By Chris M. Barkley: Novelist Meredith R. Lyons stopped in at the spacious Joseph Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati, Ohio to promote her second novel, A Dagger of Lightning. She was hosted and interviewed by the Hugo Award winning writer John Scalzi. Soundcloud Interview Link: “Meredith R. Lyons Interview With John Scalzi”.
Cover: A Dagger of Lightning by Meredith R. Lyons
In the latest installment of Scalzi’s “The Big Idea” feature, “The Big Idea: Meredith R. Lyons” (which was published on April 3 on his Whatever blog site), Lyons explains what her motivation was for the new novel, which is the first in a new series.
“Why was it that only those twenty-one and under got to be ripped from their mundane lives, gifted immortality, and elevated to chosen one? Why not choose someone with some life experience and an appreciation for the frailty of our mortal coil?”
“With that in mind, I set out to write a forty-five-year-old woman who leaves for a morning run and never makes it home. I was so obsessed with the idea that I had ten thousand words in less than forty-eight hours. But I made the deadly mistake of sitting down and thinking about it, and subsequently worried that no one would be interested in a scifi fantasy protagonist older than thirty. I was even scared to show it to my writing group in case the concept ‘was stupid.’”
John Scalzi interviewing Meredith R. Lyons.
Her protagonist, Imogen, is a middle aged woman out for a morning run when she is abducted by what she takes to be an alien, but turns out to be a super powered alien fae looking for an ally, her, to help him wage war on his homeworld. Needless to say, Imogen is a less-than-willing protagonist in this adventure.
During the question and answer session I asked whether she would categorize the book as fantasy, romantasy or an anti-romantasy?
“I would describe it as a romantasy with a spaceship on top,” Lyons said with a mischievous smile.
Meredith R. Lyons currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and “two panther sized cats”. She is a former actor and current audiobook narrator for Onyx Publications and is a member of International Thriller Writers, Sisters In Crime, and the Women’s National Book Association. Lyons has a black belt in martial arts, has taught cardio kickboxing, owns several swords and has been known to knit scarves, enjoy gardening and visiting coffee shops.
(It should also be noted that she bears more than a passing resemblance to MSNBC news anchor Stephanie Ruhle.)
Her first novel, Ghost Tamer, was published in September 2023.
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi (Tor Publishing Group, March 2025)
By Lis Carey: One fine day, when NASA is in preparing for early tests of the new moon lander for the Diana missions to return to the Moon, the NASA director gets word of an emergency with the lunar samples brought back from the Apollo missions.
Have they been stolen? No. Have they been destroyed? Not exactly.
They’ve turned to cheese.
The Moon itself, right now at quarter phase, is also looking mighty strange, with a much higher albedo than the gray, rocky world should have. Almost as if…it’s also now made of cheese.
It’s also quickly determined to be larger, at least in diameter. Large enough that even with the lower density of cheese, it’s still the same mass. So, no immediate disruptive effects on Earth, as tides and other effects remain unchanged. Although, the upcoming annular eclipse of the Sun will now be a total eclipse of the Sun.
Over the next month, we follow a variety of small groups, reacting to and coping with the sudden and inexplicable change in their own ways.
NASA has to decide what to do about the test flight of the new Mars lander. Should the unmanned flight go all the way to the Moon and return, as planned, or only to low Earth orbit, instead?
The billionaire whose company designed and built the new Moon lander decides to exploit the confusion to fulfill his own lifetime dream. (Jody Bannon is not Musk; we know he’s not Musk because he hates Musk and Bezos both.)
A science writer whose first book has, well, flopped, is looking for a chance to recover from that, writes a book about the sudden change in the Moon and its possible scientific impact.
A minister at a small Evangelical church in the Midwest has to guide his flock through what this means for their faith–and reaches into unsuspected depths in himself.
Two rival cheese shops in Madison, Wisconsin, find themselves confronting, together, a mob that tips from shouting their confusion, fear, and anger at the Moon, to turning it on a more accessible form of cheese.
A variety of small stories, some funny, some charming, play out over the next month.
It’s a good little book, not up there with Scalzi’s best, but an enjoyable read nevertheless.
(2) ASTOUNDING AWARD’S FUTURE? Following the report that Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF have been purchased by a new owner, John Scalzi speculated about the fate of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Although voting is administered by the Worldcon, the Astounding Award belongs to Dell Magazines, publisher of Analog prior to this sale. Will Analog’s new owners continue the sponsorship? John Scalzi volunteered a landing place if one is needed in a post at Whatever:
If the new owners of Asimov’s and Analog don’t want to take sponsorship of the Astounding Award (or the award is not otherwise folded into the responsibilities of WSFS/the individual Worldcons), we’ll take it on. The ideal plan would be for the Scalzi Family Foundation to act as a bridge sponsor while we set up an endowment that would allow the Astounding Award to be run indefinitely.
(3) EISNER HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES. Comic-Con International has announced 21 creators and industry figures who will be inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame this year.
In addition to these choices, voters in the comics industry will elect 6 persons from a group of 18 nominees proposed by the judges. Those nominees will be announced within the next week, and a ballot will be made available for online voting.
We’ve received more than 150 stories nominated by publishers, editors, and authors so far, and the range of stories, ideas, and perspectives has been so wonderful to read. As this is our first year of the anthology and our launch happened so quickly, we’ve decided to extend the submissions window out to Monday, March 17, to ensure that everyone publishing ecofiction gets a chance to submit….
…Ecofiction engages with some of the most urgent issues facing us today and also looks ahead to the possibilities of the future. Even when dealing with dark or tragic themes, ecofiction stories are expressions of our human connection to the most beautiful planet we know, and to all of earthlife….
(5) BOOK WITHIN A BOOK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 working weekday Women’s Hour had a second half (35 minutes in) largely devoted to two SF works. The first was a play, a re-imagining of the Greek tragedy Oedipus but set in a dystopic, near-future, climate drought-ridden future…
And then the Nigerian-American SF author Nnedi Okorafor who was discussing her latest book Death of the Author (out from Gollancz). This is a sweeping story about a writer of a science fiction novel that becomes a global phenomenon… at a price. The future of storytelling is here. A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written. This is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it… This interview begins 50 minutes in.
Nigerian American science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor’s new book is Death of the Author. It follows the story of Zelu, a novelist who is disabled, unemployed and from a very judgmental family. Nnedi and Nuala talk about the book within her book, success, and the influence on her writing of being an athlete in her earlier years.
James Cameron has reportedly revealed an anti-AI title card will open up Avatar 3, officially titled Avatar: Fire and Ash. The Oscar-winning director shared the news in a Q&A session in New Zealand attended by Twitter user Josh Harding.
Sharing a picture of Cameron at the event, they wrote: “Such an *incredible* talk. Also, James Cameron revealed that Avatar: Fire and Ash will begin with a title card after the 20th Century and Lightstorm logos that ‘no generative A.I. was used in the making of this movie’.”Cameron has been vocal in the past about his feelings on artificial intelligence, speaking to CTV news in 2023 about AI-written scripts. “I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said – about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality – and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it,” he told the publication. “I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don’t know anyone that’s even thinking about having AI write a screenplay.”…
(7) IMAGINARY PAPERS. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination has published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, its quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination.
In this issue, Sarah M. Ruiz writes about climate action, allegory, and solidarity in the 2024 film Flow; Libia Brenda writes about Crononauta, the quasi-mythical, short-lived 1964 magazine founded by Alejandro Jodorowsky and René Rebetez; and Rachael Kuintzle reports on a workshop on energy futures hosted by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2024.
On April 5, a beacon for California horror fans will be snuffed out when legacy Los Angeles shop Dark Delicacies closes its doors. “We’ve been open for 30 years, and I could have happily died right here,” laughs co-owner Del Howison, “but my wife Sue wanted to have a life — whatever that is.”
Dark Delicacies is more than just a Southern California storefront selling ghoulish souvenirs. It’s been a destination for film buffs, horror genre diehards and celebrities from across the macabre spectrum for decades, and Howison himself has become a cult attraction for those with a love of Southern California’s darker corners.
The longtime horror curator plans to stay busy until the end. On a recent weekday, Howison is moving about his Burbank shop, taking pictures of vintage Spanish and Italian movie posters to sell online. He occasionally breaks to gesture at the Tiki mugs, shot glasses, board games, playing cards and action figures on the shelves. “We stopped calling them dolls, as guys didn’t like saying they were collecting dolls,” Howison says of his early days in business. “Of course, back then, there was no such thing as a horror convention.”…
(9) UK PAPERS PROTEST AI LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A first this side of the Pond. Irrespective of their political leanings, all the papers came together on Tuesday in a campaign to stop British government proposals (yes, we have daft politicians over here just as you do in the US) to allow artificial intelligence (AI) free access to intellectual property so that it can be trained. This is something that authors have been worried about. “UK newspapers launch campaign against AI copyright plans” in the Wandsworth Times.
Special wraps appeared on Tuesday’s editions of the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Mirror, the Daily Star, The Sun, and The Times – as well as a number of regional titles – criticising a Government consultation around possible exemptions being added to copyright law for training AI models.
