25 All My Pixels Have Filed Away, Tom Mourned Scrollfully

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(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.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics writes inspirational stories.
Off the Mark has something most book clubs don’t.
Reality Check self-rejects a time travel idea.
Rubes has a well-wrapped pun.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal misjudges AI.
Speed Bump really understands artists.

(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 6/2/25 All Scrolls Bright And Beautiful, All Pixels Great And Small

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) PROPS TO VARLEY. Polygon’s Tasha Robinson says “Only one science fiction novel really predicted AI right”.

The current cultural fascination and frustration with artificial intelligence is nothing new. As far back as the 1921 Czech play R.U.R. — the workers-rights story that first coined the term “robot” — science fiction writers have channeled fears about artificial intelligence into stories where robots represent (or just bring out) the absolute best or worst of humanity…..

…John Varley’s 1992 novel Steel Beach lays out a wild far-future world where aliens have destroyed human life on Earth. Humanity has decamped to the Moon (the unwelcoming “steel beach” of the title) and other colonies, forming the “Eight Worlds” system in which many of Varley’s stories and novels are set. In the future of Steel Beach, humans run dinosaur ranches for meat, alter and rewrite their bodies at a whim, and grow organic brain-to-computer interfaces so they can operate devices with a thought. But the book still gets at some aspects of real-world AI better than most sci-fi books set in near-present futures. In particular, Varley doesn’t just consider the impact of AI on humanity — he digs into the impact of humanity on AI….

… The idea that most people turn this endlessly sympathetic companion into nothing more than a hands-free texting tool seems improbable. But notably, Hildy’s own relationship with the CC is a lot more complicated, emotional, and invested, which suggests Hildy isn’t necessarily aware of how other people interface with their omnipresent overlord.

The reasoning behind that relationship is what really makes Steel Beach feel so insightful about the problems with present-day AI. Steel Beach is an episodic, expansive novel that uses Hildy’s search for a meaningful, satisfying life as a frame for vignettes about the futures of journalism, body modification, relationships, capitalism, literacy, mental health, escapism, and a whole lot more. (Especially sex: The book’s provocative opening line is “In five years, the penis will be obsolete.”) But Hildy’s relationship with the Central Computer is the throughline that holds it all together….

(2) WE WANT – INFORMATION. [Item by Steven French.] “Fun, flirty and far too brief: why did Ncuti Gatwa leave Doctor Who so soon?” The Guardian doesn’t really answer the question but it’s hard to disagree with their conclusion:

Gatwa’s Doctor was fun, flirty and full of joy, but it is difficult not to conclude that we hadn’t seen enough of him in the role, and now we never will….

… The show sometimes feels stuck between a rock and a hard place in the modern era. It has to compete in a streaming environment where grownup fans also watch shows such as Andor or The Last of Us and compare it directly with those. The BBC though is also still trying to make a show whose primary purpose is to be broadcast on Saturday evening on BBC One for a communal multigenerational family audience gathered around the TV. And that is an audience that is increasingly vanishing in houses with multiple screens and multiple viewing options.

Gatwa’s era also seemed to be riding two slightly conflicting horses. Russell T Davies returned as showrunner with the nostalgia rush of having David Tennant and Catherine Tate back in the Tardis for three 60th anniversary specials, then promised a softish reboot with the aim of picking up new audiences and starting afresh as “Season one” with a new Disney+ international distribution deal. But he also opted to bring back companions from the 1960s and 1980s, and have the return of niche villains and enemies that necessitated flashbacks to episodes from the 1970s, which didn’t exactly scream “accessible”….

(3) SPEEDY OPTION. [Item by Dann.] Barely a month after initial release, James Cameron has picked up the film rights to Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils. It’s nice to see good karma in action.“James Cameron’s Company Has Picked Up the Rights to Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils” at Reactor.

… Cameron continues, “I’m looking forward to the writing process with him, though I’m certain this adaptation will practically write itself because Joe writes very visually, almost in scenes, and with a very cinematic structure. I can’t wait to dig into this as I wind down on Avatar: Fire and Ash. It will be a joyful new challenge for me to bring these indelible characters to life.”

The Devils was published by Tor Books less than a month ago, on May 13th….

(4) THERE WAS A RACE IN HOLLYWOOD, TOO. “75 Years Ago, A Shockingly Dark Sci-Fi Adventure Tried To Predict The Space Race” – Inverse remembers.

Several years before the Space Race officially began, two suspiciously similar Hollywood movies raced to launch their lunar expeditions onto the big screen. And even though it had a year-long head start, Destination Moon ended up as the Soviet Union to Rocketship X-M’s United States.

George Pal Productions had started working on the former in 1949, proudly teasing its state-of-the-art construction, scientific accuracy, and Technicolor visuals in an extensive marketing campaign. But when various snags delayed the release date, Lippert Pictures saw an opportunity to steal its thunder, and landed Rocketship X-M in theaters 75 years ago today.

Remarkably, the finished product rocketed into theaters just 25 days after shooting wrapped. And while the fast-tracked film doesn’t soar to the same heights as its costlier rival — it’s largely in black and white, for one thing, while the lack of any expert consultants soon becomes abundantly clear — it still stands as a fascinating curio….

(5) ON THE AIR. Phil Nichols’ new episode of Bradbury 100 is about “Radio Classics – Dimension X / X Minus One”, two series that adapted Ray’s work.

Here’s another new episode of Bradbury 100, and this time I return to Ray’s stories in the golden age of radio, looking at the classic science fiction drama series Dimension X and X Minus One.

I’ve mentioned these shows before on the podcast, but I figured it was time to make them the focus.

Although Ray Bradbury was himself a scriptwriter and dramatist, he didn’t do any writing specifically for these two shows. And unlike the series Suspense (which I looked it in episode 61), Dimension X and X Minus One only produced adaptations of stories which had already been published.

But what terrific adaptations they were! With scripts by future Emmy Award winners Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, these series never put a foot wrong. The scripts are pretty close to the original stories, without being simple, lazy transcriptions.

In this episode I include clips of many of the Bradbury-based episodes, the most striking of which is the run of episodes based on stories from The Martian Chronicles. But if you’ve never listened to a Dimension X or X Minus One in its entirety, I would urge you to do so. Go to a darkened room, and let your mind conjure up… well, something like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits… or wherever your imagination takes you…

(6) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter says that it paid for tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants to know their Nineteenth Century sff.

Final Jeopardy: Category: Science Fiction

Clue: Referring to what’s wrongly believed to be a meteorite, “The Falling Star” is the title of Chapter 2 of this 1898 novel.

Wrong question: What is “The Time Machine”?

Correct question: What is “War of the Worlds”?

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

June 2, 1915 — Lester del Rey. (Died 1993.)

By Paul Weimer: For me, first and foremost, Lester del Rey was a publisher and an editor. Many of the books I first encountered reading science fiction, back 4 decades ago, were published by Del Rey, which he founded with his wife Judy Lynn del Rey. And for a good while, that’s all I thought that he was (although his legacy and influence as a publisher is huge).

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology was a gateway to a number of authors for me. Theodore Sturgeon. Murray Leinster. Fritz Leiber (for “Coming Attraction”, although I would soon discover Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser). And Lester del Rey, for “Helen O’Loy”. I had read enough Greek Mythology by that point to get the idea that this was a Helen of Troy story, and it was perhaps the first story I read where a robot was an object of romantic interest. Helen’s story, and the tragedy of it moved me deeply.

I soon came across other del Rey stories, here and there, randomly, sprinkled in best of collections and favorite science fiction stories and the myriad other SF anthologies that I read in the first decade of my science fiction reading.

But it was Harlan Ellison® who turned me onto perhaps the best and my favorite of the Lester del Rey stories. In one of his own collections about the relationship between men and Gods, he mentioned a Lester del Rey story “For I am a Jealous People”. I could see the biblical allusion in the title, and I decided to seek it out.

I recently re-read it, and it still slaps, hard. “For I am a Jealous People” is a kicker of a story, where the Abrahamic God is real, has always been real. But now, God is angry with humanity and fed up with us, and basically has sided with aliens invading Earth and its possessions. That is a smash to the face to begin with, but it’s humanity response to this revelation in the story that really brings it home to me, the power of a del Rey story at its best. Humanity’s response could have been any number of plausible results. Regret. Sadness. Despair. Resignation. Anger. Del Rey goes for “Good. Bring it!” It’s a muscular answer to the question of what to do when even God is against you, and it remains powerful to this day.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal clarifies Star Trek transporters.
Brewster Rockit detects dad jokes.
Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee delivers a ghastly pun of its own.
Close to Home sets weird boundaries.
Dinosaur Comics argues with the Eighteenth Century.
Free Range has its own variation of that argument, asking what if the revolution started and no one saw it?
Six Chix embraces a trend. Sort of.

(9) KINGPIN FOR MAYOR. The Brooklyn Eagle is there when “’Daredevil’ gives an ominous look to Brooklyn Borough Hall”.

Downtown Brooklyn passers-by were treated to moody lighting and fog effects at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Thursday evening when the Disney+ series “Daredevil: Born Again” filmed a scene on the plaza steps.

Banners showing a man’s stern face (“Mayor Fisk,” aka crime boss “Kingpin,” played by Brooklyn-born actor Vincent D’Onofrio) and the words “New York Born Again” hung between the pillars; an armored vehicle was parked on the plaza; and flowers were piled on the steps, giving the scene an ominous air.

Signs indicated the shoot was for a show named “Out of the Kitchen,” but crew members told the Brooklyn Eagle that is the working title for the most recent incarnation of “Daredevil.” The series features Charlie Cox as blind attorney Matt Murdock — the superhero Daredevil — reprising his role from Marvel’s Netflix television series….

‘Daredevil: Born Again,’ filmed at a transformed Brooklyn Borough Hall Thursday and Friday evening. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

(10) OF COURSE THEY DO. “Meta plans to replace humans with AI to assess risks” – NPR has the story.

For years, when Meta launched new features for Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, teams of reviewers evaluated possible risks: Could it violate users’ privacy? Could it cause harm to minors? Could it worsen the spread of misleading or toxic content?

Until recently, what are known inside Meta as privacy and integrity reviews were conducted almost entirely by human evaluators.

But now, according to internal company documents obtained by NPR, up to 90% of all risk assessments will soon be automated.

In practice, this means things like critical updates to Meta’s algorithms, new safety features and changes to how content is allowed to be shared across the company’s platforms will be mostly approved by a system powered by artificial intelligence — no longer subject to scrutiny by staffers tasked with debating how a platform change could have unforeseen repercussions or be misused….

(11) BEFORE AND AFTER DARK. [Item by Steven French.] Nora Claire Miller on screen savers, poetry and her gran’s iMac in The Paris Review: “Recurring Screens”.

The world’s first screen saver was not like a dream at all. It was a blank screen. It was called SCRNSAVE, and when it was released in 1983 it was very exciting to a niche audience. It was like John Cage’s 4’33″ but for computers—a score for meted-out doses of silence….

