Tag Archives: litigation

Pixel Scroll 6/4/25 All My Pixels Have Filed Away, Tom Mourned Scrollfully

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(1) BRIAN KEENE HELPS OUT. Yesterday we linked to Jason Sanford’s report about the hit Apex Books is taking from the bankruptcy of Diamond Book Distributors because of payments they won’t be receiving. Today, Brian Keene announced he will give Apex Books a lift by foregoing some royalties Apex owes Keene: “Apex Books”.

If you’re a regular reader of my daily journal over on Patreon, then you’ve been following all the fallout from the Diamond Distribution bankruptcy. I’d mentioned in one of those entries that this wouldn’t just impact comic publishers and comic stores, but book publishers and booksellers, as well.

One of the main publishers who have been drastically hit by what is — in my personal opinion — either utter incompetence or complete malfeasance on the part of Diamond executives — is Apex Book Company, who’ve published my own ISLAND OF THE DEAD, THE LOST LEVEL, RETURN TO THE LOST LEVEL, HOLE IN THE WORLD, KING OF THE BASTARDS, THRONE OF THE BASTARDS, and CURSE OF THE BASTARDS (those latter 3 cowritten with Steven L. Shrewsbury). I have also appeared in a number of their anthologies, including the recently released THE MAP OF LOST PLACES.

You can read in detail about how Diamond’s collapse has impacted them via this note from owner (and my friend for 20 years) Jason Sizemore. The situation is dire.

One of the biggest outstanding debts Apex is currently facing is royalties for my novel ISLAND OF THE DEAD. I like Apex. i like Jason and Lesley. I like that they’ve taken chances on a wide-ranging line-up of new voices in horror, fantasy, and science-fiction. I like that they have always paid their authors on time and fairly, and that they actually spend money marketing and promoting the books.

Therefore, this afternoon, I have informed Jason that I am waiving ALL ROYALTIES due to me for ISLAND OF THE DEAD. Apex will not have to pay me for copies sold from the book’s initial release until now. While that won’t completely fix the situation, it does remove one of their bigger debts and buys them some breathing room. As I said, I’ve known Jason and Lesley a long time, and in talking to them this afternoon, I know that this will definitely help.

I would like to ask that if you haven’t yet bought one of those books I mentioned above, that you do so now, but also that you do it directly from Apex via their website, rather than Amazon or a chain bookstore or even my own indie bookstore. Buying them directly from Apex will immediately put money in Apex’s pockets, and allow them to pay all the other writers in their stable. If you already own all of my books published by them, then perhaps consider subscribing to their magazine or buying a book by someone else. You can do all of those things via the Apex website.

…While I am not wealthy, this past year has been pretty good for me. I’m currently in a place where I can afford to take the financial hit of waiving those ISLAND OF THE DEAD royalties. I know that other authors are not, and I would never ask them to do so. I also know that most people have the attention span of a gnat with ADHD, and will ignore a plea for folks to go buy books from Apex unless I give them a reason to read through this announcement. It is my hope that — having read it to see what the hell Brian Keene is up to this time — you will indeed now click the link, buy some books, and then other folks can get paid.

(2) TALKIN’ ABOUT MY REGENERATION. The Guardian finds that not everyone’s a fan… “’Like trying to float a sinking ship’: your reaction to Billie Piper’s Doctor Who return”.

…In all honesty, I’m a bit unsure how I feel. There are elements of it that makes sense, however, there is something unnerving about taking on the form of a previous love interest and wearing their skin as a suit. I hope it’s not just gimmicky – perhaps if there are links back to the Bad Wolf storyline that originated for the ninth Doctor then it may work. However, at the moment it does feel like trying to float a sinking ship. I say this as somebody who has loved Doctor Who since I was a child. Time will tell, but I hope this isn’t just another cheap trick to keep us interested. Russell T Davies don’t let us down! Gabrielle, freelance photographer and video editor, Bristol

…I’m shocked, but in a good way. Billie Piper is such an integral part of NuWho history and the credits didn’t introduce her as the Doctor, so the opportunities are endless (is she the Bad Wolf? Or the Moment?). I’m really excited to see what comes next and hope the show gets renewed. The only thing I’m upset about is how poorly parts of the fandom reacted. To bring back old characters is such a Doctor Who thing to do. I have the feeling that loads of people forgot what the show is about: it’s fun, it’s full of heart and it’s always been a little bit wacky, so why not embrace this new development with an open mind? As the Doctor himself said: “Hate is always foolish, love is always wise.” It would be great if people took that to heart. Isa, Germany

(3)  TIME TO PLAY. Joe Stech has launched the Hawking Radiation Mass Energy Converter. (You may have tried his previous creation, Dyson Swarm which we linked to in January.)

“Game” is actually a strong word for what this is, the game is actually more of an experiment to try and convey some information about artificial black holes. It is possible to play through the whole game in less than two minutes, but it will probably take you longer than that to get a feel for the mechanics.

I’d love to hear what you think of it. If you want some light background reading to go along with the game, here’s the Wikipedia page on Hawking Radiation.

(4) FRAZETTA FAMILY WINS ANOTHER COURT DECISION. A U.S. District Court federal judge has reinstated summary judgment in Frazetta Properties, LLC suit against Jesse David Spurlock and Vanguard Productions, ruling that the latter misled the Court by citing a forged document to justify unauthorized use of Frank Frazetta’s copyrighted artwork.

Spurlock “claimed falsely that William Frazetta, Holly Frazetta, and Heidi Frazetta Grabin had signed this letter. This was false, as the defense now admits in light of the forensic evidence provided.”

The ruling comes in the ongoing case first filed in 2022 after Spurlock published Frazetta book cover art without a license.

A press release issued by the Frazettas adds:

The Court sanctioned Spurlock, reinstated its original summary judgment ruling in favor of Frazetta Properties, and ordered him to pay the Plaintiffs’ legal fees. The ruling affirmed that Frazetta Properties owns the valid copyright to the “Death Dealer II” and “Death Dealer V” artworks, and that Spurlock’s use of those images in his 2022 publication was unauthorized and infringed upon the Estate’s rights. The Court also rejected Spurlock’s claims of fair use and prior licensing, stating that his use of the art “supplants the object of the protected work and is therefore not transformative to any meaningful extent.”

This federal case followed a 2019 state court lawsuit in which Spurlock sued the Frazetta family alleging breach of contract after receiving a termination notice. At trial, the Frazetta family successfully demonstrated that Spurlock had failed to uphold his contractual obligations, including underreporting and underpaying royalties on Frazetta- related book sales. A jury ruled in favor of the Frazettas, and Spurlock later abandoned his appeal. He was also ordered to pay legal fees in that case.

“This ruling reinforces what we stand for: protecting the Frazetta name from fraud and defending the legacy of one of the greatest artists in American history—no matter what it takes,” said Joe Weber, representative of Frazetta Properties, LLC.

(5) GILBERT & SULLIVAN & REH. Bobby Derie chronicles a branch of Robert E. Howard fandom in “’The Ballad of Conan’ (1983) by Anne Braude” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein. There’s a screencap of Braude’s highly amusing filk lyrics at the end of the post.

The first fandom of Robert E. Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria arose in the 1930s, when the adventures of the barbarian were published in the pages of Weird Tales. Some fans, including R. H. Barlow, Emil Petaja, Charles B. Hornig, Alvin Earl Perry, and P. Schuyller Miller wrote to Howard—and the Texas pulpster wrote back, answering questions, sometimes gifting manuscripts of his stories, subscribing to fan publications like The Fantasy Fan, and providing unpublished stories and poetry for fanzines like The Phantagraph to publish as well.

This early interaction with fandom endeared Howard to his fans, and helped provide the basis for the first fan-publications…

…All of this increased fan activity, such as the Hyborian Legion and the Robert E. Howard United Press Association (founded in 1972). Conan was no longer an obscure hero from the pages of Weird Tales; the Cimmerian had become a staple of science fiction and fantasy, an archetype of barbarians, fighters, and rogues, a multi-media figure well-known and established in fandom—and the serious critical study of Robert E. Howard’s life and fiction were picking up, echoing the scholarly interest that Lovecraft had attracted a decade earlier.

Which is where things stood when fan Anne Braude wrote the jocular (but largely accurate) “Ballad of Conan” for the Conan-heavy issue of the fanzine Niekas in 1983….

(6) DEDICATED TO CORFLU. [Item by David Langford.] The Corflu 2025 fanthology Dancing to Architecture in which various fans write about music has just been added the free library at the TAFF site — with an optional donation to The Corflu Fifty suggested if you enjoy it. Many thanks to Corflu for the suggestion.

Dancing to Architecture, edited by Doug Bell, is a collection of fan writing about music, published for the fanzine convention Corflu 42 held in Newbury in April 2025. Edited by Doug Bell and designed by Pat Virzi, it includes fifteen essays, all original here, by Rich Coad, Lucy Huntzinger, Nic Farey. Geri Sullivan, Ulrika O’Brien, Mark Plummer, Ted White, Christina Lake, Bruce Gillespie, Sandra Bond, William Breiding, Claire Brialey, Doug Bell and John Harvey, with artwork from Brad W. Foster (front cover, at left), Alison Scott, Dave Hicks, Clarrie Maguire, Sue Mason, Ulrika O’Brien, Dan Steffan and Pat Virzi. 34,000 words.

(7) BOMBS AWAY. Literary Hub traces “How Literature Predicted and Portrayed the Atom Bomb” – featuring several bits of sff history, including this one I hadn’t come across before:

…Philip Wylie himself strayed into trouble in 1945 when he wrote a story called “The Paradise Crater,” about the efforts of neo-Nazis in a future 1965 to avenge Hitler’s defeat by building uranium bombs. Wylie fell afoul of Blue Book editor Donald Kennicott’s unusually dutiful decision to seek official permission in advance.

In short order, Kennicott was instructed to bury the story and Wylie was placed under house arrest in a hotel room in Connecticut. What, asked an Army Intelligence major, did Wylie know about the atomic bomb? The major said that he was prepared to take Wylie’s life, and his own, if it was necessary to prevent a security leak.

Wylie protested that he had no inside information, nor did he need any. Thanks to his publicity work for the US Air Force, he had friends in high places and was soon released. He offered to shred the manuscript but the major said, no, he should hang on to it until the war was over.

“The Paradise Crater” did indeed appear in the October 1945 issue of Blue Book, by which time the whole world knew about the atomic bomb. “I saw the headline, brought on the bus by a stranger, and thought: Yes, of course, so it’s here!” recalled one young science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury. “I knew it would come, for I had read about it and thought about it for years.”

Not that there was any cause for the science fiction community to feel smug, because what they had also foreseen, more often than not, was world destruction. “People do not realize civilization, the civilization we have been born into, lived in, and been indoctrinated with, died on July 16 1945 [the date of the first bomb test], and that the Death Notice was published to the world on August 6, 1945,” wrote John Campbell in his first Astounding editorial after Hiroshima. He added, “There is only one appropriate name for the atomic weapon: The Doomsday Bomb.”…

(8) IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE WAS A LIBRARY. Untapped Cities tells “10 Secrets of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street”. Like, what was on that site before they built the NYPL?

2. The New York Public Library was Built on the Site of the Old Croton Reservoir

…The Croton Reservoir held 20 million gallons of water within its walls, which stood 50 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Edgar Allan Poe frequently walked atop the reservoir walls to enjoy the view they offered of the city. When it became obsolete in the 1890s, it was torn down to make way for the new library building. It took two years and some 500 workers to dismantle the reservoir. The cornerstone of the library was laid in 1902. The Old Croton Aqueduct would serve as a vital water supply for New York City for nearly a century until a new aqueduct was built, which remains in service to this day. Inside the library, you can still see pieces of the reservoir walls if you look for the rough stone between the stairs on the lower levels of the South Court, near the Celeste Auditorium….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 4, 1960 — Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 65.

By Paul Weimer: Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an author I found, and then lost and then found again. She in the meantime had been writing prolifically, in multiple genres and fields, but had fallen off of my radar for a good long while.

It all started in the 1990s when I picked up The Sacrifice, the first of her Fey novels. The high concept drew me immediately. A world-conquering empire of Elves sweeping everyone before them…and then they run into the speedbump of Blue Isle, which has a power to resist the Fey that they themselves don’t even quite suspect. Suddenly the easy conquest is not so easy and over the next several books, Rusch explored this conflict from multiple vantage points and perspectives.

And then, someone Rusch fell off of my personal radar. Too many other new authors, perhaps. Or I didn’t follow her into mysteries and other subgenres such as media-tie ins, of which she has written or coauthored a fair number of, in multiple universes, and often under other names as well, ranging from Star Trek to Roswell. 

It wasn’t until my early official reviewer days that I picked up Rusch again, as she helped vitalize the xenoarchaeology novel subgenre with the Wreck series. I was offered a review copy of Diving into the Wreck, and my fond memories of The Fey stood me in good stead as I dug into Boss’ story.

Since then I’ve been following Rusch on her blog and Patreon, where she has fearlessly and openly discussed and educated on the craft and business of writing. Anyone seriously interested in either should follow and read what Rusch has to say.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) IS SUPERMAN JEWISH? [Item by Lew Wolkoff.] I somehow got a subscription to Quora.com, and I read the entries for humor as much as anything else. Today, they got stuck with questions about Superman and other superheroes being Jewish. Here’s the response from Elliot Maggin, who wrote the Superman comics from 1971 to 1986. “Is Superman Jewish?”

Reply from Elliot S Maggin

Principal writer of the comic book series from 1971 through 1986; author of three novels in which Superman is a primary character.

The unwarranted assumption in the explanations above is that Kryptonians are not Jews. I dissent from that notion. While they are not direct descendents of the Judeans of the Middle East from whom the term “Jewish” comes, I always ascribed effectively Jewish doctrine and ritual to the Kryptonian tradition. In fact, the Kryptonian tradition is congruent with and certainly predates the Judean, so they have at least as much claim to the tradition as any of us.

I give all my characters religions, so I’ve thought this through – really. The Kents are Methodist (as is Clark), Lois is Catholic, Perry is Baptist, Jimmy is Lutheran (no surprise there) and Bruce Wayne and Batman are both Episcopalian (even less of a surprise there). And Superman (like the Siegels, the Shusters, the Weisingers, the Schwartzes, the Maggins and the Luthors) is Jewish.

This is so self-evident that it may as well be canon.

Comment by Lew Wolkoff: Clark Kent is Methodist, but Superman is Jewish? Good trick. I’m not too crazy about Luthor being Jewish, it smacks a bit too much of the “Protocol of the Elders of Zion” bullshit.

 In the book From Kracow to Krypton about the influence of Jews on comic books, the author suggested that Superman and Batman fit the classic stereotypes for the Wise Son and the Wicked Son of the Passover seder. Traditionally, the Wicked Son is portrayed as a warrior (most common) or a man of wealth.

(12) VIEW THE MILKY WAY FROM NEW YORK. “American Museum of Natural History to launch new space show ‘Encounters in the Milky Way,’ narrated by Pedro Pascal” reports amNewYork. The show opens to the public on June 9. 

A brand new space show that explores the intricacies of the Milky Way Galaxy is opening to the public at the American Museum of Natural History. 

“Encounters in the Milky Way” is a time-traveling journey that shows galactic migration and how that cosmic movement impacts our solar system. The show is narrated by award-winning actor Pedro Pascal and will play in the museum’s Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space’s Hayden Planetarium.

“This is the 25th anniversary of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and it makes this space show, which is our seventh space show since the Rose Center opened, particularly special,” said Museum President Sean M. Decatur. “Since 2000, our space shows have transported millions of visitors to the edge of the observable universe with increasingly sophisticated visualizations based on observations from groundbreaking space missions and leading-edge scientific models.”…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Foley: A Sonic Tale” from Lucasfilm.

In “Foley: A Sonic Tale,” Skywalker Sound’s Foley Artists, consisting of old pros and new talent, unite to bring the work of Star Wars alive through the matching of sound to action.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Paul Weimer, Arnie Fenner, Lew Wolkoff, David Langford, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 5/28/25 Things File Apart, The Pixels Cannot Scroll

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(1) WALDROP AND WINDS NEWS. George R.R. Martin says a feature-length adaptation of Howard Waldrop’s A Dozen Tough Jobs is on the way in “Howard Meets Hercules” at Not a Blog. GRRM also has a little message for everyone who complains when he works on anything besides The Winds of Winter.