The proposals would allow tech firms to use copyrighted material from creatives and publishers without having to pay or gain a licence, or reimbursing creatives for using their work.
In response, publishers have launched the Make It Fair campaign, which saw newspapers put covers on the outside of their front page – criticising the Government’s consultation – organised by the News Media Association (NMA), and backed by the Society of Editors (SOE).
The message said: “The Government wants to change the UK’s laws to favour big tech platforms so they can use British creative content to power their AI models without our permission or payment. Let’s protect the creative industries – it’s only fair.”…
…In a statement shared with the Times, the Klara and the Sun (Faber) author said the country had reached a “fork-in-the-road” moment. “If someone wants to take a book I’ve written and turn it into a TV series, or to print a chapter of it in an anthology, the law clearly states they must first get my permission and pay me,” he said.
“To do otherwise is theft. So why is our government now pushing forward legislation to make the richest, most dominant tech companies in the world exceptions? At the dawn of the AI age, why is it just and fair – why is it sensible — to alter our time-honoured copyright laws to advantage mammoth corporations at the expense of individual writers, musicians, film-makers and artists?”
Ishiguro continued that “no one believes the proposed ‘opt-out’ system will work”, saying this is why “those lobbying on behalf of the tech giants favour it”….
(11) MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG (1985-2025). Actress Michelle Trachtenberg, known especially to fans for playing Dawn Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died at the age of 39. According to the Guardian:
…Police sources confirmed her death to both ABC News and the New York Post. There is no cause of death yet known, with police saying on Thursday that the New York Medical Examiner is investigating but no foul play was suspected. She had recently undergone a liver transplant, according to sources….
A successful child actress, her first lead film role was in the comedy adventure Harriet the Spy (1996). Trachtenberg followed the film with a role in Inspector Gadget next to Matthew Broderick. Her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer came in 2000 and continued til the show ended three years later.
Trachtenberg continued to have an active career after that in non-genre productions.
(12) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Award-Winning Barbara Hambly
Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite writers of horror and mysteries, has won two Lord Ruthven Awards given by the Lord Ruthven Assembly, a group of scholars specializing in vampire literature who are affiliated with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.
(This piece is about her fantasies and mysteries that I’m familiar with. I know she wrote some SF, do comment upon it if so inclined.)
Those Who Hunt in The Night, the first in her excellent John Asher series, won the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel. I think the series, eight long, might be concluded, as the last came out six years ago.
I’m also very impressed of her two novelizations done for one of my favorite TV series, Beauty and the Beast and and Beauty and the Beast: Song of Orpheus as it’s hard to write material off those series that’s worth reading. I’ve read others which very quickly got really mawkish as they overly focus on the relationship, in my opinion of course, of the relationship of Catherine and Vincent to the exclusion of what could a fleshing out of that world. Not her. Wonderful novels!
I’ve not tracked down her three Sherlock Holmes short story pastiches yet.
I listened to Bride of the Rat God, which is the only supernatural fantasy in theSilver Screen historical mystery series, and the next book which was not a fantasy, Scandal in Babylon. There are two more in the series so far. They likewise are not fantasy according to her.
And yes, there’s lots about her writing career I’ve not included here so feel free to tell me what you think I should have mentioned. If anybody has read her Abigail Adams or Benjamin January mystery series, I’d be interested in knowing what you think.
Dark Horse Media has officially shut down Dark Horse Digital as of February 24, 2025, with comics no longer available for purchase on the platform. Online access to the DHD website, however, will still be available at least through this summer, and users can continue to log in and read the comics in their bookshelves.
Effective March 31, 2025, the Dark Horse Comics and Plants vs. Zombies Comics apps for iOS will also no longer be supported.
Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphics gets in touch to correct me. He says “Contrary to what you wrote, the comics were actually not printed yet. If they had been, we would have proceeded as planned. But since they weren’t, and given the uncertainty of whether Diamond will even exist come May (or be able to pay us for them), we made the difficult decision to pull the plug while we could. We may still produce the comic this year, bypassing FCBD. Things are, as you can probably understand, a bit fluid these days… The decision was made entirely based on the uncertainty of FCBD and had nothing to do with the Lost Marvels book series itself, which is otherwise proceeding as planned!”
When Netflix first started adding video games to its huge catalogue of streaming TV shows and films, it did so quietly. In 2021, after releasing an impressive experiment with the idea of interactive film in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in 2018 and a free Stranger Things game in 2019, Netflix began expanding more fully into interactive entertainment.
The streamer’s gaming offering, for a long time, was its best-kept secret. Whoever was running it really had an eye for quality: award-winningly brilliant and relatively little-known indie games comprised the majority of its catalogue, alongside decent licensed games based on everything from The Queen’s Gambit to the reality dating show Too Hot to Handle. Subscribers could play games such as Before Your Eyes, a brief and touching story about a life cut short; Spiritfarer, about guiding lost souls to rest and Into the Breach, a superb sci-fi strategy game with robots v aliens. The company bought or invested in several game studios known for making critically acclaimed work, including London-based Ustwo games (which was behind Monument Valley). It also established a studio in California to work on blockbuster games, staffed by veteran developers.
But it seems things are changing. That blockbuster studio has been closed, as first reported by Game File, before it could ever release a game. Its latest tie-in game, Squid Game Unleashed, absolutely sucks – it’s constructed around the celebration of slapstick violence, making it a terrible fit for a satirically violent show about capitalist exploitation. Funding a bunch of indie darlings and hiring big-name talent from the likes of Blizzard and Bungie for its game studio gave the impression that Netflix really was keen on becoming a part of the gaming industry, and doing it properly. Now that is very much in question.
The company has made layoffs across its gaming divisions, including at Night Studio – makers of weird-fiction supernatural teen horror series Oxenfree. It has cancelled plans for several forthcoming games that were due to join the service, including indie hits Thirsty Suitors and Don’t Starve Together, and promising-looking hobbit game Tales of the Shire. What’s going on?
He is probably most often thought of today as a wizard, a shape-shifter or a mentor to the young King Arthur.
But a detailed re-examination of Myrddin – Merlin – by Welsh scholars suggests he can also be considered an early British environmentalist deeply worried about human interaction with the natural world…
… The researchers have been combing through manuscripts in the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth, and also in the 15th-century Red Book of Hergest at Jesus College, Oxford.
They also discovered more about the importance of Merlin’s sister, Gwenddydd. Callander said: “Gwenddydd is a really important figure in Welsh Merlin poetry. She supports Merlin and also appears to be a prophet in her own right.
“We found hundreds of lines of poetry in her voice in dialogue with her brother. Merlin describes her as ‘fair Gwenddydd, summit of dignity’ and ‘refuge of songs’. One of the important aspects of the project is to throw light on this lost female voice from medieval Wales.”
Callander said it was surprising that early Merlin poems had been largely neglected. “These Welsh-language texts had not been edited or translated in full, meaning much material has been missed out.”…
Akiva Goldsman is developing a new Universe at Legendary Television featuring three reimagined Irwin Allen sci-fi TV series. The Oscar-winning writer, producer and director will draw inspiration for the new TV shows from Allen’s catalog and focus on revitalizing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants and The Time Tunnel.
… Legendary Television is focused on the three titles above and not Allen’s second TV series Lost in Space, which aired from 1965-68 on CBS and was reimagined by Legendary TV for a 2018-21 series on Netflix. 20th Century Fox produced all four of the original shows….
[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Jason Sizemore, Joey Eschrich, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Cat Eldridge.]
Following the report that Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF have been purchased by a new owner, John Scalzi speculated about the fate of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Although voting is administered by the Worldcon, the Astounding Award belongs to Dell Magazines, publisher of Analog prior to this sale. Will Analog’s new owners continue the sponsorship? John Scalzi has volunteered a landing place if one is needed.
Formerly named the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, it has been presented at the Worldcon since 1973, two years after Campbell’s death. The award was established by Conde Nast, publisher of Analog at the time. In 2019 it was renamed for the Golden Age prozine Campbell edited – Astounding — following a storm over the Campbell name catalyzed by Jeannette Ng’s award acceptance remarks about Campbell’s racism.
The new owners could keep on sponsoring the Astounding Award, of course. In case they don’t, John Scalzi made this offer in a post at Whatever:
If the new owners of Asimov’s and Analog don’t want to take sponsorship of the Astounding Award (or the award is not otherwise folded into the responsibilities of WSFS/the individual Worldcons), we’ll take it on. The ideal plan would be for the Scalzi Family Foundation to act as a bridge sponsor while we set up an endowment that would allow the Astounding Award to be run indefinitely.
UPDATE: Scalzi has learned from Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams that the new owners will continue to sponsor the various awards their magazines have been giving:
Sheila Williams (editor of Asimov’s) says: “Analog and Asimov’s new owners fully intend to support the awards that we and the mystery magazines bestow each year. We are also grateful for your continued support and love that you are determined to help keep Analog’s legacy going.”
(1) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Episode 17 of Scott Edelman’s podcast Why Not Say What Happened? tells “How My Meeting Margaret Hamilton Became a Marvel Comics Contest”. Below is a photo of young Scott with the actress who formerly played the Wicked Witch but by the 1970s was hawking Maxwell House coffee.