…My grandmother’s iMac spent most of its time showing Flurry, a dancing rainbow spider that was the first-ever Macintosh screen saver when it debuted in 2002. My grandmother was very tech-averse and preferred to write on a yellow legal pad. Whenever she needed to use the iMac, she’d call me with questions. “Thank goodness you picked up,” she’d say. “An alternate universe has emerged in the corner of my screen. Can you help?”

I quickly gave up on trying to convince her to use words like “window” or “application” instead of “planet” or “dimension.” Her descriptions felt closer to the real experience of using a computer—like trying to fly a spaceship. She read a lot of sci-fi. I helped her download Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven from iTunes as an audiobook. We listened together as a man altered collective reality with his dreams….

(12) BLACK MIRROR EFFECTS. Animation World Network takes us “Inside the VFX of Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror – USS Callister: Into Infinity’ Season 7 Finale”.

Black Mirror’s 7^th season finale, “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” a sequel to the fan-favorite 2017 Season 4 opening episode, “USS Callister,” picks up years later where the ship’s crew, led by Captain Nanette Cole, is stranded in an infinite virtual universe, fighting for survival against 30 million players. MacLachlan spoke with AWN about how he and the visual effects team began with a fresh visual direction and an ambitious VFX brief, modernizing the original look while employing a collaborative pipeline to produce needed shots, and why family visits to set might help inspire a new generation of digital artists….

…He adds, “Some of the stuff we designed as we did the VFX, and some of the things Union VFX did were absolutely fantastic. You know, the teleportation, the defragging / fragging, the spaceship design, the space battles, they were all new elements this time around.”

“There are north of 600 VFX shots in the episode, which is a significant shot count,” MacLachlan shares. “The largest body of work was obviously the space battle sequences in and around the Heart of Infinity,” he says. “There’s a lot of fully CG content — space battles, explosions, laser fire, dynamic camera moves.”

Designing the action around a unique central structure was critical. “A key feature of the show was that everything is moving in and around this swirling, gyroscopic behemoth of a center of the Heart of Infinity,” MacLachlan says. “The team had to coordinate shots where the camera moves in and around a moving obstruction. I can’t think of another space battle where the object is shifting this way.”…

(13) PERSISTENT TECH. BBC Future also keeps an eye on the past: “Obsolete, but not gone: The people who won’t give up floppy disks”.

…Floppy disks or diskettes emerged around 1970 and, for a good three decades or so, they were the main way many people stored and backed up their computer data. All the software and programmes they bought came loaded onto clusters of these disks. They are a technology from a different era of computing, but for various reasons floppy disks have an enduring appeal for some which mean they are from dead.

The original 8in (20cm) and 5.25in (13cm) floppy disks were actually floppy – you could bend them slightly without harming the magnetic material inside.

But the later 3.5in (8.75cm) disks were arguably the most successful. It is these that came to be immortalised as the “Save” icon in many computer applications even today. The 3.5in disks, which Espen Kraft uses, are small and rigid, not actually floppy, but that means they are both more robust and easier to store….

…Kraft adores floppy disks because they help him creatively, he says. He doesn’t want to make music that merely apes 1980s styles – rather, he wants it to sound like it actually came from that decade.

It’s when Kraft is using antiquated equipment that he makes his best music, he says. Feeling the ruggedness of a treasured disk as it slots into a dusty old drive. In his opinion, more modern equipment with gigabytes of storage doesn’t come close. He even performs live shows with floppy disks and has used them during musical appearances on Norwegian television.

To this day, Kraft records new sounds and samples straight onto this physical format, including crickets singing in the forest near his house in the evening. If you pitch that cacophony down by 10 octaves or so, and add some reverberation as well as a little delay, then lo: “You have instant music,” says Kraft. “A very nice custom soundstage,” he says….

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

Pixel Scroll 5/31/25 Scroll Tuesday Night

Posted on May 31, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING. And don’t read the URLs of these two links, either, which also contain the spoiler.

Gizmodo asks “What the Hell Just Happened on ‘Doctor Who’?” – and then answers the question. No spoiler in the first paragraph, fortunately.

Doctor Who‘s latest season has just come to an end—and with it, we just got hit with an absolute shocker of a cliffhanger. Let’s discuss, shall we?

The Guardian’s storygoes even farther with a spoileriffic headline that I won’t quote fully: “Doctor Who finale sees…”

(2) LOCUS APPEAL NEARS END. The “Locus Mag 2025” fundraiser at Indiegogo ends today. With seven hours still to run it had taken in $80,375. How much does that help?

…With rising inflation, tariffs, and shipping costs, it now costs over $725,000 a year to publish the magazine, run the website, and present the awards each year. Through subscriptions, advertising, and existing donations and sponsors, we can count on $400,000 in anticipated revenue next year. That means we need to raise an additional $325,000 to make it all the way through 2025….

So there are probably more fundraising efforts to come.

(3) THE 20,000 LEAGUE MISSION. “Star Trek Alum Shazad Latif Captains the ‘Nautilus’ in First Trailer for Rescued Sci-Fi Series” – Collider profiles the show.

Star Trek: Discovery‘s Shazad Latif is going where no man has gone before… but this time, instead of outer space, he’s headed to the hidden depths of the ocean. Latif stars as Captain Nemo in Nautilus, AMC’s new reimagining of Jules Verne‘s classic science fiction novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The show’s new trailer sees him set sail in the titular super-submarine, even as he’s pursued to the ends of the Earth. The series premieres June 29 on AMC and AMC+.

In the new trailer for the 19th-century-set science fiction series, which serves as a prequel to Verne’s novel, Nemo is the prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company, a globe-spanning corporation that wields more power than any government. He and his fellow prisoners are put to work building the Nautilus, an advanced submarine that the Company hopes will further tighten its grip on the world’s seaways. However, Nemo foments a rebellion among his fellow prisoners and takes command of the ship, escaping into the depths with his fellow prisoners as his crew. The Mercantile Company is soon in hot pursuit, with a dogged mariner assigned to bring Nemo down; meanwhile, Nemo has an unwilling passenger on board. Will he have his revenge on his captors, or will the Company deep-six his ambitions?…

(4) NYT’S PETER DAVID TRIBUTE. The New York Times profile is terrific — “Peter David, Comic Book Writer Who Repopularized the Hulk, Dies at 68” – link bypasses the paywall. Here’s the very end of the piece:

…Mr. David, a gregarious soul who was befriended by movie stars and celebrities in the science-fiction realm, fondly remembered in his memoir the night he was watching the original “Star Wars” movie on television and its protagonist, Mark Hamill, called. A budding comic book writer himself, Mr. Hamill wanted to know: Could Mr. David write the introduction to a collection of his work?

“Uh, hey, Mark,” Mr. David said. “I’m watching you about to blow up the Death Star.”

“I can call back,” Mr. Hamill replied.

“No, that’s OK,” Mr. David told him. “I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.”

(5) QUACKING UP. Scott Edelman is back with Episode 23 of the Why Not Say What Happened? podcast: “Why Howard the Duck Was the Silver Surfer of the ’70s”. (And here’s several dozen platforms where it can be found.)

Join me and Neil Ottenstein for a rambling panel about Howard the Duck in which I share the Marvel Comics chaos which caused me to be hired there in 1974, my regrets over having written an issue of Omega the Unknown, my ethical queasiness about owning original art, what it means when I say I knew Stan Lee before he had hair, my terrifying Bullpen encounters with “Jumbo” John Verpoorten, why Howard the Duck was the Silver Surfer of the ’70s, my Times Square street theater with Steve Gerber, the time Howard the Duck had to be hatched instead of laid, how immaturity cost me Captain Marvel, the only time I ever saw Stan Lee get flustered, and more.

Among other things, Edelman recalls the time Howard the Duck couldn’t get laid – see the relevant comics panel here, and read the whole story here.

(6) HOW WUDE! [Item by Steven French.] Ben Child, in the Guardian’s “Week in Geek”, ponders a galaxy full of hangovers rather than hope: “Ryan Reynolds has pitched an ‘R-rated’ Star Wars. What would that look like?”

Take all the essential ingredients of Star Wars – samurais in space, adventure among the wookiees, aliens with backward syntax, evil cyborgs with a penchant for murder by telekinesis – then imagine George Lucas hadn’t given us all of that through a PG prism. This, it appears, is what Ryan Reynolds did when pitching to Disney. “I said, ‘Why don’t we do an R-rated Star Wars property?’” Reynolds told The Box Office podcast. “‘It doesn’t have to be overt, A+ characters. There’s a wide range of characters you could use.’ And I don’t mean R-rated to be vulgar. R-rated as a Trojan horse for emotion. I always wonder why studios don’t want to just gamble on something like that.”

Let’s imagine the scene: a gaggle of studio execs are nervously cowering before the Hollywood A-lister’s megawatt smirk as he reveals his idea for a take on George Lucas’s space opera that doesn’t hold back. This is Star Wars Tarantino-style. Perhaps Mando’s got a drug problem, or Chewie really does rip people’s arms off – and beat them to death with the wet ends. Somewhere over in Coruscant a Jedi slices a corrupt senator into symmetrical chunks without ever unsheathing his saber. Or maybe Reynolds just thinks the galaxy far, far away could use a little more Deadpool & Wolverine-style sweary irreverence.

He’s wrong. Push Star Wars too far into the realm of self-aware snark, or nudge it to start laughing at itself before the audience does, and you undercut the very thing that keeps fans tethered to its dusty, big-hearted mythos. We already have umpteen animated takedowns – Robot Chicken’s fever-dream dismemberments, Family Guy’s fart-laced remakes – and they’re fine, in their way. But if Star Wars ever starts mimicking the shows that exist solely to mock it, then the circle will be complete….

(7) THE THING OF SHAPES TO COME. Rich Horton’s reviews of the finalists continue at Strange at Ecbatan: “Hugo Ballot Review: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, by John Wiswell”.

… The story is told from the point of view of Shesheshen, who is a shapeshifting monster, or wyrm, and who has threatened the population of the Isthmus for some time. As the novel opens, Shesheshen is awakened early from her yearly hibernation by a familiar menace — monster hunters….

(8) CONCURRENT SEATTLE. ConCurrent Seattle, a one-day alternate program created in protest of the use of ChatGPT by the Seattle Worldcon, had raised almost half of its $5,000 budget as of yesterday.

The use of ChatGPT at WorldCon has been a breach of trust in an industry of writers whose work has been stolen to train genAI. ConCurrent, a one-day event being held on Thursday, August 14, 2025, at the ACT Theatre in downtown Seattle, is an alternative for those who want a convention with no genAI involved.

ConCurrent is not a replacement for WorldCon and will be free of charge and open to all….

(9) JAYANT NARLIKAR (1938-2025). [Item by Steven French.] The science journal Nature has an obituary of Jayant Narlikar who was not only Fred Hoyle’s PhD student and collaborator (together they developed an alternative theory of gravitation which rejected any Big Bang) but also wrote science fiction himself (his novel The Comet is still on the syllabus in some Indian schools). “Jayant Narlikar, visionary astrophysicist and science populariser, dies at 86”. He died on May 20.

