From the large number of stories that series editor John Joseph Adams screened for this year’s collection, he picked the 80 best pieces (forty science fiction and forty fantasy) to submit to editor Nnedi Okorafor for a blind reading, so that the prestige of the venues or author bylines were not a factor. (The ones Adams designated as notable are shown in a table at the link). Okorafor then selected 20 for publication (ten science fiction, ten fantasy.)
The book will be released on October 21, 2025.
Here is the Table of Contents with the 20 stories they thought the best.
FANTASY
Look at the Moon by Dominique Dickey from Lightspeed
The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
Ushers by Joe Hill from Amazon Original Stories
Country Birds by Kij Johnson from Sunday Morning Transport
The Wonders of the World by ‘Pemi Aguda from Ghostroots: Stories
Also, the Cat by Rachel Swirsky from Reactor
What Happened to the Crooners by Russell Nichols from Nightmare
The River Judge by S.L. Huang from Reactor
A Stranger Knocks by Tananarive Due from Uncanny
An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia from Death in the Mouth, Vol. 2
SCIENCE FICTION
The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro from Lightspeed
The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George from Clarkesworld
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim from Lightspeed
Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim from Clarkesworld
The Forgetting Room by Kathryn H. Ross from FIYAH
The Audit by Olivie Blake from Januaries
Yarns by Susan Palwick from Asimov’s
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by T.J. Klune from In the Lives of Puppets
NOW IN ITS 10TH year, the annual Best American Science Fiction and Fantasyanthology provides an excellent overview of short genre fiction published in the United States. Each year, series editor John Joseph Adams selects 80 short stories from SF magazines and literary journals for blind review by a guest editor, who chooses their favorites from among them. This process maintains a high level of quality and consistency, while also allowing the guest editor to make a distinctive mark on each collection.
Hugh Howey, the 2024 guest editor, rose to fame after his self-published dystopian story“Wool” (2011) became an online sensation, leading to his stories’ distribution by Simon & Schuster and their adaptation into the Apple TV+ series Silo (2023– ). As might be expected for an author with a good eye for the market, Howey’s choices for the 2024 collection steer more toward the crowd-pleasing than those of my favorite series entry—the 2019 volume edited by Carmen Maria Machado. The result, however, is an impressive array of stories that will likely appeal both to casual readers and would-be writers….
… The high-water mark of the new millennium’s Age of Earnestness (the supposed successor to the 1990s Age of Irony) was directly tied to the rise of Twitter, as well as to a reading culture where attempts at nuanced expression could swiftly fall victim to dogpiles and hot takes. At least 12 of the 20 stories included in this volume (several of them from writers outspoken on social justice issues) were published in online magazines in 2023 in the wake of Twitter’s post-Musk exodus. Writing this review in the aftermath of the American election, I cannot help but perceive these stories as anticipatory responses to a changed technological and social culture. They are less overt in their depiction of “good” politics than previous entries in the Best American series, more interested in the psychology of “bad” and morally ambiguous characters, and more interested in depicting characters whose ability to change oppressive systems is limited or nonexistent….
Another day, another man fails to see how his sexually inappropriate behavior is wrong. This time around the man is John Barrowman, who up until a few years ago was one of Doctor Who’s most beloved stars. He played Captain Jack Harkness, one of the first pansexual characters on British TV, and was one-half of the show’s very first same-sex kiss. Fans adored him for his charm and charisma. That’s no longer the case.
Barrowman’s downfall was the result of another sexual misconduct allegation. In 2021, Noel Clarke, who played Mickey Smith on the show, was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Any chance of his ever returning to Doctor Who went up in smoke, as did his career. During this media storm, journalists uncovered some old footage of Clarke at a 2015 convention discussing Barrowman’s dubious behavior. He spoke about how Barrowman was allegedly constantly “taking his d*** out” on set and once even rested it on co-star Camille Coduri’s shoulder when they were in a makeup truck (she confirmed that she remembered this incident in the video but offered no further context). Seemingly, this had been tolerated for a while—but it wasn’t about to be tolerated any longer.
It turned out that Barrowman had been called out for his behavior in the past, but had seemingly learned nothing. In 2008, he admitted to exposing himself during a BBC Radio 1 show and apologized for it, saying he “went too far.” This apology was seemingly at the forefront of his mind when he made another apology in the wake of the 2021 allegations.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I understand that upset may have been caused by my exuberant behavior and I have apologized for this previously,” he said in a statement. “Since my apology in November 2008, my understanding and behavior have also changed.”
But apparently, this actually resulted in Barrowman learning nothing. Instead of changing and growing, he’s simply bitter that he lost his Doctor Who gig and a large portion of his entertainment career. He said as much to Wales Online recently. “I think I’ve been badly treated, definitely,” he complained. “I’m disgusted at the way my Doctor Who and Torchwood family turned their backs on me—99% of the things that were said about me were bulls***.”
Barrowman claimed that “no one was offended, no one was upset,” by his actions—but clearly, this isn’t true if he was delivering apologies. “It was crap,” he went on. “I ended up being good clickbait and it has lasted for three years. It’s been devastating—to the point I was blackballed. I can’t get into a room for an audition or a meeting anymore.”…
(3) DROPPING GENRE NAMES. Shelf Awareness brings us “Reading with… Carter Wilson”:
Book you’re an evangelist for:
William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. This might have been the only book I had to read in high school English that I fell in love with. The sheer creativity of Goldman is astonishing.
Book you’ve bought for the cover:
Well, it’s much more common I don’t buy a book because of the cover. But I will say I was persuaded by the gorgeousness of Anne Rice’s complete Vampire Chronicles. Gorgeous wrought-iron detailing all over the cover of that one
Book that changed your life:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Not sure any book has truly changed my life, but The Road is a book that forces you to read every single word. I can’t think of any other author whose use of language is as compelling as McCarthy’s.
Favorite line from a book:
“Don’t Panic.” –Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…
… Pages from Les Très Riches Heures (The Very Rich Hours) – an elaborately decorated prayer book from the 15th century – will be exhibited at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris, after a costly restoration. It has not been seen, even by historians and academics, since the 1980s….
…He said the exhibition would also feature books from the duke of Berry’s collection on display for the first time since the 15th century. Berry, known as John the Magnificent, whose motto was “Le Temps venra” (the time will come), was one of medieval France’s greatest patrons of the arts and collected illuminated manuscripts.
Deldicque said the restoration of Les Très Riches Heures would be completed after the exhibition closes and the manuscript returns to the museum’s archive.
“It is too fragile and at risk of damage from light to be on permanent display,” he said. “That’s why this exhibition will be unique. Everyone knows about this book – but nobody has seen it.”…
(5) ON THE HORROR TRAIL. [Item by Steven French.] For the travelling horror fan, Atlas Obscura has compiled a list of fourteen must-see places to visit: “14 Haunting Places in Literature”.
There’s nothing quite like a horror story. The supernatural and macabre have haunted our imaginations for centuries—and inspired writers for centuries to create works that can terrify us.
We’ve compiled a list of our favorite places across the world that have appeared in horror literature, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to places that inspired Edgar Allan Poe before his death. Take a spine-tingling tour of these horror-inspiring locations—if you dare….
Perched on a log in the Rare Books department of the Free Library of Philadelphia stands a strange piece of history. Dead since 1841, but preserved with arsenic, and frozen inside a shadow box, this bird’s legacy is longer than most people’s. The raven’s name is Grip. Grip the Clever, Grip the Wicked, Grip the Knowing.
Once Charles Dickens’ pet raven, upon its death Dickens had it professionally taxidermied and mounted. Grip even makes an appearance in Barnaby Rudge, one of Dickens’ lesser-known stories.
