(1) 2025 HUGO AWARD FINALISTS. The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Hugo Award Finalists were announced today.
Congratulations to all the finalists, especially the authors of two Best Related entries published by File 770, Chris Barkley and Jason Sanford for “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” and Camestros Felapton and Heather Rose Jones for “Charting the Cliff: An Investigation Into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics”.
(2) HUGO AWARD BASE DESIGNER. Seattle Worldcon 2025 has announced that the Hugo Awards Base will be designed by Joy Alyssa Day, a professional glass sculpture artist. Joy, with her partner BJ, have previously designed the Hugo Awards base for LonCon in 2014. Examples of Joy’s sculptures can be found at her website, GlassSculpture. Below are photos of the 2014 Hugo Award base, and their work on the Cosmos Award given by the Planetary Society.
(3) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 132 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Almost Everything Is Not Mac” is here early, because the hosts John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty are discussing this year’s Hugo Awards finalists.
An uncorrected transcript is available here.
(4) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman returns with episode 22 of his Why Not Say What Happened? Podcast, “The Conundrum of Condensing Marie Severin into 1,200 Words”. And here’s where it’s available on multiple platforms.
This time around, I grow anxious over a dream discovery of long-lost original comic book artwork, realize I was wrong about a certain Alan Moore/Frank Miller memory, contemplate the difficulty of condensing the life of Marie Severin into a mere 1,200 words, share the meager remains of what was once a massive comic book collection, remember there’s an issue of Fantastic Four I need to track down to solve an early fannish mystery, rededicate myself to Marie Kondo-ing my creative life, and more.
(5) FISHING FOR A SUPERSTAR. “Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies is manifesting DC star Viola Davis being the next iteration of the villainous Master, calling her ‘one of the greatest actors in the world’” at GamesRadar+.
Given that beloved sci-fi series Doctor Who has been on air for over 60 years now, countless actors have featured either in major roles or as guest stars.
From Simon Pegg playing a villainous editor in ‘The Long Game’ to Andrew Garfield facing off against aliens in ‘Daleks in Manhattan’, the seemingly endless list also includes Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya, Oscar winner Olivia Colman, and Black Panther’s very own Letitia Wright – to name but a few.The question is then – who would showrunner Russell T Davies love to have on the series in a guest role, who hasn’t been featured before? Putting that to the man himself in a recent interview ahead of Doctor Who season 2 hitting our screens, Davies is puzzled at first admitting to GamesRadar+ that “almost everyone has been in it”. And he’s right – hell, even pop star icon Kylie Minogue even showed up for the Titanic themed episode ‘Voyage of the Damned’….
…As Davies tells us: “I simply worship Viola Davis, one of the greatest actors in the world, we should be so lucky we should have that money. She just brings quality, depth, and surprise. Every time I see her she does something surprising, which is a very Doctor Who quality. She’d get it. I say this hoping that you print it, then her agent will read it and say ‘yes, you can have Viola for absolutely no money, she will come to Cardiff for free.'” Well – here’s hoping!
(6) BOOP-OOP-A-DOOP! “’Boop!’ Arrives on Broadway, With a Surprising 100-Year Back Story” reports the New York Times. Link bypasses paywall.
Betty Boop has arrived on Broadway, nearly a century after she first boop-oop-a-dooped her way onto the big screen. “Boop! The Musical,” like the “Barbie” and “Elf” films that preceded it, imagines a transformational encounter between an anthropomorphic character and the real world (well, a fictional world full of people)….
…Jasmine Amy Rogers, the actress starring as Betty Boop on Broadway, described her as “full of joy” and “unapologetically herself.” “She is sexy, but I don’t think it is merely sex that makes her sexy,” she continued. “I would say it’s the way she carries herself, and her confidence and her unabashed self.”…
Betty, created at the height of the Jazz Age, is obviously modeled on flappers, and her relationship to music history has been a subject of debate and litigation.
In 1932, a white singer named Helen Kane sued, alleging that the “baby vamp” style of the Betty Boop character, including the “boop-oop-a-doop” phrase, was an unlawful imitation of Kane. At a widely publicized trial in 1934, Fleischer countered by pointing out that a Black singer, Esther Lee Jones, who performed as Baby Esther, had used similar scat phrases before Kane. Kane lost….
