(1) FOR WHOM CTHULHU TOLLS. Quotes from Lovecraft’s correspondence touching on Hemingway feature in Bobby Derie’s “Harsh Sentences: H. P. Lovecraft v. Ernest Hemingway” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.
It is just possible that Ernest Hemingway knew the name H. P. Lovecraft. Though they moved in very different literary circles and Hemingway was not known to have ever picked up a copy of Weird Tales. Yet they both earned three-star ratings in Edward J. O’Brien’s The Best Short Stories of 1928, Hemingway for “Hills Like White Elephants,” Lovecraft for “The Color Out of Space.” They both made The Best Short Stories of 1929, too. For Hemingway, that was the likely the beginning and end of their association; there are no mentions of the master of the weird tale in Hemingway’s letters. It was easy, in the 1920s and 30s, to know nothing about Lovecraft.
For H. P. Lovecraft, missing Hemingway would have been much more difficult—nor did he….
…While vastly different in style, that both men shared an appreciation for some of the same authors and works, or at least recognized their importance, should not be surprising. They were only nine years apart in age, both white men raised in America, voracious readers who loved literature. One notable fantasy writer that they both appreciated was Lord Dunsany, who was a major influence on Lovecraft:
“Often a wonderful moon and the guy’s would have me read Lord Dunsany’s Wonder Tales out loud. He’s great.” —Ernest Hemingway to Grace Quinlan, 8 Aug 1920, LEH 1.237
(2) EFFORT TO STOP IMLS LAYOFFS. Plaintiffs move to prevent layoffs ordered for the Institute of Museum and Library Services: “In D.C.’s District Court, ALA Battles to Preserve IMLS” at Publishers Weekly.
At the first hearing in ALA v. Sonderling, held April 30 at the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, the American Library Association and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees pushed for the court to put an immediate halt to the ongoing gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services before the majority of its staff is laid off this weekend.
The ALA and AFSCME hope to block the implementation of a White House executive order that has hollowed out the IMLS, reduced staffing to a minimum, and imposed delays and outright terminations on the agency’s statutory and discretionary grants. In a brief filed April 28, the organizations argued that the defendants, including IMLS acting director Keith Sonderling, have made “arbitrary” and “unconstitutional” changes at the agency. The defendants contend they must comply with the EO to fulfill “the President’s priorities.”…
(3) AI BS. T. R. Napper cuts loose on “the oft-repeated lies and the self-serving greed of an industry that, at its core, seeks to destroy art” in “It’s the People, Stupid (Human Art in a Company World)”.
The Will to Anthropomorphise
This dishonesty of the tech industry is particularly acute in the field of generative AI models, where obscurantist tech language tries mightily to anthropomorphise the machine. Where we are told, for example, that mistakes made by Large Language Models are ‘hallucinations’, or that chatbots can serve us as mentors, coaches, cheerleaders, counsellors, and even as romantic interests.
Let’s make this clear from the outset. A large language model has the same sentience as a toaster. It thinks about language about as much as a toaster does toast: that is, not at all. These are not coaches or counsellors, they are products. They are instruments of surveillance and data extraction for some of the most venal and amoral corporations on earth. The products don’t care about you, they don’t think about you. They don’t think about you because ‘they’ don’t exist as a consciousness.
When AI-driven search engines have a 60% error rate, they are not ‘hallucinating,’ they simply aren’t working. If you had a car that didn’t work 60% of the time, you’d take it back to the dealership…
(4) MEANWHILE, BACK AT AI MONETIZATION. The Verge tells how – with the estate’s permission — “The BBC deepfaked Agatha Christie to teach a writing course”.
BBC Studios is using AI to recreate the voice and likeness of late detective story author Agatha Christie for the purpose of featuring it in digital classes that teaches prospective writers “how to craft the perfect crime novel.” A real life actor, Vivien Keene, is standing in for Christie, with her appearance augmented by AI to resemble the author.
The new class, called Agatha Christie Writing, is available today on BBC Maestro, the company’s $10-per-month online course service that usually gives you access to content from living professionals teaching things like graphic design, bread making, time management, and more.
