Tag Archives: Doctor Who

Pixel Scroll 5/13/25 The Psy Who Clicked In From The Scroll

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(1) ATWOOD’S FREEDOM TO PUBLISH AWARD. The Guardian reports an award acceptance speech in which “Margaret Atwood says she cannot remember another time ‘when words themselves have felt under such threat’”.

Margaret Atwood has said she cannot remember another point in her lifetime “when words themselves have felt under such threat”.

“Words are our earliest human technology, like water they appear insubstantial, but like water they can generate tremendous power” the 85-year-old novelist said in her acceptance speech for the freedom to publish prize at the British Book awards.

“Political and religious polarisation, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade,” she added. “The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years.”

The British Book awards, colloquially known as the Nibbies, are a set of prizes for authors, illustrators and book industry professionals run by the publishing trade magazine, The Bookseller. …

…Though Atwood did not attend the ceremony in London, she recorded a video acceptance speech to be shown when she was announced winner of the freedom to publish award, which is supported by freedom of expression campaign organisation Index on Censorship and was established in 2022 to “highlight the growing threats to writers, publishers and booksellers, and to amplify those who fight back”.

(2) FIGHTING BACK. “Jamie Lee Curtis just wanted an AI ad removed, not to become the ‘poster child of internet fakery’” – at the LA Times (behind a paywall).

Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t expect to be at the forefront of the artificial intelligence debate in Hollywood. But she didn’t have a choice.

The Oscar-winning actor recently called out Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on social media, saying the company ignored her requests to take down a fake AI-generated advertisement on Instagram that had been on the platform for months.

The ad, which used footage from an interview Curtis gave to MSNBC about January’s Los Angeles area wildfires, manipulated her voice to make it appear that she was endorsing a dental product, Curtis said.

“I was not looking to become the poster child of internet fakery, and I’m certainly not the first,” Curtis told The Times by phone Tuesday morning.

The ad has since been removed.

What happened to Curtis is part of a larger issue actors are dealing with amid the rise of generative AI technology, which has allowed their images and voices to be altered in ways they haven’t authorized. Those changes can be wildly misleading….

(3) DOOR DRAGONS AT WORK. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] They told him, both of them, to Go Away. From NPR: “The President has named a new Acting Librarian of Congress. It’s his former defense lawyer.”

Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, has been appointed as the acting Librarian of Congress by President Trump, according to a spokesperson at the Department of Justice….

Blanche has no experience working in libraries or archives,…

An employee at the Librarian of Congress, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said two men showed up this morning with a letter saying that Blanche was appointed the acting Librarian of Congress, Brian Nieves was appointed acting assistant librarian, and Paul Perkins was appointed the acting Register of Copyrights and Director of the Copyright Office. The men were not allowed into offices and left soon after, the employee said, adding that the Library of Congress is a legislative branch agency, and has not yet received direction from Congress on how to move forward….

Publishers Weekly offers more detail about the turnover: “U.S. Executive and Legislative Branches Battle at the LoC”.

Does the future of the free world come down to who oversees the Library of Congress? Events of the past five days suggest as much, with a pitched battle over who may serve as interim Librarian and strong words from the House of Representatives.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was summarily fired, via email, late in the day on May 8. At the time of her removal, Hayden was serving a 10-year appointment that would have concluded in 2026, and her sudden ouster—without clear grounds for dismissal—was met with nationwide rage and disappointment from librarians, members of Congress, and the general public. Robert R. Newlen was named acting Librarian to replace Hayden, according to LoC seniority regulations and rules for succession.

Newlen has substantial experience in the agency, having worked at the Library of Congress from 1975–2017, and having been appointed (by Hayden) interim director of the Congressional Research Service in 2023. Newlen is a past member of the American Library Association executive board, a senior trustee of the ALA endowment, and 2016 recipient of the ALA Medal of Excellence.

One of Newlen’s first official acts as Librarian was to inform staff that the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, had been fired Saturday, May 10. Perlmutter, also appointed by Hayden, had served in the role since 2020. The Copyright Office is housed in the Library of Congress and likewise belongs to the U.S. legislative branch, and the director is appointed to the post by the Librarian. As of May 12, no new acting director had been identified.

Newlen served for all of one weekend before the Trump administration attempted to remove him too. The New York Times reported that deputy attorney general Todd Blanche—already in a prominent Department of Justice role—had been named acting Librarian on May 12, and immediately thereafter was embroiled in a standoff with Newlen. Politico broke the news that Newlen “disputed a change that had been made in an email to library staff Monday morning” and did not cede the role to Blanche, calling for Congress and not the executive branch to direct the process….

(4) EARLY RETURNS ON MURDERBOT. “’Murderbot’ Review: Apple’s New Comedy Sci-Fi Is A Great Vehicle For Alexander Skarsgard, But Not Without Its Problems” at Forbes. Beware mild spoilers.

…The most endearing thing about Murderbot is it’s / his (nobody quite knows how to refer to SecUnit when it comes to pronouns, a running gag) obsession with The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, which is basically the show you’d get if Star Trek and Days Of Our Lives had a lovechild. The show has 2,797 episodes and we get little glimpses of them in action because Murderbot spends every waking moment glued to his entertainment feed, and is annoyed when pesky humans and their problems get in the way…

(5) PAGERTURNERS. “People who prefer physical books over ebooks usually display these 7 behaviors, says psychology” – Global English Editing has the story. First on the list:

1) They value the sensory experience

You see, for physical book lovers, reading is more than just deciphering words. It’s a sensory affair.

The smell of the paper, especially in a new book fresh off the shelf or an old one rich with history, is intoxicating to them.

The tactile stimulation of flipping through pages, feeling the texture under their fingertips, provides a satisfaction that swiping on a screen simply can’t match.

And there’s something about hearing the gentle rustle of pages turning or seeing your progress as you slowly traverse from the right side of the book to the left that makes reading a physical book uniquely rewarding.

It’s this immersive, multi-sensory experience that often keeps them loyal to traditional books, despite the convenience of digital alternatives. So if you’re someone who relishes these sensory delights, it’s safe to say you might be a physical book lover at heart….

(6) LACON V RATES TO INCREASE. Memberships in the 2026 Worldcon will cost more on June 15.

LAcon V membership rates go up on June 15th!

Right now, full attending adult memberships are $200 and will increase to $230. (All other memberships will remain the same price for now.) Our installment plan is also currently available for full adult attending memberships!

Visit the registration page on the website to get your membership before prices go up: https://www.lacon.org/register

Take advantage of the installment plan right now: https://www.lacon.org/2025/05/10/installmentplan

(7) CANARY IN THE COALMINE: USING “VIRTUAL VOICE”. [Item by Francis Hamit.] This link is for my new audiobook It is a test. https://a.co/d/07HmIQf

I am coming up on the 60th anniversary of matriculating at University of Iowa in Iowa City. I was originally a Drama major but between then and when I left to join the US Army Security Agency in 1967 several events occurred that changed my life. I discovered writing and my true vocation. Despite a history of D+’s in English it turned out I could write. I’m dyslexic but I could hear the music. Perhaps it was all of those plays I was in. I went from a Basic Playwrighting class to the Undergraduate Writers Workshop. During those two years, as the Vietnam War heated up, I saw the first draft card burning, indulged in nude photography (them not me) and took up undercover anti-narcotics work.

About ten years ago I wrote a short memoir about all of it, The Perfect Spy, which did not get much traction there because no one would review it. It was too shocking. No one wanted to know that their parents or grandparents actually did “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”.

Kirkus gave me a very nice review.

And now, out of nowhere, Amazon has offered me a “virtual voice” audiobook.  It’s not the robotic voice they used to have but AI enhanced.  Actually sounds human and had features  that allow for variations in pace.  Google gave me something similar for Starmen but it was a long slog and the voice selection was not great. Amazon’s voice are IMO better and easier to work with.  And this is probably the future in small press conversions.  When we did The Shenandoah Spy in 2008 I did a 50-50 deal with Gail Shalan on ACX. That was 40 hours of trial and error for both of us and practically no sales.  It was great for Gail. She went on to become an audiobook superstar.  I can’t afford her now but I’m very proud of having given her that first chance.

I think Virtual Voice may be my solution. No one reads anymore. Audiobooks are a big chunk of the market and Amazon controls the price to a narrow range.  I am hoping that some people will find my adventures as a young man in Iowa worth listening to.  Sixty years is not that long ago.

If you want a science fiction connection, Nicholas Meyer was a classmate.  I had a couple of things to say about him too.

(8) LET’S DO THE TIME LORD AGAIN. “Your Name Engraved in Circular Gallifreyan – Metal, Glow Reactive Paint. Doctor Who Cosplay. Prop Replica. Game Piece. Geek Gift. Pin Badge.”

Solid metal disc with your name translated into Circular Gallifreyan, then laser engraved and filled with Ultra Violet reactive paint. We can engrave this in Copper, Brass, Stainless Steel or Aluminium. If you want a different size metal than the options listed, please message us and we can help 🙂 We’ve also got a Titanium listing of this in our store, see the “Sci-Fi” section.

You can use this link to translate into Gallifreyan: https://adrian17.github.io/Gallifreyan/. I thought “That could be fun” and checked it out. They tell me this is how File 770 reads in that language.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 13, 1994 — The Crow

Thirty-one years ago on the evening, The Crow premiered. I saw it at the theatre and yes, I liked it quite a bit. I’m not a horror fan but I found this quite impressive.  I hadn’t realized until now that it was co-written by John Shirley along with David J. Schow but I’ll get back to that in awhile. 

It was directed by Alex Proyas who would later be nominated for a Hugo at Aussiecon Three (1999) for Dark City. (The Truman Show won that year.) And he’d also later direct I, Robot.

The Crow was produced by Jeff Most, Edward R. Pressman and Grant Hill. Most would produce the sequels, The Crow: City of Angels, The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer. Pressman was the uncredited executive producer for Conan the Destroyer and Grant Hill was involved in the Matrix films plus V for Vendetta.

Of course, the movie starred Brandon Lee, an actor who gave the film a certain tragic edge by dying. 

The other major roles were held by Ernie Hudson and Michael Wincott. Ernie you know, but Michael Wincott has largely played villains in such films as Alien Resurrection and The Three Musketeers (remember I hold them to be genre). 

It was written by John Shirley along with David J. Schow (lots of forgettable horror in my opinion other than this). Checking IMDB, I see Shirley has written far too many screenplays too list all of them here, so I’ll just note his work on Deep Space Nine, Batman Beyond and Poltergeist: The Legacy. Though definitely not genre, he also wrote one episode of the IMDb Red Shoe Diaries. Really he did. 

His Red Shoes Diaries episode? IMDb says it was, “A beautiful astronaut, trapped in a dying spacecraft a million miles from home, makes tender love for the last time with her co-pilot as she ruminates about the sensual path of her life that led her to the adventure of outer space.”

(The only continuing role in the Wikipedia Red Shoe Diaries was Jake Winters played by David Duchovny in his first true ongoing role as it ran sixty episodes. The framing device is him as a narrator with a back story to explain why he’s introducing and offering closing commentary on these stories. Serling he ain’t though. Yes I did see a few when they originally aired back in the Nineties on Showtime. Softcore would be putting it mildly to describe them.)

The Crow did well at the box office making nearly a hundred million against twenty-four million in costs. it spawned a franchise of sorts as it has three sequels, (The Crow: City of Angels,  The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer) plus a reboot last year, The Crow, which also based  off the 1989 comic book series by James O’Barr. 

So what did the critics think? 

Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune had this to say: “What’s scary about The Crow is the story and the style itself: American Gothic, Poe-haunted nightmare, translated to the age of cyberpunk science fiction, revenge movies and outlaw rock ‘n’ roll, all set in a hideously decaying, crime-ridden urban hell.” 

Caryn James of the New York Times was impressed though not as ecstatic: “It is a dark, lurid revenge fantasy and not the breakthrough, star-making movie some people have claimed. But it is a genre film of a high order, stylish and smooth.”

It holds a most exemplary ninety percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. 

The only place it’s streaming is on Pluto with ads. No, just no.

Yes, there are copies of it on YouTube. As always, any links to those will be deleted with extreme prejudice as it is very much under copyright. Really they will. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS. The Official Steranko Fan Page on Facebook has put out a “Call for Contributions to the Steranko History of Comics, Volume 3 and Updated Editions!”

Comic art fans, collectors, and historians: We are thrilled to announce that Jim Steranko is working on Volume 3 of the acclaimed Steranko History of Comics. As Special Advisor to this project, I’m excited to share that Volumes 1 and 2 will also be updated with new supplemental material, and all three volumes are planned to be published in full color.

We are seeking contributions of rare and original materials related to the Golden Age of Comics, including documents, original covers, photos, color comps, special pages, presentations, character/costume designs, and unpublished images. As with the original Volumes 1 and 2, the focus is on bold, iconic graphics and behind-the-scenes editorial or biographical content of historical significance. Interior panel pages are a lower priority unless they hold unique importance.

If you have art, photos, correspondence, or documents that could enhance this project, your contribution could earn you a contributor credit, a complimentary copy of the book, the benefits of having your material featured in this landmark publication, and Jim’s personal gratitude.

To ensure we reach collectors and fans with access to such materials, please share this call widely within your networks. If YOU have relevant items, contact me directly via Direct Message with a description or a low-resolution scan/photo. If it’s a potential fit, I’ll provide instructions for submitting a high-resolution (minimum 300dpi, full-color) scan to Jim Steranko.

Join us in shaping comics history with the Steranko History of Comics!

(12) FOR SOME VALUES OF FIRST. Inverse remembers:“90 Years Ago, A Forgotten Horror Movie Beat A Monster-Movie Classic To The Punch”.

Although it was technically not the first werewolf movie (that honor goes to the long-lost and now forgotten 1913 short, The Werewolf), Werewolf of London was the first feature-length motion picture in cinema history to deal with the subject of lycanthropy (or “lycanthrophobia,” as it’s called in the film itself). Produced by Universal Pictures, the film starred Henry Hull as Dr. Wilfred Glendon, a world-famous British botanist (apparently botanists could be celebrities back in the day) who ventures into Tibet to find a rare flower, Mariphasa lumina lupina, that allegedly can blossom in moonlight. He does find the flower, but brings home something much worse.