Listen in as I look back half a century on what it was like being in the room with Len Wein and Dave Cockrum (or as much as I’m willing to admit) as they plotted Giant-Size X-Men #1, why my mid-’70s likeness still hangs on the wall at Marvel Comics HQ, my freelance income during the first six months of my life as a comics professional, the collaborative short stories my friends and I stayed awake 24 hours to write on Harlan Ellison’s 39th birthday, an article I commissioned for F.O.O.M. about collecting comics in 1975 which should make you weep 50 years later, how my meeting with Wicked Witch of the West Margaret Hamilton ended up being a Marvel Comics caption contest, and much more.
Tired of having the same old snack? The you’re in luck. Goldfish has got something new for you, and it’s downright magical.
On Tuesday, Goldfish announced that it’s partnering with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products to “cast a delicious spell” with the launch of its limited-edition Goldfish Butterbeer Flavored Grahams, which, yes, are inspired by Harry Potter.
The new crackers, the company noted in a statement provided to Food & Wine, come with a “rich butterscotch flavor, hints of creamy vanilla, and a touch of magic in each fun-shaped bite.”…
… Goldfish Butterbeer Flavored Grahams will be hitting grocery store shelves in March for about $3.69…
PLAYERS OF THE game Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket are in revolt over its newly introduced trading system. Since its release last week, fans across Reddit, X, YouTube, and even the game’s official site all agree: Trading in Pocket is very, very bad.
Pocket, which launched last October for iOS and Android, is a free-to-play adaptation of the physical card game that digitally streamlines card-collecting and battling. Mimicking the gotta-catch-’em-all hype that dominated the ’90s and early aughts, the game’s developers frequently drop new card sets to keep players tearing open digital packs in the hopes of getting rare Pokémon. Those cards can then be used to battle either solo against AI, or online against other players. Prior to last Wednesday, the one thing missing from the game was trading, which would allow players to swap cards and fill in their decks.
Now, players are threatening to cancel premium subscriptions—a $9.99-per-month membership with additional perks like extra items and cards—in response to the newly released feature. “Shame, it was really fun for a few months,” wrote a player in a post on Reddit where they encouraged others to cancel their subscriptions. “Now it feels gross.”…
For months now I have been in the thrall of Pokémon Trading Card Pocket. It’s a devilishly slick blend of card-collecting and pared-down battling that has had me obediently opening the app on my phone at least twice a day since it launched. The virtual cards are beautifully done; the rare art cards especially, with their pastoral scenes of Pokémon in their natural habitats. I have spent many hours on the battles, too, honing decks and chasing win streaks to earn myself victory emblems. I got most of my friends into it, anticipating the day when its makers at DeNa would finally enable trading so I could fill the last couple of holes in my collection.
This week, on the day that the trading went live and an expansion full of pretty new cards was introduced, I quit. I made a couple of trades for the Venosaur Ex and Machamp Ex that had evaded my grasp despite opening hundreds of packs, took a screenshot of the “collection complete” screen, and I haven’t opened it since. I’m done….
…The title of the Hungarian version of When the Moon Hits Your Eye is an example of this “translation, not transliteration” phenomenon. People in English-speaking countries know the title is a lyric from “That’s Amore,” a well-known standard most famously sung by Dean Martin. The title hits in a very specific way, because English-speaking folks have the context for the phrase and the song it’s embedded into. But it’s not a guarantee that the phrase hits the same way in other languages, or will have the same sense of play.
The solution Agave, my Hungarian publisher, and its translators, decided on: Change the title to Csak a hold az égen, which are lyrics in the 1995 song “Szállj el, kismadár,” which is the biggest hit from the biggest album of Republic, a well-known Hungarian band:
“Csak a hold az égen” translates to “Only the moon in the sky,” and it’s the first line of the chorus of the song — which is to say, the line everyone who is a fan of the band or the song will reflexively be able to sing. The song was a top ten hit in Hungary, and the album it was on was number one on the Hungarian charts for ten weeks….
…Butler herself traveled a long way, both figuratively and literally, to find community. When I teach Butler’s works in courses on science fiction and African American literature at the University of California, Riverside, I like to show my students two photographs that feature Butler in group settings. In the first, taken at a 1970 science fiction convention in Pittsburgh, Butler stands on the outer edge of a group of young writers with their mentor, the notable science fiction author Harlan Ellison, seated in front. Butler and her fellow students had just participated in a science fiction workshop at Clarion State College under Ellison’s guidance. The other students notably included Vonda McIntyre, a feminist science fiction pioneer who would become a lifelong friend to Butler; French linguist and science fiction writer Jean Mark Gawron; and Russell Bates, a Native American author from Oklahoma who would go on to write for television and film. Butler was the only Black participant in the workshop.
Years later, when Butler and author Samuel R. Delany were asked how many other Black science fiction writers there were, they responded, “We’re two-thirds.” The other forerunner was Charles Saunders, who pioneered the sword and soul subgenre, setting fantasy adventure stories in mythical settings drawn from African cultures. Having people like Delany, McIntyre, and Ellison as mentors and friends encouraged Butler to write meticulously researched, wildly imaginative, captivating novels that eventually made her the first science fiction author to win the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grant.”
The other image I like to share with my students tells the rest of Butler’s story. In the photo above, she is by no means isolated: Her company consists of 28 Black women writers who attended a retreat convened by Essence magazine in 1988. Before the internet became the main source of news and entertainment, Essence—along with Ebony and Jet magazines—was a household name in 20th-century Black America. You couldn’t walk through a supermarket checkout line in a Black neighborhood without seeing its iconic covers. Black women have always been the target audience for Essence. Growing up, Butler saw women like herself and those far removed from her working-poor circumstances in its pages: celebrities, role models, and leaders. She saw that, as a Black woman, she could be one of them. And then, in 1988, there she was, appearing in Essence alongside economist Julianne Malveaux, playwright Ntozake Shange, and law professor Elaine Brown, former chair of the Black Panther Party.
Seeing Butler in these 1970 and 1988 photos in the company of different peers helps us understand how much we can learn from her example. She was unique, but she was never singular, the way we often think about intellectuals. She contained, as the poet Walt Whitman would have put it, “multitudes.”…
(7) THE BLACK FANTASTIC ONLINE PANEL. The Library of America will host an online event featuring Tananarive Due, Victor LaValle, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and andré carrington, “The Black Fantastic: The New Wave of Afrofuturist Fiction Registration”, on Wednesday, February 19 from 6:00-7:00 p.m. Eastern. RSVP at the link. Contribution to attend: $5 (can be applied toward purchase of The Black Fantastic or any other book on the LOA Web Store.)
A new wave of science fiction and fantasy by Black writers has burst onto the American literary scene in recent decades: tales of cosmic travel, vampires, and alternate timelines set in profound social and psychological orbits. Building on the legacy of titans Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany, these visionary writers root their imagination of other worlds in the multilayered realities of Black history and experience.
Award-winning SF authors Tananarive Due, Victor LaValle, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah join andré carrington, editor of The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories, for a conversation about genre, influence, and the fascinating and phantasmagoric universes conjured by these new voices on the vanguard of American fiction.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
February 5, 1956 — Invasion of the Body Snatchers(premiered on this date)
By Paul Weimer: The original, and possibly if not the best, in a dead heat with 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
You know the story. Duplicates of people, created from alien seed pods (hence the phrase “pod people”) start replacing their originals in a small town in California. A small group of people band together to not only survive the menace, but to learn enough to escape and tell the authorities.
A classic, and for darned good reasons.
But why is it a classic? Excellent performances? The movie’s cast, from Kevin McCarthy as Dr. Miles Bennell, to Diana Wynter, King Donovan and Carolyn Jones are sharp and always on. You might not recognize them as A-listers or even B-Listers from the perspective of time, except maybe Carolyn Jones, who played the original Morticia Adsams in the Addams Family TV series. But they perform their roles here, and well. (Fun fact, the director Sam Peckinpah has a cameo).
Excellent editing? There are scenes of terror, suspense, and horror that are very well executed by director Don Siegel. It’s been aped and copied and referenced many times, not only in sequels to the movie, but in popular media and culture.
A stripped down and straight along plot and sequence of scenes that never lets up until the finale? The existential, political emotional horror of the whole idea of “pod people” in its original and most pure form? I saw the movie on WPIX in the late 70’s or early 80’s, and have seen it many times since. I didn’t get the political allegory one can make when I was younger…now, I see a number of potential political allegories one can read into it — anti-communism, the dangers of ultra-conformity, anti-McCarthyism. Any which way, it shows what happens to the individual, when society becomes poisoned and toxic (and doesn’t that feel relevant today).
I do find it interesting that thanks to the framing device, this is perhaps the most optimistic and “positive” of all of the Invasion movies. Every single one, especially 1978, has gone against this grain since, making the Invasion ever darker, ever more successful, humanity ever more doomed. Is it a sign of the times and tastes in movie fans? Or tastes in studio heads? I am not sure. But the movie does end as it began with Miles in the hospital, not only telling his story but being believed, and action being taken. I understand that the prologue and epilogue were later additions. I’ve never seen the film without them, I do wonder how I’d feel about a cut of the movie with both of them removed.
