an interesting place to begin. I had vague ideas on what had happened in the first two movies (from cultural appropriation, such as it was, and my older brother).  So having an opening crawl…and then having the droids go to Jabba’s Palace…that was the first moments of Star Wars on a screen for me. For a long time, it held pride of place, even when I saw Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back on video, mainly because I had seen it first. It was “my Star Wars movie” for a very long time. Boba Fett, introduced, and thrown into a pilot. An imperial shuttle (I later had a toy). A whistle stop tour to see this Yoda person I had no idea what his deal really was. The terrifyingly incomplete and dangerous Death Star. My first exposure to Vader, to the Emperor, to our heroes of the Rebellion.

And of course the Ewoks. Yes, the Ewoks are for kids. But the Ewoks are terrifying. Sure their defeat of imperial forces en masse makes no sense (I immediately got a defensive like of AT-STs that would finally pay off when I saw Rogue One. But notice just how dangerous the Ewoks are to individual storm troopers, it’s clear they have been fighting them for years…and, well, yes, eating them. Those cute Ewoks are carnivorous and merciless. I couldn’t buy them defeating an entire garrison with rebel help, but bushwhacking lone soldiers for a meal? Yeah, that definitely was plausible.

Also, of course, Return of the Jedi was my first intro to Lando Calrissian and I had no idea the Falcon used to be his. So yes, the first Star Wars film I saw was Lando flying the Falcon.  Go figure. And, also, I saw the Han-Leia romance at its culmination.  So when I did see Star Wars, and saw Luke Kiss Leia, having seen it in Return of The Jedi…boy was I confused. But the dogfight into the superstructure is rather satisfying.

And of course the big space battle. If not for the Death Star, the Imperial fleet was clearly on the ropes. I took it to mean the Empire was vastly underestimating the rebellion. With their smaller and more nimble fleet, and better fighters, the Empire was a dinosaur compared to the Rebellion.  Maybe had I seen Star Wars I would have felt differently, but I started watching Star Wars when the Empire was ready to fall, not at its height.

I am not a fan of the retconning that has Hayden Christensen’s force ghost appear in newer versions of Return of the Jedi. It also goes to the whole problem of timelines and timeframes in the Star Wars universe. But the movie itself? Solid still.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 25, 1939 — Sir Ian McKellen, 86.

By Paul Weimer: Sir Ian McKellen came to my consciousness in his twin roles in the late 90’s: Magneto, and Gandalf. It was quite the coup for both Peter Jackson and for Sony to land an actor of McKellen’s magnitude and make it work so that I could watch him chew scenery with Patrick Stewart (each one of them the other’s equal) and then the ensemble cast of the best adaptation of Middle-Earth I will likely get in my lifetime. The idea that he was doing these two iconic roles, basically, at once, is amazing. 

Also, McKellen makes the Hobbit movies almost watchable for me. Almost.

And yes, while we have seen Magneto and Gandalf with other portrayals, other actors, other media, they feel like they stand as reaction, or preparation, to McKellen’s performances. That’s his power as an actor. People half a century now will study his takes, if only to do it differently.  

He doesn’t quite rescue the 2009 Prisoner remake from utter oblivion, although he does try. It is when he is so brilliantly affably evil. “Of course it’s a trap” that he really gets the role of Number Two right. But he’s saddled with a script and a setup that just doesn’t jell together. A pity.

I think his best genre piece outside of Magneto and Gandalf is one that is only mildly genre, and this is his adaptation of Richard III. It counts as genre because it takes place in a 1930’s version of Richard III, with the Wars of the Roses taking place as a conflict much more like the Spanish Civil War, between Royalists and Fascists. McKellen plays the title character, addresses the audience throughout, and is absolutely captivating in it. 

Sir Ian McKellen

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) DOCTOR WHO BARBIE. “Ncuti Gatwa Is a Barbie, Again” – Gizmodo has the story.

Not content with simply being Ken again after his guest appearance in the Barbie movie coincided with the news that he would be Doctor Who‘s latest Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa is going full circle with his very own 15th Doctor Barbie doll.

Revealed by the BBC this morning, Mattel Creations will release new Barbie dolls of the 15th Doctor and his first companion, Ruby Sunday. He’s Ken no more!…

… Gatwa isn’t the first Time Lord to be Barbie-fied–Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor had that honor back in 2018–but Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday will mark the first time a Doctor Who companion has entered the Barbie world….

(12) MIRROR, MIRROR, THAT WILL BE ON THE WALL. “What are Time Mirrors? And Do They Exist?” The Daily Dot seems to think they do.

Time mirrors sounds like a concept straight out of a sci-fi film. But physicists confirm that time mirrors exist—and it’s not as mind-boggling as it sounds.

Instead of a regular mirror that bounces light back at the person looking in, letting them see their reflection, a time mirror is caused by waves reversing their flow in time. In other words, this reaction causes a signal to reverse, Earth.com reports.

To demonstrate, physicists attach a metal strip to an “electronic component” to create a “metamaterial.”

Then, by carefully adjusting the electronic component, a burst of energy flips the direction of the wave in time.

While it sounds complex to the layman, scientists anticipate that time mirrors could have tangible applications. No, not just for time machines.

According to Earth.com, this discovery may create new ways to transmit data or create advanced computers. However, the scientists note that further research and experiments are needed to figure out the limits of time mirrors….

(13) A BIG DUMP. “Giant ‘white streak’ appears over multiple US states as Chinese rocket dumps experimental fuel in space” explains Live Science.

A massive streak of white, aurora-like light recently appeared in the night sky above several U.S. states after a Chinese rocket released half a dozen satellites into orbit. The light show was triggered when the rocket dumped a new type of fuel into space before reentering the atmosphere, experts say.

The luminous streak appeared at around 1:24 a.m. ET on Saturday (May 17), hanging in the air for around 10 minutes before eventually fading away. It was photographed in at least seven states — Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Missouri, Nebraska, Washington and New Mexico — but may have been visible even further afield, according to Spaceweather.com.

Photographer Mike Lewinski snapped stunning shots of the streak from Crestone, Colorado (see above) and also managed to capture timelapse footage of the entire event….

(14) MORE BOGUS AI LEGAL CITATIONS. “Alabama paid a law firm millions to defend its prisons. It used AI and turned in fake citations” reports the Guardian.

…In 2021, [prison inmate] Johnson filed a lawsuit against Alabama prison officials for failing to keep him safe, rampant violence, understaffing, overcrowding and pervasive corruption in Alabama prisons. To defend the case, the Alabama attorney general’s office turned to a law firm that for years has been paid millions of dollars by the state to defend its troubled prison system: Butler Snow.

State officials have praised Butler Snow for its experience in defending prison cases – and specifically William Lunsford, head of the constitutional and civil rights litigation practice group at the firm. But now the firm is facing sanctions by the federal judge overseeing Johnson’s case after an attorney at the firm, working with Lunsford, cited cases generated by artificial intelligence – which turned out not to exist.

It is one of a growing number of instances in which attorneys around the country have faced consequences for including false, AI-generated information in official legal filings. A database attempting to track the prevalence of the cases has identified 106 instances around the globe in which courts have found “AI hallucinations” in court documents.

Last year, an attorney was suspended for one year from practicing law in the federal middle district of Florida, after a committee found he had cited fabricated AI-generated cases. In California earlier this month, a federal judge ordered a firm to pay more than $30,000 in legal fees after it included false AI-generated research in a brief.

At a hearing in Birmingham on Wednesday in Johnson’s case, the US district judge Anna Manasco said that she was considering a wide range of sanctions – including fines, mandated continuing legal education, referrals to licensing organizations and temporary suspensions – against Butler Snow, after the attorney, Matthew Reeves, used ChatGPT to add false citations to filings related to ongoing deposition and discovery disputes in the case.

She suggested that, so far, the disciplinary actions that have been meted out around the country have not gone far enough. The current case is “proof positive that those sanctions were insufficient”, she told the lawyers. “If they were, we wouldn’t be here.”…

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Paul Weimer, Frank Catalano, 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 Rob Thornton.]

Pixel Scroll 5/24/25 I’ve Seen Pixels Through The Tears In My Eyes, And I Realize, I’m Scrolling Home

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(1) THE WHEELS FALL OFF. Deadline reports “’The Wheel Of Time’ Canceled By Prime Video After 3 Seasons”.

Prime Video will not be renewing The Wheel of Time for a fourth season. The decision, which comes more than a month after the Season 3 finale was released April 17, followed lengthy deliberations. As often is the case in the current economic environment, the reasons were financial as the series is liked creatively by the streamer’s executives….

…Three seasons in, the series has remained a solid performer but its viewership has slipped, with the fantasy drama dropping out of Nielsen’s Top 10 Originals chart after the first three weeks of Season 3 while staying on the list for the entire runs the previous two seasons. (The Wheel of Time was back on the Originals ranker for the week after the Season 3 finale at #10.)…

…The Nielsen rankings reflect U.S. viewership. Streaming renewal decisions are made based on how a show does around the world, and The Wheel of Time is a global title. It did rank as #1 on Prime Video in multiple countries with the most recent season. Still, the Season 3 overall performance was not strong enough compared to the show’s cost for Prime Video to commit to another season and the streamer could not make it work after examining different scenarios and following discussions with lead studio Sony TV, sources said.

With the cancellation possibility — and the show’s passionate fanbase — in mind, the Season 3 finale was designed to offer some closure.

Still, the news would be a gut punch for fans who have been praising the latest season as the series’ best yet creatively. Prime Video executives also have spoken of the show getting better creatively every season, which is supported by critics as Season 3 ranks 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, up from 86% for Season 2 and 81% for Season 1….