… Narlikar’s influence extended well beyond academic circles. He was a dedicated science communicator and one of India’s earliest and most prolific writers of science fiction. A story exploring black holes and time dilation, submitted anonymously, won him his first award and launched a writing career that brought scientific ideas to a wider audience. His accessible and engaging popular science books became fixtures in school curricula and earned him the UNESCO Kalinga Prize in 1996….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 31, 1990 — Total Recall

By Paul Weimer: “Get your ass to Mars”.

Sure, I think as social satire The Running Man is probably better science fiction as a movie. But as a vehicle for 1980’s SF for Schwarzenegger that wasn’t Terminator, I think you can’t do better than one of my favorites, Total Recall. The excitement of a movie “based on a story by Philip K. Dick” (which I subsequently read and was confused by how little it actually had to do with it.)

But the movie is a corker from start to finish and so much of the movie is imprinted in my brain to this day. The movie’s insistence on keeping it very ambiguous, right to the end, if Quaid was dreaming or not , charmed me. I argued with my brother over this, who thought the “sweat drop” scene with Dr. Edgemar proved it was all real. I disagreed, and pointed out things like “Bluesky on Mars” being the name of his program, and how Melina resembled the woman programmed for his vacation. And if you listen to the commentary, Paul Verhoeven directed the movie with the point of view that it was all a dream, and Schwarzenegger acted with the point of view that it was reality. It makes for an interesting tension on screen and it works.

There are lots of little details that happen in the background. The change in geopolitical setup to a North-South Cold War. The Tokyo Samurai are trying to go for a fifth and deciding win in the World Series (so now the American Baseball leagues have teams in Japan…and the World Series is a best of nine affair). The movie is visually rich and generous like that, showing a lived in world that you can believe is real. Two worlds to be precise, both Earth and Mars. And the brutalist architecture pattern works for this authoritarian future.

And of course the movie is hideously violent. The body count is high.

The movie remains ever relevant with its critiques of colonialism, and authoritarianism. We are meant to side with the Free Mars movement, and maybe not until Cox’s Cohagen decides to kill everyone by asphyxiation does he really go from a tyrannical colonial figure who is vaguely understandable, to a true and undeniable monster that is irredeemable. But that steady revelation of just how horrible he can be starts with him looking sympathetic at first, and then unfurling his true nature and the extent of what he has done, and is willing to do. It’s a dive into authoritarian and colonialist mindsets, and in this day and age, even more relevant than ever.

And the movie follows through on the implications of its technology with the character beats. When Richter is told that Quaid/Hauser won’t remember anything, he just has to punch him hard, because of all what he’s put Richter through at this point. It’s a character beat that makes sense given the tech. And we have Chekov’s guns all over the place, which all fire, which propel us to the final confrontation. Sure, the “Ten second terraforming method of Mars” is bonkers and would not work. The movie doesn’t explain that there are more steps to the breathable atmosphere than melting the ice to get oxygen. I don’t care.

I read the novelization, done by Piers Anthony, because “I wanted to know more”. And I wish I hadn’t. I had not yet discovered how terrible Anthony was as a writer, but the novel’s insistence at each and every chance to say “yes this is real” over and over, was disappointing. Even at the end, when Quaid points out to Melina that she looks like the woman from Rekall, she casually says she used to do modeling for them. The book was determined to squash any ambiguity, and it was a major turn off. It did more solidly explain the terraforming, though and how it would work.

But the movie remains solid. Don’t bother with the remake. Watch the original. Don’t let me down, buddy, I’m counting on you.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee compares entertainments.
Wumo avoids a clichéd location.
xkcd says this is not an immediate concern.

(12) MURDERBOT SUITS UP. Alexander Skarsgård shows it’s a real challenge to pull on his costume in this TikTok video: “Discover the Morning Routines of Security Units in Murderbot”.

(13) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “How the iPhone Drove Men and Women Apart” is a hooky headline, but the real topic of Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times podcast (which is the source of the New York Times article) is the declining fertility rate in many countries. If the NYT article is paywalled, the podcast episode is available on YouTube under the title “Progressives Are Driving Themselves Into Extinction”.

…Douthat: What about culture apart from politics? Because, while it is the case that culture is determined to some degree by tech, the smartphone creates culture in its own way. It’s also the case that the issue of declining birthrates is not one that much of elite Western culture has taken seriously. It’s not something that’s entered into the mainstream cultural mind the way that the threat of climate change has done. So you could imagine if it became a more important part of the cultural imaginary — some kind of self-conscious attempt to treat this as an important issue.

Let’s say, right now people in Hollywood would feel bad if they were perceived to be not doing something to fight climate change or something. Hollywood used to make a lot of romantic comedies. It doesn’t really anymore. There’s still a few. But are there cultural scripts that could be written — whether in movies or TV or elsewhere — that you think could actually make a difference?

Evans: I think definitely, yes. And I think it would be wonderful if Hollywood promoted that and supported that. In fact, as a joke last year, I even wrote a comedy script about how Hollywood could support fertility and things like that.

Even though I’m totally on board with that — and I think that’s very important — there are several frictions. One, it’s very difficult to do cultural engineering today, because we have infinite options of entertainment at our fingertips — on Netflix and everything. So if you’re not that interested in a romantic comedy — you know, in China, a lot of the most popular films are about divorce. So it’s difficult to do cultural engineering. On top of that, as long as people are hooked on their smartphones, they might not have the social skills to do it.

I think another possible mechanism would be to use the tax system and to give massive tax incentives to people who have children, because that’s a positive externality….

(14) NUMBER NINE? NUMBER NINE? “Scientists Say They’ve Found a Dwarf Planet Very Far From the Sun” – this link bypasses the New York Times paywall. “The small world was found during a search for the hypothetical Planet Nine, and astronomers say the next time it will reach its closest point to the sun is in the year 26186.”

A sizable world has been found in a part of the solar system that astronomers once thought to be empty. It probably qualifies as a dwarf planet, the same classification as Pluto.

Temporarily named 2017 OF201, it takes more than 24,000 years to travel around the sun just once along a highly elliptical orbit, coming as close as 4.2 billion miles and moving as far out as 151 billion miles. (Neptune is just 2.8 billion miles from the sun.)

And 2017 OF201 may have implications for the hypothesis of an undiscovered planet, nicknamed Planet Nine, in the outer reaches of the solar system.

“We discovered a very large trans-Neptunian object in a very exotic orbit,” said Sihao Cheng, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J….

(15) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? [Item by Steven French.]

“My space-dog has no nose!”

“How does he smell?”

“Like a poisonous marzipan cloud!”

“From cat urine to gunpowder: Exploring the peculiar smells of outer space” at the BBC.

Scientists are analysing the smells of space – from Earth’s nearest neighbours to planets hundreds of light years away – to learn about the make-up of the Universe.

Jupiter, says Marina Barcenilla, is “a bit like a stink bomb”.

The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter has several layers of cloud, she explains, and each layer has a different chemical composition. The gas giant might tempt you in with the sweet aroma of its “poisonous marzipan clouds”, she says. Then the smell “would only get worse as you go deeper”.

“You would probably wish you were dead before you got to the point where you were crushed by the pressure,” she says.

“The top layer of cloud, we believe, is made of ammonia ice,” says Barcenilla, likening the stench to that of cat urine.” Then, as you get further down, you encounter ammonium sulphide. That’s when you have ammonia and sulphur together – a combination made in hell.” Sulphurous compounds are famously responsible for stinking of rotting eggs….

(16) RARA AVIS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Eat chicken — I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch. This is this week’s Nature cover story….

The cover shows an artist’s impression of Archaeopteryx, the oldest-known fossil bird, which lived some 150 million years ago. In this week’s issue, Jingmai O’Connor and colleagues describe the fourteenth known specimen of Archaeopteryx — colloquially known as the Chicago Archaeopteryx because it was acquired by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. This specimen is important because it is so well preserved: it is nearly complete and has not been crushed, which means it retains a remarkable level of detail. This, combined with painstaking preparation guided by micro-computed tomography, allowed the researchers to uncover fresh information about the skeleton, soft tissues and plumage of this iconic creature. Among the team’s findings are specialized inner secondary feathers called tertials on both wings, and an indication that creature’s foot pads were adapted for movement on the ground. The collection of newly identified features suggests that Archaeopteryx was adapted for some level of flight and was comfortable living both on the ground and in trees.

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

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

Posted on May 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(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!

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Broom Hilda might have helped Kong.
Close to Home has a strange GPS voice option.
Dinosaur Comics loves public domain works.
Pearls Before Swine breaks a reviewer’s code.
Rhymes with Orange needs a strange trim.
Yaffle goes martial.

(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)

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(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?

(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.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics discusses resolutions.
Fowl Language knows facts about stars.
Non Sequitur is surprised to meet the author.
Pardon My Planet indulges in a false equivalence about pro wrestling.
Strange Brew witnesses a timely departure.
The Argyle Sweater points out the disadvantage of cowl hair.
Wumo tries a line that fails.

(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 50^th 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.]

Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: The Road to Amber

Posted on May 22, 2025 by Mike Glyer

The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume 6: The Road to Amber, Edited by David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs and Ann Crimmins (NESFA, 2023)

Review by Paul Weimer: And so we come to the sixth and final volume of the NESFA Press collections of the works of Roger Zelazny. It is the end, but it has been prepared for, to quote the Fourth Doctor in Logopolis.

The amount of short fiction in these last years of Roger Zelazny is rather small. Both his health problems, and his focus on novels means that in terms of short fiction, this volume has the least of the six volumes in terms of short fictional material of the sort that has dominated the earlier volumes.

So let’s turn to that short fiction first. As the title, and people who know the bare outlines of Zelazny’s career can guess, this is the volume that collects all of the Amber short stories and other material that Zelazny wrote in and after the final Merlin novel of Amber. (There are a few other stories and works here as well, mind but Amber makes up more than half of the fiction in the book) Would these stories have been a springboard to a third series of Amber books? We’ll never know. Certainly, fan fiction writers and roleplayers (like myself) have used these stories as springboards and launching pads for roleplaying campaigns and other works.

Are the stories of interest to a reader not steeped in Amber? Honestly (and I say this as someone who I think you all know is pretty in deep in this stuff), probably not. The novels, as you know, feature Corwin (first series) and Merlin (second series) as singular points of view throughout their series. No breaking point of view, a strict close first person point of view. (In a way, the new enthusiasm for that in epic fantasy is, well, something Zelazny did decades ago)

These short stories break that convention. “The Salesman Tale” is from Luke’s perspective as he gets caught in Amber politics and makes a bargain with Vialle, Queen of Amber. “Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains” does return us to Corwin’s perspective, as he flees captivity in Chaos and gets mixed up in mysterious portents along the way. “The Shroudling and the Guisel returns us to Merlin’s perspective as he meets a childhood friend and deals with a extradimensional monster. “Coming to a Cord” is perhaps the most experimental of the lot, as it tells a story from the perspective of Merlin’s sapient artifact Frakir as they try to figure out mysterious events in the castle after being abandoned by Merlin.