Maybe we do need an Invasion of the Body Snatchers in our own year of 2025 where people among us turn so violently and horribly against anyone who is different, where our political leaders are feckless, amoral, cowards or evil, and where it seems that research money is going into “18% Gray AI slop.” Meeting and facing an alien invasion, an insidious and carefully planned one. (Consider the scene where our heroes overhear Grivett’s plans for the organized dissemination of the Pods) . Pluck, luck, hard work and collective action oppose the Invaders. Even without the prologue and epilogue “assuring the happy ending” there is a sense of human spirit and resilience throughout the film.
The movie is a lean and mean 80 minutes long (barely longer than an extra length episode of a TV series season opener or finale these days). It never outstays its welcome, and in fact is probably underrated, if anything, as one of the more important movies ever made. Have you seen it lately?
…The film’s budget was initially reported to be $15 million, but New Line kept whittling it down. In various commentaries and interviews, Carpenter has pinned the final budget at anywhere from $7-10 million, a significant reduction. Notably, the film’s original ending had to be completely reimagined.
King Carpenter: [There was] fighting with the studio, but that’s every movie. They had some weird people. They don’t trust anybody, and at the same time, I don’t trust them, so it becomes like Spy vs. Spy. [The budget] kept changing as we got closer to shooting. It would be one amount, and then they would cut $2 million out of it. You’re just going, “Why?” But it is what it is, that’s what happens, so we’d roll with it. We just figured it out, and you figure out your shooting days, and you know going in that whatever you anticipate, something in there is going to go to sh*t, and so you have to be prepared to punt on something.
Greg Nicotero: I just remember being in pre-production and we would have all the meetings at this little house in Sherman Oaks that they had on Willis Avenue, and looking at all the storyboards for the finale, the original finale where the whole town gets sucked into the book at the end. And it was a big, big deal. And for us, the designs were coming up with not only the creature, but some of the other looks. And I remember we got to that ending and it was like, “We don’t have enough money to do that.” ILM had storyboarded the whole thing, and it was all this really, really elaborate big action sequence. And I remember being at the meeting where they went, “Yeah, we’re going to rewrite the ending because we don’t have the money to do that.” And I was like, “Oh.”…
A badly burnt scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum has been digitally “unwrapped”, providing the first look inside for 2,000 years.
The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened.
But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text….
…Inside this huge machine, which is called a synchrotron, electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light to produce a powerful X-ray beam that can probe the scroll without damaging it.
“It can see things on the scale of a few thousandths of a millimetre,” explained Adrian Mancuso, director of physical sciences at Diamond.
The scan is used to create a 3D reconstruction, then the layers inside the scroll – it contains about 10m of papyrus – have to be identified.
“We have to work out which layer is different from the next layer so we can unroll that digitally,” said Dr Mancuso.
After that artificial intelligence is used to detect the ink. It’s easier said than done – both the papyrus and ink are made from carbon and they’re almost indistinguishable from each other.
So the AI hunts for the tiniest signals that ink might be there, then this ink is painted on digitally, bringing the letters to light….
… Last year, a Vesuvius Challenge team managed to read about 5% of another Herculaneum scroll.
Its subject was Greek Epicurean philosophy, which teaches that fulfilment can be found through the pleasure of everyday things.
The Bodleian’s scroll is likely to be on the same subject – but the Vesuvius team is calling for more human and computing ingenuity to see if this is the case….
…For those of you haven’t been paying attention, the titular evil in The Monkey (and what the popcorn bucket is modeled after) is an evil wind-up toy that kills a person whenever the key in its back is turned. In the Stephen King short story on which the movie is based, the cursed object is a classic cymbal-banging monkey, but the design was changed up for the film due to rights issues. Instead of clashing cymbals, it holds a pair of drumsticks and beats a snare that it holds between its legs.
The film centers on a pair of twin brothers who discover the monkey in the closest of their absconded father. After the vicious toy rips through their family like tissue paper, they are able to successfully contain it for a while, but years later, when the siblings are estranged adults, it makes a horrible return.
The popcorn bucket’s likeness to the prop in the movie is impressive… but if fans really want to go the extra mile, they’ll plan ahead and bring some red food dye with them to their screening of The Monkey to apply it to the contents before they start munching. After all, part of what makes the upcoming horror film so special is the fact that it has a good shot of going down in history as the goriest Stephen King adaptation, which is an aspect well-highlighted in the trailers and previews….
According to Nerdist: “It will only be available at AMC Theatres locations, and it comes with a large popcorn for $44.99 plus tax. The 85-ounce popcorn bucket is stylized to look just like the monkey toy that’s at the heart of the film.”
On a hill of birch and spruce overlooking the Knik Arm, a narrow stretch of the Gulf of Alaska that extends northwest of Anchorage, archaeologists have unearthed a remarkably intact cache pit used by the region’s Indigenous Dene people. The discovery is offering a new perspective on the long human history of the region, as well as how to preserve and protect its legacy for generations to come.
Cache pits are like root cellars, as Elizabeth Ortiz, an archaeologist and cultural resource manager at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), the military complex where the discovery was made, says in a statement.
Located along a well-known Dene trail that led north out of the modern-day Anchorage area, the pit measures about 3.5 feet deep. It was dug into well-drained soil and lined with birch bark and grass, which preserved fish, meat and berries through the harsh seasonal extremes of southeastern Alaska.
The Dene, also known as Athabaskans, include the Dena’ina and Ahtna people. In the summers, they would have stayed in the area to catch and preserve salmon and terrestrial meat, with houses and smokehouses lining the bluffs above the Cook Inlet, according to Arkeonews.
Archaeologists expected the cache pit to be a few hundred years old. However, radiocarbon testing revealed that it was actually much older.
“When we got the results back that said it was 960 years, plus or minus 30, we were shocked,” Ortiz tells Alena Naiden of KNBA, a local radio station. “[We] were jumping up and down in our cube in tears. It was very, very exciting.”
[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.]
I have three cats. And we have books all over, so yes, they definitely sleep near books sometimes, and one cat was so persistent in her desire to sleep on my laptop while I was using it that I put a cat trap (i.e., a nice box) on my desk in an attempt to entice her to sleep somewhere else. (This worked! She really likes her box.)
Here’s a picture of Balto sleeping under rather than on my e-reader (on which I’m reading John Scalzi’s Starter Villain, in a section about cats):
Here’s Lottie demonstrating why I installed the cat trap:
Here’s Lottie in her box:
Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com
To learn why the organization is in a crisis SFWA members must read the Forum. Those outside can get only a very general idea from social media posts like M L Clark’s statement on Bluesky.
In the last several years, SFWA has begun requiring its Board members, employees, and key volunteers to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to ensure confidentiality. However, recent events have shown that these NDAs cause more problems than they solve. Because the NDAs are overly broad without clear limits or expiration dates, they leave employees, Board members, and volunteers uncertain about what they can and cannot say without potential legal repercussions. Even more concerning is that these NDAs have created distrust between SFWA membership and the Board, and an environment where the perception exists that bad actors can mistreat others and violate SFWA’s bylaws with impunity.
There is no legal requirement for SFWA as a 501(c)(3) to use NDAs, for either its legal or tax status. Many nonprofits, both inside and outside California, function perfectly well without using NDAs, either trusting that people will follow the laws about disclosure of personal, financial, and medical information, or using individual confidentiality agreements with the details of what information needs to be kept confidential spelled out.
Accordingly, in the interests of greater transparency for the organization, we, the undersigned members of SFWA, petition for the following change to the bylaws:
….A special videogame category was added in 2021 to recognize the increased impact of videogames amidst the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it was a one-off: No game-related Hugo was awarded in 2022 or ’23.
In 2023, however, Worldcon voted to make the Best Game or Interactive Work a permanent category for 2024—wouldn’t you know it, just in time for the Baldur’s Gate 3 behemoth to smash through the walls like the Kool-Aid Man and run off with it. BG3 beat out Alan Wake 2 (yet again), Chants of Senaar, Dredge, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor for the big prize….
“The Hugo nominees and awards have determined my reading list since forever, so it’s a huge honor to be standing here,” Larian boss Swen Vincke said during his acceptance speech (via Polygon).
“Videogame writing is often underestimated. It is very very very hard work. For Baldur’s Gate 3 we had to create over 174 hours of cinematics just to be able to respect the choices of the players and to make sure that each and every single one of them would have an emotional story that was reflecting their choices and their agency. It takes a very long time, it takes a very large team … It takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of talent. So I’m very happy for all of them and for all of the team back home that we can get this, and very grateful to the fandom.”