(2) OUT OF TIME LORD? Deadline is also collecting bad news from the outrage journals about another fan favorite: “‘Doctor Who’ Ratings Dive, Supercharging Uncertainty About Future Of Sci-Fi Series”. Are these just rumors? Here’s what’s on The Sun’s front page:

Deadline says:

…Rupert Murdoch-owned The Sun newspaper sparked the latest flurry of rumors, reporting that Ncuti Gatwa had been “exterminated” from the BBC series amid a ratings “nosedive.” The BBC said it was “pure fiction” that Gatwa had been fired.

The Sun‘s front-page story also gives credence to speculation that Doctor Who will be “rested” after Season 15 has finished screening on the BBC and Disney+…

… So what can we say with certainty about the destiny of the Time Lord?

Firstly, the show’s UK ratings have dropped considerably. Detractors have pinned this on so-called “woke” storylines, though it is not clear if this is the only reason people are switching off.

Deadline has analyzed official seven-day viewing figures for the first half of Season 15, and it does not make easy reading for those involved in Doctor Who.

The first four episodes have averaged 3.1M viewers, which was 800,000 viewers down from last year’s season, which was Gatwa’s first as the Doctor.

Compare the first half of Season 15 to Jodie Whittaker’s last outing as the Doctor, and things get uglier. Season 13 was watched by 5M people over its first four episodes in 2021, two million more viewers than the show is currently managing….

… In a small development today, the BBC was prepared to say that Gatwa had not been fired from the show, but refused to deny that he had quit. Gatwa’s rep has been contacted for comment….

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to toast writer/editor Craig Laurance Gidney on Episode 254 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

This episode, which invites you to take a seat at the table with Craig Laurance Gidney, captures a meal which could have taken place during AwesomeCon — but didn’t. If you want to know why — you’ll have to join us!

Craig Laurence Gidney

Gidney’s short stories have been collected in Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories (2008), Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction (2014), and The Nectar of Nightmares (2022), the first two of which were Lambda Literary Award finalists — as was his 2019 novel A Spectral Hue (2019). He received the Bronze Moonbeam Medal and Silver IPPY Medal for his 2013 novel Bereft. In 1996, at the start of his career, he was also awarded the Susan C. Petrey Scholarship to attend the Clarion West Writing Workshop.

From 2020-2023 he co-edited Baffling Magazine with Dave Ring, and he’s also the co-editor — with Julie C. Day & Carina Bissett — of Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology, published this month.

We discussed how meeting Samuel R. Delany led to his attending the Clarion Writing Workshop, the influence of reading decadent writers such as Verlaine and Rimbaud, why he kept trying to get published when so many of his peers stopped, the many ways flaws can often make a story more interesting, our shared love of ambiguity, the reason there must be beauty entwined with horror, why he’s a vibes guy rather than a plot guy, the time Tanith Lee bought him a pint and how that led to him coediting her tribute anthology, what he learned from his years editing a flash fiction magazine, and much more.

(4) YOU’RE FROM THE SIXTIES. Steven Heller remembers “When Undergrounds Shined the Light” at PRINT Magazine.

England was the epicenter of cool during the ’60s, not only because the Beatles and Stones spawned some of the great music and fashion innovations of the era, but also due to the wellspring of underground newspapers there. Working at undergrounds gave me access to periodicals from all over the world. IT (International Times) and Oz where the two most influential for their design and content. Muther Grumble was one of the many others that filled mailboxes.

Founded in 1966 (contrary to the 1960 dateline on the issue above), International Times was one of the earliest and most important British underground papers. After being threatened with lawsuits by the London Times, International Times changed its name to IT, but often kept the original name as a subhead on its covers. In its heyday, IT appeared regularly for 13 years. The paper’s logo was an iconic black-and-white image of Theda Bara. Contributors included most of the prominent underground figures of the period, including Allen Ginsberg (who interviewed the Maharishi), William S. Burroughs, Germaine Greer, John Peel, Heathcote Williams and Jeff Nuttall….

(5) THE WRITER GETS PAID. John Scalzi interviews himself “About That Deal, Ten Years On” at Whatever. His famous Tor contract, to be precise.

If you could go back in time to 2015, would you sign the same contract again?

Pretty much? I understand this sort of contract is not for everyone; not everyone wants to know what they’re doing professionally, and who with, for a decade or more, or wants the pressure of being on the hook for multiple unwritten books. But as for me, back then, I was pretty sure in a decade I would still want to be writing novels, and I would want to be doing it with people and a publisher who were all in for my work. Turns out, I nailed that prediction pretty well. And from a financial and career point of view I can’t say that it hasn’t benefitted me tremendously.

Now, to be clear, other writers have sold more than me, or gotten bigger advances than I have, or have won more awards than me, in the ten years since that contract made the news. But I’ve sold enough, been paid enough, and have been awarded enough to make me happy and then some. I’m happy with the work I’ve done in this last decade. I’m happy with how it’s been received. I’m happy with where I am with my career and life. Much of that is because of this contract. So, yeah, I would do it again. I kind of did, last year, when I signed that ten-book extension.

(6) PBS SELF-CENSORSHIP. “Criticism of Trump Was Removed From Documentary on Public Television” reports the New York Times. “A segment in a documentary about the cartoonist Art Spiegelman was edited two weeks before it was set to air on public television stations across the country.”

The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning “American Masters” series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations.

The filmmakers say it is another example of public media organizations bowing to pressure as the Trump administration tries to defund the sector, while the programmers say their decision was a matter of taste.

Alicia Sams, a producer of “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,” said in an interview that approximately two weeks before the movie’s April 15 airdate, she received a call from Michael Kantor, the executive producer of “American Masters,” informing her that roughly 90 seconds featuring a cartoon critical of Trump would need to be excised from the film. The series is produced by the WNET Group, the parent company of several New York public television channels.

Stephen Segaller, the vice president of programming for WNET, confirmed in an interview that the station had informed the filmmakers that it needed to make the change. Segaller said WNET felt the scatological imagery in the comic, which Spiegelman drew shortly after the 2016 election — it portrays what appears to be fly-infested feces on Trump’s head — was a “breach of taste” that might prove unpalatable to some of the hundreds of stations that air the series.

But the filmmakers have questioned whether political considerations played a role. They have noted that earlier this year, according to Documentary Magazine, which first reported the “American Masters” decision, PBS postponed indefinitely a documentary set to air about a transgender video-gamer for fear of political backlash.

Sams pointed out that their film had already been approved for broadcast — the filmmakers agreed it would be shown at 10 p.m. rather than 8 p.m., so that certain obscenities would not need to be blurred or bleeped — and that the call came a week after a Capitol Hill hearing in which Congressional Republicans accused public television and radio executives of biased coverage (the executives denied that accusation in sworn testimony).

“If PBS cannot protect the free speech of its content creators and subject matters without fear of retribution from members of the government who may find their views displeasing, then how can it strengthen the ‘social, democratic and cultural health’ of the American people?” Sams and four other producers and directors wrote to PBS and WNET executives last month, quoting from PBS’s mission statement….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 24, 1963 — Michael Chabon, 62.

The first work by Michael Chabon that I read was the greatest baseball story ever told, and yes, I know that statement will be disputed by many of you, or at least the greatest fantasy affair which is Summerland in which a group of youngsters save the world from destruction by playing baseball.  It’s a truly stellar novel, perfect, that in every way deserved the Mythopoeic Award it received.

Next on my list of novels that I really enjoyed by him is The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, the alternate history mystery novel, which would win a Hugo at Devention 3. Like Lavie Tidhar’s Unholy Land, this novel with its alternate version of Israel is fascinating. 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is story of them becoming major figures in the comics industry from its start into its Golden Age. It’s a wonderful read and an absolutely fantastic look at the comics industry in that era.  It has a screenplay he wrote a quarter of century ago ready to be filmed but it’s been tied up in pre-production Hell ever since. 

An interesting story by him is “The Final Solution: A Story of Detection” novella. The story, set in 1944, is about an unnamed nearly ninety-year-old retired detective who may or may not be Holmes as this individual is a beekeeper. 

He is, I’d say, a rather great writer. 

I’d be remiss to overlook his work on the Trek series. He joined the writing team of Picard, and later was named showrunner. He had two Star Trek: Short Treks episodes co-written by Chabon, that one “Calypso”; the second written only by him was “Q&A”. 

Michael Chabon

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) JURASSIC BODEGA. amNewYork’s “Ask the MTA” feature explains “How the Whispering Gallery works, A line service and more”. The “and more” includes a dinosaur-themed bodega.

Q: What’s going on with the dinosaur pop-up at Grand Army Plaza? – Meghan K., Upper East Side  

A: Rex’s Dino Store is an art installation and the first (and only) bodega for dinosaurs in New York City. Featuring a hand-crafted 7-foot-tall paper mâché orange dinosaur named Rex, the scene is a life-size diorama of a bodega with prehistoric-themed products and publications with seemingly endless dinosaur puns, like the Maul Street Journal or ClawmondJoy bars.

Created by Brooklyn artists Akiva Leffert and Sarah Cassidy, the installation is a whimsical celebration of New York City bodegas and a childlike exploration of what it’s like to be a New Yorker. Rex’s Dino Store is part of the MTA’s Vacant Unit Activation Program, which aims to fill former retail units in the subway with creative non-traditional public projects and exhibits to make stations more vibrant and welcoming. Those interested in applying to use available spaces can submit proposals on the MTA website, MTA.info. — Mira Atherton, Senior Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Sustainability, MTA Construction and Development

(10) REH NEWS. The Robert E. Howard Days website thinks you may be surprised to hear “Howard Days Fans Have Arrived!” – after all, the convention’s still three weeks away. But wait…!