For all you Howard Waldrop fans out there… if you enjoyed our short films, the adaptations of MARY-MARGARET ROAD-GRADER, NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, and THE UGLY CHICKENS that we’ve been showing at film festivals over the past couple of years, we have big news a-coming.   A Waldrop feature is on the way.  All animated, from Lion Forge.

It’s an adaptation of Howard’s novella A DOZEN TOUGH JOBS, his  take on the Twelve Labors of Hercules.   Joe Lansdale, the Sage of Nacogdoches, father of Hap and Leonard, and creator of Bubba Ho-Tep, did the screenplay, and no one could have done it better except maybe Howard His Own Self.

(I know, I know.  Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER.   You have given up on me, or on the book.  I will never finish WINDS,  If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING.   If I do, it won’t be any good.  I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me…     I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old.   I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago.  I don’t give a shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money.   I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards.   You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, “A Song for Lya” and DYING OF THE LIGHT, “Sandkings” and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,  “This Tower of Ashes” and “The Stone City,” OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois,   You don’t care about any of those, I know.   You don’t care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER.  You’ve told me so often enough).

Thing is, I do care about them.

And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well.  The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all.  More than you can ever imagine….

(2) ONLY ONE PAGE AHEAD. Han Song’s future is not far enough away, it seems: “A Science Fiction Writer Wrestles With China’s Rise, and His Own Decline” in the New York Times (link bypasses the paywall).

Science fiction is the business of imagining the future, but reading Han Song, one of China’s leading writers of the genre, can sometimes feel like reading recent history.

In 2000, he wrote a novel depicting the collapse of the World Trade Center. In 2016, another book imagined the world transformed into a giant hospital, with doctors taking people from their homes — as would happen at times during China’s coronavirus years.

For Mr. Han, 59, this means only that he had not gone far enough in imagining how dark or strange modern life could become.

“I thought I was just writing, but that it was impossible for it to happen,” he said of his novel “Hospital,” in which everyone is reduced to being a patient. “It actually happened just a few years later,” he said, referring to the pandemic. “This is an example of reality being more science fiction than science fiction.”

How the unthinkable can become reality has been Mr. Han’s subject for the past four decades. By day, he is a journalist at China’s state news agency, recording the country’s astonishing modernization. At night, he writes fiction to grapple with how disorienting that change can be.

His stories are bleak, grotesque and graphic. Some scrutinize the gap between China and the West, as in “The Passengers and the Creator,” a short story in which Chinese people worship a mysterious god called Boeing. Others imagine that China has displaced the United States as the world’s leading superpower. Many take ordinary settings, like subway trains, as backdrops for wild scenes of cannibalism or orgies….

… Mr. Han estimates that about half of his writing has not been published in China because of censorship. That includes “My Country Doesn’t Dream,” though it has circulated widely online….

(3) NEBULAS: UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED. Michael Capobianco continues his chronicle: “A Brief History of SFWA: The First Nebula Awards” at the SFWA Blog.

Less than a year after SFWA founder and President Damon Knight created the Nebula Award, the first Nebula Awards Ceremonies were held on March 11, 1966. Why “Nebula?” The name was first introduced without explanation in the inaugural ballot mailed out to SFWA members. According to Robert Silverberg, SFWA’s second president, “Far as I know, Damon just liked the idea of calling it a Nebula. None of us saw any reason to object.” 

The ceremonies were held in two locations: one in New York City and the other in Beverly Hills, CA. The New York ceremony was held in what Knight later characterized as a “grungy” upstairs room at the Overseas Press Club on 45th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The California Nebulas were presented at a more upscale location: McHenry’s Tail O’ the Cock, a large, English–tavern style restaurant on Beverly Hills’ Restaurant Row…

…Ninety attendees were present in New York, and seventy attended the ceremony in California. On the way to the New York Nebulas, both Knight and SFWA Secretary-Treasurer Anne McCaffrey were involved in “minor” automobile accidents. In the Bulletin account, there was no indication of who was at fault, but both accidents involved trucks and both cars, Knight’s Dodge Dart and McCaffrey’s VW, were totaled….

(4) CLARION WEST BOOK SWAP IN SEATTLE. Get ready for the Clarion West Book Swap @ Octavia E. Butler Birthday Bash at the Langston Hughes Performing Art Institute in Seattle on June 22 from 12:00-3:00 p.m. Free RSVP at the link.

Bring a book, take a book: the Clarion West book swap is back. This time, we’ll join Langston’s creative arts team to celebrate science fiction luminary Octavia E. Butler. Come for the live performances, food, and refreshments. Stay for the community and celebration!

And don’t forget to bring a book to share (and a reusable tote to take away your new finds!)

Location: Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, 104 17th Ave S Washington 98144.

(5) BELLA RAMSEY PROFILE. Them verifies that “Bella Ramsey Is Alive and Well”.

It’s nearing 9 p.m. in London and the sky is turning black in the window behind Bella Ramsey, but the Last of Us star lights up as we go on a long tangent about the massively multiplayer online game Club Penguin. “Club Penguin is where I explored my gender identity,” they tell me with a proud smile.

The 21-year-old actor, who leads the hit HBO series based on the wildly popular video game series, publicly came out as nonbinary in an interview with The New York Times in 2023, but their gender evolution began long before then, with early exploration happening online. “My penguin was called Tomboy Bella and was red. I did karate on the freaking Karate Hill. I was loving life in Club Penguin world,” they tell me emphatically. “You can be whoever you want behind that avatar.”

The family-friendly Club Penguin game is perhaps the antithesis to The Last of Us, a critically acclaimed pair of survival horror video games intended for mature players. Every avatar was a penguin, uniform in shape and size, only distinguishable by the player’s color choice and username. Identifiers like gender, race, or class were deprioritized. Although children’s online games can often be poorly monitored and even muddled with Call of Duty-level slurs, otherworldly characters and anthropomorphic animals allow players to imagine an existence outside of the gender binary. In fact, video games have been sites of possibility for Ramsey more generally.

“When you get to choose a girl character or a boy character, I would pick the boy one because I could,” they tell me. “Gaming is such an amazing place to explore. I think there is often a narrative of it not being a safe space, and in some cases, yes, but in so many others, it is such a free and open space.”

Ramsey owes much of their current star power to the medium. The character of Ellie — a hard-headed, big-hearted, vengeful teenager surviving a dystopian world — catapulted the actor, who had previously starred as crowd favorite Lyanna Mormont in the final few seasons of Game of Thrones, to the top of the call sheet. It was a role to which they felt an immediate draw. “Even the description that I got in the email of the self-tape, I knew her, and I connected to her. She always felt like someone who was already inside of me.”

Though Ellie has identified as queer since season one of The Last of Us, we see her fall — or plummet, perhaps — into her first real lesbian relationship in the recently concluded second outing. The follow-up, much like the video game sequel on which it’s based, moves away from the often patriarchal and heteronormative post-apocalyptic horror genre and invites the viewer to fully step into a young masculine lesbian’s perspective. “I’d seen an article about Dina and Ellie’s kiss in the second game being the first lesbian kiss in a video game or something. Their relationship was my first introduction to the world of The Last of Us. It was really special to get to play that out with Isabela Merced,” Ramsey tells me….

(6) BREAKFAST OF C.H.U.D.S. “Bovril: A meaty staple’s strange link to cult science fiction” – BBC makes the connection.

A stout black jar of Bovril with a cheery red top lurks in many a British kitchen, next to tins of treacle and boxes of tea. The gooey substance, made of rendered-down beef, salt and other ingredients, can be spread on toast or made into a hot drink, but what many people don’t realise is that this old-fashioned comfort food has a surprising link to science fiction.

The “Bov” part of the name is easy enough to decipher – from “bovine”, meaning associated with cattle. But the “vril” bit? That’s a different story, literally.

In 1871, an anonymous novel was published about a race of super-humans living underground. The narrator of The Coming Race, who has fallen into their realm during a disastrous descent into a mine shaft, is shocked to learn that they are telepathic, thanks to the channeling of a mysterious energy called vril.

“Through vril conductors, they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animal and vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of our mystics,” the narrator realises. Vril gives them strength, as well, rendering them capable of incredible feats. The people call themselves the Vril-Ya, and their society seems in many ways superior to that of the surface dwellers….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 28, 1984 — Max Gladstone, 41.

By Paul Weimer: I slept on Max Gladstone’s first book, Three Parts Dead, for nearly a year. It wasn’t until it had hit paperback that I finally decided to dive into the first of the Craft Sequence, and then started and have been reading them as quickly as they come out. It’s his big conceit, his big series, and necromancy, accounting, magic, old gods, and social systems lets Max play with all of the themes and ideas that he wants, and make it into a fascinating fantasy universe. He’s also written a couple of text games set in the verse, too. 

I’ve enjoyed a heck of lot of his other work, too. There’s the serial Bookburners, which he collaborated with Mur Lafferty, Andrea Phillips, Amal El-Mohtar, and others. Occult operatives dealing with magically empowered objects is not a new idea in the main, but he brings lots of invention and ideas to the table with the serial.

I am also a big fan of possibly the best road trip SF novel out there: Last Exit. It’s Gladstone’s own love letter to Zelazny and shadow walking and traveling through multiple worlds, but not realizing you are bringing yourself along into those worlds. It’s a stunning construction and deconstruction of the concept. I do really need to re-read it…but as a listen, in an audiobook, and see how it does on an actual road trip. Someday!

I should probably mention This is How You Lose the Time War, but that is such a sui generis collaboration with the aforementioned Amal El-Mohtar, that it is impossible to determine what parts are his and which ones are hers, and I bet I’d be wrong if it tried. It certainly has given life and power to science fiction poetry, and I think its existence is why poetry has risen, at least for the 2025 Worldcon, to the level of a Hugo Award.

Happy Birthday Max!

Max Gladstone

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) STOP THAT TRAIN! “Superman Creator’s Estate Reportedly Files New Lawsuit To Block James Gunn’s Movie From Releasing In Certain Countries” reports ScreenRant.

James Gunn’s Superman movie is facing another lawsuit as the Man of Steel co-creator’s estate has reportedly filed a new lawsuit that could affect the DC Universe movie’s release. After a long wait to see the character back on the big screen, the Superman movie is approaching its summer release, with David Corenswet starring as the next live-action version of the DC icon. While the previous Superman movie lawsuit was dismissed in April, Warner Bros. Discovery is facing another round of litigation.

In Matthew Belloni’s latest Puck Newsletter, Eriq Gardner writes that attorney Marc Toberoff has reportedly refiled his copyright case, on behalf of the estate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, in New York state court. Toberoff is additionally seeking an injunction to block Warner Bros. from “exploiting Superman” in the U.K., Ireland, Canada, and Australia – where the estate is disputing copyright ownership due to the countries’ specific copyright laws.

According to Gardner, Warner Bros. Discovery had been ordered by the New York Supreme Court to “submit opposition papers by Friday,” before appearing in court on June 4 where they would have to explain why an injunction shouldn’t be granted​​​​​​. At the time of this story’s publication, Warner Bros. Discovery has not commented. Gardner writes that the suit is “theoretically jeopardizing the global rollout” of Gunn’s Superman movie….

(10) ALEX ROSS ART EXHIBIT. In Southern California, the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center is hosting the exhibit “Marvelocity: The Art of Alex Ross”. Location: 241 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim, CA 92805

On display May 16 through August 17, 2025. In a world where comic art traditionally exists in a realm beyond reality, allowing for fantastical narratives and impossible feats, Alex Ross boldly bridges the divide between fantasy and realism.

Ross’s revolutionary approach transcends conventional comic art. His technique—a fusion of Norman Rockwell’s authentic Americana with Jack Kirby’s dynamic imagination—achieves what many thought impossible: making the extraordinary feel real. Featuring over 50 original artworks from his landmark 2018 book Marvelocity, this exhibition invites you to experience the magic where artistic craftsmanship meets superhero mythology. 

(11) SLITHER WARNING. Starship Sloane Publishing Company released another David Gerrold novel today — The Boy Who Was Girl.

Whatever you do, don’t piss off Slither. That’s the only warning you’re going to get. Slither is an augmented, shapeshifting assassin with a hair-trigger temper. Hurled across space to a world of violence and treachery, a place where no one can be trusted, Slither can’t get home until she (or maybe he?) stops an interplanetary invasion. What happens next is a ferocious, fast-paced brawl where revenge is a dish best served NOW. Fasten your seatbelt! This is David Gerrold at his best!

The print edition with cover art by Marianne Plumridge titled Bolo Observation Platform is available from Amazon (the ebook isn’t out yet).

(12) ‘RAPID UNSCHEDULED DISASSEMBLY’. “SpaceX Starship breaks up over Indian Ocean in latest bumpy test” – the Guardian has the story.

Another SpaceX Starship prototype broke up over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, capping the latest bumpy test flight for the rocket central to billionaire Elon Musk’s dream of colonising Mars.

The biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built lifted off at 6.36pm local time from the company’s facility near a southern Texas village that earlier this month voted to become a city also named Starbase.

The first signs of trouble emerged when the first-stage Super Heavy booster blew up instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

A live feed then showed the upper-stage spaceship failing to open its doors to deploy a payload of Starlink satellite “simulators”.

Though the ship flew farther than on its two previous attempts, it sprang leaks and began spinning out of control as it coasted through space on a suborbital path before re-entering the atmosphere out of control and eventually breaking apart.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” SpaceX posted on X, using a familiar euphemism for failure, adding it would learn from the setback….

(13) AI SEARCH’S FADING USEFULNESS. In an opinion piece for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols complains, “AI model collapse is not what we paid for”.

I use AI a lot, but not to write stories. I use AI for search. When it comes to search, AI, especially Perplexity, is simply better than Google.

Ordinary search has gone to the dogs. Maybe as Google goes gaga for AI, its search engine will get better again, but I doubt it. In just the last few months, I’ve noticed that AI-enabled search, too, has been getting crappier.

In particular, I’m finding that when I search for hard data such as market-share statistics or other business numbers, the results often come from bad sources. Instead of stats from 10-Ks, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) mandated annual business financial reports for public companies, I get numbers from sites purporting to be summaries of business reports. These bear some resemblance to reality, but they’re never quite right. If I specify I want only 10-K results, it works. If I just ask for financial results, the answers get… interesting,

This isn’t just Perplexity. I’ve done the exact same searches on all the major AI search bots, and they all give me “questionable” results.

Welcome to Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO). Formally, in AI circles, this is known as AI model collapse. In an AI model collapse, AI systems, which are trained on their own outputs, gradually lose accuracy, diversity, and reliability. This occurs because errors compound across successive model generations, leading to distorted data distributions and “irreversible defects” in performance. The final result? A Nature 2024 paper stated, “The model becomes poisoned with its own projection of reality.”

Model collapse is the result of three different factors. The first is error accumulation, in which each model generation inherits and amplifies flaws from previous versions, causing outputs to drift from original data patterns. Next, there is the loss of tail data: In this, rare events are erased from training data, and eventually, entire concepts are blurred. Finally, feedback loops reinforce narrow patterns, creating repetitive text or biased recommendations.…

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Paul Weimer, Justin Sloane, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 5/27/25 Everybody Loves Raymond Palmer (Both The Shaver’s Mystery Guy And The Size-Shrinking Superhero)

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(1) SO THIS HEINLEIN, IS HE ANY GOOD? View Sharon Lee’s acceptance speech for the 2025 Robert A. Heinlein Award in this YouTube video.

(2) FAIR PAY. Steve Davidson urges sff readers to commit to pay a fair price for short fiction in a post on Facebook. Davidson begins by telling what the market rates of the Thirties would translate to after factoring in 90 years’ worth of inflation. Then he makes this appeal —

…Authors need to LIVE in order to be able to write and, I’d venture to guess, authors who are not stressing over whether or not they’ll be living in their cars next month will write more and better than those who have no such concerns.

To put a finer point on it: magazines would have to pay a word rate of 67 cents per word if the sale of that one short story is to have the same economic power today as $150 bucks did back in 1930.

On the other hand….

I’m betting that readers actually DO value authors and their works (well, at least those readers who read anyways). And I’m betting that they are willing to step up IF they’re given the opportunity. Oh, maybe not quite yet to covering sixty-seven cents per word, but certainly more than 8 cents per word.

I think the evidence is all around us that they are. I mean – go look at what a paperback costs these days! Me, I choke whenever I see the cover price because my baseline is what it cost me to buy those first Heinlein novels from the Bookmobile back in 1968 – 45 cents to 60 cents. Those same books now go for $13 – or more!

Anyway, the point is this:

We KNOW you all are willing to pay something close to what modern science fiction is actually worth, because you’re already doing it everyday when you plunk down ten bucks for an ebook or fifteen bucks for a paperback (or forty+ bucks for a hardback).