Vincke isn’t kidding when he says Larian wanted to ensure Baldur’s Gate 3 was as reactive as possible to player choices: The studio recently revealed that the game’s rarest ending has only been unlocked by 34 players—and remember, this is a game that’s sold well over 10 million copies. (For a little added context, 1.9 million Baldur’s Gate 3 players were turned into a cheese wheel. Which is fine, really: No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses.)…
(3) ELLISON FOUNDATION HAD IRS CHARITABLE STATUS REVOKED. The IRS has revoked the 501(c)(3) charitable status of The Harlan and Susan Ellison Foundation after it failed to file the required Form 990 for three straight years. Douglas J. Lane provides detailed coverage of the Foundation’s creation, activities, and status in his blog post “For Want of a Form”:
On Monday, August 12, 2024 the Internal Revenue Service updated its monthly list of 501(c)(3) organizations for whom it was revoking charitable status based on failure to file Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, for three consecutive years.
Among the organizations freshly listed was EIN number 873507738, The Harlan and Susan Ellison Foundation.
The revocation of charitable status puts the Foundation and its president, J. Michael Straczynski, in a tricky spot, as it makes the organization fully taxable. They cannot receive tax-free donations or offer deductions to donors. Under California law, they will also not be able to distribute charitable funds. There are other ramifications, and while reinstatement is possible, it comes with a swath of requirements.
It’s critical to say at the outset of this account of the public-facing facets of the Foundation: I ascribe no malicious intent or nefarious purpose to anyone involved in any of the events that led to this revocation, and no impropriety is indicated by anything that has occurred. Indeed, Joe Straczynski speaks in a caring and sincere way about the place the Ellisons have in his heart, and how he wants to carry out their wishes. The Foundation has a laudable vision. But malicious intent and carelessness are two different things, and it’s clear a severe breakdown occurred somewhere along the way that resulted in opacity where transparency was required, creating a situation in which warnings were missed and the Foundation was positioned for a catastrophic setback that was wholly avoidable…
Lane also posted the information today at The Harlan Ellison Facebook Fan Club, leading to this series of comments from J. Michael Straczynski.
This is literally the first time I’m hearing this. We’ve had no contact from them directly or indirectly. If the forms were not submitted that’s strictly a paperwork issue and that’s on us. I need to find out what happened on the attorney side. This will be fixed and as per this the status will then be reinstated once we’ve sent in the forms.
Okay, last quick update for the moment. It looks like the notices were being sent to the wrong address/suite number. Also, as for the Packard, it was not sold, it was given freely to a member of this very forum in exchange for looking after it and maintaining it in Harlan’s memory. He can confirm this here if he so desires.
So bottom line for now: the paperwork fell through a crack between different offices over who was handling what, and the address (as noted in the link) was incorrect for the notices. I assumed all this was being properly attended to, while I was busy getting Harlan’s work back into print. That error was mine. The good news is that since this was apparently a comedy of errors on both sides, there should be no issue with getting this rectified swiftly by simply filing the paperwork.
Okay…I just heard from the business management firm we’ve been using and they confirmed that they hadn’t looked after this because they believed it was already being handled by others. They’re filing the paperwork as we speak and this will be rectified promptly.
This has now been officially resolved. We just confirmed with the tax dept that we never received any notices from the IRS. We sent in and they have now filed the returns with the correct address. After the IRS processes them, we will handle the paperwork to reinstate the Foundation which will apparently not be a problem. The IRS will update their records so no further notices are missed. The tax dept now has the Foundation on their schedule so they won’t miss it again anyway. Just to be on the safe side moving forward we are going to hire a nonprofit attorney on retainer to coordinate all of the moving parts so nothing falls through the cracks in future.
A colorful day but at least it’s ending better than it began.
(5) AMERICAN NON-IDOL. I don’t know that any of the many ways John Scalzi restates the basic point in his 3,600-word post really feels like it stuck the landing, but the oft-repeated message makes sense: “Please Don’t Idolize Me (or Anyone, Really)” at Whatever.
In the wake of the various recent allegations involving Neil Gaiman, people have been both very sad that someone who they looked up to as an inspiration has, allegedly, turned out to be something less than entirely admirable, and are now looking to see who is now left that they can rotate into the spot of “the good dude,” i.e., that one successful creative guy who they think or at least hope isn’t hiding a cellar full of awful actions. One name I see brought up is mine, in ways ranging from “Well, at least we still have Scalzi,” to “Oh, God, please don’t let Scalzi be a fucking creep too.” Which, uhhhh, yeah? Thanks?…
…Every person you’ve ever admired has fucked up, sometimes really badly. Everyone you’ve ever looked up to has secrets, and it’s possible some of those secrets would materially change how you think about them, not always for the better. Everyone you’ve ever known has things about them you don’t know, many of which aren’t even secrets, they’re just things you don’t engage with in your day-to-day experience of them. Nevertheless it’s possible if you were aware of them, it would change how you feel about them, for better or for worse. And now let’s flip that around! You have things about you that even your best friends don’t know, and might be surprised to learn! You have secrets you don’t wish to share with the class! You have fucked up, and lied, and have been a hypocrite too!…
…Oh, God, this is where Scalzi starts admitting to terrible, terrible things. No. I feel pretty confident I live a tolerably ethical life. Part of the reason for this is that I have what I think is a decent operating principle, which is: If I’m thinking of doing something, and Krissy called me right then and asked “what are you doing?” and I would be tempted to lie to her about it, then I don’t do that thing….
Fantastic Fest, the country’s largest genre film festival, has unveiled the feature lineup for its 19th edition, taking place at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX, from September 19th- 26th.
Featuring 28 World Premieres, 23 International and North American Premieres, and 15 U.S. Premieres, the fest opens with the world premiere of James Ashcroft’s The Rule of Jenny Pen, a new thriller starring John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush. Lionsgate’s horror thriller Never Let Gowill be presented during the opening night gala, with director Alexandre Aja, star Halle Berry and the team from 21 Laps in attendance. Meanwhile, opening night will also feature the world premiere of Terrifier 3, the latest film in Damien Leone’s horror franchise, centered on the horrifying Art the Clown.
(7) AURORA AWARDS VOTING STATISTICS. Clifford Samuels has posted the “Final results for the 2024 Aurora Awards” at the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association website. The direct link to the statistics is here.
“When You See A Dragon, You Run” by Jenna Hanchey, read by the author
“The Darling Murders” by Jonathan Nevair. Read by Jean-Paul Garnier
Music by Phog Masheeen. Theme music by Dain Luscombe.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Lis Carey.]
Born August 15, 1933 – Bjo Trimble, 91.
By Lis Carey: Bjo was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, in 1933, discovered sf fandom in 1952. She was serving in the US Navy, at the Great Lakes Naval Station, and saw an announcement in Astounding Science Fiction about the science fiction convention that weekend in Chicago—the 10th Worldcon, the one we now call Chicon II, though at the time it had no official name. The largest Worldcon ever at the time, with 870 members, it was a great place for a smart and friendly young woman to meet people and make connections in fandom. Her new acquaintances included Robert Bloch, Willy Ley, August Derleth, and Harlan Ellison.
Bjo Trimble attends the 2024 Peabody Awards at Beverly Wilshire on June 9. Photo by Jon Kopaloff.
When it was discovered that she was an artist and cartoonist, she was recruited to provide illustrations for fanzines, sealing her fate. She claims to have met her husband, John Griffin Trimble, under Forrest J Ackerman’s piano, during a particularly crowded party. He was serving in the US Air Force, and they traded Stupid Officer Stories.
But as we all know, this was mere prelude. Bjo was active in LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fiction Society), and organized a fashion show for Solacon (the 16th Worldcon). In 1960, she started Project Art Show, which brought the first modern, organized art show at a science fiction convention to Pittcon, the 1960 Worldcon. Bjo continued the project, bringing art shows to Worldcons and other conventions. By 1969, Project Art Show had become The International Science-Fantasy Art Exhibition” (ISFAE), and was judging and awarding prizes, as well as organizing the art shows.
But in 1968, Bjo started turning her attention to a new fannish interest–Star Trek. Bjo and John Trimble were active in the letter-writing campaign credited with getting the show a third season, after it was initially canceled after its second season. They also helped convince NASA to name the first of the Space Shuttles Enterprise, although that was a test vehicle never intended for space flight.
Bjo was a major contributor to the Star Trek Concordance, containing cross-referenced details on every character, setting, event and device in every episode of the original Star Trek, and, in later editions of the book, its animated incarnation, and the Star Trek films. Originally self-published, it got a mass market publication by Ballantine Books in 1976, and an updated edition by Citadel Press in 1995. On the Good Ship Enterprise: My 15 Years with Star Trek, her memoir of her experiences in Star Trek fandom, was published in 1982.
Bjo was a Guest of Honor at Dragon Con, which was also the 6th North American Science Fiction Convention, in 1995. Bjo and John Trimble were Fan Guests of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th Worldcon. Bjo, or Bjo and John, were also honored at many Star Trek and other science fiction conventions.
In addition, Bjo and John Trimble were Baron and Baroness of the Society for Creative Anachronism’s Barony of the Angels, from September 2008 to January 2012. That’s at least fandom adjacent, right?
Sadly, John in April 2024, but Bjo is still with us. Her contributions to fandom will remain.
A flurry of book bars has recently opened that prioritize solo time as much as low-key conversation, offering a fun alt-combo to record bars and libraries.These spaces for reading, drinking, listening to music, and chatting with other book lovers (or not) are a post-shutdown pivot from social distancing. And while the throwback staple had started to revive just after the pandemic, their openings have gained momentum around the city.