“Hall of Mirrors”, the last and final story, has Corwin and Luke team up in the titular portion of the Castle, with even more dire portents, and mixes in Flora (seen in Coming to a Cord) in the bargain. There is also a map, an unusual ficlet of Amber written in collaboration with Ed Greenwood, the unpublished prologue to Trumps of Doom (where Merlin walks the Logrus, and first gets the aforementioned Frakir), and an Amber questionnaire which answers some questions about the Amberverse. It’s a decent chunk of the book, but again, in the end, if you don’t know who Rilga’s three sons are (1), or know whose symbol is a lion rending a unicorn (2), then these stories and bits and bobs are, I am afraid, not going to be a hit for you. They don’t stand alone, and aren’t meant to stand alone.

Fair enough. What else is here? More poetry (because the NESFA Press editors led by Kovacs have been so good as to sprinkle poetry from his entire career through the volumes). There are some interesting stories and curiosities as well. (Including an outline for what would become, with collaboration after his passing, the novel Donnerjack)

Of particular interest may be the remainder of the Croyd Crenson Wildcard stories and matter that Zelazny did in his lifetime, completing the collection of that work began in volume five. We get the character outline, which has been invaluable for people using the character ever since (Croyd is very popular in the Wild Cards universe), and the stories “Concerto for Siren and Serotonin” and the final story he did for Croyd, “The Long Sleep”.

There is also a surprising amount of work around the story Godson, which is about the godson of Death, and his unusual power and abilities as a result. I would have thought that maybe Pratchett was inspired by Godson in the creation of Susan in the Discworld novels, but I learned after reading the Godson material that there is an old Grimm’s fairytale about Godfather Death that Zelazny and Pratchett are both borrowing from. In addition to the story Godson, here, there is also a play adaptation of the story here, complete. The willingness of Zelazny to experiment and escape his own bounds by trying a play treatment of one of his stories just reinforces my conviction of his inventiveness and cleverness as a writer.

One of Zelazny’s finest short stories, “The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker” feels like, upon rereading (I read it long ago but forgot most of the details), as it is an inspiration for a particular scene in Interstellar. The story, about the eponymous space traveler trapped near a black hole and his attempts to escape his fate, is funny, poignant and amusing. It also occurs to me that Baker’s final fate also might tie into an idea that Gene Wolfe used in one of his later novels.

There is also the background and interstitial matter for Zelazny’s own attempt to do a shared world volume, Forever After. The conceit for Forever After is a good one–once the heroes have gathered all the magical geegaws, trinkets, tchotchkes and the like to defeat the Dark Lord (or Dark Lady, or Dark Being), what happens to them? Why are they found in such begotten places in the first place rather than gathered together? Zelazny’s idea is that having too many of the things in close proximity for too long turns out to be a bad thing. So, once the big bad is defeated, the magical artifacts have to be scattered all over again. And thus this anthology (which included David Drake, Jane Lindskold, Mike Stackpole and Robert Asprin) came to be. Zelazny provided the background and some interconnecting materials, the authors tells the story of the scattering of the artifacts again (and the consequences of doing so). It’s full of light fantasy humor (there is even a fight that is beat by beat a Three Stooges routine). And the whole idea feels like a deconstruction of fantasy quest narratives that could be published today (Django Wexler’s How to be the Dark Lord and Die Trying feels resonant with Forever After)

And then there are the remembrances and elegies. I’ve not really talked about these much in length in the previous volumes, but it is here that they hit, and hard. In particular, I was moved by the aforementioned Jane Lindskold’s piece simply titled “Roger Zelanzy “, which tells the story of their relationship in Zelazny’s last years of his life. I found it elegiac, moving and beautiful. Gerald Hausman and Gardner Dozois also have remembrances in this volume as well. However, Lindskold’s feels far more personal and real, and vital, and perhaps essential. While reading remembrances and elegies is something I am not wont to linger over, this one, giving perspective to the end of Roger’s life from Lindskold’s perspective, is the exception that proves the rule for me.

In some way, this volume, with those pieces, and the final pieces of Zelazny’s work, does make this volume both a wake and a celebration of life for Zelazny’s oeuvre. Certainly, the previous five volumes fit that role as well, but especially the early volumes felt more like an exploration of his earlier work, whereas where we come here, to the end of all things for Zelazny, it is a chance to read it to the end and think about, celebrate Zelazny’s work and his life, and mourn his too-early passing.

This is where we think about Zelazny in the main, in the complete, in the whole. I’ve highly enjoyed this exploration of his oeuvre, from its passionate and wild beginnings, through his phases of work, and here to the end. The biographies, poems, interstitial matter, curiosities and more have kept the books fresh and interesting. These have been far from being a dogmatic “death march” through his work. The six NESFA Press volumes of the Collected Work of Roger Zelazny have been a joyous shadowshift, and sometimes a glorious hellride, through the multitudinous worlds of Zelazny’s work. The journey has been the destination, even as this volume evokes Nine Princes of Amber and Corwin and Random driving toward the city, worlds changing as they go.

So we come to the end of this book, and the six book series. (There is a seventh book that is strictly a bibliography, The Ides of Octember.) As for me on a personal note, now that I have completed the Zelazny NESFA Press volumes, I look to move on to another heart author with a sheaf of NESFA Press books, and another of my heart authors, Poul Anderson.

So, to quote Corwin at the end of The Courts of Chaos:

“Hello, and goodbye, as always”

Footnotes.

(1) Gerard, Caine and Julian

(2) Dalt, son of Deela and Oberon. The character in my RPG scenarios and campaigns that players just love to hate.

Pixel Scroll 5/17/25 A Handbook For Pixels

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) AI HALLUCINATES ABOUT JG BALLARD. The Bookseller exposes that “Coca-Cola advert featuring JG Ballard novel ‘errors’ was ‘AI-leveraged’” (article is paywalled).

A Coca-Cola advert released as part of its “Classic” campaign, which features well-known authors referencing its products in their novels, appears to include an inaccurate representation of work by the English novelist JG Ballard.

The Empire of the Sun and Crash author is one of three writers included in an advertisement released by Coca-Cola in mid-April 2025. The advert shows an old-fashioned typewriter writing out excerpts from novels, such as Stephen King’s The Shining, as if the onlooker is watching the author type directly onto the page. References to Coca-Cola are accompanied by the appearance of the brand’s red logo and a burst of sound evoking that which might accompany the opening of a fizzy-drink bottle. As well extracts of work by King and VS Naipaul the advert presents us with Extreme Metaphors by JG Ballard, dated 1967. It features a misspelling of the Chinese city of Shanghai.

JG Ballard, who was published by HarperCollins in the UK, did not write a novel published in 1967 called Extreme Metaphors. There is, however, a book titled Extreme Metaphors: Selected Interviews with JG Ballard, edited by Dan O’Hara and Simon Sellars (4th Estate) and published in 2012, three years after Ballard’s death. O’Hara told 404Media: “The sequence of words being typed out by the imagined JG Ballard in the ad was never written by him, only spoken, and the only person ever to type that exact sequence out in English is me.”…

(2) HORROR UNIVERSITY OPEN FOR ENROLLMENT. StokerCon has announced the 2025 Horror University workshop schedule. From June 12-15 they will present nine live, in-person workshops at StokerCon 2025 in Stamford, CT. See course descriptions at the link.

HORROR UNIVERSITY is designed for horror writers interested in refining their writing, learning new skills and techniques, exploring new writing formats, or better understanding the genre. These workshops are taught by some of the most experienced voices in horror.

Registration per workshop is $55 per workshop for all attendees. General registration for StokerCon does not include Horror University programming; additional registration is required so that the Con is able to compensate each instructor for their workshop and support the cost of the program.

More details are available on Eventbrite and will be posted to StokerCon.com soon! Horror Universty workshops are separately ticketed sessions. Registrations may be purchased through the Registration portal.

(3) TUNED IN. A new episode – “Doctor Who: The Interstellar Song Contest” reviewed by Camestros Felapton. This is an ambiguous excerpt, but I want to avoid spoiling the review, the same way Camestros avoids spoiling the episode.

…Undoubtedly this is going to be a divisive episode. Some Doctor Who places I visit are showing a lot of love for it but I think a more general consensus is one of disappointment.

My main takeaway is that this episode is the best example of the recurring problem with this season….

(4) NIVEN Q&A. “Larry Niven interview: Ringworld legend discusses his classic novel and all things sci-fi” – a fun dialog that Niven fans will enjoy.

EHW: Is there anything you would do differently if you wrote Ringworld today?

LN: I’ve been telling people that I would start over with a universe in which you can’t go faster than light [and] nobody’s got psychic powers. The point is, if you build a Ringworld, it has to be because you can’t reach other stars…

EHW: What is the one piece of advice you would offer someone trying to write science fiction today?

LN: Shorten your name, like I did….

(5) BRADBURY’S BEST. James Wallace Harris only wants to read the best Bradbury – so how can he make sure he doesn’t miss any? Harris tries to solve that problem in “How Many Ray Bradbury Short Stories Do You Want to Read?” at Classics of Science Fiction.

…However, over the last five years, I’ve been gorging on science fiction short stories, and I’ve been surprised by how often his stories show up in anthologies. Then, a few weeks ago, I read The Bradbury Chronicles, a biography of Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller. Bradbury’s life was riveting, inspiring me to read more of his work. According to the Library of Congress, Bradbury published over 600 short stories. According to the Weller biography, by the late 1940s, Bradbury was writing and publishing a short story a week.

Piet Nel sent me a spreadsheet with 375 stories from all of Bradbury’s major collection. Piet also said, “Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, by Eller & Touponce (2004), has a comprehensive story list, compiled with academic rigor, up to 2002. It runs to about 400 stories.” So, it’s hard to reconcile the 600 number from the Library of Congress. Piet also sent me the link to Phil Nichols’ site and his Short Story Finder….

…I just don’t want to read that many Ray Bradbury stories. I just want to read his best stories, but I’m unsure which ones are the best. I’m partial to his science fiction stories, but I’m willing to read any type as long as they are among his best….

(6) GOLD STANDARD. “US Mint releases Space Shuttle $1 gold coin” and Popular Science tells how to get one.

You can now own a $1 gold coin celebrating one of America’s most revolutionary achievements: the NASA Space Shuttle program. The latest variant in the ongoing American Innovation $1 Coin series is available to order through the United States Mint. Selected to represent the state of Florida, the noncirculating legal tender is the third coin released this year and the 28th coin in the 15-year project first announced in 2018.

While the coin’s front displays the series’ Statue of Liberty image, the back shows the shuttle launching above plumes of exhaust. United States Mint Medallic Artist Eric David Custer sculpted the image while Artistic Infusion Program (AIP) Designer Ron Sanders designed it….

(7) MURDERBOT PRAISE. A highly favorable review – with a headline that makes an interesting claim: “’Murderbot’ review: This sci-fi show is the best new comedy of 2025” at NPR.

…I laughed a lot, watching Murderbot, and admired how much the show gets right from the jump. SecUnit offers a running commentary on the action, so the show is awash in voiceover. But that voiceover is used, never relied upon. It’s always employed in ways that individualize and particularize SecUnit’s character, which often manifests in jokes that undercut the events we’re watching through its eyes.

About those space-hippies. There are a lot of jokes at their expense, but they’re not the kind of lazy, lay-up, make-fun-of-the-wokes jokes. They’re specific, and so firmly rooted in character that they allow each member of the team to distinguish themselves from each other, to be weird in their own particular way….

