(1) GOFUNDME FOR HOWARD ANDREW JONES. Friends have started “A Call to Help Howard Andrew Jones and His Family” at GoFundMe.
In August, Howard Andrew Jones wrote that he has been diagnosed with brain cancer––multifocal glioblastoma – and that, “People I trust––my doctors and my family––inform me it will be fatal, and we are deciding now on a course of action to make the most of the time I have left.” This GoFundMe shall go to forthcoming medical bills in the months to come and any other funding the family might need.
At this writing the appeal has raised $22,345 of the $35,000 goal.

(2) SCARE UP THE VOTE. The Scare Up the Vote event by members of the horror community hopes to raise funds and awareness to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The live online event at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on October 15 will include appearances from Stephen King, Joe Hill, Mike Flanagan, Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, Cynthia Pelayo, Paul Tremblay, Gabino Iglesias, Victor LaValle, Alma Katsu, Bryan Fuller (Hannibal), Scott Derrickson (The Black Phone), and Don Mancini (creator of Chucky). Follow the YouTube page for the livestream: “Scare Up the Vote” YouTube page.

(3) GOLDSMITHS PRIZE SHORTLIST. The finalists for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize were announced October 2. None of the six are detectably of genre interest:
- All My Precious Madness (Mark Bowles, Galley Beggar Press)
- Tell (Jonathan Buckley, Fitzcarraldo)
- Parade (Rachel Cusk, Faber)
- Choice (Neel Mukherjee, Atlantic)
- Spent Light (Lara Pawson, CB Editions)
- Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking (Han Smith, JM Originals).
The prize, worth £10,000 and run in association with the New Statesman, was open to novels published between 1 November 2023 and 31 October 2024, written in English by citizens of the UK or Ireland, or authors who have been resident in either country for three years and have their book published there.
The winner will be announced on November 6.
(4) BOOK FREEDOM. Publishers Weekly reports “In Arkansas, Book Banners Dealt Another Legal Setback”.
In yet another major win for freedom to read advocates, a federal judge has ordered the Crawford County Public Library in Arkansas to stop segregating books deemed inappropriate by some local residents into special “social sections,” and to return the books to general circulation.
In his September 30 opinion and order, U.S. district court judge P.K. Holmes III held that “it is indisputable” that the creation and maintenance of the library’s so-called social sections “was motivated in substantial part by a desire to impede users’ access to books containing viewpoints that are unpopular or controversial in Crawford County.” In a preliminary injunction, Holmes ordered county officials to dismantle the sections and return the books to general circulation, as well as to refrain from “coercing” library staff to censor books.
The decision comes in a lawsuit first filed in May 2023 by three local parents, who challenged the county’s quorum court, the library board, and the library’s interim director for a policy that created special sections and classifications for segregating books, mostly LGBTQ content. Among their defenses, county officials argued that moving the books to special sections did not amount to book banning. But Holmes said the evidence showed that “viewpoint discrimination was a substantial motive” for the creation of the “social sections,” and that the policy held “profound” First Amendment implications….
(5) PAY THE WRITER. “The SoA responds to results of The Bookseller’s survey on advances and royalties” at The Society of Authors (UK).
A recent survey launched by The Bookseller on advances and royalties revealed that 52% of respondents had experienced payment issues with their publishers.
The survey found that among those who experienced issues with payment, ‘around 18% experienced problems with both advances and royalties, 17% only with advances [and] with around the same number experiencing problems only with royalties’….
(6) ZOOMING INTO FANHISTORY. Fanac.org will host a Zoom FanHistory session featuring globetrotting Australian fan Robin Johnson on October 26. To attend, send a note to fanac@fanac.org
FANAC FanHistory Zoom Session
Robin Johnson: Traveling Fan from Oz
Robin Johnson, interviewed by Perry Middlemiss & Leigh EdmondsOctober 26,2024 – 7PM EDT, 4PM PDT, 12AM London, 10AM AEDT Sunday, Oct 27 Melbourne