Now all you have to do is extend that same calculus, that same perceptual handwavium when it comes to magazine issues and their close cousin companions, theme anthologies….

(3) LOCUS FUNDRAISER LOOKS TO FINISH STRONG. The “Locus Mag: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror 2025” appeal at Indiegogo has four days to go. It had raised $44,671 when I checked this afternoon. Among reasons for you to click over, the Indiegogo paid includes links to videos of Connie Willis, Daniel Abraham, and Tobi Ogundrian reading from their work.

We are incredibly grateful for every penny donated and we’ll put it all to good use, but this is a moment to be honest about the urgency of our fundraiser. We’re just 4 days from the close of this fundraiser and we haven’t raised even half of the money we need to keep Locus running. 

Being an indie non-profit press, we’ve been running on a skeleton crew for years. A larger budget means paying writers and artists a better rate, adding more short fiction and long form reviewers to cover all the amazing stories that are being written, and enough budget to cover all the amazing events out there and to stay connected with the community. Please help keep Locus alive, as the independent voice of the field and the guide to the world’s imagination!

If we don’t reach our funding goals, we will have to contract even further – you’ve seen your favorite magazines and newspapers shrink or disappear… There’s no part of what Locus does that we can imagine giving it up, reviews, interviews, cons, obits, the Locus Awards, the recommended lists – remembering people, pushing the news out, evening out the playing field. We don’t want to give any of it up. And we want to get back to a full schedule of writing workshops, reach more people on different platforms about our amazing genre, host readings… so much more. 

We’re particularly concerned about the loss of short fiction reviews. Locus is one of the only venues that reviews short stories and makes a concerted effort to cover the small and independent press. Locus wants to help level the playing field for emerging writers and everyone in general. Without those efforts it feels like the only SFF writers getting attention out there are NYT bestsellers…

(4) APPEALS COURT SAYS LIBRARY COLLECTION DECISIONS ARE GOVERNMENT SPEECH. “Full Court of Appeals Reverses Previous Rulings, Supports Texas Library’s Book Removals” at Publishers Lunch (behind a paywall).

A full en banc ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned both a lower-court decision and a Court of Appeals ruling that had found a Texas library’s removal of books was a violation of the First Amendment, in a 10-7 decision.

Last year, a regular three-person Court of Appeals panel ruled that the Llano County Library could not remove books based on their content, writing that, “Government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree.” The titles at issue included books about sexuality and racism, and “butt and fart books.” Eight of the original 17 removed titles were returned to the library.

Now, the court reversed that preliminary injunction and dismissed the free speech claims of the plaintiffs—seven library patrons.

In the decision, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan writes that the right to receive information from “tax-payer funded library books” is not protected by the First Amendment.

“That is a relief, because trying to apply it would be a nightmare,” the decision continues. “How would judges decide when removing a book is forbidden? No one in this case—not plaintiffs, nor the district court, nor the panel—can agree on a standard. May a library remove a book because it dislikes its ideas? Because it finds the book vulgar? Sexist? Inaccurate? Outdated? Poorly written? Heaven knows.”

The decision also states that “a library’s collection decisions are government speech and therefore not subject to Free Speech challenge.” Judge Duncan asserts that libraries have always made decisions about what books to shelve, just as government-funded museums decide on which paintings to include.

“That is what it means to be a library—to make judgments about which books are worth reading and which are not, which ideas belong on the shelves and which do not.

“If you doubt that, next time you visit the library ask the librarian to direct you to the Holocaust Denial Section.”…

(5) LETTING THE DOGS IN. [Item by Daniel Dern.] In chatting with one of the (local) librarians about some catalog quirks (mentioning my not-yet-replicated search within WorldCat/OCLC showing a library/book location of “outer space”), they noted that the CountWay library in the (Harvard) medical center area had a dog in their catalog — a “library” dog, e.g., for “Read with a Dog,” “schedule cuddle time”…

I haven’t (yet) found actual catalog entries, but (as I already knew), “library dogs” are indeed a Real Thing, e.g., Therapy Pets | Countway Library (harvard.edu)

For many Filers, this, of course, immediately brings to mind the classic Eric Frank Russell story, “Allamagoosa” (here’s a Baen link to the story.)

(6) ORSON WELLES HELPS SELL A BOOK. A Deep Look by Dave Hook looks at another 1949 sf collection: “’Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories’, Orson Welles ‘editor’, 1949 Dell (SFE says ghost editor was Don Ward)”

The Short: I read Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories, Orson Welles “editor”, 1949 Dell (there is controversy about the actual editor). Including the 1938 “Invasion from Mars: A Radio Adaption” radio play adaptation, it includes ten stories and an Introduction. My favorite story is the well reprinted and superlative Ray Bradbury story “The Million Year Picnic“, a Martian Chronicles short story, Planet Stories Summer 1946. My overall average rating of the stories was 3.76/5, or “Very good”. I have mixed feelings about recommending it, see below. You can find links to the stories here.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 27, 1911 — Vincent Price. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer: Vincent Price. My first voice and face of horror. But especially, his voice. 

I’ve mentioned WPIX many times in these birthday reminiscences and in comments at File 770. And so it was on NY’s movie station that I first encountered the work of Vincent Price. It was one of the Dr. Phibes movies, gory, weird and a lot of fun. That voice was unmistakable. Imagine my surprise when the very different looking Dr. Egghead (played by Price) showed up in an episode of the 60’s Batman cartoon. Although Egghead and Phibes couldn’t be more different, the voice was what keyed me, even with my amusia, that the same actor was at work here.  That oily, horror fueled voice. He was the voice of terror, of nightmares, of the dark descent. 

And that’s kind of how I kept running into him, by accident, again and again. For a while it seemed I could not escape the Master of Horror. Oh, here he is in a movie based on the “Pit and the Pendulum”. How very droll.  Oh, and here he has shown up randomly on an episode of Columbo. Oops, here he is again in a Roger Corman horror film. All with That Voice. Although I still think the Jeff Goldblum version is better, the haunting image of his version of The Fly, where a part of him is trapped in a fly’s body, caught in a web, with a spider coming to eat him, is enough to give me the chills. 

Even with all of his other work, again and again, what Price comes down to is the voice of horror. And so I ask you, who else could have been the narrator voice for the music video Thriller?

Vincent Price

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY, TOO.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 27, 1934 — Harlan Ellison. (Died 2018.)

By Paul Weimer: Harlan Ellison. No trademark symbols, if he wants to come back from the dead and harangue me, he’s welcome to do so. 

To talk about him as a broken step will be taken as read, it turns out he did behave very badly indeed, and that mars his reputation. Not being ever to finish the Last Dangerous Visions is another stain on his record, too. He seems to have forgotten his own maxims and advice on that one. He was a writer’s writer and an editor’s editor, and while he had the juice for the first Last Dangerous Visions, he never could see through to the last. 

My older brother had plenty of collections of his stories, so his stories, both genre and only near-SF was an early part of my reading. Included in those collections were both volumes of The Glass Teat, so along with lots of Ellison stories, I also got a healthy dose of his film and television criticism, and his unyielding personality. I may have never gotten to meet him personally, but his ferocious reputation by his writing was enough. When Heinlein has him show up in the end of The Number of the Beast as simply “Harlan”, I had read enough to know what Heinlein meant with that one word. 

Three stories of his always come to my mind and you can guess them.  “’Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” which for even though the titular Harlequin is captured and his rebellion ended, is still a story of hope, because his spirit of chaos cannot and will not be permanently stilled.  “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, one of the most ultimate horror stories, with four people and a deranged computer at the end of the world.  And, “Paladin of the Lost Hour” which is the best “Rage against the dying of the light” story I’ve ever read.  When he wasn’t a raging a-hole, Harlan Ellison could and did write.

Harlan Ellison

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) DEADPOOL/BATMAN CROSSOVER. Wade Wilson has been hired for a job in Gotham City, but will the World’s Greatest Detective help him or destroy him? Entertainment Weekly today revealed Marvel’s Merc with a Mouth will meet DC’s Dark Knight this September in Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1, the first of two crossovers between Marvel and DC more than twenty years in the making. It will be followed by DC’s Batman/Deadpool #1 in November.

 Deadpool/Batman #1 will be written by prolific Spider-Man comics writer and co-writer for Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine Zeb Wells and drawn by industry superstar Greg Capullo, an artist with an incredible legacy at both legendary comic book companies, with influential work on Batman and X-Men titles.

“After writing Amazing Spider-Man for 60 issues, I told Marvel I needed a break. Marvel told me I could do that or I could write a comic starring Deadpool and Batman with the best Batman artist of our generation. I no longer needed a break,” Wells shared with EW. “In Batman we’ve found someone who has even less time for Deadpool’s antics than Wolverine, but a city-wide threat from the Joker makes strange bedfellows (literally, if Deadpool had his way). It’s been a blast letting Deadpool loose in Gotham City and watching what happens.”

“Am I dreaming? This crossover is likely to be the high point of my career…and, I’ve had a great career,” Capullo added. “Some of my earliest work (many years ago) was on X-Force, so Deadpool and I go way back. More recently, I spent 10-plus years drawing Batman at DC. The idea that I get to do a crossover event with Deadpool and Batman…If I am dreaming, please don’t wake me!”

Check out Capullo’s main cover and stay tuned for more news about Deadpool/Batman #1 in the weeks ahead.

(11) WB WHACKS SCREENING OF SCHUMACHER CUT. “Studio Blocks Screening of Controversial Batman Forever Director’s Cut” reports CBR.com.

The fabled Schumacher cut of Batman Forever has hit a major snag as Warner Bros. has decided to scrap a planned screening of the hotly anticipated film.

A screening of the Schumacher cut was supposed to take place at Cinefile Video in Santa Monica, California. But according to The AV Club, the event was canceled following a legal request from Warner Bros. “Our planned screening of Batman Forever has been canceled,” the store said in an email to its members. “This follows a legal request from Warner Bros. regarding the rights to the version of the film we intended to show. While this was a free, members-only event meant to celebrate a unique piece of film history, we respect the rights of studios and creators, and have chosen to withdraw the event accordingly.”

The news came as a major blow for Batman fans as the Schumacher cut has long been considered a Holy Grail of sorts….

(12) FIRST OF THE LAST OF US. [Item by Steven French.] “The Last of Us science adviser: COVID changed our appetite for zombies” learned Nature.

The year was 2013, and the release of a hotly anticipated zombie-apocalypse video game was on the horizon.

The game, called The Last of Us, invited players to explore what then seemed a fanciful scenario: a world devastated by a pandemic in which a pathogen kills millions of people.

Unlike in many apocalypse fictions, the pathogen responsible wasn’t a bacterium or a virus, but a fungus called Cordyceps that infects humans and takes over their brains.

The writers at game studio Naughty Dog, based in Santa Monica, California, were inspired by real fungi — particularly Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, known as the zombie-ant fungus. The fungus infects insects and releases chemicals into the animals’ brains to change their behaviour. Ahead of the game’s release, Naughty Dog turned to scientists, including behavioural ecologist David Hughes, a specialist in zombie-ant fungi (he named one after his wife), to field questions from the media about the fungal and pandemic science that inspired the story. Hughes, who is at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, has since moved to studying climate change and food security….

(13) BALTICON SUNDAY SHORT SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL 2025 WINNERS. [Report by lance oszko.] Audience scores were from 0 to 5, with sum of values divided by number of votes. 

Best Live Action

  • Stephen King’s The Reach (2024) Italy Luca Caserta 167 points in 41 votes cast = 4.0731 * 

Best Animation

  • Dad in the Echo (2023) China Jacky Heng SUN  315 points in 82 votes cast = 3.8414 *  

Scores of all entries:

  • An Old Friend 2024 USA Nuk Suwanchote  198 Points in 57 Votes cast = 3.4736.
  • Akashic Spheres 2021 USA James Scott 150 points in 69 votes cast =2.1739
  • Invasion ’53  2024 Maryland Danielle Weinberg 304 points in 77 votes cast = 3.9480
  • Zerk 2024 Maryland Theo Jack-Monroe 193 points in 69 votes cast = 2.7971
  • Dad in the Echo 2023 China  Jacky Heng SUN  315 points in 82 votes cast = 3.8414  * Best Animation
  • Eunice 2018 UK Eric Garro 240 points in 74 votes cast = 3.2432  * Science History Discovery of Greenhouse Gasses.
  • M.T. Nestor 2023 USA John Schlag  250 points in 70 votes cast = 3.5714  
  • The Hairdo 2024 UK Catherine Ruby Yeats  205 points in 73 votes cast = 2.8082
  • Fire of God 2024 Belgium Yannick Mourcia  106 points in 40 votes cast = 2.6500
  • Frederic Brown’s The Hobbyist 2016 USA George Vatistas 161 points in 46 votes cast = 3.5000
  • Battle of LA 2024 USA Patrick Pizzolorusso 137 points in 46 votes cast = 2.9782  
  • Forever 2018 France  Donia Summer 115 points in 47 votes cast = 2.4468
  • Under Siege 2025 Greece Nikos Nikitoglou 107 points in 47 votes cast = 2.2765
  • Stephen King’s The Reach 2024 Italy Luca Caserta  167 points in 41 votes cast = 4.0731  * Best Live Action
  • The Faun of Healwood The Edge 2023 France Stephane Artus 116 points in 39 votes cast = 2.9743
  • In The Walls 2023  Argentina  Ramsés Tuzzio  63 points in 32 votes cast = 1.9687   (continuing trend of low scoring Horror)

*** last 3 had technical error in missing subtitle/captioning.

  • Leïla et Les Fantômes 2023  France Chiraz Chouchane  41 points in 19 votes cast = 2.1578 
  • Alcalyne 2022 France  MICHAËL PROENÇA  41 points in 24 votes cast  = 1.7083  * Lowest Score.
  • Howard Waldrop’s Mary Margaret Road Grader 2024 USA Steven Paul Judd  110 points in 30 votes cast = 3.6666.

(14) THEY KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES. “New evidence suggests our solar system has nine planets again” – Earth.com discusses a new candidate for number nine.

…Searching the far reaches

Researchers at a university in Taiwan believe a Neptune-sized object could be wandering roughly 46.5 to 65.1 billion miles from the sun.

Their fresh findings are based on two deep infrared surveys taken more than two decades apart, with equipment sensitive enough to detect a faint planetary glow.

Infrared data from 1983 and 2006 offered a rare chance to see if something moved slightly between observations.

A possible candidate popped up, and the group thinks it might take 10,000 to 20,000 years to orbit the sun….

…Researchers estimate that if this object exists, it could weigh between seven and seventeen times as much as Earth. That puts it in the ice giant category, similar to Uranus or Neptune, rather than a rocky planet like Earth or Mars….

(15) 48 CHALLENGE 2025. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sci-Fi London Film Fest has just posted its latest 48-hour film challenge’s 10 finalists for 2025.

This challenge is where amateur film makers are given a line of script and told to include a particular prop (it could be anything from a top hat to a candle stick) and then they are given two days to complete a short SF film.

You can view the finalist shorts at the link.

Meanwhile, this year’s Fest runs June 19– 22, 2025 at the Picture House in Finsbury Park (just north of central London).

(16) ESA BLUE DANUBE BROADCAST TO SPACE, [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] To mark ESA’s 50th anniversary, ESA’s  Cebreros station will broadcast “The Blue Danube” to space on Saturday, May 31, 2025.

The Cebreros station has been used to communicate with deep space missions including: BepiColombo, Euclid, Juice, Hera, Rosetta, Mars Express and NASA’s Perseverance rover.

The Blue Danube was famously (for us SF buffs) in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Cebreros station can, in theory, communicate with current-technology deep-space probes up to 1/3 light years away. However, it could communicate further with bigger dishes than those aboard current deep space probes and so in theory anyone listening around nearby stars should pick the microwave (S-band) broadcast up.

Details here: “European Space Agency will beam the famous ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ waltz out into the cosmos” in BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

The European Space Agency is planning to beam Johann Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube’ waltz out into the cosmos to celebrate a series of key anniversaries in the history of spaceflight.

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the European Space Agency and its ‘Estrack’ satellite tracking network.

It also marks the 20th anniversary of its ‘Cebreros’ space antenna and, coincidentally, the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss II himself, composer of the Blue Danube.