The book was reviewed for Graham’s Magazine by its literary critic at the time, Edgar Allan Poe. Poe wrote that “[the raven’s] croaking might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama.” It wasn’t long after this that Poe published his breakout work “The Raven.” The coincidence didn’t escape notice, and Poe was taunted with the refrain “Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, / Three fifths of him genius, two fifths sheer fudge.”
Despite this, “The Raven” was a smashing success and Poe enjoyed performing readings at fancy salon parties. He would turn down all the lights and recite the poem with great drama. Everyone referred to him as “the Raven,” but it would only be four years after publishing “The Raven” and gaining worldwide fame that Poe would be found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, dying shortly thereafter….
(6) CHRISTOPHER BENJAMIN (1934-2025). Actor Christopher Benjamin died January 10 at the age of 90. The portion of his career of interest to sff fans is noted by the Guardian’s obituary:
With a portly but athletic physicality, a rich baritone voice, a bloodhound, drooping visage and a sarcastic sense of humour, Christopher Benjamin, who has died aged 90, was a backbone actor on television, but mostly stage, for many years.
He had a sort of internet afterlife when his role as Henry Gordon Jago in the BBC TV 1977 Doctor Who saga The Talons of Weng-Chiang was reprised in an audio supernatural mystery series from 2010 to 2021.
Benjamin was on TV and radio from 1965, appearing in Z Cars, The Avengers, The Saint, Jason King and, notably as the same character, Potter, in Danger Man and its more surreal, sci-fi spin-off, The Prisoner, both starring Patrick McGoohan. …
(7) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
January 26, 1994 — Babylon 5 series premieres
Thirty-one years ago on PTEN, the Prime Time Entertainment Network, a syndicated network organized by Warner Brothers, the Babylon 5 series premiered. It was created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski. It followed Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993), the pilot film which aired a year earlier. It would run for five twenty-two episode seasons as planned plus six related films.
It generated a spin-off series, Crusade, but that only lasted thirteen episodes. Two other series were planned, The Legend of the Rangers and The Lost Tales, but neither got past the pilot.
Its cast was marked by tragedy with a number of the principal actors dying young including Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, Jeff Conaway, Jerry Doyle, Andreas Katsulas and Michael O’Hare.
It won two Hugo Awards for “The Coming of Shadows” at L.A. Con III and “Severed Dreams” at LoneStarCon II.
Babylon 5 in the revised print is streaming currently on Prime. I’m going to rewatch it this Winter as I’ve not seen it in at least a decade.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
January 26, 1918 — Philip José Farmer. (Died 2009.)
By Paul Weimer: Philip José Farmer first came to my attention as a name mentioned in the famous “Appendix N” of the original Advanced Dungeon Master’s Guide. Like the rest of the entries in that bibliography, it just listed his name, and a book title (“World of Tiers, et al”) and that was it.
Not long thereafter, though, I came across issue 37 of Dragon Magazine, which was an in-house organ for TSR that mostly focused on D&D and (early on) other TSR games as well. Anyway, in issue 37, Ed Greenwood wrote an article called “From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass in one small step. The theory and use of Gates.” As someone who was already clued into my love of multiverse stuff, this was a formative article for me.
In that article, Greenwood mentions The World of Tiers as “The magnum opus of gate systems”. He mentioned a number of other authors (particularly Moorcock and Cherryh) but I had remembered the mention of Farmer in the AD&D book and now really wanted to find The World of Tiers books, and now had the titles of each and every one.
And so I read them and was immediately absorbed into the story of Robert Wolff, who is not the suburban homeowner he really thinks he is, but someone far older, more powerful and more dangerous. I also saw that Kickaha, the trickster who sets off Wolff on his adventure, was in fact, an even more interesting character with a complicated story (and very possibly an author insert character).
From Tiers, I soon discovered the Riverworld novels, and got hooked on the idea of historical characters being pitted against each other after waking up on the titular planet, and much else besides. It’s one of the most interesting settings ever created in SFF. I remember back in the day, daydreaming what I would do if I woke up on the Riverworld. (The copy I had stressed and made it clear that everyone who ever lived “including you” was going to wake up on the planet.) I also weirdly associate the Billy Joel song “River of Dreams” with Riverworld as well.
I recall a shared world of novels that he created the setting for, the “Dungeon”. Farmer didn’t write any of the novels himself, but instead created the setting for a series of writers to play in. Like Tiers, it was a world involving Gates and strange planes, but as you might guess from the title, this was really a “prison plane” that the main character, Clive, is trying to penetrate to find his missing brother. What I particularly remember is that the novels with different authors took very big “Swings” back and forth, with authors in subsequent books retconning major events in previous books. I got the sense that the authors did not like the ideas of their counterparts all that much. It does make the series not satisfactory overall, and I can’t imagine ever trying to reread it, but it was memorable for its imagery and imagination.
Farmer is the second author, after Heinlein, that I read who tried to synthesize a lot of his characters and settings into as much of a single coherent whole as possible, particularly with his Wold Newton works.
My favorite Farmer besides all of the goodness of Tiers and Riverworld might be The Gate of Time, eventually renamed Two Hawks from Earth. It featured a Native American pilot flying over Romanian airfields during WWII who gets blasted into an alternate history where the migrations of the Native Americans into North America didn’t happen, and they instead rolled westward into Europe, drastically changing the development of Europe instead. I loved how our protagonist tries and figure out what he is dealing with, a culture very different than anything he remembers, and gets caught up in intrigue and adventure. And really, that is what Farmer’s works have always done for me — entertaining action adventures that keep the pages turning.
Saying he felt humiliated by such a public betrayal of his trust, a monstrous abomination known as the Bog Freak told reporters Friday that he was devastated to have seen a movie depicting things he told filmmaker Guillermo del Toro in confidence….
Tufts University biotech researcher Marco Lo Presti made an astonishing discovery while investigating how silk and dopamine allow mussels to stick to rocky surfaces.
“While using acetone to clean the glassware of this silk and dopamine substance,” he told Wired, “I noticed it was undergoing a transition into a solid format, into a web-looking material, into something that looked like a fiber.”
Lo Presti and his colleagues immediately got to work, investigating whether the sticky fibers could be turned into a “remote adhesive.”
The result is an astonishingly “Spider Man”-like silk that can be shot not unlike the superhero’s wrist-mounted web shooters, as detailed in a paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials last year.
While it won’t allow an adult person to swing from skyscraper to skyscraper any time soon, the results speak for themselves. Footage of the team’s experiments shows strands of the material being dripped onto a number of objects from several inches above, forming a solid connection in a matter of seconds and allowing the object to be carried away.
The researcher’s collaborator, Tufts engineering professor Fiorenzo Omenetto, recalled being caught off guard by the accidental discovery….
…Last fall a new entry came from Luke Durant, a researcher in San Jose, Calif. Durant’s discovery unseated the former record holder for the largest prime, which had gone uncontested for nearly six years, an unprecedentedly long reign in the modern search for such numbers. The gap makes sense: the bigger primes are, the further apart they end up, making each new find harder than the last.
The new prime contains a mind-boggling 41,024,320 digits. To put that in perspective, the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe has around 80 digits. Each additional digit increases a number by 10 times, so the size of the new prime lives far beyond human intelligibility. Primes play a major role in pure math, where they’re main characters in a field called number theory, and in practice, where, for example, they underlie widely used encryption algorithms. A prime with 41 million digits won’t immediately join the ranks of useful numbers, but for now it adds a feather in the cap of a community that longs to apprehend the colossal….
… When asked how much money his project cost in an interview with Numberphile on YouTube, Durant said, “I believe it’s under $2 million.” That’s a hefty investment compared with the prime-search project’s prize of $3,000, which he plans to donate to the high school he attended, the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science….
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Cat Eldridge.]