While procuring three sample buds, Glendon is attacked and bitten by an animalistic humanoid creature. He makes it home and creates an artificial source of moonlight in his lab in order to make Mariphasa bloom, after which he’s approached by Dr. Yogami (Warren Oland, creepy), a fellow botanist who claims they met in Tibet. Indeed they did: Yogami was the creature that attacked Glendon, and claims that Glendon will turn into a werewolf himself thanks to Yogami’s bite — unless the plant, which can keep lycanthrophobia in check, blooms successfully….

… Werewolf of London was originally conceived as a vehicle for horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, with the former tagged to play Glendon and the latter cast as Yogami. That would have been a blockbuster combination, but Karloff was already committed to filming Bride of Frankenstein and the studio was hesitant to muck around with that movie’s schedule (Valerie Hobson appeared in both films, incidentally, playing Dr. Frankenstein’s wife in Bride)….

(13) NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN. “Trump’s 2026 budget plan would cancel NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission. Experts say that’s a ‘major step back’” reports Space.com.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been on the prowl within Jezero Crater following its touchdown in February 2021. That car-sized robot has been devotedly picking up select specimens from across the area, gingerly deploying those sealed pick-me-ups on the Red Planet’s surface, as well as stuffing them inside itself. Those collectibles may well hold signs of past life on that enigmatic, dusty and foreboding world.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have for years been intently plotting out plans to send future spacecraft to Mars and haul those Perseverance-plucked bits, pieces, and sniffs of atmosphere to Earth for rigorous inspection by state-of-the-art equipment.

But President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 proposed budget blueprint issued on May 2 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) calls for a 24.3 percent reduction to NASA’s top-line funding and could slashing the space agency’s science budget by 47 percent. A casualty stemming from this projected budget bombshell is the Mars Sample Return (MSR) venture.

In fact, MSR is tagged in the White House’s proposed 2026 budget as “grossly over budget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars,” explaining that MSR is not scheduled to return samples until the 2030s…

(14) PATTON VS. THE VOLCANO. The National Air and Space Museum says it was exciting “That Time We Bombed a Volcano”.

Pilots are advised to avoid volcanic eruptions, but in 1935, a squad of U.S. bombers took a more aggressive approach. 

A crisis erupted (literally) on November 21, when lava spewed from a fissure on the summit of the nearly 14,000-foot-high Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. Six days later, a new vent opened on the volcano’s northern flank. The lava flowed downward, pooling at the base of the massive mountain, where it then began edging its way toward the town of Hilo—at the alarming rate of one mile per day.

Thomas Jaggar, the founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, grew increasingly worried after he realized the lava could reach the headwaters of the Wailuku River, which supplied water for Hilo’s 15,000 residents.

Jaggar reasoned that explosives detonated near the eruptive vent would divert the flow of lava advancing toward Hilo by collapsing the lava channels—narrow paths of fluid lava with raised rims formed by cooling magma. 

Thus, on December 26, six Keystone B-3A bombers from the 23rd Bombardment Squadron and four LB-6 light bombers from the 72nd Bombardment Squadron were deployed to Hilo from Ford Island’s Luke Field at Pearl Harbor. The next day, Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton (yes, that Patton) directed the bombers to begin their assault on Mauna Loa. Each carried two 600-pound Mark I demolition bombs, each one loaded with 300 pounds of trinitrotoluene (better known as TNT). Due to the heavy payload, the bombers flew a clearance of just 4,000 feet above the volcano.

A total of 20 of the 600-pound bombs were dropped on the lava channels. Fifteen struck the margins, while five others made direct hits, spraying molten rock in all directions.

Six days later, the eruption ended. Jaggar maintained that the bombers had helped hasten the end of the lava flow. Others are less certain. “Whether the bombing stopped the 1935 lava flow remains unknown, though many geologists today cast doubt,” notes a report later published by the U.S. Geological Survey….

(15) VIDEOS OF THE DAY. Remember the North Bergen High School stage production of Alien four years ago? The person who played the lead is now starting a Hollywood acting career. Marc Scott Zicree gives a two-minute introduction in “Alien! Sigourney Weaver! Ridley Scott! Space Command Studios! North Bergen High School?!”

You can still see the video of the “Alien High School Play — You’ve GOT to See What These Kids Pulled Off!” – with Sigourney Weaver on hand to introduce the performance.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Francis Hamit, Steve Green, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/21/25 That’s My Last Loch Ness, Hanging On The Wall

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(1) THE INVISIBLE BABY? “Baby boomers: if Sue Storm is pregnant then what’s going to happen in the Fantastic Four’s first outing?” asks the Guardian.

You might have thought that the introduction of Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four, into the MCU would be enough heavy lifting for one movie. But while all eyes were on the potential ramifications of villain Galactus turning up for planetary snack time, the new trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps delivers a mind-bending revelation: Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) is pregnant.

This looks like big news. As they prepare to take on their colossal nemesis and his gleaming, emotionally unavailable emissary Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s the Thing will be doing so in the knowledge that they’re protecting more than just the future of this Apollo-era-inspired version of Earth. And if you’ve even lightly skimmed the back catalogue of Fantastic Four comics, you’ll know this is no ordinary pregnancy; and certainly no ordinary infant.

(2) FANZINE TALK INSPIRED BY LICHTMAN COLLECTION. The Friends of the Lehigh University Libraries will be hosting a talk on Zoom on Wednesday, April 23 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern titled Worlds We Build Together: Sci-Fi Fandom, Fanzines, and the Culture of Connection.

The talk will feature panelists Phoenix Alexander (Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction and Fantasy at University of California, Riverside) and Pete Balestrieri (Curator of Popular Culture, University of Iowa Libraries), who will discuss the history of science fiction fandom and the production of fanzines that span nearly 100 years. Topics will include fanzines in the classroom and community and a celebration of the Lehigh Libraries acquisition of the Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection in 2024.

The talk is free and open to the public, but registration is required. More information about this talk and a link to register is available here.

This talk program is presented in collaboration with the exhibit Galaxy of Ideas: The Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection. 

(3) LICHTMAN COLLECTION EXHIBIT. “Galaxy of Ideas: The Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection” is on display at Lehigh University Libraries through June 2025.

Recently, the [Lehigh Libraries Special Collections] Libraries acquired the Robert Lichtman Science Fiction Fanzine Collection amounting to over 15,000 items. This extensive collection spans nearly a century, dating from the late 1930s through 2022, and features commentary, fan fiction, criticism, conference proceedings, and other genres. Along with the printed works, the archive includes correspondence, original art, and several fanzine titles personally published by Lichtman.

Fanzines, or ‘zines, as they are commonly referred to, may seem like an unusual choice for an institution whose traditional rare book collection is steeped in history. However, a previous gift of fanzines from alumnus Frank Lunney already revealed significant research interest across the curriculum. 

Boaz Nadav Manes, Lehigh University Librarian says: “Adding this comprehensive fanzine collection to Lehigh Libraries’ holdings establishes our libraries as a primary national destination for research related to science fiction studies and affiliated interdisciplinary fields. With the addition of Lichtman’s correspondence and artwork, the collections’ appeal goes much beyond its thematic focus and will generate enthusiasm around deepening our understanding of areas such as fandom culture, network analysis, gender studies, and more. We are truly excited about this landmark addition to our collection.” 

While it will take some time before the entire Lichtman fanzine collection is fully cataloged and prepared for use, we are pleased to exhibit highlighted selections from the collection showing its breadth and depth. The on-site display opens in Linderman Library in January, with additional material relating to international Worldcons (World Science Fiction Convention) opening later in Fairchild-Martindale Library. Both displays will be on view through the end of June 2025.

(4) HELP WANTED. “Now Hiring! Operations Director of SFWA”. Full details at the link.

The Operations Director is one of the key management leaders for SFWA. The Operations Director is responsible for overseeing operations (including membership and systems management), accounting and office administration, and internal fundraising and development processes (auction, sponsorship processes, and fundraising systems). The Operations Director will report directly to the President of the Board of Directors and lead a fully remote team of employees, contractors, and volunteers.

(5) COMMUNICATION FROM NEW ASIMOV’S OWNER. Subscribers are receiving the following message from Must Read Magazines, new publishers of Asimov’s Science Fiction, that the May/June issue will arrive late.

Information about your May/June 2025 Issue

Dear Subscriber,

We are confirming the buzz: Must Read Magazines is the new publisher of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

The first issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction printed under our banner will be the May / June 2025 issue, which you should receive in the mail about May 12, 2025. Your future issues will be mailed to you every other month after that.

Asimov’s Science Fiction is an iconic publication with a storied history in the genre. We are delighted its excellent editorial team has stayed on and we will all continue the group’s traditions.  We are developing many more ways to continue and build the magazine’s community and hope you will connect with us more online or in the mail during our forthcoming expansion.

Thank you for being a subscriber; we look forward to serving you with the Who’s Who of award-winning authors, stories, editorial insights and genre news for years to come.

Print subscribers who call or mail in a renewal before the end of June and mention the coupon code LIFTOFF will receive $4 off the purchase of an annual subscription to one of our other great magazines or $6 off gifting any one of our magazines to a new subscriber: Asimov’s, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and soon to come, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

(6) WILLY LEY’S ASHES DISCOVERED. “Willy Ley Was a Prophet of Space Travel. His Ashes Were Found in a Basement” reports the New York Times. Link bypasses paywall. Ley was one of the winners of the first Hugos in 1953 for “Excellence in Fact Articles”, and another in 1956 for “Feature Writer”. There are hopes of launching his ashes into space. He also won a Retro-Hugo (2004) and an International Fantasy Award (1951).

During his life, Willy Ley predicted the dawn of the Space Age with remarkable accuracy. How did his remains end up forgotten in a co-op on the Upper West Side?

The basement of the prewar co-op on the Upper West Side was so cluttered and dark in one area that the staff called it “the Dungeon,” and last year, the building’s new superintendent resolved to clear it out.

For weeks, he hauled the junk left behind by former tenants — old air-conditioners, cans of paint, ancient elevator parts and rolled-up carpets — through the winding hallway with its low ceilings to the dumpster out back.

About halfway through the job, he spied an old tin can on a shelf next to a leaf blower. He read the label:

“Remains of Willy Ley. Cremated June 26, 1969.”

This was not the sort of thing you toss in a dumpster.

The super brought his discovery to the co-op board president, Dawn Nadeau. She had plenty of co-op business to attend to — a lobby renovation, a roof replacement — but the disposition of someone’s ashes was new to her.

“We needed to handle the remains as respectfully as possible,” said Ms. Nadeau, a brand consultant. “So I set out trying to figure who this was and who it belonged to.”…

… The rise of the Nazi party disturbed Mr. Ley deeply, and in 1935, worried about the weaponization of rockets by the government, he fled Germany. Eventually, he ended up in Queens.

In New York, he made a living primarily as a science writer, churning out articles and books, including “Rockets: The Future of Travel Beyond the Stratosphere” in 1944. In it, Mr. Ley reiterated his belief in the possibility of space travel: “I wish to affirm with great seriousness that the rocket to the moon is possible,” he wrote. “Whether it has any practical value is another question and whether the experiment will be made is another story altogether.”…

…. Ms. Nadeau now has her own space mission, and it is not clear how or whether she will complete it. She found a company that said it would send the ashes into space, but the average cost listed on its website was a prohibitive $12,500.

For now, the can that holds what’s left of Mr. Ley’s earthly body is still in the co-op, tucked away in the workshop of the superintendent, Michael Hrdlovic, who first discovered it in the basement….

Willy Ley accepting 1953 Hugo in Philadelphia.

(7) CARTOON DOCTOR. Grant Watson reviews the “Lux” episode of Doctor Who at FictionMachine.

With the TARDIS unable to return to May 2025, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) instead lands in 1953 Miami. There he and Belinda (Verada Sethu) discover a mysterious closed cinema, and a missing persons case that leads them inside. There they encounter one of the strangest foes the Doctor has ever faced: a cartoon character inexplicably come to life.

I suspect a lot of viewers will be delighted by “Lux”, an ambitious and bold stretch in storytelling that is quite unlike many things the series has done before. Indeed to find something as off-kilter as the Doctor and his companion confronting a cartoon character, being turned into cartoons themselves, and even contemplating their own fictional status, one has to go all the way back to 1968’s serial “The Mind Robber”. I positively adore that story, but I did not adore “Lux”, and I am struggling to pinpoint exactly why that is….

(8) SEE IT NOW. [Item by Steven French.] If any Filer is in London from mid-May they may want to check out this exhibition on extra-terrestrial life at the Natural History Museum: “’It blew us away’: how an asteroid may have delivered the vital ingredients for life on Earth” in the Guardian.

Several billion years ago, at the dawn of the solar system, a wet, salty world circled our sun. Then it collided, catastrophically, with another object and shattered into pieces.

One of these lumps became the asteroid Bennu whose minerals, recently returned to Earth by the US robot space probe OSIRIS-REx, have now been found to contain rich levels of complex chemicals that are critical for the existence of life.

“There were things in the Bennu samples that completely blew us away,” said Prof Sara Russell, cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London, and a lead author of a major study in Nature of the Bennu minerals. “The diversity of the molecules and minerals preserved are unlike any extraterrestrial samples studied before.”

Results from this and other missions will form a central display at a Natural History Museum’s exhibition, Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth?, which opens on 16 May. It will be a key chance for the public to learn about recent developments in the hunt for life on other worlds, said Russell.

(9) NEW GERROLD NOVELLA. Starship Sloane has just published a new novella by David Gerrold, titled Here There Be Lawyers. It’s set on the colony world Praxis.  Available in print and eBook. David is the cover artist/designer for this one. 

Dar is a well-connected arbiter and Turtledome is comfortable enough. But the colony on Praxis requires his expertise in crafting a constitution—and he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. Their objective is a bold one, and if they succeed, powerful interests and a highly lucrative, intergalactic economic system will be disrupted. Permanently. A world is at play, the stakes are high, and a corporate overlord will stop at nothing to protect its investment.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 21, 1976 — Wonder Woman 1976 series episode 1

The mark of a good series is not how great the pilot is but the first episode after the pilot. Forty-six years ago this evening on ABC, the second episode of Wonder Woman aired, a curiosity titled affair called “Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther”. 