(7) DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS. “Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Other Toxic Fans: How Hollywood Is Fighting Back” – Variety has the details.
… Still, toxic fandoms have grown so pernicious that they’ve become a fact of life for many — and so powerful that while talent, executives and publicists will privately bemoan the issue, fear of inadvertently triggering another backlash kept several studios from speaking for this story even on background. (As one rep put it, “It’s just a lose-lose.”)
Those who did talk with Variety all agreed that the best defense is to avoid provoking fandoms in the first place. In addition to standard focus group testing, studios will assemble a specialized cluster of superfans to assess possible marketing materials for a major franchise project.
“They’re very vocal,” says the studio exec. “They will just tell us, ‘If you do that, fans are going to retaliate.’” These groups have even led studios to alter the projects: “If it’s early enough and the movie isn’t finished yet, we can make those kinds of changes.”
Several studio insiders say they often put their talent through a social media boot camp; in some cases, when a character is intentionally challenging a franchise’s status quo, studios will, with the actor’s permission, take over their social media accounts entirely. When things get really bad — especially involving threats of violence — security firms will scrub talent information from the internet to protect them from doxxing….
(8) NEW GERROLD NOVELLA COMING THIS MONTH. David Gerrold’s new SF novella Praxis will be released October 22 by Star Traveler Press, an imprint of Starship Sloane Publishing.
A lifetime in the Labor Corps—or colonize a new world. For Jamie and José, not much of a choice. But Praxis wouldn’t be easy. To survive there, you had to depend on each other. And that requires honesty that few possess. Praxis is a bold experiment in society building, a monosexual colony, with no promises of survival and no return trip. But it’s got potential. You just have to build a new civilization—on the other side of the universe.
It is a compelling story that explores social issues without skimping on the hard science fiction.
The foreword is by John Shirley and the cover art is an original piece by Bob Eggleton commissioned for the book. F. J. Bergmann did the book design and layout and Justin T. O’Conor Sloane is the editor and publisher.

(9) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
October 3, 2017 — Anniversary: Blade Runner 2049
Science fiction fans live in hope, especially when it comes to sequels, prequels, and other works. Maybe this time it will be good. Maybe the magic will return. Maybe the horse will sing.
Maybe.
I won’t claim to be one of the seventeen people who saw the original Blade Runner in the theaters in 1982, my exposure came when versions of it arrived on videotape, but it had become one of my core SFF experiences. And so in 2017, upon the announcement of its forthcoming release, I was extremely interested in what Denis Villeneuve (whose Arrival I had loved) could do with the film.
I saw it opening weekend, because it was my birthday weekend, and I wanted to treat myself. I had been led to expect spectacle and visuals, and I wanted the large screen, and in those days before the Covid Pandemic, I had no inhibitions in doing so. And so I sat down to see what Villeneuve had wrought.
If the original Blade Runner is a noir classic pinpricked and studded with moments of beauty, Blade Runner 2049 was a large, sprawling epic on the screen, pinpricked and studded with moments of different kinds of beauty. Such visions, taking the future of Los Angeles from Blade Runner and adding a level of inexorable environmental devastation that we get right in the first scene and all the way to the finale at the devastated, buried Las Vegas. A twisty, twisted tale that wraps around the shed snake skin of the original film. And a story, and revelations that are of a piece, and feel like they belong in a Philip K. Dick story. The bones of the movie and its revelations.
This film doesn’t and didn’t work unless you were steeped in the original, sometimes too much for its own good. But even for its long run time, around every corner, there was so much to see and take in. The long running time can work against it, but it gives us so much of the world to inhabit and see and explore.
Is it the original? No. Does it depend too much on the original? In some ways, trying to follow up on a classic movie was an impossible task. Had Villeneuve gone for another noir piece (even more than the mystery chassis of this film), it would have felt like too much of a copy. If there was no acknowledgement of the original, it would have felt like a betrayal of the original. I think that Villeneuve made the Blade Runner universe his own in a way that Ridley Scott did with his original movie. He understood the assignment and I think he hit the mark.
And long before Barbie, this movie helped cement Gosling as someone far more than just his good looks and charm. And to see Harrison Ford again, of course, was a pleasure. And Ana de Armas. And Robin Wright. And thanks to Blade Runner 2049, for better or worse, we got two Dune movies from Villeneuve. The template for those two movies is here.
And now I need to rewatch it. Maybe you should give it a try, if you haven’t.