Like wine bars and cocktail bars, the focus in book bars is less on needing labor to make complicated dishes as the case may be in a full-fledged restaurant. Instead, the business relies on easier-to-procure revenue streams: booze, books, and sometimes, ready-made snacks, like olives, nuts, and tinned fish. But book bars, owners say, are less about practicality than about creating a community, a third place that’s conducive to reading and chatting while enjoying a drink…
FOOD AND FANTASY HAVE LONG gone hand in hand. Our oldest myths and fairy tales abound with ravenous monsters and enchanted apples, while modern fantasy literature has brought us the second breakfast-savoring hobbits of The Lord of the Rings and the sprawling medieval banquets of A Song of Ice and Fire. Fantasy fans rally around official cookbooks from the worlds they love, as well as unofficial recreations and fanfiction that explores the diets of their favorite characters.
Ashdown Forest in East Sussex is perhaps best known as The Hundred Acre Wood, the beloved setting of arguably the most famous children’s books ever written, Winnie-the-Pooh, published in 1926, and The House at Pooh Corner (1928)….
…Today, the 6,500-acre heathland and woodland 36 miles south of London, is a rare and protected area, providing habitat for endangered flora and fauna. In this gentle, ancient landscape, we can enjoy its literary, cultural and environmental history; we can be twitchers, walkers or pub-goers….
For the first time ever, Warner Bros. Discovery will be hosting a Back to Hogwarts pop-up in New York City. From Aug. 30 through Sept. 1, “Harry Potter” fans can gather at Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal to celebrate the start of a new school year at Hogwarts.
In the “Harry Potter” universe, all students board the Hogwarts Express and return for a new year on Sept. 1. Warner Bros. Discovery hosts global celebrations in cities like London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo, uniting fans worldwide with digital activities, in-person gatherings, and watch-alongs, plus huge celebrations at “Harry Potter” destinations such as the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios.
At the New York pop-up, guests can expect to find magical performances, LEGO building activities, an interactive “Harry Potter: Quidditch Champion” experience, and a Butterbeer toast, courtesy of the flagship Harry Potter New York store. On Sept. 1, there will be a ticketed event with a live 11 a.m. countdown, marking when the Hogwarts Express would leave Kings Cross station in the series.
Though all of the events are free to attend, “Harry Potter” fans must sign up for a timed-entry ticket, which will be available starting Aug. 19. To make sure you don’t miss it, sign up and opt into email communications from the Harry Potter Fan Club by Aug. 17. On Aug. 19, an email will be sent including a link to the ticket site ahead of release at 12 p.m. EST.
(16) NOT A ROLLING STONE. SAILING, MAYBE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Today’s Nature has Stonehenge on the cover. There’s a Nature News item here.
The history of Stonehenge poses many challenges, not least of which is where all of the stones came from and how they were transported to the site. The Neolithic structure is made up of two main types of stone — sarsens sourced some 25 kilometres away near Marlborough, and bluestones that originated in Wales. The largest of the bluestones at the site is the six-tonne Altar Stone, but it is an anomaly: it did not come from Wales. In this week’s issue, Anthony Clarke and colleagues reveal that the Altar Stone probably made a remarkable journey of some 750 kilometres from Scotland. The researchers analysed two fragments from the stone and discovered a striking similarity to the Old Red Sandstone of the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland. The team suggests that the stone could have been transported by sea, indicating that there might have been a significant level of societal organization within Neolithic Britain.
(17) UPLIFTING HUMANS.[Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In a series of stories and novels, David Brin explored the idea of species uplift where by a technological civilization genetically manipulates a non-sentient species into full-blown sentience: a process called ‘uplifting’. Brin’s series has a climax in the Hugo-winning The Uplift War (1986).
Last weekend, while folk in Glasgow were preparing for the Hugo Awards ceremony, Isaac Arthur posted one of his monthly ‘Sci-Fi Sunday’ videos. While in David Brin’s stories the humans appeared to be the exception in the Galaxy who evolved sentience naturally whereas every other civilization seems to have been uplifted with the original uplift being made by some ancient and now extinct civilization. Conversely, in Isaac’s video, he explores the notion that humans were uplifted by an alien race.
Now, it has to be said that Isaac himself does not subscribe to the idea of humans being uplifted (he makes that clear both at the video’s beginning and end), but explores the concept hypothetically. Included in the mix is a slightly more sober idea that the Earth might have been subject to panspermia and specifically directed panspermia… As well as a brief dive into Eric von Daniken which, mercifully, he looks at purely through an SFnal lens… “Were Primitive Humans Uplifted By Aliens?”
Many believe humanity’s climb upward may have been assisted by outsiders. Is this possible, and if so, what does that tell us about our own past… and future?
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Clifford Samuels, Christian Brunschen, 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 Daniel Dern.]
THE 2024 HUGO AWARDS CEREMONY IN GLASGOW SCOTLAND, A PHOTO ESSAY
By Chris M. Barkley:
(1-3) Lining Up for the Hugo Awards Ceremony outside of the Armadillo, 7:00 pm local time.
(4) Artist Maurizo Manzieri (right) and Silvio Sosio (left), publisher and editor of the magazine Robot and the online magazine Fantascienza.com, outside of the Armadillo, 7:00 pm.
In a 1968 interview, the BBC spoke to author JRR Tolkien about his experiences during World War One, how they had a profound effect and influenced his epic fantasy novel, Lord of the Rings.
“Stories – frankly, human stories are always about one thing – death. The inevitability of death,” The Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien told a BBC documentary in 1968, as he tried to explain what his fantasy magnum opus was really about.
The novel, the first volume of which was published 70 years ago this week, has enthralled readers ever since it hit the shelves in 1954. The Lord of the Rings, with its intricate world-building and detailed histories of lands populated with elves, hobbits and wizards, threatened by the malevolent Sauron, had, by the time of the interview, already become a bestseller and a cornerstone of the fantasy genre.
To better explain what he meant by the story being about death, Tolkien reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet, which contained a newspaper clipping. He then read aloud from that article, which quoted from Simone de Beauvoir’s A Very Easy Death, her moving 1964 account of her mother’s desire to cling to life during her dying days….
…This new deal marks another long-term commitment by Tor Publishing Group and Tor UK to the works of John Scalzi, with the first book of this new contract tentatively scheduled for 2029.
John Scalzi said of the deal, “It’s rare in publishing to get anything close to continuity—authors go from one publishing house to the next. So I’m especially proud that this contract not only extends my two-decade association with Tor Books, but gives us both an opportunity to build on what’s come before, and make what comes next even better. We have so much planned in the years ahead. I can’t wait for you all to read it.”
Patrick Nielsen Hayden commented, “It’s fantastic to know that we’ll be in the John Scalzi business for even more years to come. He’s a remarkable writer and I can’t wait to see what he does next.”…
(3) TAFF WINNER’S ITINERARY. Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund administrator Sandra Bond today issued Taffluorescence 5, containing news of 2024 delegate Sarah Gulde’s movements and other hot news from TAFF. Gulde’s visit to the UK will take her to:
…FX is going all out for “Shadows” at Comic-Con this year for their “farewell tour.” The acclaimed mockumentary comedy series — which earned eight Emmy nominations earlier this month — has announced that its upcoming sixth season will be its last. The Bayfront’s exterior is draped in a gigantic “Shadows” promotional poster, and just below the hotel is an activation area that features one designed to look like the show’s vampire mansion.
Before their panel presentation, the cast and creatives head to an area where they are greeted by fans in full cosplay despite the sweltering heat. The “Shadows” team is then shuttled to the convention center, where it listens in backstage as a packed Hall H receives a sneak peek at the Season 6 premiere. (Berry and Newacheck share a thumbs up when they hear the audience erupt in laughter after a Laszlo moment.) And after their Hall H presentation, they and the rest of their group will be chatting up fans — some in cosplay, some with “Shadows”-themed paraphernalia, all with enthusiasm — as they sign autographs and pose for selfies. As for Season 6, Simms says, “It’s exactly what we wanted to do.”
“We wanted to make a last season that was not sentimental or trying to tie up every loose end,” he says. “Just make [a season] that is super funny and at the end has a good ending, which we’re not going to tell you.”
(5) R-R-R-R MATEY! Deadpool & Wolverine made a lot of money this weekend, its $205 million domestic box office ranking as the eighth biggest opening of all time among any film and by far the biggest launch for an R-rated film, not adjusted for inflation. The first Deadpool was the previous record-holder at $133.7 million. “Box Office: ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Sets Record With $205 Million Debut” at Variety.
…Disney’s superhero sequel has collected $205 million in its opening weekend, ranking as the eighth-best debut of all time ahead of 2018’s “Black Panther” ($202 million) and behind 2015’s “Jurassic World” ($208 million) and 2012’s “The Avengers” ($207 million). Only nine films in Hollywood history have crossed the $200 million milestone in their opening weekends. Ticket sales also easily surpassed 2016’s “Deadpool” ($132 million) to set the record for the biggest R-rated opening weekend ever. The 2018 sequel, “Deadpool 2,” now stands as the third-biggest R-rated debut with $125 million. Among the newest installment’s many benchmarks, “Deadpool & Wolverine” landed by far the biggest start of the year, overtaking Disney’s Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2” ($155 million debut).