In it she got to take resurgent Nazis on in the form of a Nazi spy ring known as the Abwehr who are active again and who are targeting Steve Trevor for imprisoning the Baroness von Gunther, their leader. 

The Baroness Paula von Gunther was created by William Moulton Marston as an adversary for his creation Wonder Woman in Sensation Comics #4, 1942, “School for Spies”. Though she disappeared during the Crisis on Infinite Earth years, Jim Byrne brought her back in 1988 and made once again the Nazi villainess she once was. No villain or villainess can ever truly cease to exist in the comics realm, can they?   

This episode is based off “Wonder Woman Versus the Prison Spy Ring” in Wonder Woman #1 (July 1942). (The title comes from when it was reprinted later.) In the story, Colonel Darnell informs Trevor that an army transport ship was sunk by a German U-Boat. Believing the Nazis must have had a traitor inside the Army, Darnell orders Steve to interrogate the former head of the Gestapo system in America — The Baroness who is now serving time in a federal penitentiary thanks to Wonder Woman. 

Her only other television appearance was in 2011 on the animated Batman: The Brave and the Bold series in the “Scorn of the Star Sapphire!” episode. If you’re a Batman fan, this series which is about as serious as the Sixties series was so is a lot of fun.  It’s more contemporary is look and feel but the attitude is very similar. 

Note that this episode made Trevor responsible for her being captured. 

So how was it received? This episode ranked twelfth in the Nielsen ratings, shockingly beating out a Bob Hope special which ranked twentieth.

So here’s Wonder Woman and Baroness Von Gunther…

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) STAR WARS MANGA COLLECTION. “Dark Horse Comics and Lucasfilm Announce The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga” and the Kickstarter intended to fund publication.

As part of Star Wars Celebration, Dark Horse Comics is announcing that they will publish The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga. Two stunning volumes will each be available wherever books are sold, and will spotlight Hisao Tamaki’s original art from his acclaimed 1997 manga adaptation of Star Wars: A New Hope and include a new English translation. Ahead of retail launch in Summer 2026, Dark Horse Comics will also be offering special editions through the publisher’s first ever Kickstarter campaign.

This beautifully drawn manga will be available through Kickstarter in two distinct editions, each offering a unique way to experience this extraordinary adaptation.  The Collector’s Edition features the same two-volume hardcovers that will be available at retail but with Kickstarter exclusive covers. The Masterpiece Edition will faithfully reproduce Tamaki’s art at its original size in two volumes and include an auxiliary volume. The Masterpiece Edition format will be exclusively available through Kickstarter. Fans can now follow the prelaunch page for the Kickstarter page.

These deluxe Kickstarter-exclusive sets offer fans an opportunity to revisit the classic adventure through new eyes and in a fresh voice. A standard edition of The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope—The Manga will be released in comic shops and bookstores in 2026. Join Dark Horse and Lucasfilm to explore the creative journey of a novel view of a galaxy far, far away. 

(13) KIDS THESE DAYS. [Item by Kathy Sullivan.] I’m sure this isn’t the only middle school doing this, but I’m proud of my local school. “Students weave stories at D&D Club” in the Winona Post.

…The Dungeons & Dragons Club at WMS has been taking place for about three years for seventh and eighth graders and meets once a week for part of the school year. Students who are homeschooled or who attend schools other than WMS have also been part of the club.

Seventh Grade Language Arts Teacher and Dungeons & Dragons Club Supervisor Greg Peterson’s own experiences playing the game since he was his students’ age inspired him to pass it on. When he would talk in class about playing, as a way to show his students he’s human, too, many would express interest in the game, so he started the group.

Dungeons & Dragons is all about creating enjoyable characters and telling their stories collaboratively with a group of people, Peterson said. 

“… The collaborative storytelling experience is extremely unique. It’s different than just reading a book or watching a movie,” Peterson said. “You’re in the story. And being able to take on that mantle as a hero is empowering and is really just fun. There are times where at tables I’ve played at as a dungeon master or as a player where people have cried, people have laughed, people have been jaw-droppingly shocked at what we’ve done. We’ve gotten so deep into character we forgot we’re playing a game in some cases.” 

To help students learn how to play the game, Peterson guided them through developing characters’ backstories, such as deciding why their characters have certain powers in imagined fantasy worlds….

(14) GET OUT OF THAT BOXCAR. A horror curiosity from the Nassau Hobby Center: “O Gauge RailKing Amityville Box Car w/Glowing LEDs”.

This 40′ box car features bright, glowing LED lights on both sides of this car spaced behind the windows of the haunted Amityville House. Each LED glows at a constant intensity and is sure to catch the attention of all who see it on your own O Gauge model railroad. Completely assembled and ready-to-run. Just put it on the track and enjoy the action.

(15) NAMELESS STAR WARS SERIES IN DEVELOPMENT. [Item by Chris Barkley.] From the guy that gave us Lost and Nash Bridges: “’Star Wars’ Series in the Works with Carlton Cuse, Nick Cuse” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Prolific Lost showrunner Carlton Cuse is taking a journey into the Star Wars galaxy, with son Nick Cuse at his side. The duo is in early development on a Star Wars series for Lucasflim, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter….

The news comes on the eve of Andor season two’s debut and follows Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo, where Lucasfilm unveiled a first look at feature The Mandalorian & Grogu and revealed a title for Shawn Levy’s Ryan Gosling movie, Star Wars: Starfighter. The company also revealed new details of Ashoka season two, including the return of fan favorite Anakin Skywalker actor Hayden Christensen…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “How Captain America Brave New World Should Have Ended”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Moshe Feder, Linda Deneroff,Alex Japha, Andrew (not Werdna), Jim Meadows, 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 Daniel Dern, who assures us “No sea or lake serpents were harmed in the making of this Scroll Title. As for the wall, only time will tell.”]

Pixel Scroll 4/17/25 The Scrolled Equations

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(1) BELFAST EASTERCON FAN FUNDS AUCTION. [Item by David Langford.] The catalogue for the Eastercon Fan Funds Auction (18:30 local time on Sunday 20 April) was posted only to the Eastercon Discord server: I offered to host a copy at Ansible, and this can be found here: “2025 Reconnect Fan Funds Auction”.

From the Discord announcement: “We’re only taking bids in person this year, so if you can’t be there and want something, send a friend with clear instructions and a maximum limit.”

(2) SQUEEZED OUT. Susan Wise Bauer of Well-Trained Mind Press told Facebook readers how – despite having used only US printers — tariffs have had a damaging knock-on effect to their business.

(3) IT COULD BE VERSE. Camestros Felapton delivers a good report on a unique novel-length Best Poem finalist: “Hugo 2025: Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead”.

…One thing I love about the Hugo Awards is when you find an unexpected treat in the finalists — something you didn’t know you’d love but knocks your socks off when you read it. This year (so far) it is Calypso. Inventive, thought provoking, solidly science fictional and a sensory experience….

(4) NO TIMEY-WIMEY FOR THIS. “’Why be toxic?’: Russell T Davies hits back at claims Doctor Who too woke” in the Guardian.

The Doctor Who screenwriter Russell T Davies has said he has no time for “online warriors” who claim the show is too woke….

…“Someone always brings up matters of diversity,” Davies said on the Radio 2 programme Doctor Who: 20 Secrets from 20 Years. “And there are online warriors accusing us of diversity and wokeness and involving messages and issues.

“And I have no time for this. I don’t have a second to bear [it]. Because what you might call diversity, I just call an open door.”…

(5) FROM TOKYO BY WAY OF TENNESSEE. With what’s going on in the country, this is the right beverage in the right container: “Godzilla Whiskey Bottle Collector’s Edition”. Holds 10 ounces of kaiju hooch. Goes for $32.98. (No, I don’t know where they came up with that odd number. Maybe it’s a tariff thing.)

Marking 70 years of Godzilla’s iconic legacy, this whiskey bottle features a fierce design inspired by the legendary kaiju. With bold details and a commanding presence, it’s the perfect tribute to the monster who has terrorized and captivated generations.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 17, 1964 — The Twilight Zone‘s “The Jeopardy Room”

The cast of characters—a cat and a mouse, this is the latter. The intended victim who may or may not know that he is to die, be it by butchery or ballet. His name is Major Ivan Kuchenko. He has, if events go according to certain plans, perhaps three or four more hours of living. But an ignorance shared by both himself and his executioner, is of the fact that both of them have taken the first step into the Twilight Zone.

Opening narration of this episode. 

On this evening sixty-one years ago, The Twilight Zone‘s “The Jeopardy Room” first aired on CBS.  The plot is Major Ivan Kuchenko  as played by Martin Landau, a KGB agent who is attempting to defect, is trapped inside a hotel room in an unnamed, politically neutral country with a bomb about to go off unless he can disarm it. I’m assuming that you’ve seen, but on the grounds that you might not have, I won’t say more. It’s a splendid bit of Cold War paranoia. 

Not surprisingly, it was written by Serling though some of the episodes weren’t. It was directed by Richard Donner who later on would be known for The Omen, Scrooged and Superman but this was very early on in his career and he had just three years earlier released X-15, an aviation film that presented a fictionalized account of the X-15 research rocket aircraft program. Neat indeed. 

It is one of only a handful of The Twilight Zone episodes that has no fantastical elements at all. It’s a classic Cold War story more befitting a Mission: Impossible set-up than this series. It even involves a message delivered by way of a tape recorder, but mind you that series is two years in the future so that has to be just a coincidence. Or The Twilight Zone being The Twilight Zone…

The Twilight Zone is streaming on Paramount+. 

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) MARVEL SWIMSUIT SPECIAL RETURNS. The legendary Marvel Swimsuit Special is back this July.

 Throughout the ‘90s, fans enjoyed a lighter side of the Marvel Universe in Marvel Swimsuit Special, an annual one-shot that featured breathtaking artwork of Marvel characters in beach attire and swimwear. This unique and beloved special makes its long-demanded return this July in MARVEL SWIMSUIT SPECIAL: FRIENDS, FOES & RIVALS #1!

Primarily an artist showcase, Marvel Swimsuit Special presented pinups from the industry’s top talents in a magazine-style format, complete with tongue-in-cheek articles and descriptions.

Roxxon Comics is at it again when they release their own UNAUTHORIZED SWIMSUIT SPECIAL! Wasp is on the case and seizes the opportunity for Marvel’s heroes to do their OWN swimwear fashion shoot all over the world! But fear not, True Believers, we know what you’re REALLY here for! This super-sized special features splash page after splash page of gorgeous art, but with a story so you can pretend you’re “reading it for the articles”…

For more information, visit Marvel.com. [Click for larger images.]

(9) THE CHAMBERS WILL OPEN. The Steampunk Explorer says “’Nautilus’ Set for North American Premiere in June”.

The wait will soon be over for steampunk fans in the U.S. and Canada, as AMC Networks finally revealed the premiere date for Nautilus, the Disney-produced TV series that tells the origin story of Captain Nemo.

The 10-episode series will debut with two episodes on Sunday, June 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, on the AMC cable channel and AMC+ streaming service. It will air weekly on Sundays until the two-episode finale on Aug. 17.

The series stars Shazad Latif as Captain Nemo, described as “an Indian Prince robbed of his birthright and family, a prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company and a man bent on revenge against the forces that have taken everything from him.”…

(10) WE’VE MISUNDERSTOOD URANUS ALL THESE YEARS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Hubble Space Telescope data show that the time taken for the planet to revolve around its axis is almost half a minute longer than was thought.

Primary research here: “A new rotation period and longitude system for Uranus” in Nature Astronomy.

(11) IN MY DAY ANNIHILATION WAS SUMMUT DALEKS DID. OR WUZ THAT EXTERMINATION? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I don’t know about you but there are some authors I have never got around to reading even though they are award winning authors. For me, Jeff Vandermeer is one such. I was aware (doing SF² Concatenation) that his ‘Southern reach’ trilogy was doing well: the ‘Southern Reach’ trilogy (which I gather has recently morphed into something extra) was short-listed for a Best Series Hugo as well as a Locus Best Series and, of course, Annihilation won a Nebula. But the give-away for me was that before all these accolades, my fellow members of our team selected it as one of our annual Best SF novels we do every January (feel free to scroll down here as over the years it has shown to be somewhat predictive). So, I knew the book was special. However, Vandermeer’s Brit Cit publishers are a far broader church than a specialist SF/F imprint and as it is almost a full time job liaising with these last but not all imprints, I missed the book coming our way, but my teammates didn’t! And so given their recommendation I sought out the film… and, oh dear, I didn’t like it even though it was Alex Garland…. (Give me Strugatskis’ Roadside Picnic and the film Stalker any day… But I guess that’s my loss: not everyone can like everything.

All of this is a long-winded way of my saying that Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult has just re-released, and updated, a 19-minute video on both the book and the film, Annihilation. Now, this is more a book review than a film review, and it is more a review than a critique. So, as Moid himself explains, that if you have seen the film Annihilation but not the book then you need not worry about spoilers in his vid. Conversely, if have not seen the film or read the book then beware, spoilers ahoy…

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George annoys “The AI That Writes Every Pop Song”. When the revolution comes….

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

Pixel Scroll 4/15/25 The Goldendoodle At Starbow’s End

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For this special issue, we are looking for:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stories featured in this episode:

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

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

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Small Change trilogy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(9) COMICS SECTION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 4/14/25 Peter And The Dire Wolf

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(1) SARA FELIX UPDATE. Sara Felix, whose husband was badly injured when their new house blew up yesterday, has given Facebook friends a news update.

The girls have such a nurturing bunch of moms that have watched them while I am at the hospital.

The community was damaged by this not just us. It is scary how big of an accident it was.

We hadn’t moved in so the girls are at the current house. Cheeto and everyone is fine.

Keith is stable and is through surgery. He has burns on a large percentage of his body, but he is recovering.