…So, yeah. Murderbot is the best comedy series I’ve seen this year and I’m gonna be shouting that from the rooftops. Check out the episodes that drop Friday on Apple TV+. If you like them, do me a favor, because we need to get the word out about this show:

Meet me on the roof.

(8) LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. Seems the demand wasn’t that great in 1946. “Harvard Law Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. Surprise! It’s an Original.” The New York Times tells about the discovery. (Article is behind a paywall.)

Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946.

That is about to change.

Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties.

It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.

“I never in all my life expected to discover a Magna Carta,” said David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King’s College London, describing the moment in December 2023 when he made the startling find.

The manuscript’s value is hard to estimate, although it is fair to say that its price tag of under $30 (about $500 today) must make it one of the bargains of the last century. A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.

Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia, in eastern England, helped authenticate the text. He noted that the document, which bound the nation’s rulers to acting within the law, had resurfaced at a time when Harvard has come under extraordinary pressure from the Trump administration….

(9) JIM WALKER OBITUARY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sadly, the British SF fan Jim Walker has passed. Jim was a friend of, and a contributor to, the SF² Concatenation. His first offerings were a couple of book reviews back in the mid-1990s. From the early 2000s to 2017, he was one of our regular convention reporters, especially of Eurocons. He also took part in the Anglo-Romanian Fan Fund activities of the 1990s to early 2000s attending events, both here in Britain when there were visiting Eastern European fans, and also in Timisoara, Romania, with our two International Weeks of Science and SF in 1999 and 2003.

In addition to Eurocons, he was a regular at Britain’s (there are others) Festival of Fantastic Films and the British Eastercon. A civil engineer by training and profession, in retirement he made short films with local friends including a couple of SF offerings which, naturally, were screened at the Festival of Fantastic Films. Sadly, Jim was not at the 2023 Festival of Fantastic Films which I attended for the first time in a few years. We last physically met up in the summer of 2019 when he came down to London. We met to take in the view by Greenwich Observatory of the Thames and the new financial district to the north. We then walked across Blackheath’s Black Death plague pit (hence Blackheath’s name), to have lunch at a real ale hostelry… The thing about ‘last times’ is that when they occur you never know then that they are a ‘last time’. Farewell old pal.

The Dead Dog party participants following a gala dinner for the 1st International Week of Science & SF in 1999. Jim is far left (Jonathan next to him, yellow tie).

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

By Paul Weimer: The Empire Strikes Back. The Greatest of the Star Wars films?

Possibly.

Like Star Wars, I didn’t get to see this one in the theater. I didn’t get any playsets for this one, no Cloud City playset, unfortunately. I had a sketchy idea of the events of the movie from seeing Return of the Jedi, and the Atari 2600 videogame. Oh, and the vector laser arcade game. So I knew only a sketch of the movie and its events.

It would be when it aired on TV in the mid-80’s (along with Star Wars itself, and after I had seen ROTJ) that I would finally see the movie.

Best script of the entire nine movies? Possibly. For freshness and reinvention, the original Star Wars has Empire beat, but Star Wars can be slow going in places, where Empire is much leaner, meaner and more controlled in its blaster fire. We see how Lucas clearly had changed his mind about Luke and Leia and started the run toward Leia and Han. We meet Yoda, in his best incarnation. Force Ghost Obi-Wan. And just the casual way Vader deflects the laser fire from Han Solo was just so good. It answered the question of “Why don’t you just shoot him?” that I had wondered since his lightsaber fight in Star Wars.

And of course “Luke, I am your Father”. One of the greatest twists in modern cinema, without none. Was Vader lying? Why did Obi-Wan lie if he wasn’t? It brings Luke and the Rebellion to a low point not long after, Han captured, the rebellion scattered to the wind. In the Hero’s Journey, this is about as low as things can get in the trilogy. The middle of trilogies is hard, often flabby or repetitive. Empire is none of these. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit is fooled by a face.
Carpe Diem has trouble adjusting to working in person again.
Ink Pen would recommend his doctor.
Nancy thinks this self-help book is for someone else.
Off the Mark thinks the Lorax shares too much information.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal awaits the robot rebellion.
Wumo finds four’s a crowd.
xkcd complicates sailing.

(12) BUSTED. “How Broken is Google?” Camestros Felapton would like to tell you.

I’ve been writing short spoiler-free reviews of the current seasons of Doctor Who each (for me) Sunday morning, having watched the show Saturday (evening). Last week, I had a bit of blank on the title of the episode: was it the Story Engine…no…not quite. Rather than tie myself in knots I just googled it. “doctor who recent episode”.

Google came back with an answer: Castrovalva: Part One, Doctor Who Season 117, episode 1. It had a little picture of Peter Davison next to it. Observant readers will spot that Peter Davison is not Ncuti Gatwa, Castrovalva was broadcast 43 years ago and that, while long running, Doctor Who has not had 117 seasons….

And that’s not all!

(13) WHERE IT BEGAN. BBC reports about “The ‘space archaeologists’ hoping to save our cosmic history”. (And yet not a mention of River Song!)

Space is being commercialised on a scale unseen before. Faced by powerful commercial and political forces and with scant legal protections, artefacts that tell the story of our species’ journey into space are in danger of being lost – both in orbit and down here on Earth.

Like Stonehenge, these are irreplaceable artefacts and sites that have a timeless significance to humanity because they represent an essential stage in the evolution of our species. They are often also expressions of national pride because of the industrial and scientific effort needed to achieve them. Sometimes they are also memorials to those who died in the course of ambitious space programmes.

They also have another use. Studying these artefacts and sites helps researchers better understand how astronauts interact with new technology, adapt to new environments and develop new cultural practices. The conclusions of researchers can influence the design of future spacecraft and help future space missions succeed.

Can a new generation of pioneering space archaeologists like Alice Gorman and Justin Walsh help save our space heritage for coming generations, and how might their work change space exploration in the future? …

(14) IT HAS A PULSE. [Item by Steven French.] Not saying it’s aliens but not *not* saying it’s aliens either! “Not saying it’s aliens: SETI survey reveals unexplained pulses from distant stars” at Phys.org.

More than 60 years ago, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) officially began with Project Ozma at the Greenbank Observatory in West Bank, Virginia. Led by famed astronomer Frank Drake (who coined the Drake Equation), this survey used the observatory’s 25-meter (82-foot) dish to monitor Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti—two nearby sun-like stars—between April and July of 1960. Since then, multiple surveys have been conducted at different wavelengths to search for indications of technological activity (aka “technosignatures”) around other stars.

While no conclusive evidence has been found that indicates the presence of an advanced civilization, there have been many cases where scientists could not rule out the possibility. In a recent paper, veteran NASA scientist Richard H. Stanton describes the results of his multi-year survey of more than 1,300 sun-like stars for optical SETI signals. As he indicates, this survey revealed two fast identical pulses from a sun-like star about 100 light-years from Earth that match similar pulses from a different star observed four years ago…

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. DUST has posted “Sci-Fi Short Film ‘Imminent Arrival’”.

Richard James, AKA “Reaper Rick,” is a simple Red-blooded, paranoid, country man. His long history of Military Service has taught him to never trust the government, pushing him to live out his days in the country, off of the grid. Other than his religious viewership of his favorite cable news network, his only other connection to the outside world is through his good buddy, “Squinty Joe,” who he only keeps in contact through HAM Radio. The two of them engage daily about the latest wild conspiracy theories, further exacerbating and shaping their views on the world. The two are constantly trying to one-up each other, bragging about who has the latest gear or best doomsday prep. In their minds, the apocalypse is right around the corner so it only makes sense to have a solid plan. In this Sci-fi Dramedy short film, we follow a day in the life of Rick as his intense paranoia becomes a reality during one of the strangest days of his life!

[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, 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 Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 5/16/25 It’s Hot As Hell In Pixeldelphia

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) NATIONAL SPACE SOCIETY PICKS ROBERT A. HEINLEIN MEMORIAL AWARD WINNER. “Legendary Nasa Astronaut Story Musgrave To Receive Award At The International Space Development Conference” reports Fox 5 San Diego.

Former NASA astronaut Dr. Story Musgrave will receive the prestigious Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award for his efforts toward making humanity a spacefaring civilization this June at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference^® (ISDC^®). The conference will be held June 19-22 in Orlando, Florida, at the Rosen Centre Hotel.

Musgrave is a former NASA astronaut who was active during the Apollo, Skylab, and shuttle programs. He flew into space six times and aboard all five shuttle orbiters. He is also a medical doctor and holds six academic degrees in mathematics and statistics, business administration, chemistry, physiology and biophysics, literature, and an M.D. Musgrave served in the U.S. Marine Corps and has flown 17,700 hours in a wide variety of aircraft including 7,500 hours in jets.

“Story Musgrave is a legend in the astronaut corps,” said Isaac Arthur, president of the NSS. “Besides his stunning academic accomplishments, he is also a pilot, has practiced medicine, and is deeply educated in literature. He is a true polymath, and his contributions to core ideas of long-term spaceflight and settlement are impressive, making him a truly deserving of the prestigious Heinlein Memorial Award.”…

(2) GREGORY BENFORD UPDATE. Kathryn Cramer wrote in a comment on File 770 today:

I called Greg Benford last night and spoke to him about the statement Jim is circulating. Greg opposes Jim getting control of his finances and of his life.

My understanding is that this was either Jim’s 5th or 6th attempt to get Greg under conservatorship. The statement posted by Joe Haldeman was emailed out by Jim Benford as a PDF to a number of Gregs hard SF writer friends. (I now have a copy of the PDF.) Apparently, Jim was requesting that they post it.

The statement does not accurately represent the situation. And indeed if everything in the statement were true, Jim would not be causing the situation to be litigated on Facebook and via spamming Greg’s friends.

Cramer has made similar posts on Facebook, including here and here, where many comments have been left.

(3) ERIN UNDERWOOD PRESENTS. Erin Underwood has two new videos, a review of the first two episodes of Murderbot on Apple TV+, and a review of the conclusion of Andor Season 2.

Murderbot TV Series Review – Did They Get It Right?

Apple TV+ brings The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells to life—but does the series capture the sarcastic, media-loving SecUnit fans adore? Here’s my review of Episodes 1 & 2 and why Murderbot might be your next favorite sci-fi series.

Andor’s Ending Just Rewrote Rogue One – Star Wars Finale Review

Andor Season 2 ends not with a bang, but with something more powerful. In this review of Episodes 10–12, I explore how Tony Gilroy’s season finalé doesn’t just complete Cassian Andor’s arc, it reshapes how we understand Rogue One. From Luthen’s quiet sacrifice to Kleya’s infiltration (and the surprising final scene that reframes Cassian’s final moments) this series changes everything.

(4) WHAT IS NEWS? The Pew Research Center analyzes “What News Is (and Isn’t) According to Americans”.

…In the digital age, researchers – including Pew Research Center – increasingly study news from the audience perspective, what some have deemed an “audience turn.” Using this approach, the concept of news is not necessarily tied to professional journalism, and audiences, rather than journalists, determine what is news….