…Well, our feeble attempt attempt at humor notwithstanding, the Pavilion will be a cooler place for Howard Days 2025! Working in conjunction with Project Pride, the Robert E. Howard Foundation has seen to the installation of three giant ceiling fans in the roof of the Pavilion next to the Robert E. Howard Museum….

That will be a welcome improvement in Texas this summer.

(11) HOW WEIRD ARE THEY? Sci-Fi Odyssey introduces fans to “5 Weird Civilisations Sci-Fi Books You Need to Read”

Today we’re taking a tour through some of the weirdest civilisations in science fiction. Eden by Stanisław Lem; The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman; The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle; The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov; Honourable Mentions: Embassytown by China Miéville; City by Clifford D. Simak; Engine Summer by John Crowley; A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.

(12) IT’S LIFE JIM, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I have a vague recollection (which needs fact checking) that a brief (a very concise) aside in a David Brin ‘Uplift’ novel had intelligent species in our part of the Galaxy coming together to agree a treaty whereby all heavy element life forms would get to be able to colonise systems with planets amicable to their own kind, and all carbon-based life forms would get to be able to colonise systems with planets suitable to them…  All well and good, but could there really be life that that is unlike our water-based, carbon life?

So step up astrophysicist Dr Becky who has just posted a video on “The search for LIFE: but NOT as we know it…”  What solvent would it use? (We use water.) And if not carbon-based, on which elements might it be based?

We only know of one planet in the universe that hosts life: Earth. So when we search for other life out there in the Universe we look for what we know. We look for water, and ozone, and methane, and a whole bunch of carbon containing molecules because we know that those ingredients point to life here on Earth. But what if life out there in the Universe is NOT as we know it, and we’re missing the signs because it doesn’t have the same signatures of Earth-life?! This is a real possibility, and there are astrochemists and astrobiologists out there who are working through all the options of what we think life could be like. So let’s chat about the fundamental biochemistry of life and pick out a few things that could be different to Earth…

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

Pixel Scroll 5/20/25 L.A. Mike And The Ark Of The Lost Scroll

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(1) SUN-TIMES PRINTS FAKE READING LIST. [Item by Steven H Silver.] On Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times published a recommended reading list.  The problem is that only 5 of the 15 books exist.  The other 10 were AI hallucinations.

The list includes the real Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury and the not-quite-so-real The Last Algorithm by Andy Weir.

Ars Technica has the story: “Chicago Sun-Times prints summer reading list full of fake books”.

The creator of the list, Marco Buscaglia, confirmed to 404 Media that he used AI to generate the content. “I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can’t believe I missed it because it’s so obvious. No excuses,” Buscaglia said. “On me 100 percent and I’m completely embarrassed.”

A check by Ars Technica shows that only five of the fifteen recommended books in the list actually exist, with the remainder being fabricated titles falsely attributed to well-known authors. AI assistants such as ChatGPT are well-known for creating plausible-sounding errors known as confabulations, especially when lacking detailed information on a particular topic. The problem affects everything from AI search results to lawyers citing fake cases.

On Tuesday morning, the Chicago Sun-Times addressed the controversy on Bluesky. “We are looking into how this made it into print as we speak,” the official publication account wrote. “It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom. We value your trust in our reporting and take this very seriously. More info will be provided soon.”…

… Freelance journalist Joshua J. Friedman noted on Bluesky that the reading list was “part of a ~60-page summer supplement” published on May 18, suggesting it might be “transparent filler” possibly created by “the lone freelancer apparently saddled with producing it.”…

…The publication error comes two months after the Chicago Sun-Times lost 20 percent of its staff through a buyout program. In March, the newspaper’s nonprofit owner, Chicago Public Media, announced that 30 Sun-Times employees—including 23 from the newsroom—had accepted buyout offers amid financial struggles….

(2) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025. Heart Lamp, a collection of 12 short stories by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, has won the International Booker Prize 2025. It is a non-genre work.

In a collection of 12 short stories, Heart Lamp chronicles the everyday lives of women and girls in patriarchal communities in southern India.

Originally published in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, Banu Mushtaq’s portraits of family and community tensions testify to her years tirelessly championing women’s rights and protesting all forms of caste and religious oppression.

Mushtaq’s writing is at once witty, vivid, moving and excoriating, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. It’s in her characters – the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost – that she emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature.

(3) DARTH VADER IS STILL TALKING AND SAG-AFTRA TAKES ISSUE. [Item by Jim Janney.] “SAG-AFTRA Hits Fortnite With Unfair Labor Practice Over AI Darth Vader Voice” reports Variety — although the objection is not the use of James Earl Jones’ voice (which he authorized prior to his death), or even the use of AI, but the lack of negotiation to set a new price.

SAG-AFTRA is objecting to the use of AI to recreate the late James Earl Jones’ bass intonations of Darth Vader in Epic Games’ “Fortnite.”

The actors union said Epic-owned Llama Productions “chose to replace the work of human performers with AI technology” for the Star Wars-themed Fortnite Battle Royale mini-season that launched last week. “Unfortunately, they did so without providing any notice of their intent to do this and without bargaining with us over appropriate terms.” As such, SAG-AFTRA filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Llama Productions….

…Jones, who died in 2024 at 93, had signed off an agreement to allow his archival voice recordings to be used to recreate his younger voice from the Star Wars films for future Lucasfilm projects. In addition, Jones’ family had granted permission for the use of his voice in “Fortnite,” according to Disney, Lucasfilm and Epic Games. “James Earl felt that the voice of Darth Vader was inseparable from the story of Star Wars, and he always wanted fans of all ages to continue to experience it,” his family said in a statement. “We hope that this collaboration with ‘Fortnite’ will allow both longtime fans of Darth Vader and newer generations to share in the enjoyment of this iconic character.”

But SAG-AFTRA said “Fortnite’s” use of Jones’ AI-generated voice was not cleared by the union.

In its statement, the union said, “We celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share in the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned roles. However, we must protect our right to bargain terms and conditions around uses of voice that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did the work of matching Darth Vader’s iconic rhythm and tone in video games.”…

(4) IAIN M. BANKS MUST BE SPINNING. Vox notes “The tech billionaires are missing the point of their favorite sci-fi series”.

One of the most momentous developments of the new Trump era is how major billionaires in the tech industry — frequently known as the broligarchs — have thrown their weight behind the president. During the 2024 election, they offered high-profile support and made big donations; after the inauguration, they announced new company policies that aligned them with President Donald Trump’s regressive cultural ideologies.

Elon Musk had already turned Twitter into a right-wing echo chamber since purchasing it in 2022, and spent several chaotic months earlier this year as Trump’s government efficiency henchman. Jeff Bezos has revamped the Washington Post’s editorial section to build support for “personal liberties and free markets.” Mark Zuckerberg decided to get rid of fact-checkers at Meta.

It was a massive show of power that revealed how possible it is for these wealthy men to remake our culture in their own image, transforming how we speak to each other and what we know to be true. Using that power on Trump’s behalf seems to have paid mixed dividends for Silicon Valley, but it nonetheless makes clear how important it is to understand their worldview and their vision for the future.

Which is why it is striking to note that Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg share a favorite author: Iain M. Banks, the Scottish science fiction writer best known for his Culture series. Banks is an odd choice for a bunch of tech billionaires. The author, who died in 2013, was a socialist and avowed hater of the super-rich.

“The Culture series is certainly, in terms of more modern science fiction, one of my absolute favorites,” Bezos told GeekWire in 2018, adding, “there’s a utopian element to it that I find very attractive.” Bezos has attempted twice to adapt the series for TV at Amazon, once in 2018 and again in February. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg picked the Culture novel Player of Games for his book club in 2015….

… The politics of these books are not subtle, and they are also not compatible with the existence of billionaires. So it’s worth thinking about why the broligarchs have so consistently cited a socialist author as an inspiration. What do they find tantalizing about Banks’ work? Are they missing the point altogether?…

(5) ANOTHER BOOKSTORE SUPPORT FUNDRAISER. “Binc Launches Fundraising Campaign to Meet Increased Need and Rising Grant Amounts”. [Via Shelf Awareness.]  Dozens of authors and creators have joined the Book Industry Charitable Foundation to help launch the Now More Than Ever, I Stand with Bookstores fundraising campaign to encourage book and comic lovers to stand with their community stores in challenging times. 

Dozens of authors and creators from across genres have joined the Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation to declare their commitment to book and comic people. Their support is launching the Now More Than Ever, I Stand with Bookstorescampaign to engage book and comic lovers in standing with their community stores amidst challenging times. Stores across the country will have displays May 19-June 2, 2025, encouraging in-store purchase and/or donating to Binc. 

Thanks to the generosity of Binc ambassador and best-selling author Amor Towles and other authors/creators the first $50,000 in donations received will be matched dollar for dollar. Donate today.

Binc noted that with the growing uncertainty regarding federal funding to support local community resources, the challenges against First Amendment rights, and overall financial insecurity, “store employees are at greater risk of harassment and not being able to withstand and navigate a personal crisis.” Requests to Binc for help have increased 8% over last year and the average amount to resolve a crisis is also rising….

(6) IS THE TIME LORD RUNNING OUT OF TIME? Inverse collates the Doctor Who cancellation rumors in “37 Years Later, The Oldest Sci-Fi Show Might Repeat Some Troubling History”.

…According to new rumors published by The Mirror, the current incarnation of Doctor Who, shepherded by showrunner Russell T Davies, is headed for a “big pause” after the 2025 “Season 2” concludes in two weeks. The report cites “insiders” who claim that Davies has “already planned the next two seasons, having almost completed scripts for series 16 and with stories for the 17th series worked out.” (Series 16 and 17 translate Season 3 and 4 in the new post-2024 number system.)