Other candidates shortlisted for Word of the Year —
demure
dynamic pricing
lore
romantasy
slop
(2) TABLE TALK. The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Exhibits team is taking applications for the art show, dealers’ room, and fan tables through January 15, 2025.
The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Art Show will feature science-fiction, fantasy, and other genre-interest art, including sculpture, jewelry, and models displayed in a gallery setting alongside work from one of our guests of honor, artist Donato Giancola.
Sales are made by the convention on behalf of artists.
The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Dealers’ Room team looks forward to bringing together a vibrant and diverse dealer’s room with a large and curated selection of merchandise and services that represent the best in our fandom community. Dealers staff their own tables or booths and sell their own merchandise.
Worldcon offers no-charge table spaces to clubs, groups, conventions, and organizations that promote science, science fiction, fantasy, horror, costuming/cosplay, and other fannish pursuits. This table space is an opportunity to share your enthusiasm with Worldcon members who have similar interests.
(3) VISIT THE MIDWAY. Also, the Seattle Worldcon 2025 website has added a “Fun Stuff” area with coloring pages, a Seattle playlist, a trivia game, free cross stitch patterns, links to their specially-designed fabrics, and more.
The Short: I recently read The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024, Hugh Howey & John Joseph Adams editors, 2024 Mariner. Among the 20 stories, my favorite was the “The Long Game” by Ann Leckie, from The Far Reaches, John Joseph Adams editor, 2023 Amazon Original Stories. My overall rating for the stories included was 3.6/5, or “Very good”. I recommend it, but there were two stories that were “Did not finish ” for me….
… Here are some of the things that public libraries, as well as public school libraries where applicable, should be considering right now to prepare for the new administration. There are fewer than two months—and honestly, about one month with the holidays—to shore up your institutions to make them as strong and solid for the community as possible…
An example of their advice is:
Update Your Collection Management Policies
The thing that will protect your library collection the most is your suite of collection development policies. These policies might be one single policy with several sections or several policies that fall under the umbrella of collection management. These include not only the types of materials you acquire but also how you make those decisions—we know that books don’t simply appear on shelves. Explain the review sources you use and why they’re used, as well as explain where and how recommendations from the community and from the professional field come into consideration. Be as clear as possible about the difference between review materials used to make collection decisions and tools used to help in reader advisory. You don’t rely on reviews nor on recommendations from places like BookLooks or RatedBooks, created by Moms For Liberty and Utah Parents United and their cohorts respectively, as those are not professionally vetted sources. You don’t purchase materials based on reviews from Common Sense Media but you may utilize it in helping patrons find materials. It is annoying to get this granular, but that granularity is crucial. Most people don’t know how libraries select material….
(6) MEDICAL UPDATE. Moshe Feder told Facebook readers he went to the emergency room with abdominal pain on November 30, where the decision was made to have his gallbladder removed. The surgery was successful.
…My gallbladder was in much worse shape than they thought. I’m not sure how infected — white cell count was just a bit high — but I think it was beaten up by years of stones. It wouldn’t have come out neatly through the laparoscopic incision.
So they had to switch from the 20-minute robotic method to the old style 2-hour procedure with a much longer incision.
To say I’m sore is an understatement. I can barely move without aggravating the incisions, and I’m praying that I never cough or sneeze. Even mere belching hurts!
Disney’s fantasy musical served up a mammoth holiday domestic debut of $225.2 million, according to final numbers (that’s up from Sunday’s estimate of $221 million). Smashing numerous records, the Moana sequel boasts the biggest five-day debut in history — besting The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($204.6 million) — as well as delivering both the top Thanksgiving opening of all time and the biggest Thanksgiving gross of all time by a mile, beating Frozen ($93.6 million) and Frozen II ($125 million). And its three-day weekend haul of $139.7 million is the biggest opening ever for a Walt Disney Animation title….
… Overseas, Moana 2 sailed to $165.8 million — Sunday’s estimate was $165.3 million — for a global start of $389 million to boast the biggest global launch of all time for an animated film after passing up Super Mario ($377.2 million)….
Stephen King’s raucous rock ‘n’ roll radio station is going silent at year’s end.
The renowned author and lifelong rocker who used to perform with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band that featured literary icons, said Monday that at age 77, it’s time to say good-bye to three Bangor, Maine, stations that have been bleeding money. King kept the stations afloat for decades, and he said he and his wife, Tabitha, are proud to have kept them going for so long.
“While radio across the country has been overtaken by giant corporate broadcasting groups, I’ve loved being a local, independent owner all these years,” King said in a statement. “I’ve loved the people who’ve gone to these stations every day and entertained folks, kept the equipment running, and given local advertisers a way to connect with their customers.”
… King’s foray into radio began at age 36 with his 1983 purchase of a radio station that was rebranded WZON in deference to his book, “The Dead Zone.” That station went through a few permutations before closing, and then being reacquired by King in 1990.
The ZONE Corporation’s current lineup consists of WKIT-FM, which bills itself as “Stephen King’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio Station,” along with WZON-AM Retro Radio and an adult alternative station, WZLO-FM. They’ll go off the air on Dec. 31….
(9) LYNN MANERS OBITUARY. Longtime LASFS member Lynn Maners died December 1. His partner Carol Trible said that he was discovered in front of the TV by Maner’s ex-wife, Nancy Bannister when she went over to the house about 5 p.m.”
Maners held a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from UCLA, his thesis titled “Social lives of dances in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. He later moved to Tucson, AZ and taught at Pima Community College.
Whether at LASFS meetings in person, on the club’s Facebook page, or in recent years at its live meetings via Zoom, Maners could be counted on to highlight the occasion with interesting trivia, odd news stories, and linguistic curiosities.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born December 2, 1971 — Frank Cho, 53.
So we have Frank Cho. Surely many of you are familiar with the delightful genre Liberty Meadows strip which he wrote and illustrated with its cast of not-always-charming talking beasties and their resident therapist Brandy Carter, who Cho says is an artistic crossing between Lynda Carter and Bettie Page. It ran from ‘97 to ‘01 with some additional material for a few years after that. Here’s a Liberty Meadows strip.
Only in The Dreaming Library does this idea really exist…
He stated his comic career working for Penthouse Comix along with Al Gross and Mark Wheatley. The three of them, likely after a very long weekend, thought up a six-part “raunchy sci-fi fantasy romp” called The Body, centering on an intergalactic female merchant, Katy Wyndon, who can transfer her mind into any of her “wardrobe bodies”, mindless vessels that she occupies to best suit her, ahem, mediations with the local alien races that she encounters while traveling the galaxy trading and trying to become wealthy.
The story was never published for several reasons. Even Kathy Keeton, wife of publisher Bob Guccione, and the person at Penthouse who published the raunchiest comics I’ve seen this side of The Hustler wasn’t interested.
There’s Jungle Girl Comics which was created by Frank Cho, James Murray, and Adriano Batista. Think a female Tarzan. Though she (mostly) stays on the ground in her jungle.
Now Cho loves young females in bikinis that barely cover the parts that need covering. Or nothing at all. Both of these kept them on. His first title at Marvel caused controversy because he claimed that Shanna, the She-Devil, another jungle strip, was supposed to be fully nude. It turned out that he was right as Marvel was intending to launch an adult line of comics. They didn’t, and so history wasn’t made.
I’m not singling out specific title at either DC or Marvel as there’s really too many, and what you will like is very much a matter of personal taste. But one more note we part and that’s about his work at DC.
His work there, well, other than the Harley Quinn covers which are decidedly on the silly edge of things, are more traditional in feel and the Green Arrow one I’ve chosen certainly is. Yes, I’m a really big Green Arrow fan, he’s one of my favorite DC characters, particularly the modern take on him. Here’s a variant cover he did for volume 8, number 1 of that series.