And a reminder of the 2001: A Space Odyssey clip:

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Daniel Dern, lance oszko, Paul Weimer, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mark Roth-Whitworth for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 5/25/25 When You Get Caught Between The Scroll And Pixel City

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(1) A DISCWORLD TOUR. Olivia Waite picks “The Essential Terry Pratchett” for New York Times readers (link bypasses the NYT paywall.)

…Book by book, Discworld expands and deepens, pulling in elements from our world that Pratchett tempers in surprising ways: Shakespeare, vampires, police procedurals, musicals, Australia, high finance. Then come even bigger ideas: war, revolution, justice.

By the time we reach Book 29, “Night Watch,” Pratchett is writing comic fantasy the way Martin Luther offered theological critique to the Catholic Church: sharp and tough as nails, with a hammering moral force….

… Discworld is not about how to be good, but about how to do good, and why even the smallest acts of kindness matter. Empathy — like humor or creativity or hope — is a muscle. You don’t train for a marathon by running around the world: You start with small distances and work your way up….

Waite recommend this book as the place to start:

…If you find the flow charts daunting — and who could blame you? — “Monstrous Regiment” (2003) is your best bet for a stand-alone, as it happens far away from Ankh-Morpork or the witchy Ramtop Mountains. We meet young Polly Perks, from a small country forever at war with its neighbors, as she cuts her hair, dons trousers and joins the army in hopes of finding her missing brother. The troops are untrained, the fields are barren, and the government insists it’s treasonous to even ask which side is winning the war. The only authority is Sgt. Jack Jackrum, a jovial nightmare in a coat “the red of dying stars and dying soldiers” — as if Falstaff were reborn as a god of war.

Polly soon discovers she’s not the only soldier in disguise. Everyone has their reasons for fighting, and they’re being tracked by more enemies than they know. It’s trench humor at its blackest, and burns like a wound being cauterized…

(2) A RETRO REVIEW. A Deep Look by Dave Hook wishes he was going to be on a panel at the Seattle Worldcon to discuss “’Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense’ by Cordwainer Smith, 1949 Duell, Sloan and Pearce”.

The Short: I recently read Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense by Cordwainer Smith, 1949 Duell, Sloan and Pearce. It’s not SF, but today it would be called a techno-thriller, with an engaging story of USSR atomic bomb program spying and espionage. I enjoyed it and thought it was very good. It’s available in e-book format at a very reasonable price….

(3) SKILLS FOR MODERATING PANELS. Frank Catalano tells how to navigate the hardest easy job in public speaking in “A call for moderation (of panels)” at Franksplaining. He has 10 tips.

… I’ve moderated, conservatively, more than two hundred panels (I started as a teen at science-fiction conventions). Since those early nerdy gatherings, I’ve hosted professional panel discussions at events ranging from technology trade shows and summits to book and education industry conferences over several decades.

But being a good moderator requires a different skill set than being a good public speaker. Overlap? Yes. With a major difference: the audience’s attention should be focused on the entirety of the panel, not only the moderator….

… So, for the sake of a perky panel and a rapt audience, here are 10 things I’ve learned about being a good moderator (if you’re ever called to serve, for reasons personal or professional):

1) You’re the glue. Your mission as moderator is to create a coherent whole out of disparate, and sometimes feuding, parts. As a result, you should be the panel’s audience surrogate — even asking for definitions of terms and clarification of statements which a panelist may state as though everyone already knows. Many times, people attend panels to learn, so they may not….

(4) TEN YEARS LATER. The Daily Dot takes us back to “The 11 most important fandoms of 2015”. You were probably a fan of more than one of these. The list includes Star Wars, Max Max: Fury Road, and Back To The Future. Yet the most irresistible is the number one entry –

1) Hamilton

If you’d told us while we were writing last year’s top 10 list that another fandom—much less one for a Broadway musical—would unseat Star Wars in 2015, we’d have probably sent for the doctor to see if you were feeling OK. But if last year in fandom was the year of diversity powered by feminism and social justice activism, then it only makes sense that this year, the fandom that took everyone by shock and storm was one that took all those conversations to the next level—and several levels beyond.

Put simply, Hamilton is the story of a single founding father, retold through a modern lens with a cast mainly composed of black actors. Nothing about Hamilton is simple, though—starting with the music, a stunning, stirring hip-hop language that crams three times more text into its run time than the average Broadway musical. In addition to being inherently modern, Hamilton is also an inherently fannish text—a kind of AU (Alternate Universe) fanfic that also serves to critique its canon, which in this case is the historical narrative we’re all taught. That narrative all too frequently leaves out marginalized voices, and evades the messy politics of a revolution carried out by white men, many of whom distrusted urban industry and had no intention of freeing their slaves. Composer Lin-Manuel Miranda inserts his own viewpoint as a hip-hop fan born to Washington Height’s immigrant Latino community into that of Alexander Hamilton, who immigrated to New York in poverty from St. Croix. Hamilton typified the revolutionary spirit Miranda reclaims on behalf of #BlackLivesMatter and other current political movements.

Rarely has theatre seemed to loom as large over the cultural landscape as Hamilton does, but rarely has theatre managed to intersect so neatly with both the immediacy of current political issues and the constant cries for representation from fans who expect more from the media they consume. Hamilton began a season-long siege on social media upon the release of the long-awaited cast recording, taking over Tumblr and Twitter and ultimately winning a stint as the bestselling rap album in the country. 

Fans responded in legion forces, annotating hundreds of thousands of words on the show’s category on the lyrics website Genius, and churning out fanworks and critical analysis in droves. Renewed interest in Alexander Hamilton was so intense that the Treasury is now delaying his removal from the $10 bill. Additionally, Miranda’s social media savvy, his genius #Ham4Ham pre-shows, and his appearances all over pop culture from Colbert to Star Wars, have all made him an instant celebrity. And the fandom just keeps growing. History is still happening in Manhattan—all you have to do is look around, look around at the Hamilton movement to see it.

(5) SHARON LEE’S AWARD. Baen Books posted a photo of Sharon Lee accepting the 2025 Robert A. Heinlein Award Friday night at Balticon.

(6) TECHBROS DON’T GET FANTASY EITHER. The New York Times ponders “Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits” (link bypasses the paywall.)

…How did a trilogy of novels about wizards and elves and furry-footed hobbits become a touchstone for right-wing power brokers? How did books that evince nostalgia for a pastoral, preindustrial past win an ardent following among the people who are shaping our digital future? Why do so many of today’s high-profile fans of “The Lord of the Rings” and other fantasy and sci-fi classics insist on turning these cautionary tales into aspirational road maps for mastering the universe?…

… A similar taste for kingly power has taken hold in Silicon Valley. In a guest essay in The Times last year, the former Apple and Google executive Kim Scott pointed to “a creeping attraction to one-man rule in some corners of tech.” This management style known as “founder mode,” she explained, “embraces the notion that a company’s founder must make decisions unilaterally rather than partner with direct reports or frontline employees.”

The new mood of autocratic certainty in Silicon Valley is summed up in a 2023 manifesto written by the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who describes himself and his fellow travelers as “Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons and bringing home the spoils for our community.”

Andreessen, along with Musk and Thiel, helped muster support for Trump in Silicon Valley, and he depicts the tech entrepreneur as a conqueror who achieves “virtuous things” through brazen aggression, and villainizes anything that might slow growth and innovation — like government regulation and demoralizing concepts like “tech ethics” and “risk management.”

“We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature,” Andreesen writes. “We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.”…

(7) PETER DAVID (1956-2025). Acclaimed comics writer Peter David died May 24 after a long illness.  

AIPT Comics pays tribute: “Comic book legend Peter David dies at 68”.

Peter David is best known in the comics world for his legendary 12-year run on Incredible Hulk in the 1980s that fundamentally transformed the character. He is also synonymous with Spider-Man, and has penned other major heroes for both Marvel and DC, including Captain Marvel and Aquaman. Most recently, David wrote Symbiote Spider-Man.…

… David is survived by his wife, Kathleen O’Shea David, and his daughters Ariel, Shana, Gwen, and Caroline.

Thaddeus Howze has a long remembrance on Facebook.

… A prolific and versatile writer, David’s career began not in comics, but in prose and journalism. His keen wit and sharp storytelling earned him a position in Marvel’s sales department during the 1980s, a foot in the door that led to his first published comic story in The Spectacular Spider-Man #103 (1985). From there, his voice became unmistakable: funny, humane, and layered with deep characterization….

…His 12-year tenure on The Incredible Hulk is legendary, turning what could have been a simple monster book into a psychological epic exploring identity, trauma, and redemption. That run, frequently cited as one of the best in Hulk’s history, cemented PAD’s status as a master craftsman of serialized storytelling.

But his legacy didn’t stop with the Hulk. PAD’s fingerprints are on some of the most enduring titles and characters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries…

…David also ventured beyond comics, contributing to television, video games, and an extensive bibliography of novels—both original works and media tie-ins, including memorable Star Trek stories that made him a fan favorite across fandoms….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 25, 1983 — Return of the Jedi

By Paul Weimer: As I have said before, Return of the Jedi is the first Star Wars movie I ever saw in a theater, and the second movie I ever saw in a theater, period. I don’t quite remember if it was opening weekend or a couple of weeks later that my brothers and I went to go see my first Star Wars film. I had only seen commercials, had some shared Star Wars Toys (I *still* have a stormtrooper bobblehead, I’m looking at it right now, the thing must be over 40 years old). But Return of the Jedi was my first time seeing a Star Wars film, in theaters or otherwise.

It was an interesting place to begin. I had vague ideas on what had happened in the first two movies (from cultural appropriation, such as it was, and my older brother).  So having an opening crawl…and then having the droids go to Jabba’s Palace…that was the first moments of Star Wars on a screen for me. For a long time, it held pride of place, even when I saw Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back on video, mainly because I had seen it first. It was “my Star Wars movie” for a very long time. Boba Fett, introduced, and thrown into a pilot. An imperial shuttle (I later had a toy). A whistle stop tour to see this Yoda person I had no idea what his deal really was. The terrifyingly incomplete and dangerous Death Star. My first exposure to Vader, to the Emperor, to our heroes of the Rebellion.

And of course the Ewoks. Yes, the Ewoks are for kids. But the Ewoks are terrifying. Sure their defeat of imperial forces en masse makes no sense (I immediately got a defensive like of AT-STs that would finally pay off when I saw Rogue One. But notice just how dangerous the Ewoks are to individual storm troopers, it’s clear they have been fighting them for years…and, well, yes, eating them. Those cute Ewoks are carnivorous and merciless. I couldn’t buy them defeating an entire garrison with rebel help, but bushwhacking lone soldiers for a meal? Yeah, that definitely was plausible.

Also, of course, Return of the Jedi was my first intro to Lando Calrissian and I had no idea the Falcon used to be his. So yes, the first Star Wars film I saw was Lando flying the Falcon.  Go figure. And, also, I saw the Han-Leia romance at its culmination.  So when I did see Star Wars, and saw Luke Kiss Leia, having seen it in Return of The Jedi…boy was I confused. But the dogfight into the superstructure is rather satisfying.

And of course the big space battle. If not for the Death Star, the Imperial fleet was clearly on the ropes. I took it to mean the Empire was vastly underestimating the rebellion. With their smaller and more nimble fleet, and better fighters, the Empire was a dinosaur compared to the Rebellion.  Maybe had I seen Star Wars I would have felt differently, but I started watching Star Wars when the Empire was ready to fall, not at its height.

I am not a fan of the retconning that has Hayden Christensen’s force ghost appear in newer versions of Return of the Jedi. It also goes to the whole problem of timelines and timeframes in the Star Wars universe. But the movie itself? Solid still.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 25, 1939 — Sir Ian McKellen, 86.

By Paul Weimer: Sir Ian McKellen came to my consciousness in his twin roles in the late 90’s: Magneto, and Gandalf. It was quite the coup for both Peter Jackson and for Sony to land an actor of McKellen’s magnitude and make it work so that I could watch him chew scenery with Patrick Stewart (each one of them the other’s equal) and then the ensemble cast of the best adaptation of Middle-Earth I will likely get in my lifetime. The idea that he was doing these two iconic roles, basically, at once, is amazing. 

Also, McKellen makes the Hobbit movies almost watchable for me. Almost.

And yes, while we have seen Magneto and Gandalf with other portrayals, other actors, other media, they feel like they stand as reaction, or preparation, to McKellen’s performances. That’s his power as an actor. People half a century now will study his takes, if only to do it differently.  

He doesn’t quite rescue the 2009 Prisoner remake from utter oblivion, although he does try. It is when he is so brilliantly affably evil. “Of course it’s a trap” that he really gets the role of Number Two right. But he’s saddled with a script and a setup that just doesn’t jell together. A pity.

I think his best genre piece outside of Magneto and Gandalf is one that is only mildly genre, and this is his adaptation of Richard III. It counts as genre because it takes place in a 1930’s version of Richard III, with the Wars of the Roses taking place as a conflict much more like the Spanish Civil War, between Royalists and Fascists. McKellen plays the title character, addresses the audience throughout, and is absolutely captivating in it. 

Sir Ian McKellen

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) DOCTOR WHO BARBIE. “Ncuti Gatwa Is a Barbie, Again” – Gizmodo has the story.

Not content with simply being Ken again after his guest appearance in the Barbie movie coincided with the news that he would be Doctor Who‘s latest Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa is going full circle with his very own 15th Doctor Barbie doll.

Revealed by the BBC this morning, Mattel Creations will release new Barbie dolls of the 15th Doctor and his first companion, Ruby Sunday. He’s Ken no more!…

… Gatwa isn’t the first Time Lord to be Barbie-fied–Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor had that honor back in 2018–but Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday will mark the first time a Doctor Who companion has entered the Barbie world….

(12) MIRROR, MIRROR, THAT WILL BE ON THE WALL. “What are Time Mirrors? And Do They Exist?” The Daily Dot seems to think they do.

Time mirrors sounds like a concept straight out of a sci-fi film. But physicists confirm that time mirrors exist—and it’s not as mind-boggling as it sounds.

Instead of a regular mirror that bounces light back at the person looking in, letting them see their reflection, a time mirror is caused by waves reversing their flow in time. In other words, this reaction causes a signal to reverse, Earth.com reports.

To demonstrate, physicists attach a metal strip to an “electronic component” to create a “metamaterial.”

Then, by carefully adjusting the electronic component, a burst of energy flips the direction of the wave in time.

While it sounds complex to the layman, scientists anticipate that time mirrors could have tangible applications. No, not just for time machines.

According to Earth.com, this discovery may create new ways to transmit data or create advanced computers. However, the scientists note that further research and experiments are needed to figure out the limits of time mirrors….

(13) A BIG DUMP. “Giant ‘white streak’ appears over multiple US states as Chinese rocket dumps experimental fuel in space” explains Live Science.

A massive streak of white, aurora-like light recently appeared in the night sky above several U.S. states after a Chinese rocket released half a dozen satellites into orbit. The light show was triggered when the rocket dumped a new type of fuel into space before reentering the atmosphere, experts say.

The luminous streak appeared at around 1:24 a.m. ET on Saturday (May 17), hanging in the air for around 10 minutes before eventually fading away. It was photographed in at least seven states — Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Missouri, Nebraska, Washington and New Mexico — but may have been visible even further afield, according to Spaceweather.com.

Photographer Mike Lewinski snapped stunning shots of the streak from Crestone, Colorado (see above) and also managed to capture timelapse footage of the entire event….

(14) MORE BOGUS AI LEGAL CITATIONS. “Alabama paid a law firm millions to defend its prisons. It used AI and turned in fake citations” reports the Guardian.

…In 2021, [prison inmate] Johnson filed a lawsuit against Alabama prison officials for failing to keep him safe, rampant violence, understaffing, overcrowding and pervasive corruption in Alabama prisons. To defend the case, the Alabama attorney general’s office turned to a law firm that for years has been paid millions of dollars by the state to defend its troubled prison system: Butler Snow.

State officials have praised Butler Snow for its experience in defending prison cases – and specifically William Lunsford, head of the constitutional and civil rights litigation practice group at the firm. But now the firm is facing sanctions by the federal judge overseeing Johnson’s case after an attorney at the firm, working with Lunsford, cited cases generated by artificial intelligence – which turned out not to exist.

It is one of a growing number of instances in which attorneys around the country have faced consequences for including false, AI-generated information in official legal filings. A database attempting to track the prevalence of the cases has identified 106 instances around the globe in which courts have found “AI hallucinations” in court documents.

Last year, an attorney was suspended for one year from practicing law in the federal middle district of Florida, after a committee found he had cited fabricated AI-generated cases. In California earlier this month, a federal judge ordered a firm to pay more than $30,000 in legal fees after it included false AI-generated research in a brief.