The rumor that’s bigger, and backed up by some confirmed statements, is that it’s unclear if the BBC’s partnership with Disney+ will continue after 2025. Before the latest season of Who launched, Inverse confirmed with Davies himself that “There’s no commission of Season 3 yet. There are no serious conversations about anything because the series doesn’t exist yet. But I love this job. I love staying in it. I’d be very happy.”…

(7) WELLMAN BOOK REMINDER. “Manly Wade Wellman’s Cahena Going Out of Print” and DMR Books would be happy to sell you a copy while they still can. Ordering information is here — “Cahena — DMR Books” – where there is also a detailed plot summary.

In 2020 DMR Books made arrangements to reprint Manly Wade Wellman’s final novel, Cahena, bringing it back into print for the first time in nearly thirty-five years. The contract is expiring soon, and at the end of May it will once again be unavailable.

Cahena is a historical novel (with fantasy elements) dealing with the brave and beautiful warrior queen who reigned over the Berbers in the seventh century. The Cahena, as she was known, was believed to be a sorceress and prophetess. She led an army forty thousand strong in a valiant struggle against the Mohammedan invaders who were fresh from their conquest of Carthage….

(8) AI / COPYRIGHT BATTLE IN PARLIAMENT. BBC reports “Peers demand more protection from AI for creatives”.

The House of Lords has dealt a second defeat to the government over its Data (Use and Access) Bill.

Peers had already backed an amendment calling for more copyright protections for the creative industries from artificial intelligence (AI) scrapers once.

MPs rejected that amendment and sent the Bill back to the Lords, where Technology Minister Baroness Jones told peers it would lead to “piecemeal” legislation as it pre-empted consultation on AI and copyright.

However, there was broad and vociferous support for Baroness Kidron, a film director and digital rights campaigner, who accused ministers of being swayed by the “whisperings of Silicon Valley” asking them to “redefine theft”.

The Lords rebellion follows condemnation from Sir Elton John, who called the government “losers” over the weekend and said ministers would be “committing theft” if they allowed AI firms to use artists’ content without paying.

He joins the ranks of high-profile musicians, including Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox, and Kate Bush, who are outraged by plans they say would make it easier for AI models to be trained on copyrighted material.

Kidron’s amendment would force AI companies to disclose what material they were using to develop their programmes, and demand they get permission from copyright holders before they use any of their work.

Highlighting the power differential between the big tech giants in the US and creatives in the UK, Kidron branded the government’s plans “extraordinary”.

“There’s no industrial sector in the UK that government policy requires to give its property or labour to another sector – which is in direct competition with it – on a compulsory basis, in the name of balance,” she said….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 20, 1928 — Shirley Rousseau Murphy. (Died 2022.)

Now we come to a woman who wrote about cats who talked and understood human speech, Shirley Rousseau Murphy. How could I resist such a writer?  Certainly the Pixels wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t celebrate her, would they? 

The series that I’m interested is the Joe Grey series which involves a number of felines in a small coastal California town with a thriving tourist trade who develop the rather unusual ability not only to understand human speech but to talk it as well. No, it’s not explained, nor should it be. It is just is as all such things should be, 

Shirley Rousseau Murphy

In first novel, Cat on the Edge, Joe Grey, our central feline and mostly the narrator here and in all of the novels, is the only witness to a murder. As the author says on her website, “Escaping the killer, he becomes the hunted, and he’s one scared tomcat–until he meets green-eyed Dulcie, a charmer with talents to match his own.”  He also discovers shortly there’s the aforementioned talents. Weirded out at first, he’s delighted eventually. 

The writing here is better than just decent with some quite unexpected plot developments that add considerable depth to the story. Joe Grey as a cat seems a feline in his behavior, the setting is charming and makes sense, and the mysteries are reasonably good though I wouldn’t call them particularly deep. I should admit I find that true of nearly every mystery I read. If characters are interesting, the plot fascinating and the setting well crafted, I don’t care that the mystery is slight at best, which they more often than not are. 

It obviously sold well as there were twenty-one novels before she stopped with the last, Cat Chase the Moon, published after her death. A novella, Cat Chase the Moon, which I think is a prequel also has been published only by the usual suspects. 

So all of these novels in this series I suspect based on listening to the first eight and a number of the latter to date are all like any series of this sort such that you could read any or all of them and be entertained by what you read. Is there an explicit order to them? No idea though I do know the last one does wrap up the series. 

She has a number of other works, none of which I’ve read. 

The Fontana Duology is a paranormal series involving Satan Himself with cats again prominently involved based on the really cute orange tabbies on both covers, and also the titles are The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana and The Cat, the Devil, the Last Escape. 

Tired of cats yet? You’re out of luck if you are as she wrote went on to pen The Catswold Portal where a young girl could transform herself into, oh guess. She actually notes on her website that she describes each cat in detail so this is a small calico.

Ok, I promise no more cats, so finally I’ll stop with dragons that I consider to be akin to cats. I really do. They probably like having their bellies tickled. Carefully. 

The Dragonbards trilogy which has as its story a sleeping dragon who awakens only to find her beloved land ruled by an evil despot and the only one who can save is a bard who is not be found. It’s a YA series that got very, very good reviews. 

Well I should say that she did unicorn fiction as well. Her story is “Starhorn” which is found in The Unicorn Treasure which she edited in the hardcover first edition from Doubleday cover art and illustrations by Tim Hildebrandt.

(I am not looking at her children’s fiction which would take many more paragraphs. Really it would. And there’s horses there.)

Cats, dragons, unicorns. Is that the Holy Trinity of fantasy fiction? If not, it should be. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) SANCTUARY MOON. Inverse tells “Why Apple’s Best New Sci-Fi Series Created Its Own Version of ‘Star Trek’”. For those who can’t get enough Murderbot coverage, of which I am one.

…That’s right, while the primary story of SecUnit (Alexander Skarsgård) is the focus of Murderbot, the Murderbot itself is a big fan of a fictional sci-fi soap opera called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. While the book version of this meta-show was described by author Wells as “How to Get Away with Murder in Space,” the TV series version is very much more a Star Trek, complete with the hilarious catchphrase “boldness is all.” Speaking to Inverse, the showrunners of Murderbot, Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, revealed how their take on Sanctuary Moon happened.

Mild spoilers ahead.

In the series, we get John Cho of Star Trek fame as a kind of swaggering Captain Kirk figure, who may have the best collar and jacket in all of contemporary sci-fi. But both Weitzes note that casting Cho because of the Star Trek connection wasn’t the only reason to bring him into this project. “John did have that iconography coming in, as did Clark Gregg with his Marvel experience,” Paul Weitz explains. “But really these were just people who we had their phone numbers. We’d worked with John before on I think 12 films or something.”…

(12) HYDROGEN BOMB DESIGNER. [Item by Andrew Porter.] This is a very fascinating article, and there’s a link to an interview with his widow, which talks about growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Link bypasses the New York Times paywall: “Dick Garwin Fought Nuclear Armageddon. He Hid a 50-Year Secret”.

Enrico Fermi’s battle with cancer was nearing its end in late 1954 when he received a visitor.

Fermi, a Nobel laureate in physics, had fled fascism in Europe and become a founder of the nuclear age, helping bring the world’s first reactor and first atom bomb to life.

The visitor, Richard L. Garwin, had been Fermi’s student at the University of Chicago, the laureate calling him “the only true genius I have ever met.” Now, he had done something known at the time only by Fermi and a handful of other experts. Not even his family knew. Three years earlier, the boy wonder, then 23, had designed the world’s first hydrogen bomb, which brought the fury of the stars to Earth.

In a test, it had exploded with a force nearly 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima, its power greater than all the explosives used in World War II.

To his reverential student, Fermi confided a regret. He felt his life had involved too little participation in crucial issues of public policy. He died a few weeks later at 53.

After that visit, Dr. Garwin set out on a new path, seeing nuclear scientists as having a responsibility to speak out. His resolve, he later told a historian, came from a desire to honor the memory of the scientist he had known best and admired most…

(13) BLAST IN THE PAST. “14,000 years ago, the most powerful solar storm ever recorded hit Earth. ‘This event establishes a new worst-case scenario’” says Space.com.

An extreme solar storm hit Earth some 14,300 years ago, more powerful than any other such event known in human history, a new analysis of radiocarbon data has revealed.

The solar storm, the only known to have taken place in the last Ice Age, long eluded scientists as they lacked appropriate models for interpreting radiocarbon data from glacial climate conditions.

But a new study by a team from the Oulu University in Finland has taken a stab at the measurement interpretation with eye-opening results. Using a novel chemistry-climate model, the team found that the marked spike in the carbon-14 isotope detected in fossilized tree rings was caused by a solar storm more than 500 times as powerful as the 2003 Halloween Solar Storm, which was the most intense in modern history….

… In 2023, a major spike in radiocarbon concentrations in fossilized tree rings was discovered, indicating a major solar storm must have taken place as the last ice age was drawing to an end.

The new study was finally able to precisely assess the magnitude of that solar storm and date it more accurately. The scientists believe that solar storm took place between January and April in the year 12,350 BC, likely dazzling the hundreds of thousands of mammoth hunters who lived in Europe at that time with the most awe-inspiring aurora borealis….

…Scientists previously studied records of five other radiocarbon spikes found in tree ring data, which they attributed to powerful solar storms that had taken place in 994 AD, 775 AD, 663 BC, 5259 BC and 7176 BC….