Name a character, Hulk, Spider-Gwen, Hellboy, Red Sonja, New Avengers, Batman, Harley Quinn, and Cho has likely had a hand in it.
Cho is, without doubt, one of my favorite modern comics writer and illustrator.
A very, very impressive amount of his work is available in digital form. Suitable for enjoying on an iPad as I do these days.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
Dinosaur Comics tells us there are two things to look forward to.
To say that Tom King has had a varied career is an understatement.
As a little boy growing up in Los Angeles, King wanted to be a comic book writer. After honing his writing skills as a young man, his dream came true when he interned for Marvel in New York.
But the bubble burst whenRobert Harras, the editor in chief of Marvel at the time, told him that “comics are dead” and he should find a real job. So, he studied philosophy and history at Columbia University, and worked at the Department of Justice for over a year after he graduated in 2000.
Then, 9/11 happened. King told Business Insider he felt a call to action, which led to another career move: joining the CIA….
… Things came full circle when he was given a cover for when he traveled abroad. He dismissed his boss’ suggestion and instead told border security interrogators that he was a comic book writer….
… After the birth of his first son, King left the CIA — partly because he didn’t want to give him “a fatherless life” — and returned to his first passion: comics…
… In 2013, he wrote for the Vertigo imprint, before his first work at DC Comics, “Nightwing” — about Batman’s former sidekick — was published in 2014. Since rejoining the industry, he has earned many accolades, including winning the best writer Eisner Award, considered the Oscars of comic books, in 2018 and 2019 for “Batman,” “Mister Miracle,” and “Swamp Thing.”…
When someone thinks of the greatest and most influential comic strip of all time, it’s more than likely that Charles Schultz’s Peanuts is one of the first titles to come to mind. However, it’s also nearly impossible to leave Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes out of the conversation, especially considering the impact it’s had on not just American culture, but the entire world. Given said cultural impact, some may be wondering why the strip has never been adapted into a film or television series in the 40 years since its conception. The truth is, any kind of screen adaptation or official merchandising of the characters is something that Watterson has always been vehemently opposed to. While it’s more than likely that an actual TV or movie adaptation, whether live-action or animated, will never see the light of day, that certainly hasn’t stopped the imagination of its fans online….
… As much as its creator may detest the idea, there’s no doubt that Calvin and Hobbes would lend itself to wonderful work of animation; but the wiki page of a hypothetical TV series is perhaps the closest anyone will ever get to making one of their own. According to the page on “Calvin and Hobbes the Series”, the fictional series first premiered on Nickelodeon back in May of 2016 and lasted an impressive run of 163 throughout 5 Seasons until 2021. While some of these fake episodes can be found online, as short fan fiction stories, “JaJaLoo” provided a full list of each episode and even went the extra mile of giving each one a name. They even provided an in-depth background on the show’s production, writing that the Nickelodeon series was actually a reboot that followed a previous attempt to adapt the strip by Cartoon Network titled “Calvin and Hobbes: the Animated Adventures”. This part of the page offers some rather confusing contradictions to the rest of the page, however, as it also claims that the reboot was done in live-action, despite previously claiming that it was also animated with voice actors like its predecessor…
… Some might be wondering why it is that Watterson has been so reluctant to approve any such adaptation or merchandising of his characters for these years, but his reasoning behind it actually isn’t all that complicated. He spoke about his reluctance in a 1987 interview (via Internet Archive), claiming that doing so would compromise the experience for the reader and would also result in cheapening his work.
“I think it’s really a crass way to go about it–the Saturday morning cartoons do that now, where they develop the toy and then draw the cartoon around it, and the result is the cartoon is a commercial for the toy and the toy is a commercial for the cartoon. The same thing’s happening now in comic strips; it’s just another way to get the competitive edge. You saturate all the different markets and allow each other to advertise the other, and it’s the best of all possible worlds. You can see the financial incentive to work that way. I just think it’s to the detriment of integrity in comic strip art.”…
…When Superman & Lois debuted, viewers discovered they had twins who were 15 years old. This small detail allowed both Superman and Lois Lane to become true adults in both their relationship and as parents of children nearing adulthood themselves. After being a representational figure for women for more than eight decades, Superman & Lois allowed her to do that again for adult fans.
While there are plenty of problematic portrayals of women in the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics, Lois Lane was always a bit different. From the first issue of Action Comics in 1938 through the decades that followed, Lois Lane was always a woman working in a field dominated by men, and she won their respect. While it’s true many stories feature Lois swooning over Superman and berating Clark Kent, she was equally concerned with breaking a good story, especially the Man of Steel’s true identity….
When fire was invented, it changed the course of human evolution. It provided warmth, enabled cooking and facilitated the creation of more advanced tools. For instance, one pivotal tool, the stone-tipped spear, might have been assembled using tar and other adhesives. While early tar production remains largely a mystery, scientists have now uncovered a 65,000-year-old hearth that appears to have functioned as a small-scale “tar factory.”
In a new study published in Quaternary Science Reviews in November, scientists describe a 65,000-year-old hearth found in Gibraltar on the Iberian Peninsula. The fire pit was theoretically used to make tar—and if that conclusion is proven true, it also represents the first evidence of the use of the plant rockrose, Cistus ladanifer, for obtaining tar….
… Scientists already knew that Neanderthals made adhesives using other materials like ocher and naturally sticky substances to haft stone tips onto wooden shafts to create weapons. The newly described hearth in Gibraltar represents a “specialized burning structure” for tar production, the researchers write in the study…
A team of astronomers has examined a potentially new source of gravitational waves, and discovered it’s possible — maybe — it could be detected with currently working instruments. The source would be the lumpy disk of material swirling madly around a black hole right after it forms*.
First things first: Gravitational waves were the last prediction made by Einstein’s theory of relativity that remained unproven, at least until 2015 (and announced a year later after a lot of analysis). The idea is that what we think of as space (or spacetime) can be warped, distorted, by masses in it. That distortion is what we perceive as gravity….
…If you accelerate a massive object, it not only dents space but also creates ripples in spacetime, called gravitational waves….Space shrinks and expands as the waves pass by, and if you had a very accurate ruler, for example, you could measure that oscillation.
Astronomers have built just such a detector, called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). I’ve written about it many times; it detected the first gravitational waves in 2015 (there are other observatories that are part of a global collaboration with LIGO, too, and ESA is building a space-based version called LISA that will be freaking amazing… and astronomers can even use pulsars in the galaxy to look for these waves, which is pretty metal). Now here’s an important thing: Any accelerating mass makes GWs (please accept that abbreviation so I don’t have to type it our every dang time), but they tend to be mushy, spread out and weak. The waves get much sharper and stronger a) the more massive the objects are, and 2) the harder they’re accelerated. That’s why almost all the GWs detected have been from merging black holes: they’re very massive indeed, and as they merge they are whipped around each other at nearly the speed of light….
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Michelle Morrell, Diana Glyer, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Andrew (not Werdna).]
From the large number of stories that series editor John Joseph Adams screened for this year’s collection, he picked the 80 best pieces (forty science fiction and forty fantasy) to submit to editor Hugh Howey for a blind reading, so that the prestige of the venues or author bylines were not a factor. (The ones Adams designated as notable are shown in a table at the link). Howey then selected 20 for publication (ten science fiction, ten fantasy.)
The book will be released on October 22, 2024.
Here is the Table of Contents with the 20 stories they thought the best.