…Key findings:

Defining news has become a personal, and personalized, experience. People decide what news means to them and which sources they turn to based on a variety of factors, including their own identities and interests.
Most people agree that information must be factual, up to date and important to society to be considered news. Personal importance or relevance also came up often, both in participants’ own words and in their actual behaviors.
“Hard news” stories about politics and war continue to be what people most clearly think of as news. U.S. adults are most likely to say election updates (66%) and information about the war in Gaza (62%) are “definitely news.”
There are also consistent views on what news is not. People make clear distinctions between news versus entertainment and news versus opinion.
At the same time, views of news as not being “biased” or “opinionated” can conflict with people’s actual behaviors and preferences. For instance, 55% of Americans believe it’s at least somewhat important that their news sources share their political views.
People don’t always like news, but they say they need it: While many express negative emotions surrounding news (such as anger or sadness), they also say it helps them feel informed or feel that they “need” to keep up with it.
People’s emotions about news are at times tied to broader feelings of media distrust, or specific events going on at that time – perhaps in combination with individuals’ political identities. For instance, partisans often react positively to news about their own political parties or candidates and negatively to news covering their opposition, which means feelings can shift with political changes.

(5) ANOTHER SEASON OF FUTURE FOOTBALL. [Item by N.] Sports writer and documentarian Jon Bois’ multimedia narrative 17776 amassed a lot of buzz and a cult fandom upon its release in 2017 (this contributor remembers trying to push for it to get a Hugo nomination, despite its unconventional framing). Following its 2020 sequel 20020, it looks like there’s a third installment coming—and this time, it’s been sold to Tor:

(6) THE SENTENCE IS WRITTEN. “Man who attacked author Salman Rushdie gets 25 years in prison” reports NPR.

Hadi Matar, the man who severely injured novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing attack, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison — the maximum for attempted murder.

Matar, 27, was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder in February for his attack on the author at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022. A knife-wielding Matar leapt onto the stage where Rushdie was about to give a lecture, stabbing the author multiple times in the face, neck, arm, abdomen and eye.

The assault left Rushdie, now 77, partially blind and with permanent nerve damage. The author did not return to the Chautauqua County court in Mayville, N.Y., for the sentencing, but did submit a victim impact statement….

(7) LORDS CONSIDER AMENDED AI BILL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The House of Lords (in the UK) have returned a second time to the House of Commons an amendment to the forthcoming Data (Use and Access) Bill. This amendment has already been rejected twice by the Commons who want AI trainers copyright free access to copyright material. The House of Lords want IP creators to have the right to refuse to allow their work be used to train AIs. The Lords voted against
the Commons position by 287 to 88.

We await the Commons response. Constitutionally – and remember Britain has an unwritten constitution (unlike WSFS) – the Commons should now accept their Lordship’s view, however there is precedent for them to ignore it though that would likely spark a bit of a Parliamentary row. We await, with interest, outcomes.

Details here: “Industry urges government to accept data bill AI amendment as it passes in Lords” at The Bookseller (behind a paywall).

(8) A TIME THE WRITER GOT PAID. Daytonian in Manhattan recalls some notable tenants of “H. I. Feldman’s 1940 139 East 35th Street” in New York.

…Moving into an apartment in October 1941 were actor Frank O’Connor and his wife, author and screenwriter Ayn Rand. The couple met on the set of Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings and were married on April 15, 1929. Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905, Ayn became an American citizen in 1931.

Two months after moving in, Rand landed a contract to publish the novel she was working on, The Fountainhead. It was published in May 1943. Later that year, Rand returned home from a business lunch and, according to Anne Conover Heller in her Ayn Rand and the World She Made:

When she got back to the apartment, tired and downcast, her husband was waiting in the dimly lit living room, a peculiar look on his face. “Well, darling,” he said, after a dramatic pause, “while you were at lunch you earned fifty thousand dollars.”

Frank O’Connor had received the phone call from Warner Bros. informing her they had purchased the screen rights to The Fountainhead. The couple left 139 East 35th Street in December that year….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 16, 1999 — The Phantom Menace

By Paul Weimer: The year was 1999 and the Moon blasted out of orbit, leaving Martin Landau and Barbara Bain to wander through space…

Wait, wrong universe, let’s try again.

The year was 1999. Near the end of the decade between the fall of the wall and the fall of the Towers. Sixteen years after Return of the Jedi. The Phantom Menace was going to be released in theaters. Uncharacteristically for me, I had already seen the soundtrack and realized that there was a movie spoiler hidden in the list of tracks.

Regardless, I was determined to see it in a theater, on opening day. I tried three theaters that day (May 16th) before finally getting a ticket, in a completely full theater. It was an event, an excitement in the air. And then the crawl began. The cadence and style were of the first three movies, but taxation dispute? What WAS this? And then the movie began.

There is some good stuff, some of the old Lucas magic. The Qui-Gon and Obi relationship. Classic serial plot twist with the switched Princess. The enemy droids. (Roger, Roger). Some of Naboo looks great.

But some of the magic was gone or worse, turned and twisted. Jar-Jar Binks, the worst character Lucas has created, bar none. Anakin originally made C3P0? Really? Why? It’s a story beat and choice that makes absolutely no sense, then or now.

And then there is the momentum killer. Don’t get me wrong, the pod race is a spectacle and very fun to watch. But it absolutely kills the momentum of a movie that is flailing already. Sure, Ben-Hur did it but Ben-Hur was not floundering before the chariot race. The pod race is outsized for the stakes it has. And the movie never recovers from it. By the time we get to the fight with Darth Maul, it’s a relief, not the culmination of a great movie. Lucas’ magic failed him in this movie.

I tried watching the movie one more time since that fateful opening day…and my opinion, unfortunately, has not improved. I did watch Attack of the Clones and The Revenge of the Sith and those movies have their own problems. But, fortunately, they are not The Phantom Menace.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Carpe Diem adapts a device.
Dinette Set suggests a name change.
Heart of the City finds a fitness coach.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal predicts the future of coding.
Three Panel Soul shows a prompt injection can be surprisingly effective.

(11) SPIDER-GWEN. Announced earlier today at Collider, the adventures of Spider-Gwen will undergo an evolution this August in Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider #1 by writer Stephanie Phillips and artist Paolo Villanelli.

The series follows Phillips and Villanelli’s current run of Spider-Gwen: The Ghost-Spider which comes to a thrilling conclusion this July and sets the stage for this bold new beginning. Departing her home dimension under mysterious circumstances and finding herself trapped in Earth-616, Gwen embarked on a journey involving Loki, the TVA, and the reality-altering Cosmic Cube. Now, Gwen’s extended stay becomes permanent as her very life is rewoven into the main Marvel Universe!

Gwen Stacy isn’t from this Earth but she’s here to stay, so it’s time to make herself at home! A new costume, a new home life– heck, she’s even starting a new band! Unfortunately for Gwen, new threats are also heading her way, starting with one that just might be her own fault! Follow the Ghost-Spider as she settles into Earth-616 to stay!

“For Gwen, this new start is about possibility,” Phillips told Collider. “She’s carrying the weight of her past, but she’s finally in a place where she can build something new—new allies, new purpose, and maybe even a new sense of self… or, recovering an element of herself we haven’t seen in a while. Like playing in a band.”

(12) FIRST VOLDEMORT, NOW… “Hunger Games Sunrise on the Reaping: Ralph Fiennes Is President Snow” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Lionsgate‘s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping has found its President Snow.

Ralph Fiennes will play the ruthless Panem dictator in director Francis Lawrence‘s forthcoming film in the franchise, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively…

…Fiennes follows in the footsteps of the late Donald Sutherland, who portrayed Coriolanus Snow in the series’ first four films that kicked off with The Hunger Games hitting theaters in 2012. Blyth starred as a younger version of the character opposite Rachel Zegler in 2023’s prequel feature The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes….

(13) IS HE SUPE ENOUGH? [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s “Week in Geek” considers the trailer for James Gunn’s Superman: “James Gunn’s new Superman is more human than alien god – but can he still inspire awe?”

For those of us brought up on the 1978 version of Superman, the sight of him squirming in the face of a mildly probing interview by Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) in the first full trailer for James Gunn’s Superman is like watching a Greek god forget his lines in a school play. Rather than a morally upright, granite-jawed colossus watching over us like Jesus in a cape, this new David Corenswet-essayed take on Kal-El is one who is less a saviour from the stars than a disbelieving schoolboy who can’t quite understand how he’s getting aggravation for rescuing a cat up a tree….

(14) SOL GALL. “Sun Launches Its Strongest Solar Flare of the Year So Far, Causing Radio Blackouts Around the World” reports Smithsonian Magazine.

The sun has had quite a busy week hurling solar flares at our planet, causing blackouts across the globe.

“After weeks of calm, solar activity is suddenly high again,” reports Spaceweather.com. This is not totally unexpected, as scientists announced in the fall that the sun has reached the peak of its natural, 11-year cycle of activity, a high level known as the solar maximum. During this phase, the sun has more sunspots—dark, cool regions with tangled-up magnetic fields that can erupt material out into space.

The recent flares came from a pair of sunspots, including a new one that emerged earlier this week. Called AR4087, the spot is not completely aligned with Earth, but it’s currently turning toward our planet. “If the explosions continue for a few more days, however, Earth will find itself squarely in the strike zone,” with the potential for aurora-causing coronal mass ejections (CMEs) to arrive, writes Spaceweather.com….

… On Tuesday, a sunspot named AR4086 shot out an X1.2 solar flare. The very next day, the new sunspot AR4087 followed up with an M5.3 flare before a significantly stronger X2.7 flare—then topped it all off with another M7.7 flare, as reported by Live Science’s Jess Thomson. The AR4087 explosion caused “strong” R3 radio blackouts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, per Space.com’s Daisy Dobrijevic….

(15) JUST PUCKER UP, AND BLOW. [Item by Steven French.] If we could talk with the animals … well, maybe someday we can: “Dolphin whistle decoders win $100,000 interspecies communication prize” reports the Guardian.

A $100,000 prize for communicating with animals has been scooped by researchers who have shed light on the meaning of dolphins’ whistles.

The Coller-Dolittle Prize for Two-way Inter-species Communication was launched last year by the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University.

The winning team, the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program led by Laela Sayigh and Peter Tyack from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has been studying bottle-nosed dolphins in waters near Sarasota, Florida, for more than four decades.

The researchers used non-invasive technologies such as hydrophones and digital acoustic tags attached by suction cups to record the animals’ sounds. These include name-like “signature” whistles, as well as “non-signature” whistles – sounds that make up about 50% of the animals’ calls but are poorly understood.

In their latest work, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, the team identified at least 20 different types of non-signature whistle that are produced by multiple dolphins, finding two types were each shared by at least 25 individuals.

When the researchers played these two sounds back to dolphins they found one triggered avoidance in the animals, suggesting it could be an alarm signal, while the other triggered a range of responses, suggesting it could be a sound made by dolphins when they encounter something unexpected…

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

Pixel Scroll 5/15/25 A Pixel A Day, Keeps The AI Away

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) GREGORY BENFORD CONSERVATORSHIP ANNOUNCED. Joe Haldeman today published on Facebook an announcement and statement by James Benford: “Jim Benford asked me to post this: Court Approves conservatorship of the Estate and Person of Gregory Benford”. In addition to some information about Gregory Benford’s health, it includes allegations and insinuations about people who have been close to Gregory since his stroke in 2022.