(14) SPACE MAIL. [Item by Chris Barkley.] LOOK at what I found in my mailbox TODAY!!!!! I had completely forgotten that I did this when I attended Chicon 8!

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

Pixel Scroll 5/18/25 Pixels Tickle When They Walk Through You

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(1) ZELAZNY-INSPIRED ART. Michael Whelan discusses the series of covers he created for “The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny” from the NESFA Press.

I rank Roger Zelazny as one of the best F/SF writers of his generation. One of my prime regrets is that I never got to meet him.

I was immediately intrigued when offered the chance to provide covers for a multi-volume collection of his works by NESFA Press, the publishing side of the New England Science Fiction Association.

While pitching the project, the publisher explained that Roger had said in an interview that he always wished to have me do a cover for one of his books; alas that it didn’t come to pass during his lifetime. But I was happy to show my respect for his legacy through my art….

…Upon reflection I settled on a blend of 1) managing elements of RZ stories that applied to tales within a particular volume, and 2) adding things ‘on the fly’ as a part of the process of doing the painting, using connections that popped up while adding details to the composition.

I’m not going to lie…it did occur to me that I could paint anything at random, knowing that a connection could be found between what I chose to depict and some narrative or thematic element in Zelazny’s writing.

That was liberating. I felt free to develop the composition from a “big design” standpoint since there was such a wealth of material to draw on to “populate” the image areas.

The idea of running one image across the spines of the seven books was discussed early on; I believe Alice Lewis, jacket designer on this project, was the one who originally mentioned it. The challenge of making it work seemed exciting, so I was drawn to that approach right away….

(Paul Weimer has reviewed the first five books in the series for File 770: “Paul Weimer Review: Roger Zelazny’s Threshold”; “Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume Two: Power & Light”; “Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume Three: This Mortal Mountain”; “Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny, Volume Four, Last Exit to Babylon”; and “Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume 5: Nine Black Doves”.)

(2) SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 CONSULTATIVE VOTE IS OPEN. Seattle Worldcon 2025 is holding a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting. Voting runs from May 1 to May 31 and is accessed through the member registration portal in the same manner as the Hugo Award voting. More information is available on the Consultative Vote Webpage.

As previously announced, Seattle Worldcon is holding a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting to the Seattle Worldcon: the proposed revisions of the Hugo Award categories for best professional artist and best fan artist, and the proposed amendment to abolish the Retro Hugo Awards.

The purpose of the consultative vote is to test whether this type of vote is feasible, in case the practice is someday adopted as a formal part of the WSFS decision-making process. These proposals were chosen because they have clearly generated wide interest among the Worldcon community.

(3) ON THE WAY. “Frankenstein in the Age of CRISPR-Cas9” at Nautilus.

…[Mary] Shelley drew on a mythology of technology that goes back to the 6th century B.C. when the figure Prometheus stole fire from the gods and bestowed it to mankind. The “fire bringer,” is often associated with Lucifer, (literally meaning “light bearer”), who pilfered light from the heavens and brought it down to Earth. The “fall of man” implies an age when mortals are illuminated with knowledge. Immanuel Kant was the first to modernize the term, when he nicknamed his pal, Benjamin Franklin, “the Prometheus of modern times” for his nifty work with kites. In the early 19th century, Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus put the concept into terms of controlling biological forces. She not only arguably invented science fiction, but her novel offered a plot device for modern tales, including Flowers for Algernon, The Stand, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Yann Martel’s short story “We Ate the Children Last.” We all understand the illusions. A scientist sets out to create a more perfect entity, only to have it backfire as the thing he creates gets out of control.

…By the early 1980s, Richard Mulligan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology isolated genetic code and wrapped it up in a virus, returning it to humankind as a tool. In the same decade, companies such as Biogen and Genentech claimed the patents to control the first applications of genetic engineering. Scientists today are using the gene editing tool CRISPR to do things such as tinker with the color of butterfly wings, genetically alter pigs, and engineer microbes with potentially pathogenic or bioterror purposes. Last year, a group of 150 scientists held a closed-door meeting at Harvard Medical School to discuss a project to synthesize the code of a human genome from scratch using chemical techniques. As Andrew Pollack wrote in The New York Times, “the prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents.” In August, Shoukhrat Mitalipov at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland reported using CRISPR to alter a human embryo….

…We are at the very start of the “industrial revolution of the human genome,” just as Shelley was writing at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Her essential insight is that science and technology can progress but will never achieve social control without a willful and ongoing abdication, or repression, of our agency. Shelley wants to tell us that what we seek from technology is based on our existential fear of being in control over our own lives, which have no ultimate solution, and which compels us to so eagerly pursue what psychologists call an external locus of control. But mythology is often first presented as a utopia, only to result in a dystopian reality…

(4) THE SF COLLECTION SOME OF US GREW UP WITH. “A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Volume One & Two, Anthony Boucher editor, 1959 Doubleday & 1960 SF Book Club” features at A Deep Look by Dave Hook.

The Short: I recently reread one of my favorite SF anthologies as a much younger person, A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Volume One and Volume Two, Anthony Boucher editor, 1959 Doubleday/1960 Science Fiction Book Club. It was available for purchase only as a two volume set when new. I am not aware of any other SF anthology that includes two novels and 10 pieces of short fiction, much less one that includes four novels and 20 short fiction works in the set. My favorite novel included is the classic The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, and my favorite short fiction is the classic “The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff“, a novella by Theodore Sturgeon. My overall average rating is 3.73/5, or “Very good”. It was great to rediscover how great the John Wyndham novel Re-Birth is…. 

(5) GOING ROGUE IS RECOMMENDED. “Five Takeaways From Rewatching ‘Rogue One’ After ‘Andor’” at The Ringer.

…The makers of Andor have teased how transformative it can be to revisit Rogue One after the prequel-to-a-prequel’s conclusion. As of last week, Andor creator Tony Gilroy hadn’t rewatched Rogue since finishing Andor, but he hyped the practice anyway: “Other people around me have done it. So I’ve been reassured. And I’ve seen bits and pieces of it; it comes on, and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, holy crap. Look what that does.’” Diego Luna was even more insistent. “I urge people to see Rogue One right after the end of Season 2,” the actor who plays Cassian said. “They’re going to see a different film.”…

There follow five takeaways which, as you should expect, are full of spoilers.

(6) AS IMAGINED IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. [Item by Andrew Porter.] “When a president goes rogue: In these books, it already happened” at Salon. Discussion of several novels including The Man In The High Castle and Parable of The Sower.

…As the second Trump administration lurches into its third month, moving fast and breaking government, I’ve been studying what American writers have suggested would occur if a demagogue were elected president. A next step, in novels such as Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here,” involves a direct attack on the Supreme Court if it declines to affirm a president’s agenda. Much the same forces are at work 90 years later. Alternative histories, particularly dystopias, reflect their societies’ radical pessimism, as  Harvard professor and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore suggested in 2017:  

“Dystopia used to be a fiction of resistance; it’s become a fiction of submission, the fiction of an untrusting, lonely, and sullen twenty-first century, the fiction of fake news and Infowars, the fiction of helplessness and hopelessness.”…

(7) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER THOUGHTS. [Item by Steven French.] A couple of genre related novels top the Guardian’s list of contenders for the International Booker Prize: “A Danish Groundhog Day or tales of millennial angst… What should win next week’s International Booker?”

What unites the books on the shortlist for this year’s International Booker prize? Brevity, for one thing: five of the six are under 200 pages, and half barely pass 100. They are works of precision and idiosyncrasy that don’t need space to make a big impression. Themes are both timely – AI, the migration crisis – and evergreen: middle-class ennui; the place of women in society. And for the second consecutive year, every book comes from an independent publisher, with four from tiny micropresses. Ahead of the winner announcement on 20 May, here’s our verdict on the shortlist….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 18, 1962 — Twilight Zone’s “I Sing The Body Electric”

They make a fairly convincing pitch here. It doesn’t seem possible, though, to find a woman who must be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good, except, of course, in the Twilight Zone. — Intro narration.

On this date in 1962, The Twilight Zone aired “I Sing The Body Electric”. 

It was scripted by Ray Bradbury and although he had contributed several scripts to the series, this was the only one produced. (His first script, “Here There Be Tygers,” was accepted but never filmed.)

It became the basis for his 1969 short story of the same name, named after an 1855 Walt Whitman poem which celebrates the human body and its connection to the universe. It was according to Whitman anti-slavery. The original publication, like the other poems in Leaves of Grass, did not have a title. In fact, the line “I sing the body electric” was not added until the 1867 edition.

Bradbury’s short story would be published first in McCall’s, August 1969. Knopf would release his I Sing The Body Electric collection in October of that year. It’s been included in least fifty collections and anthologies.) 

James Sheldon and William F. Claxton directed the episode; Sheldon directed some of The Man from U.N.C.L.E episodes; Claxton is known for Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie. I’ll confess to having seen a fair amount of the former but none of the latter. 

A large ensemble cast was needed as, minor spoiler alert, the primary cast here are shown at two ages, hence Josephine Hutchinson, David White, Vaughn Taylor, Doris Packer, Veronica Cartwright, Susan Crane and Charles Herbert all being performers even though the actual script calls for very few characters. 

Another spoiler alert. Perhaps I’m being overly cautious but we did get a complaint about spoiling a 50-year-old episode of a program by not noting that I was going to say something about that program, hence spoiler alerts for these programs.