(2) AUREALIS AWARDS. The 2024 Aurealis Awards shortlists were announced today. Complete information at the link.

(3) FAAN AWARDS. The winners of the FAAn Awards for fanzine achievement were revealed yesterday in the UK. The full list is here: “2025 FAAn Awards”.

(4) STURGEON SYMPOSIUM DATES AND CALL FOR PAPERS. The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas has set the dates for the 2025 Sturgeon Symposium.

The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction is pleased to announce our 4th Annual Sturgeon Symposium, to be held October 9-10, 2025. In addition to presenting the annual Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story, which will include a reading from the winner, we are delighted to announce that Darcie Little Badger has accepted our invitation to speak at the symposium. 

We have opened our call for papers where we invite papers, panel proposals, and roundtable discussions that engage with this year’s theme: “Expanding Speculative Horizons.” Inspired by Darcie Little Badger’s diverse contributions to SF (novels, short stories, comics, etc.), we encourage a wide range of submissions, especially those that reflect upon expansive understandings of speculative expression.

We encourage you to submit and share our CFP widely. Below you will find the link to our CFP with more details on the event and guidelines for proposals. Deadlines for submissions is May 19.

(5) DOCTOR WHO HISTORY. [Item by Nickpheas.] Front Row on BBC Radio 4 has quite a long feature on the new series of Doctor Who which spread to cover the history of the show, and even a brief interview with Waris Hussein, the original director (who I didn’t realize was still alive). “…Doctor Who new series & impact on culture…”. Doctor Who feature starts 11:20 in.

(6) RUSSELL T DAVIES Q&A. Parade tries to find out what’s coming in this season and the next: “’Doctor Who’ Boss Russell T Davies Breaks Down That ‘Earth-Shattering’ Premiere Twist”.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the modern incarnation of Doctor Who, which you helped bring on screen. What have you learned most over the course of working on so many episodes and with so many Doctors?
I mean, it’s astonishing. I just look exactly the same. So clearly, I’m made of Adamantium. It’s funny because actually, a couple of years ago, the BBC said, “You want to celebrate the 20th anniversary.” And I said, “We’ve just had a 60th anniversary!” And on Disney+, it’s only two years old, so no, so we chose not to. Now we get to the 20th, and everyone’s talking about the 20th. And I feel a bit stupid. We didn’t really do anything to celebrate it. Someone at the BBC is making a documentary, so that’ll be out in a couple of months.

I think about Doctor Who, you learn something new with every single episode. It was different. Now this year, coming out in Episode 2, this year, we go to Miami in 1952, where there’s a living cartoon. The cartoon has stepped out of the cinema screen, voiced by Alan Cumming. So, for that, we all had to learn hand-drawn animation. I’ve worked in television for a million years. And I’ve done graphics, I’ve done CGI. I’ve never actually done hand-drawn animation before, which was amazing.

What I did learn is it’s 15 times more meetings than anything else I’ve ever done. [Laughs.] But it’s wonderful. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and I appreciate the skill of the animator more than ever. And Doctor Who has always done that. Always every week, it’s different. I mean, last year, we sort of said to ourselves, “Can we do an episode where the enemy is just an old woman who stands 73 yards away?” And we did, and it worked. So you have to take these very deep breaths and sort of say, “Is this going to work?” And have faith in it. So it teaches you something different every single time. And 20 years whizzes past in a flash….

… As we’re just starting out Season 2 on Disney+, are you already in the planning stages for Season 3?
We’ll always look ahead to the future if we get the chance to keep running. I’ve got ideas. “I think I’ll do that near [Season] 4 or 5.” And that’s always the way I’ve worked on things. So yes, I could promise you amazing stuff at the end of Season 4. There are things we’ve already mentioned that are going to bear fruit a long time into the future. So that’s just the fun of it. That’s the fun of Doctor Who. But, to say again, it’s the pit stops along the way….

(7) NAME THAT ORBIT. Mental Floss challenges readers: “Can You Match the Moon to the Planet It Belongs To?” Take the quiz at the link. Uh, after Earth and the Moon, my hit rate rapidly declined. I got 41%. You can do better!

(8) SF WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A WARNING, NOT A BLUEPRINT FOR THE FUTURE. Sam Freedman’s latest column in The Guardian is: “The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world?”

One can only imagine the horror the late Iain Banks would have felt on learning his legendary Culture series is a favourite of Elon Musk. The Scottish author was an outspoken socialist who could never understand why rightwing fans liked novels that were so obviously an attack on their worldview….

… Musk isn’t alone in his enthusiasms. Mark Zuckerberg has renamed his company and sunk $100bn in pursuit of the “metaverse”, a word that first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. So obsessed is Zuckerberg with the book – in which people plug into a simulated world to avoid a real one fallen into dystopian chaos – that at one point all product managers at Facebook were asked to read it as part of their training. Snow Crash also inspired the development of Google Earth, and was mandatory reading for the Xbox development team at Microsoft. Jeff Bezos loves Stephenson so much that he hired him to work for his Blue Origin rocket company.

If sci-fi’s influence was simply on product design, it wouldn’t be a problem. If Zuckerberg wants to burn his own cash in pursuit of a personal fantasy, or Musk wants to build hideous cars, that’s their call. It may even inspire something genuinely useful from time to time….

…The real issue is that sci-fi hasn’t just infused the tech moguls’ commercial ideas but also their warped understanding of society and politics. The dominant genre of sci-fi in the 80s and 90s, when today’s Silicon Valley overlords were growing up, was Cyberpunk – as exemplified in the novels of William Gibson (who invented the term “cyberspace”) and Stephenson, as well as any number of films and video games. The grandfather of the genre was Philip K Dick, whose novels and short stories spawned films including Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report.

https://dff5fe6618baf1dc9a69a0f44e8ea6da.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-41/html/container.html Dick’s stories were fuelled by amphetamine-driven paranoia. Nothing can be trusted and nobody is who they appear to be. It’s a style that’s arguably had more impact on modern culture and aesthetics than any other. The Matrix (1999) is just one example of Dick’s wider influence: he had often spoken of other worlds and suggested our own reality was a simulation.

As historian Richard Hofstadter noted in his famous 1964 essay, the “paranoid style” has been a feature of rightwing American politics for a long time – but The Matrix has given it a new vocabulary and imagery….

(9) PKD AT MEDIA DEATH CULT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult is really into Philip K. Dick.  He has just posted a quick guide to the author. You can see the 24 minute video below…

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Probe series (1988)

Thirty-seven years ago on this date, the Probe series ended its seven-episode run, not by any means the shortest run of a series we’ve looked at – several, such as Nightmare Cafe and Space Rangers, lasted only six episodes. Can anyone recall a genre series that lasted less episodes? I’m sure there is one. 

It was co- created by Michael I. Wagner and Isaac Asimov. Asimov had quite some background in television SF series and Wagner was previously known for creating Hill Street Blues. (You can purchase all one hundred forty episodes at Apple TV+ for just $39.95!) 

Here Asimov co-created, produced and according to ImDB was involved in writing all of the eight scripts. That’s not particularly surprising to me that he did that given how prolific he was. 

The pilot and series starred Parker Stevenson as Austin James, an asocial genius who solved high tech crimes, and Ashley Crow as James’ new secretary Mickey Castle. Stevenson’s only major casting was on Baywatch.  Row has a serious genre credit as she played Sandra Bennett on Heroes. That series is streaming on Peacock. And no, I really don’t care if Baywatch is streaming anywhere.

It aired on ABC just once and was re-aired on Syfy, though they edited the episodes to stuff in extra commercials as they did every series they aired which they hadn’t produced. 

What happened to it? Did poor ratings doom it? No, they didn’t. As one reviewer notes, “Together, these two encounter out-of-control experiments, supernatural events, and mysterious deaths. As you might expect, Probe features heavy doses of scientific knowledge and logical reasoning, but was cut short due to the 1988 writers strike.” 

Remember the Australian-filmed Mission: Impossible shot during the writers strike was only a go because they dug into the file drawers of the first series and used not filmed scripts. Or possibly Grave’s  brain. 

It is not streaming anywhere. Except Space Rangers, I find really short run series that were not done as miniseries tend not to be streamed. 

Do I have to say that all those YouTube copies are illegal, so links will be, oh, need I say it?

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) YMMV DURING HOLY WEEK. There is a surprising sf film mentioned in this NPR story. “Revisiting our favorite (and not so favorite) religious films” at NPR.

DETROW: And even for those of us who live more secular lives, movies continue to offer a bit of a cinematic catechism with stories from the Bible and other religious traditions. And with Passover and Holy Week underway, we figured it would be a good time to talk about faith and film. I’m joined by NPR’s religion correspondent, Jason DeRose. Hey, Jason….

… DEROSE: Well, I have a very specific group of religion movies that I actually like quite a lot, and they are comedies. They’re the Monty Python films – “The Life Of Brian,” “The Holy Grail,” “The Meaning Of Life.” “The Meaning Of Life” has one of the funniest songs I ever heard in my life – “Every Sperm Is Sacred.”…

…MARTIN: The other film that I – is, like, “Arrival,” for example…

DETROW: Yes.

MARTIN: …Which is, again, like, science – it’s supposedly science fiction, right? But, like, I think a lot of films in sci-fi also – or that are technically sci-fi actually live in a – to me, in a spiritual space because they ask hard questions. What is the meaning of existence, and how do we know?…

(13) WHIP IT GOOD! Inverse tells how “’Indiana Jones And The Great Circle’ Just Got A Lot More Fun”. (See the Launch Trailer on YouTube.)

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle was one of the best games of 2024. Machine Games’ remarkable fusion of stealth gameplay, detailed open-ended levels, and a dogged faithfulness to the film series was a match made in heaven. Now, just a week ahead of its PlayStation 5 debut, The Great Circle is getting a few new additions that will make re-experiencing this modern classic worthwhile.

The Great Circle Title Update 4 will add entirely new perks for players to take advantage of in combat, over a dozen quality of life improvements, and a new hilarious use for an often underutilized item in the game.

The biggest item on the list is two new Adventure Books. One is called “Open Season,” which makes enemies more vulnerable to follow-up damage after getting hit with Indy’s whip. The second is called “Sleight of Hand,” which lets Indy use his whip to pull an enemy’s weapon towards him after doing a disarm whip attack. For players partial to the game’s optional gunplay, Sleight of Hand will add new strategy and variety to how ranged combat encounters play out.

For the more melee-focused player, Indy now has a secondary use for repair kits. These consumables are typically used to give more longevity to Indy’s makeshift weapon of choice. But The Great Circle is so chock-full of random pick-ups that they can often go ignored through most (if not all) of a single playthrough. Machine Games has made note of this player trend and adjusted things accordingly.

“Some of you have told us that you don’t have much use for Repair Kits,” the update’s patch notes read. “Well, now you can throw them at your enemies!”…

(14) WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE. Learn “How climate change could disrupt the construction and operations of US nuclear submarines” at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

…In recent years, the Defense Department has started to acknowledge climate change as a “threat multiplier”—albeit slowly. Acknowledging the billions of dollars climate change could cost the Navy in the future, the Pentagon now incorporates inclement weather disasters and other climate effects into military planning and base structures. However, during the first Trump administration, the Navy quietly ended the climate change task force put in place by the Obama administration, which taught naval leaders how to adapt to rising sea levels. As the new Trump administration wipes all mention of climate change and other environmental measures from federal agency websites, climate-related measures may also be halted despite being critical for the viability of naval missions.

Most of the naval construction and operations infrastructure for the United States’ ballistic missile submarines are located on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Due to sea level rise and increased inclement weather attributed to climate change, these facilities are becoming more vulnerable to flooding. The intensity and number of hurricanes in the North Atlantic region have increased since the 1980s and will continue to do so as ocean temperatures keep rising, further threatening coastal areas. These incidents are highly costly and disruptive to operations. According to a Congressional Research Service report, the Defense Department has 1,700 coastal military installations that could be impacted by sea level rise. In 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida suffered $4.7 billion in damages from Hurricane Michael.

Infrastructure at risk. General Dynamics Electric Boat—the lead contractor for the new Columbia-class submarines—performs over three-quarters of the construction operations for the 12 new ships at its two shipbuilding facilities located in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Both facilities are in at-risk flood areas….

(15) IN DEFENSE OF SCIENCE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Science by definition is arguable genre-adjacent to SF.  So no better a time for an appeal for reason.

The world’s two leading multi-disciplinary journals, Nature and Science have in the past month had a series of articles and news items reporting on how science in the US is being dismantled, and how it is being mis-represented by politicians on a range of issues from climate change to vaccines.

Ironically, Brit Prof Dave Kipping moved to US for his career and now many scientists are moving back and some US scientists are leaving.  See his 12-minute video from the Cool Worlds Lab…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] DeForest Kelley was apparently well-prepared for Trek: “DeForest Kelley on The Millionaire”. Watch until the end.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Olav Rokne, Nickpheas, Andrew (not Werdna), 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 Daniel “Prokofiev” Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/12/25 Hey, Scroll. Take A Walk On The Filed Side

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(1) THE FATE OF U.S. WORLDCONS WEIGHED. Two editorials came out today addressing how Worldcons should react to the increased risks of international travel to the U.S.

The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog’s post “Worldcon In An Age Of American Truculence” concludes:

…Because of the voter base, institutional knowledge, and enormous fan base, US Worldcons will and should always occur. But perhaps there should be an increased willingness among fandom to support overseas conventions in locations that present logistical hurdles for North American travellers. If we may be so bold, perhaps we as fans should encourage the practice of having a Worldcon outside of North America every second year.

In an age of US truculence, Worldcon needs to embrace friends and allies around the globe without turning its back on the generations of fans and volunteers who have built it as an institution.

Gary Westfahl’s “Op-Ed: ‘No More Worldcons in the United States?’” at File 770 starts with a more draconian conclusion:

The time has come to cancel or move the 2025 Seattle Worldcon.

And to cancel or move the 2026 Los Angeles Worldcon.

It has to be done, in order to honor a century-old tradition of science fiction….