2024 TABLE OF CONTENTS
FANTASY
The Ankle-Snatcher by Grady Hendrix from Creature Feature (Amazon Original Stories)
Bari and the Resurrection Flower by Hana Lee from Fantasy Magazine
The Blade and Bloodwright by Sloane Leong from Lightspeed
Bruised-Eye Dusk by Jonathan Louis Duckworth from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Disassembling Light by Kel Coleman from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Eye & Tooth by Rebecca Roanhorse from Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele & John Joseph Adams
How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub by P. Djeli Clark from Uncanny
If Someone You Love Has Become a Vurdalak by Sam J. Miller from The Dark
John Hollowback and the Witch by Amal El-Mohtar from The Book of Witches edited by Jonathan Strahan
Resurrection Highway by A.R. Capetta from Sunday Morning Transport
SCIENCE FICTION
Calypso’s Guest by Andrew Sean Greer from Amazon Original Stories
Emotional Resonance by V.M. Ayala from Escape Pod
Falling Bodies by Rebecca Roanhorse from The Far Reaches edited by John Joseph Adams (Amazon Original Stories)
Form 8774-D by Alex Irvine from Reactor The Four Last Things by Christopher Rowe from Asimov’s
How It Unfolds by James S.A. Corey from The Far Reaches edited by John Joseph Adams (Amazon Original Stories)
The Long Game by Ann Leckie from The Far Reaches edited by John Joseph Adams (Amazon Original Stories)
Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont by P.A. Cornell from Fantasy Magazine
From the large number of stories that series editor John Joseph Adams screened for this year’s collection, he picked the 80 best pieces (forty science fiction and forty fantasy) to submit to editor R. F. Kuang for a blind reading, so that the prestige of the venues or author bylines were not a factor. (The ones Adams designated as notable are shown in a table at the link). Kuang then selected 20 for publication (ten science fiction, ten fantasy.)
The book will be released on October 17, 2023.
Here is the Table of Contents with the 20 stories they thought the best.
FANTASY
Readings in the Slantwise Sciences by Sofia Samatar from Conjunctions
Beginnings by Kristina Ten from Fantasy
The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow from Into Shadow
Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Stephen Graham Jones from Tor.com
There Are No Monsters on Rancho Buenavista by Isabel Canas from Nightmare
White Water, Blue Ocean by Linda Raquel Nieves Pérez from Reclaim the Stars
Three Mothers Mountain by Nathan Ballingrud from Screams from the Dark
Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology by Theodora Goss from Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms
In The Beginning of Me I Was A Bird by Maria Dong from Lightspeed
Folk Hero Motifs in Tales Told by the Dead by KT Bryski from Strange Horizons
SCIENCE FICTION
Air to Shape Lungs by Shingai Njeri Kagunda from Africa Risen
Sparrows by Susan Palwick from Asimov’s
Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist by Isabel J. Kim from Clarkesworld
Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills from Uncanny
Murder by Pixel by S.L. Huang from Clarkesworld
The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to Biohacking Your Own Abortion in a Post-Roe World by MKRNYILGLD from Lightspeed
The Odyssey Problem by Chris Willrich from Clarkesworld
Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867 by Kim Fu from Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
The Difference Between Love and Time by Catherynne M. Valente from Someone in Time
Cumulative Ethical Guidelines by Malka Older from Bridge to Elsewhere
From the large number of stories that series editor John Joseph Adams screened for this year’s collection, he picked the 80 best pieces to submit to editor Rebecca Roanhorse for a blind reading, so that the prestige of the venues or author bylines were not a factor. (The ones Adams designated as notable are shown in a table at the link). Roanhorse then selected 20 for publication (ten science fiction, ten fantasy.)
The book will be published on November 1.
Here is the Table of Contents with the 20 stories they thought the best.
FANTASY
The Captain and the Quartermaster by C.L. Clark from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Colors of the Immortal Palette by Caroline M. Yoachim from Uncanny
L’Esprit de L’Escalier by Catherynne M. Valente from Tor.com
The Red Mother by Elizabeth Bear from Tor.com
The Cloud Lake Unicorn by Karen Russell from Conjunctions
Skindler’s Veil by Kelly Link from When Things Get Dark
The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han by Maria Dong from khōréō
If the Martians Have Magic by P. Djèlí Clark from Uncanny
I Was a Teenage Space Jockey by Stephen Graham Jones from Lightspeed
10 Steps to a Whole New You by Tonya Liburd from Fantasy
SCIENCE FICTION
The Cold Calculations by Aimee Ogden from Clarkesworld
Root Rot by Fargo Tbakhi from Apex
Proof of Induction by José Pablo Iriarte from Uncanny
The Algorithm Will See You Now by Justin C. Key from Vital: The Future of Healthcare
Delete Your First Memory For Free by Kel Coleman from FIYAH
The Pizza Boy by Meg Elison from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story by Nalo Hopkinson from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Future Library by Peng Shepherd from Tor.com
Tripping Through Time by Rich Larson from Dark Matter
Let All the Children Boogie by Sam J. Miller from Tor.com
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) May 7, 2022
(3) COMPLAINT: JUSTIFIED OR UNJUSTIFIED? [Item by Anne Marble.] This review of the new alternative history novel The Peacekeeper: A Novel by B.L. Blanchard might make an interesting discussion. There’s also a three-star review showing the same confusion. (This is one of the First Reads book for this month on Amazon, so the potential reviewers probably come outside of SFF, but still… Why can’t people just Google?)
(4) VIDEO GAME NEWS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Tom Faber reviews Norco, a point-and-click adventure game with magical realist elements based on the personal experiences of lead developer Yuts, who grew up in Norco, Louisiana near “a Shell oil refinery that exploded during his childhood in 1988, damaging his house.”
Norco‘s writing nods to Southern Gothic authors such as William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy alongside genre writers Raymond Chandler and William Gibson. Looking at a vehicle in your garden, you are told: “This truck was your grandfather’s. You remember hiding in his lap while he let you steer. The dead wasps that collected behind the seat. The smell of grease, whiskey and nicotine.’ This terse, stylish language is studded with sharply observed local vernacular and occasional bouts of impressionistic poetry whose adventurous metaphors only rarely stray into purple prose….
..If it all sounds sombre, the game leavens its storytelling with plenty of wackiness and wry humour. There is a detective who wears clown make-up as a fashion choice. A cat on a bookshop counter will, if stroked repeatedly, purr so ecstatically that it flies through the air, crashing through the ceiling.
(5) LIFEWRITING. [Item by Todd Mason.] Tananarive Due and Steve Barnes’s latest podcast features guest Patton Oswalt. All three are horror genre folks, among other things, including being screenwriters, and Harlan Ellison friends or acquaintances. “Lifewriting: Write for Your Life! Special Guest: Patton Oswalt!”
In this episode, Steve and Tananarive talk to comedian and actor Patton Oswalt about how horror helps us navigate difficult times, the horror-comedy connection, the late Harlan Ellison, and meditation as a tool for coping with stress.
(6) GEORGE PERÉZ (1954-2022) George Pérez, the acclaimed comic book artist and writer known for his work on major DC properties, including Crisis on Infinite Earths and Wonder Woman, along with Marvel’s The Avengers, has died. The Hollywood Reporternoted his passing with a long tribute. He was 67.
Constance here, with the update no one wants to read. George passed away yesterday, peacefully at home with his wife of 490 months and family by his side. He was not in pain and knew he was very, very loved.
We are all very much grieving but, at the same time, we are so incredibly grateful for the joy he brought to our lives. To know George was to love him; and he loved back. Fiercely and with his whole heart. The world is a lot less vibrant today without him in it.
He loved all of you. He loved hearing your posts and seeing the drawings you sent and the tributes you made. He was deeply proud to have brought so much joy to so many.
Everyone knows George’s legacy as a creator. His art, characters and stories will be revered for years to come. But, as towering as that legacy is, it pales in comparison to the legacy of the man George was. George’s true legacy is his kindness. It’s the love he had for bringing others joy – and I hope you all carry that with you always.