Auntie, the organic one, caring for the children has decided they are too much of a burden and has decided to leave. So father decided to get a robot grandmother, a new fangled invention in their city. The mechanical grandmother after some resentment by one child is accepted by all after she saves one child from mortal injury and Serling says after that —

As of this moment, the wonderful electric grandmother moved into the lives of children and father. She became integral and important. She became the essence. As of this moment, they would never see lightning, never hear poetry read, never listen to foreign tongues without thinking of her. Everything they would ever see, hear, taste, feel would remind them of her. She was all life, and all life was wondrous, quick, electrical – like Grandma.

So this gentle tale that only Bradbury could write of the children who love her and the ever so wonderful mechanical grandmother ends with Serling saying the words scripted of course by Bradbury for him:

A fable? Most assuredly. But who’s to say at some distant moment there might be an assembly line producing a gentle product in the form of a grandmother whose stock in trade is love? Fable, sure, but who’s to say?

This was the year that the entire season of the series won the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo at Chicon III. Just my opinion, but I think of all the nominees that it was clearly the far superior choice to win the Hugo. Really superior. 

It is streaming on Paramount+. 

There’s also a boy in the family but I couldn’t find an image of all three children, the father and the grandmother that was as good as this one is.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) EXPECT A CODA FOR THIS SEASON OF DOCTOR WHO. BBC Doctor Who reveals: “Special episode of Doctor Who: Unleashed announced celebrating 20 years of revival”.

Travel back with David Tennant, Billie Piper and host Steffan Powell through a host of Whoniversal history…

As Season 2 comes to a climax, a special edition of Doctor Who: Unleashed is set to air on BBC Three, BBC iPlayer and BBC Wales. Steffan Powell is once again set to take a trip through the time vortex as he invites viewers on a journey celebrating the last twenty years since Doctor Who returned, and he will be joined by a host of cast and creatives that have played a part in bringing the show back into the Whoniverse.

Joining Steffan for the ride are some of the show’s most recognisable faces, including past Doctors David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker, former companions Billie Piper, Pearl Mackie, and Mandip Gill, ex-showrunners Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, the current Doctor Ncuti Gatwa alongside his newest companion Varada Sethu, as well as the current showrunner and the man who brought the show back in 2005, Russell T Davies.

As well as chatting with the stars about what Doctor Who means to them, Steffan will be revealing secrets from behind the scenes with interviews with those who work behind the cameras to bring Doctor Who to life….

 (11) PRECURSORS? Facebook’s group for David Attenborough Fans discusses the Silurian Hypothesis.

…The idea of the Silurian Hypothesis was inspired by an episode of Doctor Who, where intelligent reptilian creatures called Silurians awakened from 400 million years of hibernation due to nuclear testing. While this was a work of fiction, the hypothesis raised a profound possibility: What if there were once other advanced civilizations on Earth that have completely vanished?

Humans often think that their existence and their civilization are eternal, but history teaches us otherwise. Take ancient Egypt, for instance. For over 3,000 years and across 30 dynasties, Egyptians lived under the shadow of the pyramids, fished the Nile, and mingled with other cultures. To them, their civilization seemed everlasting, yet it too disappeared. Similar fates befell the Mesopotamians, the Indus Valley civilization, the Greeks, Nubians, Persians, Romans, Incas, and Aztecs. These great empires, once thriving with millions, left behind scant evidence of their grandeur.

Modern humans have been around for about 100,000 years, a mere blip in the hundreds of millions of years that complex life has existed on Earth. Given this vast expanse of time, it’s conceivable that other intelligent species might have risen and fallen long before us. Would we even know they had been here?…

…The Silurian Hypothesis suggests looking for markers of industrialization on a global scale. One key marker is changes in the isotopic composition of elements, which can be detected in sedimentary layers. For instance, human activities have altered the nitrogen cycle and increased the levels of certain metals like gold, lead, and platinum. Most notably, the burning of fossil fuels has changed the carbon isotope ratios in the atmosphere, known as the Suess effect, which is detectable in sediment cores.

Interestingly, a sudden global change in carbon and oxygen isotope levels was observed 56 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The PETM saw Earth’s temperature rise by six degrees Celsius over 200,000 years, with fossil carbon levels spiking. Some scientists speculate that a massive volcanic eruption caused this, but the exact cause remains unknown. Could it have been evidence of an ancient civilization? Probably not, but it does show how such an event could leave a detectable mark.

The Silurian Hypothesis, while not proving the existence of ancient civilizations, provides a framework for searching for them, not just on Earth but also on other planets. The Drake Equation estimates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, suggesting there could be anywhere from 150,000 to 1.5 billion. If intelligent life can arise multiple times on a single planet, as the Silurian Hypothesis proposes, it opens up exciting possibilities for finding civilizations throughout the galaxy….

(12) THE INSIDE (THE BOOKSHOP) STORY. [Item by John King Tarpinian.] The Howling (1981) Bookshop scene was filmed at the Cherokee Bookshop, which was on Cherokee just off of Hollywood Boulevard.  The wandering customer is Forry Ackerman.   

(13) PITCH MEETING. Ryan George takes us inside the “Thunderbolts* Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/17/25 A Handbook For Pixels

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(1) AI HALLUCINATES ABOUT JG BALLARD. The Bookseller exposes that “Coca-Cola advert featuring JG Ballard novel ‘errors’ was ‘AI-leveraged’” (article is paywalled).

A Coca-Cola advert released as part of its “Classic” campaign, which features well-known authors referencing its products in their novels, appears to include an inaccurate representation of work by the English novelist JG Ballard.

The Empire of the Sun and Crash author is one of three writers included in an advertisement released by Coca-Cola in mid-April 2025. The advert shows an old-fashioned typewriter writing out excerpts from novels, such as Stephen King’s The Shining, as if the onlooker is watching the author type directly onto the page. References to Coca-Cola are accompanied by the appearance of the brand’s red logo and a burst of sound evoking that which might accompany the opening of a fizzy-drink bottle. As well extracts of work by King and VS Naipaul the advert presents us with Extreme Metaphors by JG Ballard, dated 1967. It features a misspelling of the Chinese city of Shanghai.

JG Ballard, who was published by HarperCollins in the UK, did not write a novel published in 1967 called Extreme Metaphors. There is, however, a book titled Extreme Metaphors: Selected Interviews with JG Ballard, edited by Dan O’Hara and Simon Sellars (4th Estate) and published in 2012, three years after Ballard’s death. O’Hara told 404Media: “The sequence of words being typed out by the imagined JG Ballard in the ad was never written by him, only spoken, and the only person ever to type that exact sequence out in English is me.”…

(2) HORROR UNIVERSITY OPEN FOR ENROLLMENT. StokerCon has announced the 2025 Horror University workshop schedule. From June 12-15 they will present nine live, in-person workshops at StokerCon 2025 in Stamford, CT. See course descriptions at the link.

HORROR UNIVERSITY is designed for horror writers interested in refining their writing, learning new skills and techniques, exploring new writing formats, or better understanding the genre. These workshops are taught by some of the most experienced voices in horror. 

​Registration per workshop is $55 per workshop for all attendees. General registration for StokerCon does not include Horror University programming; additional registration is required so that the Con is able to compensate each instructor for their workshop and support the cost of the program.​

More details are available on Eventbrite and will be posted to StokerCon.com soon! Horror Universty workshops are separately ticketed sessions. Registrations may be purchased through the Registration portal.

(3) TUNED IN. A new episode – “Doctor Who: The Interstellar Song Contest” reviewed by Camestros Felapton. This is an ambiguous excerpt, but I want to avoid spoiling the review, the same way Camestros avoids spoiling the episode.

…Undoubtedly this is going to be a divisive episode. Some Doctor Who places I visit are showing a lot of love for it but I think a more general consensus is one of disappointment.

My main takeaway is that this episode is the best example of the recurring problem with this season….

(4) NIVEN Q&A. “Larry Niven interview: Ringworld legend discusses his classic novel and all things sci-fi” – a fun dialog that Niven fans will enjoy.

EHW: Is there anything you would do differently if you wrote Ringworld today?

LN: I’ve been telling people that I would start over with a universe in which you can’t go faster than light [and] nobody’s got psychic powers. The point is, if you build a Ringworld, it has to be because you can’t reach other stars…

EHW: What is the one piece of advice you would offer someone trying to write science fiction today?

LN: Shorten your name, like I did….

(5) BRADBURY’S BEST. James Wallace Harris only wants to read the best Bradbury – so how can he make sure he doesn’t miss any? Harris tries to solve that problem in “How Many Ray Bradbury Short Stories Do You Want to Read?” at Classics of Science Fiction.

…However, over the last five years, I’ve been gorging on science fiction short stories, and I’ve been surprised by how often his stories show up in anthologies. Then, a few weeks ago, I read The Bradbury Chronicles, a biography of Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller. Bradbury’s life was riveting, inspiring me to read more of his work. According to the Library of Congress, Bradbury published over 600 short stories. According to the Weller biography, by the late 1940s, Bradbury was writing and publishing a short story a week.

Piet Nel sent me a spreadsheet with 375 stories from all of Bradbury’s major collection. Piet also said, “Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, by Eller & Touponce (2004), has a comprehensive story list, compiled with academic rigor, up to 2002. It runs to about 400 stories.” So, it’s hard to reconcile the 600 number from the Library of Congress. Piet also sent me the link to Phil Nichols’ site and his Short Story Finder….

…I just don’t want to read that many Ray Bradbury stories. I just want to read his best stories, but I’m unsure which ones are the best. I’m partial to his science fiction stories, but I’m willing to read any type as long as they are among his best….

(6) GOLD STANDARD. “US Mint releases Space Shuttle $1 gold coin” and Popular Science tells how to get one.