(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Bliss has an unexpected birdwatcher.
- Rhymes With Orange knows the problem with waiting rooms.
(11) UR SID TO JOIN LEE-MILLER ARCHIVE AT TEXAS A&M. Sharon Lee today informed fans of the Liaden Universe®:
Long-time Friends of Liad will recall Ur Sid, an eight-inch tall Teddy bear, dressed in a Scout uniform. Ur Sid attended the conventions that Steve and Sharon couldn’t make, hobnobbing with the Famous, and, like every good fan, collecting buttons and memorabilia.
The authors would occasionally meet Ur Sid at worldcons, and were always happy to see him. But his purpose was to be an Ambassador at Large for the Liaden Universe®, and in that he succeeded very well, indeed.
Ur Sid traveled between cons via the Bumpy Passage, a refurbed Scout ship that had seen better days, and he sent reports back to the Friends of Liad listserve.
Those reports are sadly lost. However, Ur Sid also kept a diary. From it, we learn that his first WorldCon was ChiCon 2000. His last con, though it’s not noted in the diary, was Heliophere 2023, where Steve and Sharon were Writer Guests of Honor. He attended the Teddy Bear Tea, and charmed the room, as always.
All good adventures do finally come to an end. Ur Sid stopped travelling when the Bumpy Passage suffered a catastrophic failure of its Struven Unit. Subsequently, he spent some years with Friend of Liad Sarge, who reunited him with the authors at PhilCon 78, in 2014.
Ur Sid is about to embark on his last trip, via FedEx. He will be escorting a shipment of Liaden Universe® books to the Lee and Miller Archive at the Cushing Memorial Library at Texas A&M. Once that duty is accomplished, Ur Sid will become part of the permanent archive. He’ll be keeping a Very Close Eye on Steve and Sharon’s Literary Legacy. And charming the curators, of course.
Link to the Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Archive (note that the papers are still being processed).
(12) HAVE THEY GONE NUTS? “Nutter Butter, Are You Okay? The Brand’s Unhinged Social Media Has Customers Concerned” reports Delish.
You probably haven’t thought much about Nutter Butter since the cookie was in your lunchbox in the third grade. However, the snack brand has taken an interesting route to regain cultural relevance.
Nutter Butter has been posting completely unhinged TikToks for weeks now. No one seems to understand the brand’s bizarre approach, but it seems to be working. People are talking about Nutter Butter again, and the account has amassed millions of video views and hundreds of thousands of followers.
We’ll just leave these Nutter Butter TikToks here for evidence…
And while no one can’t seem to make any sense of it, that’s kind of the point. We got in touch with Nutter Butter to ask what was going on.
“Nutter Butter embraces its nuttiness, departing from a perfectly curated feed to experiment with the surreal side of the internet,” a spokesperson for the brand told Delish. “Our social channels create a realm of extreme absurdity and deep lore by going where no other cookie has gone before. Follow us as we push the boundaries of creativity to take you on unexpected adventures.”…
(13) SIM CRADLE TO GRAVE. Variety has details about how “‘The Sims 4’ to Launch ‘Life and Death’ Expansion Pack Featuring Grim Reaper Career, Funerals, Afterlife and Reincarnation”.
… “In the Reaper Profession, Sims with an affinity for the afterlife can become Grimterns and work their way up to Reaper as they make a career out of facilitating the next phase of life for Sims,” per “The Sims” developers. “Work with Grim at the Netherworld Department of Death (N.W.D.D.) and even head off into the ‘field.’ Sims in this profession can experience reaper training with the all-around-good-guy-training-dummy, Kenny, maintain Grimtern Sims’ scythes, practice reaping souls on practice dummies, and determine causes of deaths for reaped souls. At higher levels, Sims in this Career can even determine which souls they’ll reap and which they’ll return to life. Once retrieved, souls can be placed in the Netherworld Portal to meet the soul quota. Grimterns who meet the soul quote are eligible to become Employee of the Month.”…
(14) DOXX EVERYONE IN SIGHT? According to Gizmodo, “This Facial Recognition Experiment With Meta’s Smart Glasses Is a Terrifying Vision of the Future”.
Two college students have used Meta’s smart glasses to build a tool that quickly identifies any stranger walking by and brings up that person’s sensitive information, including their home address and contact information, according to a demonstration video posted to Instagram. And while the creators say they have no plans to release the code for their project, the demo gives us a peek at humanity’s very likely future—a future that used to be confined to dystopian sci-fi movies….
… An Instagram video posted by Nguyen explains how the two men built a program that feeds the visual information from Meta Ray Ban smart glasses into facial recognition tools like Pimeyes, which have essentially scraped the entire web to identify where that person’s face shows up online. From there, a large language model infers the likely name and other details about that person. That name is then fed to various websites that can reveal the person’s home address, phone number, occupation or other organizational affiliations, and even the names of relatives….
(15) SECOND DINOSAUR ASTEROID. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC have just reported that research has uncovered a second dinosaur-killing asteroid. However this is not new news as the headline suggests as a couple of paragraphs in reveals that this discovery has previously been covered by the BBC themselves. What is new is a more detailed survey whose results have just been published in Nature: “3D anatomy of the Cretaceous–Paleogene age Nadir Crater”. See the pictures below.
Ripley once said of other monster creatures, we should “nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” Having two giant asteroids, one for the western and one the eastern hemisphere was a good way to be sure.
I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch…


(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Another movie pulled out of the vault & given the Pitch Meeting treatment. “Superman III Pitch Meeting”.
[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Joe Siclari, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge. Amd SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cliff, assisted by Nina.]