Richard Man tries to correct the characterization about one of those people in this Facebook post.

A number of well-known sff figures comment on the two posts.

(2) LACON V REVEALS FIRST SPECIAL GUEST. The 2026 Worldcon committee, LACon V, has announced Tracy Drain as the convention’s first Special Guest.

Tracy Drain is a flight systems engineer who has helped to develop, test, and operate a variety of robotic spacecraft for deep space exploration over the past 25+ years. Her passion for space grew from an early love of science fiction – she soaked up Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica, plus sci-fi and fantasy books by the armload. With her eye on a career in space, she studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky and interned at the NASA Langley Research Center. After earning a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, she landed a full-time position at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2000.

As a systems engineer, Tracy works with teams of engineers and scientists to ensure all the parts of a spacecraft (telecommunications, thermal, power, software, etc.), the science instruments, and the mission (spacecraft/instruments, ground data system, mission design and navigation, etc.) are designed to work well together to accomplish the mission goals. Her previous missions have included the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Kepler mission (an Exoplanet hunter), the Juno mission (orbiting Jupiter) and the Psyche mission (now on its way to study an asteroid). She is currently the Chief Engineer in operations for the Europa Clipper mission which successfully launched in October 2024 and is now on its 5.5-year cruise to Jupiter. After arrival in the Jovian system, Clipper will study Europa – one of the most scientifically exciting moons in our solar system!…

(3) LACON V OPENS PROGRAM PARTICIPANT INTEREST SURVEY. The Program Division for LAcon V, the 2026 Worldcon, will be co-managed by Helen Montgomery and Dr. Meg MacDonald. Montgomery chaired Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon. MacDonald was co-Division Head for Promotions for Glasgow 2024 – A Worldcon for Our Futures.

LAcon V has a Program Overview page.

Our Program Suggestion Form is for anyone who wishes to submit an idea for a program item. This can be a panel discussion you want to see, a workshop you want someone to run, a discussion group about your favorite book or movie franchise – maybe you just have a cool panel title, or perhaps a fully formed description of a panel but no title. It’s all okay to submit! No idea is too big or too small; we want to hear them all!

And then there’s our Program Participant Interest survey, which is for anyone who is interested in being a program participant, be it on site in Anaheim or online through our virtual offerings. We expect and need hundreds of program participants. Some may be professionals in their field; others may be hobbyists or fans. No matter what, we want to know more about you! Filling out the form does not guarantee that you will be accepted as a participant, but it is the first necessary step in the process, and we’re excited to hear from you.

(4) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books has released Simultaneous Times podcast episode 87 with KC Grifant & Franco Amati.

Stories featured in this episode:

“Negation” by KC Grifant; music by Phog Masheeen; read by the Jenna Hanchey
“So I Guess I’m Not an Actual Person Anymore” by Franco Amati; music by Phog Masheeen; read by Jean-Paul Garnier

Theme music by Dain Luscombe.

(5) GENRE GRAPEVINE ON SEATTLE WORLDCON. Jason Sanford presents “Genre Grapevine’s Deep Dive into the Use of ChatGPT by Seattle Worldcon”, a public post on Patreon.

….It appears Worldcon leadership only learned that ChatGPT was used in this manner after the fact, when the person on the vetting team revealed what they’d done and said that there was no other way to complete the vetting with so few volunteers on the team. While Worldcon leadership had concerns about the use of generative AI, because ChatGPT had already been used – and because of the lack of needed volunteers on the vetting team – they decided to retroactively accept its use.

What came after is now well known: Word about the use of ChatGPT quickly spread among Worldcon volunteers and the larger genre community.

I’m told the person on the vetting team who originally decided to use ChatGPT is no longer involved in the vetting process….

Unfortunately, none of the quoted sources was willing to go on the record as a source.

(6) DAVE RATTI OBITUARY. [By Becky Veal.] David Ratti, long time Orlando fan, passed away on May 15, 2025. He had been suffering prolonged illnesses, but the cause of death is initially listed as pneumonia and sepsis.

I don’t know when Dave first got into fandom, but I met him at Necronomicon in 1983. I was pushing my infant son Sean in a stroller when someone came up to me and tried to start a conversation. I remember thinking “another fat jerk“. And thus I met my best friend of 40 years.

Dave was a founding member of the Orlando Science Fiction Society and the convention Oasis. We worked together editing the bid progress reports for the 1992 Orlando Worldcon, MagiCon. We ran more convention offices and other departments than I can count.

I will write a better obituary later, as I’m sure others will. I’m too exhausted with grief to do more. Dave was unique and special and wonderful in his own way. There will be many tears shed by many fans and friends, including myself.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Liō series (2006)

Nineteen years ago on this date, one of the most unusual strips to come into existence did so in the form of Mark Tatulli’s Liō. It was very easy to market globally as it had almost no dialogue except that spoken by other people in the parodies that I’ll mention in a minute as Liō and the other characters don’t speak at all, and there were no balloons or captions at all giving it a global appeal.

Liō, who lives with his father and various monsters, i.e. Ishmael a giant squid and Fido a spider, various animals like Cybil a white cat (of course there’s a cat here, a very pushy feline indeed), aliens, lab creations, and even Liō’s hunchbacked assistant. Why there’s even Archie, Liō’s psychopathic ventriloquist’s dummy. Liō’s mother is deceased. Though why she’s deceased is never stated. Definitely not your nuclear family here.

An important aspect of the strip is that it will riff off other strips, and lots of them: Blondie, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes (my favorite strip ever), Cathy, Garfield, Opus, Peanuts, even Pearls Before Swine (definitely not one of my favorite strips I will readily admit) will become fodder for parody by this strip. That’s where the only dialogue is spoken.

Tatulli on the Mr. Media podcast back a decade or so said “It’s really a basic concept. It’s just Liō who lives with his father, and that’s basically it, and whatever I come up with. I set no parameters because I didn’t want to lock myself in. I mean, having no dialogue means that there is going to be no dialogue-driven gags, so I have to leave myself as open as possible to any kind of thing, so anything basically can happen.”

There a transcript of that podcast here as the audio quality of that interview is, as the interviewer admits, rather awful. He says that he got better after that first interview by him.

In multiple interviews, Tatulli has said the two major contemporary influences on his style are Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams.

It’s good at offending people as this strip demonstrates.

Currently, the strip runs daily globally in more than two hundred and fifty papers. Lio is also available in collections, many of them, found in paperback and digital formats. They display rather well on an iPad.

(8) MORE MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 15, 2015 — Mad Max: Fury Road

By Paul Weimer: I briefly mentioned Mad Max Fury Road in my recent retrospective of George Miller, but the movie deserves a bit of its own space as well.

It came out in 2015. Thirty years after the previous entry, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I had figured that the franchise had had its end. The creation of Fury Road was a delight, and, 30 years after seeing the last Mad Max movie in a theater, I vowed to see this one, too. And so I did, one fine afternoon in May.

I was blown away. Tom Hardy makes an excellent Mad Max, taking up Gibson’s old mantle. But the thing that struck me immediately is how little he is a part of his own movie. This is a movie about a community, and about an Imperator (Charlize Theron) and a struggle against patriarchal tyranny. Max is only a piece of his own titular film…and yet it works. What I remember about this film isn’t Max so much as Immortan Joe, and his Boys. And Furiosa. And the War Rig.

And the spectacle. Seeing this on a movie theater screen was revelatory. The scale and size of the movie, especially in the “dust storm” sequence, astonished me. My jaw hit the floor when we got to that sequence. And then we get the musician on the attacking vehicle, and a fantastic action sequence. We get moments of intimacy, and care. And utter tragedy, when Furiosa realizes her paradisiacal home is gone forever. The fiercely anti-patriarchal nature of the script. “We are not things!”

It won six academy awards, and was also up but did not win Best Picture and Best Director. Entirely deserving, Mad Max Fury Road felt (until the recent movie Furiosa) as a capstone to the world of Mad Max. In a way, I feel like it is the one essential Mad Max movie because, as noted above, Mad Max is almost a walk-on in his own titular movie. The movie is much bigger, bolder and larger for not having Max front and center, and possibly why it is so successful. It’s the one essential Mad Max movie. It takes every theme of the previous films, adds new ones and puts it all together in a stunning performance all around.

And the Black and White conversion is fantastic.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Dinosaur Comics predicts the future.
Frank and Ernest label a book trend.
Ink Pen illustrates failure at Green Lantern power.
Loose Parts corrects a name.
Reality Check doesn’t age well.
Rhymes with Orange runs into staffing issues.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comments on achievements.
Tom the Dancing Bug has a repeat that is still true.
xkcd features a historian joke.

(10) KGB. Ellen Datlow shared her photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB readings for May 14, 2025.

Carol Gyzander and Daryl Gregory read from recent work to a full house, despite the dreary weather.

(11) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 134 of the Octothorpe podcast, “In the Framework of Linear Time”, they “discuss the recent Seattle 2025 controversy, and also read out some letters of comment from various listeners, before getting into the real meat of the podcast: roguelikes.” An uncorrected transcript is here.

A photograph of a yellow square on a mantlepiece. On the yellow square is black text and a red shape with yellow text. The text reads “Corflu 42. 2025 FAAn Awards. Best Immutable Object: Octothorpe”. Text overlaid on the photograph reads ‘Octothorpe 134. “Don’t believe everything you read on ChatGPT.”’

(12) LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS. JustWatch gives reasons to watch “Love, Death + Robots – streaming tv show online”.

JustWatch’s latest Why-To-Watch feature spotlights acclaimed director and animator Tim Miller, the visionary behind Netflix’s genre-defying anthology Love, Death + Robots, which premieres its fourth season today (May 15, 2025). In an exclusive quote shared with JustWatch, Miller speaks to the show’s groundbreaking creative freedom and its potential to convert even the most hesitant viewer into an animation devotee.

The show’s Director Tim Miller says:

This show will make you an animation fan

There’s something for everyone [in “Love, Death + Robots”]. If you want to see artists performing at the top of their game across a variety of genres and styles, and you’re an animation fan, it’s a must-watch. If you’re not an animation fan, this is the show that might make you one.

(13) V’GER LIVES! [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Engineers at NASA say they have successfully revived thrusters aboard Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from our planet, in the nick of time before a planned communications blackout. “Voyager 1: Once ‘dead’ thrusters on the farthest spacecraft from Earth are in action again” at CNN.

Engineers at NASA say they have successfully revived thrusters aboard Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from our planet, in the nick of time before a planned communications blackout.

A side effect of upgrades to an Earth-based antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, the communications pause could have occurred when the probe faced a critical issue — thruster failure — leaving the space agency without a way to save the historic mission. The new fix to the vehicle’s original roll thrusters, out of action since 2004, could help keep the veteran spacecraft operating until it’s able to contact home again next year.

Voyager 1, launched in September 1977, uses more than one set of thrusters to function properly. Primary thrusters carefully orient the spacecraft so it can keep its antenna pointed at Earth. This ensures that the probe can send back data it collects from its unique perspective 15.5 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space, as well as receive commands sent by the Voyager team.