At a hearing in Birmingham on Wednesday in Johnson’s case, the US district judge Anna Manasco said that she was considering a wide range of sanctions – including fines, mandated continuing legal education, referrals to licensing organizations and temporary suspensions – against Butler Snow, after the attorney, Matthew Reeves, used ChatGPT to add false citations to filings related to ongoing deposition and discovery disputes in the case.

She suggested that, so far, the disciplinary actions that have been meted out around the country have not gone far enough. The current case is “proof positive that those sanctions were insufficient”, she told the lawyers. “If they were, we wouldn’t be here.”…

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Paul Weimer, Frank Catalano, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]

Pixel Scroll 5/10/25 All Around The Scrollberry Bush, The Monkey Chased The Pixel

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(1) GUARDIAN BOOK REVIEWS. Past Best Fan Writer Hugo winner Abigail Nussbaum, and author of 2025 BSFA Award winner Track Changes penned the Guardian’s latest “The best science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup”. Nussbaum cover The Devils by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz, £25), The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Orbit, £20), Land of Hope by Cate Baum (Indigo Press, £12.99), and A Line You Have Traced by Roisin Dunnett (Magpie, £16.99).

(2) MEETING DEATH SCIENTIFICALLY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC’s World Service  has a nifty weekly science programme Unexplained Elements.  This week’s programme was topical with this week’s news of the Pope popping off and the pomp and circumstance ceremony that garnered international attention. It was a topic in which the late Terry Pratchett would have been interested. 

It addressed questions such as when did humans first start burying their dead? The answer seems to be over 100,000 years ago, but this is for anatomically modern humans. Apparently some proto-human species (whose brain capacity was a third of modern humans) may have buried their dead, though the research (currently in peer review) is debatable.  Apparently, the pre-print has been amended to take criticisms into account and while one critic has been convinced, others remain sceptical.

Another topic was that of the biology of graveyards.  Because its ground remains largely untilled, and because of gravestones and the like, there are many micro-environments, and both these factors lead church graveyards have a higher local area biodiversity.

Then there is the issue of a dead person’s digital rights to their social media and online accounts. The European Union’s GDPR is the world’s most robust data protection regulation, though that does not seem to stop firms like Facebook or EventBrite failing to strictly follow it (just look as the small print when you sign up) or even Worldcons who arguably (it would be interesting to test this in court and I could write an essay on this) fail to strictly adhere to its provisions.  Nonetheless, despite GDPR being the world’s gold standard in data protection, the dead have no rights whatsoever under GDPR!

Talking of a dead person’s digital rights (or lack thereof), what of mobile (cell) phones and smartphones, what happens to them when they ‘die’?  Well, fans of Red Dwarf might say that they go to silicon heaven. The reality, however, is for most of them landfill!  Here there are multiple environmental sustainability issues.  All those heavy metals and rare earth elements leech out in landfill causing threats to water tables and other ecotoxicology issues.  And then there is the loss of these elements (which include silver and gold – many kilograms per tonne of mobile phones disposed) to the economy necessitating the mining of replacement elements and the environmental damage that this does.  So the next time a Worldcon tells you that they are ditching recyclable paper from sustainably managed forests (look for the kite mark when buying the paper for publications) don’t accept the Worldcon’s word for it: more greenwash!

It was a fascinating programme. You can access it here.

First up, we delve into the thorny issue of when early humans started to carry out funerary rituals, before turning our attention to graveyards and the life that thrives within these sacred environments.

Next, we are joined Carl Öhman from Uppsala University in Sweden, who reveals what happens to our data when we die and why we should care about it.

Plus, we discuss the precious materials hiding in our old devices, and find out whether animals mourn.

(3) DODGE THE SCAMS. Victoria Strauss points out “Two to Avoid: Book Order Scams and Fake Reviews”. Full details at Writer Beware.

Here are two newish frauds that appear to be on the rise. As with most writing scams these days, they target self-published authors.

The Book Order Scam

I’ve written before about book order scams, in the context of scammers impersonating bookstores such as Barnes & Noble with out-of-the-blue emails promising bulk purchases and big royalties. All the author has to do is pony up thousands of dollars or pounds to cover printing and/or shipping costs (the relevant note here: bookstores do not print the books they sell, and they typically order from the publisher or publishing platform, rather than from the author).

This newer version of the book order scam is somewhat different, arriving not from a bookstore impersonator, but from the self-publishing service provider the writer has hired to publish and/or market their book. That provider isn’t a true self-publishing company, though, but rather one of the many ghostwriting scams that waylay would-be indie authors in order to defraud them….

Fake Reviews

Fake reviews–sometimes just a few lines, sometimes elaborate essays with stars and number rankings–arrive unasked-for, attached to a complimentary email claiming that a book has been “discovered” by book scouts or book evaluators. Or they’re included as part of a pitch for a package of publishing and marketing services, to show how much the service provider believes in the author’s book.

Undoubtedly produced by feeding book blurbs and other info into chatbots, they are essentially bait: affirmation and flattery designed to induce the author to reply, so they can be subjected to aggressive sales pitches for whatever the “reviewer” is selling.

Here are a couple of examples, both sent out by scammers on this list. They’re not just book reviews–they’re PROFESSIONAL book reviews! So much better than just the regular kind….

(4) CHERRYH ANNOUNCEMENT. CJ Cherryh told Facebook followers yesterday she and Jane Fancher won’t be at the Seattle Worldcon – but it’s not the result of any controversy.

Jane and I will not be attending WorldCon despite it being in our state (which some people might want to know)—no controversy, just the expense and the physical buffeting of crowds. While Jane’s got more go-juice than I do, the crowd pressure and distances involved would be pretty exhausting, leaving us sadly low-energy. We’ll still go to friendly ‘little’ cons in driving range, note well, if we know about them!!! and be our brilliant selves, but we’re not up to a full-on WorldCon.

(5) ABOUT THE FEMALE MAN. Farah Mendlesohn’s book Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ, or, As the Bear Swore is available for preorder from Luna Press Publishing. It will be released in Summer 2026.

Joanna Russ’s writing career was relatively short, running from 1968 to 1987, with a number of essay collections published in the years after that. Her fiction career consists of just six novels and four collections, but each of the novels she published challenged engrained conventions of the genre.

The Female Man was received with shock, horror and vituperation when it was published in 1975. Its fractured narrative, and its direct attack on patriarchy and the straight-jacket of performative femininity, were described as shrill and man-hating. Over the years it emerged as a classic of feminist science fiction, a novel that continues to excite and resonate, and a touchstone for proudly militant feminists.

This exploration of The Female Man offers a close reading of the text, focussing on how the book works, its structures, arguments, humour, and brilliant anger

(6) COMPENSATING FACTORS. “My School Visit was Cancelled. I Fought Back and Won” writers Erica S. Perl in School Library Journal.

As a children’s book author, I love a good mystery. Which is why, last month, after a Virginia elementary school principal abruptly cancelled my visit by email, with no explanation or interest in rescheduling or paying me, I decided to investigate.

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what had happened: a parent had complained because of a social media video I had made celebrating Pride month. In it, I mention that Snail, a character in my Whale, Quail, Snail early reader series (illustrated by Sam Ailey), is nonbinary. Most snails are. “It’s a fiction series,” I add, “but that’s a fact.”…

… I wish I could tell you that my story ended amicably with the return of my visit to the school’s calendar. That’s not what happened.

Instead, after I asked for my fee, the principal turned the matter over to the district’s lawyers. The principal then informed the school librarian, who booked my visit, that she might have to pay me out of her own pocket. I told her I would not take her money, no matter what happened. I was extra-outraged that the principal was threatening to make her pay for the “crime” of setting up an author visit.

But my story doesn’t end there. I’m not just a children’s book author. I’m also a former trial lawyer. So instead of walking away muttering about injustice, I spent some quality time with my contract.

That’s right, my author contract. Whenever I am invited to visit a school, my booking agent draws up a contract—and this visit was no exception. According to one clause, if an appearance is cancelled with less than 30 days notice, the school is required to pay my entire fee plus any non-refundable travel expenses. The principal had cancelled on me 28 days before my visit.

And finally, my contract specifies that the contract is governed by the law of the state where I live, not the law of the state where the school is located. So if I wanted to sue for breach of contract, I could simply file papers in my local courthouse (no legal expertise or degree required!).

So, I did. Which is how I got to a different kind of happy ending: the school paid me my fee.

It’s not the win I wanted, because that would have had me standing in front of a gymnasium full of elementary school students. But it is a victory, as I see it, for all authors, especially in this current climate….

(7) KILLER ROBOTS NO LONGER SCIENCE FICTION. [Item by Francis Hamit.] “Unmanned Systems Are Not Revolutionary (But Could Be)” says a post on War Room, hosted by the U.S. Army War College.

Rather than revolutionizing warfare, unmanned systems have emerged as evolutions within the larger information revolution; advancements to be sure, but failing to render conventional militaries obsolete or dramatically reshaping force structures….

(8) PLONK YOUR MAGIC TWANGER. The one answer Smithsonian Magazine knows for sure is the price: “Who Created This Peculiar Painting of a Drooling Dragon? Nobody Knows—but a Museum Just Bought It for $20 Million”. Steven French adds, “Actually the ‘drooling dragon’ looks more like our Patterdale Terrier after he’s spotted the postman!”

Emma Capron, a curator at the museum who was responsible for the acquisition, describes the altarpiece as “wildly inventive” and “full of iconographical oddities,” per the Art Newspaper.

Start with the dragon and its bizarre dog-like face, exaggerated fangs and dripping drool. According to tradition, Satan, disguised as a dragon, swallowed St. Margaret whole. His stomach rejected her and there she appears in the painting, kneeling in prayer, totally unfazed by the event.Next to Margaret, one of the two angels holds a book of song, once thought to be a hymn by the English composer Walter Frye but now identified as musical gibberish. The other angel plucks her mouth harp, “a sound hardly associated with celestial harmony,” as the National Gallery says in the statement….

(9) PEACEMAKER IS BACK. “Peacemaker Season 2 Trailer: John Cena’s DC Superhero Returns” – Variety sets the frame.

… John Cena‘s very R-rated DC superhero has returned in the first trailer for “Peacemaker” Season 2, created by DC Studios co-chief James Gunn. The sophomore season takes place in the rebooted DC Universe, which officially kicked off with Gunn’s animated series “Creature Commando” and continues with his summer tentpole “Superman.” Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner and Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl cameo in the trailer and will appear in “Superman.”…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 10, 1969 — John Scalzi, 56.

By Paul Weimer: I’d read John Scalzi’s blog for years before his fiction. 

I got onto the Scalzi train with his entry in Metatropolis. His story involving a high tech pig farmer had all of the bones of a Scalzi story, from its “I think I know everything” protagonist, to its often snarky sense of humor. While I didn’t fall deeply in love with his work, then or since, I kept reading his work. Redshirts, of course, which still may be my favorite of his novels and stories, helped expand in my mind the metafictional opportunities in science fiction. Lock In is a solid piece of science fictional speculation on how a society might come together and respond to the consequences of a pandemic.  Given that it was written long before Covid…I wonder if Scalzi or, aged fifty six yearswould have reconsidered the novel after the worldwide reaction to the aftermath of the Covid Pandemic. 

Of course the Old Man’s War series is the one that he gets grief for, because it should appeal to the Sad and Rabid Puppies…but it is, in the parlance of today, “too woke”. It’s possible that the existence of such books helped motivate Torgersen and Beale, an irritant to their ideology and worldview (and a counterexample to the idea that Mil-SF must be conservative). Again, I do wonder how Scalzi would write it today, given all that has happened. 

So this is a long way of saying that although it is on my Kindle, I have not yet read When The Moon Hits Your Eye, which seems to have as triggering an idea (the moon turns into cheese. Seriously?) as one can possibly make in the field. But it shows that in the end, Scalzi likes to have fun when writing. He never takes it too seriously, even if he keeps it as rigorous and locked down as the story needs. He’s just telling stories and doing his thing and having the time of his life, and haters can go hang. 

The first time I actually met him in person, he didn’t remember it. He was extremely jet lagged, sitting in a hotel lobby and apparently remembered little from the entire weekend. Due to circumstance (although Scalzi is an excellent DJ, I am told, I am not a dance party goer), I only finally, finally actually got to talk to him at the Glasgow Worldcon. Being part of the photography team did  let me meet and photograph everyone who would hold still.   But did he know who I was? I’m still convinced that he didn’t, and that’s all right. 

John Scalzi’s fiction, too…that’s all right. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) AMAZING STORIES COLLECTION. Amazing Stories: Best of 2024,a collection of  science fiction short stories published by the magazine over the past year, is now available.

Edited by Lloyd Penney, this collection continues Amazing’s nearly century-long tradition of exploring the strange, the speculative, and the sublime.

From lunar labor revolutions to delicate alien diplomacy, these stories represent the vanguard of speculative fiction. Readers will encounter futures both dystopian and dazzling, technologies that reshape identity and time, and characters grappling with the emotional and ethical consequences of scientific progress. Highlights include:

  • “A Short-Lived History of the Stockpiling of Time, in Post-Mono-Heliocentric Space-Times” by K.V.K. Kvas, a mind-bending tale of interstellar economics, identity, and revolt.
  • “Return from Venus” by C.B. Droege, a quiet and touching story about cross-species friendship and the longing for home.
  • “Best Case Scenario” by Susan Oke, a suspenseful diplomatic mission where what you offer—and what you misunderstand—could mean the difference between peace and peril.

With cover art by Hugo Award-winning artist Bob Eggleton and a lineup of diverse voices offering everything from hard science speculation to lyrical philosophical fiction, Amazing Stories: Best of 2024 is a must-have for any SF fan’s collection.

 “Amazing Stories has always been a home for bold, boundary-pushing science fiction,” says Editor-in-Chief Lloyd Penney. “This year’s stories continue that proud legacy—with some of the most challenging, beautiful, and entertaining tales we’ve ever published.”

It is available online at amazingstories.com and in paperback and eBook editions at indie and major retailers worldwide or at this link.

(13) MONSTROUSLY COOL. That’s what your drinks become with an assist from the “Godzilla Ice Mold”.

(14) DAISY RIDLEY’S ZOMBIE ENCOUNTER. JustWatch quotes Daisy Ridley in its Why to Watch feature about her role in the zombie thriller “We Bury the Dead streaming: where to watch online?”

We Bury the Dead is a gripping, emotional thriller set in a world transformed by the undead. In a unique take on the zombie genre, the film follows Ava—a woman tormented by loss—who volunteers with a corpse retrieval unit to search for her missing husband. Set against a surreal yet intimate apocalypse, the story explores love, grief, and the fragile boundaries of what makes us human.

Daisy Ridley says:

The script is beautiful. It’s about grief and watching someone desperately trying to find an answer, even though she doesn’t know what that answer is going to be. The backdrop of the zombies represents this moment for [my character] Ava because she’s neither here nor there emotionally. Ava’s sole purpose is to find her husband. As a means to get to him, she joins the body retrieval unit which volunteers to find people and notify families. The zombies look like our friends and family, so it’s close enough to reality but in a way that doesn’t feel too close. It feels horribly human.

(15) HONEY, I’M HOME! “Soviet-era spacecraft Kosmos 482 plunges to Earth after 53 years stuck in orbit” reports AP News.

A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.

Its uncontrolled entry was confirmed by both the Russian Space Agency and European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking. The Russians indicated it came down over the Indian Ocean, but some experts were not so sure of the precise location. The European Space Agency’s space debris office also tracked the spacecraft’s doom after it failed to appear over a German radar station.

It was not immediately known how much, if any, of the half-ton spacecraft survived the fiery descent from orbit. Experts said ahead of time that some if not all of it might come crashing down, given it was built to withstand a landing on Venus, the solar system’s hottest planet.

The chances of anyone getting clobbered by spacecraft debris were exceedingly low, scientists said….

…Any surviving wreckage will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty….

…After so much anticipation, some observers were disappointed by the lingering uncertainty over the exact whereabouts of the spacecraft’s grave….

A Russian press release says it fell in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta.

(16) YOUR ALIEN NATION. The BBC explains, “More than half your body is not human”.

More than half of your body is not human, say scientists.

Human cells make up only 43% of the body’s total cell count. The rest are microscopic colonists.

Understanding this hidden half of ourselves – our microbiome – is rapidly transforming understanding of diseases from allergy to Parkinson’s.

The field is even asking questions of what it means to be “human” and is leading to new innovative treatments as a result.