You can now own a $1 gold coin celebrating one of America’s most revolutionary achievements: the NASA Space Shuttle program. The latest variant in the ongoing American Innovation $1 Coin series is available to order through the United States Mint. Selected to represent the state of Florida, the noncirculating legal tender is the third coin released this year and the 28th coin in the 15-year project first announced in 2018.

While the coin’s front displays the series’ Statue of Liberty image, the back shows the shuttle launching above plumes of exhaust. United States Mint Medallic Artist Eric David Custer sculpted the image while Artistic Infusion Program (AIP) Designer Ron Sanders designed it….

(7) MURDERBOT PRAISE. A highly favorable review – with a headline that makes an interesting claim: “’Murderbot’ review: This sci-fi show is the best new comedy of 2025” at NPR.

…I laughed a lot, watching Murderbot, and admired how much the show gets right from the jump. SecUnit offers a running commentary on the action, so the show is awash in voiceover. But that voiceover is used, never relied upon. It’s always employed in ways that individualize and particularize SecUnit’s character, which often manifests in jokes that undercut the events we’re watching through its eyes.

About those space-hippies. There are a lot of jokes at their expense, but they’re not the kind of lazy, lay-up, make-fun-of-the-wokes jokes. They’re specific, and so firmly rooted in character that they allow each member of the team to distinguish themselves from each other, to be weird in their own particular way….

…So, yeah. Murderbot is the best comedy series I’ve seen this year and I’m gonna be shouting that from the rooftops. Check out the episodes that drop Friday on Apple TV+. If you like them, do me a favor, because we need to get the word out about this show:

Meet me on the roof.

(8) LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. Seems the demand wasn’t that great in 1946. “Harvard Law Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. Surprise! It’s an Original.” The New York Times tells about the discovery. (Article is behind a paywall.)

Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946.

That is about to change.

Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties.

It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.

“I never in all my life expected to discover a Magna Carta,” said David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King’s College London, describing the moment in December 2023 when he made the startling find.

The manuscript’s value is hard to estimate, although it is fair to say that its price tag of under $30 (about $500 today) must make it one of the bargains of the last century. A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.

Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia, in eastern England, helped authenticate the text. He noted that the document, which bound the nation’s rulers to acting within the law, had resurfaced at a time when Harvard has come under extraordinary pressure from the Trump administration….

(9) JIM WALKER OBITUARY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sadly, the British SF fan Jim Walker has passed. Jim was a friend of, and a contributor to, the SF² Concatenation. His first offerings were a couple of book reviews back in the mid-1990s. From the early 2000s to 2017, he was one of our regular convention reporters, especially of Eurocons. He also took part in the Anglo-Romanian Fan Fund activities of the 1990s to early 2000s attending events, both here in Britain when there were visiting Eastern European fans, and also in Timisoara, Romania, with our two International Weeks of Science and SF in 1999 and 2003.

In addition to Eurocons, he was a regular at Britain’s (there are others) Festival of Fantastic Films and the British Eastercon. A civil engineer by training and profession, in retirement he made short films with local friends including a couple of SF offerings which, naturally, were screened at the Festival of Fantastic Films. Sadly, Jim was not at the 2023 Festival of Fantastic Films which I attended for the first time in a few years. We last physically met up in the summer of 2019 when he came down to London. We met to take in the view by Greenwich Observatory of the Thames and the new financial district to the north. We then walked across Blackheath’s Black Death plague pit (hence Blackheath’s name), to have lunch at a real ale hostelry… The thing about ‘last times’ is that when they occur you never know then that they are a ‘last time’. Farewell old pal.

The Dead Dog party participants following a gala dinner for the 1st International Week of Science & SF in 1999. Jim is far left (Jonathan next to him, yellow tie).

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

By Paul Weimer: The Empire Strikes Back. The Greatest of the Star Wars films?

Possibly. 

Like Star Wars, I didn’t get to see this one in the theater. I didn’t get any playsets for this one, no Cloud City playset, unfortunately. I had a sketchy idea of the events of the movie from seeing Return of the Jedi, and the Atari 2600 videogame. Oh, and the vector laser arcade game. So I knew only a sketch of the movie and its events.

It would be when it aired on TV in the mid-80’s (along with Star Wars itself, and after I had seen ROTJ) that I would finally see the movie. 

Best script of the entire nine movies? Possibly. For freshness and reinvention, the original Star Wars has Empire beat, but Star Wars can be slow going in places, where Empire is much leaner, meaner and more controlled in its blaster fire. We see how Lucas clearly had changed his mind about Luke and Leia and started the run toward Leia and Han. We meet Yoda, in his best incarnation. Force Ghost Obi-Wan.  And just the casual way Vader deflects the laser fire from Han Solo was just so good. It answered the question of “Why don’t you just shoot him?” that I had wondered since his lightsaber fight in Star Wars. 

And of course “Luke, I am your Father”. One of the greatest twists in modern cinema, without none. Was Vader lying? Why did Obi-Wan lie if he wasn’t? It brings Luke and the Rebellion to a low point not long after, Han captured, the rebellion scattered to the wind. In the Hero’s Journey, this is about as low as things can get in the trilogy. The middle of trilogies is hard, often flabby or repetitive. Empire is none of these. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) BUSTED. “How Broken is Google?” Camestros Felapton would like to tell you.

I’ve been writing short spoiler-free reviews of the current seasons of Doctor Who each (for me) Sunday morning, having watched the show Saturday (evening). Last week, I had a bit of blank on the title of the episode: was it the Story Engine…no…not quite. Rather than tie myself in knots I just googled it. “doctor who recent episode”.

Google came back with an answer: Castrovalva: Part One, Doctor Who Season 117, episode 1. It had a little picture of Peter Davison next to it. Observant readers will spot that Peter Davison is not Ncuti Gatwa, Castrovalva was broadcast 43 years ago and that, while long running, Doctor Who has not had 117 seasons….

And that’s not all!

(13) WHERE IT BEGAN. BBC reports about “The ‘space archaeologists’ hoping to save our cosmic history”.  (And yet not a mention of River Song!)

Space is being commercialised on a scale unseen before. Faced by powerful commercial and political forces and with scant legal protections, artefacts that tell the story of our species’ journey into space are in danger of being lost – both in orbit and down here on Earth. 

Like Stonehenge, these are irreplaceable artefacts and sites that have a timeless significance to humanity because they represent an essential stage in the evolution of our species. They are often also expressions of national pride because of the industrial and scientific effort needed to achieve them. Sometimes they are also memorials to those who died in the course of ambitious space programmes.

They also have another use. Studying these artefacts and sites helps researchers better understand how astronauts interact with new technology, adapt to new environments and develop new cultural practices. The conclusions of researchers can influence the design of future spacecraft and help future space missions succeed.

Can a new generation of pioneering space archaeologists like Alice Gorman and Justin Walsh help save our space heritage for coming generations, and how might their work change space exploration in the future? …

(14) IT HAS A PULSE. [Item by Steven French.] Not saying it’s aliens but not *not* saying it’s aliens either! “Not saying it’s aliens: SETI survey reveals unexplained pulses from distant stars” at Phys.org.

More than 60 years ago, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) officially began with Project Ozma at the Greenbank Observatory in West Bank, Virginia. Led by famed astronomer Frank Drake (who coined the Drake Equation), this survey used the observatory’s 25-meter (82-foot) dish to monitor Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti—two nearby sun-like stars—between April and July of 1960. Since then, multiple surveys have been conducted at different wavelengths to search for indications of technological activity (aka “technosignatures”) around other stars.

While no conclusive evidence has been found that indicates the presence of an advanced civilization, there have been many cases where scientists could not rule out the possibility. In a recent paper, veteran NASA scientist Richard H. Stanton describes the results of his multi-year survey of more than 1,300 sun-like stars for optical SETI signals. As he indicates, this survey revealed two fast identical pulses from a sun-like star about 100 light-years from Earth that match similar pulses from a different star observed four years ago…

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. DUST has posted “Sci-Fi Short Film ‘Imminent Arrival’”.

Richard James, AKA “Reaper Rick,” is a simple Red-blooded, paranoid, country man. His long history of Military Service has taught him to never trust the government, pushing him to live out his days in the country, off of the grid. Other than his religious viewership of his favorite cable news network, his only other connection to the outside world is through his good buddy, “Squinty Joe,” who he only keeps in contact through HAM Radio. The two of them engage daily about the latest wild conspiracy theories, further exacerbating and shaping their views on the world. The two are constantly trying to one-up each other, bragging about who has the latest gear or best doomsday prep. In their minds, the apocalypse is right around the corner so it only makes sense to have a solid plan. In this Sci-fi Dramedy short film, we follow a day in the life of Rick as his intense paranoia becomes a reality during one of the strangest days of his life!

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

Pixel Scroll 5/14/25 First Shalt Thou Take Out The Holy Pixel

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(1) INAUGURAL CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE. “And So I Roar wins Climate Fiction Prize 2025”. The Climate Fiction Prize is a new literary prize that celebrates the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis. The Prize, worth £10,000, was awarded at a ceremony in London, on May 14.

Abi Daré has won the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize for And so I Roar (Sceptre, Hodder). The novel follows fourteen-year-old Adunni from her life in Lagos, where she is excited to finally enroll in school, to her home village where she is summoned to face charges for events that are in fact caused by climate change.

“A book of real energy and passion which both horrifies and entertains with a cast of compelling characters, a story of how the climate crisis can provoke social crisis where often women and children are the victims. Despite the tragedy, Abi Daré holds faith in the strength of individuals and relationships and her hopefulness leaves us inspired.”

– Madeleine Bunting, Chair of Judges

(2) MARTHA WELLS Q&A. Martha Wells did a Reddit r/television Ask Me Anything today. You can read the answers here: “This is Martha Wells, a four-time Hugo, two-time Nebula, and five-time Locus Award winner for The Murderbot Diaries, a book series published by Tordotcom. Ask Me Anything”.