Deepfaked Agatha Christie’s teachings are “in Agatha’s very own words,” her great-grandson James Prichard said in a press release. It uses insights from the real Christie and is scripted by academics — so the actual content appears to be human-made and not generated from a model that’s been fed all of her work. BBC collaborated with Agatha Christie Estate and used restored audio recordings, licensed images, interviews, and her own writings to make this all happen….
(5) UNSPOILED PRAISE. Camestros Felapton tells us why “Andor Season 2 is really good [no spoilers]”.
…One of the things that I really like about this show that, if anything, is even stronger this season, is the way the Imperial bad guys are treated as fully realised complex characters BUT without any suggestion that somehow they are decent people who are just on the wrong side of things. We spend a lot of time with Imperial agent Dedra Meero of the Imperial Security Bureau and the uptight but emotionally fragile Syril Karn. They really are not nice people both as people and in terms of the powers that they serve but they are very definitely people, with complex lives and difficult emotions, trying to navigate their own lives….
(6) IN FOR A POUND. ER, FIFTEEN. The Guardian reports “New book prize to award aspiring writer £75,000 for first three pages of novel”. But it’s “pay to play”.
A new competition is offering £75,000 to an aspiring writer based on just three pages of their novel.
Actor Emma Roberts, Bridgerton author Julia Quinn and Booker-winning Life of Pi author Yann Martel are among the judges for The Next Big Story competition, run by online fiction writing school The Novelry.
Roberts, who co-founded the book club Belletrist, said: “There’s nothing more euphoric than being immersed in the world of a good book and to get lost in the words of a brilliant author. This is a groundbreaking new writing prize and I’m thrilled to be included on this panel of esteemed luminaries.”
Martel said: “We all need stories to make the world new, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there.”
Along with the cash prize, The Novelry will support the winner for a year to develop their idea into a full book….
… Entrants from the UK, US, Canada and Australia are invited to submit the first three pages of their novel via The Novelry’s website by 31 July. Each entry costs £15 and there is no limit on the number of entries each writer can submit. A shortlist selected by a team at The Novelry will be put to a public vote from 28 September. Guided by the public vote, the judging panel will pick a winner, to be announced on 12 October. The prize is funded by The Novelry….
(7) CASHING IN ON SUPERHEROES. “Superman gets a U.S. Coin—Batman and more coming soon” reports AIPT Comics. (See full information at the U.S. Mint’s “Comic Art Coin and Medal Program” webpage.)
The United States Mint (Mint) has announced it’s launching a coin series featuring Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products (WBDGCP). Designed by Mint Chief Engraver Joseph Menna, these are genuine American coins.
It’s said the coins are meant to celebrate the American values and heroic ideals that these characters represent.
The first hero getting the coin treatment is Superman, first revealed during a ceremonial strike event held at the Mint in Philadelphia.
The coins come in gold and silver. Check out the Superman coins below….
(8) ICG RIP 2025. The International Costumers Guild has posted the “Costuming Community Video Memorial 2025” — see the video on YouTube. Note: The photo listed as “William Rotsler” is actually Tim Powers. They do accurately list Rotsler’s year of death as 1997; they don’t say why he’s included.
This video premiered during the virtual Single Pattern and Future Fashion shows on April 12, 2025 when Costume-Con had been cancelled. Once again, we recognize people who may not have worn (m)any costumes and/or competed in masquerades, but still made some significant impact within the greater costuming community. If you know of a costumer or someone else who has either passed away recently or years earlier, please contact us at icg-archivist @ costume.org. The people remembered in this video are: John Stopa, William Rotsler, Jim Inkpen, John Trimble, Jim Davis, Tonya Adolfson (aka Tanglwyst de Holloway), Jay Smith and “Miki” Dennis.
(9) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Star Trek pilot, “The Cage”
By Paul Weimer: The original Star Trek pilot, “The Cage”, starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike.
I saw pieces of it before I got to see the entire thing, of course, in the two-part Star Trek episode “The Menagerie” which has Spock recall the events of the episode. My opinion of “The Cage” was thus an incomplete opinion until I finally got to see the complete “The Cage” on TV on a TV special just before The Next Generation debuted.