“They are essential to your health,” says Prof Ruth Ley, the director of the department of microbiome science at the Max Planck Institute, “your body isn’t just you”….

… But genetically we’re even more outgunned.

The human genome – the full set of genetic instructions for a human being – is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes.

But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out between two and 20 million microbial genes.

Prof Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist from Caltech, argues: “We don’t have just one genome, the genes of our microbiome present essentially a second genome which augment the activity of our own…

(17) SCIENCE PAPERS WITH UNDISCLOSED AI USE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is controversial to some, in no small part due to large language models (LLMs) and other A.I. (such as image-generating A.I.) using people’s intellectual property (their written or art works) for A.I. and LLM training without permission or recompense.  This is exemplified by the recent debate over the Seattle’s Worldcon use of A.I. (for example, see (1) in the Scroll here).

Similarly, the use of A.I. has controversies in science.  Indeed, a number of leading science journals, such as Nature, frown on the use of A.I. and/or at least ask science authors to declare any use of A.I. in their submissions. The latest news here comes from a news item in this week’s Nature that hundreds of papers have used A.I without disclosure!

Generative A.I. tools such as ChatGPT have quickly transformed academic publishing. Scientists are increasingly using them to prepare and review manuscripts, and publishers have scrambled to create guidelines for their ethical us. Although policies vary, many publishers require authors to disclose their use of A.I….

But science sleuths have identified hundreds of cases in which A.I. tools seem to have been used without disclosure…

…Publishers need to act quickly to resolve issues of dishonest A.I. use.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Rich Lynch, Paul Weimer, Francis Hamit, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]

Pixel Scroll 5/9/25 Better To Light One Pixel Than To Scroll The File

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(1) BOOKS THAT FETCHED BIG BUCKS. AbeBooks lists the “Most expensive sales from January to March 2025”. The complete top 10 is at the link. Here are the three fantasy/SF books that brought the highest prices.

1. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams and William Nicholson – $28,000

Paper covered boards with Nicholson’s illustrations, covered in matching original dust wrapper First published in 1922, The Velveteen Rabbit has become one of the most beloved children’s stories of all time. This rare and fragile first edition is particularly notable for its seven color illustrations, some double-page, each with its original printed caption. The endpapers feature delightful drawings of rabbits.

This exceptional copy retains its paper-covered boards with Nicholson’s illustrations and original publisher’s pictorial dustwrapper with matching design. It presents in near-fine condition, with only a short split to the foot of the upper joint and light spotting to early pages. The dustwrapper, while showing a small chip to the spine foot and minor fraying, remains remarkably well-preserved for such a delicate publication.

“The Velveteen Rabbit has struck a chord with child and adult readers alike since its original publication in 1922, with its combination of Margery Bianco Williams’s underlying message and William Nicholson’s striking double page colour illustrations, which work in harmony with the text. The first edition is both rare and inherently fragile so copies in such exemplary condition are very seldom found. In thirty years as a specialist in rare children’s books this is only the fourth such copy we have sold.”

4. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White – $18,700

Author’s presentation copy, inscribed to friend and fellow novelist, Elizabeth Taylor on the front end paper, “For Elizabeth Taylor / and I do like Irish whiskey / E B White” E.B. White and British novelist Elizabeth Taylor maintained a literary friendship despite rarely meeting in person. Their connection flourished through The New Yorker, where White’s wife Katherine served as Taylor’s first editor. This first edition of Charlotte’s Web carries their relationship in ink – White’s inscription reads “For Elizabeth Taylor / and I do like Irish whiskey,” a fitting note from an author known to store manuscripts in whiskey boxes and keep a bottle ready for guests.

The first issue (marked ‘First edition, I-B’ on verso) features Garth Williams’ original color dustwrapper and line drawings, showing only slight toning to the spine.

“Charlotte Web has long been a popular with children the world over, but what makes this book particularly special is the inscription by the books author, E.B.White to fellow novelist, Elizabeth Taylor. The notion of author to author associations strikes a particular chord with sophisticated book collectors, the book marking an intersection of the author’s creative endeavour and their life outside the text. It is evidence of this personal contact which influences the author’s work which gives books like this an animation all of their own. Taylor had the misfortune to be a contemporary of the much more famous actress of the same name, but was nevertheless a successful (and lately, increasingly read) author in her own right, described by Kingsley Amis as ‘one of the best English novelists born this century’.”

8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick – $15,500

First edition review copy with publisher’s original publicity slip 1968 marked a turning point in science fiction with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick’s tale of bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalking artificial beings through a post-apocalyptic landscape would redefine the genre’s approach to human consciousness and artificial life.

In its original grey cloth binding with gilt spine lettering, this review copy offers a rare glimpse into the novel’s publication. The inclusion of the publisher’s publicity slip and unclipped dust jacket makes this example particularly noteworthy in Dick’s bibliography.

“As one of the genre’s most influential authors, Dick’s exploration of themes like reality, identity, and authoritarianism has left a lasting impact on literature and film. His thought-provoking narratives, often blending dystopian futures with psychological intrigue, have inspired numerous adaptations, including the iconic Blade Runner.”

(2) FLASHY MEETS THE BUGS. The discussion Cat Eldridge sparked yesterday with his piece about George Macdonald Fraser’s “Flashman” made me track down my parody of the series, “Flashman at Klendathu”, and add it to File 770’s library of my fanwriting. The article originally appeared in Guy H. Lillian’s fanzine Challenger in 2008, adorned with this wonderful illo by Charlie Williams.

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to break for brunch with writer Adeena Mignogna on Episode 253 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Adeena Mignogna

Ever since Adeena Mignogna dared to eat a donut on the Capclave Donut Carnival episode of this podcast, I knew I’d eventually host her for a more in-depth conversation. And that time is now!

Mignogna is the author of the the Robot Galaxy series, which so far is a quartet, made up of Crazy Foolish Robots; Robots, Robots Everywhere; Silly Insane Humans; and Eleven Little Robots. As you’ll hear in our chat, there’ll be many more to follow. She’s also the author of Lunar Logic — the first novel in a series which doesn’t yet have an overarching title, though the second book will be titled Moonbase Mayhem, so who knows, perhaps there’ll be something alliterative there as well.

She’s also one of the hosts of the long running BIG Sci-Fi podcast. When not writing or podcasting, Adeena is a physicist, astronomer, and software engineer who’s worked for nearly three decades in the aerospace industry as a Mission Architect.

We discussed how Star Trek changed her life, which Trek character she used as her screen name on fan forums when she first went online as a young teen, why she never wrote fanfic, the feedback from a friend which saved her NaNoWriMo novel from being trunked, how she discovered she’s neither a plotter nor a pantser but rather something in-between, her favorite science fiction novel of all time (and the important lesson it taught her about her Robot Galaxy series), why she went the indie route and how she knew she had the chops to pull it off, the manner in which we gender robots, the reason writing each book in her quartet was more fun than the one before, why she remains hopeful about our AI future, how she finally learned she was a morning writer after years of trying to write at night, and much more.

(4) PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS. The 2025 PEN America Literary Awards were announced on May 8. None of the fiction appears to be genre.

The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award went to Jason Roberts for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life.

(5) JEOPARDY! [Item by Rich Lynch.] The current Jeopardy champion going into today’s match is Dan Moren, a sff author, editor and podcaster with an entry in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia.

(6) RETURN TO SUMMERISLE. “Are you here for the burning?” – The Observer covers a dedicated fan’s restaging of The Wicker Man.

As the sun sinks over the Irish Sea, Fergal O’Riordan stands on a headland in south-west Scotland and looks up with tears in his eyes at the 7 metre-tall wicker man, blazing against the darkening sky. Five years of work going up in smoke. He couldn’t be happier.

Dubliner O’Riordan first contacted me in February to tell me about a documentary he was making on Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult folk-horror classic The Wicker Man. The project had consumed him since 2020, costing him all his savings, and almost his marriage, his family and his sanity.

Publicity seeker, I assumed. But when I finally got to meet O’Riordan, 55, last weekend, for the premiere of his film, Return to Summerisle, in the small town of Newton Stewart, it became apparent that he had been deadly serious…

(7) ORWELL ARCHIVE GAINS DOCUMENTS. “About 160 historic George Orwell papers saved for nation after outcry” reports the Guardian.

George Orwell’s correspondence, contracts and readers’ reports relating to his earliest novels are among historic papers that have been saved for the nation after an outcry over their initial dispersal.

University College London (UCL) said it had acquired the archive of the Nineteen Eighty-Four author’s publisher as “a valuable piece of Britain’s cultural heritage”.

About 160 items, dating from 1934 to 1937, are to be added to the Orwell Archive in UCL Special Collections, the world’s most comprehensive holdings of research material relating to him….

…The collection had belonged to his publisher, Victor Gollancz, who founded one of the 20th century’s foremost publishing houses.

The company was acquired by the Orion Group, which became part of Hachette, owned by the French multinational Lagardère, whose decision to sell the archive because its warehouse was closing was condemned last year as an act of cultural vandalism….

(8) DISRUPTION OF THE DAY. “Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden Fired by White House” reports Publisher Weekly.

In the latest blow to professional research and the literary and arts community, the Trump administration fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on May 8. “Tonight, the White House informed Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden that she has been relieved of her position,” a Library of Congress spokesperson confirmed in an email to PW. No reason for Hayden’s removal was provided, and no further information has been announced regarding the library’s staffing or budget.

Hayden has led the Library of Congress since 2016, when she was appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed and sworn in by the U.S. Senate. She was the first woman and first Black person to head the nation’s library, a federal resource whose vast on-site and online collections are the research arm of the U.S. Congress and an information hub for organizations and individuals worldwide. Hayden is a past CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, and from 2003 to 2004 served as president of the American Library Association….

…Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D–N.Y.), the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, issued a statement calling the removal “unjust” and “a disgrace” that represents the president’s “ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history, and turn back the clock.” Calling the Library of Congress is “the People’s Library,” Jeffries added: “There will be accountability for this unprecedented assault on the American way of life sooner rather than later.”…

(9) TARIFF TERROR. “‘A kick in the teeth’: UK film industry’s horror at possible Trump tariffs” says the Guardian.

It is a sunny May afternoon in leafy Surrey, and Richard St Clair is carefully preparing a bomb. It is not real, but it will look like it is when shown on a Netflix TV show. Across the workshop a colleague is cheerfully sandpapering a pile of hip bones for the 28 Years Later zombie film – trailers suggest a lot of skeletons will be involved.

They are working at db Props, a small company based at Shepperton Studios that has made everything from Thor’s hammer to Alan Turing’s computer in The Imitation Game.

Yet for all its work on huge productions, the workshop has a shadow hanging over it, cast by Donald Trump. The US president this week sent shock waves through the global film industry with a surprise statement that he will bring in a 100% tariff on movies “produced in Foreign Lands”. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” he wrote on his social network Truth Social.

“I’m terrified about this new Trump thing – whatever that may be,” says Dean Brooks, the owner of db Props and a 45-year veteran of the props trade after joining at 16. “This has been a proper kick in the teeth.”

Britain’s film and video production industry employs about 99,000 people, but it punches well above the UK’s economic weight globally, and has a glamour that other industries cannot match. Hollywood relies heavily on Britain to make its films and big budget TV series such as the recent Star Wars series Andor and Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible franchise. In turn the UK relies on Hollywood for work: inward investment and co-production spend on film and high-end television in the UK reached £4.8bn in 2024, representing 86% of the total, according to the British Film Institute.

(10) STEPHEN FABIAN (1930-2025). Sff artist Stephen Fabian, whose impressive black & white covers adorned fanzines before he moved on to a successful pro career, died May 6 at the age of 95. Bob Eggleton was among those who announced his passing.

Fabian was a Hugo finalist for Best Fanartist twice (1970-1971) and Best Professional Artist seven times (1975-1981).

He won the British Fantasy Award for Artist in 1980 and 1985, and his “The End of Days” (Chacal #2) won the Artwork award in 1978. He was also a finalist three other times.

His success apparently was a pleasant surprise to him. Fancyclopedia 3 notes:

…Fabian did not start out to be an artist. He attended several schools before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1949, where he served as a teacher of radio and radar. He left the Air Force in 1953 and worked for electronic firms as an engineer until 1973, when he found himself out of work….

Fabian studied drawing and painting on his own, and began submitting artwork to fanzines in the 1960s, becoming a well-known fan artist. The day he was laid off work, he received letters asking him to submit his work to both Amazing and Galaxy. He immediately switched from electronics engineer to full-time SF artist…. 

In addition to prozines, Fabian produced artwork for TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons game from 1986 to 1995, particularly on the Ravenloft line.

There’s some pretty amazing artwork in the gallery on his website. See it while you can.

(11) PETER MORWOOD (1956-2025). Irish novelist and screenwriter Peter Morwood died May 9. He was best known for his Horse Lords and Tales of Old Russia series. He lived in Ireland with his wife, writer Diane Duane, with whom he co-authored several works. Duane announcement of his death on Facebook said:

…I am in utter shock and terrible pain to have to inform everyone that our friend, my dear husband and creative partner of nearly forty years, Peter Morwood, passed away suddenly early this morning after a brief illness that as late as yesterday (when his doctor saw him) had seemed to be on the mend.

I’m not in any position to say much more about this situation now, as you’ll understand my current mental state is not up to the task. (I keep expecting to wake up from a truly terrible dream, but this one shows no sign of breaking.) I will let people know more about this in coming days.

There will be a postmortem shortly to determine the exact cause of his death. I’ll share what details of this are appropriate as they become clear….

Duane and Morwood married at Boskone in February 1987.

Duane has asked for financial support:

Meanwhile in the short term I’m very much going to need assistance with the expenses that in the days that follow will inevitably surround what’s happened. For those people who want to assist, please feel free to use the Ko-Fi account here, and simply tag the associated messages, etc, “P expenses”. ETA: Please choose the Stripe payment option at Ko-Fi rather than PayPal, as PP seems to be having some kind of obscure difficulties at the moment. I have disconnected PayPal until this is resolved.

Peter Morwood and Diane Duane. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Soylent Green (1973)

Fifty-two years ago, Soylent Green was in general distribution in the States. It had premieres earlier in LA and NYC, respectively, on April 18th and April 19th. 

The film was directed by Richard Fleischer who had previously directed Fantastic Voyage and Doctor Doolittle, and, yes, the latter is genre. Rather loosely based off of Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! Novel, it starred Joseph Cotten, Chuck Connors, Charlton Heston, Brock Peters, Edward G. Robinson in his final film role, and Leigh Taylor-Young. 

The term soylent green is not in the novel though the term soylent steaks is. The title of the novel wasn’t used according to the studio on the grounds that it might have confused audiences into thinking it a big-screen version of Make Room for Daddy. Huh? It’s worth noting that Harrison was not involved at all in the film and indeed was was contractually denied control over the screenplay. No idea why he agreed to this but hopefully the money was good. 

So how was reception at the time? Definitely mixed though Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Tribune liked it: “Richard Fleischer’s ‘Soylent Green’ is a good, solid science-fiction movie, and a little more. It tells the story of New York in the year 2022, when the population has swollen to an unbelievable 80 million, and people live in the streets and line up for their rations of water and Soylent Green.” 

Other were less kind. A.H. Weiler of the New York Times summed it up this way: “We won’t reveal that ingredient but it must be noted that Richard Fleischer’s direction stresses action, not nuances of meaning or characterization. Mr. Robinson is pitiably natural as the realistic, sensitive oldster facing the futility of living in dying surroundings. But Mr. Heston is simply a rough cop chasing standard bad guys. Their 21st-century New York occasionally is frightening but it is rarely convincingly real.“

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it an excellent percent rating. 

It was nominated for a Hugo at DisCon II, the year Sleeper won.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) BIG SQUEEZE. “Games Workshop Freezes Assets Amid Worldwide Seller Takedown” – Spikeybits has a long report about the litigation.

Games Workshop has initiated a worldwide Warhammer crackdown, suing 280 sellers, freezing accounts, and sales platforms.

If you’ve checked your favorite online marketplace lately and noticed a few listings mysteriously vanish, you’re not imagining things. Games Workshop just dropped the legal equivalent of an orbital bombardment—suing 280 sellers across the globe and freezing their assets in one sweeping move.

We’re talking shut-down stores, locked accounts, and some very panicked vendors. Some were clearly pushing counterfeit kits, while others got hit for less obvious reasons, like using the word Citadel in a brush holder listing. Let’s break down who got caught in the blast radius, why it matters, and what this means for the rest of us trying to hobby in peace….

(15) TRAILER PARK. Netflix is airing Old Guard 2.