(2) FRANK R. PAUL AWARDS. Frank Wu has announced that the 2025 Frank R. Paul Awards will be presented at Philcon (November 21-23). Due to the lateness of the convention in the calendar, he is extending the deadline for submissions for the Frank R. Paul Awards for another month, to May 15. All artists, publishers and editors are enthusiastically encouraged to submit their 2024 work to the main awards administrator, Frank Wu, at FWu@Frankwu.com Details are available here: “Frank R. Paul Awards”.

Frank R. Paul Award trophy. Photo by Rich Lynch.

(3) BALTICON SUNDAY SHORT SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL 2025. [Item by lance oszko.] The Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival 2025 has curated 19 short films representing 8 countries. Featured are Short Stories adapted into Short Films.

Sunday 25 May 2025 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.

George RR Martin produced another Howard Waldrop film Mary Margaret Road Grader“. Estimated budget $2.2 Million. Director Steven Paul Judd is known for Dark Winds and Marvel’s Echo. It has a score by Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi.

Italian Director Luca Caserta brings us The Reach. One of the last authorized Dollar Baby Stephen King Films.
With a song by Bruce Springsteen.

Director George Vatistas adapted The Hobbyist by Frederic Brown.

Actor Stacy Thunes (Nosferatu – Head Nurse) currently at Universal Studios, Japan stars in The Hairdo.

An Old Friend. Director Nuk Suwanchote. An imaginary friend (Jason Faunt) finds out his sole purpose is to bring happiness to his child, only to discover his child is a 90 year old man (Tom Skerritt) on his deathbed.

First time Local filmmakers were also selected in Twilight Zone and Animation motifs.

Horror and Fantasy round out our offerings.

(4) “I’M NOT A ROBOT” [Item by lance oszko.] The Balticon Sunday Short Science Fiction Film Festival could not arrange a screening, but still worthy of your attention. “Watch The Surreal Identity Crisis of ‘I’m Not a Robot’” in The New Yorker.

(5) SFF BOOKS OUT OF NAVAL ACADEMY LIBRARY. Allen Steele pointed out that the list of 381 books pulled from the U.S. Naval Academy library (reported at the top of yesterday’s Scroll) includes several works of sff (even though the vast majority are nonfiction about gender issues or racism). Steele asks, “Wonder what Robert Heinlein would have to say about the actions of his Alma mater?”

The three sff works I found on the list are:

  • Light From Uncommon Stars / RykaAoki.
  • Sorrowland / Rivers Solomon
  • A Psalm For The Wild-Built / Becky Chambers.

(6) AUSTEN IN INNSMOUTH. Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein finds much to enjoy in “’Innsmouth Park’ (2025) by Jane Routley”.

Jane Austen’s role in weird fiction is underappreciated, largely because she herself didn’t really write any (although Northanger Abbey is a biting satire of the Gothic novel, and a must-read for Gothic fans which even Lovecraft acknowledged, which has to at least classify Austen as weird fiction’s strange aunt.) Yet the world she described, the characters and milieu she envisioned, have been enduring and influential far beyond the genre she initially worked in. Generations of writers have called back to Austen, and mashups like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) by Austen & Ben H. Winters, Regency Cthulhu (2023) by Andrew Peregrine & Lynne Hardy, and Secrets & Sacrifices: A Regency Cthulhu Novel (2024) by Cath Lauria all point to a similar rainy-day afternoon brainstorm:

Why not mix Austen and Lovecraft?…

(7) PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS FINALISTS.  There are almost no nominees of genre interest among the 2025 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists. The one exception is in this category, a work of horror fiction.

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)

For a book-length translation of prose from any language into English.

The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk. Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead Books)

(8) BBC COVERAGE OF BELFAST EASTERCON. Eastercon got a 15-minute slot on BBC Northern Ireland with Jo Zebedee and Ian McDonald doing an interview and chatting about it. “Saturday with John Toal – Puppets, Worms and Sci-fi”. Interview starts at 45m20s.

…As Belfast prepares to host a special Sci Fi convention Eastercon, for the first time in its 76 year history, John hears from two successful science fiction writers Ian McDonald and Jo Zebedee….

(9) STUNT OSCAR APPROVED. “Oscars Add Best Stunt Design Category Starting in 2027” – Variety has the story.

…“Since the early days of cinema, stunt design has been an integral part of filmmaking,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang. “We are proud to honor the innovative work of these technical and creative artists, and we congratulate them for their commitment and dedication in reaching this momentous occasion.”

In a statement, Leitch said, “Stunts are essential to every genre of film and rooted deep in our industry’s history—from the groundbreaking work of early pioneers like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin, to the inspiring artistry of today’s stunt designers, coordinators, performers, and choreographers.” He went on to say, “This has been a long journey for so many of us. Chris O’Hara and I have spent years working to bring this moment to life, standing on the shoulders of the stunt professionals who’ve fought tirelessly for recognition over the decades. We are incredibly grateful. Thank you, Academy.”

…Category rules for eligibility and voting for the inaugural award will be announced in 2027 with the complete 100th Academy Awards Rules….

(10) BLACK MIRROR. “Black Mirror Season 7’s Tech Tales Come With a Knife-Twist of Emotion” — Gizmodo gets down to cases.

A new season of Black Mirror has arrived, and with it the usual cautionary tales (and screaming warnings) about technology’s darkest capabilities—wrapped in a deceptively alluring blanket of “Jeez, that would actually be really cool if it were real!” Across six episodes, season seven boasts some of the show’s all-time greatest performances, as well as its first sequel episode, which proves well worth the eight-year wait….

(11) MIDDLE-EARTH WAYFINDER. Wisconsin Public Radio profiles Karen Wynn Fonstad, “The Wisconsin cartographer who mapped Tolkien’s fantasy world”.

If you’ve ever wanted to explore the world of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” the best place to start might be Oshkosh.

That’s where a Wisconsin cartographer created dozens of maps that went into “The Atlas of Middle-earth,” the official geographic guide to the world of author J.R.R. Tolkien. Her work went on to influence “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy.

Like many readers, Karen Wynn Fonstad fell in love with the fantasy series and went through multiple readings. Unlike most readers, she was trained as a cartographer, and came up with an ambitious plan to use the texts to create realistic maps from Tolkien’s texts.

Fonstad passed away 20 years ago. Now, her husband and her son — both geographers themselves — have embarked on a new quest: to digitize her original maps and find an archive to house them…

… “It’s a little bit of an overwhelming process because, first of all, there’s hundreds of maps. Secondly, the maps are built in such a way that they have many layers to them,” Mark said. “I barely scratched the surface this week.”

As we walk into the map library, we are surrounded by Middle-earth. Mordor, the Shire and all points in between are represented. And not just Middle-earth. Karen created works for other fantasy worlds — some never published.

How do you scan a collection of maps of varying sizes, some of them in delicate condition?

You need a big scanner, caution and some patience….

… In 1977, she called the American publisher of Tolkien’s work, Houghton Mifflin, to pitch the idea of an atlas. As Todd recalled, the person in charge of handling Tolkien’s work fell in love with the idea, and the Tolkien estate gave it the thumbs-up.

Then the work really began….

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Mad Max film (1979)

By Paul Weimer: The quintessential post-apocalyptic movie, the one with the real breakthrough. Sure, A Boy and His Dog and Damnation Alley and others preceded it, but this was the movie, series of movies that made a star of Mel Gibson, and the scenes of the Australian desert became the cinematic language and landscape of what a post apocalyptic world should look like in three movies that it took dozens for, say, the American Western.

That’s the power of Mad Max, that’s the power of George Miller’s cinematography. One could approach these movies from all sorts of angles, from worldbuilding to characterization, to point of view. As an example-the second movie, Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) is not told from the point of view and perspective that you’d expect. It’s a recreation, a retelling, and that brings in all sorts of interesting questions about narrative and conventions and storytelling. 

Or one could explore Max as a character, from his end of the world cop, all through the damaged survivor in the latest Mad Max movie, where he literally is used as a resource. 

Or one could explore environmental themes, social themes, and the psychology of the survivors of the landscape, from the small to the mighty.

But I want to talk a bit about cinematography, as a person interested in image, you are not surprised. One thing that told me and showed me that Miller “Still had it” in Fury Road was the scene with the dust storm and the vehicles approaching it. You know the scene if you watched it. It was solid proof for me that Miller’s fantastic cinematography, to be able to bring the wildness of the Australian wasteland to life in the previous films, was still there. It recalled for me of many of the other iconic places and imagery used in the series, from Thunderdome back through the mean streets of Melbourne in Mad Max. The lack of dialogue in much of the films means that Miller’s storytelling in the films is necessarily what the movies are carried on. And it is indeed carried so effectively. You remember the visuals, the costumes, the sets, and of course the vehicles. How many gearheads were born from watching these movies?

One last fun note on Mad Max. The first bit of Mad Max I saw was not until the mid 80’s. I accidentally caught the last few minutes on a videotape recording of Mad Max 2 while trying to (don’t judge) see D.C. Follies. I wondered what the heck I had watched and looked it up in the TV guide…and then I recorded and watched The Road Warrior and was captivated.  Later, I found the original Mad Max…and then, of course Thunderdome.

Mad Max. A cinematic icon, four movies (5 if you count Furious) and counting.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) TWO HEARTS AND TWO EARS. “Graham Norton to star in Eurovision-themed Doctor Who episode” reports BBC.

Graham Norton is to star in a new episode of Doctor Who, taking his Eurovision commentary duties to an Interstellar Song Contest.

Norton, the BBC’s voice of Eurovision, will meet Ncuti Gatwa’s Time Lord at the 803rd annual Interstellar Song Contest, where different planets compete to be crowned winner.

“And it’s not just a cameo,” showrunner Russell T Davies said. “He has a whole plot twist all to himself!”

The episode will also feature fellow Eurovision fanatic and broadcaster Rylan Clark as the event’s co-host, and will be broadcast on BBC One just before this year’s real-life grand final on 17 May….

(15) THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. “How might AI chatbots replace mental health therapists?” asks The Week.

There is a striking shortage of mental health care providers in the United States. New research suggests that AI chatbots can fill in the gaps — and be remarkably effective while doing so.

Artificial intelligence can deliver mental health therapy “with as much efficacy as — or more than — human clinicians,” said NPR. New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the results delivered by a bot designed at Dartmouth College.

What did the commentators say?

There was initially a lot of “trial and error” in training AI to work with humans suffering from depression and anxiety, said Nick Jacobson, one of the researchers, but the bot ultimately delivered outcomes similar to the “best evidence-based trials of psychotherapy.” Patients developed a “strong relationship with an ability to trust” the digital therapist, he said.

Other experts see “reliance on bot-based therapy as a poor substitute for the real thing,” said Axios. Therapy is about “forming a relationship with another human being who understands the complexity of life,” said sociologist Sherry Turkle. But another expert, Skidmore College’s Lucas LaFreniere, said it depends on whether patients are willing to suspend their disbelief. “If the client is perceiving empathy,” he said, “they benefit from the empathy.”….

(16) UPON FURTHER CONSIDERATION. “MIT study finds that AI doesn’t, in fact, have values” says TechCrunch.

A study went viral several months ago for implying that, as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it develops “value systems” — systems that lead it to, for example, prioritize its own well-being over humans. A more recent paper out of MIT pours cold water on that hyperbolic notion, drawing the conclusion that AI doesn’t, in fact, hold any coherent values to speak of.

The co-authors of the MIT study say their work suggests that “aligning” AI systems — that is, ensuring models behave in desirable, dependable ways — could be more challenging than is often assumed. AI as we know it today hallucinates and imitates, the co-authors stress, making it in many aspects unpredictable.

“One thing that we can be certain about is that models don’t obey [lots of] stability, extrapolability, and steerability assumptions,” Stephen Casper, a doctoral student at MIT and a co-author of the study, told TechCrunch. “It’s perfectly legitimate to point out that a model under certain conditions expresses preferences consistent with a certain set of principles. The problems mostly arise when we try to make claims about the models, opinions, or preferences in general based on narrow experiments.”

Casper and his fellow co-authors probed several recent models from Meta, Google, Mistral, OpenAI, and Anthropic to see to what degree the models exhibited strong “views” and values (e.g., individualist versus collectivist). They also investigated whether these views could be “steered” — that is, modified — and how stubbornly the models stuck to these opinions across a range of scenarios.

According to the co-authors, none of the models was consistent in its preferences. Depending on how prompts were worded and framed, they adopted wildly different viewpoints.

Casper thinks this is compelling evidence that models are highly “inconsistent and unstable” and perhaps even fundamentally incapable of internalizing human-like preferences….

(17) BIRD WORRIES. “Conservationists raise alarm over Air Force plan to land SpaceX Starships on bird sanctuary atoll” reports Space.com.

The U.S. military is considering Johnston Atoll, a remote Pacific island chain that serves as an important refuge for dozens of seabird species, for “two commercial rocket landing pads” to test giant cargo rocket landings for the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, and it’s getting push-back from environmentalists.

The Rocket Cargo Vanguard program aims to develop the technologies required to rapidly deliver up to 100 tons of cargo anywhere on Earth using commercial rockets. Though not explicitly named, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is currently the only company —commercial or otherwise — capable of manufacturing rockets designed for landing and reuse, and its Starship megarocket is DAF’s leading contender. The Air Force outlined its plans in a Federal Registry notice last month. Objections from the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), however, may hinder plans for the new landing pads on the South Pacific atoll.Johnston Atoll lies about 825 miles (1,325 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii, and is home to several different species of seabirds, including the largest known colony of Red-tailed Tropicbirds. It was designated a refuge for native bird populations in 1926, but suffered environmental degradation through 2004, due to its use by the U.S. military as a nuclear weapons testing and chemical weapons disposal site. Since the military’s departure from the islands, restoration efforts have helped raise Johnston Atoll’s bird population back to nearly 1.5 million.

(18) ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYES? “Purple Isn’t Real, Science Says. Your Brain Is Just Making It Up” reports Popular Mechanics. If there is no purple, does that mean there can be no purple people eaters?

You might be today years old when you realize there is no purple in the rainbow. There is no P in ROYGBIV.