Internationally, “Deadpool & Wolverine” captured $233.3 million for a staggering global tally of $438 million. After three days of release, the film, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, is already the sixth-highest grossing of 2024. Disney spent about $200 million to produce and roughly another $100 million to promote the movie.
In the six decades since the publication of the original Dune novel in 1965, the science fiction franchise has gone through many different typographic identities. Notable examples include the use of Giorgio for the British paperbacks by NEL (c. 1968) and Albertus for David Lynch’s movie adaptation (1984). But another typeface has even stronger ties to Dune and its author. It appeared on the covers of dozens of books, including the classic Dune trilogy and its sequels, and also on other titles by – or about – Frank Herbert, from various imprints. Strangely enough, the name of this typeface is barely known even among die-hard fans….
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
July 29, 1941 – David Warner. (Died 2022.) Let’s consider David Warner. Where shall we start? I say with his role in Time Bandits where Warner plays Evil Genius, a malevolent being capable of twisting and warping reality. He needs the map to be able to escape the Fortress of Darkness, where he’s been imprisoned. Evil is also different because He understands technology, and in his clawed hands “The world will be different. Because I have understanding.” What’s that he has an understanding of? Digital watches. “And soon I shall have an understanding of cassette recorders and car telephones.” A truly excellent role for him.
David Warner as Evil Genius
Next up in my estimation would be his performance as John Leslie Stevenson and Jack the Ripper in Nicholas Mayer’s exemplary Time after Time which has Malcolm McDowell as H. G. Wells.
As Warner as Jack offhandedly says to Wells, “Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Here, I’m an amateur.” Warner does a bang on the ear of making Jack revel in the violent nature of the present such as the ease in which one can purchase firearms and how killing has become much more efficient because of them.
Jack says, “We don’t belong here? On the contrary, Herbert. I belong here completely and utterly. I’m home.”
Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells.
So what next? That’d have to be Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the chancellor of the Klingon High Council who hopes to forge a peace between his people and the Federation.
Memory Alpha notes “Jack Palance was Nick Meyer’s original choice for the role. (Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 141) However, Palance proved to be extremely costly to hire as well as slightly hesitant to accept the part.” They need a performer who fitted the script’s description of Gorkon as “savagely tall” and Warner was six feet, two inches tall.
David Warner recognized that the role was not a particularly large one, saying, “I just sat there for one scene and then got killed! Which is fine – I don’t have a problem with that. It’s exposition, setting it all up.” (From Star Trek Magazine issue 153, p. 47) . He did a lot with what little time had do you agree?
David Warner as Chancellor Gorkon.
Those are the three performances that I think he’s most memorable in. Did he have other roles which I should note?
He voiced in the Batman: The Animated Series a character named Ra’s al Ghul, a very long live criminal mastermind. He voices him to utter perfection as one who both respects and disdains Batman.
That he’s a man of many roles is beyond dispute as he’s played Doctor Von Frankenstein and The Creature, Reinhard Heydrich who I can only describe as the souless monster that was responsible for the Holocaust; Bob Cratchit, a Professor Summerlee, Lord Mountbatten, The Doctor, Houdini and Professor Abraham Van Helsing.
I’m sure that I missed some interesting performances he did, so feel free to tell me that I overlooked them as you always do.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
Jumpstart jumped to the wrong conclusion (started last week).
(9) REYNOLDS RAP. The Hollywood Reporter gives reasons for ranking these as the “13 Best Ryan Reynolds Movies”. For example, you probably already forgot this one:
11. Detective Pikachu (2019)
The first thing you think of when you consider that famous yellow cutie that the Pokémon brand was built from probably isn’t Ryan Reynolds. His initial casting as Pikachu, for which he lent his voice and face via motion capture, was initially met with understandable confusion and a share of derision. But somehow, against all odds, it works. A gumshoe Pikachu with missing memories, teaming up with a failed Pokémon trainer, Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), and a cub reporter, Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton), to uncover a city-wide conspiracy is the kind of clever, special effects heavy take on the neo-noir that makes the film appealing for more than just Pokémon fans.
I couldn’t count the names of Pokémon characters I know on one hand, and I didn’t go into this movie as a fan. Yet, I found Rob Letterman’s film to be an engaging fantasy-mystery, and Reynolds’ performance to be a breezy and grounding element in a film entirely set in a lore-heavy fictional reality. As far as video game adaptations go, Detective Pikachu is one of the best, and it doesn’t get overly caught up in minutiae, instead allowing the cast and audience to simply focus on delivering a good time within the framework of a silly, but no less endearing, concept. And as for a bit of film trivia, before Reynolds accepted the role, Hugh Jackman was on WB’s shortlist to voice Pikachu — but he wasn’t quite ready to don the yellow just yet.
… During San Diego Comic-Con 2024 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunner Alex Kurtzman and Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies came together for a joint event titled Intergalactic Friendship Panel: Star Trek X Doctor Who. This raised some eyebrows, and the anticipation only grew after Saturday’s Star Trek panel. During the panel, Kurtzman was asked about a Doctor Who crossover, and his answer pointed to the crossover panel. “I think you should come to the panel later today and ask the same question,” Kurtzman teased.
Now, we know what that tease was referring to – a crossover between the Doctor Who: Lost in Time and Star Trek Lower Decks: The Badges Directive mobile games. It’s perhaps not the crossover fans were hoping for – we were kind of crossing out fingers for a live-action meetup, but at least one of the panelists has hope that that may happen someday. …
(11) BACK TO THE SILO. Shelf Awareness picked up this Silo news at Comic-Con.
During San Diego Comic-Con, Apple TV+ announced that the second season of the hit series Silo, which is based on Hugh Howey’s sci-fi stories–including the novellas Wool, Shift, and Dust–will premiere November 15 with the first episode, followed by one new episode every Friday through January 17, 2025.
Steve Zahn (The White Lotus, Treme) is joining the season 2 cast..
(12) THE CTHULHU IN THE HAT? H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon for Beginning Readers by R.J. Ivankovic is a droll, Seuss-inspired parody. (No, I don’t know if the Seuss corporate lawyers have heard of it yet.)
So a warning to all, for what it is worth: when the monsters arise they will conquer the earth.
The famous H.P. Lovecraft story Dagon is gracefully retold in anapestic tetrameter and illustrated in a darkly whimsical style by genius poet-artist R.J. Ivankovic.
A sailor escapes in a lifeboat after his ship is attacked by a German raider during World War I. He soon finds himself in more bizarre peril, stranded in a dark, stinking mire on the edge of a mammoth pit. Venturing into the pit, he discovers a monolith covered in weird hieroglyphics and something stranger still that crawls from the slime a creature that may be the vanguard of a vast and monstrous invading army from the depths of the sea.
Join us on a pawsome journey as we unveil our beloved feline friends who aren’t just curled up in a cozy corner; they’re out there, backpacking across continents, camping under the stars, floating in cosmic space, time-traveling to study with art masters, seeking enlightenment on pilgrimages, commanding the seven seas and skies, and even hustling in the Big Apple!
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Sandra Bond, Bill, Jim Janney, 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 Jon Meltzer.]
(1) VASTER THAN EMPIRES. George Sandison, managing editor for Titan Books, hopes to demystify publishing in his newly-launched a series of newsletter posts. First up, a survey of the industry: “Submissions: steering the iceberg”.
I find myself, these days, in the preposterous position of working in genre fiction. Having been publishing since 2014 as an indie, and heading up a major trade list since 2019, it’s close to second nature in a lot of ways.
But for the vast majority of people outside the industry, publishing is arcane, weird and no doubt seems arbitrary. There is a huge extended community of readers, reviewers, fans and authors fascinated by publishers and their lists, but so few ways for those people to get a sense of how publishers work, and why.
Which is silly.
So I’d like to make some sense of it all. The intent here is that this will be the start of a series of articles which will shine a light on some of the many, many opaque bits of publishing. Because really, none of it is that complicated, at least taken in isolation – doing it all at the same time is the trick, which will likely be a recurring theme across the series…..
…So exactly how big a mountain are we talking about? Fortunately there are a couple of useful numbers to call on to help make sense of it.
The last time anyone was mad enough to try and count how many books are published in the UK each year they came up with a number in the region of 200,000, which averages out to 548 a day. I remember seeing a survey in The Bookseller (link lost to the vagaries of time, with apologies) that it was 250,000 one year.
Now say I’m overseeing a list of 100 publications a year, across all formats, you can begin to see how many publishers – and editors – are involved, to say nothing of self-publishers….
…Regardless, Scalzi’s handling of the discovery seems like a model for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation — which, given the Wild West of still-forming norms and practices around AI art, wouldn’t be surprising for anyone in a creative industry.
Well, Goddamnit, it looks like some “AI”-generated art got onto one of my covers, specifically, the cover to the Italian edition of Starter Villain. Some (actual human) artists tracked down the cover art, and (on Adobe’s stock art site, at least), it’s marked as “generated with AI.”