Andy (Charlize Theron) and her team of immortal warriors are back, with a renewed sense of purpose in their mission to protect the world. With Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) still in exile after his betrayal, and Quynh (Veronica Ngô) out for revenge after escaping her underwater prison, Andy grapples with her newfound mortality as a mysterious threat emerges that could jeopardize everything she’s worked towards for thousands of years. Andy, Nile (KiKi Layne), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), Nicky (Luca Marinelli) and James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) enlist the help of Tuah (Henry Golding), an old friend who may provide the key to unlocking the mystery behind immortal existence. Directed by Victoria Mahoney, and also starring Uma Thurman, The Old Guard 2 is an emotional, adrenaline-pumping sequel, based on the world created by Greg Rucka and illustrator Leandro Fernandez.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Danny Sichel, Rich Lynch, Michael J. Walsh, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 5/1/25 If You’re Looking For That Pixel, It’s Over In That Scroll, Not This One

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(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. 

Larry Niven

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(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.]

Pixel Scroll 4/26/25 (Light) Years To You, Space Family Robinson, Earworms Love You More Than Etaoin Shrdlu

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(1) CEMETERY DANCE KERFUFFLE HAS CONSEQUENCES. StokerCon today announced on Facebook a punitive action against small press Cemetery Dance in response to publisher Richard Chizmar’s exchange with an author who wrote to him seeking overdue royalties.

Due to recent information coming to light, Cemetery Dance will not be allowed to hear pitches during StokerCon. The Horror Writers Association stands up for the rights of its members, including the right to receive royalties as contracted, to have their works published as contracted, and to have its members treated with civility and respect. Cemetery Dance appears to be lacking in all of these areas.

Todd Keisling is the author whose experience at the hands of Cemetery Dance publisher Richard Chizmar led to HWA’s action. It seems he did finally get paid.

Screencaps of the exchanges were posted by Keisling in comments on Facebook after Chizmar doubled down on calling Todd a funny little man and then did a “dirty delete” of the comment.

Several authors have followed up with comments about having to dun Cemetery Dance for payment.

(2) MAURICE BROADDUS’ BOOKSHELF. Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was “Shelfies #33: Maurice Broaddus”. Photo at the link.

The why I do what I do shelf. This is the shelf of books that have inspired me or push me to do what I do. Futureland (Walter Mosley) was the first book that made me re-think my writing trajectory. When I read it, I thought to myself “we can do that?” It was the first sf book I read that had characters who looked like me, that had worldbuilding done through a different cultural lens….

(3) TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, CHAPTER 37. Victoria Strauss introduces Denise Beck-Clark’s writeup before turning over the microphone in “Guest Post: My Twenty-Four Hour Dream” at Writer Beware.

I’ve written many scam case studies and investigations on this blog, all of which reference and/or describe writers’ direct experiences (while protecting their identities, as Writer Beware always promises to do). But when the essay below landed in my inbox this week, it presented the perfect opportunity to offer a different perspective: a writer’s own first-person description of her encounter with a scammer.

The scam in question is an extremely common one: out-of-the-blue contact from someone claiming to be a well-known film producer/famous movie director/executive with a major production company supposedly eager to turn the writer’s book into a movie. The essay details all the typical elements of this often-elaborate fraud: praise and promises carefully calibrated to manipulate the writer’s hopes and dreams (and ego), contracts and other items that lend a veneer of authenticity, even a phone call from the famous director attached to the project! But also warning signs, which this writer didn’t ignore but too many writers do–such as American movie people speaking with strong foreign accents.

Denise Beck-Clark has kindly given me permission to use her name and bio (at the bottom of the post). Hopefully her experience will help other writers recognize and avoid this type of scam. (My favorite part of the story: when the scammer recommends using Writer Beware.)…

(4) JOSH ROUNTREE Q&A. “Nuts & Bolts: Author Josh Rountree on Transitioning From Short Stories to Novels” on the Horror Writers Association blog.

Q: How is writing a novel different from writing short fiction?

A: I don’t think there’s one perfect answer for this, but in general I think short stories and novels require us to access different parts of our writer brains.

Being a short story writer, my brain is always telling me to tighten, tighten, tighten. Leave nothing in the story that’s not important to character, advancing plot, etc. You try to make every sentence you write do double duty.

When I transitioned to working on a novel, I felt that same instinct, and I had to remind myself that it’s okay to let things breath.  I can go deeper into the characters, their personal stories, and figure out who these people are on a deeper level. I still want every sentence to work hard, advancing the story and building the character, but I can be a bit more leisurely about it.

Some people are skilled at one form and not the other. I think I’m one of them. Short stories come easily to me, but novels are much more challenging.  I wrote a half dozen novels that will never see the light of day, for good reason. Books that I thought were wonderful at the time, but with hindsight I can see they’re a mess. As much as I love short story writing, I did want to prove to myself I could write a novel, but the process became discouraging with each new failure.

Finally, I decided to split the difference and see if I could write a novella.  I told myself it was really nothing more than a longer short story. I was consciously trying to trick myself, and ultimately it worked.

(5) ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD Q&A. There are four Murderbot questions near the end: “Alexander Skarsgård: The Empire Interview” at Empire Online.

How did you approach that evolution, of portraying a machine that is becoming a bit more human?

Ironically, I found Murderbot more relatable than most characters I’ve ever played.

(6) NEW AI COPYRIGHT SUIT. “Publisher of PCMag and Mashable Sues OpenAI” reports the New York Times. (Behind a paywall.) “Ziff Davis, which owns more than 45 media properties, is accusing the tech company of infringing on the publisher’s copyrights and diluting its trademarks.”

… In a 62-page complaint filed in federal court in Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated, Ziff Davis says the tech company has “intentionally and relentlessly reproduced exact copies and created derivatives of Ziff Davis works,” infringing on the publisher’s copyrights and diluting its trademarks. It claims that OpenAI used Ziff Davis content to train its artificial intelligence models and generate responses through its popular ChatGPT chatbot.

“OpenAI has taken each of these steps knowing that they violate Ziff Davis’s intellectual property rights and the law,” the complaint says.

The company is seeking at least hundreds of millions of dollars in its lawsuit, according to two people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for OpenAI said in a statement that its models were “grounded in fair use,” referring to the legal standard for use of copyrighted material….

(7) COLONEL MUSTARD IN THE MOVIE THEATER WITH THE CASH REGISTER. CrimeReads says it’s time to praise this 1985 movie: “The Clues, the Clueless, and the Critics: Appreciating Clue” at CrimeReads.

…[It] is this latter element of the film (the board game come to life) that all its contemporary critics found both equally vexing and ingenious. The film, written and directed by Johnathan Lynn, features three different endings. Three different outcomes to the mystery, just as is possible in the board game. There is no motive in the board game, so one must be supplied for the film to have any meaning. That is, if it strives for meaning. It doesn’t. Instead, it embraces the randomness of a shuffled card deck, offering three random endings that might satisfy the clues in the story as well as the next.

This is what Ebert in referencing in the aforementioned quote, the start of his review of the film—an element that, on its own, he found brilliant. “The way Paramount is handling its multiple endings,” he wrote, “is ingenious. They’re playing each of the endings in a third of the theaters where the movie is booked. If this were a better movie, that might mean you’d have to drive all over town and buy three tickets to see all the endings.” He concludes, though, “[w]ith ‘Clue,’ though, one ending is more than enough.”

But he was correct in finding creative merit in this aspect of Clue. Writing in 2021, the scholar Milan Terlunen noted that “Clue lays bare the inner workings of all detective stories. Clue‘s multiple endings aren’t just a clever cinematic translation of the board game’s structure — they reveal something crucial about the nature of clues in general.” He goes on to explain that the very point of “solving” a mystery is “the process of distinguishing clues from red herrings… [t]here’s always too much evidence in a detective story, which fits beautifully with the general too-muchness of Clue.”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 26, 2010 — Iron Man II

Fifteen years ago the sequel to the highly successful and quite popular Iron Man se premiered in select markets before opening nationwide on May 7. 

Titled just Iron Man 2, it was directed by Jon Favreau who had done the first film, and written by Justin Theroux, who had not done the first film (which had been written by a committee of Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. Hey it worked, didn’t it?) The first film got nominated for a Hugo at Anticipation. 

Iron Man 2 premiered at the El Capitan Theatre, a fully restored movie palace in Hollywood. This theater and the adjacent Hollywood Masonic Temple (which are now known as the El Capitan Entertainment Centre) are owned by the Disney Company and serve as the venue for a majority of the Disney film premieres.

Although fandom is very fond of saying it did substantially worse than the first film at the box office that’s a lie as it actually did better. Iron Man did five hundred and eighty million against one hundred and forty million in costs, whereas this film took in six hundred and thirty million against the same production costs. 

So how was it received by critics at the time? Anthony Lane at the New Yorker liked it better than its competitors Spider-Man and Superman: “To find a comic-book hero who doesn’t agonize over his supergifts, and would defend his constitutional right to get a kick out of them, is frankly a relief.” 

Roger Ebert writing for the Chicago Sun-Tribune was impressed: “Iron Man 2 is a polished, high-octane sequel, not as good as the original but building once again on a quirky performance by Robert Downey Jr.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather good seventy-two percent rating. 

It is of course streaming where all things Marvel are which is Disney+. I am going to have to subscribe, aren’t I?

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) ANTI-RULES. Karl K. Gallagher has done an interesting thought experiment on X:

(11) BATTLING THE BLAHS. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Luke Holland considers the declining fortunes of assorted TV ‘super-franchises’ and comes up with some radical suggestions for reviving their fortunes: “May the force be with you! How to save every tired TV superfranchise, from Star Wars to Game of Thrones”.

It’s amazing to think that, not so very long ago, people were actually excited at the prospect of a new Star Wars show. Or when it emerged that a fresh Lord of the Rings saga was, through some kind of Gandalfian wizardry, being squeezed on to the small screen, the reaction was one of giddy awe. Even the faintest whisper of another trip to Hogwarts would have set the whole internet ablaze. And now? Well, here’s a test: there’s a new Harry Potter series coming out soon. How does that make you feel? Exactly.

There’s no doubt about it – a worrying number of what used to be the world’s most untouchable franchises are in trouble. But how did they arrive at this point of terminal audience ennui? And is there any route for them back into our hearts?

(12) TATOOINE-ALIKE. “Rare exoplanet orbits twin stars in ‘Star Wars’-like twist” reports Phys.org.

Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits at a 90-degree angle around a rare pair of strange stars—a real-life ‘twist’ on the fictional twin suns of Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine.

The exoplanet, named 2M1510 (AB) b, orbits a pair of young brown dwarfs—objects bigger than gas-giant planets but too small to be proper stars. Only the second pair of eclipsing brown dwarfs known—this is the first exoplanet found on a right-angled path to the orbit of its two host stars.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Birmingham made the surprise discovery using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The brown dwarfs produce eclipses of one another, as seen from Earth, making them part of an “eclipsing binary.”

Publishing their discovery in Science Advances, the researchers note that this is the first time such strong evidence for a “polar planet” orbiting a stellar pair has been collected.

Thomas Baycroft, a Ph.D. student at the University of Birmingham who led the study commented, “I’m particularly excited to be involved in detecting credible evidence that this configuration exists.’…

(13) TRAILER PARK. “Love Death + Robots Volume 4”. Extreming May 15 on Netflix.

The Emmy-winning anthology of twisted tales from strange worlds returns, with stories featuring MrBeast and the Red Hot Chili Peppers

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #98, A Column of Unsolicited Opinions

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“I Don’t Believe This Debt is Owed By Me…”; Why I Decided To Sue Dave McCarty, Part Deux

Photos of Chef the Wonder Paralegal by Chris Barkley

By Chris M. Barkley:

“Am I bugging you? Didn’t mean to bug ya. OK Edge, play the Blues!”

U2 lead singer Bono, finishing a political soliloquy against South Africa’s then apartheid policies during a performance of the song “Silver and Gold” during U2’s Rattle and Hum tour dates in Denver, Colorado, November 1987.

What has gone before:

  • On October 21st, 2023, I won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in Chengdu, China.
  • My award, along with a host of others were shipped from Chengdu to Dave McCarty, the 2023 Hugo Awards Administrator, who resides in Chicago, Illinois.
  • The release of the 2023 Hugo Award Final Ballot results and Nomination Statistics raised concerns and controversy.
  • In late January, the Hugo Awards arrived at Dave McCarty’s home, but many were damaged. McCartty states that there is money from the Chengdu con runners to have the awards repaired and will be dispersed in a timely manner.
  • On February 14, 2024, “The Report on Censorship and Exclusion” by myself and Jason Sanford was published, highlighting irregularities in the nomination and voting processes overseen by Dave McCarty.
  • Since then, some awards have been sent out to recipients but there has been no definitive accounting of who has received them. The current status of my Hugo Award is unknown.

There is no room for feelings in a court of law. 

Forget what you’ve seen on Perry Mason, LA Law, The Practice or Suits. When it comes to the law you’re better off keeping your feelings under lock and key.

Because in a court of law, either civil or criminal, the only things that matter are evidence and facts. Not conjecture, hearsay, opinions or, especially, feelings. 

Contrary to a good majority of people who support the current administration, we are a nation whose foundation and purpose is bound by laws and legislation, not people. Or feelings.

I have had my fair share of time inside courtrooms, fighting parking tickets, creditors and bad landlords. And I have had my fair share of victories and defeats.

In the previous Cook County Small Claims court hearing on March 27, David Lawrence McCarty claimed he did not feel he owed anything on the claim against him. On April 22, I received an untitled email from Mr. McCarty with a PDF attached of a Cook County court document signed by him stating that officially notifying me that he was going to participate in the upcoming legal proceedings.

On the morning of the hearing, I felt somewhat apprehensive about appearing on the scheduled Zoom call, even though I knew what the likely outcome was going to be.

As I set up my laptop for the hearing forty five minutes before the hearing, I tried to connect to the court website but my phone indicated that there was no internet service. My partner, Juli, who works from home, said that she received a text message from our internet provider that confirmed the area wide outage.

I was feeling a bit anxious about this development because while I could have easily attended over the phone, I felt that doing so felt a bit too impersonal for my taste.

As my anxiety was about to spike, Juli suggested an alternative; rather than waiting to see if the service was going to be restored, I should go over and connect at her vacationing daughter and son in law’s home ten minutes away. I checked my watch and agreed.

I easily zipped through the suburban forests and arrived with twenty minutes to spare. As I entered I faced my next obstacle, an enthusiastic, overly friendly and energetic eight month old chocolate Labrador named  Chef.

Chef, being the boundless ball of dogwood he is, made a pest of himself as I set up the laptop. With ten minutes to go, I decided to put Chef outside into the backyard so he could find some wildlife to chase. Except Chef had other plans.

I had placed the laptop on the dining room table facing the living room, with the expansive springlike vista of their backyard as a backdrop.

Chef, wanting my attention and affection, jumped up onto the window ledge, looking over my shoulder as I frantically tried to connect to the Cook County website. When I finally did, I saw Chef, his tongue dripping sideways out of his mouth, loudly pawing at the window in the background. 

I sighed and reversed my position to the other side of the table, lest the judge mistake Chef as my legal counsel.

I logged in and was acknowledged by the recording clerk with five minutes  to spare. After receiving my case “line number”, I muted my microphone and waited to be called. At 10:35 a.m., Cook County Judge Maria Barlow called the court to order and began hearing cases. I witnessed a number of cases involving rent disputes, property damage, skip trace reports on delinquent defendants and other personal disputes.

And as time passed, my nervousness dissipated. Judge Barlow called cases and worked her way through the call list as efficiently as possible, allowing attorneys, plaintiffs and defendants to have their say but swiftly cutting off any attempts to obfuscate or deflect from the matter at hand.

I also saw ordinary people, also afraid, frustrated and nervous as I am, striving to make themselves understood.

Finally, forty minutes into the session, Judge Barlow called our line number. She addressed the both of us:

Me: Here, Your Honor. 

Judge Barlow: All right, good morning.

Dave McCarty: Good morning. David McCarty here, Your Honor. 

JB: All right, good morning. Mr. McCarty, it looks like you filed your appearance and Mr. Barkley, you filed the case. Did you all want to go to mediation or you want to set this for trial?

Me: I am willing to go to mediation.

JB: Okay, what about you, Mr. McCarty?

DM: I don’t believe that this debt is owed by me, so I don’t see what mediation would do.

Me: Your Honor, this has been a long-going issue between myself and the defendant, and this could be settled in five minutes if the defendant were to take my settlement offer.