But wait, what about violet? Well, despite what you may have come to believe, violet is not purple. In fact, violet (along with the rest of the colors in a naturally occurring rainbow) has something purple doesn’t—its own wavelength of light. Anyone who ever ended up with a sunburn knows violet wavelengths are real, as the Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation is the reason you need to wear sunscreen, even though you can’t see those wavelengths (more on that later). Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo are all just as real.

But purple? Well, purple is just your brain’s way of resolving confusion.

That’s right. Red and blue (or violet) wavelengths are two opposite extremes on the spectrum. When you see both of these wavelengths in the same place, you eyes and brain don’t know what to do with them, so they compensate, and the clashing wavelengths register as the color we call purple. It doesn’t actually exist….

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

Pixel Scroll 4/11/25 Within This Scroll Of Pixels And Sin/Your Tribbles Grow Bald But Not Your Kzin

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(1) SINKING THE NAVAL ACADEMY LIBRARY. The New York Times reveals “Who’s In and Who’s Out at the Naval Academy’s Library?” (Behind a paywall). “An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power.”

 Gone is “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou’s transformative best-selling 1970 memoir chronicling her struggles with racism and trauma.

Two copies of “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler are still on the shelves.

Gone is “Memorializing the Holocaust,” Janet Jacobs’s 2010 examination of how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed and remembered.

“The Camp of the Saints” by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. The 1973 novel, which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from developing countries, has been embraced by white supremacists and promoted by Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser.

“The Bell Curve,” which argues that Black men and women are genetically less intelligent than white people, is still there. But a critique of the book was pulled.

The Trump administration’s decision to order the banning of certain books from the U.S. Naval Academy’s library is a case study in ideological censorship, alumni and academics say.

Political appointees in the Department of the Navy’s leadership decided which books to remove. A look at the list showed that antiracists were targeted, laying bare the contradictions in the assault on so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies….

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to wolf down lamb with Carolyn Ives Gilman in Episode 251 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Carolyn Ives Gilman

Carolyn Ives Gilman was one of my earliest guests of the podcast, appearing all the way back on Episode 5. Nine years and two days later, the night she was taking part in the latest Charm City Spec, we decided it was time to chat and chew for you again.

Gilman’s books include her first novel Halfway Human, which has been called “one of the most compelling explorations of gender and power in recent SF;” Dark Orbit, a space exploration adventure; and Isles of the Forsaken and Ison of the Isles, a two-book fantasy about culture clash and revolution. Some of her short fiction can be found in Aliens of the Heart and Candle in a Bottle, both from Aqueduct Press, and in Arkfall and The Ice Owl, from Arc Manor.

Her short fiction has also appeared in Analog, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, Realms of Fantasy, and others.  She has been nominated for the Nebula Award three times and for the Hugo twice. Gilman lives in Washington, D.C., and works as a freelance writer and museum consultant.  She is also author of seven nonfiction books about North American frontier and Native history.

We discussed the way her ideas aren’t small enough to squeeze into short stories, how she shelved a novel she’d written because she felt her imagination at its wildest wasn’t ridiculous enough to match reality, whether our personal archives will be trashed or treasured, the reason she doesn’t feel she can teach writing, why authors need to respect what the story wants, why she’s terrible at reacting to writing prompts and how she does it anyway, how she generally starts a story not with character or plot but with setting, the ethics and morality of zoos and museums, how she manages to makes the impossible seem possible, our shared inability to predict which stories editors will want, and much more.

(3) TUTTLE BOOK REVIEWS. Lisa Tuttle’s “The best science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup” for the Guardian covers Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway; Some Body Like Me by Lucy Lapinska; City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead & Aliya Whiteley; Rose/House by Arkady Martine; and The Cat Bride by Charlotte Tierney.

(4) THE NEBUGO AWARD. When it comes to the Hugo’s novella category, Eddie believes in “Casting the net a little wider” at Borrowed and Blue. Or at least as widely as the titles on Eddie’s own list of faves of 2024. (And if nothing else, you might find something that belongs on your own TBR pile.)

…I shall now proceed to suggest that the collective wisdom of the Hugo jury this year was, in one meaningful way, somewhat questionable. The novella category for this year consists entirely of nominees from a single publisher, with all but one from a single imprint. That seems to me to be a rather myopic view of the field; I think we can look much more widely than that.

Without further ado, the Nebugo Awards Novella & Novel shortlists (commentary for the books that were on my favourite of the year list for 2024 is cribbed from there; comment for those which weren’t is new)….

(5) SLAN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] When the eldest (a 90-year-old) member of our local SF group came to last month’s meeting with a suitcase of books, there were some interesting titles. I grabbed four including Slan by van Vogt.  When I got home, I found I already had a copy on my unread bookshelf that had embarrassingly been there unread for nigh on four decades (I’m getting on a bit myself)…  Anyway, waste not want not, I dived in and then after generated a review for SF² Concatenation which has been posted ahead of its next season edition due to go up next week.

Van Vogt’s Slan is his first novel and something of a minor SF classic. Minor, because it has not really stood the test of time despite winning the Retro-Hugo for 1941 in 2016 at the MidAmeriCon II Worldcon in Kansas City. ‘The Retro for 1941’ I hear you cry?  Well, yes, because the novel was originally serialized in the Astounding Science Fiction over their September–December editions in 1940. But is it any good?  Well, truth be told, opinion is divided.  First, the story…

The review is here.

(6) SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT JOB. [Item by Steven French.] The Doctor’s new companion is interviewed in advance of the new season kicking off tomorrow: “’I can’t believe I’m paid to watch Ncuti Gatwa!’: Doctor Who’s boundary-pushing new companion, Varada Sethu” in the Guardian.

Most teenagers rebel against their parents in small ways: sneaking out, stealing a nip of Cointreau, arriving home past curfew. Not Varada Sethu, the Newcastle-raised actor who’s about to grace screens as new companion Belinda Chandra in the forthcoming season of Doctor Who. Her rebellion took on a go-big-or-go-home attitude befitting a future screen star: when she was 18 she entered, and subsequently won, the Miss Newcastle beauty pageant. “Oh my God, I thought that was gonna be buried somewhere!” she exclaims when I bring it up. The whole thing was “kind of an accident”, she explains: “My sister and I were walking around in Eldon Square shopping centre, and they asked us if we wanted to enter, and I thought: ‘Yeah, I’ll give it a go’ – I thought it might piss off my parents a bit!”

The decision to enter definitely caused “a bit of friction”, but Sethu’s parents didn’t raise a quitter. “On the day we had the rehearsals, I called my mum up and said: ‘I don’t want to do this, can you please take me home?’ And Mum was like: ‘Well, you’ve signed up for it, so you’re doing it,’” she recalls. “None of us expected me to win – the whole thing was a bit of a bodge job for me!”

Now 32, the beauty pageant world “doesn’t really align with” Sethu’s value system, and her chosen vocation is miles – galaxies, really – away from that world of tiaras and special skills. In recent years, thanks to a starring role in the acclaimed Star Wars series Andor and her forthcoming turn as Belinda, as well as a part in the 2018 BBC drama Hard Sun, she’s become known as a go-to British sci-fi actor. “You don’t often see brown people in space – well, you do more than in other genres, because they’re futuristic – but I don’t think I necessarily saw myself as part of the sci-fi world,” she says. “So I don’t quite know how I ended up here, but I love it, and I’m very, very happy to be here.”…

(7) THE MOUSE AND THE TARDIS. “Has Disney+ Changed ‘Doctor Who’? U.S. and U.K. Fans Discuss.” in the New York Times. Link bypasses NYT paywall. Perhaps a spoiler warning is a good idea here.

…So the stakes are high this season. Four “Doctor Who” fans from the United States and Britain spoke to The New York Times via video calls to share their views on Gatwa’s performance, on Davies’s return, and on how the show has changed since Disney+ got involved. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity….

Vera Wylde, 43. Vermont.

As a performer — and I do not say this lightly — [Gatwa] is the most charismatic person who has taken on the role. He commands the camera immediately.

I do have an issue, in that I feel like I don’t truly know him as well as I would like. The surface level is complete charisma, bright as the sun. I got that. What’s underneath that? I’m still working on that.

I had far, far more feelings about [Davies] coming back as showrunner than I did about Disney being involved. At a fundamental level, I am frustrated with him because I had hoped that he wouldn’t just slip back like it’s 2005 again and approach seasons in the same way — which is exactly what he did. It’s mostly standalone, and there’s a mystery box that is really blatant, and it ends in a two-part finale with the return of a classic-era villain….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

April 11, 1963 — Gregory Keyes, 62.

By Paul Weimer: I started reading Gregory Keyes at the very start of my reviewing life. This was in 1999, and I was just started to test the waters of connecting with reviewers and publishers and talking about books to people I didn’t know (I’ve always talked about books to people I did know).  In an electronic newsletter put out by Barnes and Noble in those days, they mentioned the forthcoming alternate history fantasy book by an author new to me, J. Gregory Keyes.  (Aas Keyes styled himself, for these books).  

The idea of an alternate world where Newton discovered the laws of Magic was instant catnip for me, and I got the book as soon as it came out, and the sequels as well. Come for the alternate history with magic and angels, stay for an alternate United States with Bluebeard as a founding father.

His oeuvre since has mellowed out a bit, with lots of big phat fantasy of the first water, the doorstoppers that he knows the minor and major keys and plays them well (The Briar King series, for example,The High and Faraway series, The Basilisk Throne, and even Elder Scrolls novels). He’s done a bunch of other tie-ins and novelizations, from Marvel to Godzilla to Star Wars).  

I talk of mellowing out because I eventually went back to his first novels, before Newton’s Cannon…the Waterborn duology. And like Newton’s Cannon, they are inventive, strange and weirdly wild in a way some of his post-Cannon fiction is not. The world of the Waterborn is something you don’t see so much — a relatively young fantasy world, that hasn’t had the thousands of years of history in the past yet, but that future is definitely stretching ahead of it.

I can’t fault the fact that he has found success in more traditional fantasy novels, but I do kind of miss the author who had Goddesses of Rivers begging lovers to kill the river they emptied into, and the idea of Benjamin Franklin doing alchemy. (To be fair, The High and Faraway does capture a bit of that early wildness once more).  Like the realms of faerie in many of his books, Keyes’ work has been somewhat tamed…but not quite completely. Not quite. But if I think of authors who write to fantasy doorstopper length, sure there is Martin and Williams and Jordan and Elliott…but there is also Keyes as well. He should always be part of that conversation.

I have not yet tried his latest novel, The Wind that Sweeps the Stars. 

Gregory Keyes

Happy birthday!

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) BUTTERBEER OREOS. These started out as a viral fake. They might still be, although there’s a new wave of claims they’re really going to show up in stores.

(11) CHARITY AUCTION. [Item by Froonium Ricky.] Maureen Ryan, genre-loving tv critic and author of Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, is currently holding an eBay auction (see “Moryanwatcher on eBay”) of various TV items, including a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “Subspace Rhapsody” T-Shirt, some X-Files promo items, a “Warrior” hoodie, some Game of Thrones magnets, and a Farscape script and actual piece of the Moya set. All the proceeds go to various excellent Mo-chosen charities! 

(12) GETTING TO THE BOTTOM. “3D scan of Titanic sheds new light on doomed liner’s final moments” at CNN.

A new documentary reveals the incredible results of a project to create 3D underwater scans of the doomed ocean liner RMS Titanic, which sank 113 years ago.

“Titanic: The Digital Resurrection” tells the story of how deep-sea mapping company Magellan created “the most precise model of the Titanic ever created: a full-scale, 1:1 digital twin, accurate down to the rivet,” according to a statement from National Geographic, published Tuesday….

… The 90-minute National Geographic documentary allows filmmaker Anthony Geffen “to reconstruct the ship’s final moments—challenging long-held assumptions and revealing new insights into what truly happened on that fateful night in 1912,” according to the statement.

In the film, Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson, metallurgist Jennifer Hooper and master mariner Chris Hearn walk around a full-scale reproduction of the ship, highlighting previously hidden details.

One key finding is a visibly open steam valve, which corroborates accounts that engineers manned their stations in Boiler Room Two for more than two hours after Titanic hit the iceberg.

This maintained the electricity supply and allowed crew to send distress signals, meaning the 35 men in the boiler room may have sacrificed themselves to save hundreds of other people.

The team also reconstruct hull fragments found scattered around the site, revealing that Titanic didn’t split in two, but “was violently torn apart, ripping through first-class cabins where prominent passengers like J.J. Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim may have sought refuge as the ship went down.”

The scan also helps to exonerate First Officer William Murdoch, who has been accused of abandoning his post. The position of a lifeboat davit, a piece of equipment used to lower the craft, corroborates testimony that Murdoch was, in fact, washed out to sea as the crew prepared to launch it….

(13) MIKHAIL TIKHONOV Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] As the man says, the possibilities are indeed vast … “Q&A: How to (theoretically) spot an alien” at Phys.org

Are we alone in the universe? The answer to one of humanity’s biggest questions is complicated by a basic reality: If there is life on other worlds, it may not look familiar. A sample of rocks from Mars or another planet almost certainly won’t have recognizable fossils or another similarly obvious sign of living organisms, said Mikhail Tikhonov, an assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis who studies microbial communities.

But just because we might not recognize signs of life on a distant moon or planet doesn’t mean it’s actually lifeless. “There could be life forms out there that defy our imagination,” Tikhonov said.

Searching for life that we don’t understand may seem like an impossible mission. In a paper published in Nature Communications, Tikhonov and co-author Akshit Goyal of the International Centre for Theoretical Science in Bengaluru, India, propose a new idea. Instead of looking for particular molecules or compounds associated with life as we know it, scientists can look for telltale patterns of energy.

Tikhonov discusses his out-of-this-world idea in this Q&A.

(14) REACHING THE FINISH LINE. Mr. Sci-Fi, Marc Scott Zicree, gives his comments about the publication history of Last Dangerous Visions and the late Harlan Ellison in “The Book on the Edge of Forever Finally Arrives!”

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, N., Froonium Ricky, 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 Daniel “Burma Shave” Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/6/25 Always Check Where You’re Walking When Pixels Are Present

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(1) 2025 HUGO AWARD FINALISTS. The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Hugo Award Finalists were announced today.