Today is Free Comic Book Day. A day George absolutely loved and a fitting day to remember his contributions to comics and to our lives. I hope you’ll enjoy your day today with him in mind. He would have loved that.
Please keep his wife Carol in your thoughts and again, I thank you for respecting her privacy. I remain available through the contact on the page.
George’s memorial service will take place at MEGACON Orlando at 6pm on Sunday, May 22nd. It will be open to all. Details to follow.
We will miss him always.
(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1997 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-five years ago, The Fifth Element got its first theatrical exhibition at the Cannes Film Festival, an English-language French film directed by Luc Besson and co-written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen from a story by Besson.
Artists Jean “Moebius” Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières, whose books Besson acknowledges are his inspiration for a great deal of the film, were hired for production design. The fabulous if admittedly over-the-top costume design was by Jean-Paul Gaultier who is not in the film. (I checked.) The filming took place in London and Mauritania when nothing in France was available.
It is very much an adolescent fantasy, or fiction if you prefer, as he wrote it at sixteen though he was thirty-eight when it was actually produced. I love the cast which includes among many Bruce Willis, John Neville, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm and, in a role for the ages, Maïwenn Le Besco. Look I love this film — the casting is great, the story works and I love the universe here. I’ve watched it least a half dozen times so far.
The budget was close to ninety million but it made back over two hundred and sixty million. Quite impressive indeed.
So what did the critics think at the time? Let’s as usual start with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Tribune: “’The Fifth Element,’’ which opened the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, is one of the great goofy movies–a film so preposterous I wasn’t surprised to discover it was written by a teenage boy. That boy grew up to become Luc Besson, director of good smaller movies and bizarre big ones, and here he’s spent $90 million to create sights so remarkable they really ought to be seen.”
And let us finish with Marc Salov of the Austin Chronicle who obviously didn’t know how old Besson was he wrote the script: “The Fifth Element never takes itself too seriously. Oldman is hilarious as the effete, over-the-top Zorg; Willis plays essentially the same character he’s played in his last five films — ever the scruffy rebel; and Jovavich is gorgeous, charming, and thoroughly believable as Leeloo (thanks to some terrific post-English language skills). Even U.K. trip-hop sensation Tricky scores points as Zorg’s right-hand toadie. Although the film tends to suffer from a severe case of overt preachiness in the third reel (shades of James Cameron’s The Abyss), it’s still a wonderfully visual, exciting ride. Besson remains one of France’s great national treasures, and The Fifth Element is a surprising, delightful melange of old-school dare-deviltry and new-age sci-fi.”
It has a very impressive eighty-six percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. It was nominated for a Hugo at BucConeer, the year Contact won. It is streaming on Amazon Prime and Paramount +.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born May 7, 1922 — Darren McGavin. Oh, I loved him being Carl Kolchak on the original Kolchak: The Night Stalker — How many times have I seen it? I’ve lost count. Yes, it was corny, yes, the monsters were low-rent, but it was damn fun. And no, I did not watch a minute of the reboot. By the way, I’m reasonably sure that his first genre role was in the Tales of Tomorrow series as Bruce Calvin in “The Duplicates“ episode which you can watch here. (Died 2006.)
Born May 7, 1923 — Anne Baxter. The Batman series had a way of attracting the most interesting performers and she was no exception as she ended playing two roles there, first Zelda, then she had the extended recurring role of Olga, Queen of the Cossacks. Other genre roles were limited I think to an appearance as Irene Adler in the Peter Cushing Sherlock Holmes film The Masks of Death. (Died 1985.)
Born May 7, 1931 — Gene Wolfe. He’s best known for his Book of the New Sun series. My list of recommended novels would include Pirate Freedom, The Sorcerer’s House and the Book of the New Sun series. He’s won the BFA, Nebula, Skylark, BSFA and World Fantasy Awards but to my surprise has never won a Hugo though he has been nominated quite a few times. He has been honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. (Died 2019.)
Born May 7, 1940 — Angela Carter. Another one taken far too young by the damn Reaper. She’s best remembered for The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories where she took fairy tales and made them very, very adult in tone. Personally I’d recommend The Curious Room insteadas it contains her original screenplays for the BSFA-winning The Company of Wolves which starred Angela Lansbury, and The Magic Toyshop films, both of which were based on her own original stories. Though not even genre adjacent, her Wise Children is a brilliant and quite unsettling look at the theatre world. I’ve done several essays on her so far and no doubt will do more. (Died 1992.)
Born May 7, 1951 — Gary Westfahl, 71. SF reviewer for the LA Times, the unfortunately defunct as I enjoyed it quite a bit Internet Review of Science Fiction, and Locus Online. Editor of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders; author of Immortal Engines: Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy (with George Slusser) and A Sense-of-Wonderful Century: Explorations of Science Fiction and Fantasy Films.
Born May 7, 1952 — John Fleck, 70. One of those performers the Trek casting staff really like as he’s appeared in Next Generation, Deep Space Nine in three different roles, Voyager and finally on Enterprise in the recurring role of Silik. And like so many Trek alumni, he shows up on TheOrville.
Born May 7, 1969 — Annalee Newitz, 53. They are the winner of a Hugo Award for Best Fancast at Dublin 2019 with Charlie Jane Anders for “Our Opinions Are Correct”. And their novel Autonomous was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novel, John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Locus Award for Best First Novel, while winning a Lambda Literary Award. Very impressive indeed. They are also the winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for their best short science fiction, “When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis”. They are nominated again this year at Chicon 8 for a Best Fancast Hugo for their “Our Opinions Are Correct” podcast.
(9) STRANGE HAPPENINGS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, David Betancourt interviews Benedict Cumberbatch and Elisabeth Olsen about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with Cumberbatch explaining that he thinks Stephen Strange is part of an ensemble and not necessarily the star. “Benedict Cumberbatch on Doctor Strange sequel: ‘It’s not all about him’”.
… Cumberbatch still gets opportunities to flex his own superhero muscles in the new film by playing multiple alternate universe versions of Doctor Strange. These include heroic, seemingly evil and zombielike versions of the superhero, who was created by the late Steve Ditko and Stan Lee and first appeared in Marvel Comics “Strange Tales” No. 110 back in 1963. Cumberbatch first dabbled with a Doctor Strange from a different world when he voiced the character in the animated series “What If…?” last year.
Ego seems to be the common denominator among the variants — he never works well with others. But Cumberbatch says Strange has to learn to rely on someone other than himself.
“These parallel existences have a similarity about them but there’s also key differences,” Cumberbatch said. “It was a challenge … to create something that’s different but at the same time recognizably Strange. There’s an element of him that’s constant. But he’s still really injured by his ego and his arrogance and his belief that he has to be the one holding the knife. This film really undoes that logic and stress-tests him in a way that means his evolution is such that he can’t operate as a solo entity. He has to collaborate.”…
(10) THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR HAWKING. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] The Starfleet boots seen on the new series will be made available to the public and will retail for about $500 Cdn. “Vancouver designer’s boots on deck as official shoes of the Enterprise in new Star Trek series” reports CBC News. And there’s no stitching in them because in space no one can see a sewing machine!
Vancouver’s John Fluevog is joining the USS Enterprise this spring as Starfleet’s official bootmaker.
Fluevog, whose shoes have been worn by the likes of Madonna, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and even B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, designed footwear for the cast of the new series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which premieres May 5.
He said he feels a sense of connection to Star Trek in that both his shoes and the series offer a sense of escapism….
(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Boston Dynamics’s Spot is a hard-working robot but he still likes showing off his latest dance moves! “No Time to Dance”.