JB: Well, he just said he doesn’t believe he owes the debt, so what do you want me to do, Mr. Barkley? Other than set a trial and listen to the testimony and make a determination.

Me: Well, I’m perfectly willing to go to trial then.

JB: All right. Are you all available Thursday, June 26th at 9:30? It needs to come in person.

DM: That date works for me. Chris is remote, though, so I’ll go with what works for him.

Me: Did you say June 22nd?

JB: The 26th, 26th.

Me: June 26th?

JB: The first day. Yep.

Me:9:30? 

JB: Yep. In person, though, room 1102. Does that work?

DM: That works for me, Your Honor.

JB: All right. Mr. Barkley, Mr. McCarty, you all need to come with all of your witnesses in person, room 1102. With you, you’re going to bring three copies of any documents you want the court to see. Any questions, Mr. Barkley?

Me: I have no questions at this time, Your Honor.

JB: Any questions, Mr. McCarty?

DM: No questions, Your Honor.

JB: All right, I’ll see you both June 26th, 9:30 in the morning, in person.

Me: Thank you, Your Honor.

JB: All right, you all have a nice one.

DM: And you as well. Thank you.

And in a little over two minutes, it was over.

I was somewhat relieved that I had made myself clear in my presentation (although I, like a good many people I know, HATE hearing their voice over headphones).

And so, after some extensive contemplation (and eight White Castle sliders and a large Coke Zero later), I decided to contact Mr. McCarty directly via email to clearly and directly make my intentions known.

At 5:23 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, I sent the following:

24 April 2025


Circuit Court of Cook County – Case #202511033122

To: David L McCarty

From: Chris M. Barkley

To David L. McCarty, 

In court proceedings earlier today, you stated that you do not owe anything to myself, the Plaintiff in the case I filed against you on 5 February 2025.

In my filing, I contended that you are currently in possession of the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, which I was the recipient of on 21 October 2023, in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, the People’s Republic of China.

The 2023 Hugo Awards that were shipped to your home address arrived in Chicago, Illinois in late January 2024 and I have not received it yet. My filing puts the value of the Award at $3000.00.

In two court hearings, on 27 March 2025 and today, 24 April, you have refused arbitration and my verbal offers to settle this suit. Having failed to disperse my and other 2023 Hugo Award recipients has placed you in this somewhat precarious legal situation.

Cook County Judge Maria Barlow has set an in person trial for 26 June 2025, in Cook County Courtroom 1102 at 9:30 am, Central Standard time.

In the hopes of reaching an mutual agreement before the trial date, I am offering you the settlement in writing:

1) That you will send the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer bearing my name to my stated address on the court documents within two weeks of the date of this settlement offer.

2) You will include the designated winning Best Fan Writer envelope and the card bearing my name, to the same address, also within two weeks of this settlement offer.

3) I also request that you disperse any other 2023 Hugo Awards in your possession to the appropriate recipients within two weeks of the date of this settlement offer, with a public declaration (on either a social or a public media outlet of your choosing) that this has been accomplished.

Upon verification of the items above, the civil suit against you will be remitted in its entirety and no further legal action should be necessary. 

Cordially,

Chris M. Barkley

Cincinnati, Ohio

I also posted this email as an open letter pinned onto my Facebook page and to many sf news and fandom pages as well.

It is my most fervent hope that Mr. McCarty has either read the email or any of the many posts circulating on social media. Because I am only asking to fulfill the many pledges has has made to deliver the 2023 Hugo Awards to their rightful recipients.

Watch this space… 

Pixel Scroll 4/25/25 Knowing I’m On The Scroll Where You Click

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(1) MURDERBOT ACTOR Q&A. The actor who plays Ratthi is interviewed in “Next Big Thing: In Conversation With British Actor Akshay Khanna” at Grazia India.

British actor Akshay Khanna stars in Murderbot, a series about a security cyborg that is horrified by, but at the same time, drawn to humans.

Headlined by Alexander Skarsgård, the much-anticipated sci-fi comedy-thriller series Murderbot is all set to debut globally on May 16 on Apple TV+. Akshay Khanna, known for his work in the films Polite Society and Red, White & Royal Blue, speaks to us about stepping into the role of a scientist for the show, how he approaches sci-fi as a genre, and all the things that inspire him. 

GRAZIA: Murderbot sounds like an exciting project. Can you tell us what drew you to it?

AKSHAY KHANNA: I am such a massive nerd. Sci-fi is my favourite genre so when the audition came through, I pulled out all the stops, binged all the books, and scoured Reddit threads to get as solid a picture of the tone and universe as I could. It’s such a funny, brilliant series and I knew it would resonate with audiences. I knew I could fit in Martha Wells’ world, so I gave myself the best shot by taking up about 10 hours of my endlessly patient friend’s time obsessively trying to get the right take. It was well worth it…. 

G: How do you approach playing a character in such a unique genre?
AK: Sci-fi has a bit of a reputation of being quite dark, foreboding and serious. This show has a lighter tone – my character Ratthi is a free love space-hippie scientist, so I was able to let loose and have fun. …

(2) BARKLEY V. MCCARTY COURT HEARING. On April 24 another hearing was held by Cook County Small Claims Court on Chris Barkley’s suit against Chengdu Worldcon Hugo administrator Dave McCarty where Chris is attempting to get his 2023 Hugo trophy or $3000. McCarty has refused arbitration, and Barkley’s oral settlement offers, so now the judge has set the case for an in-person trial on June 26.

Barkley has published an open letter to McCarty on Facebook repeating the terms of his settlement offer.

1) That you will send the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer bearing my name to my stated address on the court documents within two weeks of the date of this settlement offer.

2) You will include the designated winning Best Fan Writer envelope and the card bearing my name, to the same address, also within two weeks of this settlement offer.

3) I also request that you disperse any other 2023 Hugo Awards in your possession to the appropriate recipients within two weeks of the date of this settlement offer, with a public declaration (on either a social or a public media outlet of your choosing) that this has been accomplished….

(3) BODLEIAN’S ORACLES EXHIBIT. [Item by Susan de Guardiola.] F&SF references spotted at the Bodleian Library (Oxford) exhibit “Oracles, Omens and Answers”. It’s an interesting exhibit but unless someone is already in Oxford it’ll be hard to see, as it closes on April 27. (Full information here.)

Discover how people have sought answers to life’s big questions throughout history.

Drawing on material from across time and cultures – from oracle bones from Shang Dynasty China (ca. 1250-1050 B.C.E.) to an autobiography of Ronald Reagan’s White House astrologer – Oracles, Omens and Answers will explore the different techniques humans have used to unveil the past, understand the present and predict the future.

From palm reading and astrology to weather and public health forecasting, see how societies have turned to divination to ask questions that resonate with us today: on health, relationships, money and politics.

Step into the world of divination and uncover the ways that humanity has tried to confront the unknown and uncertain.

Note: This exhibition includes a large continuous projection of spider divination practice, including images of the spiders in action.

(4) NYTIMES EASTERPUNK. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The steampunk-themed lead photo in the New York Times’ “Bunnies, Bonnets, Brights and Blooms at New York’s Easter Parade” article is visible without needing a NYT account.

(DPD notes: The rest of the pix are mundane. Impressive, but non-Easterpunk. Here’s a “gift” link to the full article: “Bunnies, Bonnets, Brights and Blooms at New York’s Easter Parade”.)

(5) CROSSOVER THE MOUNTAIN. Animation Magazine explains what it means when “SpongeBob Joins the ‘Star Trek’ Crew in New Paramount+ Promo”.

… “Find Your Mountain on Paramount+” is the latest chapter of Paramount+’s award-winning Mountain of Entertainment™ brand campaign, and the new ad is the third in a series of star-studded live-action brand spots featuring unexpected mashups that showcase the personalized content experience on Paramount+. Previous promos have featured mash-ups of Yellowjackets x Survivor and Mean Girls x Gladiator.

(6) BJO COA. John and Bjo Trimble’s daughter Lora has announced on Facebook a new address for Bjo.

They have moved mom to Skilled Nursing.

Ok peeps mom’s new address is

Betty Trimble
Cal vet Home west LA
RCFE, Room C138L, 11500 Nimitz Ave
West Los Angeles CA 90049
United States

(7) CASTING A SPELL. Although I couldn’t get it to produce numbers, Bill came up with a way to make NASA’s “Your Name in Landsat” feature, linked in yesterday’s Scroll, display “File 770”.

(8) GEORGE BARR (1937-2025). Fantasy and science fiction artist George Barr died April 19, 2025 at the age of 88 reports Steve Fahnestalk.

Barr was a seven-time Hugo nominee, five times for Best Fan Artist (winning once in 1968), twice for Best Professional Artist.

His early illustration venues included George Scithers’ Amra, Tom Reamy’s Trumpet and Locus.

His first professional illustration was the cover of the March 1961 Fantastic. He did many interior illustrations for Asimov’s Science Fiction, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, and Weird Tales. 

He was the 1976 Worldcon Fan Guest of Honor, and the 1994 Worldcon Artist Guest of Honor. During the 1994 appearance he memorably participated in a re-enactment of Bob Eggleton’s Hugo win after the absent winner impulsively flew to Canada to pick up his rocket in person.

Annette Lotz, a friend of the artist, called Eggleton after the ceremony and told him the news. She said he hyperventilated for a bit, then talked about flying up on the spur of the moment. When Lotz called him in the morning to see what he’d decided, Eggleton’s answering machine announced, “I’ve gone to Canada. I’ll be back Tuesday.”

Bob Eggleton’s impulsive trip to collect his Hugo delighted fans. He was publicly presented with his award at the start of the Masquerade by Barry Longyear and George Barr. Reenacting what he’d done the night before, Barr opened the envelope of nominees and read the name on the card, “What a surprise! — Bob Eggleton!”

Barr was born in Tucson, AZ, grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and later moved to Northern California. He is said to have been a talented pianist.

George Barr at the 1994 Worldcon. Photo by © Andrew Porter.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 25, 1999 — X-Files’ “The Unnatural” episode

Scully: Mulder, it’s such a gorgeous day outside. Have you ever entertained the idea of trying to find life on this planet? 

Mulder: I’ve seen the life on this planet Scully, and that is exactly why I am looking elsewhere.

X-Files’ “The Unnatural”

Twenty-six years ago on this evening on FOX, the David Duchovny written and directed  episode of X-Files  titled “The Unnatural” first aired. It is not connected to the underlying mythology of series, and thus is one of their Monster of the Week stories. Well, there might be monsters here. Or not. Certainly not in the usual sense of monsters. 

There are many spoilers here. You’ve been warned. There’s coffee and cherry pie elsewhere… 

We’ve aliens (as in Roswell, really just like those ones), baseball and the KKK. Well, only the latter are the monsters here if you ask me as the aliens definitely aren’t. Aliens loving to play baseball? How can they possibly be monsters? 

We would have had Darren McGavin here too but he suffered a stroke after he was cast as one of the principal characters, but after the stroke, he was replaced by M. Emmet Walsh whom you’ll recognize as Bryant in Blade Runner. McGavin never filmed anything again though one credit is dated after his stroke. 

(He had been in two episodes here playing the same character, Agent Arthur Dales, “Travellers “and “Aqua Mula”. They had planned on him wearing the pork pie hat and the suit that Kolchak wore but the film company said, well, those words can’t be repeated here according to McGavin.) 

It had a notable cast, so I’ll list it: Frederic Lane, M. Emmet Walsh, Jesse L. Martin, Walter T. Phelan, Jr.  Brian Thompson and Paul Willson.

Reception for this episode is exceptionally good. Them Movie Reviews said of it that, “It is truly a credit to Duchovny that The Unnatural works at all, let alone that it turns out as a season highlight. There are any number of memorable and striking visuals in The Unnatural. The sequence where Dales discovers Exley’s true nature is one of the most distinctive shots in the history of The X-Files.”

While Doux Reviews stated “Think about it for a minute. This is an episode about baseball players in the 1940s. They are not only black in a time when being so could be life threatening, they are aliens. Our two heroes are, for the most part, nowhere to be seen throughout this hour. This story should never have worked. It did and it does on every subsequent re-watch. Written and directed by David Duchovny, this is an earnest hour of television. Duchovny took a premise that could have been silly and inane beyond the telling of it and chose to take the whole thing seriously. Because he does, we do as well.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give the series as a whole an outstanding eighty-six percent rating. 

X-Files is streaming on Hulu. I really need to do a watch of it as I know that I’ve not seen all of it, so that alone would justify a subscription to that service. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) WINDYCON 50 CONREPORT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just put up an advance-post ahead of its next seasonal edition of a convention report of Windycon 50 in Chicago, USA.

Only three days after a national election widened the already factious divisions in the United States, we fans of SF met in a Chicago suburb for Windycon 50, the longest-running con in the area. Some attendees felt worried and threatened by the US Presidential election results.

At the opening ceremony, the co-chairs, Daniel Gunderson and Vlad Stockman, issued a call for unity and understanding. They quoted from a speech in Babylon 5 about the need to show each other kindness and love because “we are one.” Over the weekend, although the election was not forgotten, it also didn’t impose itself on any activities….

(12) THE CLASS OF ’25. Clarion West has announced the members of the Clarion West Class of 2025. The workshop will be conducted virtually this summer. They will be working with Maurice Broaddus, Carlos Hernandez, Diana Pho, Martha Wells, and the Clarion West staff. 

  • Aishatu Ado (Cologne, Germany)
  • Rida Altaf (Karachi, Pakistan)
  • Krushna Dande (Aurangabad, India)
  • Kehkashan Khalid (Karachi, Pakistan/Jeddah, Saudi Arabia)
  • Angel Leal (Texas, USA)
  • Ricardo Morales Bonilla (Mexico City, Mexico)
  • Plangdi Neple (Nigeria)
  • K.W. Onley (Maryland, USA)
  • Anaïs Ornelas Ramirez (Mexico City, Mexico)
  • Rukman Ragas (Colombo, Sri Lanka)
  • M.R. Robinson (VA, USA)
  • Victoria N. Shi (CA, USA)
  • Sonia Sulaiman (Wawiiatanong/Windsor Ontario, Canada)
  • Miguel Torhton (Mexico City, Mexico)
  • Travis Trusty (Los Angeles, CA, USA)

(13) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to pig out on pork belly with Jarrett Melendez in Episode 252 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Jarrett Melendez

Awesome Con is always a blast, and not just because it brings back memories of the first comic book convention I attended a lifetime ago when I was only 15. But also because I get to chat with creators I’d never encounter elsewhere on my more science fictional con circuit. This time around I got to dine with and you get to eavesdrop on Jarrett Melendez, author of the graphic novel Chef’s Kiss, which was a 2023 Alex Award winner as well as both an Eisner Award and GLAAD Award nominee. The sequel, Chef’s Kiss Again, will be released in 2026.

As a cookbook author and food journalist, Melendez has written countless articles and developed hundreds of original recipes for Bon Appetit, Epicurious, Saveur, and Food52. He’s written seven cookbooks to date, including My Pokémon Baking Book, RuneScape: The Official Cookbook, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Official Cookbook, The Official Wednesday Cookbook, The Official Borderlands Cookbook, and others.

Melendez is currently working on Tales of the Fungo: The Legend of Cep, to be published by Andrews McNeel, plus Fujoshi Warriors, an action comedy comic miniseries, and a love letter to both fujoshis and magical girl anime and manga. Melendez has also contributed to award-winning and nominated anthologies, including Young Men in Love, All We Ever Wanted, and Young Men in Love 2: New Romances.

We discussed how his loves of food and writing combined into a career, the way running comic book conventions gave him the contacts he needed when it was time to create comics of his own, which franchise inspired his sole piece of fan fiction, the comics creator whose lessons proved invaluable, how he knew Chef’s Kiss needed to be a graphic novel rather than a miniseries, the way he balanced multiple plot arcs so they resolved in parallel, the magical pig whose taste is more trustworthy than any chef you’ve ever met, his early crush on Encyclopedia Brown, how he cooks up recipes connected with franchises such as Pokémon and Percy Jackson, the traumatic childhood incident which became the catalyst for his upcoming graphic novel, and much more.

(14) RASPBERRY BERET. Jim Shull asks “Can Disney Studios Paris Be Fixed?” in an installment of his Disney Journey series.

Disney Studios Paris is transforming into Disney Adventure World. This episode explores the history of the park, its present and its future. And how Universal Studios Great Britain may impact DSP as it changes.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Susan de Guardiola, Bill, Daniel Dern, 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 Daniel Dern.]