Congratulations to all the finalists, especially the authors of two Best Related entries published by File 770, Chris Barkley and Jason Sanford for “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” and Camestros Felapton and Heather Rose Jones for “Charting the Cliff: An Investigation Into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics”.

(2) HUGO AWARD BASE DESIGNER. Seattle Worldcon 2025 has announced that the Hugo Awards Base will be designed by Joy Alyssa Day, a professional glass sculpture artist. Joy, with her partner BJ, have previously designed the Hugo Awards base for LonCon in 2014. Examples of Joy’s sculptures can be found at her website, GlassSculpture. Below are photos of the 2014 Hugo Award base, and their work on the Cosmos Award given by the Planetary Society.

(3) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 132 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Almost Everything Is Not Mac” is here early, because the hosts John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty are discussing this year’s Hugo Awards finalists.

An uncorrected transcript is available here.

A black background. Text in purple reads “Octothorpe 132” while text MADE OF FIRE says “Scorching hot takes on the Hugo finalists”.

(4) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman returns with episode 22 of his Why Not Say What Happened? Podcast, “The Conundrum of Condensing Marie Severin into 1,200 Words”. And here’s where it’s available on multiple platforms.

This time around, I grow anxious over a dream discovery of long-lost original comic book artwork, realize I was wrong about a certain Alan Moore/Frank Miller memory, contemplate the difficulty of condensing the life of Marie Severin into a mere 1,200 words, share the meager remains of what was once a massive comic book collection, remember there’s an issue of Fantastic Four I need to track down to solve an early fannish mystery, rededicate myself to Marie Kondo-ing my creative life, and more.

A 1972 Marie Severin Hulk Sketch

(5) FISHING FOR A SUPERSTAR. “Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies is manifesting DC star Viola Davis being the next iteration of the villainous Master, calling her ‘one of the greatest actors in the world’” at GamesRadar+.

Given that beloved sci-fi series Doctor Who has been on air for over 60 years now, countless actors have featured either in major roles or as guest stars.

From Simon Pegg playing a villainous editor in ‘The Long Game’ to Andrew Garfield facing off against aliens in ‘Daleks in Manhattan’, the seemingly endless list also includes Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya, Oscar winner Olivia Colman, and Black Panther’s very own Letitia Wright – to name but a few.The question is then – who would showrunner Russell T Davies love to have on the series in a guest role, who hasn’t been featured before? Putting that to the man himself in a recent interview ahead of Doctor Who season 2 hitting our screens, Davies is puzzled at first admitting to GamesRadar+ that “almost everyone has been in it”. And he’s right – hell, even pop star icon Kylie Minogue even showed up for the Titanic themed episode ‘Voyage of the Damned’….

…As Davies tells us: “I simply worship Viola Davis, one of the greatest actors in the world, we should be so lucky we should have that money. She just brings quality, depth, and surprise. Every time I see her she does something surprising, which is a very Doctor Who quality. She’d get it. I say this hoping that you print it, then her agent will read it and say ‘yes, you can have Viola for absolutely no money, she will come to Cardiff for free.'” Well – here’s hoping!

(6) BOOP-OOP-A-DOOP! “’Boop!’ Arrives on Broadway, With a Surprising 100-Year Back Story” reports the New York Times. Link bypasses paywall.

Betty Boop has arrived on Broadway, nearly a century after she first boop-oop-a-dooped her way onto the big screen. “Boop! The Musical,” like the “Barbie” and “Elf” films that preceded it, imagines a transformational encounter between an anthropomorphic character and the real world (well, a fictional world full of people)….

…Jasmine Amy Rogers, the actress starring as Betty Boop on Broadway, described her as “full of joy” and “unapologetically herself.” “She is sexy, but I don’t think it is merely sex that makes her sexy,” she continued. “I would say it’s the way she carries herself, and her confidence and her unabashed self.”…

Betty, created at the height of the Jazz Age, is obviously modeled on flappers, and her relationship to music history has been a subject of debate and litigation.

In 1932, a white singer named Helen Kane sued, alleging that the “baby vamp” style of the Betty Boop character, including the “boop-oop-a-doop” phrase, was an unlawful imitation of Kane. At a widely publicized trial in 1934, Fleischer countered by pointing out that a Black singer, Esther Lee Jones, who performed as Baby Esther, had used similar scat phrases before Kane. Kane lost….

…Rogers said she hopes that over time, women of different ethnicities will portray the character, but said she is proud to play her as a Black woman, with nods to Baby Esther and the scat technique of jazz singing. “Jazz lives so deep in the heart of Betty that I feel as if we can’t really have a full discussion about her without involving the African American race,” she said…

(7) GOOD DOG. Krypto takes us home: “Superman | Sneak Peek”.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 6, 1937 — Billy Dee Williams, 88.

Rather obviously, Billy Dee Williams’ best-known role is as — and no I did know this was his full name — Landonis Balthazar “Lando” Calrissian III. He was introduced in The Empire Strikes Back as a longtime friend of Han Solo and the administrator of the floating Cloud City on the gas planet Bespin. 

(So have I mentioned, I’ve only watched the original trilogy, and this is my favorite film of that trilogy? If anyone cares to convince me I’ve missed something by not watching the later films, go ahead.) 

He is Lando in the original trilogy, as well in as the sequel, The Rise of Skywalker, thirty-six years later. The Star Wars fandom site thinks this might be the longest interval between first playing a character and later playing the same character, being a thirty-six year gap.

He returned to the role within the continuity in the animated Star Wars Rebels series, voicing the role in “Idiot’s Array” and “The Siege of Lothal” episodes. Truly great series if you haven’t seen, and available of course on Disney+. 

He voiced him in two audio dramas with one being the full cat adaption of Timothy Zahn’s Dark Empire. 

Now this is where it gets silly, really silly. The most times he’s been involved with the character is in the Lego ‘verse. Between 2024 with The Lego Movie to Billy Dee Williams returned to the role in the Star Wars: Summer Vacation in 2022, he has voiced Lando in eight Lego films, mostly made as television specials.

Going from hero to villain, he was Harvey Dent in Batman, and yes in The Lego Batman Movie. Really they made it. I’d like to say I remember him here but than they would admitting this film made an impression on me which it decidedly didn’t. None of the Batman Films did in the Eighties.

He’s in Mission Impossible as Hank Benton, an enforcer for a monster, in “The Miracle” episode; he’s Ferguson in  Epoch: Evolution, the sequel to Epoch, which looks like quite silly, and I’m using this term deliberately, sci-film, and finally he voiced himself on Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?,  the thirteenth television series in the Scooby-Doo franchise. 

Billy Dee Williams

(9) COMICS SECTION.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-04-06T11:46:12.460Z

(10) WHY ARE KIDS OBSESSED WITH THE TITANIC? “So You Think You Know a Lot About the Titanic …” in the New York Times (behind a paywall.)

Parents often look down at the whorl on the top of their children’s heads and wonder what, exactly, is going on inside. An industry of books, video games, films, merchandise and museums offers some insight: They’re probably thinking about the Titanic.

Last fall, Osiris, age 5, told his mother, Tara Smyth, that he wanted to eat the Titanic for dinner. So she prepared a platter of baked potatoes — each with four hot-dog funnels, or smokestacks — sitting on a sea of baked beans. (He found it delicious.) Since first hearing the story of the Titanic, Ozzy, as he’s known, has amassed a raft of factoids, a Titanic snow globe from the Titanic Belfast museum and many ship models at his home in Hastings, England.

About 5,500 miles away in Los Angeles, Mia and Laila, 15-year-old twins, devote hours every week to playing Escape Titanic on Roblox. They have been doing this for the last several years. Sometimes, they go down with the ship on purpose — “life is boring,” explained Mia, “and the appeal is that it’s kind of dramatic.”

Nearly 113 years after the doomed White Star Line steamship collided with an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and sank at around 2:20 a.m. the next day, it remains a source of fascination for many children. The children The New York Times spoke to did not flinch at the mortal fact at the heart of the story: That of the more than 2,200 passengers on the Titanic, more than twice as many passengers died as those who survived.

“I really like whenever it just cracked open in half and then sank and then just fell apart into the Atlantic Ocean,” said Matheson, 10, from Spring, Texas, who has loved the story since he read “I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912” at age 5. After many frustrating bath time re-enactments involving flimsy ship models, Matheson and his father, Christopher Multop, designed a Tubtastic Titanic bath toy — of which they say they now sell about 200 a month (separate floating iceberg included)….

John Zaller, the executive producer of Exhibition Hub, the company that designed “Bodies: The Exhibition” and “Titanic: An Immersive Voyage,” a traveling exhibition with interactive elements, attested that Titanic kids often knew more than their tour guides. At the Titanic experience, children can sit in a lifeboat and watch a simulation of the ship sinking, see a life-size model of the boiler room be flooded with water, and follow along with the passengers on their boarding pass, ultimately finding out whether they survived the wreck.

“The biggest takeaway for kids is, ‘I lived!’ or ‘I died!’” Mr. Zaller said. “They understand the power of that.”…

(11) APRIL FOOLISHNESS. Except it happened in March: “An AI avatar tried to argue a case before a New York court. The judges weren’t having it” at Yahoo!

It took only seconds for the judges on a New York appeals court to realize that the man addressing them from a video screen — a person about to present an argument in a lawsuit — not only had no law degree, but didn’t exist at all.

The latest bizarre chapter in the awkward arrival of artificial intelligence in the legal world unfolded March 26 under the stained-glass dome of New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, where a panel of judges was set to hear from Jerome Dewald, a plaintiff in an employment dispute.

“The appellant has submitted a video for his argument,” said Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels. “Ok. We will hear that video now.”

On the video screen appeared a smiling, youthful-looking man with a sculpted hairdo, button-down shirt and sweater.

“May it please the court,” the man began. “I come here today a humble pro se before a panel of five distinguished justices.”

“Ok, hold on,” Manzanet-Daniels said. “Is that counsel for the case?”

“I generated that. That’s not a real person,” Dewald answered.

It was, in fact, an avatar generated by artificial intelligence. The judge was not pleased.

“It would have been nice to know that when you made your application. You did not tell me that sir,” Manzanet-Daniels said before yelling across the room for the video to be shut off….

… As for Dewald’s case, it was still pending before the appeals court as of Thursday.

(12) ONCE FICTION, NOW SCIENCE. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian reports “Biologist whose innovation saved the life of British teenager wins $3m Breakthrough prize”. Harvard Professor, David Liu —  

 … was chosen for inventing two exceptionally precise gene editing tools, namely base editing and prime editing. Base editing was first used in a patient at Great Ormond Street in London, where it saved the life of a British teenager with leukaemia.

The young woman’s doctor apparently called the technique at the time, ‘science fiction’!

(13) ETERNAUT TRAILER. The Eternaut premieres on Netflix on April 30.

After a deadly snowfall kills millions, Juan Salvo and a group of survivors fight against a threat controlled by an invisible force. Based on the iconic graphic novel written by Héctor G. Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López.

(14) WHY IS MARS RED? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Well, we all know the answer – an on-going process of the radiolysis of water (here UV and high energy particles from Solar wind splitting water) produces oxygen radicals that oxidise iron to hematite (a form of iron(III) that on Earth often gives some sandstones their red colour…)  Well, maybe not!   New research now suggests otherwise.  Data from three orbiters combined with a look at Earth minerals suggests that the Martian red minerals were formed over three billion years ago when Mars was decidedly wet. Had Mars been warmer, then these minerals would have gone. ; Mars’ red colour looks like being ferrihydrite (Fe5O8H  nH2O) that forms under decidedly wet conditions.  This is yet more evidence – if more is needed – that Mars was wet billions of years ago. 

The primary research, by French, US and British based astrophysicists, is  Valantinas, A. et al (2025) “Detection of ferrihydrite in Martian red dust records ancient cold and wet conditions on Mars”. Nature Communications, vol. 16, 1712. Meanwhile over at DrBecky there is a 12-minute video which you can see here: “New study explains why Mars is RED”. I keep on telling people that the machines are taking over but nobody ever listens to me… In fact they rule Mars!

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

Pixel Scroll 4/2/25 Oh, Pixelline, Why Can’t You Be True?

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(1) LOST BONESTELL LITHOGRAPHS COMING ONLINE FREE. You’ll soon be able to view thirty-two recently discovered industrial illustrations from Chesley Bonestell’s early career. Starting this Thursday, April 3, Michael Swanwick and Marianne Porter will be posting one new illustration every workday on Swanwick’s blog at Flogging Babel.

Most of these images have not been seen for over a century.

Chesley Bonestell was the most significant and influential astronomical illustrator of the 20th century. But before his rise to fame he worked as an architectural illustrator. In 1918, he was commissioned by the Army Corps of Engineers to document the construction of a wartime munitions plant and hydroelectric dam in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Bonestell created 32 large-scale lithographs, showing the construction of the plant, including meticulous records of both industrial interiors, the dam and railroad being built, and the surrounding countryside. They were all signed in the stone.

The munitions factory was never a particularly successful enterprise; it came on line only a few weeks before World War One ended. But the hydroelectric dam was the first in the Tennessee Valley Authority, the massive project that made possible the economic and industrial development of the American South.

The thirty-two lithographs were stored in the Packwood House Museum in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where only two were actually on display to the public. This set of prints are not numbered, and it is not clear if any other prints were made. The Museum was owned and operated by John Featherstone, and his wife, Edith Featherstone, an artist in her own right, and was intended to showcase her work, as well as central Pennsylvania arts and crafts. Eventually the museum was closed and its contents liquidated. The Bonestell lithographs seem to have been included in the collection because John Featherstone was the engineer in charge of the Muscle Shoals construction project.

The lithographs were purchased by Swanwick and Porter in an auction. When all of them have been posted online, a torrent will be created, making the complete collection available at full resolution.

Michael Swanwick is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer. His wife, Marianne Porter, is the editor and publisher of Dragonstairs Press.  The first image to be posted is attached.

Swanwick explained on his blog today how the lithographs came into the couple’s possession: “Chesley Bonestell’s Lost Lithographs”.

“I don’t know what they are, but I hope you get them.”