It’s my policy not to accept AI-generated art for final cover art, and I thought I and my team had communicated that widely. When this art was presented to me for approval, I made the assumption that it was done by a human, and approved it. So, this is on me….
… That being the case, here’s what I am doing right now to make sure we don’t have this happen again, and to mitigate some of the damage AI-generated art is doing to the actual humans in the field.
1. I have instructed my agent (who is sending the instruction down the chain), that all book contracts henceforth have to agree that cover art must be created by a human artist. Stock art use is acceptable, but that stock art must be human-created, not AI-generated. We will expect our contractual partners to exercise due diligence to make sure these conditions are met (by, as an example, using only stock art sites that note when art is AI-generated). I’ll note that Tor already has agreed to this. So this is no longer just a policy; it’s a hard contractual point.
2. I have donated to the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, specifically to their Sponsored Memberships for BIPOC artists, to help emerging artists from marginalized communities receive the benefit of the professional and artistic community that ASFA can provide. They will need it for this new era of artistry….
Let the speculation begin. The “Untitled Event Film” Warner Bros had dated for December 2026 now is being billed as a “Denis Villeneuve Event Film,” and sources said the studio and Legendary are holding the date with expectations that he wraps up the spectacular trilogy with Dune 3.
Hurdles still have to be cleared as they’re still working on script and locking cast, but it is the project Villenueve has been working on….
…Villeneuve and Legendary are prepping Dune: Messiah, which the filmmaker said in January “should be the last Dune movie for me.” They next will reteamNuclear War: A Scenario, based on Annie Jacobsen’s nonfiction book that explores a ticking-clock scenario about what would happen in the event of a nuclear war…
“A Quiet Place: Day One” is making noise at the box office, collecting a roaring $53 million in its domestic opening weekend. The nearly silent thriller added $45.5 million internationally for a global tally of $98.5 million.
Though it landed in second place behind Disney-Pixar’s billion-dollar blockbuster “Inside Out 2,” the ticket sales for “Day One” are especially impressive because spinoff stories usually don’t bring in as much business as direct sequels. Yet “A Quiet Place: Day One” — a prequel in Paramount’s post-apocalyptic horror series — landed the biggest debut in the franchise, exceeding the original 2018 “A Quiet Place,” ($50 million to start) and the 2021 sequel, “A Quiet Place Part II” (a $48 million debut during COVID).
(5) DODGING ROWLING’S ENDORSEMENT. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] JK Rowling: (Regarding the July 4th election in the UK.) The Labour Party supports Trans Rights, so don’t vote for them. I endorse the UK‘s Communist Party instead.
Communist Party of Britain: (Backs away from her slowly.) Uh, no thanks, we’re good!
The Communist Party of Britain affirmed that it supports transgender people’s right to “live equal, full and meaningful lives” after J.K. Rowling, almost as well known at this point for her hatred of trans women as for penning the mega-popular Harry Potter series, expressed tacit support for its candidates. On Saturday, Rowling encouraged her social media followers to vote Communist, a move made in response to the anti-trans feminist group For Women Scotland tweeting that a party spokesperson had told them it stood “in support of [recognizing] the nature of biological sex.” A day later, a statement was released on the party’s official X account clarifying the matter. “For avoidance of doubt, the Communist Party supports the right of trans people to medically transition, to have access to healthcare and live equal, full and meaningful lives, socially, economically and politically,” it said. “We believe that such liberation will only be possible under socialism.” Rowling’s blessing, likely now to be rescinded, came after she published an op-ed in The Timesof London on Friday disavowing the Labour Party over its support for trans rights….
(6) GRAPHIC NOVEL RECOMMENDATIONS. The New York Times’ Sam Thielman reviews The Complete Web of Horror edited by Dana Marie Andra; The Ribbon Queen by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows; All My Bicycles, by Powerpaola; and Very Bushwack, by Sig Burwash. “Book Review: Best Graphic Novels in June – The New York Times (nytimes.com) (Link is to unlocked article.)
(7) SFF ZINE LAUNCHES TOMORROW. The WYRMHOLE is coming July 1.
hey have you ever wondered: "what does a terminally-online SFF magazine look like, and how horrible can it get?" Well, LOOK NO FURTHER
we talk craft. stories. Hole jokes. recs. TikTok. memes. the internet at its worst. SOFT LAUNCH TMRW https://t.co/Y1n6z7Nwfl
(8) AMAZING’S BEST. “Amazing Stories Releases THE BEST OF 2023!”. Edited by Lloyd Penney, The Best of 2023 features 29 science fiction short stories, published throughout 2023 on the Amazing Stories website, featuring a collaborative cover from Ron Miller and Tom Miller.
Stories by Paul Saka; Heather N. Santo; Royce Badgers; David Ian; David Hewitt; David Hankins; Adam Breckenridge; Nerine Dorman; Victor Jimenez; Gene Turchin; Adrian Tchaikovsky; Jack McKenzie; David Newkirk; John Andrew Karr; James Mapes; Alex Graham-Heggie; Leonid Korogodski; Dave Creek; John Taloni; Norman Spinrad; Lisa Fox; Andrew Hiller; Chaz Osburn; Ray Daley; Michael Carabott; Pete Carter; C.J. Peterson; Jenna Hanchey; Jeff Hewitt.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
June 30, 1959 — Vincent D’onofrio, 65. You no doubt know Vincent D’onofrio as Edgar the Bug in Men in Black which I’ll talk about about shortly, but let me first discuss what I think is his greatest role which was his decade-long performance as New York City Police Detective Robert Goren in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Of course it’s not genre but it’s rare that we get to see an actor in a primary role that long. Goren is an incredibly intense, extremely intelligent though opponents often thought he wasn’t and physically imposing man, but is could be very unpredictable and sometimes volatile and even angry.
Like Holmes, his methods were unusual and he admitted that “I am an acquired taste”. Eames, his female partner, often explained him to individuals who were puzzled and offended by him.
If you’ve not seen Men in Black, you really should and I’m assuming you have, otherwise, go away. You can come back later. He played Edgar / The Bug, Edgar being a farmer who is killed and eaten by a giant alien insect. An Effing Big Bug. From here out, it’s his voice and his body language that is what carries being under the Rick Baker designed face and full body suit. Now there’s a great interview with him and director Barty Sonnefiejd here that you should read: “Vincent D’Onofrio’s Men in Black: A Sugar-Water Oral History” at Vulture.
I singled out these two roles above all the roles he’s had because they demonstrate his most extraordinary skills — the first being the use of his voice to convey a character in a way I believe that is truly rare among performers, and second, the sheer physicality that he bring to a role.
I know the Rick Baker suit added to his bulk but his acting ability made the character even more present, more menacing that just the alieniness created by the suit and the sheer nastiness of his head of it grew more corrupt, more decayed. A truly brilliant performance.
Feel free to mention other roles that I didn’t note.
Universal Pictures has landed the rights to A Vicious Circle, a Boom! Studios graphic novel series created by Terminator Zero showrunner Mattson Tomlin and artist Lee Bermejo.
Tomlin will write the screenplay adapting his own work while Ryan Coogler, the filmmaker behind the Black Panther movies, will produce via his Proximity Media banner.
Also producing are Proximity’s Sev Ohanian and Zinzi Coogler, along with Boom!’s president of development Stephen Christy.
Circle is a two-hander action thriller about assassins from the future hunting each other through time. “John Wick meets Looper” is how it is being described.
Eddie Murphy is returning to the fairytale-fueled world of “Shrek.”
In an interview withCollider published Monday, Murphy opened up about voice acting as “Donkey” in the franchise’s next film. “We started doing ‘Shrek’ four or five months ago,” Murphy told Collider, while promoting his latest “Beverly Hills Cop” installment, “I recorded the first act, and we’ll be doing it this year, we’ll finish it up.”
“Another ‘Shrek’is coming out, and Donkey’s gonna have his own (spin-off) movie,” Murphy said, adding later that he thinks “Shrek 5” will be released sometime in 2025….
Engineers in Japan are trying to get robots to imitate that particularly human expression — the smile.
They have created a face mask from human skin cells and attached it to robots with a novel technique that conceals the binding and is flexible enough to turn down into a grimace or up into a squishy smile.
The effect is something between Hannibal Lecter’s terrifying mask and the Claymation figure Gumby.
But scientists say the prototypes pave the way for more sophisticated robots, with an outward layer both elastic and durable enough to protect the machine while making it appear more human.
Beyond expressiveness, the “skin equivalent,” as the researchers call it, which is made from living skin cells in a lab, can scar and burn and also self-heal, according to a study published June 25 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science…
…Scientists, including Takeuchi and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo, have been working with lab-made human skin for years.
In 2022, the research team developed a robotic finger covered in living skin, allowing the machine’s digit to bend like a human finger, giving it the tactility to potentially perform more precise tasks.
Takeuchi’s team had tried anchoring the skin with mini-hooks, but those caused tears as the robot moved. So the team decided to mimic ligaments, the tiny ropes of loose tissue that connect bones….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Lloyd Penney, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Wright.]