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Rob Thornton, Lisa Garrity, Anne Marble, Todd Mason, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]
From the large number of stories that series editor John Joseph Adams screened for this year’s collection, he picked the 80 best pieces to submit to editor Veronica Roth for a blind reading, so that the prestige of the venues or author bylines were not a factor. (The ones Adams designated as notable are shown in a table at the link). Roth then selected 20 for publication (ten science fiction, ten fantasy, (highlighted in green on the table.)
The book will be published on October 12.
Here is the Table of Contents with the 20 stories they thought the best.
FANTASY
Glass Bottle Dancer by Celeste Rita Baker from Lightspeed
The Long Walk by Kate Elliott from The Book of Dragons
The Cleaners by Ken Liu from Faraway
Tiger’s Feast by KT Bryski from Nightmare
Crawfather by Mel Kassel from F&SF
Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker from Tor.com
Let’s Play Dead by Senaa Ahmad from The Paris Review
And This is How to Stay Alive by Shingai Njeri Kagunda from Fantasy
Our Language by Yohanca Delgado from A Public Space
The Rat by Yohanca Delgado from One Story
SCIENCE FICTION
One Time, a Reluctant Traveler by A. T. Greenblatt from Clarkesworld
Skipping Stones in the Dark by Amman Sabet from F&SF
Brother Rifle by Daryl Gregory from Made to Order: Robots and Revolution
Schrodinger’s Catastrophe by Gene Doucette from Lightspeed
The Plague Doctors by Karen Lord from Take Us to a Better Place: Stories
Survival Guide by Karin Lowachee from Burn the Ashes (The Dystopia Triptych, Vol. 2)
The Pill by Meg Elison from Big Girl
The Beast Adjoins by Ted Kosmatka from Asimov’s
How to Pay Reparations: a Documentary by Tochi Onyebuchi from Future Tense
Beyond the Dragon’s Gate by Yoon Ha Lee from Tor.com
Guest editor Veronica Roth is the best-selling author of the Divergent series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Four: A Divergent Collection), the Carve the Mark duology (Carve the Mark, The Fates Divide), and Chosen Ones. She is a board member of YALLFest, the biggest YA book festival in the country, and YALLWEST, its sister festival. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
…The Arkham House Archive contains over 4000 letters and documents related to publications issued by Arkham House, Mycroft & Moran and Stanton & Lee between 1939 and 1971, as well as correspondence and business papers related to Derleth’s activities as writer and editor for other publishers, including his editorial work as an anthologist in the 1940s and 1950s, and as a TV scriptwriter in the 1950s. This archive is a highly important collection of letters and documents. The core of the archive is correspondence, often extensive, from several hundred authors whose work Derleth published under his own imprints or in his highly important non-Arkham House anthologies published in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as manuscripts, mostly typewritten (including fair copies and carbons), submitted by Arkham House authors.
… These business papers largely predate the August William Derleth Papers held by the Wisconsin Historical Society, as “most of the pre-1963 materials were destroyed when this collection was originally processed, so substantially complete records survive only for the years between 1963 and 1970.”
(2) ROSWELL JUDGE. Light Bringer Project has introduced S.B. Divya as one of the Finalist Judges for the Roswell Award international short science fiction story competition from writers age 16 and older.
S.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma. She enjoys subverting expectations and breaking stereotypes whenever she can. Divya is the Hugo and Nebula–nominated author of Runtime and co-editor of Escape Pod (anthology), with Mur Lafferty. Divya also co-host of the premier science fiction podcast magazine, Escape Pod.
Her short stories have been published at various magazines including Analog, Uncanny, and Tor. Her collection, Contingency Plans For the Apocalypse and Other Situations, is out now from Hachette India. Machinehood is her debut novel from Saga Press. She holds degrees in computational neuroscience and signal processing, and she worked for twenty years as an electrical engineer before becoming an author.
Find out more about her at SBDivya.com or on Twitter as @DivyasTweets.
(4) NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the March 10 Financial Times, Tom Faber discusses how video games incorporate museums into their gaming.
In 2020’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the hero is excluded from a science museum as a child but returns later as the titular web-slinger, leaping triumphantly between the wings of rockets suspended from the ceiling. Here the museum space is shorthand for lost innocence, playing on gamers’ memories of school trips to exhibitions. This same effect is pulled off more artfully in The Last Of Us Part II, which features a poignant flashback sequence in an abandoned museum of science and history. In the ruined atrium, flooded with sunlight and overtaken by vines, the complex relationship between protagoinist Ellie and her father-figure Joel is infused with tenderness as they play on dinosaur skeletons and enter the command module of an Apollo spacecraft, forgetting the zombie-infested world outside for a few blissful moments.
In-game museums sometimes serve instead of meta-commentary, spaces where games tell the story of their own creation. The joyous PS3 platformer Astro’s Playroom is a living exhibition of Sony’s greatest hits, while old Ratchet And Clank games contain secret levels which teach players about how developers created the game’s physics and environments. Most imaginative is the post-credits museum of Call Of Duty 2: Modern Warfare, remastered last year, where players can scrutinise character models, environments and weapons from the game. Looking closely at each diorama–zooming in via the scope on your sniper rifle, naturally–reveals the extraordinary detail put into each component. A tempting red button causes the exhibits to spring to life and attack.
(5) SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM? [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Isaac Asimov’s autobiography In Joy Still Felt discusses how in 1958 he was approached to be on a quiz show called Brain or Brawn and he declined to appear. Asimov writes, “I thought of Sprague de Camp, who managed to get on The $64,000 Question and who (for reasons known only to himself and God), chose motion pictures as his category, then muffed the very first question.”
I’d be interested in stories about fans and pros being on quiz shows. Ray Bradbury appeared on an episode of You Bet Your Life in 1956.
… The White Rabbit never says, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get,” nor does the Mad Hatter say, “I am under no obligation to make sense to you.” The quote attributed to the Queen of Hearts – “That’s enough! Off with their head” – is almost right; she was after “heads”.
Dr Franziska Kohlt, editor of the Lewis Carroll Review, says she’s always spotting Carroll misquotes. “I saw a post about the coins on a collectors’ page, and almost automatically went checking for the quote, thinking, ‘Oh I hope they haven’t – oh no they have,” she said. “Misattributed Alice quotes are absolutely everywhere.”
Kohlt said that the “hurrier I go” and the “I am under no obligation!” quotes are “absolutely not Carroll quotes, as much as the internet insists”. “You wouldn’t believe how often we have to deal with these misquotes. I even find them in academic papers,” she said….
(7) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.
Anthony J. Lumsden conceived a design so advanced for the Van Nuys sewage facility that the building stood in for Star Trek’s Starfleet Academy (see it in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). 6100 Woodley Ave., Van Nuys. (See “Scene It Before: The Japanese Garden from Star Trek” in Los Angeles Magazine.)
(8) JAMES FOLLETT OBIT. British writer James Follett (1939-2021) died January 10. Blake’s 7 fans knew him as the scriptwriter for the “Stardrive” and “Dawn of the Gods” episodes. In the Seventies he wrote many genre plays for BBC Radio 4’s Afternoon Theatre, Just Before Midnight, and Saturday Night Theatre. In the Eighties he created Radio 4’s acclaimed SF serial Earthsearch, and later wrote three novels based on it. Altogether he wrote 11 sff novels, several computer games, and many radio and TV scripts. (He was the cousin of Ken Folett.)