…Rogers said she hopes that over time, women of different ethnicities will portray the character, but said she is proud to play her as a Black woman, with nods to Baby Esther and the scat technique of jazz singing. “Jazz lives so deep in the heart of Betty that I feel as if we can’t really have a full discussion about her without involving the African American race,” she said…
(7) GOOD DOG. Krypto takes us home: “Superman | Sneak Peek”.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
April 6, 1937 — Billy Dee Williams, 88.
Rather obviously, Billy Dee Williams’ best-known role is as — and no I did know this was his full name — Landonis Balthazar “Lando” Calrissian III. He was introduced in The Empire Strikes Back as a longtime friend of Han Solo and the administrator of the floating Cloud City on the gas planet Bespin.
(So have I mentioned, I’ve only watched the original trilogy, and this is my favorite film of that trilogy? If anyone cares to convince me I’ve missed something by not watching the later films, go ahead.)
He is Lando in the original trilogy, as well in as the sequel, The Rise of Skywalker, thirty-six years later. The Star Wars fandom site thinks this might be the longest interval between first playing a character and later playing the same character, being a thirty-six year gap.
He returned to the role within the continuity in the animated Star Wars Rebels series, voicing the role in “Idiot’s Array” and “The Siege of Lothal” episodes. Truly great series if you haven’t seen, and available of course on Disney+.
He voiced him in two audio dramas with one being the full cat adaption of Timothy Zahn’s Dark Empire.
Now this is where it gets silly, really silly. The most times he’s been involved with the character is in the Lego ‘verse. Between 2024 with The Lego Movie to Billy Dee Williams returned to the role in the Star Wars: Summer Vacation in 2022, he has voiced Lando in eight Lego films, mostly made as television specials.
Going from hero to villain, he was Harvey Dent in Batman, and yes in The Lego Batman Movie. Really they made it. I’d like to say I remember him here but than they would admitting this film made an impression on me which it decidedly didn’t. None of the Batman Films did in the Eighties.
He’s in Mission Impossible as Hank Benton, an enforcer for a monster, in “The Miracle” episode; he’s Ferguson in Epoch: Evolution, the sequel to Epoch, which looks like quite silly, and I’m using this term deliberately, sci-film, and finally he voiced himself on Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, the thirteenth television series in the Scooby-Doo franchise.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Brewster Rockit thinks he can explain an anomaly.
- Half Full accommodates.
- Mother Goose and Grimm tries a different beat.
- The Argyle Sweater exposes the reason for multiple Alien sequels.
- Tom Gauld reveals another little-known fact of nature.
(10) WHY ARE KIDS OBSESSED WITH THE TITANIC? “So You Think You Know a Lot About the Titanic …” in the New York Times (behind a paywall.)
Parents often look down at the whorl on the top of their children’s heads and wonder what, exactly, is going on inside. An industry of books, video games, films, merchandise and museums offers some insight: They’re probably thinking about the Titanic.
Last fall, Osiris, age 5, told his mother, Tara Smyth, that he wanted to eat the Titanic for dinner. So she prepared a platter of baked potatoes — each with four hot-dog funnels, or smokestacks — sitting on a sea of baked beans. (He found it delicious.) Since first hearing the story of the Titanic, Ozzy, as he’s known, has amassed a raft of factoids, a Titanic snow globe from the Titanic Belfast museum and many ship models at his home in Hastings, England.
About 5,500 miles away in Los Angeles, Mia and Laila, 15-year-old twins, devote hours every week to playing Escape Titanic on Roblox. They have been doing this for the last several years. Sometimes, they go down with the ship on purpose — “life is boring,” explained Mia, “and the appeal is that it’s kind of dramatic.”
Nearly 113 years after the doomed White Star Line steamship collided with an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and sank at around 2:20 a.m. the next day, it remains a source of fascination for many children. The children The New York Times spoke to did not flinch at the mortal fact at the heart of the story: That of the more than 2,200 passengers on the Titanic, more than twice as many passengers died as those who survived.