It was a fascinating experience to see the entire pilot at last, without any Kirk or the rest of his era, and all of the missing material. I came to see how even more progressively radical for its time that the original pilot for Star Trek was. Mind you, I saw how Jeffrey Hunter ‘s Christopher Pike was really Jeffrey Sinclair before his time…a lead that was good, but not quite what audiences would want in the main. I could see the swing from Hunter to Shatner, Pike to Kirk. I could sadly see why having a female Number One in the early 1960’s was a non-starter, either.
The real poleaxe was Spock. The Spock of “The Cage” is a very different Spock than the Spock we see in every subsequent iteration. A smiling Spock, an emotional Spock, a Spock that is fundamentally less alien in many ways than the Spock we come to know and love. And of course one that is just a moderate officer on the Enterprise, not the first officer, not part of the Heroic Trio of Bones, Kirk and Spock. And no Heroic Trio as well. (Good old Jon Lormer as Dr. Theodore Haskins is no McCoy, but it’s clear that he’s the model for McCoy). And of course, once we have gotten to Strange New Worlds, the conception of what an Enterprise Bridge could be has changed.
So in the end, we will never know what might have resulted…but I strongly suspect Star Trek would not have survived as long as it did, if “The Cage” had gone forward and become the actual TV series. But again (c.f. Babylon 5 again), it was a prototype that made the real version possible, and magical.
(10) BELATED BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
April 30, 1938 — Larry Niven, 87.
By Paul Weimer: Larry Niven was one of the early SF authors I read, once I was out of my initial burst of Asimov and Clarke, in the early 1980’s. My brother had a couple of copies of various short story collections set in Known Space, as well as Ringworld. And so I was set for a while on Niven and his works. I loved some of the crafty puzzling aspects of some of his stories, the variety of aliens, and the exploration of consequences of technologies.
I kept following Niven’s work, and it was his collaboration with Pournelle (The Mote in God’s Eye) that got me into Pournelle’s work for a good long time. Similarly, his collaborations with Steven Barnes (Dream Park) got me into Barnes’ own work. Niven was a great facilitator of introducing me to authors, directly and indirectly. I first heard of Georgette Heyer through an anecdote that he relates in N-Space, for example.
Still, Niven has multiple worlds that enthralled me. Known Space. The novels of his Smoke Ring duology. The Magic Goes Away verse. Dream Park (until the last novels which retconned and changed the technology and ruined the concept for me). The Heorot verse. His contributions to Pournelle’s Future History.
The luster of Niven slowly faded, as his politics and mine diverged, perhaps on his part, and certainly in mine. It started in Fallen Angels, and his very anti-Environmental stance that, as cool as it was to have Glacier spushing out of Canada, started to turn me off. I think it was The Burning City, set in his Magic Goes Away verse, that finally had the politics overwhelm the storytelling, the writing, and the ideas, to their detriment for my own personal reading. I did try Bowl of Heaven (with Gregory Benford) a decade ago…but the magic had gone away, for me. Alas.
For all of my love of early Niven Known Space and the like, “Inconstant Moon” remains my favorite Niven story. It’s a love story at its heart, even as Niven kills most of the planet in the process.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
- Carpe Diem complains about book size.
- Dinosaur Comics predicts an unexpected source of future nostalgia.
- Strange Brew should have known.
- xkcd theorizes about Jupiter’s core.
- Pearls Before Swine delivers a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of loaning a book to a friend.
(12) NEW FRAZETTA ART BOOK. Frazetta Girls is taking pre-orders on their website for a book of Frank’s drawings: “Frank Frazetta: Fine Lines Art Book”
It includes essays about Frazetta’s illustrations for the Canaveral Press, the Lord of the Rings portfolio, the Science Fiction Book Club, and others.
(13) COSTUME DESIGN. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Really fascinating costuming and clothing article. “Costume Secrets of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” at PBS.
In Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, a character’s success is measured in silks, stitching, and the symbolism of a regal headpiece. In an interview with MASTERPIECE, costume designer Joanna Eatwell talks about dressing the Tudors from the inside out, channeling 16th-century portraiture, and which actor most fully inhabits her meticulously crafted designs….
JOANNA EATWELL: … And in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, we were given the greatest gift ever. And that is Hans Holbein and his court paintings. …Holbein did primarily paint the court, because portraiture was incredibly expensive to have done. And he did a couple of pet portraits of Henry’s servants. And from those, we can get liveries, the King’s guards, we understand how they worked. But he paints fabrics. He’s extraordinary. And I think we’d be lost without him….
(14) WHAT’S MY LINE? At Entertainment Weekly, “Kit Harington recalls Bella Ramsey helping him with ‘Game of Thrones’ lines”.
Kit Harington and Bella Ramsey are reminiscing about working on Game of Thrones together — and recalling how one of them helped the other remember their lines.
In a recent conversation for Interview, Ramsay told Harington their earliest memories of playing Lyanna Mormont opposite his Jon Snow in season 6 of the HBO fantasy series.
“I don’t know whether you remember this, but I remember it quite vividly and have some remorse for it now, but during that scene I was mouthing your lines to you,” the Last of Us star said. “Now I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, how awful.’ But at the time it came from a very innocent place of being like, ‘Kit’s struggling with his line and I know it, so let me just mouth it to him.'”
Harington then shared his side of the story. “I do remember you helping me out and it being quite humiliating,” he recalled. “But yeah, thanks for that. I’ve probably chosen to forget it.”
Ramsey said they now regret the move. “You’re welcome. No, I think I need to forget it, because that’s so annoying,” they said. “Like, how annoying is that?”
Harington reassured his former costar: “It wasn’t at all. If anything I was like, ‘Oh god, I’ve got to up my game. I came here not really being comfortable enough with my lines, in the arrogance of however old I was, thinking I’m just opposite some child. And then that child actor is wiping me off the screen.’ Not that it’s a competition, but you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a bit too comfortable in my Jon Snow-ness.'”…
(15) RESIDENT ALIEN SEASON 4 WILL BE SIMULCAST. “’Resident Alien Gets Season 4 Premiere Date & Trailer On USA & Syfy” reports Deadline.
Almost a year after Resident Alien moved from Syfy to NBCUniversal sibling USA Network with a suspenseful Season 4 renewal, a premiere date has been set for said Season 4 and, surprisingly, it involves both the sci-fi comedy-drama’ new and old homes.
The new season of Resident Alien will debut June 6 as a simulcast on USA and Syfy….
… As Deadline reported last spring, Resident Alien, facing cancellation at Syfy, moved to USA for a fourth season with a significant budget reduction. The USA/Syfy simulcast model was previously used for Chucky during its three-season run….
(16) A LITTLE LIKE A MYSTERY THEATRE 3000 MOMENT. “Almost 30 years later, Ben Affleck says his iconic Armageddon DVD commentary might be his best work: ‘It is an achievement I’m proud of’” at GamesRadar+.
Ben Affleck has no shortage of career highlights, from starring in modern classics like Pearl Harbor and Gone Girl and playing Batman in the DCEU to his directorial work in award-winning movies like Argo. His best work, however, might be his brutally honest Armageddon’s DVD commentary, according to Affleck himself.
“In retrospect, now, I feel like maybe my best work in my career is the commentary on this disc,” he said during a Criterion’s Closet Picks video after finding Michael Bay’s thriller on the shelf.”People approach me to talk about the commentary in this disc as much as they do movies that I’ve been in,” Affleck continued. “And it’s because I didn’t know any better than to be really honest. But I won’t spoil it for those of you who are interested. It is an achievement I’m proud of and didn’t intend to be as good as I now think it is.”
In the most famous part of his commentary, Affleck argued that it’s illogical to train oil drillers to be astronauts instead of the other way around. “How hard can it be? You just aim the drill at the ground and turn it on,” he commented back then, not afraid to mock his own film….
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Arnie Fenner, Paul Weimer, Jeffrey Smith, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