Here’s one exchange.

BiasCutTweed

I have two pedantic world building questions I would love to ask though, if you’re game to answer:

  • Is there any sort of nominal governance structure in the Corporation Rim? Like just enough to support a judicial and monetary system, and the regulatory stuff that occasionally gets mentioned. I know Murderbot could absolutely give zero damns and it’s our narrator but I’m weirdly curious.
  • There are alien remnants everywhere but we never see any living advanced aliens. Do they exist? Might we ever?
  • And a show-specific question – did you/they ever consider Fleabag-style 4th wall breaks for Murderbot’s inner thoughts? Or would that be way too much eye contact for it?

marthawellswriter

  1. There is basically a committee structure that handles that stuff, with different people from various dominant corporations being appointed to it, and it works about as well as you might expect.
  2. They might still exist, but I don’t think I’d take the story in that direction.
  3. I think they did early on, because I saw some auditions that used it, but I actually think the voiceover works much better and I’m glad they went with it.

(3) WIL WHEATON’S FAVES. JustWatch has teamed up with sci-fi icon Wil Wheaton to spotlight his all-time favorite science fiction movies and TV shows in a newly released editorial feature on JustWatch.com.

In this exclusive Why to Watch editorial, Wheaton shares a curated list of titles that have shaped his lifelong love of science fiction. From intergalactic epics to overlooked cult gems, the collection offers fans a rare peek into the streaming watchlist of one of pop culture’s most enduring sci-fi personalities. “Wil Wheaton’s Top 6 Sci-Fi Movies & Shows That Are Not Star Trek”.

Here is perhaps his most obscure pick.

Sugar (2024)

Wheaton also loves the cult Apple TV+ series Sugar. “It’s one of the great sci-fi series of the last five years that I never really heard people talk about,” the actor says. The show is a noir thriller that blends in fantastic sci-fi elements and follows a private investigator (Colin Farrell) who has a secret of his own. “I loved it,” Wheaton continued, “I thought it was brilliant and extremely well-done.”

(4) APPOINTMENT VIEWING. Will British cultural icon ITV be sold? “ITV Sale Speculation: Inside Deal Everyone And No One Is Talking About” at Deadline.

If you’ve watched ITV’s The Assembly, you will know that it involves stars like Danny Dyer and David Tennant subjecting themselves to no-holds-barred questions from a captivating cast of neurodivergent interrogators. It makes for illuminating viewing, producing genuine revelations from its disarmed but obliging subjects, who enter the show in a spirit of openness. 

Far from the cameras, in a colorless room in the basement of London’s 11 Cavendish Square townhouse on Tuesday, ITV chairman Andrew Cosslett was similarly squirming in the face of questioning, with less comical results. Chairing ITV’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), Cosslett was grilled, almost heckled, by an angry shareholder demanding to know when the British broadcaster’s 78p share price will rise after flatlining for more than three years.

“This is not good enough, you must have some idea, you guys are very highly paid,” said the shareholder. Cosslett struggled to answer, reaching for what by now feels like an old fail-safe. “If you can explain to me what Donald Trump will do next, then maybe I could,” he said.

Questions around ITV’s sticky share price — Cosslett and ITV boss Carolyn McCall faced three during the 45-minute AGM alone — are inextricably linked to the constant mutterings around its potential sale. On this matter, ITV has been a little less forthcoming with answers than the celeb bookings on The Assembly. The company that gave the world Downton Abbey has been finding new ways to say “no comment” to inquiries about whether it will submit to suitors, including RedBird IMI and Banijay….

(5) MISSING BUT NOT NECESSARILY LOST. “Doctor Who archive legend says missing episodes ‘certainly’ exist in private collections” – quotes in Radio Times.

With 97 of the missing Doctor Who episodes still unaccounted for, Sue Malden, the BBC’s first archive selector who has worked to find episodes across the years, has assured fans that she believes some “certainly” still exist in private collections.

Twenty-six stories from the show’s first six years are currently incomplete, because the BBC erased or reused tapes in the 1960s and 1970s to save storage space and costs. In recent years some of these episodes have now been recreated via animation, as tapes of audio recordings have survived for every episode.

Still, there remains hope amongst fans that other full episodes could still exist to this day, something Malden has suggested is a very real possibility.

Speaking at the RECOVERED festival at the Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre in Leicester, hosted by Film is Fabulous!, Malden was asked about the current situation regarding missing Doctor Who episodes.

Malden said: “As far as Doctor Who goes, we do not have a statement or anything to make at the moment. We do know fairly certainly that there are episodes missing in private collections. Some members of the Film is Fabulous! team are in a considerably significant position to help on that.”…

(6) FINAL MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] My summary: Mostly glowing reviews, especially about the action sequences. Some grumbles about the runtime and convoluted plot. “Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning First Reactions” in the Hollywood Reporter.

“Tom Cruise has done it again!” That’s the very early verdict from press screenings for the Hollywood icon’s latest film, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, with the film variously described as “astonishing,” “jaw-dropping,” “insane” and the “action movie of the summer.”

Following a series of press screenings, first reactions to Final Reckoning are hitting social media after the embargo lifted on Monday night. The social media reactions come ahead of official critics’ reviews, which drop on Wednesday.

The eighth film in the long-running Paramount Pictures spy action franchise, Final Reckoning has a lot riding on it for the studio as well as the domestic box office. In November 2024, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the project has had a long and difficult journey, with a budget approaching a hefty $400 million amid production delays — partly due to the 2023 Hollywood strikes — making it one of the most expensive films ever made….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 14, 1944 — George Lucas, 81.

By Paul Weimer: To talk about George Lucas for me is to first talk about Star Wars. 

Star Wars lurked in my imagination long before seeing any of it. I didn’t see Star Wars in the theater but my younger brother and I got a joint Christmas gift of a Death Star playset, and a few action figures. We only had the commercials for the set to go on, not Lucas’ own vision, and so our playing of the set led to very strange scenarios having nothing to do with the movie. 

It would not be until 1983, and Return of the Jedi, that I saw a George Lucas movie at all, and in the theater. I saw the magic of his world, having only the fuzziest idea of the first two movies, but I was swept along. This shows the power of Lucas harnessing the power of serial fiction to allow watchers to get in on the action quickly. This is something the Marvel cinematic universe could still learn from Lucas today. It’s not just the crawls at the beginning, its the economy of storytelling, the establishment of characters that let you hit the ground running. 

Like Star Wars, I missed the first Indiana Jones movie in theaters, but did see Temple of Doom (Lucas did not direct but his story was the basis of the film). And of course, too, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Same principle applies. Early Lucas knew the power of crafting episodic sequels and making them work. 

In keeping with those films, Lucas was also responsible for getting me hooked into the idea of the Hero’s Journey, since I read the Joseph Campbell book The Power of Myth thanks to Lucas’ forward in the book. Sure, the Hero’s Journey is a very outdated, patriarchal and restrictive story framework but it was my first real engagement with the nature and form of stories. Lucas helped introduce me to that whole new world. 

However, I would not see another Lucas directed film until the late 1990’s…but that is another story, one that deserves its own entry.

George Lucas with his wife, Mellody Hobson

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bliss has a child “helpfully” point something out.
  • Mike de Jour finds that word doesn’t mean what you think it means. 
  • Mutts – did he answer the question? 
  • Rubes can’t come up with an original excuse. 
  • Wumo might be an annoying fan. 

(9) DE-RE-BRANDING. The Hollywood Reporter says “Warners Is Changing Max’s Name Again — Back to HBO Max”. Sigh. Please just make up your mind.

… Thirty minutes into Wednesday’s Warner Bros. Discovery upfront, Bloys revealed the name change to media buyers. The news was met with laughter, light applause and exactly one whistle. Bloys did follow with a solid joke: “I know you’re all shocked, but the good news is I have a drawer full of stationery from the last time around.”…

(10) COMMUNITY RESPONDS TO BOOK BURNING. “Man burns 100 library books on social media; residents donate 1,000 more” on News 5 Cleveland.

Members of an Interfaith Group Against Hate (IGAH) gathered outside a Northeast Ohio church to stand united against hate. This comes after reports that a man checked out 100 books related to race, religion, and LGBTQ+ topics from the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Beachwood — then burned them in a video posted to social media.

View the news video here.

(11) IRONHEART. Gizmodo lets everyone know “Finally, the First Ironheart Trailer Is Here”.

… Black Panther: Wakanda Forever introduced audiences to Riri Williams (Dominque Thorne), an MIT genius who built her own Iron Man-esque armored suit and helped the Wakandans fight the Talokanil.

She may have left her suit behind in Wakanda, but she hasn’t given up trying to make new ones that truly establish her as the next big talent. While back home in Chicago, she crosses paths with Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), a misfit with a hood that lets him use dark magic and wants her to be a part of what he’s building up. Things seem good at first, but once she starts getting wise to the shadier parts of his dealings, Riri’s gotta armor up and protect Chicago and her loved ones….

(12) SUPER TRAILER PARK. “Superman’s Full Trailer Gives Us Our Best Look Yet at DC’s New Era” reports Gizmodo.

…[James] Gunn teased the trailer on social media as the “full trailer” he’d been “waiting too long to share.” And indeed, we see Superman facing off with an array of baddies, including a giant scaly monster and several supervillains—including, most intriguingly, a smirking Lex Luthor. He also stops a war and gets in trouble for it with the U.S. government, and gets grilled about it by the toughest journalist he knows: Lois Lane, who definitely knows Clark is Superman this time around…

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