(14) THE KIDS HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT TEKWAR. [Item by N.] Majuular discusses “William Shatner’s TekWar: A Forgotten Franchise in Retrospect”.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, N., Becky Veal, John Coxon, Steven H Silver, Lis Carey, 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 Peer.]

Pixel Scroll 5/14/25 First Shalt Thou Take Out The Holy Pixel

Posted on May 14, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) INAUGURAL CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE. “And So I Roar wins Climate Fiction Prize 2025”. The Climate Fiction Prize is a new literary prize that celebrates the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis. The Prize, worth £10,000, was awarded at a ceremony in London, on May 14.

Abi Daré has won the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize for And so I Roar (Sceptre, Hodder). The novel follows fourteen-year-old Adunni from her life in Lagos, where she is excited to finally enroll in school, to her home village where she is summoned to face charges for events that are in fact caused by climate change.

“A book of real energy and passion which both horrifies and entertains with a cast of compelling characters, a story of how the climate crisis can provoke social crisis where often women and children are the victims. Despite the tragedy, Abi Daré holds faith in the strength of individuals and relationships and her hopefulness leaves us inspired.”

– Madeleine Bunting, Chair of Judges

(2) MARTHA WELLS Q&A. Martha Wells did a Reddit r/television Ask Me Anything today. You can read the answers here: “This is Martha Wells, a four-time Hugo, two-time Nebula, and five-time Locus Award winner for The Murderbot Diaries, a book series published by Tordotcom. Ask Me Anything”.

Here’s one exchange.

BiasCutTweed

I have two pedantic world building questions I would love to ask though, if you’re game to answer:

Is there any sort of nominal governance structure in the Corporation Rim? Like just enough to support a judicial and monetary system, and the regulatory stuff that occasionally gets mentioned. I know Murderbot could absolutely give zero damns and it’s our narrator but I’m weirdly curious.
There are alien remnants everywhere but we never see any living advanced aliens. Do they exist? Might we ever?
And a show-specific question – did you/they ever consider Fleabag-style 4th wall breaks for Murderbot’s inner thoughts? Or would that be way too much eye contact for it?

marthawellswriter

There is basically a committee structure that handles that stuff, with different people from various dominant corporations being appointed to it, and it works about as well as you might expect.
They might still exist, but I don’t think I’d take the story in that direction.
I think they did early on, because I saw some auditions that used it, but I actually think the voiceover works much better and I’m glad they went with it.

(3) WIL WHEATON’S FAVES. JustWatch has teamed up with sci-fi icon Wil Wheaton to spotlight his all-time favorite science fiction movies and TV shows in a newly released editorial feature on JustWatch.com.

In this exclusive Why to Watch editorial, Wheaton shares a curated list of titles that have shaped his lifelong love of science fiction. From intergalactic epics to overlooked cult gems, the collection offers fans a rare peek into the streaming watchlist of one of pop culture’s most enduring sci-fi personalities. “Wil Wheaton’s Top 6 Sci-Fi Movies & Shows That Are Not Star Trek”.

Here is perhaps his most obscure pick.

Sugar (2024)

Wheaton also loves the cult Apple TV+ series Sugar. “It’s one of the great sci-fi series of the last five years that I never really heard people talk about,” the actor says. The show is a noir thriller that blends in fantastic sci-fi elements and follows a private investigator (Colin Farrell) who has a secret of his own. “I loved it,” Wheaton continued, “I thought it was brilliant and extremely well-done.”

Wil Wheaton told us some of his favorite sci-fi movies and TV shows of all time (not counting #StarTrek, of course). Do they match your list? ???????? pic.twitter.com/5W8UEkWBoY
— JustWatch (@JustWatch) May 13, 2025

(4) APPOINTMENT VIEWING. Will British cultural icon ITV be sold? “ITV Sale Speculation: Inside Deal Everyone And No One Is Talking About” at Deadline.

If you’ve watched ITV’s The Assembly, you will know that it involves stars like Danny Dyer and David Tennant subjecting themselves to no-holds-barred questions from a captivating cast of neurodivergent interrogators. It makes for illuminating viewing, producing genuine revelations from its disarmed but obliging subjects, who enter the show in a spirit of openness.

Far from the cameras, in a colorless room in the basement of London’s 11 Cavendish Square townhouse on Tuesday, ITV chairman Andrew Cosslett was similarly squirming in the face of questioning, with less comical results. Chairing ITV’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), Cosslett was grilled, almost heckled, by an angry shareholder demanding to know when the British broadcaster’s 78p share price will rise after flatlining for more than three years.

“This is not good enough, you must have some idea, you guys are very highly paid,” said the shareholder. Cosslett struggled to answer, reaching for what by now feels like an old fail-safe. “If you can explain to me what Donald Trump will do next, then maybe I could,” he said.

Questions around ITV’s sticky share price — Cosslett and ITV boss Carolyn McCall faced three during the 45-minute AGM alone — are inextricably linked to the constant mutterings around its potential sale. On this matter, ITV has been a little less forthcoming with answers than the celeb bookings on The Assembly. The company that gave the world Downton Abbey has been finding new ways to say “no comment” to inquiries about whether it will submit to suitors, including RedBird IMI and Banijay….

(5) MISSING BUT NOT NECESSARILY LOST. “Doctor Who archive legend says missing episodes ‘certainly’ exist in private collections” – quotes in Radio Times.

With 97 of the missing Doctor Who episodes still unaccounted for, Sue Malden, the BBC’s first archive selector who has worked to find episodes across the years, has assured fans that she believes some “certainly” still exist in private collections.

Twenty-six stories from the show’s first six years are currently incomplete, because the BBC erased or reused tapes in the 1960s and 1970s to save storage space and costs. In recent years some of these episodes have now been recreated via animation, as tapes of audio recordings have survived for every episode.

Still, there remains hope amongst fans that other full episodes could still exist to this day, something Malden has suggested is a very real possibility.

Speaking at the RECOVERED festival at the Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre in Leicester, hosted by Film is Fabulous!, Malden was asked about the current situation regarding missing Doctor Who episodes.

Malden said: “As far as Doctor Who goes, we do not have a statement or anything to make at the moment. We do know fairly certainly that there are episodes missing in private collections. Some members of the Film is Fabulous! team are in a considerably significant position to help on that.”…

(6) FINAL MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] My summary: Mostly glowing reviews, especially about the action sequences. Some grumbles about the runtime and convoluted plot. “Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning First Reactions” in the Hollywood Reporter.

“Tom Cruise has done it again!” That’s the very early verdict from press screenings for the Hollywood icon’s latest film, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, with the film variously described as “astonishing,” “jaw-dropping,” “insane” and the “action movie of the summer.”

Following a series of press screenings, first reactions to Final Reckoning are hitting social media after the embargo lifted on Monday night. The social media reactions come ahead of official critics’ reviews, which drop on Wednesday.

The eighth film in the long-running Paramount Pictures spy action franchise, Final Reckoning has a lot riding on it for the studio as well as the domestic box office. In November 2024, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the project has had a long and difficult journey, with a budget approaching a hefty $400 million amid production delays — partly due to the 2023 Hollywood strikes — making it one of the most expensive films ever made….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 14, 1944 — George Lucas, 81.

By Paul Weimer: To talk about George Lucas for me is to first talk about Star Wars.

Star Wars lurked in my imagination long before seeing any of it. I didn’t see Star Wars in the theater but my younger brother and I got a joint Christmas gift of a Death Star playset, and a few action figures. We only had the commercials for the set to go on, not Lucas’ own vision, and so our playing of the set led to very strange scenarios having nothing to do with the movie.

It would not be until 1983, and Return of the Jedi, that I saw a George Lucas movie at all, and in the theater. I saw the magic of his world, having only the fuzziest idea of the first two movies, but I was swept along. This shows the power of Lucas harnessing the power of serial fiction to allow watchers to get in on the action quickly. This is something the Marvel cinematic universe could still learn from Lucas today. It’s not just the crawls at the beginning, its the economy of storytelling, the establishment of characters that let you hit the ground running.

Like Star Wars, I missed the first Indiana Jones movie in theaters, but did see Temple of Doom (Lucas did not direct but his story was the basis of the film). And of course, too, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Same principle applies. Early Lucas knew the power of crafting episodic sequels and making them work.

In keeping with those films, Lucas was also responsible for getting me hooked into the idea of the Hero’s Journey, since I read the Joseph Campbell book The Power of Myth thanks to Lucas’ forward in the book. Sure, the Hero’s Journey is a very outdated, patriarchal and restrictive story framework but it was my first real engagement with the nature and form of stories. Lucas helped introduce me to that whole new world.

However, I would not see another Lucas directed film until the late 1990’s…but that is another story, one that deserves its own entry.

George Lucas with his wife, Mellody Hobson

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss has a child “helpfully” point something out.
Mike de Jour finds that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Mutts – did he answer the question?
Rubes can’t come up with an original excuse.
Wumo might be an annoying fan.

(9) DE-RE-BRANDING. The Hollywood Reporter says “Warners Is Changing Max’s Name Again — Back to HBO Max”. Sigh. Please just make up your mind.

… Thirty minutes into Wednesday’s Warner Bros. Discovery upfront, Bloys revealed the name change to media buyers. The news was met with laughter, light applause and exactly one whistle. Bloys did follow with a solid joke: “I know you’re all shocked, but the good news is I have a drawer full of stationery from the last time around.”…

(10) COMMUNITY RESPONDS TO BOOK BURNING. “Man burns 100 library books on social media; residents donate 1,000 more” on News 5 Cleveland.

Members of an Interfaith Group Against Hate (IGAH) gathered outside a Northeast Ohio church to stand united against hate. This comes after reports that a man checked out 100 books related to race, religion, and LGBTQ+ topics from the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Beachwood — then burned them in a video posted to social media.

View the news video here.

(11) IRONHEART. Gizmodo lets everyone know “Finally, the First Ironheart Trailer Is Here”.

… Black Panther: Wakanda Forever introduced audiences to Riri Williams (Dominque Thorne), an MIT genius who built her own Iron Man-esque armored suit and helped the Wakandans fight the Talokanil.

She may have left her suit behind in Wakanda, but she hasn’t given up trying to make new ones that truly establish her as the next big talent. While back home in Chicago, she crosses paths with Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), a misfit with a hood that lets him use dark magic and wants her to be a part of what he’s building up. Things seem good at first, but once she starts getting wise to the shadier parts of his dealings, Riri’s gotta armor up and protect Chicago and her loved ones….

(12) SUPER TRAILER PARK. “Superman’s Full Trailer Gives Us Our Best Look Yet at DC’s New Era” reports Gizmodo.

…[James] Gunn teased the trailer on social media as the “full trailer” he’d been “waiting too long to share.” And indeed, we see Superman facing off with an array of baddies, including a giant scaly monster and several supervillains—including, most intriguingly, a smirking Lex Luthor. He also stops a war and gets in trouble for it with the U.S. government, and gets grilled about it by the toughest journalist he knows: Lois Lane, who definitely knows Clark is Superman this time around…

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Jayn.]

File 770

Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom

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