“I really like whenever it just cracked open in half and then sank and then just fell apart into the Atlantic Ocean,” said Matheson, 10, from Spring, Texas, who has loved the story since he read “I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912” at age 5. After many frustrating bath time re-enactments involving flimsy ship models, Matheson and his father, Christopher Multop, designed a Tubtastic Titanic bath toy — of which they say they now sell about 200 a month (separate floating iceberg included)….
John Zaller, the executive producer of Exhibition Hub, the company that designed “Bodies: The Exhibition” and “Titanic: An Immersive Voyage,” a traveling exhibition with interactive elements, attested that Titanic kids often knew more than their tour guides. At the Titanic experience, children can sit in a lifeboat and watch a simulation of the ship sinking, see a life-size model of the boiler room be flooded with water, and follow along with the passengers on their boarding pass, ultimately finding out whether they survived the wreck.
“The biggest takeaway for kids is, ‘I lived!’ or ‘I died!’” Mr. Zaller said. “They understand the power of that.”…
(11) APRIL FOOLISHNESS. Except it happened in March: “An AI avatar tried to argue a case before a New York court. The judges weren’t having it” at Yahoo!
It took only seconds for the judges on a New York appeals court to realize that the man addressing them from a video screen — a person about to present an argument in a lawsuit — not only had no law degree, but didn’t exist at all.
The latest bizarre chapter in the awkward arrival of artificial intelligence in the legal world unfolded March 26 under the stained-glass dome of New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, where a panel of judges was set to hear from Jerome Dewald, a plaintiff in an employment dispute.
“The appellant has submitted a video for his argument,” said Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels. “Ok. We will hear that video now.”
On the video screen appeared a smiling, youthful-looking man with a sculpted hairdo, button-down shirt and sweater.
“May it please the court,” the man began. “I come here today a humble pro se before a panel of five distinguished justices.”
“Ok, hold on,” Manzanet-Daniels said. “Is that counsel for the case?”
“I generated that. That’s not a real person,” Dewald answered.
It was, in fact, an avatar generated by artificial intelligence. The judge was not pleased.
“It would have been nice to know that when you made your application. You did not tell me that sir,” Manzanet-Daniels said before yelling across the room for the video to be shut off….
… As for Dewald’s case, it was still pending before the appeals court as of Thursday.
(12) ONCE FICTION, NOW SCIENCE. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian reports “Biologist whose innovation saved the life of British teenager wins $3m Breakthrough prize”. Harvard Professor, David Liu —
… was chosen for inventing two exceptionally precise gene editing tools, namely base editing and prime editing. Base editing was first used in a patient at Great Ormond Street in London, where it saved the life of a British teenager with leukaemia.
The young woman’s doctor apparently called the technique at the time, ‘science fiction’!
(13) ETERNAUT TRAILER. The Eternaut premieres on Netflix on April 30.
After a deadly snowfall kills millions, Juan Salvo and a group of survivors fight against a threat controlled by an invisible force. Based on the iconic graphic novel written by Héctor G. Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López.
(14) WHY IS MARS RED? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Well, we all know the answer – an on-going process of the radiolysis of water (here UV and high energy particles from Solar wind splitting water) produces oxygen radicals that oxidise iron to hematite (a form of iron(III) that on Earth often gives some sandstones their red colour…) Well, maybe not! New research now suggests otherwise. Data from three orbiters combined with a look at Earth minerals suggests that the Martian red minerals were formed over three billion years ago when Mars was decidedly wet. Had Mars been warmer, then these minerals would have gone. ; Mars’ red colour looks like being ferrihydrite (Fe5O8H nH2O) that forms under decidedly wet conditions. This is yet more evidence – if more is needed – that Mars was wet billions of years ago.
The primary research, by French, US and British based astrophysicists, is Valantinas, A. et al (2025) “Detection of ferrihydrite in Martian red dust records ancient cold and wet conditions on Mars”. Nature Communications, vol. 16, 1712. Meanwhile over at DrBecky there is a 12-minute video which you can see here: “New study explains why Mars is RED”. I keep on telling people that the machines are taking over but nobody ever listens to me… In fact they rule Mars!
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Scott Edelman, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