Sad to learn of the recent passing of writer James Follett. James wrote two episodes of Blake's 7 – Dawn Of The Gods and Stardrive. We'll be celebrating Stardrive (a wonderful Series D episode) in great depth in the #b7annual82pic.twitter.com/1gSCp6WPPX
March 15, 1981 — On this date in 1981, Scanners premiered. Directed by David Cronenberg and produced by Claude Héroux, it starred Jennifer O’Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Dane and Michael Ironside. Reviewers, with the exception of Roger Ebert who despised it with all of his soul, generally liked it, and reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a healthy sixty four percent rating among audience reviewers. The same cannot be said for the sequels which have ratings of seventeen and eighteen percent among those same reviewers.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born March 15, 1852 – Augusta, Lady Gregory. Folklorist, playwright, theatre manager. Vital to Irish Literary Revival. For us, collected and retold Irish tales e.g. “The Three Sons”, Cuchulain of Muirthemne. Bernard Shaw called her the greatest living Irishwoman. (Died 1932) [JH]
Born March 15, 1924 — Guy Williams. Most remembered as Professor John Robinson on Lost in Space though some of you may remember him as Don Diego de la Vega and his masked alter ego Zorro in the earlier Zorro series. (Is it genre? You decide. I think it is.) He filmed two European genre films, Il tiranno di Siracusa (Damon and Pythias) and Captain Sinbad as well. (Died 1989.) (CE)
Born March 15, 1943 — David Cronenberg, 78. Not a Director whose tastes are at all squeamish. His best films? I’d pick Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch and The Dead Zone.Though I’m tempted to toss Scanners in that list as well. ISFDB says he has one genre novel, Consumed, which garnered a Bram Stoker Award nominated for A Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Oh and he was in the film version of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed. (CE)
Born March 15, 1926 – Rosel Brown. Three novels (one with Keith Laumer), two dozen shorter stories. Recent reprint collection Earthblood (6 by RB, 3 by KL, 1 by both). Had an M.A. in Greek, too. (Died 1967) [JH]
Born March 15, 1933 – Al Lewis, age 88. Chaired Westercon 15. Long active in LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society); first to receive its Evans-Freehafer Award (service). Produced The Genie and The Musquite Kid Rides Again, famous in song and story. [JH]
Born March 15, 1937 – Dan Adkins. A dozen covers, two hundred twenty interiors. Fanart for e.g. Double:Bill (he has five in this issue – PDF), Vega, Xero (he’s in The Best of “Xero”), Yandro. Fanzine, Sata (later by Bill Pearson). Here is the Nov 66 If. Here is the Jul 69 Galaxy. Here is the Sep 71 Amazing. Later worked with Wally Wood and for DC, Marvel, Dell. Here is Doctor Strange 169. Here is an interview by Roy Thomas. Sinott Hall of Fame. (Died 2013) [JH]
Born March 15, 1948 — Carl Weathers, 73. Most likely best remembered among genre fans as Al Dillon in Predator, but he has some other genre creds as well. He was a MP officer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, General Skyler in Alien Siege, Dr. Artimus Snodgrass in the very silly The Sasquatch Gang comedy and he voiced Combat Carl in Toy Story 4. And no, I’m not forgetting he’s currently playing Greef Karga on The Mandalorian series. I still think his best role ever was Adam Beaudreaux on Street Justice but that’s very, very not genre. (CE)
Born March 15, 1949 — Lawrence Kasdan, 72. Director, screenwriter, and producer. He’s best known early on as co-writer of The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Return of the Jedi. He also wrote The Art of Return of the Jedi with George Lucas which is quite superb. He’s also one of the writers lately of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Solo: A Star Wars Story. (CE)
Born March 15, 1962 — Jemma Redgrave, 59. Her first genre role was as Violette Charbonneau in the “A Time to Die” episode of Tales of the Unexpected which was also her first acting role. Later genre roles are scant but include a memorable turn as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, daughter of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart on Doctor Who. Not at all surprisingly,she has also appeared as Stewart as the lead in myriad UNIT adventures for Big Finish Productions. (CE)
Born March 15, 1965 – James Barclay, age 56. A dozen novels, half a dozen shorter stories. Guest of Honour at FantasyCon 2008, Master of Ceremonies at FantasyCon 2010. “Barclay Rambles On” in BFS Journal 10 (British Fantasy Society). Two children, two dogs – meaning a total of four, not two. [JH]
Born March 15, 1967 — Emily Watson, 54. Her first genre appearance is in Equilibrium as Mary O’Brien before voicing Victoria Everglot in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. Next is she’s Anne MacMorrow in the Celtic fantasy The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep. She appeared apparently in a Nineties radio production of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase but I’ve no information on it. (CE)
Born March 15, 1980 – Julie Cross, age 41. Three novels, one shorter story for us; several others. NY Times and USA Today Best-Seller. Gymnast and coach. Has read The Odyssey, Native Son, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. [JH]
John Joseph Adams was a guest lecturer at the 2020 Odyssey Writing Workshop. In this excerpt from a question and answer session, he talks about worldbuilding and what he’d most like to see in submissions.
John is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a science fiction and fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of more than thirty anthologies, including Dead Man’s Hand, Robot Uprisings, Oz Reimagined, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard.
Recent books include Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Press Start to Play, Loosed Upon the World, and The Apocalypse Triptych.
John is also the editor and publisher of the magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare.
2. DONNA SHIRLEY WAS INSPIRED BY SCI-FI NOVELISTS RAY BRADBURY AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE.
At age 12, Shirley discovered—and devoured—Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles at the Wynnewood public library. Her earthbound teenage endeavors included editing her high school yearbook and playing cymbals in the marching band, but her space dreams were powered by Jimmy, the protagonist of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Sands of Mars, who makes a seven-month voyage to the planet. In her 1998 autobiography Managing Martians, Shirley recalled, “Clarke described a world that was my ideal of community and comradeship.”
(13) SET IN DC. In the Washington Post, Fritz Hahn, Anyang Guo, and Angela Haupt ask various people for their favorite books set in Washington. Michael Dirda recommends This Shared Dream by Kathleen Ann Goonan, set in an alternate universe 1991 where JFK wasn’t assassinated and Martin Luther King becomes U.N. ambassador. “The best books about Washington D.C.”. One other sff novel is mentioned —
“Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders
I had often passed beautiful Oak Hill Cemetery on my walks around the city, but I didn’t get obsessed with it until I read “Lincoln in the Bardo,” a novel that might be described as a phantasmagoric “Spoon River Anthology” with footnotes. Set at the cemetery, and told by ghosts, it’s hilarious, disturbing and poignant by turn. George Saunders was inspired to write it after hearing about Lincoln’s visits to the cemetery to see his young son Willie, who temporarily lay in the Carroll Family Mausoleum after his death in 1862. The first time I tried to visit Oak Hill it was closing time, but an employee told me I could get a key and enter any time if I bought a plot, an idea I haven’t entirely ruled out. In the meantime I’ll make due with visiting hours.
(14) MUPPET KNOWLEDGE. In “The Muppets Find Out Which Muppet They Are” on YouTube, the Muppets take BuzzFeed’s Muppet quiz to determine which Muppet they are, a process one Muppet called “very meta.”
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “300 Pitch Meeting” on ScreenRant, Ryan George says that 300 is set in Sparta, “a Greek city state where shirts have been outlawed” and the film consists of “slow-motion fight scenes with very muscular men wearing very tight thongs.”
[Thanks to Nick Eden, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, JJ, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is ending its John Joseph Adams Books sff imprint after five years. Adams told Facebook followers:
Sad news, friends: HMH has decided to discontinue John Joseph Adams Books. We’ve still got several books forthcoming, and those will still be published, but nothing new beyond those, alas. Cheers to all of the authors who went on this ride with me, and to all who bought & read.
Adams emphasized that HMH is still publishing another project:
I should note that Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy is not connected to JJA Books in a technical sense, so the 2020 and 2021 volumes of that will still be published, and then we’ll see. This doesn’t impact whether or not THAT continues.
And he added, “This also has no impact on Lightspeed or Nightmare [magazines] or the impending relaunch of Fantasy, or any of my anthologies.”
[Thanks to rcade and Andrew Porter for the story.]