That’s what the lady at the auction house said when Marianne Porter told her that all Marianne wanted were the Chesley Bonestell lithographs. There were 32 of them in the lot, and it was clear nobody at Pook & Pook knew what they were….

(2) KENNY GRAVILLIS Q&A. “Movie Poster Designer Kenny Gravillis Aims to Leave You Asking Questions” at PRINT Magazine.

…Is it common within the movie poster design industry to bid against other studios for projects? 

Especially on really big films, there will be three to four different agencies. Just to give you an example, on Game of Thrones season two, there were like 11 agencies that worked on that. It’s super competitive. For independent films that don’t have that much money, they might only be able to hire one agency to work on it. But when you start getting into the Dunes of the world, then there are multiple agencies working on it. And they’re working on it until the end, by the way. You don’t even know if you’re gonna get the final post; it’s pretty wild….

…I also think successful movie posters can exist as standalone pieces in their own right, outside of their attachment to a movie. A graphic image or design that you might want on your wall or you find compelling simply because it looks good. 

100%. The thing is, every filmmaker cares about their poster. There’s not one filmmaker that’s like, “Whatever…” Because it’s the face of the film. As great as trailers are, they’ll probably be forgotten. Nobody says, “I remember the trailer for Rosemary’s Baby or the trailer for Alien.” They’re like, “Oh, my God, the Alien poster!” …

…The other thing I’d like to say is that it never gets old. The other day, I went to see Captain America, and our poster was in the lobby. Seeing the stuff that I’ve worked on out in the world just never gets old. If it ever does, I think I’ll call it a day.

(3) CAN IT BE? “Trump Tariffs Hit Vox Day” says crusading journalist Camestros Felapton, who has found a way to leverage today’s headlines into a sff blog post. (By which I mean, dang, I wish I’d thought of it!)

…A country that surprised some in getting high tariffs was Switzerland at 31%. That’s higher than the UK (10%), EU (10%) and South Korea (25%). Sure would be a shame if some obnoxious hyper-nationalistic Trump support had invested a lot of money in printing and binding hardback books for Trump supporting fanboys in the US wouldn’t it?…

(4) A FIRST IN THE FIELD. A Deep Look by Dave Hook chronicles “’The Other Worlds’, Phil Stong editor, 1941 Wilfred Funk: The First Speculative Fiction Anthology”.

The Short: As discussed below, I believe The Other Worlds (aka The Other Worlds: 25 Modern Stories of Mystery and Imagination, 1942 editions), Phil Stong editor, 1941 Wilfred Funk, is the first speculative fiction anthology. I am glad I read it, but it’s a mixed bag and I would only recommend it to a big fan of horror, science fiction and fantasy from 1925 to 1940. It includes three essays by Stong in addition to 25 stories. My favorite story was the great “Alas, All Thinking!“, a novelette by Harry Bates (known best for “Farewell to the Master“, a novelette adapted for the movie “The Day The Earth Stood Still“), Astounding Stories, June 1935. I am not really a fan of horror, which influenced how I felt about The Other Worlds. My overall average rating is 3.45/5, or a rather anemic “Good”. It is in print, and available online…

(5) FUTURE TENSE. March 2025’s Future Tense Fiction story is “Coda,” by Arula Ratnakar—a story about computation, genetics, and cryptography.

The response essay, “Computing Consciousness”, is by computer scientist Christopher Moore, whose research actually inspired the story!

(6) TIME TO NOMINATE FOR THE CÓYOTL AWARDS. Members of the Furry Writers’ Guild are eligible to submit 2024 Cóyotl Awards nominations through April 5.

Nominations are open to all members of the Furry Writers’ Guild, though awards may be given to any work of anthropomorphic writing demonstrating excellence regardless of membership. Please see the award rules for what makes an eligible work. For a non-exhaustive list of what’s eligible, see the recommended reading list.

(7) DOUBLE-HEADER. In the first video below Erin Underwood interviews Martha Wells about her Murderbot series, with a couple of questions about the adaptation that is coming to Apple TV in May. The second video is a review of In The Lost Lands, which is an adaptation of GRRM’s short story.

Exclusive Interview with Martha Wells: Inside The Murderbot Diaries

Join me for this exclusive interview with Martha Wells, author of The Murderbot Diaries, as we explore one of science fiction’s most popular series — now being adapted into a new Apple TV series. What makes Murderbot so compelling, and how did Wells create such a nuanced, unforgettable character? Come watch on YouTube to find out!

In the Lost Lands, Movie Review – Worth the Watch?

Paul W.S. Anderson’s In the Lost Lands brings George R.R. Martin’s dark fantasy to life, but does its reliance on digital sets and AI-driven cinematography elevate or undermine the experience? With Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista leading the charge, this film raises big questions about the future of sci-fi and fantasy filmmaking. Join me on YouTube where I break it down.

(8) ON TARGET. “’Woke’ criticism of Doctor Who proves show on right track, says its newest star” in the Guardian.

Criticisms that Doctor Who has become too “woke” prove the series is doing the right thing by being inclusive, its new star Varada Sethu has said.

Sethu plays the Doctor’s latest travelling companion, Belinda Chandra, in new episodes airing next month. With Ncuti Gatwa returning as the Doctor, the pairing marks the first time a Tardis team will comprise solely people of colour.

Speaking about the milestone, Sethu told the Radio Times: “Ncuti was like, ‘Look at us. We get to be in the Tardis. We’re going to piss off so many people.’…

And the BBC has a long profile with the actor: “Doctor Who: Varada Sethu wants to inspire young South Asian women”

When new Doctor Who companion Varada Sethu first told her family she wanted to be an actress, there wasn’t immediate support.

“They had difficulty coming to terms with it initially,” she tells BBC Asian Network News.

Varada, who will be playing Ncuti Gatwa’s sidekick, Belinda Chandra in the upcoming series, feels going into acting is “sadly still not encouraged in the South Asian community”.

“There’s an element of resistance we face,” the 32-year-old says.

But Varada wants to change all of that, and says inspiring young girls to follow their dreams is one of her big goals.

“I want to be the person that these girls can point out to and say: ‘She made it and she came from a community that looks like mine’.

“So I think I’ve gone about this with the energy of, I can’t fall flat on my face,” she says.

But the actress, who has had roles in Disney+ Star Wars series Andor, 2018 crime drama Hard Sun and Jurassic World Dominion, says change comes with challenges.

A report by the Creative Diversity Network found in 2022/23 the percentage of on-screen contributions by those who identify as South Asian or South Asian British was 4.9%.

That’s compared with the latest census data, analysed by the UK Government, that found around 8% of people from those backgrounds are in the working-age population.

“It’s a constant battle of failure isn’t an option,” says Varada.

“Because, you know, your uncle’s daughter who’s six, who might wanna go into acting when she’s a bit older, won’t be allowed to, if I become the cautionary tale.”…

(9) STRANGE NEW TREK. Gizmodo says “The First Trailer for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Is a Wild Trip”.

The new trailer immediately goes meta, detailing at least more than a few adventures where Strange New Worlds will take the crew of the Enterprise beyond the typical spacebound adventures and into some very meta territory–from murder mystery holoprograms, to a kitschy spin on the original Trek‘s ’60s production aesthetics. And that’s even before you get to Carol Kane’s Commander Pelia hooking up the whole ship to old-timey analogue phones!…

(10) VAL KILMER (1959-2025). Actor Val Kilmer, whose iconic genre roles included Batman Forever and Real Genius, died April 1 at the age of 65. The Hollywood Reporter tribute notes he was most famous for playing Iceman in Top Gun and Doc Holliday in Tombstone. And it also recalled some of his other sff work —

…Marlon Brando’s insane assistant in John Frankenheimer’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996); 

…He was married to British actress Joanne Whalley from 1988 until their divorce in 1996. They met while working together on Willow and wed months later.

…Kilmer starred as rockabilly teen idol Nick Rivers in the daffy spy spoof Top Secret! (1984) from Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers. 

…Kilmer also provided the voice of K.I.T.T. in a new version of TV’s Knight Rider in 2008-09

(11) MEMORY LANE(S)

[First piece written by Paul Weimer. Second piece by Cat Eldridge.]

April 2, 1968 — 2001: A Space Odyssey

By Paul Weimer: Did the “Blue Danube Waltz” play through your head just now? Or perhaps “Also Sprach Zarathrustra”?  Possibly both?  Even though I am not a music guy, both of those music pieces come to mind when I think of 2001. The music is the first thing I think of when I think of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

You know the story. Monolith uplifts Ape with the power of ultraviolence. Humans find the Monolith on the Moon, a ship heads to Jupiter to investigate where the signal went. Hal goes mad and kills most of his crew. David Bowman has an apotheosis. 

But 2001 is far more than the music and that plot. It’s visuals, really the first time I saw it, I felt that this could be what space would be like. Slow sedate visuals but one that felt accurate. (The jokes/conspiracy theories that the real moon landing was directed by Kubrick come from the visuals of 2001). Be it the apes scene, the casualness of the lounge in the space station, the investigation of the monolith, daily life on the Discovery, or the very very weird ending. I am still not quite sure I get it. But is it absolutely unforgettable? Yes. 

And that’s the fun thing about the movie. It is slow, very slow. But it doesn’t drag. It’s sedately and sedate in places, and then violently and suddenly. The movie seems to just know when to interrupt the quiet stately pace with a sudden action or point of drama. In any event, the movie holds my attention throughout. Every time I’ve started watching it, I’ve kept it on.  It is THE space movie for me. 

And it became clear to me that when I saw Star Trek The Motion Picture, just how much they tried to borrow from 2001. Maybe too much, for their own good. They learned the need for stately pacing…but not so much when to break it up.

By Cat Eldridge: Fifty-six years ago, 2001: A Space Odyssey had its world premiere on this date at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C., it would be nearly a month and three weeks, the fifteenth of May to be precise, before the United Kingdom would see this film. 

It was directed as you know by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay by him and Arthur C. Clarke who wrote the novel. 

It spawned a sequel about which the less said the better. (My opinion, the critics sort of like it. Huh.)

It would win a Hugo at St. Louiscon over what I will term an extraordinarily offbeat field of nominees that year — Yellow Submarine, Charly, Rosemary’s Baby and the penultimate episode of The Prisoner, “Fallout”. 

It did amazingly well box office wise, returning one hundred fifty million against just ten million in production costs. 

So, what did the critics think of it then? Some liked, some threw up their guts. Some thought that audience members that liked it were smoking something to keep themselves high. (That was in several reviews.) Ebert liked it a lot and said that it “succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale.” Others were less kind with Pauline Kael who I admit is not one of my favorite critics saying that it was “a monumentally unimaginative movie.” Humph. 

I was too young to see when I came out, but an arts cinema showed a few decades later which I saw it there, so I did see it on a reasonably large screen. It is extraordinarily amazing film. I don’t think the Suck Fairy would any problems with it even today

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a most not unsurprising rating of ninety two percent. 

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

April 2, 1948 — Joan D. Vinge, 77.

By Paul Weimer: It is fitting that The Snow Queen has her birthday just as we are getting out of winter and into Spring, and the treacherous Winters of the planet Tiamat are reluctantly getting ready to hand over the control of the planet to the Summers for a time.  The original Snow Queen novel and its sequels is where I began reading Vinge’s work. I picked it up for the same reason I picked up many books in the mid to late 90’s–it had been on an award ballot and I was filling in the gaps of my reading. (It won for Best Novel at the Hugos in 1981, and was a finalist for the Nebula the same year).  I found the worldbuilding of the novel most satisfying, and the titular Snow Queen and her grand plot to try and control the planet for its entire cycle by means of her clone I found to be a crackerjack story. 

Only after reading the story did I realize how much the story was influenced by both the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, and by Robert Graves (The White Goddess).  A re-read when I decided to read the entire series showed me that as much as I thought it has been rich and interesting, on a re-read the book was *even better*.  The Snow Queen is one of those novels that the more you know, the even cleverer and more intricately woven it appears to be. 

My favorite of that entire series is the standalone Tangled Up in Blue, which is really a noir mystery novel that just so happens to take place on the mean streets of Carbuncle. It’s a genre mashup that works even better than I hoped, and it works really standalone, too. You don’t need to read The Snow Queen to dive into Tangled Up in Blue. 

Besides the stories set on Tiamat, Vinge has written plenty of other stuff as well. Catspaw is a favorite of mine, although it is a case where I accidentally started with the second book in the series not even knowing there was a first book (Psion).  Vinge feels, like Julian May, like one of the last SF authors to really use and deploy telepathy in a major mainstream SF novel straight up. 

Finally, Vinge has also written a number of movie tie-in novelizations, including one (Cowboys and Aliens) that actually redeems that (IMO) very flawed movie.

Joan Vinge

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) DC COMICS HISTORY. BBC’s Witness History remembers “The wonder woman of DC Comics”.

In 1976, Jenette Kahn began one of the biggest roles in comic books – publisher of DC Comics, home to Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. She was only 28 and the first female boss.

(15) WRITING WHILE DISABLED. In the second audio episode of Writing While Disabled at Strange Horizons, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston “welcome Farah Mendlesohn, acclaimed SFF scholar and conrunner, to talk all things hearing, dyslexia, and more ADHD adjustments, as well as what fandom could and should be doing better for accessibility at conventions, for both volunteers and attendees.”

There’s a transcript at the link, where you can also watch the full interview on video with close-caption subtitles.

(16) VIDEOS OF THE DAY. “Oh Jeez, Rick and Morty Will Return in May” reports Gizmodo.

April Fools’ Day is upon us, but this is no joke: Rick and Morty season eight hits Adult Swim May 25, with a first look to prove it. The news came as part of Adult Swim’s annual April 1 celebration, and also included a 22-minute special of favorite Rick and Morty moments re-interpreted in appropriately and unexpectedly freaky ways. Adult Swim described it as pulling from “absurd, live-action, theater-based genres,” and frankly you just need to watch it to believe it.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Paul Weimer, Erin Underwood, Michael Swanwick, 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 Mark Roth-Whitworth.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, back at the plot…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cora Buhlert.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D.C. Fontana

(9) COMICS SECTION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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